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Capitalism Has Devolved Into Looting

Capitalism Has Devolved Into Looting

In the Western World Capitalism Has Devolved Into Looting

…when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed.   –  Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged”

There’s no such thing as markets anymore – only interventions.  –  Chris Powell, co-founder and Treasurer of GATA

Ayn Rand is a pariah among those who believe that government is our benefactor. There are times and conditions when government can be a benefactor of the people. But not in the Western world at the present time. As Michael Hudson and I agree, Western central banks refuse to create money to finance economy recovery. Money is created only for the benefit of the oligarchs’ banks in order that the oligarchs can continue to control the governments.

In the US for the past seven years the Federal Reserve has provided cheap bank reserves for the banks to lend at a markup or to speculate with. Banks are no longer suppliers of capital for productive investments and employment. Instead banks invest in speculation, arbitrage, derivatives, financing corporate takeovers and stock buybacks. The Fed has made it unnecessary for banks to pay for deposits. Instead, the banks get free money and charge consumers with negative interest rates for making deposits. For seven years Americans have, thanks to the utterly corrupt Federal Reserve and US government, been deprived of interest on their savings. In the Western world today, savers are penalized, not rewarded.

In Greece and Europe the banks are the oligarchs’ method of control just as the Federal Reserve is in the US and the Bank of England in the UK and the European Central Bank in the EU. The same in Canada, Australia, and Japan.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

US criminal economics: TPP secret treaty = ‘constitutional republic,’ debt = ‘money’, 500 million+ dead from poverty = ‘necessary.’ Had enough to demand arrests?

US criminal economics: TPP secret treaty = ‘constitutional republic,’ debt = ‘money’, 500 million+ dead from poverty = ‘necessary.’ Had enough to demand arrests?

hat tip: Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Blog

“Psychopaths are unable to form emotional attachments or feel real empathy with others, although they often have disarming or even charming personalities. Psychopaths are very manipulative and can easily gain people’s trust. They learn to mimic emotions, despite their inability to actually feel them, and will appear normal to unsuspecting people… When committing crimes, psychopaths carefully plan out every detail in advance and often have contingency plans in place. Unlike their sociopathic counterparts, psychopathic criminals are cool, calm, and meticulous.” – Psychology Today

The .01% psychopathic oligarch “leaders” (and here) in US government, banking/finance, and corporate media wage war upon the 99.99%  in ~100 crucial areas. Aside from lie-began overt unlawful military Wars of Aggression connected to economic domination with the US starting over 200 such armed attacks since WW2 and war-murdering ~30 million people (with these crimes “covered” by corporate media, let’s consider three central economic policies:

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

TPP: Unconstitutional tribunal for .01% oligarchs to dictate what is ‘fair trade’

TPP: Unconstitutional tribunal for .01% oligarchs to dictate what is ‘fair trade’

“The corporations have bribed the political leaders in every country to sign away their sovereignty and the general welfare of their people to private corporations. Corporations have paid US senators large sums for transferring Congress’ law-making powers to corporations.” – Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary to US Treasury, former editor of the Wall Street Journal

Trans-Pacific-Partnership (TPP) is “secret national security legislation” that President Obama and both parties’ “leaderships” refuse to disclose to the American public, and only visible from WikiLeaks. President Obama attempted “fast track” dictatorial power for Congress to vote for TPP without access to full text or public consideration. “Fast track” violates the US Constitution’s requirement for the Senate to ratify all treaties with 2/3 vote by claiming that 50% is somehow the same (a tie is broken by the VP, so 50% is enough). President Clinton’s justification of “fast track” is here.

TPP is Emperor’s New Clothes’ unconstitutional because it allows a foreign three-person tribunal chosen by the same .01% oligarch powers that created TPP to have power to tax Americans billions of our dollars for claimed “damages” of corporations. These three persons appointed by TPP interests would have dictatorial power to protect corporate claimed “future profits.” From Ellen Brown:

“To date, the highest ISDS award has been for $2.3 billion to Occidental Oil Company against the government of Ecuador over its termination of an oil-concession contract, this although the termination was apparently legal. Still in arbitration is a demand by Vattenfall, a Swedish utility that operates two nuclear plants in Germany, for compensation of €3.7 billion ($4.7 billion) under the ISDS clause of a treaty on energy investments, after the German government decided to shut down its nuclear power industry following the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Shots Fired – Jamie Dimon Questions Elizabeth Warren’s “Understanding of the Global Banking System”

Shots Fired – Jamie Dimon Questions Elizabeth Warren’s “Understanding of the Global Banking System”

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I think the following comments will come back to haunt Jamie Dimon. They represent the perspective of an out of touch, financial oligarch who is so consistently fed bullshit compliments by all those surrounding him, he has no idea how badly this will backfire in the long-run.

