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Gary Edwards

Professor Hoppe's new book: "The Competition of Crooks") | The God That Failed - 0 views

thegodthatfailed.org/...uner-the-competition-of-crooks

Hans-Hermann-Hoppe Libertarian Democracy

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • And perhaps then, finally, will come the realization that democracy – in whose name all these dirty tricks have been done – is nothing more than an especially insidious form of communism, and that the politicians who have wrought this immoral and economic madness and who have thereby enriched themselves personally (never, of course, being liable for the damages they have caused!), are nothing more than a despicable bunch of communist crooks.
  • democracy which is causally responsible for the fatal conditions afflicting us now
  • The number of productive people is constantly decreasing, and the number of people parasitically consuming the income and wealth of this dwindling number of productive people is increasing steadily. This can’t work in the long run.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • That the whole democratic house of cards has not yet completely collapsed speaks volumes about the still tremendous creative power of capitalism, even in the face of ever-increasing governmental strangulation.
  • And this fact also allows us to conjecture about what economic ‘miracles’ would be possible if we had unimpeded capitalism liberated from such parasitism.
  • the correct realization becomes generally accepted that the only antagonistic conflict of interest in society is the one between tax-payers, i.e. the exploited, and tax-consumers, i.e. the exploiters.:
  • In other words, between the class of people on the one hand who earn their income and assets by producing something that is bought voluntarily and valued accordingly by others; and the class of those on the other hand who produce nothing considered to be of value, but who live instead by living off and enriching themselves from the incomes and assets of other, productive people, forcibly taken via taxation – that is to say all government employees and all recipients of government “welfare assistance”, subsidies and monopolistic privileges.
  • book’s thesis is that the government is a monopolist of ultimate justice and law enforcement and that every monopoly is always bad from the perspective of the consumer – in this case the citizen. Your alternative solution is a private law society.
  • The basic idea is quite simple. Abolish monopoly and encourage competition.
  • I can only go to a state court of law, staffed by judges who themselves are paid from taxes to enforce government regulations.
  • In this way, government-staged robbery, assault, manslaughter, murder, war is “legally” sanctioned.
  • In a private law society, if we had such a conflict, we would instead approach arbitrators who are independent of both parties, and who are competing with other arbitrators for voluntarily paying customers.
  • We would not use an inherently biased judge working for and paid directly by the state, who is therefore partisan, but rather a neutral third party, to adjudicate the normal human legal conflicts arising between existing and recognized property rights and private contract law.
  • the mediation market.
  • My income from my work is my property (not the state’s) and the restaurant is my property (not the state’s).
  • Therefore, any government-imposed tax upon me or use restrictions upon my property (such as a smoking ban) would therefore be judged unlawful, as robbery and expropriation.
  • the state is nothing but a “great band of robbers,” a mafia, only a much larger, more overwhelming and dangerous one.
  • the subject of class consciousness
  • “there’s absolutely no reason in any case why the state should have anything at all to do with the production of money.”
  • And every newly printed bill causes a redistribution of social wealth.
  • More paper money doesn’t make a society richer overall. It’s just more paper. But every new piece of printed paper reduces the purchasing power of all the other previously-existing paper bills
  • these machinations, taking place every day on an almost unimaginable scale, are nothing more than a gigantic case of fraudulent theft.
  • in a competitive environment, a better kind of money would be produced. Why? Because there’ll always be a demand for means of exchange.
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Dec 12
     
    Interview with Hoppe where he once again pushes libertarian thinking forward.  Hoppe puts most of the blame on "democracy" itself, caling it "an insidious form of communism".  Good stuff.  Highlighted parts. excerpt: "That the whole democratic house of cards has not yet completely collapsed speaks volumes about the still tremendous creative power of capitalism, even in the face of ever-increasing governmental strangulation. And this fact also allows us to conjecture about what economic 'miracles' would be possible if we had unimpeded capitalism liberated from such parasitism. If, and when, this insight finally bears fruit will depend upon the class consciousness of the population. There is a Marxist myth, eagerly promoted by the state, of an irreconcilable clash of interests between employers (capitalists) and employees (workers), or between the rich and the poor. As long as this myth prevails in public opinion, nothing at all will change and disaster is inevitable. A fundamental change can only occur if, instead of this, the correct realization becomes generally accepted that the only antagonistic conflict of interest in society is the one between tax-payers, i.e. the exploited, and tax-consumers, i.e. the exploiters.: In other words, between the class of people on the one hand who earn their income and assets by producing something that is bought voluntarily and valued accordingly by others; and the class of those on the other hand who produce nothing considered to be of value, but who live instead by living off and enriching themselves from the incomes and assets of other, productive people, forcibly taken via taxation - that is to say all government employees and all recipients of government "welfare assistance", subsidies and monopolistic privileges. Only when the producer class clearly recognises this, and publicly speaks out; when the producers are finally confident to take the moral high ground and reject the insolent admonitions from the po
Paul Merrell

Venezuelan Conglomerate to Halt Beer Production | venezuelanalysis.com - 0 views

venezuelanalysis.com/11944

war & peace Venezuela U.S.-foreign-policy coup boarding

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Polar, Venezuela’s largest private food and beverage provider, released a statement on Thursday that it will stop beer production, citing its inability to import raw materials. The company alleged the Venezuelan government has not issued sufficient US currency to purchase equipment and raw goods necessary to continue its production past this April. 
  • “Our current situation is this: We have not been able to replenish the inventory, and we only have malted barley to produce until April 29. Under those circumstances, we are obliged to suspend the production of beer and malts until we get access to the currency needed to procure the raw materials,” Polar’s statement continued.   Polar produces approximately 80 percent of beer consumed in Venezuela; however, due to rising beer prices, many artisanally crafted and traditional alcohols have become increasingly popular across the country.
  • While a complete halt to production would be a significant blow to workers; on other occasions, factory workers have taken over company plants following unexpected closures. Such was the case of the Clorox factory in Los Valles del Tuy, Miranda on the outskirts of Caracas in 2014. In recent years, the Venezuelan government as well as grassroots have denounced the hoarding of raw materials and alleged shortages are tactics used by private companies to instigate destabilization and the economic war. Polar along with other corporations have been among those accused of such actions. Polar is also well-known for its cornmeal flour product Harina Pan, used to make the national dish “arepas” which is now a rare sight on supermarket shelves and often sold at speculated prices.   The government and Venezuelan grassroots have also denounced Polar’s owner, Lorenzo Mendoza of hoarding, misappropriating state-subsidized dollars as well as conspiration against the government. Mendoza has denied these allegations.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • In February, protestors in Catia on the west side of Caracas known for its working class roots also took-over Polar distribution trucks to demand that the company stop hoarding basic food and goods.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Apr 16
     
