tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87539020787328802502024-02-08T03:14:52.055-08:00mannfm11mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.comBlogger110125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-53714946259974398382019-01-10T16:26:00.001-08:002019-01-10T16:26:40.547-08:00TRUMP THE DISRUPTOR The government is shut down and, who is at fault? Congress. Both parties. The DNC, the RNC, K Street and a bunch of people and organizations can be grouped in with Congress. Trump? No, the problem has simmered and progressively become worse as time has passed. One third of the people of El Salvador are reportedly in the US now. They didn't just show up 1 week. Does this sound like a recent issue?<br />
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Are Americans heartless or racists, because they would like to slow, cease or limit cross border movement? I think not. What about the 300 million Indians, who would pile in immediately, of we opened the gate? Half of Africa, much of Europe and other parts of Asia would like to come as well. That is, until enough came to destroy the country by changing its philosophy and overwhelming its physical and financial resources. This issue totally threatens the middle class in the country, mainly the bottom half, which has been suffering living standard declines for decades, much due to the dilution of the labor pool with millions of unskilled immigrants, willing to undercut the domestic worker. <br />
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The press and the left needs to open their eyes and they will see why Trump has received so much support. For more than 20 years, there has been discussion about immigration, amnesty and border security. Much of the current Democratic resistance has voted for a border fence, wall or some kind of barrier, but never funded more and a pittance of the costs. Most of them are on the record in policy or campaign speeches, taking Trump's current position. 20 years and nothing of count has been done. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING OF COUNT. <br />
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It is becoming obvious that instead of doing something to solve the problems here, the parties have chosen to make the situation something to talk about during campaigns, checking the breeze enough and using it to divide during the sessions, the press then dividing the country. They all know what comes over the border, drugs, human trafficking, people looking for a better life and now, welfare seekers. The later overwhelm a part of government services that are already in peril, as American education and medical care are way out of bounds in cost, due mostly to political solutions.<br />
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20 years and nothing done. I will expand, as the entire Federal Government mechanism is about talking points and nothing about reasonable solutions. They can't pass a budget, they can't move on immigration, amnesty and border security. They merely let the problem get to a crisis point. The border has been a crisis for decades, a 3000 mile crisis. Again, 20 years of talking and nothing done, except brainwash the kids in school. We are a nation of disabled humans, from birth to grave and the most disabled are the people running the 2 parties. <br />
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I am of the opinion, after observation that if we merely put the names of 100,000 people at a football game and drew 435, we would do better than the crap we are being fed by the parties. The same is true for the Senate, draw them out of a hat. There are Senators from major States that shouldn't be running the animal shelter in a mid sized town, much less making rules for the country. They are a pile of political talking points, full of schemes to unjustly enrich themselves and others at the expense of a population being enslaved by coercion. They find their political issues and block other solutions or create solutions that barely work at prices 100 times what should be allocated. We could wipe out the entire group and never miss one of them. <br />
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There is always talk about people paying their fair share from politicians. The Federal government spends $4 trillion a year and there are around 125 million private jobs in the US. I don't count government jobs, because they all draw out of the private sector and are part of the political class. In any case, Federal spending is over $30,000 per private job. Let that sink in. A high percentage of private jobs pay no more than $30,000 a year, so those jobs have to go to pay 100% tax to pay their fair share. The rich can't pay it, as a couple years of deficits are enough to drain the top .1% and take a bite out of the remainder. So, adding to that drain isn't doing anything but dragging the country down farther.<br />
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Immigration and border security are on the front burner right now. We have had a war in Afghanistan drag on for 17 years. No solution. The swamp wants to stay and I think Trump is about to leave. 70 years in Korea. Imagine that, the iron curtain came down, the Chinese modernized and became our biggest source of imported goods and we can't solve a regional skirmish in 70 years? I'm sure we could have built housing for half the country with the costs of these fiascos. <br />
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Let's move from wars to trade. China is destroying the American middle class, but it is a Congress, executive self inflicted wound. They just sit there for 20 years, while the financial position of Americans get to the point way over half don't have a months income in savings. $800 billion has to be paid somehow, debt and asset liquidations, being the only methods, besides bankruptcy. Where did the equity seniors used to have built up in their homes go? Excess government spending and unrestricted monetary policy are to blame, as much as the people themselves. <br />
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We can go on and on. The border issue has been a crisis for years. It has spread across the nation, weakened families, diluted earning capacity of the working middle class and destroyed finances. These resources have been replaced by disability, welfare and drug addiction of a disillusioned group of people. Know it or not, these people pay the salaries of the pious leftists who reign above them. The whole stack of cards id coming down. <br />
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Trump was elected, because Congress and the 2 political parties became self serving outfits with nothing to show but self interest in the end. There are all crisis. The press is the lapdog and the people are lied to with every news story. We are listing to the solutions of idiots, pushed by another group of idiots to the point that only people who can think for themselves are able to fend off the nonsense. There are a lot of anti Trump politicians because they are anti American and have little interest in the long term stability and prosperity of America. <br />
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20 years of talking and we still have the same bullshit border security with millions coming over from places all over the world, drugs, terrorists, human trafficking, disease, pestilence and massive social and financial costs. Kids are growing up with illegal aliens and socialist teaching and most have dim prospects for their futures. They can't see the truth. Congress would rather not deal with this problem, because it would spoil their next campaign, for or against immigration, for or against free trade, for or against war. All the while, their comrades in DC and on Wall Street and in the bureaucracies get rich or secure and the people get continually poorer in worse conditions. <br />
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Trump is going to make something happen. Stop the flow and deal with the effects. We can't solve drug addiction when the supply keeps pouring in. We can go on with this nonsense and go down the drain or do something about it. Pelosi and Schumer have been playing footsies with this issue for decades. Paul Ryan did nothing. Boehner did nothing. Obama did nothing, but take actions without law to make the situation even harder to solve. Bush, Clinton. The last attempt was Reagan, in the 1980's and he was double crossed by lying Democrats. <br />
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Before Trump, the domestic United States was left to rot, by a complicit Congress. Pelosi is worth tens, if not hundreds of millions. She has been in Congress for decades. Maxine Waters lives in a multi-million dollar home, not in her district. Washington DC get richer and more crooked and less trustworthy, as the majority of the rest of the country sinks. It is all unsustainable and they are fiddling while Rome is burning and plotting their escape. Build the wall and lets start solving problems. Most good ideas are simple. Congress has none. In the end, I have to believe he Democratic Party is involved in more than politics. mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-54472768775298228682017-07-18T01:25:00.000-07:002017-07-18T01:25:32.468-07:00THE WORKING CLASS IS TAPPED OUT. NO MORE LEFT IDEASThe latest leftist craze is a guaranteed income. The idea is everyone deserves something and giving everyone something would save money. The idea, if not examined, makes sense. This would be especially true, if a large portion, like 95%, of the bureaucracy could be eliminated. It might also be true, if the amount took away all the subsidized housing, all the Medicaid, all the education support. But, the chances of this are less than me drinking all the salt water in the Pacific Ocean.<br />
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The question starts, who gets the money? Then, it is how much? Then, what does it replace? Lastly, who is going to pay? These are important questions for a variety of reasons. If everyone is going to get it, then those that work are going to have to pay enough in taxes and enough in taxes is going to have to be collected out of the money given others to pay for the program. Also, there is going to have to be a huge employment program for the eliminated bureaucrats, who are largely not fit for private employment. The private sector already has enough bureaucrats. <br />
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What I am about to write probably goes astray of the fake science known as Keynesian or mainstream economics, but it is in fact true. The math cannot add up in any other fashion, when all is said and done. That factor is that the working class pays all taxes in the end. This is not understood, because there is so much money created by government debt and many people that work for a living don't pay any income tax, only employment taxes. This will be true regardless of whether taxes on the rich are low or close to 100%, or we will see a decline in the economy that most people aren't prepared to accept. <br />
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There are a couple of facts that are not advertised to the public at large. This is merely Federal Government, not the state and local governments around the country, which makes the picture even bleaker. The added Federal debt for fiscal year 2016, regardless of what was stated as the deficit, was $1.4 trillion. If you don't believe me, look for yourself for the debt level October 1, 2015 and then September 30, 2016. We were told we had a great economy, but the truth is the Federal government is rapidly going broke and the populace cannot be taxed enough to pay for what the government is consuming and paying out. <br />
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The second fact is there are roughly 120 million private jobs and we are spending $3.6 trillion on an annual basis. That expenditure equals $30,000 a private job. Being that a full 50% of jobs in the US now pay $30,000 a year or less, this equates to 100% of the income of half the job holders in the US. Being that the majority of the rest make $75,000 or less, we are talking about 40% or more of the productive income of 85% or so of the private sector workers in the USA. American credit fails, which it is sure to do, if the current trend persists and the system cannot go on. Then, we see the collapse of the currency, the liquidation of all private property into the hands of a few and dark age serfdom returning to the modern world.<br />
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The wealthy pay taxes only on income received. Either income is received from other wealthy people or from the working class. Nothing can be received that isn't first paid or financed. This means that working class people merely return the majority of their money received back to those that employ them and the cycle continues. Rich taxes are paid out of money spent by the working class and in a real capitalist economy, this is net of credit, with the excess being recycled as investment payrolls. Throw in credit and the game gets out of balance, which is what creates the business cycle. This is for another post or you can study the masterpiece by Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit. If you can understand that in sum nothing can be paid that isn't received or financed, you can figure this one out. The taxes either have to be paid our of what most of us are paid or what we spend. <br />
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Now, lets do the math. There are roughly 330 million people in the United States. Lets say we pay them all $1000 a month. This amounts to $330 billion a month or $4 trillion a year. What does this eliminate? Does it eliminate Section 8? Medicaid? Social Security? Medicare? None of the above? Maybe it merely eliminates 1 million bureaucrats at $100K a year? Take off $100 billion. Put in another $1.1 trillion and we have a net budget of $5 trillion, a 35% increase of the current budget. If Medicare and Social Security are continued, that is another $1.2 trillion or so, which brings us to $6.2 trillion. We are now looking at a cost of over $50,000 per private job. The families currently making $30,000 to $40,000 a year have to consider not working, though with 2 children, their income would grow to $70,000 to $80,000 a year. Their share of the government would be $50,000 for 1 job and $100,000 for 2 jobs. We all know they would be exempt from paying anything other than Social Security taxes, so the burden would fall to the next income bracket upward. <br />
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The $100K household, of the same size would have their income expand to $140,000. This is the typical middle class 2 income family. It would also be the households that would start bearing the costs that couldn't be paid by the lower income classes. Their $30,000 share per job or $60,000, in the case of a 2 worker household would grow to $50,000 or $100,000. The later would place them in the same shape they were in before the distribution. The former would improve that household's prorate share from $70K to $90K. Either way, something besides the status quo would require this household pay more in taxes in some fashion. These are the households that send their kids to college, buy a new car every 4 or 5 years, buy some new furniture once in awhile, etc. They also go to restaurants, employing kitchen help and wait staff. If the standard of living is destroyed in this class, the economy ceases to prosper, which is what has occurred in much of America.<br />
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So, do we give it to everyone or do we give it to a select few that the politicians select and leave the rest of us alone? In effect, required taxation would deprive anyone above the median of any benefit. If you tax the rich and leave the rest of us alone, how does that play? Lets say 30 million are eligible? How many more quit work and get on the gravy train? Remember, maybe 70 million are retired and 120 million are privately employed. Throw in another 30 million or so in government. About 75 million are under 19. That leaves 65 million roughly that don't work. Of the 120 million, likely another 40 million either need some kind of assistance or struggle along. How many of these 40 million would merely quit working and take the money? There are place in the USA you can live pretty cheap. Not here in Collin County Texas, but in the abandoned middle part of the country, there are many cities and towns where a couple could take $2000 a month and get along. <br />
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I have considered this idea before, as Senator George McGovern brought up the idea in the 1972 election. It was foreign to the morals of the country that everyone could be paid for not working. I examined the idea because so much has changed in the bureaucracy geared toward the welfare state. Don't ever fool yourself into thinking the bureaucracy works for us. The bureaucracy works for the bureaucracy. This is not to say there aren't people in the bureaucracy that care a lot for we the people, but like anyone, there is always number 1. This is the backbone of the swamp. Getting rid of them would make the idea more plausible, but in my case, it was that the idea might have headed off the massive growth in this group. <br />
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If there was an amount that would get rid of Medicare, Medicaid, Food stamps, Section 8 and all the other help programs, this would be a viable program, only if it got rid of the entire bureaucracy that services these programs. Of course, Medicare would still have to be funded by a deduction from the check. Medicaid would also have to be deducted. These would be required, if one wasn't earning money in the private sector. <br />
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These are the cases for and against. The question then becomes, what would happen if the guarantee was put in? How many people would quit work? What would the price of labor for bottom end jobs be? Would people retire at age 50? If so, what would they do? People produce goods and services and if people don't work, the amount of goods and services are no longer provided. <br />
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Also, what does this do to the level of taxation for those that continue to work? What happens to the structure of credit and the value of the currency? Both of these factors, regardless of how basically good or bad the idea appears, are the real questions. They could tax capital, but in confiscating capital wealth, the country runs the risk of consuming the seed corn and stagnating real progress. At what point does the emerging world no longer take American or European money and we find ourselves in the same boat as Venezuela? A guaranteed check is fine and dandy, as long as it will buy what one needs. Once it doesn't and the money collapses, there is no amount of printing that will ever restore the purchasing power of the check. This isn't an opinion. It is economic history. Then it comes down to who eats who? mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-78165216290952619942017-06-02T18:59:00.001-07:002017-06-02T19:14:29.376-07:00And the International Swamp ScreamsPoliticians are like kids in a first grade classroom, except worse. When something that affects them negatively, like more homework or no Halloween candy, you hear a collective moan. Never has there been a more universal moan out of so broad a group of political class members, in my lifetime. A huge pile of goodies were taken away.<br />
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For the naïve and uninitiated, the typical politician couldn't care if you fell over dead in the street, unless you were a personal friend, donor or they could make political hay out of your death. They don't mind starting wars, murdering people or any kind of mayhem, as long as it puts money in their pockets, adds to their power or buys them more votes to use to peddle more influence. There might be 10% of them not in that class, usually 1 termers. Pull the name of a multi-term Congressman out of the hat and you have a sure bet you found one of this type. Find one that has clawed their way up the political ladder and you find a top Swamper, a virtual Al Capone. Statesmen were from a different era and, in fact, few and far between. Crooks populated the first Congress and it has been that way ever since. <br />
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The Paris Accord was going to be a source of trillions of dollars for the Swampers, over the next couple of decades. The lobbyists were going to propose the laws, the politicians pass them and the executive branch write the regulations. As usual, these laws and regulations were not going to be for we the people, but for those already in line with their own plans. A million dollars or so, well placed would put the main crooks in the drivers seat. <br />
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There isn't much the Accord would do to change the weather, quite likely nothing. At best, it would force China and India to start cleaning up in a couple of decades. The only thing we could count on is the middle class and poor, in the United States, would foot the bulk of the bill and Swampers, especially those close to the Democratic National Committee, would reap billions. More would have to be paid by fewer people, because the real economy would suffer.<br />
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The idea global warming regulations would be good for the economy goes hand in hand with the broken window theory and the idea of war being good. What they are good for is a few well placed businessmen and bankers. War production is blown up and the enriched worker ends up getting the bill, in the end. The broken window theory, aka storm damage and other catastrophes merely replaces what has been destroyed. When a window is broken, society loses the use of a window. When a house is blown away, a house is lost. Getting sick also generates a lot of money for someone, but the productivity of the patient is lost. <br />
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Contrary to the story, there is plenty of evidence against the politically presented story of climate change. You might note that any time something out of the day to day ordinary happens in weather, they blame climate change. A Dallas County Judge today blamed climate change for floods we had in 2015. That might work for the masses and kids that have not been here long, as this is a fast growing area, but over the past 50 years, I have seen plenty of floods, some of which would have been significantly worse, had there been as much concrete then as there is now. Not climate change. Sometimes, it just rains a hell of a lot at once here. Sometimes we have droughts. Some are worse than others. We had a dust bowl in the 1930's, when there wasn't much fossil fuel use. <br />
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If you have been watching the idiot box and listening to the power and money hungry political class for the last 15 years, you might do your own research. Those opposed to the fake data theory, which is actually how the prevailing science has been proven up, are substantial and very significant scientists. You might note that Exxon Mobil is in favor of the climate pact, so there goes the charge that these guys are paid by the oil industry, which is an often used way to stain the reputation of a denier. In any case, plug into the many videos on YouTube that cover the real science and you will find the most likely causes of climate change, which has been in force for 4 billion years now, are solar cycles and sunspots. <br />
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The climate is going to change, if man goes away. One thing for certain is the fascist governments around the world are going to be able to do absolutely nothing about the sun. But, that doesn't stop them from attempting to sell us on the idea that CO2 is pollution. It isn't pollution, but instead the gas that supports plants and is respired from the life actions of all animals and humans. Another thing for certain is that politicians and their cronies, which we are likely not in the group, are going to tax us, control us and lower our standard of living to their benefit. This is why they are all screaming in unison. It is the ultimate in worldwide socialist, communist and fascist control of the populace, the standard of living and the corruption that comes along with it. <br />
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In closing, the one thing we must hope is that the trend in temperature is sideways or up. Cooler temperature would be a disaster for the world, with lower crop yields and all the other problems that come with cold. Some more CO2 would boost the growth of crops and trees. Modern history hasn't shown the idea that the oceans are going to rise and flood the world, as we had a warmer period 1000 years ago and I don't see much evidence London England and Manhattan Island were under water at the time. There is evidence out there that man lived, mined and farmed on areas now covered by ice. 2 things are certain, death and taxes. Taxes are the fuel for the political class, in control and goodies to pass around. The people that work for a living that don't work for the government, those who live by economic means instead of political means, pay all that is paid. mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-58276586739459686842017-06-01T23:02:00.005-07:002017-06-01T23:02:46.852-07:00Donald Trump's Greatest Victory. Stopping the Climate Change Scam...So Far?Today, Donald Trump confirmed one of his most important campaign promises, pulling out of the Paris Accords on Climate Change. There are masses against this, not because it is important, but because of the propaganda that has been spouted over the past 20 years or so. It is right up along side the Russian interference news story that has almost no valid backing. <br />
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Why was the climate pact so important to avoid? To start, there is plenty of conflict as to whether the science is valid or not. The 97% figure was never accurate. It was made up, using names of people that had attended conferences that had never voiced an opinion pro or con. So, there is a good chance the whole matter was invalid and even if it had some validity, no reasonable person would really believe the governments of the world could control the temperature of the Earth. There is a massive amount of scientific proof that the world has been warmer and colder throughout history, trends in one direction that reverse in the other direction.<br />
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There is also the fact that the pro change group was being paid to come to the warming conclusion and doctored the data to achieve a continuance of the warming trend. The hack of emails of a major climate lab discovered the scientists were under duress to hide the decline. The decline was a 30 years or more period between the 1930's and 1970's, when global temperatures declined. This was a period when the use of fossil fuels ramped up massively, thus blowing a hole in the CO2 theory. According to one group of data, there has been no warming since the late 1990's.<br />
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One might note the term has moved from Global warming to Climate Change. The climate has always changed. What has also changed is the news, where propaganda from the major fascist leaders and establishment figures around the world has pointed to everything, warm weather, cold weather, storms, no storms, rainfall, no rainfall, etc. and said it was linked to global warming. Those of us that are prone to think we know something, because everyone is supposed to know, might find ourselves brainwashed by such a practice. But, because there is data that shows no warming, the switch has been made, with the same message. Global warming=Climate Change, though they are actually 2 different things. <br />
