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Fintan
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Joined: 18 Jan 2006
Posts: 4100
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 Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 7:55 pm Post subject: Audio - DANGER: New World Order Imploding! |
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The Next Level Show - 7th October, 2008
DANGER:
New World Order Imploding!
The systemic crisis which birthed Globalism has now gone critical as
a $2,000 Trillion edifice faces deflation of up to 60/1 leveraging, and
potential wipeout of Wall Street stocks and American's retirement savings.
Fintan Dunne examines the opportunities and dangers of the
collapse of the Globalist Economic Order; and the threat of a huge
tax burden and command economy which would destroy America.
LISTEN:
Broadband Mp3 Audio 
http://BreakForNews.com/audio/BeautifulTruth081007a.mp3
Click to Play or Right-Click to 'Save As' and Download.
Dialup Mp3 Audio
http://BreakForNews.com/audio/BeautifulTruth081007.mp3
Click to Play or Right-Click to 'Save As' and Download.
| Quote: | "While the politicians have wrangled over $700 billion, the Fed has injected close to $300 billion into the financial system in just two weeks."
To fund this, the Fed has essentially had to print money, boosting the monetary base by $68 billion dollars, an annualised increase of 600 percent in two weeks.
http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSSYD37001620081005?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0 |
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| Quote: | | Ponzi, or pyramid, scheme involves luring in investors with promises of high returns. The con artist this time ie. - Bush, Obama, McCain, Paulson, Bernake, Cox, the rest of Congress, the usually suspects, explain how the high returns are generated, but in reality he simply pays the first investors (A Ponzi, or pyramid, scheme involves luring in investors with promises of high returns. The con artist invents a story to explain how the high returns are generated, but in reality he simply pays the first investors (Paulson and Goldman insiders) with money obtained from later investors. It’s a take-from-Peter-to-pay-Paul system. As long as the scam artist manages to recruit larger and larger numbers of new investors (aka suckers) the system works, but as soon as the flow of new money stops, it collapses. Ponzi schemes always collapse, sooner or later. |
| Quote: | French officials said that he had achieved his aim of persuading Europe’s other three biggest economies to back his call for a G8 summit to lay the foundations for “new international financial system”. They also claimed he had scored a decisive victory as European institutions agreed to ease the budget deficit limits imposed on members of the Eurozone.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4888287.ece |
| Quote: | It Ain't Gonna Work
BY TIM W. WOOD
What we are dealing with is the wrath of Kondratieff Winter, which is
about the purging of excess credit. Along with that comes deflation and
along with that global stock markets enter into extended declines.
Real estate declines, economic growth slows, commodities decline, bankruptcies accelerate as the excess credit is purged from the system, the banking system is shaken, the free market is blamed and we move toward national fascist political tendencies. We are now seeing each and every one of these symptoms of K-wave winter. For the record, I did not make up these symptoms to fit the current situation. I have original writings by Nikolai D. Kondratieff and the signs of K-wave winter were quoted from a book by David Knox Barker titled, The K-wave and was published in 1995. Don’t think the powers that be aren’t aware of Kondratieff Winter. They know full well what we are facing and that is why they have tried to hold back its wrath as diligently as they have since 2001.
http://www.financialsense.com/Market/wood/2008/1003.html |
| Quote: | The Global Casino, Currency Devaluation and Giant Fire Sales
by Geraldine Perry / October 3rd, 2008
No one knows how long “bad assets” will continue to send shock waves through international markets, nor can anyone say just what the specific fallout may be. One thing that is certain is that taxpayers across the globe will increasingly be called upon to support the financial system. This is pretty much a done deal, having already been discussed in IMF position papers and elsewhere. It’s also the elephant in the room, an unpleasant reality that will become increasingly troublesome as time marches on.......
What nearly everyone fails to understand — or in some cases understand sufficiently well — is that the real root of the problem lies with our money creation system. Presently we have bank credit serving as money. It is a money of accounts, rather than a money of exchange. Put another way and as former Senator Robert Owen, original co-sponsor of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act, later complained, some last minute back-door tweaking of the Fed Act gave us a currency with debt-creating power instead of a currency with debt-paying power.
As a result our money is essentially being created by the Federal Reserve and other banks through the making of loans or providing of credit. Up until now, this has been done primarily through the fractional reserve system, which allows the banking system, as a whole, to create many times more “money” as loans than what the initial reserves amount to. In point of fact the initial reserves are not themselves “money” but actually loans — or perhaps more accurately, credit — provided by the privately-owned Federal Reserve to our government.
Thus, it is the privately-owned banking system that controls our money supply because it is through this system that our money gets created. Today, a shadow banking system is also creating our money through the highly leveraged “off balance sheet” activities of the derivatives market.
Some refer to this type of money as false money or substitute money because money is in effect created when banks make loans to a borrower. These loans always have interest attached and yet no money is created to pay the interest charges due on this debt. The only way to pay these interest charges is by creating more debt as “money” — and this then serves to increase the “money” supply.
Again, accumulating interest charges are in effect unpayable — unless more debt is incurred — due to the manner in which out money is created. You can use yourself as a way to understand this concept. If you take out a loan for $1000 and then spend your newly created “money” (in the form of bank notes or promises to pay back the debt), you will have placed your loan “money” into circulation where others can use it. To keep things simple, let’s say no one else is able to secure a loan, so $1000 is all the “money” in circulation. At the end of the year you owe your lender $1000 plus interest. Since only $1000 was created as “money”, how can you pay both the principal and interest, even assuming you have been able to earn back all the loan/money you spent? Answer: You must take out an additional loan. OR, you can negotiate to defer payment, which only compounds the interest you owe.
Even worse — and because the exponential function of compounding interest comes into play, unpayable interest charges must accumulate exponentially over time. The phenomenon created by the need to create ever more debt as “money” in order to meet the demands of accumulating, unpayable interest becomes integrated into the value of false money — decreasing its value over time and simultaneously increasing the demand for ever more “money” as credit or debt just to pay growing debt.
This is the real reason why we have an economy built on debt. And because the money supply is never adequate enough to pay accumulating interest, unbridled greed and the attendant pursuit of “fast money” become increasingly difficult to control. Rampant corruption soon follows and must grow ever more problematic as unpayable interest accumulates.
