Rolling Stone: The BIG Takeover -- Excellent 8 pg. Article
"It's over — we're officially, royally f*cked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.
The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That's $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG's 2008 losses).
So it's time to admit it: We're fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it is that we're still in denial — we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American Dream. When Geithner announced the new $30 billion bailout, the party line was that poor AIG was just a victim of a lot of shitty luck — bad year for business, you know, what with the financial crisis and all. Edward Liddy, the company's CEO, actually compared it to catching a cold: "The marketplace is a pretty crummy place to be right now," he said. "When the world catches pneumonia, we get it too." In a pathetic attempt at name-dropping, he even whined that AIG was being "consumed by the same issues that are driving house prices down and 401K statements down and Warren Buffet's investment portfolio down."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_...
I finally got around to
I finally got around to reading this article. The part about all the secrecy at the Federal Reserve was especially appropriate after today's fax bomb. I thought it was very enlightening. A must read for all.
This is an excellent article, to a point.
So what's not to love about an article that slams corrupt political insiders, Wall Street bankers, and even (gasp) the Federal Reserve?
I guess it is that it tries to completely explain this current mess in terms of greed and stupidity.
True, it does acknowledge that the "greed" transcends the mere accumulation of wealth; and correctly describes it as a move to consolidate political power.
However, it leaves us with the impression that this was all just an unlucky accident, created by a general climate of de-regulation and unscrupulous wheeler-dealers, rather than the result of a multi-generational, global conspiracy dedicated to destroying the American middle class and instituting one world government.
That "little" oversight turns what could have been a tremendous expose into just another ideological rant.
And it also deflects attention away from the ROOT CAUSE of everything it purports to expose.
Too little, too late, and too off target.
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Natural Law and Natural Rights
http://jim.com/rights.html
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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."
excellent read.
after reading this and e-mailing to thank the author, i sent it to everyone i know. my daughter printed it out and my husband made copies and is giving it to everyone he knows. great article for exposing the bastards and their connections to the government. the author says he really likes ron paul for voting his conscience.
Very nice article.
It is nice to see that some people still have courage.
Peace
www.youtube.com/truefictions
Missed one point, though.
They quoted one source and let it stand:
"They had some back room somewhere where a bunch of Indian guys who'd been doing nothing but math for God knows how many years would come up with some kind of model saying that this or that combination of debtors would only default once every 10,000 years," says one
young trader who sold CDOs for a major investment bank. "It was nuts."
What happened was a mathemetician noticed that prices tracked risk, and came up with a formula to predict risk based on price.
Then they made the fatal mistake: They used this price-based formula to make risk-evaluations and used them to drive purchasing decisions.
The problem was that price HAD been tracking risk because people did a lot of examination of the underlying assets to determine their risk and used this to make buy/sell/price decisions. Using this formula in this way, once enough people were doing it to affect the price, replaced real measurements and injected the output back into the input. They created a massive positive feedback loop, driven, not by risk information, but by unrelated market signals (which it now brought in, through the price, and magnified).
And they made a second mistake: Using this to provide a risk assessment on things where risk was hard to assess through normal means. This meant that there was little true risk signal in the price in the first place - while the addition of the methodology immediately drove demand up, which drove price up, which drove the signal up. So you had, not just positive feedback, but a bogus "up" signal to get it destabilized in the bubble direction.
Now the equities market is used to this sort of thing: It happens all the time, when people come up with a model to predict PRICES by estimating VALUE from price signals. It's the old game of the chartists vs. the value traders. As soon as a lot of people use the tool to make trading decisions the market's feedback makes the tool stop working. Depending on the tool the market may become excessively stable or drive to a bubble or bust, until enough money drains from the chartists to the value traders that the chartists abandon the tool or go broke.
But the SECURITIES market isn't used to this sort of pathology in estimation of RISK. So the players weren't watching for it.
My bet is that some young turks (like the named parties) latched onto a new tool which worked (at first, and against historic data). And (like self-promoting ivy-league grads often do) they took over a niche and deflected criticism, squeezing out the critics and building up their own power. Then the tool broke in their hands.