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The real absurdity starts with the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. 400 parts per million. In comparison, oxygen, at 20% is roughly 200,000 parts per million, nitrogen at in the high 700,000 range. Added CO2 is like throwing another jigger of scotch in a lake, expecting the water to now get one drunk. Greenhouse or not (called greenhouse because they pump it into greenhouses to make plants grow faster, maybe a good thing), the amount of CO2 is insignificant, a very trace element. <br />
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I have doubted the story from the first for one reason. Back when I was in school, around 1970, I had read that the energy of the sun hitting the Earth for either 1 second or 1 minute (a big difference in magnitude, but in either case, an amazing statistic) was greater than the total amount of energy mankind had expended in history. In such an arena, there could be little effect from any other source on temperatures that came close to that from the sun. Mankind was insignificant. <br />
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Going farther, the arguments against the global warming theory involved a variety of causes, including the number of sunspots present at a given time. Man had been recording sunspots for as long as there were means to do so, several hundred years and there were records. The more sunspots, the warmer the temperature. Fewer sunspots led to cooler temperatures. Thus, regardless of theory, the primary influence came from solar, not from mankind. <br />
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This brings us to the next point. That point is, who is stupid enough to believe, without destroying the atmosphere, is government of any kind going to control the sun? This is what they are telling us, because using all known data, this is what creates the warming and cooling cycles on Earth. Not another eyedropper of CO2 thrown in the ocean of air we have around us. They might as well have told us we needed to give them money and power to stop a Martian invasion. <br />
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Then comes the question of why so many establishment figures are behind the climate control agenda? The same answer as most other ideas, money and power. Virtually all deniers have been accused of working for the oil companies. But, it turns out the multinationals are in favor of the pact. Why? I suspect the investment bankers and the petrochemical industry are counting on having control of carbon credits. The idea has made former VP Al Gore wealthy. Carbon credits would virtually take the right of the average Joe to consume energy, free of any side profit earned through this multinational corporate and international banker racket. <br />
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The we have the politicians, the corporate states. What it a corporate state? It is the political form of something otherwise known as fascism. Virtually the entire Western world is engaged in fascism to some degree. It is a form of socialism where the government and the major corporations have a cooperative relationship. It was the elites way of adopting socialism without going to communism. <br />
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The climate change accord meets the model for a worldwide corporate state, where industry is managed in unison by a few. It gives the politicians and the multinationals full control of the economy of the entire world. Though ideas move the world forward, the whole game runs in energy and regardless of what they say about green energy, it can hardly provide more than a dent in what is needed for progress around the world. Thus, who controls the carbon based fuels, controls the world and the uses of these valuable substances. <br />
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Though it sounds good, socialism is a bar to progress around the world. It sounds good in that it divides everything up. But, divided up, what does everyone get? The same? That might be for us peons, but not for the elite. In getting the same, who wants to produce more? In fact, who wants to produce at all, if they are going to get an equal share either way? Take a look at Venezuela, what is by far the wealthiest country in South America. Several years ago, the supply of toilet paper dried up. A major oil producing country, with an abundance of good land and other minerals and nothing to wipe with. Now, there is not enough food. Everyone gets their fair share, except a few who have deemed themselves important. <br />
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Take a look at the backers of the Paris Accords that you see at the conferences. Do they fly coach? No, they fly their own planes, many of them commercial jet liner size. How concerned are they about their carbon footprint? How concerned are they about the added cost of energy? Not very, because they are going to run the game and the flow of funds will be rigged so they can continue to live it up, while many of the rest of us have to give up our cars, turn our air conditioners down or off in the summer and wrap ourselves in blankets during the winter. Everything will be more expensive. <br />
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Being that I have now lived over 6 decades, I have seen things, read things and digested ideas that people 30 years younger than myself have either no or little knowledge. I was a kid in the 1960's, when the US still had muscle and the economy hadn't been fully sabotaged by the DC elites. There was much discussion in the 1950's about the significance of the UN and the various treaties we had entered. The fear was that the US government was ceding the sovereignty of its people to international organizations. Anyone who takes a close look, sees that is the truth. The Paris Accords was going to be the final straw, as a country whose people have no direct control of their economy no longer has its freedom. All government is left to do is manage the resources between its people and manage its people. It is the people that are supposed to manage the DC government, not the reverse. <br />
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This brings us to the mainstream establishment trouble with Trump. Despite being very wealthy, Trump isn't in their club. He sees the US a nation of people that can do as he did, not as a country that you need connections to the government in order to prosper. The US government, in an accelerating manner, has systematically destroyed the industries in the US, including agriculture and it is destroying, through propaganda and education, the initiative a a major portion of its people. More intelligent in some ways, where it counts, the kids today are dumb as a box of rocks. Colleges are nothing more than training centers for bureaucrats, not creators of science in industry. This is why we have a leftist tilt to the education system and its students. Clearly the understanding of real economics and math are beyond the masses. <br />
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One must ask themselves how long a nation can last that exports a trillion dollars a year in debt in exchange for goods and services, gives away, through military and other programs, several hundred billion more. It's central government spends $30,000 a year per private job, a figure that is equal to or greater than the pay of half the jobs. Can anyone explain how long that is going to work? Then we have elitists, the same people that want the Accord approved, who talk of guaranteed incomes. With whose money? So we print it off on the press? The $30K a year guy already has a fair share of $30K a year. If they give him $10K, it will be $40K, except that if they give the nonworking guy the $10K as well, that too will go on the fair share. Businesses are merely transferees of taxes, thus the bill is being paid regardless. <br />
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The point is, a country that is already mathematically broke isn't in position to pay tens of billions of dollars a year to third world countries to make up for not emitting CO2, nor can it continue on its current path sans the money. We also can't afford to spend an average of $13,000 per capita on health care, regardless of whether one is sick or not. The government has already ruined that industry, one which was affordable and the best in the world at one time. Think they are going to do any better at managing our broad economy through carbon credits? mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-87132757961489769342016-12-21T12:07:00.000-08:002016-12-21T12:07:32.249-08:00America versus the New World OrderThe recent election of Donald Trump has generated massive controversy and resistance from a variety of actors and organizations. Trump, who has had a tremendously successful career as a real estate developer and investor, has been ridiculed as an incompetent, a racist, anti-woman and other negative features. 100 years ago, his election would have been heralded as good for America, as the business of the United States is business and private property. Today, we are seeing resistance, from hired protestors to challenges in the electoral college. The news media is on fire and there is a move to censor the alternate view, from these same sources. <br />
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I have read the books from 50 years ago. There were actions attempted in Congress to stop this anti-American activity in the early part of the 1950's, making the same claims. These actions were lobbied out of existence, labeled as ridiculous. The writers mentioned groups, such as the Council on Foreign Relations and United Nations, that were designed to hijack the United States government and put us under international rule. All of this was labeled as conspiracy theory, tinfoil wacko stuff. <br />
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After 60 years of living and some knowledge of this subject over the past 20 years, I have to believe there is a lot to the conspiracy theories. In fact, there isn't a conspiracy, except in the media and in politics to hide the intent of what they are doing and to label anyone who points out what they are doing as unconstitutional and treasonous, as a tinfoil nut. I quit reading, and for the most part, I quit talking about the subject and began to watch. Anyone who pays attention over time, has to know this is no theory, but a fact. <br />
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Political correctness is one of the items that has come out of the act to delegitimize America and brand America as a bad country. I believe the signing of the UN Genocide Treaty and the political correctness movement arose at the same time. There was a clause in the Treaty, which the US refused to sign for 30 years, that stated that someone who made a statement deemed to hurt the feelings of a member of a group or a group was guilty of genocide. There goes the 1st amendment and in comes the thought police. Upon reading this, there was a story of the arrest of a teenage kid at school, who had called an overweight girl a fat cow. This happened locally. Though not nice, the idea of arrest was foreign to the public view at that time and the kid was let loose. Having read the books, I knew this was in fact an attempt to exercise the treaty in the US. The people of the country hadn't swallowed the nonsense enough to take action of such absurd proportions. <br />
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We need look no farther than the recent election to see how far the political correctness, UN genocide treaty has advanced in the United States and as far as that goes, around the world. Outsiders are being brought in throughout Europe and North America, under the guise of refugees. Who created these refugees in the first place? The politically correct US establishment, in fomenting civil war in the secular Middle East and North Africa. The ruling establishment is up to their necks in this policy and behind such movement. <br />
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Order out of chaos is the mantra of the internationalists. The current line of thought was organized out of world war I & II. The League of Nations failed after World War I, because the United States people refused to be put under such an organization. Having failed, they planned a bigger war, with European socialism being the spearhead. The abandonment of gold as a support for European money, the demands on Germany to pay for the war that was no more their fault than the fault of France, England or Russia and the insane division of Europe, were acts that created the stage for World War II. <br />
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There is no greater spearhead in US history for the rise of international regulation and government than the establishment of the Federal Reserve. Unless one understands money and credit together with banking, it is difficult for the general public to see this problem. The problem is linked to the fact that once banking starts making loans by creating deposits, the money no longer exists to satisfy the deposit liabilities or for that matter, to pay the accrued interest, as all the money is all the money. Post World War II, the Breton Woods Agreement was negotiated to monetize world trade and fix the value of the various currencies around the world to the dollar. This action allowed for the re-establishment of European currency and trade, but it served to drain the US of trade dollars and instead of buying American, foreign countries merely bought US bonds in place of gold or dollars themselves. Eventually, the United States ran out of gold to deliver and the system moved to purely debt money. <br />
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The abandonment of gold put the monetary systems of the world on purely debt money. The problem with debt money is there is no rational limit to where the game begins and ends, as the entire structure is based on fiction rather than substance. Credit demands constant expansion, or the economy stagnates and the system comes apart. This means that bankers have more debt to draw interest and those outside the banks have more debts to pay. It also means the position of the bank is perilous and with it the deposits of its customers. It becomes a catch 22, extortion racket.<br />
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Consumer bank finance, whether it be credit cards, car loans or mortgages, if held by banks, forces the consumer to dedicate more of his future income to paying for past consumption, thus creating a condition of lower future demand. At the same time, the balance sheets of industries and banks are inflated. The entire system is a balance sheet. Debt financed out of savings, can merely be seen as delayed spending and at risk with no risk to the system, only to the lender. There is no savings used in bank credit other than the extraction of capital created from the sale of items. Thus, bank money has a way of impounding the capital of others, while the bank operates as a middle man. This is why inflation, which is nothing more than the expansion of credit, is not good for the economy. <br />
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To tie this in with the international scheme of rule, one must come to understand what created the Great Depression, that which led to the great bubble in the stock market, that is seen as the cause of the depression by many. The bubble was merely an effect of loose Federal Reserve monetary policy, undertaken in part to support the overvalued return of Britain to the gold standard. This is an important feature, because international trade and the solvency of such trade is a key component of globalism. The currency doesn't matter, so much as the debt that accrues from international trade.<br />
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During the 1920's, the US was the only solvent country of any means on Earth. Europe had exhausted its finances in World War I, and for the most part, destroyed its capacity to back their money with gold. Britain returned to the gold standard in a modified gold exchange system, which was really nothing, but a fraud. To understand gold, one must understand that credit must be liquidated or the nation using credit becomes impoverished by the credit used to carry on commerce. <br />
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At the end of the war, the US was a rapidly expanding economy, largely on the war trade it carried on during World War I. The end of the war was painful for the US economy, as witnessed by the panic of 1919-1921. Inflated commodities fell in price. Roaring factories supplying the war shut down. The economy had to transition and the related debt had to be liquidated. Of course, the early 1900's were a period of creativity, and the new inventions had a market. Domestic and foreign. In order to transact international trade, Wall Street bankers and other entities created debt instruments to finance imbalances in trade. It didn't matter if it was debt or gold, as long as the credits for gold moved to make payment. Capital flows, in the form of investment would usually have been made to create demand, but the new game was debt financing. Otherwise, American investment in European production would have had to been transacted, just as the reverse was true when the US was growing in prior years. <br />
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The problem was, the banks were giving credit to bankrupt nations, to buy American goods. This created the boom of the 1920's, something that couldn't be sustained. When the party stopped, the United States fell into the worst depression in its history. The length of the depression was caused by the fact the Federal Reserve was insolvent and the loans from Europe were broadly held in the US banking system. All debt was based on inflated values. So, it was either liquidate the debt and the bad investment and start over or cover up the situation. The later was the choice, as it was the only way the big banks and the central bank were to remain intact. FDR cancelled payment in gold and substituted currency with the fiat "This note is legal tender for all debts public and private". He then devalued the dollar from $20 and change per ounce to $35 an ounce, providing for room to inflate. The system was not allowed to de-lever and though the stock market recovered half its losses between 1932 and 1937, the economy didn't recover. Demand had little to do with it. It was the fact that certain parties were excused from having to take losses. The Federal Reserve provided the illusion of unlimited credit and system couldn't make good on its debts. <br />
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With the advent of Bretton Woods and the United Nations, a couple more institutions arose. They were the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The World Bank was primarily to make international government loans to finance projects in emerging countries. The IMF was to stop international bankruptcy at the border of participating countries, to ensure the bank loans to such countries were good. This prevented the losses that always arise from excessive credit expansion from laying at the feet they belong and instead by paid by the sale of assets in the rescued country. These fire sales are generally attended by the same internationalists that are behind such financing. <br />
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One only need look at the debt prison in which Greece resides to understand the forces behind the IMF. Greece is broke and will remain broke. The debt is bad. Yet, the IMF and the European System provides the illusion the debt of Greece is good. They have now made the fatal mistake of taking much of the paper into the ECB, which upon default will make the ECB broke. This has international implications. One cannot be held in bondage and remain free.<br />
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We have now crossed the boundary of sanity in finance. In the United States, we used Federal Reserve currency for trade. But, unknown to most, the dollar is merely an international debt instrument. The dollar derives its value, not on its acceptance in trade, but its acceptance in credit. No dollars, no credit. This is because the loans around the world, to finance trade, are largely made in dollars. One has no use for financial paper, if there isn't a market in which to park it. The demise of the dollar, based on some idea of value, is greatly exaggerated. To destroy the dollar is to destroy most of the cross border paper on Earth. One would have to find an acceptable substitute, which there is only one, the Euro. The Euro is backed by a system that is more in debt than the United States system. Thus, the move to the Euro would involve the purchase of debt instruments of higher risk and lower quality. The yen is even more perilous, as the debt levels in Japan are at a point where bankruptcy is the only real solution to recovery. The Yuan of China is based on the dollar assets held in China and there is little in the form of debt based on the Chinese currency to give it any substance in trade. This, with the fact the debt in China is as perilous as any on Earth, meaning that a conversion of the yuan to gold would immediately result in the removal of all gold from the country. <br />
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Whereas we the people have to save our money to buy the bonds of the United States, banking institutions merely have to create credit on their balance sheet to buy the bonds. Their main exposure is interest rate risk and little else. They get their interest bearing paper for free. This is why governments put up with banks and why they bail them out in crisis. <br />
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The fraud in all of this is the entire system is based on debt that will never be paid. It is supported only by the continual liquidation of equity in capital held by the people of the various nations involved. Whereas, we the people work, for our money, the banks merely create it on their ledger, in return for the pledge of an asset or future income. The less in real assets pledged, the higher the risk and the rate. One might witness the financial crisis of 2007-2009 revolved around the value of equity on the homes of Americans. Once values quit inflating, the debt that could be reasonably attached to this collateral began to shrink. If one examines the value of housing in the country and the amount of debt against such value, they will realize the shelter in which most people live is fully hocked to the system. This is one reason the recovery has been so poor. <br />
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Currencies are bank paper. Forget the countries in which they are accepted in trade. They have nothing to do with the governments of the countries they are attached. Greece could leave the EU and still use Euros in trade, if they wished. In fact, they would probably need Euros to carry on proper trade, as long as the Euro maintained value. I see this possibility, even if the EU dissolves. As long as the banks use the unit, make loans in the units and collect debts in the unit, the name makes no difference. Most times, one has no problem spending dollars, wherever they go in the world, mainly because the dollar is superior to the unit used in the country. I have never had a dollar refused in Mexico, a country that has been ravaged by inflation to the point that it now takes 20,000 old pesos to buy a dollar worth about 10 cents, 1964, a time when the exchange rate was 8 to 1. Thus the Mexican people have seen the real value of their money go from 8 to 1 to 200,000 to 1, inflation sufficient enough to make a million dollars relatively worth about $40. <br />
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If you can put this discussion together, you can understand why they want to break down borders and apply the debt universally. Banks cannot pay their liabilities. They have never been able to pay their liabilities, as they have never had the money on deposit to make a single loan over and above their deposits. The system has been based on legislative fraud from the beginning. Trade financed in deficit can only be paid with more credit, whereas the funds for repayment of such credit does not exist. In this form, if allowed to remain for a century, as it has, allows for a small group to gain control of all the equity on Earth. This is why the top .01% of the populations around the world have had all the gains and if the system came apart, why they would have all the losses. They would have to liquidate to pay their liabilities. <br />
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This same small group controls the boards of directors of the major corporations around the world. Thus, it would be to their advantage to control the international regulations and to continue to set competitors at a disadvantage. No borders would remove international debt problems and allow them to apply the bad debts to others. No currency in circulation would resolve the banks from ever performing on a liability, as there could be no liability removed from the system. Thus we would all have to pay. Growth would be limited to the potential for consumption of the products produced by these international companies and of course, debt interest being extracted from others would require more and more deficit spending by governments around the world, as the means to pay would not exist for the population at large. <br />
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I liken the debt system employed around the world to the story in Genesis, where the people of Israel became imprisoned in bondage in Egypt. The story goes that Pharaoh gathered up the money and the people had to hock their cattle, their land and themselves to survive. After the crisis, Pharaoh gave them back their land, their cattle and their lives in return for 20% of what they made. Looks familiar doesn't it? The gathering up of gold into the Fed in 1913, the income tax and the Great Depression?<br />
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Is it any wonder why Trump may provide such a threat to these people that they fabricate all kinds of lies and movements against him? I took a look and only the Secretary of Education is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. It is unheard of for a CIA director, a Secretary of Defense and the Treasury Secretary to not be members. The only Clinton not listed as a member is Hillary, only because she was out due to political reasons. Chelsea is a member. Who the hell is she? A look at the donors of the Priorities USA PAC, a Soros creation to allow Hillary to illegal fund raise for the election, provides a list of members in their donations. <br />
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If Trump holds true and he isn't murdered, we are going to see a new plan for America. If I were Trump, I would cancel all debts, foreign and domestic, in the US dollar and replace it and the Federal Reserve with gold. I don't believe we will be able to reset this game without taking such drastic actions. There would surely have to be a plan of equity, but the system cannot be held in international bondage, created by endowing a small group the power to make the money in circulation and regulate the value of said money, together with providing protection for the scheme to remain intact. The scheme is falling apart and it is unjustly bringing all property in the world into the hands of the few that have access to the credit finance scheme. Hardship would follow, but prosperity would return to the public at large. Maybe the price exchange of gold would be $1 million an ounce. Who cares, as it is all relative and the market would establish a value in real terms relatively soon. <br />
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To understand the international game, one must understand international finance and the paper money scheme. This is where it originated and it is where it will either end or we will find ourselves in permanent bondage. The big players will still have their property, but they won't be able to finance their revolutions around the world and dilute the rights of the American people. Banks will be required to operate without deposit insurance and they will return to their basic purpose, to finance short term paper for short term projects. Men like George Soros will lose their capacity to manipulate markets and draw billions to make a mess of the American system. Arbitrage and speculation will lose its purpose. Electronic money will go away and true charity will determine welfare, as it always did prior to the imposition of this scheme on the United States. <br />
