Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Parliament in Cyprus passes international bailout deal


Women withdraw cash from machines in Nicosia, Cyprus, 30 April  BBC
Parliament in Cyprus has approved the country’s international bailout after warnings that the alternative would be financial collapse.
MPs voted through the loan package by 29 votes to 27.
The tiny eurozone state secured a loan package worth 10bn euros (£8.4; $13bn) from its EU partners and the International Monetary Fund.  
In return it must raise 13bn euros, largely banking reform.
An early proposal to raise money through a levy on all bank deposits was quickly withdrawn.
But anger has continued smouldering. Under the bailout, depositors will be forced to take major losses on savings over 100,000 euros, and capital controls were imposed in March.
The Cypriot financial crisis developed because of its exposure to Greece’s economic problems.
‘Enslavement deal’
No single party had a majority in the 56-member parliament but the three-party, centre-right coalition in power had 30 seats in total – one more than needed to pass the bailout.
President Nicos Anastasiades had appealed to lawmakers to act with the national interest in mind.
“What we’re called upon today to do is to adopt a loan agreement that will allow our country to breathe and to give us the chance to overcome whichever problems we’re facing amid this crisis,” he told reporters.
Government spokesman Christos Stylianides told state radio: “We have had enough of delusions.
“We don’t have another choice. Whoever has one should tell us what it is.”
But George Perdikis, an MP for the Greens party, said before the vote: “A ‘yes’ from Cyprus’s parliament is by far the biggest defeat in our 8,000-year history.
“Its democratically elected representatives have a gun to their head to agree to a deal of enslavement.”

Cypriot parliament approves EU bailout

The aid was conditional on Cyprus winding down Laiki, its second-largest bank
The aid was conditional on Cyprus winding down Laiki, its second-largest bank
Cyprus's parliament has approved a European Union bailout including provisions to impose substantial losses on bank depositors and wind down one of the island's biggest banks.
By a show of hands, 29 politicians approved ratification of the bailout bill and 27 opposed.
The government had warned that without approval the economy was in imminent danger of default.
Cyprus is expected to get the first disbursement of a total of €10 billion in aid from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund next month.
Cyprus, the eurozone's third smallest country, is bracing itself for at least two years of economic misery and record unemployment as terms of the €10bn bailout deal begin to take effect.
Attempts to agree on a bailout triggered financial chaos on the island last month, when parliament rejected an initial plan to force both insured and uninsured depositors to pay a levy to fund the recapitalisation of two banks heavily exposed to debt-crippled Greece.
Insured deposits are those of up to €100,000.
It was followed by a two-week shutdown of banks.
The fallback option was to wind down one of the banks, Laiki, and impose losses of up to 60% on uninsured deposits in a second, Bank of Cyprus.

Connecticut Begins Gold Dealer Shutdown

Jeff Berwick
Activist Post

If you don't own gold yet, you might really want to hurry up and get some. We keep saying it, but this time it's not just because physical precious metals are getting incredibly scarce. Purchasing gold may become outright illegal if what's going on in Connecticut is any indication.


Even if Connecticut's plan to track all gold sales isn't a harbinger for a modern day Roosevelt-like ban on gold ownership, it will at the very least drive gold bullion dealers out of business with the cost of complying with the new regulation. That will create artificial scarcity in Connecticut and could set a precedent for other US States.

From the Connecticut General Assembly website:
AN ACT CONCERNING PRECIOUS METALS OR STONES DEALERS. 
To require precious metals or stones dealers to provide a periodic statement of transactions in an electronic format to the local licensing authority and retain any goods purchased for at least ten days, and to make the requirements applicable to precious metals or stones dealers similar to those applicable to secondhand dealers. 
Introduced by: Public Safety and Security Committee
As economist Gary North pointed out concering this bill: "You may recall that the terror of the French Revolution was run by the Committee on Public Safety." In the section on "Bullions and Coins", the bill says:
For bullion and coin sales, in addition to the requirements under current law, the bill requires dealers to keep the record in English, be consecutively numbered, and include the seller’s general description.
Did you catch that last part about including the seller's general description?

This may be only the relatively tiny state of Connecticut, but the very fact that any government in the US is paying so much attention to gold transactions should send a very clear signal. Not only should you be running -- not walking -- to get more gold ...You should also be running to get a lot of it outside of the US as a clampdown seems to be in the works.

Maybe it's no coincidence that this bill is being introduced in Connecticut. It may not be long before the federal government starts publicly associating precious metals and Bitcoin with "terrorists" who are trying to hide their purchases of bomb-making materials. The state of Connecticut and the city of Boston, Massachusetts have been host to the kind of violence that governments love to use to restrict gun ownership and to increase surveillance powers. It wouldn't surprise me if we saw similar legislation to what Connecticut is proposing coming out of Massachusetts. Eventually, I imagine such legislation sweeping across the US.

There will come a time when you will simply not be able to get precious metals because of a lack of supply (and no one will sell at any dollar price) ... or because purchase and ownership of the metals will be flat out illegal. This isn't hyperbole. This is a prediction based on history and current trends.

We have all watched as mere penstrokes have increased the state's power to monitor, spy upon and kill. Less than eighty years ago, a US president completely and abruptly outlawed the ownership of gold in a time of declared crisis. Does anyone reading this really think that something like that couldn't hapen again as the monetary system is its death throes and the US empire is inevitably resulting in the US police state?

The state will start to take strong action against gold and decentralized currencies. This is to be expected during The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It. Make sure to act before it's too late. Get your gold and then secure it somewhere the US government won't be able to steal it.

Sheriff’s Department Takes Family’s Home and It’s Contents Using a Fake Eviction

 

Please help my family get some press on this! Local media is in bed with our county and has only lied about the situation by claiming we had been evicted when we had NOT.

