Financial Crisis

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King: World Facing Worst Financial Crisis In History – More QE Justified!

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NOTHING HAS CHANGED …

… except that the situation is getting much, much worse.

Related info:

– Elite Puppet Central Banksters To Bailout Elite Puppet Banksters Worldwide

Quantitative easing =  printing money = creating money out of thin air = increasing the money supply = inflation = hidden tax on monetary assets = theft!

Deficit spending and quantitative easing are policies designed to destroy the middle class and the poor and to benefit the elitists.

“When a country embarks on deficit financing and inflationism (Quantitative easing) you wipe out the middle class and wealth is transferred from the middle class and the poor to the rich.”
– Ron Paul

“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. … This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”
– Alan Greenspan

“By a continuing process of inflation (Quantitative easing), governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
– John Maynard Keynes

‘The Mervy King’ ‘nuked’ the UK with quantitative easing before:

– Bank of England extends quantitative easing to £200 billion (Guardian)

Expect more ‘fallout’ like this, because he will do it again:

– UK: Shock Rise In Unemployment – Inflation Hits 4 Percent, Double The Government’s Target

– UK: Why Our Purchasing Power Is Set To Suffer The Biggest Squeeze Since 1870

And yes, the central banksters know what they are doing:

– On Mervyn King’s Apology That Central Banks Are Destroying The Middle Class’ Standard Of Living

Just exchange the Fed with the BoE and ‘THE BEN BERNANK’ with ‘THE MERVY KING’ and watch this:

– Quantitative Easing Explained

Got physical gold and silver?

Prepare for collapse.

This is the ‘Greatest Depression’.


– World facing worst financial crisis in history, Bank of England Governor says (Telegraph, Oct. 6, 2011):

Sir Mervyn King was speaking after the decision by the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee to put £75billion of newly created money into the economy in a desperate effort to stave off a new credit crisis and a UK recession.

Economists said the Bank’s decision to resume its quantitative easing [QE], or asset purchase programme, showed it was increasingly fearful for the economy, and predicted more such moves ahead.

Sir Mervyn said the Bank had been driven by growing signs of a global economic disaster.

“This is the most serious financial crisis we’ve seen, at least since the 1930s, if not ever. We’re having to deal with very unusual circumstances, but to act calmly to this and to do the right thing.”

Read moreBank of England Governor Mervyn King: World Facing Worst Financial Crisis In History – More QE Justified!

Full-Blown Civil War Erupts On Wall Street: As Reality Finally Hits The Financial Elite, They Start Turning On Each Other

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Recommended ‘extensive roundup’ here:

– Full-Blown Civil War Erupts On Wall Street: As Reality Finally Hits The Financial Elite, They Start Turning On Each Other (AmpedStatus, Sep 3, 2011):

Finally, after trillions in fraudulent activity, trillions in bailouts, trillions in printed money, billions in political bribing and billions in bonuses, the criminal cartel members on Wall Street are beginning to get what they deserve. As the Eurozone is coming apart at the seams and as the US economy grinds to a halt, the financial elite are starting to turn on each other. The lawsuits are piling up fast. Here’s an extensive roundup:

…

Matt Taibbi: Obama Goes All Out For Dirty Banker Deal (Rolling Stone)

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Obama bin Bush: Mission accomplished!

– Obama Goes All Out For Dirty Banker Deal (Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, August 24, 2011):

A power play is underway in the foreclosure arena, according to the New York Times.

On the one side is Eric Schneiderman, the New York Attorney General, who is conducting his own investigation into the era of securitizations – the practice of chopping up assets like mortgages and converting them into saleable securities – that led up to the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

On the other side is the Obama administration, the banks, and all the other state attorneys general.

This second camp has cooked up a deal that would allow the banks to walk away with just a seriously discounted fine from a generation of fraud that led to millions of people losing their homes.

The idea behind this federally-guided “settlement” is to concentrate and centralize all the legal exposure accrued by this generation of grotesque banker corruption in one place, put one single price tag on it that everyone can live with, and then stuff the details into a titanium canister before shooting it into deep space.

Read moreMatt Taibbi: Obama Goes All Out For Dirty Banker Deal (Rolling Stone)

Joint Statement From Merkel And Sarkozy On Global Financial Crisis

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– Joint Statement From Merkel And Sarkozy On Global Financial Crisis (ZeroHedge, Aug 7, 2011):

Below is the full text of the joint French-German statement attempting to prevent another European market collapse. Next up are comparable statements from the ECB and from theG7. We expect many more before the night is out.

Following is the full text of a joint statement issued on Sunday by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy on measures to tackle the euro zone debt crisis.

President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel reiterate their commitment to fully implement the decisions taken by the heads of state and government of the euro area and the EU institutions on July 21st 2011.

In particular, they stress the importance that parliamentary approval will be obtained swiftly by the end of September in their two countries.

They welcome the recent measures announced by Italy and Spain with regard to faster fiscal consolidation and improved competitiveness. Especially the Italian authorities’ goal to achieve a balanced budget a year earlier than previously envisaged is of fundamental importance. They stress that complete and speedy implementation of the announced measures is key to restore market confidence.

