THOUGHT FOR THE DAY!

"The Bank of the United States is one of the most deadly hostilities existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution. An institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the Union, acting by command and in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset the government. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries. What an obstruction could not this bank of the United States, with all its branch banks, be in time of war! It might dictate to us the peace we should accept, or withdraw its aids. Ought we then to give further growth to an institution so powerful, so hostile?" --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1803.

警員千里送卡‧神秘人捐錢贈義肢‧英美兩國善長炮製聖誕驚喜

（美國‧華盛頓/倫敦24日訊）雖然全球經濟不景，但天真爛漫的孩子們享受快樂聖誕的權利不應被奪去。在英國和美國，就有警察、師長、善心人齊心合力炮製聖誕奇蹟。

美國賓夕法尼亞州一間特許公立學校，始創人喬伊納為鼓勵近千名學生努力奮鬥，上週五買來各式各樣聖誕禮物讓學生挑選。其中最受男生歡迎的是籃球。有3人更獲得特別禮物，其中兩位抗癌學生獲贈iPod，另一學生獲飛往加州機票，與逾年不見的軍官父親團聚。

美國弗吉尼亞州5歲男童諾曼罹患腦癌，聖誕願望是收到聖誕卡。消息傳至麻省及新罕布什爾州，250名警員上週四分乘百輛警車，駕車12小時穿州過省，浩浩蕩蕩為他送上聖誕卡，令諾曼喜極而泣。

美國連鎖超市沃爾瑪在密歇根州的一間分店，收到匿名人士捐贈1萬美元（約3萬令吉），替顧客付清已預留的貨物餘額，令43名顧客可提早把貨物帶回家。沃爾瑪又將多出的逾6千令吉捐給慈善機構。

在英國，牛津5歲女童諾特前年聖誕前夕患上腦膜炎而截去四肢。去年雖裝上義肢，但走路時感到不舒適。

她今年許願，希望得到一對粉紅色義肢。不久就有神秘人將一筆巨款寄給她，家人趕緊替她購置一對價值約6千鎊（約3萬令吉）的粉紅色義肢，令她變回一個充滿活力的女孩。

研究顯示溫度上升‧南極冰融快兩倍

（法國‧巴黎24日訊）最新氣溫記錄分析顯示，南極大陸西部冰蓋的暖化速度高出以往預期兩倍。

研究顯示，在1958年至2010年年間，南極大陸西部冰蓋的平均溫度上升了攝氏2.4度，不但比以前認為的幅度加倍，也比全球平均暖化幅度高兩倍。

美國的研究人員表示，他們是在夏季的檢測中開始發現這項暖化證據的。這項研究結果已發表在最新一期的《自然地質科學》雜誌上。

研究人員擔心，由此導致的冰蓋加速融化將造成全球海平面持續上升。

西南極冰原厚達4公里，如果全部融化，全球海平面將上升3.3公尺；還好，冰原要完全融化，須要數百年時間。海平面大幅上升，將使孟加拉到吐瓦魯等海拔較低的國家受到較大衝擊，倫敦、布宜諾斯艾利斯等濱海城市也會遭殃。

先前的研究認為，西南極冰原因海水溫度上升而融化，但最新研究發現，西南極冰原也受氣候影響，主因是來自太平洋的風和天氣型態改變。

加強機場保安‧澳洲引進全身掃描器

（澳洲‧墨爾本24日美聯電）澳洲政府為加強機場的保安，在澳洲柏斯國際機場引進全身掃描器，所有入境者在入境前都必須通過上述機器的掃描。

據美聯社報導，有關全身掃描機器將置放在國際班機搭客的掃描處，與金屬探測器置放在一起。

“有關當局將抽樣式要求入境者接受全身掃描，或接受金屬探測器的探測。＂此外，澳洲政府說，澳 洲所有大型機場都會使用“L-3 Pro Vision millimeter-wave＂這一款全身掃描器，也是最先進的掃描器；澳洲政府共耗資9千500萬令吉在所有大型機場裝置這一款機器。

“它可探測衣服底下的金屬及非金屬物件，但卻不同於其他帶有｀侵略性’的掃描器。乘客可看見機器上呈現的掃描圖像，但機器不會儲存任何圖像。＂

海外華裔青少年中華文化大賽‧大馬隊榮膺狀元‧加拿大榜眼‧巴西獲探花

（中國‧廈門24日訊）由中國國務院僑辦主辦的首屆“海外華裔青少年中華文化大賽＂今晚在廈門舉行總決賽，馬來西亞隊榮膺狀元，加拿大隊、巴西隊分獲榜眼和探花，而來自加拿大的沈勇同學獲得中華才子獎。

