Where have we heard this before?

Associated Press reports that the world powers seek to contain the European debt crisis.  Wow.  This time they are really serious I bet.  Notorious con man and circus barker Timmy Geithner chimed in that "the debt crisis posed the most serious threat to the global economy and that failure to take bold action raised the risk of domino-style defaults by heavily indebted European countries".  So Tim, you mean that the PIIGS are too big to fail?   Oh.  Where have we heard that before?  Yes, the markets are telling governments "give us more free money on the backs of the taxpayer or we will take our ball and go home".

OK, granted that if the Eurozone collapses then others will follow suit.  I'm not arguing that there will be some other outcome (in fact I believe there can be no other outcome).  So what's the "fix" for all of this carnage?  The article paraphrases Timmy as saying that "the European Central Bank should try to ensure that governments pursuing sound reforms could get loans at affordable rates and that European banks have access to the capital they need to operate."

What Timmy is saying is that if the ECB will just continue to engineer the loaning of endless amounts of new money to those who have already proven that they cannot possibly repay what they have already borrowed then we can all call it a day on this global meltdown thing.  Of course, that is what Timmy has been saying all along about everything and everyone and he has yet to be correct.  In fact, there is no way he can possibly be correct given the amount of bad debt that is already baked into the global economic fractional reserve lending scam.  There are very few reserves anymore.  It's all un-backed debt and Wimpy Promises now.  In other words, it's all one big pack of lies and it has been so for a long time.  This is the nature of the confidence game.  Are you getting it yet?  This were no accident folks.  It be an inside job.

So that's our choice now.  Continue printing and borrowing and loaning lest the debt Ponzi collapse.  Of course, anyone with any sense at all can see that this is inherently unsustainable and so it will eventually collapse under its own corrupt weight no matter what anyone does.  By continuing to prop it up the coming bust is only being made worse.  I say again: there is no possibility of a "soft landing" anymore.  Debt levels have just gotten too high globally on the books of the biggest powers.  Debt to GDP ratio of 100% used to be the stuff of 3rd world nations.  Now almost all western nations are there if you account properly instead of playing a shell game with the debt, Japan is at 200% GDP and soon we will find that in order to bail out their housing bubbles, China, Australia and Canada will also have to admit massive indebtedness.

So Timmy is out there fighting for the world, right?  He just wants things to get better so we can all live better lives.  Or is there some other reason he keeps poking his little pinhead into the situation?  Let me ask you something.  Do you think Angela Merkel's efforts to save the EuroPonzi are being done for the benefit of Greece?  How about for the benefit of the German people?  Hopefully you have figured out that in both cases the answer is "no".  Merkel doesn't care about the PIIGS at all.  And her actions prove she couldn't care less about the hard working German people.  She keeps loading them up with guarantees and stimulus and loans to deadbeats.  The Dark Queen Merkel cares only about herself and keeping her unwarranted position of power.  She is, in fact, afraid of what will happen to her if the German people are ever allowed to find out just how badly she has sold them down the river in the name of saving herself.

Geithner is no different.  He doesn't care about Germany or the Eurozone or Americans or anything else except keeping the corrupt status quo power structure intact.  How knows that when the Eurozone collapses then it's going to threaten USD hegemony as everyone scrambles to create new monetary systems that anyone can have any trust in.  I suspect that the smaller countries will eventually realize that they are better off with an honest money supply and they will return to gold standards one by one.   Yes, this will create strong currencies for them that will mean they will have trouble exporting and so they will be among the first to abandon the game of trying to use exports as a profit generation mechanism.  When that happens, those who were paying for their lifestyles with debt will no longer have anyone who will accept debt as payment.  Once the concept of accepting debt as payment collapses globally, then and only then will we see what the new world order looks like. 

This may seem an impossible situation but I see it as not only possible but likely.  We've had a debt mania over the last 80 years.  As it collapses, lots of people are going to lose everything and it won't just be poor people.  It will be rich, connected people as well (do you think it was only poor people who got screwed in the 1700s as a result of the collapse of the South Sea Company?).  Here's what we can expect to figure out as a people over the next 10-20 years:

• The root cause of 90+ % of the problems in the world today is the result of dishonest money supply consisting of fiat currency and fractional reserve credit (which is currently very near zero reserve credit).  Without this fraudulent system, no scam artist could ever leverage up big time and take the profits if the gamble pays off or dump the losses on the taxpayer if he loses.  The current system not only enables this behavior, it encourages and even rewards it.
• 70+% of government programs are in fact mathematically set up as Ponzi schemes whereby it takes increasing amounts of debt or taxation to fund them so that at some point the money they require to operate can no longer be borrowed or taxed.  At that point they collapse.
• The stock market is in large part a Ponzi scheme driven by a combination of the Boomer population bubble and government's efforts to relieve them of their money in the form of being funneled into 401k and other government controlled retirement programs.  People will eventually realize that when all other debt based wealth collapses, greedy government will have no other choice but to steal the retirement savings of the patsies.  If you are laughing at this statement then you are in denial.  If I was a morals-free con man running the show this is exactly the future I would have in store for you and the con men running the show are far more devious than I can ever be.  If I can think it up, they have already done so and have implemented plans 30 years ago to make it happen.
• All government debt is a scam.  Honest government must be paid for by taxes in real time and if that is not happening then the people are just fooling themselves.
• All fiat currency is a scam. Scams always end up collapsing either because the targeted patsies have been fleeced to the bare skin or because they have gotten wise and refuse to participate anymore.   Some fiat currencies are less abused than others by their governments but as we can see with the Swiss Franc being tied to the Euro, even that safety is an illusion.

So what to do?  Well, the dollar is going to look better for a little while as Euroland melts down but soon enough Congress will step in and debase it again.  Congress HAS to do this because even as a net importer we are too dependent on exports for our revenue stream.  If the dollar strengthens too much then it will push employment way beyond the current 9% and in fact I suspect that before things get better the US unemployment rate could get past 20%.  In other words, depression, not recession.  As the largest credit bubble in the history of man goes bust, how can we expect anything less than a massive bust?  Under these conditions, Congress will tell Bernanke (or whatever new con man they put in charge) to fire up the printing presses.  They will use the fact that we control the world's reserve currency until we are no longer the world's reserve currency.  Let gold run the course of its current (and not unexpected) pullback and then keep getting out of dollars for the long run.  Forget the short term turbulence and volatility.  Gold is money and nothing else is.  He who has the gold will eventually be the one making the rules.  Note that gold is not losing buying power relative to commodities.  Oil is falling too and stocks outside the big headline names have gotten whacked worse than Great Depression levels.  If you want to see what that looks like, check out the solar stocks right now.  It's a blood bath for them.

