Stopped Lending At Some Of Their Branches

REUTERS/Jason Lee

 

Branches of Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) have stopped lending amid the country's current liquidity squeeze, according to Caixin Online.  The two banks, are part of the country's Big Four. Bank of China was reportedly having a hard time meeting loan-to-deposit requirements before the liquidity squeeze and it plans to resume lending on July 15.
Meanwhile, ICBC's headquarters set a cap on lending, but what was unusual was that "headquarters had cut down on the quotas to make room for its own operations," according to Caixin. Other sources however said this wasn't a major problem.
Chinese interbank rates, or the rates at which banks lend to each other, began spiking before the Dragon Boat festival earlier this month.
The People's Bank of China alleviated some of the pressure by injecting liquidity into some banks and saying that it would use various tools like short-term liquidity operations to help stabilize rates.
But it's important to remember that the "PBOC promised more liquidity but not enough to support the equity markets or enough to drop rates below 4%," according to Robert Savage at FX Concepts.
And the Chinese central bank's initial decision to let rates peak is still being interpreted as its way of punishing certain banks that had runaway credit growth. From Société Générale's Wei Yao:

The PBoC makes clear that it wants more responsible and less risky behavior from financial institutions, including the strengthening of liquidity and asset-liability management, and calls on large banks to help stabilize markets. Secondly, the PBoC calls on financial institutions to balance liquidity and profitability and other business objectives according to macroprudential requirements. Lastly, it calls on financial market participants to strengthen market discipline, particularly related to Shibor.

Jim O'Neill said China was never at risk of a genuine liquidity crunch. But there definitely are concerns of a credit bubble so we will be following these developments closely.

Jeff Berwick on the Goddard Report: Government does nothing but kill, steal and destroy

Description: 

Jeff Berwick is interviewed on the Goddard Report. They talk about how bad the sentiment is in the commodities market. Jeff feels that the fundamentals have not changed and it's still a good idea to hold on to your gold stocks. The end of the monetary system as we know it (TEOTMSAWKI) is well on it's way which is why we are seeing in all the riots and economic upheaval around the world. The Federal Reserve has continued to print money and there is no other options that they have with the amount of debt in the system. The Military Industrial Complex is are in many un-winnable wars which will only overindebt the system even more. Although China is growing faster than the US they are still following the fascist road of the US by printing money and faking the GDP. The times are changing and this will accelerate once the monetary system collapses. The internet is changing the game and the government will not be able to close the Pandoras Box of information getting out. Governments are the enemies of humanity and have completely screwed up the global economy.

- See more at: http://xrepublic.tv/node/4006#sthash.ij5lOArZ.dpuf

Report: Hidden Tariff On American Citizens In New Immigration Bill: Millions More Stand To Lose Their Jobs

Leave it to the best and brightest in Congress to craft legislation that does more harm than good.
Amid a national employment crisis that has left one in every three Americans near poverty and on government welfare, our dear leaders have taken it upon themselves to legislate millions more out of jobs.
The Obamacare mandates slated to go into effect next year will force employers to provide health care coverage, or pay a fine to the government of $3000 per employee if they fail to do so. This is a job killer in and of itself, but it doesn’t stop there.
Under the immigration legislation making its way through Congress right now there exists a provision that will allow illegal immigrants residing in the United States the option of being classified as “registered provisional immigrants,” which means they can work legally within the United States. It sounds like a great idea to the progressive-minded.

Here’s the problem.

“Under Obamacare, businesses with over 50 workers that employ American citizens without offering them qualifying health insurance could be subject to fines of up to $3,000 per worker. But because newly legalized immigrants wouldn’t be eligible for subsidies on the Obamacare exchanges until after they become citizens – at least 13 years under the Senate bill – businesses could avoid such fines by hiring the new immigrants instead.”

What the new legislation essentially does is place a tariff on hiring American citizens.
Estimates suggest that well over thirty million immigrants, perhaps more, will benefit from the law.
Who won’t benefit?
That’d be the 23% of Americans who have lost their jobs over the last five years, and the millions more who are struggling to stay gainfully employed in the worst labor market since the great depression.
You see, coupled with Obamacare the immigration bill gives employers absolutely no incentive to hire Americans. In fact, it punishes them for doing so by mandating company sponsored medical coverage or forcing them to pay a tax for failure to provide their employees with healthcare.
By hiring a provisional immigrant, they can avoid those taxes for up to thirteen years.
Businesses across the country are barley staying afloat and Congress will leave them no choice but to lay off employees who will cost them more money under the new healthcare mandates.
It’s basic economics, something our Congressional membership fails to understand.
This is what happens when you don’t read the bills before you pass them.
As you may have guessed, it’s likely that not a single one of the representatives who are in support of the immigration overhaul have read the 1,200 page legislation.
Here are a few responses from the bill sponsors when they were pressed to address the provisional immigrant issue:

“We’re trying to solve that right now. I don’t know if that’s been solved,” Senator Max Baucus of Montana (chief author of Obamacare) told The Weekly Standard.
…
“I don’t know. I’d have to look at it closely,” said Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. “I just haven’t read it that closely to know.”
…
Senator Tom Carper of Delaware said he was too busy to answer the question. “I don’t have the time to drill down on it right now.”

Congress is a vote away from vaporizing millions of jobs because of the ignorance and complacency of the majority of  its members.

It really makes you wonder… are they doing this intentionally?

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Author:
Mac Slavo
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Date: June 26th, 2013
Website: www.SHTFplan.com

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Corporatism Is Not Capitalism: 7 Things About Predator Corporations That Every American Should Know

Corporatism Is Not Capitalism: 7 Things About The Monolithic Predator Corporations That Dominate Our Economy That Every American Should Know

By Michael, on October 21st, 2011

Right now, there is a lot of talk about the evils of “capitalism”.  But it is not really accurate to say that we live in a capitalist system.  Rather, what we have in the United States today, and what most of the world is living under, is much more accurately described as “corporatism”.  Under corporatism, most wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of giant corporations and big government is used as a tool by these corporations to consolidate wealth and power even further.  In a corporatist system, the wealth and power of individuals and small businesses is dwarfed by the overwhelming dominance of the corporations.  Eventually, the corporations end up owning almost everything and they end up dominating nearly every aspect of society.  As you will see below, this very accurately describes the United States of America today.  Corporatism is killing this country, and it is not what our founding fathers intended.
The following is the definition of “corporatism” from the Merriam-Webster dictionary….

the organization of a society into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political representation and exercising control over persons and activities within their jurisdiction

Corporatism is actually not too different from socialism or communism.  They are all “collectivist” economic systems.  Under corporatism, wealth and power are even more highly concentrated than they are under socialism or communism, and the truth is that none of them are “egalitarian” economic systems.  Under all collectivist systems, a small elite almost always enjoys most of the benefits while most of the rest of the population suffers.
The Occupy Wall Street protesters realize that our economic system is fundamentally unjust in many ways, but the problem is that most of them want to trade one form of collectivism for another.
But our founding fathers never intended for us to have a collectivist system.
Instead, they intended for us to enjoy a capitalist system where true competition and the free enterprise system would allow individuals and small businesses to thrive.
In an article that was posted earlier this year on Addicting Info, Stephen D. Foster Jr. detailed how our founding fathers actually felt about corporations….

