How Goldman Sachs Helped Mask Greece’s Debt

Giant Sucking Sound Part 2? The NAFTA Of The Pacific Will Soon Allow Millions More American Jobs To Be Shipped Overseas

The United States is negotiating one of the biggest free trade agreements in history and there is barely a peep about it on the news.  Years ago, Ross Perot warned that if NAFTA was implemented there would be a “giant sucking sound” as millions of jobs left this country.  It turns out that he was right.  Starting on Tuesday, the next round of negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (also known as the “NAFTA of the Pacific”) will begin in Chicago.  We have already seen the Obama administration push hard for free trade agreements with Panama, South Korea and Colombia and the administration is making the Trans-Pacific Partnership a very high priority.  Membership in the “NAFTA of the Pacific” already includes Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore.  The United States, Australia, Peru, Malaysia and Vietnam are scheduled to join.  Canada, Japan and South Korea are also reportedly considering membership.  So once this “free trade” agreement is ratified, will we hear another “giant sucking sound” as millions more of our jobs are shipped overseas?

Look, it is not really that complicated.  If you are a giant U.S. corporation, you can either make stuff here, or you can make stuff overseas where it is far, far less expensive to do so.

To greedy corporate executives, there are a lot of advantages to moving operations out of the country….

*It is legal to pay slave labor wages in many of these other countries.  After all, why pay an American worker 10 or 20 times as much as a worker on the other side of the globe?

*In many of these other countries you do not have to provide any health care for workers.

*In many of these other countries there are virtually no environmental controls to worry about.

*In many of these other countries there are virtually no labor standards to worry about.

*In many of these other countries you only have to deal with a fraction of the “red tape” that you have to deal with in the United States.

By merging our economies with the economies of societies that are far different from our own, we have created a “race to the bottom” that is incredibly destructive to the U.S. economy.

In Vietnam, one dollar an hour is considered to be a very good wage.

So how do you plan to compete against that?

These “free trade agreements” are direct assaults on the big, juicy paychecks of American workers.

If you do not know about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, you need to get educated.

The following is a basic introduction to the TPP from Wikipedia….

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), also known as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, is a multilateral free trade agreement that aims to further liberalise the economies of the Asia-Pacific region; specifically, Article 1.1.3 notes: “The Parties seek to support the wider liberalisation process in APEC consistent with its goals of free and open trade and investment.”[1] The original agreement between the countries of Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore was signed on June 3, 2005, and entered into force on May 28, 2006. Five additional countries – Australia, Malaysia, Peru, United States, and Vietnam – are negotiating to join the group.

Apparently, one of the goals of the TPP is to reduce all trade tariffs among member nations to zero by the year 2015.  The proponents of “free trade” are absolutely thrilled.

We have all enjoyed the flood of cheap products from overseas.  It is nice to pay a little bit less for things.

But these cheap prices have come at a very high cost.  We are literally destroying the American economy.  If you walk into just about any store today and you start turning over products, you will find that almost all of them are made out of the country.

If our middle class jobs keep getting shipped overseas, our prosperity is going to vanish.  If the American people allow this to continue, the standard of living of American workers is going to continue to fall toward the level of workers in third world countries.

Arthur Stamoulis, the executive director of Citizen Trade Campaign recently had the following to say about why he is opposed to this new free trade agreement….

“They’ve shipped our jobs overseas. They’ve reduced the tax base, they’ve driven down the wages and benefits for the jobs that are left. We’ve had enough”

As you can see from the chart below, we have seen a massive decline in manufacturing jobs in the United States over the last few decades….

It is absolutely amazing that the Obama administration continues to tout more “free trade” agreements as a way to increase employment in the United States.

Sadly, nearly half the country is still going to run out and vote for the guy in the next election.

Between December 2000 and December 2010, 38 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Ohio were lost, 42 percent of the manufacturing jobs in North Carolina were lost and 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Michigan were lost.

So the answer is to ship even more of our jobs overseas?

Apparently the Obama administration actually believes that we don’t want those jobs.  The following is what U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk told Tim Robertson of the Huffington Post recently….