中新社報導，當晚總決賽中，在大賽預選賽中綜合排名前6名的加拿大、馬來西亞、蒙古、巴西、菲律賓、緬甸等國家隊的海外華裔青少年，參與角逐。

加拿大沈勇獲才子獎

經過必答、搶答、糾錯、快速搶答、才藝競賽、才子大沖關等競賽環節的一較高低之後，此次大賽的優勝團體及個人獎項最終產生。

“海外華裔青少年中華文化大賽＂，是由國務院僑辦2008年起在全世界範圍內發起的“海外華裔青少年中華文化知識競賽＂更名而來，其前身是一項綜合性競賽活動，旨在提高海外華裔青少年學習漢語和中華文化的興趣，增進其對中國的瞭解和認識。

為進一步提昇活動效應，國務院僑辦今年對該項賽事進行全面升級，正式更名為“海外華裔青少年中華文化大賽＂，每年舉辦一屆，今年是首屆，共有來自19個國家的3萬6千名華裔青少年分別參加了歐洲、美洲、東南亞三大海外賽區的比賽。

經過夏令營和冬令營兩場半決賽選拔後，來自德國、意大利、紐西蘭、加拿大、西班牙、法國、巴西、泰國、蒙古、馬來西亞、緬甸、菲律賓、寮國等13個國家的近550名營員和領隊，參加了在廈門舉辦的中華文化大賽總決賽。

Choice clips from the documentary "Maxed Out"

Fed May Monetize Entire Deficit in 2013

Does Libor Manipulation Deserve The Death Penalty?

Bloomberg's William Cohan released a provocative piece last night, headlined by the even more provocative "UBS Libor Manipulation Deserves the Death Penalty." We can only assume that Cohan is being metaphorical - after all, despite the rare occasional recent criminal charge no one has still gone to prison for the biggest coordinated manipulation of a benchmark fixed income market for years: something previously relegated to the fringes of crackpot conspiracy theories - after all, so many people were in on it, how can they possibly all keep their mouths shut - you know, the usual excuse against massive conspiracy theories, at least until they become conspiracy fact. Yet one wonders: will current and future ongoing market manipulations ever cease when there is no real deterrent: after all spending a few years in jail is certainly worth a few million in ill-gotten proceeds, even assuming the termination of a career in finance. Is Cohan being rhetorical? Or has the time for some true vigilante justice finally come? Because in a world increasingly best portrayed by the 2009 movie "The International" where one has to "go outside" a captured legal system to get real justice, is vigilantism eventually coming to every town near you, once the money illusion ends? And a bigger question - is this the main preemptive reason for the gun control push seen so vividly in recent days and months?
Via Bloomberg:
There is no point in mincing words: UBS AG (UBSN), the Swiss global bank, has been disgracing the banking profession for years and needs to be shut down.

... On Dec. 19, the bank paid $1.5 billion to global regulators -- including $700 million paid to the CFTC, the largest fine in the agency’s history -- to settle claims that for six years, the company’s traders and managers, specifically at its Japanese securities subsidiary, manipulated the London interbank offered rate and other borrowing standards.

Analysis: Central bankers rethink their devotion to slaying inflation

 