    Having failed in two violent coup attempts that were thwarted, the U.S., UK, and Israel, acting in convert with Venezuelan oligarchs have succeeded in inflicting enough misery that the Opposition has won a controlling majority in the Venezuelan legislature. The Bolivarian Revolution lives on at least for now in the executive and justice branches of government. A presidential impeachment process is about to begin without any impeachable offense being alleged. The U.S. has been pushing very hard diplomatically and via stiff economic sanctions to secure the release of principles in the previous violent coup attempts. A bill declaring amnesty for them was found unconstitutional by the Venezuelan high court. (I haven't checked but I suspect Venezuela's constitution  resembles that of the U.S. in placing the pardon power strictly in the hands of the Executive.) Watch out, Venezuela, if Hillary becomes the U.S. PreZ. 
Paul Merrell

Catalog Reveals NSA Has Back Doors for Numerous Devices - SPIEGEL ONLINE - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...numerous-devices-a-940994.html

surveillance state NSA NSA-methods NSA-backdoors routers hard-drives must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • When it comes to modern firewalls for corporate computer networks, the world's second largest network equipment manufacturer doesn't skimp on praising its own work. According to Juniper Networks' online PR copy, the company's products are "ideal" for protecting large companies and computing centers from unwanted access from outside. They claim the performance of the company's special computers is "unmatched" and their firewalls are the "best-in-class." Despite these assurances, though, there is one attacker none of these products can fend off -- the United States' National Security Agency.
  • Specialists at the intelligence organization succeeded years ago in penetrating the company's digital firewalls. A document viewed by SPIEGEL resembling a product catalog reveals that an NSA division called ANT has burrowed its way into nearly all the security architecture made by the major players in the industry -- including American global market leader Cisco and its Chinese competitor Huawei, but also producers of mass-market goods, such as US computer-maker Dell.
  • The specialists at ANT, which presumably stands for Advanced or Access Network Technology, could be described as master carpenters for the NSA's department for Tailored Access Operations (TAO). In cases where TAO's usual hacking and data-skimming methods don't suffice, ANT workers step in with their special tools, penetrating networking equipment, monitoring mobile phones and computers and diverting or even modifying data. Such "implants," as they are referred to in NSA parlance, have played a considerable role in the intelligence agency's ability to establish a global covert network that operates alongside the Internet. Some of the equipment available is quite inexpensive. A rigged monitor cable that allows "TAO personnel to see what is displayed on the targeted monitor," for example, is available for just $30. But an "active GSM base station" -- a tool that makes it possible to mimic a mobile phone tower and thus monitor cell phones -- costs a full $40,000. Computer bugging devices disguised as normal USB plugs, capable of sending and receiving data via radio undetected, are available in packs of 50 for over $1 million.
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  • These NSA agents, who specialize in secret back doors, are able to keep an eye on all levels of our digital lives -- from computing centers to individual computers, and from laptops to mobile phones. For nearly every lock, ANT seems to have a key in its toolbox. And no matter what walls companies erect, the NSA's specialists seem already to have gotten past them. This, at least, is the impression gained from flipping through the 50-page document. The list reads like a mail-order catalog, one from which other NSA employees can order technologies from the ANT division for tapping their targets' data. The catalog even lists the prices for these electronic break-in tools, with costs ranging from free to $250,000. In the case of Juniper, the name of this particular digital lock pick is "FEEDTROUGH." This malware burrows into Juniper firewalls and makes it possible to smuggle other NSA programs into mainframe computers. Thanks to FEEDTROUGH, these implants can, by design, even survive "across reboots and software upgrades." In this way, US government spies can secure themselves a permanent presence in computer networks. The catalog states that FEEDTROUGH "has been deployed on many target platforms."
  • The ANT division doesn't just manufacture surveillance hardware. It also develops software for special tasks. The ANT developers have a clear preference for planting their malicious code in so-called BIOS, software located on a computer's motherboard that is the first thing to load when a computer is turned on. This has a number of valuable advantages: an infected PC or server appears to be functioning normally, so the infection remains invisible to virus protection and other security programs. And even if the hard drive of an infected computer has been completely erased and a new operating system is installed, the ANT malware can continue to function and ensures that new spyware can once again be loaded onto what is presumed to be a clean computer. The ANT developers call this "Persistence" and believe this approach has provided them with the possibility of permanent access. Another program attacks the firmware in hard drives manufactured by Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor and Samsung, all of which, with the exception of the latter, are American companies. Here, too, it appears the US intelligence agency is compromising the technology and products of American companies.
  • Other ANT programs target Internet routers meant for professional use or hardware firewalls intended to protect company networks from online attacks. Many digital attack weapons are "remotely installable" -- in other words, over the Internet. Others require a direct attack on an end-user device -- an "interdiction," as it is known in NSA jargon -- in order to install malware or bugging equipment. There is no information in the documents seen by SPIEGEL to suggest that the companies whose products are mentioned in the catalog provided any support to the NSA or even had any knowledge of the intelligence solutions. "Cisco does not work with any government to modify our equipment, nor to implement any so-called security 'back doors' in our products," the company said in a statement. Contacted by SPIEGEL reporters, officials at Western Digital, Juniper Networks and Huawei also said they had no knowledge of any such modifications. Meanwhile, Dell officials said the company "respects and complies with the laws of all countries in which it operates." Many of the items in the software solutions catalog date from 2008, and some of the target server systems that are listed are no longer on the market today. At the same time, it's not as if the hackers within the ANT division have been sleeping on the job. They have continued to develop their arsenal. Some pages in the 2008 catalog, for example, list new systems for which no tools yet exist. However, the authors promise they are already hard at work developing new tools and that they will be "pursued for a future release."
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Dec 13
     
    Oh, great. My router and all of my hard drives have NSA backdoors in them. And my BIOS on the Linux box may be infected with a backdoor. What are the odds that NSA has not developed similar capability for the UEFI on our two newer Windows boxes? 
Gary Edwards

