Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:16 pm Post subject: Re: Housing & Economic Collapse - In Progress
dohboi wrote:
Zardos actually brings up an important paradox. US citizens are both pampered and oppressed.
I like how Edward Abbey put it the best:
Quote:
We are a nation of helots ruled by an oligarchy of techno-military-industrial administrators.
Never before in history have slaves been so well fed, thoroughly medicated, lavishly entertained—but we are slaves nonetheless.
Our debased popular culture—television, rock music, home video, processed food, mechanical recreation, wallboard architecture—is the culture of slaves.
Furthermore the whole grandiose structure is self-destructive: by enshrining the profit motive as our guiding ideal, we encourage the intensive and accelerating consumption of land, air, water—the natural world—on which the structure depends for its continued existence.
A house built on greed will not long endure. Whether it's called capitalism or socialism makes little difference; both of these oligarchic, militaristic, expansionist, acquisitive, industrializing, and technocratic systems are driven by the same motives; both are self-destroying. Even without the accident of a nuclear war, I predict that the military-industrial state will disappear from the surface of the earth within a century.
Joined: Apr 13, 2005 Posts: 2554 Location: St.Louis, Mo
Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:25 pm Post subject: Re: Housing & Economic Collapse - In Progress
In 1773, when Amschel Rothschild had accumulated sufficient funds through his fractional reserve and usury banking practices, he called a secret meeting in his old goldsmith shop with 12 of the most powerful and influential men of the time. 'Me purpose of this meeting was to convince the attendees to pool their resources and, with the help of his plan, gain total control of the resources of the world!
The plan Amschel laid out consisted of several steps, including:
1) Law is force in disguise. Right lies in force ("Might makes Right") The right to rule lies in force.
2) Political freedom is an idea, not a fact. In order to usurp political power, all that is necessary is to preach 'liberalism,' and the electorates will give up more and more power to the conspirators.
3) Money is all powerful. Governments are insignificant compared to money. Since governments control the money, that control must be removed from governments, and put in the hands of the conspirators.
4) Any and all means to achieve the goal of world domination by the conspirators is justified.
5) The size, scope, and power of the conspirators' resources must remain hidden.
6) Alcohol, drugs, and moral corruption shall be used to weaken the will of the people.
7) Wars should be instigated and orchestrated so that both sides would be in their debt (in other words, the conspirators would gain profit and power, no matter who "won" the wars!).
Propaganda and control of information should be used to influence opinion.
9) Pre-planned and artificially manipulated financial panics and depression should be used to tame the people, and weaken governments, so as to ultimately form a one-world government, with the conspirators as the rulers.
Amschel had 5 sons, 4 of whom he sent to the major cities of four different major powers of Europe, to establish or gain control over the major central bank of each country. Solomon went to Vienna, Austria; Nathan to London, England; Carl to Naples, Italy; James to Paris, France; while Meyer (and Amschel) stayed in Frankfurt, Germany. In addition to these major countries of Germany, Austria, England, Italy and France, the Rothschilds did extensive banking for the governments of Belgium, Spain, Brazil, and many other countries. This was all part of Amschel's plan to gain control over vast wealth and power.
By having each of his sons running successful central banks in each country, Amschel could influence the economy and politics of Europe, to create economic panics and wars, just as he had planned. Each country's banks (controlled by the Rothschilds) would then finance the wars for the conflicting countries and, as a result, the bankers would profit. If you study history, you will see that, during this period of time, there was perpetual war in Europe for many years, particularly after the Rothschilds came to power!
Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:35 pm Post subject: Re: Housing & Economic Collapse - In Progress
shortonoil wrote:
Zardoz quoted:
Quote:
The Federal Reserve cut its main lending rate by three quarters of a percentage point to 2.25 percent as officials try to prop up the faltering economy and restore faith in the U.S. financial system.
I’ll give it one week to work, if it doesn’t, and the credit markets are still bond up like grandma after she ate whole wedge of cheese, it will be time to take a new inventory on the food and ammo!
The Dow is behaving as if grandma had stewed prunes and bran slathered in mineral oil.
U.S. stocks rallied the most in five years as earnings from Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. allayed concern investment banks are collapsing and the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark rate.
Lehman, the fourth-biggest securities firm, had its steepest advance ever and helped lead financial stocks to their biggest gain since 2000. Goldman, the largest securities firm, rallied the most in almost nine years. All 10 industry groups in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index added at least 1.7 percent after the Fed cut the target rate for overnight lending by 0.75 percentage point, helping the market erase a two-day tumble that wiped out $767 billion following Bear Stearns Cos.'s collapse.