Let’s increase our competitiveness… the reality is about half of our imports, our trade deficit is because of how much oil [we import], so you take that out of the equation, you look at what percentage of it are things that frankly, we don’t want to make in America, you know, cheaper products, low-skill jobs that frankly college kids that are graduating from, you know, UC Cal and Hastings [don’t want], but what we do want is to capture those next generation jobs and build on our investments in our young people, our education infrastructure.

Can you believe that nonsense?  He believes that there are things that “we don’t want to make in America”?

Why is nobody calling for him to resign immediately?

Manufacturing jobs have traditionally been high paying jobs that can support middle class families.

But now we are losing millions of those jobs and the Obama administration simply does not care.

Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.

America is being deindustrialized at warp speed and most Americans don’t even understand what is happening.

Look, even if U.S. firms wanted to stay in the United States and try to compete, they face almost insurmountable obstacles….

*Many foreign nations deeply and directly subsidize national industries and the U.S. government lets them get away with it.  That puts our industries at a vast disadvantage.

*The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the world.  That puts our corporations at a vast disadvantage.

*Many foreign nations do not require businesses to provide health care for their employees.  That puts our businesses at a vast disadvantage.

*Many foreign nations impose very little regulation on businesses.  That puts businesses in the United States at a vast disadvantage.  In the U.S., we have some of the most restrictive regulations in the world.

The truth is that even the “next generation jobs” and the “green jobs” that Obama keeps talking about are rapidly leaving the country.

For example, the third-largest producer of solar panels in the United States, Evergreen Solar, is leaving America.

Evergreen is shutting down its factory in Massachusetts, laying off 800 American workers and moving production over to China.

A recent New York Times article explained why Evergreen is making this move….

Evergreen, in announcing its move to China, was unusually candid about its motives. Michael El-Hillow, the chief executive, said in a statement that his company had decided to close the Massachusetts factory in response to plunging prices for solar panels. World prices have fallen as much as two-thirds in the last three years — including a drop of 10 percent during last year’s fourth quarter alone.

Chinese manufacturers, Mr. El-Hillow said in the statement, have been able to push prices down sharply because they receive considerable help from the Chinese government and state-owned banks, and because manufacturing costs are generally lower in China.

We are losing the “jobs of the future” and Obama is doing nothing about it.

Last year, more than half of all the solar panels in the world were made in China.

China is absolutely killing us on the global economic stage and Obama does not even seem to think that it is a problem.

The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.

Not only that, the United States now spends more than 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.

So don’t listen to any of the nonsense that Obama is spouting about creating jobs.

Not that most of the Republicans are putting forward any good ideas either.

The reality is that our politicians have lied to us.  Globalism is absolutely destroying our economy.

Do you remember when the United States was the dominant manufacturer of automobiles and trucks on the globe?  Well, in 2010 the U.S. ran a trade deficit in automobiles, trucks and parts of $110 billion.

We are losing ground in almost every industry that you could name.  Even the “jobs of tomorrow” are mostly being created overseas.

Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, says that our advanced technology companies are creating far more jobs overseas than they are in the United States….

Some 250,000 Foxconn employees in southern China produce Apple’s products. Apple, meanwhile, has about 25,000 employees in the U.S. That means for every Apple worker in the U.S. there are 10 people in China working on iMacs, iPods, and iPhones. The same roughly 10-to-1 relationship holds for Dell, disk-drive maker Seagate Technology (STX), and other U.S. tech companies.

When is someone going to wake up America?  If we are even losing “advanced technology” jobs, then what kind of jobs are going to be left?

In 2002, the United States had a trade deficit in “advanced technology products” of $16 billion with the rest of the world.  In 2010, that number skyrocketed to $82 billion.

Needless to say, that is not a good trend.

Our politicians promised us that the “global economy” would mean more jobs and more prosperity for us.

Well, that was obviously a giant lie.

Today, if you gathered together all of the unemployed people in the United States, they would make up the 68th largest country in the world.

If we allow all of this “free trade” nonsense to continue, our unemployment nightmare is going to continue to get worse and even more of our formerly great cities will end up looking like total hellholes just like Detroit does.