A truly American future - 1 views

www.wnd.com/...a-truly-american-future

Constitutional-Capitalism Crony-Capitalism

shared by Gary Edwards on 24 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Ours has been a human experiment in which a constitutional republic was created that, aside from its moral and legal rightness, also created an environment in which entrepreneurs could flourish. The results of this experiment have been spectacular. Our lives and the lives of people throughout the world have been enriched by this experiment.
  • We are now in a very imperfect political battlefield, on which we are striving to save a constitutional republic by democratic means. Historically, our odds are poor. All democracies in history have ultimately failed. All have descended into mob rule. This is the reason our founders did not give us a democracy. We must be the exception.
  • At present, the situation is in doubt. Our president refuses to follow the rules of our constitutional republic; the self-interested cowardice of too many of our members of Congress prevents them from disciplining the president; and our courts are politicized as well. Moreover, many elements of our government are running amok, such as the Federal Reserve with its printing presses and the Environmental Protection Agency with its unending search for more power for itself. As Gilder shows in “Knowledge and Power,” the real advance of knowledge and power to improve human life depends upon a benign human society in which entrepreneurial advance can flourish. He explains this in political terms and in the scientific terms of information theory.
  • Gary Edwards on 24 Jul 14
     
    "As economist Julian Simon observed, people always produce more than they consume and always better the human condition of themselves and their neighbors - if they are free to do so. Why was Simon able to make this observation based on American experiences and other more brief episodes in human history? The answer to this question is elegantly described by George Gilder in his book "Knowledge and Power: The information Theory of Capitalism and How It is Revolutionizing Our World." Gilder teaches us about the "economics" of human advance. Establishment economics is, of course, a somewhat murky forest of "supply" and "demand" and "micros" and "macros" and all sorts of other abstractions. Within economics has arisen a sort of political contest as to whether "demand" or "supply" is most important. Does the market respond to "demands" for certain sorts of goods, or are goods unexpectedly "supplied" to the market by inventors and entrepreneurs - as surprises which then create market demand themselves? It is clear that the "supply" side trumps the "demand" side in this controversy. As George Gilder elucidates, potential advances - products and other goods - arise first in the minds of entrepreneurs who, using information, existing tools and skills in assembling and utilizing capital, bring these advances to the market. If the entrepreneur is right about the demand that will arise when his new product becomes available, he is rewarded with the fun of providing it and with profits. In order to do this, the entrepreneur needs a relatively quiet, noise-free environment, where the information comprising his innovation can express itself. His environment needs easily available capital in the hands of free men, so that he has rich opportunities to seek that capital and utilize it. The entrepreneur also needs a system of justice that protects his efforts and his coworkers. He needs a system of individual liberty where the
jacob logan

Total starts production on Kaombo Sul FPSO - 0 views

www.offshore-technology.com/...total-kaombo-fpso

#Kaombo_Sul_FPSO #Oil_And_Gas #French_Oil_And_Gas #Offshore_Luanda #Angola #Production

shared by jacob logan on 03 Apr 19 - No Cached
  • jacob logan on 03 Apr 19
     
    French oil and gas company Total has started production on the Kaombo Sul floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) unit at the Kaombo project offshore Luanda in Angola.
Paul Merrell

The U.S. Has REPEATEDLY Defaulted | Washington's Blog - 2 views

www.washingtonsblog.com/...-has-repeatedly-defaulted.html

U.S. economy government-debt debt-default debt-battle

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • It’s a Myth that the U.S. Has Never Defaulted On Its Debt Some people argue that countries can’t default.  But that’s false. It is widely stated that the U.S. government has never defaulted.  However, that is also a myth.
  • Gary Edwards on 16 Oct 13
     
    Excellent article Paul! But it left me in tears. The bastardos are destroying the currency. Quick Count of The U.S. defaulting on its debt obligations: ... Continental Currency in 1779 ... Domestic debt between 1782 through 1790 ... Greenbacks in 1862 ... Liberty Bonds in 1934 ... 1933 Dollar to GOLD devaluation (1/35 th per ounce) ... 1971 Nixon ends GOLD backing of dollar, violating the terms of the Bretton Woods Agreement ... 1979 Treasury defaults, refusing to redeem maturing treasury bonds The only thing keeping the American Economy going is the massive rush to convert the fiat currency the Federal Reserve is churning out into hard assets; like land and corporate stock. In 2008 the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel pumped $29 Trillion into the world banking system. They continue to pump $85 Billion per month into Bankster financial markets, buying up bad mortgage paper and backstopping the many insured derivatives scams now unwinding. The Banksters were bust in 2008, but are now flush with more dollars than anyone knows what to do with. Instead of "loaning" this money out, and investing in traditional business productivity, they use the freshly minted dollars to purchase hard assets. Business loans would provide profit based on interest - a gambit that requires confidence in the value of the dollar since the dollar is the measure of the economic reward. The purchase of hard assets is different. The "value" is not in the profitability of the investment, as measured in fiat currency. The value is in hard asset and any future economic power that asset holds through the expected currency crash. The only mystery here is that of military might. How do the banksters and global elites protect their assets in the future collapse they have made certain? Oh wait - private security companies capable of waging war. It's no accident that the early geopolitical energy wars of the 21st century saw a massive buildup of private corporate military and i
Paul Merrell

Own Your Own Devices You Will, Under Rep. Farenthold's YODA Bill | Bloomberg BNA - 0 views

www.bna.com/own-own-devices-n17179895381

U.S. copyright software first-sale-doctrine legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • A bill introduced Sept. 18 would make clear that consumers actually owned the electronic devices, and any accompanying software on that device, that they purchased, according to sponsor Rep. Blake Farenthold's (R-Texas). The You Own Devices Act (H.R. 5586) would amend the Copyright Act “to provide that the first sale doctrine applies to any computer program that enables a machine or other product to operate.” The bill, which is unlikely to receive attention during Congress's lame-duck legislative session, was well-received by consumer's rights groups.
  • Section 109(a) of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. §109(a), serves as the foundation for the first sale doctrine. H.R. 5586 would amend Section 109(a) by adding a provision covering “transfer of computer programs.” That provision would state:if a computer program enables any part of a machine or other product to operate, the owner of the machine or other product is entitled to transfer an authorized copy of the computer pro gram, or the right to obtain such copy, when the owner sells, leases, or otherwise transfers the machine or other product to another person. The right to transfer provided under this subsection may not be waived by any agreement.
  • ‘Things' Versus SoftwareFarenthold had expressed concern during a Sept. 17 hearing on Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act over what he perceived was a muddling between patents and copyrights when it comes to consumer products. “Traditionally patent law has protected things and copyright law has protected artistic-type works,” he said. “But now more and more things have software in them and you are licensing that software when you purchase a thing.” Farenthold asked the witnesses if there was a way to draw a distinction in copyright “between software that is an integral part of a thing as opposed to an add-on app that you would put on your telephone.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • H.R. 5586 seeks to draw that distinction. “YODA would simply state that if you want to sell, lease, or give away your device, the software that enables it to work is transferred along with it, and that any right you have to security and bug fixing of that software is transferred as well,” Farenthold said in a statement issued Sept. 19.
Paul Merrell

