Monday, July 19, 2010

The Financial Con Of The Decade Explained So Simply Even A Congressman Will Get It

Essential Reading from Zero Hedge if you still don't get what's been happening with the bank bailouts and subsequent austerity narrative...







The amounts that are being stolen are so huge, the timescale so rapid and the eventual likely impact so pervasive that I cannot believe the plutocrats behind this think they can get away with it indefnitely

Unless they've got something quite nasty up their collective sleeve

And if anyone has the cheek to tell me that there isn't an enormous conspiracy to keep Joe Public in the dark about this enormous scam they can go fuck themselves

.

54 comments:

Malcolm Pryce said...

Trouble is mate, it’s like being mugged by the invisible man. Or pick-pocketed: you know the money’s gone but you don’t know who to punch. I’m a well-educated and intelligent man but I don’t understand finance. I read the original article you link to and struggled to ‘get it’. You clearly do get it, but most people are like me. At least in the old days when you were covered in sores and starving outside the nobleman’s estate you had a pretty accurate and visceral understanding of who was doing the shafting.

stef said...

I think the barrier to compression, aside from a little technical terminology which is relatively easy to pick up on, is the fact that the fraud is so large and so blatant it defies commons sense and logic

Our governments have borrowed a lot of money from the banking system to give to the banking system, no strings attached

To pay for that gift and the interest on the associated debt subsequent generations are going to be paying interest in perpetuity to the banking system. They'll also be paying through the nose for use of essential infrastructure which was sold to the banking system to pay from the money that was given to the banking system

When enough ordinary people grasp what has been done they are going to have to be killed off, locked up or otherwise incapacitated or distracted

stef said...

When the banks started claiming their eye-watering 'losses' a couple of years ago our governments could have simply guaranteed ordinary depositors' savings and let the banks go tits up

That would have been the end of it, at relatively little cost

The 'losses' the banks made were the result of insane casino style bets between them which had no direct connection with the real economy

By stepping in and effectively covering those fantasy bets our governments have turned over the real economy into slavery

Stef said...

or, putting it another way

I bet you £500,000,000 that David Cameron is going to wear red socks tomorrow

I lose the bet

I then admit that I cannot pay the £500,000,000

At this point, you could have my kneecaps broken and console yourself with the thought that the £500,000,000 never really existed in the first place

However, if I were a bank, the government would step in and take £500,000,000 out of the real economy to give to you on my behalf

And because th government has a little trouble taking the £500,000,000 out of the real economy straight away you offer to lend some of the government's own money back to it (with interest) or use some of that money the government has given to you to buy up the country's infrastructure from the government

I'm happy, you're happy, we give selected members of the government a cut, so they're happy

The only people who are unhappy are the daft c*nts who have to pay it all back with interest, via taxes and increased bills for Life's essential

It really is that blatant

Stef said...

We really are in guillotine territory now...

Stef said...

I'm starting to feel like Dr Evil these days

There was me plucking the figure of £500,000,000 out of thin air as an example of a large sum that would be significant on a national scale and there are Hedge Fund managers out there who 'earn' that much in a few months

Pocket calculators are going to have to be made with a few more digits on them. That or people start referring to the sums involved in scientific notation

Quoting the UK national debt as 4x10^12 is so much tidier than £4,000,000,000,000

Stef said...

...even reading what I've just written, and with the level of understanding I have developed about what is being done, I still find myself instinctively saying

'Nah, it can't be like that. They couldn't get away with it'

but it is like that

and who's going to stop Them?

Malcolm Pryce said...

The BBC anaesthetizes us to the reality doesn’t it? Every night on the news they cut to the stock market just before the weather and report the rise of the indices as an intrinsically good and noble thing, something which is good for us all like sunny weather. There is never a hint of the moral ambiguity that informs their reporting of, say, betting on the horses. It is this constant reassurance that the world of finance is inherently noble that confuses people and chokes the sense of outrage. How come there was not more anger that the banks paid themselves huge bonuses with the money we bailed them out with?

Stef said...