The East India Company was the largest corporation of its day and its dominance of trade angered the colonists so much, that they dumped the tea products it had on a ship into Boston Harbor which today is universally known as the Boston Tea Party. At the time, in Britain, large corporations funded elections generously and its stock was owned by nearly everyone in parliament. The founding fathers did not think much of these corporations that had great wealth and great influence in government. And that is precisely why they put restrictions upon them after the government was organized under the Constitution.
After the nation’s founding, corporations were granted charters by the state as they are today. Unlike today, however, corporations were only permitted to exist 20 or 30 years and could only deal in one commodity, could not hold stock in other companies, and their property holdings were limited to what they needed to accomplish their business goals. And perhaps the most important facet of all this is that most states in the early days of the nation had laws on the books that made any political contribution by corporations a criminal offense.

Our founding fathers would have never approved of any form of collectivism.  They understood that all great concentrations of wealth and power represent a significant threat to the freedoms and liberties of average citizens.
Are you not convinced that we live in a corporatist system?
Well, keep reading.
The following are 7 things about the monolithic predator corporations that dominate our economy that every American should know….
#1 Corporations not only completely dominate the U.S. economy, they also completely dominate the global economy as well.  A newly released University of Zurich study examined more than 43,000 major multinational corporations.  The study discovered a vast web of interlocking ownerships that is controlled by a “core” of 1,318 giant corporations.
But that “core” itself is controlled by a “super-entity” of 147 monolithic corporations that are very, very tightly knit.  As a recent article in NewScientist noted, these 147 corporations control approximately 40 percent of all the wealth in the entire network….

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 percent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 percent of the companies were able to control 40 percent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

Unsurprisingly, the “super-entity” of 147 corporations is dominated by international banks and large financial institutions.  For example, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America are all in the top 25.
#2 This dominance of the global economy by corporations has allowed global wealth to become concentrated to a very frightening degree.
According to Credit Suisse, those with a household net worth of a million dollars or more control 38.5% of all the wealth in the world.  Last year, that figure was at 35.6%.  As you can see, it is rapidly moving in the wrong direction.
For a group of people that represents less than 0.5% of the global population to control almost 40 percent of all the wealth is insane.
The dominance of corporations is also one of the primary reasons why we are witnessing income inequality grow so rapidly in the United States.  The following comes from a recent article in the Los Angeles Times….

An economic snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute shows that inflation-adjusted incomes of the top 1% of households increased 224% from 1979 to 2007, while incomes for the bottom 90% grew just 5% in the same time period. Those in the top 0.1% of income fared even better, with incomes growing 390% over that time period.

You can see a chart that displays these shocking numbers right here.
#3 Since wealth has become concentrated in very few hands, that means that there are a whole lot of poor people out there.
At a time when technology should be making it possible to lift standards of living all over the globe, poverty just continues to spread.  According to the same Credit Suisse study referenced above, the bottom two-thirds of the global population controls just 3.3% of all the wealth.
Not only that, more than 3 billion people currently live on less than 2 dollar a day.
While the ultra-wealthy live the high life, unimaginable tragedies play out all over the globe every single day.  Every 3.6 seconds someone starves to death and three-quarters of them are children under the age of 5.
#4 Giant corporations have become so dominant that it has become very hard for small businesses to compete and survive in the United States.
Today, even though our population is increasing, the number of small businesses continues to decrease.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006.  Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.
This is the exact opposite of what should be happening under a capitalist system.
#5 Big corporations completely dominate the media.  Almost all of the news that you get and almost all of the entertainment that you enjoy is fed to you by giant corporations.
Back in 1983, somewhere around 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the United States.
Today, control of the news media is concentrated in the hands of just six incredibly powerful media corporations.
#6 Big corporations completely dominate our financial system.  Yes, there are hundreds of choices in the financial world, but just a handful control the vast majority of the assets.
Back in 2002, the top 10 banks controlled 55 percent of all U.S. banking assets.  Today, the top 10 banks control 77 percent of all U.S. banking assets.
The “too big to fail” banks just keep getting more and more powerful.  For example, the “big six” U.S. banks (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo) now possess assets equivalent to approximately 60 percent of America’s gross national ....
#7 Big corporations completely dominate our political system.  Because they have so much wealth and power, corporations can exert an overwhelming amount of influence over our elections.  Studies have shown that in federal elections the candidate that raises the most money wins about 90 percent of the time.
Politics in America is not about winning over hearts and minds.
It is about who can raise the most cash.
Sometimes this truth leaks out a bit in the mainstream media.  For example, during a recent show on MSNBC, Dylan Ratigan made the following statement….

“The biggest contributor to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is Goldman Sachs. The primary activities of this president relative to banking have been to protect the most lucrative aspect of that business, which is the dark market for credit default swaps and the like. That has been the explicit agenda of his Treasury Secretary. This president is advocating trade agreements that allow enhanced bank secrecy in Panama, enhanced murdering of union members in Colombia, and the refunding of North Korean slaves.”

Later on, Ratigan followed up by accusing both political parties of working for the bad guys….

“But I guess where I take issue is, this president is working for the bad guys. The Democrats are working for the bad guys. So are the Republicans. The Democrats get away with it by saying, ‘Look at how crazy the Republicans are; at the Democrats pretend to care about people.’ BUT THE FACT IS THE 2-PARTY POLITICAL SYSTEM IS UTTERLY BOGUS.”

Wow – nobody is actually supposed to say that on television.
Today, most of our politicians are bought, and most of them actively help the monolithic predator corporations accumulate even more wealth and even more power.
In fact, as I wrote about recently, the big Wall Street banks are already trying to buy the election in 2012.
Fortunately, it looks like the American people are starting to wake up.  According to one recent survey, only 23 percent of all Americans now trust the financial system, and 60 percent of all Americans are either “angry” or “very angry” about the economy.
Unfortunately, many of them are joining protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street which are calling for one form of collectivism to replace another.
The American people are being given a false choice.
We don’t have to choose between corporatism and socialism.
We don’t have to choose between big corporations and big government.
Our founding fathers actually intended for corporations and government to both be greatly limited.
The following is a famous quote from Thomas Jefferson….

“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

Unfortunately, things did not turn out how Jefferson wanted.  Instead of us controlling the corporations, they now control us.
This next quote is from John Adams….

“Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.”

But who dominates our economy today?
The big banks.
Perhaps we should have listened to founding fathers such as John Adams.
Lastly, here is another quote from Thomas Jefferson….

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

How prescient was that quote?
Last year, over a million American families were booted out of their homes by the big banks.  The financial institutions actually now have more total equity in our homes than we do.
Unemployment is rampant, but corporate profits are soaring.  The number of Americans on food stamps has increased by more than 70 percent since 2007, and yet the incomes of those at the top of the food chain continue to increase.
We need a system that allows all Americans to start small businesses, compete fairly and have a chance at success.
Instead, what we have is a corporatist system where the big corporations have most of the wealth, most of the power and most of the advantages.
We need to get the American people to understand that corporatism is not capitalism.
Corporatism is a collectivist system that allows the elite to accumulate gigantic amounts of wealth and power.
The answer to such a system is not to go to a different collectivist system.
Rather, we need to return as much power as possible to individuals and small businesses.
Our founding fathers intended for us to live in a country where power was highly decentralized.
Why didn’t we listen to them?
www.endoftheamericandream.com

Paycheck to paycheck and food stamp to food stamp: Study finds 3 out of 4 Americans are one financial emergency away from being out on the street.