<br />mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-11452101876890028362016-11-11T11:01:00.000-08:002016-11-12T15:21:31.777-08:00Trump's Biggest ChallengeThe election of Donald Trump is totally contrary to what is being perceived by his detractors. For one, it was the strategy of the underground establishment to not only select, but demonize whomever was nominated to run against Hillary Clinton, the one chosen nearly 30 years ago. WikiLeaks releases, of hacked John Podesta emails, have shown the level of corruption and manipulation that went on behind the scenes. Efforts to initiate strategies to demonize the opponent as a racist, a xenophobe, a hater of women and a neo-Nazi have stained Trump, to the point that his real history is lost, while the fiction has caused some to think it is the end of the world that he was elected and the election was stolen. At the same time, the press and strategy was to steer the public away from the various scandals with which Clinton was involved. That news would border on Treason and clearly on charges that could make her holding the Presidency against the law. Clinton fabricated charges against Trump and managed the news. In any case, as time passes the perception of Trump will change and those in the streets will either be seen for what they are or see the error in their ways. <br />
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That said, Trump's biggest problem isn't popularity. Trump pretty much defined it in one of the debates when he said, we have a bubble, a false prosperity built on excessive credit. Breaking bubbles spread bankruptcy throughout the economy, liquidate excessive capacity, debt and labor and almost always make whomever is in office or power, extremely unpopular. They take on a life of their own, as they expose financial weakness that was heretofore hidden. The last one was the over inflation of the housing markets and the stock market, along with the underlying securities and monetary structure of such financing. Confidence was lost to the point that day to day financing of such holdings dissolved into thin air. The $700 billion TARP rescue was merely the tip of the iceberg, as trillions of costs were hidden under government guarantees and Federal Reserve inflation. <br />
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Doug Noland, of Credit Bubble Bulletin <a href="http://creditbubblebulletin.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://creditbubblebulletin.blogspot.com/</a> named the rescue, the government finance bubble. In short, no one has given more coverage to the brewing financial situation since 2000, than Doug. He saw the mortgage finance bubble and how it fed into the stock market, back in the 1990's. His post, titled Franklin Raines, Director of Central Planning, October 21, 2001 was expose on what was to come (you can read this classic post by searching the link on Doug's page). I suspect we will see the fulfillment of the next break in the area of government finance. <br />
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There is no place that government bubble finance is any stronger than China. China was a bubble going into the financial crisis of 2008, but still had fuel for the fire. What followed is the greatest bubble of finance in history. China already had empty cities and has built more. The most phenomenal statistic has been their use of concrete, which I understood was greater in the combined years 2011-2013 than the consumption of concrete in the USA for the entire 20th century. With the use of concrete, there is a parallel use of steel, as rebar. Steel capacity in China is double demand and the excess is such they can flood the world with export and the entire mining industry around the world depends on this continued demand. Funny finance has permeated the economy and evergreen loans, where bad debt is covered up with more bad debt are massive. More so than anyone can know. Shadow banking has run wild.. <br />
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The result is an overbuilt economy, based on the printing of money, backed by US Treasuries. This cycle of vendor financing, debt recycling, was behind the bubble of the Great Depression. Bankrupts financing bankrupts. Rather than merely let the yuan appreciate, China creates a corresponding amount of Chinese funds on the back of these holdings. Fears of them dumping our bonds are overblown, as the real fear is that capital flight will necessitate the sale to acquire dollars. A lack of this backing could cause the hyperinflation that has taken place to reveal itself in a collapse of one or both currencies. <br />
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In Europe, the problem is worse. European banks were not bailed out during the financial crisis as they were in the US. There are no less than 3 and probably 5 governments in Europe that are totally broke, Greece being the worst case. This insolvency has been covered up to this time. The corresponding flow of funds between national central banks is out of balance and cannot be solved, without another bailout. The social insurance system in Europe is for all practical purposes, existing on a wish. The risk of financial crisis in Europe is high. An event will be blamed, but the weak link isn't any more the cause than the weakness of the entire structure. <br />
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Low American interest rates have led to a massive amount of emerging market borrowing in dollars. The value of currencies is beyond most people. The primary need for dollars around the world is to cover dollar denominated debts. Many of these countries are based on rapidly growing manufacturing bases or mining to feed the growth in China and other areas. Capacity was expanded to serve the overinvestment in these growing areas and demand hasn't kept up with the bubble. Hot money moves in and out and when it moves out, an imbalance is created and the currencies move in one extreme or the other. Brazil has seen such a problem as the boom a few years ago attracted hundreds of billions that suddenly wanted out on the bust. <br />
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The financial system is built on counterparties. The borrower and the depositor are counter parties and the bankers that create such transactions are counter parties to both. Credit is money that doesn't exist except in the solvency of the parties on either side of the bankers balance sheet. Your deposit in the bank is called a credit, a liability of the bank, because that is what it is, credit against their assets. There is no money involved, only liquidity and solvency. <br />
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A wide valley has developed between the bubble economies and those that cannot benefit as well in such a system. The US election showed the fallacy of bubbles in various stages, in that sans California, the Washington DC area, the NE financial economy states and Chicago, the election was a massive Trump landslide. This is what 2016 was about, the battle between financial interests and the localities that benefitted from the credit bubble and the rest of the nation. This is more than a system of outdated industries, ruining lives as they are liquidated, but a system where well placed people actually benefit from the liquidation, the free credit and the covering of risk by the government in general.<br />
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The term millionaire was coined in the John Law, Mississippi Bubble around 1720, as people close to finance got filthy rich, on a temporary basis, through the creation of a paper money scheme. The scheme was such that it was adopted in London as well, the South Seas Bubble. The bursting of these bubbles brought hardship on both countries followed by years of war between them. <br />
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It isn't by chance that the billionaire class has become so broad. We are seeing the same influence. Money inflation creates speculation, in lieu of investment. It distorts economies and unjustly enriches a few, many of which later go bust, as the illusion of wealth was just that in the first place. We are told inflation is low, but it is high, showing up in asset prices rather than consumer prices. The demand isn't there to satisfy the artificial investment that has happened through ultra low interest rates on flexible paper debt. Government debts keep this game afloat and this debt is bought and sold repeatedly to finance otherwise phony schemes. This is much the basis of the hundreds of trillions of derivatives around the world. It is the primary reason you get next to zero on your money in the bank.<br />
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The world is printing money to cover up insolvency. The pool of Federal Reserve money has grown by over 400% since Obama became President. This money has financed consumption up front, but it has financed speculation on the back side. The adjustment of prices of everything to reorder things has not been allowed to occur. It is important to see who benefits from printing money and who suffers, as assumed prosperity isn't easy to measure in inflationary terms. A revealing book was written around the turn of the 19th century by a man named Andrew Dickson White, titled Fiat Money Inflation in France. It is worth a read, as it is short and concise. <a href="https://mises.org/library/fiat-money-inflation-france" target="_blank">https://mises.org/library/fiat-money-inflation-france</a> <br />
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One thing I learned from the above posted book was the devastation of inflation on the middle class, the economy at large and the total ruin of the poor. It become habit and excessive inflation was behind the Great Depression. Governments really have no solution other than to postpone the inevitable. Thus, the pile of crap from 2008 was merely shoved forward to today. There is no real rebound in the economy to provide prosperity to the population at large, because the debts weren't resolved, only hidden. One only need look at the meek rebound in housing starts and home ownership to see how poor the situation really is. This cannot be seen in bubble lands, NYC, DC and California. The rest of the nation is suffering under the solution to the problems that have kept the players and states of CA, NY and DC afloat. New schemes have been added to such, in more money from around the nation and the world. There will be little prosperity until this bubble is resolved. Resolution will bankrupt many wealthy players and this is part of the reason Trump couldn't win, though he did. He won because the rest of the nation never recovered and what recovery there was for many was the replacement of a good job with a job at Wal-Mart. <br />
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There is no doubt the bubble will break. For the third time in less than 20 years, California will have a government finance crisis. This is because the phony bubble tech stocks that have made so many Californian rich will seek their true level and deprive the overburdening government of its free cash flow. The magic that appeared under Jerry Brown, as the bubble reflated, will be seen as another round of witchcraft. They will cry for a bailout. Hopefully Trump gives them the middle finger and the Obama/Clinton lovers will have to reach into their dwindling pockets or cut their socialism. The suckers that bought such inflated assets will again swear they will never do it again and a few of the scheme artists on Wall Street and Silicon Valley will get away with some money. Others will find themselves broke and in some cases, faced with securities fraud. Facebook, which trades at roughly the value of Exxon, will be re-priced, like Yahoo was last decade. The bubble leaders in 2000 have never recovered. Neither have many of their bag holders.<br />
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Will the entire economy freeze up this time? Who know. What will occur is a slowdown due to the long cycle mal-investment investments that are made during bubbles. Just like the steel and concrete industries in China, the down line investment in mines and factories to build factories will cease. Credit fueled bubbles are never funded entirely by real savings and the margin is that difference. The 2000's were based on equity extracted from housing, used to continue consumer spending. What was left for many was little or no equity and a mortgage balance that wouldn't be liquidated in a sale. Such are bubbles. <br />
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The biggest bubble in the US may be in the corporate finance area, where money has been borrowed, not for expansion, but for partial liquidations of the corporations themselves. Many of these bonds are of the junk variety. These partial liquidations are better known as stock buybacks. Money that should have gone into the US economy directly, went into the pockets of speculators and management. This money isn't invested, it is often used to buy existing assets. This creates more inflation in the markets. The wealth effect goes away when bubbles burst. What a catch 22 we have been given. mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-59118931815638141462016-11-09T22:14:00.001-08:002016-11-09T22:14:57.831-08:00Donald Trump-Stronger TogetherThe missing point in the Trump election is likely to be the campaign slogan of the Hillary Clinton campaign, Stronger Together. The point Trump made, which was rejected by others and embraced by his supporters, was this is the USA and we are Americans. We take care of Americans first and that includes us all. It doesn't include taking in millions of people from outside the country. It doesn't include fighting a war on terror and then making the same mistake made here and abroad of letting the terrorists into the country. Also, we don't import semi-skilled and unskilled labor, pay their medical bills and have the living standards of Americans depleted as a result. He who is not with us is against us.<br />
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I am going to make this point before I go forward. I have Mexican immigrants do work for me from time to time. I don't hire people who can't speak English, as I don't speak Spanish. I watch them work and they work hard and are assets to the community. I can't say that for most white people I know. That said, I believe Trump speaks for many of them as well as natural born Americans. <br />
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But, we have 90 million working age people in the US who are not employed, or at least don't admit to being employed. Some are in school, some are disabled. Some have been out of work so long they have lost touch with how to do their jobs. Others are drawing money on some government program, because it pays better than the pay at some job they can get. Much of this is due to the dilution of the labor force in America. Those working, have their pay held down by the fact there is always another to take their job. It doesn't pay to improve productivity when labor is so plentiful and so cheap. This is what raises the standard of living. Those that suffer this fate are just as much Hispanic or African American, as they are white. They are in small towns and in cities. Many jobs that paid a living wage 30 years ago, pay a bare subsistence wage today. We don't need more unskilled labor. <br />
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The same holds true for the massive importation of Indian computer labor, as millions of Americans have spent years in school learning the trade. California tech firms lobby to keep the doors open to these people, not because they can't find help, but because they can pay less to someone who comes from a third world country. Plus, as was pointed out to me, these foreigners don't come with the huge student loan debt that comes from an inflated education system. <br />
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That said, I am trying to eliminate much of what has been used against Trump to brand him as a racist. Also, the anti-woman issue needs to be addressed as well. Trump put a woman over the construction of Trump Tower, which was built in the late 1970's. She was one of the first to hold such a position in what had been a totally male business. He was ahead of his time. I can also say that former Dallas Cowboy Hershel Walker played for Trump in the USFL and I recall he idolized him. The same holds true for Mike Tyson. One was a saint, one a villain. Both were champions and both were black. I know there are plenty of other stories. We hear about the exceptions, especially when the aim of the opposition is to demonize the man. <br />
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If we can put this nonsense out of the way, maybe America can get on the same page. The same page is to end gridlock in the national government, solve our problems, preserve our rights as individuals and get going forward. For you TV watchers, who do next to nothing and only imagine how to get things done, this part of Trump might elude you. People who have never done anything don't understand people that do. Most politicians have done nothing but figure out how to win one election after another. Americans under 35 have had the idea of winning diminished in their lives. Who does anything without a goal? If the goal in little league was to get a trophy, you got one regardless of achievement or not. Losing is hard, but losing is part of living and if you care, it is painful. Losers in life get eaten and quite often never learn the team work it takes to be a winner. <br />
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One had to listen to Trump for awhile to really understand what he was about. He knew people had problems and regardless of whether it was politically correct or not, he knew what was making these problems worse. If one has rats, they can kill them, but it would be wise to not leave the door open for more. If we have a surplus of unskilled labor or unemployed skilled labor, why open the door for more? The working people of the United States, not the government, pays for this in the end. To point out the source of the problem is not racism or divisive. It is fact. <br />
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But, what Trump was really talking about was solving problems. Most good ideas are simple. Putting them into action takes decision. Most of the time, it doesn't take a bureaucrat to study the problem for 15 years and then hire 500 more bureaucrats to push paper and regulations. Trump mentioned infrastructure and he mentioned things that I haven't heard in the past, like replacing old hospitals, upgrading airports and the such. He talked about getting the inner cities moving. For most of the intellectuals, they don't have a clue what he means when speaking of neighborhoods with run down roads and no services. Trump knows urban development and has been pretty successful at it. Listen to his victory speech and take note. <br />
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More than anything, he talks of winning and how the USA doesn't win any more. This is not some guy who has done nothing. Doing the projects he has done, is as complicated or more so than being President. These are long process contracts, not I'm going to build a building and it happens. The hardships Trump went through in the late 1980's through the mid 1990's are things that temper a person. The hardships of most politicians involve campaigning and maybe losing an election at some point. Other people pay the price. He pulled off the impossible, getting elected, overcoming a rigged system, which I will write on in the next month. The price of losing is high.<br />
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So, if you are anti-Trump, get over it. This is politics and what you hear and use against someone in politics is part of the stage act. What you can't put in a stage act is the will and determination of a man, one who is sacrificing his retirement years to do something for the country. He isn't Adolph Hitler, as presented. What is he? Someone who can break the gridlock in DC.<br />
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Ronald Reagan was demonized, but Reagan did something, even though he had a reputation of taking naps and delegating a lot of authority. One thing he did was come to some consensus, as the Republicans never controlled the House of Representatives at any time in his tenure. Reagan had been a Democrat at some point and left the party, because it moved too far left. Trump is also regarded as a former Democrat and I believe the Democrats will embrace a lot of what he wants to do. They have to, or the Republican party will take their base and expose the National Democratic Party for what they are, the party of the rich and famous. They are no longer the party that offers the average American a way up the standard of living ladder. People aren't stupid and they will shed their labels and get onto something that works. Trump didn't show up in DC to expel Mexicans and block Muslims from coming into the country. He came there to remove barriers to success.<br />
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In that vein, I sense in a short time, we will find ourselves stronger together. Trump isn't an ideologue. He comes without much debt to others and his constituents are the deplorable's, who are really everyday average working Americans who are tired of being soaked and ignored by DC. Working Americans pay for all the free stuff, directly or indirectly. If you don't work, you are enslaving these people and they have reached a point they know it. Those that realize this will join Trump. Those that want a free ride, a pat on the back for failure and those that need a shoulder to cry on will probably continue to vote for the enemy. <br />
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America use to have 2 party's for the working people. One was seen to represent a higher class of people than the other. Interestingly, the party's shifted sides. The blood suckers are now on the side of the Democrats, whether they be the compound interest fractional reserve bankers, the leveraged hedge funds, the arms dealers or others. They preach a utopia, but the utopia they preach will lead to death, destruction, starvation and a total breakdown of society. There won't be much kinder, gentler when starvation sets in. We are headed for collapse and chaos, should we not turn back. I would rather have my feelings hurt, which I must admit I am pretty sensitive, than to go hungry. There is nothing free in government and there is no choice as to what it costs. <br />
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The only way Trump fails, is if one side or the other refuses to go along. And, going along doesn't mean putting all kinds of nonsense into the programs. Getting the cities operating and modernized is a lot more important than the social engineering that is lulling young Americans to sleep. At the same time, civil productive people of any race or religion need not find the going rough with their fellows. Blaming someone for intolerance, is to some extent intolerance itself. Lets not make crime out of every day life. Accept that people are naturally the way they are and usually see the error of their ways. That has been my experience. <br />
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I am looking forward to the next 4 years. There is a lot to change, like getting the nonsense out of schools. The elite have basically brainwashed the masses in public education, under the guise of political correctness. In the meantime, they have stolen the livelihood of these same people. They are coming out of school today, mentally disabled to the point that I have read 70% of them are not eligible to join the armed services. That represents a national crisis. We have had a steady 8 years of this nonsense and where are we? The choice between a crook, who represents the status quo and a rough talking man who has achieved his entire life shouldn't be a hard choice. It isn't by chance that the losing crooks backers are creating havoc. They don't realize progress has its price. Trump has the capacity to unite the country, given a chance, as it has never been united in peace time history. Give him the chance. mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-21681171220357654502016-11-02T23:22:00.000-07:002016-11-02T23:22:49.009-07:00Department of InjusticeLately, it is becoming more than apparent that the Attorney General's office and the Department of Justice has become a destructive barrier to maintaining a Republic. WikiLeaks has provided ammunition to make the statements with some certainty that would have only been hollow speculation based on observation. If not for the leaks and a pervert named Weiner, with connections to the former President and his candidate wife, a lot of things wouldn't have come to light. <br />
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First of all, the centralization of power in the President of the United States has gone way beyond what was intended. At best, the President was to be Commander in Chief of the Armed services, controlled by Congressional willingness to declare war and to fund it. Actions taken over the past 110 years or so, has changed this situation, to the point the President now has to be controlled, lest we become a Constitutional dictatorship. He or her ability to operate independently of the rest of the country has to be reined in.<br />
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The first action that must be taken is to remove the investigative portions of Government from the hands of the executive. Crime, not on the streets, but in the political arena and the white collar sections of America and on an international basis, has destroyed the American middle class. There is a large section of corruption that goes totally uninvestigated and when it is clear it should be investigated, they send their blind pigs to find nothing. The Clintons are just the tip of the iceberg. What about Wall Street, with its published emails indicating they knew they were selling dog crap as AAA debt. I think they called it other names, like toxic waste. They blew up the western banking systems, but they were literally untouched by the fraud they put on the rest of us. <br />
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We have had plenty of IRS scandals. Who can make ones life more miserable than the IRS? A few people, but history has shown they have harassed people out of favor with the current administration, past and present. This type of accommodation of justice and criminal investigation cannot continue to occur. It punishes enemies and common people and runs cover for those in favor of the government. A Republic cannot stand when the criminals have such power at their disposal. <br />
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For one, the prosecution and the investigators cannot continue to be controlled in the same agency. This also holds true of the grand juries, which must be independent of control by either party. Grand juries need to have power of their own, not to be rubber stamps of either investigators or prosecutors. This can only result in long term injustice and a concentration of power in the hands of a ruling class that leaves the rest of the country devoid of justice. <br />
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Through WikiLeaks and the releases of the data compiled on the Clinton email investigation showed the man in charge of the investigation was tainted, even if he was fair. A Clinton crony gave his wife, who was running for a state office, a sizable percentage of her campaign war chest. The man may have been fair, but there was a political cloud all the same. <br />
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The current investigation is even under a deeper cloud. The Justice Department man is in deep with the Clinton organization, so deep that his positioning in his job, cannot be a mere accident. The Justice Department reeks of a protection racket run by the current administration, putting the rule of law as a tenet at risk. This is clear when I look at the email case where there was clear perjury, clear negligence and clear violation of national security laws, yet insufficient evidence, because intent couldn't be proved. Ask the next drunk driver who finds themselves in a fatal accident, if they intended to kill someone. In all cases, they would honestly answer no. I'm not so certain Hillary Clinton could give an honest answer, if you asked her name. Yet, she was given a green light to run for President. <br />
