Which Side on Your On? Anti-Austerity Cops Face Off Against Riot Police in Portugal

An on-duty police officer stand guard outside the Portuguese parliament during a demonstration by national security forces unions in Lisbon on Thursday. (AP)Defending their pensions from the threat of ever-deepening austerity cuts, as many as ten thousand off-duty police officers and state security agents in Portugal found themselves on the other side of the barricades Thursday night as they faced down their on-duty colleagues in riot control gear.
With a march through Lisbon that ended at the steps of parliament, the anger police and security union members broke through security fences, and even briefly occupying the entrance to Parliament before the night was over.
The proposed cuts in public pensions are being demanded by the nation’s creditors in exchange for a government bailout package received in 2011.
As Agence France-Presse reports:

Thousands of Portuguese police officers, paramilitary police and other security officers took to the streets of the capital to protest the government’s latest austerity measures.

Police in plain clothes massed outside parliament, where they broke through a security cordon to briefly occupy the steps leading up to the building.
During an earlier march, they had called for the government to resign, carrying a banner that read “For professional dignity and people’s security.”
Unions said the rally was the biggest ever organised by the country’s police, and warned that budget cuts planned for next year would “destabilise the work of the police” and “deteriorate public security.”
Media reports estimated the number of demonstrators at between 8,000 and 10,000.
“I’ve been with the police for eight years and never got promoted or a pay rise, even though I have a family now and more responsibilities,” complained protester Manuel Ribas, 32.
“Next year, they will take another 100 euros [$135] out of my gross salary, which will leave me with 900 euros a month, just as if I had just left the police academy.”

Following the raucous protest, the police superintendent of the nation’s police Paulo Gomes tendered his resignation
Portuguese police officers gather outside parliament during a protest in Lisbon on November 21, 2013.People march towards the Portuguese parliament during a protest in Lisbon on November 21, 2013. (Press TV)An off-duty office is detained on the steps of parliament. (AP)A demonstrator waves the flag of the Association of Professional Police Officers during a protest against the government’s austerity measures outside Parliament in Lisbon. (Photo: AFP/Francisco Leong)
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Source: Common Dreams
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The Dying Dollar — Paul Craig Roberts

Since 2006, the US dollar has experienced a one-quarter to one-third drop in value to the Chinese yuan, depending on the choice of base.
Now China is going to let the dollar decline further in value.  China also says it is considering undermining the petrodollar by pricing oil futures on the Shanghai Futures Exchange in yuan. This on top of the growing avoidance of the dollar to settle trade imbalances means that the dollar’s role as reserve currency is coming to an end, which means the termination of the US as financial bully and financial imperialist.  This blow to the dollar in addition to the blows delivered by jobs offshoring and the uncovered bets in the gambling casino created by financial deregulation means that the US economy as we knew it is coming to an end.
The US economy is already in shambles, with bond and stock markets propped up by massive and historically unprecedented Fed money printing pouring liquidity into financial asset prices.  This month at the IMF annual conference, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said that to achieve full employment in the US economy would require negative real interest rates.  Negative real interest rates could only be achieved by eliminating cash, moving to digital money that can only be kept in banks, and penalizing people for saving.
The future is developing precisely as I have been predicting.

As the dollar enters its death throes, the lawless Federal Reserve and the Wall Street criminals will increase their shorting of gold in the paper futures market, thereby driving the remnants of the West’s gold into Asian hands.
PBOC Says No Longer in China’s Interest to Increase Reserves
By Bloomberg News – Nov 20, 2013
The People’s Bank of China said the country does not benefit any more from increases in its foreign-currency holdings, adding to signs policymakers will rein in dollar purchases that limit the yuan’s appreciation.
“It’s no longer in China’s favor to accumulate foreign-exchange reserves,” Yi Gang, a deputy governor at the central bank, said in a speech organized by China Economists 50 Forum at Tsinghua University yesterday. The monetary authority will “basically” end normal intervention in the currency market and broaden the yuan’s daily trading range, Governor Zhou Xiaochuan wrote in an article in a guidebook explaining reforms outlined last week following a Communist Party meeting.

About Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

The post The Dying Dollar — Paul Craig Roberts appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org.
The official Paul Craig Roberts blog can be found here.
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Fed Minutes Reveal a Dangerous Power Grab by New York Fed

By Pam Martens: November 21, 2013

Simon Potter, Markets Group Head at the New York Fed

Just when it seemed one could no longer be shocked by the corruption, hubris and lack of accountability in the American financial system, along comes yesterday’s release of the Federal Reserve’s minutes for the October 29-30 meeting of its Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).
While mainstream media focuses on what the minutes revealed about when the Fed might begin to reduce its monthly $85 billion in bond purchases, receiving scant attention is a brazen power grab boldly stated on page two of the eleven pages of minutes.
Back on October 31, wire services reported that the temporary dollar and foreign currency swap lines that had been put in place between central banks on a temporary basis during the financial crisis had been turned into standing arrangements.
The Associated Press explained the action as follows: “Six of the world’s leading central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, say they will provide each other with ready supplies of their currencies on a standing basis, extending arrangements set up to steady the global financial system during post-2007 turbulence.”
In other words, without public deliberations, an action that was adopted as a temporary, emergency operation, now had become a permanent part of world finance – on the basis of minutes and details yet to be seen by Congress or the general public.
When those minutes were released yesterday, alarm bells should have rang out from the business press. Not only did this temporary emergency measure become permanent, but the full FOMC committee is reduced to voting on its continuance but once a year and the conduct of the program has been effectively delegated to the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and a man the American people have never heard of, Simon Potter, the Manager of the System Open Market Account and Markets Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
According to the minutes, ten members of the FOMC Committee, including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his likely replacement, Vice Chairman, Janet Yellen, unanimously voted in favor of the plan. The comments of those opposing the plan are opaquely described in the minutes as follows:  “The Committee considered a proposal to convert the existing temporary central bank liquidity swap arrangements to standing arrangements with no preset expiration dates.  The Manager [Potter] described the proposed arrangements, noting that the Committee would still be asked to review participation in the arrangements annually.  A couple of participants expressed reservations about the proposal, citing opposition to swap lines with foreign central banks in general or questioning the governance implications of these standing arrangements in particular.”
Instead of the full FOMC committee, which includes Federal Reserve Board Commissioners and Presidents of the regional Federal Reserve banks, approving these interventions in foreign currencies, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve will simply now consult with a subcommittee. But more troubling, the New York Fed has gained enormous power in the process. The minutes state: “authority to approve subsequent drawings of a more routine character for either the dollar or foreign currency liquidity swap lines may be delegated to the Manager [Potter], in consultation with the Chairman.”
Simon Potter already wields enormous and nontransparent power in financial markets. Potter is head of the Markets Group which oversees a sprawling trading operation at the New York Fed. Of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, only the New York Fed has a trading floor rivaling that of Goldman Sachs. Potter is also Manager of the System Open Market Account (SOMA) at the New York Fed. According to the Fed’s web site, SOMA operations are designed to influence bank reserves, money market conditions, and monetary aggregates.
The New York Fed has come under withering criticism for allowing CEOs of the serially prosecuted Wall Street banks to serve on its Board of Directors while it purports to function as a primary regulator of Wall Street. Despite having failed to detect and prevent the frauds that led to the financial collapse of Wall Street in 2008, it has received expanded regulatory powers under the Dodd-Frank “reform” legislation.
On July 16 of last year, the former New York State Attorney General and later Governor who attempted to drag Wall Street corruption into the light of day before it imploded the system, Eliot Spitzer, penned an article for Slate on the insidious doings of the New York Fed.
Under the headline, “Why the New York Fed Must Be Investigated,” Spitzer explained the history of the New York Fed’s role in turning a blind eye to the rigging of the global interest rate benchmark known as Libor, a benchmark impacting everything from student loans to mortgage rates to municipal borrowing costs across America. Spitzer wrote: “The New York Federal Reserve knew about Libor games being played by the banks years ago and seems to have done precious little about it—except perhaps send a memo parroting the so-called reform ideas proposed by the banks themselves. Then nothing more. No prosecutions, no inquiries of the banks to see if the illegal behavior had stopped—just a live-and-let-live attitude.”
Spitzer called for an independent special prosecutor to investigate the New York Fed, citing the deep conflicts of interests on its Board over the years:
“Well, look who was on the board: Dick Fuld of Lehman fame; Sandy Weill of Citibank; Jeff Immelt of GE—the largest beneficiary of the Fed’s commercial paper guarantees; and, of course, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, whose bank’s London derivative trades and Libor involvement make his role on the board even more absurd.”
Dimon’s two-terms totaling six years on the Board of the New York Fed ended this past December. He continued to serve even as his bank, JPMorgan Chase, was being investigated for losing $6.2 billion trading exotic derivatives with its bank depositors’ money.
And the hits just keep on coming. Last month we learned that Carmen Segarra, a former bank examiner at the New York Fed is charging in a lawsuit that she was told to change her negative review of Goldman Sachs over its inadequate conflict of interest policy. When she refused to do so, she was terminated in retaliation and escorted from the Fed premises, according to her lawsuit.
Just how long will it take Congress — that body in Washington with a 9 percent approval rating from the American people — to figure out that “just trust us” has been a killer policy when it comes to Wall Street and other people’s money.

