Guest Post: Next In Line For Implosion: Pension Plans

And yes, John Key sold the crap they came up with at Merrill Lynch to pension funds too!

Pension plans are based on 8% annual growth forever. What happens to these plans in a zero-interest rate world as the global economy and stock markets contract?

I’m afraid it’s time for an intervention. I don’t enjoy being the bearer of difficult news, but now that Europe has stumbled drunkenly into the pool and been “rescued,” it’s once again tearfully blubbering that this time it’s all going to change, and a new prime minister in each dysfunctional, insolvent EU nation is going to make the pain and the addiction all go away.

It’s time we face the reality that Europe and the U.S. are full-blown financial alcoholics, addicted to illusion and debt. And what do they turn to as “solutions”? The very sources of their pain: illusory “fixes” and more debt. Have you ever seen a global market as dependent on rumors of “magical fixes” for its “resilience” as this one?

What’s truly remarkable is the psychotic distance between the facts–Europe’s debts are impossible to service, its economy is free-falling into recession, the U.S. is already in recession, China’s real estate bubble has popped and cannot be reinflated– and the heady leap of global markets on every trivial rumor of a magic fix.

Since it runs in our family, I do not use the word “alcoholic” lightly. Those of you who have to deal with alcoholics know the drill: the liquor stashed behind the fridge, as if everyone doesn’t know it’s there; the stumbling into the pool, the humiliating rescue, the tearful promise of change which goes nowhere, and all the rest.

I seriously suspect the entire global economy is alcoholic–not about liquor, but about debt and the impossibility of paying entitlements which expand by 8% a year in an economy which grows by 2% a year at best. In all the millions of words printed about the subprime meltdown, the gutting of the U.S. financial and housing markets and now about Europe’s impossible burden of debt, how often have we seen anyone in the MSM or mainstream financial press confess that “borrowing our way of out of trouble” is not just financially bankrupt but morally bankrupt as well?

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Next In Line for Implosion: Pension Plans   (November 8, 2011) Pension plans are based on 8% annual growth forever. What happens to these plans in a zero-interest rate world as the global economy and stock markets contract?I’m afraid it’s time for an intervention. I don’t enjoy being the bearer of difficult news, but now that Europe has stumbled drunkenly into the pool and been “rescued,” it’s once again tearfully blubbering that this time it’s all going to change, and a new prime minister in each dysfunctional, insolvent EU nation is going to make the pain and the addiction all go away. It’s time we face the reality that Europe and the U.S. are full-blown financial alcoholics, addicted to illusion and debt. And what do they turn to as “solutions”? The very sources of their pain: illusory “fixes” and more debt. Have you ever seen a global market as dependent on rumors of “magical fixes” for its “resilience” as this one? What’s truly remarkable is the psychotic distance between the facts–Europe’s debts are impossible to service, its economy is free-falling into recession, the U.S. is already in recession, China’s real estate bubble has popped and cannot be reinflated– and the heady leap of global markets on every trivial rumor of a magic fix. Since it runs in our family, I do not use the word “alcoholic” lightly. Those of you who have to deal with alcoholics know the drill: the liquor stashed behind the fridge, as if everyone doesn’t know it’s there; the stumbling into the pool, the humiliating rescue, the tearful promise of change which goes nowhere, and all the rest. I seriously suspect the entire global economy is alcoholic–not about liquor, but about debt and the impossibility of paying entitlements which expand by 8% a year in an economy which grows by 2% a year at best. In all the millions of words printed about the subprime meltdown, the gutting of the U.S. financial and housing markets and now about Europe’s impossible burden of debt, how often have we seen anyone in the MSM or mainstream financial press confess that “borrowing our way of out of trouble” is not just financially bankrupt but morally bankrupt as well?

Greece under bankers control who’s next? Italy of course and financial stocks collapse!

While in an interesting twist of fate the Greek PM which was to be  a banker by the name of Papademos has not been decided upon the Banksters have opened their all out attack on Italy which will be brought next under Bankers occupation while I thought that Berlusconi was an utter buffoon rest assured that the one following him up will be  utterly in the hands of the Bankster elite and that will be much worse for the Italian people!

What is interesting though is that the financial world does not have faith in the ability of the banks to resolve the financial crisis with more control over individual sovereign countries and the finance stocks are collapsing like never before

 

Odious debt, John Key’s legacy?

The concept of odious debt was established in international law in 1927 and basically states that (quote wikilepedia) the national debt incurred by a regime for purposes that do not serve the best interests of the nation, should not be enforceable.

John Key has borrowed a massive $ 40 billion or so in the last three years indebting this Nation for many years to come and given the rich 1% a massive tax cut while making life a lot harder for the 99%.

I would argue that this constitutes an odious debt and that while we have been labouring under the perception that we actually had an election which was not entirely steered by Propaganda, we actually have been conned into electing the Keyster after having been promised he came back to New Zealand to serve this country with his “hard nosed business acumen” as my dear neighbours still believe (poor souls) we have actually been under banker occupation and that constitutes a regime.

Here is what Max Keiser and Saifedean Ammous with a nice bit of info from Stacy Herbert about John Key’s friend Timothy the Tax dodger” Geithner the current secretary of Treasury and all out bankster scumbag to start with:

John Key pack your bags by Trillion

Another excellent song by rapper Trillion: John Key pack your bags!