Greed and corruption aside, what this money creation system means for you and me is that the purchasing power of the dollar is eroded over the long term due to the demands of accumulating interest — and this then increases the cost of doing business and the overall general cost of living. These increasing costs are then reflected in overall, long term increases of prices for goods and services.
In other words, inflation within our current debt-based money system is actually due to debt-induced currency devaluation, caused by accumulating, unpayable interest. The problem has grown so huge that some researchers say that some eighty-five cents of every dollar are now going to satisfy the needs of this accumulating interest, rather than the real economy.
Bottom line is that the whole system is governed by mathematical law and as it stands now, it is a mathematical impossibility. Once the debt load becomes unsupportable the system will crash. Meanwhile and as the debt burden grows ever larger the economy will go through increasing periods of instability and volatility, despite the best efforts of the Fed to tweak interest rates and the money supply — or for that matter the government’s willingness to increase the debt ceiling on the backs of taxpayers.
Ours is not the only country facing these issues and so today, in response to the fallout generated by the shadow banking system that arose within the derivatives market, we are in the midst of redesigning the global credit system, according to bond fund king Bill Gross and many others. What we all need to understand is that any redesign of the global credit system will require continually increasing government reliance on taxpayer dollars — so long as we continue with the current money creation system.
Essentially and due to the exponential function for calculating compounding interest, taxpayer debt must explode as we are forced to pay ever more interest on outstanding interest. This will continue until the labor and assets of the people can no longer be mortgaged. We are in other words essentially being destroyed by the tyranny of unpayable interest — not the tyranny of paper money.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/10/the-global-casino-currency-devaluation-and-giant-fire-sales/#comment-29293 |
| Quote: | Capital destruction
I should hasten to say that I disagree with this popular diagnosis which puts the cart before the horse. My diagnosis, described in the first part of this article, identifies the destruction of capital as the cause, and the credit crisis as the effect.
The problem goes back to the U.S. government foolish decision to destabilize the interest-rate structure (and, hence, bond prices) in 1971. As a consequence, long-term interest rates shot up to 16 percent per annum by the early 1980’s, from where they started their long descent that still continues.
Falling interest rates destroy capital as they raise the liquidation-value of debt contracted earlier at higher rates. By ‘liquidation value’ is meant the sum that will liquidate the debt, should it be necessary to pay it off before maturity. In a falling interest-rate environment it will take a larger sum to retire the same debt. Why? Because the scheduled stream of interest payments is now capitalized at a lower rate of interest and, therefore, it falls short in liquidating the debt.
This means that, paradoxically, falling interest rates do not alleviate but aggravate the burden of debt. All observers miss this point as they blithely assume that debt is automatically refinanced at the lower rate. It is not. Falling interest rates create a deficiency on capital account since it takes a bigger bite to service existing debt than originally provided for, and the deficit is made up at the expense of capital. Over-leveraging is not the cause; it is the effect. What it shows is that the banks do not pay heed; they persist in error. They simply ignore shrinking capital ratios. This ultimately causes wholesale bankruptcies, leading to the vicious downwards spiral.
The banks should have made provision to compensate for eroding capital as interest rates were falling. None of them did. None of them understood the insidious process of capital erosion in the wake of declining interest rates. They reported losses as profits. Then they were hit by the negative feedback: capital eroded further. When the truth dawned upon them, it was already too late.
Interest rates have been falling for the past 28 years. The liquidation value of outstanding debt has been increasing by leaps and bounds. It reached the tipping point in February, 2007 as indicated by the unprecedented jump in the price of credit-default swaps. It revealed that any further decline in the rate of interest would plunge bank capital into negative territory. At this point capital dissipation stops: there is nothing more left to dissipate. For the banks, this is sudden death.
No commentator could explain why banks have all run out of capital at the same time, while making obscene profits. My explanation is simple. There have been no profits, obscene or otherwise. The banks were paying out phantom profits in the belief that their capital accounts were in good shape. They weren’t. The banks were unaware that the falling interest rate structure has been making inroads on their capital. Since all banks have been working with microscopic capital ratios as a result of 28 years of capital erosion, the failure of one single bank would trigger the ‘domino-effect’ on the rest.....
Close of Keynes’ and Friedman’s system
Understandably, it will be hard for policy-makers, academia and media, and the accountants’ profession to admit that they have been wrong all along about gold and its essential role in the economic bloodstream and in accounting. They have fallen victim to the charm of John Maynard Keynes, the prankster who invented the idea that gold was a barbarous relic, and the gold standard was a ‘contractionist fetter’ upon the world economy. Now we have proof that the blame for the contraction should be assigned, not to the use but to the misuse of gold. The debt collapse is the burial ground for Keynesianism.
After Keynes was gone, policy-makers, academia and media, and the accountants’ profession fell under the spell of another visionary and adventurer talking with a forked tongue, Milton Friedman. He was fond of posing as a free-market man, but in promoting irredeemable currency he did more than anybody, save Keynes, to destroy the free market. Friedman promoted the spurious idea that gold is superfluous in the international monetary system as floating foreign exchanges rates can mimic the operation of the gold standard and will balance the trade accounts. But as the record shows, Friedmanite nostrums have ruined the dollar, as well as the once flourishing and peerless American productive apparatus.
Politicians, academia and media, and the accountants’ profession must swallow their pride and get the confession off their chests that their prognostication, policies, and advice about gold have been in error. If they fail to do this, and continue to block the way of gold to make a return to the economic bloodstream, then their responsibility for the suffering caused by the credit collapse in this country and in the world will be total. They will be shown as doctrinaire wreckers of human cooperation under the system of division of labor, who muzzled their critics and usurped unlimited power, while paving the way to a world disaster akin to that of the Bolshevik revolution.
After the close of Marx’ system, the close of Keynes’ and Friedman’s system is inevitable. But the wounds they have caused would take a long, long time to heal.
http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest_08/fekete100208.html |
| Quote: | The Crack Up Boom, Part IX
Ice Age, the Policies of Insolvency,
the Gang of 535 and YOU!
29 September 2008 - Ty Andros
The CREDIT markets are in CARDIAC arrest as we speak, as no one trusts US and G7 financial and banking institutions. CAPITAL IS NOT AVAILBLE to them. Their ONLY source of capital and credit is their RESPECTIVE governments and central banks.....