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• WallStreetOnParade.com is a public interest web site operated by Russ and Pam Martens to help the investing public better understand systemic corruption on Wall Street. Ms. Martens is a former Wall Street veteran with a background in journalism. Mr. Martens' career spanned four decades in printing and publishing management.

How Wall Street is Bleeding Detroit Dry

Shady Wall Street dealings and massive corporate subsidies are responsible for Detroit’s financial nosedive, not worker and retiree pensions, a report published Wednesday reveals.
Released by Wallace Turbeville, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who now works for the think tank Demos, the study takes aim at Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr’s claims that workers and retirees are to blame for Detroit’s shortfall.
“To say the pension fund killed the city, it’s like if you were stabbed, strangled and blown up, did you die from the strangling?” Turbeville said, according to The Huffington Post. “That’s why I find this whole thing illogical, except for the fact somebody didn’t like pensions.”
Turbeville singles out Detroit’s risky financial dealings with big banks as “a great threat to the city.” In 2005 and 2006, the city financed its $1.6 billion in debt through a series of complex swap deals with “hidden risks.” The report explains,

The deals included provisions that would allow the banks to terminate the swaps under specified conditions and collect termination payments, which would entitle the banks to immediate payment of all projected future value of the swaps to the bank counterparties. Such conditions included a credit rating downgrade of the city to a level below “investment grade,” appointment of an emergency manager to run the city and failure of the city to make timely payments.

Turbeville states, “These swap deals were particularly ill-suited for a city like Detroit, which had been hovering on the edge of a credit rating downgrade for years… A strong case can be made that the banks that sold these swaps may have breached their ethical, and possibly legal, obligations to the city in executing these deals.”
Furthermore, massive tax subsidies to corporations—which climbed as high as $20 million annually—were a “burden on city revenues at a time when it was particularly damaging,” the report finds. These revenues were further depleted by unemployment and depopulation connected the Great Recession. This coincided with a reduction of Michigan state sharing of revenue.
Contrary to widespread belief, Detroit’s overall spending is not the culprit behind the city’s shortfall and in fact decreased 38 percent since the Great Recession. Rather, it was declining revenue, “exacerbated by complicated Wall Street deals,” that threatened Detroit’s ability to pay its expenses, the study finds.
The report accuses Orr of grossly inflating Detroit’s alleged $18 billion in debt to accelerate the push for bankruptcy filings. “While emergency manager Kevyn Orr has focused on cutting retiree benefits and reducing the city’s long-term liabilities to address the crisis, an analysis of the city’s finances reveals that his efforts are inappropriate and, in important ways, not rooted in fact,” the report concludes.
The study comes as Detroit’s bankruptcy case makes its way through the courts. Orr has been slammed by unions for forcing through bankruptcy proceedings with the support of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder in a bid to subvert local democratic process and state law. Orr has been blasted for gutting public services and diverting public dollars to pay off the big banks largely responsible for the city’s financial spiral while threatening workers’ hard-earned pensions.
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Source: Common Dreams
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China Announces That It Is Going To Stop Stockpiling U.S. Dollars