Photo: Cop Block
Photo: Cop Block
by Theodore Visner
Cop Block
April 30, 2013
My wife and I (Theodore Visner and Kathy Smith) bought a home from Shelly Sweet on land contract, a sheriff department employee, that changed her mind after we had been in the home for seven months making all payments as agreed. Although we were paying Sweet every month on the purchase of the property, she had not been paying the underlying mortgage and the home fell into foreclosure.
On a weekend Sweet knew that we would be out of town, she offered the contents of our home to her friends and coworkers at the Isabella County Sheriff’s Department claiming we had abandoned the home and many took her up on her free offer deal and took over $55,000 dollars worth of our personal property.
When we discovered this on Monday September 27, 2010 we called the same police and they kept us out of our home and assisted in it’s continued looting. We had NOT been evicted nor had we abandoned the property and the woman had convinced friends and coworkers that we had never paid her, were trashing the house and had forced her into foreclosure none of which were true.
My wife and I were able to get the house back after a full day of effort to discover that 95% of it’s contents had been stolen. The sheriff deputy (Steinert) came to our home three times that day and only assisted his coworker while the under-sheriff, sheriff and PA refused to help us after they recognized the totality of the situation…(that being, 6+ coworkers of Sweet coming into our home and receiving stolen property-theft).
On deputy Steinert’s third visit to our home, he arrested Visner for misuse of 911. The county then investigated my crime for almost four months and while I moved my family out of Isabella County for their safety, I could not move with them because my indefinitely delayed arraignment still loomed over my head.
We lost our home and 95% of it’s contents to the Sheriff Department and the sheriff department and the prosecutors office ignores our complaints and refuses to investigate their own and their friends. Over two and a half years have now passed with law enforcement officials doing nothing except covering for one another.
The theft of all of our property sucks but the underlying crime was the conspiracy to deprive my family’s constitutional rights, a federal crime during the commission of which, I was kidnapped (arrested) by deputy Steinert on the bullshit charge of misusing 911. Violation of Title 18 U.S.C. §§ 241 and 242 is a federal felony crime where the offenders could be sentenced to death if killing or kidnapping occur.
The following people participated in the crimes against my family.
Isabella County Sheriff Deputy Clinton Steinert
Isabella County Sheriff Department Clerk Shelly Sweet
Isabella County under-sheriff John Tellis
Isabella County Sheriff Leo Mioduszewski
Isabella County Board of Commissioners (7 or 8)
Isabella County Prosecuting Attorney Larry Burdick (out-going)
Isabella County Prosecuting Attorney Risa Scully (incoming)
Full story at www.Visner4Sheriff.com
Call me at 989-954-2814
Please help my family get some press on this! Local media is in bed with our county and has only lied about the situation by claiming we had been evicted when we had NOT.

 

Ex-Pa. bank manager gets house arrest in theft

The Associated Press
READING, Pa. —
A former bank manager who pleaded guilty to stealing nearly $200,000 from an incarcerated customer has been sentenced to six months of house arrest and has vowed to work hard to pay the money back.
David Parsons, 39, made the vow to Berks County Judge Stephen Lieberman before he was sentenced Monday, the Reading Eagle (http://bit.ly/13H8MDv ) reported.
The judge said the case was unusual because Parsons, of Shillington, had cooperated, pleaded guilty to theft and pledged to make full restitution and because house arrest was in the best interest of taxpayers.
The sentence also included 6 1/2 years of probation. Prosecutors had sought a sentence of nine to 23 months in the county jail.
Defense attorney Paul Missan said Parsons had recently opened a restaurant in Reading and allowing his client to work there also would benefit the economy.
Authorities said the former Metro Bank manager created debit cards using the victim's personal information and made daily withdrawals from ATMs in Berks and Lebanon counties in 2011.
They said the customer was in York County Prison and Muskingum County Jail in Ohio but inherited money while incarcerated. The customer was released from the Ohio prison in December 2011.
A total of $60,000 in restitution from the $196,000 taken has been paid: $20,000 from Parsons and $40,000 from a business to which he gave money.
Detectives said Parsons used some of the money to buy 1-ounce gold bars valued at $84,000, which he then sold, but investigators have not recovered them.
Parsons apologized to the bank and his family, saying, "This is something I struggle with every day."
___
Information from: Reading Eagle, http://www.readingeagle.com/

Everything Is Rigged in Favor of the Rich!!! The Stock Market Doesn’t Need The Economy To Surge, The Distribution Of Income And Wealth Looms Larger, Fed Holds $2 Trillion (And Rising) Of US GDP Hostage. Americans Past Point Of No Return?

The Stock Market Doesn’t Need The Economy To Surge

The S&P 500 gained a notable 1.7% last week, and it sits just points from its all-time high.
This comes as U.S. economic data continues to signal a spring slowdown.  Q1 GDP grew at a slower pace than expected, durable goods orders disappointed in April, and the housing market is showing signs of slowing.
Meanwhile, the current earnings season continues to be less than stellar….

In the rear view window, Q1 GDP was initially reported at +2.5% annualized. Once again, private growth was depressed by government austerity. March monthly data included a sharp decline in durable goods orders, which are now basically flat for a full year. New home sales increased slightly; existing home sales declined slightly. The University of Michigan confidence index increased in the second half of April, but is down month over month.
Let’s start this week’s look at the high frequency weekly indicators by looking at transports and consumer spending, which are the most significant changes:
Transport
Railroad transport from the AAR
  • -5600 or -2.0% carloads YoY

  • -1100 or -2.6% carloads ex-coal

  • +1400 or +0.6% intermodal units

  • -4200 or -0.8% YoY total loads
Shipping transport


American Rail Traffic Growth Has Nearly Ground To A Halt

The Growing Divergence Between Rich And Poor Economies May Become A Source Of Great Danger

Those economies relatively rich at the start of the twentieth century have by and large seen their material wealth and prosperity explode. Those nations and economies that were relatively poor have grown richer, but for the most part slowly. The relative gulf between rich and poor economies has grown steadily over the past century. Today it is larger than at any time in humanity’s previous experience, or at least larger than at any time since only some tribes knew how to use fire. The gulf across which the world’s rich and poor regarded each other exists in every dimension: how much people consume, whether they can read, what tools they use, and how they make their living.
This glass can be viewed either as half empty or as half full. The glass is half empty: we live today in a world that is nearly the most unequal world ever. Only the world of the 1970s and 1980s—with standards of living in China greatly depressed by the legacy of Mao, his Great Leap Forward, and his Cultural Revolution and with standards of living in India depressed to a lesser extent by the License Raj of the Nehru Dynasty—was more unequal than ours is, even today. The glass is half full: most of the world has already made the transition to sustained economic growth; most people live in economies that (while far poorer than the leading-edge post-industrial nations of the world’s economic core) have successfully climbed onto the escalator of economic growth and thus the escalator to modernity. The economic transformation of most of the world is less than a century behind the of the leading-edge economies—only an eyeblink behind, at least from the millennial perspective. However, the millennial perspective is one that human beings can adopt only when contemplating the long-dead past—not when thinking about their present or their children’s future.
On the other hand, one and a half billion people live in economies that have not made the transition to economic growth, and have not climbed onto the escalator to modernity. It is hard to argue that the median inhabitant of Africa has a higher real income than his or her counterpart of a generation ago.


from Zero Hedge:
US commercial bank loans and leases flat since Lehman, and yet US GDP higher by $2 trillion since the biggest bankruptcy in history. How does one reconcile this monetary and growth quandary? Simple. Enter the Fed.
When it comes to the real measure of a nation’s economic output, one can rely on “flexible”, constantly changing definitions of what constitutes the creation of “goods and services” as well as transactions thereof, goalseeked to meet the propaganda of constant growth no matter what (and which it appears will now, arbitrarily, include intangibles such as iTunes), or one can go to the very core of “growth” (just ask the anti-Austerians for whom debt and growth are interchangeable) which is and has always been a reflection of the increase (or decrease) in broad and narrow liquidity or money supply, which in turn means how much money is created through loans, either via commercial banks or the central monetary authority, also known as the Federal Reserve.
….

by Monty Guild, Financial Sense:
There are More Tools in the Kit—We Expect to See them Used in the U.S. and Europe Before the Current Economic Malaise has Ended
So far, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s aggressive monetary easing is following pretty closely the prescription laid out in 1999 by a Princeton economics professor named Ben S. Bernanke. Back then, before the dotcom decline of 2000 and the 2008 crisis, Mr. Bernanke wrote the following in his appraisal how to help Japan regain its economic footing after 10 years of stagnation:
“Despite the apparent liquidity trap, monetary policymakers retain the power to increase nominal aggregate demand and the price level… [and] increased nominal spending and rising prices will lead to increases in real economic activity.”