Maybe they figured out why - but by then they were stuck to the tar baby. But if so they couldn't admit that the tool was now broken. It would immediately crash their companies and thier own reputatoins and jobs. So either they kept going out of ignorance of what was happening or out of covering their own butts - until the bubble inflated until it started to leak.
This happened when housing got overbuilt, prices slowed their climb and started to drop, and the risky mortgages of the later stages started to default. This caused enough concern that a real risk signal started intruding on the price of the CDOs.
And once the price started down, the tool immediately started raising its risk assessment, which drove the prices down further. Now the positive feedback was driving the bust.
This will, of course, continue to happen with any investment on which the tool is applied, as long it drives a significant part of the market decisions. And the hell of it is: If everbody stops using it it will START WORKING AGAIN - until they start using it and again break it.
What will stop this pathology is the general realization that the tool can ONLY be used for OBSERVATION and NOT for MAKING MARKET DECISIONS.
(Or at least market decisions of that form. It might be useful for detecting when somebody else is using it, in order to bet against him. That would suck his money into the other player's pocket and tend to re-stabilize the market.)
= = = =
"Obama’s Economists: ‘Stimulus’ Has Cost $278,000 per Job."
That means: For each job "created or saved" about five were destroyed.
Significant testimony links AIG to 9/11
"Jack Blood of gcnlive.com interviews Richard Andrew Grove, an AIG insider and whistleblower. This is an insider expose of AIG/Kroll, their ties to 9/11 and the new financial 9/11."
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6546044203900048624&...
-posted on other thread
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/86562
coup d'état
This is a great article that takes the discussion to another level:
These are very strong words
The ongoing lies and corruption are pieces that fit together to bring us a clear picture. I think the writer is absolutely accurate in the strong words used - we are witnessing a coup.
Our nation has subjugated the control and creation of our money to private banks thus relinquishing our national sovereignty; effectively we have become a client state. Neither a Democracy nor a Republic may exist when the greatest power of the nation is held in the hands of private banks.
The cancer started in 1913 with the Federal Reserve Act and has been rotting away at our fiber and sovereignty ever since.
Larry
END the FED before it ENDS US
END the FED before it ENDS US
4GodinVA
You didn't learn a lick of stick about socialism ..GO live in RUSSIA if that other plan suits you.. " DISTRIBUTISM " HA!!
you-no
Hey confusion ... Distributism is not Socialism
In fact, Distributism is the opposite of socialism. It's about as many people as possible owning their own homesteads and businesses (no more being wage slaves). It's about outlawing chain stores so a multitude of local people have an opportunity to own local stores. It's about promoting family businesses where the families don't have to compete with slave labor overseas or big box retailers in their own backyard. It's about local farmers selling their goods locally. It's also about politicians having to live next door to the people they represent (much incentive for not screwing your constituents here). It's about people living where they work and working where they live ... no more bedroom communities or suburbs (yuck!) or hour long commutes.
Human nature being fallen, Distributism is about protecting human beings and small businesses from being taken advantage of by rich, predatory competitors. There wouldn't be a stock exchange under Distributism. (You may remember that Rothschild made his millions by causing a selling panic in London. It took him just one day to "own" England. If you think that's fair, wait till you see what the Rothschilds have in store for your family under our present government).
Today, everyone has tunnel vision ... they think the choice is either capitalism or communism. Well, I'm happy to report that there are far better alternatives than either of these two manipulative, loser systems. And the best one is Distributism!
Go read a book!
Synchronicity abounds still!
I was just talking with another human within the past few days and other times about this very thing, but this is the first time I have heard of it worded architecturally. I was discussing the antiquity of the centralized power structure and the birth of the truly distributed human society and consciousness. I will have to look up Distributism now.
Learn more every day!
Thanks :)!
In balance!
So your system would outlaw
chain stores and the stock exchange? Sounds as if you'd need to keep a pretty strong government enforcer to make people live the way you see fit.