Leaked docs show spyware used to snoop on US computers | Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...-used-to-snoop-on-us-computers

surveillance state Gamma-Group FinFisher zero-day-exploits Vupen-Security MSOffice MSIE Acrobat

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Software created by the controversial UK-based Gamma Group International was used to spy on computers that appear to be located in the United States, the UK, Germany, Russia, Iran, and Bahrain, according to a leaked trove of documents analyzed by ProPublica. It's not clear whether the surveillance was conducted by governments or private entities. Customer e-mail addresses in the collection appeared to belong to a German surveillance company, an independent consultant in Dubai, the Bosnian and Hungarian Intelligence services, a Dutch law enforcement officer, and the Qatari government.
  • The leaked files—which were posted online by hackers—are the latest in a series of revelations about how state actors including repressive regimes have used Gamma's software to spy on dissidents, journalists, and activist groups. The documents, leaked last Saturday, could not be readily verified, but experts told ProPublica they believed them to be genuine. "I think it's highly unlikely that it's a fake," said Morgan Marquis-Bore, a security researcher who while at The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto had analyzed Gamma Group's software and who authored an article about the leak on Thursday. The documents confirm many details that have already been reported about Gamma, such as that its tools were used to spy on Bahraini activists. Some documents in the trove contain metadata tied to e-mail addresses of several Gamma employees. Bill Marczak, another Gamma Group expert at the Citizen Lab, said that several dates in the documents correspond to publicly known events—such as the day that a particular Bahraini activist was hacked.
  • The leaked files contain more than 40 gigabytes of confidential technical material, including software code, internal memos, strategy reports, and user guides on how to use Gamma Group software suite called FinFisher. FinFisher enables customers to monitor secure Web traffic, Skype calls, webcams, and personal files. It is installed as malware on targets' computers and cell phones. A price list included in the trove lists a license of the software at almost $4 million. The documents reveal that Gamma uses technology from a French company called Vupen Security that sells so-called computer "exploits." Exploits include techniques called "zero days" for "popular software like Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, Adobe Acrobat Reader, and many more." Zero days are exploits that have not yet been detected by the software maker and therefore are not blocked.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Many of Gamma's product brochures have previously been published by the Wall Street Journal and Wikileaks, but the latest trove shows how the products are getting more sophisticated. In one document, engineers at Gamma tested a product called FinSpy, which inserts malware onto a user's machine, and found that it could not be blocked by most antivirus software. Documents also reveal that Gamma had been working to bypass encryption tools including a mobile phone encryption app, Silent Circle, and were able to bypass the protection given by hard-drive encryption products TrueCrypt and Microsoft's Bitlocker.
  • The documents also describe a "country-wide" surveillance product called FinFly ISP which promises customers the ability to intercept Internet traffic and masquerade as ordinary websites in order to install malware on a target's computer. The most recent date-stamp found in the documents is August 2, coincidung with the first tweet by a parody Twitter account, @GammaGroupPR, which first announced the hack and may be run by the hacker or hackers responsible for the leak. On Reddit, a user called PhineasFisher claimed responsibility for the leak. "Two years ago their software was found being widely used by governments in the middle east, especially Bahrain, to hack and spy on the computers and phones of journalists and dissidents," the user wrote. The name on the @GammaGroupPR Twitter account is also "Phineas Fisher." GammaGroup, the surveillance company whose documents were released, is no stranger to the spotlight. The security firm F-Secure first reported the purchase of FinFisher software by the Egyptian State Security agency in 2011. In 2012, Bloomberg News and The Citizen Lab showed how the company's malware was used to target activists in Bahrain. In 2013, the software company Mozilla sent a cease-and-desist letter to the company after a report by The Citizen Lab showed that a spyware-infected version of the Firefox browser manufactured by Gamma was being used to spy on Malaysian activists.
Paul Merrell

ClubOrlov: Whiplash! - 0 views

cluborlov.blogspot.com/...whiplash.html

oil-market forecast pipelinestan-wars geopolitics

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Over the course of 2014 the prices the world pays for crude oil have tumbled from over $125 per barrel to around $45 per barrel now, and could easily drop further before heading much higher before collapsing again before spiking again. You get the idea. In the end, the wild whipsawing of the oil market, and the even wilder whipsawing of financial markets, currencies and the rolling bankruptcies of energy companies, then the entities that financed them, then national defaults of the countries that backed these entities, will in due course cause industrial economies to collapse. And without a functioning industrial economy crude oil would be reclassified as toxic waste. But that is still two or three decades off in the future.
  • An additional problem is the very high depletion rate of “fracked” shale oil wells in the US. Currently, the shale oil producers are pumping flat out and setting new production records, but the drilling rate is collapsing fast. Shale oil wells deplete very fast: flow rates go down by half in just a few months, and are negligible after a couple of years. Production can only be maintained through relentless drilling, and that relentless drilling has now stopped. Thus, we have just a few months of glut left. After that, the whole shale oil revolution, which some bobbleheads thought would refashion the US into a new Saudi Arabia, will be over. It won't help that most of the shale oil producers, who speculated wildly on drilling leases, will be going bankrupt, along with exploration and production companies and oil field service companies. The entire economy that popped up in recent years around the shale oil patch in the US, which was responsible for most of the growth in high-paying jobs, will collapse, causing the unemployment rate to spike.
  • The game they are playing is basically a game of chicken. If everybody pumps all the oil they can regardless of the price, then at some point one of two things will happen: shale oil production will collapse, or other producers will run out of money, and their production will collapse. The question is, Which one of these will happen first? The US is betting that the low oil prices will destroy the governments of the three major oil producers that are not under their political and/or military control. These are Venezuela, Iran and, of course, Russia. These are long shots, but, having no other cards to play, the US is desperate. Is Venezuela enough of a prize? Previous attempts at regime change in Venezuela failed; why would this one succeed? Iran has learned to survive in spite of western sanctions, and maintains trade links with China, Russia and quite a few other countries to work around them. In the case of Russia, it is as yet unclear what fruit, if any, western policies against it will bear. For example, if Greece decides to opt out of the European Union in order to get around Russia's retaliatory sanctions against the EU, then it will become entirely unclear who has actually sanctioned whom.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The US is making a desperate attempt to knock over a petro-state or two or three before its shale oil runs out, with the Canadians, their tar sands now unprofitable, hitching a ride on its coat-tails, because if this attempt doesn't work, then it's lights out for the empire. But none of their recent gambits have worked. This is the winter of imperial discontent, and the empire is has been reduced to pulling pathetic little stunts that would be quite funny if they weren't also sinister and sad.
  • But a bunch of deluded people muttering to themselves in a dark corner, while the rest of the world points at them and laughs, does not an empire make. With this level of performance, I would venture to guess that nothing the empire tries from here on will work to its satisfaction.
  • Because it will recover. The fix for low oil prices is... low oil prices. Past some point high-priced producers will naturally stop producing, the excess inventory will get burned up, and the price will recover. Not only will it recover, but it will probably spike, because a country littered with the corpses of bankrupt oil companies is not one that is likely to jump right back into producing lots of oil while, on the other hand, beyond a few uses of fossil fuels that are discretionary, demand is quite inelastic. And an oil price spike will cause another round of demand destruction, because the consumers, devastated by the bankruptcies and the job losses from the collapse of the oil patch, will soon be bankrupted by the higher price. And that will cause the price of oil to collapse again. And so on until the last industrialist dies. His cause of death will be listed as “whiplash”: the “shaken industrialist syndrome,” if you will. Oil prices too high/low in rapid alternation will have caused his neck to snap.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Jan 15
     