On the US "Day Of Rage"

Russia Today reported on the so called US Day Of Rage which was supposed to have some unfathomable link to the days of rage in the middle east.  The goal was to get some protesters to gather in the Wall Street district and camp there as they did in Spain, etc.  While it's good to see people trying to get involved, rage is ridiculous.  Rage accomplishes nothing unless you are willing to tear down the whole country.  Egypt, Libya, etc. are screwed for years to come as they usher out one strong armed con man and quickly install another loser.  Example: "NTC (rebel) military spokesman Ahmed Bani has given Gaddafi loyalists an ultimatum: join the ranks of the new authorities, or be considered traitors."  All that can be expected of the new regime coming to power is just more strong arm tactics.  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.  Rage is not the answer.  Rage makes you do things without knowing why, without having clear goals and without considering the implications of your actions.  Rage blinds you to the truth.  I didn't say that there is never a time for violence because sometimes it is unavoidable.  But do it in a calm and calculated way if there is no other choice and not because you are enraged.

So now that we are calm again, let's look at the facts.  Those who are venting against Wall Street complain that some small percentage of the people have way too high a percentage of the wealth.  This is true.  Of course, these short sighted people don't realize that this is what 90% of the world is saying about the average American!  Many around the world live in fox holes while we live in single family dwellings that are, for the most part, modern and safe.  We have nice cars and roads and restaurants and all manner of luxuries that people elsewhere do not have.  Most Americans foolishly consider this their birthright.  If Wall Streeters should be ashamed of their prowess in gaming the system then I guess we should all be ashamed of our individual prosperity and just give it away, huh?  Well of course not!  In the minds of the uneducated protesters, it's only "them" that have too much and they want the government to help us steal it from "them".

And so here is the truth of the matter.  Wall Street is filled with some of the smartest, hardest working, most focused people on the planet.  Competition is fierce there and only the strong survive.  Yes, they view everyone else as game to be hunted but hey, that is the mindset of the Alpha Male.  That mindset exists wherever highly successful people are.  Look at a guy like Steve Jobs.  By all accounts, he is a tyrant.  But what a productive tyrant he was!  Face it: playing around all day and not worrying too much about being productive and enjoying your life instead of focusing on making money is not the path to financial success and those who live like this should not be jealous of those who are spending their lives making money.  It's everyone's choice how to live their lives.

Since you are open minded enough to have read this far into my post then you deserve kudos because too many people stop reading as soon as the opinions expressed don't back up their herd-think.  Up until now, my post has probably sounded very pro-Wall Street, pro "capitalism" when in fact I think that those working on Wall Street are mainly con men and that we have not had real capitalism for decades in this country (only crony capitalism).  But "con man" does not imply "stupid person" and in fact, generally quite the opposite.  Only the most clever and insightful can ever be good con men.  They would probably excel at almost anything they put their minds to.  So I wanted to give Wall Streeter's their just due.  Fair is fair even if you don't like the sound of it.

And now to the real truth, that which very few of the protesters around the world have any clue about: the best and brightest become con men because it pays the best to be a con man when the money supply is corrupt and can be so easily gamed.  The real culprit is not the Wall Street worker but rather the corrupt money supply which enables Wall Street to spirit value out of the economy without having done any productive work to achieve it.  PERIOD.  If you want to know what to really blame, it would be none other than fiat currency and fractional reserve banking.  Without these fraudulent concepts, Wall Street would self-dissolve (not completely, just to the right size) in an orderly fashion.  The smart but morally challenged con men would go off and do other things where they could best ply their God-given talents in economically productive endeavors to provide for themselves and their families.  They are not inherently evil but they do lack the moral character to avoid doing immoral things when it is dangled in front of them (same as most of us!).  When viewed logically and without rage, it only makes sense that what has happened must happen given the nature of man. 

Let me put it another way.  If a strong man is at war with a weak man, and the physically weak man dies during the battle, was the strong man wrong to have killed him?  Well, it depends on your personal viewpoint but America as a whole seems to believe this is perfectly normal and natural.  Might makes right, especially during war.  But let's say you have personal concerns about this.  In that case, do you blame the strong man for being strong, or do you blame the fact that some a$$hole in government demanded that there be a war in the first place?  Should a strong man just lay down his weapon and take one in the head given that he is caught up in the war even though he didn't start it?  I think not.  Everyone has been given certain gifts in varying quantities: physical strength, health, longevity, intelligence, stamina, etc.  It is the nature of man to use these gifts in every possible way to better his personal condition and it is at the very heart of the concept of freedom that he be allowed to do so.  If you don't want people doing a certain thing, don't set the basic rules of the game up so as to encourage it!

Well, Wall Street bankers view it as a war too.  They think they are soldiers.  Most of them had no hand in creating or perpetuating fiat currency nor did they create the policy of fractional reserve banking.  But by gum if these fraudulent policies are the law of the land then their sole mission is to leverage the crap out of it before someone else does.  And yes, if Wall Street were not leading the con, someone else would be.  Maybe the UK or Russia or China, but it would be someone.

So the correct answer is not to go after the Wall Street combatants but rather to strike at the root of the problem which is the fraudulent money supply.  Nothing will ever get fixed until that occurs.  Without fixing that, the only thing that will happen is periodic changing of who is the dictator.  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!  This whole monetary system is owned and operated by the Federal Reserve.  They are, for those who will shun ignorance and suspend disbelief, the monetary equivalent of military warmongers.  When the protesters surround the Federal Reserve building and tell Ben Bernanke to get out either on his feet or on a stretcher, that is when I will stop accusing the protesters of being ignorant, misguided fools.  When they shut the Federal Reserve down forever and demand a return to honest money and the demise of fractional reserve credit then I will hail them as enlightened souls.  Don't get me wrong: I do love them for their passion.  I do love the fact that the sheeple are starting to grow a pair.  But damn it people, EDUCATE YOURSELVES before you go off on "days of rage" which will only result in needless injuries, damage to property and the strengthening of the police state. 