"Every night on the news they cut to the stock market just before the weather and report the rise of the indices as an intrinsically good and noble thing,"

well quite, particularly when you consider that the FTSE is currently at the same level as it was in 1997

no small feat when you consider general inflation and all the billions of pension fund contributions that are stuffed into it every month

whatever doesn't get syphoned off into the shadow financial system before a large company declares its profit is skimmed off by the stock market professionals in fees and rigged trading

ordinary people will *never* be allowed to accumulate capital in the way that the plutocrats do

for some reason, the plutocrats eased up for a few years in the post-war period but they're now hard at work correcting that historical aberration

why haven't a significant number of people cottoned on?

the flow of toys, tits and sugar continues uninterrupted

for now anyway

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link Stef.
Some interesting comments on that ZH site too. The sheer scale of it, and the average joe's ignorance of it can be mindblowing.
And when you get down to it (past all the diversions/sleight of hand), it is all quite hideously simple.

Stef said...

One of the interesting things about the comments underneath the original ZH article is that no-one is seriously challenging the analysis

Not even the usual 1/2 arsed attempts at defending the indefensible

Anon said...

When more people start personally feeling the pinch, they may change their views. Until then it'll be more of the same.

Random "conspiracy nuts" who happen to have been screwed over are not enough to bring attention to the messed up nature of the system we have now.

I read a discussion on the homeless that confirms, in my mind, that the state has no intention of aiding the issue but instead keeping the status quo to justify filtering money to NGOs. There were other points made like taxes\illegality of various actions but it was rather long so I'll just link it here:

http://jtittiger.blogspot.com/2010/06/homeless-solution-is-problem.html

Don't mind the references to God, you can safely ignore the Christian stuff without losing the 99% gist of the post.

stef said...

"Don't mind the references to God, you can safely ignore the Christian stuff without losing the 99% gist of the post."

the funny thing is, before I read the piece, I was going to reply by saying that reference to Christianity in the context of the banking system is totally fine as the only people that really pissed Jesus off in the Bible were the money changers

and then I read the link and bumped into this line...

"Money changers the bible calls them. They are the only class of people that the bible documents as really pissing off our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

spooky

plenty I personally agree with in that post, punctuated by right wing libertarian language that I personally don't use. Having said that, and as discussed under a previous post here, I would be happy to stand next to that person, torch and pitchfork in hand

stef said...

I think it's also worth mentioning that not only were the money changers the only people that really pissed Jesus off in the Bible but the Bible implies that Jesus' antagonism to the money changers is what got him nailed to a tree...

Mark 11

15 On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves,
16 and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.
17 And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not written: " 'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations' But you have made it 'a den of robbers.'"
18 The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.


I'm not a practicing Christian myself but if I were I'd be quite confident that the Gospels offer some pretty clear guidance on how to view usurers

Anon said...

I believe you made allusions to that previously with the modern day priest class being financial analysts and the like, preaching grave danger if their recommendations weren't followed.

stef said...

it's such a great system, so why restrict it to religion when it works so well in finance, and politics, and science...

Anon said...

Fiscal localism is on the rise in countries other than US I notice:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128546325

Stef said...

the funniest mainfestation of a bunch of shysters trying to sell a load of old cock using religious techniques was 'Zeitgeist - The Movie'

when it first came out several Loons described it in approving terms and suggested I gave it a spin. They particularly approved of the way is supposedly demolished the myth of organised religion

I watched it and though it was 90% truthy I found the 10% bullshit content just a little bit too much to digest

The apparent demolition of Christianity whilst containing some good material also contained untruths and half truths which the film-makers must have been aware they were including

Ditto for Zeitgeist's assault on the religion of Money which, along with the religion of Science, has largely replaced the Christian Faith over the last couple of hundred years. Some solid material mixed in with deliberate untruths and half-truths

I suspected a hidden agenda

and then, a little later on, Zeitgeist Addendum was released, complete with its completely lala land punchline bigging up this bollocks

Don't worship THEIR Nonsense! Worship MY nonsense!

Stef said...

"Fiscal localism is on the rise in countries other than US I notice:"

The Germans, and the Austrians, know a thing or two about bollocks Fiat, bank-created depressions and how quickly the banksters stamp out local currencies if they start to become too successful

Stef said...