As outlined in a Tedbits commentary from August 2007 entitled
Roach Motels (I urge you to read that issue for more insights)
https://www.thefuturestrader.us/archiveTA/tedbits-Aug28-07.pdf
there was NOT and is not enough money in the world to underpin the OVER-the-COUNTER CDO’s, CMO’s, CLO’s and MBS’s, (collateralized debt, mortgage, loan obligations, mortgage backed securities) as NO marketplace or clearing functions were in place to PROVIDE a market of buyers and sellers which would allow PRICE DISCOVERY to take place. Nor was there a marketplace to allow them to be quickly bought and sold with reliable COUNTER parties and clearing functions.
The MATH is stacked in favor of the buyer of the naked swaps and stacked against those that wrote them... Tens of billions of dollars are
PARKED in these NAKED credit default bets. If only two bets out of
twenty PAY off then the buyer makes 100% on their money. Everybody
is decrying the golden parachutes for the people who allowed this to
happen and drove their companies into the ground. WE HAVEN’T SEEN
ANYTHING YET ON THE MALFEASANCE AND IDIOT DECISIONS. THIS
WILL TURN CURRENT LOSSES INTO DWARFS!
Why weren’t these credit default issues addressed? Because this is the only corner of the over-the-counter markets that can still generate income. It has not CLOSED for business like the rest of the toxic paper markets.
Now you know why one of the reasons AIG was TOO BIG TO FAIL. They had written over $400 billion of credit default swaps on CDO’s, CMO’s, CLO’s, MBS’s, etc. to EUROPEAN banks and GOLDMAN SACHS (also served as underlying clearing organization) who held many of the underlying securities. It is now emerging that JP Morgan Chase held over $150 billion worth of LIABILITIES (aka losses) had Bear Stearns been allowed to fail. NOW we know why Bear and AIG were saved and Lehman WAS NOT. Remember Hammering Hank Paulson holds his FORTUNE in Goldman stock, and JP Morgan Chase is just another face of the bankers which hold the Federal Reserve. Of course they will save themselves first and SEND you the bill for doing so, and absorb the FAILED institutions as they did in the Great Depression.....
The “economic stabilization act of 2008” is NOTHING of the sort. It’s a sham. The public servants did not take this seriously and have chosen to do what they have always done - write a document that serves their supporters and destroys the public at large. You can tell by the looks on their faces they have gathered power, reduced your freedom and have made sure their supporters are PAID. Of course they are gleeful as they now own and control the largest mortgage companies in the world known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and have also nationalized AIG, the largest insurer in the world. They are thinking of all the sugar plums they can FLEECE from the companies in terms of CAMPAIGN donations; and retired politicos can earn MILLIONS for mismanagement as they have done for decades with Fannie and Freddie.....
...if they slice the purchasing power of those THINGS called G7 currencies in half, as they will be forced to do.....
...this is not a LIQUIDITY problem. It is a SOLVENCY problem.
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_08/andros092908.html |
| Quote: | What Just Happened With AIG
And What This Means For You
Christopher Laird - August 25, 2008
If you follow the economic reports of the latest victims of the credit crisis, Bear, Lehman, AIG, Fannie Freddie, and who knows who is next, the key reason for these firms demise is their 60 to 1 leverage. Maybe in some cases it’s only 40 to 1 but it’s still the same situation. Fannie Freddie have 60 to 1.
Computers and the Internet (I was an Oracle Systems engineer) made it possible to create fantastically complex financial instruments and asset backed securities and derivatives. This made immense amounts of money available for credit. Then, the internet made it possible for brokerages to get millions of people trading online, for next to nothing. So all this money came into the banks and brokerages, and with the power of computers, was securitized into what is now turning out to be disastrously complicated and illiquid financial derivatives.
So, in this huge credit party, basically the entire wealth of the world is leveraged something like 20 times the entire worlds GDP of 60 trillion. Uhm, we have a serious problem here folks!
...cumulatively, since August of 07, the world central banks have put out roughly $2 trillion and counting if you add up everything they are doing, in essentially bailout out all this bad paper. There is only one problem. There is $1000 Trillion of it out there. And it’s going bad very fast. And, the central banks realize there is NOTHING they can do to stop this.
Imagine a new world
Now, I want you to imagine a new world. In this world, everyone in debt, GM, AIG, you, the nations with big national debts - imagine if all that is zeroed out.
Would not economic activity start screaming? Would not the world enter a period of unprecedented economic prosperity, for probably another 65 year prosperity boom?
So, we are right on the cusp of this. But first there is a little ‘work’ to be done.
if you survive the depression, living very frugally, when the currency ultimately does collapse, and a new one is created, you could sell the home for the new currency, or any real thing you managed to keep in the depression. A lot of people got wealthy in the Great Depression as they found great deals on everything, and bought the stuff at 10 cents on the dollar, and just waited the mess out.
The trick is surviving with some real things paid off.
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_08/laird091708.html |
| Quote: | Credit Crisis II…
A World Financial Armageddon?
Christopher Laird - August 25, 2008
Probably what is happening is that this is a classic case of a parabolic world credit peak, as more and more money is needed each week merely to keep the bubble from collapsing. And the only ones left to infuse this money are the central banks. No one else is willing to step in. Financial institutions won’t lend to each other, and investors won’t recapitalize the crippled banks.....
If it is true, as we suspect, that we are at the peak of a credit/financial bubble that started right after WW2 ended, and it is at a parabolic peak and cannot be sustained, then the world’s central banks already know this too. They probably are trying to decide when to let go…
The central banks in question would be the BOJ, the US Fed and the ECB, and likely the BOC........
The latest numbers being speculated on are the losses will be over $1 trillion (IMF) and $2 trillion or more (Roubini).
Now, maybe $2 trillion doesn’t sound like a lot compared to the entire world economy. The trouble is, that capital is leveraged anywhere from 10 to 50 times by the financial system. Fannie and Freddie have 60 to 1 leverage.
Losing $2 trillion of capital will totally wipe out the entire world financial system for a decade because of the leverage at 60 to 1. Basically, unless those losses can be purged in some way, it has to be earned back over a period of years/decades. That essentially cripples the entire world financial system.......
The point of emphasizing it’s from the end of WW2 is that we are not talking merely about a banking crisis, or whatever. We are talking about the deleveraging of the greatest economic/finance bubble in history. Once the level of leverage reached 60 to 1, it becomes impossible to stay ahead of the deleveraging, even for central banks........