The latest food stamp usage data was released with very little attention from the media.  47.7 million Americans are on food assistance spanning a record 23.1 million families.  Americans on food stamps reflects deep structural issues in the way our economy employs our population.  The recovery in many parts of the US is anything but.  What we are seeing is a growing (and permanent) class of people that will be part of a working (and growing non-working) poor segment of our population.  You would think with the proliferation of information that more opportunities would arise but many people are not keeping up.  There was also a survey showing that 3 out of 4 Americans are basically living paycheck to paycheck with 1 out of 4 living without any savings at all.  You would think this economic dilemma would make headline news but it doesn’t.  Is a paycheck to paycheck and food stamp to food stamp nation worth reporting on?

Food stamp payouts at record levels
I’ve been tracking the nominal amount of money being paid out to food stamp participants and we are at a record level:

Over $70 billion a year is going out in food stamps.  The high elevation of payouts is showing that many people simply cannot get off of this because of the lack of employment or the lack of opportunities in the current marketplace.  A large number on food stamps are also going to the working poor.  Tracking this data shows that the recovery has largely been a no show for a giant section of our population.  Many of these people camp out at dollar stores or Wal-Mart waiting at the end of the month simply to see their debit cards refill so they can purchase food for their family.  The typical payout per family?  $276 per month.
Paycheck to paycheck
Another recent study on the ridiculously low amount of savings for Americans was released:

“(CNN Money) Fewer than one in four Americans have enough money in their savings account to cover at least six months of expenses, enough to help cushion the blow of a job loss, medical emergency or some other unexpected event, according to the survey of 1,000 adults. Meanwhile, 50% of those surveyed have less than a three-month cushion and 27% had no savings at all.”

50 percent have just enough for three months of expenses while another 27 percent are literally living paycheck to paycheck.  One of the main reasons for this lack of savings is the current banking environment we are living in.  There is very little incentive to save when banks are paying nearly zero percent on deposits and CDs:

This is done purposefully.  The Fed is setting up an environment where savers are punished and it should be no surprise that people are not saving because they can’t or simply have very little incentive to do so.  We now find ourselves in an economy where living paycheck to paycheck is very common.  What does that say about the recovery however?
We discussed this market and how it has setup a two-income household trap for many:

The vast majority of Americans have two-income households not because they want to but because of economic necessity.  Over the last few decades with more people working the household income figures have gone up but strip this out and per capita wage growth has actually fallen inflation adjusted for over a decade.
Is this paycheck to food stamp recovery really a recovery?  The Fed has ensured that as long as people have access to insane levels of debt (more directed to the banking system and their speculation) then the wheels will keep on turning.

The Single Largest Driver of the US Economy is About to Collapse

by Phoenix Capital Research

The markets continue their dead cat bounce while the economic data worsens.

First quarter US GDP was revised down from an annual rate of 2.4% to 1.8%.  The drop was due to lower personal consumption expenditures than initially forecast.

This is the crux of the US’s current economic woes: consumer-spending accounts for roughly 70% of our GDP. And QE does nothing to help incomes, which drive consumption.

The US Federal Government has subsidized a weak economic recovery via food stamps and other social program, but the private sector is lagging with most of its hiring coming in the form of temporary or part-time jobs.
The Wall Street Journal ran this graphic yesterday. Anyone who is banking on consumers to continue spending as they have is out of their mind.



Regarding the stock market, it’s important to note that all market collapses follow a similar pattern of:

1)   The initial drop breaking support
2)   Bouncing to re-test support
3)   The larger drop

The S&P 500 has completed #1 and is now in #2:



This move could take us as high as 1,625. However, if the market fails to reclaim its trendline we’re going down as far as 1,500 in short notice. And if we take out that level we’re in BIG TROUBLE.

If you have not taken steps to prepare for a market collapse, we have a FREE Special Report that outlines how to prepare your portfolio. To pick up a copy, swing by:

http://gainspainscapital.com/protect-your-portfolio/

Best Regards
Graham Summers

Santelli’s Rant to Fed: ‘Try Something New! Quantitative Easing Bond Buying Isn’t Helping The Economy’

Rick Santelli argues that the Federal Reserve should try “something new” because its quantitative easing bond buying isn’t helping the economy.
Rick Santelli’s Epic Rant To Bernanke: “Ben, What Are You Afraid Of?”

The Bernanke Fed is playing with deflationary fire

I hope the Fed knows what it is doing.
It has chosen to tighten monetary policy even though core PCE inflation is actually lower right now than it was when the Fed previously thought it dangerous enough to launch further QE. America is one shock away from a slide into outright deflation, and the eurozone is half a shock away.

Click to enlarge

Anyone who still thinks the Fed has not just tightened significantly – or that markets have overreacted – should read this lament by St Louis Fed chief James Bullard in the Washington Post:

This was tighter policy. It’s all about tighter policy. You can communicate it one way or another way, but the markets are saying that they’re pulling up the probability we’re going to withdraw from the QE program sooner than they expected, and that’s having a big influence.

Here is M1 money to cheer you up:

Click to enlarge

And here is M1 velocity to cheer you up further:

Click to enlarge

Now, short-term M1 money data is very volatile, and can often flash wild signals. Nevertheless, I am frankly flabbergasted by the actions of the Bernanke Fed at this point.
They are gambling that the US economy will shake off the effects of fiscal tightening of 2pc to 3pc of GDP this year, arguably the biggest squeeze in half a century. It may indeed do so, but it may not, and the costs of making a mistake before the US recovery is safely established are asymmetric.
Scott Sumner, the spiritual father of the Market Monetarists, says the errors made by the Fed in 1937 and the Bank of Japan in 2000 did serious damage, while the US suffered little lasting effect when the Fed delayed too long in 1951.
Are we to conclude that Ben Bernanke has lost his nerve and joined the Austro-nihilists?

Silver At Less Than 19 Dollars An Ounce? Are You Kidding Me???

By Michael

The day that silver traders have been waiting for has arrived.  On Wednesday, the price of silver dropped another 5 percent.  As I write this, it is sitting at $18.55 an ounce.  On Wednesday it hit a low that had not been seen in three years.  Overall, the price of silver has declined by 34 percent this quarter.  That is the largest quarterly move in the price of silver in more than 30 years.  So what does all of this mean?  It means that we are looking at a historic buying opportunity for those that are interested in silver.  Yes, gold is undervalued right now as well, but it is absolutely ridiculous how low the price of silver is.  At the moment, the price of gold is about 66 times higher than the price of silver is.  But they come out of the ground at about a 9 to 1 ratio, and unlike gold, silver is used up in thousands of common consumer products.  Those that want to invest in silver should be shouting for joy that prices have fallen this low.  If you have been waiting and waiting and waiting to “load the boat”, your moment has arrived.
In my previous articles, I have warned over and over again that we would see wild swings in the prices of gold and silver.  For example, I wrote the following back in April…

As I mentioned above, gold and silver are going to experience wild fluctuations over the next few years.  When the next stock market crash comes, gold and silver are probably going to go even lower than they are today for a short time.  But in the long run gold and silver are going to soar to unprecedented heights.
Investing in gold and silver is not for the faint of heart.  If you cannot handle the ride, you should sit on the sidelines.  We are entering a period of tremendous financial instability, and holding gold and silver is going to be like riding a roller coaster.  The ups and downs are going to shake a lot of people up, but the rewards are going to be great for those that stick with it the entire time.