John Key confesses to his role in destroying the global economy on breakfast TV

The problem with Psychopaths is they want to brag about their achievements even if these achievements are damaging and detrimental to many others.

In this regard John Key does not differ from his Wall street mates. In fact he just did except here in New Zealand many don’t know the whole story so it sounded to most Kiwi’s as if John Key could see reason in the Occupy Wall street movement making him look like an understanding democratic leader allowing free speech and demonstrations.

Here is his confession on breakfast TV and below I fill in the blanks:

John Key says about Wall street and the Occupy movement the following:

” If you go all the way back to what’s caused the global financial crisis you can apportion an enormous amount of the blame at the foot steps of Wall street and it ultimately created products that destroyed capital around the world and fitfully (whatever that means) destroyed banks around the world.:

“I mean they sold products that in their heart of hearts they must have known they wouldn’t be repaid for so I can understand that bit….”

and then he goes on about why condemning capitalism is a bad thing and how we should lift  the poor out of their misery and make them more wealthy. (More on that later) Let’s analyse the whole statement about the banking world and it’s destructive products for a bit and connect John Key to all these negative activities shall we?

“If you go all the way back to what’s caused the global financial crisis you can apportion an enormous amount of the blame at the foot steps of Wall street.”

1. This is correct but it goes back quit a bit further then John Key would let us to believe as he states in the “unauthorised biography” he left long before they created these fraudulent products.One of the first events ever to use the products he speaks of happened in 1987 with the attack of Andrew Krieger on the NZ dollar to which John Key was party as I prove in this article. In his book infectious greed Frank Partnoy identifies the trade made by Andrew Krieger which to this day tops the top ten trades made of all time as the Patient zero trade of what is ending now as the total financial collapse of the global system. It set the tone for John Key’s career as a Derivatives and forex trader.
2. John Key blames Wall street but what he doesn’t say is that he was a Wall street trader. Here is a link to a speech he made to the New Zealand American friendship association in 2007. In it he clearly states that he had an apartment in New York, lived there a lot of the time and he also tells us he had an office and several employees one of whom dies on 911. In fact he tells us that he worked on Wall street and what’s more he was an advisor in an upon invitation only committee of the New York Federal Reserve.
3. John Key at the time of the repeal of the Glass Steagall act was the managing director of Debt for Merrill Lynch. Here he talks about the fantastic possibilities of over the counter products, the very ones now destroying the economy, in 1999!

 and it ultimately created products that destroyed capital around the world and fitfully (whatever that means) destroyed banks around the world.

1. They did but the previous makes it clear that it wasn’t they but we.

“I mean they sold products that in their heart of hearts they must have known they wouldn’t be repaid for so I can understand that bit….”

1. Here is the bragging (confessing bit coming full to the fore. The question did not ask for this emotional statement. Here he shows us his intimate knowledge of the products he sold and what would inevitable be the outcome and the sentence goes way beyond the scope of the question. It merely asked if he could understand why the demonstrated and the first two sentences would have sufficed but by saying “they must have known in their heart of hearts” he actually admits to not only knowing now that the Wall street antics will destroy the entire system but actually having known that in his heart of hearts he knew that the scam would implode on him and his Wall street bankster mates at the time he was dealing in them. but in saying it out in the open he also shows that he cynically thinks that since Kiwi’s still think of him as a nice guy that they won’t catch on to this what is essentially a bragging psychopathic confession of his role in the whole damn scam.

Is the economy deliberately ruined? New film says so!

Rush to Oz hits record high under Key

Could it be that the pollsters only call landlines and areas of well to do middle class, middle aged pakeha males because these people clearly cast a vote albeit with their feet!

New Zealand’s net loss of people to Australia has averaged almost 25,000 a year in the three years since Prime Minister John Key was elected – a higher net loss than the average under any previous government.

Almost 113,000 people moved to Australia on a permanent or long-term basis between the end of November 2008, when Mr Key was elected, to the end of September this year.

The number is offset by the 43,000 people who moved back to New Zealand.

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12 Facts About Money And Congress That Are So Outrageous That It Is Hard To Believe That They Are Actually True

I read somewhere that John Key became $ 5 million richer during the last three years. With his bank shares in BofA it can’t have come from them so how did he get that much richer?

He met with Timothy “the  Taxdodger” Geithner when he last visited the states. Could it be that the money masters wanted to keep their buddy in NZ happy?

Do you want to get rich?  Just get elected to Congress.  The U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives are absolutely packed with wealthy people that are very rapidly becoming even wealthier.  The collective net worth of the members of Congress is now measured in the billions of dollars.  The people that we have elected to the House and Senate are absolutely swimming in money.  Unfortunately, it is not easy to get elected to Congress.  In this day and age you generally have to be heavily connected to those that are very wealthy to get into Congress because it takes gigantic amounts of cash to win campaigns.  But if you can get in to the club, you pretty much have it made.  The numbers that you are about to read are very difficult to believe and they should deeply sadden you.  They show that Congress has become all about money.  Congressional races are mostly financed by wealthy people, most of the people that we elect to Congress are very wealthy, and they rapidly get wealthier after they are elected.  All of this money has turned our republic into something far different than our founding fathers intended.