Sadly, virtually all of our politicians in both political parties are in favor of these “free trade” agreements.  In fact, most of them are pushing these kinds of agreements as one of the “solutions” to our problems.

The U.S. economy is being dismantled and deindustrialized right in front of your eyes.

If you plan on speaking out, you better do it now because it is almost too late to stop what is being done.

It is up to you America.

Even Goldman Sachs Secretly Believes That An Economic Collapse Is Coming

Goldman Sachs is doing it again.  Goldman is telling the public that everything is going to be just fine, but meanwhile they are advising their top clients to bet on a huge financial collapse.  On August 16th, a 54 page report authored by Goldman strategist Alan Brazil was distributed to institutional clients.  The general public was not intended to see this report.  Fortunately, some folks over at the Wall Street Journal got their hands on a copy and they have filled us in on some of the details.  It turns out that Goldman Sachs secretly believes that an economic collapse is coming, and they have some very interesting ideas about how to make money in the turbulent financial environment that we will soon be entering.  In the report, Brazil says that the U.S. debt problem cannot be solved with more debt, that the European sovereign debt crisis is going to get even worse and that there are large numbers of financial institutions in Europe that are on the verge of collapse.  If this is what people at the highest levels of the financial world are talking about, perhaps we should all start paying attention.

There is a tremendous amount of fear in the global financial community right now.  As I wrote about the other day, the financial world is about to hit the panic button.  Things could start falling apart at any time.  Most of these big banks will not admit how bad things are publicly, but privately there is a whole lot of freaking out going on.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Brazil believes that “as much as $1 trillion in capital may be needed to shore up European banks; that small businesses in the U.S., a past driver of job production, are still languishing; and that China’s growth may not be sustainable.”

Perhaps most startling of all is what the report has to say about the debt problems of the United States and Europe.

For example, this following excerpt from the report sounds like it could have come straight from The Economic Collapse Blog….

“Solving a debt problem with more debt has not solved the underlying problem. In the US, Treasury debt growth financed the US consumer but has not had enough of an impact on job growth. Can the US continue to depreciate the world’s base currency?”

Remember, this statement was not written by some guy on the Internet.  A top Goldman Sachs analyst put it into a report for institutional investors.

The report also goes into great detail about the financial crisis in Europe.  Brazil writes about how the euro is headed for trouble and about how dozens of financial institutions in Europe could potentially be in danger of collapse.

But in any environment Goldman Sachs thinks that it can make money.  The following is how Business Insider summarized the advice that Brazil gave in the report regarding how to make money off of the impending collapse in Europe….

• Buy a six-month put option on the Euro versus the Swiss Franc, thus betting the Euro will drop against the Franc (the Franc being the currency that an official Goldman report recently referred to as the most overvalued in the world)
• Buy a five-year credit default swap on an index of European corporate debt—the iTraxx 9. This is a bet that some of these companies will default, and your insurance policy, the CDS, will pay off

This is so typical of Goldman Sachs.  They will say one thing publicly and then turn around and do the total opposite privately.

For example, prior to the financial crisis of 2008, Goldman Sachs was putting together mortgage-backed securities that they knew were garbage and marketing them to investors as AAA-rated investments.  On top of that, Goldman then often privately bet against those exact same securities.

The CEO of Goldman Sachs has even acknowledged that the investment bank engaged in “improper” behavior during 2006 and 2007.

For much more on the history of all this, please see this article: “How Goldman Sachs Made Tens Of Billions Of Dollars From The Economic Collapse Of America In Four Easy Steps“.

So will Goldman Sachs ever get into serious trouble for any of this?

No, of course not.

Yeah, they will get a slap on the wrist from time to time, but the reality is that the top levels of the federal government are absolutely littered with ex-employees of Goldman Sachs.  Goldman is one of the “too big to fail” banks and they are going to continue to do pretty much whatever they feel like doing.

Sadly, the power of the “too big to fail” banks just continues to grow.  At this point, the “big six” U.S. banks (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo) now possess assets equivalent to approximately 60 percent of America’s gross national product.

Goldman Sachs was the second biggest donor to Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008, so don’t expect Obama to do anything about any of this.