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This brings to mind the rigging of the Presidential elections I have witnessed over the past 28 years or so. I won't go into the rigging, except to say that the quality of the candidates have been doubtful. How any party could be brash enough to basically rig a nomination for someone whose potential criminality was so apparent, is beyond me. It clearly smells rotten in Denmark, as they use to say. It was clear the fix was in on any potential charges. WikiLeaks provides evidence of such an opinion. At the same time, they are throwing Generals in jail over violations a fraction of Hillary's. It is clear they had the Justice Department in line for a go. Hillary could have shown up with the smoking gun and the Attorney General Lynch would have declared it a suicide.<br />
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In the meantime, such a candidate is free to make up all kinds of lies on their opponent. Whether Trump is guilty of any or all of what has been charged is beside the point. The point is, there was no smoke on Trump other than some brash statements in the past. No plaintiff had ever come forward or told anyone. Not to worry, Hillary has a long history of making victims out of women, sometimes double. Lying is her business. If she had the investigation and prosecution under her thumb, who would oppose her?<br />
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The law has to find its way to another master, than the administration in power. This is whether it is Democratic or Republican. I have seen the tampering over the past 8 years. Obama received a fortune in money out of Wall Street in 2008. In return, nothing was done to the investment banking industry on a criminal basis. Yeah, a few scam artists were prosecuted, but not the investment banking officers themselves. There were plenty of Bernie Madoffs. <br />
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I suggest the FBI and the Justice Department be taken from the executive branch. In any case, we are mingling branches of government and putting too much power in one party's hands. WikiLeaks has shown conflicts of interest in every direction. Congress should have oversight and maybe appointment power. Candidates should have very weak party connections at best. Political operatives in such a position of power is counter to freedom of society over a long term.<br />
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Not only does power need to be decentralized in the US, as we are seeing the results of centralized power, but the power of the Presidency should be greatly diminished. This is why we have gridlock. It is either gridlock or tyranny. There would be immediate improvement in the standard of living, if political power in DC was cut in half. There is no free lunch. There is little freedom in a totalitarian society and we aren't far away today, when you look at the administration of justice. <br />
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In closing, would a Clinton Justice department do any better job of investigating Hillary? I think it would be scary. Look at what she is doing to Trump. Look what she likely did to Julian Assange. The same type charges. Look at the sudden appearance of Trump raping a child, tied in with Jeffrey Epstein, when in fact rumors are circulating that Hillary and company are tied in with the same man. Look at the charges of Trump being with the Russians. The last time such charges were in vogue, Joseph McCarty was at his peak. But, McCarthy had some basis in fact. Hillary's charges are pie in the sky. Think you want this woman running justice in America. We are damn close. I vote we take it away from all Presidents, as evidence is clear that power corrupts. mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-70708939623501443392016-10-19T23:56:00.001-07:002016-10-19T23:56:32.806-07:00Dear Mr. TrumpFirst of all, I am not a registered voter. I will discuss my reasons for not being registered, as for years voting was a religion to me. My explanation might go a long way to answering why the process is rigged. I must say your answer that Hillary was the Democratic nominee, despite her scandals, goes a long way to pointing out how rigged the system is and why I am not voting at this time. <br />
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Your performance in the debate was okay. Clinton can sound very convincing some times and I can see how someone who didn't know better, would vote for her. Just who could, having even a clue how corrupt she has been and probably will continue to be. Lying is a habit for her. <br />
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Anyhow, you missed on some things. The most important of which was the WikiLeaks. Hillary threw out the red herring about the Russians being the culprits, with at best evidence that would be thrown out of court, and you bit on her attack. The proper answer would have been, had the leaks come out against you, the media would have beat you to death, even if it came from the devil himself. Where you missed was that no one has dispelled the legitimacy of the emails. There were even emails from the guy who organized the riots at your rally in Chicago. WikiLeaks wouldn't have known that man's name from mine. Point being, there is plenty of important information on who Hillary Clinton really is. That was a fat pitch and you took it and struck out on the one that followed. <br />
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Remember, Americans are stupid enough that most of them actually believe you had no taxable income the past 18 years. Unless things have changed, you had to pay tax on your TV show. Maybe there was enough depreciation on your properties, along with property taxes and interest to shelter all the income that came in. I highly doubt this, because a lot of these properties are depreciated out and they are still class A properties. Point being, a carry forward loss is a real loss and to be honest, I thought you were broke at the time. Maybe you were and didn't throw in the towel. <br />
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My point on the previous paragraph is the vast majority of people don't know Apple computer borrows money to keep from bringing their cash back to the United States. Most miss the significance of $2.5 trillion coming back to the United States, because they don't understand we get zero taxes out of money the multi-nationals leave off shore. At the same time, the corporate tax rate kills rising small business, just as a billionaire pays at the same bracket as someone making $700,000.<br />
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Then there is the deficit. The moderator got away with using a phony figure for the national debt. Hillary got away with stating there is a social security trust fund and the implication Clinton balanced the budget, when in fact that counted extra social security funds. They talked about the improvement in the budget deficit, when in fact, year ending September 30th, Federal debt was $1.4 trillion higher than October 1, 2015. We are already over 100% of GDP in debt, which is considered the point of no return.<br />
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A politician should be prohibited in using the term, Social Security Trust Fund. The trust fund has been spent and the only way the fund exists is if the same people pay the taxes again to make it exist. Instead, it is a classic Ponzi scheme and there should never any action taken to recreate the imaginary fund again, lest it be stolen again. <br />
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The biggest drain on the middle class of the United States is monetary inflation. Monetary inflation is debt inflation and the illusion is money is easy to pay back and wages are going up. It drains savings and devalues capital. The only beneficiaries are the rich, who have first access to the money and government bureaucrats. They can indebt the people painlessly, only to spring the debt on them later. <br />
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The Clintons claim the 1990's. The 1990's were a debt bubble and the country was funded on home equity, hidden because declining interest rates inflated values. Franklin Raines, a Clinton cabinet member, created the almost no down payment standards on FNMA loans, then took over FNMA to finish the bubble and draw out $100 million in compensation. Raines gave us a bankrupt FNMA and Barack Obama. The middle class is either renting now or stuck in mortgaged up homes. Artificially low rates are going to take the rest of the equity this time around. <br />
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We all know what happened to the stock market in 2000 to 2002. This bubble was fueled by hype and money withdrawn from the housing stock of the American people. The 401K's were making people rich and providing money for the bubble, only for it to disappear in worthless stocks, hyped by analysts who never saw a sell recommendation. Wall Street got fat and many retirement funds were left holding huge cap value stocks like Enron and WorldCom. The highest value stocks at the time, Microsoft, Intel, GE and Cisco have yet to make it back to their 2001 tops nearly 16 years later. These 4 stocks made up over 1/8 of total market capitalization and were universally held in excess in mutual funds. <br />
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Where the American people are fooled is inflation helps the rich, bails out the bankers, who operate a Ponzi of their own and devalue the assets of the middle class. Capital gains are only for quick money, as over time, most capital gains are noting but devaluation of the money and no gain at all. I don't think it would be too bad if capital gains were taxed at full income amounts, as long as the basis was indexed to inflation. <br />
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The other thing that fools most people is there is nothing free. In fact, the cost of government falls directly on the people that work for a living. You can tax the excess of the rich, but you can't gain by taxing capital over time. That is because capital provides the basis of a rising standard of living. Government produces nothing. It does provide services, but in sum, those services are derived from the people that work outside the government. The term GDP means nothing, when the measuring stick means nothing and so much of it is fluff. A few intellectuals position themselves to convince the rest of us they know more about our business than we do. This is why central planning doesn't work.<br />
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My other reason for not voting is philosophical. I am a Rothbard leaning Libertarian. Gary Johnson is just another statist, a guy that held office all his life. A self respecting Libertarian wouldn't touch him with a 10 foot pole. The most powerful government for a libertarian would be at city hall, where we could get our hands on them. DC would amount to next to nothing, maybe 5% the size it is today. <br />
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As to why I don't vote? I had a hell of a time not registering this time to vote for you. You get elected and run again, I will probably get in line. But, you aren't supposed to be on the ticket, which is why it is rigged. I don't believe the press is as rigged as it has been this time around. I think they just happen to work for those that usually pick the candidates. As you like to point out, your movement is an anomaly. It is, because you aren't supposed to get the nomination. In fact, George Washington,, Abe Lincoln, Andrew Jackson or Thomas Jefferson would have almost no chance of running for President today, unless they sold out. I quit voting in 1994, when I realized they were going to make the second George Bush President after Clinton. I was right and there is no way in hell George should have been within 200 yards of the White House. The same goes for his father and the Clintons. Reagan was said to be an anomaly, but Reagan was just another establishment guy who happened to be on the opposite end of the spectrum. He worked for General Electric when he did Death Valley Days. He didn't fall out of the sky to be the speaker at the RNC in 1964. His administration was dominated by Rockefeller men, just as Carter and Nixon's was. <br />
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If you get elected, it will be the greatest political event in my lifetime. The establishment will have been defeated, at least temporarily. I'm sure you have been close enough to politics that you couldn't see what I have been able to see, standing back. Just as I did years ago, I'm sure you are getting a big dose today. You aren't supposed to be the nominee. Anyone in their right mind knows Hillary isn't supposed to be there, in reality, but American politics is a stage show. Nor was Romney or McCain the best men for the job, but stand ups for Obama, who raised a huge war chest from Wall Street in 2008 and paid his dues by putting none of them in jail for the massive fraud that led to the breaking bubble. Not to mention he kept Bernanke in power, giving them fuel to pile up even more wealth on leverage that cost nothing. Then there was Bob Dole in 1996, when Clinton would have been easy to defeat. Why such a dull candidate, when the Republicans had a winner in 96? Same with Dukakis in 1988. At least the Democrats ran Mondale in 1984, who had the appearance of being legitimate. <br />
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I respect you DJT. Any man who could take the shit dished out the last year and still be moving forward with hope, is a real man. I'm going to send you a little money, just as I sent Ron Paul money and Rand Paul money. It is too bad you were so naïve as to think we had legitimate elections in the US. It has little to do with capability or honesty and a lot to do with who with money and power puts up. Both the nominees are supposed to be their guys. <br />
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The executive branch of government was never supposed to be this powerful. What scares me about Hillary or, if not Hillary, the next guy or woman, is that we are just a step away from being a dictatorship. The average Joe wouldn't know one if they saw it, until is started acting as a dictatorship. We are already there, as Congress has declared too many wars on the domestic front and woven too much Federal funding through the states. This is where we get ridiculous stuff like allowing transvestites in with our daughters at school. No one in their right mind would make such a ruling, other than someone who is seeing how much the people of a country will take. As you can see, we are already there. Executive orders are orders of war. <br />
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The US was set up as a mercantile system and we were told it was free enterprise. It is, where they aren't involved. That area is getting more narrow all the time. They get bailed out, we get regulated. There are no regulations that either fail to provide the oligarchs with more money or eliminate their competition. If it hits them too hard, they go to China. mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-29094173943712736832016-10-13T11:49:00.000-07:002016-10-13T11:49:11.030-07:00Right Wing ConspiracyThere are really only 3 types of societies in the world, tribalism, socialism and classical liberalism. Classical liberalism is not to be confused with what they call liberal in the US and around the world, but instead a system of free enterprise, minimal government intrusion, little or no redistribution of wealth. <br />
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Tribalism is what you make of it. It could be socialistic or classical liberal. Socialism is another animal. There are 2 general types of socialism, communism on the left and Fabian socialism on the right. Fabian socialism either is or is closely aligned with fascism. Fascism is national socialism, the kind preached by Obama and for the most part, both parties of the US government. One party merely wants to go faster toward state ownership of much of the means of production and economy the other. <br />
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There is almost no true left wing socialism with any power in the United States. Instead, we have 2 parties that are much closer to the fascist model, right wing. The model is called the corporate state. The left is right and the right is just less right. <br />
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How strong is the system? Watch the election. There is no free mainstream press in the United States. It is all geared to support the fascist, international domination line. There is no one on the scene more prepared to go down this line than Hillary Clinton, even if it ends up bankrupting the United States and draining it of what was once a massive amount of accumulated capital. The point is to keep those in charge that are in charge, because this is the very means of support and the continuation of such system. The problem is, it eventually goes bankrupt. The globalists don't care, because they have their nests feathered and can live where they wish. <br />
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Trump is no classical liberal, that is certain. All one has to do is listen. But, it is clear that he has a plan for the country and not for the globalist multinational corporations and international bankers. Clinton, on the other hand, seems to be interested in selling out the United States, giving the people the typical bones that fascists throw them. We are going to get rid of greenhouse gasses, a fascist conspiracy, in the first place. The little guy just won't have a car, while the globalist flies in a private jet and rides in a limousine. Less demand for oil and gas will merely conserve more of this resource for them, while their taxes are merely recycled back to them.<br />
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One only need watch the debate Monday to witness how the conspiracy works. Anderson Cooper made certain to nail Trump down on whether he had groped any women. This whole matter had been constructed out of Trumps boasting of his celebrity on that tape. The entire Clinton structure is in the corporate press. It has to be, as Trump would really make a mess of their plans of draining the US so they can build up their worldwide interests. It takes all of 3 days to pull up some women that claim Trump molested them. The entire matter was lined out so Hillary can run out the clock on what will be the greatest right wing scam since the election of Woodrow Wilson.<br />
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One must look at how easy a target Donald Trump is in this matter. Who is he? Probably the most celebrity rich guy in the United States. The number of women that would sleep with him, merely on invite stretches in the tens of millions. The number of women he has probably hugged in some fashion is in the tens of thousands. The nature of his business and celebrity brings him into contact with many. <br />
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If Trump groped the 4 women, he has probably groped thousands. Where have they been all these years? He has been in the celebrity class for the past 35 years. One for every 9 years doesn't fit the model. Where are his yard children? Sex for a middle class decent looking male isn't hard to find. Women can get it on demand, provided they are average or better. A man of Trump's status doesn't need to grope women. He merely needs to ask them. The evidence against him is sketchy at best. <br />
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Then we must turn to the women themselves. As public a figure as Trump has been, the chances he has had close contact with the mere public percentage of mentally ill people would definitely raise the odds of imaginary molesting of hundreds of women. If there were 100 women that even thought Trump groped them, that wouldn't be shocking. 25% of American women are taking psychiatric drugs, at least that is what I have read. For what? The doctor thought something was going on between the ears. There is a lot of projection, where people project onto others what they want.<br />
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The point of all of this isn't to argue whether Trump is guilty or not. The point is to look at the coverage in the press. Hillary has more fires blazing around her than Smoky the Bear. They don't look. The Obama Administration is unequally prosecuting people in the US. They don't look. Hillary blames everything on the Russians, when in fact the WikiLeaks are the writings of her and her associates. The Clinton's now claim a $250 million net worth, though neither has had much of a private sector job. Clearly they are selling influence or collecting for past favors. The big press isn't even looking at these matters. <br />
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The question here is whether there is still a we the people in the US or merely a group of people dependent on what their masters will let them have. It is clear there is a fascist power structure in the US that protects itself, spins the information Americans are allowed to have and wants to control them to the hilt. They need politicians that will continue the status quo, because to interrupt it, everything falls apart. <br />
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Trump has seen this go on for years and thought he could do something about it, because he believed the fable that the US is a free society with free elections. Much of the American population has believed the same, that they could choose their leaders, when in fact, we have been voting for a group of cardboard cutouts, anyone not in the mold, eliminated by the right socialist press. What is guaranteed for average Americans is a declining standard of living and a continued theft of the rights guaranteed in the bill of rights. The current structure either violates or has eliminated much of them already. Remember, they are your rights not the governments. mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-66836776607723139772016-10-12T10:50:00.000-07:002016-10-12T10:50:00.957-07:00Stood UpThere is a popular British series called Peaky Blinders. In it, they hire a kid to get thrown in jail to appease the authorities. They call it "stood up". The kid was paid well and all was well, except the organized crime opponents of the Blinders killed him.<br />
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Stood up meant there was a purpose for the authorities and the criminal element involved. In the case of the Blinders, they needed an arrest of a bookie, a phony at that, to get the cops off their real bookies. In the case of the police, they needed an arrest to show the government that was demanding action, they were doing their job. <br />
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Such is the current political climate. In fact, we have been voting for stood up candidates for President most, if not all my life. The only exceptions I can think of are Trump and maybe Reagan. But, Reagan was a political figure, brought into the mix at the Republican Convention of 1964. Sometimes we have 2 viable establishment characters, so the puppeteers can't lose. Other times, we have basically a dummy to face their man in power. An example was Dole in 1996, when it would have been easy for the Republicans to dust off a new face and beat Clinton in 1996. Dole was in the same pockets that Clinton was in, thus making it a safe bet. <br />
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I made a decision to quit voting in 1994 and despite my strongest urges to register and vote against Hillary, I haven't done so. My reasoning at the time was they were going to make the second Bush the President of the United States, when they stood him up as Governor of Texas. 2000 confirmed my suspicions. It was either 2002 or 2004 that Obama was elected to the Senate. Immediately, he was being touted as a Presidential candidate, the first black President. It only took 4 years, despite Obama doing nothing to distinguish himself in the Senate. The timing of his election, the financial crisis, along with the massive campaign war chest he had, tells a story. Afterwards, there was very little in criminal prosecution of the sins of Wall Street and some of the main characters involved were brought into his government. <br />
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McCain was also a stood up character. One of the Keeting 5, McCain was certain to be friendly to the bankers. Then we have the capital firm character, Mitt Romney. What an insider and what an easy target for Obama. Was the plan to elect Obama or to have 2 candidates in the pocket of the establishment?<br />
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This brings us to Hillary Clinton. What has Hillary done? Next to nothing, but she was touted 25 years ago, as the first woman President. She had worked in a law firm a few years, her practice tinged with corruption. Other than that, her claim to fame was she was married to a politician. Someone decided she would be Senator of a state, where she hadn't resided in over 25 years. Broke, according to her story, she buys a mansion. The state, New York, is ruled by bankers. Presto.<br />
<br />
If we the people understood what was going on, Donald Trump would win this election by 50 points. I'm not going to say Trump has all the great ideas, but for the first time in a long time, likely in my lifetime, we have a man that isn't owned by the same powerful international groups. His opponent is tainted with more scandals and corruption than possibly any character who has ever run for any national office. The actions of the establishment against Trump model the actions of a totalitarian state. <br />
<br />
The current controversy is about something Trump said on an open mike while riding in a bus with other celebrities. The establishment had this on the shelves to release at an appropriate time. What time? When all the damning facts about his opponent comes out. We saw this when the Obama phony, doctored birth certificate was released. Suddenly they kill Bin Laden. The WikiLeaks releases confirm Hillary is a 2 faced liar, who doesn't work for the people, doesn't unite the people, but uses divisive tactics that may or may not be her actual opinion. She peddles influence to the few, using the many to get into power, effectively destroying the middle class. The establishment doesn't care about us. They care about having someone in power that will spread their influence and pad their pockets. The American people are pawns to keep them in power. <br />
<br />
Trump was actually telling it as it is. He never admitted to grabbing pussy, only that he could do it, if he wanted in a lot of cases. Is it true? There are women that don't care who they sleep with, as long as there is status in doing so. The NBA teams travel around the country. Women hang out to get someone of note as a notch on their gun. Some of these guys end up paying child support to women they don't know. You hear about it all the time. <br />
<br />
WikiLeaks comes out with all the dirt on Hillary (their emails, not some rumor) and here this off color interview of Donald Trump telling it like it is. The press can't talk about how Hillary looks at the typical American as a pawn or how she despises us. No it is about Trump telling it as it is, likely having fun behind closed doors in telling it. Locker room talk, as in the 19th hole locker room.<br />
<br />
How many women has Donald Trump met that would go to great lengths to have him show sexual interest toward them? Probably 100,000 or more. Wilt Chamberlain claimed to have had sex with something like 5000 women. Think he got all of them that were available? They were lying in wait for him, if this was true. That is 1 a week for 100 years and Wilt probably did it in 35 years or less. He wasn't going out on dates with these gals, as Wilt was a bachelor his entire life and not even Wilt could handle that stream of women. I never heard any rumors of rape against Wilt. Think Wilt didn't grab a lot of pussy? He was black and he was an icon. He was also a notch on thousands of women's guns. <br />