Actually no...
...there would not need to be a strong central organization anymore. That is part of what is happening now. There is no longer a need for a powerful centralized governing body. With the free flow of information now, a distributed system is much more easily managed. In the olden days when only the pony express was available instead of databases and WANs centralization was more necessary. It's outlived its usefulness.
what a great read
one of the best articles I have ever read on DP.
Thank you for posting.
"(Better) to be confused in the search for truth than fully confident and sound asleep in a dream of lies." ~ Michael Nystrom
http://www.votenader.org/blog/2008/09/10/statement-to-ron-pa...
Website:
http://www.libertypoet.com/
Twitter:
http://twitter.com/LibertyPoet
"How can we justify to the unemployed and underemployed in the United States the incredible cost of maintaining a global empire?" - Dr. Ron Paul
That was VERY enlightening!
That was VERY enlightening! Of course, it left me even angrier than I was about the whole thing. The entire system is so completely corrupt, I cannot imagine how it can be cleaned up. Total collapse looks like the only way out.
Pat
BOHICA!!
Pat
BOHICA!!
A Communist is merely a Capitalist ...
... who stacks the deck in his own favor. Communists and capitalists are half brothers ... their mother is godless materialism (which ALWAYS provokes men to greed without regard for the rights of others). Their fathers are different ... Marx and Jefferson ... but as Marx's method, once instituted, is almost 100% foolproof and Jefferson's method is always dicey (someone else may invent a bigger, better, cheaper widget than the one you are selling), greedy men will always opt for the Marxist method.
There is a far better system, called Distributism. It's aim is to control bigness while supporting the widest possible distribution of private property and the means of production. In it, nobody gets filthy rich but each person or family has an abundance of all the necessities of life ... which means they live a secure life. Most government would be local (called the principle of subsidiarity), so politicians are answerable to their neighbors.
G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc wrote extensively on Distributism. They were astute historians and newsmen in England and watched English capitalism (the Rothschild empire) up close. They saw the swindle going on.
Even if we could turn back the clock to the 1700's, history would repeat itself ... human nature doesn't change. Greed will beget the same result because the rich will always have more clout than the little guy.
Organized Collapse
I find it hard to beleive that the Govt. doesn't understand the implications of their current monetary policies and they are in fact collapsing our economy on purpose. Stealing every last drop of wealth from the citizens along with a huge power grab. Pretty soon they'll be confiscating all our guns, our precious metals & all our liberties all for the sake of the good of the people.
Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws - Mayer Amschel Rothschild
An alternative is that they
An alternative is that they see the collapse coming and are using it as an excuse to raid the rest of the value of the serfs' property and future earnings, distributing it among themselves.
Planning something like this in advance implies far more competence than they have demonstrated. But taking advantage of it when it happens is within the reach of opportunism even without exceptional brainpower.
As they say: "Never waste a good crisis."
= = = =
"Obama’s Economists: ‘Stimulus’ Has Cost $278,000 per Job."
That means: For each job "created or saved" about five were destroyed.
Fabulous.... well worth the time.
"Not armies, not nations, have advanced the race; but here and there, in the course of ages, an individual has stood up and cast his shadow over the world." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6pAcBXt2j8
Thomas Jefferson: “Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever."
Viva La Revolucion!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmaTNf4YhEs
Excellent Article!!
I, also, was a bit disturbed by the unlying theme that AIG took advantage of areas not sufficiently regulated...I don't trust the US Government and the European Union...but those eight pages gave me time to THINK about this. Sounds like the Fed, which seems to be immune to any Congressional oversight, has become a de facto fourth branch of government. The other three branches are government are indeed regulated in a "checks and balances" way by the CONSTITUTION.
Am I oversimplifying or misunderstanding something here?
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson
Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem. ("I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude"). Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 30 January 1787.
You got it.IMHO though a
You got it.
IMHO though a part of the bailout is to keep the leviathons alive so their screwups can be used as an excuse for more regulation. Without the bailout they would fail and their example would make people loath to invest in similar operations in the future. Bailing them out prevents this.