Right now, a lot of people that bought silver when it was 25 dollars an ounce or 30 dollars an ounce are probably feeling discouraged.
Don’t be.  You will be just fine.  When the price of an ounce of silver hits 100 dollars an ounce you will be very thankful for the silver that you stored away at those prices.
We are moving into a time when we will see more volatility in precious metals prices than we have ever seen before.  That means there will be some tremendous opportunities to make money.  But in order to make money, you have to buy low and sell high.
The current decline in the price of paper silver does not have anything to do with the demand for actual physical silver.  In fact, demand for physical silver is higher than it ever has been before.
For example, sales of silver coins by the U.S. Mint have set a brand new all-time record high during the first half of 2013.
Last year, the U.S. Mint sold 33 million ounces of silver for the entire year.
This year, the U.S. Mint is on pace to sell 50 million ounces of silver for the entire year.
So don’t be alarmed that the price of silver is falling.
Instead, be very, very thankful.
Hopefully it will go even lower.
And you know what?  There is a decent possibility that the price of silver may go down a bit more.  This will especially be true during the initial stages of the next financial panic.
When the price of silver does dip, it is a perfect opportunity to load the boat, because even many mainstream analysts are projecting that the price of silver is headed into the stratosphere over the long-term.  For example, the following is what Citi analyst Tom Fitzpatrick told King World News the other day…

Again, if you look at silver going back to the 2008 correction, we got down to levels below $9, then we saw the silver price multiply by a factor of over 5 times. So assuming this marks a point near the end of the correction in silver, then our bias would be one that would take silver not only to new all-time highs, but we would look for a target as high as $100 for silver

A chart illustrating the projections that Fitzpatrick is making can be foundright here.
There are so many reasons to own silver (even as opposed to owning gold).  The following is an excerpt from a recent article about silver that really caught my attention…
*****
7. Silver is way below its nominal record price of $50 in 1980.  It is even further below the government inflation adjusted level of $135.  And if you use REAL inflation adjusted numbers, like Shadowstats, the REAL 1980 inflation adjusted price of silver would have to be $450!  Silver is a precious and depleting resource and when you look at the price of housing, cars, education, food, energy, taxes, insurance back in the 1980?s, it is insane to think that silver is so cheap on any level.  Especially when the uses of silver have skyrocketed since the 1980’s.  It is now used in technology on a massive scale and is even now said to cure cancer.  Heck, they did not even have Silver Eagle sales back then, or the Silver Bullet Silver Shield for that matter.
8. This time it is going to be much larger!  None of the problems from the 2008 Banking Crisis have been solved.  In fact it is orders of magnitudes worse.   What started out as an institutional  problem, is now a sovereign nation problem.  This collapse will not be a puny multi – billion dollar corporation like AIG disintegrating, it will be the Trillion dollar economies of the nations of the world and the Quadrillion dollar derivative monster markets cracking apart.  There is no financial, political or social safety net left.  We destroyed all of that in 2008 and are on a debt based junkie delusion.
The collapse of currencies will affect every counter-party, debt based asset in the world. Your cash, stocks, bonds, Real Estate, pensions, insurance, all of it.  The collapse of financial contracts will lead to the collapse of all political and social contracts.  The Anger Phase of humanity is coming and only real assets with no counter party risk will be worth anything.  Most commodities have storage or degradation issues leaving only precious metals as a real store of wealth.

9. 1:65 Ratio makes silver the only choice.  The current gold to silver ratio is: 1 ounce of gold is worth 65 ounces of silver.  These come out of the ground at a 1:9 ratio!  That means just to get back to the natural mining ratio, silver would have to out perform gold 600%.  This is regardless what happens to the dollar value of gold.  If gold goes to $13,000 an ounce, silver at a 1:9 ratio would be $1,444 silver.
10. The historical stockpiles of silver are destroyed.  We know implicitly that gold has been treasured and kept secure.  While silver has been used and abused as a cheap, industrial metal like tin.  Since the price of silver has been under attack since the Crime of 1873, silver has been used in such small quantities that it has been destroyed.  The US government in 1950 had 5 billion ounces of silver in its strategic stockpile, now it has ZERO. So if gold and silver come out of the ground at a 1:9 ratio and gold has been treasured and silver stockpiles destroyed, logic would dictate that the end of this silver bull market will find the gold to silver ratio BELOW 1:9 and I think it will come close to a 1:1.  Either way, we are a long way away from those levels which makes silver so exciting right now.
It is the destruction of huge stockpiles like this that explains the decade long supply deficit to the growing demand of silver.  Do not forget that we are only 7 years away from the United States Geological Survey’s prediction that if we continue to consume silver at these rates, silver would be the first metal to become extinct.  When I challenged the USGS on that statement, they said that only a massive revaluation of silver to bring on more production and wiser use of silver would stop the extinction.  I don’t think we will ever run out of silver, but I do believe that the free market will crush this paper manipulation and that anyone holding physical silver on that day will then have a lottery ticket in real value.
*****
You can read the rest of that excellent article right here.
Do you want some more reasons to own silver?
The following are some excerpts from an excellent article by Mark Thomas…
*****
The amount of silver consumed annually and bought for investment exceeds currently exceeds total annual mining output and has for years. That gap has been filled by sellers willing to sell from existing inventories and as prices rise. As time passes this will naturally push prices significantly higher until this fundamental imbalance reaches a true equilibrium price where supply is closer to demand.
*****
Both industrial and investment demand for silver is growing in excess of the annual increase in mining production growth. The available inventory is low and will get even tighter over time. These two factors will lead to a continued tighter supply-demand situation going forward.
*****
Silver is an industrial metal with over 10,000 commercial applications. Because it is one of the best electrical and thermal conductors, that makes it ideal for electrical uses such as switches, multi-layer ceramic capacitors, conductive adhesives, and contacts. It is used in some brazing and soldering as well. Silver is also used in solar cells, heated automobile wind shields, DVD’s and some mirrors.
*****
Silver is an essential element in the electronic gadgets that are a growing part of our digital age. It is in every cell phone, smart phone, tablet, computer keyboard, solar cells and every radio frequency if ID device (RFID). This makes it an essential element going forward as the world becomes more addicted to gadgets. The growth and rising living standards of people in the emerging economies will drive long-term growth of new customers that will demand more and more electronic gadgets.
*****
Silver’s industrial demand should increase 60% to 666 million ounces per year by 2016 from 487 million ounces in 2010. Current annual mine production is only around 700 million ounces per year growing a few percent annually.
*****
Of a total of fifty billion ounces of silver that have been mined in history, only two ounces (estimate) or 5% remain in above ground inventories available to be bought and sold. This is due to silver being used up in industrial applications in very small quantities, which makes it unprofitable to recycle at today’s prices. A lot of silver is used in minute quantities in industrial products which are used up and discarded without being recycled.
*****
The total amount of silver available to trade in the physical silver market is only about $70 billion versus the total gold market which now exceeds $4.3 trillion. As you can see from these numbers, the total market size of the silver market is only 1.6% of the size of the entire gold market. This lack of liquidity and use of extreme leverage in its respective futures market produces wild volatility in price fluctuations of silver.
*****
You can read the rest of his excellent article right here.
Are you starting to get the picture?
Let us hope that the price of silver stays below 20 dollars an ounce for as long as possible, because once this opportunity is gone we will probably never see it again.
It is important to realize where we are in the greater scheme of things.  The world is moving toward another major financial crisis which will usher in a brief period of deflation.  Unlike many others that are talking about the coming economic collapse, I have always maintained that we are going to see deflation first and then the response to the crisis will give us the rip-roaring inflation that so many talk about.  The following is an excerpt from one of my articles where I talk about this…

So cash will not be king for long.  In fact, eventually cash will be trash.  The actions of the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve in response to the coming financial crisis will greatly upset much of the rest of the world and cause the death of the U.S. dollar.
That is why gold, silver and other hard assets are going to be so good to have in the long-term.  In the short-term they will experience wild swings in price, but if you can handle the ride you will be smiling in the end.