    Dmitry Orlov with a humorous yet inscisient take on the state and future of the oil market. Spoiler: He sees signs of desperation amongst the leaders of the American Empire, reduced to no viable options. 
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Jan 15
     
    "inscisient"? Make that "incisive." Follow reading Orlov's piece by reading Mike Whitney's latest at http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/20/are-plunging-petrodollar-revenues-behind-the-feds-projected-rate-hikes/ A lot of confirmation of what Orlov said in Whitney's article, citing hard numbers. Mass layoffs in the U.S. and Canadian oil industry; the petrodolar has stopped providing liquidity for the dollar; and the Fed plans to raise interest rates to force an influx of dollars from developing nations, in order to replace the petrodollar liquidity crisis. Whitney makes a strong case that it's a plot by the big banksters to steal another huge pile of cash at the expense of a huge number of jobs in the U.S. Both Orlov and Whitney say that it's going to be a very rough ride for the 99 per cent and for the population of developing nations. Indeed, Whitney's numbers say we are already over the precipice on jobs and well into free-fall.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Jan 15
     
    But last night, Obama had the gall to claim that all is just peachy-k een on the jobs front. As he helps the banksters offshore another huge number of U.S. jobs.
Paul Merrell

OPEC Unlikely to Cut Oil Production, Venezuela's PDVSA Predicts "Difficult Times Ahead"... - 0 views

venezuelanalysis.com/11043

war & peace oil OPEC Russia Venezuela

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • negotiations with Mexico, Russia and Saudi Arabia have failed to reach a joint pledge for OPEC nations to cut oil production. Ramirez, who was replaced as president of state-owned oil company PDVSA in September but continues to be Venezuela’s OPEC representative, met his counterparts on Tuesday in Vienna to kickstart the discussion on the plummeting price of oil before Thursday’s hugely significant OPEC summit. Between the United States shale boom and slower economic growth in Europe and China, the price of Venezuelan heavy crude dove from $99 per barrel in June to about $69 last week, prompting Ramirez’s diplomatic tour.
  • OPEC members Venezuela, Iraq, Ecuador, and Nigeria have all advocated for a cut in production as the quickest way to drive market prices back up. Statistics uphold this argument, considering OPEC estimations that global supply will exceed demand by more than 1 million barrels per day (bpd) in the first half of next year. But after Tuesday’s Vienna meeting Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi told reporters that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, had reached a “consensus” not to do so. Al-Naimi believes the twelve-nation OPEC group, of which Saudi Arabia is the largest producer, will follow suit. "We are very confident that OPEC will have a unified position,” he said, in reference to tomorrow’s summit. Meanwhile, Russia’s most influential oil official, state-firm Rosneft’s president Igor Sechin, surprised some and quelled rumors by announcing the largest producing non-OPEC nation had no intention of reducing their output, either. Not even, Sechin said, if oil “falls under $60 a barrel.”
  • The Russian company recently signed a contract with PDVSA for the purchase of 1.6 million tons of petroleum and 9 million tons of derivatives of crude over the next five years. While it makes sense that the GCC prioritize market share over barrel price, to a certain extent, Russian government coffers have already been hard hit by dropping prices, causing Sechin’s comment to raise some eyebrows. Indeed, many analysts claim the oil glut of the early 1980’s (which almost bankrupt Venezuela) contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • However, oil makes up 97 percent of Venezuela’s export earnings, and the market shift has already caused the country a 30 percent loss in foreign income, Maduro said last week. According to Reuters, PDVSA has put the possible sale of U.S. refinery Citgo Petroleum Corp back on the table. People close to the matter have reported that Lazard Ltd, the investment bank hired by PDVSA to explore the sale, has set a late-December deadline for new offers, despite Venezuelan finance minister ruling it out last month. Citgo runs three refineries in the United States, totaling an estimated value of up to $10 billion.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Nov 14
     
    The headscratcher for me in this article is Russia's position that it will maintain production even if crude oil prices drop below $60 per barrel. The dropping price has delivered a huge hit on the Russian economy already. These factors cause me to wonder if China has pledged funds to help Russia ride out the U.S./GCC assault on oil prices.  
Gary Edwards

Porter Stansberry- Porter Stansberry: These events confirm my greatest fears - 0 views

www.thedailycrux.com/...ents-confirm-my-greatest-fears

Banksters Porter-Stansberry Inflation Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Sep 12
     
    The Central Banksters of the World are printing money as fast as possible, and using this paper to buy up tons of GOLD.  Rather than lending to productive businesses, the Banksters are using their fiat paper volumes to buy up hard assets, with land, precious metals, and controlling positions in asset rich productive or leading commodity enterprises.  This is not going to end well for those left holding paper when it all crashes. "If you didn't take our warnings or strategies seriously before, I hope now you can see that we have been right: The authorities mean to print their bad sovereign debts away through an ongoing and massive inflation. Just how big is this inflation likely to be? When you look at the world's largest external debt positions, two economic areas appear as outliers: the European Union ($16 trillion) and the U.S. ($14.7 trillion). Even on a per-capita basis, the external foreign debts of the U.S. are enormous ($50,000 per person). Many countries in the European Union are in an even more precarious position. France has $74,000 in external debt per person. Germany has $57,000. These countries obviously have much to gain by printing the currency necessary to repay their obligations. I estimate we'll see at least another doubling of the monetary base in both the U.S. and the ECB. The question is how these nations' creditors will respond. In response... the West's creditors are piling into the one reserve asset no one can print: gold. Since the beginning of quantitative easing in America, Russia has almost doubled its holdings of gold, buying 500 tons. China bought 454 tons during the same period. And it's not only America's economic and military rivals who obviously no longer trust the U.S. dollar or the euro. In the last year, Switzerland's central bank has quietly increased its holdings of gold by nearly 25%. We are approaching the moment of a global paper currency collapse: In the second quarter of this year, central banks around the world
Gary Edwards