As decided on July 21st, the effectiveness of the EFSF will be improved and its flexibility increased linked to appropriate conditionality, in particular through the following instruments: precautionary program, finance recapitalization of financial institutions and to intervene in secondary markets on the basis of an ECB analysis recognizing the existence of exceptional financial market circumstances and risks to financial stability and on the basis of a decision by mutual agreement of the member states, in order to avoid contagion.

Jim Rogers on CNBC: ‘US Is Nearing Even Worse Financial Crisis’ (Video)

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– ‘US Is Nearing Even Worse Financial Crisis: Jim Rogers (CNBC, June 8 2011):

The U.S. is approaching a financial crisis worse than 2008, Jim Rogers, chief executive, Rogers Holdings, warned CNBC Wednesday.

“The debts that are in this country are skyrocketing,” he said. “In the last three years the government has spent staggering amounts of money and the Federal Reserve is taking on staggering amounts of debt.

“When the problems arise next time…what are they going to do? They can’t quadruple the debt again. They cannot print that much more money. It’s gonna be worse the next time around.”

The well-known investor believes the government won’t shut down in August if agreement isn’t reached on raising the debt ceiling, but he did say “draconian cuts” are needed in taxes and spending, especially military spending.

“We’ve got troops in 150 countries around the world. They’re not doing us any good, they’re making enemies. They’re costing us a fortune,” he said.

Rogers said he is “not long anything in the U.S.” and short on American tech stocks. He owns Chinese stocks as well as commodities and would love the world price of silver and gold to come down so he could “pick up the phone and buy more.”

Read moreJim Rogers on CNBC: ‘US Is Nearing Even Worse Financial Crisis’ (Video)

Mark Mobius: Another Financial Crisis Inevitable – Total Value Of Derivatives Exceeds World GDP By Factor 10

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– Another Crisis ‘Around The Corner’: Mobius (Bloomberg, May 30, 2011):

Mark Mobius, executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management’s emerging markets group, said another financial crisis is inevitable because the causes of the previous one haven’t been resolved.

“There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis,” Mobius said at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo today in response to a question about price swings. “Are the derivatives regulated? No. Are you still getting growth in derivatives? Yes.”

The total value of derivatives in the world exceeds total global gross domestic product by a factor of 10, said Mobius, who oversees more than $50 billion. With that volume of bets in different directions, volatility and equity market crises will occur, he said.

Read moreMark Mobius: Another Financial Crisis Inevitable – Total Value Of Derivatives Exceeds World GDP By Factor 10

How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis

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Don’t blame American appetites, rising oil prices, or genetically modified crops for rising food prices. Wall Street’s at fault for the spiraling cost of food.



Demand and supply certainly matter. But there’s another reason why food across the world has become so expensive: Wall Street greed.

It took the brilliant minds of Goldman Sachs to realize the simple truth that nothing is more valuable than our daily bread. And where there’s value, there’s money to be made. In 1991, Goldman bankers, led by their prescient president Gary Cohn, came up with a new kind of investment product, a derivative that tracked 24 raw materials, from precious metals and energy to coffee, cocoa, cattle, corn, hogs, soy, and wheat. They weighted the investment value of each element, blended and commingled the parts into sums, then reduced what had been a complicated collection of real things into a mathematical formula that could be expressed as a single manifestation, to be known henceforth as the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI).

Read moreHow Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis

Paul Craig Roberts: The Perfidy Of Government How We Lost Our Economy, The Constitution And Our Civil Liberties

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Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

paul-craig-roberts

This essay is about three recent books that explain how we lost our economy, the Constitution and our civil liberties, and how peace lost out to war.

Matt Taibbi is the best–certainly the most entertaining–financial/political reporter in the country. There is no better book than Griftopia (2010) to which to turn to understand how stupidity, greed, and criminality, spread evenly among policymakers and Wall Street, created the financial crisis that has left Americans overburdened with both private and public debt. Taibbi walks the reader through the fraudulent financial instruments that littered the American, British, and European financial communities with toxic waste. He has figured it all out, and what in other hands might be an arcane account for MBAs is in Taibbi’s hands a highly readable and entertaining story.


Amazon.com: Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

Amazon.de: Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

For the first 65 pages Taibbi entertains the reader with the inability of the public and politicians to focus on any reality. The financial story begins on page 65 with Fed chairman Alan Greenspan undermining the Glass-Steagall Act leading to its repeal by three political stooges, Gramm-Leach-Bliley. This set the stage for the banksters to leverage debt upon debt until the house of cards collapsed. When Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, attempted to do her regulatory job and regulate derivatives, the Federal Reserve, Treasury, and Securities and Exchange Commission got her bounced out of office. To make certain that no other regulator could protect the financial system and its participants from what was coming, Congress deregulated the derivatives markets by passing the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.

Read morePaul Craig Roberts: The Perfidy Of Government How We Lost Our Economy, The Constitution And Our Civil Liberties

The Guardian on ‘Inside Job’: How Bankers Caused The Financial Crisis

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– INSIDE JOB (Documentary – Official Trailer in HD):

Amazon.com:
–Inside Job
– Inside Job [Blu-ray]

Only now does the Guardian report about this documentary. Just in time before the next crisis: The Greatest Depression.