What Jamie Dimon doesn’t understand, is that people still hate the big banks. Half a decade into this oligarch theft marketed as an economic recovery, have you ever met a single person who didn’t harbor bad feelings toward the banks and the bailouts? I haven’t.

While Elizabeth Warren herself might not be personally popular across the political spectrum, her message on the banks is. If this message still resonates now, it will only resonate much more in the years ahead when the economy enters its next downturn. At that point, Mr. Dimon will be very sorry he made this comment.

You don’t want to poke Elizabeth Warren in the eye with a stick, and that is exactly what he just did. This was a really stupid move. One that can only be explained away by mindless hubris; something disconnected elites are famous for throughout history.

From Bloomberg:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon took aim at U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a critic of large banks, as he expressed broad concerns about leadership in Washington.

“I don’t know if she fully understands the global banking system,”Dimon, speaking Wednesday at an event in Chicago, said of the Massachusetts Democrat. Still, he said he agrees with some of her concerns about risks.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US fall from virtuous republic to tragic-comic empire described perfectly by Roman historians

US fall from virtuous republic to tragic-comic empire described perfectly by Roman historians

The ancient Greek historian, Polybius, celebrated the Roman republic of ~ 150 BC under its constitution with balance of powers among the Senate, two elected consuls, and the general citizens:

“Such being the power that each part has of hampering the others or co-operating with them, their union is adequate to all emergencies, so that it is impossible to find a better political system than this.”  – The Histories, Book VI, Section V: On the Roman Constitution at its Prime

Americans and people around the world were equally proud of the United States Constitution as “impossible to find a better political system than this.”

About 100 years after Polybius’ account, Rome’s republic had descended into oligarchic competition for power. Contemporary to Julius Caesar, the Roman historian and government insider Sallust blasted the decline of virtue in government:

“To those who had easily endured toils, dangers, and doubtful and difficult circumstances, ease and wealth, the objects of desire to others, became a burden and a trouble. At first the love of money, and then that of power, began to prevail, and these became, as it were, the sources of every evil. For avarice subverted honesty, integrity, and other honorable principles, and, in their stead, inculcated pride, inhumanity, contempt of religion, and general venality. Ambition prompted many to become deceitful; to keep one thing concealed in the breast, and another ready on the tongue; to estimate friendships and enmities, not by their worth, but according to interest; and to carry rather a specious countenance than an honest heart. These vices at first advanced but slowly, and were sometimes restrained by correction; but afterwards, when their infection had spread like a pestilence, the state was entirely changed, and the government, from being the most equitable and praiseworthy, became rapacious and insupportable.” – Conspiracy of Catiline, The Argument

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

CFR Says China Must Be Defeated And TPP Is Essential To That

CFR Says China Must Be Defeated And TPP Is Essential To That

Wall Street’s Council on Foreign Relations has issued a major report, alleging that China must be defeated because it threatens to become a bigger power in the world than the U.S.

This report, which is titled “Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China,” is introduced by Richard Haass, the CFR’s President, who affirms the report’s view that, “no relationship will matter more when it comes to defining the twenty-first century than the one between the United States and China.”

Haass gives this report his personal imprimatur by saying that it “deserves to become an important part of the debate about U.S. foreign policy and the pivotal U.S.-China relationship.” He acknowledges that some people won’t agree with the views it expresses.

The report itself then opens by saying: “Since its founding, the United States has consistently pursued a grand strategy focused on acquiring and maintaining preeminent power over various rivals, first on the North American continent, then in the Western hemisphere, and finally globally.” It praises “the American victory in the Cold War.” It then lavishes praise on America’s imperialistic dominance: “The Department of Defense during the George H.W. Bush administration presciently contended that its ‘strategy must now refocus on precluding the emergence of any potential future global competitor’—thereby consciously pursuing the strategy of primacy that the United States successfully employed to outlast the Soviet Union.”

The rest of the report is likewise concerned with the international dominance of America’s aristocracy or the people who control this country’s international corporations, rather than with the welfare of the public or as the U.S. Constitution described the objective of the American Government: “the general welfare.”

