I declared Greenspan a traitor several years ago. I meant it in the most literal sense and I still believe it is true: he sold us out. He knew what it would lead to and he did it anyway. I hope Greenspan has a good hiding place because history shows that he is the type of person that ends up with a noose around his neck if the economic failure leads to significant civil unrest.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Societe General: "It's too late to prevent the collapse of the G7"
For the record, Albert Edwards is the co-head of global strategy at Societe General (big European bank), a position he took in 2007. Here is a 2.5 minute video in which he is quoted.
Sometimes these videos contain so much information that it is hard to absorb. Let me recap using quotes from Mr. Edwards:
- “it is too late to prevent the collapse of the G7”
- “we are all now insolvent”
- “there is no other way out but to default”
- “economic prosperity over the past decade has been a sham, a totally unsustainable Ponzi scheme built on a mountain of private sector debt” (this should sound familiar by now…)
While the commentators of the video are laughing and joking this is really not funny and the world is starting to wake up to it. I don’t believe that Societe General would allow one of its officers to make these statements lightly. Keep in mind that Societe General was one of the very few banks that cautioned about the 1st wave of the collapse 2 quarters before it happened.
If you want to read more, this link is a good starting point:
The timing is the only thing that is unknown IMO but if anyone big fails there will be a chain reaction that takes everyone down pretty quickly. Remember, the damage has already been done and the reveal really doesn’t take long to occur. What we have to do is stop the government from making new laws at a record pace (AKA “reforms” which are really just power grabs). IMO the main purpose of these is to allow them to stay in power after the crash.
Monday, March 22, 2010
What does the IRS have to say about the bill of rights?
Some interesting info is revealed by the new IRS HQ building located in Carrolton, MD. In front of the building is a black pyramid with a white capstone which contains the Constitution minus the Bill of Rights:
Note to government from The Captain: OK guys, enough of the illuminati pyramids and other secret society symbolism on public buildings, please. It’s just getting old and tiring and, quite honestly, increasingly pathetic. These age old trappings of elitism give you no more claim to this country than gangland “tagging” gives “the crips” or “the bloods” special ownership over “their” territory. Just stop already with the pyramids, crossed square and compass, etc. All it does is make people suspect that government has forgotten that it is the servant of the people and in fact it makes people worry that government believes it is actually in charge of the people as a rancher would own livestock or other property. I assure you nothing could be further from the truth.
On a column next to this pyramid there is a plaque to explain the exclusion of the bill of rights from the constitution:
In case you having trouble reading it, the inscription says “"The Bill of Rights was not ordained by nature or God. It's very human, very fragile."
Please consider that none of these things happen by accident. Someone thought long and deep about quoting Congressman Barbara Jordan (deceased but we still have to see her ungainly statue on the main floor of Austin Airport…). It’s difficult to know if this was meant as a benevolent reminder to the people or as a malicious threat. Perhaps a little of both.
First let’s give the benefit of doubt to whoever commissioned this inscription and explore the possibility that it was meant as a benevolent reminder along the lines of "freedom isn't free". We all know that the Declaration Of Independence defines inalienable (the actual word used was "unalienable") rights to include (but not limited to) the right to “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness”. But what does “inalienable”/”unalienable” actually mean in our legal system? This is important to understand because while they are called “inalienable” rights they certainly are alienable. For example, if the right to liberty were absolutely inalienable, if it could not be separated from you no matter what, then there would be no prisons. Instead, 3.2% of the American population was in prison or on parole at the end of 2008.
A closer look at the term “inalienable/unalienable” shows that our founders declared that so called unalienable rights were given to us by The Creator and can thus only be given up willingly by the people. One way to give up your inalienable rights is to violate the rights of others. Thus, if you commit a crime you have willingly waived your inalienable right to liberty. In death penalty states, you can also waive your inalienable right to life by murdering someone or committing some other capital offense.