See also:

– Former Governor Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory: Wall Street

– Former Assistant Secretary of Housing Catherine Austin Fitts: The Looting Of America

The film Inside Job brilliantly exposes the corruption in US banking that led to the 2008 crash. We ask four bankers for their verdict on this damning indictment of their world

Peter Bradshaw reviews Inside Job

An aerial view of Wall Street, the heart of the global financial meltdown. Photograph: Cameron Davidson

When Michael Moore made his debut feature, Roger and Me, he set about vilifying the boss of General Motors, the now deceased Roger B Smith, for destroying his home town of Flint, Michigan. Charles Ferguson’s film Inside Job attempts to blame a wider cast list for the banking crash of 2008 and explains why so little has been done to reform the financial world or bring criminal prosecutions against the main protagonists.

His villainous lineup includes bankers, politicians (many of whom were previously bankers), regulators, the credit ratings agencies and academics. When Glenn Hubbard, George Bush’s chief economic adviser and dean of Columbia Business School, is shown as a partisan advocate of deregulation, we have one of the movie’s punch-the-air moments. During the interview, Hubbard, who denies he was corrupted by his paid-for relationships with government, angrily barks: “You’ve got five minutes, mister. Give it your best shot.”

The spotlight has largely bypassed academics in the UK. There are plenty of economists who believed the banks understood what they were doing and supported deregulation. Whether they took large slugs of cash for writing poorly researched, cheerleading reports on the economic miracle in Iceland (pre-crash), as former US central banker Frederic Mishkin is found doing, is less clear. Over here, the relationship between academia and business appears to be more arm’s length, though London Business School dean Sir Andrew Likierman sits on the Barclays board, while Howard Davies, who argued for light-touch regulation while head of the Financial Services Authority, has become director of the London School of Economics. The UK’s chief villian, however, is probably the disgraced, but largely unpunished, banker Sir Fred Goodwin, the former boss of Royal Bank of Scotland, once the fifth-largest bank in the world.

In Inside Job, the name that keeps cropping up is Larry Summers, a friend of President Bill Clinton and more recently Barack Obama. Summers exemplifies the links between cheerleaders in academia, Wall Street, supine regulators and an ignorant Capitol Hill that Ferguson stresses were at the root of the problem. It helps that Summers looks like a mafia boss, but the difficulties in making the case against him are shown by the need to explain financial products like credit default swaps and how securitisation was used by banks to increase their borrowing.

Read moreThe Guardian on ‘Inside Job’: How Bankers Caused The Financial Crisis

Former CIA Agent Reveals Camp Stanley Horror

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Washington: In many ways, the personal injury lawsuit looked routine: In late 2001, a government employee and his family sued the agency he worked for, saying it had placed them in a mold-contaminated home that made them sick and required nearly all their possessions to be destroyed.

But this was no ordinary case. The employee, Kevin M. Shipp, was a veteran Central Intelligence Agency officer. His home was at Camp Stanley, an Army weapons depot just north of San Antonio, in an area where the drinking water was polluted with toxic chemicals. The post includes a secret C.I.A. facility.

Declaring that its need to protect state secrets outweighed the Shipps’ right to a day in court, the government persuaded a judge to seal the case and order the family and their lawyers not to discuss it, and to later dismiss the lawsuit without any hearing on the merits, Mr. Shipp said.

More than half a decade later, Mr. Shipp is going public with his story. He contends that the events broke up his marriage and destroyed his career, and that C.I.A. officials abused the State Secrets Privilege doctrine in an effort to cover up their own negligence.

Read moreFormer CIA Agent Reveals Camp Stanley Horror

Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura: EPISODE GUIDE (Full Length Videos)

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Michigan Prepares For A Tsunami Of Muni Financial Crises

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State after state will go bankrupt, asking the even more bankrupt federal government for a bailout.

Dozens of Michigan’s municipalities and school districts could soon face major financial problems and an unnamed handful are on the brink of becoming insolvent, warns State Treasurer Andy Dillon.

To prepare for the onslaught, the state treasurer’s office will start training 50 emergency financial managers this week to help the state cope with an expected rise in communities facing financial collapse. The training will focus on helping local governments avoid a state financial takeover while emphasizing early intervention, Bond Buyer reports.

Read moreMichigan Prepares For A Tsunami Of Muni Financial Crises

How Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson Broke The Law: ‘This Will Be A Disclosable Event And We Do Not Want A Disclosable Event’ – Parsing The Ken Lewis ‘MAC’ Deposition

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Among some of the discoveries of the financial crisis is that the entire financial system is now, following the Lehman bankruptcy, built entirely on fraud. And while Ken Lewis may spend the remainder of his days on some private island with stolen taxpayer money providing for his every last wish, it was he, in following the Fed’s and the Treasury’s orders to make a mockery of fiduciary responsibility, that was among the first people to confirm that there is no rule of low in America, or rather whatever law there is, it only applies to the less than immortal (i.e. the sub-banker class). Below, in an indication that Zero Hedge will never forget, we present the salient highlights from the Ken Lewis deposition on the MAC clause surrounding the Merrill transition, emphasizing the threats from Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke. For as long as neither of these three is in jail for what is documented shareholder (and taxpayer) fraud, we fail to see why the remaining 300+ million Americans continue to diligently pay their share of taxes into a government that is now beyond (and in full documentation) corrupt. Also, how BofA’s lawyer Wachtell was not at all present during the discussion of the MAC clause, makes a complete mockery of the US legal process in its entirety. We wonder just when the official scribe of the kleptocracy, Andrew R. Sorkin, will write a book disclosing the truth of what happened, including a listing of all the laws broken with full premeditation by every single player, and not the watered down, PG13 (and rather expensive)version  that makes everyone come out like a law-abiding superman.

