wow!

Photoshop expert: and author of more than 17 books on computer graphics Mara Zebest: Obama's Latest Long-Form Birth Certificate Is a Fake! http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/04/critics-obamas-latest-long-form-birth-certificate-is-a-fake/

Incredible!  Bullseye

Neil M. Barofsky was the special inspector general for the TARP program form 2008 until today, March 30th, 2011.  In this article he explains why TARP failed, even identifying the specific areas where the promises to Congress were outrageously circumvented by Federal Treasury Department.  Incredible indictment of Treasury, and how the big banks looted the taxpayers.  The banks foreclosure on the American Dream had the US Treasury Department serving taxpayers up on a silver platter.

I wonder if they can beat Porter Stansberry's presentation?  Porter rocks. "Inside the Meltdown" is chilling (and can be seen on line at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/view/

Nose Dive Alert:  get ready to bleed.  this chart describes the The Purchasing Power of the Dollar in free fall.

GOLD!!! Great explanation.

Nicely done.  When is it time take the pipe?  When is it past time?  Is Paul Ryan the only honest man left standing in the House?  Ron Paul?

The single most astonishing fact about foreign exchange is not the high volume of transactions, as incredible as that growth has been. Nor is it the volatility of currency rates, as wild as the markets are these days.... Good article but it's missing one glaring fact:  It's entirely possible today to use GOLD as the reserve value, while using fiat currencies as the transaction fluid. Given the rise of smartphones, it's now possible to instantly calculate the VALUE of any item or asset in terms of that currency price / GOLD ration value.  The same holds true for setting contractual (futures) agreements.  Set the agreement in terms of Gold, and on the day the transaction is settled, convert the Gold Value to whatever currency desired.  Easy peasy. In fact, i would argue that for anyone who's not a chump, the World's Reserve Currency is Gold and has been Gold for some time.  Once the chumps get a clue and an iPhone, they too will start thinking in Gold while trading in Gold denominated dollars, yuan or Euro. Note this is quited different than having to endure the impossible hope of another Bretton Woods type BASIL II agreement.  There is no need to agree as long as an Open and Free Internet is up and running, and even chumps can connect their iPhone using apps like "Priced In  Gold"

America, it's time we pulled our heads out of the sand.  Specifically, it's time the people we pay to run this country develop a long-term plan to balance the budget.  Tell your politician you can handle the truth. Tell him or her that you're sick of pretending.

Excellent web site!  They even have a Priced-in-Gold app for Android.  Once you start thinking in Gold, there is no turning back.   Yesterday i heard a comment blaming turmoil and revolution in the mid east for the rising cost of gasoline. I wondered though if this conflict was a convenient cover story for out-of-control government spending and the hyperinflation that comes from smoking the monetary printing presses? A quick calculation shouts that today an ounce of gold ($1407.00/oz) can purchase 140 barrels of oil ($100/barrel). Seems like a lot of oil to me, but the calculation clearly needs to be placed in historical context. Google came up with this useful web site:Edit True Prices Measured in Gold

Wow.  Porter is one of those people who actually puts their money where their mouth is.  His record of success is extraordinary.  This time though he is sounding an alarm the world should listen to.  The politicians and banksters have taken us down a road of no return, and finally, the facts are clear.  The storm has started. Porter Stansberry: When I talk to people, when I talk to news commentators, when I do interviews, when I talk to investors, when I go to investment conferences, when I talk to very well-known hedge fund managers. . .all of these people have some idea that things are going wrong. Lots of them say they're worried about being on the verge of a big crisis. I think we're in one. So, I ask them, rhetorically, what do they have to see in the markets before they realize the crisis is underway? How high does the price of gold have to go? How far do Treasury bonds and muni bonds have to fall? How far does the dollar have to decline on a trade-weighted basis? How high does unemployment have to go? How big do the fiscal deficits have to grow? They don't have any answers to those questions because all of the thresholds have been violated already. Two years ago, no one would've thought it possible for the muni bond market and the Treasury bond market to both fall as much as they have fallen in the last six weeks at the same time. That just didn't happen ever before.