China just dropped an absolute bombshell, but it was almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media in the United States. The central bank of China has decided that it is “no longer in China’s favor to accumulate foreign-exchange reserves”. During the third quarter of 2013, China’s foreign-exchange reserves were valued at approximately $3.66 trillion. And of course the biggest chunk of that was made up of U.S. dollars. For years, China has been accumulating dollars and working hard to keep the value of the dollar up and the value of the yuan down. One of the goals has been to make Chinese products less expensive in the international marketplace. But now China has announced that the time has come for it to stop stockpiling U.S. dollars. And if that does indeed turn out to be the case, than many U.S. analysts are suggesting that China could also soon stop buying any more U.S. debt. Needless to say, all of this would be very bad for the United States.
For years, China has been systematically propping up the value of the U.S. dollar and keeping the value of the yuan artificially low. This has resulted in a massive flood of super cheap products from across the Pacific that U.S. consumers have been eagerly gobbling up.
For example, have you ever gone into a dollar store and wondered how anyone could possibly make a profit by making those products and selling them for just one dollar?
Well, the truth is that when you flip those products over you will find that almost all of them have been made outside of the United States. In fact, the words “made in China” are probably the most common words in your entire household if you are anything like the typical American.

Thanks to the massively unbalanced trade that we have had with China, tens of thousands of our businesses, millions of our jobs and trillions of our dollars have left this country and gone over to China.
And now China has apparently decided that there is not much gutting of our economy left to do and that it is time to let the dollar collapse. As I mentioned above, China has announced that it is going to stop stockpiling foreign-exchange reserves…

The People’s Bank of China said the country does not benefit any more from increases in its foreign-currency holdings, adding to signs policy makers will rein in dollar purchases that limit the yuan’s appreciation.
“It’s no longer in China’s favor to accumulate foreign-exchange reserves,” Yi Gang, a deputy governor at the central bank, said in a speech organized by China Economists 50 Forum at Tsinghua University yesterday. The monetary authority will “basically” end normal intervention in the currency market and broaden the yuan’s daily trading range, Governor Zhou Xiaochuan wrote in an article in a guidebook explaining reforms outlined last week following a Communist Party meeting. Neither Yi nor Zhou gave a timeframe for any changes.

It isn’t going to happen overnight, but the value of the U.S. dollar is going to start to go down, and all of that cheap stuff that you are used to buying at Wal-Mart and the dollar store is going to become a lot more expensive.
But of even more importance is what this latest move by China could mean for U.S. government debt. As most Americans have heard, we are heavily dependent on foreign nations such as China lending us money. Right now, China owns nearly 1.3 trillion dollars of our debt. Unfortunately, as CNBC is noting, if China is going to quit stockpiling our dollars than it is likely that they will stop stockpiling our debt as well…

Analysts see this as the PBoC hinting that it will let its currency fluctuate, without intervention, thus negating the need for holding large reserves of the dollar. And if the dollar is no longer needed, then it could look to curb its purchases of dollar-denominated assets like U.S. Treasurys.
“If they are looking to reduce these purchases going forward then, yes, you’d have to look at who the marginal buyer would be,” Richard McGuire, a senior rate strategist at Rabobank told CNBC in an interview.
“Together, with the Federal Reserve tapering its bond purchases, it has the potential to add to the bearish long-term outlook on U.S. Treasurys.”

So who is going to buy all of our debt?
That is a very good question.
If the Federal Reserve starts tapering bond purchases and China quits buying our debt, who is going to fill the void?
If there is significantly less demand for government bonds, that will cause interest rates to rise dramatically. And if interest rates rise dramatically from where they are now, that will set off the kind of nightmare scenario that I keep talking about.
In a previous article entitled “How China Can Cause The Death Of The Dollar And The Entire U.S. Financial System“, I described how China could single-handedly cause immense devastation to the U.S. economy.
China accounts for more global trade that anyone else does, and they also own more of our debt than any other nation does. If China starts dumping our dollars and our debt, much of the rest of the planet would likely follow suit and we would be in for a world of hurt.
And just this week there was another major announcement which indicates that China is getting ready to make a major move against the U.S. dollar. According to Reuters, crude oil futures may soon be pricedin yuan on the Shanghai Futures Exchange…

The Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) may price its crude oil futures contract in yuan and use medium sour crude as its benchmark, its chairman said on Thursday, adding that the bourse is speeding up preparatory work to secure regulatory approvals.
China, which overtook the United States as the world’s top oil importer in September, hopes the contract will become a benchmark in Asia and has said it would allow foreign investors to trade in the contract without setting up a local subsidiary.

