FedUpUSA

Archive for October 4th, 2011

Here we have a snapshot of today’s Dow Jones Industrial average.  Pretty impressive there.  What you might ask, would cause the Dow Jones Industrial average to rise from down 200 points (where it had been most of the day) to up 153 points in the space of 45 minutes at 3:00 pm ET?  Well, for the average person, the answer isn’t such good news.  From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

BRUSSELS  — A Belgian newspaper is reporting that the government has promised to guarantee the survival of Dexia, a bank investors worry is overexposed to potentially bad debt from Europe’s most indebted countries.

Following a two-hour emergency cabinet meeting Tuesday evening, caretaker Prime Minister Yves Leterme said, according to De Standaard newspaper, “We are giving a new government guarantee and will take all the initiatives necessary for Dexia Belgium to consolidate. We still believe it has a future.”

The paper said Leterme gave no figure on the guarantee.

The plan involves dividing the bank and putting the problem loans — including those to Southern European countries — into a “bad bank — which both Belgian and France would agree to prop up.

Are you getting this?  The stock market, which by all accounts, is now comprised of more than 75% TBTF (Too-Big-To-Fail banks and Wall Street firms) using HFT (High Frequency Trading), is placing its bets on whether or not Dexia (another European TBTF)  will be able to successfully transfer their bad debts onto the taxpayers of Belgium.  They propose to divide Dexia into a ‘good bank’ and a ‘bad bank’.  The good bank will be retained by the private bankers and the bad bank comprised of all the defaulted, toxic loans will be transferred to the taxpayers of Belgium.  Sound like a good deal?  Well, the banks around the world think so  and they are placing their bets accordingly.  You can see it in graphic illustration above in the Dow chart.

Hopefully, the Belgians will get a reach-around, or at least a kiss after they’ve been raped.  But don’t laugh and point, because this is happening all around the world.  The entire global banking system is doing nothing but chasing their prospects of governments allowing them to commit financial rape upon their citizens and so far, the ONLY country that has said NO has been Iceland.  This is nothing short of ‘legalized’ CORRUPTION & THEFT!  The illustration below is why governments allow this to continue.  These same rapists put your politicians in office.  The bankers don’t care what party the politicians are from, just that they can be bought.

How long are you going to stand for government sanctioned financial rape?  When will you force your government to STOP THE LOOTING & START PROSECUTING?!!

Discussion  (registration required to post)

Karl Denninger appeared on today’s Dylan Ratigan show, talking about the common ground we all need to reach in order to effectively take our country back.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In summary:  STOP THE LOOTING & START PROSECUTING!

What do we have here?

“We can’t rely on monetary policy. We can’t solve the international imbalances with monetary policy, but people don’t know that yet,” warned Hoenig, who oversees banks in Colorado, which is part of the Fed’s 10th District based in Kansas City, Mo.

The core problem is that the United States has consumed more than it has produced for 20 years running. Consumers and governments in the developed world have piled on too much debt.

Uh, 30 years running.  Remember this chart?

Hoenig goes on to admit that The Fed built the asset bubbles with inappropriately-low interest rates!  That is, he makes one of my central points: It must always cost money in real terms to borrow.

What’s even better is what I’m hearing today in the Bernanke testimony on The Hill.  For the very first time I heard a Representative state clearly that Bernanke’s rate policy is enabling the drug binge of deficit spending in Congress!

Now, Congress, take the next step.  Come to the understanding that we must pay for each and every program we want to have with current tax revenues.

Yes, there will be market consequences from removing the stupidity of past acts.  But that’s unavoidable, just as you cannot avoid the fact that once you smoke crank for months or years your teeth have already rotted and will not grow back!

We still can stop further deterioration in our choppers, and we must – even if we go through a nasty round of withdrawal.

For those of you critical of the Occupy Wall Street protests: While I admit that the lead has been taken by the left, and their ‘proposed fixes’ are terrible, that doesn’t mean they are not absolutely correct in what they are doing by pointing out the criminality of Wall Street and its capture of our government. Do you LIKE the bailouts that are to this day continuing to destroy our economy and …our country?! These ongoing bailouts are the biggest welfare entitlements the world has ever known – and it has all been YOUR taxpayer money going to Wall Street!

FedUpUSA first started protesting on Wall Street in April 2008 – and we called for an occupation then too! THIS IS WHERE IT ALL STARTED!  The only thing different about our message in this video is that we do not propose more communism to solve what is essentially an already communist government/Wall Street collusion.

