A Simple Glance at the Geo-Economic Structure

By: Jay Dyer

Last Friday I called in to the Alex Jones Show and spoke with Alex and Bob Chapman about the Group of 30.  The discussion was essentially as follows:  two semesters ago, the head of the economic department at my university gave a lecture on the EU economy and the Euro.  In fact, after a few prodding questions from myself, she related that the EU set-up was similar to our privately owned Federal Reserve system in the US.  I asked her why a system of privately owned banks is in charge of the issuance of currency, and, as most status quo partisans echo, she stated that it was for “economic stability.”

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Joan Veon - October 13, 2008

Transferring wealth through the myth of buying and holding an investment

When I was a college student, I had a gall bladder attack late in the evening and went to the Emergency Room. There a good looking intern became my temporary doctor. Not only did he check me out, but he called in 3 or 4 of his colleagues to also check me out. It was not until 10 years ago, that I realized I had been severely violated in the name of medicine by four young men looking for fun during their shift.

The American people have just been severely violated in the name of the 2008 Credit Crisis. In the arena of investing, the concept of “buying and holding” a security has been gold. The idea being that the “market always comes back.” However, the problem is that you have to wait for the market to come back which may take years and you might break even. Last Friday one of the business channels interviewed a financial expert said that buy and hold was best. How could she even think that when stocks dropped 18% for the week? And the month before, they dropped 20%. Friday, October 10, saw a new historic high and low in intraday market swings totaling over 1000 points. Maybe if we use inflation, it is equal to the October 1987 market crash of 500 points. However, both the market and you and I are in new territory. For those of us who did not live during the Great Depression, this is new.

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The market is worth more than $516 trillion, (£303 trillion), roughly 10 times the value of the entire world’s output: it’s been called the “ticking time-bomb”.

Margareta Pagano and Simon Evan - 12 October 2008

It’s a market in which the lead protagonists – typically aggressive, highly educated, and now wealthy young men – have flourished in the derivatives boom. But it’s a market that is set to come to a crashing halt – the Great Unwind has begun.

Last week the beginning of the end started for many hedge funds with the combination of diving market values and worried investors pulling out their cash for safer climes.

Some of the world’s biggest hedge funds – SAC Capital, Lone Pine and Tiger Global – all revealed they were sitting on double-digit losses this year. September’s falls wiped out any profits made in the rest of the year. Polygon, once a darling of the London hedge fund circuit, last week said it was capping the basic salaries of its managers to £100,000 each. Not bad for the average punter but some way off the tens of millions plundered by these hotshots during the good times. But few will be shedding any tears.
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Lindsay McIntosh - 09 October 2008

IT WAS a day of desperate global action, unprecedented in both scale and cost, intended to stymie the international devastation being wrought by the financial crisis.

As the London stock market steeled itself to open again following days of vicious battering, Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, rose to stake the future of the country and the Cabinet on an audacious £500 billion banking bail-out.

And barely had the City begun to digest the hugely complex and unorthodox scheme when it was sent reeling again by an unscheduled interest rate cut – mirrored across the world – by the Monetary Policy Committee. It was the first such co-ordinated approach since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 – yet another indicator, had one been needed, of the gravity of the situation.

The half percentage point drop was immediately passed on to millions of borrowers, with leading high-street banks cutting their mortgages.

The government’s scheme, a three-part plan which takes in short, medium and long-term measures, was welcomed by business leaders and analysts.

David Kern, adviser to the British Chamber of Commerce, said: “The government has taken a radical step, but it is one we welcome.”

But there was concern a phenomenal amount of taxpayers’ cash was being staked on a last-ditch measure that could fail. The Taxpayers’ Alliance accused ministers of failing to address other options first.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a fresh warning that Britain was on the brink of recession.

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William N. Grigg - October 07, 2008

The October Revolution of 2008 will prove to be at least as consequential as the one that occurred in Russia in 1917.

Beginning immediately after 9-11, George W. Bush and the cabal he represents began the controlled implosion of the hollowed-out shell of our once-sturdy republic. Last week the final phase of that demolition project got underway.

By using monetary inflation as a sapping device, the FED is knocking down the few federalist pillars that, at least in theory, separated the various layers of government. It is also preparing to nationalize key segments of the commercial economy. All of this is being done through the FED’s New Deal era “emergency powers” to extend “credit” to any entity it chooses, whether governmental, commercial, or “public-private partnership.”

The revolution of 1913-1933, which inflicted the Federal Reserve, income tax, and the New Deal apparatus upon the United States, left us with a system Mussolini described as a “corporate state,” more commonly known as Fascism.

