Gunpartsguy
Member
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2007
- Messages
- 49
Got this from a friend............Personally I thinks it's engineered this way. Can you say "Amero"?
Ron Paul is the only candidate who understands what is happening. He is the only candidate with a vision for what comes next, for the America we want after this is over and how we invent that future.
"Dave from Denver" and I just attended a Ron Paul campaign meeting. The more I think about it, the more I believe he can not only do well, but actually WIN the Republican nomination. The campaign process is very complex, such as the "Caucuses" that many states (such as Colorado) have as opposed to the more widely understood "primaries". As a result, some significant damage can be done by a motivated campaign, especially when the candidate has such strong underground support. Moreover, Guiliani, McCain, Huckabee, and Romney, quite frankly, are very weak candidates in a year where the Republican party is in big trouble to start with.
Please let people know that this is something worth fighting for, if just for the sake of your gold investments, let alone the more noble goal of trying to save a nation that has fallen from grace. Right now the Ron Paul groundswell is building, and I firmly believe that when gold hits $1,000 in 1H08 and the media focus on inflation accelerates, this groundswell will explode into a full-blown craze.
Every little bit counts, and in this case such a "little bit" could wind up having a huge positive impact on our lives.
Andy
Remember that the system that is collapsing is not a free market. The collapse is going to give "capitalism," undeservedly, a bad name. Yet it is socialism that is collapsing, just as socialism and central planning collapsed in the Soviet Union in 1987.
The culprit is government intervention. The fault lies in our desire to control normal greed and eliminate inequality by force. We wanted to change human nature and create the "new socialist man." Well, we created him under various names, and look what happened.
1. Do you remember earlier this year when Bush signed an executive order delegating to John Negroponte a newly conjured power to exempt any entity from financial disclosure laws "in the interest of national security?"
Here is one result:
Remember the story about the little boy who repeatedly cried "Wolf!" when there was no wolf, with the result that when the wolf eventually appeared, nobody believed the little boy's warnings? Well, it would seem that failure to cry wolf when the wolf is actually there leads to a similar result: eventually everyone simply assumes the wolf is there, whether he is or not.
Bankers, for example, are beginning to treat no news--nothing overtly toxic on a company's balance sheet--as bad news: they assume the toxic revelations are simply hidden, rather than that they are not there, because it has finally dawned on them that under the "New World Order" of spin control and legalized lying, potential counterparties will not be required to tell them the truth, if doing so might "disrupt" markets. Result: bankers are becoming increasingly reluctant to make new loans or to roll over old loans, and powerful contractionary forces have been unleashed in the global economy.
The implication: as those in charge of financial institutions increasingly wake up to the fact that cooking the books is sometimes OK, they are going to make increasing efforts to purge their balance sheets of suspect paper, and central banks are going to find themselves in the position of buyer of last resort. Result: central banks must either create enough "money" to buy up the toxic paper that, by means of accounting legerdemain, has been hidden on company balance sheets, thereby ensuring out-of-control price inflation in the future, or else, by refusing to do so, allow a global credit collapse to occur immediately.
Bottom line: making it OK to lie "in the public interest" is not in the public interest, because in the final analysis nothing disrupts markets more than the belief that counterparties may be lying.
I remember years ago in personal encounters how cavalier the Wall Street bankers were about the losses their actions engendered for customers. Very few of those leaders thought beyond the immediate greed virus that spread everywhere. Few considered what "blowback" might look like.
One form of blowback will be that foreigners control our financial markets, and perhaps our government itself. This is a liquidation. Control is shifting to our creditors.
Will the Singapore, Chinese and Arab government funds now buying up Merrill, Citibank, Bear and others at below market prices lose huge amounts of money? My guess is yes. Buying forests, oil reserves, land, and mineral resources seems much safer to me than putting billions into failing Wall Street banks. There's no prestige when the 100 year old firm you just partnered with goes bankrupt.
2. With reference to the J. Kyle Bass snippet on how Wall Street deliberately created the toxic waste derivatives with Asia as target market:
This is the third time we have heard that the whole subprime mess is the result of a PLANNED, DELIBERATE exploitation of European/Asian naive faith in a AAA rating. That a group of Wall Street insiders got together to discuss how to tget rid of the 'toxic' paper that the new geared up mortgage industry was producing - mortgages that had no hope at all of surviving for long after the entry teaser rates lapse and the higher market related rates kicked in. Unfortunately it turns out that many US investors and funds - in pursuit of better returns than the dismal US Treasuries - also fell for the sucker trap and stocked up on toxic waste. I assume that by the time the bubble burst, these insiders had made enough to retire many times over, and might well be short of the market now, raking in more millions. My guess is that the fact they provided the banana peel on which the US (and global) financial system is slipping to a great fall is of little concern to them now.
Deep down I am concerned about the reaction from Asian fund managers and investors who were suckered into buying this garbage. So far, we know of fiunds in Europe that are in deep trouble because of their eager acceptance of US AAA ratings, but I have heard little of similar problems in Asia. Are they keeping their troubles close to the chest - as Japanese banks did when their property market collapsed in the early 90's?
More importantly, how are they planning to take revenge on Wall Street for deliberately defrauding them with false ratings?
As as the surely must be doing.
Middle class wipeout has begun. The suicide rate skyrocketed during the Great Depression. We are only at the beginning, and the rate for ages 45 - 54 is the highest in 25 years.
3. As the Masters of the Universe who populate Wall Street deposit their almost $30 billion of bonuses1 this holiday season, I wonder if any of them will have their sleep disturbed by the skeletons of America’s expiring middle class? While the media and political class are focused on the subprime debacle, serious distress has emerged in the credit card debt market.
According to an Associated Press analysis, "The value of credit card accounts at least 30 days late jumped 26 percent to $17.3 billion in October from a year earlier." Leading the pack downward is Bank of America where, "defaults in October were almost 200 percent higher than in October 2006." Other major banks that reported large increases in delinquencies are Advanta, GE Money Bank and HSBC, with, "…increases of 50 percent or more in the value of accounts that were at least 90 days delinquent when compared with the same period a year ago." (2)
It is interesting to note that, according to Federal Reserve data, about 45%— nearly half—of the credit card debt outstanding has been securitized and sold off to investors. That means that if the Fed and Treasury decide to craft a rescue scheme for credit card debtors, they will run up against one of the same obstacles to resolving the subprime mess; the diffusion of debt ownership. This scattered ownership pattern serves to thwart would-be meddlers from coercing debt holders into compromising their interests. After all, it’s hard to twist someone’s arm if you don’t know who they are.
The sharp increase in credit card delinquencies has also caused many issuers to pull in their horns as, "…banks have been less willing to allow consumers to consolidate credit card debt into home equity loans or refinanced mortgages. That is leaving some with no option but to miss payments, economists said."(2)
Bankruptcy no longer offers a safe haven to many borrowers, as changes to the law—rammed through by lending institutions in 2005—preclude "above average" earners from wiping out their debts. Even so, "The number of households filing for bankruptcy in November increased to 28 percent over the same month last year."(3)
The human face of the crisis can be seen in middle class borrowers like, "Kenneth McGuinness, a postal clerk from Flushing, N.Y. His credit card struggles began nine years ago, when he charged his son's college tuition and books. He thought he was being clever: His credit card's 6 percent "teaser" interest rate was lower than the 8.6 percent interest on a college loan.
McGuinness, 61, soon began using Citibank and Chase cards for food, dental work and copays on doctor visits and minor surgeries. Interest rates surged to 30 percent. Now he's $37,000 in debt and plans to file for bankruptcy in February.
"I tried to pay what I could and go after the high-interest accounts first," McGuinness said. "But it just kept getting higher and higher, and with late charges and surcharges I was going backward." (2)
So the squeeze is on credit card holders, adjustable rate mortgage borrowers, as well as anyone who has tapped a credit line to try and keep up with galloping inflation—which pretty well defines America’s middle class.
For some, unfortunately, the current mess may already be a dead end.
"The suicide rate among middle-aged Americans has reached its highest point in at least 25 years, a new government report said Thursday. The rate rose by about 20 percent between 1999 and 2004 for U.S. residents ages 45 through 54 — far outpacing increases among younger adults, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
In 2004, there were 16.6 completed suicides per 100,000 people in that age group. That's the highest it's been since the CDC started tracking such rates, around 1980. The previous high was 16.5, in 1982." Experts said they don't know why the suicide rates are rising so dramatically in that age group, but believe it is an unrecognized tragedy."(4)
Hey experts, listen up: the tragedy is that the current system tells lies to the public about the true cost of living, devalues their work, ships their jobs abroad, takes away their health insurance when they have no job, stops counting them as unemployed if they can’t find a new job, then brands them as deadbeats for not adapting to the times and steals their savings by grotesquely inflating the supply of money and credit. The people most affected by this are the middle-aged, who have had the time to accumulate both responsibilities and debts. I’ll wager that at least some of that 45-54 age group find their prospects so bleak that they choose the ultimate form of withdrawal.
Financial writers often refer to corporate executive’s plush severance arrangements as "golden parachutes." The real golden parachute, though, is gold itself because it allows individuals to take their savings and opt out of a destructive, deceptive economic system. After what will likely be a horrible experience with the consequences of too much debt, I expect many people will desire a way of life—and a monetary system—that is not debt-based, aka the gold standard.
The only thing missing, so far, is a catalyst to ignite the public’s realization of this. That catalyst will come when the debt pyramid collapses while gold shoots up towards its natural market level of thousands of dollars per ounce. Given that, even with slack demand in India on their side, the Cartel has been unable to engineer a major sell-off in gold’s price, we may be much closer to that moment than almost anyone realizes.
In the meantime the biggest bonuses on Wall Street are going to those, like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein, who have helped prevent the public from discovering gold as a financial alternative in 2007. I just wonder if any strange noises will disturb their sleep this Christmas Season.
Ron Paul is the only candidate who understands what is happening. He is the only candidate with a vision for what comes next, for the America we want after this is over and how we invent that future.
"Dave from Denver" and I just attended a Ron Paul campaign meeting. The more I think about it, the more I believe he can not only do well, but actually WIN the Republican nomination. The campaign process is very complex, such as the "Caucuses" that many states (such as Colorado) have as opposed to the more widely understood "primaries". As a result, some significant damage can be done by a motivated campaign, especially when the candidate has such strong underground support. Moreover, Guiliani, McCain, Huckabee, and Romney, quite frankly, are very weak candidates in a year where the Republican party is in big trouble to start with.
Please let people know that this is something worth fighting for, if just for the sake of your gold investments, let alone the more noble goal of trying to save a nation that has fallen from grace. Right now the Ron Paul groundswell is building, and I firmly believe that when gold hits $1,000 in 1H08 and the media focus on inflation accelerates, this groundswell will explode into a full-blown craze.
Every little bit counts, and in this case such a "little bit" could wind up having a huge positive impact on our lives.
Andy
Remember that the system that is collapsing is not a free market. The collapse is going to give "capitalism," undeservedly, a bad name. Yet it is socialism that is collapsing, just as socialism and central planning collapsed in the Soviet Union in 1987.
The culprit is government intervention. The fault lies in our desire to control normal greed and eliminate inequality by force. We wanted to change human nature and create the "new socialist man." Well, we created him under various names, and look what happened.
1. Do you remember earlier this year when Bush signed an executive order delegating to John Negroponte a newly conjured power to exempt any entity from financial disclosure laws "in the interest of national security?"
Here is one result:
Remember the story about the little boy who repeatedly cried "Wolf!" when there was no wolf, with the result that when the wolf eventually appeared, nobody believed the little boy's warnings? Well, it would seem that failure to cry wolf when the wolf is actually there leads to a similar result: eventually everyone simply assumes the wolf is there, whether he is or not.
