Monday, July 22, 2013

Citizen talking points to prove US War Crimes, massive economic fraud

As a citizen, I strongly recommend that you develop command to explain, document, and prove at least a few of perhaps ~100 serious crimes of US 1% “leadership.” The purpose is for you to help the 99% recognize:
  • These are obvious and serious crimes that kill millions, harm billions, and loot trillions.
  • Those pointing-out the crimes are both factually correct and upholding American ideals. We are right, and 1% “leaders” are so wrong.
  • Given history shows these crimes are escalating, we need to help all honest, law-abiding people end these crimes.
As I keep reminding you: you all took at least one US Government class. You learned US federal government is limited in power by our Constitution. “Limited government” prevents unlimited or dictatorial power.
Given our unalienable rights and Constitution, We the People have a choice: either honor and uphold our freedoms under law, or surrender to “emperor has no clothes” obvious criminals. Many Americans have Oaths to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
This level of understanding is entirely within your command and calling as a responsible citizen.
Here are talking points to help anyone verify and confirm the following obvious crimes:
  • US armed attacks, invasions, and occupations of foreign lands are unlawful Wars of Aggression. Two treaties, the Kellogg-Briand Pact and UN Charter, make armed attacks on another nation unlawful unless in response to armed attack by that nation’s government. It’s icing on the legal cake that all “reasons” given for war to Americans, our military, and the world are now disclosed by our own official documents as known to be false as they were told. Moreover, such US wars have killed 20-30million since WW2. All of our families sacrificed through two world wars: if there’s one law that Americans should know as least as well as rules of their favorite sport, it’s war law.
  • Fraud is the crime of misrepresentation that causes harm. The US bankster economy uses fraud to transfer trillions annually from We the People to them. This criminal “1%” represent our “debt-supply” as a “money supply,” represent bank debt that they made out of nothing as “loans,” and represent escalating government debts as having no solutions except our austerity rather than presenting obvious solutions in money and through public banking. This fraud costs Americans increasing work for less pay (if they can get work), increasing debt, inflation, deprivation of public services, and a transfer of wealth to a criminal-colluding 1% that hide ~$20 to $30 trillion in protected tax havens. About one million children die from preventable poverty every month from “developed” nations’ reneged promises for annual investment equal to one-half of one percent of this tax-free wealth for about ten years. Ending poverty reduces population growth in all historical cases, and according to the CIA is the best way to end terrorism. For “leaders” to withhold this option is fraud from people with legal fiduciary responsibility for comprehensively accurate information to those they represent.
  • Among many issues related to War Crimes, the 2006 Military Commissions Act and NDAA 2012 attack and remove nearly all Rights under the US Constitution. These are passed pieces of legislation, but not laws Americans should follow because “laws” that obviously violate the Constitution are void. The criminal claim that the Executive Branch can detain anyone on their dictate forever, or even assassinate upon dictate (even 16-year-old American children) is an obvious crime. Here are our unalienable rights under attack from “laws” mocking the Constitution.
  • You recognize the objective facts prove that these crimes from US Presidents and “leadership” of both parties in Congress are only possible because they’re “covered” by corporate media to lie for the worst crimes imaginable for a nation to commit. They do so relentlessly and increasingly. In case you consider state-level “leadership” of our Left and Right arms of fascism any better, they lie and hoard literal billions and trillions in surplus taxpayer accounts while demanding our austerity. This is what the CAFR scam is about.
You rightfully conclude:
  • The lawful response to these crimes is immediate arrests, not mere consideration of impeachment committee consideration or media banter about proper leadership. For years we’ve offered Truth and Reconciliation for these criminals that is still open.
  • The rule of law is meant for all to understand, and that if we can master rules in sports we MUST MASTER AND ENFORCE rules that millions and billions of human beings rely upon people of good hearts and minds to uphold.
  • You’re smart enough, you’ve seen enough, and you’re ready right now for victory over psychopathic criminals in US “leadership.”
We will be victorious, as Muse’s Uprising lyrics artistically states, because We the People choose justice over War Crimes, prosperity over imposed poverty, and unleashing the human spirit discover human life after our control is ended.
You are ready for victory.

American Citizenship is Rapidly Becoming Devalued to Zero

Washington, DC—Our forefathers sacrificed so much so we would have freedom, prosperity and the tools to prevent government from again becoming despotic.   As a nation our citizenship has been the envy of the entire rest of the world.   We have allowed freedom to slip away and the value of our citizenship has rapidly declined.
We built a system where free enterprise created wealth and jobs.  That in turn gave Americans the ability to consume the fruit of their labor. Productivity and excellence was rewarded and accordingly America became the wealthiest and strongest nation on earth.   Today productivity is punished with extortionate taxation at every level of government.
Nearly 100 years passed and Socialists and Communists floated new ideas about government.  These ideas failed in nation after nation but for a few party leaders that could live like royalty through corruption while their citizens were starved, confined and enslaved.  These governments are well known for killing dissidents or anyone wishing to escape from their own homelands.
That did not stop the spread of Socialism and Communism to the USA and our government including the Whitehouse.  Both major political parties are awash with politicians on a united mission, to force the failed Socialist ideas on Americans.  These disloyal politicians all believe the Constitution they were sworn to protect is outdated and irrelevant.
Socialism can only flourish when the vast majority of citizens are totally dependent upon government.  We are at a point where over 50% of the population is impoverished and programed into utter and complete dependence. 
Our Socialists are doing everything they can to increase the population with the ignorant and poor from Mexico and Central America.  The price of admission is simply to break our immigration laws.  Millions more illiterate and unskilled trespassers are being handed citizenship and the right to vote by our Socialist politicians.  That will guarantee a Socialist government in the USA for the next 100 years.
In the mean time our government is moving in efforts to prevent the flight of Americans wanting to emigrate with their assets elsewhere in the world.  The revocation of passports for tax indebtedness has already begun.  At what point does our border patrol begin to use deadly force to keep Americans from leaving?  Don’t say that it can’t or won’t happen because history is redundant with examples proving this point.
In any event our American citizenship is all but worthless today.  Government’s domestic spying is out of control.  Our Criminal justice system has been reduced to show trials.  To make matters worse we are swimming in wrongful convictions because we’ve given prosecutors too much new power. Our free speech is endangered by the very real threat of IRS abuse.  Our politicians have sold Americans on the idea that liberty must be traded for security.  As a result we have morphed into a fascist police state that’s armed with the latest technological super weapons.
Frankly I have no taste for the new America.  Even the Left leaning European nations still understands the horror of fascism and protects liberty better then America.  Americans are fleeing this nation like never before.  
Productive Americans will either have to fight to regain their freedom or submit to slavery.  I just know one thing, each coming day will be darker as our productivity, prosperity and liberty slips completely into a tyrannical Abyss.