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With war raging across the globe in July 1944, ministers from all 44 Allied nations met at the imposing Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to thrash out a set of rules that would govern world finance once Hitler was defeated.

Gordon Rayner - 08 Oct 2008

Knowing that greater international trade would help to prevent future wars, and determined to avoid another Great Depression, the delegates signed the Bretton Woods Agreements, creating the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. It was a big vision, driven by grand historical figures: Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt and the British economist John Maynard Keynes.

But a system that was designed 64 years ago has, not surprisingly, proved ill equipped to deal with the fiendishly complex practices of 21st-century banking that led to the current worldwide crisis.

Neither the IMF, the World Bank nor any other institution has the power to police the global financial system in a way that might have prevented the excessive risk-taking which led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis and, in turn, the credit crunch.

A more recent creation, the G8 group of industrialised nations, looks hopelessly out of date without the emerging economic giants of Brazil, India and China among its ranks. And the “beggar-thy-neighbour” policies of guaranteeing savings that have sprung up in Germany, Greece and Ireland in recent days have shown that even in Europe, co-ordinated economic policy is a myth.

“The current system is in crisis and we have an environment where dog eats dog,” said Bob McKee, of the economic consultancy Independent Strategy. “Electorates will expect more regulation, and politicians will push for it.”

The new Business Secretary, Peter Mandelson, argued last week that new global solutions are needed because “the machinery of global economic governance barely exists”, adding: “It is time for a Bretton Woods for this century.”

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Mike Adams - October 08, 2008

(NaturalNews) In 1942, German intelligence officers rounded up skilled Jewish prisoners and launched Operation Bernhardt, a clever scheme designed to counterfeit hundreds of millions of dollars worth of British Pounds and destroy the British economy by flooding it with counterfeit money. Located in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Operation Bernhardt was, even by modern standards, a runaway success that resulted in the creation of forged bank notes worth 132 million British Pounds.

This “economic warfare” operation resulted in a devastating economic effect on the British economy. You can read the true history of this operation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_…

It is important to note that Operation Bernhardt was an act of war, specifically pursued for the purpose of destroying Britain’s economy by creating so much new money that the value of the money already in circulation would plummet. This was considered a strategic attack, just as effective as carpet-bombing tank factories or mowing down soldiers on the field with German-made MG42 machine guns.

What does all this have to do with the Federal Reserve?

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Patrick Wood - October 6, 2008

When push came to shove, Humpty Dumpty discovered the shortest distance to the cobblestones below: straight down.

Being quite dead, Humpty’s body is stinking up the whole neighborhood. The eyewitnesses call it murder. The coroner, bypassing the eyewitnesses, rules it an accident. The public clamors for taxpayer funds to clean up the mess. Congress passes a bill for superglue to be liberally applied to the broken pieces of shell. The courts finally rule that the eyewitnesses are guilty of hate-speech. Contractors who administrate the reconstruction project get rich.

And so goes the circle of life. Makes no sense, does it?

The global economy, including its stock markets and banking system, is a decaying, dead corpse in process of a massive credit deflation. Until it hits absolute bottom (wherever and whenever that is), no life-support system will help. No government bailout at taxpayer expense will help. No nationalization of body parts (e.g., Fannie, Freddie, AIG) will help.

Nevertheless, let’s analyze the bailout mania that will most certainly one day be declared the largest and most brazen swindle in the history of the world.

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AFP - Oct 6 07:07 AM US/Eastern

World markets suffered massive losses Monday, striking four-year lows, as panic-stricken investors doubted whether a Wall Street bailout package would stem the global financial crisis.

London, Frankfurt and Paris all tumbled more than six percent approaching the half-way mark while a 15-percent dive in Moscow forced a halt to Russian trading.

“We have a seriously weak and fear driven market at our hands,” said Tom Hougaard, chief market strategist at City Index.

“It is anyone’s guess where we will end the day.”

Investors dumped shares after US stock markets had fallen sharply on Friday, despite US congressional approval of a 700-billion-dollar bank bailout.

On Monday, Tokyo ended down 4.25 percent as Hong Kong’s stock market shed 5.0 percent, Seoul tumbled 4.3 percent and Sydney lost 3.3 percent. Shanghai dived 5.23 percent and Mumbai was down 5.58 percent in late afternoon trade.

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Joan Veon - October 6, 2008

Understanding World Events and the Credit Crisis

For many of us, reading history does not provide us with the flavor of life, the uncertainties of the moment and the fears of facing the truth of the situation. The events over the past six weeks and more specifically from August, 2007 have provided us with a myriad of events which leave even the most astute observer speechless. Over the past fourteen years, I have written extensively about a global currency, global tax, global stock exchange, global central bank, and world government. I have stated on many occasions that world government is not coming, it is here. In order to bring in world government, it will have to be through crisis—continuing, constant crises. The solution will be world government, total integration of all the countries of the world.

