Thursday, March 20, 2014
The Federal Reserve Seems Quite Serious About Tapering – So What Comes Next?
Will
this be the year when the Fed’s quantitative easing program finally
ends? For a long time, many analysts were proclaiming that the
Fed would never taper. But then it started happening.
Then a lot of them started talking about how “the untaper” was
right around the corner. That hasn’t happened either.
It looks like that under Janet Yellen the Fed is quite determined to
bring the quantitative easing program to a close by the end of this
year. Up until now, the financial markets have been slow to
react because there has been a belief that the Fed would reverse
course on tapering the moment that the U.S. economy started to slow
down again. But even though the U.S. middle class is
in horrible shape, and even though there are lots of signs that
we are heading
into another recession, the Fed has continued tapering.
Of course it is important to note that the Fed
is still absolutely flooding the financial system with money even
after the announcement of more tapering on Wednesday. When you
are talking about $55,000,000,000 a month, you are talking about a
massive amount of money. So the Fed is not exactly being
hawkish.
But when Yellen told the press that
quantitative easing could end completely this fall and that the Fed
could actually start raising interest rates about six months after
that, it really spooked the markets.
The
Dow was down 114 points on Wednesday, and the yield on 10 year U.S.
Treasuries shot up to 2.77%. The following is
how CNBC described
the reaction of the markets on Wednesday…
Despite a seemingly dovish tone, markets
recoiled at remarks from Yellen, who said interest rate increases
likely would start six months after the monthly bond-buying program
ends. If the program winds down in the fall, that would put a rate
hike in the spring of 2015, earlier than market expectations for the
second half of the year.
Stocks tumbled as Yellen spoke at her initial
post-meeting news conference, with the Dow industrials at one point
sliding more than 200 points before shaving those losses nearly in
half. Short-term interest rates rose appreciably, with the five-year
note moving up 0.135 percentage points. The seven-year note tumbled
more than one point in price.
But this is just the beginning. When it
finally starts sinking in, and investors finally start realizing that
the Fed is 100% serious about ending the flow of easy money, that is
when things will start getting really interesting.
Can the financial markets stand on their own
without massive Fed intervention?
We
shall see. Even now there are lots of signs that a market crash
could be coming up in the not too distant future. For much more
on this, please see my previous article entitled “Is
‘Dr. Copper’ Foreshadowing A Stock Market Crash Just Like It Did
In 2008?”
And what is going to happen to the market for
U.S. Treasuries once the Fed stops gobbling them up?
Where is the demand going to come from?
In
recent months, foreign demand for U.S. debt has really started to dry
up. Considering recent developments in Ukraine, it is quite
certain that Russia will not be accumulating any more U.S. debt, and
China has announced that it is “no
longer in China’s favor to accumulate foreign-exchange reserves”
and China actually dumped about
50 billion dollars of U.S. debt during the month of December
alone.
Collectively, Russia and China account for
about a quarter of all foreign-owned U.S. debt. If you take
them out of the equation, foreign demand for U.S. debt is not nearly
as strong.
Will domestic sources be enough to pick up the
slack? Or will we see rates really start to rise once the Fed
steps to the sidelines?
And
of course rates on U.S. government debt should actually
be much higher than they are right now. It simply does not make
sense to loan the U.S. government massive amounts of money at
interest rates that are far below the
real rate of inflation.
If free market forces are allowed to prevail,
it is inevitable that interest rates on U.S. debt will go up
substantially, and that will mean higher interest rates on mortgages,
cars, and just about everything else.
Of course the central planners at the Federal
Reserve could choose to reverse course at any time and start pumping
again. This is the kind of thing that can happen when you don’t
have a true free market system.
The
truth is that the Federal Reserve is at
the very heart of the economic and financial problems of
this country. When the Fed intervenes and purposely distorts
the operation of free markets, the Fed creates economic and financial
bubbles which inevitably burst later on. We saw this happen
during the great financial crisis of 2008, and now it
is happening again.
This is what happens when you allow an
unelected, unaccountable group of central planners to have far more
power over our economy than anyone else in our society does.
Most
people don’t realize this, but the greatest period of economic
growth in all of U.S. history was when there
was no central bank.
We don’t need a Federal Reserve. In
fact, the performance of the Federal Reserve has been absolutely
disastrous.
Since the Fed was created just over 100 years
ago, the U.S. dollar has lost more than 96 percent of its value, and
the size of the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times
larger. The Fed is at the very center of a debt-based financial
system that has trapped us, our children and our grandchildren in an
endless spiral of debt slavery.
And now we are on the verge of the greatest
financial crisis that the United States has ever seen. The
economic and financial storm that is about to unfold is ultimately
going to be even worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Things did not have to turn out this way.
Congress could have shut down the Federal
Reserve long ago.
But our “leaders” never seriously
considered doing such a thing, and the mainstream media kept telling
all of us how much we desperately needed central planners to run our
financial system.
Well, now those central planners have brought
us to the brink of utter ruin, and yet only a small minority of
Americans are calling for change.
Soon, we will all get to pay a great price for
this foolishness. A great financial storm is fast approaching,
and it is going to be exceedingly painful.
Signs of A Gold ‘Supercycle’: Chart This! | Kitco News
Kitco
News kicks off the week with Gary Wagner to find out what he makes of
gold’s recent price movements. He says that although there is evidence
that we might be entering a 2-year long gold ‘supercycle,’ he still
needs proof from market technicals before he is 100% sure. While Wagner
is optimistic about the yellow metal, he does not have the same
conviction on silver. Tune in now to his analysis as he gives a macro
view for the yellow metal. Kitco News, March 17, 2014.
Join the conversation @ The Kitco Forums and be part of the premier online community for precious metals investors:http://kitcomm.com – Or join the conversation on social media: @KitcoNewsNOW on Twitter: http://twitter.com/kitconews — Kitco News on Facebook: http://facebook.com/kitconews — Kitco News on Google+: http://google.com/+kitco — Kitco News on StockTwits: http://stocktwits.com/kitconews
Ron Paul to Fed: Hands off interest rates, half of US economy is socialized.
The Federal Reserve is
expected to announce on Wednesday further tapering while holding its
benchmark interest rate near zero, but the central bank is wrong to
manipulate interest rates at all, former Republican congressman and
presidential candidate Ron Paul told CNBC.
(Read more: Wall St eyes Yellen for possible job target shift)
“It’s an illusion. I don’t
think any one individual knows how to plan the economy by manipulating
interest rates. Interest rates are so important that if you give this
power to one small group or one individual, there will be distortion,”
Paul said Wednesday on “Squawk on the Street.”
“So sometimes you have housing
bubbles and sometimes you have housing busts, then you have housing
bubbles and bond bubbles that’s all [the] result of the manipulation of
interest rates, which is my real objection to it.”http://www.cnbc.com/id/101507139
Since The 1960s, Wages Have Fallen As A Share Of The US Economy From 51 Percent To 42 Percent Today
Our
lead story: On Monday, the US and European Union imposed asset freezes
and travel bans on officials from Russia and Ukraine, as Crimean leaders
move forward with their plans to join Russia following a vote on
Sunday. Erin brings the economics surrounding Crimea and Ukraine.Then Erin speaks with investor
David Tice who gave us his view on the macroeconomic outlook of the US.
He discusses his view of quantitative easing and Austrian economics.
After the break, Erin brings you part two of our interview with junk
expert Adam Minter. He explains why Latin America is one of the few
regions that doesn’t export junk to China and gives us what he finds
most interesting about the junk trade today.In today’s Big Deal, Edward
Harrison sits down to talk about wages in the USA. Since the 1960s,
wages have fallen as a share of the US economy from 51 percent to 42
percent today. Edward talks about the importance of wages in the US’
ongoing recovery.
Also check us out on Facebook — and feel free to ask us questions:
http://www.facebook.com/BoomBustRT
http://www.facebook.com/harrison.writ…
http://www.facebook.com/erinade2020
http://www.facebook.com/BoomBustRT
http://www.facebook.com/harrison.writ…
http://www.facebook.com/erinade2020
Lost Reunion, 10 Years Later: No, They Were Not Dead the Whole Time!
"We debated as to whether or not we should show you the REAL finale" to Lost, Damon Lindelof teased the nearly full Dolby Theatre Sunday night. To the hoots, applause and groans, Carlton Cuse said, "Too soon?!"
The Lost co-creators joined some of their stars for a 10th-anniversary tribute to the ABC cult hit. The show went off the air in 2010, but the 10th-anniversary tribute to the show was the fastest-selling event in the 31-year history of the William S. Paley Television Festival.
