Current Affairs

Trends for 2012

Posted on by Duncan Toms

1. Economic Martial Law: Given the current economic and geopolitical conditions, the central banks and world governments already have plans in place to declare economic martial law … with the possibility of military martial law to follow.

2. Battlefield America: With a stroke of the Presidential pen, language was removed from an earlier version of the National Defense Authorization Act, granting the President authority to act as judge, jury and executioner. Citizens, welcome to “Battlefield America.”

3. Invasion of the Occtupy: 15 years ago, Gerald Celente predicted in his book Trends 2000 that prolonged protests would hit Wall Street in the early years of the new millennium and would spread nationwide. The “Occtupy” is now upon us, and it is like nothing history has ever witnessed.

4. Climax Time: The financial house of cards is collapsing, and in 2012 many of the long-simmering socioeconomic and geopolitical trends that Celente has accurately forecast will come to a climax. Some will arrive with a big bang and others less dramatically … but no less consequentially. Are you prepared? And what’s next for the world?

5. Technocrat Takeover: “Democracy is Dead; Long Live the Technocrat!” A pair of lightning-quick financial coup d’états in Greece and Italy have installed two unelected figures as head of state. No one yet in the mainstream media is calling this merger of state and corporate powers by its proper name: Fascism, nor are they calling these “technocrats” by their proper name: Bankers! Can a rudderless ship be saved because technocrat is at the helm?

6. Repatriate! Repatriate!: It took a small, but financially and politically powerful group to sell the world on globalization, and it will take a large, committed and coordinated citizens’ movement to “un-sell” it. “Repatriate! Repatriate!” will pit the creative instincts of a multitude of individuals against the repressive monopoly of the multinationals.

7. Secession Obsession: Winds of political change are blowing from Tunisia to Russia and everywhere in between, opening a window of opportunity through which previously unimaginable political options may now be considered: radical decentralization, Internet-based direct democracy, secession, and even the peaceful dissolution of nations, offering the possibility for a new world “disorder.”

8. Safe Havens: As the signs of imminent economic and social collapse become more pronounced, legions of New Millennium survivalists are, or will be, thinking about looking for methods and ways to escape the resulting turmoil. Those “on-trend” have already taken measure to implement Gerald Celente’s 3 G’s: Gold, Guns and a Getaway plan. Where to go? What to do? Top Trends 2012 will guide the way.

9. Big Brother Internet: The coming year will be the beginning of the end of Internet Freedom: A battle between the governments and the people. Governments will propose legislation for a new “authentication technology,” requiring Internet users to present the equivalent of a driver’s license and/or bill of health to navigate cyberspace. For the general population it will represent yet another curtailing of freedom and level of governmental control.

10. Direct vs. Faux Democracy: In every corner of the world, a restive populace has made it clear that it’s disgusted with “politics as usual” and is looking for change. Government, in all its forms – democracy, autocracy, monarchy, socialism, communism – just isn’’t working. The only viable solution is to take the vote out of the hands of party politicians and institute Direct Democracy. If the Swiss can do it, why can’t anyone else?

11. Alternative Energy 2012: Even under the cloud of Fukushima, the harnessing of nuclear power is being reinvigorated by a fuel that is significantly safer than uranium and by the introduction of small, modular, portable reactors that reduce costs and construction time. In addition, there are dozens of projects underway that explore the possibility of creating cleaner, competitively priced liquid fuels distilled from natural sources. Plan to start saying goodbye to conventional liquid fuels!

12. Going Out in Style: In the bleak terrain of 2012 and beyond, “Affordable sophistication” will direct and inspire products, fashion, music, the fine arts and entertainment at all levels. US businesses would be wise to wake up and tap into the dormant desire for old time quality and the America that was.

via Gerald Celente’s Dire Predictions For 2012 | Disinformation.

Russia oil spills wreak devastation

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Environmentalists estimate at least 1 percent of Russia’s annual oil production, or 5 million tons, is spilled every year. That is equivalent to one Deepwater Horizon-scale leak about every two months. Crumbling infrastructure and a harsh climate combine to spell disaster in the world’s largest oil producer, responsible for 13 percent of global output.

Oil, stubbornly seeping through rusty pipelines and old wells, contaminates soil, kills all plants that grow on it and destroys habitats for mammals and birds. Half a million tons every year get into rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean, the government says, upsetting the delicate environmental balance in those waters.