<br />
So, the mainstream media plays these comments over and over again, while emails showing what a group of thugs are managing the Democratic Party candidate. Hillary Clinton is a criminal. Not only is she guilty of violating the espionage act, but there is massive evidence of the peddling of influence. The Feds go after local authorities engaged in minor violations, while Hillary pockets tens of millions, then runs for President. That, with the mainstream media aiding and abetting her along the way. <br />
<br />
Why? Trump is the first candidate for President that the people of the United States selected, in my lifetime. The Republican establishment fought him. The Democrats demonize him, yet is he likely closer to the blacks, Hispanics and whites of the US than Hillary ever was. His views on illegal immigration is twisted to mean he hates Mexicans, while the Americans of lower economic status are priced out of the market, social systems are financially strained and the country bears a cost. Trump has come out for the United States and its people. The establishment is fighting him, because they want to get rid of the United States as we know it and use the world as their source of more power. <br />
<br />
So, we are looking at a cardboard cutout in Hillary and the people's choice in Trump. The establishment candidate can be whomever they like, as they are in the habit of controlling both candidates. Mickey Mouse could be on the ticket, as long as the administration behind him was composed of establishment, Goldman Sachs types. This is what we will get with Hillary, more characters selling the common man and women of the United States down the river, under the guise of diversity and nation building. <br />
<br />
As for me? I resisted the urge to register to vote once more. Maybe one day I will get involved with local issues and register. If Texas isn't a safe state for Trump, my vote wouldn't matter, as the establishment would have succeeded in pulling the wool over the sheeples eyes once more. The United States has been destroyed by these people and we are seeing a last gasp effort by a movement to save what is left. Our debt and our working class is being used as collateral to further the aims of the multinationals and globalists. Even the poorest American couldn't stand what is on its way, if we don't reverse this collateralization of America for international purposes. In the meantime, the current administration is pushing us toward world war, likely to cloud the issue of impending financial collapse. The main players are going to need a place to hide and Hillary will give it to them, in exchange for a little fame, fortune and power. Our industry is gone and the debts are piling up. We the people are a dead issue, if we the people elect Hillary. Elect our candidate, not theirs. mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-47930841261565502292015-01-24T01:23:00.001-08:002015-01-24T01:23:23.907-08:00Credit Bubble Bulletin: My Weekly Commentary: Draghi's Do Whatever it Take...<a href="http://creditbubblebulletin.blogspot.com/2015/01/draghis-do-whatever-it-takes-beat.html?spref=bl">Credit Bubble Bulletin: My Weekly Commentary: Draghi's Do Whatever it Take...</a>: As always, the CBB is an expression of my own views. It is in no way intended as investment advice. My objective is to chronicle history&#...mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-65455146440864319752015-01-19T10:22:00.000-08:002015-01-19T10:22:54.610-08:00STUCK ON ZEROThe talk over the past couple of years has been, when does the Fed raise its discount rate? The fact of the matter is this talk is to be taken with a grain of salt, as any possible threat is met with assurances from some Fed dove that raising rates in the near term just isn't possible. I have a few explanations to offer that go outside of this jawboning policy, that actually moves to the point that only the market will ever raise rates, as the Fed is stuck on zero.<br />
<br />
The first point to make is that since the Japanese bank went to zero, a bank that actually went so far, has never been able to get out of the trap they built themselves. There are many reasons why this is the case, but the primary one is that the monetary base has no natural way to have increased itself while stuck at zero. A zero fed funds rate raises no money for depositors or bankers, who have excess cash. The only thing that grows is the monetary debt associated with increased bank lending in the first place. Thus, debt has either increased or remained flat, while the compound interest equation has consumed the means of repayment. For those that don't understand this policy, I will go into details. <br />
<br />
All the money in circulation today has been created by the system of banks either creating debt or buying the debt of others. This includes the central banks, which must maintain a balance sheet that at least presents a case of solvency. In making such loans, they never create the interest with which to pay the debt back to its source. Repayment has to either come out of the deposit balances in the banking system, out of the capital position of banks or out of the forfeiture of property, in the event of default. In any case, the ability to service debt, placed on the debit side of the bank ledger, has to come from the credit side of the ledger. This is what constitutes the entire base of funds to service the cumulative ledgers of the banking system. <br />
<br />
Once we have met zero, all kinds of carry trade financing takes place. Banks and other entities that have the capacity, borrow at zero and buy higher yielding securities that give them a free ride, along with allowing all sorts of borrowers a source of lower financing, much lower than the normal risk situation presented often deserves. To raise rates, puts this entire systematically created situation at risk. The carry trade in various currencies around the world is in full force and effect. <br />
<br />
How large is this trade? I have no way of knowing, but I would suspect it is behind the low government rates around the world, just as is QE itself. As more money is put on the debit side of the bank ledger, more funds become available at zero, to anyone willing to take the risk. The Japanese carry trade has been happening for close to 20 years. Japan has never moved off the zero rate. The 10 JGB is trading about as close to zero as could ever be imagined for a government that for all practical purposes is insolvent and has absolutely no mathematical capacity to service its debt any anything resembling a real interest rate. Its entire tax revenue would be consumed at such a rate.<br />
<br />
As long as those in position to know can make the assumption that rates are going to remain at or almost at zero, this trade will go on. It appears to me they have the central bankers trapped, as the losses of even a couple a percent move in longer dated paper would create a margin call that exceeds the capital of the entire system that supports such carry. A 20% haircut on sovereign debt or corporate debt issued to support the trillions in stock buybacks and acquisitions would make the subprime disaster look like a rained out picnic.<br />
<br />
Then, one must look at the other side of the game, the banking system itself. Excess reserves total in the multi-trillions in the US alone. How could such a massive pool of money be put in demand to create a bid, when the system is so flush with cash? Are the central banks going to commit suicide and destroy the mark to market on what they hold as collateral, in order to raise rates? To reverse QE and start selling bonds would by itself, destroy the leveraged carry trade. I suspect this activity isn't even in the cards. <br />
<br />
The proposed method is to raise the interest rate paid on reserves. That rate, from what I understand, is at 1/2%. There is no real bid in the Federal funds market or the rate on funds would be what the Fed would pay on reserves, in the first place. Why would it be any less? Why would banks give up this rate to lend these risk free funds in the broad market? Is it because no one needs any funds at this level of supply or am I missing something? It would only be the Fed itself providing funds at a lower rate that could answer any needs of funds. Absent a bid, there is no Fed funds market.<br />
<br />
My preferred means of raising the discount would be to raise the reserve requirement. This would fly in the face of the TBTF banks, as they would be the most likely entities that would be affected by such a move, in that they would be most likely the more highly levered institutions. Could we see such a move? I highly doubt it.<br />
<br />
Without a system that needs funds, how can the Fed create a bid? They are limited as to how much they can pay on reserves, because they are the holders of such a large amount of low yielding paper. I would suspect, having some clue as to the rates of interest on 10 year paper over the past few years, they would be limited to maybe 2.5% to 3% on the top. This is hardly a real interest rate, but high enough to upset the finances of government and destroy any carry trade in dollars. A 2% inflation rate, from what I have been taught, implies a 5% risk free rate on bonds. A move in the coupon from around 2% to 5% on a 10 year bond, implies a roughly 25% loss in current market value of such securities. How could such a move be transacted for long?<br />
<br />
In this vein, we are faced with only 3 remedies for the Fed to raise rates. Sell assets and draw in money, raise the rate paid on reserves or raise the reserve requirement, forcing banks to hold more cash. The only one that can be successfully used over the short term would be to pay a higher rate of interest on excess reserves. But, this is limited to the average rate the Fed receives on its assets, surely less than 3%, which is a normal rate at around zero inflation. Pulling money out of the system, though the wise position, would create an unwind of the carry trade on bonds and the inflated stock bubble, destroying the false prices of assets we see at this time. <br />
<br />
When a small group can purchase a return for free, we end up with an unbalanced economy and one that is rife with systematic risk. The average American doesn't have access to free money. Only those positioned to take advantage of the financial engineering mechanisms developed over the past 30 years have this advantage. In the meantime, it is mandatory that someone hold the excess money produced, whether it be the banks, which have the money immediately returned to them through the closed system of banking or the poor guy who saved his money and has sense enough to not trust the asset inflation that has come around to bite them over and over again. <br />
<br />
In the end, at zero or at a higher rate, this system will collapse. It will collapse, because no one lives off their own body and the fact of the matter is the earnings excess we see in corporate America is a result of excessive debt, taken on largely by people that have no capacity to borrow and service more debt. Financing available to them is only available at rates a long way from zero, some of the subprime, paying rates that were against the law at one time. Paying zero on liabilities created by the entities that have been entitled to pay zero is also against the law, the law of nature and mathematics. Something that can't go on forever won't. mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-3768937162612669592014-09-03T10:00:00.002-07:002014-09-03T10:00:27.318-07:00New CommitmentI haven't been here in awhile, though I have drafted a few posts that never made it to the site. The subjects have become stale, so it is probably no use saving old material. In any case, it is time for some new stuff.<br />
<br />
Some of you that follow me know I write plenty around the net. I write because I read and I think I have something to say on a subject, right or wrong. Everyone has their own version of reality and that includes the guy that does your local news. Sports writers make Gods and goats and guys that write on markets and economics look like fools or geniuses, depending on which way the grain is running. <br />
<br />
Though I am still interested mainly in markets and economics, reading various Austrian economic and libertarian sites, my perspective has changed somewhat. Though the perception presented in the mainstream press is that countries like Russia and China are run by oligarchs, the truth of the matter is, so are the western countries. There are questions about the politics and economics of the western states that I don't believe I would have asked a few years ago. Some of this is due to reading and listening to men like Murray Rothbard, one of the great informed minds of the last half of the last century. In many places, his philosophy would be dismissed as pure bullshit, as I was informed by one of my favorite writers on the net. But, my study of the last 100 years tells me Rothbard was right on. Whether you call it conspiracy or merely people with power taking care of their business and feathering their own nests, doesn't matter. <br />
<br />
There are a couple of questions that have come to mind recently that I don't know I would have studied in the past. One is, why is the USA continually looking for the next scape to get into? This is even more important a question, as the resources of the country have become drained over the past 50 years or so, through the same repetitive activities. It is even more important, in that it appears the foreign policy and actions of the US are designed to create the next enemy, as they have with ISIS and Al Qaeda. I call this procedure knocking over bee hives. It appears we are racing toward a big finale, where Americans lose their prosperity and freedom and maybe even the war.<br />
<br />
The biggest question that has to be asked today is, why are there more people in prison in the US than anywhere else in the world? It isn't just violence, but all kinds of crimes. And, why are so many common people in prison, yet those that rig financial games to defraud others and expose the economy to risks not there with them? Is there a good old boys club, where they not only profit from others being in prison, but they see to it that their crimes are swept under the table and at best, the corporation, generally a banking conglomerate, are fined?<br />
<br />
In his history classes, Rothbard brought up something that isn't taught in American history, the religion of the Eastern Establishment, namely what Murray called Yankees. This not only has to do with morality, but it has to do with the promoted biblical prophecy that we hear all the time. I doubt there was much discussion of this prophecy 200 years ago, but someone found it and it appears they are pushing to bring it about. Rothbard says it caused the Civil War. I think it might have caused the prison population as well. Rothbard called these people humanitarians with a guillotine. They have been around for hundreds of years. The idea of socialism and communism actually is derived from these religious groups. <br />
<br />
One thing I never thought would happen was the degree of asset purchases we have seen by the central banks. I suspected the US would do the same thing as Japan when the time came, after many claims that they would never do so. The US has done one thing differently, they recapitalized the banks first then shoved in the dirt. Being that the balance sheet of banks can only be recapitalized by shifting money from being liabilities to capital, someone had to replace the money for the scam to work. The debts owed banks can only be paid out of the supply of money on the credit side of the schedule or by reducing capital. This back door bailout has kept a lot of powerful people, many guilty of criminal activity, in power. <br />
<br />
Then we have the greatest asset bubble in history. You would think we are in an economic boom, but the spending power of the basic customer of the corporate world has been exhausted. We are instead in an inflationary asset bubble, where the real power has been provided by low interest rates and the borrowing of money to buy back stock by companies that will have little means of repaying the money should another credit crunch occur. In the process, the purchasing power of those lower down the economic scale has been diminished greatly. The equation is broke and the US, save for the fact the population is still growing is headed for a Japan situation. Europe is already there. <br />
<br />
I hope to see all of you soon. I will dedicate time to post this site 3 or 4 times a month minimum. I encourage debate, should you like to comment. Thanks for showing up. mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-23029457625523099262013-11-01T11:02:00.002-07:002013-11-01T11:21:45.166-07:00The Road to Serfdom and ObamacareLike many of my posts, this one was originally written on Karl Denninger's site market-ticker.org. <br />
<a href="http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=225621&page=2#new" target="_blank">http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=225621&page=2#new</a><br />
<br />
<br />
I decided to search the mises.org site to see if they posted the Hayek book, The Road to Serfdom. It is there. I had bought it in paperback a few years ago, but I would suspect I have gained more perspective, watching the NAZI's in power and reading other stuff. If you haven't read the book, or have and it has been awhile, this is the book to read now and turn onto your friends. I put it on Facebook, which is about all I do on Facebook. That is post stuff I hope others will read. <br />
<br />
<h5>
hayek page 47 wrote..</h5>
<blockquote class="forum">
Nobody saw more clearly than the great political thinker de<br />
Tocqueville that democracy stands in an irreconcilable conflict<br />
with socialism: Democracy extends the sphere of individual<br />
freedom, he said. Democracy attaches all possible value to each<br />
man, he said in 1848, while socialism makes each man a mere<br />
agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in<br />
common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while<br />
democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in<br />
restraint and servitude.</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h5>
hayek page 49-50 wrote..</h5>
<blockquote class="forum">
Democratic assemblies cannot function as planning agencies.<br />
They cannot produce agreement on everything the whole direction<br />
of the resources of the nation for the number of possible<br />
courses of action will be legion. Even if a congress could, by<br />
proceeding step by step and compromising at each point, agree on<br />
some scheme, it would certainly in the end satisfy nobody.<br />
To draw up an economic plan in this fashion is even less<br />
possible than, for instance, successfully to plan a military<br />
campaign by democratic procedure. As in strategy, it would<br />
become inevitable to delegate the task to experts. And even if,<br />
by this expedient, a democracy should succeed in planning every<br />
sector of economic activity, it would still have to face the problem<br />
of integrating these separate plans into a unitary whole. There<br />
will be a stronger and stronger demand that some board or some<br />
single individual should be given powers to act on their own<br />
responsibility. The cry for an economic dictator is a characteristic<br />
stage in the movement toward planning.<br />
<br />
Thus the legislative body will be reduced to choosing the<br />
persons who are to have practically absolute power. The whole<br />
system will tend toward that kind of dictatorship in which the<br />
head of government is from time to time confi rmed in his position<br />
by popular vote, but where he has all the power at his command to<br />
make certain that the vote will go in the direction that he desires.</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h5>
hayek page 53-54 wrote..</h5>
<blockquote class="forum">
Advancement within a totalitarian group or party depends<br />
largely on a willingness to do immoral things. The principle<br />
that the end justifi es the means, which in individualist ethics is<br />
regarded as the denial of all morals, in collectivist ethics becomes<br />
necessarily the supreme rule. There is literally nothing which the<br />
consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves the<br />
good of the whole, because that is to him the only criterion of<br />
what ought to be done.<br />
Once you admit that the individual is merely a means to<br />
serve the ends of the higher entity called society or the nation,<br />
most of those features of totalitarianism which horrify us follow<br />
of necessity. From the collectivist standpoint intolerance and<br />
brutal suppression of dissent, deception and spying, the complete<br />
disregard of the life and happiness of the individual are essential<br />
and unavoidable. Acts which revolt all our feelings, such as the<br />
shooting of hostages or the killing of the old or sick, are treated<br />
as mere matters of expediency; the compulsory uprooting and<br />
transportation of hundreds of thousands becomes an instrument<br />
of policy approved by almost everybody except the victims.<br />
<br />
To be a useful assistant in the running of a totalitarian state,<br />
therefore, a man must be prepared to break every moral rule he<br />
has ever known if this seems necessary to achieve the end set for<br />
him. In the totalitarian machine there will be special opportunities<br />
for the ruthless and unscrupulous. Neither the Gestapo nor<br />
the administration of a concentration camp, neither the Ministry<br />
of Propaganda nor the SA or SS (or their Russian counterparts)<br />
are suitable places for the exercise of humanitarian feelings. Yet it<br />
is through such positions that the road to the highest positions in<br />
the totalitarian state leads.</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/upldbook351pdf.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/file....</a><br />
<br />
Any legitimate American can't read this and look at the current administration and not see the Road to Serfdom being paved by the NAZI's in power. When confronted with their lies, the administration tells more lies. They go right from telling people they can keep their insurance coverage, to writing rules that force insurers to cancel policies because they are against the law to blaming the insurance companies. Who is writing the business under Obamacare? The insurance companies, of course. So, the new idea will be to get rid of the insurance companies and institute new taxes to run the system. All decisions dealing with health care, treatments, who will live, etc., will be done by the regime. Dissenters will be fined or imprisoned. Or be pursued by the IRS.<br />
<br />
Health insurance really isn't anything more than a means of financing health emergencies. You pay in advance for what you might need. Now, where are we? Everyone that has had insurance that has had an illness since being insured is now impaired as an insurable life. Remember, health insurance is life insurance. You can't buy life insurance when you are dead and you can't buy it when you are likely to die, at least at a premium most people would be willing to pay. But, if you are terminal, they can't cancel you. Not even on a term policy where the fixed term is up, you can still pay the renewal to 95 rate and you can sell your policy and let someone else pay it. <br />
<br />
But, with health insurance, if the pool is cancelled, those that are uninsurable are fucked. They had insurance and now they don't. I have never sold health insurance, because between the noise you hear from the socialists and my misunderstanding of various payment clauses in the policies (I have never used a health insurance policy in my adult life), I never felt competent to discuss such coverage. I have had contracts to sell insurance though and there was always a guarantee you had coverage in a new pool, if the pool you were in was discontinued. I guess the only out the insurance company had was to quit doing business in your state. The bullshit you hear from the mouths of the defenders of this current mess is just that, bullshit. <br />
<br />
I posted the Hayek link, because I think every American should read this book and examine what we are seeing now. I get a lot of argument from people I know about this NAZI stuff I rant. Mainly, because they are clueless as to how the Hitler's happen. This is how they happen. Good intentions or not, a group sets the stage and another group comes in and takes over. It is already clear that the Obama administration has absolutely no morals. The entire group lie. They intend to use force at some point. They spy on the people. I can go on and on. It might not be Obama that turns this into a totalitarian dictatorship, but it is apparent we are well on our way. There will be more adherents to socialized medicine, as the system comes out of this totally fucked up. We are really looking at a situation which would be not unlike Japan, where instead of 2 bombs, we flew over the same cities and dropped another on each and then put a couple on Tokyo to boot. Some will say you can't fuck up what is already fucked up. Any of us that have been through difficulties know that is not true, as it can always get more screwed up. <br />
<br />
What if the news Karl posted above had come out when the data was available? The whole government shutdown mess would have been a mute point. At the worst, we would have had a case for postponing the Unaffordable Care Act for a year, that the American people would have probably demanded. As it is now, the genie is out of the bottle. I don't think they get the genie back in the bottle at this point. We have seen the nuclear option used on the healthcare system of the United States. The only way to save the village was to destroy it. <br />
<br />
There is only one way we come out of this in one piece. That is to allow the free market to work. There have been examples posted here and acting-man.com wrote about a couple of MD's running no insurance operations, one a GP and the other a surgeon. Anyone with credit can afford to get a surgery under the free market system. The payments would probably be less than those on a health care policy and there would be no coinsurance. <br />
<br />
I am sure that if any free market plan comes to fruition, the NAZI's will step in to stop it. I am not sure that such a restraint of trade and freedom would pass court muster, but this day and time, you never know. as the legal system has been steered in a fascist direction as well. If enough people dropped their health insurance and bought policies that covered cancer, heart problems and accidents and paid the rest out of pocket, American health care would be revolutionized. If you think we would see the current cash pricing in pharmacies continue without insurance, you are missing the boat. But, the can of worms is open and the totalitarian solution Hayek diagrams is likely to be used. NAZI's cannot afford to have their authority questioned. mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-61700565365072269282013-10-05T11:32:00.001-07:002013-10-05T11:32:08.448-07:00Is It Time for an Anti Party?I have thrown this idea around on various posts on Karl Denninger's Market Ticker. I can't say how many people have thought it a good idea or failed to recognize how it would work. But, we have reached a fork in the road where the United States is headed to financial doom, the politico's represent themselves and a few constituents and the Executive branch is now structured to control the lives of the masses through personal regulation and spy networks that do little to further the lives of these people nor protect the real security of the nation. <br />
<br />
The idea is an Anti Party. I figure, if a group could control 15% of the vote, they could restructure Congress, swing the election of Presidents and clean out government. All they would need to do is work to vote in the primary running against the incumbent, for a candidate of their own. The Tea Party has succeeded in do this in the Republican Party, but in effect it has merely divided one Party between Freedom fighters and corporate interests. This action has left the Democratic Party totally in the hands of the corporate statists and done little to fix the Federal government to be of interest in the middle class.<br />