The fans turned out in droves to see cast members Henry Ian Cusick (aka Desmond), Jorge Garcia (Hurley), Josh Holloway (Sawyer), Malcolm David Kelley (Walt, all grown up), Yunjin Kim (Sun) and Ian Somerhalder (Boone). Unfortunately, due to shooting schedules run amok, Daniel Dae Kim (Jin) and Nestor Carbonell (Richard) were unable to join the fun. And, as moderator Paul Scheer put it, Vincent the dog also was unavailable, having just landed a role in Air Bud 4.
Scheer was an excellent and knowledgeable moderator, with some ideas of his own about the show and its place in TV history. "Lost was more than a show," he declared. "It really redefined the way we watched TV." In its six seasons, which "spanned both space and time," he continued, it was the first show "that made you run out and read a book because the show referenced it" (referring to his own copy of The Ginger Man), and it engaged its audience in weekly debate and almost forensic-level sleuthing. "I think you could even trace the idea of binge watching to Lost," he said.
Scheer also mentioned the elephant in the room, asking the audience to refrain from questions about the missing Malaysian aircraft, although the coincidence was hard to miss. But "that would be in bad taste," he said.
The episode screened for the event was "Exodus: Part 1," the first half of the first season's finale. At the end of the hour, the castaways succeed in launching a raft they've built in hopes of intercepting a passing ship.
Holloway shared a touching recollection of shooting in Hawaii, despite the challenges presented by the natural environment. "The harsher the elements, the more fun it became. To me, anyway. I love the fact, when the mudslides would start, and the little waterfalls everywhere, and everyone would cram under one little tent ... It was just a break in the day, and we were just having this moment in the middle of nature. I loved that."
Lindelof responded: "Never ever did we write, "There's rain, and Jack and Kate are running up a hill.' Most of the time on Lost, what you see is what you get."
That went for the raft, too, Holloway said: "We sailed that raft halfway to Kauai! They left us out there!"
Cuse told how the first raft constructed ... sank. The second time, Jack Bender, who directed 37 episodes of the series, "called up and said, 'We have a problem with the raft.' I said, 'Did it sink again?' He said no, the raft is too fast, and the camera boat can't keep up!"
The show started out very different, according to Darlton (the collective nickname of Lindelof and Cuse). Lindelof explained that, at first, "There was no Sun in the Lost script, because there was no Lost script!" Actress Kim read for the role of Kate. When she auditioned, she wowed them, in part by telling them she'd been in the equivalent of Titanic in Korea, "and we decided we needed to write a character for her."
Similarly, Garcia read for Sawyer, because Hurley didn't exist. But when they saw him play a pot dealer on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Darlton knew they had to get Garcia into their show, so they wrote the part of Hurley for him.
See also: PaleyFest Television Panel Bingo
It is true that the actors didn't usually know what was coming their way. As Lindelof put it, "We really felt at a certain point that withholding what our plans for the actors were was in the best interest of the show, because the actors were so strong that it informed the writers room.
"We're shooting the pilot," Lindelof continued, "and Terry O'Quinn [Locke] would go between takes half a mile down the beach, and sit with his earbuds in. And [co-creator J.J. Abrams] says to me, 'That guy's got a secret!' And I said, 'What is it?' And he said, 'You figure it out!'" (O'Quinn didn't know immediately that his character had boarded the plane in a wheelchair.)
Cuse agreed, "They were right there — they only knew what the characters knew..." And Somerhalder cut in, "And you were always on the precipice of death!"
Despite Promises To Fight Mortgage Fraud, DOJ Basically Ignored It, Then Claimed Success With Faulty Stats
from the terrorism-is-hot dept
A few months ago, we noted that the FBI had quietly admitted that its primary function was no longer law enforcement (as it was supposed to be), but rather "national security." Because fighting terrorism is hot. Putting bankers destroying the economy in jail? Not hot. As we noted at the time, the numbers showed that the FBI was putting a huge part of its budget towards "counterterrorism" (potentially doing much more to destroy your civil liberties than the NSA) and its efforts to take down white collar crime was dropping significantly.A new report from the Justice Department's Inspector General confirms this finding. It also notes that, despite President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder promising (yeah, I know...) that cracking down on "mortgage fraud" was a top priority, the FBI has actually put it near the bottom of the list of actual priorities. Say one thing, do another. That sounds mighty familiar.
“In cities across the country, mortgage fraud crimes have reached crisis proportions,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said at a mortgage fraud summit in Phoenix in 2010. “But we are fighting back.”Oh, and even better, because of all the hype and talk about mortgage fraud, Congress allocated more budget specifically for that purpose, though it appears to have gone elsewhere.
The inspector general’s report, however, shows that the F.B.I. considered mortgage fraud to be its lowest-ranked national criminal priority. In several large cities, including New York and Los Angeles, F.B.I. agents either ranked mortgage fraud as a low priority or did not rank it at all.
And that's not all. The DOJ then pretended that it had been fighting mortgage fraud and put on a whole presentation about its success -- based on totally faulty numbers. Numbers that it was pretty sure were faulty -- and then took nearly a year to admit that their claims of success were based on bogus stats:
We further found that, despite receiving significant additional funding from Congress to pursue mortgage fraud cases, the FBI in adding new staff did not always use these new positions to exclusively investigate mortgage fraud. Moreover, when we attempted to assess the effectiveness of the Department’s efforts in pursuing mortgage fraud cases, we found that DOJ could not provide readily verifiable data related to its criminal and civil enforcement efforts. The DOJ’s release of significantly flawed information at a highly publicized press conference in October 2012 regarding the purported success of the FFETF’s and the DOJ’s recent mortgage fraud initiative reflects the lack of accurate data maintained by the Department regarding its mortgage fraud efforts, as well as the Department’s serious failure to adequately vet information that it was presenting to the public. Only days after the press conference the Department had serious concerns over the accuracy of the reported statistics, yet it was not until August 2013 when the Department informed the public that the October 2012 reported statistics were indeed flawed. Moreover, during those 10 months, the Department continued to issue press releases publicizing statistics it knew were seriously flawed. We believe the Department should have been more forthright at a much earlier date about this flawed information.Somehow, none of this is making me feel any safer.
techdirt.com/articles/20140317/17483026608/mortgage-fraud-key-part-economic-recession-basically-ignored-fbi.shtml …
The DJIA Is A Hoax
The Dow Jones Industrial Average Is a Farce
Guest post by Wim Grommen. Mr. Grommen was a teacher in mathematics and physics for eight years at secondary schools. The last twenty years he trained programmers in Oracle-software. He worked almost five years as trainer for Oracle and the last 18 years as trainer for Transfer Solutions in the Netherlands.The last 15 years he studied transitions, social transformation processes, the S-curve and transitions in relation to market indices. Articles about these topics have been published in various magazines / sites in The Netherlands and Belgium.
The paper “The present crisis, a pattern: current problems associated with the end of the third industrial revolution” was accepted for an International Symposium in Valencia: The Economic Crisis: Time for a paradigm shift, Towards a systems approach.
On January 25 2013, during the symposium in Valencia he presented his paper to scientists.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) Index is the only stock market index that covers both the second and the third industrial revolution. Calculating share indexes such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and showing this index in a historical graph is a useful way to show which phase the industrial revolution is in. Changes in the DJIA shares basket, changes in the formula and stock splits during the take-off phase and acceleration phase of industrial revolutions are perfect transition-indicators. The similarities of these indicators during the last two revolutions are fascinating, but also a reason for concern. In fact the graph of the DJIA is a classic example of fictional truth, a hoax.
Transitions
Every production phase, civilization or other human invention goes through a so called transformation process. Transitions are social transformation processes that cover at least one generation. In this article I will use one such transition to demonstrate the position of our present civilization and its possible effect on stock exchange rates.
A transition has the following characteristics:
- it involves a structural change of civilization or a complex subsystem of our civilization
- it shows technological, economical, ecological, socio cultural and institutional changes at different levels that influence and enhance each other
- it is the result of slow changes (changes in supplies) and fast dynamics (flows)
A transition process is not fixed from the start because during the transition processes will adapt to the new situation. A transition is not dogmatic.
Four transition phases
In general transitions can be seen to go through the S curve and we can distinguish four phases (see fig. 1):
- a pre development phase of a dynamic balance in which the present status does not visibly change
- a take off phase in which the process of change starts because of changes in the system
- an acceleration phase in which visible structural changes take place through an accumulation of socio cultural, economical, ecological and institutional changes influencing each other; in this phase we see collective learning processes, diffusion and processes of embedding
- a stabilization phase in which the speed of sociological change slows down and a new dynamic balance is achieved through learning
- the degeneration phase in which cost rises because of over capacity and the producer will finally withdraw from the market.
Figure 1. The S curve of a transition
Four phases in a transition best visualized by means of an S curve:
Pre-development, Take-off, Acceleration, Stabilization.