We have a financial system that is deeply, deeply corrupt and all of that corruption is a big reason why things are falling apart.

Sadly, the 54 page report mentioned above is right – we really are facing a global debt meltdown and we really are heading for an economic collapse.

You aren’t going to hear the truth from the mainstream media or from our politicians because “keeping people calm” is much more of a priority to them than telling the truth is.

The debt crisis in the United States is unsustainable and the debt crisis in Europe is unsustainable.  Right now we are in the calm before the storm, and nobody knows exactly when the storm is going to strike.

But let there be no doubt – it is coming.

The amazing prosperity that we have enjoyed for the last several decades has largely been a debt-fueled illusion.  It was a great party while it lasted, but now it is coming to an end and the aftermath of the coming crash is going to be absolutely horrific.

Keep watch and get prepared.  We don’t know exactly when the collapse is going to happen, but it is definitely on the way and now even Goldman Sachs is admitting that.

The Federal Reserve Cartel: Part III: The Roundtable & The Illuminati

June 14, 2011 — Dean Henderson

According to former British intelligence agent John Coleman’s book, The Committee of 300, the Rothschilds exert political control through the secretive Business Roundtable, which they created in 1909 with the help of Lord Alfred Milner and South African industrialist Cecil Rhodes. The Rhodes Scholarship is granted by Cambridge University, out of which oil industry propagandist Cambridge Energy Research Associates operates.

Rhodes founded De Beers and Standard Chartered Bank.  According to Gary Allen’s expose, The Rockefeller Files, Milner financed the Russian Bolsheviks on Rothschild’s behalf, with help from Jacob Schiff and Max Warburg.

In 1917 British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour penned a letter to Zionist Second Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild in which he expressed support for a Jewish homeland on Palestinian-controlled lands in the Middle East. [1]

The Balfour Declaration justified the brutal seizure of Palestinian lands for the post-WWII establishment of Israel.  Israel would serve, not as some high-minded “Jewish homeland”, but as lynchpin in Rothschild/Eight Families control over the world’s oil supply.  Baron Edmond de Rothschild built the first oil pipeline from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean to bring BP Iranian oil to Israel.  He founded Israeli General Bank and Paz Oil. He is considered by many the father of modern Israel. [2]

Roundtable inner Circle of Initiates included Lord Milner, Cecil Rhodes, Arthur Balfour, Albert Grey and Lord Nathan Rothschild.  The Roundtable takes its name from the legendary knight of King Arthur, whose tale of the Holy Grail is paramount to the Illuminati notion of Sangreal or holy blood.

John Coleman writes in The Committee of 300, “Round Tablers armed with immense wealth from gold, diamond and drug monopolies fanned out throughout the world to take control of fiscal and monetary policies and political leadership in all countries where they operated.”

While Cecil Rhodes and the Oppenheimers went to South Africa, the Kuhn Loebs were off to re-colonize America.  Rudyard Kipling was sent to India. The Schiffs and Warburgs manhandled Russia. The Rothschilds, Lazards and Israel Moses Seifs pushed into the Middle East.  In Princeton, New Jersey the Round Table founded the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) as partner to its All Souls College at Oxford.  IAS was funded by the Rockefeller’s General Education Board. IAS members Robert Oppenheimer, Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein created the atomic bomb. [3]

In 1919 Rothschild’s Business Roundtable spawned the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) in London.  The RIIA soon sponsored sister organizations around the globe, including the US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Asian Institute of Pacific Relations, the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, the Brussels-based Institute des Relations Internationales, the Danish Foreign Policy Society, the Indian Council of World Affairs and the Australian Institute of International Affairs. Other affiliates popped up in France, Turkey, Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece. [4]

The RIIA is a registered charity of the Queen and, according to its annual reports, is funded largely by the Four Horsemen.  Former British Foreign Secretary and Kissinger Associates co-founder Lord Carrington was President of both the RIIA and the Bilderbergers.  The inner circle at RIIA is dominated by Knights of St. John Jerusalem, Knights of Malta, Knights Templar and 33rd Degree Scottish Rite Freemasons.  The Knights of St. John were founded in 1070 and answer directly to the British House of Windsor.  Their leading bloodline is the Villiers dynasty, which the Hong Kong Matheson family married into. The Lytton family also married into the Villiers gang. [5]