Capitalism is killing our morals, our future

In a Market Society, everything is for sale
For the rest of the world, capitalism is not working: A billion live on less than two dollars a day. With global population exploding to 10 billion by 2050, that inequality gap will grow, fueling revolutions, wars, adding more billionaires and more folks surviving on two bucks a day.

Why should you worry? Capitalism breeds corruption and inequality

But the 2008 crash challenged our faith in free-market capitalism: “The financial crisis did more than cast doubt on the ability of markets to allocate risk efficiently. It also prompted a widespread sense that markets have become detached from morals.”
Then comes the big question: So what? “Why worry that we are moving toward a society in which everything is up for sale?” Two big reasons concern Sandel:
First, inequality: “Where everything is for sale, life is harder for those of modest means.” If wealth just bought things, yachts, sports cars, and fancy vacations, inequalities wouldn’t matter much. “But as money comes to buy more and more, the distribution of income and wealth looms larger.”
Second, corruption: “Putting a price on the good things in life can corrupt them … markets don’t only allocate goods, they express and promote certain attitudes toward the goods being exchanged.” Also “corrupt the meaning of citizenship. Economists often assume that markets … do not affect the goods being exchanged. But this is untrue. Markets leave their mark.”

Dysfunctional politicians pushing Americans past point of no return

Can we change? “The appeal of using markets to put a price on public values, is that there’s no judgment on the preferences they satisfy.” Debate is unnecessary. Markets don’t “ask whether some ways of valuing goods are higher, or worthier, than others. If someone is willing to pay for sex, or a kidney … the only question the economist asks is ‘How much?’ Markets … don’t discriminate between worthy preferences and unworthy ones.” Markets may never draw the line, but do politicians, in secret?
What is certain: Capitalism is eliminating moral values, as Nobel economist Milton Friedman and capitalism’s philosopher Ayn Rand had been preaching to the generation. As Sandel puts it: “Each party to a deal decides for him- or herself what value to place on the things being exchanged. This nonjudgmental stance toward values lies at the heart of market reasoning, and explains much of its appeal.”
But unfortunately, market capitalism “has exacted a heavy price … drained public discourse of moral and civic energy.”
The good professor is a great teacher, with only one glaring flaw in his logic: he’s too idealistic, too quixotic. You don’t have to be a fatalist to know that without a total economic collapse, market capitalists — including 1,426 billionaires, Wall Street bankers, hedgers, lobbyists and every other special interest getting rich off the new market society — will never voluntarily surrender their control over the American political system.
Rather, they will blindly continue down their self-destructive path with an absolute conviction they are divinely guided by the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith, and perhaps even God.
Meanwhile, we have no choice but wait patiently till the collapse, anxiously aware that our bizarre political system will just keep degrading America’s moral values, pricing, buying, selling, trading morals like commodities, because in the final analysis everything has a price and everyone has a price in our hot new exciting Market Society.


Stunning Gold Shortages As Western Ponzi Scheme Collapsing

The world economy is starting to disintegrate. What we are entering now is the culmination of a Ponzi scheme of printed money and credit that started with the creation of the Fed in 1913….

Child Hunger Is Exploding In Greece – And 14 Signs That It Is Starting To Happen In America Too

The world is heading into a horrific economic nightmare, and an inordinate amount of the suffering is going to fall on innocent children.  If you want to get an idea of what America is going to look like in the not too distant future, just check out what is happening in Greece.  At this point, Greece is experiencing a full-blown economic depression.  As I have written about previously, the unemployment rate in Greece has now risen to 27 percent, which is much higher than the peak unemployment rate that the U.S. economy experienced during the Great Depression of the 1930s.  And as you will read about below, child hunger is absolutely exploding in Greece right now.  Some families are literally trying to survive on pasta and ketchup.  But don’t think for a moment that it can’t happen here.  Sadly, the truth is that child hunger is already rising very rapidly in our poverty-stricken cities.  Never before have we had so many Americans unable to take care of themselves.  Food stamp enrollment and child homelessness have soared to brand new all-time records, and there are actually thousands of Americans that are so poor that they live in tunnels underneath our cities.  But for millions of other Americans, the suffering is not quite so dramatic.  Instead, they just watch their hopes and their dreams slowly slip away as they struggle to find a way to make it from month to month.  There are millions of parents that lead lives that are filled with constant stress and anxietyas they try to figure out how to provide the basics for their children.  How do you tell a child that you can’t give them any dinner even though you have been trying as hard as you can?  What many families go through on a regular basis is absolutely heartbreaking.  Unfortunately, more poor families slip through the cracks with each passing day, and these are supposedly times in which we are experiencing an “economic recovery”.  So what are things going to look like when the next major economic downturn strikes?
A recent New York Times article detailed the horrifying child hunger that we are witnessing in Greece right now.  At some schools there are reports of children actually begging for food from their classmates…
As an elementary school principal, Leonidas Nikas is used to seeing children play, laugh and dream about the future. But recently he has seen something altogether different, something he thought was impossible in Greece: children picking through school trash cans for food; needy youngsters asking playmates for leftovers; and an 11-year-old boy, Pantelis Petrakis, bent over with hunger pains.
“He had eaten almost nothing at home,” Mr. Nikas said, sitting in his cramped school office near the port of Piraeus, a working-class suburb of Athens, as the sound of a jump rope skittered across the playground. He confronted Pantelis’s parents, who were ashamed and embarrassed but admitted that they had not been able to find work for months. Their savings were gone, and they were living on rations of pasta and ketchup.
Could you imagine that happening to your children or your grandchildren?
Don’t think that it can’t happen.  Just a few years ago the Greek middle class was vibrant and thriving.
And we are starting to see hunger explode in other European countries as well.  For example, in the UK the number of people receiving emergency food rations has increased by 170 percent over the past year.
This is one of the reasons why I get upset when people say that “things are getting better”.  Yes, the stock market has been setting record highs lately, but things are most definitely not getting better.
Even during this false bubble of debt-fueled economic stability that we are enjoying right now, we continue to see hunger and poverty rise dramatically in America.
Since Barack Obama has been president, the number of Americans on food stamps has grown from 32 million to more than 47 million.
Will we all be on food stamps eventually?
Will we all become dependent on the government for our survival at some point?
According to the Boston Herald, even Tamerlan Tsarnaev was receiving government welfare benefits…
Marathon bombings mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev was living on taxpayer-funded state welfare benefits even as he was delving deep into the world of radical anti-American Islamism, the Herald has learned.
State officials confirmed last night that Tsarnaev, slain in a raging gun battle with police last Friday, was receiving benefits along with his wife, Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, and their 3-year-old daughter. The state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services said those benefits ended in 2012 when the couple stopped meeting income eligibility limits.
Isn’t that crazy?
And yes, there are some people out there that are abusing the system.  In fact, the cost of food stamp fraud has risen sharply to approximately $750 million in recent years.
But most of the people on these programs really need the help.  Thanks to our incredibly foolish economic policies, there are not enough good jobs for everyone and there never will be again.  The percentage of Americans that are unable to take care of themselves is going to continue to rise, and the suffering that we are witnessing right now is going to get much, much worse.
Not that things aren’t really, really bad already.  Here are some signs that child hunger in America has already started to explode…
#1 Today, approximately 17 million children in the United States are facing food insecurity.  In other words, that means that “one in four children in the country is living without consistent access to enough nutritious food to live a healthy life.”
#2 We are told that we live in the “wealthiest nation” on the planet, and yet more than one out of every four children in the United States is enrolled in the food stamp program.
#3 The average food stamp benefit breaks down to approximately $4 per person per day.
#4 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps before they reach the age of 18.
#5 It may be hard to believe, but approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are currently living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.
#6 The number of children living on $2.00 a day or less in the United States has grown to 2.8 million.  That number has increased by 130 percent since 1996.
#7 According to Feeding America, “households with children reported food insecurity at a significantly higher rate than those without children, 20.6 percent compared to 12.2 percent”.
#8 According to a Feeding America hunger study, more than 37 million Americans are now being served by food pantries and soup kitchens.
#9 For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless.  That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.