When we look back into the past we see three transitions, also called industrial revolutions, taking place with far-reaching effect :
1. The first industrial revolution (1780 until circa 1850); the steam engine
2. The second industrial revolution (1870 until circa 1930); electricity, oil and the car
3. The third industrial revolution (1950 until ….); computer and microprocessor
Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA)
The Dow Index was first published in 1896 when it consisted of just 12 constituents and was a simple price average index in which the sum total value of the shares of the 12 constituents were simply divided by 12. As such those shares with the highest prices had the greatest influence on the movements of the index as a whole. In 1916 the Dow 12 became the Dow 20 with four companies being removed from the original twelve and twelve new companies being added. In October, 1928 the Dow 20 became the Dow 30 but the calculation of the index was changed to be the sum of the value of the shares of the 30 constituents divided by what is known as the Dow Divisor.
While the inclusion of the Dow Divisor may have seemed totally straightforward it was – and still is – anything but! Why so? Because every time the number of, or specific constituent, companies change in the index any comparison of the new index value with the old index value is impossible to make with any validity whatsoever. It is like comparing the taste of a cocktail of fruits when the number of different fruits and their distinctive flavours – keep changing. Let me explain the aforementioned as it relates to the Dow.
The False Appreciation of the Dow Explained
On the other hand, companies in the take-off or acceleration phase are added to the index. This greatly increases the chances that the index will always continue to advance rather than decline. In fact, the manner in which the Dow index is maintained actually creates a kind of pyramid scheme! All goes well as long as companies are added that are in their take-off or acceleration phase in place of companies in their stabilization or degeneration phase.
On October 1st, 1928, when the Dow was enlarged to 30 constituents, the calculation formula for the index was changed to take into account the fact that the shares of companies in the Index split on occasion. It was determined that, to allow the value of the Index to remain constant, the sum total of the share values of the 30 constituent companies would be divided by 16.67 ( called the Dow Divisor) as opposed to the previous 30.
On October 1st, 1928 the sum value of the shares of the 30 constituents of the Dow 30 was $3,984 which was then divided by 16.67 rather than 30 thereby generating an index value of 239 (3984 divided by 16.67) instead of 132.8 (3984 divided by 30) representing an increase of 80% overnight!! This action had the affect of putting dramatically more importance on the absolute dollar changes of those shares with the greatest price changes. But it didn’t stop there!
On September, 1929 the Dow divisor was adjusted yet again. This time it was reduced even further down to 10.47 as a way of better accounting for the change in the deletion and addition of constituents back in October, 1928 which, in effect, increased the October 1st, 1928 index value to 380.5 from the original 132.8 for a paper increase of 186.5%!!! From September, 1929 onwards (at least for a while) this “adjustment” had the affect – and I repeat myself – of putting even that much more importance on the absolute dollar changes of those shares with the greatest changes.
How the Dow Divisor Contributed to the Crash of ‘29
From the above analyses/explanation it is evident that the dramatic “adjustments” to the Dow Divisor (coupled with the addition/deletion of constituent companies according to which transition phase they were in) were major contributors to the dramatic increase in the Dow from 1920 until October 1929 and the following dramatic decrease in the Dow 30 from then until 1932 notwithstanding the economic conditions of the time as well.
Dow Jones Industrial Index is a Hoax
In many graphs the y-axis is a fixed unit, such as kg, meter, liter or euro. In the graphs showing the stock exchange values, this also seems to be the case because the unit shows a number of points. However, this is far from true! An index point is not a fixed unit in time and does not have any historical significance. An index is calculated on the basis of a set of shares. Every index has its own formula and the formula gives the number of points of the index. Unfortunately many people attach a lot of value to these graphs which are, however, very deceptive.
An index is calculated on the basis of a set of shares. Every index has its own formula and the formula results in the number of points of the index. However, this set of shares changes regularly. For a new period the value is based on a different set of shares. It is very strange that these different sets of shares are represented as the same unit. In less than ten years twelve of the thirty companies (i.e. 40%) in the Dow Jones were replaced. Over a period of sixteen years, twenty companies were replaced, a figure of 67%. This meant that over a very short period we were left comparing a basket of today’s apples with a basket of yesterday’s pears.
Even more disturbing is the fact that with every change in the set of shares used to calculate the number of points, the formula also changes. This is done because the index, which is the result of two different sets of shares at the moment the set is changed, must be the same for both sets at that point in time. The index graphs must be continuous lines. For example, the Dow Jones is calculated by adding the shares and dividing the result by a number. Because of changes in the set of shares and the splitting of shares the divider changes continuously. At the moment the divider is 0.15571590501117 but in 1985 this number was higher than 1. An index point in two periods of time is therefore calculated in different ways:
Dow1985 = (x1 + x2 +..+x30) / 1
Dow2014 = (x1 + x2 +.. + x30) / 0.15571590501117
In the 1990s many shares were split. To make sure the result of the calculation remained the same both the number of shares and the divider changed. An increase in share value of 1 dollar of the set of shares in 2014 results is 6.4 times more points than in 1985. The fact that in the 1990s many shares were split is probably the cause of the exponential growth of the Dow Jones index. At the moment the Dow is at 16,437 points. If we used the 1985 formula it would be at 2,559 points.
The most remarkable characteristic is of course the constantly changing set of shares. Generally speaking, the companies that are removed from the set are in a stabilization or degeneration phase. Companies in a take off phase or acceleration phase are added to the set. This greatly increases the chance that the index will rise rather than go down. This is obvious, especially when this is done during the acceleration phase of a transition. From 1980 onward 7 ICT companies (3M, AT&T, Cisco, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft), the engines of the latest revolution and 5 financial institutions, which always play an important role in every transition, were added to the Dow Jones.
|
Period
|
Basket changes
|
Stock splits
|
Dow Divisor end period
|
|
1930-1940
|
18
|
0
|
15,100
|
|
1940-1950
|
0
|
12
|
9,060
|
|
1950-1960
|
5
|
27
|
3,824
|
|
1960-1970
|
0
|
26
|
1,894
|
|
1970-1980
|
3
|
12
|
1,465
|
|
1980-1990
|
5
|
32
|
0,586
|
|
1990-2000
|
11
|
40
|
0,201
|
|
2000-2010
|
7
|
13
|
0,132
|
Table 1. Changes in the Dow, stock splits and the value of the Dow Divisor after the market crash of 1929Dow Jones Industrial Average
Figure 2 Exchange rates of Dow Jones during the latest two industrial revolutions. During the last few years the rate increases have accelerated enormously.
Overview from 1997 : 20 winners in – 20 losers out, a figure of 67%
September 23, 2013: Hewlett – Packard Co., Bank of America Inc. and Alcoa Inc. will replaced by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Nike Inc. and Visa Inc. Alcoa has dropped from $40 in 2007 to $8.08. Hewlett- Packard Co. has dropped from $50 in 2010 to $22.36.
Bank of America has dropped from $50 in 2007 to $14.48. But Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Nike Inc. and Visa Inc. have risen 25%, 27% and 18% respectively in 2013.
September 20, 2012: UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH) replaces Kraft Foods Inc. Kraft Foods Inc. was split into two companies and was therefore deemed less representative so no longer suitable for the Dow. The share value of UnitedHealth Group Inc. had risen for two years before inclusion in the Dow by 53%.
June 8, 2009: Cisco and Travelers replaced Citigroup and General Motors. Citigroup and General Motors have received billions of dollars of U.S. government money to survive and were not representative of the Do.
September 22, 2008: Kraft Foods Inc. replaced American International Group. American International Group was replaced after the decision of the government to take a 79.9% stake in the insurance giant. AIG was narrowly saved from destruction by an emergency loan from the Fed.
February 19, 2008: Bank of America Corp. and Chevron Corp. replaced Altria Group Inc. and Honeywell International. Altria was split into two companies and was deemed no longer suitable for the Dow. Honeywell was removed from the Dow because the role of industrial companies in the U.S. stock market in the recent years had declined and Honeywell had the smallest sales and profits among the participants in the Dow.
April 8, 2004: Verizon Communications Inc., American International Group Inc. and Pfizer Inc. replace AT & T Corp., Eastman Kodak Co. and International Paper. AIG shares had increased over 387% in the previous decade and Pfizer had an increase of more than 675& behind it. Shares of AT & T and Kodak, on the other hand, had decreases of more than 40% in the past decade and were therefore removed from the Dow.
November 1, 1999: Microsoft Corporation, Intel Corporation, SBC Communications and Home Depot Incorporated replaced Chevron Corporation, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, Union Carbide Corporation and Sears Roebuck.
March 17, 1997: Travelers Group, Hewlett-Packard Company, Johnson & Johnson and Wal-Mart Stores Incorporated replaced Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Texaco Incorporated, Bethlehem Steel Corporation and Woolworth Corporation.