During the initial stages of the next major stock market crash, gold and silver will not do very well.  But that is okay.  Dips are buying opportunities.
As the coming economic crisis unfolds, governments and central banks all over the world will desperately attempt to resuscitate the global financial system.  We are going to see money printing and “stimulus packages” on a scale that we have never seen before.  Crazy things will happen with stocks, bonds and currencies.
When the dust finally settles, those that are holding “real money” will be the ones that will be in the best shape.

QE Is Sovereign Default In Slow Motion!! We Are All Going To Be Financially Obliterated

Rising  stock markets, when no one  buys shares and while the real economy is shrinking – is fishy. Something stinks! Beware, from now on anything can happen very suddenly.

QE should never of happened in the first place…
Central financial planning is a disaster. Its bizarre that almost all economists agree that trying to centrally planning an entire economy Soviet Union style is foolish, but yet they believe centrally planning the financial part of the economy not only can, but should be done. They are all taught more or less the same failed theories at almost all major universities.
The FED and other central banks around the world have painted themselves into a corner. They have propped up bond and stock markets with new money. They foolishly believed they could continue forever because there was no obvious inflation, or at least no serious inflation.
Keeping bond and stock markets and housing markets inflated artificially through QE keeps the illusion of economic recovery, but with horrible unintended consequences of borrowing cheap money, and creating bigger and better bubbles further down the road. The practice prevents the correction of huge economic imbalances, drags out the recovery, and will result in an even worse catastrophic crash once the QE finally stops, which eventually it must. At some point, the massive amounts of money on bank balance sheets has to start leaking into the real economy. Take less pain now, or more pain later, red or the blue pill, it would however have been better not to start QE in the first place.

What Ben Bernanke and the Fed have come to understand very clearly over the last 5 years of QE is that accommodative monetary policy, in the face of intransigent state consumption rather than returnable investment spending continues to squeeze the number of voluntary wealth creating transactions in the economy. The more QE is applied, the smaller the wealth creating sector of the economy becomes.
The problem lies with the political will to deal with the trend of fiscal deficits that leave behind only worthless debt that is not backed by any tangible or intangible assets that can repay that debt.
And so Ben Bernanke and the Fed have to try to change political behaviour and its economic consequences some other way. That way is the withdrawal of QE – the politicians have blown it again – the carrot approach has failed – the stick now needs application.

The era of “ultralow” mortgage rates could officially be over
They say that one sign of creeping old age is that memories from past decades are more vivid than those from past days or weeks. They’re right. I don’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday but clearly recall bragging about refinancing our mortgage for 6% back in the early 2000s. That was a killer rate at the time, and my thought was that if banks were dumb enough to give us such cheap money for 30 years, then we should take as much as possible.
This illustrates the relaxed attitude about debt that a lot of baby boomers had back then, and also the way the previously-unthinkable becomes normal after a while. Where a 6% mortgage seemed cheap 10 years ago, now 4% seems expensive. And apparently even 4% is now in the rearview mirror:
Say goodbye to ultralow mortgage rates

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Mortgage rates spiked over the past week, causing some to believe the ultralow rates of recent years could be gone for good.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.93% last week, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey of conforming mortgage rates. But the results to be released this Thursday could very well shock the average mortgage shopper, as the average rate for the 30-year mortgage could move closer to 4.5% — or maybe even higher than that, said Dan Green, loan officer with Waterstone Mortgage in Cincinnati…

 http://dollarcollapse.com/housing-bubble/thinking-about-5-mortgages/
The 441 TRILLION Dollar Interest Rate Derivatives Time Bomb
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-441-trillion-dollar-interest-rate-derivative-timb-bomb
The Trigger Has Been Pulled And The Slaughter Of The Bonds Has Begun
Over the last several years, reckless bond buying by the Federal Reserve has forced yields down to absolutely ridiculous levels.  For example, it simply is not rational to lend the U.S. government money at less than 3 percent when the real rate of inflation is somewhere up around 8 to 10 percent.  But when he originally announced the quantitative easing program, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that he intended to force interest rates to go down, and lots of bond investors made a lot of money riding the bubble that Bernanke created.  But now that Bernanke has indicated that the bond buying will be coming to an end, investors are going into panic mode and the bond bubble is starting to burst.  One hedge fund executive told CNBC that the “feeling you are getting out there is that people are selling first and asking questions later”.  And the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries just keeps going up.  Today it closed at 2.59 percent, and many believe that it is going to go much higher unless the Fed intervenes.  If the Fed does not intervene and allows the bubble that it has created to burst, we are going to see unprecedented carnage.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-trigger-has-been-pulled-and-the-slaughter-of-the-bonds-has-begun
The markets continue their dead cat bounce while the economic data worsens. This is the crux of the US’s current economic woes: consumer-spending accounts for roughly 70% of our GDP. And QE does nothing to help incomes, which drive consumption.
The US Federal Government has subsidized a weak economic recovery via food stamps and other social program, but the private sector is lagging with most of its hiring coming in the form of temporary or part-time jobs.
http://gainspainscapital.com/2013/06/26/the-single-largest-driver-of-the-us-economy-is-about-to-collapse/

If QE were great, we should be doing it all the time
In fact, it does not generate growth or wealth. GDP is a composite calculation dependent on calculating the inflation deflator correctly. Our economists are mired in delusion if they believe GDP rise generated by QE is actual beneficial economic growth.
QE is wealth-neutral or a net negative on wealth.
It benefits those with access to cheap money – primary dealers, banks and those who are asset-rich. It bails out debt-burdened economic zombies.
It hammers those on fixed incomes, on low pay and those who save.
So it robs the poor and deserving to reward the rich, feckless and fraudulent. It is an instrument of evil.
And it achieves these horrendous outcomes through massive state intervention in supposedly free markets. This causes malinvestment on a massive scale by destroying the price signal in those markets.
Adam Smith’s free market delivers innovation, higher quality and lower costs. The broken markets we have now deliver the opposite. In some ways, these markets are worse than communism – at least that ****ed-up model pretended to deliver benefits for the masses. Our markets deliver wealth to the super-rich by destroying the middle classes.

Jonathan

George Osborne raids welfare and slashes 144,000 public sector jobs

George Osborne has hit his target of £11.5 billion in Whitehall cuts by slashing 144,000 more public sector jobs and raiding the welfare budget again. 