This will make any of the banking and currency crises we have seen since WW2 look like child’s play. It is not clear when Credit Crisis II begins but it is threatening already.
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_08/laird082508.html |
| Quote: | Grassroots Movements, Global Elites
and Political Economy in Times of Panic
by Pablo Ouziel / October 3rd, 2008
Almost everyone whom over the last decade of economic arrogance and pedantic borrowing preached about the power of the western world and its economic might, has all of a sudden turned around and become a spoke person for panic itself. Yet for the layperson it doesn’t seem to matter. If it did, grassroots movements would be picking up traction and the global elites would be held accountable for their crimes. Too early for that, society is still not ready to come to terms with the fact that leaders are a reflection of the people they lead. I am inclined to believe that it will take a lot more pain, many more lies, and much larger panic before citizens stand up and react to this catastrophic social tsunami.
Perhaps the first thing we must all do is acknowledge that the financial panic we are facing is a lot deeper than what is presented through the media, and understand that the problem is systemic. The sooner we come to terms with this, the sooner we will be able to find real solutions.
Developed countries are living way over their means and no matter how we try to prop it up, sooner or later the deck of cards is going to collapse. From my humble opinion, the sooner that happens the better, because with everyday that passes, the eventual landing gets much more painful.
The second point we are going to have to grapple with is the fact that the great majority of society has been too laissez-faire to predict what was heading our way and is today an apparent reality; the fact that our casino culture of gambling the world away was always a finite proposition which politicians and economists perpetuated to eternal existence, while the thirsty masses accepted it without question.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/10/grassroots-movements-global-elites-and-political-economy-in-times-of-panic/ |
| Quote: | A study done in the 1980s by James Rosenau (1990) revealed the emergence of a world in turbulence, but one, which was also undergoing a transformation.
Rosenau had argued that the rapid developments in the world economy, and in particular, in the communications technology, had strengthened "subgroups" and undermined the solidity of the state.
This was because a major part of the people had come to believe that "whole systems" had become too "complex" to meet their
material and spiritual needs and hence a reversion to more manageable identities.
Alvin Toffler(1980) had referred to the same phenomenon when he noted:
In consequence, national governments... continue, by and large, to impose uniform, standardized policies designed for a mass society on increasingly divergent and segmented publics. Local and individual needs are forgotten or ignored, causing the flame of resentment to reach white heat. As demassification progresses, we can expect separatist or centrifugal forces to intensify dramatically and threaten the unity of many nation-states (Toffler, 1980: 327-28 ).
The transformation from "whole systems" to "sub-groupism", according to Rosenau, included a resort to ethnicity. Rosenau argued that evidence available proved that "similar but unrelated circumstances [were] at work throughout the world" and this accounted "for the recognition of shared identity among the members of diverse subgroups in every corner of the globe".
LINK |
| Quote: | HENRY FORD QUOTATIONS
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
"Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services."
"The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life."
"There is one rule for industrialists and that is: make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible."
"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it."
"We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we make today."
http://breakfornews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=27620#27620 |
_________________
Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open.
Last edited by Fintan on Thu Feb 12, 2009 8:00 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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Mike Cann
Joined: 22 Jun 2008
Posts: 90
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| Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:48 am Post subject: |
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Is it me or does everything we've all been aware of suddenly it all is coming really going down, crashing down? Yep.
An interview I did for a Republican candidate for Congress who bashes the Democrat incumbent Ed Markey for voting for the bailout. I'm not in front of the camera but behind it...
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Robert
Joined: 07 Feb 2006
Posts: 303
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| Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:29 pm Post subject: |
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Sunspot activity.....
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Big Boss
Joined: 04 May 2008
Posts: 544
Location: Outer Heaven
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| Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Its funny, today I came across Naomi Klein's book "The Shock Doctrine" which mentions the 'Shock and Awe' MIC tactics among many other themes. It was interesting because she speaks of this country's economic situation and I immediately wondered what many of my BFN cohorts thought of her personally. Fintan? anyone? |
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Fintan
Site Admin
Joined: 18 Jan 2006
Posts: 4100
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| Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 7:05 pm Post subject: |
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The bloodletting on Wall St. continues today
The DOW is now down 1,400 over 5 sessions:
| Quote: | U.S stocks beaten up; S&P 500 closes at 5-year low
Dow falls 500 points as Fed move in commercial paper gives only short respite
By Kate Gibson, MarketWatch - 4:50 p.m. EDT Oct. 7, 2008
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- U.S. stocks on Tuesday declined for a fifth
session straight, prolonging a sharp sell-off that had the S&P 500 ending
at a five-year low, as investors found little respite in the Federal
Reserve's latest steps to ease frozen credit markets. |
The market has already factored in a rate cut and the Fed's
commercial loans initiative. But the trend is still down.....
| Quote: |  |
So how long is it going to take people to connect
the dots and Joe Public to stampede out of Wall St?
Here's some dots:
| Quote: | Retirement accounts have lost $2 trillion - so far
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS - 53 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans' retirement plans have lost as much
as $2 trillion in the past 15 months — about 20 percent of their value —
Congress' top budget analyst estimated Tuesday as lawmakers began
investigating how turmoil in the financial industry is whittling away
workers' nest eggs.
The upheaval that has engulfed financial firms and sent the stock market
plummeting is also devastating people's savings, forcing families to hold
off on major purchases and even delay retirement, Peter Orszag, the
head of the Congressional Budget Office, told the House Education and
Labor Committee......
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iABtVuD1MG7gisbfhmW13fT37FdAD93LTDQO0 |
Consumers are clearly turning off the spending.
Below is the data for August! September and
October are going to be serious retrenchment.
| Quote: | Consumers pay down debt for first time in 10 years
By MarketWatch 3:08 p.m. EDT Oct. 7, 2008
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- U.S. families paid off consumer debts at
the fastest pace in more than 10 years in August, a sign that consumers
are rushing to pare back their spending and save more money as the
economy slips deeper into recession.
It was the first month since January 1998 that consumers had paid off
more debt than they took on. Borrowing to buy an automobile declined
sharply. Consumers also charged less on their credit cards than they
paid off.