Real truth and fictional truth
Is the number of points that the Dow Jones now gives us a truth or a fictional truth? If a fictional truth then the number of points now says absolutely nothing about the state that the economy or society is in when compared to the past. In that case a better guide would be to look at the number of people in society that use food stamps today – That is the real truth
Fortune 100 Companies get a Whopping $1.2 Trillion in Handouts
Fortune 100 Companies Have Receive a Whopping $1.2 Trillion in Corporate Welfare
Most of us are aware that the government gives mountains of cash to powerful corporations in the form of tax breaks, grants, loans and subsidies–what some have called “corporate welfare.” However, little has been revealed about exactly how much money Washington is forking over to mega businesses.Until now.
A new venture called Open the Books, based in Illinois, was founded with a mission to bring transparency to how the federal budget is spent. And what they found is shocking: between 2000 and 2012, the top Fortune 100 companies received $1.2 trillion from the government. That doesn’t include all the billions of dollars doled out to housing, auto and banking enterprises in 2008-2009, nor does it include ethanol subsidies to agribusiness or tax breaks for wind turbine makers.
What Open the Book’s forthcoming report does reveal is that the most valuable contracts between the government and private firms were for military procrument deals, including Lockheed Martin ($392 billion), General Dynamics ($170 billion), and United Technologies ($73 billion).
$8.5 billion in federally subsidized loans were also doled out to giant oil companies Chevron and Exxon Mobile, and $1 billion went directly to massive agri-business Archer Daniels Midland.
Of course, the banks also got their piece of the pie: $10 billion in federal insurance went to Bank of America,
Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, not including any of the 2008
bailout money. Walmart enjoyed its share of federal insurance backing as
well.
Thanks to Open the Books, the curtain has been lifted and the whole country can now witness the great suckling of corporate America.
As Open the Books founder Adam Andrzejewski put it: “Mitt Romney had it
wrong: When it comes to the Fortune 100, it’s 99%, not 47%, on some
form of the government’s gravy train.”
Aaron Cantú is an investigator for the Marijuana Arrest Research Project and an independent journalist based in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter @aaronmiguel_
Housing loses its 'big pop': Blackstone's Schwarzman
Blackstone Group
has poured billions into real estate in the past few years, but the U.S.
housing market has lost its "big pop" as an investment option, CEO Stephen Schwarzman told CNBC on Wednesday.
During an interview on "Squawk Box," Schwarzman said home prices price in some markets spiked as much as 20 percent in recent years but now investment returns on home prices have settled somewhere between 5 and 10 percent.
"That's just great, but it doesn't justify us buying at the same rate," said Schwarzman, whose firm has bought $7 billion to $9 billion worth of individual homes,
Schwarzman said he's content to limit his exposure at those levels.
"We think a lot of the big pop in housing has gone out," he said.
(Read more: Byron Wien: There's still time to buy stocks)
Asked whether Blackstone's big position in real estate helped drive up prices following the subprime mortgage crisis, Schwarzman said the investments have most likely affected only smaller markets where their home purchases have been focused.
"We're in effect a bit player in a very massive market, and the laws of supply and demand are really what drive housing," Schwarzman said.
(Read more: 'Beauty in eye of beholder': Blackstone on FB's WhatsApp buy)
During an interview on "Squawk Box," Schwarzman said home prices price in some markets spiked as much as 20 percent in recent years but now investment returns on home prices have settled somewhere between 5 and 10 percent.
"That's just great, but it doesn't justify us buying at the same rate," said Schwarzman, whose firm has bought $7 billion to $9 billion worth of individual homes,
Schwarzman said he's content to limit his exposure at those levels.
"We think a lot of the big pop in housing has gone out," he said.
(Read more: Byron Wien: There's still time to buy stocks)
Asked whether Blackstone's big position in real estate helped drive up prices following the subprime mortgage crisis, Schwarzman said the investments have most likely affected only smaller markets where their home purchases have been focused.
"We're in effect a bit player in a very massive market, and the laws of supply and demand are really what drive housing," Schwarzman said.
(Read more: 'Beauty in eye of beholder': Blackstone on FB's WhatsApp buy)
—By CNBC's Jeff Morganteen. Follow him on Twitter at
@jmorganteen.
Spain’s Rescued Banks Seen Facing Claims on $4 Billion Debts
Arbitrators appointed by the
Spanish government are considering claims that might leave
rescued lenders Bankia SA (BKIA), NCG Banco and Catalunya Banc liable
to pay compensation to individual investors who bought as much
as 3.1 billion euros ($4.3 billion) of junior debt.
Independent assessors including KPMG and Ernst & Young are examining the possible mis-selling of products such as preferred shares and have agreed to consider compensation requests from 269,204 customers, according to a government report sent to parliament on March 14 that was seen by Bloomberg News. The requests being reviewed represent 45 percent of the 6.8 billion euros of securities subject to the claims, the report said.
Spain’s government is trying to coax the economy back to life after two recessions in six years and a 41 billion-euro bailout for the banking system. The arbitration process was set up to assess claims from savers who say their banks failed to have properly explained the risks of buying junior debt instruments during the financial crisis.
The process “will likely reduce the negative political impact of burden-sharing,” said Antonio Barroso, a London-based political analyst at Teneo Intelligence. “It might also partially help to repair the loss of confidence in financial institutions.”
KPMG is assessing client claims against Bankia while Ernst & Young is reviewing Catalunya Banc claims, spokeswomen at the lenders said.
Bankia’s parent company, BFA, has set aside 1.2 billion euros to cover liabilities from the arbitrage process, the lender said in its 2013 earnings statement. Bankia shares fell as much as 2 percent before trading 0.4 percent higher at 1.53 euros at 1:35 p.m. today.
Spain’s 2012 banking rescue imposed losses on holders of junior debt, a procedure that proved controversial because bailed-out lenders had raised capital by selling junior debt such as preferred shares through their branch networks to customers who didn’t always know what they were buying.
The independent experts have so far rejected requests from retail investors holding 3.6 billion euros of subordinated securities, the report said. Catalunya Banc, NCG Banco and Bankia, lenders created through the mergers of former savings banks, sold 9.8 billion euros of loss-absorbing securities to retail investors mostly after the credit crisis left them shut out of wholesale debt markets.
bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-18/spain-s-rescued-banks-may-face-claims-on-4-3-billion-of-debts.html …
Independent assessors including KPMG and Ernst & Young are examining the possible mis-selling of products such as preferred shares and have agreed to consider compensation requests from 269,204 customers, according to a government report sent to parliament on March 14 that was seen by Bloomberg News. The requests being reviewed represent 45 percent of the 6.8 billion euros of securities subject to the claims, the report said.
Spain’s government is trying to coax the economy back to life after two recessions in six years and a 41 billion-euro bailout for the banking system. The arbitration process was set up to assess claims from savers who say their banks failed to have properly explained the risks of buying junior debt instruments during the financial crisis.
The process “will likely reduce the negative political impact of burden-sharing,” said Antonio Barroso, a London-based political analyst at Teneo Intelligence. “It might also partially help to repair the loss of confidence in financial institutions.”
Bankia Claims
Bankia faces claims on 2.2 billion euros of securities, the report shows. The 260,000 clients that have already been awarded compensation are due to receive close to the nominal amount of their investments, Deputy Bank of Spain Governor Fernando Restoy said Feb. 5.KPMG is assessing client claims against Bankia while Ernst & Young is reviewing Catalunya Banc claims, spokeswomen at the lenders said.
Bankia’s parent company, BFA, has set aside 1.2 billion euros to cover liabilities from the arbitrage process, the lender said in its 2013 earnings statement. Bankia shares fell as much as 2 percent before trading 0.4 percent higher at 1.53 euros at 1:35 p.m. today.
Spain’s 2012 banking rescue imposed losses on holders of junior debt, a procedure that proved controversial because bailed-out lenders had raised capital by selling junior debt such as preferred shares through their branch networks to customers who didn’t always know what they were buying.
The independent experts have so far rejected requests from retail investors holding 3.6 billion euros of subordinated securities, the report said. Catalunya Banc, NCG Banco and Bankia, lenders created through the mergers of former savings banks, sold 9.8 billion euros of loss-absorbing securities to retail investors mostly after the credit crisis left them shut out of wholesale debt markets.
bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-18/spain-s-rescued-banks-may-face-claims-on-4-3-billion-of-debts.html …
Prince William: One baby’s enough
Prince William thinks one child is “enough at the moment”.
Speculation is rife the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge want another tot now, but according to UK newspaper The Herald Scotland, Prince William has dismissed this hearsay.
“Maybe one day. One’s enough at the moment,” he responded while visiting the Irish Guards when a soldier asked whether the royal couple were ready to expand their family.
Prince William and Duchess Catherine went to the military base Monday in Aldershot, England in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day.
The Duchess was dressed in all green at the affair, and she awarded 300 soldiers on parade with shamrocks.
Prince George will accompany his parents on a royal tour of Australia and New Zealand, which kicks off in the month of April.