If that actually happens, that will be absolutely huge.
China is the number one importer of oil in the world, and it was only a matter of time before they started to openly challenge the petrodollar.
But even I didn’t think that we would see anything like this so quickly.
The world is changing, and most Americans have absolutely no idea what this is going to mean for them. As demand for the U.S. dollar and U.S. debt goes down, the things that we buy at the store will cost a lot more, our standard of living will go down and it will become a lot more expensive for everyone (including the U.S. government) to borrow money.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much that can be done about any of this at this point. When it comes to economics, China has been playing chess while the United States has been playing checkers. And now decades of very, very foolish decisions are starting to catch up with us.
The false prosperity that most Americans are enjoying today will soon start disappearing, and most of them will have no idea why it is happening.
The years ahead are going to be very challenging, and so I hope that you are getting ready for them.
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Filthy Rich CEOs Are Lobbying to Cut Medicare, Social Security and Push the Retirement Age Back

The loudest calls for Social Security cuts are coming from CEOs who will never have to worry about their own retirement security.

The following originally appeared on OtherWords, and is cross-posted here with permission.

David Cote, the CEO of Honeywell, has more than $134 million in his personal retirement fund. If I were sitting on a nest egg that big, I might feel a bit sheepish about telling ordinary grandmas and grandpas to take a cut in their Social Security payments.
But Cote — and leaders of many other large corporations — don’t see it that way. In fact, as Congress prepares for yet another budget showdown at the end of the year, the loudest calls for Social Security cuts are coming from CEOs who will never have to worry about their own retirement security.
Two lobby groups have organized CEOs into an austerity army. One is the Fix the Debt campaign, which is spending tens of millions of dollars on slick PR tactics to garner public support for cutting popular programs like Social Security and Medicare. More than 135 chief executives have signed up as Fix the Debt spokespeople.
The other is the Business Roundtable, a 40-year-old club for about 200 of America‘s most powerful CEOs. The Roundtable doesn’t sugarcoat. They want everybody to work until age 70 before they can get Social Security.

Like Cote, these are people who are sitting on massive nest eggs of their own. According to a new report by my organization, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the Center for Effective Government, Business Roundtable CEOs have retirement accounts worth $14.5 million on average. That’s enough to generate a monthly retirement check of $86,043 starting at age 65. By contrast, the average monthly Social Security check is only $1,237.
Many of these CEOs are also shortchanging their own workers’ pension funds. General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, for example, has made his employees’ future less secure by building up a nearly $22.6 billion deficit in the company’s retirement fund.
Why do CEOs with platinum pensions care so much about cutting Social Security? The CEOs claim it’s all about patriotism. “As an American,” Cote says, “I couldn’t know about this problem and not try to do something about it.” As the Baby Boom generation ages, Cote says, we’re facing a “demographic time bomb.”
There’s a raging debate among economists about whether we’re really facing a bomb or if this is just another phony crisis. What’s clear is there are far more effective ways to ensure Social Security’s sustainability than cutting benefits.
One of the most effective ways would be to lift the cap on wages subject to Social Security taxes. Right now, just the first $113,700 of an American worker’s wage income is subject to this 12.4 percent payroll tax. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that if this cap were eliminated, it would do reduce Social Security’s projected shortfall by three times as much as raising the retirement age to 70.
It’s not hard to figure out why these powerful CEOs aren’t supporting that change. They’d have to pay way more into the system. For example, Cote received an unusually large cash payout in 2011 of $25.1 million. If the cap didn’t exist, he would’ve paid $2.6 million in Social Security taxes instead of the maximum for that year of $11,107.
If these CEOs were truly patriotic, they’d work to ensure a dignified retirement for all their fellow Americans.
Source: Alternet
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Bloomberg Kills Article Exposing Chinese Regime, Suspends Reporter