The fake "recovery" was nice while it lasted, says famous apocalyptic forecaster Gerald Celente, founder of the Trends Research Institute. But now the fun's over, and we're headed for what Celente describes as the "Greatest Depression." Specifically, the always startling Celente says the country is headed for rising unemployment, poverty, and violent class warfare as the government efforts to keep the economy going begin to fail. The crux of the problem, Celente argues, is that the middle class has been wiped out. America used to be a land of opportunity for all, where hard-working people could build their own small businesses in their own communities and live prosperous and fulfilling lives. But now a collusion of state and corporate interests that Celente describes as "fascism" have conspired to help only the biggest companies and the richest Americans. This has put a shocking amount of the country's wealth in the hands of a privileged few and left the rest of the country to subsist on chicken-feed wages and low job satisfaction as Wal-Mart "associates" -- or worse. The answer, Celente says, is to bring back the laws that prevented huge companies from getting so big and powerful, and put some opportunity back in the hands of ordinary people.  But doing that is going to take a while.  And in the meantime, we're headed for trouble. (Celente's dead right about U.S. wealth inequality, by the way.  It's shocking.  And it's getting worse.) 

What we are reckoning with is the breakdown so big hardly anyone notices it. The model of a political economy set up in response to the industrial revolution is now worn out. Exhausted. Headed for the trash heap of history. We're not in the habit of giving advice here in The Daily Reckoning. Sure, we warned readers about the biggest threats to their finances in 30 years - the bubbles in tech stocks and then in housing. And sure, we urged them to buy what turned out to be the best investment they could have made - gold. And yes, we criticized governments for doing all the wrong things. But urging them to do the right things would be both futile and earnest. Futility doesn't bother us. But we can't stand earnestness. Left unchecked it leads right to world improvement…and thence to Hell. Still, in the spirit of civic betterment, today exceptionally, we offer a bit of advice to financial authorities all over the world. In a word: Default! When you have more debt than you can pay, it is always best to own up…default…hang your head…say you're sorry…promise not to do it again… …and go about your business. And do it as soon as possible. Whence cometh this august advice? From the pages of history - recent…and not so recent.

Incredible must read essay.  

Fortunately, even if Congress doesn't raise the debt ceiling, a default on our debt need not follow when our borrowings reach their limit in the next few months. I intend to introduce legislation to make sure of this. For months, some political leaders and commentators have argued that failure to raise the debt ceiling would necessarily cause the U.S. to default on its debt. President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors chairman, Austan Goolsbee, recently warned, "If we get to the point where you've damaged the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity. I don't see why anybody's talking about playing chicken with the debt ceiling." In fact, if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling, the federal government will still have far more than enough money to fully service our debt. Next year, for instance, about 6.5% of all projected federal government expenditures will go to interest on our debt, and tax revenue is projected to cover about 67% of all government expenditures. With roughly 10 times more income than needed to honor our debt obligations, why would we ever default? To make absolutely sure, I intend to introduce legislation that would require the Treasury to make interest payments on our debt its first priority in the event that the debt ceiling is not raised. This would not only ensure the continued confidence of investors at home and abroad, but would enable us to have an honest debate about the consequences of our eventual decision about the debt ceiling.

It's an overall concept I've designated as the Democratic Bankruptcy Paradox: The paradox by which every democracy eventually goes bankrupt-regardless of the people's will and intention of keeping it from going bankrupt. That's why it's a paradox: The citizens of a democratic state are supposed to control its destiny. They obviously do not want their nation to suffer bankruptcy-yet in spite of their will and intent, democratic states always go bankrupt. Always. This post will outline my proof of why this is so. I will first explain the logic of my Democratic Bankruptcy Paradox theory, and how it is derived from a rather recently articulated problem in philosophy called the discursive dilemma, or sometimes the doctrinal dilemma; an aspect of group agency that has been used primarily in legal theory, but which I've realized has some fairly interesting-and radical-applications to macro-economics and public finance in representative democracies. I will then explain how the discursive dilemma, when applied to macro-economics and fiscal policy in a democratic regime, leads to the Democratic Bankruptcy Paradox. It is here that I will prove two general conclusions: * One: Democracies always act in a fiscally incoherent manner. * Two: Democracies always go bankrupt-without exception.  Finally, I will show how my Democratic Bankruptcy Paradox theory applies to the American case, and explain why the U.S. governments at the local, State and Federal level spend more than they bring in-even as their citizens uniformly oppose this state of affairs.

