FedUpUSA

Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

The elites who run this country exercise power in two ways, one private, one public. Politicians and policy are manipulated through registered lobbyists on Capitol Hill, and in private meetings at lavish fundraisers. It’s all about money and access. All of this takes place behind closed doors, out of the public’s sight. The manipulation of American citizens is carried out through the corporate owned media (image left, click to enlarge). There’s nothing private about it; it’s right there in front of you on the TV. How does this work?

From yesterday in New York, which people keep trying to tell me is full of Marxists and Communists, with the entire protest run by George Soros.  And let’s not forget the allegation that they kick out anyone who actually makes sense or isn’t a Marxist.

Oh now that is a Marxist sign…

Wait a second…

I keep being told that all these people are looking for “more free stuff.”

That’s not free stuff!  That’s Restoring The Rule Of Law!

In fact, it’s exactly what I’ve been calling for in this regard for the last several years.

Oh, and for those who think that this protest is a bunch of people who have no regard for anyone else in the area?  You might want to read this:

Yeah…..

Now I have to assume that the people doing the “reporting” on this event and the people attending in NYC who are members of the mainstream media are (1) capable of reading, and (2) actually went to OWS in NY.

I haven’t gone to the NY protest, as I live 1,100 miles away and am a single parent.  I have, however, gone to our local protest, and what I keep hearing is that “oh Pensacola isn’t anything like those dope-smoking hippies in NY.”

Uh huh.

If that’s true then perhaps you can explain why I’ve got literally dozens of sets of photos like this along with descriptions of conversations that many people have had — my email box keeps getting flooded with them.  While there certainly are socialists and such present and yes, there are groups who I vehemently disagree with who have declared “solidarity” with OWS, this does not evidence that the people making said statements organized or are in control of OWS.

The evidence is simply not there to support those allegations — especially the second, which is the important one.  After all, if that allegation was true then the people depicted above would have been run out of town on a rail, and more to the point, by now, given the rank and repeated provocation by the authorities, we would have had a looting and burning spree. 

But that hasn’t happened, in stark contrast to times and places like Katrina or the various G-8 and G-20 protests, when it did.

This set of pictures was posted in “The Bar” on the forum by one of our long-time members yesterday. 

He was there.  Before you judge get some first-hand information.

The Media is LYING to you, and when you consider who pays their check isn’t the reason obvious?

Two final points and I’ll leave you to your morning coffee:

For those who say that the “occupiers” are all a bunch of law-breaking, dope-smoking hippies, perhaps you might want to explain how it is then that the Pensacola protesters actually showed up at the City Council meeting, stood and were heard in an orderly and lawful manner, and received a variance — by vote of the council?  Oh wait, that doesn’t comport with the narrative being run by the mainstream media either, does it?

The cops have been trying to suppress dissemination of video evidence of their unlawful behavior as well.  So far Google (which owns Youtube) is refusing at least some of the removal requests, although the most-recent report pre-dates these protests.  Now why would the authorities want video documentation of their lawless behavior removed from view, eh?  “Freedom of the Press”, right?  Uh huh… just like all the “mainstream media” reports of the protesters all being hippies and Communists are true…. right?

I want to know when we’re going to get apologies and retractions of the claim that Bank of America did not need any new capital.

Remember, that was a mantra.  Well, how about that deal then….

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), the biggest U.S. lender, said Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. will invest $5 billion to bolster the company after losses tied to subprime mortgages drained capital. Bank of America surged in New York trading.

Berkshire will get cumulative perpetual preferred stock paying a 6 percent dividend, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank said today in a statement. Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire also gets warrants to buy 700 million shares at $7.14 each.

Six percent eh?  That’s damn expensive money – something like 30 times the official “overnight” rate to borrow.  In addition he got warrants to buy 700 million shares at $7.14 each, which are (at this writing) about 75 cents each in the money.  Oh, and there’s no lock-up period on those either.

Can I ask an inconvenient question on the latter?  447 million shares have traded hands on BAC this morning thus far.  Were any of them shorted against the box by Berkshire, given that there are no apparent restrictions on his disposition of those warrants?

Buffett conceived of the investment while in the bathtub yesterday morning and had his assistant contact Moynihan’s to get the banker’s private number, CNBC reported, citing an interview with Buffett.

Riiiiiight.  The phone call that was reported with Obama and the incessant pumping yesterday of exactly this “idea” in the corporate media (CNBS, again) didn’t have anything to do with it I’m sure.  I’m also sure there’s no sort of backdoor deal in the wings from the government; after there there’s no record that the 2008 “investments” were ultimately backstopped by the government, right?

Oh wait… there was and they were.  Oh darn.

The market didn’t believe a word of it in the general sense, although BAC is still trading 12% higher as I write this.  We’ll see how long it lasts, or whether this simply provides incentives for the Bears to look at the facts and say “you lied about not needing capital – now we’re really going to lean into you.”

I’m getting very tired of this – isn’t there some sort of law about intentionally misleading people to their detriment?  Isn’t doing that called fraud?

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States has never defaulted on its debt and Democrats and Republicans say they don’t want it to happen now. But with partisan acrimony running at fever pitch, and Democrats and Republicans so far apart on how to tame the deficit, the unthinkable is suddenly being pondered.

No it’s not.