Full transcript highlights, presented without commentary:

Read moreHow Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson Broke The Law: ‘This Will Be A Disclosable Event And We Do Not Want A Disclosable Event’ – Parsing The Ken Lewis ‘MAC’ Deposition

Quotes From Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s Memoir of The Financial Crisis, On The Brink

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Make no mistake, the financial crisis has only just begun.

This is The Greatest Depression.

Paulson on Paulson

A friend sent me a collage of quotes from former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s memoir of the financial crisis, On the Brink.  The quotes are particularly relevant in view of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission’s newly issued report which concludes that the 2008 financial crisis was badly mishandled by the government.

The collage paints a stunning picture of a confused and panicked government without a coherent strategy for getting in front of and containing the crisis.  Judge for yourself:

“I misread the cause, and the scale, of the coming disaster.  Notably absent from my presentation was any mention of problems in housing or mortgages.”  (p. 47)

“All of this led me in late April 2007 to say . . . that subprime mortgage problems were ‘largely contained.’  I repeated that line of thinking publicly for another couple of months. . . . We were just plain wrong.” (p. 66)

“Lehman’s UK bankruptcy administrator, PricewaterhouseCoopers, had frozen [Lehman’s] assets in the UK . . .  a completely unexpected  . . . jolt.” (p. 230)

“General Electric . . . was having problems selling commercial paper.  This stunned me.” (p. 172)

“I’d never expected to hear those troubles spreading like this to the corporate world. . . .” (p. 227)

“In a celebratory mood, [Rep.] Pelosi, [Sen.] Reid, [Sen.] Dodd, [Rep.] Frank, [Sen.] Schumer, and I walked together to Statuary Hall to announce the [TARP] deal. . . . Perhaps I should have foreseen the problems ahead . . . .” (p. 314)

“I expected [TARP] to be politically unpopular, but the intensity of the backlash astonished me.” (p. 370)

“I began to seriously doubt that our asset-buying program [TARP] could work.  This pained me, as I had sincerely promoted the [toxic asset] purchases to Congress and the public. . . .” (p. 385)

Read moreQuotes From Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s Memoir of The Financial Crisis, On The Brink

(FOX NEWS) Inside Job: ‘The US Government Escorted The Underwear Bomber Through Security Without A Passport To Board The Plane’, Say Two Attorneys, Eyewitnesses Who Were On Site

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“It was intentional then. It went this far to further the war on terror, to get body scanners in the airports, to increase the TSA’s budget, to renew the Patriot Act and whatever other reasons you wanna list.”
– Lawyer Kurt Haskell


Added: 26. Januar 2011

I contend that this story is just the tip of the iceberg into the US government’s black operations to further the Patriot Act, funding for Homeland Security and the TSA, and to keep intensity up for the so called War on Terror.

Respected lawyer and community leader, Kurt Haskell, has nothing to gain from pointing his finger at the federal government.

He witnessed the underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, being whisked past security and led onto NorthWest Airlines flight 253, by a well-dressed man with an American accent- all without the passenger’s proper visa and passport documentation.

What the news piece doesn’t mention is that the State Dept did indeed put Mutallab on the plane, at the behest of “an unnamed US intelligence agency.”

Undersecretary Patrick F. Kennedy (Detroit news article was removed from web!).

THIS is why we are being groped, molested, and body scanned at the airport by the TSA! Because the government claims the underwear bomber is a real threat! Stand up America- the politicians say our rhetoric is dangerous. Maybe the government itself is terribly dangerous….

28/01/2011 – 13:34 by cybe

Source: 100777

The US government is Al-Qaeda or better Al-CIAda:

– Al Qaeda Doesn’t Exist or How The US Created Al Qaeda (Documentary)

“The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaeda. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US.”
– Robin Cook, Former British Foreign Secretary


US: Organic Consumers Association Funded by Big Pharma and Rockefeller! Food Freedom Betrayal!

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Our food supply is in jeopardy. Not only from outside forces such as poisons from China, but from within. The very people that we look to for guidance seem to be working together to lead us straight into global food governance in the form of Codex Alimentarius. This is especially alarming when you consider that the very organizations such as the USDA and FDA, that are charged with the safeguarding and regulation of our food supply are at the forefront of the battle, leading us straight into worldwide genocide using food as a weapon.

But the USDA and FDA do not stand alone. There are others who consider food to be “fair game” in this war against the people, and they just happen to control some very large purse strings. So, who holds the purse strings behind the push to obliterate any food safeguards we may have? Let’s just pick two – Rockefeller and Merck, then take a closer look at a few of the “trusted” organizations that they fund.