The little baby is reportedly being spoiled rotten by his grandparents, Carole and Michael Middleton.
Apparently they are relishing every opportunity to shower their grandchild with love.
"[They are] spoiling him rotten, just like any other grandparents," a source told People Magazine recently.
"They are just overwhelmed to be grandparents. They are helping out in whatever way they can and wherever they are able to – you always do with your own family, don't you?"
Prince William has previously spoken about how much he thinks his son resembles younger brother Prince Harry.
"He's a little bit of a rascal, I'll put it that way,” Prince William told CNN back in August. “He either reminds me of my brother or me when I was younger, I'm not sure, but he's doing very well at the moment."
© Cover Media
Satellite images draw mixed reactions from relatives of passengers, crew aboard MH370
The families of Chinese passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines
flight insisted that their loved ones could still be alive today, as
Beijing said it was following developments closely.
Reports that satellites had spotted what could potentially be debris
from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have given a glimmer of
hope to distraught relatives of passengers and crew that they might
finally know what happened after almost two weeks of waiting.While some are hopeful that there will be survivors, others are more cautious.
Subramaniam Gurusamy, 60, who lives in Klang and whose 34-year-old son Puspanathan Gurusamy was on board, tells AFP by phone: "I think we need to confirm first if the two objects are part of the missing plane. Are you saying the plane has gone into the sea?
"So many people are praying for the safe return of my only son. I am praying every day for his return. But if something bad happens what can I do?"
AFP said at the Lido Hotel in Beijing where relatives of the 153 Chinese passengers are gathered, Wen Wancheng, whose son was on the flight, said: "I hope all the people on board are alive."
Asked if he firmly believed the relatives were still alive, the 63-year-old from Shandong province replied: "Yes, all alive, firmly believe."
The relatives have been going through a rollercoaster of emotions ever since the plane went missing on March 8 after leaving Kuala Lumpur International Airport for Beijing.
A commotion broke out yesterday at the daily press briefing venue at the Sama Sama Hotel in Sepang when a group of angry family members of Chinese passengers on board the missing aircraft stormed into the auditorium and accused Putrajaya of hiding information and misleading the public about the search and rescue operation.
The group had also carried a huge banner with Mandarin characters, demanding answers from Putrajaya.
A sobbing Chinese woman, speaking in Mandarin, cried: "Please let me know where is my son, where is his whereabouts".
The distraught woman kept repeating her demands, calling the government "liars".
She also said Beijing should exert pressure on Malaysia and demand for answers on the whereabouts of flight MH370.
Another relative scolded the Malaysian officials in Mandarin, saying that they were "liars" who had kept them in the dark after almost two weeks of searching for the aircraft.
Policemen on duty at the hotel attempted to escort the distraught and angry relatives out of the auditorium, but the situation became chaotic for a while as members of the media rushed to record the scene.
This was the first time relatives of passengers on board the flight MH370 have turned angry and caused a commotion in Kuala Lumpur over the progress of the search for the plane. Previously such outburst only occurred in Beijing where relatives had complained that they were not getting adequate information in a timely manner.
The display of anger by relatives coincided with scathing criticism of Putrajaya from Chinese state media and social media users.
In an editorial, the China Daily newspaper had asked whether Malaysia was sharing all the information it had gathered.
"The contradictory and piecemeal information Malaysia Airlines and its government have provided has made search efforts difficult and the entire incident even more mysterious," the newspaper had said.
"What else is known that has not been shared with the world?"
Two-thirds of the passengers on board the Malaysia Airlines flight were Chinese. – March 20, 2014.
So You Think Military Intervention is a Good Idea?
Well, if you really feel that strongly about it..
Here's your rifle..
Here's your parachute..
We ran out of the desert camo, but here is a bright day-glo orange jumpsuit left over from Gitmo..
Watch your head climbing into that transport plane..
Click for larger
And we'll call whoever it is you are telling us needs to be invaded this week and tell them you are on your way to kick their butts all by yourself.
But given the very long history of the United States government and the corporate media lying and tricking us into wars, you will forgive We The People if we sit this one out and keep our children safe at home.
And just in case you are one of those poor government or media people who are not as well educated in history as the average American citizen, here is a comprehensive but by no means complete list of just how many times We The People have been made total fools of by the US Government and the corporate media.
When the USS Maine exploded in Havana harbor in 1898, the Captain, Charles Sigsbee, reported it as an accident resulting from an on-board fire. President McKinley and the newspapers of the day claimed it was an attack with a Spanish mine and told that lie to trick the American people into supporting war with Spain.
In 1975 the USS Maine was examined by a team of investigators led by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the father of America's nuclear navy, and their conclusion was the Captain Charles Sigsbee had been correct. The ship was destroyed by an on-board fire and there was no evidence of an external attack.
Rickover's excavation of the remains of USS Maine.
On May 7th, 1915, a German U-Boat U-20 torpedoed and sank RMS Lusitania, a passenger ship operated by the Cunard line. Like many ships built during that time, Lusitania was heavily subsidized by the British Government and designed to be easily converted into a military auxiliary cruiser in time of war. Although the United States was officially neutral, Germany declared that Lusitania was being used to transport military cargoes to England, which made her a legitimate target of war. Germany even went so far as to take out ads in the American newspapers warning civilians not to take passage on the Lusitania.
The ad placed by Germany warning passengers not to take passage on the Lusitania
The United States and Britain denied that Lusitania carried war materials, and the story of the Germans sinking a helpless passenger ship turned public opinion against Germany and allowed the United States government to convince the American people to enter WW1 against Germany.
War munitions recovered from the wreck of the Lusitania
In 2008, divers finally entered the hold of Lusitania, and proved once and for all that she had been smuggling military munitions to England. Germany had been legally in the right to sink her. The US Government and the media deliberately lied to the American people to trick them into WW1.
Remains of the USS Arizona
FDR claimed Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack. It wasn't. The United States saw war with Japan as the means to get into war with Germany, which Americans opposed. So Roosevelt needed Japan to appear to strike first. Following an 8-step plan devised by the Office of Naval Intelligence, Roosevelt intentionally provoked Japan into the attack. Contrary to the official story, the Japanese fleet did not maintain radio silence, but sent messages intercepted and decoded by US intercept stations. Tricked by the lie of a surprise attack, Americans marched off to war.
Honolulu newspaper warning of the attack on Pearl Harbor one week before it occurred. It was no surprise.
Documents declassified in 1994 revealed that Roosevelt spent 1941 following an 8 step plan to provoke Japan crafted by ONI Lt. Cmdr. Arthur H. McCollum, as a back door to war against Nazi Germany. Far from being a surprise, British agent Dusko Popov, code-named Tricycle, delivered a copy of the complete Japanese plan for the attack to the FBI in August of 1941. While the public was told that the Japanese fleet maintained radio silence, the reality is that they were broadcasting all the way across the ocean, and intercepted by the government's Station-H on windward Oahu (which intercepted Admiral Yamamoto's order to set sail for the attack on November 25th) and by Leslie Grogan, the civilian radio operator on the Matson steamship SS Lurline, who was able to plot the progress of the fleet towards Japan, and handed a map to the Hawaiian Navel Intelligence office when the Lurline arrived in Honolulu, three days before the attack. Roosevelt, along with ordering all the newer ships away from Pearl Harbor ahead of the attack, ordered a Navy training cruise, Exercise 191, that happened to lie directly in the path of the oncoming Japanese fleet, back to Pearl without explanation. Had Exercise 191 been allowed to continue, the japanese fleet would have been discovered and the planned attack thwarted.
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
President Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin to send Americans off to fight in Vietnam.
USS Maddox
On August 4th, 1964, an inexperienced sonar operator on the USS Maddox, rattled by an encounter with North Vietnamese patrol boats trying to keep US ships out of their territorial waters just two days previously, picked up the sounds of his own ship's screws and mistakenly interpreted them as incoming torpedoes. Although the Captain of the Maddox immediately reported the error up the chain of command, the initial report of an attack garnered headlines which President Johnson used to goad Congress into escalating the Vietnam War.
As for 9-11, there is ample evidence of deception. Here are just two out of many.
The official report does not mention WTC building 7 at all, which although not hit by an airplane, collapsed into its own footprint just like a controlled demolition.
The collapse of WTC Building 7.
One of the surviving videos actually captured the sound of the explosives.
Here is an MP3 of the relevant portion, with the higher frequencies reduced by 10db.
Here is the audio spectrogram for the above, indicating the start of the explosion.
9/11/2001 radio broadcast: "...I was just standing there, ya know... we were watching the building [WTC 7] actually 'cuz it was on fire... the bottom floors of the building were on fire and... we heard this sound that sounded like a clap of thunder... turned around - we were shocked to see that the building was... well it looked like there was a shockwave ripping through the building and the windows all busted out... it was horrifying... about a second later the bottom floor caved out and the building followed after that... we saw the building crash down all the way to the ground... we were in shock." [197kB wma download]
Prior to 9-11 and since, no steel-framed building ever totally collapsed from a fire, and because WTC Building 7 contained Federal Government offices, it was built to much higher standards than the normal building codes in New York.