Share This Chart With Anyone That Believes The U.S. Economy Is Not Going To Crash

By Michael Snyder
Total Debt Growth vs. GDP Growth

Anyone that thinks that the U.S. economy can keep going along like this is absolutely crazy.  We are in the terminal phase of an unprecedented debt spiral which has allowed us to live far, far beyond our means for the last several decades.  Unfortunately, all debt spirals eventually end, and they usually do so in a very disorderly manner.  The chart that you are about to see is one of my favorite economic charts.  It compares the growth of U.S. GDP to the growth of total debt in the United States.  Yes, U.S. GDP has certainly grown at a decent pace over the years, but our total debt has absolutely exploded.  40 years ago, the total amount of debt in our system (government debt + corporate debt + consumer debt, etc.) was about 2 trillion dollars.  Today it has grown to more than 56 trillion dollars.  Our debt has grown at a much, much faster rate than our economy has, and there is no way in the world that we will be able to continue to do that for long.
Posted below is the chart that I was talking about.  The blue line is our total debt, and the red line is our GDP.  As you can see, this chart kind of speaks for itself…
Total Debt Growth vs. GDP Growth
So how did we get here?
Well, of course the federal government has been the biggest offender.  It would be a tremendous understatement to say that the politicians in Washington D.C. have been reckless.  Since the year 2000, the size of the U.S. national debt has grown by more than 11 trillion dollars.
Posted below is a chart that demonstrates the dramatic growth of the national debt as a percentage of GDP.  In particular, our debt has absolutely exploded as a percentage of GDP since the financial crisis of 2008…
National Debt As A Percentage Of GDP
Does that look sustainable to you?
Of course it isn’t.
Right now, the mainstream media is very excited that the federal budget deficit for this year might be less than a trillion dollars, but they are really missing the point.  The debt of the U.S. government is still growing much, much faster than the economy is, and the United States already has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain.
What we are doing to future generations is absolutely criminal.  We are piling up mountains of debt that will haunt them for the rest of their lives just so that we can make the present a little bit more pleasant for ourselves.
As I noted in another article, during Obama’s first term the federal government accumulated more debt than it did under the first 42 U.S presidents combined.  And now we are entering a time period when demographic forces are going to put a tremendous amount of pressure on the finances of the federal government.
The Baby Boomers have started to retire, and they are going to want to start collecting on all of the financial promises that we have made to them.
As I have written about previously, the number of Americans on Medicare is projected to grow from a little bit more than 50 million today to 73.2 million in 2025.
The number of Americans collecting Social Security benefits is projected to grow from about 56 million today to 91 million in 2035.
Where are we going to get the money to pay for all of that?
Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff has calculated that the U.S. government is facing unfunded liabilities of 222 trillion dollars in the years ahead.
There is no simply no way that the U.S. government is going to be able to meet those obligations without wildly printing up money.
And of course the federal government is not the only one with massive debt problems.  We just saw the city of Detroit go bankrupt, and there are lots of other communities all over the nation that could soon follow.
Posted below is a chart that shows the growth of state and local government debt over the years.  In particular, please take note that the total amount of state and local government debt has grown from about 1.2 trillion dollars in the year 2000 to about 3 trillion dollars today…

State And Local Government Debt
But the chart posted above does not even take into account the massive unfunded pension obligations that state and local governments are facing.  According to the Detroit Free Press, state governments are facing unfunded pension obligations of nearly a trillion and a half dollars…
From Baltimore to Los Angeles, and many points in between, municipalities are increasingly confronted with how to pay for these massive promises. The Pew Center for the States, in Washington, estimated states’ public pension plans across the U.S. were underfunded by a whopping $1.4 trillion in 2010.
And many large cities are dealing with similar situations.  Detroit was the first to go down, but could Chicago or Los Angeles eventually be forced to declare bankruptcy too?…
Chicago recently saw its credit rating downgraded because of a $19-billion unfunded pension liability that the ratings service Moody’s puts closer to $36 billion. And Los Angeles could be facing a liability of more than $30 billion, by some estimates.
According to a report that was released earlier this year, the largest U.S. cities are facing hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded pension liabilities at this point…
Early this year, the Pew Center released a survey showing that 61 of the nation’s largest cities — limiting the survey to the largest city in each state and all other cities with more than 500,000 people — had a gap of more than $217 billion in unfunded pension and health care liabilities. While cities had long promised health care, life insurance and other benefits to retirees, “few … started saving to cover the long-term costs,” the report said.
So where will all of that money come from?
That is a good question, and nobody has an easy answer at this point.
Meanwhile, U.S. consumers have been racking up staggering amounts of debt over the past several decades.  Just consider the following numbers…
-Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.
-Car loans just keep getting longer and longer, and approximately 70 percent of all car purchases in the United States now involve an auto loan.
-The total amount of student loan debt in America recently surpassed the one trillion dollar mark.
-One study discovered that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt, and according to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States.
-Consumer debt in the United States has risen by a whopping 1700%since 1971, and 46% of all Americans carry a credit card balance from month to month.
Sadly, most people don’t realize how damaging credit card debt can be.  If you just carry an “average balance” on your credit cards each month, and those credit cards have just an “average” interest rate, you could end up paying millions of dollars to the credit card companies by the end of your life…
Let’s say you are an average American household, and you carry an average balance of $15,956 in credit card debt.
Also, as an average American household, let’s assume you pay an average current rate of 12.83%.
Finally, let’s assume you carry this average balance for 40 years, between ages 25 and 65.  How much did your credit card company make off of you and your extreme averageness?
Answer: $2,629,618.64
Incredibly, a large percentage of the population does not seem to understand these things.  An astounding 43 percent of all American families spend more than they earn each year.
Are you starting to understand why approximately half of all Americans die broke?
We are a nation that is completely and addicted to debt.
If you do not believe that it will ever catch up with us you are being delusional.
We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the planet, and a day of reckoning is fast approaching.