"The Kingower, named after a region in Bavaria, is a depreciative currency. It loses two percent of its value at the end of each quarter. So that encourages people to spend, something the frugal Germans are notoriously unwilling to do."

/ sarc on

unlike the Euro, or the £, or any other paper currency, which aren't losing any of their spending power at all each quarter

/ sarc off

Anon said...

Based on my own basket of goods, a conservative estimate of purchasing power between 2007 and 2010 indicates a 50% drop in purchasing power. In other words I had to spend double to buy the same goods. Whether that be in quantity terms or quality, it was a staggering change.

Try coping with that without a job, like millions of people have had to. Then you really start to wonder about the psychological state of the pseudo-middle class whining about the unemployed. Priorities really are skewed when buying tat from China is considered more important than affordable housing.

gyges said...

Nice rant by Denis Rancourt about why we must despise university profs.

"University professors are cowardly deceiving scum. There are no good professors.

They work under a cover of serving community and the public good yet they serve and replicate a system of extreme violence and repression; a system of layered exploitation that uses every method from war and genocide to economic slavery to psychological social engineering in order to maintain and increase its hierarchical domination.
"

Only those who don't see it could be offended by the note.

gyges said...

I wonder if the big society includes local currencies such as the one in the Wörgle experiment?

Stef said...

No

Anonymous said...

"Our governments have borrowed a lot of money from the banking system to give to the banking system, no strings attached...

They'll[us, the public, will] also be paying through the nose for use of essential infrastructure which was sold to the banking system to pay from the money that was given to the banking system"

Oooooh Shit!

Anonymous said...

The purpose of Zeitgeist was to attack religion using some rather well known conspirallonery on money and 9-11 < to get the proverbial foot in the door. An AV version of a cream pie if you will.

I'm not a Christian, but it certainly didn't demolish Christianty. What it did was espose some of the frauds that were deliberately were inserted into Christianty so that they may exposed later thereby discrediting so called Christianity.

I believe it's called a straw man technique.

And most fell straight in.

Anonymous said...

The Zeitgeist bait and switch is not an isolated incident.

Check out this fun cutesy video: The Empathic Civilization

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g

Made by a Jeremy Rifkin. He turns out to be a major globalist.

Here's his 'Mega Trends in Globalization Lecture Topics', it's worth reading just for the titles alone (e.g ‘Harnessing the scientific and technological fields of biotechnology, nanotechnology, advanced IT, and cognitive science in ways that advance the process of globalization’):

http://www.foet.org/lecture.html

And elsewhere:

"If we can harness our empathic sensibility to establish a new global ethic that recognizes and acts to harmonize the many relationships that make up the life-sustaining forces of the planet, we will have moved beyond the detached, self-interested and utilitarian philosophical assumptions that accompanied national markets and nation state governance and into a new era of biosphere consciousness. We leave the old world of geopolitics behind and enter into a new world of biosphere politics, with new forms of governance emerging to accompany our new biosphere awareness."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65CdIg22LXE

"Can we reach biosphere consciousness and global empathy in time to avert planetary collapse?"

Who is this guy?

"Jeremy Rifkin has been an advisor to the European Union for the past decade [...] He currently advises the European Commission, the European Parliament, and several EU heads of state, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain.

Mr. Rifkin is the principle architect of the European Union’s Third Industrial Revolution long-term economic sustainability plan to address the triple challenge of the global economic crisis, energy security, and climate change."

http://www.foet.org/JeremyRifkin.htm

Or, even simpler:

BREAKING THE GALILEAN SPELL, By Stuart A. Kauffman:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kauffman08/kauffman08_index.html

"My aim is to reinvent the sacred." etc.

Why?

http://www.salon.com/news/environment/atoms_eden/2008/11/19/stuart_kauffman

"If we can't transform our secular humanist, consumerist worldview into one in which we have this sense of responsibility, awe and wonder for the planet and all life, then we can't invent a global ethic. Yet we need it to create a transnational, mythic structure to sustain the global civilization that's emerging."