The following are 12 statistics about money and Congress that are so outrageous that it is hard to believe that they are actually true….

#1 The collective net worth of all of the members of Congress increased by 25 percent between 2008 and 2010.

#2 The collective net worth of all of the members of Congress is now slightly over 2 billion dollars.  That is “billion” with a “b”.

#3 This happened during a time when the net worth of most American households was declining rapidly.  According to the Federal Reserve, the collective net worth of all American households decreased by 23 percent between 2007 and 2009.

#4 The average net worth for a member of Congress is now approximately 3.8 million dollars.

#5 The net worth of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi increased by 62 percent from 2009 to 2010.  In 2009 it was reported that she had a net worth of 21.7 million dollars, and in 2010 it was reported that she had a net worth of 35.2 million dollars.

#6 The top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, saw his wealth grow by 29 percent from 2009 to 2010.  He is now worth approximately 9.8 million dollars.

#7 More than 50 percent of the members of the U.S. Congress are millionaires.

#8 In 2008, the average cost of winning a seat in the House of Representatives was $1.1 million and the average cost of winning a seat in the U.S. Senate was $6.5 million.  Spending on political campaigns has gotten way out of control.

#9 Insider trading is perfectly legal for members of the U.S. Congress – and they refuse to pass a law that would change that.

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IAEA report thrives on laptop of lies

Just in case you actually believed Iran was able to bomb the world to smithereens with a nuke next month:
According to a cable released by the Wikileaks in October 2009, “Amano reminded [the] ambassador on several occasions that he would need to make concessions to the G-77 [the developing countries group], which correctly required him to be fair-minded and independent, but that he was solidly in the US court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.”

In an atmosphere of cringing obedience to Washington, Mr. Amano cannot choose but to play into the hands of the US officials who look over his shoulders and observe with diligence what he puts to paper in the report he writes about Iran.

The US-engineered new allegation against the Islamic Republic which is part of a 15-page document issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency is that Iran carried out “work on the development of an indigenous design of a nuclear weapon including the testing of components. Some activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device continued after 2003” and “some may still be ongoing.” This new allegation is indeed based on the fiction of the laptop of death.

Allegations against the Islamic Republic practically started in 2004 when a mysterious figure handed over to the CIA a laptop he had purloined from an Iranian technician purportedly working at a nuclear plant in Iran. The laptop which has come to be known as the laptop of death is said to contain pages and pages of top-secret information in English detailing Iran’s lust for attaining technical knowhow to produce nuclear payroll for Shahab III missile.

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Wikileaks Exposes German Preparations For “A Eurozone Chapter 11″

The end of the Euro!!!

The following cable from US ambassador to Germany Philip Murphy (“Ambassador Murphy spent 23 years at Goldman Sachs and held a variety of senior positions, including in Frankfurt, New York and Hong Kong, before becoming a Senior Director of the firm in 2003, a position he held until his retirement in 2006″) “CONFIDENTIAL: 10BERLIN181” tells us all we need to know about what has been really happening behind the smooth, calm and collected German facade vis-a-vis not only Greece, but all of Europe, and what the next steps are: “A EUROZONE CHAPTER 11: DB Chief Economist Thomas Mayer told Ambassador Murphy he was pessimistic Greece would take the difficult steps needed to put its house in order.  A worst case scenario, says Mayer, could be that Germany pulls out of the Eurozone altogether in 20 years time.  In 1990, Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled that the country could withdraw from the Euro if: 1) the currency union became an “inflationary zone,” or 2) the German taxpayer became the Eurozone’s “de facto bailout provider.”  Mayer proposes a “Chapter 11 for Eurozone countries,” which would place troubled members under economic supervision until they put their house in order.  Unfortunately, there is no serious discussion of this underway, he lamented.” This was In February 2010. The discussion has since commenced.

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Greens vote could put Labour in Government – Key

Let’s prove him right!

Prime Minister John Key has conceded National risk losing the election should the Green Party hold the balance of power.

The Green Party captured 10.1 per cent in the latest DigiPoll, the party’s highest rating in the poll since the 2002 election campaign. With Labour floundering around the 30 per cent mark in most polls, and no other minor party polling higher than 2 per cent, the Greens could hold the balance of power should National fail to win 50 per cent of the vote.

The Greens have not ruled out working with National, but it’s has been described as “unlikely” by the party’s leaders.

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Excellent analysis of the Bankster mafia tactics by Gerald Celente

I can’t embed the stream but here is the link. Well worth the listen and a horrible prediction of WWIII.

Morgan Stanley Says Europe’s Pandora’s Box Has Been Opened

Oh shit!

Have a sinking suspicion that the way the Eurozone has handled the past week’s Greek threat has set the stage for the collapse of the Eurozone (here’s looking at you Italy, over and over) now that Merkozy has made the possibility of a country leaving the Eurozone all too real? You are not alone: Morgan Stanley’s Joachim Fels has just sent a note to clients in which he not only commingles three of the catchiest and most abused apocalyptic phrases of our time (“Emperor has no clothes“, “Water Pistol not Bazooka“  and “Pandora’s Box“) he also warns, in no uncertain terms, that “by raising the possibility that a country might (be forced to) leave the euro, core European governments may have set in motion a sequence of events which could potentially lead to runs on sovereigns and banks in peripheral countries that make everything we have seen so far in this crisis look benign.” And when a major investment bank, itself susceptible to bank runs warns of, well, bank runs, you listen.

