American Public Wants Tax Payer Funds Invested on Main Street USA, NOT Tel Aviv

With Democracy breaking out in the Middle East as the 21st Century Facebook Generation of Arab youth topple the 20th Century dictators, American foreign policy in the Middle East is being led by its tail to the future forcing U.S. Think Tanks into hyperdrive.
As it once stood, the argument that Israel is the only free democracy in the region as the cause celeb for our billions in yearly support is becoming a 21st century non-starter.
In fact, A Veterans Today informal phone poll shows that 76% of American Citizens no longer support financial aid to Israel.
Some cite the flowering calls for freedom, liberty, and justice in the Arab world as the reasons for their questioning our billions sent to Israel. Some say pay them for what? Let them manage their own affairs.

But after further digging, it’s much more apparent that economics as home is a much more powerful engine driving this change in public attitude.
For example, the union fight between the workers of Wisconsin and the GOP bent on breaking the unions is one very serious issue that is breaking America’s back.
Furthermore, with scenes being played out all across the nation in places like Braddock Pennsylvania where cities are dying and jobs are flying away seem to be the bigger driving force for the new “we don’t want to pay for others, we need to invest at home” attitudes.

While Veterans Today believes that the U.S. should absolutely stand for liberty, freedom, and justice across the globe, it is tacitly more fundamental to our success that we invest at home first.
Instead of giving nationalists who live in lands far far away monies that we at home never get the benefits from, it’s far more sane and right to invest our monies on Main Street in places like Braddock PA and invest in our education, workers, industries, and infrastructure so that our future remains seeded for 21 century success.
The biggest obstacle to having the wishes of the American public respected and honored by the U.S. Congress who has been continually giving over $ 10 billion a year in cash and defense contracts to Tel-Aviv is getting them to get off the lobbyist payola shake down which will be easier said then done. All this means that we may have to overthrow our own congress before we can extract the AIPAC lobby tumor from our system.

Your comments are appreciated.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/02/26/u-s-public-no-longer-supports-taxpayer-money-to-israel/

Celente: “When the money stops flowing down to the man in the street, the blood starts flowing in the streets.”

(TotalInvestor) – Trend forecaster Gerald Celente, of the Trends Research Institute, says that the further expansion of government austerity measures and impoverishment of the majority of the world’s populace will lead to more violence, riots and revolutions.
In his latest Trend Alert® to subscribers, Celente discusses the revolutions breaking out in the middle east and provides a different reasoning than mainstream pundits and politicians for why it is happening and why it will spread to Europe and the US:

As we wrote before Tunisia and Egypt erupted, the outbreaks would go global and the reasons behind the unrest would be more about bread and butter issues than politics. As economies decline, unemployment rises, taxes are raised and services cut – while those at the top get richer and most everyone else gets poorer – revolutions will continue to spread.
But that’s not the way it’s being represented by the same people who didn’t see it coming. The media, pundits and politicians have misrepresented the historic geopolitical events that have occupied the news since the onset of the New Year. Virtually overnight, the revolutions have been glorified as courageous fights for freedom and liberty by democracy-hungry-masses.
But it is not hunger for democracy that drives them. Democracy, autocracy, theocracy, monarchy – right, center, left – it is mostly a gut issue…an empty gut issue. When the money stops flowing down to the man in the street, the blood starts flowing in the streets. It’s a simple equation. A few at the top have too much, and too many others have too little.
What’s Next
In response to the current Middle East uprisings, gold has broken above $1400 an ounce and Brent Crude climbed to $113 a barrel. There is no end in sight to market volatility. As the violence escalates and expands, the fallout will be felt around the world.
From the onset of the financial crisis that began in August 2007, and through the ensuing Panic of ’08, Washington, the Federal Reserve and central banks have managed to forestall a Great Depression-grade meltdown by way of a variety of multi-trillion dollar rescue packages, bailouts and stimulus programs. For three years the programs were able to induce an illusory and superficial recovery that, barring a major external geopolitical jolt, might have continued to run its course until the inevitable denouement.
But now the jolt felt around the world is in the process of shattering the recovery illusion. Whether deliberately (as calculated policy) or as fallout from fear-based denial, the pieces are not being put together. The current unrest is not confined to the Middle East and North Africa, and as we had forecast, it will spread to Europe and other parts of the world. The more volatile and widespread the insurrections, the greater the probability that some combination of events (e.g., oil shock, terror attack, cyber wars and regional wars) will crash already fragile economies, and roil sound ones.
Be Prepared
Conditions are spinning out of control. In some countries, bank and stock market closures are real possibilities, as is the imposition of martial law. We reiterate our forecast for gold $2000. We recommend keeping cash and necessities on hand to help weather emergency situations. If the worst does not happen, nothing is lost. If the worst happens and you are not prepared, you are lost.
Source: The Trends Journal Subscriber Trend Alert (February 24, 2011)