 

The Chancellor also unveiled plans to put a cap on £100 billion of welfare spending to stop the benefits budget spiralling out of control further in future.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Osborne said he is imposing a "limit on the nation's credit card"

Mr Osborne will also take more money out of the welfare budget, despite Liberal Democrat promises that there would be no more cuts to benefits.

However, the Ministry of Defence was barely hit with cuts at all, with its overall budget falling by just £800 million, or less than two per cent, in 2015/16.

GOLD CONTINUES TO BLEED FROM THE COMEX- Another 5 Tons Withdrawn Monday

As the paper price of gold falls even lower due to market manipulation, gold continues to bleed from the COMEX Warehouse stocks.  Today, another 156,310 ounces were removed from the Customer inventories. 
What is even more interesting is how much gold has been removed from the COMEX since the beginning of the year.




From The SRSRoccoReport:
If we look at the COMEX Inventory table below, we can see that 64,177 oz were removed from HSBC and 92,133 oz were removed from Scotia Mocatta.  Again, both of these were withdrawn from the Eligible or Customer Inventories.

While HSBC and Scotia Mocatta can afford these sort of gold withdrawals from their customer inventories, as you can see, JP Morgan cannot with only 141,197 oz remaining.  Basically, the gold that was removed from these two bank vaults, would have totally wiped out JP Morgan’s remaining customer inventory.
Furthermore, as we can see from the chart below, Gold Continues to Bleed from the Comex:


Since the beginning of the year, total COMEX gold inventories have fallen 32%, from 11 million oz in January to 7.5 million oz today.  This chart is from 24hGold.com, and has not be updated yet as it still shows the previous days total in the top right part of the chart at 7.68 million.
So, as the bizarre paper trading in the precious metal markets keeps pushing the price of gold lower, investors continue to withdraw more gold out of the COMEX warehouses.
It will be interesting to see what happens to JP Morgans pathetically small gold inventories in the next several weeks and months.

Domination Over? New rating agency to fight US Big Three

81.5% of Money Created through Quantitative Easing Is Sitting There Gathering Dust … Instead of Helping the Economy

Fed Has Been a Total Failure

Robert D. Auerbach – an economist with the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee for eleven years, assisting with oversight of the Federal Reserve, and now Professor of Public Affairs at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin – notes today:

There is a massive misconception about where the Bernanke Fed’s stimulus landed. Although the Bernanke Fed has disbursed $2.284 trillion in new money (the monetary base) since August 1, 2008, one month before the 2008 financial crisis, 81.5 percent now sits idle as excess reserves in private banks. The banks are not required to hold excess reserves. The excess reserves exploded from $831 billion in August 2008 to $1.863 trillion on June 14, 2013. The excess reserves of the nation’s private banks had previously stayed at nearly zero since 1959 as seen on the St. Louis Fed’s chart. The banks did not leave money idle in excess reserves at zero interest because they were investing in income earning assets, including loans to consumers and businesses.
This 81.5 percent explosion in idle excess reserves means that the Bernanke Fed’s new money issues of $85 billion each month have never been a big stimulus. Approximately 81.5 percent (or $69.27 billion) is either bought by banks or deposited into banks where it sits idle as excess reserves. The rest of the $85 billion, approximately 18.5 percent (or $15.72 billion) continues to circulate or is held as required reserves on banks’ deposit accounts (unlike unrequired excess reserves).

What’s Professor Auerbach talking about?
We’ve repeatedly pointed out that the Federal Reserve has been intentionally discouraged banks from lending to Main Street – in a misguided attempt to curb inflation – which has increased unemployment and stalled out the economy.
We noted in 2010:

[T]he Fed has been paying the big banks high enough interest on the funds which they deposit at the Fed to discourage banks from making loans. Indeed, the Fed has explicitly stated that – in order to prevent inflation – it wants to ensure that the banks don’t loan out money into the economy, but instead deposit it at the Fed:

Why is M1 crashing? [the M1 money multiplier basically measures how much the money supply increases for each $1 increase in the monetary base, and it gives an indication of the "velocity" of money, i.e. how quickly money is circulating through the system]
Because the banks continue to build up their excess reserves, instead of lending out money:

(Click for full image)
These excess reserves, of course, are deposited at the Fed:

(Click for full image)
Why are banks building up their excess reserves?
As the Fed notes:

The Federal Reserve Banks pay interest on required reserve balances–balances held at Reserve Banks to satisfy reserve requirements–and on excess balances–balances held in excess of required reserve balances and contractual clearing balances.

The New York Fed itself said in a July 2009 staff report that the excess reserves are almost entirely due to Fed policy:

Since September 2008, the quantity of reserves in the U.S. banking system has grown dramatically, as shown in Figure 1.1 Prior to the onset of the financial crisis, required reserves were about $40 billion and excess reserves were roughly $1.5 billion. Excess reserves spiked to around $9 billion in August 2007, but then quickly returned to pre-crisis levels and remained there until the middle of September 2008. Following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, however, total reserves began to grow rapidly, climbing above $900 billion by January 2009. As the figure shows, almost all of the increase was in excess reserves. While required reserves rose from $44 billion to $60 billion over this period, this change was dwarfed by the large and unprecedented rise in excess reserves.
[Figure 1 is here]

Why are banks holding so many excess reserves? What do the data in Figure 1 tell us about current economic conditions and about bank lending behavior? Some observers claim that the large increase in excess reserves implies that many of the policies introduced by the Federal Reserve in response to the financial crisis have been ineffective. Rather than promoting the flow of credit to firms and households, it is argued, the data shown in Figure 1 indicate that the money lent to banks and other intermediaries by the Federal Reserve since September 2008 is simply sitting idle in banks’ reserve accounts. Edlin and Jaffee (2009), for example, identify the high level of excess reserves as either the “problem” behind the continuing credit crunch or “if not the problem, one heckuva symptom” (p.2). Commentators have asked why banks are choosing to hold so many reserves instead of lending them out, and some claim that inducing banks to lend their excess reserves is crucial for resolving the credit crisis.
This view has lead to proposals aimed at discouraging banks from holding excess reserves, such as placing a tax on excess reserves (Sumner, 2009) or setting a cap on the amount of excess reserves each bank is allowed to hold (Dasgupta, 2009). Mankiw (2009) discusses historical concerns about people hoarding money during times of financial stress and mentions proposals that were made to tax money holdings in order to encourage lending. He relates these historical episodes to the current situation by noting that “[w]ith banks now holding substantial excess reserves, [this historical] concern about cash hoarding suddenly seems very modern.”
[In fact, however,] the total level of reserves in the banking system is determined almost entirely by the actions of the central bank and is not affected by private banks’ lending decisions.
The liquidity facilities introduced by the Federal Reserve in response to the crisis have created a large quantity of reserves. While changes in bank lending behavior may lead to small changes in the level of required reserves, the vast majority of the newly-created reserves will end up being held as excess reserves almost no matter how banks react. In other words, the quantity of excess reserves depicted in Figure 1 reflects the size of the Federal Reserve’s policy initiatives, but says little or nothing about their effects on bank lending or on the economy more broadly.
This conclusion may seem strange, at first glance, to readers familiar with textbook presentations of the money multiplier.

Why Is The Fed Locking Up Excess Reserves?
Why is the Fed locking up excess reserves?
As Fed Vice Chairman Donald Kohn said in a speech on April 18, 2009:

We are paying interest on excess reserves, which we can use to help provide a floor for the federal funds rate, as it does for other central banks, even if declines in lending or open market operations are not sufficient to bring reserves down to the desired level.