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Loose Cannon: Will Israel attack Iran?

Israel is a country of six million. If they attack Iran they are attacking a country with 70 million people. It is inevitable that the US and NATO will be involved meaning that we are looking at WWIII.

Can you say money masters take over: Greek PM gone and a bankster takes over!

Here the Money masters don’t have a problem. We vote our demise in ourselves but the Greek are not so stupid and it took a hell of a fight but they got their man in just the same. Meet Mr Papademos; Federal Reserve man, MIT trained, former vice president of the European Central Bank and above all a member of the trilateral commission since ’98! The Greek are so screwed.

 

Report: U.K. preparing for military strike on Iran nuclear facilities

The U.K. is stepping up its preparations for a military strike on Iran, the Guardian newspaper reported on Wednesday. According to the report, the U.K. is increasingly concerned over Tehran’s nuclear program, and is preparing to deploy Royal Navy ships in the coming months to assist a possible U.S. attack on key facilities in Iran.

The paper cited senior officials who said they believed Iran had regained its technological capabilities which were severely damaged in a cyber-attack last year. Iran said the Stuxnet worm infected personal computers of employees at the Bushehr plant, but not the plant’s main systems. The New York Times reported last January that the worm was a joint Israeli-U.S. effort to undermine Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

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Manufacturing consent for war: UN has ‘compelling proof’ Iran is building nuclear warheads

There is a ‘compelling case’ that Iran is secretly building an arsenal of nuclear warheads, warns the United Nations.

As speculation mounts that Israel or the U.S. could lead a military strike against Iran, a report clearly rejects Tehran’s claims its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only.

Although the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency will stop short of explicitly saying Iran is making its own nuclear bombs, it will give plenty of new details.

Its report, due to be released next week, will also add to areas of concern that the UN has raised previously.

‘There are bits of it which clearly can only be for clandestine nuclear purposes,’ said an official.

‘It is a compelling case.’

The IAEA will also make public findings which its authors say make little sense unless they are weapons-related.

Tehran denies secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons, insisting it is enriching uranium for reactors to generate electricity.c

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Sources: US Gives Israel Green Light For Iran Strike

The Obama administration’s fabricated terror plot blamed on Iran represents the green light for an Israeli attack on Iran set to take place within the next two weeks, according to confidential military sources who spoke with Alex Jones.

Israel is concerned that major powers like Germany are moving closer to smoothing relations with Iran and allowing Iran to continue its nuclear enrichment program unimpeded. A two month window has been allocated during which Israel has the opportunity to launch a military assault, waiting until winter when the attack will be more difficult to pull off is not an option.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s October 3 Tel Aviv visit was used by Israeli hawks to convince the United States that it should green light the attack. Less than 10 days later, a fanciful terror plot involving a used car salesman was invented to implicate Iran and create the pretext for a military assault.

“In recent weeks, intense discussions have taken place in Israeli military and intelligence circles about whether or not to launch a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Apparently, the key question in the debate was how to ensure that the United States took part in the attack or, at the very least, intervened on Israel’s side if the initial strike triggered a wider war,” writes Patrick Seale of Gulf News.

That intervention has now been mandated by the announcement of the fabricated terror plot, which was actually concocted last month but only made public now.

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Did John Key just promise to give millions of dollars to al Qaeda?

Al Qaeda flag over Benghazi

To most Kiwi’s the NATO attack on Libya was all about freeing the Libyan people and killing the latest Villain du Jour and the rebels we helped put into place were promised millions of NZ dollars to help them rebuild an infrastructure which until the attack had been perfectly fine.

But who are these rebels and why is the al Qaeda flag flown in Benghazi and if we are fighting al Qaeda in Afghanistan than why are we giving aid to the same group in Libya which will return to extreme Sharia law after the death of Gaddafi?

One of the leaders and the commander of the rebel forces is a man called Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi who openly states that he was fighting in Afghanistan killing US troops a a fundamentalist rebel and he is listed as a “member” of Al Qaeda.

With the return of Sharia law, army comanders who were actively fighting Western troops in Afghanistan and a fierce anti US sentiment amongst the Libyan rebels why in the world are we promising to give millions of dollars to these people while NZ soldiers are dying in Afghanistan fighting the same people?

Interview with Joshua Blakely on scientific apporach of the events of 911

The Collapse Of Our Corrupt, Predatory, Pathological Financial System Is Necessary And Positive

 a couple of days ago I posted an article about the pending economic collapse explained in three easy steps. This article published on Zero Hedge blog is eminently readable and covers the economic collapse with a bit more detail but the premiss is the same. Banks took on risk and hedged it back to zero but the system is collapsing as the parasitic financial elite has sucked the life blood out of the real human economy and this article explains why it must collapse in order for the human race to be able to thrive again.

Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds

The Collapse of Our Corrupt, Predatory, Pathological Financial System Is Necessary and Positive

We are being throttled by the Big Lie: we’re told that if the predatory financial system implodes, we’ll all be ruined. The opposite is true: the only way to save our economy is to let the corrupt, pathological and flawed financial system implode.

I was recently challenged by a contributor to write something positive, and so I decided to write about the single most positive outcome of the current financial crisis in Europe: the complete collapse of the corrupt, predatory, pathological global banking sector and its dealers, the central banks. Exploring why this is so reveals the insurmountable internal conflicts in our current financial system, and also illuminates the systemic political propaganda which is deployed daily to prop up a parasitic, corrupting, pathologically destructive financial system.

Our first stop is modern finance itself. Modern financial “products” and “instruments” are often highly complex and abstract, but the entire edifice can be distilled down to this: the system is based on the assumption that all risk can be hedged, and the difference between the initial position’s yield/gain (i..e. placement of capital at risk for a gain) and the cost of hedging the risk of the wager to zero can be skimmed from the system risk-free.

That is the entire system in a nutshell, and we can immediately see the advantages of this system over traditional Capitalism, where risk can be hedged but never to zero, and the return is correlated to the risk taken on.

In modern finance, high-risk “investments” (wagers) with high returns can be taken on without worry because any and all risk can be hedged to zero, even in super high-risk wagers.

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On media control and the Iraq war speech of Stephen Harper and John Howard or do you still believe we elect our governments?

Here are two video’s. One is of the announcement by a US TV host Conan that he will be marrying a gay couple live in his show and the reactions of all the “independent” talking heads all over the TV senders which are also supposedly independent and the second is the speech which committed Australia and Canada to the illegal war in Iraq. If after you watched those video’s you still believe we are electing our own governments and that we have a media not controlled by the powers that be I’ve got a nice bridge in New York for sale you might be interested in!

An Israel Attack on Iran: Military Suicide

There is a strong speculation that Israel is bound to mount an attack on Iranian nuclear sites, a threat which the Zionist regime has frequently repeated and an idea which, if translated into action, will bring about apocalyptic consequences for the Zionist entity.

Reportedly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recently sought to drum up cabinet support for a military strike against the nuclear sites of the Islamic republic of Iran. In joint efforts with the defense minister Ehud Barak, Netanyahu has succeeded in wringing support for such a reckless act from the skeptics who were already opposed to launching an attack on Iran. Among those he managed to convince was Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

There are still those in the Israeli cabinet who are against such a move including Interior Minister Eli Yishai of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor, Strategic Affairs Minister and Netanyahu confidant Moshe Yaalon, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, army chief Benny Gantz, the head of Israel’s intelligence agency Tamir Pardo, the chief of military intelligence Aviv Kochavi and the head of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency Yoram Cohen.

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Is The Entire Global Banking Industry Carrying Naked, Unhedged “Risk Free” Sovereign Debt Yielding 100-200%? Quick Answer: Probably!

Summary: Since the king of Wall Street traders (not:The Squid That Can’t Trade) carries so much risk free (not:Good ‘Ole Lehman Collapse Days!) sovereign debt heavily leveraged on their books, if it is proven that a Greek default is not truly a default, hence not a credit event, then isn’t Goldman trading extreme risk naked and unhedged? Below, I delve deeply into this question, looking for an answer!

This morning I saw the following from Nouriel Roubini on my twitter feed -Roubini Global Economics Paper: Are CDS Worthless Because Greece’s Exchange Won’t Trigger a Credit Event? http://bit.ly/ttrgFS followed by this from Chris Whalen – @Nouriel Precisely. Fed, etc encourage CDS to generate income for TBTF banks, then the banks welch on the bets by “investors” Kleptocracy. As anyone who follows me knows, I’m in lock step with that particular opinion espoused by Chris. Still, the bigger and much more pertinent question looms… Aren’t the big US investment banks carrying trillions of dollars of unhedged exposure? Quick answer: Hell Yeah!

Reality, Redux

First, a refesher on our European bank run theory expoused 5 months ago…

1. Let’s Walk The Path Of A Potential Pan-European Bank Run, Then Construct Trades To Profit From Such
2. Greece Is Fulfilling Our Predictions Of Default Precisely As Predicted This Time Last Year
3. The Anatomy Of A European Bank Run: Look At The Banking Situation BEFORE The Run Occurs!
4. The Fuel Behind Institutional “Runs on the Bank” Burns Through Europe, Lehman-Style!

About a month ago, I posed the question When Does 3+5=4? When You Aggregate A Bunch Of Risky Banks & Then Pretend That You Didn’t? Condensed, Cliff Notes edition, Goldman has the most shortable share price of all the big banks at around $100 and is quite liquid; it is more susceptible to mo-mo traders than it is to it’s own book value, it is highly levered into the European debt/banking mess, and last but not least, Goldman is the derivatives risk concentration leader of the world – bar none! So, if anyone is in need of CDS as a good solid hedge, it should be Goldman, no?