The Purse Strings

Rockefeller

Let’s take a look at just a part of what the Rockefeller crime family is involved in concerning our food supply.

Today, the Rockefellers use coercive population control tactics and food as a weapon through a front organization, CGIAR (Consultative Group on Agricultural Resources) as the Rockefellers are trying to distance themselves from public- just like the Rothschild clan has done. Engdahl reports that CGIAR operates under the umbrella of the UN World Bank, and its primary focus is the spread of GMO crops. CGIAR was created by the Rockefellers and the Ford Foundation, along with the UN World Bank in 1971 with $350 million dollars a year in funding. (MorphCity)

Financed by generous Rockefeller and Ford Foundation study grants, CGIAR saw to it that leading Third World agriculture scientists and agronomists were brought to the US to master the concepts of modern agribusiness production, in order to carry it back to their homeland. In the process they created an invaluable network of influence for US agribusiness promotion in those countries, most especially promotion of the GMO Gene Revolution in developing countries, all in the name of science and efficient, free market agriculture.(InformationLiberation)

The Rockefeller Foundation spent more than $100 million for the advance of the GMO revolution. (Engdahl – Seeds of Destruction)

Part of the Rockefeller dynasty includes a group known as Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors:

Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that advises donors in their philanthropic endeavors throughout the world. The foundation is headquartered in New York City and adheres to John D. Rockefeller Sr.’s practice of managing philanthropy “as if it were a business.”[1] Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors currently advises on and manages more than $200 million in annual giving in more than 60 countries.[2] (Wikipedia)

Philanthropy can be used by business to advance a corporate image that is acceptable to certain groups of people in order to put up a benevolent facade while all the time conducting business as usual, which may or may not be so benevolent.

Merck

Now let’s take a peek at Merck:

Read moreUS: Organic Consumers Association Funded by Big Pharma and Rockefeller! Food Freedom Betrayal!

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Slams Greenspan, Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson, Summers, SEC, Rating Agencies and Big Banks for Causing Crisis

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The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is releasing its report Thursday.

The New York Times has a preview of the report, which shows that the Commission will slam the right people for causing the financial crisis.

Barry Ritholtz gives a good summary of the Times’ article:

The many causal factors highlighted in the FCIC report:

• Alan Greenspan’s malfeasance — his refusal to perform his regulatory duties because he did not believe in them — allowed the credit bubble to expand, driving housing prices to dangerously unsustainable levels; Greenspan’s advocacy for financial deregulation was a “pivotal failure to stem the flow of toxic mortgages” and “the prime example” of government negligence;

• Ben S. Bernanke failed to foresee the crisis;

• The Bush administration’s “inconsistent response” — saving Bear, but allowing Lehman to crater — “added to the uncertainty and panic in the financial markets.”

• Bush Treasury secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. wrongly predicted in 2007 that subprime meltdown would be contained.

• The Clinton White House, including then Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, made a crucial error in “shielding over-the-counter derivatives from regulation [CFMA]. This was “a key turning point in the march toward the financial crisis.”

• Then NY Fed President, now Treasury secretary Timothy F. Geithner failed to “clamp down on excesses by Citigroup in the lead-up to the crisis;” Further, a month before Lehman’s collapse, Geithner was still in the dark about Lehman’s derivative exposure;

• Low interest rates brought about by the Fed after the 2001 recession “created increased risks” but were not chiefly to blame, according to the FCIC (I place some more weight on Ultra-low rates than they do);

• The financial sector spent $2.7 billion on lobbying from 1999 to 2008, while individuals and committees affiliated with the industry made more than $1 billion in campaign contributions. The impact of which an incestuous relationship between bankers and regulators, Congress and bankers, and classic regulatory capture by the industry.

• The credit-rating agencies “cogs in the wheel of financial destruction.”

• The Securities and Exchange Commission allowed the 5 biggest banks to ramp up their leverage, hold insufficient capital, and engage in risky practices.

• Leverage at the nation’s five largest investment banks was wildly excessive: They kept only $1 in capital to cover losses for about every $40 in assets;

• The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency along with the Office of Thrift Supervision, “federally pre-empted” (blocked) state regulators from reining in lending abuses;

• The report documents “questionable practices by mortgage lenders and careless betting by banks;”

• The report portrays the “bumbling incompetence among corporate chieftains” as to the risk and operations of their own firms:

-Citigroup executives admitting that they paid little attention to the risks associated with mortgage securities.
-AIG executives were blind to its $79 billion exposure to credit default swaps;
-Merrill Lynch top managers were surprised when mortgage investments suddenly resulted in billions of dollars in losses;

Read moreFinancial Crisis Inquiry Commission Slams Greenspan, Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson, Summers, SEC, Rating Agencies and Big Banks for Causing Crisis

14 Eye Opening Statistics Which Reveal Just How Dramatically The US Economy Has Collapsed Since 2007

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There are always some that have a lot to celebrate:

– Warren Buffett’s $600 Million INTEREST-FREE Loan From US Taxpayers Or How The Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves At Taxpayers Expense

And how about ‘main street’?