Kohn said in a speech on January 3, 2010:

Because we can now pay interest on excess reserves, we can raise short-term interest rates even with an extraordinarily large volume of reserves in the banking system. Increasing the rate we offer to banks on deposits at the Federal Reserve will put upward pressure on all short-term interest rates.

As the Minneapolis Fed’s research consultant, V. V. Chari, wrote this month:

Currently, U.S. banks hold more than $1.1 trillion of reserves with the Federal Reserve System. To restrict excessive flow of reserves back into the economy, the Fed could increase the interest rate it pays on these reserves. Doing so would not only discourage banks from draining their reserve holdings, but would also exert upward pressure on broader market interest rates, since only rates higher than the overnight reserve rate would attract bank funds. In addition, paying interest on reserves is supported by economic theory as a means of reducing monetary inefficiencies, a concept referred to as “the Friedman rule.”

And the conclusion to the above-linked New York Fed article states:

We also discussed the importance of paying interest on reserves when the level of excess reserves is unusually high, as the Federal Reserve began to do in October 2008. Paying interest on reserves allows a central bank to maintain its influence over market interest rates independent of the quantity of reserves created by its liquidity facilities. The central bank can then let the size of these facilities be determined by conditions in the financial sector, while setting its target for the short-term interest rate based on macroeconomic conditions. This ability to separate monetary policy from the quantity of bank reserves is particularly important during the recovery from a financial crisis. If inflationary pressures begin to appear while the liquidity facilities are still in use, the central bank can use its interest-on-reserves policy to raise interest rates without necessarily removing all of the reserves created by the facilities.

As the NY Fed explains in more detail:

The central bank paid interest on reserves to prevent the increase in reserves from driving market interest rates below the level it deemed appropriate given macroeconomic conditions. In such a situation, the absence of a money-multiplier effect should be neither surprising nor troubling.

Is the large quantity of reserves inflationary?

Some observers have expressed concern that the large quantity of reserves will lead to an increase in the inflation rate unless the Federal Reserve acts to remove them quickly once the economy begins to recover. Meltzer (2009), for example, worries that “the enormous increase in bank reserves — caused by the Fed’s purchases of bonds and mortgages — will surely bring on severe inflation if allowed to remain.” Feldstein (2009) expresses similar concern that “when the economy begins to recover, these reserves can be converted into new loans and faster money growth” that will eventually prove inflationary. Under a traditional operational framework, where the central bank influences interest rates and the level of economic activity by changing the quantity of reserves, this concern would be well justified. Now that the Federal Reserve is paying interest on reserves, however, matters are different.

When the economy begins to recover, firms will have more profitable opportunities to invest, increasing their demands for bank loans. Consequently, banks will be presented with more lending opportunities that are profitable at the current level of interest rates. As banks lend more, new deposits will be created and the general level of economic activity will increase. Left unchecked, this growth in lending and economic activity may generate inflationary pressures. Under a traditional operating framework, where no interest is paid on reserves, the central bank must remove nearly all of the excess reserves from the banking system in order to arrest this process. Only by removing these excess reserves can the central bank limit banks’ willingness to lend to firms and households and cause short-term interest rates to rise.

Paying interest on reserves breaks this link between the quantity of reserves and banks’ willingness to lend. By raising the interest rate paid on reserves, the central bank can increase market interest rates and slow the growth of bank lending and economic activity without changing the quantity of reserves. In other words, paying interest on reserves allows the central bank to follow a path for short-term interest rates that is independent of the level of reserves. By choosing this path appropriately, the central bank can guard against inflationary pressures even if financial conditions lead it to maintain a high level of excess reserves.

This logic applies equally well when financial conditions are normal. A central bank may choose to maintain a high level of reserve balances in normal times because doing so offers some important advantages, particularly regarding the operation of the payments system. For example, when banks hold more reserves they tend to rely less on daylight credit from the central bank for payments purposes. They also tend to send payments earlier in the day, on average, which reduces the likelihood of a significant operational disruption or of gridlock in the payments system. To capture these benefits, a central bank may choose to create a high level of reserves as a part of its normal operations, again using the interest rate it pays on reserves to influence market interest rates.Because financial conditions are not “normal”, it appears that preventing inflation seems to be the Fed’s overriding purpose in creating conditions ensuring high levels of excess reserves.
***

'C' is for cutbacks: 'Sesame' lays off workers

Richard Termine / Sesame Workshop via AP

Sesame Workshop, creators of "Sesame Street," had to cut staff on Tuesday.

It's a sad day on the "Street." Sesame Workshop, makers of the classic children's program "Sesame Street," laid off approximately 10 percent of its employees Tuesday.
"Sesame Workshop, the non-profit organization behind Sesame Street, is constantly assessing where we must invest for the future in response to today's rapidly changing digital environment," the company said in a statement obtained by Reuters. "After careful review, we have concluded that we must reduce our workforce by approximately 10% to strategically focus our resources."
According to Deadline.com, 30 employees lost their jobs, and the company's Sesame Learning program and Global Education departments will be absorbed into other parts of the company. Former Newsweek, Inc. CEO Tom Ascheim, who was an executive vice-president with Sesame Leaning, was one of those laid off, Deadline reports.
Sesame Learning was described by the company as "a vital Workshop initiative aimed (at bringing) the 'Sesame Street' advantage to classrooms and child-care settings."
There was no word on whether "Sesame Street," the workshop's Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning program, would be directly affected.

Agenda 21 - Unconstitutional Conservation

Rocky Balboa
Activist Post

The gradual emergence of Agenda 21 from concept to implementation can be seen either as world society waking up to environmental priorities with the need to enforce sustainable development, or as a project in social engineering and an infringement on private property rights.

Agenda 21 was first introduced to the international arena at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. 178 governments voted at Rio to adopt the program. It has since been adopted by over 200 countries.

Lately we’ve seen signs of implementation of Agenda 21 in the USA and elsewhere. It was reported in 2010 that approximately 1500 families in Miami, Florida were losing their homes due to a directive from Miami-Dade’s Department of Environmental Resource Management (DERM) which classified nearly 8.5 square miles in Florida as protected wetlands.(1) Whatever the reasoning within DERM - if the restored wetlands would act as a buffer zone to ease future flooding fears - such directives were a change of procedure in the USA which amongst other things has infringed on private property rights - a foundation stone of the US Constitution (Fifth Amendment) and a principal guarantor for people’s liberty. The due process of law has been challenged as well. Code officials have been given extensive powers never before seen and which some have termed, “Gestapo!”(2)

Currently, the Chinese government is attempting to move approximately 250,000,000 people from rural areas into urban areas. With construction of large apartment blocks happening now at a frantic pace, they hope to complete this task in twelve to fifteen years.(3) Maybe the Chinese experience can be seen as a forerunner to the latest global environmental dictates. China’s long history of authoritarian rule probably says a lot for the early introduction of living restrictions in that country (One-Child Policy, 1978) and similarly says a lot for the way American values have been undermined in recent times that resistance in America to programs like Agenda 21 has been very weak.