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Fall Of The House Of Money: Artemis Capital On How €entral Banking Took Over Capital Markets… And The World

One of the long-term recurring themes both here and in other more objective media, has been the encroaching domination of the central planning regime, or monetary authorities, read central banks, in the domain of capital markets and overall broad sovereignty, to the point where there is neither technical nor fundamental analysis left, but merely the question of where is the next batch of excess liquidity going to come from. Welcome to the death throes of the fiat system. Artemis Capital has released an extended must read presentation that summarizes just how global changes in trade, currency exchange, global monetary excess liquidity in recent decades, and especially in the coming future, will increasingly determine and define risk, and more troubling, the centuries old anarchism of state sovereignty. Anarchism, because as Europe has demonstrated so very well, in the current world the only real actors are the central banks. And with each passing day they become ever more powerful players in the global capital markets arena, as confirmed by correlations that rise every higher, approaching 1.000 across all asset classes. Anyone wondering why the only fulcrum variable for the future of risk will be FX exchange rates, and why any and all wars in the future will be primarily in binary “currency” format, we urge a careful reading of the attached slideshow by Artemis Capital titled “Fall of the House Of Money: Changes in Global Trade and Currency Exchange.”

None of this will come as a surprise to regular readers, but some of the concepts bear repeating.

Artemis’ Chris Cole starts with the premise of “World War €urrency”

Countries are artificially devaluing their currencies to generate competitive trade advantages or to finance deficits

United States

• Ultra-loose monetary policy (ZIRP & Quantitative Easing)
• Massive government deficits and high debt levels
• Unsustainable fiscal spending and entitlements

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15 Trillion Dollars In Debt, 45 Million Americans On Food Stamps And Zero Solutions On The Horizon

How does a country end up 15 trillion dollars in debt?  30 years ago, we were just a little over a trillion dollars in debt.  How in the world do supposedly rational people living in “the greatest nation on earth” allow themselves to commit national financial suicide by allowing government debt to explode like that?  It almost seems like there should be some sort of official ceremony in Washington D.C. to commemorate this achievement.  It really takes something special to be able to roll up 15 trillion dollars of debt.  To get to this level, we really had to indulge in some wild spending.  For example, did you know that the U.S. national debtgrows by more than 2 million dollars every single minute?  All of this debt has fueled an unprecedented boom of prosperity for the last 30 years, but now that prosperity is drying up.  Today, there are over 45 million Americans that are on food stamps.  America is being deindustrialized at a blinding pace and there are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.  Poverty is exploding all over the nation, and millions of families have lost their homes to foreclosure.  Unfortunately, there are zero solutions on the horizon.  The leaders of both major political parties seem even more clueless right now than in past years.  We really could use some hope, but hope is in very short supply.

When evaluating the health of America’s economy, it is important not to look at the short-term numbers.  Rather, the key is to look at the long-term trends and the balance sheet numbers.

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Repost: Open letter to Eugene Bingham or would you have voted for John Kye if you had known!

This is a repost of an open letter I send to Eugene Bingham in December 2008. Rather than suing me for defamation or libel the NZHerald removed 5 pages of the internet version of the interview I’m referring too. The pages contained all the references to John Key’s banking career!

have the hard copy of the original interview and a pdf which I will post on this blog this weekend.

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Eugene Bingham is a journalist for the New Zealand Herald and he has been the writer of most of the articles about John Key and has repeatedly interviewed him. He wrote amongst others the Unauthorised biography which appeared in the 19 July 2008 New Zealand Herald edition and is well worth reading.

I have stuck this post to the top and you will find the new postings appear below this one.

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“You have sold your soul to the Devil and wrote the article as a PR stunt for the man who is now our Prime Minister but who is in fact one of the Arsonists of the perfect firestorm about to hit this poor small Nation.” Evelyn Gilbert

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Dear Eugene,

I have been thinking about writing this open letter to you for a while and today I felt was the right moment to tell you what I think about you and the way you have helped John Key get elected.

I will not beat around the bush. I’m not build that way, so here goes.

You are an insult to what was once a noble and very necessary profession in order to take our politicians to task if found wanting (thanks to the internet people like me can do our own research and we are no longer depending on frauds like you for our information).

You are either incredibly bad at your job because it appears that either you did not double check John Key’s story, something every self respecting journalist should do, or you have slipped over to the dark side and you willingly lied and allowed John Key to lie to your readers.

Either way you ought to be ashamed of yourself and resign today.

Why, you ask, is this blogger so crass in her accusations?

We have a government in which John Key is the Prime Minister. He has been elected based on information available and let’s not forget the much hyped need for “Change”.

In a functioning Democracy the press as the fourth estate is responsible for making sure that all the relevant information is available for the public to be able to vote in their best interest.

In the run up to an important election it is of the utmost importance that the public knows all about their politicians there is to know and if it means that a politician is not voted in because it turns out that said politician is a liar or a criminal than so be it.

In a time such as this when the entire global economy is crashing because of Wall street manipulations it is of the utmost importance to know everything there is to know of the most important opposition leader especially if that politician has made his money through parasitical speculation in the international finance world. That same world which is now collapsing due to it’s own irresponsible financial speculations.

Eugene, you failed to do that job so spectacularly and in doing so you helped put in power a man who has no business governing us in these times and the future will tell that you were instrumental in keeping information away from us that would have surely changed the out come of this election.

Let me give you but three examples of your failure to supply us with real information.