Colonel Edward Bulwer-Lytton led the English Rosicrucian secret society, which Shakespeare opaquely referred to as Rosencranz, while the Freemasons took the role of Guildenstern.  Lytton was spiritual father of both the RIIA and Nazi fascism.  In 1871 he penned a novel titled, Vril: The Power of the Coming Race.  Seventy years later the Vril Society received ample mention in Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.  Lytton’s son became Viceroy to India in 1876 just before opium production spiked in that country.  Lytton’s good friend Rudyard Kipling worked under Lord Beaverbrook as Propaganda Minister, alongside Sir Charles Hambro of the Hambros banking dynasty. [6]

James Bruce, ancestor to Scottish Rite Freemason founder Sir Robert the Bruce, was the 8th Earl of Elgin. He supervised the Caribbean slave trade as Jamaican Governor General from 1842-1846.  He was Britain’s Ambassador to China during the Second Opium War.  His brother Frederick was Colonial Secretary of Hong Kong during both Opium Wars.  Both were prominent Freemasons.  British Lord Palmerston, who ran the Opium Wars, was a blood relative of the Bruce monarchy, as was his Foreign Secretary John Russell, grandfather of Bertrand Russell. [7]

Children of the Roundtable elite are members of a Dionysian cult known as Children of the Sun.  Initiates include Aldous Huxley, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence and H. G. Wells.  Wells headed British intelligence during WWI. His books speak of a “one-world brain” and “a police of the mind”.  William Butler Yeats, another Sun member, was a pal of Aleister Crowley.  The two formed an Isis Cult based on a Madam Blavatsky manuscript, which called on the British aristocracy to organize itself into an Isis Aryan priesthood. Most prominent writers of English literature came from the ranks of the Roundtable. All promoted Empire expansion, however subtly.  Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society and Bulwer-Lytton’s Rosicrucians joined forces to form the Thule Society out of which the Nazis emerged. [8]

Aleister Crowley formed the British parallel to the Thule Society, the Isis-Urania Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.  He tutored LSD guru Aldus Huxley, who arrived in the US in 1952, the same year the CIA launched its MK-ULTRA mind control program with help from the Warburg-owned Swiss Sandoz Laboratories and Rockefeller cousin Allen Dulles- OSS Station Chief in Berne.  Dulles received information from the Muslim Brotherhood House of Saudi regarding the creation of mind-controlled Assassins.  Dulles’ assistant was James Warburg. [9]

The Atlantic Union (AU) was an RIIA affiliate founded by Cecil Rhodes- who dreamed of returning the US to the British Crown.  In 1939 AU set up its first offices in America in space donated by Nelson Rockefeller at 10 E 40th St in New York City.  Every year from 1949-1976 an AU resolution was floored in Congress calling for a repeal of the Declaration of Independence and a “new world order”. Another RIIA affiliate was United World Federalists (UWF)- founded by Norman Cousins and Dulles assistant James P. Warburg.  UWF’s motto was “One world or none”.  Its first president Cord Meyer stepped down to take a key position in Allen Dulles’ CIA.  Meyer articulated UWF’s goal, “Once having joined the One-World Federated Government, no nation could secede or revolt…with the atom bomb in its possession the Federal Government would blow that nation off the face of the earth.” [10]

In 1950 James Warburg, whose elders Max and Paul sat on the board of Nazi business combine IG Farben, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “We shall have world government whether or not you like it- by conquest or consent.”  The AU and UAF are close to the CFR and the Trilateral Commission (TC)- founded by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1974. [11]

The TC published The Triangle Papers which extended the “special relationship between the US and Western Europe” to include Japan, which was fast becoming creditor to the rest of the world.  Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker was TC Chairman.  TC/CFR insider Harvard Professor  Samuel Huntington, who most recently has argued for a “Clash of Civilizations” between the West and the Muslim world, wrote in the TC publication Crisis in Democracy, “…a government which lacks authority will have little ability short of cataclysmic crisis to impose on its people the sacrifices which may be necessary.” [12]