The most controversial aspect of Agenda 21 must be the Wildlands Project. The map accompanying this, otherwise known as the US biodiversity map, or the population control map of the USA, has large areas designated for little or no human use. Adjacent to these areas are buffer zones where human use is highly regulated. It can’t be overestimated the amount of land this represents and the restrictions on human freedom that will follow from this if the proposals are fully implemented.(4)

(There are also areas designated military reservations which for many people gives the lie to the supposed imperative and urgency for governments to protect the planet by implementing these sustainable development measures. As we all know, the military-industrial-complex is the most wasteful and polluting of industries, and to be talking about sustainable development whilst at the same time taking for granted that humanity will retain its military capabilities, tells us a lot about the architects behind Agenda 21, if nothing else.)

The big question is whether or not Agenda 21 was formulated as a genuine attempt to solve global environmental problems or whether it's a program to enslave humanity, but disguised as an all-encompassing environmental action plan. Certainly, the fear of climate change and the potential harm to our planet that rising temperatures could inflict has been used to bring in, amongst other things, carbon taxes which is just another tax on top of all the other taxes we pay adding to the ever increasingly tax burden on the majority of people minus the mega-rich and corporations, of course (who manage to dodge paying their fair share of taxes). Or possibly, Agenda 21 was initially envisioned and formulated sincerely, but was hijacked by the New World Order brigade who saw Agenda 21 as a means to accelerate their agenda to enslave humanity.(5)

A quick perusal at the early originators of Agenda 21 may give some answers to these questions or at least raise an eyebrow or two. John Anthony, a renowned expert on the topic of United Nation’s Agenda 21, sees the origins of Agenda 21 coming from two significant players in global affairs - Gro Brundtland and Maurice Strong.(6) Both are veteran Bilderberg attendees. Okay, if Bilderberg is just a friendly discussion forum then we needn’t dwell any longer on this. Yet many people see a greater significance in the choice of these two global players. Brundtland was Vice President of Socialist International whose aim is to replace capitalism with socialism. Former oilman, Maurice Strong, had hardly the environmental credentials to justify his being given the directorship of the United Nation’s Environment Programme (UNEP). Strong was CEO of American Water Development Incorporated (AWDI), a corporation with a history of dodgy business credentials involving massive environmental degradation. Strong and Brundtland were instrumental in formulating the 1987 report, Our Common Future - one of the precursors to Agenda 21.

Another alarm bell surrounding Agenda 21 is the decision by the Monsanto Company in 2013 to join the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) which many believe is a global front group for Agenda 21 and according to Greenpeace, is among the key players responsible for slowing the progress of nations around the world in tackling climate change effectively. Ethan A. Huff goes even further by saying that Agenda 21 is a “United Nations (UN) scheme to surreptitiously seize property rights from people worldwide and pack the world's populations into tiny micro-cities controlled by a centralized government.”(7)

So here we have two Bilderberg members instrumental in the early stages of Agenda 21’s formulation. We have an Agenda 21 endorsement by one of the world’s leading bogeymen corporations, Monsanto. And finally a view of the United Nations as working to bring about the New World Order.

The problem with action plans formulated by these international bodies is that they’ll inevitably lean towards corporate needs. The work of Thomas Ferguson, who champions the Investment theory of party competition whereby business elites play the leading part in political decision-making, may encapsulate many of the drawbacks of Agenda 21.(8) One suspects the Chinese are urbanizing at a rapid pace, for example, mainly to expand consumer numbers (in contrast to self-sufficient landowners) rather than in adherence to any UN initiative.

It’s a little unsettling reading the arguments against Agenda 21 and the counter-arguments. One could conclude that no one is really concerned for the natural environment - environmental concerns just being another arena for political movements to clash and as a platform for political evangelizing - which is the essence of an article by Stephanie Mencimer, which focuses on the shenanigans of the now fashionable Tea Party.(9)

What if everything’s been hijacked? Will sincere people have to take back what was once theirs? Will that be the task of humanity in the next fifty years - to reconfigure all our government bodies, institutions, and corporations, back to their pure, sincere beginnings? Or if we’re skeptical about them ever having worked on behalf of the 99%, then we’ll have to form our own movements. Bring on the Occupy Movement, Wearechange, etc.

Or think of it this way. Has our natural environment got to the stage were totalitarian management initiatives have to be implemented for us to have any chance of securing a future for our planet? The answer to that depends on how one views the future and what one expects from the future. As David Attenborough put it recently, "Quite simply, we will run out of food. People talk about doom-laden scenarios happening in the future: they are happening in Africa now. You can see it perfectly clearly. Periodic famines are due to too many people living on land that can't sustain them."(10)More recently he said: “We are a plague on the Earth, it's coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so... Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.”(11)

Maybe (or definitely) the main problem with Agenda 21 and other such global initiatives is that most people haven’t heard of them. Why is this? Is it because of a corporate media maintaining a relative silence to please the globalists? Or is it because people don’t care? - don’t care to educate themselves, to inform themselves, and don’t care about their natural environment. Maybe there’s a bit of both here. We get the government we deserve. Maybe we also get the natural environment we deserve. Sometimes when the carrot doesn’t work, the stick takes its place. With the overriding importance of maintaining a healthy natural environment, the stick may have to take prominence. A local supermarket in my area recently tried an initiative of “no plastic bags” on Saturdays. Most people responded by deciding to shop Sundays, and the supermarket became like a ghost-town on Saturdays. The ball’s in our court. What are we going to do with it?

Footnotes:

1.) 1,500 families losing land in Miami land grab, submitted by left the hurd, posted onto the Daily Paul website, 6th October 2010.

2.) Michael Snyder, Agenda 21 Is Being Rammed Down The Throats Of Local Communities All Over America Agenda, Infowars, 24th December 2012.

3.) Ian Johnson, China’s Great Uprooting: Moving 250 Million Into Cities, The New York Times, 15th June 2013.

4.) Wildlands Project, Simulated Reserve and Corridor System to Protect Biodiversity. As Mandated by the Convention on Biological Diversity, The Wildlands Project, UN and US Man and the Biosphere Program and Various UN, US Heritage Programs and NAFTA.

5.) Susanne Posel, Ecovillages: Selling Environmentally-Friendly Agenda 21 Enslavement, Occupy Corporatism, 6th February, 2013.

6.) John Anthony, Agenda 21 EXPLAINED, full version, video presentation, 28th November 2011.

7.) Ethan A. Huff, Monsanto further unveils its true evil nature by signing on to UN Agenda 21 'sustainability' scam, Natural News, 24th February 2013.

8.) Thomas Ferguson, Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems, American Politics and Political Economy Series, University of Chicago Press, 1995.

9.) Stephanie Mencimer, “We Don’t Need None of That Smart-Growth Communism”, Mother Jones, March/April, 2011 issue.

10.) Nick Harding, Sir David Attenborough: ‘This awful summer? We’ve only ourselves to blame...’, The Independent, 14th July 2012.

11.) Steve Nolan, …meanwhile, the man who’s OFF the telly says ‘curb population or nature will do it for us’: Wildlife legend Sir David warns that mankind is a ‘plague on the Earth’, The Daily Mail, 22nd January 2013.

This article has been entered into the Activist Post Writing Contest - EXPOSE Agenda 21. 1st place receives a $500 cash prize. 2nd place receives a $250 cash prize. Additional details and submission guidelines can be found here: http://www.activistpost.com/2013/05/writing-contest-expose-agenda-21.html