– US Census: Number of Poor People May Be Millions Higher

– US: Food Stamps Used by Record 43.2 Million in October, Up 15 Percent From A Year Ago

– Geithner Warns Lawmakers That Failure to Raise US Debt Limit ‘Precipitates a Default by the United States’ With Catastrophic Economic Consequences

– US Consumer Bankruptcies Hit 5-year High in 2010

– Hiding The Greatest Depression: How The US Government Does It:

The real US unemployment rate is not 9.8% but between 25% and 30%. That is a depression level of job losses – so why doesn’t it look like a depression for many people?  How can so large of a statistical discrepancy exist, and how is it that holiday shopping malls are so crowded in a depression?

This is the Greatest Depression.


The Great Depression

Most Americans have become so accustomed to the “new normal” of continual economic decline that they don’t even remember how good things were just a few short years ago.  Back in 2007, unemployment was very low, good jobs were much easier to get, far fewer Americans were living in poverty or enrolled in welfare programs and government finances were in much better shape.  Of course most of this prosperity was fueled by massive amounts of debt, but at least times were better.  Unfortunately, things have really deteriorated over the last several years.  Since 2007, unemployment has skyrocketed, foreclosures have set new all-time records, personal bankruptcies have soared and U.S. government debt has gotten completely and totally out of control.  Poll after poll has shown that Americans are now far less optimistic about the future than they were in 2007.  It is almost as if the past few years have literally sucked the hope out of millions upon millions of Americans.

Sadly, our economic situation is continually getting worse.  Every month the United States loses more factories.  Every month the United States loses more jobs.  Every month the collective wealth of U.S. citizens continues to decline.  Every month the federal government goes into even more debt.  Every month state and local governments go into even more debt.

Unfortunately, things are going to get even worse in the years ahead.  Right now we look back on 2005, 2006 and 2007 as “good times”, but in a few years we will look back on 2010 and 2011 as “good times”.

We are in the midst of a long-term economic decline, and the very bad economic choices that we have been making as a nation for decades are now starting to really catch up with us.

So as horrible as you may think that things are now, just keep in mind that things are going to continue to deteriorate in the years ahead.

But for the moment, let us remember how far we have fallen over the past few years.  The following are 14 eye opening statistics which reveal just how dramatically the U.S. economy has collapsed since 2007….

#1 In November 2007, the official U.S. unemployment rate was just 4.7 percent.  Today, the official U.S. unemployment rate is 9.4 percent.

#2 In November 2007, 18.8% of unemployed Americans had been out of work for 27 weeks or longer.  Today that percentage is up to 41.9%.

#3 As 2007 began, there were just over 1 million Americans that had been unemployed for half a year or longer.  Today, there are over 6 million Americans that have been unemployed for half a year or longer.

#4 Nearly 10 million Americans now receive unemployment insurance, which is almost four times as many as were receiving it back in 2007.

#5 More than half of the U.S. labor force (55 percent) has “suffered a spell of unemployment, a cut in pay, a reduction in hours or have become involuntary part-time workers” since the “recession” began in December 2007.

#6 According to one analysis, the United States has lost a total of approximately 10.5 million jobs since 2007.

#7 As 2007 began, only 26 million Americans were on food stamps.  Today, an all-time record of 43.2 million Americans are enrolled in the food stamp program.

#8 In 2007, the U.S. government held a total of $725 billion in mortgage debt.  As of the middle of 2010, the U.S. government held a total of $5.148 trillion in mortgage debt.

#9 In the year prior to the “official” beginning of the most recent recession in 2007, the IRS filed just 684,000 tax liens against U.S. taxpayers.  During 2010, the IRS filed over a million tax liens against U.S. taxpayers.

#10 From the year 2000 through the year 2007, there were 27 bank failures in the United States.  From 2008 through 2010, there were 314 bank failures in the United States.

#11 According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the number of U.S. families with children living in homeless shelters increased from 131,000 to 170,000 between 2007 and 2009.

#12 In 2007, one poll found that 43 percent of Americans were living “paycheck to paycheck”.  Sadly, according to a survey released very close to the end of 2010, approximately 55 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck.

#13 In 2007, the “official” federal budget deficit was just 161 billion dollars.  In 2010, the “official” federal budget deficit was approximately 1.3 trillion dollars.

#14 As 2007 began, the U.S. national debt was just under 8.7 trillion dollars.  Today, the U.S. national debt has just surpassed 14 trillion dollars and it continues to soar into the stratosphere.

So is there any hope that we can turn all of this around?

Unfortunately, the massive amount of debt that we have piled up as a society over the last several decades has made that impossible.

If you add up all forms of debt (government debt, business debt, individual debt), it comes to approximately 360 percent of GDP.  It is the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world.

If the federal government and our state governments stop borrowing and spending so much money, our economy would collapse.  But if they keep borrowing and spending so much money they will continually make the eventual economic collapse even worse.

We are in the terminal stages of the most horrific debt spiral the world has ever seen, and when the debt spiral gets stopped the house of cards is going to finally come down for good.