It’s part of a legacy of environmental tragedy that has plagued Russia and the countries of its former Soviet empire for decades, from the nuclear horrors of Chernobyl in Ukraine to lethal chemical waste in the Russian city of Dzerzhinsk and paper mill pollution seeping into Siberia’s Lake Baikal, which holds one-fifth of the world’s supply of fresh water.

Oil spills in Russia are less dramatic than disasters in the Gulf of Mexico or the North Sea, more the result of a drip-drip of leaked crude than a sudden explosion. But they’re more numerous than in any other oil-producing nation including insurgency-hit Nigeria, and combined they spill far more than anywhere else in the world, scientists say.

“Oil and oil products get spilled literally every day,” said Dr. Grigory Barenboim, senior researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Water Problems.

via AP Enterprise: Russia oil spills wreak devastation – Boston.com.

More Radioactive Leaks From Fukushima

Posted on by Duncan Toms

TOKYO — At least 45 tons of highly radioactive water have leaked from a purification facility at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, and some of it may have reached the Pacific Ocean, the plant’s operator said Sunday.

Nearly nine months after Fukushima Daiichi was ravaged by an earthquake and tsunami, the plant continues to pose a major environmental threat. Before the latest leak, the Fukushima accident had been responsible for the largest single release of radioactivity into the ocean, threatening wildlife and fisheries in the region, experts have said.

The new radioactive water leak called into question the progress that the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, appeared to have made in bringing its reactors under control. The company, known as Tepco, has said that it hopes to bring the plant to a stable state known as a cold shutdown by the end of the year.

The trouble on Sunday came in two stages, a Tepco statement said. In the morning, utility workers found that radioactive water was pooling in a catchment next to a purification device; the system was switched off, and the leak appeared to stop. But the company said it later discovered that leaked water was escaping, possibly through cracks in the catchment’s concrete wall, and was reaching an external gutter.

In all, as much as 220 tons of water may now have leaked from the facility, according to a report in the newspaper Asahi Shimbun that cited Tepco officials.

The company said that the water had about one million times as much radioactive strontium as the maximum safe level set by the government, but appeared to have already been cleaned of radioactive cesium before leaking out. Both elements are readily absorbed by living tissue and can greatly increase the risk of developing cancer.

Tepco said a check on Saturday had found no sign of the leak, suggesting that it began Saturday night or early Sunday morning. The company said it was exploring ways to stop any more water from escaping.

Since the disaster in March, workers have been struggling to cool the stricken plant’s reactors by flooding them with water, which is contaminated with radioactivity in the process and becomes a problem of its own.

via More Radioactive Leaks From Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant – NYTimes.com.

Bank funding crisis deepens

Posted on by Duncan Toms

In other words European workers must now be forced to compete toe to toe with Chinese labor costs even though the cost of living in Europe is vastly higher than living in China. Of course the obvious solution to that conundrum is to make the cost of living here more like that of living in China. Which is a simple matter of doing away with workers rights, health care, education and any sort of pension at all. The outlines of a plan emerging here I think.

This is a BANK funding crisis, but it is nations of ordinary people who are being blamed and forced to pay for all the corruption, stupidity, greed and lies which caused it and are still causing it.

via Bank funding crisis deepens | Golem XIV – Thoughts.

Debt or Taxes – the battle of our time

Posted on by Duncan Toms

The key is this: by bailing out the banks and the private financial system we are diverting tax and the power it confers from the Nation State and its system of democratic accountability, and instead empowering a system where debt not democracy reigns supreme. As more and more of our as yet un-earned wealth is already pledged to support the system of private debts and private debt-based wealth we find ourselves less and less able to control it or enforce even its own laws upon it. The financial system and those whose power comes from it are increasingly able to disregard any restraining laws. They can incur debts and ignore them forcing others, us, to pay them for them. How? because we have tied our selves to their system and weakened the old system which used to protect us and work for us.

via Debt or Taxes – the battle of our time

Credit Crunch 2.0?

Posted on by Duncan Toms

So now we have almost every aspect of the original sub-prime credit crunch reproduced by the same people who did it the first time and were never punished or even rebuked but instead were allowed to reward themselves with millions in bonuses.

So to summarize, MF Global invested in sub prime. Only this time sub prime bonds not mortgages. It leveraged them hideously, pretended it had off-loaded the risk when it hadn’t and then got caught when the value of the bonds went down and counldn’t pay the debts it had taken on using the bonds as collateral. Sorry to belabour the point but I want you to see how this really is subrpime all over again.

And like the original sub prime it means when one bank goes down it leaves all those to whom it owes money, with their own losses.