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Noam Chomsky: “The Idea Of A Media Which Does Not Repeat US Propaganda Is Intolerable To American Leaders”

Noam Chomsky: “The Idea Of A Media Which Does Not Repeat US Propaganda Is Intolerable To American Leaders”

Few individuals polarize the public with their opinions, statements and mere presence, like Noam Chomsky. The 86 year old linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator, social justice activist, and anarcho-syndicalist advocate, has strong opinions (and in some cases, entire schools of thought) on everything from philosophy, to sociology, to linguistics, but he is perhaps best known in recent years for his political activism which has led to death threats due to his staunch and far-reaching criticism of US foreign policy (allegedly the Anti-Defamation League “spied on” Chomsky’s appearances).

His broader outlook is a peculiar version of libertarianism (he describes himself as an anacrho-syndicalist), in which he asserts that authority is inherently illegitimate, and that the burden of proof is on those in authority. If this burden can’t be met, the authority in question should be dismantled. Authority for its own sake is inherently unjustified. He contends that there is little moral difference between chattel slavery and renting one’s self to an owner or “wage slavery.” He holds that workers should own and control their workplace.

He is has also repeatedly stated his opposition to ruling elites, among them institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and GATT.

In other words, the present, in which ruling elites (whether the BIS and “Troika) and ubiquitous US intervention in every possible foreign affair (courtesy of a State Department which, as it has now been revealed, had until recently worked on behalf of the highest foreign bidder) determine the fate of the entire world, should provide Chomsky with endless material for contemplation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How America’s Aristocracy Extends Its Global Control

How America’s Aristocracy Extends Its Global Control

As has been well documented even by the BBC, in their 1992 classic documentary about the CIA’s (still-ongoing) Gladio Operation, America’s CIA basically took control of the international racist-fascist (i.e., ideologically nazi) movement after World War II, by protecting and hiring Hitler’s Nazis and their key aristocratic eastern European supporters undercover. The Gladio Operation was just one branch of a broader CIA strategy, developed by Allen Dulles and originally carried out by his protégé James Angleton, to use, for the purposes of America’s aristocracy, nazis’ intense racism, by retargeting it away from Jews and toward Russians, so as to weaken first the Soviet Union, and, then, after the end of that, Russia itself. (U.S. President Barack Obama’s involvement with Ukraine is very much a result of this post-WW-II pro-nazi Dulles-Angleton program.)

There were many other branches of this strategy, one being by the World Bank and IMF to introduce capitalism into the former Soviet states in a manner that would privatize their formerly government-owned assets to aristocrats in the West and in the formerly Soviet nations by means of insider fire-sales which enabled these state-assets to be picked up by cooperating local insiders at non-market super-low prices and thereby have these new “oligarchs” (the local copies there of Western capitalism’s own aristocrats) as being secret agents of the U.S. aristocracy, who would thus be extending the American aristocracy’s control eastward. Mark Ames has succinctly recounted this operation, and David McClintick did the major report on it prior to Ames. 

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘It’s our money’ podcast: be educated on monetary/credit reform or continue looting by oligarchs

‘It’s our money’ podcast: be educated on monetary/credit reform or continue looting by oligarchs

Human beings are looted by asset-hole oligarchs literally by the trillions every year.

These lying sacks of spin are the .01% banksters, and “leaders” of government and corporate media.

Human beings will either continue being looted and lied-to, or earn voices for justice from basic education that includes how to create what we use for money:

Debt-free money is creating money as a positive number, while public credit creates what we use for money as a negative number. Both are useful tools for good-faith experimentation to manage an economy’s money supply.

The following podcast from the Public Banking Institute’s It’s our money includes this basic education required for economic freedom:

http://itsourmoney.podbean.com/e/they-own-you-040815-1428939237/

If the public cannot, or will not, demand control over money then freedom is not possible because the only freedom possible is slavery to those who command money creation as we witness today:

 

The UK Guardian is Earth’s third most-read on-line newspaper. In a revealing article with rare admittance of the central facts, The truth is out: money is just an IOU, and the banks are rolling it in, the author explains what the Bank of England and US Federal Reserve admit (when you press for the truth):

What we use for money is created as debt by private banks.