BBC, CNN, and Fox news all reported the collapse of WTC building 7 twenty six minutes BEFORE it happened.
Given that no steel-framed building had ever
collapsed from fire prior to 9-11, how is it that Rudy Giuliani was
warned to move his emergency staff out of the building because it was
going to collapse? He is on video reporting being told the building would collapse ahead of time (and also on video later denying he ever said such a thing).
There are videos, including in the Naudet Brothers' documentary "9-11"
of police warning people to get away from Building 7 because of an
impending collapse. Sounds like people were following a script!
2. On the day of 9-11, President Bush was at Booker Elementary School in Sarasota Florida, reading about pet goats.
Video shows White House aid Andy Card walking in to whisper to Bush that a second plane has hit the WTC, and Bush himself claimed that was the moment when he knew the nation was being attacked.
Bush also claimed to have seen the first impact into the WTC on TV, and said it twice, once on CNN. The second impact took place while Bush was inside the classroom reading about pet goats, so there is no possibility of confusion.
Obviously, the only way Bush could have seen the first impact was over a closed-circuit system, since video of the first impact, shot by the Naudet brothers for their firehouse documentary, was not broadcast until late that night.
In theory, there are an unknown number of hijacked planes in the air, flying over the eastern half of the United States, crashing into buildings. Bush's presence at Booker Elementary School was announced in the media three days before in the Sarasota Times, giving the planners of 9-11 ample time to target the President. Other media also announced his plan to visit the school ahead of time.
And there is an airport just 4 miles away from Booker Elementary School.
Click for larger map
Everyone knew the nation was under terror attack form crashing airplanes, but we did not see the Secret Service take a single step to protect the President! They didn't grab Bush and toss him in that armored limo and start driving in a random direction to foil a possible inbound plane. From their inaction, it is clear the United States Secret Service KNEW FOR A FACT that President Bush was not a target that day. And the only way the Secret Service could know for a fact that the President was not a target is that they all knew what the targets were going to be.
Then there were the lies used to trick the US into war with Iraq.
First off was Tony Blair's "Dodgy Dossier", a document released by the Prime Minister that made many of the claims used to support the push for war. The dossier soon collapsed when it was revealed that much of it had been plagiarized from a student thesis paper that was 12 years old!
The contents of the dossier, however much they seemed to create a good case for invasion, were obsolete and outdated, having been plagiarized from a 12-year old student thesis paper.
Iraq lies: Mobile Bioweapons Labs
British balloon inflator system, presented to the public as a mobile biological weapons lab
Then there was the claim about the "Mobile biological weapons laboratories". Proffered in the absence of any real laboratories in the wake of the invasion, photos of these trailers were shown on all the US Mainstream Media, with the claim they while seeming to lack anything suggesting biological processing, these were part of a much larger assembly of multiple trailers that churned out biological weapons of mass destruction.
Illustration on how a balloon inflator is supposed to be part of a system to make weapons of mass destruction
The chief proponent of this hoax was Colin Powell, who presented illustrations such as this one to the United Nations on February 5th, 2003.
This claim fell apart when it was revealed that these trailers were nothing more than hydrogen gas generators used to inflate weather balloons. This fact was already known to both the US and UK, as a British company manufactured the units and sold them to Iraq.
Colin Powell's speech to the UN was itself one misstatement after another. Powell claimed that Iraq had purchased special aluminum tubes whose only possible use was in uranium enrichment centrifuges. Both CIA and Powell's own State Department confirmed that the tubes were parts for missiles Saddam was legally allowed to have. Following the invasion, no centrifuges, aluminum or otherwise were found.
Ariel photos with fictitious labels
Powell also claimed to the United Nations that the photo above showed "Decontamination Vehicles". But when United Nations inspectors visited the site after the invasion, they located the vehicles and discovered they were just fire fighting equipment.
Powell claimed the Iraqis had illegal rockets and launchers hidden in the palm trees of Western Iraq. None were ever found.
Powell claimed that the Iraqis had 8,500 liters (2245 gallons) of Anthrax. None was ever found.
Powell claimed that Iraq had four tons of VX nerve gas. The UN had already confirmed that it was destroyed. The only VX ever found were samples the US had left as "standards" for testing. When the UN suspected that the US samples had been used to contaminate Iraqi warheads, the US moved quickly to destroy the samples before comparison tests could be carried out.
Powell claimed that Iraq was building long-range remote drones specifically designed to carry biological weapons. The only drones found were short-range reconnaissance drones.
Powell claimed that Iraq had an aggregate of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical and biological warfare agents. Powell gave no basis for that claim at all, and a DIA report issued the same time directly contradicted the claim. No biological or chemical weapons were found in Iraq following the invasion.
Powell claimed that "unnamed sources" confirmed that Saddam had authorized his field commanders to use biological weapons. No such weapons were ever used by the Iraqis to defend against the invasion and, of course, none were ever found in Iraq.
Powell claimed that 122mm warheads found by the UN inspectors were chemical weapons. The warheads were empty, the corroded remains of weapons given to Iraq by the US to use against Iran, and showed no signs of ever having contained chemical weapons.
Powell claimed that Iraq had a secret force of illegal long-range Scud missiles. None were ever found. Powell claimed to have an audio tape proving that Saddam was supporting Osama Bin Laden. But independent translation of the tape revealed Osama's wish for Saddam's death.
"That dot is a chemical weapons dump. Honest!"
Colin Powell's UN debacle also included spy photos taken from high flying aircraft and spacecraft. On the photos were circles and arrows and labels pointing to various fuzzy white blobs and identifying them as laboratories and storage areas for Saddam's massive weapons of mass destruction program. Nothing in the photos actually suggested what the blobby shapes were and during inspections which followed the invasion, all of them turned out to be benign.
In at least one case, the satellite Powell claimed had taken one of the pictures had actually been out of operation at the time. And many questioned why Powell was showing black and white photos when the satellites in use at the time over Iraq took color images.
Forged Niger uranium sales document
Another piece of evidence consists of documents which President Bush referenced as in his 2003 State of the Union Speech. According to Bush, these documents proved that Iraq was buying tons of uranium oxide, called "Yellow Cake" from Niger.
Since Israel had bombed Iraq's nuclear power plant years before, it was claimed that the only reason Saddam would have for buying uranium oxide was to build bombs.
This hoax fell apart fast when it was pointed out that Iraq has a great deal of uranium ore inside their own borders and no need to import any from Niger or anywhere else. The I.A.E.A. then blew the cover off the fraud by announcing that the documents Bush had used were not only forgeries, but too obvious to believe that anyone in the Bush administration did not know they were forgeries! The forged documents were reported as being "discovered" in Italy by SISMI, the Italian Security Service. Shortly before the "discovery" the head of SISMI had been paid a visit by Michael Ledeen, Manucher Ghorbanifar, and two officials from OSP, one of whom was Larry Franklin, the AIPAC Israeli spy operating inside the Pentagon's Office of Special Projects, from which many of the Iraq fabrications came.
In July, 2005, the Italian Parliament concluded their own investigation and named four men as suspects in the creation of the forged documents. Michael Ledeen, Dewey Clarridge, Ahmed Chalabi and Francis Brookes. This report has been included in Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame, and Paul McNulty, the prosecutor of the AIPAC spy case.
A recently declassified memo proves that the State Department reported the fact that the Niger documents were forgeries to the CIA 11 days before President Bush made the claim about the Niger uranium based on those documents.
In the end, the real proof that we were lied to about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is that no weapons of mass destruction were ever found. That means that every single piece of paper that purported to prove that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was by default a fraud, a hoax, and a lie. There could be no evidence that supported the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. In a way, the existence of any faked documents about Iraq's WMDs is actually an admission of guilt. If one is taking the time to create fake documents, the implication is that the faker is already aware that there are no genuine documents.
What the US Government had, ALL that they had, were copied student papers, forged "Yellow Cake" documents, balloon inflators mislabeled as bioweapons labs, and photos with misleading labels on them. And somewhere along the line, someone deliberatly decided, with malice aforethought, to put those misleading labels on those photos, to pretend that balloon inflators were portable bioweapons labs, and to pass off an outdated stolen student paper as a contemporary analysis.
The President of the United States and his Neocon associates lied to the people of the United States to send them off on a war of conquest.
Saddam's Nuclear Weapons did not exist.
In 2011, President Obama sent in covert operatives to create civil unrest in Libya, then lied by claiming it was a revolution to trick the American people into war with Libya (similar to the failed attempt to do the same in Iran in 2009.