So enjoy these times while you still have them.  Yes, today is not nearly as prosperous as 2007 was, but today is most definitely a whole lot better than 2015 or 2020 is going to be.

Sadly, we could have avoided this financial disaster completely if only we had listened more carefully to those that founded this nation.  Once upon a time, Thomas Jefferson said the following….

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.

January 10th, 2011

Source: Economic Collapse Blog


Federal Reserve Withholds Collateral Data for $885 Billion in Financial-Crisis Loans

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Related articles:

– Federal Reserve Made $9 Trillion In Emergency Overnight Loans

– UK Banks Borrowed More Than $1 Trillion From US Federal Reserve

– Has the Federal Reserve become the central bank of the world?

– Federal Reserve to Name Recipients of $3.3 Trillion in Aid During Crisis


The Fed today released details identifying thousands of transactions including bonds bought under its mortgage purchase program and asset-backed commercial paper pledged under its Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money-Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility.

The Federal Reserve withheld details on individual securities pledged as collateral by recipients of $885 billion in central bank loans, denying taxpayers a measure of the risks they faced from its emergency aid.

The central bank yesterday released data on 21,000 transactions from $3.3 trillion in emergency lending to stem the financial crisis. July’s Dodd-Frank law required the Fed to disclose the names of borrowers, the size and interest rates of loans, and “information identifying the types and amounts of collateral pledged or assets transferred.”

For three of the Fed’s six emergency facilities, the central bank released information on groups of collateral it accepted by asset type and rating, without specifying individual securities. Among them was the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, created in March 2008 to provide loans to brokers as Bear Stearns Cos. collapsed.

“This is a half-step,” said former Atlanta Fed research director Robert Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Cumberland Advisors Inc. in Sarasota, Florida. “If you were going to audit the facilities, then would this enable you to do an audit? The answer is ‘No,’ you would have to go in and look at the individual amounts of collateral and how it was broken down to do that. And that is the spirit of what the requirements were in Dodd-Frank.”

Read moreFederal Reserve Withholds Collateral Data for $885 Billion in Financial-Crisis Loans

Federal Reserve Made $9 Trillion In Emergency Overnight Loans

by

Related articles:

– Federal Reserve Withholds Collateral Data for $885 Billion in Financial-Crisis Loans

– UK Banks Borrowed More Than $1 Trillion From US Federal Reserve

– Has the Federal Reserve become the central bank of the world?

– Federal Reserve to Name Recipients of $3.3 Trillion in Aid During Crisis


Top recipients of overnight loans made by the Federal Reserve under special program that ran from March 2008 through May 2009.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The Federal Reserve made $9 trillion in overnight loans to major banks and Wall Street firms during the financial crisis, according to newly revealed data released Wednesday.

The loans were made through a special loan program set up by the Fed in the wake of the Bear Stearns collapse in March 2008 to keep the nation’s bond markets trading normally.

The amount of cash being pumped out to the financial giants was not previously disclosed. All the loans were backed by collateral and all were paid back with a very low interest rate to the Fed — an annual rate of between 0.5% to 3.5%.

Still, the total amount was a surprise, even to some who had followed the Fed’s rescue efforts closely.

“That’s a real number, even for the Fed,” said FusionIQ’s Barry Ritholtz, author of the book “Bailout Nation.” While the fact that the markets were in trouble was already well known, he said the amount of help they needed is still surprising.

“It makes it very clear this was a very serious, very unusual situation,” he said.

Read moreFederal Reserve Made $9 Trillion In Emergency Overnight Loans

TSA Takes Full Control Of Passenger Watch Lists

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See also:

– Former Assistant TSA Administrator Admits That Airport Security Checkpoints Violate The Fourth Amendment

US Dept. of Homeland Security stated that all passengers on flights “within or bound for the United States are now being checked against government watch lists” under implementation of the Transportation Security Administration’s “Secure Flight” program, which entails the agency prescreening a passenger’s full name, birth date and gender prior to issuance of a boarding pass.

Previously, airlines were tasked with checking names against watch lists; now, in accordance with a final rule issued by DHS in 2008 (ATW Daily News, Oct. 23, 2008), airlines are required to collect a passenger’s information at the time of reservation and provide it to TSA. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement, “Secure Flight makes air travel safer for everyone by screening every passenger against the latest intelligence before a boarding pass is issued.”

Read moreTSA Takes Full Control Of Passenger Watch Lists

UK Banks Borrowed More Than $1 Trillion From US Federal Reserve

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Related articles:

– Federal Reserve Withholds Collateral Data for $885 Billion in Financial-Crisis Loans

– Federal Reserve Made $9 Trillion In Emergency Overnight Loans

– Has the Federal Reserve become the central bank of the world?

– Federal Reserve to Name Recipients of $3.3 Trillion in Aid During Crisis

British banks borrowed more than $1 trillion (£640bn) from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis, led by Barclays following its swoop on the US business of Lehman Brothers.


The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act forced the Federal Reserve to reveal which banks and companies it lent money to

The disclosures came because the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act forced the Fed to reveal which banks and companies it lent money to in an effort to shore up the financial system from the end of December 2007 onwards.