(Reuters) - A subtle shift in monetary policymaking is afoot with a new generation of central bankers, striving to secure global economic recovery, prepared to challenge the old doctrine of inflation-fighting at all costs.
Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of Canada and soon-to-be head of the Bank of England, may or may not have intended to spark a high-level debate last week over how diligently central banks should fend off inflation.
But he did just that with his speech in Toronto on the BoC's flexible approach to prices, and his musings on alternative approaches to policy that the Canadian central bank had considered but dismissed.
Within two days, Britain's finance minister, two BoE policymakers, and numerous economists had weighed in on what Carney's comments meant for the country and for the future of central banking.
The sharp reaction reflects unease with a change in the way the world's major central banks approach policy in an era of slow recovery from world economic crisis.
Policymakers from the U.S. Federal Reserve to the Bank of Japan have reconsidered or relaxed their inflation targets -- long the raison d'etre of monetary policy -- and have given more emphasis to economic growth, even if that is not an official mandate.
"They have reduced their slavish devotion to the sole goal of inflation targeting," said Carl Tannenbaum, a former Fed official who is now chief economist at U.S. asset manager Northern Trust.
No central banker is going to tolerate an inflation spike in order to boost employment or foster more growth.
Policymakers have also largely dismissed some of the more radical alternatives to achieving their goals, most notably targeting levels of nominal gross domestic product (real GDP plus inflation).
Yet with the financial crisis having starkly exposed central banks' failure to stave off danger, and policymakers having responded by flooding world markets with trillions of dollars in cheap funding, a small run-up in inflation may no longer be the anathema it once was.
TRAILBLAZING IN NORTH AMERICA
In the world's largest economy, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has unleashed some $2.5 trillion in asset purchases in the last few years to boost hiring and economic growth, squarely focusing on the employment side of the U.S. central bank's dual mandate.
His approach differs to that of his veteran predecessor Alan Greenspan. The same goes for Mario Draghi who took over from Jean-Claude Trichet at the ECB and it looks like Carney, replacing Britain's Mervyn King, fits the same pattern.
The Fed last week tied low interest rates to a drop in the jobless rate to 6.5 percent -- it stood at 7.7 percent last month -- as long as inflation did not threaten to top 2.5 percent.
The unprecedented move may represent the culmination of its departure from the inflation-centric model pursued by former Fed chairmen Greenspan and Paul Volcker and gave a clear signal that it would tolerate inflation above its 2 percent target if that was the cost of getting more Americans back to work.
Eric Green of TD Securities, a former New York Fed economist, wrote that "Bernanke has relaxed the inflation constraint", effectively raising the Fed's core inflation target over time from 1.75 percent to 2.5 percent.
North of the border, the Bank of Canada has long had an inflation target of 2 percent within a range of 1 to 3 percent.
But unlike past BoC governors, Carney, 47, has emphasized the idea of "flexible targeting" in which inflation could be allowed to stray from the target for longer than would normally be tolerated in order to stabilize financial markets or the economy.
Carney said earlier this month that the BoC explored the idea of changing its inflation targeting mandate altogether but decided that was too risky.
He stressed he was not dropping hints about his plans for Britain yet BoE policymakers were quick to push back on any notion the country should change its approach to policy.
Paul Fisher, the BoE's executive director for markets, said Britain should be wary of changing the central bank's 2-percent inflation target and had no need to adopt the longer-term commitments its North American counterparts have made on interest rates.
But while BoE Chief Economist Spencer Dale warned "there is no free lunch" when it comes to changing the central bank's target, British finance minister George Osborne surprised some when he welcomed Carney's opening of the debate.
"If you want to change the regime you have to make a pretty strong case for doing so," Osborne told members of parliament.
LAST OF THE INFLATION FIGHTERS
In July, Carney will replace King, considered among the last of the old guard of inflation-fighting central bankers -- despite mixed success in that regard -- which also included BoJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa and former ECB head Trichet.
Draghi, who succeeded Trichet last year, has been careful to stick to the ECB's price stability mantra, which is enshrined in the EU treaty and fiercely defended by Germans who are still haunted by the memory of hyperinflation in the 1920s.
Yet he has also flooded the financial sector with more than one trillion euros this year and pledged to buy euro zone government bonds in whatever amounts are needed to shore up the currency bloc.
Two hardline ECB policymakers, Axel Weber and Juergen Stark, resigned last year over the bank's previous bond-buying program. The pair said they felt it strayed into the realm of fiscal policy and could ultimately pose inflation risks.
In Japan, Shirakawa is under unusually explicit pressure from incoming Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to boost the BoJ's inflation target to 2 percent, from 1 percent, to help battle the deflation that has mired the country for the past 15 years.
Abe's party was swept to power on Sunday in part on a pledge of "unlimited" monetary easing to achieve higher inflation.
In a private meeting on Tuesday, Shirakawa was said to have sat in silence as Abe reiterated his request for the BoJ to boost its inflation target. The BOJ duly delivered its third shot of monetary stimulus in four months earlier on Thursday.
Masaaki Kanno, a former colleague of Shirakawa at the BOJ and now chief economist at JPMorgan Securities in Japan, says Shirakawa will be the last "normal" BoJ governor, one who worries about the risks posed by printing money.
"There are more and more people in Japan who want deflation to be eliminated and feel that the BoJ should be forced to use its 'magic wand' to create inflation," Kanno said.
"The only option left for Japan might be for the BOJ to print money by buying more bonds," he added. "If that's what the public wants, (Shirakawa's) successor will probably have to go down that route."
(Additional reporting by Louise Egan and Randall Palmer in Ottawa, Leika Kihara in Tokyo, David Milliken in London, and Paul Carrel in Frankfurt. Editing by Mike Peacock)

The Federal Reserve is Above the Law

This Is How The Banksters Took Control Of You!!!