What is keeping Tea Party folk, independents and conservatives from joining this and changing the dialogue about remedies? Why are you allowing the message to be ‘socialism is the only alternative to Wall Street fascism?’ Oh, there’s Wall Street fascism alright, but socialism and communism are NOT the answers. The answer is to stop allowing Wall Street, Banks and special corporations to pay Congress to write favorable legislation for them, to the detriment of the rest of us. This is neither capitalism nor a democratic republic form of government. It is CORRUPTION of our system.

Why are YOU letting the message against corruption, crony bailouts, devaluation of our dollar resulting in rampant price inflation, and failure to enforce already existing law upon certain ‘exempt’ entities become co-opted by far-leftist, communist radicals? Probably the same reason many in the Tea Party allowed it to be co-opted by far-right factions screaming against gays. This is and always has been about the shadow banking system (Wall Street) controlling the quantity of money in our economy, and using that money to purchase legislation while keeping politicians in office that will continue to favor Wall Street and the Too-Big-To-Fail Banks, essentially paying our government to look the other way when Wall Street commits criminal acts.

You do realize that the reason everyone is losing their jobs, homes and our government and most individuals are up to their eyeballs in debt is because the government is funneling all of our money to the Too-Big-To-Fail Banks both here in around the world, yes? Or don’t you understand that THIS is why there has been a $32 TRILLION net worth gain for the TOP 5% in this country, while the rest of us have lost a like amount? If you believe the system that orchestrated THAT is capitalism, I have a bridge to sell you. Stop defending our current system – it hasn’t been capitalism in decades; it is a kleptocracy. And don’t try telling me that ONLY the government is to blame (yes, they are part of this) – but Wall Street is just as guilty because THIS type of thing is NOT the doing of people in government! These are uniquely wall Street ‘innovations’ – the very innovations that have brought our country to its knees with the perverse amount of leverage they have put into the financial system.

The Wall Street and corporate-money capture of our government MUST END. Pick your enemies wisely but join the battle that is worthy and if need be, change the dialogue – Just like Dylan Ratigan is talking about in the video below.

Now listen to what Dylan Ratigan has to say:

That’s what all the crooners want you to believe.

Today is 10/4.  Yesterday the S&P closed at 1099.

It also closed at 1099 on that same day in 2008.

Over the next month and a half it would fall to 750, rally for a couple of months to about 900, and then collapse to 666.

Are we about to have a repeat – or a rhyme?

Good question.  This much is not in question – we were down massively yesterday, and today Europe’s DAX, as I write this, is off a further 34%. (ed: oops – that 3% was good for 20 minutes; now it’s 4%)

What does a crash look like?  About like this.  And there’s been nothing – a literal nothing – out of our authorities on the root causes or addressing them.

Most-importantly, Republican leadership, including but not limited to those who have screamed the loudest about the IMF and other “entanglements” have been SILENT about the root of this dislocation.  NOT ONE DAMN WORD HAS PASSED THE LIPS OR KEYBOARDS OF BOEHNER, McMORRIS-ROGERS, McCONNELL, RYAN AND OTHERS ON THE RAW ABUSES AND SCAMS THAT LED TO AND IS FEEDING THIS MARKET COLLAPSE. 

The Democrats are no better – from their side of the aisle? SILENCE.

The simple fact of the matter is that this collapse is happening for the same reason the last one did:

BANKS ARE LYING ABOUT ASSET VALUES AND EXPOSURE WHILE BOTH SIDES OF THE POLITICAL AISLE ARE TOO BUSY PERFORMING INDECENT ACTS ON THE BANKSTERS, PONTIFICATING ON HOW “IMPORTANT” THEY ARE TO “AMERICAN COMPETITIVENESS”, TO PUT A STOP TO THIS CRAP.

Familiar, isn’t it?  You have banks holding Greek debt at “21%” markdowns, when the market is saying 50% – or more.  The banks claim “this is what it is” when the market disagrees, and the result is that the market pounds their stock into the dust.  This same game is transferring here, with Morgan Stanley threatening to collapse.

Credit spreads are blowing out just as they did in 2008 as well.  Why doesn’t anyone want to look at the cash bond market for these institutions and governments and then come tell me all about credit risk as the market perceives it.  And where does that risk come from?

Simple. THE LYING HAS NOT STOPPED AND THE LIARS HAVE NOT BEEN PUNISHED. 