1. The true relationship John Key had with Andrew Krieger and the attack on the NZ dollar in late 1987.
   
2. The role John Key had in the Asian Crisis, the Russian collapse and the collapse of the LTCM hedgefund.
   
3. The role John Key had in the Subprime trade and the real timeline of the Subprime crisis and the subsequent collapse of the global economy.

1. The true relationship John Key had with Andrew Krieger and the attack on the NZ dollar in late 1987.

You have in multiple articles told us that John Key only went to work with Andrew Krieger after Andrew Krieger in 1988. In fact you even give a specific date in this article. In it you state that John Key starts to work for the Bankers Trust on 29 August 1988. If this is true than John Key could not have worked with Andrew Krieger. Not for the bankers trust or any other bank. Because Andrew Krieger left Forex on 30 June 1988 and did not return to that trade until September 1990.

How do I know? Because Eugene, I did what you should have done.

I googled the name Andrew Krieger and Bankers Trust and found 3, that is three, (here, here and here) articles in the New York Times online archive (Especially put on line for journalists like you Eugene) written by three different journalists at three different times and each of those articles Chronicles Andrew Krieger’s career at that very crucial time. It turns out that Andrew Krieger (who because of his spectacular attack on the NZ dollar was a bit of a Wall street celeb) left the Bankers Trust in as early as December 1987 but no later than February 1988. He then went to work for George Soros as a senior manager from sometime March or April and left that position in June 1988. An interview with him in September 1990 reveals that he didn’t trade in the Foreign Exchange business beyond some very limited trading conducted solely for himself.

Other than that, the trade that made Andrew Krieger famous was conducted in mere hours only seven days after Black Monday (while New Zealand was still reeling from the worst crash in recent history) and if John Key was the sole manager of the hundreds of millions of dollars he traded in for Andrew Krieger as you state in your 19 July “Unauthorised” biography, it can only have been during that famous attack.

Eugene, if  John Key traded with Andrew Krieger during what was the first speculative attack on a currency ever and which was followed by several world crisis provoking super attacks in which John Key partook don’t you think it would have been essential for us to know?

If John Key willingly engaged in behaviour that risked his country’s economy and  he is prepared to lie or let you lie about it 20 years after the event I thought it would have been paramount that you let the public know especially in an “Unauthorised” biography. It sets after all a precedent. If he was prepared to collapse his own countries currency in a speculative raid than he would have no qualms about doing it to other countries either.

2. The role John Key had in the Asian Crisis, the Russian collapse and the collapse of the LTCM hedgefund.

Totally lacking in your “Unauthorised” biography is one of the most important periods in recent banking history other than the mere mention of how John Key came through the Asian crisis relatively unscathed and how John Key had to fire hundreds of colleagues earning him the nickname “the Smiling Assassin”.

Whether that is because John Key just fluttered over it while he spoke to you or you choose not to go into the subject it is never the less another gross dereliction of duty on you part.

The Asian crisis 1997 and the collapse of the Russian currency in 1998 were closely connected.
They were both the result of the actions of several hedgefunds. One of them being George Soros’s hedgefund and the other the Long Term Credit Management hedge fund also known as LTCM.

This hedgefund collapsed so spectacularly as a result of speculative Forex and derivatives trading it had to be bailed out by the Federal Reserve of New York in order to protect the entire global system from collapsing. John Key may or may not have been involved in the trading that lead to the collapse of the fund but you picture him as firing hundreds of his colleagues at Merrill Lynch, earning him the endearing nickname of the “Smiling Assassin” but the only time Merrill Lynch was forced to fire that many people was in the aftermath of the LTCM scandal putting John Key right in the middle of yet another major Forex scandal. In fact in 1999 John Key is introduced as the managing director of Debt in 1999 in this article.

How do I know? Because unlike you I did the research and a couple of simple google searches wielded al this information. So once again Eugene you either are bad at your job or you and John Key willingly lied to us, the punters.

3. The role John Key had in the Subprime trade and the real timeline of the Subprime crisis and the subsequent collapse of the global economy.

In what is perhaps either the most blatant show of ignorance on your part or perhaps the most blatant lie you state unequivocally in your “Unauthorised” biography  that the subprime products were only hatched in 2004 and 2005.

That is outrageous.  In fact it’s so outrageous that for this remark alone you should resign.

Why is this outrageous? Because it is common knowledge that house prices started to rise in the late nineties.
Not just in the US but around the world, including New Zealand.

This rise had nothing to do with higher wages, more prosperity or more production. In fact jobs in the entire Western world had been disappearing for years  to China, wages were either stagnant or falling and more and more people had to take on debt to make ends meet.

That alone is a sign of bubble building.

But once again if you had taken the trouble Eugene to google subprime timeline you would have found this interesting Subprime timeline (just one of many) and this little graph telling you that as early as the beginning of 1998 the subprime markets exploded from less than 1% market share to a whopping 14%.

The real subprime timeline

The years 2004 and 2005 was merely the time the bubble started to show it’s first cracks.

And if you had done your job and you would have spend another 5 minutes googling you would have found this graph as well.

A beautiful model for fraud

And to top it off you would have found what enabled the subprime crisis and why it will inevitably collapse our economy together with the entire world’s economy, thanks to scumbags like John Key and his ilk aided and abetted by people like you.