New tax increases in California stir debate about adding to exodus

• 
  FILE: April 18, 2009: The skyline of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge appear above the evening fog in Sausalito, Calif. (REUTERS)
  

A vote last month that makes Californians among the highest-taxed residents in the country is sparking debate about whether the Democrat-back initiative will backfire, by forcing high-earners to join a long exodus from the cash-strapped state.
Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown successfully pushed the tax increase by suggesting that high-earners must shoulder the largest burden in bailing out the state, particularly its debt-ridden public school system.
However, high unemployment and government debt have already sent residents fleeing in large numbers – an estimated 225,000 annually for the past 10 years.
And the recently passed tax increase for families making more than $250,000 each year could further shrink the tax base for California, whose 2012 budget deficit is projected to hit $28 billion.
Much of the debate has raged among California advocacy groups and in the editorial pages of the state’s biggest and most influential newspapers.
“More is never enough for these people,” Kris Vosburgh, executive director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assoc., said about the Democrat-backed increase. “It’s hard to believe people will not leave.”
Vosburgh said his group is not an advocate for the wealthy and argued the tax increase atop other bad economic factors – including high gas and sales taxes – also have small and large businesses packing. 
“With high taxes and heavy regulations, it’s just difficult to produce those widgets at a lower price than somebody in, say, Texas,” he told FoxNews.com on Tuesday.
Syndicated columnist Walter E. Williams wrote in The Orange County Register: “California politicians can fleece people in 2012, but there’s no guarantee they can do the same in 2013 and later years. People can leave.”
Ex-Californians over the past decade have already put roughly $5.67 billion into Nevada’s economy as well as $4.96 billion into Arizona and $4.07 billion in Texas, according to Manhattan Institute study titled “The Great California Exodus: A Closer Look.”
The September 2012 study -- based on data from the state and such federal agencies as the Internal Revenue Service – also argues that “chronic economic adversity,” including powerful unions, has driven away businesses.
The liberal-leaning think thank California Budget Project declined to talk about the issue but points to a study that concluded Hollywood executives, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs or other higher-earning Californians will not leave, based on the aftermath of a 2005 so-called “millionaires tax” increase.
Executive Director Chris Hoene told The Los Angeles Times that the Stanford Center of Poverty and Inequity study “dispels one of the most persistent myths about state tax policy.”
The California tax increases that passed in November, known as Proposition 30, are expected to generate at least an additional $6 billion annually – and lay claim to 2012 income.
The rate hikes range from 9.3 percent to 10.3 percent for families making $250,000 to 10.3 percent to 13.3 percent for families making at least $1 million annually.
In addition, the top state-federal tax rate for Californians in 2013 would climb to 52 percent should Washington fail to resolve the looming fiscal crisis and federal rates return to those from the Clinton-era, according to a recent study from Lynchburg College’s School of Business and Economics, which takes into account tax increases related to ObamaCare. 
Among the most likely places of exile would be neighboring Nevada, which has no state income tax.
Such an idea is not that far-fetched, considering California resident and pro golfer Tiger Woods famously took his millions to Florida, another of the seven U.S. states with no state income tax.
The tax increases from Proposition 30, which also included a sales-tax hike, expire after seven years, but it might be too late.
Dan Walthers, a columnist for The Sacramento Bee, said it’s too early to tell but argued California-based Google is using an offshore address to avoid taxes on overseas income so “wouldn’t Google millionaires also avoid state taxes on themselves if they could?”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/12/22/new-tax-increase-in-california-stirs-debate-about-adding-to-exodus/#ixzz2G2tOzexg

It’s Not a “Fiscal Cliff” … It’s the Descent Into Lawlessness

It’s Not a Tax or Spending Problem … It’s a Devolution Into Lawlessness

The “fiscal cliff” is a myth.
Instead, what we are facing is a descent into lawlessness.
Wikipedia notes:

In many situations, austerity programs are imposed on countries that were previously under dictatorial regimes, leading to criticism that populations are forced to repay the debts of their oppressors.

Indeed, the IMF has already performed a complete audit of the whole US financial system, something which they have only previously done to broke third world nations.
Economist Marc Faber calls the U.S. a “failed state“. Indeed, we no longer have a free market economy … we have fascism, communist style socialism, kleptocracy, oligarchy or banana republic style corruption.
Let’s look at some specific examples of our descent into lawlessness.

Lawless Looting and Redistribution of Wealth

The central banks’ central bank – the Bank for International Settlements- warned in 2008 that bailouts of the big banks would create sovereign debt crises … which could bankrupt nations.
That is exactly what has happened.
The big banks went bust, and so did the debtors. But the government chose to save the big banks instead of the little guy, thus allowing the banks to continue to try to wring every penny of debt out of debtors.
Treasury Secretary Paulson shoved bailouts down Congress’ throat by threatening martial law if the bailouts weren’t passed. And the bailouts are now perpetual.
Moreover:

The bailout money is just going to line the pockets of the wealthy, instead of helping to stabilize the economy or even the companies receiving the bailouts:

• Bailout money is being used to subsidize companies run by horrible business men, allowing the bankers to receive fat bonuses, to redecorate their offices, and to buy gold toilets and prostitutes