Politics is playing a small role. For 30 years Egyptians lived under the rule of President Mubarak. For 30 years we heard how great Egypt was from the people that lived there, as well as our own media. Then, from one day to the next, everything changed and Mubarak was a dictator. A similar story was presented in other parts of the middle east that are now in turmoil.
This is not about deposing leaders for political reasons, though it may seem like it based on how it’s being presented in the media.
Consider the latest union protests in Wisconsin. It was portrayed by the media as a partisan issue – a fight between republicans and democrats. But had a democrat governor been forced to take similar action, the unions would have been in the streets protesting anyway.
This is happening because the flow of easy money is being systematically withdrawn from Main Street (the world over).
This is happening to public and private sector workers alike. No one is immune.
Keeping the arguments in a political space diverts the focus of the masses so that they hate each other, as opposed to targeting the fundamental reasons for why we’re in the position we are in the first place.
We’ve suggested it before, and we will yet again: As the people get broker and hungrier, and they lose their jobs, their homes and finally realize there will be no return to the boom times of the 80′s, 90′s and early 2000′s, the unrest will foment and spread.
Author: Mac Slavo
Source: Total Investor

Our Culture Will Have To Adopt Old Timely Values

(Audio only) How the bankers take down societies, short break down.

Catherine on Her Soapbox

I would like to propose a contrary theory to the dire views of those looking behind the veil of recent economic statistics.

First, if you look at the amount of money that has been stolen or shifted out of the economy it is more than enough to take care of all that ails us IF we convert to behaving productively.

Of course that means that we can not organize society to support unproductive corporations and food and health systems based on rigged profits and lies.

It also means that our culture will have to adopt old timely values. Take care of your business and your family. Good manners. Hard work. Discipline. Caring about those around you. Keeping your word.

So it seems to me that the problem is that we — all of us from the gangsters to the spoiled many - are not behaving like mature adults and all solutions require that we do.

Friendly fascism, lies, covert operations and warfare continue to be the proposed manner of dealing with this. This is part of the assumption that people can not and will not behave intelligently or responsibly - an assumption that is not true IMO. However, fascism ultimately will not work. Which leaves the rest of us asking the question, “How do we implement responsibility on a self organizing basis?” That is not all that is needed. However, it is a critical step.

Most of our discussion assumes that most everyone is going to continue to behave like a pig. Perhaps so. But if that is the case, then there are no solutions. But it is not because there is an economic or financial
problem.

When a society runs at a total negative return on investment (we do when you integrate public and private capital) there is never enough money. However, if you change to running on a total positive return on investment on a basis of integrated public and private capital, there is plenty of money. (For more on Solari investment strategy, click here)

The debt bubble was never intended as a financial system. It is a control system — one that permits the controllers to engage in a radical re-engineering of planetary resource management and governance.

So - bottom line - are we prepared to shift from an investment model that is focused on immediate investment returns or which is held to a standard of positive returns for investor and total?
Conceptually, it is a relatively easy change.

Cap and trade reflects a negative solution - a top down taxation system easily gamed. However, there is a positive way to do it. Make government investment transparent by place, optimize government spending according to traditional standards of performance and accountability and allow equity to flow based on markets to both places (yes municipalities can be financed with equity) and enterprises rather than through rigged systems and force.