"The run on the investment banks would appear to be over,'' said Doug Peta, a New York-based market strategist at J&W Seligman & Co., which oversees about $19 billion. "It seems certain we are going to finish the week with the four investment banks we started with, and we couldn't be sure of that Monday morning. The Fed decision is actually a bit of a sideshow.''
_________________ "Thank you for attending the oil age. We're going to scrape what we can out of these tar pits in Alberta and then shut down the machines and turn out the lights. Goodnight." - seldom_seen
Joined: Jun 13, 2007 Posts: 2127 Location: Minniesotuh
Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 5:54 pm Post subject: Re: Housing & Economic Collapse - In Progress
Zardoz wrote:
Item Quote:
"The run on the investment banks would appear to be over,'' said Doug Peta, a New York-based market strategist at J&W Seligman & Co., which oversees about $19 billion. "It seems certain we are going to finish the week with the four investment banks we started with, and we couldn't be sure of that Monday morning. The Fed decision is actually a bit of a sideshow.''
[/quote]
I suppose it wouldn't be possible that Lehman & Goldman finished up so high because investors thought They might need a bailout at the same price as Bears and wanted to get in on the ground floor? _________________ "RRrrruuuunnnn!!!" ~Apocalypto
Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 7:09 pm Post subject: Re: Housing & Economic Collapse - In Progress
It's comical to look at the Lehman stock chart.
45% gain in one day, right after Bear implodes and is traded in for the coffee makers and fax machines.
This sort of outright manipulation of the market has been alluded to as one of the necessary steps that may be needed to ensure "properly functioning markets." Here we have it for all to see.
The number #1 rule in banking is that everything is "big smiles" and "thumbs up" right until a chain is thrown around the door and the windows are boarded up. We will probably never get to see the desperation of these bankers as they watch the entire financial system swirling uncontrollably down the toilet.
Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 8:11 pm Post subject: Re: Housing & Economic Collapse - In Progress
I love how this bail out is framed as "socialism" by some. The only thing socialized is risk, which encourages more of the same. The profits certainly won't accrue back to the citizens who bail out the banking institutions, with their tax dollars. It's theft, an abstracted form of piracy.
Joined: Oct 23, 2004 Posts: 4525 Location: New Jersey
Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 8:31 pm Post subject: Re: Housing & Economic Collapse - In Progress
CrudeAwakening wrote:
DantesPeak wrote:
I do think that sterilization is a term that can be applied to this asset replacement process within the Fed balance sheer (that is it is disposing Treasury bills and accepting mortgage related securities and who know s what else in return).
So yes, the size of the Fed’s balance sheer is somewhat of a restriction. This is a problem I am sure they have been struggling with. However eventually they are not going to let that hold them back from ‘lending’, and it’s likely within the past few weeks the total balance sheet of the Fed is starting to expand at a much faster than normal rate.
The Fed added about $100 billion to its balance sheet after 9/11/2001, so they will expand when they think it’s necessary.
There's also the small matter of reduced cashflow to the Treasury from lower quality Fed assets. This will make it harder for the Treasury to meet its debt servicing costs without further inflation.
This is even more than a discussion about what the Fed has done to the US Treasury. We are about to begin a new epoch for the valuation of the US dollar.
The first modern epoch was the establishment of the Bretton Woods system, which established in 1944 the dollar as the reserve currency for the world. Cheap oil and Bretton Woods did wonders for the US economy, even though citizens could not exchange their US dollars for gold.
However that system failed, with its formal death marked by Nixon closing the gold window on the US dollar in 1973 (that is foreign central banks were no longer given gold for their dollars). I think it is no coincidence that US oil production peaked the same year. Formal gold backing of the dollar was gone, but the US dollar was still directly guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the US. Backed up with military strength, that was good enough to keep the second epoch of the paper US dollar going until now.
Now as the worldwide peak of conventional oil has passed, the third, and probably final epoch, for the paper US dollar has now begun. The direct backing of the US dollar by the US Treasury is rapidly being replaced with nebulous mortgage pool securities and collateralized debt obligations of undetermined value. It’s still questionable if the US dollar can be accepted as a reserve currency of the world under this new standard.
Whether this murky dollar will be accepted is a question that may take some time to answer, but then again, the vote on accepting the new dollar may come at any time – and we in the US may not like the results.