Of course regulating them is an excuse to regulate all the other little fish. As you can see, the big guys can buy ways to escape regulators.
= = = =
"Obama’s Economists: ‘Stimulus’ Has Cost $278,000 per Job."
That means: For each job "created or saved" about five were destroyed.
Bottom line is on page 6
"Market analyst Eric Salzman is more blunt. "If AIG went down," he says, "there was a good chance Goldman would not be able to collect." The AIG bailout, in effect, was Goldman bailing out Goldman.
Eventually, Paulson went a step further, elevating another ex-Goldmanite named Edward Liddy to run AIG — a company whose bailout money would be coming, in part, from the newly created TARP program, administered by another Goldman banker named Neel Kashkari."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
World's Greatest Business
http://www.gbemembers.com/webintro.php?view=wmv
"The Number one reason people lose money is the FEAR of losing money." Sir John Templeton
"GINO" = Government In Name Only
Study History
When the Romans figured this out in 70ad, they went and leveled a certain temple, but apparently it was not enough...
www.iamthewitness.com/
Cows think they are free, this is no bull, the beast must be Fed, with pitchfork instead
Cows think they are free, this is no bull, the beast must be Fed, with pitchfork instead
Greedy capitalists
Guys don't rush to judgement here, sure there's lots of the familiar "greedy capitalists" bull here, BUT - notice the vitriolic tone whenever the Fed is mentioned. This is valuable!! Remember Lew Rockwell saying when he was a youngster, the Fed was something like an Ark of the Covenant - impenetrable, incrutable, unknowable. Nobody knew anything about it (most people didn't even know it existed), nobody thought to ask any questions about it and CERTAINLY nobody dared to criticize it!
And today we have a major article in a major magazine dropping hydrogen bombs at this once sacred cancerous institution. This makes me mighty optimistic. We are getting somewhere folks!
They are not dropping hydrogen bombs ...
They're water balloons. The people have no recourse and, if they did, they couldn't get together enough to do anything with it.
Everything is out in the open now because the game is just about over. We have become a communist country (some of us just don't know it yet ... but the proofs will be plentiful for those who observe).
Water balloons
maybe, but compared to how the Fed was treated only several years ago, they are truly bombs.
And communist country? Oh no, my friend, I've lived in a communist country for !5 years and trust me - you have a long way to go.
The freedoms we have today ...
... could be gone tomorrow. They're itching to declare martial law. I'd say that the one and only thing they're worried about are the guns in private hands. They're trying to neutralize gun owners by making ammunition scarce. It's a sure sign they plan to move against us.
The Fed doesn't care how it's treated, so long as it keeps its power. I haven't noticed where they've given up any power at all. In fact, their bailouts keep proving they're more powerful than ever.
I hate to say it but I think we are all going to be living under a communist government in the near future.
Great find!
Thx.
Good article
I like to read the comments. I hope some of you will be posting some good ones to enlighten the masses.
Healthnut4freedom
"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths." Proverbs 3:5,6
Healthnut4freedom
The lip of truth shall be established forever: but a lying tongue is but for a moment...Lying lips are abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly are His delight. Prov 12:19,22
Quotes Ron Paul's Aide Paul-Martin Foss on P.7
"They're supposed to be temporary," says Paul-Martin Foss, an aide to Rep. Ron Paul. "But we keep getting notices every six months or so that they're being renewed. They just sort of quietly announce it."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_...
This article is scary. The liberal Rolling Stone reading population are going to get it about the Fed.
I agree this is a scary development.
The R.S. is very influential to a wide swath of liberal ideologues. this article could take them a big first step toward realizing their beloved Democrats are maybe just as clueless or corrupt as the Republicans. Once their faith is rattled, their minds may begin to open to reality.
The ripples from this revolutionary article could churn up some really big waves. I hope to see more articles from the author. It would be wonderful if some of our most enlightened economic scholars could be in contact with him. I was very thankful he mentioned Ron Paul's aid respectfully.