• A lot of the bailout money is going to the failing companies’ shareholders

• Indeed, a leading progressive economist says that the true purpose of the bank rescue plans is “a massive redistribution of wealth to the bank shareholders and their top executives”

• The Treasury Department encouraged banks to use the bailout money to buy their competitors, and pushed through an amendment to the tax laws which rewards mergers in the banking industry (this has caused a lot of companies to bite off more than they can chew, destabilizing the acquiring companies)

And as the New York Times notes, “Tens of billions of [bailout] dollars have merely passed through A.I.G. to its derivatives trading partners”.
***
In other words, through a little game-playing by the Fed, taxpayer money is going straight into the pockets of investors in AIG’s credit default swaps and is not even really stabilizing AIG.

Moreover, a large percentage of the bailouts went to foreign banks (and see this). And so did a huge portion of the money from quantitative easing. Indeed, the Fed bailed out Gaddafi’s Bank of Libya, hedge fund billionaires, and big companies, but turned its back on the little guy.
A study of 124 banking crises by the International Monetary Fund found that propping up banks which are only pretending to be solvent often leads to austerity:

Existing empirical research has shown that providing assistance to banks and their borrowers can be counterproductive, resulting in increased losses to banks, which often abuse forbearance to take unproductive risks at government expense. The typical result of forbearance is a deeper hole in the net worth of banks, crippling tax burdens to finance bank bailouts, and even more severe credit supply contraction and economic decline than would have occurred in the absence of forbearance.
Cross-country analysis to date also shows that accommodative policy measures (such as substantial liquidity support, explicit government guarantee on financial institutions’ liabilities and forbearance from prudential regulations) tend to be fiscally costly and that these particular policies do not necessarily accelerate the speed of economic recovery.
***

All too often, central banks privilege stability over cost in the heat of the containment phase: if so, they may too liberally extend loans to an illiquid bank which is almost certain to prove insolvent anyway. Also, closure of a nonviable bank is often delayed for too long, even when there are clear signs of insolvency (Lindgren, 2003). Since bank closures face many obstacles, there is a tendency to rely instead on blanket government guarantees which, if the government’s fiscal and political position makes them credible, can work albeit at the cost of placing the burden on the budget, typically squeezing future provision of needed public services.

In other words, the “stimulus” to the banks blows up the budget, “squeezing” public services through austerity.
Numerous top economists say that the bank bailouts are the largest robbery and redistribution of wealth in history.
Why was this illegal? Well, the top white collar fraud expert in the country says that the Bush and Obama administrations broke the law by failing to break up insolvent banks … instead of propping them up by bailing them out.
And the Special Inspector General of the Tarp bailout program said that the Treasury Secretary lied to Congress regarding some fundamental aspects of Tarp – like pretending that the banks were healthy, when they were totally insolvent. The Secretary also falsely told Congress that the bailouts would be used to dispose of toxic assets … but then used the money for something else entirely. Making false statements to a federal official is illegal, pursuant to 18 United States Code Section 1001.
So breaking the rules to bail out the big, insolvent banks, is destroying our prosperity.

Lawless Justice System

A strong rule of law is essential for a prosperous and stable economy, yet the government made it official policy not to prosecute fraud, even though main business model adopted by the biggest financial crime in world history, the largest insider trading scandal of all time, illegal raiding of customer accounts and blatant financing of drug cartels and terrorists have all gotten away scot-free without any jail time.
There are two systems of justice in America … one for the big banks and other fatcats, and one for everyone else.
While Iceland prosecuted its top criminal bankers, and thus quickly got through its financial problems and now has a vibrant economy, the American government has done everything it can to cover up fraud, and has been actively encouraging criminal fraud and attacking those trying to blow the whistle.
The rule of law is now as weak in the U.S. and UK as many countries which we would consider “rogue nations”. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.
This is a sudden change. As famed Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto notes:

In a few short decades the West undercut 150 years of legal reforms that made the global economy possible.

Moreover, U.S. government personnel are on the take. They have become so corrupt that regulators are literally sleeping with industry prostitutes … while they pimp out the American people.
The corruption of government officials is staggering, and the system of government-sponsored rating agencies had at its core a model of bribery.
We’ve gone from a nation of laws to a nation of powerful men making one-sided laws to protect their own interests … in secret. Government folks are using laws to crush dissent. It’s gotten so bad that even U.S. Supreme Court justices are saying that we are descending into tyranny.
It’s not a “fiscal cliff” … it’s an attempt to rape America … just like Greece and Ireland have been plundered.
Economics professor Randall Wray writes:

Thieves … took over the whole economy and the political system lock, stock, and barrel. They didn’t just blow up finance, they oversaw the swiftest transfer of wealth to the very top the world has ever seen. They screwed workers out of their jobs, they screwed homeowners out of their houses, they screwed retirees out of their pensions, and they screwed municipalities out of their revenues and assets.
Financiers are forcing schools, parks, pools, fire departments, senior citizen centers, and libraries to shut down. They are forcing national governments to auction off their cultural heritage to the highest bidder. Everything must go in firesales at prices rigged by twenty-something traders at the biggest and most corrupt institutions the world has ever known.