Fed Debate Moves From Tapering to Extending Bond Buying – 11.7 million Americans remain jobless.
Debate about the Fed ending its bond buying was premature. The US economy would collapse if it wasn’t on Fed life-support and the Fed knows it.

Everything Is Rigged – The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever – Matt Taibbi

Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschild’s & the Masons & the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The …


The Market & Cycles – Why We Must Crash & Burn – Martin A. Armstrong

This is why we are facing a MAJOR economic upheaval. This is a GENERATIONAL shift. The youth are coming of age. They have no future under this economic system. This will explode in everyone’s face.


Jon Stewart Blasts Congress For Gutting STOCK Act


The World Is Hoarding Alternative Money As Almost All Major Countries Are Going Through The Classic Stages of Economic Collapse

Hoarding Alternative Money & Reforming Banks
Argentina is going through the classic stages of economic collapse. The government seized all pensions. They are destroying everything that gives the people incentive to be a society that emerges from the cooperation of everyone. When government turns against its own people, even as the USA is currently doing, you end up with deflation insofar as the economy collapses and wages are not available, while hoarding emerges as does barter. This is why we find hundreds of cities in the USA issuing their own local currency because there was not much available especially after the sovereign debt defaults and the closure of more than 3,000 banks. In Japan when its currency collapsed, it entered a dark age where there was no coin issued for about 600 years. Rice became the standard of money. It is more often than not, basic commodities that become the alternative money supply. Currently, we are starting to see the very same patterns emerge in Argentina….
http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/04/28/hoarding-alternative-money-reforming-banks/
The 5 Stages of Collapse
Stage 1: Financial collapse
Faith in “business as usual” is lost. The future is no longer assumed [to] resemble the past in any way that allows risk to be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access to capital is lost.
Stage 2: Commercial collapse
Faith that “the market shall provide” is lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down, and widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm.
Stage 3: Political collapse
The ‘monarchs of money’ and the war on savers
Power Shift: First in a series on the rise of the central bankers and the global imposition of cheap credit
Most of that generation grew up believing that if you save and exercise prudence that you will earn at least a modest return on your hard-earned money to keep you comfortable in your old age, perhaps along with a pension.
But the money-printing orgy of the last five years looks to have shot that notion to smithereens.
Very deliberately, the central bankers have punished savers, pushing interest rates so low that any truly safe investment — and older people are always advised to play it safe — yields a negative return when inflation is factored in.
British pensioners Judy White and her husband Alan, at their home in Teddington, south of London: ‘I now have 50 per cent less.’ (CBC )
The policy has savaged pension and savings returns worldwide, but particularly in Britain, a nation of savers and pensioners.
There is more money in British pension funds than in the rest of Europe combined, and now that money is just sitting, “dead,” as some call it, not working for its
See the surge in central bank holdings, the printing of new money, beginning in the spring of 2008 with the bank bailouts and the acquistion of long-term securities to keep interest rates down.See the surge in central bank holdings, the printing of new money, beginning in the spring of 2008 with the bank bailouts and the acquistion of long-term securities to keep interest rates down. (International Monetary Fund)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/04/26/f-rfa-macdonald-power-shift-savers.html

New report exposes a serious problem with “quantitative easing”
I was going through a recent note from SocGen’s Patrick Legland and came across a nice visualization for potential problems from Japan’s QE program.
As I’ve mentioned before, Japan’s Yen strategy is inherently zero-sum. That is, if the lower Yen boosts Japanese growth, then it’s essentially stealing from someone else’s growth.
We’ve seen this most clearly in Europe in recent years where the weak Euro has benefited Germany and not the periphery nations (who are all current account deficit nations). So it’s interesting to note that the decline in the Yen is hurting… Germany!
This is interesting because of some of the recent calls for the ECB to copy the BOJ’s easing policy.
http://pragcap.com/a-european-qe-disconnect-to-come
New report says the run on physical gold has gone global
Those who precipitated the recent fall in the gold price may have unleashed a beast that will put future efforts at market manipulation way out of their control. Physical metal is now seemingly becoming key in investors’ minds.
They are no longer putting any faith in paper gold and this is being seen in all quarters with reports from virtually all continents of demand exceeding supply of physical metal, and some hefty premiums being applied on sales of gold bullion.
Add to this particularly strong demand from Asia – reports have put the volume of deliveries into the Shanghai exchange so far this year of over 1,000 tonnes as actually exceeding estimated new mine production over the period.
Now whether this is indicative of actual Chinese demand, or perhaps a liquidation of gold held in the Western ETFs and it being moved into what might be deemed as safer depositories elsewhere is uncertain for the moment – although anecdotal evidence does suggest huge demand re-occurring at Chinese and Hong Kong retail outlets.
That other hotbed of gold demand…
http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/content/en//mineweb-gold-news?oid=187674&sn=Detail
Rick Rule- Are We in for Physical Shortages in Gold & Silver?

http://www.wallstformainst.com/2013/04/25/rick-rule-are-we-in-for-physical-shortages-in-gold-silver/
Greek parliament passes bill to lay off 15,000
Greeks Unpaid Taxes Soar $1.04 Billion
Moody’s says Italy may still eventually need bailout
Ebbing Inflation Means More Easy Money
Silver Slump Lures Buyers as Waiting Time Rises in Singapore

America Is The Land of Opportunity For ILLEGAL ALIENS!!! Gov’t Gives Free Phones, Free Health Care, Full Voting Rights, ‘IMMEDIATE’ ACCESS TO WELFARE For ILLEGAL ALIENS And $3,000 Hiring Edge Over Americans!!!