What I am proposing at the root is a U.S. debt for equity swap that will work and create astonishing new wealth if we are prepared to function with equity responsibilities and incentives and combine it with sound money systems both globally and locally.

None of this assumes that the human race changes - just that the guys who control the spaceships and guns are prepared to live with something that creates more wealth than massive depopulation. Since they now control the funds that would become the majority of the equity in the debt for equity swap, there should be a way.

That said, depopulation may be considered a safer, more practical solution. I would suggest that prototyping the debt for equity swaps would be a prudent insurance policy. I submitted a deal structure to the CIA through a back door on a way to prototype it using the FHA Fund back in 2000. Someone at Langley should dust it off and reconsider it.

The tricky negotiation, of course, is how such a system can continue to tithe to the black budget. And how do we rehabilitate or otherwise cleanse several generations of varmints whose only skills relate to criminal conspiracies. These, however, are details.

Economic collapse and depression is not necessary as an economic or financial matter. What is necessary is a plan that faces what needs to be faced and lets communities and markets deal with it. So is it possible to fashion the political consensus? Or, perhaps the question is how much pain do we need to endure before we can create the political consensus?

I anticipate that many of you feel it is impossibility. However, “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” A I have said before, now is not the time in the history of our
people for a failure of imagination.

Source: Catherine on Her Soapbox

Why a Flat Tariff on All U.S. Imports Would Work

I advocate protectionism. But one standard criticism is that this would just result in politically connected industries getting tariffs raised on the products they produce. This would corrupt our economy, force consumers to pay higher prices, and serve no legitimate economic logic.

Sounds logical enough. As the 19th-century American radical economist Henry George put it, "introducing a tariff bill into a congress or parliament is like throwing a banana into a cage of monkeys."

So let's just cut that Gordian knot right now: what America needs isn't some complicated system of tariffs, but a flat tariff, the same on every imported good and service.

The exact level at which to set the tariff is an open question. For the sake of argument, we can take 30% as a hypothetical figure, because it is in the historic range of U.S. tariffs and is close to the net pressure on America's trade balance due to foreign nations' VAT or value-added taxes. The right level will not be something trivial, like 2%, or prohibitive, like 150%. But there is no reason it shouldn't be 25 or 35%, and this flexibility will provide wiggle room for the compromises needed to get a tariff through Congress.

A flat tariff would be imperfect, but it would be infinitely better than free trade and relatively politics-proof. Above all, it is a policy people are unlikely to support for the wrong reasons (AKA producer special interests) because it does not single out any specific industries for protection. It would thus maximize the incentive for voters and Congress to evaluate protectionism in terms of whether it would benefit the country as a whole--which is precisely the question they should be asking.

A flat tariff would also create the right balance of special-interest pressures: some interests would favor a higher tariff, others a lower one. This is a prerequisite for fruitful debate, as it means both views will find institutional homes and political patrons.

A flat tariff's uniformity across industries would avoid the problems that occur when upstream but not downstream industries get tariff protection. For example, if steel-consuming industries do not get a tariff when steel gets one, they will become disadvantaged relative to their foreign competitors by the higher cost of American-made steel. And why should steelworkers be protected from foreign competition at the price of forcing everyone else to pay more for goods containing steel? The only reasonable solution is that steelworkers should pay a tariff-protected price for the goods they buy, too. This logic ultimately means that all goods should be subject to the same tariff.

A flat tariff would have other benefits, too. For one thing, it would avoid the danger of getting stuck with a tariff policy that made sense when it was adopted but gradually became an outdated captive of special interests over time, always a risk with tariffs. Although it is a fixed policy, it would not be fixed in its effects, but would automatically adapt to the evolution of industries over time. In 1900, it would have protected the American garment industry from foreign (then mostly European) competition. It wouldn't do that today. As which industries are good industries changes over time, which industries it protects will change accordingly.