Bankers, for example, are beginning to treat no news--nothing overtly toxic on a company's balance sheet--as bad news: they assume the toxic revelations are simply hidden, rather than that they are not there, because it has finally dawned on them that under the "New World Order" of spin control and legalized lying, potential counterparties will not be required to tell them the truth, if doing so might "disrupt" markets. Result: bankers are becoming increasingly reluctant to make new loans or to roll over old loans, and powerful contractionary forces have been unleashed in the global economy.
The implication: as those in charge of financial institutions increasingly wake up to the fact that cooking the books is sometimes OK, they are going to make increasing efforts to purge their balance sheets of suspect paper, and central banks are going to find themselves in the position of buyer of last resort. Result: central banks must either create enough "money" to buy up the toxic paper that, by means of accounting legerdemain, has been hidden on company balance sheets, thereby ensuring out-of-control price inflation in the future, or else, by refusing to do so, allow a global credit collapse to occur immediately.
Bottom line: making it OK to lie "in the public interest" is not in the public interest, because in the final analysis nothing disrupts markets more than the belief that counterparties may be lying.
I remember years ago in personal encounters how cavalier the Wall Street bankers were about the losses their actions engendered for customers. Very few of those leaders thought beyond the immediate greed virus that spread everywhere. Few considered what "blowback" might look like.
One form of blowback will be that foreigners control our financial markets, and perhaps our government itself. This is a liquidation. Control is shifting to our creditors.
Will the Singapore, Chinese and Arab government funds now buying up Merrill, Citibank, Bear and others at below market prices lose huge amounts of money? My guess is yes. Buying forests, oil reserves, land, and mineral resources seems much safer to me than putting billions into failing Wall Street banks. There's no prestige when the 100 year old firm you just partnered with goes bankrupt.
2. With reference to the J. Kyle Bass snippet on how Wall Street deliberately created the toxic waste derivatives with Asia as target market:
This is the third time we have heard that the whole subprime mess is the result of a PLANNED, DELIBERATE exploitation of European/Asian naive faith in a AAA rating. That a group of Wall Street insiders got together to discuss how to tget rid of the 'toxic' paper that the new geared up mortgage industry was producing - mortgages that had no hope at all of surviving for long after the entry teaser rates lapse and the higher market related rates kicked in. Unfortunately it turns out that many US investors and funds - in pursuit of better returns than the dismal US Treasuries - also fell for the sucker trap and stocked up on toxic waste. I assume that by the time the bubble burst, these insiders had made enough to retire many times over, and might well be short of the market now, raking in more millions. My guess is that the fact they provided the banana peel on which the US (and global) financial system is slipping to a great fall is of little concern to them now.
Deep down I am concerned about the reaction from Asian fund managers and investors who were suckered into buying this garbage. So far, we know of fiunds in Europe that are in deep trouble because of their eager acceptance of US AAA ratings, but I have heard little of similar problems in Asia. Are they keeping their troubles close to the chest - as Japanese banks did when their property market collapsed in the early 90's?
More importantly, how are they planning to take revenge on Wall Street for deliberately defrauding them with false ratings?
As as the surely must be doing.
Middle class wipeout has begun. The suicide rate skyrocketed during the Great Depression. We are only at the beginning, and the rate for ages 45 - 54 is the highest in 25 years.
3. As the Masters of the Universe who populate Wall Street deposit their almost $30 billion of bonuses1 this holiday season, I wonder if any of them will have their sleep disturbed by the skeletons of America’s expiring middle class? While the media and political class are focused on the subprime debacle, serious distress has emerged in the credit card debt market.
According to an Associated Press analysis, "The value of credit card accounts at least 30 days late jumped 26 percent to $17.3 billion in October from a year earlier." Leading the pack downward is Bank of America where, "defaults in October were almost 200 percent higher than in October 2006." Other major banks that reported large increases in delinquencies are Advanta, GE Money Bank and HSBC, with, "…increases of 50 percent or more in the value of accounts that were at least 90 days delinquent when compared with the same period a year ago." (2)
It is interesting to note that, according to Federal Reserve data, about 45%— nearly half—of the credit card debt outstanding has been securitized and sold off to investors. That means that if the Fed and Treasury decide to craft a rescue scheme for credit card debtors, they will run up against one of the same obstacles to resolving the subprime mess; the diffusion of debt ownership. This scattered ownership pattern serves to thwart would-be meddlers from coercing debt holders into compromising their interests. After all, it’s hard to twist someone’s arm if you don’t know who they are.
The sharp increase in credit card delinquencies has also caused many issuers to pull in their horns as, "…banks have been less willing to allow consumers to consolidate credit card debt into home equity loans or refinanced mortgages. That is leaving some with no option but to miss payments, economists said."(2)
Bankruptcy no longer offers a safe haven to many borrowers, as changes to the law—rammed through by lending institutions in 2005—preclude "above average" earners from wiping out their debts. Even so, "The number of households filing for bankruptcy in November increased to 28 percent over the same month last year."(3)
The human face of the crisis can be seen in middle class borrowers like, "Kenneth McGuinness, a postal clerk from Flushing, N.Y. His credit card struggles began nine years ago, when he charged his son's college tuition and books. He thought he was being clever: His credit card's 6 percent "teaser" interest rate was lower than the 8.6 percent interest on a college loan.
McGuinness, 61, soon began using Citibank and Chase cards for food, dental work and copays on doctor visits and minor surgeries. Interest rates surged to 30 percent. Now he's $37,000 in debt and plans to file for bankruptcy in February.
"I tried to pay what I could and go after the high-interest accounts first," McGuinness said. "But it just kept getting higher and higher, and with late charges and surcharges I was going backward." (2)
So the squeeze is on credit card holders, adjustable rate mortgage borrowers, as well as anyone who has tapped a credit line to try and keep up with galloping inflation—which pretty well defines America’s middle class.
For some, unfortunately, the current mess may already be a dead end.
"The suicide rate among middle-aged Americans has reached its highest point in at least 25 years, a new government report said Thursday. The rate rose by about 20 percent between 1999 and 2004 for U.S. residents ages 45 through 54 — far outpacing increases among younger adults, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
In 2004, there were 16.6 completed suicides per 100,000 people in that age group. That's the highest it's been since the CDC started tracking such rates, around 1980. The previous high was 16.5, in 1982." Experts said they don't know why the suicide rates are rising so dramatically in that age group, but believe it is an unrecognized tragedy."(4)
Hey experts, listen up: the tragedy is that the current system tells lies to the public about the true cost of living, devalues their work, ships their jobs abroad, takes away their health insurance when they have no job, stops counting them as unemployed if they can’t find a new job, then brands them as deadbeats for not adapting to the times and steals their savings by grotesquely inflating the supply of money and credit. The people most affected by this are the middle-aged, who have had the time to accumulate both responsibilities and debts. I’ll wager that at least some of that 45-54 age group find their prospects so bleak that they choose the ultimate form of withdrawal.
Financial writers often refer to corporate executive’s plush severance arrangements as "golden parachutes." The real golden parachute, though, is gold itself because it allows individuals to take their savings and opt out of a destructive, deceptive economic system. After what will likely be a horrible experience with the consequences of too much debt, I expect many people will desire a way of life—and a monetary system—that is not debt-based, aka the gold standard.
The only thing missing, so far, is a catalyst to ignite the public’s realization of this. That catalyst will come when the debt pyramid collapses while gold shoots up towards its natural market level of thousands of dollars per ounce. Given that, even with slack demand in India on their side, the Cartel has been unable to engineer a major sell-off in gold’s price, we may be much closer to that moment than almost anyone realizes.
In the meantime the biggest bonuses on Wall Street are going to those, like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein, who have helped prevent the public from discovering gold as a financial alternative in 2007. I just wonder if any strange noises will disturb their sleep this Christmas Season.