So now let’s move on from MF Global, because as some wag commented, you never find just one cockroach in a dirty kitchen. Which logic nearly killed a second brokerage, Jeffries. Its stock collapsed on the rumour that it too had bought up lots of European bonds. Jeffries had to take the amazing step of publishing every single position in bonds that it had. Only then did its stock recover.

Since then other banks have been less forthcoming about their exposure, namely Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. Only they are not so much suspected of having lots of European bonds themselves as having perhaps provided the one part of the whole sub prime crisis we have not so far mentioned, CDS insurance. Goldman and JP Morgan are among the world’s largest derivatives traders. And they revealed that between them they have sold ‘protection’ on over $5 trillion globally. No one knows how much of this is on dodgy European debt and neither Goldman nor JP Morgan is saying.

In sub prime credit crunch 1 it was AIG that provided much of the short term funding and much of the CDS protection. This time who knows who are the main providers. But one thing you can be sure of, there will have been a great deal of it sold. Because it would have been sold using the same logic which inspired MF Global to buy the debt. The logic which said, these are countries too big to fail so in the end they will be bailed out even if democracy has to be suspended to ensure it. If you believed that logic then you wold have sold CDS protection and pocketed the premium.

So that, I believe is all aspects of sub prime accounted for. You can now see that while sovereign bonds and debts may be the fissile material the bomb itself and its explosive potential was constructed by the banks just as they did last time following the same blue-print and same greed.

And how soon might it go off. For that we end with UniCredit. Last quarter the trillion euro bank suddenly posted a ‘surprise’ 10.6 billion euro loss in just this last quarter! It’s bonds are now trading as junk while it faces having to raise another 51 billion euros to re-finance its debt in just the next year. That, to me spells BOOOOM! It is only the first. It certainly won’t be the last. There will be others and they may be along fairly soon.

Why did UniCredit suddenly make such a loss? What was happening during the last quarter? Well Spanish and Italian bonds have lost a lot of value. what do you think, might UniCredit have been holding a lot of them? Surely not I hear you cry. Who would be so stupid. UniCredit blames the loss on its Kazakhstan and Ukraine units. What would those units have been doing to wrack up such monumental losses? UniCredit is now trying desperately to sell bits of itself.

The banks know what is going on. They each know the risks and losses they are hiding and know if they have them then so do the others. Exactly as in Credit crunch1 interbank lending is frozen with both libor and repo markets in disarray.

I suggest these are the real reasons the banks are in an absolute panic and are shrieking about how the ECB MUST print and print now and why elections and voting of any kind at all must NOT be allowed to upset the smooth imposition of the bank’s required plan. There is contagion but it is bank contagion, its sub prime greed and failure all over again.

Buckle up – Credit Crunch 2

The World Is Drowning in Debt, and Europe Laces On Concrete Boots

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Three metaphors describe Europe: drowning in debt, circular firing squad and trying to fool the money gods with an inept game of 3-card monte.

The world’s major economies are drowning in debt–Europe, the U.S., Japan, China. We all know the U.S. has tried to save its drowning economy by bailing out the parasite which is dragging it to Davy Jones Locker–the banking/financial sector– and by borrowing and squandering $6 trillion in new Federal debt and buying toxic debt with $2 trillion whisked into existence on the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet.

It has failed, of course, and the economy is once again slipping beneath the waves while Ben Bernanke and the politico lackeys join in a Keynesian-monetary cargo-cult chant: Humba-humba, bunga-bunga. Their hubris doesn’t allow them to confess their magic has failed, and rather than let their power be wrenched away, they will let the flailing U.S. economy drown.

Europe has managed to top this hubris-drenched cargo-cult policy–no mean feat. First, it has indebted itself to a breathtaking degree, on every level: sovereign, corporate and private:

Germany, the mighty engine which is supposed to pull the $16 trillion drowning European economy out of the water, is as indebted as the flailing U.S.

Second, the euro’s handlers have already sunk staggering sums into hopelessly insolvent debtor nations, for example, Greece, which has 355 billion euros of outstanding sovereign debt and an economy with a GDP around 200 billion euros (though it’s contracting so rapidly nobody can even guess the actual size). According to BusinessWeek, the E.U. (European Union), the ECB (European Central Bank) and the IMF (International Monetary Fund) own about $127 billion of this debt.

Since the ECB is not allowed to “print money,” the amount of cash available to buy depreciating bonds is limited. The handlers now own over 35% of the official debt (recall that doesn’t include corporate or private debt), which they grandly refuse to accept is now worth less than the purchase price.