Hell, we can’t even get one member of the clown-car brigade up above to get in front of a microphone and issue simple words condemning the lies!

The stock market cannot “discount” economic activity when companies are given free license to lie.  But that’s what happened – twice – in the last four years and nobody has gone to jail for it.

If you simply “held on” from the start of the crash in 2007, you’re down about 30%.  If you thought you were smart holding through the 666 low after October of 2008, you’re back where you started in 2008 – but you’re still down 30% from the high.  You probably felt good in March and April of this year.

How’s it working out now?

And the very real possibility that we’re going down here – and right through the 666 lows – does exist.

Your retirement accounts have been shredded twice in three years.  That’s a hell of a record, isn’t it?

The only thing you have in any economy, or in any market, is confidence.  The law says you have a right to trust a balance sheet.  That it should reflect, in all material respects, the firm’s prospects.  The firm is also under an obligation (under Reg FD) to timely disclose material adverse events – like, for instance, the fact that it has no good collateral for its daily market operations.

Did Lehman keep that implied covenant of fair dealing with the market?  With you?  Nope.

It’s time to give up on this government – here and abroad.  It’s time to give up on this market.  You will be lied to, you will watch the crimes be committed, you will lose and lose and lose again, and nothing will be done.

The most-important point of this, however, is not the stock market.  It’s that your pension funds have all been playing the “8% growth” game for three decades and spending money as if those numbers were realistic.  They weren’t.  Your pensions are not going to be paid – a fact I’ve been sounding the alarm on now for years, and if you didn’t believe it then after the ‘big rally” from 2009, you should damn well have been shaken from the events of the last two months.  It is not just Social Security and Medicare that are in trouble, it’s private and public pensions as well.  The assumptions you were sold as “reasonable” were lies and now the truth is asserting itself.

If this pattern holds and again nobody is held to account – nobody is indicted, nobody goes to jail, “primary dealers” continue to have the ability to operate in the United States despite playing these games and American firms are not forced to tell the truth or suffer severe criminal legal consequences this is not a time to buy, it’s a time to leave.  A time to withdraw your consent to be governed through any and all lawful means.  Nobody has been held to account for the events of 2008, and nobody is being held to account now.  There have been no arrests, no prosecutions, no indictments, and nobody has gone to jail.

Go ahead folks, tell me again how voting for a Donkey or an Elephant will fix it.  Just like it did in 2008, right?  You were going to get change, and you had hope.  You did your civic thing and marched off to the polls while the banksters looted you blind.

Well, we’re back where we were in October of 2008, just before you voted.

You hoped.  You thought you’d get change.

But the market is right back where it was just before you voted, unemployment is higher, the government is roughly $4 trillion in the hole more than it was in 2008 and the market is going to force an end to the government spending coverup soon as well.

How, objectively, do you rate your progress in the political sphere America?

And what do you intend to do about it?

Here’s the ugly little fact you don’t want to deal with – but you must:

Until you withdraw your consent through lawful refusal to produce that which can be taxed, force political change to take place and the thieves and liars to be held to account, it’s not going to change.  You will be shorn like sheep and occasionally one or more of you will be turned into lambchops and consumed.  How many of you have to lose your homes to abusive foreclosures – on the back of abusive lending?  How many of you need to lose your jobs to abusive offshoring in the guise of “global competition” and “free trade”?  How many of you need to have your retirement portfolios shredded once again?  You’ve lost 8% in your retirement portfolio (if in the S&P 500) in the last three days alone – how many more days of this do you need?  How many times do you need to see the people who rob you each and every day sipping champagne from their 30th floor multi-million dollar apartments while you scrounge for scraps in the street and wave signs?

You bought into the BS run in 2008 and 2009 and looked at those who dispassionately analyzed the mathematics of what was going on with a sneer.  I knew it would come to exactly what is happening now, because it had to.  We should have taken our medicine in 2000, but refused.  We had another opportunity to do it in 2007, contracting government by 25%.  We refused.

Now we must slash government – today – by 50% – into a WORSE economic downturn, in the context of unemployment and declining standards of living, than we had in 2007.

If we don’t do it?

In another couple of years we will lose the ability to choose as the required contraction will be an effective 100%, at which point we will become Greece.

We blew it America, and while there’s still time we must admit the truth and do what we can – not what we want to do, but what we can do – to stop adding to our compounding of the damage.