Having said all of that, nowhere in the bill of rights or anywhere else in the constitution do the words “inalienable” or “unalienable” exist. Thus, it would seem, the Bill of Rights might not hold “inalienable” status in some people’s minds. Online sources tend to dance around the subject a bit which is more evidence that people aren’t 100% sure on the matter (or they have a strong opinion which they don’t care to share…). For example, the online Law Dictionary defines the Bill of Rights as “The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, that part of any constitution that sets forth the fundamental rights of citizenship. It is a declaration of rights that are substantially immune from government interference.” As you can see, this definition does not hold the US Bill of Rights to be anything terribly unique or sacred because “any constitution” will obviously have such a section (of course they don’t, but say it 3 times and people will believe it). Also, I don’t know what exactly “substantially immune” means but I do know that it doesn’t mean “inalienable”. These are the weasel words of the elite which they will argue, with the backing of police and military, give them free reign to do whatever they want to with our rights should the need to protect their jobs and high positions arise.
Keep in mind that the declaration of independence, which does discuss inalienable rights, is not really a legal document according to many scholars and it has no legal power to imbue any rights or to define any obligations. Its main purpose was to declare to the outgoing British government why it was fired and to warn/remind future governments under what conditions they can also reasonably expect to be fired. So while it is a nice piece of wording and clearly inspirational there is nothing binding in it, just suggestions. Perhaps in the future I will take the time to go through each of the grievances listed in that document to see how many of the government actions which can “reasonably” result in an overthrow have already occurred (at least in the minds of the founding fathers)…
Although it is an amendment to the constitution, the very name “BILL of rights” does not imply unalienablity but rather that it exists as a result of due process of the creation of laws which start off as bills. Even the name was taken from the English Bill of Rights of 1689 which was a British bill later enacted into law in Brittan. Remember, inalienable rights come from The Creator and thus are supposed to be above changes in the law. Just because something is law today doesn’t mean it will be law tomorrow. Laws change all the time. The ‘Lectric Law Library” says that the bill of rights was “included in the constitution as part of deal made so that the libertarian elements of the founding fathers, lead by Jefferson and others, would vote for ratification of the constitution.” According to this account it was a negotiated process with the oligarchy who wanted to give up as little as possible to the people while the champions of the people (Madison, et al) wanted as many protections for the people as possible from government gone wild. They could EASILY have created a section in the body of the constitution with a title such as “citizen’s unalienable rights” but instead the weaker title “Bill of Rights” was chosen, likely because a stronger set of people’s rights would have defeated the purpose of those who sought to become the new slave owners upon departure of the British. Again, none of this was accidental, it was a negotiated settlement.
To net out the first argument, the IRS may simply be giving us a benevolent, up front reminder that breaking the law (which to them, of course, mainly encompasses failing to pay tribute to Caesar in the form of taxes which are spent in every manner except by the will of the people) is grounds for eliminating the bill of rights, and they can do it regardless of whether or not you think they are inalienable because even inalienable rights are waived by the commission of crimes. Taken in a broader sense beyond the payment of taxes, the benevolent warning may be telling us that as long as we do as we are told then we will be treated as if we have these rights but if we complain too loudly or cause too much trouble then our masters reserve the right to suspend the freedoms that they have, in the past, so generously bestowed upon us.
Come to think of it, this does seem to be the type of “friendly reminder” you might expect to have appear in front of the IRS after significant, vocal factions of the people start calling themselves “The Tea Party” and suggesting the federal income tax is an illegal scam or that we are enduring taxation without representation.
The exploration of the other side of the coin -that of it being a blatant malevolent threat- builds upon the above and is thus simpler. In essence, it could be warning us that the Bill of Rights never was inalienable. In other words, there is no requirement that government wait for you to voluntarily waive your rights by committing a crime. It could be taken to mean that the bill of rights exists purely at the convenience of the government and that we are within a few short years of having it yanked from us if it is in the interest of the government to do so. Again, it is the sort of thing that a bankrupt government might need to resort to when the debt fueled vote-buying entitlements run out. When there is no more carrot to herd the flock, the stick is all that remains.
Unfortunately, both the benevolent and malevolent versions of this really amount to the same thing since government can just continue creating more laws until breathing incorrectly is an offense. The one thing that speeds up the whole process, however, is consent of the rules by the public and the best way to get the public to acquiesce is to threaten the people (first in subtle ways but later on overtly). Again, it is no coincidence that Madison wrote:, “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy“.