This system is like adding negative numbers forever. The aggregate debt only gets larger, and will never be repaid because this is what we use for money. Also, as we see today, the interest and debt total become so tragic-comic we can’t get close to affording to pay.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Portrait of the American Oligarchy – The Very Troubling Income and Wealth Trends Since 1989

Portrait of the American Oligarchy – The Very Troubling Income and Wealth Trends Since 1989

One of the primary purposes of Liberty Blitzkrieg is to dispel the myth that America is politically a democracy and economically a free market, and prove that it is in fact a centrally planned oligarchy. If the people were well aware of this and fine with it, that’s one thing, but my contention is that the vast majority of the public is merely buying into the myth. This is why the population is so passive and easily controlled. They simply don’t understand what is happening to them. The proverbial frog slowing boiling to death.

Whenever I note that real median incomes in America haven’t increased for decades, many people have a hard time believing it. Nevertheless, as John Adams famously proclaimed: “facts are stubborn things.” Indeed they are, and an article published today by Bloomberg View provides some disturbingly stubborn facts that must be admitted to and faced. We learn that:

If you worry about the declining fortunes of the U.S. middle class, take heed: It might be worse than you realized.

Tracking the middle class can be difficult, because the group is hard to define. Typically, researchers look at households with incomes or net worth in the middle of the entire population. This approach, though, might provide a falsely rosy picture.

Two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — William Emmons and Bryan Noeth — sought to address this shortcoming by focusing on households’ demographic characteristics, rather than income or wealth. Specifically, they looked at families whose breadwinner was at least 40 years old and had achieved a level of education that would typically allow a middle-class standard of living. Whites and Asians needed exactly a high-school diploma to qualify. For blacks and Hispanics, it took a two-year or four-year college degree — a stark recognition of persistent racial inequality.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Origin of the ‘New Cold War’

The Origin of the ‘New Cold War’

This will be history, replacing myth. So: if at the start it might seem unbelievable, I request the reader — please click onto the sources; and, as you read them, you will (if you have been getting your ‘news’ from the popular mainstream and ‘alternative’ ‘news’ sources) experience the replacement of myth by actual history. The world in our time will come directly alive via the most-reliable sources that exist; and it clearly contradicts, it disproves, the widespread myth that has been projected from the ‘news.’

To start with: the ‘new Cold War,’ against Russia, is something of a misnomer, because it differs from the original version, against the U.S.S.R., in that it’s already a hot war, which started in Ukraine as being the key proxy-state for the American Government’s chief foreign-policy aim, of defeating Russia; and it’s a war that is very bloody, and widely lied-about in both the U.S. and Europe, but that is discussed in Russia as if it were somehow the result of mere errors by Western powers, when in fact all of the Western leaders knew from the get-go that this was intended to be a lynching of Russia by Uncle Sam, and when the EU have been going along with this aim because the U.S. aristocracy supposedly have the interests of European aristocrats in mind and not only their own: it’s ‘the Western Alliance,’ after all.

But it’s not ‘the Western Alliance,’ really. It’s instead a gangland war by aristocrats on the global stage, and it’s threatening to become the hottest war that ever was.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

BREAKING BAD (DEBT) – EPISODE THREE

BREAKING BAD (DEBT) – EPISODE THREE

In Part One of this three part article I laid out the groundwork of how the Federal Reserve is responsible for the excessive level of debt in our society and how it has warped the thinking of the American people, while creating a tremendous level of mal-investment. In Part Two I focused on the Federal Reserve/Federal Government scheme to artificially boost the economy through the issuance of subprime debt to create a false auto boom. In this final episode, I’ll address the disastrous student loan debacle and the dreadful global implications of $200 trillion of debt destroying the lives of citizens around the world.

Getting a PhD in Subprime Debt

“When easy money stopped, buyers couldn’t sell. They couldn’t refinance. First sales slowed, then prices started falling and then the housing bubble burst. Housing prices crashed. We know the rest of the story. We are still mired in the consequences. Can someone please explain to me how what is happening in higher education is any different?This bubble is going to burst.” – Mark Cuban

Now we get to the subprimiest of subprime debt – student loans. Student loans are not officially classified as subprime debt, but let’s compare borrowers. A subprime borrower has a FICO score of 660 or below, has defaulted on previous obligations, and has limited ability to meet monthly living expenses. A student loan borrower doesn’t have a credit score because they have no credit, have no job with which to pay back the loan, and have no ability other than the loan proceeds to meet their monthly living expenses. And in today’s job environment, they are more likely to land a waiter job at TGI Fridays than a job in their major. These loans are nothing more than deep subprime loans made to young people who have little chance of every paying them off, with hundreds of billions in losses being borne by the ever shrinking number of working taxpaying Americans.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