Warning to all police, firefighters, schoolteachers: Most government pensions to be confiscated within a decade


governmentNatural News – by Mike Adams
Last week, Detroit declared bankruptcy, becoming the largest city in U.S. history to take such drastic action in the face of financial insolvency. A declaration of bankruptcy isn’t what most people think it is, though: it’s not just a statement of “we’re broke!” It’s actually a way for the city to clear its slate of all financial obligations and not pay the retirees it owes.
What are the largest financial obligations the city facing? Pensions. $3.5 billion worth of pensions, to be exact.  
Yes, Detroit owes former government employees — teachers, firefighters, cops and more — a whopping $3.5 billion in current and future payments. Except Detroit doesn’t have $3.5 billion to pay the pensions. The city is in a state of economic collapse. Remember, the U.S. government used billions in taxpayer money to help General Motors move its manufacturing offshore to countries like China. As a result of economically-insane actions and criminal mismanagement, a city that used to be the hub of industrial output in America has become a ghost town of abandoned buildings, crumbling infrastructure and financial destitution.
But even as all this was becoming apparent, the government workers there continued to collect fat paychecks and pensions, all based on the promise that endless population growth would out-pace the rise in pension obligations. Many pensioners are owed over $100,000 a year from the government, and this is true across California, Illinois and many other states as well.
Chicago, for example, owes $19 billion in pension payments that it doesn’t have, and the city of Los Angeles is more than $30 billion in the hole. The story is much the same in every major U.S. city.
As the Detroit Free Press now reports:
Early this year, the Pew Center released a survey showing that 61 of the nation’s largest cities — limiting the survey to the largest city in each state and all other cities with more than 500,000 people — had a gap of more than $217 billion in unfunded pension and health care liabilities. While cities had long promised health care, life insurance and other benefits to retirees, “few … started saving to cover the long-term costs,” the report said.
Read that report here:
http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Retire…

Detroit’s bankruptcy being challenged

Realizing it flat-out doesn’t have the money to pay these pension obligations, Detroit had little choice but to declare bankruptcy in an effort to avoid paying the pensions. In effect, this is a confiscation of all pension funds by the government, meaning that retired cops, firefighters, school teachers and so on will never see a dime of the pensions they thought they had earned.
Naturally, those who are owed the pensions are furious about all this. Imagine working 40 years on the job, building up a retirement only to have that retirement stolen from you by a local government that’s steeped in corruption and financial mismanagement. The word “incompetent” doesn’t even begin to describe Detroit’s political leadership. It’s more like “brain damaged” or “criminally insane.”
But it’s also commonplace. Across the country, city governments have all spent the pension funds instead of saving them. Almost no large city has the funds necessary to pay its obligations to retirees. Pension financial planning strategies are tragic nightmares of broken promises, dishonest politicians and delusional workers (who still somehow believe they’re going to get paid).
In Detroit, the pensioners are fighting back, claiming Michigan’s state constitution forbids cities like Detroit from wiping away pension obligations by declaring bankruptcy. It’s all headed to the courts now, where even if Detroit’s bankruptcy is nullified, the city still doesn’t have the money to pay its pension obligations.
So it’s a no-win situation regardless of the outcome. Where the money doesn’t exist, nobody gets paid regardless of the legal wrangling in the courts.

Is Detroit “Too Big To Fail?” An Obama bailout may be imminent

There’s already talk of Obama bailing out Detroit, meaning the federal government would take on the debt of the mismanaged city and its pension funds, eventually passing on those obligations to taxpayers all across the country.
Yep, that means you and I will be paying the $100,000 retirement pension of some ex-cop in Detroit. It’s all part of the federal government’s new plan to reward waste and punish fiscal responsibility.
No wonder Sen. Rand Paul says Detroit will only be bailed out “over my dead body.” As Breitbart.com reports, Sen. Paul has stated, on the record, “I basically say he [Obama] is bailing them out over my dead body because we don’t have any money in Washington.”
Breitbart.com goes on to state, “Paul said the reason he is going to fight to stop any efforts to bail out Detroit is that if the president succeeds in bailing it out, that will send a signal to the rest of cities and states nationwide that the federal government will bail them out to if they conduct reckless spending.”
“Those who don’t have their house in order, who are teetering on disaster, will continue to make bad decisions.” – Sen. Rand Paul.
He’s right, of course. But rewarding reckless spending has become the new sport in Washington, where globalist banks routinely receive hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts after losing money on outlandish derivatives bets that went sour.
If we bail out Detroit, then the precedent is set: The taxpayers will have to foot the bill to bail out Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, Seattle and every other city that’s on the brink of financial disaster because bureaucrats are short-term thinkers who typically only think ahead to the next election, not the next generation.
“Public pension plans across the nation are in fiscal distress. Generally underfunded, most now require far greater contributions from governments than initially envisioned,” writes the California Common Sense organization, which goes on to state:
In 2012-13, Los Angeles’s pension costs are expected to rise to $1.3 billion, or 18% of the city’s budgeted expenditures. In 2002-03, just 10 years ago, pension costs were only $157 million, or 3% of total expenditures. Over the last decade, pension costs have grown at an annual average growth rate of 25% and have outpaced spending growth for every major area of the city’s budget.
“In April Moody’s Investors Service warned it could downgrade the ratings of Chicago, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Portland and 25 other local governments and school districts as part of a change in how it factors public pensions into debt grades,” writes Forbes.com. “In Chicago, teachers’ pensions alone cost $1 billion a year, while overall debt service accounts for close to a quarter of the city budget.”