It released the details of more than 21,000 individual transactions on its website on Wednesday, which showed that British banks represented more than a third – about $1.5 trillion – of the $3,300bn lent by the US authorities to prop up the financial sector.

Barclays borrowed $863bn from the Fed, with almost half coming in overnight loans through the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, a programme established by the central bank to help those banks that deal in US Treasuries.

Barclays has since repaid all its loans and said that much of its then borrowing was down to its purchase of Lehman’s US business.

Royal Bank of Scotland borrowed $446bn, Bank of Scotland $181bn, Abbey National $19bn and HSBC borrowed less than $10bn.

The figures for the banks represent the total amount they borrowed and not the total outstanding borrowing at any one point.

Read moreUK Banks Borrowed More Than $1 Trillion From US Federal Reserve

Has the Federal Reserve become the central bank of the world?

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Related articles:

– Federal Reserve Withholds Collateral Data for $885 Billion in Financial-Crisis Loans

– Federal Reserve Made $9 Trillion In Emergency Overnight Loans

– UK Banks Borrowed More Than $1 Trillion From US Federal Reserve

– Federal Reserve to Name Recipients of $3.3 Trillion in Aid During Crisis


UBS was the biggest borrower under the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, with $74.5 billion overall, more than twice as much as Citigroup Inc., the top U.S. bank recipient, according to the data released yesterday.

Federal Reserve data showing UBS AG and Barclays Plc ranked among the top users of $3.3 trillion from emergency programs is stoking debate on whether U.S. regulators bear responsibility for aiding other nations’ banks.

UBS was the biggest borrower under the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, with $74.5 billion overall, more than twice as much as Citigroup Inc., the top U.S. bank recipient, according to the data released yesterday. London-based Barclays Plc took the biggest single amount under another program that made overnight loans, when it got $47.9 billion on Sept. 18, 2008.

“We’re talking about huge sums of money going to bail out large foreign banks,” said Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont independent who wrote the provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that required the Fed disclosures. “Has the Federal Reserve become the central bank of the world? I think that is a question that needs to be examined.”

The first detailed accounting of U.S. efforts to spare European banks may add to scrutiny of the central bank, already at its most intense in three decades. The Fed, which released data on 21,000 transactions, said in a statement that its 11 emergency programs helped stabilize markets and support economic recovery. The Fed said there have been no credit losses on rescue programs that have been closed.

Read moreHas the Federal Reserve become the central bank of the world?

Ireland Bailout Fails To Calm Nervy Markets – Prof. Nouriel Roubini Tells Portugal To Seek Bailout, Spain ‘Too Big To Bail Out’

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– Roubini tells Portugal to seek bailout as markets slide (Telegraph):

Nouriel Roubini, the US economist, said Portugal should consider asking for a bailout before its financial plight worsens as the euro fell after the €85bn Ireland bailout failed to ease eurozone debt fears.

Mr Roubini, the economist who predicted the financial crisis, told daily paper Diario Economico it is “increasingly likely” Portugal will require international assistance.

He said the country is approaching “a critical point” due to it high debt load and weak growth and there were ample funds to shore up Portugal, one of the eurozone’s smaller countries which contributes less than 2pc to the 16-nation bloc’s gross domestic product.

However, he said neighboring Spain, Europe’s fourth-largest economy, is “too big to bail out.”

• FTSE 100 down 2%; Dow loses 1%
• Euro slides to two-month low against US dollar
• Cost of insuring Spanish and Portuguese debt hits record high


Irish prime minister Brian Cowen speaking to the media in Dublin yesterday after the EU approved the €85bn bailout. Photograph: Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images

Stocks fell on both sides of the Atlantic, the euro tumbled, and the cost of borrowing for Ireland, Spain and Portugal jumped today, as details of the republic’s €85bn (£72bn) bailout failed to quell anxiety that the crisis in the eurozone was deepening.

Amid speculation that the European authorities may be left with little option but to embark on large-scale quantitative easing to try to bolster sentiment, Ireland’s borrowing costs shot as high as 9.6% as the terms of its bailout by the International Monetary Fund and European Union were digested by investors.

“The bottom line is that the financial markets are unimpressed, and that’s the most generous description,” Neil MacKinnon, global macro strategist at VTB Capital told Associated Press. “The crisis rumbles on.”

Read moreIreland Bailout Fails To Calm Nervy Markets – Prof. Nouriel Roubini Tells Portugal To Seek Bailout, Spain ‘Too Big To Bail Out’

Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory: Wall Street (Video)

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– Catherine Austin Fitts: The Looting Of America (Must-see!):

Former Assistant Secretary of Housing under George H.W. Bush Catherine Austin Fitts blows the whistle on how the financial terrorists have deliberately imploded the US economy and transferred gargantuan amounts of wealth offshore as a means of sacrificing the American middle class. Fitts documents how trillions of dollars went missing from government coffers in the 90?s and how she was personally targeted for exposing the fraud.

I have told you many times before that the entire financial crisis has been orchestrated.

The US puppet government, the puppet Wall Street banksters and the Federal Reserve are looting and bankrupting America and destroying the dollar by order of these elite criminals that run the entire show.

YouTube removed the video(s) AGAIN!!!

Found a replacement …


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