<br />
One must look at what the Tea Party really is. It is far from the guns, God and small government group the establishment has painted it to be. These are free market, anti control people, who are rebelling against the status quo of soaking the middle for the benefit of Wall Street, the poor and the rich in general. They are also not necessarily soak the rich people, nor starve the poor people either. Though they tend to be anti Fed and anti socialism. <br />
<br />
Through this anti idea adopted by the Tea Party, they have been able to elect several candidates on the Republican ticket. This has the establishment Republicans in a tizzy, namely because these people are not for what the National Republican party is operated to achieve, which is more along the same goals as the behind the scenes Democrats, to strip power from the middle and play both ends of the political spectrum against the middle. All government revenue is levied against productive enterprise, which is the primary reason the USA has been in decline since the Great Society began and fantastic wealth has been cornered in the top 1% of the population. Those who have been able to assemble idle capital have done well in the trickle up economics of LBJ, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, not to mention the Bush's and to some extent Reagan. <br />
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What the Tea Party really represents is the Democratic Party of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. These people were pushed out of the Democratic Party through the actions of the party, progressively since the late 1800's, with an acceleration occurring after Jimmy Carter, where they no longer had a place in the fascist Democratic Party of Carter and Mondale. They are not corporate Republicans, but generally middle to upper middle class workers, small business owners and middle management. They are painted by the national media as yokels and idiots, but likely the average Tea Party member possesses a better idea of economics and how the American government is supposed to work than the mainstream groups which are primarily voting to have government force others to pay their way. <br />
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The problem the Tea Party has is they have no say in the Democratic Party and the National Republicans, with their media machine, don't want them. The current demonizing of Ted Cruz is a clear point to demonstrate this reasoning. If John Boehner was a Democrat, we wouldn't ever know the difference, as he represents a different ideology than Cruz or most of the non traditional people who have joined the Republican party merely because they can't stomach the Democrats and their government control socialism. But, it isn't only the Democratic socialism they can't stomach, but the repeated wars of both parties, the watering down of civil liberties due to security issues created by the waging of these wars, the debts associated with wars and socialism and the general corruption involved at the top of both parties. The Tea Party is the current anti party in operation. <br />
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Cruz, like him or not, stood up against a real issue. It isn't that Obamacare is necessarily good or bad, but that it involves massive regulation, implied force to comply and makes a mess of the entire landscape of American medicine. American's aren't going to like Obamacare, not the middle class, which it is designed to coerce into paying the bill for others. It will create a guaranteed cash flow for the elites, which control the title of nobility drug business, the bankers who derive massive cash flow from the financing of medical facilities and the poor, which will be subsidized by the productive people of society. Someone must be blamed for the continued inaction of the US Senate, why not the guy who stood up and spoke up on an issue where preferred constituents have received a bye in compliance?<br />
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The sort of anti party I mention has little to do with philosophy, other than the philosophy of the party. It won't run candidates in any specific party, but attack named incumbents and attempt to nominate and elect candidates in the opposing party. Most elections are won by spreads of 55-45 or lower in the House and few ever go over 60-40. If we had 15% of the vote to vote as a block, against the mess we have in Congress, regardless of party, we could clean out Congress until we found one that worked. Forget you are a Democrat or Republican. If you are among the forgotten middle class, you can band together with other like minded people, nominate a candidate in the opposing party and whether he wins or not, vote for the candidate of the party out of power. If the rule of thumb is these 15% are split 5/10 Democrat to Republican, the 5% going over to the Republican side will swing a lot of seats that way and on the contrary, would pretty much wipe out the Republicans as we know them. I would suspect that 25% of the Democratic vote and half the Republican vote technically belongs in the anti party.<br />
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It isn't against the law for the Democratic Party to have a Tea Party, which will also refuse to toe the national line. Remember, the National Republican leadership treats the Tea Party as if they were the nutty aunt locked up stairs. So would the Democrats, but remember there are members of both parties that would vote for a yellow dog before they would vote for the other party. I will also note that primaries nominate the candidates and a significant minority of voters participate on those elections. The first thing that must be done to change things is to get at least one non-establishment candidate on the ballot. Which party means absolutely nothing. <br />
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Why should there only be Tea Party Republicans, when we can have Tea Party Democrats? The Tea Party or whatever Anti Party we need to develop, should be concerned with who runs on the ticket opposite the incumbent, unless the incumbent is one of theirs and is in danger of losing his spot. A 70% participation of 15% of the likely voting public in either party primary would enable them to nominate the entire slate of candidates. Eventually, they could have influence on the leadership of both parties and instead of being the nutty aunt locked up stairs, they would become king makers in both parties, directing candidates to pare back the Federal government and its regulations on us, not to mention the destructive theft of services our government has come to represent. mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-33918827368429399672013-08-07T13:25:00.000-07:002013-08-07T13:25:45.689-07:00When the market calls a spade a spadeI posted this on Karl Denninger's Market Ticker on this date. <br />
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There are some stupid questions asked in regard to money, no offense intended.<br /><br />For one thing, the banks would remove every spare dime from the Fed. Depositors would remove every dollar they could stand to hide themselves from the banking system and hold it in cash. They can't turn your currency into 99 cents from one dollar and issue 99 dollar bills in place of $100's. Banks would be devoid of currency and cease to function. <br /><br />In a sense, the central bank is already carrying on a negative interest rate policy. The interest rate, which is basically zero, up to 1/2%, if you take into consideration what the Fed is paying on excess reserves. A real interest rate encompasses at least the inflation rate and should encompass a return in excess of that. The rate is near zero because Benny has put so much money in the system the banks don't need money to clear their imbalances. <br /><br />There is a big joke out there the Fed can tomorrow declare the interest rate to be 1%. Benny has ass fucked himself with all his QE. He has to create enough of a shortage to create a bid for bank funds. Remember, Fed money has to do with the transition of bank liabilities and has little to do with our accounts. The banking system pays interest on the cash we hold, at least indirectly. In truth it is paid by the government, but is forfeited by the banks, in that they hold non-interest bearing Federal Reserve liabilities in lieu of interest bearing treasury debt. <br /><br />Maybe in the long run, things are the way we think they are, but in the short run, the system works entirely different than the vast majority of us were taught. It is the function of a credit system, which is really a debit and credit system. The cash available at any given time to those outside the bank consists of credits or bank liabilities and currency held by the public. Few, if any businesses, outside of retailers and illegal businesses hold any significant balances of currency outside the banks. Retailers hold only enough to make change for what comes into their trade and the vast majority of other cash is held by businesses that cash checks.<br /><br />The actual print has been around $1 billion a week, from figures I see Doug Noland publish on his weekly report on money supply. The remaining $80 billion plus is ending up, largely on the debit side of the bank ledger, plus whatever is being financed directly by government flows. It is these government flows, money that it is implied by decades of action as money that will never be paid back and backed by compound interest that is the true long term push on inflation. KD's example of borrowing against future demand is the counter balance of private money expansion. Thus, out of the banks assets (ie: bonds you and I sell that are funded by the Fed, along with those bought from pension funds and other institutions) make up the bulk of credit creation by the Fed. Credit creation implies there is a credit entry creating a cash liability on the bank ledger. <br /><br />I think the primary effect of QE is more and more, a greater and greater percentage of the bank assets are represented by Fed money. This is in effect, a forced deleveraging of the various banks balance sheets. A creation of a mass of idle capital and an unwinding of the long term leveraging of debits the banking system has accomplished over decades. There may or may not be a countering credit liability, other than bank capital that represents this increase. For years, banks have been creating credits on a very minimal increase in bank cash, literally their entire portfolio being represented by loans and various income producing assets, against a small slice of capital. <br /><br />Bank credits can be extinguished by the repayment of debt that extinguishes bank debits. Such an action on Fed funds can only be exercised by a resale of assets by the Fed, picking up cash or payment of interest to the Fed. This interest generally cycles back through the Federal government and paid back out into the banking system, producing a wash. Thus, the only thing that can carry this cash is private capital. It can't go anywhere, except to be used to leverage more credit, which is actually leveraged against bank capital, be withdrawn from the bank for cash hoards or lie there in the banks. Very little bank lending is used to create a hoard of currency, but instead is used to move to credits in the bank issuing the credit or in other banks in other entities accounts. <br /><br />It is what is happening to the cash, once it is created that presents the current picture. The debt levels and the structure of the US economy is now that money might flow to entitlements, but the money spent by those drawing entitlements circulates mainly to accounts where it isn't being spent again through the economy. Any flow merely creates a cash balance somewhere else. Corporate profits are now around 1/8th the economy, up from a long term average of 1/16th, so in short it takes money only 8 cycles to belong totally to the corporate world, as opposed to 16 times years ago. Much money is being used to pay interest on prior debt, thus accruing to accounts that reinvest the money. Unlike the average Joe, these entities don't spend their entire cash hoard every 2 weeks, but buy assets with it instead. Money instead is being used for speculation instead of consumption. Some is being used to replace worn out capital goods, but little is being used for expansion, because demand has been pulled forward. <br /><br />Japan is an interesting study, in that everything that would be assumed to happen, hasn't happened. The US is on QEIII. Japan is on QE a whole lot more. Their government carries a massive debt, I would suspect largely monetized by the Bank of Japan. The banking system in Japan is so full of cash, the people of Japan, having received next to zero on their funds are holding hoards of printed yen, in lieu of the banking system and still little pulse. At best, one can speculate on wide swings in the Nikkei index and hope to beat the game. The fact Japan hasn't blown up YET, is evidence this game works. The fact Japan's economy has stagnated, their birth rate has collapsed and their debt is massive, is evidence trouble is still ahead of us. Abe is going to prove the point one way or another.<br /><br />The fiat on US currency reads "This Note is Legal Tender for all Debts, Public and Private". The currency is a unit of debt, valued only in its capacity to satisfy debt obligations. This is why the dollar has international value. The fact the dollar once had intrinsic domestic value, that it was part of the international gold exchange system and represented stored capital, made it a means of transferring capital and debt between countries. It is through the international banking system that trade is generally transacted and international debt is created. The dollar has value internationally, not because the US prints it, but because massive banking and other debts are denominated in dollars. It is also the means of access to the United States capital markets, the deepest in the world. It is the unit of trade, not due to decree, but due to its position in debt in capital markets around the world. Regardless of whether a country would issue gold back currency, gold itself or choose another currency, the fact is that the fiat of tender for debts around the world give rise to its value and not much of anything else. <br /><br />In the position of debt and in the position of credit in banking around the world, the value of the dollar is also the problem with the dollar. This along with the fact that principal and interest in banking can only be satisfied with the creation of more dollars, not on the banks ledger, but in the accounts of those that owe dollars in the form of principal and interest to the banks. The banking system creates every actual dollar in existence. Dollars are loaned through other entities, but they are only created through borrowing from commercial banks and monetization of sovereign debt. <br /><br />If you do the math, we get back to what Karl wrote above. I buy a car with cash from my account, the cash goes to another entity and I get the car. Once I move from paying cash to creating a debt instrument, either a bank creates the cash or the cash is acquired from the banking system as a loan or from an account and placed into another account. I no longer own my car until it is paid off and to get another one, I either have to take out a new loan or save the money while I am paying off the car I have to buy another at cost beyond the equity I have in the car I own. This problem began to assert itself back in the 1970s, when terms on auto loans was extended beyond the 36 month terms that were usual then. I think they now have auto loans of 7 years and maybe longer and leases where no equity is acquired. People roll larger and larger balances to the next auto, to the point they no longer can trade cars. Of course, in order to continue to lengthen the term of loans, automakers had to make better cars. When I was a kid, a car with 100,000 miles was considered an exceptional auto that was worn out and had little trade value. Today, if I bought a car that wouldn't go 200,000 miles, I would consider it a lemon. I am now at 93,000 miles on a truck I bought used 6 years ago, a total of 173,000 miles. I recall in the 1980's, a 6 year old auto was a pile of junk. Mine will be 14 model years on and I expect to drive it 2 more years. You couldn't do that in 1980, nor could a lender expect to have a car worth much more than scrap at the end of a 5 year loan. Autos are one thing that I can about guarantee you they don't make them like they used to and thank God they don't. <br /><br />Credit cards are another matter. I would suspect a person who has required debt service on credit cards in excess of 10% of their income are credit impaired. They are also debt slaves. In order to extinguish credit card debt, a persons spending must not only decline the amount it exceeded income while the debt was being incurred, but a like amount, plus interest must be dedicated to paying down the debt. Thus, if a person paid interest only on their $10,000 line of credit over 50 months of building up the debt, their cost during that time was the interest. Their incurring of debt was $200 a month, spending they did in excess of income minus interest. Going from spending $200 a month more than someone makes to spending $200 a month less is a $400 swing. It is either do that, pay on the debt forever or default. Bankruptcy solves a lot of these problems, as long as the system is set up to absorb the losses.<br /><br />One persons money debt is another persons or institutions money asset. The impact of default, on a wide scale basis, is loss in many areas, including banking. I don't believe there is any purpose for what the Fed has been doing other than to cover up insolvency in banks, pension funds and strangled leveraged plays. As we go forward, more supposed wealth accrues in these areas,, until the markets catch up and once again declared a spade a spade.mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-54815248645603664732013-06-10T11:28:00.007-07:002013-06-10T11:28:54.247-07:00Has Government Painted Us into a Corner? The Use of Emergency Laws and the Rules Associated with themThe Patriot Act and all executive orders associated with it should be repealed and replaced with something more limiting. I recall listening to a lawyer from Virginia on Coast to Coast AM. Now I know Art Bell and company had a lot of characters on their show, but this guy was speaking on Executive Orders. I want to say this was back in 1999. I taped it, but I doubt I could find that tape, as it was in my car for a few years and probably was ruined. <br />
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In any case, the guy argued about how the President didn't need mother may I from Congress to do anything, merely pass executive orders associated with some problem and they would usually stand. The 2 that didn't were the Youngstown Steel case during the late 1940's, when Truman tried to nationalize the Youngstown Steel Company and some end run the Clintons tried to do on health care when they came into office in 1993. Clinton passed some orders on wetlands (the story was they could declare almost the entire country wetlands and rule over us with an iron fist, destroying farming and limiting construction on a sizable amount of the country. Around that time, a friend of mine told me he was arrested once for urinating on a public watershed, because they deemed where he stopped along the side of the road as such and there wasn't a lake or river within site). The guy said that had been challenged by a few in Congress, including Helen Chenowith of Idaho. The court ruled they had no standing to challenge, because they were in Congress. <br />
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The real point here is the guy brought up the most recent executive order at the time. Clinton had declared a state of emergency on something Bin Laden's group had done, I believe in Thailand and basically declared war on him. The fucker had been around for awhile. It might have been the embassy in Africa. I have no way of knowing what the administration might have done there. <br />
In any case, since Pearl Harbor, there hasn't been an official declaration of war by the US Congress. Yet we spent a decade in Viet Nam, several years at war in Korea, where the threat of war has been continual for longer than I have been alive, 2 invasions of Iraq (one partial and one full), Afghanistan, and smaller police actions in various countries around Africa and Europe. Congress hasn't declared war, but they evidently agree to these war under some other kind of nonsense. I have yet to see Congress get us out of one of these conflicts or refuse to fund them, no matter how popular or unpopular the conflict might be. Are we stuck once these actions start?<br />
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It is my understanding that Abraham Lincoln issued the first executive order, basically prosecuting the Civil War without Congress. To the thinking of the South and most likely most, if not all of the States at the time, they were sovereign states and were acting within their rights. I would have thought there would have been more orders of that sort issued prior, like in the War of 1812, which was a real emergency and a war I understand to have been declared by Congress. Lincoln took actions to silence dissent that developed over the time the war was going on. Texas was let into the union under a Constitution that allowed the people to dissolve their government and wasn't annexed, because John Q. Adams ruled that a sovereign state couldn't be annexed. It was brought in under a joint resolution of Congress, akin to the declaration it is National Secretaries Day, with the understanding Texas would fulfill various requirements, one of which was to enact an approvable Constitution. By popular vote, Texas withdrew from the Union under that Constitution. I know nothing about the other States. I do know Texas and Alabama were the last given full representation back into the union, I believe in 1878. <br />
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KD mentioned the draft and registering for the draft in the last ticker on this subject. Mohammed Ali, aka Cassius Clay, successfully avoided the draft, under the term conscientious objector. I would suspect you can refuse to volunteer, but is not the filing of a draft card offering to volunteer? If it is, why are there penalties for not filing? The fact that there hasn't been a draft since the early 1970's (I missed the war and the draft), doesn't outweigh the requirement to register. <br />
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The point here is there any greater act of terrorism than to require people to go to war for some action the government chooses to get involved. The US screwed up World War I, getting in to lend money to Britain and France, actions which created great resentment when we actually wanted our money back. They took the tact they fought the war for us, which was a bunch of bullshit. National Security was never an issue in World War I. FDR staged our entry into WWII. Should we have been in that war? There were some bad actors, notably the Germans, Russians and to some extent the Japanese. My suspicion is that Hitler opened a can of worms when he attacked Russia, thus exposing Europe to eventual occupation by the communists. This is a coin flip call, but there were more Americans killed in that war than the terrorist have killed to date. Ditto Viet Nam and Korea. <br />
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Then there is the refused for reasons of National Security. I have heard enough stories and seen enough official letters on this subject to realize that the main security they are concerned with is covering up the crimes of various government agencies. Here is one such paper that was covered up by national security for decades, in the files of Georgetown University. It was a plan to incite a war against Cuba after Castro took over, staging events to appear we were attacked by Cuba. This was in the 1960's. Think the power grab of the US government has gone backwards over the past 50 years? <br />
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<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/doc1.pdf">http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/doc1.pdf</a><br />
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What is the response to the release of the news that our communications are being tracked? The government is denying its use and they are charging the guy who released the news with a crime, likely violating National Security. The government is waging war against us, so how is the disclosure of a war against us a breach of national security? Obama is merely the end of a long line of lying bastards we call Presidents. How much of the national security restrictions apply to dirty deeds run under executive order? <br />
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It is much preferable, in my opinion, to be conquered from without than to be conquered from within. The current government is too interested in making us do something, like buy health care, what would appear to be a good cause, enforced by NAZI tactics, than letting us be free. Sure someone getting sick without insurance affects all of us. So does the appropriation of our labor under force of law. I think in the past, this was called slavery. Maybe we should us 18USC1581 as an attack, when this is enforced. They are also interested in raising a revenue against the population. This was one of the main protests in the founding protest documents of the nation.<br />
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There is no justification for the gathering of information about the general population. As Karl states, this is a clear violation of the Bill of Rights, not just 4 & 5, but all 10 and some of the others. Theses amendments stand together or they hang separately. 99% of the phones in the USA can probably be linked into a chain of calls that touch the phone of a terrorist. Think the terrorist is going to use a phone registered in his name? Think we aren't going to have to provide passport, birth certificate, Drivers license and other ID to get a phone soon? <br />
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There is an authorizing act in Congress that is vague or broad enough that allows these bastards to do anything they wish. Note the administration pretty much refused to say they wouldn't kill Americans with drones. Think they are going to get impeached when they do? No, they will hide behind national security. I recall the basis and purpose statement on the Patriot Act that I saw read, for defense against terrorism and other purposes (paraphrased). What are other purposes? What are terrorists?<br />
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America had better get a handle on the concept of executive order. Obama supposedly has or will attempt to enforce his gun laws through executive order. Whether you believe it or not, the government will attempt to act under these orders, until challenged. I believe they become effective 30 days after publishing. It matters not what Hitler did was against the law. He did it anyhow. I do know that executive orders will cite an authority, usually a statute. mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-84442385924774341912013-02-23T11:23:00.001-08:002013-02-23T11:28:46.135-08:00You can't turn fiction into reality for more than brief periods of timeYeah, we are going to fix this stuff? Obama has his Mydol out, crying of cramps yesterday, today, tomorrow and forever. Any idiot that had $100 last year, $100 this year and was given an extra $6 out of thin air, could spend $104 instead of $106. Not these mothers. The whole fucking government is going to collapse? They could just not send checks out for a week and solve the whole mess, kicking the expenses to next year and they could do that over a period of months, delaying for an hour a day, the remitting of money. Instead they tell us that a 2 cent reduction in spending what is being borrowed or stolen from us in the first place is going to force them to shut down their meat inspectors? <b>MAKES YOU WONDER WHERE THEIR PRIORITIES ARE, IF THE FIRST THING THEY WOULD CUT IN A MILD REDUCTION IS A PRIMARY PUBLIC SAFETY ITEM?</b> Do any of you see where these fuckers priorities are? The officials, elected or not that made those statements should have their teeth busted out with claw hammers so they can't speak so well, as they are either lying or fronting criminal enterprises that have other ideas of how to steal our money rather than providing the true government services. <br />