The banking crisis that began in August 2007 shocked markets and precipitated the Great Recession. To fully explain the banking crisis, one must account for its timing, severity, and global impact. One must also confront a startling historical contrast. If we define "banking crisis" to mean bank failures and system losses exceeding 1 percent of a country's gross domestic product (GDP), we find that in the period 1875-1913, a period of marked expansion in international trade and capital flows comparable to the last three decades, there were only four banking crises worldwide.1 By contrast, in the period 1978-2009, a period of much more extensive bank regulation, central bank intervention, government protection of depositors and other bank creditors, and government control of mortgage markets, about 140 banking crises occurred worldwide. Of these, 20 were more severe than any crisis from the earlier period of 1875-1913, in terms of total bank losses as a percent of GDP. Leading financial economists such as Charles Calomiris have argued that a necessary condition for a banking crisis is government policy that distorts the micro-incentives of banks. Likewise, University of Chicago scholar Richard Posner has argued the banks that got into trouble during the recent crisis were simply taking "risks that seemed appropriate in the environment in which they found themselves."2 In the period 1978-2009, about 140 banking crises occurred worldwide. But then why didn't a banking crisis erupt sooner-say, in the recession years of 1990-1991 or 2001-2002? What changed in recent years that led to business risk-taking capable of wrecking the U.S. housing market and the U.S. banking system and other banking systems throughout the world? Further, why were prudent credit practices reasonably maintained in credit card and commercial mortgage securitization in recent years, but wholly abandoned in residential mortgage securitization?

a new global monetary regime to reduce currency turmoil and spur growth: "This new system is likely to need to involve the dollar, the euro, the yen, the pound and a renminbi that moves toward internalization and then an open capital account," he wrote, in an echo of what we've been saying for some time. And here's Mr. Zoellick's sound-money kicker: "The system should also consider employing gold as an international reference point of market expectations about inflation, deflation and future currency values. Although textbooks may view gold as the old money, markets are using gold as an alternative monetary asset today." Mr. Zoellick's last observation will not be news to investors, who have traded gold up to $1,400 an ounce, its highest level in real terms since the 1970s, as a hedge against the risk of future inflation. However, his point will shock many of the world's financial policy makers, who still think of gold as a barbarous relic rather than as an important price signal. Lest they faint in the halls of the International Monetary Fund, we don't think Mr. Zoellick is calling for a return to a full-fledged gold standard. His nonetheless useful point is that a system of global monetary cooperation needs a North Star to judge when it is running off course. The Bretton Woods accord used gold as such a reference until the U.S. failed to heed its discipline in the late 1960s and in 1971 revoked the pledge to sell other central banks gold at $35 an ounce.

Since the Bretton Woods Agreement was signed in the wake of World War II, the global monetary system has been based on the US dollar. This means that when the Fed decides to create trillions of dollars of inflation, other countries can't simply say, "let them dig their own grave." Instead, because their international transactions are denominated in dollars, they feel a pressure to maintain relatively stable exchange rates between their currencies and the dollar. Most countries do this informally and have their own (bad) reasons for maintaining a certain level of inflation. China, however, is more literal in its devotion to the dollar system, perhaps due to its psychology as a new arrival on the world stage. So, in recent history, the People's Bank of China has largely maintained a "peg," by which it currently offers to pay 6.8 RMB for every dollar deposited, no matter how many extra dollars the Fed prints. To put it another way, China, and to a certain extent the entire world, is on a Dollar Standard -- like the Gold Standard, but based on another fiat currency instead of a precious metal. What this also means is that China does not intentionally devalue its currency against the dollar, but only to keep pace with the dollar. As the Fed seeks to blow up the global monetary system, I take comfort in the fact that gold cannot fight a currency war because it is not a currency. Gold is money. Currencies used to be backed by money until the global fiat system was introduced under President Nixon. Fiat currency can be printed at will until the economy collapses, as has happened many times in history. Money is impossible to devalue at the whim of politicians because it is naturally scarce. Even in the ruins of Europe after the Second World War, when there was no central authority and chaos reigned, an ounce of gold was worth what it always had been. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/bernanke-is-engaging-in-the-monetary-equivalent-of-nuclear-war-2010-11?utm_sourc