The remaining piece that needs to be put in place is for the United States to adopt a global regulatory system to merge our banking, insurance, and stock market and commodity industries to that of the other countries of the world. While only a handful of countries like Britain, Canada, Australia, and the Nordic countries have already adopted some type of global regulatory system, it is America’s turn and once America changes, the rest of the countries will follow suit.

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More from gr1m1b

(Via Rense)

F. William Engdahl - September 30, 2008

The unexpected rejection by the US Congress of the Bush Administration financial rescue plan, TARP on September 29 has opened up the spectre for the first time of a 1931-style domino wave of worldwide bank failures. That is already underway across the US banking spectrum with the failure, nationalization or forced liquidation in the past two weeks of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, of the giant Washington Mutual mortgage lender, of the nation’s fourth largest deposit bank, Wachovia. That was on top of a wave of smaller bank failures that began with IndyMac in the spring. For some it is appealing and more simple to grasp the magnitude of these titanic events in the US-centered financial world by assuming it is all part of a pre-planned grand conspiracy by the Money Masters, what in the 1920s in the USA was termed the Money Trust, to control the entire financial world.

As the details of the present crisis reveal, there are huge ideological fault lines making for chaos and a potential meltdown of the Laissez Faire financial system. That present system, which was built on the back of Wall Street financial and banking deregulation since 1987 when Alan Greenspan, a devout follower and close friend of radical individualist Ayn Rand, became Wall Street’s man at the Federal Reserve for almost 19 years, is over now with the failure of the Henry Paulson $700 billion bailout scheme. Governments worldwide now face no alternative but to begin the painful process of putting the financial genie back in the bottle and re-regulating an out-of-control financial system. The failure of the UK Government and the US Government to address that fundamental issue is behind the present crisis of confidence.

A brief look at history

The Great Depression in Germany in 1931 began with a seemingly minor event—the collapse of a bank in Vienna, Creditanstalt, that May. For readers interested in more on the remarkable parallels between that crisis and that of today, I recommend the treatment in my earlier volume, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order.

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Martin Masse - September 29, 2008

Marx’s Proposal Number Five seems to be the leading motivation for those backing the Wall Street bailout

In his Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, Karl Marx proposed 10 measures to be implemented after the proletariat takes power, with the aim of centralizing all instruments of production in the hands of the state. Proposal Number Five was to bring about the “centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.”

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Mike Whitney - Sep 29, 2008

The financial system is blowing up. Don’t listen to the experts; just look at the numbers.

Last week, according to Reuters, “U.S. banks borrowed a record amount from the Federal Reserve nearly $188 billion a day on average, showing the central bank went to extremes to keep the banking system afloat amid the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.”

The Fed opened the various “auction facilities” to create the appearance that insolvent banks were thriving businesses, but they are not. They’re dead; their liabilities exceed their assets. Now the Fed is desperate because the hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in the banks’ vaults have bankrupted the entire system and the Fed’s balance sheet is ballooning by the day. The market for MBS will not bounce back in the foreseeable future and the banks are unable to rollover their short-term debt. Game over.

The Federal Reserve itself is in danger. So, it’s on to Plan B, which is to dump all the toxic sludge on the taxpayer before he realizes that the whole system is cratering and his life is about to change forever. It’s called the Paulson Plan, a $700 billion boondoggle which has already been disparaged by every economist of merit in the country.

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Jake, the Champion of the Constitution -  September 22, 2008

Citigroup and GATA Call for an End to the Suppression of the Gold Market

I want to share some information on gold and a few calculations with you all. First my simple premise in case you have missed it in prior articles.

Fiat currency is a scheme perpetrated by central banks and the tacit (or is it helpless?) permission from their governments. Fiat currency is almost completely worthless and has no intrinsic value. Ultimately (no predictions as to when) electronic and paper fiat money will be worthless. All of the world’s fiat money is actually a form of debt, and it results in never-ending currency debasement, of which one way is expanding the money supply, aka “printing more money,” aka inflation. To make their scheme work, they intervene in the precious metal markets to manipulate the prices of silver and especially gold. By keeping the prices of real honest money suppressed, they try to make their fiat currency look stronger.

It gets quite a bit more complicated with derivatives (especially!), fractional reserve banking, central banking, currency exchange rates, low-cost exploitation of resource-rich regions, politics, and governmental and nongovernmental stock market manipulations but the above is the heart of it.

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