What enabled the subprime crisis were three factors

1. Easy CreditProvided by the Federal Reserve bank of New York and the City of London.
2. The order given by the US Congress to Fanny mae and Freddy mac to give mortgages to every Tom, Dick and Harry and their dog. Yep, the US congress actually started the subprime mortgage selling. I suggest you read the timeline I linked to above.
3. The repeal of the Glass Steagall act, unofficially in 1997 and officially in November 1999.This act put in place in 1933 to prevent Commercial banks from merging with investment banks to stop them from acting like the right side of the second graph had been promoted by Alan Greenspan since 1987 and had cost the Wall street investment bankers between $ 100 to $ 200 million dollars.It would have been inconceivable for John Key not to have known about the 1997 beginning of the subprime housing bubble build up because the repeal of this law was literally like giving the fox the key to the hen house and was greatly anticipated by every single Wall street/ City of London banker because it would strip every single bit of regulation away.In fact it was signed the same month John Key was invited to become one of only four advisors to the Federal Reserve bank of New York.  He represented Merrill Lynch. The others represented Citibank, Lehman Brothers and UBSWahrburg.  All those banks are either gone or in the process of going as a result of the subprime crisis.

These three items alone are enough to expose John Key as at least a liar and as the financial collapse progresses he will perhaps even be called a criminal as the mechanisms of the crisis will be exposed for what they are; The wilful manipulation of the money market by a small group of private banksters.

I said I would only take three issues on which you have been either ignorant or wilfully dishonest and I have shown comprehensively that you could have given us all the relevant information but you didn’t.

I could have added to that the derivative trade which has been building up another bubble about to collapse and in which John Key was a Key operator for Merrill Lynch or the collapse of the Bankers trust bank as a result of fraudulent Derivative trading or the fact that Andrew Krieger traded not in actual currency but in a Derivative called “options” connecting John Key to the Forex derivatives trade in as early as 1987. In fact in 2006 the Chinese government suspended the Forex Derivatives trade on the grounds that it was way to dangerous. The list is simply too long but rest assured Eugene, the information you refused us is out there and available to us.

In ending this open letter to you Eugene, I have to conclude that either you are staggeringly ignorant and therefore undeserving of your job as a journalist for a major newspaper in such a position to be tasked to investigate and write an “Unauthorised” (let’s face it there was nothing Unauthorised about the whole stinking article) biography of the man poised to become the next Prime Minister or you have sold your soul to the Devil and wrote the article as a PR stunt for the man who is now our Prime Minister but who is in fact one of the Arsonists of the perfect firestorm about to hit this poor small Nation. Either way the only honourable thing to do is to resign.

If you sold your soul to the Devil I hope he paid you handsomely because you are going to need every cent in the next 10 years as you find that less and less people can buy the rag you call home.

Evelyn Gilbert

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Tags: Eugene Bingham, John Key, New Zealand Herald

This entry was posted on 17/12/2008 at 12:43 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Edit this entry.

Four blogs for your pleasure!

Today I would like to bring a couple of blogs under you attention. They are American blogs which Chronicle each in their own way and from their own perspective the collapse of empire and the banking system. I visit them every day and one in particular several times a day because the publish, each with huge amounts of links, everyday.

1. Zero hedge: A blog focussed on the international banking and finance world with the occasional detour into other not published in the mainstream events. The writer is obviously very familiar with trading and finance but has a critical and subversive view of this world. He updates frequently and the fact that his moniker is Tyler Durden after the Bratt Pitt character in Fight club explains a lot about how he looks at the finance world.
   
   
2. Washington blog: A blog from an obviously intelligent and passionate person who hides behind the moniker Washington. He is a fierce supporter of the OWS movment and a 911 researcher and truther. His blog is the most wide in scope of the four blogs I’m linking to here and the posts are inundated with valuable links and information.
3. Economic collapse: A blog of someone who is a fierce patriot and somewhat leaning to the right of centre in that he supports the second amendment and has a conservative Christian outlook on things but his posts are again positively cranking with links and he is a star in coming up with incredibly scary statistics. He is also the Author of
4. The end of the American dream: This blog concentrates the most on the crumbling American way of life with once again horrific statistics.

 

The medieval, unaccountable Corporation of London is ripe for protest

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

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

Read more

US Food Stamp Usage Hits New Record

If in the US you haven’t been able to get out of the city you are so screwed!

From Zero hedge

As the European news flow overflow continues, it is useful to occasionally look at how America’s own economy is doing. After all remember that the latest paradigm is that the US will decouple from everyone (as is always foolishly and erroneously assumed whenever the ROW turns lower) and carry the weight of the global economy on its own shoulders. So here is this month’s refresh from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which informs us that in August, a new all time record number of Americans, or 45.8 billion, relied on food stamps for sustenance. So for those who are looking for those up and coming states where the population has decided that slowly but surely work of any kind is an anachronism we suggest you move to Alabama, Delaware, Utah, or Washington: all states that have seen at least a 3% sequential increase in food stamp usage. And, tangentially, confirming that this country’s economy is headed straight to hell and won’t pass go is the latest news from LPS according to which nearly 40% of loans in foreclosure have not made a payment in two years, and 72% have not made a payment in the past 12 month. Bullish for iPad purchases.