The top 10 biggest U.S. cities on the brink of pension bankruptcy

According to Business Insider, here are the top 10 U.S. cities whose pension obligations will soon collapse: (this article was originally published in 2010, so we have updated the “years” to reflect 2013)
#1 Philadelphia - Unfunded liability of $9 billion, $16,696 per household, only 1 year before the pension accounts are empty
#2 Chicago - Unfunded liability of $44.8 billion, $41.966 per household, money runs out in 4 years
#3 Boston - Unfunded liability of $7.5 billion, $30,901 per household, money runs out in 4 years
#4 Cincinnati - Unfunded liability of $2 billion, $15,681 per household, money runs out in 5 years
#5 St Paul - Unfunded liability of $1.4 billion, $13,686 per household, money runs out in 5 years
#6 Jacksonville - Unfunded liability of $4 billion, $12,944 per household, money runs out in 5 years
#7 New York City - Unfunded liability of $122 billion, $38,866 per household, money runs out in 6 years
#8 Baltimore - Unfunded liability of $3.7 billion, $15, 420 per household, money runs out in 7 years
#9 Detroit - Unfunded liability of $6.4 billion, $18,643 per household, money runs out in 8 years
#10 Fort Worth - Unfunded liability of $2 billion, $7,212 per household, money runs out in 8 years
Note that some of these numbers were actually optimistic. Detroit, for example, was predicted to run out of money in 2021, yet it already declared bankruptcy in 2013. What you are looking at here is a looming cascade of municipality bankruptcies over the next 10 – 20 years.

Cascading financial collapse

Nobody saves in America anymore; not cities, not states and of course not the federal government which Obama has brought to the astonishing debt level of $16 trillion (it was only $8 trillion when he first took office). It begs the question: If the cities bail out the pensioners, and Washington bails out the cities, who’s going to bail out Washington and its exploding debt?
The answer, of course, is nobody. Central banks all around the world are already sitting on far too much U.S. debt that’s being eroded by the hour as the Federal Reserve commits “quantitative easing” that dilutes the global dollar supply. They aren’t going to take on trillions more to bail out a nation now seen as a global imperialist bully that runs NSA spying on its own allies while routinely engaging in economic espionage through currency manipulations.
The American government is widely hated throughout the world today. Most nations probably wouldn’t mind seeing the USA collapse into financial oblivion. And within a few years, they may just get their wish.
“On average, pensions consume nearly 20 percent of municipal budgets,” writes Anthony Flint of The Atlantic Cities. “But if trends continue, over half of every dollar in tax revenue would go to pensions, and by some estimates in some cases would suck up 75 percent of all tax revenue.”

Financial collapse is not a doomsday conspiracy theory; it is mathematical inevitability

The upshot of all this is that if you are counting on a government pension to pay your bills during your retirement years, you may need to write that off because it probably won’t be there for very much longer.
This is true not just for local and state government workers, but also for federal government workers. Yep, all those TSA agents, DHS workers and FDA bureaucrats are going to see their own pensions stolen, and I can’t say that I’m shedding tears over TSA goons not getting their pensions. (“Pedophilia pensions!”)
“I mean the statistics in California are staggering,” said Sen. Rand Paul. “I think there’s over 100,000 people there getting over $100,000 a year in retirement. You got police chiefs in medium-sized cities getting $350,000 a year for a salary. It’s become untenable. But the main thing is we cannot send a signal from the federal government that cities and states are going to be too big to fail.”
Where all this really hurts, though, is at the local level. In most cities, people like firefighters, cops and school teachers are wildly under-paid. They dedicate their lives to serving the community, often putting their own lives at risk in the process. Stealing their pensions is especially malicious given how much they have sacrificed to earn them.
But there’s nothing that can be done to save them at this point. The mathematics are already in motion and unstoppable. Nearly all big-city pension obligation projections have been based on the false assumption that endless economic growth would provide a never-ending tax base from which pension obligations could be paid. That assumption, however, was a willful delusion in which city managers and bureaucrats happily engaged.
There is a day of reckoning coming for America, and it’s going to be a day of nationwide outrage as pensions all across the country are confiscated or destroyed in a cascading chain of bankruptcies. At the same time, the federal government will no doubt embark on a Cyprus-style private bank account confiscation program that steals private wealth from the American people. Wiring money out of the country will be made illegal, and all forms of wealth — including retirement accounts — will be subject to government confiscation.
At that point, only people who have gone to great lengths to protect their assets will have anything left. What holds value in such a scenario? Land, bullets, rifles, hand tools, stored food, silver coins, gold coins, iodine disinfectants and antibiotics, to name a few obvious items. Skills and education also rank high.
Detroit’s bankruptcy tells us the era of financial demise has begun. Now it’s only a matter of time before what happened to Detroit spreads to Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and other large U.S. cities. It is no coincidence that DHS and the feds are now routinely running paramilitary police state training exercises in high-density urban areas.

As bad as pensions are, unfunded health care liabilities are far worse

For the real story on all this, take everything you’ve just read about unfunded pensions and dig that hole ten times deeper. Because the unfunded health care obligations are ten times worse.
According to the Pew research document at www.Pewstates.org , a fiscal assessment of 61 large U.S. cities revealed that while pensions are 74% funded, retiree health care liabilities are only 6% funded.
You read that correctly: cities have only saved 6 cents on the dollar for what they’re going to need to pay the health care costs of retirees. And that’s assuming health care costs don’t keep skyrocketing thanks to hare-brained monopoly programs like Obamacare which lock in guaranteed monopolies to the drug companies, cancer centers and hospitals that now extract nearly one out of every four dollars of economic activity generated in across America.
Here’s the chart:

What this means in reality is that health care obligations will have to be abandoned. So at the same time cities confiscate pension funds, they will also abandon health care obligations.
For many retirees, this means they will lose their pensions and their health care benefits at the same time.
This is what will ultimately lead to widespread riots in the streets followed by the police state crackdown that the federal government has been planning with its purchase of billions of rounds of ammunitionthousands of armored assault vehicles, full-auto assault rifles and other equipment to be used on the streets of America. The IRS is now training with AR-15s in order to engage American taxpayers at gunpoint. Even the Wall Street Journal now admits that the militarization of American police is wildly out of control, saying:
Law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier. Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment — from bayonets and M-16 rifles to armored personnel carriers — American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield.
This also tells you why government is secretly begging for a mass pandemic to wipe out all the elderly people in America: it would save cities and states from bankruptcy! No wonder government loves to promote Big Pharma — it’s the fastest way to kill people off and therefore not have to pay their retirement benefits. Longevity is the enemy of government because the longer you live, the more you collect in benefits. The sooner you die, the more you help government meet its unfunded financial obligations.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find the White House one day running a new public relations campaign with the message “Kill yourself. It’s good for America.”
Or “Suicide is patriotic.”