In other words, even if the bill of rights are at some point ruled inalienable, people waive those rights when they consent to laws that violate those rights. Of course, that is a huge overstep by government because majority rule cannot waive my inalienable rights and I cried loud and long about the Patriot act and the formation of the Department of the Fatherland (AKA Department of Homeland Security). But if people see others buckling under to things defined in laws like the Patriot Act (overt violations of several elements of the Bill of Rights) then they begin to believe these things are law by precedent and each time they fail to stand up for their rights it constitutes consent.
Bottom line: our bill of rights is under daily attack. Government lives in many cases by rule of precedent otherwise know as the law of “say it 3 times and if nobody objects then it must be true”. By failing to understand our rights and by failing to demand that they be afforded us we are consenting to slavery which thus makes it legal.
Bloodless solution: AUDIT THE FED and then DISMANTLE IT. Return, over time, to a system of honest money and get rid of fractional reserve banking. Without the ability to create money from thin air, without the ability to pay for things with ever increasing debt, the power of the government to control us falls apart and is shown to be the sham that it always was. People that know Ron Paul understand that his main concern is to protect the rights of the people and that all of this banter about fiat currency and fractional reserve banking and ending the Fed that he started in this country are simply the means to his end. As convoluted as this strategy may initially appear, the ability to accrue massive debt is the Achilles heel of government gone wild. Control the purse strings by controlling the creation of money from thin air and you control the whole shooting match, period.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
US taking lumps now, others will follow later
I have reported on the credit bubbles in Canada and Australia several times in the past. These countries are widely reported to be in good shape because they are huge commodity exporters but if you actually review the data you will see that both of these countries have HUGE credit bubbles (much of it in the housing sector of course). Australia’s housing bubble is 20% greater per capita than ours was! It has not popped yet and neither has Canada’s massive credit bubble, but I assure you that the bust is coming and when it arrives they will get hurt even more than the US has been hurt by our credit bubble. The world has literally years of de-leveraging ahead of it IMO.
Bank auditors got big bonuses for looking the other way...
Right straight out of a tin foil hat conspiracy novel IMO:
I love the wording about how regulators could have had “a stronger supervisory response”. Talk about your understatement of the century to go along with the biggest bubble in a century which is nothing but the scam of the century. We need to set aside this ridiculous banter and just call it like it is: massive bribes and corruption at all levels of the system. People who were willing to let 10s or 100s of billions of crap slip by so that they might collect their few thousand of hush money. Nobody willing to stand up and do their job and blow the whistle on the scam. It’s like calling Charles Mansion and Jeffrey Dahmer “moody, responsible and lacking in self control”. We had gotten to the point where everything is sugar coated and made politically correct but I think the days of political correctness obscuring the hard truth are numbered.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Greek Crisis Is Over, Rest of Region Safe, Prodi Says
According to one talking head, the Eurozone is no longer in any danger…
Notice that the guy that they trotted out to pump up confidence is not a current official. The people seem to think that all of their problems are due to short sellers and others making speculative bets against the region (which includes pulling so called “hot money” out). Of course it couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that they have spent themselves into oblivion with government “programs”.
I have to laugh at the quote they used:
“For Greece, the problem is completely over,” said Prodi, who was also Italian prime minister, in an interview in Shanghai today. “I don’t see any other case now in Europe. I don’t think there is any reason to think the euro system will collapse or will suffer greatly because of Greece.”
I wonder if he could be any more sure of his assessment.
LOL at the scammers squirming.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
"Something for nothing" is the American way according to some...
This article states many of the things I have written about for years. Unfortunately, while I have been pointing out that these things are the basis of a massive scam, the quoted “expert” from the Levy Economic Institute claims they are just part of the normal system. He claims:
- Economic growth is a function of bank lending and government spending, period. That means that hard work has nothing to do with it. That makes government and banks indispensable and everyone else is just along for the ride.
- The power of banks and government come from their legal ability to create something from nothing.
- Public debt a NOT burden on future generations. It does NOT have to be repaid, and in practice it will never be repaid.
- These debts are the foundation of economic growth.
Read the article, it really does say these things:
So there you have it. The time for hiding the truth is past us. Now the powers that be are using their economic scam marketing team (AKA economic PhDs from academia) to try to mind wash us into believing that something so preposterous is true. Scams generally appear to work for awhile but they always collapse at some point. It is difficult to predict how long a scam can last but, like the Madoff ponzi, when the scam finally collapses it generally does so suddenly and those that didn’t think there was any risk are wiped out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