Syria combines two of the lies, a covert overthrow masquerading as a revolution, coupled with unfounded claims of weapons of mass destruction.
The question is not whether the US Government is lying about Syria. History shows that the US Government lies all the time to trick Americans into wars. The claim that Iraq had nuclear weapons was not an isolated case, but business as usual. The US government lies about everything, and uses every trick they can (including obedient presstitutes and whorespondants in the corporate media to prop up failed lies and ridicule those who think for themselves) to trick the nation into war after war after war.
So, to recap..
If you think military intervention is a good idea..
Here's your rifle..
Here's your parachute..
We ran out of the desert camo, but here is a bright day-glo orange jumpsuit left over from Gitmo..
Watch your head climbing into that transport plane..
Click for larger
And we'll call whoever it is you are telling us needs to be invaded this week and tell them you are on your way to kick their butts all by yourself.
But given the very long history of the United States government and the corporate media lying and tricking us into wars, you will forgive We The People if we sit this one out and keep our children safe at home.
P.S. Just in case you want to demonstrate your commitment to this military action you endorse, here is the official enlistment form for the United States Armed Forces. Just fill it out, and email it back to me, and I will be happy to deliver it to the recruiting offices next time I head down to the shopping mall!
PDF of the above article for emailing.
Here's your rifle..
Here's your parachute..
We ran out of the desert camo, but here is a bright day-glo orange jumpsuit left over from Gitmo..
Watch your head climbing into that transport plane..
Click for larger
And we'll call whoever it is you are telling us needs to be invaded this week and tell them you are on your way to kick their butts all by yourself.
But given the very long history of the United States government and the corporate media lying and tricking us into wars, you will forgive We The People if we sit this one out and keep our children safe at home.
And just in case you are one of those poor government or media people who are not as well educated in history as the average American citizen, here is a comprehensive but by no means complete list of just how many times We The People have been made total fools of by the US Government and the corporate media.
When the USS Maine exploded in Havana harbor in 1898, the Captain, Charles Sigsbee, reported it as an accident resulting from an on-board fire. President McKinley and the newspapers of the day claimed it was an attack with a Spanish mine and told that lie to trick the American people into supporting war with Spain.
In 1975 the USS Maine was examined by a team of investigators led by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the father of America's nuclear navy, and their conclusion was the Captain Charles Sigsbee had been correct. The ship was destroyed by an on-board fire and there was no evidence of an external attack.
Rickover's excavation of the remains of USS Maine.
On May 7th, 1915, a German U-Boat U-20 torpedoed and sank RMS Lusitania, a passenger ship operated by the Cunard line. Like many ships built during that time, Lusitania was heavily subsidized by the British Government and designed to be easily converted into a military auxiliary cruiser in time of war. Although the United States was officially neutral, Germany declared that Lusitania was being used to transport military cargoes to England, which made her a legitimate target of war. Germany even went so far as to take out ads in the American newspapers warning civilians not to take passage on the Lusitania.
The ad placed by Germany warning passengers not to take passage on the Lusitania
The United States and Britain denied that Lusitania carried war materials, and the story of the Germans sinking a helpless passenger ship turned public opinion against Germany and allowed the United States government to convince the American people to enter WW1 against Germany.
War munitions recovered from the wreck of the Lusitania
In 2008, divers finally entered the hold of Lusitania, and proved once and for all that she had been smuggling military munitions to England. Germany had been legally in the right to sink her. The US Government and the media deliberately lied to the American people to trick them into WW1.
Remains of the USS Arizona
FDR claimed Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack. It wasn't. The United States saw war with Japan as the means to get into war with Germany, which Americans opposed. So Roosevelt needed Japan to appear to strike first. Following an 8-step plan devised by the Office of Naval Intelligence, Roosevelt intentionally provoked Japan into the attack. Contrary to the official story, the Japanese fleet did not maintain radio silence, but sent messages intercepted and decoded by US intercept stations. Tricked by the lie of a surprise attack, Americans marched off to war.
Honolulu newspaper warning of the attack on Pearl Harbor one week before it occurred. It was no surprise.
Documents declassified in 1994 revealed that Roosevelt spent 1941 following an 8 step plan to provoke Japan crafted by ONI Lt. Cmdr. Arthur H. McCollum, as a back door to war against Nazi Germany. Far from being a surprise, British agent Dusko Popov, code-named Tricycle, delivered a copy of the complete Japanese plan for the attack to the FBI in August of 1941. While the public was told that the Japanese fleet maintained radio silence, the reality is that they were broadcasting all the way across the ocean, and intercepted by the government's Station-H on windward Oahu (which intercepted Admiral Yamamoto's order to set sail for the attack on November 25th) and by Leslie Grogan, the civilian radio operator on the Matson steamship SS Lurline, who was able to plot the progress of the fleet towards Japan, and handed a map to the Hawaiian Navel Intelligence office when the Lurline arrived in Honolulu, three days before the attack. Roosevelt, along with ordering all the newer ships away from Pearl Harbor ahead of the attack, ordered a Navy training cruise, Exercise 191, that happened to lie directly in the path of the oncoming Japanese fleet, back to Pearl without explanation. Had Exercise 191 been allowed to continue, the japanese fleet would have been discovered and the planned attack thwarted.
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
President Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin to send Americans off to fight in Vietnam.
USS Maddox
On August 4th, 1964, an inexperienced sonar operator on the USS Maddox, rattled by an encounter with North Vietnamese patrol boats trying to keep US ships out of their territorial waters just two days previously, picked up the sounds of his own ship's screws and mistakenly interpreted them as incoming torpedoes. Although the Captain of the Maddox immediately reported the error up the chain of command, the initial report of an attack garnered headlines which President Johnson used to goad Congress into escalating the Vietnam War.
As for 9-11, there is ample evidence of deception. Here are just two out of many.
The official report does not mention WTC building 7 at all, which although not hit by an airplane, collapsed into its own footprint just like a controlled demolition.
The collapse of WTC Building 7.
One of the surviving videos actually captured the sound of the explosives.
Unedited video of WTC-7 collapse reveals sound
of explosion as collapse starts at Penthouse at the 12 second mark
Here is the audio spectrogram for the above, indicating the start of the explosion.
9/11/2001 radio broadcast: "...I was just standing there, ya know... we were watching the building [WTC 7] actually 'cuz it was on fire... the bottom floors of the building were on fire and... we heard this sound that sounded like a clap of thunder... turned around - we were shocked to see that the building was... well it looked like there was a shockwave ripping through the building and the windows all busted out... it was horrifying... about a second later the bottom floor caved out and the building followed after that... we saw the building crash down all the way to the ground... we were in shock." [197kB wma download]
Prior to 9-11 and since, no steel-framed building ever totally collapsed from a fire, and because WTC Building 7 contained Federal Government offices, it was built to much higher standards than the normal building codes in New York.
BBC, CNN, and Fox news all reported the collapse of WTC building 7 twenty six minutes BEFORE it happened.
The two screen shots below show WTC 7 behind the reporter.
2. On the day of 9-11, President Bush was at Booker Elementary School in Sarasota Florida, reading about pet goats.
Video shows White House aid Andy Card walking in to whisper to Bush that a second plane has hit the WTC, and Bush himself claimed that was the moment when he knew the nation was being attacked.
Bush also claimed to have seen the first impact into the WTC on TV, and said it twice, once on CNN. The second impact took place while Bush was inside the classroom reading about pet goats, so there is no possibility of confusion.
Obviously, the only way Bush could have seen the first impact was over a closed-circuit system, since video of the first impact, shot by the Naudet brothers for their firehouse documentary, was not broadcast until late that night.
In theory, there are an unknown number of hijacked planes in the air, flying over the eastern half of the United States, crashing into buildings. Bush's presence at Booker Elementary School was announced in the media three days before in the Sarasota Times, giving the planners of 9-11 ample time to target the President. Other media also announced his plan to visit the school ahead of time.
And there is an airport just 4 miles away from Booker Elementary School.
Click for larger map
Everyone knew the nation was under terror attack form crashing airplanes, but we did not see the Secret Service take a single step to protect the President! They didn't grab Bush and toss him in that armored limo and start driving in a random direction to foil a possible inbound plane. From their inaction, it is clear the United States Secret Service KNEW FOR A FACT that President Bush was not a target that day. And the only way the Secret Service could know for a fact that the President was not a target is that they all knew what the targets were going to be.
Then there were the lies used to trick the US into war with Iraq.
First off was Tony Blair's "Dodgy Dossier", a document released by the Prime Minister that made many of the claims used to support the push for war. The dossier soon collapsed when it was revealed that much of it had been plagiarized from a student thesis paper that was 12 years old!
The contents of the dossier, however much they seemed to create a good case for invasion, were obsolete and outdated, having been plagiarized from a 12-year old student thesis paper.