If you want to start educating yourself, read Ron Paul's book, "End the Fed".

Grab bag 9-14-2011

While waiting for the markets to roll over, I want to hit on several quick points which do not individually merit a post:

• Dallas Fed Chief says "Uncertainty, not Fed policy, is hampering the U.S. and global economy".  Oh where to start.  I'll try to keep it simple even though it is made as complex as possible by those running the show in order to throw the common man off the scent. 
• First off, you have to love the Fed's tactic of having one or two of the 12 Fed Heads going public with their concerns while the Fed as a group goes forward on its path of currency debasement.  It's part of a common con man strategy of mixing a little truth with a lot of BS in order to fool the uneducated or the unwary.
• Secondly, what does he mean by "uncertainty"?  In short, he means that he believes that people are not borrowing money because they are "uncertain".  Uncertainly here is con-man-speak for "unconfident".  In short, the con man is saying the con is failing due to lack of confidence.  Will he entertain the possibility that people not having jobs underpins their decision to avoid debt?  Will he accept the fact that boomers are entering retirement and thus need to down size instead of leveraging up?  These are the real reasons for lack of "certainty".  In fact, a fair analysis says that people would borrow if they could but they are certain it would be an asinine idea given that US poverty level is the highest it has been since 1993 (and worsening each month).
• Most importantly, is the fed in control of the economy or not?  In one breath it claims to be omnipotent in its ability to control the economy (and thus we should listen to what it says along with giving it more and more power each time it falls short of its stated goals) but then on the other hand we are told that Fed policy is basically impotent if the people are "uncertain".  Sorry Feds, you asked for all these "mandates" and now that you are failing at executing you better expect that the people will demand that the captain go down with the ship.
• BNP Paribas plans $96 billion of asset sales.  That's quite a bit of de-leveraging for France's largest bank.  I wonder why they are doing it.  Oh, that's right, they are "uncertain".  About what?  How about the fact that the credit rating of France's largest banks are under attack.  As above, however, this is not a case of being "uncertain" but rather of being perfectly certain: shed assets now and raise cash or suffer big time when France rolls over.  Remember, this is not "contagion" but rather just the logical course of events to expect when a country leverages up internally in order to run a trade surplus with a bunch of PIIGS.
• China tells world "I can not save you.  I can't even save myself".  OK, well, not in so many words but it might as well have used those words.  Besides, the song of  the same name properly conveys the mood (sung by a band appropriately named "Stabbing Westward"...). China only appears to have money.  It is a sham in the same way that the Clinton administration appeared to be flush.  It is nothing more than a shell game of debt.  Chinese banks lent money to build expensive housing which nobody in China can afford.  They also lent money to create production capacity that nobody wants to buy.  That is a major reason that stuff from China is so cheap.  China is in deep trouble and it is a joke to expect that it can bail out the Eurozone or anyone else.
• Poverty level in the USA hits new record.  This is the curse of fiat currency and fractional reserve lending.  It creates booms which must undeniably and inevitably go bust.  The con men steal all of the value out of the system during the boom and then they drop the losses on uneducated masses and patsies during the bust.  This is not an accident.  This is not an act of God.  This is not a miscalculation.  It was, is, and always will be a predictable outcome of what happens when those who know how money works are allowed to game a corrupt and fraudulent money and credit supply.  The people who did it knew they were doing it right from day one.  They didn’t care.  They believed they were simply the beneficiaries of economic Darwinism.  When the masses who have been patsified by them finally realize the truth of what I have been writing for years, however, the bankers and con men better watch out.  Economic Darwinism might take a back seat to physical Darwinism when the people decide to get even.  It’s coming bankers and moneymen.  Trust me, it’s coming.  You really didn’t think you were just going to get away with it forever, did you?  Really?  Really???

Marketwatch: Just default already and stop dragging it out

Marketwatch is out today stating the obvious with an article entitled "Massive Default Is The Best Way To Fix The Economy".  In it, the author goes on and on about how it would be a tough solution but there's no other real choice blah blah blah.  In other words, 2 pages of partial truths and no real solutions.  First, the author is correct: the problem is the debt.  It is not a U.S. problem but rather a global problem.  Second, yes default is what happens when people (and sovereigns) are allowed to get in over their heads in debt.  And yes, the author reminds us that it's just as much the lender's fault as the borrower's fault.  But then he goes into the half truth of how putting candy in front of children never led to anything good:
 "There’s no point telling people not to borrow money. They always will. I have yet to see a Wall Street executive turn down free money. I have yet to see a company in an IPO say, “Don’t give us so much money!” People like money. They will take as much as they are offered."

Well, no $hit Sherlock.  Really?  But what he conveniently does not say is "... and on the other side of the coin are banks and sovereigns who can create credit out of thin air which spends as if it were real money.  No politician or federal reserve ever said "we need less credit" or "we need less inflation"."

So what Marketwatch is really pointing out is that the fractional reserve banking system is just a fraudulent load of crap waiting to happen.  It is fraudulently beneficial on the borrowing side to leverage up because if they win then they win big and if they lose then nothing too bad happens to them.  And it is fraudulently beneficial to leverage up on the lending side because until the debt Ponzi collapses you get a percentage of every outstanding loan.  You in fact get to earn interest and fees on money you never earned in the first place.

Fractional reserve lending is a complete scam but since con men on both sides of the credit/debt coin were making money in the deal nobody wanted to shut it down.  But now that the credit is collapsing and all that is left is the debt, suddenly the right thing to do is just default.  BUT THEN WHAT?  Well, the Marketwatch article sort of leaves that open ended as in "we can just start up the scam anew after the collapse".

The sad part about this is that all of the money that is extracted from the system by the fraudulent borrowers and the fraudulent lenders has to come from someone.  But the way the shell game of transfer-the-debt is played, most people don't know that the debt from these con men is getting transferred to them.  The hard working, middle of the road conservative, middle class workers who want nothing more than to work hard, play hard, enjoy their families and to live honestly are stuck paying the bill.  Yet they don't know enough about economics to figure out that the culprit of all of this pain is fiat currency and fractional reserve lending.

So, Marketwatch is correct.  Default is coming at all levels.  But what we need to do after the default is to actually learn something from it.  We need to shut down the scam of fiat currency and fractional reserve lending so that the con men can't simply start their game up anew.  In fact, I wrote a post back in April of this year that outlined the need for a default but also added other necessary reforms to ensure that the pain which we will be feeling is not replicated some years down the road for our children and their children.