The Stunning Hypocrisy of the U.S. Government - BlackListedNews.com - 1 views

www.blacklistednews.com/...M.html

NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA Edward-Snowden hypocrisy

shared by Gary Edwards on 24 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Please read this rather good summary in this morning’s New York Times of the worldwide debate Snowden has enabled – how these disclosures have “set off a national debate over the proper limits of government surveillance” and “opened an unprecedented window on the details of surveillance by the NSA, including its compilation of logs of virtually all telephone calls in the United States and its collection of e-mails of foreigners from the major American Internet companies, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple and Skype” – and ask yourself: has Snowden actually does anything to bring “injury to the United States”, or has he performed an immense public service?
  • The irony is obvious: the same people who are building a ubiquitous surveillance system to spy on everyone in the world, including their own citizens, are now accusing the person who exposed it of “espionage”.
  • It seems clear that the people who are actually bringing “injury to the United States” are those who are waging war on basic tenets of transparency and secretly constructing a mass and often illegal and unconstitutional surveillance apparatus aimed at American citizens – and those who are lying to the American people and its Congress about what they’re doing – rather than those who are devoted to informing the American people that this is being done.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • The Obama administration leaks classified information continuously. They do it to glorify the President, or manipulate public opinion, or even to help produce a pre-election propaganda film about the Osama bin Laden raid.
  • The Obama administration does not hate unauthorized leaks of classified information. They are more responsible for such leaks than anyone.
  • What they hate are leaks that embarrass them or expose their wrongdoing.
  • The “enemy” they’re seeking to keep ignorant with selective and excessive leak prosecutions are not The Terrorists or The Chinese Communists.
  • It’s the American people.
  • The people who have learned things they didn’t already know are American citizens who have no connection to terrorism or foreign intelligence, as well as hundreds of millions of citizens around the world about whom the same is true.
  • What they have learned is that the vast bulk of this surveillance apparatus is directed not at the Chinese or Russian governments or the Terrorists, but at them.
  • And that is precisely why the US government is so furious and will bring its full weight to bear against these disclosures.
  • What has been “harmed” is not the national security of the US but the ability of its political leaders to work against their own citizens and citizens around the world in the dark, with zero transparency or real accountability.
  • If anything is a crime, it’s that secret, unaccountable and deceitful behavior: not the shining of light on it.
  • At a press conference to discuss the accusations, an N.S.A. spokesman surprised observers by announcing the spying charges against Mr. Snowden with a totally straight face. “These charges send a clear message,” the spokesman said. “In the United States, you can’t spy on people.”
  • “The American people have the right to assume that their private documents will remain private and won’t be collected by someone in the government for his own purposes.”
  • “Only by bringing Mr. Snowden to justice can we safeguard the most precious of American rights: privacy,” added the spokesman, apparently serious.
  • Gary Edwards on 24 Jun 13
     
    Extremely well linked story from "Washington's Blog" excerpt: "The Government's Hypocrisy Is the Core Problem Congress has exempted itself from the prohibition against trading on inside information … the law that got Martha Stewart and many other people thrown in jail. There are many other ways in which the hypocrisy of the politicians in D.C. are hurting our country. Washington politicians say we have to slash basic services, and yet waste hundreds of billions of dollars on counter-productive boondoggles.  If the politicos just stopped throwing money at corporate welfare queens, military and security boondoggles and pork, harmful quantitative easing, unnecessary nuclear subsidies,  the failed war on drugs, and other wasted and counter-productive expenses, we wouldn't need to impose austerity on the people. The D.C. politicians said that the giant failed banks couldn't be nationalized, because that would be socialism.  Instead of temporarily nationalizing them and then spinning them off to the private sector - or breaking them up - the politicians have bailed them out to the tune of many tens of billions of dollars each year, and created a system where all of the profits are privatized, and all of the losses socialized. Obama and Congress promised help for struggling homeowners, and passed numerous bills that they claimed would rescue the little guy.  But every single one of these bills actually bails out the banks … and doesn't really help the homeowner. The D.C. regulators pretend that they are being tough on the big banks, but are actually doing everything they can to help cover up their sins. Many have pointed out Obama's hypocrisy in slamming Bush's spying programs … and then expanding them  (millions more). And in slamming China's cyber-warfare … while doing the same thing. And - while the Obama administration is spying on everyone in the country - it is at the same time the most secretive administration ever (ba
Paul Merrell

Wells Fargo Fined Over Secret Sales Policy to Open Fake Customer Accounts - nsnbc inter... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...to-open-fake-customer-accounts

banksters Wells-Fargo CFPB fraud data-breach student-loans

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has fined Wells Fargo for $100 million based on fraudulent customer account practices. An additional $85 million is to be paid to the city of Los Angeles in California, along with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
  • Last year Wells Fargo was sued by employees (current and former) and customers all across the nation for setting up “unwanted accounts, unwarranted fees”. According to the lawsuit, this was “the largest California-based bank violated state and federal laws by misusing confidential information and failing to notify customers when personal information was breached.” Using “aggressive tactics” to coerce new customers, Wells Fargo made it “difficult to correct the mistakes” made by Wells Fargo and return fees to customers because of “high-pressure sales culture set unrealistic quotas, spurring employees to engage in fraudulent conduct to keep their jobs and boost the company’s profits.” Over the course of an extended period of time, “Wells Fargo employees secretly opened unauthorized accounts to hit sales targets and receive bonuses.” There were 1.5 million accounts opened without the authorization of customers and 500,000 credit cards accounts to boot. Wells Fargo has consistently blames “a few rogue employees. Five hundred employees were terminated, according to a Wells Fargo spokesperson. There was no mention of rescinding of bonuses paid to those employees, and there is no clear evidence that executive’s payouts totaling $155 million for “performance based compensation” for 2012 through 2013 was returned to the bank.
  • Those bonuses were administered based on the fraudulent accounts opened without customer approval. In a statement, Wells Fargo expressed belated regret and a sudden desire to “take responsibility for any instances where customers may have received a product that they did not request.” The training that caused this problem in the first place was a cross-selling strategy called “Going For Gr-Eight” which is a brochure for employees to push banking products onto households of existing customers to increase fee potential and overall profitability. Wells Fargo “staffers, fearing disciplinary action from managers, begged friends and family members to open ghost accounts” and forged signatures “and falsified phone numbers” of customers who did not want to open an account. This practice drove Wells Fargo’s financial success with an estimated “26% of the company’s revenue was from fee income, including those from credit and debit card accounts, trusts and investments.” The bank not only stole money from customers but “also damage their credit scores” and put some into collections to garner fees “for unauthorized accounts went unpaid”. In case of a complaining customer, Wells Fargo would “sandbag” their customers; meaning “failing to open accounts when requested by customers, and instead accumulating a number of account applications to be opened at a later date.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Another devious tactic Wells Fargo employed was “bundling” or “incorrectly informing customers that certain products are available only in packages with other products such as additional accounts, insurance, annuities, and retirement plans.” This is not an isolated incident. Wells Fargo has fired 5,300 employees for this same “illegal behavior”. Beyond this questionable business practice, Wells Fargo was previously recognized by the CFPB for misapplying student loan payments in order to increase fee income. In this case, Wells Fargo was fined $3.6 million and forced to pay $410,000 to student loan borrowers for restitution.
Paul Merrell