From Of Two Minds

It doesn’t get any more immoral than this

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Citigroup had to pay a $285 million fine to settle a case in which, with one hand, Citibank sold a package of toxic mortgage-backed securities to unsuspecting customers — securities that it knew were likely to go bust — and, with the other hand, shorted the same securities — that is, bet millions of dollars that they would go bust. It doesn’t get any more immoral than this.

It probably gets a lot more immoral, but this sure is ugly.

via Did You Hear the One About the Bankers? – NYTimes.com.

The Corporation of London undermines all attempts to curb the excesses of finance

Posted on by Duncan Toms

It’s the dark heart of Britain, the place where democracy goes to die, immensely powerful, equally unaccountable. But I doubt that one in 10 British people has any idea of what the Corporation of the City of London is and how it works. This could be about to change. Alongside the Church of England, the Corporation is seeking to evict the protesters camped outside St Paul’s cathedral. The protesters, in turn, have demanded that it submit to national oversight and control.

What is this thing? Ostensibly it’s the equivalent of a local council, responsible for a small area of London known as the Square Mile. But, as its website boasts, “among local authorities the City of London is unique”. You bet it is. There are 25 electoral wards in the Square Mile. In four of them, the 9,000 people who live within its boundaries are permitted to vote. In the remaining 21, the votes are controlled by corporations, mostly banks and other financial companies. The bigger the business, the bigger the vote: a company with 10 workers gets two votes, the biggest employers, 79. It’s not the workers who decide how the votes are cast, but the bosses, who “appoint” the voters. Plutocracy, pure and simple.

There are four layers of elected representatives in the Corporation: common councilmen, aldermen, sheriffs and the Lord Mayor. To qualify for any of these offices, you must be a freeman of the City of London. To become a freeman you must be approved by the aldermen. You’re most likely to qualify if you belong to one of the City livery companies: medieval guilds such as the worshipful company of costermongers, cutpurses and safecrackers. To become a sheriff, you must be elected from among the aldermen by the Livery. How do you join a livery company? Don’t even ask.

To become Lord Mayor you must first have served as an alderman and sheriff, and you “must command the support of, and have the endorsement of, the Court of Aldermen and the Livery”. You should also be stinking rich, as the Lord Mayor is expected to make a “contribution from his/her private resources towards the costs of the mayoral year.” This is, in other words, an official old boys’ network. Think of all that Tory huffing and puffing about democratic failings within the trade unions. Then think of their resounding silence about democracy within the City of London.

…

The Corporation exists outside many of the laws and democratic controls which govern the rest of the United Kingdom. The City of London is the only part of Britain over which parliament has no authority. In one respect at least the Corporation acts as the superior body: it imposes on the House of Commons a figure called the remembrancer: an official lobbyist who sits behind the Speaker’s chair and ensures that, whatever our elected representatives might think, the City’s rights and privileges are protected. The mayor of London’s mandate stops at the boundaries of the Square Mile. There are, as if in a novel by China Miéville, two cities, one of which must unsee the other.

…

If you’ve ever dithered over the question of whether the UK needs a written constitution, dither no longer. Imagine the clauses required to preserve the status of the Corporation. “The City of London will remain outside the authority of parliament. Domestic and foreign banks will be permitted to vote as if they were human beings, and their votes will outnumber those cast by real people. Its elected officials will be chosen from people deemed acceptable by a group of medieval guilds …”.

The Corporation’s privileges could not withstand such public scrutiny. This, perhaps, is one of the reasons why a written constitution in the United Kingdom remains a distant dream. Its power also helps to explain why regulation of the banks is scarcely better than it was before the crash, why there are no effective curbs on executive pay and bonuses and why successive governments fail to act against the UK’s dependent tax havens.

But now at last we begin to see it. It happens that the Lord Mayor’s Show, in which the Corporation flaunts its ancient wealth and power, takes place on 12 November. If ever there were a pageant that cries out for peaceful protest and dissent, here it is. Expect fireworks – and not just those laid on by the Lord Mayor.

There Is No Way To Stop Europe’s First Domino From Falling

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Simply put, there is no way the EU authorities can stop the first domino — Greek default or equivalent writedown of its impossible debt load — from toppling the over-leveraged banks which will be rendered insolvent when forced to recognize their losses.

That leaves each nation with the politically unsavory option of bailing out its premier banks with taxpayer money, and squeezing the money out of its citizenry via higher taxes and austerity. That assumption of bank debt will in turn trigger downgrades of heavily indebted sovereign nations such as France — moves that will raise rates and make the bailout even more costly to taxpayers, who will also be suffering from reductions of income due to global recession.