Seasonally adjusted consumer debt -- including credit cards, auto loans
and other unsecured debts -- fell by a record $7.5 billion, or a 3.7%
annual rate, to $2.58 trillion in August. That's the largest percentage drop
since January 1998, the Federal Reserve reported Tuesday. Consumer
debts had risen 2.4% in July..... |
Phase 1 -2008: Recession
Phase 2 -2009: Depression
_________________
Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open. |
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duane
Joined: 07 Mar 2007
Posts: 511
Location: western pennsylvania
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Big Boss
Joined: 04 May 2008
Posts: 544
Location: Outer Heaven
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| Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:10 pm Post subject: |
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Bah....i knew it and i did search but not good enough lol, was too tired at the time BUT......i did try  . Thanks duane. |
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bardobeing
Joined: 14 Feb 2008
Posts: 56
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| Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 7:35 am Post subject: |
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Fintan, I listened to the two recent installments back-to-back last night. Brilliant. It's the best analysis I've heard and you paint the big picture context with such an elegant simplicity. Thank you so much.
As for how it might play out in the time between now and the elections, and as to which party and which representative might end up in the White House, my first thought was one of none other than George W. Bush. The vehicle could be the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Economic_Powers_Act
This would allow Bush to declare the emergency they've been preparing for without another false flag attack (of a military nature). I'm sure there are other "Acts" that can be called upon that fit into the context of an economic crisis.
They would have to be extremely desperate to do this as the people, even the most brain-dead amongst them, would not take this well. Since I don't see Obama as any different, my guess is that they'll let him go ahead and win and alter their agenda to work within the limitations they are faced with.
Again, great work man. Required listening.
_________________
"There is only one admirable form of the imagination: the imagination that is so intense that it creates a new reality, that it makes things happen." - Sean O'Faolain |
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Hombre
Joined: 07 Jan 2008
Posts: 939
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| Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 8:21 am Post subject: |
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| bardobeing wrote: | Fintan, I listened to the two recent installments back-to-back last night. Brilliant. It's the best analysis I've heard and you paint the big picture context with such an elegant simplicity. Thank you so much.
As for how it might play out in the time between now and the elections, and as to which party and which representative might end up in the White House, my first thought was one of none other than George W. Bush. The vehicle could be the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Economic_Powers_Act
This would allow Bush to declare the emergency they've been preparing for without another false flag attack (of a military nature). I'm sure there are other "Acts" that can be called upon that fit into the context of an economic crisis.
They would have to be extremely desperate to do this as the people, even the most brain-dead amongst them, would not take this well. Since I don't see Obama as any different, my guess is that they'll let him go ahead and win and alter their agenda to work within the limitations they are faced with.
Again, great work man. Required listening. |
Great post here. I can see your train of thought as your wheels turn in regard to the people. I'm gonna positively guarantee you one thing If Bush and his band of IDIOTS try anything over and above the mess they've already created then you'll have a massive, AND I DO MEAN MASSIVE, Revolt IE RIOT.
I'm in a so called " BATTLE GROUND " state ( IF YOU BELIEVE THIS TYPE OF SHIT ) Yet the Obama banners, posters, signs are at a minimum of 10-1 compared to McCain all over town.. Yes people are talking about these fictitious poll numbers being used to sway those of the fence. It ain't working people are seeing through it.
I received another phone call from camp Obama Monday night at 9. pm, that makes 4 total. McCain's camp has never called someone believes they don't need to because it's not really that important. 
The more I think about how this guy got the nod the more I chuckle. Is he the best they got? Surely there's not one living breathing soul with a brain that believes he is/was. As an American I'm embarrassed at how bold the powers that be have been in selling this pile of shit to the average person. Really pisses me off to see people so damn dumb about so many things that affect their lives on a daily basis. The most frustrating thing about all of it is that these fools want to argue about it.
A brain dead 72 year old and a big game killing air head. ONLY IN AMERICA.
Hombre |
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Mike Cann
Joined: 22 Jun 2008
Posts: 90
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| Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 9:13 am Post subject: |
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I was going to ask about Naomi too. I mean come on now! I love this forum and the podcasts Fintan does more than any other.
Here's a tighter re-edit of the clip I did. It's so chillingly that the representatives 99% of the time get re-elected and they take money from the billionaires that they are now bailing out.
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Fintan
Site Admin
Joined: 18 Jan 2006
Posts: 4100
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| Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 9:34 am Post subject: |
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Duck. Incoming Kitchen Sink!
Wow! The Central Banks worldwide just pulled a coordinated
rate cut --well ahead of schedule. This had been pencilled in
for implementation next week after this Friday's G7 meeting.
And they only gave a half-percent cut --keeping the other half percent
in the bag to throw at the market if (or rather when) things get ugly again.
And continued ugliness is assured, as the market rally on this news
has been pretty weak.
| Quote: | Fed, ECB, Central Banks Cut Rates in Coordinated Move
By Scott Lanman
Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and
four other central banks lowered interest rates in an unprecedented
coordinated effort to ease the economic effects of the worst financial
crisis since the Great Depression.
The Fed, ECB, Bank of England, Bank of Canada and Sweden's Riksbank
each cut their benchmark rates by half a percentage point. The Bank of
Japan, which didn't participate in the move, said it supported the action.
Switzerland also took part. Separately, China's central bank lowered its
key one-year lending rate by 0.27 percentage point.
Today's decision follows a global meltdown that sent U.S. stock indexes
heading for their biggest annual decline since 1937; Japan's benchmark
today had the worst drop in two decades. Policy makers are also aiming
to unfreeze credit markets after the premium on the three-month London
interbank offered rate over the Fed's main rate doubled in two weeks to a
record.
"They are throwing the kitchen sink in to try to find stability,'' said Gregory
Miller, chief economist at SunTrust Banks Inc. in Atlanta. "They are
clearly trying to get the transmission started again'' after a freeze-up
of money markets.
The Fed reduced its benchmark rate to 1.5 percent. The ECB's main rate
is now 3.75 percent; Canada's fell to 2.5 percent; the U.K.'s rate dropped
to 4.5 percent; and Sweden's rate declined to 4.25 percent. China cut
interest rates for the second time in three weeks, reducing the main rate
to 6.93 percent.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aREZkHrskr_E&refer=asia |
UPDATE 12pm Wednesday:
Ahem. Scratch that rally. Adding to the underlying negative sentiment, it
looks like the markets sniffed raw Central Bank fear in that preemptive
rate cut move. The market has yielded all the rally and is down over 200.
Today is a crunch point. The NWO have to hold the line. If not.........
See Also: Rustyh http://breakfornews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=49992#49992
_________________
Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open.