Iraq lies: Mobile Bioweapons Labs
British balloon inflator system, presented to the public as a mobile biological weapons lab
Then there was the claim about the "Mobile biological weapons laboratories". Proffered in the absence of any real laboratories in the wake of the invasion, photos of these trailers were shown on all the US Mainstream Media, with the claim they while seeming to lack anything suggesting biological processing, these were part of a much larger assembly of multiple trailers that churned out biological weapons of mass destruction.
Illustration on how a balloon inflator is supposed to be part of a system to make weapons of mass destruction
The chief proponent of this hoax was Colin Powell, who presented illustrations such as this one to the United Nations on February 5th, 2003.
This claim fell apart when it was revealed that these trailers were nothing more than hydrogen gas generators used to inflate weather balloons. This fact was already known to both the US and UK, as a British company manufactured the units and sold them to Iraq.
Colin Powell's speech to the UN was itself one misstatement after another. Powell claimed that Iraq had purchased special aluminum tubes whose only possible use was in uranium enrichment centrifuges. Both CIA and Powell's own State Department confirmed that the tubes were parts for missiles Saddam was legally allowed to have. Following the invasion, no centrifuges, aluminum or otherwise were found.
Ariel photos with fictitious labels
Powell also claimed to the United Nations that the photo above showed "Decontamination Vehicles". But when United Nations inspectors visited the site after the invasion, they located the vehicles and discovered they were just fire fighting equipment.
Powell claimed the Iraqis had illegal rockets and launchers hidden in the palm trees of Western Iraq. None were ever found.
Powell claimed that the Iraqis had 8,500 liters (2245 gallons) of Anthrax. None was ever found.
Powell claimed that Iraq had four tons of VX nerve gas. The UN had already confirmed that it was destroyed. The only VX ever found were samples the US had left as "standards" for testing. When the UN suspected that the US samples had been used to contaminate Iraqi warheads, the US moved quickly to destroy the samples before comparison tests could be carried out.
Powell claimed that Iraq was building long-range remote drones specifically designed to carry biological weapons. The only drones found were short-range reconnaissance drones.
Powell claimed that Iraq had an aggregate of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical and biological warfare agents. Powell gave no basis for that claim at all, and a DIA report issued the same time directly contradicted the claim. No biological or chemical weapons were found in Iraq following the invasion.
Powell claimed that "unnamed sources" confirmed that Saddam had authorized his field commanders to use biological weapons. No such weapons were ever used by the Iraqis to defend against the invasion and, of course, none were ever found in Iraq.
Powell claimed that 122mm warheads found by the UN inspectors were chemical weapons. The warheads were empty, the corroded remains of weapons given to Iraq by the US to use against Iran, and showed no signs of ever having contained chemical weapons.
Powell claimed that Iraq had a secret force of illegal long-range Scud missiles. None were ever found. Powell claimed to have an audio tape proving that Saddam was supporting Osama Bin Laden. But independent translation of the tape revealed Osama's wish for Saddam's death.
"That dot is a chemical weapons dump. Honest!"
Colin Powell's UN debacle also included spy photos taken from high flying aircraft and spacecraft. On the photos were circles and arrows and labels pointing to various fuzzy white blobs and identifying them as laboratories and storage areas for Saddam's massive weapons of mass destruction program. Nothing in the photos actually suggested what the blobby shapes were and during inspections which followed the invasion, all of them turned out to be benign.
In at least one case, the satellite Powell claimed had taken one of the pictures had actually been out of operation at the time. And many questioned why Powell was showing black and white photos when the satellites in use at the time over Iraq took color images.
Forged Niger uranium sales document
Another piece of evidence consists of documents which President Bush referenced as in his 2003 State of the Union Speech. According to Bush, these documents proved that Iraq was buying tons of uranium oxide, called "Yellow Cake" from Niger.
Since Israel had bombed Iraq's nuclear power plant years before, it was claimed that the only reason Saddam would have for buying uranium oxide was to build bombs.
This hoax fell apart fast when it was pointed out that Iraq has a great deal of uranium ore inside their own borders and no need to import any from Niger or anywhere else. The I.A.E.A. then blew the cover off the fraud by announcing that the documents Bush had used were not only forgeries, but too obvious to believe that anyone in the Bush administration did not know they were forgeries! The forged documents were reported as being "discovered" in Italy by SISMI, the Italian Security Service. Shortly before the "discovery" the head of SISMI had been paid a visit by Michael Ledeen, Manucher Ghorbanifar, and two officials from OSP, one of whom was Larry Franklin, the AIPAC Israeli spy operating inside the Pentagon's Office of Special Projects, from which many of the Iraq fabrications came.
In July, 2005, the Italian Parliament concluded their own investigation and named four men as suspects in the creation of the forged documents. Michael Ledeen, Dewey Clarridge, Ahmed Chalabi and Francis Brookes. This report has been included in Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame, and Paul McNulty, the prosecutor of the AIPAC spy case.
A recently declassified memo proves that the State Department reported the fact that the Niger documents were forgeries to the CIA 11 days before President Bush made the claim about the Niger uranium based on those documents.
In the end, the real proof that we were lied to about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is that no weapons of mass destruction were ever found. That means that every single piece of paper that purported to prove that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was by default a fraud, a hoax, and a lie. There could be no evidence that supported the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. In a way, the existence of any faked documents about Iraq's WMDs is actually an admission of guilt. If one is taking the time to create fake documents, the implication is that the faker is already aware that there are no genuine documents.
What the US Government had, ALL that they had, were copied student papers, forged "Yellow Cake" documents, balloon inflators mislabeled as bioweapons labs, and photos with misleading labels on them. And somewhere along the line, someone deliberatly decided, with malice aforethought, to put those misleading labels on those photos, to pretend that balloon inflators were portable bioweapons labs, and to pass off an outdated stolen student paper as a contemporary analysis.
The President of the United States and his Neocon associates lied to the people of the United States to send them off on a war of conquest.
Saddam's Nuclear Weapons did not exist.
In 2011, President Obama sent in covert operatives to create civil unrest in Libya, then lied by claiming it was a revolution to trick the American people into war with Libya (similar to the failed attempt to do the same in Iran in 2009.
Syria combines two of the lies, a covert overthrow masquerading as a revolution, coupled with unfounded claims of weapons of mass destruction.
The question is not whether the US Government is lying about Syria. History shows that the US Government lies all the time to trick Americans into wars. The claim that Iraq had nuclear weapons was not an isolated case, but business as usual. The US government lies about everything, and uses every trick they can (including obedient presstitutes and whorespondants in the corporate media to prop up failed lies and ridicule those who think for themselves) to trick the nation into war after war after war.
So, to recap..
If you think military intervention is a good idea..
Here's your rifle..
Here's your parachute..
We ran out of the desert camo, but here is a bright day-glo orange jumpsuit left over from Gitmo..
Watch your head climbing into that transport plane..
Click for larger
And we'll call whoever it is you are telling us needs to be invaded this week and tell them you are on your way to kick their butts all by yourself.
But given the very long history of the United States government and the corporate media lying and tricking us into wars, you will forgive We The People if we sit this one out and keep our children safe at home.
P.S. Just in case you want to demonstrate your commitment to this military action you endorse, here is the official enlistment form for the United States Armed Forces. Just fill it out, and email it back to me, and I will be happy to deliver it to the recruiting offices next time I head down to the shopping mall!
PDF of the above article for emailing.
Must Watch – China Buying World’s Entire New Gold Supply – Mike Maloney
Chart here:http://https://www.hiddensecretsofmon… Join Mike Maloney and his staff at the Santa Monica office of GoldSilver.com for his latest briefing on the gold and silver markets. This short preview focuses on developments in China, GoldSilver.com Insiders can now log into their accounts to watch the entire 31 minute update, which features:- Demographics as an economic driver of deflation
- The latest nail in the coffin for the US Dollar Standard
- USA’s swing toward socialism
- Welfare pressures
- Real Estate Bubble 2.0
- China
- Economic Freedom, and more.Who do you think is winning the currency wars?
- The latest nail in the coffin for the US Dollar Standard
- USA’s swing toward socialism
- Welfare pressures
- Real Estate Bubble 2.0
- China
- Economic Freedom, and more.Who do you think is winning the currency wars?
For more information about Gold & Silver or Mike Maloney, visit the Why Gold & Silver channel and subscribe: http://goo.gl/emXEB
Join GoldSilver.com & Mike Maloney on other social networks:Blog: http://goldsilver.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Goldsi…
Twitter (GoldSilver): https://twitter.com/Gold_Silver
Twitter (Mike Maloney): https://twitter.com/mike_maloney
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/golds…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Goldsi…
Twitter (GoldSilver): https://twitter.com/Gold_Silver
Twitter (Mike Maloney): https://twitter.com/mike_maloney
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/golds…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)