Once the banks and bondholders accept a 50%–75% writedown in Greek debt, then the other debtor nations will be justified in demanding the same writedown in their crushing debts. This dynamic leads to estimates that 3 trillion euros will be needed to bail all the players out. Alternatively, total losses will equal 3 trillion euros, wiping out banks and bondholders of sovereign debt.

The German economy is simply not big enough to fund a 3 trillion-euro bailout. Germany has 81 million people and its GDP is $3.3 trillion; the EU GDP is roughly $16 trillion. Compare those with the U.S., with 315 million people and a GDP of around $14.6 trillion.

Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/google/RzFQ/~3/uGsaPER3uYA/european-financial-crisis-in-one.html#ixzz1bdVxUFPG

Matt Taibbi: My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters

Posted on by Duncan Toms

No matter what, I’ll be supporting Occupy Wall Street. And I think the movement’s basic strategy – to build numbers and stay in the fight, rather than tying itself to any particular set of principles – makes a lot of sense early on. But the time is rapidly approaching when the movement is going to have to offer concrete solutions to the problems posed by Wall Street. To do that, it will need a short but powerful list of demands. There are thousands one could make, but I’d suggest focusing on five:

1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called “Too Big to Fail” financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term “Systemically Dangerous Institutions” – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.

2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it’s supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.

3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer’s own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can’t do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress.

4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year.

5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company’s long-term health – no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world.

via My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters | Politics News | Rolling Stone.

Reasons the Wall Street Protesters are Protesting

Posted on by Duncan Toms

They came by the thousands, and then the tens of thousands. As the crowd swelled in Foley Square massing for a march to Wall Street, I was most struck by its diversity. They were young, old and middle-aged; black, white, Hispanic and Asian; college kids, professionals, workers and the unemployed. They had come to march on Wall Street, called by 15 of New York’s largest unions in an act of solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement in Liberty Park.

They were rimmed by the massive, impersonal edifices of a government they felt no longer cared about them – and they were preparing to confront the banks and speculators further downtown who had hijacked the state for their own private interests. They spoke with a diversity of voices and held signs covering a spectrum of demands. But it could all be summed up in one word: fairness.

I talked with a bus driver, a nurse, a retired teacher, a salesman and an actor. (Check out my slideshow of the event to see photos.) Here is some of what they told me:

Dorothy Ahmahd, an RN sporting a T-shirt of the National Nurses Union, said, “Nurses are supporting this movement because we see a lot of our patients who once had jobs, but are no longer able to pay for health care. We know this country’s deficit is being balanced with cuts from poor people who can’t pay.” What does she want? “Taxation across the board so our patients can get good health care – no more loopholes for rich people or corporate America to slide through…” and Medicare for all.

Jesse Mendoza is a bus driver in the Bronx, who characterizes himself as “the upper poor,” struggling to make it even though he has a job. He wants an end to the fight against workers. He said his union had seen more than 700 station agents laid off recently, as well as bus and train operators, and feared that give-backs extracted from other public sector unions, like the CSEA, were coming next for him.

Bill Buster is an actor and union member (AFTRA). He lives in the neighborhood of Liberty Park where the Occupy Wall Street protesters are encamped and started getting involved by bringing food to them. Then he was shocked into action when he witnessed the mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge last Saturday. Dressed in a suit and tie, he was outraged at the media’s portrayal of the protesters: “It’s just been insulting and patronizing the way the mainstream media has singled out only the young who they can portray as hippies; they do not portray the senior citizens that are involved with us; they do not portray the professionals; they’re taking all the cheap shots they can.” Declaring the movement welcomes “Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, who are all impacted because they live in this country,” he added that he knew bankers and Wall Street lawyers who were active in the protests after having lost their jobs.

But perhaps the retired teacher summed it up best. Telling me, “the system is broken and we are no longer providing the promise America always has,” she held up a hand-made sign saying, “Economic Justice 4 All.”

Images from here
Text from here

Slavoj Zizek at Liberty Plaza

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Extracts of Slavoj Zizek’s speech 9 October at Occupy Wall Street:

They tell you we are dreamers. The true dreamers are those who think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. We are not dreamers. We are awakening from a dream which is turning into a nightmare. We are not destroying anything. We are only witnessing how the system is destroying itself. We all know the classic scenes from cartoons. The cart reaches a precipice but it goes on walking, ignoring the fact that there is nothing beneath. Only when it looks down and notices it, it falls down. This is what we are doing here. We are telling the guys there on Wall Street, “Hey, look down!”