BREAKING BAD (DEBT) – EPISODE TWO

BREAKING BAD (DEBT) – EPISODE TWO

‘If you’re committed enough, you can make any story work. I once told a woman I was Kevin Costner, and it worked because I believed it’ – Saul Goodman – Breaking Bad

“As calamitous as the sub-prime blowup seems, it is only the beginning. The credit bubble spawned abuses throughout the system. Sub-prime lending just happened to be the most egregious of the lot, and thus the first to have the cockroaches scurrying out in plain view. The housing market will collapse. New-home construction will collapse. Consumer pocketbooks will be pinched. The consumer spending binge will be over. The U.S. economy will enter a recession.” – Eric Sprott – 2007

In Part One of this article I provided the background of how our current debt saturated economy got to this point of ludicrousness. The “crazy” bloggers, prophets of doom, and analysts who could do basic math were warning of an impending financial crisis in 2006 and 2007, which would be caused by the issuance of hundreds of billions in subprime slime by the Too Big To Trust Wall Street shysters. Subprime mortgages, auto loans, and credit card lines provided the kindling for the 2008 conflagration.

Under normal circumstances we wouldn’t have seen such irrational, reckless, greedy behavior from Wall Street for another generation. But, Wall Street didn’t have to accept the consequences of their actions. They were bailed out and further enriched by their puppets at the Federal Reserve, the lackey politicians they installed in Washington D.C., and on the backs of honest, hard-working, tax paying Americans. The lesson they learned was they could continue to take excessive, reckless, unregulated risks without concern for losses, downside, or consequences.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

The Rise of the Oligarchs

The Rise of the Oligarchs

Empire examines the rise and role of the new oligarchs and the decline of democracy in the United States and beyond.

Wealth inequality has risen to stratospheric heights. The statistics, the real statistics, sound like fragments spun off from a madman’s dream.

Eighty-five people have as much money as three and a half billion other people. Look at it like this: 85 people = 3,500,000,000 people.

Forbes Magazine, which used to gleefully refer to itself as a “capitalist tool,” creates an annual list of the richest 400 people in the world. Ten years ago, their combined wealth was $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion dollars). Now, after a world wide crash and all sort of bailouts, their combined worth is $2,000,000,000,000. They have doubled their money. How have you done?

Did their money come to them because the magic of the market realised how ultra-special talented they were? Or because of power? Manipulating laws, buying politicians, even taking over governments. Has the power of money in the United States grown so great that democracy is just a charade? A large, frenetic, incredibly expensive one, but still, just play-acting and a dumb show for the public?

While all the real decisions come from a small group of the ultra-wealthy, to some degree very consciously, but to an even larger degree by the sheer weight of their incredible wealth, the Oligarchs.

That much money, it has to be about power.

 

…click on the above link to view the video…

Hillary Clinton Exposed Part 1 – How She Aggressively Lobbied for Mega Corporations as Secretary of State

Hillary Clinton Exposed Part 1 – How She Aggressively Lobbied for Mega Corporations as Secretary of State

That approach, which Mrs. Clinton called “economic statecraft,” emerged in discussions with Robert Hormats, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. investment banker who has worked in Democratic and Republican administrations and became an undersecretary of state. “One of the very first items was, how do we strengthen the role of the State Department in economic policy?” he says.

Early in Mrs. Clinton’s tenure, according to Mr. Hormats, Microsoft’s then Chief Research Officer Craig Mundie asked the State Department to send a ranking official to a fourth annual meeting of U.S. software executives and Chinese government officials about piracy and Internet freedom. Mr. Hormats joined the December 2009 meeting in Beijing.

Mr. Hormats says there was no relation between Microsoft’s donations and the State Department’s participation in the China conference.

Before every overseas trip, says Mr. Hormats, the former undersecretary of state, he helped prepare a list of U.S. corporate interests for Mrs. Clinton to advocate while abroad. 

– From the Wall Street Journal article: Hillary Clinton’s Complex Corporate Ties

If you can’t beat em, mock em. That’s essentially my motto going into the imperial spectacle known as the 2016 American Presidential election. With another Bush and another Clinton likely on the ballot, there’s basically only one candidate running, and I plan on proving this in no uncertain terms over the next couple of years.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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