Economics professor Michael Hudson agrees … saying that the banks are trying to roll back all modern laws and make us all serfs.
Professor Hudson explained in 2008:

You have to realize that what they’re trying to do is to roll back the Enlightenment, roll back the moral philosophy and social values of classical political economy and its culmination in Progressive Era legislation, as well as the New Deal institutions. They’re not trying to make the economy more equal, and they’re not trying to share power. Their greed is (as Aristotle noted) infinite. So what you find to be a violation of traditional values is a re-assertion of pre-industrial, feudal values. The economy is being set back on the road to debt peonage. The Road to Serfdom is not government sponsorship of economic progress and rising living standards, it’s the dismantling of government, the dissolution of regulatory agencies, to create a new feudal-type elite.

Indeed:

Foreign Policy magazine ran an article entitled “The Next Big Thing: Neomedievalism“, arguing that the power of nations is declining, and being replaced by corporations, wealthy individuals, the sovereign wealth funds of monarchs, and city-regions.

Indeed, this isn’t the “Great Recession”, it’s the Great Bank Robbery. The big banks have pillaged and looted the rest of the world. A lawless justice system is ruining the economy.

Lawless Central Bank

The non-partisan Government Accountability Office calls the Fed corrupt and riddled with conflicts of interest. Nobel the World Bank would view any country which had a banking structure like the Fed as being corrupt and untrustworthy. The former vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said said he worried that the failure of the government to provide more information about its rescue spending could signal corruption. “Nontransparency in government programs is always associated with corruption in other countries, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be here,” he said.
Moreover, the Fed has broken the law by withholding information from Congress, letting unemployment rise in order to keep inflation low, and otherwise exceeding its authority under the Federal Reserve Act.
Our central bank’s lawless and unaccountable actions are hurting the economy.

Lawless Attack on Democracy

The ability of the people to participate in their government’s decision-making is vital for a nation’s prosperity. But we no longer have democracy or a republican form of government in America.
The big banks own Washington D.C. politicians, lock stock and barrel. See this, this, this and this. Two leading IMF officials, the former Vice President of the Dallas Federal Reserve, and the the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Moody’s chief economist and many others have all said that the United States is controlled by an “oligarchy” or “oligopoly”, and the big banks and giant financial institutions are key players in that oligarchy.
Laws are being passed in secret, and not even Congress knows what’s going on.
In other words, not only the justice system, but the entire system of American representation has been corrupted, thus harming the economy.

Lawless Infringement of Freedom

Personal freedom and liberty – and freedom from the arbitrary exercise of government power – are strongly correlated with a healthy economy, but America is descending into tyranny.
Authoritarian actions by the government interfere with the free market, and thus harm prosperity.
U.S. News and World Report notes:

The Fraser Institute’s latest Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report is out, and the news is not good for the United States. Ranked among the five freest countries in the world from 1975 through 2002, the United States has since dropped to 18th place.

The Cato institute notes:

The United States has plummeted to 18th place in the ranked list, trailing such countries as Estonia, Taiwan, and Qatar.
***
Actually, the decline began under President George W. Bush. For 20 years the U.S. had consistently ranked as one of the world’s three freest economies, along with Hong Kong and Singapore. By the end of the Bush presidency, we were barely in the top ten.
And, as with so many disastrous legacies of the Bush era, Barack Obama took a bad thing and made it worse.

But the American government has shredded the constitution, by subjecting us to indefinite detention, taking away our due process rights, deploying drones above our heads, spying on all Americans, and otherwise attacking our freedoms.
Indeed, rights won in 1215 – in the Magna Carta – are being repealed.
Economic historian Niall Ferguson notes, draconian national security laws are one of the main things undermining the rule of law:

We must pose the familiar question about how far our civil liberties have been eroded by the national security state – a process that in fact dates back almost a hundred years to the outbreak of the First World War and the passage of the 1914 Defence of the Realm Act. Recent debates about the protracted detention of terrorist suspects are in no way new. Somehow it’s always a choice between habeas corpus and hundreds of corpses.

Of course, many of this decades’ national security measures have not been taken to keep us safe in the “post-9/11 world” … indeed, many of them started before 9/11.
And America has been in a continuous declared state of national emergency since 9/11, and we are in a literally never-ending state of perpetual war. See this, this, this and this.
In fact, government has blown terrorism fears way out of proportion for political purposes, and “national security” powers have been used in many ways to exempt big Wall Street players from the rule of law rather than to do anything to protect us.
So lawlessness infringement of our liberty is destroying our prosperity.