Last edited by Fintan on Wed Oct 08, 2008 12:52 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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howg
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 45
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| Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 11:26 am Post subject: RE: So how long is it going to take people to connect the... |
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So how long will it take, you ask?
I fear a very long time indeed - hope I'm dead wrong on this, but my recent visit home, (Thailand to Canada), was not at all encouraging.
Perhaps things are different in Ireland??
Yes, people will be angry, and yes, there will be changes.
But those in power must have known this was coming -
after all, it had to happen even w/o the mortgage & derivatives markets imploding.
It had to happen sooner or later, and they surely know that.
Even "well managed" economies must eventually implode.
Even had they managed to create new markets in time, it was still only a question of time.
Or, is it true, as Fintan suggests, that they simply screwed up - a little too clever for their own good.
Fintan, I do hope you are right!
Still, they must have a plan B up their sleeves.
Are they that overconfident?
Or is this in fact plan A, and there is no screw-up at all?
And more importantly, will we earthlings be smart / aware enough to somehow undermine their next level of enslavement.
One of the favorite themes of the new age religion / psyop was that the whole world is awakening.
A theme now used by AJ et al, and here as well - also used re. 2012.
I really do wish it were true, but I haven't seen it at all - and my ex-community in Canada were / are relatively aware, especially so compared to the average.
To cite one example, 100% believe in global warming...err, sorry, "climate change", and thought all contrary opinion was oil biz propaganda - and that I was a fool to believe them!
And most expats in Thailand still rant about the Muslim terrorists, (between beers), given half a chance, (read 99.9% - and I'm being generous!)
As to the Thais themselves, not interested in the slightest about anything, (other than food, of course).
Curiously, I am feeling quite euphoric about it all. Not sure why??
Kinda like being constipated for years, then.... WHOOOSH! All in one shot!
(I'm probably older than most of you - been waitin' for this for over 35 years now!).
I do know that hundreds of thousands are watching the same youtubes as me, reading the same articles, etc, so I do have hope.
But sometimes I wonder about those figures too - maybe they're being inflated for this very reason??
And as we all know, even if millions have been turned on to all of this, the truth has been severely obfuscated, co-opted, redirected and diluted both deliberately and as result of our all too human quality of extreme suggestibility, (easily hypnotised).
This is still a very hard sell for me regards friends and family, and the monetary system is pretty much all there to see - nothing hidden at all.
In fact, they showed us all, everyone, in real time, (maybe??), that 9/11 was a lie too.
Yet no one is particularly interested, excepting how it may affect them personally.
Or perhaps, thinking if it weren't for a bunch of too-greedy people, everything would be OK.
Even the pundits on CNBC & Bloomberg are screaming - if we have no credit liquidity, then we have no money!!
But nobody is connecting the dots...
What is everyone else experiencing in their neck of the woods?
Is the whole world awakening, other than Canada & Thailand?
PS: A very good book on all of this is:
Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order. By Baran, Paul A. & Sweezy, Paul M.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=monopoly+capital+baran+sweezy&x=0&y=0
I read this way back in my college days, but I see they've changed the sub-heading!
Used to be: A Critique of American History from a Marxixt Perspective, (or something like that). Bad marketing, I guess?
______________________________________________________
There are no nations; there are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There is no third world. There is no west. There is only one holistic system of systems; one vast interwoven, interacting, multivariate multinational dominion of dollars... Petrodollars, electrodollars, reichmarks, rubles, rin, pounds and shekels...There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT &T and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon...One vast and ecumenical holding company for whom all men will work to serve a common profit and in which all men will own a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you to preach this evangel.
Beale: Why me?
Arthur Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy.
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Fintan
Site Admin
Joined: 18 Jan 2006
Posts: 4100
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| Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 8:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |  |
The Next Level Show - 9th October, 2008
 Deja Vu:
Remember the Crash of 1873!
Could it be that a previous economic crash featured a
mortgage implosion; the US currency outside the Gold
Standard; and a collision of global trading?
Prof. of History, Scott Nelson details the astonishing parallels
between current events and the calamitous 1873 Global Crash.
LISTEN:
Broadband Mp3 Audio
http://BreakForNews.com/audio/BeautifulTruth081009a.mp3
Click to Play or Right-Click to 'Save As' and Download.
Dialup Mp3 Audio
http://BreakForNews.com/audio/BeautifulTruth081009.mp3
Click to Play or Right-Click to 'Save As' and Download.
| Quote: | REFERENCES
Professor Reynolds Scott Nelson
Legum Professor of History
College of William and Mary
Webpage: http://srnels.people.wm.edu/
Curriculum Vitae: http://srnels.people.wm.edu/srn_vt.pdf
Background
Scott Nelson received his PhD in history from the University of North
Carolina in 1995. He focuses on nineteenth-century US History.
His first book, Iron Confederacies: Southern Railways, Klan Violence
and Reconstruction was published by UNC Press in April 1999. His second
book, Steel Drivin' Man (published 2006) explores the real life and
legend of railway hero John Henry. It was published by Oxford University
Press in Fall 2006, and has received rave reviews in Entertainment
Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, and The New York Times.
The research was featured on the cover of the Chronicle of Higher
Education and has aired on the History Channel. It has won the Merle
Curti Prize for best book in US social and cultural history, the Anisfield-
Wolf Prize for non-fiction, and the National Award for Fine Arts.
With Carol Sheriff, he has completed a social history of the American Civil
War called A People at War: Civilians and Soldiers in America's Civil War.
It was published by the trade division of Oxford University Press in March
of 2007.
http://srnels.people.wm.edu/steel.html
http://srnels.people.wm.edu/iron/index.html
| Quote: | THE PANIC OF 1873
The economy is in fact over-expanded, particularly in railroad construction, and the weak link turns out to be the banking house of Jay Cooke and Company, which helped the U.S. Government finance the Civil War and also underwrote the construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad.
Jay Cooke and Company, a large and respected banking house declares itself bankrupt, and announces its failure on September 18, 1873.. (The bank's collapse precipitates the "Panic of 1873" and the ensuing three yea depression during which more than 10,000 businesses fail.
The basic economic problems are overproduction, a declining market and deflation. Investors in Europe, where a depression is already underway, begin to call in American loans. The New York Stock Exchange closes its doors for 10 days; other businesses fail; and railroad construction is curtailed, with some railroads defaulting on their bonds. The unemployed begin to move about the country seeking jobs, and bread lines appear in the cities. The hard times drove numbers of laboring people and those in humble circumstances to the West and other portions of the country, to seek the rewards which the stagnation of business in the great commercial centre denied them.