The International Banking Cartel

A look at the International Banking Cartel led by the Bank for International Settlement (in Basel, Switzerland) known as the bank of central banks (58 central banks) and The US Federal reserve System. Also a look at banking tycoons: from the Rothschild family in Europe to JP Morgan and others in the US. How banks not only control governments but also appoint politicians through huge campaign donations. Governments at the service of the major banks, the best example: the Obama administration and the history’s biggest bail out of the same institutions that caused the Great Recession.




Healthcare Law, Obamacare, Leaves Americans Vulnerable To Theft & Fraud!


Fury as BBC pensions bill soars to £2bn: Licence fee payers foot bill as boss gets £200,000 deal - and a £750,000 new job

Licence fee payers face a shocking £2 billion bill to meet the spiralling cost of the BBC pension scheme, which includes six-figure payouts to top executives.
An analysis of some of the staggering deals enjoyed by staff at the corporation reveals that one 55-year-old executive who took early retirement is receiving an annual pension of £200,000 - in addition to a £750,000-a-year salary from his new job.
The growing burden of these generous deals has contributed to a  £600 million increase in the BBC's pension fund deficit over the past year to more than £1.7 billion, amounting to nearly half its yearly revenue from the licence fee.
Last night, one Tory MP condemned the corporation's arrangements as 'a form of upper middle class benefit system' and called for an investigation.
John Smith
Patrick Loughrey
Rewards: Former BBC executives John Smith (left) and Patrick Loughrey (right)
One executive benefiting is John Smith, who retired in December from his £337,000-a-year job as head of BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial wing, with a pension pot worth £5.8 million.
He walked out aged 55 with a lump sum pay-off of £1,038,000 and is  able to draw just over £197,000 a year immediately.

In addition to his BBC Worldwide post, since 2009 Mr Smith had been a non-executive director of Burberry on a salary of £72,000 a year.
Within three months of retiring from the BBC he became chief operating officer at the luxury brand on a salary of £575,000, plus an additional £172,500 annual cash payment in lieu of pension contributions.
 
If Mr Smith lives for another 25 years, he will receive a total of more than £4 million in payments from the BBC pension scheme alone.
Many other recent employees are also enjoying bumper deals, often as a supplement to other public sector pay packages. Dame Jenny Abramsky, the corporation's former radio chief, retired in 2008 with a pension pot worth £3.9 million, which pays her £190,000 a year.
She is now chairman of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, for which she receives a public  sector salary of £40,000.
Lord Patten with George Entwistle, who he appointed as the Director-General of the BBC last year
Lord Patten with George Entwistle, who he appointed as the Director-General of the BBC last year
Patricia Hodgson, who took early retirement from her post of director of public policy in 2000, is able to draw her pension of £119,000 a year in addition to £80,000 a year for her work as deputy chair of broadcasting regulator Ofcom and chair of the School Teachers' Review Body.
Pat Loughrey, who quit as the BBC's director of nations and regions in 2009 with a £600,000 payoff, has a pension pot valued at  £1.5 million, paying him £107,000 a year. After leaving the BBC, Mr Loughrey, who is 57, became  warden of Goldsmith's College on a salary of £206,000 plus £33,000 in pension contributions.
Former deputy director general Mark Byford, 55, left in 2011 with a  £1 million payoff and a pension pot valued at £3.6 million - entitling him to an income of £210,000 a year.
George Entwistle, who quit as director general in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal with a £486,500 payoff, has a pot valued at £1.1 million, or £63,000 a year.
Former director general Mark Thompson, whose role in authorising millions of pounds of payoffs has come under scrutiny, has two BBC pensions.
The first was accrued between 1979 and 2001, when he left to become head of Channel 4, and is worth £70,000 a year.
Tory MP Rob Wilson said: 'Licence fee payers are angry about senior BBC management rewarding each other'
Tory MP Rob Wilson said: 'Licence fee payers are angry about senior BBC management rewarding each other'
His second pension, built up as director general between 2004 and 2012, is worth £19,000 a year. The BBC admits in its annual report  that it has had to set aside £100 million in cash this year - more than Radio 4's annual budget - to help prop up the scheme.
But the sum amounts to a fraction of the total deficit of £1.7 billion, up from £1.1 billion a year ago.
The report lays the blame at 'the continued fall in corporate bond yields, which are used to determine the present value of the pension scheme liabilities'.

Last night Tory MP Rob Wilson said: 'Licence fee payers are becoming increasingly angry about senior BBC management rewarding each other with lavish pensions and payoffs, which amounts to a form of upper middle class benefit. There now needs to be a full investigation by the National Audit Office.'
A BBC spokesman said: 'Like a great many other employees in the UK, BBC staff have a pension scheme that is made up of their own contributions and those of their employer. The amount they will  be entitled to depends on a variety of factors.'
A spokeswoman for BBC Worldwide said that Mr Smith had transferred some of his own money into the BBC scheme. She added that his payoff and bonuses had been paid for out of commercial income rather than the licence fee.

Global shares eye five-year high after Abe win, yen choppy

By Marc Jones
LONDON (Reuters) - World shares were testing a five-year high on Monday as a strengthening of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's grip on power in weekend elections were seen as a boost for his radical stimulus policies.
European stocks saw a steady start to the week, dipping 0.1 percent as upbeat results from Philips and Julius Baer helped offset the temptation to book profits on the 9 percent gain the FTSEurofirst 300 index (.FTEU3) has made since June. (.EU)
A 0.5 rise in Japanese stocks had lifted Asia's markets overnight after Abe's big Upper House election win, though a rebound in the yen prompted some profit taking on the Nikkei cutting its early gains in half. (.T)
The rise left MSCI's world share index <.miwo00000pus> within touching distance of the five-year high it hit at the end of May. It added to the recent gains built on generally strong company earnings and reassurances of central bank support.
"We are seeing a bit of position adjustment today but we have got a general positive outlook and I don't think the trend is going to break," said Societe Generale strategist Kit Juckes.
The election victory "frees up Abe's hand to get on with the third reform arrow of his strategy but in terms of the market there was never really any doubt over how this was going to play out.
Abe's win is expected to be negative for the yen going forward but after an initial dip on Monday, some dollar selling by Japanese investors, which in turn triggered stop-loss selling in thin conditions, saw the Japanese currency bounce back.
By 0745 GMT the dollar was down 0.6 percent on the day at just under 100 yen, a turnaround from a high of 101.05. The euro was also 0.3 percent lower at 131.51, well off an early high of 132.47.
Against the dollar, the euro was virtually unchanged from late New York levels at $1.3144, while the Australian dollar advanced 0.4 percent to $0.9225, buoyed by Friday's move by China - Australia's single biggest export market - to ease lending rules.
In debt markets, benchmark Bund futures were flat while peripheral euro zone bonds made early ground after a move by Portugal's President to keep the country's coalition government intact patched over its recent troubles.
Commodities began the week mostly firmer thanks to the softer dollar. U.S. crude held near a 16-month peak of $109.32 a barrel, Brent was at $108.43, while copper gained 1.0 percent to $6,982 a tonne.
Gold reached a one-month high of $1,322.50 an ounce, as it continued to recover from last month's eye-watering slide to a three-year low around $1,180.71.
(Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by Toby Chopra)