For those with a Christian perspective, there's always "The New Age Infiltration of the Truth Movement, Final Cut"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJi50i4wkZw&feature=related

which connects some unexpected dots.

(Sorry for splurging, Stef)

Anonymous said...

The Zeitgeist bait and switch is not an isolated incident.

Check out this fun cutesy video: The Empathic Civilization

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g

Made by a Jeremy Rifkin. He turns out to be a major globalist.

Here's his 'Mega Trends in Globalization Lecture Topics', it's worth reading just for the titles alone (e.g ‘Harnessing the scientific and technological fields of biotechnology, nanotechnology, advanced IT, and cognitive science in ways that advance the process of globalization’):

http://www.foet.org/lecture.html

And elsewhere:

"If we can harness our empathic sensibility to establish a new global ethic that recognizes and acts to harmonize the many relationships that make up the life-sustaining forces of the planet, we will have moved beyond the detached, self-interested and utilitarian philosophical assumptions that accompanied national markets and nation state governance and into a new era of biosphere consciousness. We leave the old world of geopolitics behind and enter into a new world of biosphere politics, with new forms of governance emerging to accompany our new biosphere awareness."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65CdIg22LXE

"Can we reach biosphere consciousness and global empathy in time to avert planetary collapse?"

Who is this guy?

"Jeremy Rifkin has been an advisor to the European Union for the past decade [...] He currently advises the European Commission, the European Parliament, and several EU heads of state, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain.

Mr. Rifkin is the principle architect of the European Union’s Third Industrial Revolution long-term economic sustainability plan to address the triple challenge of the global economic crisis, energy security, and climate change."

http://www.foet.org/JeremyRifkin.htm

Anonymous said...

[..continued] Or, even simpler:

BREAKING THE GALILEAN SPELL, By Stuart A. Kauffman:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kauffman08/kauffman08_index.html

"My aim is to reinvent the sacred." etc.

Why?

http://www.salon.com/news/environment/atoms_eden/2008/11/19/stuart_kauffman

"If we can't transform our secular humanist, consumerist worldview into one in which we have this sense of responsibility, awe and wonder for the planet and all life, then we can't invent a global ethic. Yet we need it to create a transnational, mythic structure to sustain the global civilization that's emerging."


For those with a Christian perspective, there's always "The New Age Infiltration of the Truth Movement, Final Cut"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJi50i4wkZw&feature=related

which connects some unexpected dots.

(Sorry for splurging, Stef)

Anon said...

Talking of dodgy speculative trades:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/7895242/Mystery-trader-buys-all-Europes-cocoa.html

Apparently all of Europe's cocoa was purchased in a single transaction...

Anon said...

http://www.wdm.org.uk/press-release/banks-blame-price-rises-coffee-chocolate-and-bread

More of the same. Who was it that said food would be used as a weapon?

Stef said...

That cocoa article pissed me off straight because it includes the now virtually mandatory 'explanation' used whenever the price of a commodity shoots up that the Chinese are responsible (eating more beef/ cocoa/ oil/ etc)

Funny people the Chinese. One week their tremendous increase in demand drives up the price of a particular commodity. Then a few weeks later that tremendous demand apparently evaporates and the price plops right back down again

Also, it's practically impossible to play the futures/ options markets anonymously (unless, of course, you're shorting airline stocks before 9/11) so the mystery buyer element is bollocks

Also, you can't buy a futures contract and elect to take immediate physical delivery of a crop that hasn't been harvested yet

It's also very unlikely that a purely speculative hedge fund would take physical delivery of a load of cocoa, or any other commodity, as it wouldn't know what the fuck to do with it

I'm not saying that there isn't something going on, just that by and large, mainstream financial journalists are full of shit

Another thing to bear in mind is that if you debauch your currency it's only a matter of time before people trading real things start demanding more of that debauched currency in exchange for real things

Anon said...

I should make it clear I don't endorse the BBC\Daily Mail\Times\etc when I link to them. I did use the word apparently there for good reason.

Stef said...