A flat tariff would trigger the relocation back to the U.S. of the right industries. For example, a 30% tariff would not cause the relocation of the apparel industry back to the U.S. from abroad. The difference between domestic and foreign labor costs is simply too large for a 30% premium to tip the balance in America's favor in an industry based on semi-skilled labor. But a 30% tariff quite likely would cause the relocation of high-tech manufacturing like semiconductors. This is key, as these industries are precisely the ones we should want to relocate. These capital-intensive, knowledge-intensive industries support high wages and have bright technological futures.

Another objection to a tariff is that if any industry is granted protection, it will just slumber behind it. Some industries indeed long to shut out foreign competition, reach a lazy detente with domestic rivals, then coast along with high profitability and low innovation. But a flat tariff resists this danger because it does not hand out a blank check of protection: it gives a certain percentage and no more. Any industry that cannot get its costs within striking distance of its foreign competitors will not be saved by it. This discipline, although unpleasant for the losers, is the price we must pay for having a tariff that actually works, rather than one which eliminates the discipline of foreign competition entirely and protects all industries indiscriminately.

The political bickering that a tariff varying by industry would cause also militates in favor of a flat tariff. The inability of different industries to coalesce around a common tariff proposal sabotaged efforts to achieve a tariff in 1972-74, but this is a policy around which the greatest possible number of industries can unite.

A flat tariff is also more ideologically palatable than most other tariff solutions. Above all, it respects the free market by leaving all specific decisions about which industries a tariff will favor up to the marketplace. It will thus be considerably easier for ideological devotees of free markets to swallow than some scheme in which tariffs are set by a federal agency, leading to that nightmare of free-marketeers: government picking winners. In the real world, zero government intervention in the economy is impossible, so the issue for believers in economic freedom and small government is to design policies that work through the smallest possible, carefully chosen interventions. This is precisely what the natural strategic tariff offers because it operates at the periphery of our economy, leaving most of its internal mechanisms untouched. In fact, the more wisely we control our economic border, the less we will probably need to control the inside of our economy.

(One final note: a flat tariff would need to include a rebate on reexported goods in order to avoid handicapping American exporters. This would include both goods that are transshipped without modification and goods that are exported after value-added processing. The latter includes everything from chocolate made from imported cocoa to computers made from imported chips. This is implied by its intrinsic logic as a tax on domestic consumption. Other nations follow the same logic in rebating VAT to their exporters.)

Ian Fletcher is Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a nationwide grass-roots organization dedicated to fixing America’s trade policies and comprising representatives from business, agriculture, and labor. He was previously Research Fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a Washington think tank founded in 1933 and before that, an economist in private practice serving mainly hedge funds and private equity firms. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, he lives in San Francisco. He is the author of Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why.

Watch Sheila Bair's Shameless PSA: Skip Starbucks And Give More Money To The Banks

http://tinyurl.com/4jggtck

Video - Sheila Bair for FDIC's "America Saves Week" - Feb. 22, 2011

Sheila's Message: Skip Starbucks And Give More Money To The Banks

This might be the saddest, most ridiculous and infuriating public service announcement since Bert the Turtle's "Duck and Cover." For "America Saves Week," Sheila Bair tells Americans to try to sock away just $10 per week.

"Here's what's amazing," Bair says, "... even if it earns only 1% interest, you will have more than $2,600 in five years and more than $11,500 in twenty years." Ok, let's see how that works out...

• $10 x 52 weeks x 5 years = $2,600

• $10 x 52 weeks x 20 years = $11,500

Wow, Sheila, that is "amazing." In a bygone era, banking officials used to talk about the "wonders of compound interest," but with the Fed holding rates at ZERO, the interest earned on your savings account isn't even worth calculating. And Sheila doesn't even bother. That's amazing. Folks, forget FDIC insured bank accounts, you may as well bury your money in a plastic sack in your back yard.

Here's what an ordinary savings account will earn at today's rates...

1.11% doesn't even make up for inflation -- not even close. Just take a look at gas prices over the past 12 months:

Or how about food prices?