Nothing can be truly fixed until people figure out that fiat currency and fractional reserve lending are nothing more than a confidence game scam which affects everyone.

911 ten years on

Lots of social website messages and news media articles are going out today to remember those who lost their lives as a result of the 911 terrorism.  It is indeed worth pausing to reflect on the happenings of that day.  I remember seeing the 2nd airplane hit the towers on a TV at work after having been alerted by co-workers that the first crash had occurred.  Like everyone else, I was astonished and pushed back by what I had just witnessed.

On that day the USA was clearly the recipient of well planned extremist terrorist attacks.  Nothing can subtract from the sadness over the loss of life of those completely innocent civilians who perished in the aircraft attacks on the twin towers and on the Pentagon.  They were clearly victims.  In addition, nothing will ever tarnish the bravery and dedication of the firefighters and police who did not shirk their duty in the face of grave danger but who rather rushed into the buildings to save others, knowing the whole time that it was a very dangerous act.  As to those who participated in the cleanup act who later died of cancer or who are suffering long term strange illnesses, they are just as much victims as those who perished on the planes during the impacts as well as during the collapse of the buildings.

In my heart and mind I hold a special place for the occupants of flight 93.  I do not consider them as much victims as they are war heroes. For whatever reason, including lack of opportunity to fight, victims just take what is coming to them.  They accept their fate or they never have a chance to react because they never see it coming.  It does not diminish their loss but it is not an act of heroism either. 

The passengers of flight 93 were war heroes.  They could have just believed the soothing words of their attackers that things would be alright if they would just agree to be victims.  They could have cowered on their knees at the back of the plane and hoped for the best.  Instead, they stood tall as they gathered intelligence using cell phones and determined that they had been caught up in an act of war.  They decided that self determination was better than being victimized.  They then decided as a group to form their own strike team and they carried out their self-assigned counterattack mission to the best of their abilities using whatever weapons they had on hand.  They knew there was little chance of saving themselves but they foiled the mission of those who wanted to use the aircraft as a guided missile against US targets. This was not their job.  They were not trained nor equipped for what they did.  But they were not hapless victims and I will never remember them as such.  They were brave combatants, a flash militia if you will, all deserving of the highest military commendations that our nation has to offer.

So how should we remember the victims and honor the heroes of 911?  It's a question each of us must answer for ourselves.  For me, true honor and respect for them has to start with giving them all a real, non-government controlled investigation of what happened so that all involved in nefarious acts of complicity or intentional profiteering from the disaster can be held accountable.  Questions about these things remain in the minds of the observant and of the vigilant. 

Arrogant government is on record as believing that it takes extreme acts to get the people of the USA to move in a particular direction.  Government has said on more than one occasion that it never wants to let a serious crisis go to waste.  When you understand how the mind of the government bureaucrat thinks, it's a very short leap of logic to start creating your own manufactured crises in order to drive public opinion and thus achieve public backing for whatever scam the government wants to profit from.  It's been suggested and even admitted by well placed members of the government that the Gulf of Tonkin incident which was the excuse to enter the Vietnam war was completely manufactured.  Warmonger LBJ is clearly on tape chomping at the bit to go kill people but he needed an excuse because without the backing of the people, any president is powerless regardless of what any laws on the books might read.  LBJ needed a false flag operation and so he made one happen.

We can either just ignore this pattern of documented abuse of power or we can come to the grips with the fact that it is human nature for absolute power to corrupt absolutely.  We can just all sit around and sing Kum-Ba-Ya and talk about the losses that occurred or we can each get involved to demand a real investigation of what happened.  If a real investigation determines that government abuse was involved in 911 or its after math then we the people need to ferret it out lest we continue to be treated as patsies and fools and disposable victims and pawns by those running the show.  I can think of no greater personal tribute to those who lost their lives or loved ones as a result of 911 and its aftermath than to demand a real investigation into all aspects of the incident starting with the collapse of Building WTC7.  If you want to educate yourself on this matter, you can start with this 15 minute video. 

If people will not take the time to educate themselves on this matter then I have to question the sincerity of their stated regrets and sympathies regarding the matter of 911.  Talk is, at the end of the day, still quite cheap.

Greece ready for sovereign default; USD is the best looking horse in the fiat currency glue factory

Greek 1 year treasury debt had an interest rate of about 5% less than a year ago.  Now it is 97%.  There are several things to take away from this:

• The credit game is essentially the same whether you are an individual or a sovereign country (a country is just a large group of individuals).  Assigning special status to sovereigns as if they cannot default is a fool's errand best left to PhDs and Economic Academians.  The are the marketing arm of the con  no matter which country you are talking about.  If you keep borrowing long enough without paying anything back then sooner or later the pool of those willing to lend to you dries up until the only lenders left are loan sharks.  Note that this is the chart for 1 year debt.  Any short term debt that has to be rolled over right now will occur at the loan shark rate of 97% per annum.  Nobody can survive that kind of interest rate for very long.
• Greeks kept on borrowing in order to maintain a lifestyle that they had not earned even though they had foolishly convinced themselves that they did.  This is one of the evils of a fractional reserve money supply.  It temporarily boosts economies and economic outlooks before it pulls the rug out.  It gets people to believe in Fairy Tale Promises.  Because of these beliefs, they essentially spend their retirement money today believing that there will be more free money rolling in tomorrow.  These patsies (a technical term which is devoid of any emotional content meaning the target of a confidence game) will eventually figure out the hard way what a Wimpy Promise really means.
• The main driver of the debt based spending was the process of buying votes through the promising of entitlements.  Greek public employees voted in puppet governments who approved lavish retirement programs for public unions.  These Ponzi promises could not be funded by taxation and so they took on debt to do it.  This has been a globally used scam by scumbag politicians and it is now collapsing all over the United States as well.  If you read the link you will see the phrase that pays is "Ponzi Scheme".  Everyone is now using this term as I have always used it: in the context of being a technical statement of fact backed by math and logic and being completely devoid of emotional content.  Get used to it people, it's true.  The whole global economy is one big Debt Ponzi fueled by fiat currency and fractional reserve banking.
• The marginal players always get hit the first and the worst.  Greece is just the first.  The rest of the PIIGS will follow.  The press will call it "contagion".  It is not contagion but rather a series of well deserved individual defaults as the Wimpy Promises of larger states are called into question following the collapse of Wimpy Promises of the smaller ones.  The global economy is in fact already bankrupt by the fact that their banks are bankrupt and the "contagion" will just be the serial admission of the fact. 
• Economic collapse has a nasty habit of unfolding with exponential speed.  Who'd a thunk that the rates could go from 5% to 97% like that?  Who, I mean, besides those of us who have a handle on real economics (not academia crap) and who don't ignore history's voice on the matter.  Who today thinks the same can happen to the rest of the PIIGS, to Germany and France and eventually to every country which is running a debt Ponzi (including the USA)?  Reading the popular press, the answer is "not very many".  But the mainstream media was wrong in the past and it will be wrong again.  The writing is on the wall.  The less marginal players will take longer to collapse and the depth of their individual collapses will not be as bad as the smaller players.  Howerver, everyone in the world will see a return to living within their means before this crash is played out.  In the end it will mean a reduced standard of living for all of us.  That's the math of it folks.  If you want to live in New Age Dream Land and to ignore the obvious math then go ahead but the ostrich strategy is not going to help avoid the problems.  As Patrick Swayze said in Next Of Kin, "You ain't seen bad yet, but it's coming".  Things will get a lot worse before they can get significantly better.  The faster we let the free market sort this out, the happier we will all be.