…

Here we don’t think of prohibition. Because the ruling system has even suppressed our capacity to dream. Look at the movies that we see all the time. It’s easy to imagine the end of the world. An asteroid destroying all life and so on. But you cannot imagine the end of capitalism. So what are we doing here? Let me tell you a wonderful old joke from communist times.

A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors, so he told his friends, “Let’s establish a code. If the letter you get from me is written in blue ink, it is true what I said. If it is written in red ink, it is false.” After a month, his friends get a first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter, “Everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theatres show good films from the West. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.”

This is how we live. We have all the freedoms we want, but what we are missing is red ink. The language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom war and terrorism and so on falsifies freedom. And this is what you are doing here: You are giving all of us red ink.

There is a danger. Don’t fall in love with yourselves. We have a nice time here. But remember: Carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after, when we will have to return to normal life. Will there be any changes then? I don’t want you to remember these days, you know, like, “Oh, we were young, it was beautiful.” Remember that our basic message is: We are allowed to think about alternatives. The rule is broken. We do not live in the best possible world. But there is a long road ahead. There are truly difficult questions that confront us. We know what we do not want. But what do we want? What social organization can replace capitalism? What type of new leaders do we want?

Remember: The problem is not corruption or greed. The problem is the system that pushes you to give up. Beware not only of the enemies, but also of false friends who are already working to dilute this process.

…

We are not communists. If communism means the system which collapsed in 1990, remember that today those communists are the most efficient, ruthless capitalists. In China today we have capitalism which is even more dynamic than your American capitalism but doesn’t need democracy. Which means when you criticize capitalism, don’t allow yourselves to be blackmailed that you are against democracy. The marriage between democracy and capitalism is over.

The change is possible. … We know that people often desire something but do not really want it. Don’t be afraid to really want what you desire.

Nerdcore Rap by Dan Bull re #occupywallstreet

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Featuring Radiohead sample.

‘Coincidentally’ JP Morgan have just made the largest (multi-million) donation in history direct to the NYPD. It’s not about Protesters vs Police but for sure the movement can’t pay off the police. This is now the third week of the little-reported anti-greed/corporate interest in politics protests/anti-corruption movement now spreading across the USA and beyond. Unions, teachers, veterans, and the general public are joining in. I am sure some of the police, who are also having their pensions stripped from them, would also prefer to join in than protect the wealthy.

The monstrous fact. From bail-outs to debt peonage.

Posted on by Duncan Toms

There is one monstrous fact stalking Europe and no amount of debating will make it go away – there isn’t enough money to make the bank bail-out’s work.

There isn’t enough money in Europe’s bail out fund, the EFSF, despite this morning’s vote in the German parliament. The vote this morning was to ‘increase’ the EFSF not to what the banks and the Americans have already insisted it will need (read – what they want) – more than a trillion euros – but to what was ‘agreed’ some while ago and had to then be ratified by member states. The mainstream financial news outlets seem keen to give the impression that what was voted for in Germany was ‘it’, the final fix, the super-EFSF. This is NOT the case. What was agreed to in Germany is what Geithner and others had already said was woefully insufficient. That is why the vote has not heralded a massive rally in Europe or America. There has been a muted increase on exchanges because today’s vote is a step towards the Uber plan.

That plan will see the EFSF working with the ECB to create what amounts to a vast CDO (Collateralized Debt Obligation). This ‘CDO’, which the banks and the Fed want so badly, will be a supra-national version of the CDOs which brought us to this state in the first place. What I think would happen, is Greece would be forced to put up assets as collateral. These could be parts of Greece and its infrastructure and/or the income from them, and future tax receipts as well I imagine. This ‘income stream’ will be the promise written on new bonds/debt which the CDO will sell to investors. Those ‘investors’ will probably be the central banks and even the self same insolvent private banks who are being bailed out in Europe and beyond.

via The monstrous fact. From bail-outs to debt peonage. | Golem XIV – Thoughts.

World Wide Credulity Crunch

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Does anyone anywhere believe anything they are told, on any subject, by any government official, financial expert or banker? Beneath all the outright lies, hopeless spin and half truths there is a more fundamental and corrosive problem. WE DON’T BELIEVE YOU!

The global reserves of credulity have been pillaged and squandered. We have been told too many times that this or that economy was fundamentally sound, that problems were contained, or would definitely be over by Christmas, that Spain was not Greece, Italy was not Spain, that Ireland’s banks were fixed, that we were all in it together and that all the banks are superbly well capitalized.

Even the banks don’t believe. Each protests that they are fine and yet none of them trust each other and won’t lend a dime.

