'Since Tolkien considered himself a conservative anarchist, it should come as no surprise that while trying to answer his publisher's questions regarding the symbolism hidden in his magnum opus, he suggested to "...make the Ring into an allegory of our own time… an allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power." One day a great magician, Gandalf the Grey, pays a visit to the village. He is concerned by the fact that one of the hobbits, a certain Mr. Bilbo Baggins, keeps there hidden a precious artifact – a mysterious ring. Forged many years ago by Sauron, the Lord of Darkness, the Ring of Power is one of many rings of power, the one, however, that controls all the others. Only someone so mediocre, so weak, inept, and created seemingly for the sole purpose of minding his own merry business like Frodo Baggins – Bilbo's heir – could, at least to some extent, resist the evil power.'

'The people are catching on. Thus we arrive at the strangest of moments when the world is figuring out that the forecasts of fire, flood and plague were faked, just as they realize the reassurances about the money were faked too. Disaster is coming, but not because of carbon. We’ve been worried about the wrong tipping point. Is it a coincidence? A random convergence of delusions? Not so. It takes one falsity to feed the other. We need a special kind of wealth to worry about bad weather 100 years from now. No one was watching the dollars hard enough... Corruption reigned across the high end of town. Politicians lied, scientists lost data, bankers mispriced risk and sold it to suckers but were bailed out, and public servants served government instead of the public. Science journals forgot what science was, professors broke laws of reason, and virtually everyone in the old media let them get away with it. Indeed the old-media was busy hacking phones for entertainment.'

Gisted/Quoted -- The problem with the idea that men are defective and that women are just better is the basic issue that nobody talks about: that men are raised by women. Women give birth to men; women raise men; and then if men turn out bad, all you get from feminists as an explanation is propaganda about "the patriarchy". There is no greater power disparity – there is no greater victimization – than that which is possible between a mother and a child. Power disparities in society are no more prevalent than the relationship between the mother and the child. That is something which is absolutely unspoken of in society. There is no possibility for society as a whole to look at female violence directly and straight on in the face. Men are raised by women and it's not just women in the home, it's women in the daycares, women in the primary schools. If you want to get to the root of violence and corruption in society, you've got to look at the mothers.'

'IpaidABribe.com is Janaagraha’s unique initiative to tackle corruption by harnessing the collective energy of citizens. You can report on the nature, number, pattern, types, location, frequency and values of actual corrupt acts on this website. Your reports will, perhaps for the first time, provide a snapshot of bribes occurring across your city. We will use them to argue for improving governance systems and procedures, tightening law enforcement and regulation and thereby reduce the scope for corruption in obtaining services from the government. We invite you to register any recent or old bribes you have paid. Please tell us if you resisted a demand for a bribe, or did not have to pay a bribe, because of a new procedure or an honest official who helped you. We do not ask for your name or phone details, so feel free to report on the formats provided.'

'Their stated mission isn't to decide right and wrong, but to clear cases and blast human beings out of their homes with ultimate velocity. They certainly have no incentive to penetrate the profound criminal mysteries of the great American mortgage bubble of the 2000s, perhaps the most complex Ponzi scheme in human history — an epic mountain range of corporate fraud in which Wall Street megabanks conspired first to collect huge numbers of subprime mortgages, then to unload them on unsuspecting third parties like pensions, trade unions and insurance companies (and, ultimately, you and me, as taxpayers) in the guise of AAA-rated investments. Selling lead as gold, shit as Chanel No. 5, was the essence of the booming international fraud scheme that created most all of these now-failing home mortgages.' -- And all because a central bank was price-fixing interest rates to make politicians' promises look vaguely plausible. Symptoms vs Cause. The pointing finger is pointing at "government".

'Dylan Ratigan and the Story Pirates have dumbed down the biggest generational theft in US history to the level where a Sesame Street fan can get it... Or is that a master ES trader with laser precision liquidity withdrawal reflexes? Anyway, it is somewhat sad to witness the transition of America from at least a passably respectable nation to one in which it is made plainly obvious to children, that to succeed in life one must cheat, lie and steal with the best of the the bankers.' -- Video inside.

'When the absurd transmogrified into the lunatic, the system activated the command to self-destruct. The Castle, impregnable from outside, starts collapsing from inside. Fear and apathy have been replaced by rage. Before people only went to demonstrations when the bulldozer was getting near their house. Now it's become quite fashionable to express one's protest and people have started intervening on each other's behalf. That a people gets the government it deserves is an odious lie. At times of great difficulty simple people, who are not damaged by the habit of giving orders don't react in a dog eats dog way, they extend a helping hand. The further a person is away from power, the better he is. What is most interesting is that people working in the public sector are also anti-state in their hearts. If you talk to any policeman or civil servant off the record, you will find levels of resentment, disillusionment and Jacobinism that the classical anarchists could only have dreamed of.'

'American journalist and Pulitzer winner Chris Hedges told RT the United States has developed a new form of corporate totalitarianism.' -- "Obama is a brand. You confuse a brand with an experience, you confuse how you are made to feel with knowledge, you confuse propaganda with ideology. It's not accidental that Advertising Age gave the Obama campaign the marketing award of the year. Take it from the professionals."

Stacy on sovereign debt defaults: "The financial oligarchs were able to use their influence with politicians to transfer their trillions of debt onto the taxpayer. Now those bills are coming due and the taxpayer is slowly starting to learn that they owe quite a lot of money." -- Pointing finger is pointing at 'government'.

'This is One Spectacular Poster of ClimateGate Covering 3 Decades. You have to see this up close to believe it. Look up close and admire the detail while you despair at how long science has been going off the rails. To better appreciate the past and what was exposed by the CRU emails, the Timeline chart consolidates and chronologically organizes the information uncovered and published about the CRU emails by many researchers along with some related contextual events. That the chart exists at all is yet another example of how skilled experts are flocking in to the skeptics’ position and dedicating hours of time pro bono because they are passionately motivated to fight against those who try to deceive us.'

'In India, where corruption (and the bribery that comes along with it) are a big problem, an organization called 5th Pillar has taken to printing zero rupee notes (so far it's printed over one million of them). The basic premise is that when someone is confronted by a corrupt official for a bribe they give them the zero rupee note, allowing them to make a statement without having to say anything at all. -- "Anand believes that the success of the notes lies in the willingness of the people to use them. People are willing to stand up against the practice that has become so commonplace because they are no longer afraid: first, they have nothing to lose, and secondly, they know that this initiative is being backed up by an organization--that is, they are not alone in this fight."' -- The pirates' 'Black Mark'?

'Fear itself; we have a major symbol of corruption standing in front of us. In a working system this symbol would be torn down. Instead the corrupt are defining this symbol at all costs, even in light of public outrage. This points to the importance of this symbol as the center of gravity. Pull down the symbol and the center of gravity, the corruption on the center, will fall. Do we have the ability to force this reform? Will the sacrifice be in the blood of our children.'

'For years, it was hard for many of us to fathom the psychopathic nature of our financial elites, or to expand the meaning of Matt Tabbi’s marvelous description of Goldman Sachs, the great vampire squid. Squid seems a fitting name for the financial cartel that drives what I have traditionally called the Tapeworm. There were some who saw the danger immediately and tried to warn us, like Sir James Goldsmith. There were some, like myself, who tried to prevent the housing bubble and find alternatives to investing our life savings in it. While those efforts did not stop the squid, they certainly made it clear that the squid take down of the planet was, indeed, part of a plan. That’s all documented now.' -- You'll be needing a strong stomach to read the rest.

'It is my strong belief, based on considerable experience with children, that we are born strong, secure, confident and empathetic. It takes a fierce effort to destroy the natural strength of children. [P]arents teach their children [...] nonsense. -- The moment you lie to someone, you become both their slave and their master. You are their slave, because you are terrified of being discovered—and you are their master, because you must control their perceptions. You must destroy their curiosity. You must respond to any approach to your falsehoods with irritation, condemnation and withdrawal. The energizing question ‘why’ becomes your implacable enemy. You must undermine their capacity to reason, to think for themselves. You must overcomplicate the world. And most of all—most of all—you must become the sworn enemy of all principles, even the most innocuous. The only ‘rules’ you can allow are base commandments, such as ‘respect your elders’, ‘love your country’ and so on.'

'The second step is to look at where the funds are coming from, and for sure narcotics today is one of, if not the most important source of revenue. So, I would legalize drugs. I know that this is never going to happen. I sit on so many committees on this issue and I can tell you that the world’s experts on narcotics, every single one, in private will tell you, “Yes, that’s the solution. We legalize drugs, we control the drugs, we tax them and we make sure that those who are being supported by drug revenue don’t get that money anymore.” But, the real issue is the moral issue. Which government is going to tell its citizens that it’s going to legalize drugs because this is the only way to create a safer world? They’ve used the argument that drugs destroy society for so long. This would require a completely different worldview and approach to politics. However, it would cut out a lot of these illegal revenues and therefore a lot of crime.'

'The political situation in the United States has become dire. We have endless corruption in government and crony corporations posing as "capitalists," as they rob people dry. Changes can be made this very day were the government motivated to do so. Can we take this community and meld it into a movement? I refuse to be overrun.' -- BUMP

Neo-liberal financialization as neo-feudalism: Explains how people have been fooled by bankster-infected government and think-tank propaganda into voting against property/land taxes.

'...the moral hazard of rent seeking can be considerable. If "buying" a favorable regulatory environment is cheaper than building more efficient production, a firm will choose the former option, reaping incomes entirely unrelated to any contribution to total wealth or well-being. This results in a sub-optimal allocation of resources — money spent on lobbyists and counter-lobbyists rather than on research and development, improved business practices, employee training, or additional capital goods — which retards economic growth. Claims that a firm is rent-seeking therefore often accompany allegations of government corruption, or the undue influence of special interests. Rent seeking may be initiated by government agents, such agents soliciting bribes or other favors from the individuals or firms that stand to gain from having special economic privileges, which opens up the possibility of exploitation of the consumer.'

'Global warming has monetary elite fingerprints all over it. The signs are always the same: a few "prestigious" players at "prestigious" institutes discover something, or say something. The mainstream media trumpets the findings and then the political establishment takes action amidst cries for speed and haste. There is something deeply and profoundly wrong with the current course of the West, and much of the problems lead to the promotions of the monetary elite. It is extremely profitable to manufacture problems - of any sort - and then to provide solutions. Demographic problems, addiction problems, declining resource problems, food problems, water problems - any problem inevitably demands an equally manufactured solution. The one thing that ordinary people are never supposed to find out is that most of the problems are phony, or at least exaggerated, and then the market itself would take care of them in due course without government action.' -- Crisis, Reaction, Solution. Repeat.

POINTING FINGER IS POINTING... AT GOVERNMENT -- Soros: '"Banks are actually getting hidden subsidies of enormous amounts because of their ability to borrow at effectively zero, and buy 10-year government bonds at 3.5 per cent. So those earnings are not the achievement of risk-takers. These are gifts, hidden gifts, from the Government, so I don't think those monies should be used to pay bonuses. So there's a resentment which I think is justified." -- #Why are banks making such huge profits now? Because markets are active again. Interest rates are at a historic low so banks borrow cheap and lend high. Governments have issued debt, companies have raised capital and got involved in deals again while currency markets have fluctuated. Banks love volatility – that's how they can charge their fat fees.' -- Bonuses are symptoms not the cause! Cut the cancer out at its root: Stop the government/Bank of England from price-fixing money and force the banks to book their losses.

Everyone should! Why? Because it's yet another indication that the government's answer to everything is price-fixing. Why does Wall St get to pay itself massive bonuses? Because of government-sanctioned price-fixing through the Federal Reserve. The simple fact is, traders wouldn't be able to receive massive bonuses without having cheap money (price-fixing) to bet with whilst always being backed by government guaranteed bailouts (price-fixing) when they screw up. Price-fixing never works but enables politicians to pander to the idignant masses who unknowing (because it is so entrenched throughout the so-called 'free market' economy that it's effectively invisible) 'benefit' from some other 'accepted' form of price-fixing scam (minimum wage, mortgage tax-relief, trade tarrifs, etc). Thus the idignant masses end up fighting FOR the very same policy that empoverishes them; that distorts their incentives; that forces their choice. The friend of your enemy is ALWAYS government price-fixing.

Here it is. 'Fall Of The Republic documents how an offshore corporate cartel is bankrupting the US economy by design. Leaders are now declaring that world government has arrived and that the dollar will be replaced by a new global currency.' ### "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." — Voltaire ### “No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” — François de la Rochefoucauld ### "A time will come when the whole world will go mad. And to anyone who is not mad they will say: 'You are mad, for you are not like us.'" — St. Anthony the Great

Documentary released today: 'The people want to know who exactly is to blame for the turmoil we’ve been burdened with, why power hungry oligarchs continue to prosper at the expense of the free world, and what can be done to reverse this course of corruption. While Michael Moore waves a general finger in the direction of “Capitalism”, without ever identifying who that really encompasses, Alex Jones grabs you by the scruff of the neck and and marches you straight into central headquarters of the culprits. Fall Of The Republic exposes the vultures of global corporatism whose continued existence depends wholly upon their ability to trigger and manipulate financial meltdown as and when they choose.' -- We're all 'conspiracy theorists' now.

'When sober-minded individuals begin to regard an enterprise within a nation as "an enemy of the people" you can bet that some serious blood is going to flow. The sense that Wall Street has pulled off a coup d'etat and taken over the machinery of the United States is the most powerful meme out there now, and its power is growing in magnitude every day among all classes of Americans.' -- Oh, boy! But STILL the anger is directed at bonuses. Bonuses?? FFS! They raped you and filmed it, and now you're raging about not getting a cut in the sales of the tape! WAKE UP, America. W-A-K-E-T-H-E-F-U-C-K-U-P

'Students of the Watergate school of journalism were taught one lesson: "Just follow the money." It was Deep Throat's one message to the Washington Post reporters from the depths of his underground car park. I have long followed this maxim, especially since first trying to understand the credit crunch last year. What motivated those in charge of Britain's financial policy? Why were they so obsessed with saving bankers and nobody else?

'The Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants, visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central bank has become a career liability for members of the profession, an investigation by the Huffington Post has found. "The Fed has a lock on the economics world," says Joshua Rosner, a Wall Street analyst who correctly called the meltdown. "There is no room for other views, which I guess is why economists got it so wrong." One critical way the Fed exerts control on academic economists is through its relationships with the field's gatekeepers. For instance, at the Journal of Monetary Economics, a must-publish venue for rising economists, more than half of the editorial board members are currently on the Fed payroll – and the rest have been in the past.' -- Useful idiots are useful

'When government is entrusted with the "redistribution" of wealth, no one should be surprised that the wealth straightaway is used to buy votes, to reward interest groups, and to pay off friends... The situation is even worse when the money is borrowed or printed rather than taxed... the printed money is simply stolen, by creating an artificial price inflation, from those who hold monetary assets (less likely to be the rich, whose assets are varied, than the poor and middle classes). Some people accept this corruption because they are deceived by the moralistic rhetoric that accompanies it (that the "self-interest" of the rich is replaced by the "public spirit" of the politicians); but it is more likely that the rhetoric is waved through more because people are satisfied with their share of the loot. Or, if "programs" exist to end or alleviate poverty, then we can congratulate ourselves on our own benevolence and compassion, as expressed through the "collective" action of government.'

'Documentary on the events that led to the economic collapse of Argentina in 2001 which wiped out the middle class and raised the level of poverty to 57.5%. Central to the collapse was the implementation of neo-liberal policies [DEBT] which enabled the swindle of billions of dollars by foreign banks and corporations. Many of Argentina's assets and resources were shamefully plundered. Its financial system was even used for money laundering by Citibank, Credit Suisse, and JP Morgan. The net result was massive wealth transfers and the impoverishment of society which culminated in many deaths due to oppression and malnutrition.' -- Saucepan time. (Not full version. Continued on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPST2cqgVQs)

$20 in an envelope.

'And so the guns come out blazing. The Clearing House Association, another name for all the banks that were bailed out over the past year with the generous contributions from all of you, dear taxpayers, are now threatening with another instance of complete systemic collapse if Bloomberg's lawsuit is allowed to proceed unchallenged, let alone if any of the "Audit The Fed" measures are actually implemented. In a nutshell - the banks want their complete opacity cake and eat it too, or else, the racket goes, the transparency that will somehow promote massive rumor mongering will again destroy capitalism. In the meantime, the Ken Lewises of the world can continue touting how stable their businesses are based on optimistic future projections, while implicitly, they continue to survive merely thanks to the cash granted them by you, taxpayers.'

'A new class of global actors is playing an increasingly important role in globalization: smugglers, warlords, guerrillas, terrorists, gangs, and bandits of all stripes. Since the end of the Cold War, the global illicit economy has consistently grown at twice the rate of the licit global economy. Increasingly, illicit actors will represent not just an economic but a political force. As globalization hollows out traditional nation-states, what will fill the power vacuum in slums and hinterlands will be informal non-state governance structures. These zones will be globally connected, effectively run by local gangs, religious leaders, or quasi-tribal organizations – organizations that will govern without aspiring to statehood.'

Got CHANGE? 'Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations *are* the government. I'm calling for a national strike, one designed to close the country down for a day. The intent? Real campaign-finance reform and strong restrictions on lobbying. Because nothing will change until we take corporate money out of politics. Nothing will improve until our politicians are once again answerable to their constituents, not the rich and powerful. Let's set a date. No one goes to work. No one buys anything. And if that isn't effective -- if the politicians ignore us -- we do it again. And again. And again. The real war is not between the left and the right. It is between the average American and the ruling class. If we come together on this single issue, everything else will resolve itself. It's time we took back our government from those who would make us their slaves.' -- Pitchfork time

'Subject: A Vast Criminal Enterprise -- The American people understand that when a group of bankers shuffle some paper unproductively and get away with hundreds of billions of dollars in bonuses, yet cause a loss of $40 trillion in global wealth and cause approximately 100 million people to become unemployed worldwide, there is only one word to describe it: criminal. We don't have to argue about whether their actions were technically illegal or violated existing statutes, as in this conspiracy the crooks were writing their own regulations and legislation through their control of the government through lobbying. There has been no criminal investigation to date, so evidence supporting criminality has not been uncovered -- no one is looking for it. Liberals hate to think that Obama, led by Geithner and Summers, is part of a grand cover-up scheme, but that is exactly what is going on. How else can you explain the lack of criminal investigations?' -- CHANGE!!!

Ouch! But like he cares.

'In what some on Wall Street are calling the biggest blockbuster deal in the history of the financial sector, Goldman Sachs confirmed today that it was in talks to acquire the U.S. Department of the Treasury. According to Goldman spokesperson Jonathan Hestron, the merger between Goldman and the Treasury Department is "a good fit" because "they're in the business of printing money and so are we." The Goldman spokesman said that the merger would create efficiencies for both entities: "We already have so many employees and so much money flowing back and forth, this would just streamline things." Mr. Hestron said the only challenge facing Goldman in completing the merger "is trying to figure out which parts of the Treasury Dept. we don't already own."' -- Hehe

'It's all gone wrong. Our belief in everything has been shattered by a series of shock revelations that have shaken our core to its core. You can't move for toppling institutions. Television, the economy, the police, the House of Commons, and, most recently, the press ... all revealed to be jam-packed with liars and bastards and graspers and bullies and turds. And we knew. We knew. But we were deep in denial, like a cuckolded partner who knows the sorry truth but tries their best to ignore it. -- There's been such an immense purge, such an exhaustive ethical audit, no one's come out clean. There's muck round every arse. But if the media's rotten and the government's rotten and the police are rotten and the city's rotten and the church is rotten - if life as we know it really is fundamentally rotten - what the hell is there left to believe in?' -- KEEP CALM AND LOL MOAR

'“Dillinger did not rob poor people,” wrote one correspondent to The Indianapolis Star. “He robbed those who became rich by robbing the poor.” Gorn writes that the current economic crisis helped him understand better why Americans could root for a homicidal bank robber: “As our own day’s story of stupid policies and lax regulations, of greedy moneymen, free-market hucksters, white-collar thieves, and self-serving politicians unfolds, and as banks foreclose on millions of families’ homes, workers lose their jobs, and life savings disappear, it becomes clear why Dillinger’s wild ride so fascinated America during the 1930s.” An outlaw could channel a people’s “sense of rage at the system that had failed them.” -- The passions unleashed by economic inequities are explosive because those inequities violate the fundamental capitalist faith. It’s the bedrock American dream that virtues like hard work and playing by the rules are rewarded with prosperity.'

'There are just four people who control all of the U.S. markets through their use of dangerous and explosive DERIVATIVES. These gambling interventions by the "Four Financial Dictators" have successfully brought the markets back each time... despite the inflated financial realities that existed. The purchase of these gambling DERIVATIVES at a great loss have transformed each market crisis into a rally. By manipulating the markets in this way, they have further inflated the highly overvalued market indexes. Perhaps Americans can now understand why the major U.S. banks, such as JP Morgan, are holding TRILLIONS of gambling derivatives on their books as the PPT group of four use them to rig the markets. Sooner or later, these market "fixes" will no longer hold the bubble from bursting. Thus, we have witnessed the creation and growth of the financial bubble that is on the brink of explosion... and we know who rigs and controls the markets to create this inflated bubble of gambling debt.'

'In Rolling Stone Issue 1082-83, Matt Taibbi takes on "the Wall Street Bubble Mafia" — investment bank Goldman Sachs. The piece has generated controversy, with Goldman Sachs firing back that Taibbi's piece is "an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories" and a spokesman adding, "We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance in being a force for good." Taibbi shot back: "Goldman has its alumni pushing its views from the pulpit of the U.S. Treasury, the NYSE, the World Bank, and numerous other important posts; it also has former players fronting major TV shows. They have the ear of the president if they want it." Here, now, are excerpts from Matt Taibbi's piece and video of Taibbi exploring the key issues.'

Text version here: http://bit.ly/WnRd6 -- "If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain - an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. The bank's unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pump-and-dump scam, manipulating whole economic sectors for years at a time... All that money that you're losing, it's going somewhere, and in both a literal and a figurative sense, Goldman Sachs is where it's going: The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth - pure profit for rich individuals.'

'...these initiatives confirm that the administration fears the "creative destruction" that free markets produce, preferring stability over innovation, competition and change."' -- CHANGE!!! --- 'The president has said on several occasions, including in yesterday's speech, that "I've always been a strong believer in the power of the free market." But his administration's prescriptions tell a different story. In AIG, GM, Chrysler, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac we can see the future that the administration envisions for our economy -- a sclerotic and unchanging structure of big companies working with, protected by, and relying on big government.'

"Many countries may conclude not simply that unfettered capitalism, American-style, has failed but that the very concept of a market economy has failed, and is indeed unworkable under any circumstances. Old-style Communism won’t be back, but a variety of forms of excessive market intervention will return. And these will fail. The poor suffered under market fundamentalism—we had trickle-up economics, not trickle-down economics. But the poor will suffer again under these new regimes, which will not deliver growth. Without growth there cannot be sustainable poverty reduction. There has been no successful economy that has not relied heavily on markets. Poverty feeds disaffection. The inevitable downturns, hard to manage in any case, but especially so by governments brought to power on the basis of rage against American-style capitalism, will lead to more poverty. The con?sequences for global stability and American security are obvious." -- Choose common sense.

'It's all over for Brown and Labour. The abyss awaits. The horse manure bought on expenses is garnish for a decomposing government. The heart of the matter is the economy, and Brown's responsibility for the bubble years. He personally is to blame for Labour's failure to ensure that ordinary people on median incomes and poor people at the bottom received a bigger share in national growth: it turns out that they fell back and only the wealthy prospered. Labour made the rich richer and the poor poorer: growth for the few, not the many. That is a failure so fundamental to Labour's purpose that the party can't go into the next election led by the man responsible. His other failings as leader pale beside this one monumental fact. While he is there, Labour cannot claim "fairness" or "social justice", so what is left to say? What is Labour's offer?' -- Oh yes, the FAILOUT has begun.

'The Bank of England is concerned that the UK's banking system is heading for a third wave of crisis that could snuff out fragile signs of recovery in the economy. On Thursday the Bank surprised the City by announcing that it would pump an extra £50bn of new money into the economy despite recent stockmarket rallies. Bank of England officials are concerned that big banks now supported by the taxpayer, such as Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group, are struggling to increase lending volumes, as they had promised in return for help from the government. Continued weakness at these banks may prevent the increase in lending that ministers are desperate to see, and dash hopes of a pre-election recovery for Labour.' -- FAILOUT time.

'I don’t believe these guys are dumb. I think they’re corrupt. JOAN: Which guys? NAOMI: Summers. Geithner. It may be legal corruption but I still consider it corrupt. Wall Street funded Obama’s campaign. They funded his Inauguration. They paid huge speaking and consulting fees to some of his closest advisers. What I am calling corruption is better understood as “crony capitalism.” JOAN: Why is my perception that Obama was funded by the tiny donations? NAOMI: Because both are true. His campaign was historic in the number of small donations and the grassroots campaigning that brought him to office. But it was also historic in the levels of Wall Street financing. The grassroots movement that brought Obama to power needs to understand that the fight is on, that Wall Street is pushing Obama hard behind the scenes because they feel they have a claim to him. And the appointment of Summers and Geithner were all messages to Wall Street – “Don’t worry, things are not going to change too much.”'

"Panelists discuss the alarming trend of politicians who break their promises to the lobbyists who helped elect them."

*The Classics* -- John Maynard Keynes on useful idiots: "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." (Oh, the irony.) -- Ben Bernanke (Holder of a PhD in How To Create A Great Depression) on the Fed-created Great Depression of the 1930s: "You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again." (NEVAR FORGET) -- Alan Greenspan on a career built of doublethink: "I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well." (Got Gold, Mr Greenspan? http://bit.ly/77ifu) -- Paul Krugman (useful idiot par excellence) on nobel-prized-prat keynesist fundamentalism: "This is really fairly shameful, that we should be wasting precious months as a profession retracing debates that were settled 70 years ago." (Meaning: 'The logic of spending your way out of debt is irrefutable!') -- Listen to these numbskulls at your peril

'Reading stories about Summers and Wall Street you realize the man was intoxicated by the exotic witches’ brew of derivatives and other financial legerdemain that got us into such a fine mess in the first place. Yet here he is, serving as gatekeeper of the information and analysis going to President Obama on the current collapse. We have to wonder, when the President asks, “Larry, who did this to us?” is he going to name names of old friends and benefactors? Knowing he most likely will be looking for his old desk back once he leaves the White House, is he going to be tough on the very system of lucrative largesse that he helped create in his earlier incarnation as a de-regulating Treasury Secretary? (“Larry?” “Yes, Mr. President?” “Who the hell recommended repealing the Glass-Steagall Act back in the 90s and opened the floodgates to all this greed?” “Uh, excuse me, Mr. President, I think Bob Rubin’s calling me.”)' -- CHANGE!

'Obama is the new Dubya. When it comes to finance at least, the parallels are way (way) too striking to ignore. Consider: #1) Obama has discarded the advice of nearly every eminent economist in the world. #2) To go with the advice of "his" team. #3) Because access to him is apparently controlled tightly by Summers and Geithner. #4) So Obama is bubbled from the growing disbelief at his lack of economic literacy. #5) A plan that is likely to result in massive looting is blindly sailing ahead.

'America is devolving into a third-world nation. And if we do not immediately halt our elite’s rapacious looting of the public treasury we will be left with trillions in debts, which can never be repaid, and widespread human misery which we will be helpless to ameliorate. Our anemic democracy will be replaced with a robust national police state. The elite will withdraw into heavily guarded gated communities where they will have access to security, goods and services that cannot be afforded by the rest of us. Tens of millions of people, brutally controlled, will live in perpetual poverty. This is the inevitable result of unchecked corporate capitalism. The stimulus and bailout plans are not about saving us. They are about saving them. We can resist, which means street protests, disruptions of the system and demonstrations, or become serfs.' -- Grim (UK too)

'When in government, they ensure that the laws and regulations are written to redound directly to the benefit of a handful of Wall St. firms, literally abolishing all safeguards and allowing them to pillage and steal. Then, when out of government, they return to those very firms and collect millions upon millions of dollars, profits made possible by the laws and regulations they implemented when in government. Then, when their party returns to power, they return back to government, where they continue to use their influence to ensure that the oligarchical circle that rewards them so massively is protected and advanced. This corruption is so tawdry and transparent -- and it has fueled and continues to fuel a fraud so enormous and destructive as to be unprecedented in both size and audacity -- that it is mystifying that it is not provoking more mass public rage.'

'#WILLIAM K. BLACK: Fraud is deceit. And the essence of fraud is, "I create trust in you, and then I betray that trust, and get you to give me something of value." And as a result, there's no more effective acid against trust than fraud, especially fraud by top elites, and that's what we have.' -- '#WILLIAM K. BLACK: I don't know whether we've lost our capability of outrage. Or whether the cover up has been so successful that people just don't have the facts to react to it.' -- '#BILL MOYERS: So, you're saying that people in power, political power, and financial power, act in concert when their own behinds are in the ringer, right? #WILLIAM K. BLACK: That's right. And it's particularly a crisis that brings this out, because then the class of the banker says, "You've got to keep the information away from the public or everything will collapse. If they understand how bad it is, they'll run for the exits."'

'David Shuster talks to Simon Johnson on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. about Wall Street's influence over the politicians in Washington DC.'

<instance>'... these days America is looking like the Bernie Madoff of economies: for many years it was held in respect, even awe, but it turns out to have been a fraud all along.'</instance> -- A rare instance of this guy saying something right.

'What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a “partnership” in which one partner robs the other. And such partnerships — with the private sector in control — have perverse incentives, worse even than the ones that got us into the mess. So what is the appeal of a proposal like this? Perhaps it’s the kind of Rube Goldberg device that Wall Street loves — clever, complex and nontransparent, allowing huge transfers of wealth to the financial markets. It has allowed the administration to avoid going back to Congress to ask for the money needed to fix our banks, and it provided a way to avoid nationalization.'

'There is also the worry that Treasury is creating a new set of problems by concentrating these sold-off toxic securities into funds run by few entities. If this program is a roaring success, Treasury is guaranteeing that a select group of hand-picked firms are set to reap enormous profits, via a program that was largely underwritten by taxpayers. As it is, smaller players can now only take part in this program if they agree to "buy" into the funds run by one of the exclusive managers. So not only is the government going to be anointing a favored few to invest in these assets. It is also giving those favored few the opportunity to collect fees and profit-sharing from anyone else that wants to go in with them. In the wake of the AIG bonfire, Mr. Geithner is tempting another outcry.'

'Meet the bankers and brokers responsible for the financial crisis - and the officials who let them get away with it -- #The Arsonist: JOE CASSANO. WAS: Chief of AIG Financial Products (2001-2008) WHAT HE DID: Blew a $500 billion hole in fabric of the universe by placing massive bet on the bubble economy with money he didn't have. WORST MOVE: In August 2007 told investors his CDS deals could not lose even "$1"; lost $352 million that quarter. NOW: Enjoying his $280 million in earnings.' -- Check the illustrations.

Quoting WaPo: 'The president held himself up as an example, saying that he had not yet renovated the Oval Office and was still using George W. Bush's furniture, even noting the stains on the carpet. He urged the banks to show comparable "constraint and responsibility," adding that the nation had undergone a cultural shift.' -- 'So let me get this straight. Banking elite, and other government insiders, defrauded savings accounts, pension funds, charitable funds and municipal funds here and around the globe by trading in worthless financial instruments; they manipulated markets and destroyed legitimate businesses along the way; and THEN, when that wasn't enough, they plundered the public purse in the chaos and panic surrounding the crash that they themselves caused. And the President asks them to kindly refrain from buying new carpet? President Obama. Step away from the Goldman Sachs banker and smell the Revolution brewing! People are angry. "Squeeze" the oligarchs. My suggestion: RICO'

"With sweeping reforms coming, the Wall Street-Washington connection may be more important than ever, and political connections may be the new currency for deal makers. Below is a matrix of Wall Street chiefs and private-equity bosses, as well as their personal contributions to politicians in 2007 and 2008, as recorded by the Center for Responsive Politics. The list, which gives politicians’ titles at the time, also illustrates the political action committee money given by each chief’s firm and its employees." -- See map

"The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time. -- Squeezing the oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice among emerging-market governments. Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk—at least until the riots grow too large."

'Geithner has just written a put option. Will the government sell you a put option? Nope, you're not rich enough. Only hedge funds are eligible. It is a transfer of wealth from you...to the guys that need it least. That's not economic democracy. It's economic feudalism: the heart of a new cold war.'

"The probable outcome of the Geithner plan is going to make today's crisis look like a zit on the face of the Elephant Man. The Geithner plan is the most radical - and radically toxic - cure for a financial disease in recent history. From an organizational point of view, it is nothing short of revolution: a financial coup d'etat. The Geithnerconomy is a kind of financial Frankenstein: run by hedge funds, leveraged by the public, whose interests overlap by only 20%. The problem of toxic incentives hasn't gone away: in fact, the Geithner plan institutionalizes and explodes it, like a biological weapon infecting an entire country. The result of the financial coup d'etat is a Great Divergence: we we have two economies running in parallel: capitalism for the poor, and socialism for the rich. The former essentially subsidizes the latter endlessly and perpetually." -- Is. This. Real?

"In 1999, it was rumored that investment bank Goldman Sachs had a 1,000 ton gold short position in the markets. However, much to the shock of Goldman Sachs and the central bankers, in 1999 gold stopped falling; and, because Goldman Sachs’ short position was so large, Goldman possibly could suffer catastrophic losses. This is when England’s then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, on May 8, 1999 announced England would sell over 50% of its gold reserves, 415 tons of the most precious metal on earth at the very bottom of the market. The decision to sell England’s gold thereby saved Goldman Sachs and insured the political future of Gordon Brown. Goldman Sachs’ is still in business and Gordon Brown is now the Prime Minister of England. Selling a nation’s gold to save the bankers’ parasitic system is now common practice as the banker’s system continues to collapse and gold continues to rise."

"People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations. ... what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers." -- Casino Gulag (Max Keiser). Includes a lucid summary of the AIG/Goldman bailout/extortion scheme and of the Federal Reserve's belligerent autonomy.

"... there will be no incentive for banks to act responsibly now or in the future if a mega-insurer is setting the stage for adverse mega-selection. And that's why AIG *must* fail. If a mega-insurer that isn't the government exists, what happens? Mega-looting. Let's take the argument further. The government will pick up the pieces after bankers loot banks. Yet, bankers are constrained in their ability to loot by the amount of deposits they can take in directly. But here's a big, fat wrinkle. If there's a mega-insurer around willing to explicitly insure them before they go bust — well, then the sky's the limit. Every bank can and will lend to and leverage every other bank, amplifying how much loot each takes in. Sound familiar? It should: it's the story of the last decade. So without letting AIG fail, mega-looting is wired into the DNA of the banking sector. Bailing out AIG's looters is worse than crony capitalism — it's crony socialism."

"The AIG bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already. The appearance that this was all an inside job is overwhelming. AIG was nothing more than a conduit for huge capital flows to the same old suspects, with no reason or explanation." -- Pure theft.

"This is the sound of the other shoe dropping; it’s what happens when the chickens come home to roost; it’s justice, equilibrium reasserting itself, and ultimately a good thing. The thing that is dying—the corporatized model of commerce—has not, nor has it ever been, supportive of the real economy. It wasn’t meant to be. We do not live in an economy, we live in a Ponzi scheme. Using future tax dollars to give banks more money to lend out at interest is robbing from the poor to pay the rich to rob from the poor. The current financial crisis is the best opportunity we have had in a very long time for a bloodless revolution against the faceless fascism under which we have been living, unaware, for much too long. Let us seize the day." -- Brilliant explanatory rant. Recommended.

"Some oligarchs are so desperate that a group of metal executives made a pilgrimage to the Kremlin in January to make what once would have been an unthinkable proposal. Meeting with President Dmitri A. Medvedev, they proposed merging their assets, which include some of Russia’s largest mines and factories, into a state-controlled conglomerate. In exchange, the government would refinance billions in Western bank debt. In other words, they were voluntarily proposing to reverse the contentious loans-for-shares privatizations that birthed the oligarchs in the mid-1990s." -- Well, well, welly-well, then.

"The Prime Minister believes his trip to meet U.S. president Barack Obama in Washington has paved the way for an international code to prevent dangerous risk-taking in the financial sector. Mr Brown also hopes to strike agreement on an end to tax havens, with countries who refuse to cooperate potentially being added to an international 'blacklist'." -- Morons.