Immigration bill contains free cell phones… Bans racial profiling
The 844-page immigration reform bill the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” dropped in the dead of night contains a lucrative handout that would give taxpayer-funded free cell phones to some people who live or work near the U.S. border with Mexico.
Pages 43 and 44 of the bill detail what one conservative blogger, Javier Manjarres of Shark Tank, has already described as the “ObamaPhone” from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). That section reads:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/04/17/Immigration-bill-contains-free-cell-phone-handouts-dubbed-MarcoPhones
The immigration bill senators introduced Wednesday bans racial profiling by federal law enforcement officers in most routine encounters, such as traffic stops.
Under current federal law and court precedents, racial discrimination is illegal — but there is no specific ban on racial profiling by federal officers.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/17/immigration-plan-bans-racial-profiling-federal-law/#ixzz2Qkf73xNC
Immigration Bill Gives New Legals $3,000 Hiring Edge
Under the immigration reform bill, some employers would have an incentive of up to $3,000 per year to hire a newly legalized immigrant over a U.S. citizen.
In avoiding one controversy — the cost of providing millions of newly legalized immigrants with ObamaCare subsidies — the Senate “Gang of Eight” may have risked walking into another.
http://news.investors.com/041713-652257-immigration-reform-meets-obamacare-employer-mandate.htm#ixzz2QrGFhTuQ
Immigration Bill ‘Worse Than We Thought,’ Legalizes Relatives and Previously Deported
CNS News quotes Rep. Lamar Smith from Texas [emphasis added]:
“It’s hard to believe, but the Senate immigration bill is worse than we thought. Despite assurances, the border is not secured before almost everyone in the country illegally is given amnesty.  The bill guarantees there will be a rush across the border to take advantage of massive amnesty.”
Rep. Smith says the Senate immigration bill shreds current immigration laws:
“And the Senate proposal offers amnesty to far more illegal immigrants than we thought.  In addition to most of the 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country, the bill offers to legalize the relatives of illegal immigrants outside the U.S. and even others who have already been deported back home. So current immigration laws are shredded. (Read More)
http://lonelyconservative.com/2013/04/gop-rep-immigration-bill-even-worse-than-expected/
Undocumented Immigrant Student In-State Tuition Bill Signed Into Law In Colorado
Undocumented immigrant students in Colorado can celebrate today — a bill that grants undocumented students in-state college tuition rates was signed into Colorado law by Gov. John Hickenlooper today.
Colorado now joins thirteen other states to allow undocumented immigrant students who graduate from state high schools to attend college at an in-state tuition rate. According to The Associated Press, some of Colorado’s undocumented students had been paying more than three times higher than the rate in-state students pay.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/29/undocumented-student-inst_n_3180476.html
Don’t forget that our nation’s veterans are forced to pay out-of-state tuition at many universities
http://diverseeducation.com/article/49068/

EXCLUSIVE–-SESSIONS: IMMIGRATION BILL GIVES AMNESTIED RESIDENTS ‘IMMEDIATE’ ACCESS TO WELFARE
The immigration bill introduced to the Senate a week and a half ago would, if passed, allow illegal immigrants to access state and local welfare benefits immediately, Breitbart News has learned. The financial impact of allowing potentially millions of immigrants onto state and local public assistance could overwhelm these programs’ budgets.
Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) uncovered this loophole in the bill and many others, and he will circulate a memo detailing the gaps in the bill on Tuesday. Breitbart News exclusively obtained a copy of the memo before its public release.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/04/29/Exclusive-Immigration-bill-would-load-immediate-fiscal-burden-onto-state-local-governments-by-allowing-illegal-immigrants-onto-welfare
Meanwhile Black, Hispanic Families Lost Most Wealth Under Obama
Millions of Americans suffered a loss of wealth during the recession and the sluggish recovery that followed. But the last half-decade has proved far worse for black and Hispanic families than for white families, starkly widening the already large gulf in wealth between non-Hispanic white Americans and most minority groups, according to a new study from the Urban Institute.
“It was already dismal,” Darrick Hamilton, a professor at the New School in New York, said of the wealth gap between black and white households. “It got even worse.”
Given the dynamics of the housing recovery and the rebound in the stock market, the wealth gap might still be growing, experts said, further dimming the prospects for economic advancement for current and future generations of Americans from minority groups.
The More Illegal Immigrants That Go On Food Stamps The More Money JP Morgan Makes
Recently uncovered documents prove that the Obama administration has been working with the Mexican government to increase the number of illegal immigrants on food stamps, and when more illegal immigrants go on food stamps JP Morgan makes more money.  As you will read about below, JP Morgan has made at least 560 million dollars processing Electronic Benefits Transfer cards.  Each month, JP Morgan makes between $.31 and $2.30 for every single person on food stamps (and that does not even include things like ATM fees, etc).  So JP Morgan has a vested interest in seeing poverty grow and the number of people on food stamps increase.  Meanwhile, the Obama administration has been aggressively seeking to expand participation in the food stamp program.  Under Obama, the number of people on food stamps has grown from 32 million to more than 47 million.  And even though poverty in America is absolutely exploding, that apparently is not good enough for the Obama administration.  It has now come out that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has provided the Mexican government with literature that actively encourages illegal immigrants to enroll in food stamps.  One flyer contains the following statement in Spanish: “You need not divulge information regarding your immigration status in seeking this benefit for your children.”  The bold and the underlining are in the original document in case you were wondering.  Overall, federal spending on food stamps increased from 18 billion dollars in 2000 to 85 billion dollars in 2012, and at this point one out of every five U.S. households in now enrolled in the food stamp program.  When people illegally or fraudulently enroll in the food stamp program, it makes it harder for those that desperately need the help to be able to get it.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-more-illegal-immigrantsthat-go-on-food-stamps-the-more-money-jp-morgan-makes

Jim Rickards explains why gold could hit $7,000 in under 2 minutes

Earlier this month at our Offshore Tactics Workshop in Chile, famed financial author (Currency Wars) and fund manager Jim Rickards explained to our audience of nearly 500 attendees why the gold price can, and should, hit nearly $7,000. Soon.

http://www.sovereignman.com/why-gold-will-hit-

6993/?inf_contact_key=42f9b9b85a05169339dde5353114351673cd3a45e3aac0a8a3179da4db242796