1 "It was a wild day in Wall street yesterday. The announcements of The Times in the morning prepared the public in a certain degree for the trouble which was to ensue, and many parties were enabled to go in the market early in the morning and protect themselves from loss. While many did this, and so saved themselves from ruin, there were others, and by far the majority, who thought that the trouble was solely brought about by machinations of the bears, and that there would only be a small sized panic, which would result in a sudden rebound in prices. Those who took this view of the situation held on to their investments as long as possible, and, so soon as their margins gave out, were compelled to go under. Of course, there were many who, by superior strength, were enabled to hold on to their purchases, and so escaped being sold out, at least for the time.
Parties who were frightened the night before by the marked decline in prices became sanguine and predicted an altogether better date of the market. This continued, however, but for a short time. The first intimation which came into the Stock Exchange of any change in the program was contained in a brief notice, which said authoritatively that Jay Cooke & Co. had suspended payment. To say that the street became excited would only give a feeble view of the expressions of feeling. The brokers stood perfectly thunderstruck for a moment, and then there was a general run to notify the different houses in Wall Street of the failure.
The brokers surged out of the Exchange, tumbling pell-mell over each other in the general confusion, and reached their respective offices in race-horse time. The members of firms who were surprised by this announcement had no time to deliberate. The bear clique was already selling the market down in the Exchange, and prices were declining frightfully.
The news of the panic spread in every direction down-town, and hundreds of people who had been carrying stocks in expectation of a rise, rushed into the offices of their brokers and left orders that their holdings should be immediately sold out. In this way prices fell off so the wall. Men went about the street with blanched faces, and requested piteously of their brokers that their stocks should not be sold out as more margin would be obtained in the morning; but self-preservation seemed to be the first law of nature with every one, so the accounts of the customers were closed out, and the losses became a fixed fact.
Some of the men who were ruined swore, some of them wept, some went out of the street without saying a word; others talked of the trouble in a jovial way, and went about trying to borrow money from friends to get on the short tack with."
http://www.thehistorybox.com/ny_city/panics/panics_article9a.htm |
The Real Great Depression
The depression of 1929 is the wrong model for the current economic crisis
By PROF. SCOTT REYNOLDS NELSON
As a historian who works on the 19th century, I have been reading
my newspaper with a considerable sense of dread. While many
commentators on the recent mortgage and banking crisis have drawn
parallels to the Great Depression of 1929, that comparison is not
particularly apt.
Two years ago, I began research on the Panic of 1873, an event of some
interest to my colleagues in American business and labor history but
probably unknown to everyone else. But as I turn the crank on the
microfilm reader, I have been hearing weird echoes of recent events.
When commentators invoke 1929, I am dubious. According to most
historians and economists, that depression had more to do with overlarge
factory inventories, a stock-market crash, and Germany's inability to pay
back war debts, which then led to continuing strain on British gold
reserves. None of those factors is really an issue now. Contemporary
industries have very sensitive controls for trimming production as
consumption declines; our current stock-market dip followed bank
problems that emerged more than a year ago; and there are no serious
international problems with gold reserves, simply because banks no
longer peg their lending to them.
In fact, the current economic woes look a lot like what my 96-year-old
grandmother still calls "the real Great Depression." She pinched pennies
in the 1930s, but she says that times were not nearly so bad as the
depression her grandparents went through. That crash came in 1873 and
lasted more than four years. It looks much more like our current crisis.
The problems had emerged around 1870, starting in Europe. In the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, formed in 1867, in the states unified by Prussia
into the German empire, and in France, the emperors supported a
flowering of new lending institutions that issued mortgages for municipal
and residential construction, especially in the capitals of Vienna, Berlin,
and Paris. Mortgages were easier to obtain than before, and a building
boom commenced. Land values seemed to climb and climb; borrowers
ravenously assumed more and more credit, using unbuilt or half-built
houses as collateral. The most marvelous spots for sightseers in the three
cities today are the magisterial buildings erected in the so-called founder
period.
But the economic fundamentals were shaky. Wheat exporters from Russia
and Central Europe faced a new international competitor who drastically
undersold them. The 19th-century version of containers manufactured in
China and bound for Wal-Mart consisted of produce from farmers in the
American Midwest. They used grain elevators, conveyer belts, and
massive steam ships to export train loads of wheat to abroad. Britain,
the biggest importer of wheat, shifted to the cheap stuff quite suddenly
around 1871. By 1872 kerosene and manufactured food were rocketing
out of America's heartland, undermining rapeseed, flour, and beef prices.
The crash came in Central Europe in May 1873, as it became clear that
the region's assumptions about continual economic growth were too
optimistic. Europeans faced what they came to call the American
Commercial Invasion. A new industrial superpower had arrived, one
whose low costs threatened European trade and a European way of life.
As continental banks tumbled, British banks held back their capital,
unsure of which institutions were most involved in the mortgage crisis.
The cost to borrow money from another bank — the interbank lending
rate — reached impossibly high rates. This banking crisis hit the
United States in the fall of 1873. Railroad companies tumbled first. They
had crafted complex financial instruments that promised a fixed return,
though few understood the underlying object that was guaranteed to
investors in case of default. (Answer: nothing). The bonds had sold well at
first, but they had tumbled after 1871 as investors began to doubt their
value, prices weakened, and many railroads took on short-term bank
loans to continue laying track. Then, as short-term lending rates
skyrocketed across the Atlantic in 1873, the railroads were in trouble.
When the railroad financier Jay Cooke proved unable to pay off his debts,
the stock market crashed in September, closing hundreds of banks over
the next three years. The panic continued for more than four years in the
United States and for nearly six years in Europe.
The long-term effects of the Panic of 1873 were perverse. For the largest
manufacturing companies in the United States — those with guaranteed
contracts and the ability to make rebate deals with the railroads — the
Panic years were golden. Andrew Carnegie, Cyrus McCormick, and John
D. Rockefeller had enough capital reserves to finance their own
continuing growth. For smaller industrial firms that relied on seasonal
demand and outside capital, the situation was dire. As capital reserves
dried up, so did their industries. Carnegie and Rockefeller bought out
their competitors at fire-sale prices. The Gilded Age in the United States,
as far as industrial concentration was concerned, had begun.