Joined: Dec 02, 2005 Posts: 6053 Location: Oil-addicted Southern Californucopia
Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 9:59 pm Post subject: Re: Housing & Economic Collapse - In Progress
DantesPeak wrote:
...Whether this murky dollar will be accepted is a question that may take some time to answer, but then again, the vote on accepting the new dollar may come at any time – and we in the US may not like the results.
Well, I dunno, but it looks to me like we're getting our answer as we speak:
_________________ "Thank you for attending the oil age. We're going to scrape what we can out of these tar pits in Alberta and then shut down the machines and turn out the lights. Goodnight." - seldom_seen
Joined: Mar 12, 2007 Posts: 681 Location: As close as I can get to the beginning of the pipe.
Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 12:48 am Post subject: Re: Housing & Economic Collapse - In Progress
doomer porn "Extinction Level Events"
Quote:
"Policy actions worldwide to date "may not prove to be adequate" to deal with the "low-probability but high-impact events" that may materialize and undermine global financial stability, Lipsky said in an address at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank.
"Policy makers as a matter of course need to 'think the unthinkable,' and to consider how they would plan to react if contingencies arise. The need to prepare more systematically for potential risks has been demonstrated amply during the past few months," he said."
Michael Lewitt: "The failure of a firm of the size and stature of Bear Stearns would be as close to an Extinction Level Event as the world's financial markets have ever seen. Bridgewater Associates, Inc. writes that, "...the counterparty exposures across dealers have grown so exponentially that it is difficult to imagine any one of them failing in isolation." While not the world's largest financial institution, Bear is a major counterparty to virtually every important financial player in the world. Its insolvency would effectively freeze the assets of many hedge funds and other liquidity providers and cause the financial system to seize up. Even an after-the-fact government bailout would do little to prevent such a meltdown scenario since the value of all of Bear's counterparty obligations would be thrown into question for some period of time. The resulting cascade of hedge fund failures and financial institution write-offs in today's mark-to-market world would be nothing less than catastrophic....
The risks of a systemic collapse have risen to uncomfortable levels. The complete withdrawal of credit from the financial system has led to a series of implosions of hedge funds and other leveraged investment vehicles. At some point - and nobody knows when that point is - the system is not going to be able to withstand further failures. It will not be the sheer volume of failures that brings the system to a standstill; the system is enormous and can sustain huge dollar losses before becoming impaired. The problem is that the global financial system is a case study in chaos theory. This is truly a case where a butterfly flapping its wings in West Africa could lead to a Category Five hurricane thousands of miles away. There are an incalculable number of derivative contracts and counterparty relationships on which the stability of the financial system hinges. All it would take is the collapse of the wrong firm or the wrong derivative contract at the wrong time to throw the wrong financial institution into crisis and force the entire system into a death spiral.
As noted above in the discussion about Bear Stearns, we may not need the largest institution in the world to fail to cause the calamity - it may just be a matter of something bad happening at the wrong firm at the wrong time to trigger a systemic collapse. This is the risk implicit in a highly leveraged financial system financed by unstable financial structures. These scenarios may sound like the ravings of a paranoid, but we will remind our readers that even paranoids have enemies, and the greatest failure that investors, lenders and regulators seem to suffer from in perpetuity is a failure of imagination. They remain incapable of imagining that the worst can happen, and as a result they behave in a manner that keeps that possibility alive. At some point, all of the king's horses and all of the king's men will not be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. We are not at that point yet, but we are closer than we've ever been."
_________________ "For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it." --Patrick Henry
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to have there statutory capital reserve limit moved. This is allegedly to free more money for them to offer loans.
Ofcoarse it is held in order to be a bulkwark against defaults and foreclosers.
It is just another stupid action increasing risk of the companies going bankrupt due to bad loans in order to try to lift the dead markets just a little.
Joined: Dec 02, 2005 Posts: 6053 Location: Oil-addicted Southern Californucopia
Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 9:03 am Post subject: Re: Housing & Economic Collapse - In Progress
dohboi wrote:
Sounds like world stock markets are going south again this morning.
Nope, they're back in the green. Happy days are here again.
What, me worry? _________________ "Thank you for attending the oil age. We're going to scrape what we can out of these tar pits in Alberta and then shut down the machines and turn out the lights. Goodnight." - seldom_seen
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Propaganda and control of information should be used to influence opinion.