Having said all that, all fiat currencies are relative.  The US admitted it was in trouble with the housing bubble long before everyone else did and the US Dollar took the early pain for that.  But now it's becoming clear that the US was not the only culprit in the grand fractional reserve lending scam.  In fact, of the major nations the sins of the USA might not be nearly the worst; those of Spain, Australia, Canada, China and the UK will all probably turn out to be bigger crashes than our own has been.  As a result of this realization, the beaten
down dollar could now be putting in a major bottom.  You can see how the horizontal green line was tested several times from the top before breaking down and then it was back tested from below and rejected once.  But then it put in an inclining double bottom and is now re-testing that resistance level from below.  Also, the recent trading action has included gaps as circled in blue which is generally a sign of strong interest in the direction of travel.  The collapse in Euroland will be dollar positive.

If the dollar breaks out at this point then expect stocks to get whacked because the only reason people are in stocks right now is as an inflation hedge even though we will likely have a good deal more deleveraging and deflation before the big inflation comes home to roost.  In this case, gold and silver could pull back sharply as well but the dollar and all other fiat currencies are like well-hooked fish.  They will have little bursts of speed relative to real money (gold) which pay out line but they are getting pretty damned tired and gold will eventually reel all of them in.  They are all losing ground over time and on average to the commodity money which is the only real money.  If the dollar can break out of this resistance level then kiss Dow 10,000 good bye to the downside.  The stock market is just another Ponzi in a world which is full of Ponzis.  Any significant dips we might be fortunate enough get in gold and silver are going to be buying opportunities.

What kind of a sick money supply leads to governments proudly announcing debasement efforts?

Today Japan joined Switzerland in proclaiming their money supply to be worth too much relative to the other troubled money supplies of other bankrupt sovereign governments.  How can you, with a straight face, tell the world that your money is worth too much more than someone else's collapsing crappy money and thus you have to crap all over your own money in order to make up for it?  How can anyone even sit there and listen to this $hit?  And to add insult to injury, Japan didn't make this announcement with shameful sorrow and concern for the savings of its tax slaves but rather "boldly" according to the link.  Since when is debasing the buying power of your citizens a "bold" thing to do?  And since when did we allow con men and criminals to "boldly" announce that they were about to steal from us again?

Of course in the U.S. it's no different.  Today Obama pitched another completely unfunded jobs package that will cost $447 billion.  Lying con man Obama doesn't have the cash to fund this and he doesn't have the balls, desire or ability to tax it out of the workers.  So, despite all his promises for austerity, he is more than willing to pile another wasted $447 billion onto the empire of dept.  This is no way to move in the direction of a deficit reduction program and indeed, the debt Ponzi will collapse just as soon as we can find someone with the balls and intelligence to say "no mas" to the continually growing deficits.  Sorry, a "soft landing" has long been off the table and the con men at the helm know it.  They either continue pumping up the debt or the global economy will massively deflate and the day of reckoning will have arrived.

Of course, it's eventually going to arrive anyhow but hey, let's just kick the can down the road as if it doesn't exist until the problems get so bad that no amount of stimulus makes any difference and the scam collapses anyway but with many more dollars involved (and lives ruined) than before.  Yep, let's stick the kiddies with all of our failed debt and leaderless political mistakes.  Nah, don't worry.  They won't begin to rebel at it.  They will just take it and take it and take it forever.

Until they don't.  And when they don't we will know all about it.  How do you think the drug lords of Mexico got started?  Were they born a$$holes and killers?  Of course not.  They were children.  But after living a lot of their youth with the promise that their life was a guaranteed dead end they decided to take what they could, how they could, whenever they could, from whoever they could.  They decided to form what is essentially their own society, government and military.  They have gotten so powerful that they now in the early stages of challenging the Mexican establishment for control of the country.  You will know the drug
lords are winning if they ever decide to issue their own money to the people of Mexico to compete alongside with the Peso.  Think about it:

• They could back it with cocaine and marijuana sales.  Think that's funny?  Your money is backed by nothing!  I would MUCH rather have money that is backed by some commodity, any commodity.  It doesn't mean I endorse that commodity, it just means the money has some backing which is necessary in the market place in order for people to have confidence in trading your currency for their hard-earned goods and services.
• Towns that accept the money would receive protection from the drug army.  Towns that don't accept it, well, they could have "accidents" or be paid visits by the drug army.  In other words, the drug politicos would learn from the examples of the U.S. and other well established sovereign governments.
• Again, taking a lesson from corrupt mainstream governments, drug lords could make 3% on inflation of this new money supply and would thus have enough money to pay off or kill anyone who would cause trouble.  People could end up with relatively save lives for a few years or maybe even decades until they eventually de-linked their currency from the drugs and ended up with fiat currency.  Again, just like any newly reformed sovereign country.
• Over time, the violence would all go underground and the drug lords would take on airs of legitimacy.  Heck, they could even appoint ambassadors to other countries in the sure and certain knowledge that none of them was really much different than they were...