As the panic deepened, ordinary Americans suffered terribly. A cigar
maker named Samuel Gompers who was young in 1873 later recalled
that with the panic, "economic organization crumbled with some primeval
upheaval." Between 1873 and 1877, as many smaller factories and
workshops shuttered their doors, tens of thousands of workers — many
former Civil War soldiers — became transients. The terms "tramp" and
"bum," both indirect references to former soldiers, became commonplace
American terms. Relief rolls exploded in major cities, with 25-percent
unemployment (100,000 workers) in New York City alone.
Unemployed workers demonstrated in Boston, Chicago, and New York in
the winter of 1873-74 demanding public work. In New York's Tompkins
Square in 1874, police entered the crowd with clubs and beat up
thousands of men and women. The most violent strikes in American
history followed the panic, including by the secret labor group known as
the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania's coal fields in 1875, when masked
workmen exchanged gunfire with the "Coal and Iron Police," a private
force commissioned by the state. A nationwide railroad strike followed in
1877, in which mobs destroyed railway hubs in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and
Cumberland, Md.
In Central and Eastern Europe, times were even harder. Many political
analysts blamed the crisis on a combination of foreign banks and Jews.
Nationalistic political leaders (or agents of the Russian czar) embraced a
new, sophisticated brand of anti-Semitism that proved appealing to
thousands who had lost their livelihoods in the panic. Anti-Jewish pogroms
followed in the 1880s, particularly in Russia and Ukraine. Heartland
communities large and small had found a scapegoat: aliens in their own
midst.
The echoes of the past in the current problems with residential mortgages
trouble me. Loans after about 2001 were issued to first-time home buyers
who signed up for adjustable rate mortgages they could likely never pay
off, even in the best of times. Real-estate speculators, hoping to flip
properties, overextended themselves, assuming that home prices would
keep climbing. Those debts were wrapped in complex securities that
mortgage companies and other entrepreneurial banks then sold to other
banks; concerned about the stability of those securities, banks then
bought a kind of insurance policy called a credit-derivative swap, which
risk managers imagined would protect their investments. More than two
million foreclosure filings — default notices, auction-sale notices, and
bank repossessions — were reported in 2007. By then trillions of dollars
were already invested in this credit-derivative market. Were those new
financial instruments resilient enough to cover all the risk? (Answer: no.)
As in 1873, a complex financial pyramid rested on a pinhead. Banks are
hoarding cash. Banks that hoard cash do not make short-term loans.
Businesses large and small now face a potential dearth of short-term
credit to buy raw materials, ship their products, and keep goods on
shelves.
If there are lessons from 1873, they are different from those of 1929.
Most important, when banks fall on Wall Street, they stop all the traffic on
Main Street — for a very long time. The protracted reconstruction of
banks in the United States and Europe created widespread
unemployment. Unions (previously illegal in much of the world) flourished
but were then destroyed by corporate institutions that learned to operate
on the edge of the law. In Europe, politicians found their scapegoats in
Jews, on the fringes of the economy. (Americans, on the other hand,
mostly blamed themselves; many began to embrace what would later be
called fundamentalist religion.)
The post-panic winners, even after the bailout, might be those firms —
financial and otherwise — that have substantial cash reserves. A
widespread consolidation of industries may be on the horizon, along with
a nationalistic response of high tariff barriers, a decline in international
trade, and scapegoating of immigrant competitors for scarce jobs. The
failure in July of the World Trade Organization talks begun in Doha seven
years ago suggests a new wave of protectionism may be on the way.
In the end, the Panic of 1873 demonstrated that the center of gravity for
the world's credit had shifted west — from Central Europe toward the
United States. The current panic suggests a further shift — from the
United States to China and India. Beyond that I would not hazard a
guess. I still have microfilm to read.
Originally published in The Chronicle Review |
_________________
Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open. |
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atm
Joined: 16 Apr 2006
Posts: 2749
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| Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 10:54 am Post subject: The Creature from Jekyll Island |
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http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8484911570371055528
atm  |
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PatrickSMcNally
Joined: 05 Mar 2007
Posts: 851
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| Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 1:09 pm Post subject: Re: The Creature from Jekyll Island |
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| atm wrote: | | http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8484911570371055528 |
Griffin is way offbase. The creation of the Federal Reserve was not (repeat NOT) the result of the Jekyll Island meeting. Ever since the bank run of 1907 it had been a topic of open public debate that the banking system needed to be reformed.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/047015263X/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
In 1910 a meeting was held on Jekyll Island by bankers in response to the public pressure. They realized that the demands for some kind of banking reform were growing and could not be ignored, so they tried to create their own plan (the Aldrich Plan) and put it forward in advance. The Aldrich Plan was rejected by Congress and did not form the basis of the Federal Reserve System. If you like, you can regard the meeting at Jekyll Island as a failed conspiracy. The later creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 was not an enactment of the Aldrich Plan and it implemented ideas which had been publicly talked about since 1907.
Edward Flaherty gives a useful short rundown on the basic facts:
http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/flaherty/Federal_Reserve.html
Our financial crisis today has really nothing to do with the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, except insofar as the latter is part of the general history of capitalism. The crisis today has occurred simply because of what Karl Marx used to call "overproduction." We produce so many goods and services that it's hard for anyone to find room for a profitable new investment in the classical sense. Hence a surplus of phony investment schemes begins to grow in its place, and now we bear the burden of all of those scam investments. But that is not controlled by the Federal Reserve, and it isn't something which can be said to have come about because of the latter's creation. Actually, the greatest period of productive growth in US capitalism happened in the 20th century after the Federal Reserve was created. That period of upward growth that began after WWII ended not because of anyone's conspiracy but because the economic room for growth exhausted itself.
It's interesting that Fintan chose to do an interview with someone comparing things to the crisis of the 1870s, which was long before the Fed was created. Bank runs used to be a very normal thing a century or so ago. Most banks in the 19th century back then had an expected lifetime of about 5 years before crashing. The Fed was created in an effort to stabilize this, and on a relative scale it did manage to succeed for awhile. But an outdated system can't be sustained.
As for the currect crisis, Nick Beams gives a useful overview of the situation:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/nbe1-o04.shtml
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/nbe2-o06.shtml
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/nbe3-o07.shtml
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/nbe4-o08.shtml |
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