First, the controversial “media” outlet Bloomberg News, widely regarded by critics as a propaganda megaphone for the radical views of billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, reportedly censored one of its reporters by blocking publication of an article exposing cronyism and corruption among Communist China’s ruling class. Insider sources quoted in news reports said the decision to kill the story was made for “political reasons” — namely, to appease Beijing. Then, last week, award-winning investigative journalist Michael Forsythe, based in Hong Kong, was finally suspended by Bloomberg’s media empire, shattering its credibility among analysts.
The explosive story that Bloomberg refused to run reportedly detailed the myriad hidden links between one of China’s wealthiest crony capitalists and the families of ruthless Communist Party autocrats, who rule the nation with terror and an iron fist. Less than a week after killing Forsythe’s investigative article, Bloomberg bosses also declared another major China story to be off-limits. The second blocked piece, the New York Times reported in a front-page story citing four unnamed Bloomberg employees, focused on the children of senior Communist Chinese tyrants employed by foreign banks.
While most of the public exposure surrounding the Bloomberg scandal has been based on anonymous sources so far, a clearer picture of what happened behind the scenes is slowly starting to emerge. According to media reports, Editor-in-chief Matthew Winkler announced the decision late last month on a conference call, comparing it to self-censorship by news agencies inside National Socialist (Nazi) Germany decades ago. “He said, ‘If we run the story, we’ll be kicked out of China,’ ” one of the Bloomberg employees with knowledge of the scandal was quoted as saying by the Times.
The brutal Communist Party-run regime in Beijing has already retaliated against foreign media organizations in the past, including Bloomberg News, in response to coverage that offended or exposed the autocrats. Of course, Chinese “journalists,” who often double as spies for the autocracy in addition to their regular role as propagandists, are already strictly controlled, too. As reported recently by William F. Jasper for The New American, China’s so-called “journalists” were recently ordered to take new propaganda training as the regime seeks to clamp down even harder on access to information.
A few analysts have suggested that Bloomberg’s decision not to publish the story may have been linked to the company’s lucrative financial-terminal business interests, fearing that angering the regime too much could kill its extremely profitable Chinese operations entirely. When he leaves office in the near future, “Nanny” Bloomberg himself announced plans to visit Chinese rulers in Beijing. The upcoming trip has been highlighted by multiple critics of the media empire’s decision to kill the articles — especially because the Forsythe piece was reportedly set to run around the same time.