The government now borrows about 42 cents of every dollar it spends. Imagine that one day soon, the borrowing slams up against the current debt limit ceiling of $14.3 trillion and Congress fails to raise it. The damage would ripple across the entire economy, eventually affecting nearly every American, and rocking global markets in the process

That’s not a default.  Watch the (intentional) misdirection here:

A default would come if the government actually failed to fulfill a financial obligation, including repaying a loan or interest on that loan.

Uh, no.

“Including”?  No, not at all.

In fact a default is only the failure to pay interest or principal on a loan.  Nothing else is a default.

If the U.S. starts missing interest or principal payments, borrowers would demand higher and higher rates on new bonds, as they did with Greece, Portugal and other heavily indebted nations

The United States takes in about $2 trillion in taxes a year.  The total interest paid last year was about $180 billion, a ridiculously low blended rate, but that’s what ZIRP (zero interest rates by The Fed) get you.

Let’s assume for a moment that the blended rate was to more than double, to 4%.  That would be about $560 billion in interest a year, including interest on the Social Security and Medicare “trust funds” (which aren’t trust funds, but I’ve been over that before.)

$560 billion is about one quarter of the tax revenues that the government takes in.  So even were interest rates to more than double The United States would not default.

Investment bank J.P. Morgan Chase recently concluded that any delay in making an interest or principal payments by the Treasury “even for a very short period of time” would have large “long-term adverse consequences for Treasury finances and the U.S. economy.” The analysis is being circulated on Capitol Hill by supporters of raising the debt limit.

There is no risk of default.  What JP Morgan is putting forward would be a default, but a failure to raise the debt ceiling would not cause one, because the Government takes in far more money in taxes than it must spend on interest.  JP Morgan knows this.

Therefore, running this line of crap is an intentionally false claim and those who are doing so must be identified by specific name, title and position and then be PERMANENTLY EJECTED by the people from the public conversation and debate on this issue.

Even though GOP leaders say they want to avoid more economic chaos, there is a large crop of tea-party aligned Republicans threatening to refuse to raise the cap under almost any circumstance. Polls suggest a large percentage of Americans oppose raising the debt limit.

The people are smarter this time around.  They were lied to last time; we were told that “Armageddon” would occur if TARP wasn’t passed.  The people said “bullcrap!” to the tune of three hundred to one among callers to Congress, but Congress passed TARP anyway.

Now the banks are running the same lie that Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke ran in 2008: Either do this or the United States will “default.”

No it won’t.  A default only occurs if you can’t make the interest and principal payments. 

The United States Federal Government takes in more than ten times the amount of interest paid in fiscal 2010 in the form of taxes.  It is therefore more than able, without any increase in the debt ceiling, to meet its lawful obligations to creditors.

What it cannot do without an increase in the debt ceiling is continue to increase the amount of borrowed money that it does not have. 

In other words, a refusal to raise the debt ceiling is a Congressionally-imposed balanced budget amendment.

Since people like Jim DeMint have said they will not vote for the increase without a Constitutional Amendment requiring a balanced budget, the simplest way to get what they claim they want is to refuse to raise the debt ceiling.

Such a refusal is a balanced budget mandate that can be imposed by Congress right now and which cannot be avoided or otherwise tampered with.

STOP LYING TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE YOU BAND OF BANKSTER JACKALS!

If there IS such a thing as a fiscal responsibility party (whether it is called “Tea” or not) they must rise right now and refuse to pass ANY increase in the debt ceiling – period.

They must make clear that ANY lawmaker who votes for such a thing will be targeted for defeat in 2012 and will lose their job – no exceptions, no ifs, no ands, no buts and no maybes.

Refusing to raise the debt ceiling will not cause a default – it will, instead, force the government to live within its means.

The Market-Ticker

Thank you to Marco Nappolini, a researcher and strategist for MindfulMoney, a London-based investment news organisation for including FedUpUSA.org in their new research report, which explores the new finance-specific networks of influence. 

Of their findings, perhaps the most telling aspect is the apparent massive shift in people’s mindsets away from the mainstream media and toward independent sources:

The research confirms the existence of a network of investment super-connectors with extraordinary media influence and reach. These super-connected new influentials are, for the most part, not well established voices in the media but individual bloggers who fiercely champion their independence….In the US, the network functions as the unofficial voice of Wall Street & the US federal bank with no mainstream media players at the centre of the network.

While I personally, don’t find this shocking, it is nice to see my theory confirmed. 

According to the report, the top 20 most influential financial/economic sources are:

1. Naked Capitalism
2. Infectious Greed
3. The Big Picture
4. Jesse’s Cross Roads Cafe
5. Zerohedge
6. Mish’s Global Economic Analysis
7. Calculated Risk
8. Paul Krugman’s Blog
9. FT Alphaville
10. Ludwig von Mises Institute
11. The Market Trader [sic] (The Market-Ticker)
12. WSJ Blogs
13. The Epicurean Dealmaker
14.Credit Writedowns
15. Dealbreaker
16. China Financial Markets
17. Max Keiser
18. The Angry Bear
19. The Economist
20. Jr. Deputy Accountant

Seven of these top 20 are regularly featured here on FedUpUSA,, along with many more which didn’t make the list.  Number 11, The Market-Ticker, is where FedUpUSA began.  We try to bring people as much information as possible in one central location so that people can stay informed about our ever-changing economic situation.  Knowledge is power. 

A big thank you to all the people that work hard to bring accurate information to the public about our economic situation.  If it were left up to the mainstream media, people would still be enticed into buying stock like Bear Stearns…..3 days before it collapsed.  They’d still believe housing values always go up and they’d think our unemployment rate is really 9.4%.