We have found ourselves living in an entire economy of lies. Borrowers lied. Lenders lied. Insurers insured the lies but were lying themselves. The regulators who oversaw the lies lied about how sound the lies were and the people who rated the lies were the most AAA of liars themselves.

Lies like debts can be printed up at will. In fact most of what is being printed in banks and newspapers are all lies related to each other. But what none of the liars remembered is that lies can only be redeemed if there is an equally endless supply of credulity. And although we frequently lament the stupidity, cupidity and cowardice of ‘people’ even they have a finite supply of credulity. And it has been exhausted.

Credulity cannot be printed up, borrowed or electronically magic-ed into existence. There is no EU stockpile or emergency supply. Once its gone its gone. And some time ago I think we reached Peak Credulity and it has been in steep decline ever since.

via World Wide Credulity Crunch. | Golem XIV – Thoughts.

Texas drought worsens from ‘abysmal’

Posted on by Duncan Toms

 

 

 

Nearly 97 percent of Texas is in either exceptional or extreme drought.

From June through August, Texas suffered the hottest three months ever recorded in the United States, according to the National Weather Service. And the 12 months ending on Aug. 31 were the driest 12 months in Texas history, with most of the state receiving just 21 percent of its annual average rainfall.

Record heat has extended to other states: Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma joined Texas in posting their warmest August on record.

In Texas alone, agricultural losses have topped $5 billion.

via Texas drought worsens from ‘abysmal’ – Weather – msnbc.com.

9/11 The Official Story. Or, 9/11 is a joke

Posted on by Duncan Toms

On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 men armed with boxcutters directed by a man on dialysis in a cave fortress halfway around the world using a satellite phone and a laptop directed the most sophisticated penetration of the most heavily-defended airspace in the world, overpowering the passengers and the military combat-trained pilots on 4 commercial aircraft before flying those planes wildly off course for over an hour without being molested by a single fighter interceptor.These 19 hijackers, devout religious fundamentalists who liked to drink alcohol, snort cocaine, and live with pink-haired strippers, managed to knock down 3 buildings with 2 planes in New York, while in Washington a pilot who couldn’t handle a single engine Cessna was able to fly a 757 in an 8,000 foot descending 270 degree corskscrew turn to come exactly level with the ground, hitting the Pentagon in the budget analyst office where DoD staffers were working on the mystery of the 2.3 trillion dollars that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had announced “missing” from the Pentagon’s coffers in a press conference the day before, on September 10, 2001.Luckily, the news anchors knew who did it within minutes, the pundits knew within hours, the Administration knew within the day, and the evidence literally fell into the FBI’s lap. But for some reason a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists demanded an investigation into the greatest attack on American soil in history.The investigation was delayed, underfunded, set up to fail, a conflict of interest and a cover up from start to finish. It was based on testimony extracted through torture, the records of which were destroyed. It failed to mention the existence of WTC7, Able Danger, Ptech, Sibel Edmonds, OBL and the CIA, and the drills of hijacked aircraft being flown into buildings that were being simulated at the precise same time that those events were actually happening. It was lied to by the Pentagon, the CIA, the Bush Administration and as for Bush and Cheney…well, no one knows what they told it because they testified in secret, off the record, not under oath and behind closed doors. It didn’t bother to look at who funded the attacks because that question is of “little practical significance“. Still, the 9/11 Commission did brilliantly, answering all of the questions the public had except most of the victims’ family members’ questions and pinned blame on all the people responsible although no one so much as lost their job, determining the attacks were “a failure of imagination” because “I don’t think anyone could envision flying airplanes into buildings ” except the Pentagon and FEMA and NORAD and the NRO.

via The Corbett Report | 9/11: A Conspiracy Theory.

Ai Weiwei on Beijing’s Nightmare City

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Having just been, I found this piece on Beijing by Ai Weiwei very interesting:

Beijing is two cities. One is of power and of money. People don’t care who their neighbors are; they don’t trust you. The other city is one of desperation. I see people on public buses, and I see their eyes, and I see they hold no hope. They can’t even imagine that they’ll be able to buy a house. They come from very poor villages where they’ve never seen electricity or toilet paper.

Every year millions come to Beijing to build its bridges, roads, and houses. Each year they build a Beijing equal to the size of the city in 1949. They are Beijing’s slaves. They squat in illegal structures, which Beijing destroys as it keeps expanding. Who owns houses? Those who belong to the government, the coal bosses, the heads of big enterprises. They come to Beijing to give gifts—and the restaurants and karaoke parlors and saunas are very rich as a result.