Will The New Housing Bubble That Bernanke Is Creating End As Badly As The Last One Did?

by Michael
Will The New Housing Bubble Lead To Another Housing Crash?
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has done it.  He has succeeded in creating a new housing bubble.  By driving mortgage rates down to the lowest level in 100 years and recklessly printing money with wild abandon, Bernanke has been able to get housing prices to rebound a bit.  In fact, in some of the more prosperous areas of the country you would be tempted to think that it is 2005 all over again.  If you can believe it, in some areas of the country builders are actually holding lotteries to see who will get the chance to buy their homes.  Wow – that sounds great, right?  Unfortunately, this “housing recovery” is not based on solid economic fundamentals.  As you will see below, this is a recovery that is being led by investors.  They are paying cash for cheap properties that they believe will appreciate rapidly in the coming years.  Meanwhile, the homeownership rate in the United States continues to decline.  It is now the lowest that it has been since 1995.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  Number one, there has not been a jobs recovery in the United States.  The percentage of working age Americans with a job has not rebounded at all and is still about the exact same place where it was at the end of the last recession.  Secondly, crippling levels of student loan debt continue to drive down the percentage of young people that are buying homes.  So no, this is not a real housing recovery.  It is an investor-led recovery that is mostly limited to the more prosperous areas of the country.  For example, the median sale price of a home in Washington D.C. just hit a new all-time record high.  But this bubble will not last, and when this new housing bubble does burst, will it end as badly as the last one did?
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has stated over and over that one of his main goals is to “support the housing market” (i.e. get housing prices to go up).  It took a while, but it looks like he is finally getting his wish.  According to USA Today, U.S. home prices have been rising at the fastest rate in nearly seven years…
U.S. home prices in the USA’s 20 biggest cities rose 9.3% in the 12 months ending in February. It was the biggest annual growth rates in almost seven years, a closely watched housing index out Tuesday said.
In particular, home prices have been rising most rapidly in cities that experienced a boom during the last housing bubble…
Year over year, Phoenix continued to stand out with a gain of 23%, followed by San Francisco at almost 19% and Las Vegas at nearly 18%, the S&P/Case-Shiller index showed. Most of the cities seeing the biggest gains also fell hardest during the crash.
But is this really a reason for celebration?  Instead of addressing the fundamental problems in our economy that caused the last housing crash, Bernanke has been seemingly obsessed with reinflating the housing bubble.  As a recent article by Edward Pinto explained, the housing market is being greatly manipulated by the government and by the Fed…
While a housing recovery of sorts has developed, it is by no means a normal one. The government continues to go to extraordinary lengths to prop up sales by guaranteeing nearly 90% of new mortgage debt, financing half of all home purchase mortgages to buyers with zero equity at closing, driving mortgage interest rates to the lowest level in 100 years, and turning the Fed into the world’s largest buyer of new mortgage debt.
Thus, with real incomes essentially stagnant, this is a market recovery largely driven by low interest rates and plentiful government financing. This is eerily familiar to the previous government policy-induced boom that went bust in 2006, and from which the country is still struggling to recover. Creating over a trillion dollars in additional home value out of thin air does sound like a variant of dropping money out of helicopters.
And the Obama administration has been pushing very hard to get lenders to give mortgages to those with “weaker credit”.  In other words, the government is once again trying to get the banks to give home loans to people that cannot afford them.  The following is from the Washington Post
The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place.
President Obama’s economic advisers and outside experts say the nation’s much-celebrated housing rebound is leaving too many people behind, including young people looking to buy their first homes and individuals with credit records weakened by the recession.
We are repeating so many of the same mistakes that we made the last time.
But surely things will turn out differently this time, right?
I wouldn’t count on it.
Right now, an increasingly large percentage of homes are being purchased as investments.  The following is from a recent Washington Times article…
Much of the pickup in sales and prices has been powered by investors who, convinced that the market is bottoming, are scooping up bountiful supplies of distressed and foreclosed properties at bargain prices and often paying with cash.
With investors targeting lower-priced homes that they intend to purchase and rent out, they have been crowding out many first-time buyers who are having difficulty getting mortgage loans and are at a disadvantage when competing with well-heeled buyers. Cash sales to investors now account for about one-third of all home sales, according to the National Association of Realtors.
And as we have seen in the past, an investor-led boom can turn into an investor-led bust very rapidly.
If this truly was a real housing recovery, the percentage of Americans that own a home would be going up.
Instead, it is going down.
As I mentioned above, the U.S. Census Bureau is reporting that the homeownership rate in the United States is now the lowest that it has been since 1995.
In particular, homeownership among college-educated young people is way down.  They can’t afford to buy homes due to crippling levels of student loan debt
For the average homeowner, the worst news is that these overleveraged and defaulting young borrowers no longer qualify for other kinds of loans — particularly home loans. In 2005, nearly nine percent of 25- to 30-year-olds with student debt were granted a mortgage. By late last year, that percentage, as an annual rate, was down to just above four percent.
The most precipitous drop was among those who owe $100,000 or more. New mortgages among these more deeply indebted borrowers have declined 10 percentage points, from above 16 percent in 2005 to a little more than 6 percent today.
“These are the people you’d expect to buy big houses,” said student loan expert Heather Jarvis. “They owe a lot because they have a lot of education. They have been through professional and graduate schools, but their payments are so significant, they have trouble getting a mortgage. They have mortgage-sized loans already.”
And the truth is that there simply are not enough good jobs in this country to support a housing recovery.  In a previous article, I used the government’s own statistics to prove that there has not been a jobs recovery.  If we were having a jobs recovery, the percentage of working age Americans with a job would be going up.  Sadly, that is not happening…
Employment-Population Ratio 2013
And as I mentioned above, the “housing recovery” is mostly happening in the prosperous areas of the country.
In other areas of the United States, the devastating results of the last housing crash are still clearly apparent.
For example, the city of Dayton, Ohio is dealing with an estimated 7,000 abandoned properties.
As I wrote about the other day, there are approximately 70,000 abandoned buildings in Detroit, Michigan.
And all over the nation there are still “ghost towns” that were created when builders abruptly abandoned housing developments during the last recession.  You can see some pictures of some of these ghost townsright here.
So the truth is that this is an isolated housing recovery that is being led by investors and that is being fueled by very reckless behavior by the Federal Reserve.  It is not based on economic reality whatsoever.
In the end, will the collapse of this new housing bubble be as bad as the collapse of the last one was?
Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below…
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke

'There will be more wealth confiscation, without a doubt'

Savers and investors face further "wealth confiscation" in Europe as the continent struggles to resolve the single currency's problems, a bank chief has said.

Cypriots protest against the ratification of a tax on bank deposits in Nicosia on March 18 - 'There will be more wealth confiscation, without a doubt'  
Earler this week savers at Bank of Cyprus saw 37.5pc of their balances above €100,000 converted into shares .