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Here is the problem Karl. Exponential is linked. Wipe out the mortgages, need to wipe out the assets on the other side of the ledger. Wipe out the assets on the other side of the ledger, there goes the retirement and pension plans. This means prices must fall, which endangers more debt, which endangers more paper assets and we have a downward spiral. We know it needs to happen, but who is going to throw their retirement, their nest egg, their wealth on the pile first? <b>And, when they do, are others going to follow or merely say old Mannfm11 did a noble act, but boy was he stupid</b>. <br />
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We have people going to rent to own stores and buying luxury items that can't buy their own cereal for their hungry children. A lot of them. We have kids on their third iphone complaining about the student loans they are racking up. The bull market needs this nonsense to continue or stocks and the related pensions go to a new low level and stay there. <br />
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If there was a solution, they failed to exercise it in 2009. They did what the Japanese did, except they had been doing what the Japanese did in the 1980's to get there the prior 15 plus years, goose the economy with money over and over again. This is what they did in the 1920's. Bernanke's model is in solving the Great Depression, but he hasn't allowed it to start, so he is pissing up a rope. Feeding the monster. So is Obama, who has now loaded onto the working class the most punative tax ever passed. <br />
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The world has bought a ticket on a losing horse and is holding on because the race hasn't been run yet. Only a very few bet on the favorite and they keep delaying the race, hoping the only horse that can win dies first. That horse is now breeding champions and is out of mind for a lot of people. But, the world can't understand why their horse, which looked so good in the warmups keeps limping worse. They keep pumping more monetary antibiotics into their picks, not understanding that after the first dose, which seemed to work, the medicine is now poisoning their steeds. <br />
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How can you continue to put more coins in the fusebox when the wiring is shorting out. Some slots have 5 coins in them now, when 1 was enough.<br />
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Government derives every dime out of the real economy. This works well when government does its job, which is provide infrastructure common to all. It doesn't do any good to build something in place of something that already works fine, like tear out a 20 year old sewer system in good shape and replace it. That is flushing your meal down the toilet, thinking you can save a step by putting the shit in the pot ahead of time. <br />
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We had the Federal Reserve in 1913, because bankers didn't want to be liable on their own notes. Then FDR took up the gold, so we could have flexible money, leaving it for international trade. Then Nixon debased and defaulted on gold, making the US credit system the standard of world finance. Now the credit system is out of power and we have turned to QE, a system of defrauding everyone involved. In order to continue QE, we need paper, so the government keeps spending and they have to keep spending, because there are tens, if not hundreds of trillions of derivatives dependent on having available 10 year notes. They have built a bomb of epic proportions that is now too unstable to defuse.<br />
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I am not saying Greenspan should have let LTCM fail, but instead of loosening credit, he should have liquidated the bubble right then and there. Stocks were at least 100% overvalued in 1998 and letting the market fall back to 1995 or 1996 levels would have not done much damage. Now, we are going to see the market fall to that level, once this nonsense is all done, wiping out 2 decades of gains in a matter of a couple of years. They won't get this up next time. Look at Japan. We will be looking at charts in a few years that have the SPX in territory from 20 years back. It is now getting close to 30 years back for Japan and the yen has been devalued as well. You can't turn fiction into reality for more than brief periods of time. <br />
<a href="http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=217892&findnew#new" target="_blank">http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=217892&findnew#new</a>mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-23558064009084797982012-12-08T11:00:00.000-08:002012-12-08T11:04:49.076-08:00The corruption of a countryThere is supposed to be a housing revival. Like Karl, Doug Noland takes apart the z-1 or what ever that quarterly report is called. He noted that mortgage debt fell considerably. What hasn't fallen is the money we are on the line for in the GSE's, the federal deficit, which was on a borrowing basis over $1 trillion again and so forth. <br />
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It is kind of like farting in a room and leaving. The air is clear until the fart drifts to where someone can smell it. Politicians are the same way, in that we don't smell their farts until time has passed. We hear this shit about Clinton and high tax rates in the 1990's producing a boom. The credit bubble and stock market mania produced a boom. Clinton had the Republicans, Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin shoveling coal into a downhill train. 2000, we were left with a hangover, which was solved by more booze, a housing bubble. <br />
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The fart in the room today is the Federal defict and the politicians that are still there need to do something about it. They need the Wall Streeters to shovel coal for them and the lunatics at the Fed, the delusional students of revisionist history, to provide the money. More and more debt on less and less worth. Keep the stock market inflated, so it appears we can still pay. <br />
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I was either listening to or reading Kyle Bass. The Japanese national debt is now greater than the net worth of the households in Japan is what I understood him to say. Solution? It appears they are going to try to pump air into a new bubble in Japan. Problem is, there isn't anyone over there with enough wind to blow one. They never fixed the holes in the old one. Neither have we, the Europeans nor anyone else. The China bubble rests on unsound banking practices that make the subprime mess look tame. Think we have mark to fantasy? <br />
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We are about to see the worst bear market in history. Doug mentioned one of the unintended consequences of Bernanke's shennanigans, the fact that regardless of how low mortgage rates are, they are massively higher than what the banksters are paying on your savings. You have $100K in the bank and a mortgage, you are giving up $3000 a year. Forget the tax deduction, which only starts after you have paid several thousand in taxes and interest on your house in most cases. Getting statements on $100K money market and CD's and seeing the $20 or less they credit to you for interest is stunning. Rates are about 1/20th what they should be and the system forces someone to hold the cash. <br />
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<strong>This is what is missing in this bank money era, the fact that someone is tied up in cash. It isn't a societal choice, as someone has to hold it. It isn't so much inflationary as it is deflationary, as either more and more resources are tied up in cash or, should it decline in value, the purchasing power in the economy falls, not increases. More than anything, I sense this is what has hamstrung Japan for 2 decades, excessive bank credit inflation that is used, not for internal expansion, but international arbitrage finance.</strong><br />
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So, the politicians need some loaded ammunition. This is why it isn't fixed. The politicians are in the shitter and the bankers have the toilet paper. The only solution is to make the problem worse, as to not do so would mean the fart gets out while the politician is still there. We are now going to war and the ammo boxes are filled with more and more spent casings. National debt is a spent casing. Bank money credit is a spent casing. It can only be recycled to factories that reload it and immediately fire it and send out reloaded casings that are already spent. This is what the debt bubble and the expanding national debt are, fired casings. <br />
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Look what is going on? Intel borrowed $6 billion last week. Why? Their dividend payments were yielding higher than the interest rate on the debt, so why not load up and buy some of their own stock? We are going to find out why not in the future. This makes INTC the ultimate short in the next slowdown, which will be worse than the last slowdown, because the ammo box has been spent. INTC could reduce its dividend in a cash crunch, but they won't be able to reduce the interest on this debt, nor evade its payment. INTC isn't in the catbirds seat it was before, because so much of what is computers has moved to phones and they aren't on this sailing ship. I have read they are going to attempt to become blow buddies with AAPL, as AAPL is waging war with its supplier, Samsung. The price wars are coming in the phone business, as they have in the PC business. What happens to AAPL if margin shrinks? <br />
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Speaking of which, the 4th quarter results of AAPL show 26.028 million phone units, producing 16.245 billion in revenue. This is right at $625 per unit wholesale. Each dollar less margin produces $26 million less gross. These items will be commodities in a matter of a few years and to annualize these figures, multiply by 4. I'm sure the Chinese in the rice paddies are going to be lining up to buy these items at $1000 retail to use in places there isn't broadband capacity. I'm also sure that when Samsung and other foreign competitors decide to really get competitive, there will be charges of dumping on the US market. But, can we really get too upset by loss of revenue by a company that for the most part employs Chinese slave labor? History shows a complete round trip on mania stocks like AAPL. I'm sure their cash balances will be discussed when the market price of the stock is nearby. Remember, in 1998, everyone had to own DELL.<br />
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I was nearly out of high school when the hand held calculator hit the market. TI is 8 miles down the road and half the town worked for them at the time. A kid brought one to chemistry class. He probably wouldn't have owned one save for the fact his old man was in TI management. Half the class copied his homework and of course, couldn't work the problems when the test came out. While in college, the HP brand was AAPL. To get one of the fancy HP calculators, it was $300 to $400. By the mid 1980's, the 12C, what I consider to be a marvelous tool, was about $120. The last one I bought was $40. My sister's was run over by a car, as she had dropped it in the parking lot. It still worked. <br />
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From Doug Nolands Credit Bubble Bulletin, December 7, 2012<br />
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<strong>I’ve essentially ignored the (stagnant) banking system in my “flow of funds” analyses over recent quarters. Total Bank Assets grew only $66bn during Q3 to $14.762 TN – and were up only $197bn (1.4%) over the past year. Yet I would be remiss for not noting the 9.7% y-o-y increase in business loans (to $2.174 TN) or the 8.3% y-o-y increase in government securities holdings (to $2.231 TN). Meanwhile, Corporate Bond holdings were down 4.1% y-o-y (to $776bn), mortgage loans contracted 2.0% (to $4.334 TN) and Misc. Assets fell 11.0% y-o-y (to $1.267 TN). On the Bank Liability side, Total Deposits were up $495bn, or 4.9%, y-o-y to $10.532 TN. </strong><br />
<strong>With federal government liabilities now locked in an historic inflationary cycle, there’s at this point a significantly reduced need for the traditional workings of the U.S. financial sector. The vast majority of system Credit growth remains governmental. In stark contrast to the mortgage finance Bubble, this Credit for the most part need not be intermediated (transformed from risky Credit to perceived safe instruments) through the banking system, or through asset-backed (ABS) and mortgage-backed (MBS) securitization. It is also worth noting that, at $7.544 TN, total GSE Securities (debt and MBS) were little changed during the quarter and declined only 0.5% over the past year. And while Total Home Mortgage Credit has contracted $660bn over the past two years, GSE securities have declined only $54bn. Despite talk of “winding down” Fannie and Freddie, total GSE securities are about where they were in early 2008. It is worth noting that GSE securities began year-2000 at $1.723 TN.</strong><br />
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<strong>Monitoring the financial sector for signs of rejuvenation remains less than fruitful. Finance Companies were stagnant for the quarter and year. Securities Broker/Dealer assets were down slightly during the quarter (assets up $70bn, or 3.5% y-o-y, to $2.051 TN). The ABS market continues to contract (down $216bn y-o-y to $1.824 TN). Money Market Funds expanded $39bn during the quarter to $2.507 TN, reducing the year-over-year contraction to $170bn. Fed Funds and Repo increased $32bn y-o-y, or 2.9%, to $1.134 TN. Funding Corps increased $70bn y-o-y, or 3.6%, to $2.256 TN. Credit Union Assets did see year-over-year growth of 5.5% to $897bn. Real Estate Investment Trust (REITs) Liabilities jumped $67bn to $792bn, with one-year growth of $172bn, or 28%.</strong><br />
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<strong>From my analytical perspective, the SAAR $299bn contraction of Home Mortgage Credit was the biggest surprise for the quarter. This compares to Q2’s $214bn contraction and Q3 2011’s $200bn decline. With mortgage borrowing costs having taken another leg down to historic lows – and all the talk of an unfolding housing recovery – I was anticipating a return to positive mortgage Credit growth in Q3 or Q4. But, then again, with negative real returns on savings and such highly uncertain policy, market and economic backdrops, it remains perfectly rational to pay down mortgages and other borrowings. That extreme fiscal and monetary policy measures foster extraordinary uncertainty – thus incentivizing a cautious approach for many individuals and businesses - reminds one of the Law of Unintended Consequences. And a “fiscal cliff” compromise, while perhaps spurring the markets’ speculative reflexes, would do little to resolve ongoing uncertainties. </strong><br />
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[url <a href="http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php/creditbubblebulletinview?art_id=10735">http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php/creditbubblebulletinview?art_id=10735</a>]<br />
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Read between the lines and you might understand what is happening. The households, in general aren't taking the bait. But, there is more. Look at the GSE debt figures and the explosion that occurred between 2000 and 2008. Look back in Doug's archives, which can be found on safehaven.com's website to 2001. You will note a similar growth rate in the 1990's, money which fueled the stock market bubble. <br />
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Why no prosecution? Some of you might recall the 2008 Presidential election. Who were Obama's financial advisors? I recall seeing them listed as Robert Rubin (talk about a fart in the room), Larry Summers (the actual turd?), Paul Volker (the legitimate voice brought along to legitimize the nonsense that I am certain he disagrees with) and Franklin Raines. Who is Franklin Raines? A black man from Wall Street who worked in the Clinton Adminstration, I believe in HUD. He is also the guy who ran FNMA during this disaster. He also financed the black congressional caucus and Obama's rise to prominence. Could there be a connection?<br />
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[url <a href="http://www.safehaven.com/article/209/franklin-d-raines-director-of-central-planning">http://www.safehaven.com/article/209/franklin-d-raines-director-of-central-planning</a>]<br />
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There have been 4 years of tickers here I have read. I venture 20% of them have dealt with the thin layer of dirt overlying the massive pile of shit known as the mortgage securitization market. The whole pile likely leads to Raines and maybe Rubin. Raines was the leader of the band in the mortgage business. Any uncovering of this massive stench puts this guy and all his cronies in prison. But, he has Obama, HUD and Eric "Place" Holder between him and broad striped outfits. Raines goes, Obama goes with him, as he will be wrapped around Obama's neck like an anvil around the neck of a man in deep water. Bought and paid for. Banker capitalists don't care what are the means as long as the ends are achieved, to the point of historically putting communists and fascists in power. Anyone kicks off a little dirt, the administration quickly covers up the bare spots. <br />
Corruption in bubbles has almost always centered around stocks and real estate loans. We had the swampland deals in the 1920's. The stock market manipulations between the trusts. All were designed to leave others holding the bag. Now we have the greatest scam, leaving the people of the US holding the bag and the elected officials arranging it. <br />
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<a href="http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=214681&ord=3085694#3085694">http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=214681&ord=3085694#3085694</a>mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-13121569619047426412012-11-07T12:25:00.001-08:002012-11-07T12:25:45.811-08:00Off the Cliff? From Freedom to Serfdom?I wrote this post in response and in support of Karl Denningers post linked at the bottom of this page. I rarely post directly to this site, but copy some stuff I put a lot of thought into writing. As Blackie Sherrod, an old Dallas Sportswriters used to say, this is scattershooting at my best. <br />
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Here is my two cents and I have been pretty good at figuring a lot of this stuff out over the years. Not how to fix it, because we are a mature society with a 2 year old mentality and fixing it would require it collapsing first. No one wants to give up their candy. A lot of us have a good idea how to fix it, but that requires breaking what is there. A good start would be ending a Federal program and firing all the associated workers each month. Spending cuts in DC means you are going to get a 6 ounce steak this year, a 7 ounce one next year, but we are going to cut it down to 6.8 ounces and grade up to 9 ounces instead of 10 ounces. The Democrats made up this bullshit during the first term of Reagan, when the press echoed the cruel spending cut rhetoric. The cruel spending cuts were merely a doubling over 8 years instead of 4 or whatever. If the rest of us could only be so lucky.<br /><br />In any case, you should have never left tickercon 1 Karl. Hope everyone is short, because they have the ultimate fuck going on right now. NYC is on its ass. The liars are suddenly admitting that all of Europe is going in the ditch. A run over dog could have figured that one out a year ago. The US is being propped by layers of fraud. I wouldn't be shocked if that big AAPL trade wasn't a day trade. 1.5 million share, a $2 loss wipes out the capital. Settle at the end of the day. Get the toilet paper ready and hope the next open is up so you can get out. It is always a rogue trader who pulls what the internal control should make impossible. Bet it was an order from the top. AAPL always goes up doesn't it? The models are used because reason says they usually work. When they don't, the result is disasterous, because the whole boat is always full of outfits trading outside the rules with insufficient capital. They always fail to work at some point, usually when it is considered they always work. I recall skipping empty cheap champagne bottles across the parking lot as a kid. I dropped one at a party on carpet once and it broke like an egg.<br /><br />The government spending component of GDP is bullshit and when it is deficit spending, even though there might be a time lag, the end component (x-i) shrinks on a net basis. If the USA wanted to solve their trade deficit, the first thing that would be required would be for banks to quit financing government deficits. Being a country saturated in debt, the deficit would disappear overnight. So would the Chinese economy, but they are likely our highest potential foe in the next big war, so why not. Things would get cheap too, wiping out leverage. <br /><br />How do you fix the government and its finances? I'm not sure it is trashing welfare or unemployment insurance. It sure isn't propping prices or taxing the hell out of success, though I would consider raising taxes on rents and other financial gains, as the current structure serves to perpetuate the mathematical divide between possibility and impossibility. Large financial pools of stagnant capital, such as my family's rental properties, save on a grander scale collect rents out of the middle class and government and compound the returns into more rents. One way or another, the end gains on these investments are going to be altered downward. Capital gains? Index to inflation and raise the rate. No one should pay tax on what isn't a real gain, due to government and banker devaluation of money, but those that benefit from acquiring money ahead of the curve should pay a real tax, if we are going to have an income tax. Romney would have won the election had Bain paid a business tax instead of a capital gain tax that was totally derived out of speculation and favorable borrowing terms. He would likely have been much poorer and maybe not have ever been in the asset stripping business in the first place. <br /><br />Romney was crucified by the idea to cut public TV subsidies. You have to start somewhere. If I was President, I would propose such a plan. Don't laugh until you think it out. Start with public TV. Next month, do away with something else. Each month go after something bigger. Maybe at a year or 18 months, close the department of education, giving states the time to either come up with their own programs or do nothing. Close the department of energy or put it on the fast track to do what Karl proposes with energy. They have been playing with their dicks up there for over 30 years now. Get rid of the DEA. I would get rid of the BATF as well and put what is necessary for both operations in the FBI. Might as well get rid of the SEC as well, as they do next to nothing, other than train evasion officers for Wall Street. <br /><br />180 degrees from Obama, I would repeal any law that supported closed unions, where employees were forced to join. Think this multi-billion dollar slush fund didn't buy Obama the election? Unions are business enterprises that make their money out of extortion and crony politics. If a union is truly effective, people will pay their dues. Otherwise, the system is set up to unionize and enforce dues. Don't think for one minute the $700 billion Obama stimulus didn't go to protect and enhance union jobs. The GM rescue was nothing more than a $50 billion gift to the UAW. GM will be broke again. <br /><br />The medical industry needs to be reformed and this starts with insurance coverage. Every insurance plan in the US, including the government ones presents nothing but a free pool of money to grab. More and more creative ways are found to grab the money, which is why the costs are out of control. I would start with making all insurance catestrophic, maybe $25,000 or $50,000 starting points. I would ban prescription plans, which I see as a front to scam the public. You only need go to Walgreens or CVS with your next cash prescription then go to Costco and see what kind of system we have. Criminal.<br /><br />With a limit of $25,000 or $50,000 to be paid out, the insurance or plans for basic coverage could be styled as monthly expenses or for many people, they could merely do without and create a sinking fund. With most medicine unprotected, I think you would see a competitive system. We could see a return of the charity hospital system. If there were drug plans, I would set them up where there was a minimum $1500 deductible and insurance companies reimbursed the customers. There isn't much to setting up a plan that goes to an online account. The point being, the pharmacies don't need to know if you have insurance or not. You can bet there would be a more competitive pricing system and we wouldn't see the dual pricing we see today. These are observations from the outside looking in.<br /><br />Lastly, KD grouped Libertarians in with Republicans and Democrats. The problem here is what appears in the Libertarian party aren't libertarians at all, but one or 2 topic people attracted by these causes. When someone joins a cause because they want to smoke dope, but they also want the government to enforce bullshit against other people, they aren't libertarian, they are potheads. When women vote Democratic because the government will mind their business for them, but they want privacy in other matters and want the government to mind their business, they are hypocrites. This is an anti-Libertarian stance. It takes a lot of education to become a true Libertarian, because we have had a lot of brainwashing all our lives to the contrary. True Libertarianism is a complex group of ideas, most Laissez Faire, but some redistributive if the benefits to an individual or group stemmed from an endowment from the State. Large land grants of various governments around the world were very anti-libertarian. Jefferson was likely one of the originals. Compound debt against productive people is the most anti-libertarian of all issues. Government ordering us around in our every day lives is another. The endowment of financial privileges is anti-libertarian and it is clear to me a bank charter in the current system is nothing more than a "Title of Nobility". Libertarian and political social fascism that prevails in the western world today are polar opposites of each other. If you ask the typical person on the street if they support fascism, they would feel insulted. But if they went to the polls yesterday, likely the voted to choose between 2 of them. There are several paths to take to get from point A to point B and we are stuck with a choice of paths, not destination.<br />
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<a href="http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=213610" target="_blank">http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=213610</a>mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-19481543231267943242012-08-28T09:09:00.001-07:002012-08-28T09:09:26.693-07:00Gold and a Libertarian SocietyI wrote this on Karl Denninger's Market-Ticker. Seeing as I do most of my writing there, I will generally repost here what I believe might have some weight. <br />