Beijing tells foreigners that they can understand the city, that we have the same sort of buildings: the Bird’s Nest, the CCTV tower. Officials who wear a suit and tie like you say we are the same and we can do business. But they deny us basic rights. You will see migrants’ schools closed. You will see hospitals where they give patients stitches—and when they find the patients don’t have any money, they pull the stitches out. It’s a city of violence.

The worst thing about Beijing is that you can never trust the judicial system. Without trust, you cannot identify anything; it’s like a sandstorm. You don’t see yourself as part of the city—there are no places that you relate to, that you love to go. No corner, no area touched by a certain kind of light. You have no memory of any material, texture, shape. Everything is constantly changing, according to somebody else’s will, somebody else’s power.

To properly design Beijing, you’d have to let the city have space for different interests, so that people can coexist, so that there is a full body to society. A city is a place that can offer maximum freedom. Otherwise it’s incomplete.

I feel sorry to say I have no favorite place in Beijing. I have no intention of going anywhere in the city. The places are so simple. You don’t want to look at a person walking past because you know exactly what’s on his mind. No curiosity. And no one will even argue with you.

None of my art represents Beijing. The Bird’s Nest—I never think about it. After the Olympics, the common folks don’t talk about it because the Olympics did not bring joy to the people.

There are positives to Beijing. People still give birth to babies. There are a few nice parks. Last week I walked in one, and a few people came up to me and gave me a thumbs up or patted me on the shoulder. Why do they have to do that in such a secretive way? No one is willing to speak out. What are they waiting for? They always tell me, “Weiwei, leave the nation, please.” Or “Live longer and watch them die.” Either leave, or be patient and watch how they die. I really don’t know what I’m going to do.

via Ai Weiwei on Beijing’s Nightmare City – The Daily Beast.

Why did shares in European Banks and BoA collapse?

Posted on by Duncan Toms

The questions we have to ask is why, after so much money in the last three years, [the banks] still need more? Why, if this policy is the correct, the only one, are the banks selling each other’s stocks? What has caused the sudden collapse in European and American banks stocks? We need to find answers because it is obvious our financial experts are lost, but too arrogant and too afraid to admit it.

Until early August, Fed officials gave no sign that they were worried about the economy. They had forecast a pickup in activity for the second half and said that weakness in the first half was due to temporary factors.

Not one official forecast of the last three years has been worth a pin. And the financial press, because they follow the same disastrously wrong ideological assumptions as those they report on, are equally clueless.

…

[D]uring the ‘good times’ when all the bank looked at the ‘recovery’ and made their bone headed growth forecasts and basically smoked their own dope – they thought there was no ‘risk’ and their Risk Managers’ confirmed it. But now, when the fiction of growth can no longer be sustained, suddenly everyone has remembered with a start, that the assets are ‘Risk Weighted’.

Hundreds of billions with zero risk weighting is zero. But go from zero to any number at all no matter if its still fairly small and the answer goes from zero to ‘A LOT’ in an instant. And that is what I think has happened in the risk Manager’s office of every bank in Europe and America. The denominator of the Capital Adequacy Ratio and the Tangible Common Equity Ratio just went through the roof. And when it did the ration went to zero. Suddenly the Risk Managers are telling everyone that the ‘safe’ banks are actually virtually insolvent. Quelle surprise! I think we’ll find Bank of America is in the same or worse state.

And for once they are right. They all know the only thing that will stop this sell off is another round of ‘rape the tax payer’. Will Bernanke tell the Americans that while there is ‘no money’ for paying for social services’ – like schools and police – hundreds of billions can be found for the banks…again. And will the ECB and the BoE say the same to their people?

What really bothers me is that this game has been going on all during the time when our ‘regulators’ and the banks and the governments were all telling us how they had learnt their lessons. how we must let by-gones be by-gones and stop bashing the poor bankers etc etc, they were ALL conniving to play this game.

They all knew the banks and others were buying up sovereign debt of ‘unhealthy’ nations. Spanish banks were encouraged to buy Spanish debt. Greek banks Greek debt, Italian banks Italian debt and they all got it on with each other as well. So that the French banks obliged everyone.

They had learned nothing. They have not changed. The banks never intended to. The regulators are still gurning, toothless cowards and mountebanks and our political leaders just did what they do – they lied. AGAIN.

Just like last time, they have all been caught by their own lies and they want us to bail them out again. And our leaders will do it, if we do not say clearly “This was not in your mandate from us at the last election.” The time is upon us for civil disobedience.

via Golem XIV – Thoughts.