European politicians will take the "easy option" of taking money from the rich rather than raising taxes and cutting spending to deal with the continent's debt problem, Lars Christensen, the head of Saxo Bank, said.
Asked if the raid on uninsured savings in Cyprus would be repeated, he told City AM: "There will be future bail-ins [loss of deposits] and other types of confiscation of wealth in the eurozone, without a doubt.
"There's no other realistic way forward if politicians continue to fail to deal with the basic indebtedness problem across Europe. They will either have to raise taxes and cut spending, or politicians will take the easier route and take money from the rich."
Earlier this week savers at Bank of Cyprus saw 37.5pc of their balances above €100,000 converted into shares, with a further 22.5pc at risk and 30pc frozen.
Following the Cyprus deal, several senior German economists proposed that wealth taxes be used to fund future bail-outs in the eurozone, with British owners of holiday homes potentially in the line of fire.
Senior advisers to Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed for better-off households to pay towards the cost of any future bail-outs for the weaker members of the single currency. The proposals, from members of Germany’s council of economic experts, raised the prospect of taxes being imposed on property in a country such as Spain if its government was forced to seek a bail-out.
The seizure of assets in Cyprus led to comparisons with America's confiscation of privately held gold during the Great Depression. Investors were compensated in dollars that were promptly devalued.
Mr Christensen said current confidence in currencies such as the euro, dollar and yen was being undermined and that the gold price would eventually recover as a result.
He said the measures being taken by central banks around the world were "undermining confidence in central banks, in the quality of their assets and in their respective currencies".
"The same thing is happening in the US and Japan – trust in the fiat [paper] currency system will slowly begin to disintegrate. We've seen it in gold. The recent sell-off was driven by buy and sell pressures in a market that is not as big as many people think. Eventually gold will pick up and go higher.
"It's all linked to evidence that the old principle of a prudent central bank has disappeared. We now have overt political influence of central banks, and that's dangerous."

Derivatives: The Unregulated Global Casino for Banks

SHORT STORY: Pick something of value, make bets on the future value of "something", add contract & you have a derivative.
Banks make massive profits on derivatives, and when the bubble bursts chances are the tax payer will end up with the bill.
This visualizes the total coverage for derivatives (notional). Similar to insurance company's total coverage for all cars.
LONG STORY: A derivative is a legal bet (contract) that derives its value from another asset, such as the future or current value of oil, government bonds or anything else. Ex- A derivative buys you the option (but not obligation) to buy oil in 6 months for today's price/any agreed price, hoping that oil will cost more in future. (I'll bet you it'll cost more in 6 months). Derivative can also be used as insurance, betting that a loan will or won't default before a given date. So its a big betting system, like a Casino, but instead of betting on cards and roulette, you bet on future values and performance of practically anything that holds value. The system is not regulated what-so-ever, and you can buy a derivative on an existing derivative.
Most large banks try to prevent smaller investors from gaining access to the derivative market on the basis of there being too much risk. Deriv. market has blown a galactic bubble, just like the real estate bubble or stock market bubble (that's going on right now). Since there is literally no economist in the world that knows exactly how the derivative money flows or how the system works, while derivatives are traded in microseconds by computers, we really don't know what will trigger the crash, or when it will happen, but considering the global financial crisis this system is in for tough times, that will be catastrophic for the world financial system since the 9 largest banks shown below hold a total of $228.72 trillion in Derivatives - Approximately 3 times the entire world economy. No government in world has money for this bailout. Lets take a look at what banks have the biggest Derivative Exposures and what scandals they've been lately involved in. Derivative Data Source: ZeroHedge.

One Hundred Dollars
$100 - Most counterfeited money denomination in the world.
Keeps the world moving.
Ten Thousand Dollars
$10,000 - Enough for a great vacation or to buy a used car.
Approximately one year of work for the average human on earth.
100 Million Dollars
$100,000,000 - Plenty to go around for
everyone. Fits nicely on an ISO / Military
standard sized pallet.

$1 Million is the cash square on the floor.
1 Billion Dollars
$1,000,000,000 - This is how a billion dollars looks like.
10 pallets of $100 bills.
1 Trillion Dollars
$1,000,000,000,000 - When they throw around the word "Trillion" like it is nothing, this is the reality of $1 trillion dollars. The square of pallets to the right is $10 billion dollars. 100x that and you have the tower of $1 trillion that is 465 feet tall (142 meters).
1 Million, 100 Million, 1 Billion, 1 Trillion
$2 Billion on Truck

$100 Million Dollars = 1 year of work for 3500 average Americans
It takes 3500 Americans 1 year of work to make $100 Million dollars. The 155 million Americans who worked with earnings in 2005 on average made $28,567 / year.

In front of the 3500 people is the $100 Million pallet that they all have to work for 1 year to earn.
Look carefully to see a stack of $1 Million and the 35 average Americans required to earn that $1 Million in 1 year.



Demonocracy.info - $100,000,000 - One Hundred Million Dollars


Bank of New York Mellon
BNY has a derivative exposure of $1.375 Trillion dollars.
Considered a too big to fail (TBTF) bank. It is currently facing (among others) lawsuits fraud and contract breach suits by a Los Angeles pension fund and New York pension funds, where BNY Mellon allegedly overcharged the funds on many millions of dollars and concealed it.
Bank of New York Mellon - Derivative Exposure
State Street Financial
State Street has a derivative exposure of $1.390 Trillion dollars.
Too big to fail (TBTF) bank. It has been charged by California Attorney General (among other) lawsuits for massive fraud on California's CalPERS and CalSTRS pension funds - similar to BNY (above).
Bank of New York Mellon - Derivative Exposure
Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley has a derivative exposure of $1.722 Trilion dollars.
Its a too big to fail (TBTF) bank. It recently settled a lawsuit for over-paying its employees while accepting the
tax payer funded bailout. Vice Chairman of Morgan Stanley had a license plate that said "2BG2FAIL" on his Porsche Cayenne Turbo. All this while $250 million of bailout money ended up in the hands of Waterfall TALF Opportunity, run by the Morgan Stanley's owners' wives-- Marry a banker for a $250M tax-payer cash injection.
The bank also got a SECRET $2.041 Trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve during the crisis, beyond the tax payer bailout.
Bank of New York Mellon - Derivative Exposure
Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo has a derivative exposure of $3.332 Trillion dollars.
Its a too big to fail (TBTF) bank. WF has been charged for its role in allegedly pursuing illegal foreclosures and deceptive loan servicing. Wells Fargo was just slapped with a $85 million fine by Federal Reserve for putting good credit borrowers into bad-credit rating (high rate) loans.
In March 2010, Wachovia (owned by Wells Fargo) paid $110 million fine for allowing transactions connected to drug smuggling and a $50 million fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine. It also failed to monitor $378.4 billion (that's $378400 millions dollars) worth of transactions to Mexican "casas de cambio" (think WesternUnion, anonymous cash transfer) usually linked to drug cartels. Beyond that, WF lets its' VIP employees live in foreclosed mansions. WF knows how to cash your legit check, then claim "fraud" and close your account. WF also re-orders your transactions to create more overdraft fees. Wells Fargo's Wachovia also got a SECRET $159 billion bailout from the Federal Reserve.