Venezuela to Freeze Oil Production under New OPEC Deal | venezuelanalysis.com - 0 views

venezuelanalysis.com/12701

oil cartels OPEC production-freeze

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • Venezuelan Oil Minister Eulogio del Pino confirmed Wednesday that the world’s largest oil cartel, OPEC, has reached a preliminary agreement to freeze crude production during a special meeting in Algeria. Under the deal, all 14 of OPEC’s member states agreed to freeze oil production at the combined daily total of between 32.5 and 33 million barrels. The precise ceiling and duration of the freeze will be decided during the cartel’s November 30 meeting in Vienna, Austria, which will also discuss the possible incorporation of non-OPEC producers. Del Pino hopes that the deal will facilitate a recovery of world crude prices, which have fallen by 60 percent over since late 2014, sparking acute economic difficulties in countries such as Venezuela, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria.
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Sep 16
     
    Sounds like the Saudis finally decided that they've eaten up too much of their capital reserves.
Paul Merrell

NSA Data Will Soon Be Used By Domestic Law Enforcement - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...214734

surveillance state NSA raw-data-sharing

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • If you’re reading this, then I’m willing to bet that you’ve been called many different names throughout your life. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say they were names like kook, paranoid, conspiracy theorist, alarmist, insane, or gullible. And after this week, you can go by a new name: Vindicated. I’m of course talking about recent revelations from the NSA. Long before Edward Snowden came along, it was no secret that the NSA was spying on everyone without good cause. Anyone who believed that fact was called a conspiracy theorist, but their fears were eventually validated. These same people also understood that the NSA’s surveillance powers would never be used exclusively against terrorists and hostile governments. The power they have is just too tempting for any government. If various government agencies weren’t using the NSA’s surveillance apparatus to solve domestic crimes, it was only a matter of time before it was used for just that.
  • And again, they called us conspiracy theorists for believing that. And again, we were right all long. A while back, we noted a report showing that the “sneak-and-peek” provision of the Patriot Act that was alleged to be used only in national security and terrorism investigations has overwhelmingly been used in narcotics cases. Now the New York Times reports that National Security Agency data will be shared with other intelligence agencies like the FBI without first applying any screens for privacy. The ACLU of Massachusetts blog Privacy SOS explains why this is important: What does this rule change mean for you? In short, domestic law enforcement officials now have access to huge troves of American communications, obtained without warrants, that they can use to put people in cages. FBI agents don’t need to have any “national security” related reason to plug your name, email address, phone number, or other “selector” into the NSA’s gargantuan data trove. They can simply poke around in your private information in the course of totally routine investigations. And if they find something that suggests, say, involvement in illegal drug activity, they can send that information to local or state police. That means information the NSA collects for purposes of so-called “national security” will be used by police to lock up ordinary Americans for routine crimes.
  • Anybody who knows anything about how governments work, should not surprised. You can’t give them any kind of power, and expect them to use it responsibly. You can’t give them any stipulations. Eventually they’ll find a legal loophole to work around any limitations that have been placed on them. In other news, the Pentagon admitted this week that they’ve been deploying military drones over the United States for domestic surveillance purposes. Much like the NSA’s surveillance apparatus, we were assured that drones were for terrorists in faraway lands. Nothing so Orwellian would ever be used against ordinary American citizens at home. Yet here we are, with more to come.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Mar 16
     
    The Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. 552a, provides in relevant part: "(a)(4) the term "record" means any item, collection, or grouping of information about an individual that is maintained by an agency, including, but not limited to, his education, financial transactions, medical history, and criminal or employment history and that contains his name, or the identifying number, symbol, or other identifying particular assigned to the individual, such as a finger or voice print or a photograph[.] ... "(b) Conditions of Disclosure.-No agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains, unless disclosure of the record would be- ... "(7) to another agency or to an instrumentality of any governmental jurisdiction within or under the control of the United States for a civil or criminal law enforcement activity if the activity is authorized by law, and if the head of the agency or instrumentality has made a written request to the agency which maintains the record specifying the particular portion desired and the law enforcement activity for which the record is sought[.]" So a separate written request for each "portion" of any individual record that describes the "law enforcement activity for which the record is sought[.]" That doesn't sound like the contemplated unfettered access to bulk raw data. And it gets even better, with a right to sue for any violation, attorney fees and expenses, and a statutory minimum of $1,000 damages per violation just for winning the case.  
Gary Edwards

CARPE DIEM: Anti-Keynesian Supply Side Tax and Spending Cuts in Sweden, and the Finance... - 0 views

mjperry.blogspot.com/...esian-supply-side-tax-and.html

Sweden Reagan-supply-side-economics Reaganomics

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 May 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 May 12
     
    Sweden's Finance Minister Anders Borg is proving that Krugman and all those Keynesian big time stimulous spenders are wrong.  Reagan supply-side economics works every time it's tried.  And Sweden is proving it every day.  Instead of borrowing to stimulate, Borg flattened and cut taxes while gutting unsustainable government welfare spending.  Put the productive resources in the hands of those who are productive, and magic happens.  Capitalism has a home in Sweden, of all places. excerpt: "When Europe's finance ministers meet for a group photo, it's easy to spot the rebel - Anders Borg (pictured above) has a ponytail and earring. What actually marks him out, though, is how he responded to the crash. While most countries in Europe borrowed massively, Borg did not. Since becoming Sweden's finance minister, his mission has been to pare back government. His 'stimulus' was a permanent tax cut. To critics, this was fiscal lunacy. Borg, on the other hand, thought lunacy meant repeating the economics of the 1970s and expecting a different result. Three years on, it's pretty clear who was right. "Look at Spain, Portugal or the UK, whose governments were arguing for large temporary stimulus," he says. "Well, we can see that very little of the stimulus went to the economy. But they are stuck with the debt." Tax-cutting Sweden, by contrast, had the fastest growth in Europe last year, when it also celebrated the abolition of its deficit. The recovery started just in time for the 2010 Swedish election, in which the Conservatives were re-elected for the first time in history.
Gary Edwards