However, the primary explanation offered by inside sources, essentially that the firm did not want to have its journalists expelled from China, has also been described as plausible by analysts. The third potential option is that the story was killed to protect the reputation of the barbaric regime. Even though Bloomberg News has exposed several key China stories in the past — including articles highlighting the corrupt enrichment of well-connected Communist Party leaders and cronies — the man behind the media outlet has repeatedly shown affection for oppressive government schemes. At this point, the facts remain unclear.
Apparently under the impression that Forsythe may have revealed the Bloomberg decision to the media, the New York Post reported late last week that the journalist had been placed on unpaid leave. According to the newspaper, the investigative reporter, whose work exposing the Communist Chinese regime’s machinations has earned him several awards, was even escorted out of Bloomberg’s Hong Kong offices on November 14. He reportedly worked on the latest story for almost a year.
The company has refused to comment on Forsythe’s employment status, but sources quoted in the press said he is ultimately expected to be dismissed. Perhaps in response to the devastating news coverage surrounding the scandal, Winkler and other Bloomberg executives have claimed that the Forsythe story was not really “spiked” — claims that have largely been dismissed as misleading at best. Considering the huge amount of attention the saga has attracted, though, analysts say it is certainly possible that Bloomberg may have decided to run the story anyway. “What you have is untrue,” Winkler was quoted as saying in response to the media coverage about the scandal.
Some commentators expect Forsythe’s article to come out no matter what — and that now, it will garner even more interest. “With this story blowing up in the way it has, it seems like only a matter of time before the content of the investigative piece Forsythe was working on gets out anyway, either through Bloomberg growing a spine and just running it, or other outlets following up on the reporting,” wrote Joshua Keating at Slate. “Only now, as a certified ‘story Beijing doesn’t want you to read,’ it’s likely to get a lot more attention than it would have otherwise.”
Analysts and media commentators, of course, lambasted the decision to kill the stories, saying the ham-handed move also killed “all” of the media outlet’s remaining credibility along with the articles. However, while the scandal certainly reflects poorly on Bloomberg and its “journalism,” it also illustrates several important points. Among the key takeaways: establishment “news” coming out of Communist China should generally be regarded as propaganda until proven otherwise. Indeed, the regime in Beijing has developed a reputation as one of the worst autocracies on Earth when it comes to just about everything — but especially free speech, free thought, and a free press.
Critics of the Bloomberg decision also said the scandal showed that media company’s reports should be taken with a grain of salt, too. “As it stands now, any reporting from Bloomberg should be automatically seen as suspect, as the editor-in-chief has admitted that he will appease local governments to keep them happy, and the reporting is expected to reflect that sort of propaganda-happy posture,” noted Techdirt editor Mike Masnick, saying the scandal showed that “yet another major news organization has decided that it no longer needs credibility.” Masnick also blasted the Bloomberg editor’s alleged motivation: Not angering the Chinese regime, which he reportedly compared to appeasing the Nazis.
Of course, the latest scandal is hardly the only reason to be skeptical of Bloomberg “news.” New York City Mayor Bloomberg, the billionaire behind the media machine that shares his name, has a reputation as one of the most autocratic politicians in America. Among other extreme statist activities that contributed to his being ridiculed as “Nanny” Bloomberg and America‘s “most dangerous mayor”: Banning large sodas in New York, bankrolling totalitarian-minded politicians, squandering huge sums out of his fortune to assault gun rights across America, and more. He is also regularly criticized as a hypocrite for his fiendish efforts to disarm law-abiding Americans even as he cowers behind legions of heavily armed bodyguards. The Chinese regime, which disarmed the population amid its mass-murder and enslavement programs, also openly loathes the U.S. Second Amendment.
Separately, and perhaps even more alarming, Bloomberg is one of the billionaires at the center of the so-called “Good Club.” Participants in the radical outfit, extremist billionaires, include population-control zealots Bill Gates and Ted Turner, both of whom have either directly or indirectly contributed to and supported the Chinese dictatorship’s gruesome one-child policy, and the resulting forced abortions. CNN founder Turner even said he wants to take the schemes global, while Gates finances organizations that work with the regime to enforce it. Radical statist financier George Soros, who claimed the Communist Chinese regime should lead the “New World Order,” is a “Good Club” participant, too.
Also part of the exclusive club, which reportedly has as its mission reducing the number of humans on the planet, is none other than establishment ringleader David Rockefeller. The founder of multiple infamous organizations dedicated to advancing a deeply controversial agenda, Rockefeller has openly praised Communist Chinese dictator Mao, widely considered the greatest mass-murderer in human history. “The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao’s leadership is one of the most important and successful in history,” he opined in a 1973 piece for the New York Times. Tens of millions had already been murdered by then.
Virtually everyone outside of China and North Korea — and probably many of the people in both nations — already understands that the Communist Chinese regime is ruthless in its zeal to suppress the truth. That was no surprise; though with the autocracy’s recent appointment to the dictator-packed United Nations “Human Rights” Council, it appears that most UN member governments do not see a problem with the tyranny and vicious human rights abuses.
Whether the Bloomberg stories exposing China’s communist rulers and the crony-capitalists they enrich will eventually see the light of day remains unclear. What has become even more obvious with the latest scandal, though, is that, despite its occasional hard-hitting investigative pieces, Bloomberg News’ credibility has plunged even further. The only reason Chinese regime’s credibility did not sink along with Bloomberg’s is because it was already at rock bottom.
^{Photo of the Bloomberg LP Tower, which houses Bloomberg News: AP Images}
Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .