Showing posts with label greed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label greed. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Friday, June 4, 2010

Chaos of the Bilderbergers?:


http://www.thedailybell.com/1106/Chaos-of-the-Bilderbergers.html

The Daily Bell - Friday, June 04, 2010 – by Staff Reporter

The Bilderberg group will convene in Sitges, Spain, a resort community 30 km from Barcelona, on June 4-7. ... Intending to prolong the global economic downturn for at least another year, the Bilderberg group hopes to take advantage of the situation to set up a "global ministry of finance" as a part of the UN. ... The debt crisis in Greece that currently puts in jeopardy the entire European financial system provides a pretext for drastic measures, and both the crisis and the measures are vivid illustrations of the strategy that employs chaos to reorder the existing arrangements. The deliberately generated chaos is tightly controlled by financial institutions, major banks, and hedge funds and serves as an efficient mechanism of governance and social restructuring. – Global Research

Dominant Social Theme: All is being decided, so calm down.

Free-Market Analysis: The Bilderberg group is meeting in Spain and unlike other years there has been relatively speaking a good deal of coverage of the meeting. We have already speculated that the reason has to do with the alternative 'Net press's relentless scrutiny. Thus, for the first time, the power elite has responded by placing some articles in the mainstream press as well.

The article, excerpted above, is certainly not "mainstream" but it is written by Olga Chetverikova and has a certain academic flair. The brief author bio at the end of the article describes Chetverikova as having a "Ph.D. in History," and explains she is "Assistant Professor at Moscow State Institute of Intentional Relations of the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation." Here's some more from the article:

EU mitigation measures are paving the way for the supranational institutions ... On May 21, the EU finance ministers adopted at a meeting chaired by European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet and European Council President H. Van Rompuy the German plan of much greater budgetary coordination including penalties for states that break the EU budgetary rules. The sanctions will include suspending the voting rights of repeat offenders, withholding the funding for infrastructural development, etc. It was also proposed to subject national budgets to EU screening prior to their being debated in national legislatures. A report will be prepared by June 17 – notably, the date of the EU summit – outlining a common Eurozone policy. Other, yet more ambitious projects like full control over Eurozone national budgets by a triumvirate comprising the European Commission, the European central bank, and the Euro Group are also discussed.

The downsides of the rescue packages are the worst part of the problem. Invoking the threat of financial collapse, the EU countries serially introduced extremely unpopular austerity regimes with salary and pension freezes for state employees, welfare cuts, increased retirement ages, etc. Greece was the first but not the only country affected. The German government plans to cut spending by Euro 10b annually in 2011-2016. France abolished the annual pension for low-income families. Under the IMF pressure, Spain is launching a comprehensive reform including pension indexing freeze, pay reductions and employment cuts in the state sector, the abolition of payments to support families with recently born children, etc. Great Britain, Italy, and others are following the lead.

The consequences of the measures are hard to gauge considering that Europe is already facing serious poverty and unemployment problems (the unemployment has reached 10% of the economically active population and continues to grow, and at least 80 mln people are currently below the poverty line). Most likely, the shadow world government – the Bilderberg group – will administer to the public the dose of social problems carefully calculated to enable the elites "to offload troubled assets", retain control over the situation, and divert protests from the actual sources of problems that trigger them.

We've been grappling ourselves with these suppositions. Hamlet-like we have considered and reconsidered whether the EU crisis was in a sense planned or if it was an inevitable evolution. These things are never clear cut from the outside; perhaps it doesn't matter in terms of our analysis. We are aware that the EU elite did eventually expect the EU to travel to this parlous point. However, we maintain, as we have in the past, that the current downturn and the scrutiny of the internet itself has made it a good deal harder for the elite – the real elite (not merely the political one) – to implement further centralizing measures without a good deal of pushback.

From out point of view the anger is intense and will build over time along with "austerity" measures. Interestingly, Chetverikova seems to agree with us somewhat. She writes, above: "The consequences of the measures are hard to gauge considering that Europe is already facing serious poverty and unemployment problems (the unemployment has reached 10% of the economically active population and continues to grow, and at least 80 mln people are currently below the poverty line)."

This is a crux point. Ordinarily, the economic downturn would be attributed to the failure of capitalism and the usual leftist/populist claptrap would be rolled out. But this time the power elite is making its bid for expanded world governance when awareness of the REAL mechanisms of control is at an all time high. We have not been able to understand the haste with which the elite has acted of late.

The best reasoning we can come up with is that the elite realizes what is obvious – that its control is slipping generally as insight into its manipulations rises. It's still strange. Ramming through centralizing measures at a time of such heightened sensitivity is only going to aggravate the situation in our opinion.

When one looks back on the 20th century these days, one is astonished to find – if one is an active reader of alternative Internet sites – that the history of the 20th century is increasingly to be seen as one of falsehoods and disguises. It was, after all, money power that perhaps created the Soviet Union, generated two world wars and a slew of minor ones and generally inflicted upon the globe waves of socialism, environmentalism and fiat-money disasters.

Because we have been reading Dr. John Coleman lately, we would tend to place a good deal of these events directly at the feet of the Rothschilds who evidently and obviously dominated the 20th century and much of the 19th as well. Even the Bilderberger meeting, itself, strikes us as a conference, to a degree for high-level functionaries. These may be asked for advice but are probably being told what is in store for them in the upcoming 12 months.

Certainly, the elite is an admixture of the specific families and individuals plus a few institutional (religious) power centers. But the Rothschild's money-power has likely grown precipitously to unbelievable of amounts as a result of the fiat-money mechanism. The result is that the real decisions are taken by a tiny handful with their own agenda and motives.

Being human, even the elite can miscalculate. Did the power elite move too fast in the teeth of a great communication revolution? We tend to believe the current downturns in the West are stronger and more intractable than was anticipated – and that the elite will have a harder time controlling them. We think various elite dominant social themes are misfiring and that keeping them running smoothly may be difficult.

Conclusion: Historian Chetverikova writes, "Most likely, the shadow world government – the Bilderberg group – will administer to the public the dose of social problems carefully calculated to enable the elites ... retain control over the situation, and divert protests from the actual sources of problems that trigger them." We are not so sure. We will continue to scrutinize the memes of the elite to see how they are being received and whether any of them are eroding further. By their conversations ye shall know them.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

BP Disaster Caused by a Nasty Mix of Government Impotence and Corporate Rule:


http://www.alternet.org/economy/147081/hightower%3A_who_the_hell%27s_in_charge_here_bp_disaster_caused_by_a_nasty_mix_of_government_impotence_and_corporate_rule?page=entire

"What we're witnessing is not merely a human and environmental horror, but also an appalling deterioration in our nation's governance."



Many news reports about the Gulf oil catastrophe refer to it as a "spill." Wrong. A spill is a minor "oops" — one accidentally spills milks, for example, and from childhood, we're taught the old aphorism: "Don't cry over spilt milk." What's in the Gulf isn't milk and it wasn't spilt. The explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon well was the inevitable result of deliberate decisions made by avaricious corporate executives, laissez faire politicians and obsequious regulators.

As the ruinous gulf oil blowout spreads onto land, over wildlife, across the ocean floor and into people's lives, it raises a fundamental question for all of us Americans: Who the hell's in charge here? What we're witnessing is not merely a human and environmental horror, but also an appalling deterioration in our nation's governance. Just as we saw in Wall Street's devastating economic disaster and in Massey Energy's murderous explosion inside its Upper Big Branch coal mine, the nastiness in the gulf is baring an ugly truth that We the People must finally face: We are living under de facto corporate rule that has rendered our government impotent.

Thirty years of laissez-faire, ideological nonsense (pushed upon us with a vengeance in the past decade) has transformed government into a subsidiary of corporate power. Wall Street, Massey, BP and its partners — all were allowed to become their own "regulators" and officially encouraged to put their short-term profit interests over the public interest.

Let's not forget that on April 2, barely two weeks before Deepwater Horizon blew and 11 people perished on the spot, the public's No. 1 official, Barack Obama, trumpeted his support for more deepwater oil drilling, blithely regurgitating Big Oil's big lie: "Oil rigs today generally don't cause spills." He and his advisors had not bothered to check the truth of that — they simply took the industry's word. That's not governing, it's aiding and abetting profiteers, and it's a pathetic performance.

But that was only the start of Washington's oily confession that it has surrendered control to corporate arrogance and avarice.

With an unprecedented volume of crude gushing from the well and the magnitude of the disaster multiplying geometrically by the day, who was in charge of coping with that? Not the White House, not the interior secretary, not the EPA. As we saw when Wall Street's greed exploded our economy, the polluting scoundrels were left in charge!

While BP's dapper CEO issued patently ridiculous statements (such as, "Everything we can see at the moment suggests that the overall environmental impact of this will be very, very modest."), our government blindly went along with BP's false assertion that only some 5,000 barrels a day were pouring from the well, when independent experts were shouting at the White House that the correct volume was up to 19 times that much.

Finally, almost a month after the blowout, Obama ordered a moratorium on drilling new offshore wells and on granting environmental waivers to the oil giants. Bravo, Mr. President! But ... his moratorium was simply ignored. Days after his order, oil companies were handed at least seven more drilling permits and five waivers.

Last week, with 63 percent of the public disapproving of his meek deference to BP, the president of the United States of America was reduced to convening a press conference to insist that he was "engaged" and, behind the scenes, was "monitoring" BP's efforts.

Wow, monitoring! Excuse me, but who's the president here? Obama should personally take charge —-cancel all of his social and political events, convene an emergency response team of the best scientific minds in the world, announce a clear plan of clean-up actions, install all relevant Cabinet officials in a Gulf Coast command center to direct the actions, make daily reports on progress to the public, fire a mess of failed regulators and go to Congress with sweeping legislation to replace America's oil dependency with a crash program of conservation and renewable energy sources.

Oh, he should also wring a few corporate necks. Instead of monitoring these criminals, prosecute them — and put the public back in charge of our government.

Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Cap-and-Trade: A Scam Based on a Scam...


http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/23046

The Canada Free Press
By Alan Caruba
Tuesday, May 11, 2010

It is almost beyond comprehension that Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) will introduce the Cap-and-Trade Act on Wednesday, May 12th, for consideration by the Senate.

It is being passed off as a “climate bill” with provisions for more oil drilling, but it is an assault on reality, on science, on common sense, and on any future economic growth of the nation.

The nation’s prisons are filled with men still claiming to be innocent after trials filled with evidence of their guilt. Denial of the truth is their last resort and this metaphor reflects what is happening in the utterly corrupt community of “global warming” liars and their associates in the U.S. government.

Recently 225 “scientists” wrote a letter defending global warming. It was published in the journal “Science”, one of the many such publications that have become as corrupt as those at the center of the global warming scam.

Based on last November’s leaked emails among those most responsible for the data at the heart of the global warming scam, it was revealed that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had been systematically publishing false climate information and analysis.

Moreover, the photo used to illustrate the “scientists” letter was photo-shopped to show a polar bear on a small piece of ice surrounded by water. The deception included the fact that many of the signatories to the letter lack credibility. Among the first 20 listed, none work in the field of climate science.

As reported by Tony Hake of Climate Change Examiner, “Pediatric surgeons, an expert in the Maya and Olmec civilizations, a chemist that studies bacteria, and a ‘computer pioneer’ with Microsoft, an electrical engineer, the chairman of a biotechnology firm, and even an expert studying corn are but a few of the 225 experts that signed the letter.”

Dr. Gerhard Kramm, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, fired off a letter disputing the usual claim that human activity is causing carbon dioxide emissions that are, in turn, causing global warming. “Until today, there is no scientific evidence that an increase of the globally averaged near-surface temperature by less than one Kelvin during the last 160 years can be linked to the increase of the atmospheric concentrations of so-called greenhouse gases.”

There is no global warming. Whatever warming occurred followed the end of a mini ice age that began around 1350. Around 1850 the Earth’s temperature increased about one degree Fahrenheit to its current level.

The United Nations has been the locus of the greatest hoax perpetrated in the modern era, codified in the bogus Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement that many nations signed onto in1997. The Clinton administration signed the agreement, but did not implement it due to a Senate resolution that unanimously rejected it.

The real aim of the global warming scam is the prospect of selling “carbon credits” in exchanges around the world, in effect selling air!

Cap-and-Trade Act: Constitute the greatest tax on energy use in the history of the nation

If the Cap-and-Trade Act is passed at the urging of the Obama administration, it will constitute the greatest tax on energy use in the history of the nation and it will energize exchanges, such as the one in Chicago, set up to buy and sell the carbon credits.

As reported by Investor’s Business Daily on May 7, “The carbon trading system being pushed here has spawned crime and fraud across the pond. Cap-and-Trade is not about saving the planet. It’s about money and power, and absolute power corrupting absolutely.”

The European Emissions Trading System is a warning to America. IBD described it as “a scam built upon a scam.” British and German law enforcement authorities have been busy arresting miscreants “as part of a pan-European crackdown on carbon credit VAT tax fraud.” And VAT, a valued added tax, is being advanced in the United States as a way to raise money to pay off our ever increasing debt.

“Last December,” reported IBD, “Europol, the European criminal intelligence agency, announced that Emissions Trade System fraud had resulted in about five billion euros in lost revenues as Europe’s carbon traders schemed to avoid paying Europe’s VAT and pocket the difference. In announcing the raid, the agency said that as much as 90% of Europe’s carbon trades were the result of fraudulent activity.”

The entire global warming theory has been a scam, a hoax and a fraud from the day it was first put forth. Its advocates, corrupt scientists, corrupted science journals, and all of the environmental organizations are hoping the same Congress that foisted Obamacare on Americans will do the same with Cap-and-Trade.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Buffett defends Goldman, joins greed Conspiracy:


By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/buffett-defends-goldman-joins-greed-conspiracy-2010-05-11

May 11, 2010, 3:33 a.m. EDT

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Warning: Bears taking over. Time to short Buffett's new "Baby Berkshires," short Goldman, short Moody's and other favorites of Uncle Warren.

Why? Behind the façade, the lovable, good ol' Uncle Warren strumming his cute little ukulele, ostensibly supporting reform, there's a dark force that's part of the toxic Goldman Conspiracy fighting to keep alive everything that's wrong with Wall Street, everything that got us into this mess, everything that will trigger another meltdown that even Uncle Warren says: "I can guarantee it."

Buffett belongs to the past while the news screams of a new world order ... Riots in Greece, more coming when the other PIIGS demand EU bailouts ... conservatives regain Britain ... unregulated BP's greed is spilling millions of gallons of oil destroying Gulf states, confirming Foreign Policy magazine warning of the "End of the Age of Oil" ... the Dow's techno-fear-driven irrational 1,000-point plunge as technicians turn bearish, ending the year-long bull rally ... even Hank Paulson's changing his tune, warning the Financial Crisis Commission that we need stronger reforms than Dobb's Senate bill.

Meanwhile, out there, seemingly oblivious of the gathering storm is an aging Woodstock hippy, good Ol' Uncle Warren strumming away on his ukulele, an over-the-hill rock star basking in the adulation of 40,000 adoring shareholders at their annual meeting in Omaha's Qwest Center ... a scene reminding us of Nero fiddling as Rome burns ... of the string quartet playing on the deck of the sinking Titanic ... of a Shakespearean tragedy with a raging, blind King Lear trapped, in denial of his role in America's collapsing empire.

Yes, folks, Uncle Warren has a bad case of denial. Remember, not too long ago Buffett was calling derivatives "weapons of financial mass destruction." And yet, there he was on stage at his love fest last week defending Wall Street's most toxic companies, trapped in denial, defending the greedy culture that got America into its current mess:

Praising Moody's "business mode," and by inference all rating agencies that blindly rubberstamped Wall Street's toxic debt, setting up the last meltdown

Defending Goldman Sachs bad behavior despite the fraud suit and a possible criminal indictment (while hiding his own conflicts of interest as a big investor in both Moody's and Goldman)

Praising Goldman's CEO Lloyd Blankfein ... by far Wall Street's greediest fat-cat banker who paid himself $68 million of his stockholders profits last year

Defending Goldman with a bizarre argument that Goldman is no more guilty than the other Wall Street banks, a tacit approval of the bad behavior of all Wall Street banks in the Goldman Conspiracy

Worse, ol' Uncle Warren also tried deflecting attention from Wall Street's corrupt business model by blaming government regulators for the meltdown, another example of Uncle Warren's blind denial, ignoring the fact that in the past year Wall Street spent over $400 million on lobbyists and campaign cash to make absolutely certain regulators, Congress and the Obama team all played along with Buffett's songs that guarantee Wall Street controls Washington regulators

Ironically, all this comes from a man who once lectured Congress on "Moral Integrity: I want employees to ask themselves whether they are willing to have any contemplated act appear on the front page of their local paper the next day, read by their spouses, children, and friends ... Lose money for my firm and I will be understanding; lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless"

Yes, Buffett's in denial ... just like his banker buddies ... so short Buffett, short Baby Berkshire, short Goldman, short Moody's. Why? They are all "shorting America," piling on debt that's pushed our debt-to-GDP ratio to 92%, past the IMF's 90% danger zone.

Main Street's also in denial ... forget hedger John Paulson's crooked subprime deals that made him and Goldman billions ... forget the hedgers in Michael Lewis' new "The Big Short" ... it's not the hedgers shorting America, it's the bosses inside Wall Street banks, their greedy co-conspirators inside Washington and now Uncle Warren, a nice guy who once thought derivatives were evil "weapons of financial mass destruction," but who's now defending every weapon Wall Street will use to stay in "business as usual," beating Main Street's 95 million investors, a corrupt business model destroying from within.