Using the loophole it had learned during Bear Stearns, the Fed set up two new companies: Maiden Lane II and Maiden Lane III. Two dealt with the secured lending and Three the shitty credit default swaps. The Fed lent each Maiden Lane $20 billion and $25 billion and then Maiden Lane paid off the investors that had either lent AIG the money to buy the shitty mortgage backed securities (ML II) and those who had the shitty mortgages and the corresponding insurance (ML III). To avoid booking a loss on the Fed's balance sheet, because the Fed had some legal problems if either of these Maiden Lanes lost money, and because of a reporting requirement that Dodd had put into TARP which actually required the Fed to report to the Congress and the public about the cost to taxpayers from ML I, the Fed did some creative accounting. They still paid all of the investors off at full value (par), so that they didn't lose anything. But they booked the loss on AIG's balance sheet and kept Maiden Lane clean.

"Max was on Radio Five Live this morning to talk about the new UK bank bill. The UK gov’t is now allowed to bailout banks in secret, wouldn’t have to tell the taxpayer whose money is bailing out said banks. Nor presumably would insider trading then be exposed as the gov’t action is now state secret?"

"Keynesian theory of government borrowing and spending is simply absurd. Essentially, under the theory, building something with absolutely no value is a good thing, as it increases economic activity. It is related to the theory that smashing a shop window is a good thing, as this also creates activity. Another article points out how prevalent window smashing view is, and how utterly silly it is. Such thinking would see an economy in which we would build a new skyscraper, knock it down the day after it was built, in order to build it again. The fact that nobody might want to live in, or hire office space in the skyscraper is irrelevant, as it will create economic activity. Economic activity is 'good' for the economy. Nobody wants the skyscraper. Why on earth build it? It is literally flushing all of that labour and material down the drain. It moves resources into quite literally pointless activity." -- Another thorough debunking.

'What's going on? Normally, we expect society to progress, amassing deeper scientific understanding and basic facts every year. Knowledge only increases, right? Robert Proctor doesn't think so. A historian of science at Stanford, Proctor points out that when it comes to many contentious subjects, our usual relationship to information is reversed: Ignorance increases. He has developed a word inspired by this trend: agnotology. Derived from the Greek root agnosis, it is "the study of culturally constructed ignorance." As Proctor argues, when society doesn't know something, it's often because special interests work hard to create confusion. "People always assume that if someone doesn't know something, it's because they haven't paid attention or haven't yet figured it out," Proctor says. "But ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth—or drowning it out—or trying to make it so confusing that people stop caring about what's true and what's not." -- *covers ears*

Gordon Brown: "We must secure the widest possible transparency and the necessary renewal of trust in the banking system. That is an essential element of rebuilding the global financial system. It will also require us to take action on impaired assets in the banking system. It will mean that we will have to have new standards of surveillance and supervision for global financial institutions." -- Comrades, our plan proceeds unimpeded.

"Sources said that a bad bank would have to take on about £200 billion of toxic assets. That would take the Government's total commitment to solving the banking crisis to almost £1 trillion in taxpayers' money that has either been spent or pledged. That equates to about £33,000 per taxpayer. The total sum is equivalent to more than two-thirds of Britain's annual GDP of £1.4 trillion. As well as creating a bad bank, the Government is planning to use Northern Rock as a "good bank" which can dramatically increase lending to individuals and businesses" -- Bank of Peter, Bank of Paul. -- "Neither [Barclays nor HSBC] took cash from the Government as part of the October bail-out... However, it is believed that they will be forced to join the bad bank so that the entire banking system can be shown to be purged of problematic investments. The Government will keep the toxic assets in the bad bank and, when the economy improves, will hope to sell them off over time." -- Fraud.

'...the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs... and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism. The current economic strategy is right out of "Atlas Shrugged": The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. With each successive bailout to "calm the markets," another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as "Atlas" grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate "windfalls."'

"A prosecutor said Minerva - who was rumored to be a retired financial market worker - is in fact a 30-year-old jobless man who only learned about foreign exchange markets through self-education." -- Because nobody can learn things for themselves; nobody can have an opinion without a university certificate to back it up. FFS!

"It bears pointing out that most of us would prefer to remain blissfully unaware of any and all such arguments and notions, perhaps choosing to concern ourselves with topics less likely to depress our libido. Awareness of topics of global import is certainly not compulsory, and may not even be beneficial. Why worry about disasters we can do nothing to avert? Why not just enjoy our day in the sun, come what may? Also, large groups of people can be dangerous when panicked, and so I do not wish to panic them. As for the few of us who are concerned, my message to you is a cheerful one, because I believe that you can still exercise some measure of control over your destiny. So, if you want some help thinking things through with a positive attitude, read on." -- ...

"Interest rates around the world are going to zero, including the UK, so anyone with savings is not getting any kind of return on those savings. The central banks are hoping that people speculate more with their money and lose, which puts them at the mercy of the state even more so than they are now in what I call this new gulag-casino state of neofeudalism." -- "The mainstream media colludes with the magic, misdirection, mischief and mayhem and money laundering. CNBC is the pretty lady standing next to the magician who misdirects the audience and it's going to continue to be that way because human nature never changes. This entire generation could get wiped out, but the next generation will not have learned a single thing."

"I suspect, that the Bank of England is planning to print money, and the same reason why they changed the law in the banking in an Act of this year as follows: ### 235 Weekly return, Section 6 of the Bank Charter Act 1844 (Bank to produce weekly account) shall cease to have effect. #### Essentially, it now possible for the Bank of England to print money and not tell anyone about it. I believe that what we are witnessing is an appalling conspiracy. I believe that the government is planning to use printed money to finance the banking system, and as a quid pro quo, the banking system will finance the government borrowing with the printed money. The repeal of the provision of the 1844 Act is an attempt to cover up the actions of the government. If I am right, we do indeed have a conspiracy." -- !!!