I also find it amusing that a load of cocoa traders whinged off to the London Futures Exchange a few weeks back about beastly speculators coming in and distorting their market

That would be the market they've had sewn up to their own benefit for 80 years or more...

http://www.cocoafederation.com/about/cal.jsp

In an ideal world people would be using the entrails of commodity traders to strangle hedge fund managers

Anon said...

Cartels that rig prices are bad, doesn't matter who's behind them.

Stef said...

The connection between production cost and cost to the end user for most things is, at best, tenuous

Stef said...

... use of expressions like 'adding value' or 'adding liquidity' are big give-aways

Anon said...

Indeed. Some items (eg Tesco Value) are there as loss leaders to draw in the punters. Others (eg Tesco Finest) are there to make the big margins to claw the discounts back.

Anon said...

Speaking of items, it's amazing what some people will throw away. I can and have fished out working computers from skips, for example. I guess we can blame the 3 year rule for that. Bought with loans of course...

gyges said...

Article from the Scottish lawyers mag, The Firm, "Online exclusive: Editor's blog- Bomber, bomber, bomber" about the Lockerbie shambles.

Interesting to read it and think of the quote from Sin City,

"Power doesn't come from a badge, or a gun. Power comes from lying...

I could pump you full of bullets right now and I wouldn't even be arrested. Everyone would lie for me. Everyone who matters..
"

The lying is so transparent; the attempts to hide it so inept ... yet those that matter go along with the lies.

Anonymous said...

"UK economy grows at fastest rate for four years"

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/uk+economy+grows+at+fastest+rate+for+four+years/3721182

Anonymous said...

Anyone got any opinions on this Julian Paul Assange character who seems to in the headlines a lot recently.

Anonymous said...

anyone any thought on this guy from wikileaks?
Is he a goody or a bady or a useful idiot who thinks he going to save the planet with his squeaky leaks

Anonymous said...

anyone any thought on this guy from wikileaks?
Is he a goody or a bady or a useful idiot who thinks he going to save the planet with his squeaky leaks

Anonymous said...

A fair bit of the rather self righteous anti-NWO/hegemony/bankster blogosphere has given him a bit of stick. Behaviour I'm beginning to tire of (and I'm prob guilty of it too).

To me, that the murdering bastards in the coalition of the killing thought it necessary to play Assange/Wikileaks showing that "Iran/Pakistan etc are engaged in terrorism(TM)" rather than leak such startling 'finds' through their normal channels, and having to paying the price of even more of their filthy coalitions shit enter the public eye, is a good reason to pack ones bagss and wave goodbye to the the 'alternative' (bipolarised).

The alternative really are a bunch of bitches.

Anonymous said...

those nasty Mooslums are up to no good once again.

BBC News - Girl, 14, forced to be prostitute in Greater Manchester

Anon said...

Trying to explain the potential dangers of cloned farm animals seems to be a fruitless endeavour...

gyges said...

Prof Rancourt is on the money again. Here's his latest note.

Lot's of stuff to think about ... too many quotes to put in here.

gyges said...

What was he doing?

"The mysterious death of a Ministry of Defence scientist who was carrying out secret bomb-making experiments was blamed on inadequate safety procedurestoday."

There are a couple of points from the story.

If MOD chemists can't make 'homemade' bombs why do we seem to think that thicko terrorists can?

Secondly, the accident happened in 2002. Why were terror acts of this nature being investigated so early?

Anonymous said...

hmmmm,,blogging can endanger ones health it seems.

Leherensuge: Greek blogger shot down in Athens

gyges said...

Blackjack, anyone?

Stef said...

has anyone come anywhere near figuring out what Blackjack was all about?

if it was intended to baffle Jones' and Icke's fan bases and send them off on wild goose chases it did a cracking job

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?board=475.0

http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=49212

Stef said...

anyway, I've always preferred board games to card games...

http://masonicboardgame.com/products/

Malcolm Pryce said...

Wow, Blackjack, I'd forgotten all about that. What on earth was that all about? Was it just a wind-up 'they' thought up while pissed?

I like your mason's game but it doesn't go far enough for me. I prefer Tony Blair's new game, announced at the Chilcott Inquiry, 'The Post 9/11 New Calculus of Risk'. It's like conventional Risk, but the counters don't exist.