European Banks Brace for Losses on Detroit… Apparently Goldman Sachs Is Doing Nothing But Making $$$ in Detroit

European Banks Brace for Losses on Detroit
Continent’s Lenders May Hold $1 Billion in City’s Debt
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323993804578615743557178704.html?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=bufferc4377&utm_medium=twitter
Detroit Mayor Warns “We May Be One Of The First… But We Absolutely Won’t Be The Last”
Amid the furore of Sunday morning political programming, Detroit Mayor Bing and Michigan Governor Snyder have been quite vocal. Bing made it clear that “a lot of negotiations will go into fixing our city,” and when asked whether he will seek a Federal bailout, he responded, “not yet.” The decisions following this huge bankruptcy are likely to be precedent-setting as Bing noted that more than 100 urban US cities “are having the same  problems we’re having.” As the WSJ reports, Bing warned, “We may be one of the first. We are the largest. But we absolutely will not be the last. And so we have got to set a benchmark in terms how to fix our cities.” Snyder was a little more hopeful that salvation will come from above as he stated that while “I don’t view that as the right answer… if the federal government wants to [bail us out], that’s their option.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-21/detroit-mayor-warns-we-may-be-one-first-we-absolutely-wont-be-last
Apparently Goldman Sachs is doing nothing but making $$$ in Detroit
“Hundreds of millions of times a day, thirsty Americans open a can of soda, beer or juice. And every time they do it, they pay a fraction of a penny more because of a shrewd maneuver by Goldman Sachs and other financial players that ultimately costs consumers billions of dollars.
The story of how this works begins in 27 industrial warehouses in the Detroit area where a Goldman subsidiary stores customers’ aluminum. Each day, a fleet of trucks shuffles 1,500-pound bars of the metal among the warehouses. Two or three times a day, sometimes more, the drivers make the same circuits. They load in one warehouse. They unload in another. And then they do it again.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/a-shuffle-of-aluminum-but-to-banks-pure-gold.html?hp&_r=1&

WSJ: Detroit Bankruptcy, Others To Follow! Expert: Detroit Bankruptcy Could Set Legal Precedent For Bankrupt Cities With Pension Obligations

The fun starts at 2:15. She starts pointing at other cities.

Why even bankruptcy can’t save Motown. Plus, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on ‘extremist’ Thomas Perez’s confirmation as Labor Secretary, how the IRS scandal reached Washington and, Virginia Gov. McDonnell’s undisclosed gifts.
Detroit Bankruptcy Could Set Legal Precedent For Bankrupt Cities With Pension Obligations, Experts Say
DETROIT — Pensioners across the country have reason to watch Detroit’s historic bankruptcy filing closely. The legal wrangling over whether the city’s filing is unconstitutional may have widespread impact on cities in crisis across the United States.
Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr says the city’s crippling lack of services and devastating population loss can’t be fixed without bondholders, banks, unions and even retirees settling for less money than they are legally owed. With the blessing of Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, Orr filed for bankruptcy at 4:06 p.m. on Thursday — just five minutes before Circuit Court Judge Rosemary Aquilina was set to consider an injunction from pension groups and retirees to stop the city from filing the paperwork.
When a corporation files for bankruptcy, any pending litigation filed against the company is halted immediately. All lawsuits are dismissed, and creditors must appear before a bankruptcy judge in federal court to plead their cases.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/21/detroit-bankruptcy-legal-precedent_n_3629018.html

US Treasury Secretary to Greece: Stick with Austerity

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew urged Greece to persevere with tough economic reforms during a one-day trip to Athens designed to demonstrate Washington’s support for the crisis-plagued country.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew urged Greece on Sunday to continue its crushing austerity policies “to ensure prosperity and growth for generations to come.”
Lew is on a one-day visit to Greece after attending the Group of 20 summit in Russia.
Lew emailed his comments to the media Sunday: “We know that Greece has passed through a very difficult period of adjustment and reform. We recognize the difficult decisions and shared sacrifices of the last few years, as well as the challenges that remain. The road ahead is still challenging. Continued reform will be essential to laying the foundation for sustained growth.”
Last week, Greek lawmakers passed a new law that puts 25,000 additional state workers on notice for possible dismissal as part of the wage and pension cuts and tax increases demanded by the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.
According to The Greek Reporter: “The U.S. is keen on making sure Greece stays in the Eurozone at all costs so that there are no ripple effects that would upset Wall Street and American banks.”
Lew’s visit to Athens comes ahead of a meeting between Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington on Aug. 8th.
Lew’s trip came just three days after German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, a leading proponent of the harsh austerity policies, also visited Athens.
Massive Crowd Gathers at Parliament For Greek Anti-Austerity Protest, September 26, 2012.
A protester gestures at riot police during clashes outside the Greek parliament in Athens, on February 12, 2012. Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the square outside Parliament as a parliamentary debate began, with more arriving constantly. As the crowds grew, a few hundred anarchists started to throw bottles and firebombs at police, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Republished with permission from: Common Dreams

NY food stamp recipients are shipping welfare-funded groceries to relatives in Jamaica, Dominican Republic and Haiti