Anyone who can't see that the money elite are nothing more than criminals who are screwing everyone else is a complete fool.  There is no bigger crime against humanity than the mass theft of people's living wages, retirement money and peace of mind caused by the fiat currency and fractional reserve criminals.  The pressure of it drives people to do insane things and if you bother to read the news, said insane things are happening with increasing regularity across the world in locked step with the collapse of the funny money scam.  You may still be getting yours and so you might not want to complain yet.  But if you don't complain at the injustices being served onto others then please don't complain when the big hand of injustice grabs you by the shoulder.  It's up to people who understand the scam to speak out if for no other reason than one's own enlightened self interest.

James Turk: It's different this time (and perhaps it really is!)

I've been following James Turk for years now and his writings have become a trusted source of information to me over the course of that time.  Recently he was interviewed (again) on KingWorldNews where he cautioned people not to expect gold to drop along with stocks this time.

The key excerpt from his statements is this:

"A lot of people have been comparing today’s problems with those leading up to the Lehman Brothers collapse in September, 2008.  They have been fearful that when the next major stock market downdraft occurred that gold would be taken down along with it, just like what happened in the aftermath of Lehman.  We’ve discussed the fact that the Lehman collapse was a liquidity crisis in which everything was sold, even the highest quality assets, like gold, were sold because of the liquidity they offered.  

But what’s happening now, Eric, is not a liquidity crisis.  Everybody learned the lesson from the Lehman collapse to be liquid and control their use of leverage, particularly the big hedge funds.  So I want KWN readers to understand the major difference between then and now is that the principal driver today is not a rush to liquidity, but rather, a rush to safety...."

Traders historically become overleveraged in one asset.  Sometimes they bet wrong and that asset that they bought using leverage/credit begins to decline in value.  In hopes that the asset is just undergoing a short term pullback and with the intention of riding out the storm, funds will often liquidate other assets that they have profits in so that they can cover their margin calls related to the failing asset.  In other words, they sell the winners and backstop the losers.  While the intent here is  to never have to show a loss on anything, it seldom works out like that.

What Turk is saying is that we are beyond that stage in the game right now.  The heavy leveraged players have either imploded or scrambled to rein themselves in.  Hedge funds have been shutting down because they realize that markets have gotten chaotic and thus the risk associated with them can no longer be intelligently managed.  They can no longer be assured of making any money at all, to say nothing of the 30% returns that their elite clients have demanded in years past.  The lessons of Lehman have not fallen upon deaf ears in the financial community.

So, Turk sees an exodus into gold "for safety" but what he really means is that the flight to gold is actually a dash into cash.  Market participants are worried that collapsing governments will no longer be able to reflate the deflating global economy.  It causes them to worry about a stock market collapse and so they are selling stocks but they are also worried about fiat currency and so they now want real, historical, constitutional money, not fake fiat currency in the form of dollars or Euros.  It's the modern day market instantiation of the old saying, "You can't fool all the people all the time".  My personal corollary to that is "...and some of the time you can't fool anyone at all". 

We are now within the time of the Great Awakening - a time when people finally wake up and realize that they have been controlled by a global scam of fraudulent fiat currency and fractional reserve banking. A time when easy patsies to fleece are an endangered species and a time when those who go sheep hunting might themselves end up on the horns.   Money makes the world go 'round and when you have fake money then much of what happens in the world is also fake and fraudulent.  Money is the very basis of modern society and so when the money is corrupt, society itself cannot avoid also being corrupt.  Those who have benefited from the corruption are giving back money left and right because they fear the backlash of the people and they hope to keep whatever ill begotten gains they might have already squirreled away for themselves (including $200k per year pensions for life!).  They want to appear charitable, etc. but if you pull back the covers and really look past the headlines you will always find some greedy bastard who is simply smart enough to try to distance himself from the con before the people drag him into the street and he loses everything.

Like all things, this dash into real cash will run its course some day and when it does, those of us who are holding real gold and silver cash will be using it to buy up good assets on the cheap (rental properties in good shape, stocks with PEs of 5, PS of 0.5 and PB of 0.5 with dividends of 5-7%), etc.  We will spend our money (our gold) on these assets when all of the leverage and speculation has been beaten out of them (and then some).  The gold and silver coins will not escape our grasps easily as we have worked very hard to earn them. 

When will this day come?  Most gold holders will start to buy things with their golden money when the Dow:gold ratio is 1:1: or less.  In other words, when 1 Troy oz of 24kt gold will buy one "share" of the entire DJIA then "stuff" will probably have gotten cheap in terms of real money and thus people with real money will buy the stuff.   As you can see from the chart to the left, we are not there yet.  At the same time, look at how the 50 day moving average of this chart has broken down below the 200 day moving average.  This is the famous "death cross" that traders and their trading computers have respected for many years.  It suggests that the Dow:gold ratio has more to fall before people decide to spend their gold on other things.  In the short term, the ratio could pop backup so that it tests the underside of the downward sloping 50 day moving average curve (nothing goes straight up or down forever) but if that occurs then expect a rapid bounce back down off of that level so that the Dow:gold ratio reaches lower lows.

At the end of the day, holding gold is not a religion (at least not for intelligent people).  It is simply an act of saving cash.  It is saving real, honest money which is beyond government control.  Nothing more and nothing less.  Savings are meant to be spent when the time is right.  But none of this will change the fact that gold is money and everything else is credit.

Gold is more than money; it's fiat currency's worst enemy.

For decades we have been programmed to believe that fiat currency like the US Dollar or, more recently, the Euro is "money".  Of course, they are not and never were.  Even when the dollar was backed by gold pre-1971, it was always gold that was the money whereas the dollar was never anything more than an IOU for gold.  An IOU is a debt.  It is not money.  It might seem a subtle difference and, during normal times, the differences between the two are quite small in practice.  But these are not normal times.  These are times when all the scams are falling apart.  That means that smart people will learn what is really what.  They will understand the important differences between payment in full right here and now vs. promises to pay in full sometime in the future.  They will figure out what a Wimpy Promise is and they will react accordingly.  Either that or they will lose everything they ever worked for at some point.