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Balance sheet depression or recession=built too much shit that now doesn't perform so can't build more, loaned more money than can be paid back, so don't have choice but to pretend and extend, especially in the banks. The biggest problem in Japan was they waited 15 years or more to close any banks. The Japanese economy was built on a debt pyramid as savings is the mirror of debt in a debt system and you can only count book value in real savings, as stock prices are arbitrary and dependent on the other side of the economy (those that don't own stocks) being able to continue to spend. Stock prices supported only by the spending of those that own them equates to pulling ones self up by their own bootstraps. <br /><br />The problem with the Libertarian party is those running the party aren't Libertarian. Kind of amazing the Dallas Fed mentions Mises. It must scare the crap out of Bernanke and company, the banksters to the moon, inflate, pretend and extend, we are all dead in the long run group. Modern banking is a statist system, bankers endowed to do what can't be done by the state. That is pretend something is there that isn't. Go on insolvent, while looting those that deal with them of everything. The facts are that government along with the Fed is allowing bankers to steal our property, pretend their assets are good, while allowing them to depreciate their liabilities, which is what they owe us without compensation. I think this violates the 5th amendment, but then again, the statists aren't concerned with the bill of rights, save for allowing politicians to mention them and courts to use them to justify some absurd ruling that violates other amendments. <br /><br />America wasn't supposed to have a ruling class. The only group that wanted a ruling class in 1800 was the bankers and their cronies. No State shall make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debt. When the chips are down, who can't pay their debts, because they are up to their eyeballs in fraud? The bankers. Laws were rigged to change deposits in banks from bailment to loans. Now we have monkeys in buildings in DC and NYC that dilute the money, paying us with what we owe instead of what we put in. Over 100% of all currency in circulation is owed back to the Fed. They got our capital for nothing, as it takes some kind of liquidation of goods, services, property and such to acquire government debt or what ever the Fed monetizes. They might be getting the assets for free, but we aren't acquiring the money. <br /><br />Contrary to belief, that clause didn't make gold and silver coin money. It was already money, but people could have made anything they wanted to be money, as long as they wanted to contract for it. Governments have used money to produce bondage ever since we have had written history. Read Genesis, with Israel getting trapped in Egypt. The writers of this clause knew government and banksters would find something besides gold and silver, like bills of credit (why the Fed can't be part of the government) to loot us. <br /><br />A constitutional republic cannot stand for long without contracts payable in gold and silver. Pharoah and the banksters take over and before long the people are asking "mother may I". Gold didn't fail because it was economically wrong, but because it didn't satisfy the banksters and the socialists. Who has it all now? The governments and banksters. They owe it all back to us. <br /><br />One of the Rothschilds said it 200 years ago, that he didn't care who made the laws, just let me control the money. Private money is the core of Libertarian thought. Gold was used because it was stable, portable, divisible and not consumed in the sense that it perished or turned to trash. Price stability is the antithesis of gold, as price stability is all about inflation and has nothing to do with finding the true liquidation value of anything. Price stability is the mechanism government uses to feed its cronies, at the expense of the rest of us. Once gold turns to paper, the gig is up. <br /><br />Gold is antiquated, only because it isn't in agreement with modern banking and socialist governments. But, note they hoard it and keep it from us. There is no way you can lever gold 20 to 1 and have a 5% interest rate and have the system last very long. Leverage was done very carefully under gold. It was the paper redeemable in gold that was unstable. <br /><br />I don't get into this battle about the price of gold, only its role in a libertarian, free society. People can promise a load of peanuts for a car if that is what is agreeable, but they can't take that to the bank today. This is the problem, what you can take to the bank. Isn't it the totalitarian system that is developing around us that we should be concerned with, the system of statists and their bankers? <br /><br />How can you have a dollar of capital when we can't agree what a dollar is? Is it a dollar of capital or 50 cents of capital or in the case of the last 100 years, a couple of cents? In the meantime, we have a bankster led government that is taking on debt that can only be satisified out of the productive resources of the economy. The debt is to be payable to banksters, directly or indirectly. Many of which have no capital up, nor could they pay their debts themselves. The cartel, run by Ben Bernanke, creates bills of credit on bills of credit to continue this scheme. The scheme isn't for economic growth, as economies grow according to the people and assets in the economy and not according to the profitability and actions of the banks and governments. mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-83407163386766769042012-08-15T10:39:00.000-07:002012-08-15T10:39:43.219-07:00My Expose on the Chicago PlanI posted this in response to Karl Denningers post<a href="http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=210183&ord=3009097#3009097" target="_blank">The Red Pill On Banking</a> . Karl is what I consider to be an important mouthpiece of the Libertarian movement and operates the Market-Ticker website. Due to the importance of this subject matter to our future prosperity, this appeared to be a valid topic to preserve on my site. <br />
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Then, what this says is a bank would have to receive an actual deposit, unencumbered by debt to make a loan. If they were lending actual money they possessed, there would be no need for the Fed. <b>I think the problem is a lot deeper than that, in that depositors couldn't have immediate access to their funds, because they were all loaned out.</b> This would mean, as I believe I have seen Karl comment, there would have to be 2 type banks, one of which never loans money, but merely holds it for customers. <br />
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Here is the rub on money. You hear this nonsense that money is going into the stock market, like it disappears. Money only changes hands or is created out of debt or disappears in the payment of debt to banks. It also cycles through accounts. Clearly the lending bank would have to also have an account at the deposit bank, because this is where the money is. Thus a lending bank would have to borrow out of the accounts at the deposit bank and I believe it would work more like the money market accounts. They would have to bid for funds and what they borrowed or loaned would merely change accounts. Whomever loaned their money to a lending bank would no longer have it.<br />
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The effects? For one, as lending went up, interest rates would also have to float upward. A fixed amount of money against a growing amount of loans would imply a growing need to acquire money, either through selling something or through productive enterprise. This would restrict boom and bust and discourage marginal investments. The idea we would have a Fed fooling with the rate of interest would destroy the entire self regulation of the system. Inflation and low interest rates are counter to each other and I believe we would have to keep the government out of this as well, as it would only take a short while before they were back into cronyism and destructive inflation. <br />
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In America's Great Depression, book page 71-72, Rothbard makes this comment. This is an important feature of economics, banking and government in that depressions are caused in large part by continual efforts of government and central banks to prevent true price discovery. A prime example would be the government subsidy for Solara or whatever that outfit was. Most people can't comprehend their wages declining and their standard of living increasing, but this is the true nature of a limited money system. It probably beats hell out of a system, where $30,000 a year today barely supports what $3000 a year did 45 years ago. Quote follows:<br />
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<b>Just as in the case of the acceleration principle, the fallacy of the<br />“investment opportunity” approach is revealed by its complete<br />neglect of the price system. Once again, price and cost have disappeared.<br />Actually, the trouble in a depression comes from costs being<br />greater than the prices obtained from sale of capital goods; with<br />costs greater than selling prices, businessmen are naturally reluctant<br />to invest in losing concerns. The problem, then, is the rigidity<br />of costs. In a free market, prices determine costs and not vice versa,<br />so that reduced final prices will also lower the prices of productive<br />factors—thereby lowering the costs of production. The failure of<br />“investment opportunity” in the crisis stems from the overbidding<br />of costs in the boom, now revealed in the crisis to be too high relative<br />to selling prices. This erroneous overbidding was generated<br />by the inflationary credit expansion of the boom period. The way<br />to retrieve investment opportunities in a depression, then, is to<br />permit costs—factor prices—to fall rapidly, thus reestablishing<br />profitable price-differentials, particularly in the capital goods<br />industries. In short, wage rates, which constitute the great bulk of<br />factor costs, should fall freely and rapidly to restore investment<br />opportunities. This is equivalent to the reestablishment of higher<br />price-differentials—higher natural interest rates—on the market.<br />Thus, the Austrian approach explains the problem of investment<br />opportunities, and other theories are fallacious or irrelevant.</b><br />
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<a href="http://mises.org/document/694/Americas-Great-Depression" target="_blank">http://mises.org/document/694/Americas-G....</a><br />
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There seems to be a belief that dollars have babies, but they don't. Reserve bank lending is based on the idea that there is more money available than has been created, as money originates with banks and interest is attached. The concept of an expanding money supply has little to do with the economy and a lot to do with keeping the loans on the bank ledger performing. Thus more and more collateral is needed to keep the system going and more money has to be created to pay the interest that is coming due. The public is faced with the dilemma of struggling to pay what they owe, file bankruptcy or borrow more and the banker is faced with the dilemma of either lending more or writing their loans down out of their capital reserves. Increasing bank capital is nothing more than accounting for money that never existed in the first place, through the addition of more money that never existed. Fed policy is based on buying assets bought with money that never existed with notes that can be exchanged between banks and other banks and between them and their customers. All compound debt. <br />
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Under a gold standard, there was always the gold. I find it highly doubtful that trade beyond borders could be established out of purely government issued money. The whole thing would be a farce. Gold was eliminated through debt and collateral, not because the government could print money. We are now totally in a legal tender for payment of debt and outside of this factor, the ink on a dollar is worth more than the paper. But our houses are valued, our businesses are valued, our cars are valued and through the income tax, the government establishes a bondage that demands this money. The basis of the dollar has little to do with its real worth, but in the structure of debts internationally. Should it fail, it would be necessary to go back to a gold standard to repeat the process, as this would imply the structure of international debt had come unwound and there would be no use for dollars. This is why the dollar is king and the yuan has little international value. <br />
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Where I carry this theory forward is that debt in the system is nothing but compound interest piled up as money. This probably leads into a gold bug idea that gold and silver were the base of the current system and are all that remain of the non compounded interest. Due to Breton Woods, the US has to produce all the debt to keep the world system afloat, thus we had $5 trillion a year in new debt coming into the system at the bubble peak and since then, much of the rest of the world has run into trouble. In the 1990 period, the US slowed down and there went Japan. Once the US began expanding again, the excess went to China, not Japan and the advent of the Euro gave the Southern European countries access to some of the credit. Bubbles appeared in these countries along with China, even though Japan continued to deflate. China continued the boom, attempting to use their own credit, but such an expansion cannot go on and wouldn't have made it this far if not for the rigged game the Chinese banking system is. There has been no price discovery allowed in China other than exports and as such all kinds of misallocations of capital have been allowed to go on. <br />
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Creating debts that involve the money supply and having more money due than is possible to pay back, as the banking system has been allowed to do through state and national charter, has to be changed. If this is changed, government interference in the price discovery mechanism also has to stop. Lending out of the money supply should be done at the risk of the indivdual depositor at market rates, set without any interference by the government. The idea we need more money by diluting the money is like deciding we need more whiskey and getting it by filling the half empty half gallon bottle with water. This might work if you drink your whiskey with water, but it would be wise not to add water when making a drink, at which pace you would run out the same time. This can be illustrated by the fact that $30K a year is about what $3000 a year was 45 years ago. 10 times as much liquid, but the same amount of booze. <br />
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Lastly, I have suspicion of any thing that comes out of Chicago. I would suspect the University of Chicago was behind this and the Rockefellers bankrolled that institution. The Rockefellers also were behind the creation of the Fed, Nelson Aldrich being one of John D's in laws. Rothbard's Origins of the Fed covers much of the 15 year smoke screen employed to sell the Fed to the government. Worth reading at the following link.<br />
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<a href="http://mises.org/document/6119/The-Origins-of-the-Federal-Reserve" target="_blank">http://mises.org/document/6119/The-Origi....</a></div>
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mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-55691885977642171982012-07-18T22:14:00.000-07:002012-07-18T22:14:19.955-07:00So you want to be a LibertarianThis is a paragraph out of Paul's 1988 book, Freedom Under Seige, page 24 of the pdf. The book is free to read at Mises.org, linked below.<br /><br /><b>Today it is usual to assume that the government owns all that we<br />produce, and through government generosity we are permitted to retain a<br />certain portion. We routinely hear that if a particular tax is reduced, it will be <br />a "cost" to government. This concept must be changed if the idea of<br />individual liberty is to survive. There is no such thing as cost to government.<br />There is only cost to people. Government cannot grant to us our right to life<br />and liberty, it would mean that government controls all that we produce.<br />Sadly this is essentially the situation in which we find ourselves today.</b><br /><br /><a href="http://library.mises.org/books/Ron%20Paul/Freedom%20Under%20Siege.pdf" target="_blank">http://library.mises.org/books/Ron%20Pau....</a><br /><br />There is nothing more counter to this idea than the recent widely publicized speech of Barack Obama, chiding the small businessman for claiming success, as if the government produced, out of thin air all that went into his success. A slave holder might have bought and paid for his slave, but he had to take care of him and punish him if he stepped out of line. Is our government acting any differently toward the productive people of the US? Wasn't the slave conditioned to believe he was there for the master? <br /><br />There are people that say we need to take our government back. I think it is more than that. We need to get rid of most of the government and what we keep largely needs to be in our own counties, home towns and states. What we need to do is get our shit back, get our individual rights back, including our rights to defend ourselves, rather than wait for the police to leave the donut shop to respond to a theft, mugging or murder that has already happened. We need to end this banker monopoly, the herding of all of us under regulation written to prefer a small group at our expense. This line of thought might be painted as wacko, but if it is wacko, so was the overturning of slavery in the 1800's, because this is what in essense it is. <br /><br />The idea of Libertarianism isn't to get the government to do something, but to stop the govenment doing a lot of what it is already doing. There is no liberty in coercion and not only in coercion, but in taking actions to coerce others to do something. Stopping the looting of the productive forces, whether it be capital or labor, as capital comes from labor and little else has to be the force of government. Protecting the life, liberty and property of all. The problem is once we enter into the sphere of regulation, we are regulated, thus we face the broad swath of the commerce clause, well beyond where its lines were meant to be. <br /><br />I, for one, have never read anything Paul wrote. I have been busy reading the modern libertarian thought of Rothbard, learning who is who in modern economic thought and finding if their public record is equal to their real record. Guys like Friedman are painted as free market, when in fact they are merely statists of another color, put there to aid and abet big government and bankers at the expense of individual creativity. Today, I decided to get in the Ron Paul section of the literature and picked the above book, as it was written on the 200th anniversary of the Constitution. <br /><br />If any of us are going to get involved with the Libertarian movement, we need to learn what the whole philosophy is, not what we hear as lip service. A good place to start is probably Albert Jay Nocks, "Our Enemy the State" or the followup written by Frank Chodorov's "Rise and Fall of Society" to get a clear idea what statism of any philosophy is. Until it becomes plain what the state does, who it serves and how it works, there is little to do but join in on the circle of bullshit that plays out on the typical election cycle. In the meantime, the state shovels more of our production into the hands of bankers and other cronies, foreign and domestic. There needs to be a lot more negative action in government, that is, they shall not instead of we have to. <br /><br />The USA is still the richest country on Earth. Otherwise it couldn't support so many leeches sucking blood from its core. The problem is the entire system is now based on more leeches sucking off the body and through continually weaking the body, it becomes more susceptible to a fatal disease. Ideas like we can gain by debasing our currency or they must be cheating because they are giving their stuff away defy plain old country logic. Poor countries can't get rich by giving their shit away any more than a country can prosper by destroying the value of its income. This is merely the philosophy that took Rome down the tubes over 1500 years ago. <br /><br />Ideas like ending the Fed will never gain widespread support until the detriment to the average productive person through the Fed's actions is understood. When it becomes clear the purpose of the Fed is to allow the cartels, the banks and protected big business to gain possession of more of our future income and not for economic growth, to grease the skids of government to spend more of our future income to buy influence and our property in the present, what to do will become clear. Fortunes less than mid 8 figures are not in position to take advantage of these actions and only a few with skill and luck are going to join this group. It is class warfare of the state at its best. When people begin to realize the reason they can't get ahead is the government and the bankers have already spent our ahead, things will change. <br />
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This was posted on Karl Denningers Market-Ticker site, July 19th. <br />
<a href="http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=208821">http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=208821</a>mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753902078732880250.post-35460682750740272512012-06-01T10:17:00.000-07:002012-06-01T10:17:00.769-07:00Employment reports and markets<div class="message">
This is a post I wrote on Karl Denningers Market-Ticker. Thought it was time put something here.</div>
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<a href="http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=206711&ord=2952845#2952845">http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=206711&ord=2952845#2952845</a></div>
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The amazing thing about the decline into the close yesterday is it formed an almost perfect elliott wave on the prior decline. I don't question the decline, but the rally instead. News yesterday wasn't that good, unless one wants to buy into the nonsense rumors about fixing Europe. The exit out of the stock market is going to get narrower and narrower. <br /><br />Every time something like this comes up, there is more talk about QE and stimulus. What the hell do you think we already have? The only difference between QE and t-bills is a fraction of a percent. In fact, German 2 years are trading at near zero. They don't print money and throw it in the street. It is more like selling your free and clear house. Someone else has your house, you have $100,000 or whatever the sales price was. In fact, Fed money is a debit entry, so instead of having bonds or bills, the banks have liquidity. If the Fed buys directly from the government, the cash does end up in accounts. <br /><br />The big bullshit is the story of deleveraging. Deleveraging what? As long as the amount of debt in the system remains the same or grows, there isn't any deleveraging. I hear the delusional Richard Koo talk about the private sector in Japan deleveraging over the past 20 years, yet their private and public debt is now over 500% of GDP. Absolute bullshit when you look at the real figures. <br /><br />What QE actually does is give banks more free liquidity to run corners in stock, bond and futures markets. A bank can be legitimately bankrupt, but if it has funds to exchange in the markets, it can appear as solvent as John D. Rockefeller. Drop the FDIC insurance back to $100,000 and see how solvent some of these TBTF banks are. I suspect banks like BAC, C and JPM are already short actual funds and still beholden to the bond and fed funds markets for their liquidity. <br /><br />This brings up the reason for QE in the first place, to keep the TBTF banks solvent. These are the outfits that are fucked when the markets start coming apart. Wasn't LTRO in Europe a back door bank bailout? More money in the accounts to pretend their assets are good. The ECB is so full of crap and worthless IOU's that if any large group of speculators questioned the Euro, it would collapse in a pile of rubble. The quoted solution, eurobonds, would be the nail in the coffin, as a partially solvent Germany is the only pillar of any size standing in Europe. France could no more do what has been forced on Ireland, in regard to their banks, than Hollande could follow the cow over the moon. So, the only solution is to give the drunken sailors more money to finish their binge. <br /><br />Then, we have stimulus. The idea of stimulus would be okay if they ever took the stimulus away. Fed spending never went down after the $700 billion plan. In fact, I think $700 billion turned into $1 trillion and has remained there. The fiscal condition of all countries involved has deteriorated greatly over the past 4 years. Instead of solutions, you get comments out of the President that a legitimate country pays its debts, so raise the debt ceiling so we can borrow more to pay. This idea and intelligent life don't fit in the same sentence, pure absurdity, but it sells to someone. Namely it sells to idiots like Nobel Economic Prize winners. Someone beat me in the head with a baseball bat, as I could stand to win that prize myself. <br /><br />Fedup.org had a link yesterday to a Scribd presentation by an ex GS guy. What he brought up was the end of the road, which will begin with bank failures in Europe. Watch this Bankia situation. If not Bankia, it will be some other bank. It could be the big bank in Belgium (Dexia) that rolled over last year, that is being floated on fiction. The one thing floating the US right now isn't the wonderful economy. It is more like my girl friend has herpes, theirs has AIDS. Mine looks pretty good if you have to make a choice. Or, you can remain celebate and buy gold and put it in a hole in the ground. The Euro could vaporize over night. <br /><br />The CNBS crowd always brings up buying stuff that isn't exposed to Europe. How has that worked in Europe for what wasn't exposed to US housing? What isn't exposed to Europe is exposed to what is exposed to Europe. What is going to be exposed to the world debt markets? The whole matter. When is Japan going to blow? It will and when it does, the world will look to the US and discount its debt as well. The attractiveness of 10 year treasuries and 10 year Japanese bonds at this time is you can get money from the Fed or the JCB on these items. There is a lot of stuff out there where there will be no market or only at a very deep discount. <br /><br />Think interest rates are coming down? Ask Spain or Italy if they are headed down. The door on risk is about to close. QE will get a small blip on the radar at best. The floor before the market broke down in 2008 was 1200 SPX. We are a mere 7% above that level right now and below quite a bit of the trading during that sideways move. Hundreds of billions have been invested in the SPX to cover recapitaliation of banks and loss of bankrupts. There have been 2 rounds of QE, a bailout of the banks, $5 trillion or more in deficit spending and the market has gone nowhere. If you had stayed in 10 year treasuries from July 2008 to the present, you would have beaten the stock market by a good margin. <br /><br />The one thing that amazes me is the move in gold on the employment news. Remember, the guy on the street can't rush in and buy or sell gold or the stock market on this news. Why the plunge in stocks and blow in gold? I have 2 words, Goldman Sachs. How many contracts does it take to move a gold market or a stock market? Not many when the world stops. When I say Goldman, it could be JPM or both or all of the above. Best guess is there were a lot of shorts in gold as a hedge, as gold and stocks have generally been moving the same direction for some time. If this is the case, they likely were blown out in both directions. Never forget, in markets the guys you are dealing with can see our cards. </div>
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<br /></div>mannfm11http://www.blogger.com/profile/06507232690375884354noreply@blogger.com0