BIN OVER THEIR HEADS: Pioneer Supermarket in Brooklyn sells plastic barrels that customers use to ship food to family members in the Caribbean.New York Post - KATE BRIQUELET and ISABEL VINCENT
Food stamps are paying for trans-Atlantic takeout — with New Yorkers using taxpayer-funded benefits to ship food to relatives in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Welfare recipients are buying groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and packing them in giant barrels for the trip overseas, The Post found.
The practice is so common that hundreds of 45- to 55-gallon cardboard and plastic barrels line the walls of supermarkets in almost every Caribbean corner of the city.  
The feds say the moveable feasts go against the intent of the $86 billion welfare program for impoverished Americans.
A spokeswoman for the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service said welfare benefits are reserved for households that buy and prepare food together. She said states should intervene if people are caught shipping nonperishables abroad.
Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, called it just another example of welfare abuse.
“I don’t want food-stamp police to see what people do with their rice and beans, but it’s wrong,” Tanner told The Post. “The purpose of this program is to help Americans who don’t have enough to eat. This is not intended as a form of foreign aid.”
The United States spent $522.7 million on foreign aid to the Caribbean last fiscal year, government data show.
Still, New Yorkers say they ship the food because staples available in the States are superior and less costly than what their families can get abroad.
“Everybody does it,” said a worker at an Associated Supermarket in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn. “They pay for it any way they can. A lot of people pay with EBT.”
Customers pay cash for the barrels, usually about $40, and typically ship them filled with $500 to $2,000 worth of rice, beans, pasta, canned milk and sausages.
Workers at the Pioneer Supermarket on Parkside Avenue and the Key Food on Flatbush Avenue confirmed the practice.
They said food-stamp recipients typically take home their barrels and fill them gradually over time with food bought with EBT cards.
When the tubs are full, the welfare users call a shipping company to pick them up and send them to the Caribbean for about $70. The shipments take about three weeks.
Last week, a woman stuffed dozens of boxes of macaroni and evaporated milk into a barrel headed for her family in Kingston, Jamaica. She said she didn’t have welfare benefits and bought the food herself.
“This is all worth more than $2,000,” she said. “I’ve been shopping since last December. You can help somebody else, someone who doesn’t live in this country.”
A man helping her pack the barrel said: “We’re poor here, and they’re poor. But what we can get here is like luxury to them.”
kbriquelet@nypost.com
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/it_on_y22owkLpsldSAjDVC9isjM

Did A Raging Fire Burn Down JPMorgan's Gold Vault?

Overnight there has been a flood of viral reports that 'there was a fire at JPM's gold vault' based on a self-made video showing a barrage of fire trucks located on Broad Street between Wall Street and Exchange Place, further substantiated additionally by a @FDNY tweet around 6:30 pm on Saturday which indeed confirmed there had been a "commercial fire in a vault."
As a reminder, it was Zero Hedge who broke the news in March about the location of JPM's vault, namely that it can be found 90 feet below street level at 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza (located over half a mile away on Liberty and William Streets). Which is relevant, because as the FDNY reports, and as the video clip below vividly confirms (with the Federal Hall National Memorial distinctly visible in the background), the fire response was focused on the area on Broad street between the New York Stock Exchange and what is now the 15 Broad Street block.


Video streaming by Ustream

So did a sweeping fire "take place" (in broad daylight and in front of video camera armed streetwalkers) providing the fire brigade a pretext to abscond with JPM's gold on orders from above, or merely give JPM an alibi to say it's gold is "gone... all gone" or rather "burned... all burned" (leaving aside the propensity of a fire to propagate in the confined oxygen constraints to be found on top of the Manhattan bedrock and far below street level)? No. For the simple reason that 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza is over two blocks away from where the fire did take place as can be seen on the map below:

In other words, if there was a "fire" in JPM's vault, the response would have been not at 15 Broad Street, but over half a mile away at the perfectly fire-accessible Liberty Street (between the NY Fed and 1 CMP), across from the real JPM vault fire doors which can be seen in the following interactive image:

#0000ff; text-align: left;">View Larger Map
And yes: those who may suggest that any amount of gold tonnage may have been quietly moved over two blocks by the Fire Brigade have never actually carried the not-so-light-bars of gold themselves, especially not in broad daylight.
So why the confusion?
It appears the confusion stems from the Fire Brigade's designation of the fire as taking place at "JP Morgan's building" which indeed is where the Fire Brigade was located. However, it is the 23 Wall Street building, also known as the "JPMorgan building" formerly owned by JPM, and subsequently owned by Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, best known for being the site of the September 16, 1920 Wall Street bombing, when 38 people were killed and 400 injured. Ironically, as was then reported, "because the Morgan building was so well known, many assumed that the target of the assumed anarchist bombing was actually the bank itself."

For modern generations, 23 Wall Street may be better known as the (incorrect) facade of the NYSE as represented in The Dark Knight Rises.
Of course, JPM has long since moved on from its landmark location just across from the NYSE, and now can be located at its Park Avenue headquarters (with its Bear Stearns annex), and of course, at 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza.
So what is now housed in the 15 Broad/23 Wall Street block to where the FDNY was responding, if not any JPM? 23 Wall and 15 Broad Street were sold in 2003 for $100 million to Africa Israel & Boymelgreen (there is likely a far more interesting story surrounding Africa Israel and Boymelgreen here than there is about the "fire in JPM's vault"). The two buildings have become a condominium development, Downtown by Philippe Starck, named for French designer Philippe Starck, one of a growing number of residential buildings in the Financial District. Starck made the roof of 23 Wall into a garden and pool, accessible to the residents of the development.
Could there be a vault in the Downtown residential building, and could the FDNY have been responding to a fire in such a "commercial vault"? Of course: as anyone who has ventured into the skyscraper forest of New York's Financial District knows, there is an underground vault in virtually every building.
However, was this the JPMorgan gold vault? Certainly not.

American Families Have Never Been This Weak, Economy Is In Even Worse Condition Than 7.6% Unemployment!! The Next Economic Crisis Will Leave Millions In Poverty

US Economy is in Even Worse Condition than 7.6% Unemployment!!