Here is the simple truth of the matter: paper currency can never be money.  Ever.  It can be confused as being money by economically, politically and historically uneducated people but the reality is unchanging: paper currency is never anything more than a marker, an IOU for real money.  And that's best case.  Even that falls apart when the paper currency loses its commodity backing.   In fact, when we had commodity backed currency the government was very proud of the fact.  It would issue "silver certificates" and even 

"gold certificates" which could, upon demand of the bearer, be converted into a certain predefined weight of physical metal of a given purity at a predefined exchange ratio.   Government proudly printed this promise on each of those notes ("note" is a technical term meaning a debt instrument).  You can see this on the face of the silver certificate 1 dollar bill where it says "One Dollar in silver payable to the bearer upon demand".  The gold certificate is even more explicit.  It says "20 dollars in gold coin payable to the bearer upon demand".

Some terminology definition is critically important here.  "Money" has a definition that has been blurred (purposefully by con men) over the years until it is now nearly synonymous with the word "currency".  But the two are very different.  Money is something that is universally recognized to be of enduring value.  Nobody has to inform you that money has value because, for whatever reason, people have throughout time have agreed that it simply does.   Money has value that crosses borders, cultures and generations.  Gold was money both for the Incas as well as for the Spaniards who came there to steal it from them.  This is an amazing fact when you think about it: two civilizations of vastly different technological development met for the first time when the conquistadors encountered the Incas and both of them considered gold as money.  

Money does not lose its buying power relative to goods and services in the economy.  There could be fluctuations of course, but a certain measure of work or a certain measure of food will, on average and over time, trade into and out of real money at about the same exchange rate.  Currency, on the other hand, is a placeholder for money.  It is a stand-in.  Currency can be used in place of money in the market place when real money is inconvenient to use for trade for some reason.  Money is also currency but currency is not money.

When you pay for something with a check, that check is not money.  Nobody will argue this fact.  The check is a promise to pay something (generally dollars or some other fiat currency today) when it is cashed.  Making this promise to pay is quite different than actually paying in full and shopkeepers often have checks bounce on them to prove this fact.  Just because some people will accept your check does not mean that it is money.  They are simply accepting your promise that the check will convert into something of perceived value in trade for whatever it is that you bought.  Checks are a form of currency, but not of money. 

Understand also that even though a check is redeemed for, say, dollars, that does not make dollars money.  We have a multilevel fiat currency system - promises upon promises.  Take the case of California.  When it gets in trouble, it pays workers in California-issued IOUs (AKA "Individual Registered Warrants").  The IOUs are promises to pay dollars in the future (plus intrest).  The dollars they pay are mandated to be legal tender against any dollar denominated debts including taxes.  In all of this hierarchial layering of promises, there is no real money.  The reason the global economy is falling apart is because without the hard discipline of real money, too many promises have been made.  Promises are very easy to make and so they are made in abundance.  But real money has to be worked for.  When there are too many promises and not enough real money available to cover them then it is a mathematical certainty that someone is going to get stiffed for payment.  The global economic house of cards that is collapsing right is really the market trying to sort out who that will be.  People are running into real money (physical gold) so that they will not be the people who get stiffed by Wimpy Promises.  It really is as simple as that.

The use of currency instead of money is not in and of itself a scam.  Gold and silver certificates were a perfectly legitimate invention.  The problem occurs when there is no way to track the number of paper claims on gold and silver as represented by the number of certificates issued.  Politicians always get greedy and begin printing up more certificates than can ever be exchanged for metals.  Forgers do the same thing.  A fair analysis would reveal little difference between currency forgers and government (note: real money cannot be forged - you could never pass off to an intelligent person a gold coin which was, in fact, not gold.  A scale and a caliper is all one ever needs to verify the validity of a gold coin).  Thus, there are downsides to the use of currency in the market place instead of money and it should be up to the people to make this trade off if they want to.  Where the royal scam comes in is when government prints up currency that is completely unbacked by anything and then demands that you use it for trade.  This is the scam of fiat currency.

When you have a scam running side by side against something honest, you have to attack the honest thing lest the truth of the scam be known by the people.  Nobody will participate in the scam if everyone is wise to it.  Thus, governments have been trying to suppress the price of gold for many years in the belief that they could possibly fool all the people all the time with enough mind washing and propaganda.  But it doesn't work like that and it never did.  Gold is patient.  It just sits there, all heavy and unchanging.  It doesn't rust or tarnish or evaporate.  Gold is not formed by chemical processes; it is elemental and thus born only in the incredible heat and pressure associated with the death of stars (supernovae with progenitor masses between 20 and 40 solar masses).  Once born, gold is eternal.  Governments throughout history have tried to deny that gold is money and the people are fooled for many years each time, but eventually the truth comes out.  Con men know this and thus gold is very much like Edgar Allen Poe's Tell-Tale Heart.  It may be out of sight but it burns in the minds of the criminals and they want it silenced lest it give away their crimes. 

Recently, Zerohedge reported on the latest insight into the gold price suppression scam, brought to us courtesy of Wikileaks:

"China Radio International sponsored newspaper World News Journal (Shijie Xinwenbao)(04/28): "...The U.S. and Europe have always suppressed the rising price of gold. They intend to weaken gold's function as an international reserve currency. They don't want to see other countries turning to gold reserves instead of the U.S. dollar or Euro. Therefore, suppressing the price of gold is very beneficial for the U.S. in maintaining the U.S. dollar's role as the international reserve currency ..."

So, gold suppression by the western powers is no secret to Chinese leaders.  In fact, they see gold as a valuable weapon in the war against the scam-backed U.S. global dominance whereby the U.S. declares anyone it doesn't like a "threat to national security", all the while preaching tolerance and the value of diversity.  More "do as I say and not as I do" from the con artists in D.C.

Short term pullbacks and dips aside, the scam of fiat currency and fractional reserve banking is falling apart globally.  Gold (and probably silver) will be the beneficiaries.

Another big sign of the collapsing con: The Feds sue the big banks.

I've written many times that during the collapse phase of any con you will start to see the biggest participants begin to turn on each other, rat each other out, etc.  All the players are dirty and are trying to curry favor with the rapidly awakening patsies by screwing their fellow partners in crime, hoping that by so doing the wrath of the people will pass them by.  Today we see more evidence of this unfolding as the Federal Housing Finance Agency filed a $196 Billion lawsuit against the largest US banks for selling them toxic, worthless MBS (Mortgage Backed Securities).