Wall Street's denial is blinding: Buffett and his merry band can no longer see how blind they are. They just keep strumming the same ol' tunes. Well folks, until they stop shorting America, we'll just keep reminding you of the debt their business model is creating.

So here are my best estimates, mostly from reported resources, of the huge debts Wall Street is dumping on America, the big bubble they're already blowing, driving the global economy headlong into another meltdown that will trigger the Great Depression II. And likely, with all this debt, soon you can bet taxpayers will stage a revolution making Main Street American streets far worse than Athens:

1. Federal government debt ... $14.3 trillion

Federal debt limit doubled since 2005 to $14.3 trillion limit. Bush/Cheney wars pushed U.S. deep into a debt hole. Military kills 54% of budget. Expect 4% deficits through 2020.

2. Treasury and Fed cheap-money policies ... $23.7 trillion

The Fed's shadowy printing presses have created an estimated but unaudited $23.7 trillion in credits, grants, loans and guarantees, backed by taxpayers. Pure profit.

3. Social Security's rising debt ... $40 trillion

Soon we must either cut benefits or raise taxes 40%. Delays worsen solutions. By 2035 Social Security and Medicare will eat up the entire federal budget, other than defense.

4. Medicare's unfunded debt ... $60 trillion

Going broke faster than Social Security. Prescription-drug benefit added an unfunded $8.1 trillion. In 5 years estimates rose from about $35 trillion to over $60 trillion now.

5. Annual health-care costs ... $2.5 trillion

Costs rising faster than inflation. Burden increasingly shifted to employees. Recent Obamacare plan would have cost $90 billion annually, paid to Big Pharma and insurers.

6. Secretive global derivatives trading ... $604 trillion

Wall Street resists all regulation of their gambling casino that leverages the combined $50 trillion GDP of all nations by a 12:1 ratio. Warning: Less than 2% of Wall Street's derivative bets triggered the last meltdown. Buffett "guarantees" it will happen again.

7. Population growth of 50% vs. Peak Oil demands ... $30 trillion

United Nations says global population is increasing from 6 billion to 9 billion by 2050. China and India need 500 new cities each. Billions more humans want autos, using up limited resources, shifting more costs to America, as commodity price increases and new resource wars.

8. U.S. dollar losing as reserve currency ... $20 trillion

As China's economy rockets past America's, the dollar will be replaced as the chief foreign reserves. The shift will devalue the relative worth of all America's assets.

9. Global real estate losses ... $15 trillion

Commercial real estate is bloating 25% of U.S. bank balance sheets. Dubai Tower, world's tallest, is empty. China collapse will upstage, further depress America's market.

10. Foreign trade and ownership ... $5 trillion

Foreigners own more than $2.5 trillion of America. China holds over $1 trillion Treasury debt. $40 billion new deficits added monthly. Total climbing at $400 billion annually.

11. State and local budget and pension shortfalls ... $3.5 trillion

Shortfalls of $110 billion in 2010, $178 billion in 2011. On top of more than $450 billion in annual shortfalls in local government employee pension funds. L.A.'s near bankruptcy.

12. Corporate pensions plus 401(k) plans ... $3.2 trillion

Only 30% of Americans have enough to retire. There's $2.7 trillion in 401(k) plans. And 92% of corporate pension plans are underfunded, with defaults guaranteed by taxpayers.

13. Consumer card debt ... $2.5 trillion

Americans are still living beyond their means. Even with a downturn, consumer debt rose from about $2.3 trillion to $2.5 trillion. Fat Cat Bankers love it, yes, love making matters worse by gouging cardholders and mortgagees, blocking help in foreclosures and bankruptcies.

14. Lobbyists annual costs ... $1.4 trillion

Wall Street bankers, Corporate CEOs and Forbes 400 Richest spend billions to influence elected officials, regulators and bureaucrats with lobbyists and campaign donations to exercise power over government. Voters are easily manipulated, but it takes lots of cash.

The total of all 14 categories of debt is a mind-blowing $825 trillion that includes "apples and oranges," jet fighters, derivatives and insurance fees, credit cards, autos and mortgages. There are more, and of course these are just estimates. Given the lack of transparency on Wall Street and in Washington, our debt is likely over $1,000 trillion.

What must you do? Wake up, drop your denial, get active, demand guys like Uncle Warren, his fat-cat buddies and Obama's team snap out of their denial, fight a return to the old greedy, toxic, destructive culture ... demand that your elected reps in Washington pass 1930's-style financial reforms ... or America will soon trigger a bigger meltdown, a new Great Depression II and no longer be the world's leading superpower.