Wells Fargo paid NO taxes in 2008-2010 and had a tax rate of NEGATIVE 1.4% while making
$49 billion in profit during the same time.
Bank of New York Mellon - Derivative Exposure
HSBC
HSBC has a derivative exposure of $4.321 Trilion dollars.
HSBC is a Hong Kong based bank and its original name is
The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited.

You will find HSBC working a lot with JP Morgan Chase.
Both HSBC and JP Morgan Chase have strong interest in gold & precious metals. HSBC and JP Morgan Chase are often involved together in financial scandals.
Lately HSBC has been sued for allegedly funneling more than $8.9 billion to the largest ponzi-scheme in history - Bernie Maddof's investment business.
HSBC (along w/ JP Morgan Chase) has been sued for alleged conspiracy suppressing the price of silver and gold, partially through precious metal DERIVATIVES and making billions of dollars on it. State of Hawaii is suing HSBC (and other banks) for deceptive credit card lending practices.
DZ Bank in Germany is suing HSBC (and JP Morgan) for deceptive (lying) practices when selling home-loan-backed securities.
HSBC is also under investigation for laundering billions of dollars.
Bank of New York Mellon - Derivative Exposure
Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs has a derivative exposure of $44.192 Trillion dollars.
The $1 Trillion pillars towers are double-stacked @ 930 feet (248 m).
The White House is standing next to the Statue of Liberty.

Goldman Sachs has advantage over other banks because it has awesome
connections in US Government. A lot of former Goldman employees hold high-level
US Government positions (chart)
.

Mitt Romney's top donor is Goldman Sachs, and one of Obama's best donors.
Ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs, Hank Paulson became the Secretary of Treasury under Bush and
during the 2008 financial crisis authored the TARP bill demanding $700 billion bail-out.
In UK, Goldman Sachs escaped £10 million bill on a failed tax avoidance scheme with help of good connections.
The bank is the largest player in the food commodities market, earned $955m from food speculation in 2009" - That's your $$$.
Goldman Sachs employees are arming themselves with guns in case there is a populist uprising against the bank.
Goldman Sachs calls their investors "muppets". and use clients to make money for themselves, disregarding the clients.
The bank was fined $22 million for sharing valuable nonpublic information with top clients (Think insider trading with best clients).
Goldman Sachs was part-owner America's leading website for prostitution ads until the ownership stake was exposed.
Goldman Sachs helped Greece conceal its debt with secret loans, while simultaneously taking advantage of Greece.
Goldman Sachs got a $814 billion SECRET bailout from the Federal Reserve during the 2008 crisis.
Goldman Sachs got $10 billion of the 2008 TARP bailout, and in the same year paid $10.9 billion in employee compensation and "benefits", while paying a tax rate of 1%. That means an average of $327,000 to each Goldman Sach's employee.
Bank of New York Mellon - Derivative Exposure
Bank of America
Bank of America has a derivative exposure of $50.135 Trillion dollars.

BofA is sticking the tax-payers with a MASSIVE bill, by moving derivatives to
accounts insured by the federal government @ total of $53.7 trillion as of 06/2011.
During 2011-12 BofA has been in need of cash, so Warren Buffett gave BofA $5 billion.
Same year BofA sold its stake in China Construction Bank to raise $1.8 billion in cash.


Bank of America paid $22 million to settle charges of improperly foreclosing on active-duty troops
BofA recruited 3 cyber attack firms to attack WikiLeaks. but the Anonymous hacker group hacked the security firms first.
BofA was sued for $31 billion in home-loan losses in 2011, the bank is involved in many lawsuits, too many to document.
BofA also received a SECRET $1.344 trillion dollar bailout from the Federal Reserve.

Bank of New York Mellon - Derivative Exposure
Citibank
Citibank has a derivative exposure of $52.102 Trillion dollars.
The $1 Trillion dollar towers are double-stacked @ 930 feet (248 m).

Citibank customers have been arrested for trying to close their accounts, while in in Indonesia a man was interrogated to death in Citibank's special "questioning room". In 2011 Citibank paid a fine of $285 million for selling home-loan backed bonds to investors, while betting they would lose value (think derivatives/insurance). The man in charge of the unit at Citibank became Obama's Chief of Staff. 2 weeks before getting hired by Obama he got $900,000 from Citibank for great performance. This was after Citigroup took out $45 billion in bailout money.
Citibank knowingly passed over bad loans to the Federal Housing Administration to insure.

Citigroup also received a SECRET $2.513 trillion dollar bailout from the Federal Reserve.

Bank of New York Mellon - Derivative Exposure
JP Morgan Chase (JPM)
JP Morgan Chase has a derivative exposure of $70.151 Trillion dollars.
$70 Trillion is roughly the size of the entire world's economy.
The $1 Trillion dollar towers are double-stacked @ 930 feet (248 m).


JP Morgan is rumored to hold 50->80% of the copper market, and manipulated the market by massive purchases. JP Morgan (JPM) is also guilty of manipulating the silver market to make billions. In 2010 JP Morgan had 3 perfect trading quarters and only lost money on 8 days. Lawsuits on home foreclosures have been filed against JP Morgan. Aluminum price is manipulated by JP Morgan through large physical ownership of material and creating bottlenecks during transport. JP Morgan was among the banks involved in the seizure of $620 million in assets for alleged fraud linked to derivatives. JP Morgan got $25 billion taxpayer in bailout money. It has no intention of using the money to lend to customers, but instead will use it to drive out competition. The bank is also the largest owner of BP - the oil spill company. During the oil spill the bank said that the oil spill is good for the economy.
JP Morgan Chase also received a SECRET $391 billion dollar bailout from the Federal Reserve.
In 2012, JP Morgan (JPM) took a $2 billion loss on "Poorly Executed" Derivative Bets.
Bank of New York Mellon - Derivative Exposure
9 Biggest Banks' Derivative Exposure - $228.72 Trillion
Note the little man standing in front of white house. The little worm next to lastfootball field is a truck with $2 billion dollars.
There is no government in the world that has this kind of money. This is roughly 3 times the entire world economy. The unregulated market presents a massive financial risk. The corruption and immorality of the banks makes the situation worse.

If you don't want to bank with these banks, but want to have access to free ATM's anywhere-- most Credit Unions in USA are in the CO-OP ATM network, where all ATM's are free to any COOP CU member and most support depositing checks. The Credit Unions are like banks, but invest all their profits to give members lower rates and better service. They don't have shareholders to worry about or have derivatives to purchase and sell.

Keep an eye out in the news for "derivative crisis", as the crisis is inevitable with current falling value of most real assets.