Lawless Initiation and Prosecution of War

It is well-documented that war destroys the economy.
Top U.S. government employees lied us into war, and used illegal torture, assassinations and other crimes of war in prosecuting the wars they unnecessarily started. They were – at a minimum – criminally negligent for failing to stop 9/11 (and see this).
In the name of fighting our enemies – the U.S. has directly been supporting Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups for the last decade. See this, this, this, this and this.
Our use of torture has also created many more terrorists than it has prevented.
Security experts – including both conservatives and liberals – agree that waging war in the Middle East weakens national security and increases terrorism. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.
Indefinite detention, drone-strikes on innocent civilians, occupation of foreign countries, and most of America’s other tactics in the “war on terror” increase terrorism.
Terrorism feeds the cycle of war … and is thus harming our economy. (And because terrorism spooks people, they spend less, which further harms the economy).
So lawlessness in starting and prosecuting war is destroying our prosperity.
Postscript: We’re not facing a “fiscal cliff”. We’re facing a descent into lawlessness. Stopping the fraudulent schemes, endless bailouts and imperial adventures is the place to start.

Report details massive growth of social inequality across US

A recent three-part investigative series by Reuters details the massive growth of social inequality in the United States. “The Unequal State of America,” largely based on US Census data spanning the last two decades on income distribution, access to education and poverty levels, paints a bleak picture of American life.
The report highlights conditions of the populations in Indiana, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. Drawing wider conclusions, the report notes that “inequality has risen not just in plutocratic hubs such as Wall Street and Silicon Valley, but also in virtually every corner of the world’s richest nation.”
The report also documents disparities in broader detail:
* Since 1989, inequality has grown in 49 of 50 states.
* 28 states saw inequality increase simultaneously by measurements of education, income, and poverty.
* In all states, the top quintile of the population benefited the most generously, seeing a 12 percent income boost on average.

The nation’s capital

The report focuses on the District of Columbia in relation to income disparity. Washington, D.C. is home to some of the starkest social inequality on the planet, with one-third of the residents in the impoverished Ward 8—and over one half of its children—living in poverty, while the average income of the bottom fifth of the population is less than $10,000 yearly. In contrast to this, the average wealth of the city’s top 5 percent is over $500,000, an almost 54 to 1 ratio, up from 39 to 1 in 1990.
Of chief responsibility for this state of affairs, the report notes, are the policies adopted by the federal government in recent decades. Though the DC region is home to only 2 percent of the nation’s population, 15 percent of all federal procurement spending is funneled back into the region, most of which is sourced to private contracting firms connected to the Department of Homeland Security as well as various law firms and lobbying groups.
Highlighting the growth of corporate influence is the growth of “organizations with a political presence,” another term for lobbyists, holding offices in the district—rising from 7,000 offices in 1981 to over 14,000 in 2006.
As a product of the tax cuts enacted under the Bush administration, many government players were able to drastically increase their own personal worth, a trend that has continued under the Obama administration.
According to the report, federal employees making over $100,000 in the region have increased by a third to over 20 percent of the workforce since 1990, while those making less than that have disappeared due to a “hollowing out” of the middle earners. This has come during a general elimination of “blue collar” government jobs in the district. As a result, now more than 50 percent of all federal jobs in the city have salaries higher than $100,000, while lower wage jobs are sourced to temp agencies providing little stability for workers.

Massachusetts

Likewise, data on Massachusetts, the site of the oldest public school system in the country and home to some of the most prestigious universities, reveals stark indices of inequality. Since 1989, the income for the state’s top 20 percent grew by nearly a fifth while the living standards for every other quintile fell, with the bottom 20 percent of the population absorbing a 9 percent loss of their income value. Massachusetts is now the seventh most unequal state in the country in terms of income, according to the report.
Massachusetts has continued to witness a growth of inequality related to education. Despite the growing need for advanced degrees to meet the requirements of the workforce, these have become more difficult to obtain. A recent study released by the U.S. College Board found that both public and private institutions in the state cost a quarter more than do institutions elsewhere in the US.
Jobs offering decent wages for less-skilled labor have plummeted in number in Massachusetts. Reuters cites a Georgetown University study that notes that since the recession of 2007 nearly 6 million jobs deemed fit for high school graduates were lost, while over 2 million jobs requiring college degrees have been added.