US ECONOMY COLLAPSE WILL LEAVE MILLIONS IN POVERTY

American families have never been this weak, and this is an incredibly troubling sign for the future of our nation.  What will future generations of Americans be like if they do not have stable homes to grow up in?  Will they be even more messed up than we are right now?  That is a frightening thought.  The following are 27 facts that prove that the family in America is in the worst shape ever…
#1 The marriage rate in the United States has fallen to an all-time low.  Right now it is sitting at a yearly rate of 6.8 marriages per 1000 people.
#2 Today, an all-time low 44.2 percent of Americans in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket are married.
#3 According to the Pew Research Center, only 51 percent of all adults in the United States are currently married.  Back in 1960, 72 percent of all adults in the United States were married.
#4 Back in 1950, 78 percent of all households in the United States contained a married couple.  Today, that number has declined to 48 percent.
#5 100 years ago, 4.52 were living in the average U.S. household, but now the average U.S. household only consists of 2.59 people.
#6 The United States has the highest percentage of one person households on the entire planet.
#7 In the United States today, more than half of all couples “move in together” before they get married.
#8 The divorce rate for couples that live together first is significantly higher than for those that do not.
#9 For women under the age of 30 in the United States, more than half of all babies are being born out of wedlock.
#10 In 1970, the average woman had her first child when she was 21.4 years old.  Now the average woman has her first child when she is 25.6 years old.
#11 According to the Centers for Disease Control, there were 69.3 births per 1,000 women in the 15 to 44 year old age bracket in 2007. Now the rate has fallen to 63.2 births per 1,000 women.
#12 The birth rate for American women in the 20 to 24 year old age bracket has fallen to 85.3 births per 1,000 women.  That is a new all-time record low.
#13 The United States has the highest divorce rate in the entire world.
#14 At this point, approximately one out of every three children in the United States lives in a home without a father.
#15 Without a father around, many single mothers in this country are really struggling to survive.  Sadly, approximately 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States are on food stamps.


#16 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point before they reach the age of 18.
#17 Today, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless.  This is the first time that has ever happened in our history.
#18 The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the entire world.  In fact, the United States has a teen pregnancy rate that is more than twice as high as Canada, more than three times as high as France and more than seven times as high as Japan.
#19 In the United States today, approximately 47 percent of all high school students have had sex.
#20 Approximately one out of every four teen girls in the United States has at least one sexually transmitted disease.
#21 According to one survey, 24 percent of all U.S. teens that have at least one sexually transmitted disease say that they still have unprotected sex.
#22 Instead of being raised by parents, an increasing number of children in America are being raised by movies, television and video games.  For example, the average young American will spend 10,000 hours playing video games before the age of 21.
#23 Americans are tied with the British for the highest average number of hours spent watching television each week.
#24 There are more than 3 million reports of child abuse in the United States every single year.
#25 The United States actually has the highest child abuse death ratein the developed world.
#26 Approximately 20 percent of all child sexual abuse victims in the United States are under the age of 8.
#27 It is estimated that one out of every four girls will be sexually abused before they become adults.
Unfortunately, this is a problem that is not going to be fixed overnight.  Getting the “right politicians” into office will not solve our problems and neither will spending a bunch of money.
The change that we need is a change of the heart.  We need to change how we treat one another and we need to get our priorities straight.
Our families are really messed up, and this is hurting our kids the most.  There is no way that this country is going to have any hope for a bright future unless our families start getting stronger.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/27-facts-that-prove-that-the-family-in-america-is-in-the-worst-shape-ever

Now That Detroit’s Gone Bust, Is Your City Next?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-20/now-detroit%E2%80%99s-gone-bust-your-city-next
After Detroit … Next Comes Chicago and All of Illinois? … Then Who and What? … That is the Question
Detroit is bust.What about Chicago? And Illinois as a whole?
After all, pension obligations are pension obligations. And cities are cities. And irresponsible Santa Claus type governments in many locations across America acting in concert with public sector union officials are producing the same results as they have in Detroit. Take the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois as a whole, for example.
Moody’s Cuts Chicago Credit Rating, Citing Pension Problems has the details:
“While everyone was focusing Detroit’s bankruptcy filing late Thursday, Motown wasn’t the only Midwestern city facing muni-market woes, as Moody’s cut Chicago’s general obligation bond rating by three notches to A3 from Aa3.From Moody’s:
http://augustametros.blogspot.com/2013/07/after-detroit-next-comes-chicago-and.html
 

If We Don’t Break Up the Big Banks, They Will Manipulate More and More of the Economy … Making Us Poorer and Poorer

Interest Rates Are Manipulated

Interest rates are rigged:

Derivatives Are Manipulated

The big banks have long manipulated derivatives … a $1,200 Trillion Dollar market.
Indeed, many trillions of dollars of derivatives are being manipulated in the exact same same way that interest rates are fixed: through gamed self-reporting.

Currency Markets Are Rigged

Currency markets are massively rigged.

Commodities Are Manipulated

The big banks and government agencies have been conspiring to manipulate commodities prices for decades.
The big banks are taking over important aspects of the physical economy, including uranium mining, petroleum products, aluminum, ownership and operation of airports, toll roads, ports, and electricity.
And they are using these physical assets to massively manipulate commodities prices … scalping consumers of many billions of dollars each year.

Gold and Silver Are Manipulated

The Guardian and Telegraph report that gold and silver prices are “fixed” in the same way as interest rates and derivatives – in daily conference calls by the powers-that-be.

Oil Prices Are Manipulated

Oil prices are manipulated as well.

Everything Can Be Manipulated through High-Frequency Trading

Traders with high-tech computers can manipulate stocks, bonds, options, currencies and commodities. And see this.

Manipulating Numerous Markets In Myriad Ways

The big banks and other giants manipulate numerous markets in myriad ways, for example:
  • Engaging in mafia-style big-rigging fraud against local governments. See this, this and this
  • Shaving money off of virtually every pension transaction they handled over the course of decades, stealing collectively billions of dollars from pensions worldwide. Details here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here
  • Pledging the same mortgage multiple times to different buyers. See this, this, this, this and this. This would be like selling your car, and collecting money from 10 different buyers for the same car
  • Pushing investments which they knew were terrible, and then betting against the same investments to make money for themselves. See this, this, this, this and this
  • Engaging in unlawful “Wash Trades” to manipulate asset prices. See this, this and this
  • Participating in various Ponzi schemes. See this, this and this
  • Bribing and bullying ratings agencies to inflate ratings on their risky investments

The Big Picture

The big picture is simple:
  • The big banks manipulate every market they touch
  • The government has given the banks huge subsidies … which they are using for speculation and other things which don’t help the economy. In other words, propping up the big banks by throwing money at them doesn’t help the economy
Get it? Break up the big banks, or they will continue to take over and manipulate more and more of the economy … increasing their profits while making everyone else poorer.