America Saves...??? We should just rename it "America Saves the Banks Week," because that's what it is. Artificially low interest rates are for the benefit of the banks, who can take free money from the Fed and then turn around and "invest" it in Treasuries (which we pay off with our tax dollars), or speculate in commodities like oil and food, which we pay for in the form of higher prices at the pump and at the grocery store.

Of course, if we're being honest, we have to acknowledge that every week is "America Saves the Banks Week." We now know that we subsidized the banks in 2010 to the tune of $130B in bonuses. Yet here we have FDIC chair Sheila Bair telling Americans to skip their afternoon snack or brown bag their lunch so that they can give the banks an extra $10 with which to drive up the price of oil, food and other commodities. When ordinary Americans are dealing with the nuclear fallout from the bankers' fraudulent debt bombs, Bair's advice isn't just insulting, it's the financial equivalent of "Duck and Cover"...

Duck And Cover (1951) Bert The Turtle Civil Defense Film

iShares Silver Trust (SLV) scam exposed

watch this video http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=14131

Layton mayor shares story of wrongful foreclosure

LAYTON -- More than 32,000 homes in Utah received a foreclosure notice last year.

A lot of those foreclosure notices went to people who thought they were meeting all of the lender's demands while they were following the procedures to apply for a loan modification. One of those people is Steve Curtis, the mayor of Layton.

Two weeks before Christmas, Curtis came home and found a foreclosure notice taped to his door. It said his home would soon be put up for auction -- even though he had never missed a mortgage payment.

This was just one of the many nightmares Curtis encountered by applying for a trial loan modification.

"Naturally our trust was with the bank," he said. "We saw no reason why not to trust. Call it gullibility or whatever."

Curtis says he was stunned to see the foreclosure notice on the home he has lived in for 14 years.

"It was very painful," he said. "Nobody should have to go through that. Nobody."

The foreclosure process on the Curtis home began when Curtis and his wife applied for a loan modification in March. Curtis had been out of full-time work for nine months and was trying to stay current on all of his bills.

Bank of America agreed to a trial loan modification that lowered their mortgage payment by $350.

"All along they said as long as you were making your payments, a foreclosure would not happen," Curtis said. "Even when it got to the underwriter everything looked very good. We were told that and that we would have no problem in qualifying."

So what went wrong? How did a foreclosure notice end up on the Curtis' door in December?

"The payments that they are making actually don't go to the servicing department," said advocate Marco Fields.

According to Fields, it's because departments within Bank of America are not communicating with each other. As soon as the Curtis family applied for the loan modification, their payments went into an escrow account so they showed up as delinquent in the servicing department.

"I think it is a simple fix. It's a computer program that needs to be able to talk to one another," Fields said.

The miscommunication is costing homeowners all over the country a lot of time and money -- and in some cases even their homes. Bank of America now faces consumer class-action suits in several states for persistent failure to modify loans.

"Every homeowner needs to be concerned about this issue because we are having the equity in our homes eroded because of these irresponsible actions by these financial institutions," said Fields.

Fields helped push the Curtis file into the office of Bank of America's CEO. But the company still hasn't been able to find all the right paperwork to straighten out their error.

"This is so far beyond advocacy. This is so far beyond a counselor. At the end of the day you are going to need a five-star attorney," said Fields.

Curtis says it's easy to lose hope. "Legally, no I don't have the resources to fight the big bully Bank of America. They'd crush me."

In order to save their home, the Curtises will have to pay all reinstatement charges. On top of that, they will also have to foot the bill for the legal fees Bank of America racked up when they foreclosed on the Curtis' home.

"I'm thinking that never should've been done in the first place," Curtis said. "So why should I be paying legal fees for something that shouldn't have been in the first place?"

Curtis now has a full-time job and will be able to save his home, but says he will continue to speak.

"I will stand up and fight because my neighborhood matters," he said.

To further illustrate what a mess the whole process has been for the Curtis family -- just two weeks ago they received an e-mail stating that they are not eligible for a loan modification because their loan is in active litigation.

But the only reason the loan is in litigation is because Bank of America wrongly foreclosed.