JB Williams -- Congress Must Immediately Impeach Entire Obama Administration - 0 views

www.newswithviews.com/...williams180.htm

Impeachment Impeach-Obama JB-Williams newswithviews

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Mar 12
     
    A well written list of particulars calling for the impeachment of the entire Obama administration.  The article ends with an appeal to restore the Constitution, identifying two groups in particular: US Patriots Union and the US Veterans "Defenders of America".  Outstanding stuff.  When you read this you will know you're in the presence of true Patriots. http://www.patriotsunion.org/DECLARATION-RESTORE-THE-CONSTITUTIONAL-REPUBLIC.pdf http://www.veterandefenders.org/ excerpt: The Obama Administration has intentionally and criminally bankrupted what was once the most productive, prosperous and powerful nation on earth. This is nothing compared to Obama's other first term achievements. Via their Federal "wealth redistribution" bailouts, the Obama Administration seized control of General Motors, screwed every individual who ever invested in the company and steered the company through managed bankruptcy so that it would emerge the property of labor unions, not the people who had invested in it for years. The Obama Administration has since seized control of Energy, Banking, Insurance, Health Care, Food production and distribution, manufacturing, water supply and outlawed free speech on public lands to protect elected servants from an increasingly angry society that currently gives Obama, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court their lowest approval ratings in U.S. history. The Obama Administration designed and launched the so-called Arab Spring across the Middle East, attacking Jews and Christians alike and unseating leaders of sovereign nations and redistributing political power throughout the region to the Muslim Brotherhood, purposefully responsible for total civil unrest around the globe and rising gas prices at the pumps. Last Friday evening, Obama issued yet another Executive Order seizing unbridled power over every aspect of American life, all the way down to the water in your toilet bowl and the garden in your back yard, sharing that power with each mem
Gary Edwards

PETER SCHIFF: The Housing Bust Was Just A Preview For The Coming Catastrophe - Business... - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/the-real-crash-2012-5

peter-schiff Lindsey-Williams The-Real-Crash

shared by Gary Edwards on 23 May 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 23 May 12
     
    Peter Schiff talks about his new book "The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy, How to Save Yourself and Your Country".  I caught the Coast-to-Coast "Financial Crisis Special" interview with Peter earlier this week where he spoke on the "Real Crash" issues.  Stunning stuff.  His hour on Coast was followed by Lindsey Williams who pointed out that the New World Order - Illuminati - Bankster trigger point would be signaled by a collapse in the derivatives market. The derivatives market is now over a quadrillion dollars of  casino style gambling.  This is where Banksters make huge bets on things like whether or not interest rates will go up or down.  Then they take out insurance to cover their bets, which further compounds the cost.  Recent events like the Jon Corzine MF Global gamble that the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel would backstop explosive European sovereign bankster debt are the first indications of collapse in the derivatives market.  We now know that JP Morgan placed similar bets on a European bailout by the Federal Reserve and World Bank, and lost big.  The only difference is that Corzine robbed his clients personal accounts to cover his bets. While Schiff argues the facts on the table, the "what", Lindsay argued the "why"; claiming that this escalating debt mess is all by design.  Lindsay claims that an operational fundamental of the New World Order elites is to first overturn the USA Constitution.  Using a Machiavellian Principle known as, "out of chaos comes order", they seek to de-stabilize and overthrow the USA Constitutional Republic using massive and crushing debt to first destroy the dollar currency.  This will create massive chaos requiring martial law and government seizure of private property and production. Peter Schiff warns that the government is driving us deeper into debt at exactly the time we should be saving and investing those savings in future private sector productivity.  Lindsay argues that this is all by desig
Gary Edwards

Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...d-a-squeezed-middle-class.html

Apple-Obammunism

shared by Gary Edwards on 24 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 24 Jan 12
     
    Stunning story.  Looks like the marxist int eh White House is going after Apple and the Communist dictators in Beijing.  How did things get so upside down? excerpt: Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas. Why can't that work come home? Mr. Obama asked. Mr. Jobs's reply was unambiguous. "Those jobs aren't coming back," he said, according to another dinner guest. The president's question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn't just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple's executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that "Made in the U.S.A." is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.
Gary Edwards

The Libertarian View: Are Tariffs Bad? - 1 views

www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php

Libertarian Austrian-Economics Tariffs-NAFTA China Ron-Paul

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Jan 12
     
    As many know, i spent quite a bit of time working for a Chinese Company seeking to enter the USA-European software market.  My task was to research the market, discover and define a market opportunity, design the product, and then work as product manager to get that service to market.  I took this job to better understand the Chinese marketplace and how sovereign Chinese companies work.  What i learned is how the Chinese seek to exploit and totally dominate open markets.  Software is just a category whose time has come.  and there are thousands of Chinese companies lining up.  The first step though is to fine tune the existing blueprint used by other Sina sovereigns.  amazing stuff. My take away from this experience is that the USA MUST set up a 30% tariff on ALL imports, and do so IMMEDIATELY!!!  Yesterday is not soon enough! As a newly minted libertarian, i wondered about the obvious conflict with Austrian Economics and their dedication to free markets and free trade?  I found the answer at this Libertarian forum, where many members were in heated discussion.  Comment #7 sums it up best i think.  Including a link to Ron Paul's Tariff-NAFTA speech. The thing is, the 30% Tariff should be part of an overall TAX REDUCTION PLAN.  I support the FAIR TAX and the Balanced Budget Amendment.  As an alternative to the Fair Tax, I would also support a 17% flat tax with no exceptions.  The ideal situation being an immediate, uncompromising, no exceptions 30% tariff on ALL imports coupled with the Fair Tax and the Balanced Budget Amendment.   And yes, i do believe this plan is consistent with the Founding Fathers Constitution.  But it took some kind of research to establish that opinion.   I've also concluded that "conservatism" is a convenient philosophical vehicle for the corrupt crony corporatism of both the military-industrial-complex, banksters and, international corporations.  Free trade and open markets concepts are perverted to become a thin veil
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