So let me get this straight.  After enabling the banks to operate fraudulently and then turning a blind eye on the practice for years, the feds are now suddenly concerned that they might have taken on fraudulent paper from the banks?  What a crock!  The feds knew just what was going on the whole time but they hoped to hide the losses until the economy picked up again at which time they hoped to be able to dump the houses on greater fools and thus not have to admit the losses.  But awakening sheeple means less patsies to fleece; suckers who still have any money left that they can be conned out of are getting much harder to come by.  The FHFA knows that the losses are real and they will never be recouped.  The lawsuit is prima facie evidence of this.  If there were even a snowball's chance in Hell of ever recouping the losses via MBS sales into a healthier housing market then no lawsuits would ever be filed because the con men would retain hope that they could skate out the back door with all the loot without ever even being accused of criminal activity.  But the lawsuit means that all the details will now come public.  The hopes of sweeping it away quietly are now gone.

And so we move into the finger pointing blame game phase of the collapse.  One important thing to realize about this phase is that with new, damning evidence coming to light (as it certainly will during a court case) even the most skeptical onlookers will have to admit that the whole con was loaded to the gills with willful fraud from day one.  Fraud was not the exception but rather the norm.  And much of the fraud occurred not in spite of government meddling in the housing markets but rather as a direct result of the government's involvement.   

The government actually created situations where you almost had to be a saint not to take fraudulent advantage of it.  The government was in fraud promotion mode because that's what it needed to do in order to increase the outstanding debt.  This was required lest the government treasury debt Ponzi itself be exposed as fraud. Higher amounts of credit effectively increased the money supply which increased asset prices which increased taxation.  In addition, government debt is often measured vs. GDP.  The artificial pumping up of asset prices artificially pump up the GDP so that the debt:GDP numbers don't look so scary.  Government hacks like Bernanke know this just as well as I do.  None of this was accidental.  All of it was required in order to have bigger government and more control over the people.

As the news of this filters out, the growing realization that fraud has been rampant will likely undermine even further the confidence that the slowest learning among us still retain regarding honesty and truth in government.  Importantly, when people lose confidence in their government, they lose confidence in the fiat currency controlled by said government.  If the people start to see the equivalent of running legal gun battles between the moneymen and their cronies in government then confidence can take a huge swoon from its already abysmally low sentiment level.

One more thing: this lawsuit is effectively a government admission that there is at least $196 Billion worth of housing losses currently held by government.  In other words, the market price of these government-owned homes is at least that much below the value of the loans that government has made on them.  Nobody would be filing lawsuits if the mortgage payments were still being made on these places.  The government would just claim that it intended to carry them to maturity.  The lawsuit thus likely covers $196 Billion of shadow inventory that moneymen have been keeping off of the market (I believe this is just the tip of the Iceberg).  Once the admission of loss is formal, expect these properties to come to market at firesale prices because there will no longer be any reason to keep mum about them or to lie about their phony balance sheet valuations.  This has significant potential to kick the legs out from under an already weak housing market.  Time will tell.

Advice from NASA: "Be Prepared"

With a nod and a wink, "Administrator Bolden" takes just a few seconds to tell everyone in NASA to put together an emergency preparedness plan.  No matter if you are on the East coast, West coast or Gulf coast, or on the Great Lakes he wants his people to have a communications plan with their family, and to be prepared.  Prepared for what?  He doesn't really say.  Just be prepared, that's all.  Be prepared for anything.  Especially, apparently, if you live near a large body of water.   Or maybe he doesn't care about his employees living inland.  Who's to say?  Before I continue on I have to say, what kind of a hokie communist/fascist sounding title is "Administrator Bolden"?  Would that be Herr Administrator?  Comrade Administrator?  Maybe one day they can get Louis Gosset Jr. to play him in the movie.  Bureaucrats make me sick.  They're almost as bad as bankers, really.

In any case, Bolden's video was put together in June 2011.  This is not some long standing thing that has been policy for years.  In fact, Herr Kommissar's web site says, "Over the past year there has been an emphasis placed on the importance of Family/Personal Preparedness by Administrator Bolden for the entire NASA family. We have developed a set of informational guides designed to prepare you, your families and pets for emergencies." Herr Administrator is clearly warning his peeps about some new perceived threat.   Herr Administrator says that he "became aware" of some things that concern him.  Did he suddenly decide that current emergency planning measures were lax or was he briefed on some new threat? 

Try not to be slow here, OK?

So where did all this come about?  Oh, that's right, from FEMA.  They had an "Eagle Horizon" exercise whose purpose is to practice COOP: Continuity of Operations.  That's elite-speak for "in case the shit hits the fan".  What exactly are they preparing for?  From the COOP web site: "all hazards including natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and other man-made disasters."  Gee, there's that natural disasters thing again, the same clause that was the red herring for the Maastricht Treat's general bailout clause.  Clearly that is not what they are preparing for.  Look at all the natural disasters that have happened, yet none of these disasters seem to be kicking off the contingency plans being practiced by FEMA. 

In addition, not one of the disasters have even the most remote potential of threatening continuity of US government operations (AKA operation "protect the elite").  In terms of natural disasters it would take a planet Nibiru type event (see 2012 nuts all over the Internet if you don't know what that means) to cause the US to have to have legitimate worries about Continuity of Operations.  FEMA is are not talking about state level continuity here folks.   FEMA et. al are practicing and planning for the risk that something much bigger will occur. 

Since I don't believe in 2012 or Nibiru or any of that new age BS, the only thing left that could affect the country as a whole would be a complete monetary collapse which leaves us open to all manner of unpleasantness - and all of it man made.  Don't laugh.  It happened to the USSR just a couple of decades ago and for the same reasons as we here in the US are now at risk: we have an empire of debt and the sheeple are finally waking up to the fact that they have been getting fleeced for going on decades. 

Comrade Bolden does go out of his way to include in his warning "think about attacks that could come from ... outside forces...".  Is he talking about space aliens?  Even though he's with NASA I would have to say "Nah".  More likely the Chinese using their new aircraft carriers to come get what's owed them, or a renewed warring Russia which sees a chance to get even for the cold war or, just as likely as either of those, a civil war by Americans who got screwed by the fraudulent money supply leading them to believe they have nothing to lose. 

Well, neither FEMA nor NASA know any better than you or I do what the future will bring but it's clear they are taking some threat fairly seriously.  Come to think of it, it might not be a bad idea to check on my spare food and medicines...