Indiana

Indiana, which has adopted some of the most draconian measures to date for screening applicants for government assistance, is next. The state was one of the first to adopt “welfare reform” in the mid-1990s, under which welfare applicants are required to show they are searching for work in order to receive a cash benefit.
Indiana has taken this process a step further by adding an outright limit of 24 months on how long one may be in such a program, as well as requiring beneficiaries to begin doing community service work within the first six weeks of participating. In a particularly cruel move, women who become pregnant while receiving services will receive no added increase in benefits to help care for their children.
This process has been replicated nationally, with only 1.4 percent of the population receiving cash aid, down two-thirds since 1996, the year President Bill Clinton enacted the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, aimed at “ending welfare as we know it.”
The report also states that although Medicaid funding has increased threefold since 1990, its actual value per recipient has declined 12 percent in that time period. In Indiana, one of the stipulations for a person receiving such assistance is that they must be subsisting at 24 percent, less than one-quarter, of the state’s official poverty threshold. Similarly, the state refuses to provide coverage to adults without children.
The data on Indiana is particularly significant due to its former position as a center for manufacturing in the Midwest. According to the Institute for Working Families, today more than two-thirds of jobs in Indiana pay less than $45,000 a year.
The author also recommends:
Widening social inequality in US capital
[09 June 2012]
Massachusetts governor outlines new round of budget cuts
[13 December 2012]
The social crisis in the US
[24 November 2012]

Alasdair Macleod: “We are quite likely to have a failure on COMEX in the silver market”

Matterhorn Asset Management’s Lars Schall has released an excellent interview with GoldMoney’s Alasdair Macleod, discussing the latest take-down of the metals post QE4, the outlook for gold and silver, and cartel manipulation of the metals.
Macleod states that massive amounts of physical gold and silver have been flowing to Asia, and that the latest bank participation report indicates massive problems are brewing for the banksters in the COMEX silver market.  With cartel shorts near a record at just under 300 million net ounces, yet with the silver price substantially lower than the 2011 high, Macleod believes that we are quite likely to have a failure on COMEX and in the silver market in particular.

2013 Silver Eagles As Low as $2.59 Over Spot at SDBullion!

Regarding the latest bank participation report, Macleod states that commercial shorts are at record highs, yet NO SILVER IS AVAILABLE!:

Bank shorts are at or near record levels. And what is interesting is that with the prices of gold and silver well below the all-time highs there are no profit-takers in the market to sell contracts to close their shorts. And in silver it is very, very alarming. This leads me to think that we are quite likely to have a failure on COMEX and in the silver market in particular.
If you have a failure in silver on COMEX then that is going to affect the gold futures market as well. The West’s central and commercial banks have suppressed the price of both gold and silver by supplying central-bank gold and increased short positions, making prices far too cheap. The result has been a massive transfer of gold and silver to Asia. This is the relevance of the point that you have been raising about Central Banks gold holdings, and it is also going to bring into question the solvency of the bullion banks who are short.
So, I think that while it may not be obvious to many people at the moment, when we look back at the fourth quarter we will see that the conditions were in place for a huge bear squeeze, for silver in particular. I would assume that the short position in gold is more controllable so long as Western Central Banks continue to make bullion available to the bullion banks that are short either on COMEX or with LBMA. But silver is different, nobody has it for sale. There is no silver around.

Macleod goes on to state that gold will be remonetized, and the process is already well underway:

I suspect that the Chinese Yuan will play a big role in Asia. What they’re doing with Iran is interesting. They’re settling net balances in gold and gold is being re-monetized in that sense. And I think that China has accumulated a lot more gold than they officially tell us. So they have the potential to use gold as money. I can see gold being re-monetized in the loosest sense for the largest internal market the world has ever seen. Believe me, it’s happening now.

Macleod also states that the upcoming physical silver crisis at the COMEX will result in a suspension of silver trading at the COMEX, and a reset massively upwards in the price of silver:

You’ve got the banks’ short position on COMEX which cannot be covered. According to the most recent bank participation reports, the banks are short of nearly 300 million ounces of silver. When you bear in mind this is an industrial metal, the vast bulk of silver consumption from mining and recycling supply goes into biocides, solar panels, electronics, et cetera. You have only 100 million ounces annually left over for investors. The short position for the banks on COMEX is three times that 100 million ounces.
There’s no way this can be covered without a price rise sufficient to kill off significant industrial demand, because there are no strategic reserves to draw on. The only country which might have strategic reserves is China but otherwise there are no reserves. And I think that the only way in which the banks’ shorts could be closed out is after a price hike which would lead to billions of dollars of losses for these banks. There will be a market crisis, and I think that they will have to suspend trading in silver and agree a settlement procedure for long and short contracts. And if that happens, it will be well over $50 an ounce. But remember, other exchanges will continue to price silver if Comex suspends, which will not help Comex resolve the problem if the price continues to rise elsewhere.