The Illuminati

The Illuminati serves as ruling council to all secret societies.  Its roots go back to the Guardians of Light in Atlantis, the Brotherhood of the Snake in Sumeria, the Afghan Roshaniya, the Egyptian Mystery Schools and the Genoese families who bankrolled the Roman Empire.  British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who “handled” mafia-founder and 33rd Degree Mason Guiseppe Mazzini, alluded to the Illuminati in a speech before the House of Commons in 1856 warning, “There is in Italy a power which we seldom mention. I mean the secret societies.  Europe…is covered with a network of secret societies just as the surfaces of the earth are covered with a network of railroads.”[13]

The Illuminati is to these secret societies what the Bank of International Settlements is to the Eight Families central bankers.  And their constituencies are exactly the same.

The forerunners of the Freemasons -the Knights Templar- founded the concept of banking and created a bond market as a means to control European nobles through war debts.  By the 13th century the Templars had used their looted Crusades gold to buy 9,000 castles throughout Europe and ran an empire stretching from Copenhagen to Damascus.  They founded modern banking techniques and legitimized usury via interest payments.  Templars’ bank branches popped up everywhere, backed by their ill-gotten gold.  They charged up to 60% interest on loans, launched the concept of trust accounts and introduced a credit card system for Holy Land pilgrims.  They acted as tax collectors, though themselves exempted by Roman authorities, and built the great cathedrals of Europe, having also found instructions regarding secret building techniques alongside the gold they pilfered beneath Solomon’s Temple.  The stained glass used in the cathedrals resulted from a secret Gothic technique known by few.  One who had perfected this art was Omar Khayvam, a good friend of Assassin founder Hasan bin Sabah. [14]

The Templars controlled a huge fleet of ships and their own naval fleet based at the French Atlantic Port of La Rochelle.  They were especially cozy with the royals of England.  They purchased the island of Cyprus from Richard the Lion Heart, but were later overrun by the Turks.  On Friday October 13, 1307 King Philip IV of France joined forces with Pope Clement V and began rounding up Templars on charges ranging from necromancy to the use of black magic.  Friday the 13th would from that day forward carry negative connotations. “Sion” is believed to be a transliteration of Zion, itself a transliteration for the ancient Hebrew name Jerusalem.  The Priory of Sion came into public view in July 1956.  A 1981 notice in the French press listed 121 dignitaries as Priory members.  All were bankers, royalty or members of the international political jet set.  Pierre Plantard was listed as Grand Master.  Plantard is a direct descendent, through King Dagobert II, of the Merovingan Kings.  Plantard, who owns property in the Rennes-le-Chateau area of southern France where the Priory of Sion is based, has stated that the order has in its possession lost treasure recovered from beneath Solomon’s Temple and that it will be returned to Israel when the time is right.  He also stated that in the near future monarchy would be restored to France and other nations. The Templars claim to possess secret knowledge that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene, fathered children to launch the Merovingan bloodline and was the son of Joseph of Arimathea. [15]

Joseph was the son of King Solomon.  Solomon’s Temple is the model for Masonic Temples, which occur without fail in every town of any size in America.  It was a place of ill repute where fornicating, drunkenness and human sacrifice were the norm.  Accorder to British researcher David Icke, it’s location on Jerusalem’s Mount Moriah may have also been an Anunnaki flight control center. The Annunaki are the reptilian/aliens revealed by the Sumerian clay tablets- the oldest written accounts of humankind known. The Crusader Knights Templar looted their huge store of gold and numerous sacred artifacts from beneath the Temple.  King Solomon was the son of King David- who during his 1015 BC reign massacred thousands of people.

Icke calls King David “a butcher” and asserts that the king wrote a good chunk of the Bible.  His son Solomon killed his own brother to become King.  He advised Egyptian Pharaoh Shiskak I, marrying his daughter.  Solomon studied at Akhenaton’s Egyptian Mystery Schools, where mind control was rampant.  The Grand Lodge of Cairo spawned a network of secret societies including Assassins, Cabalists, Freemasons and the Afghan Roshaniya. Those who pass through to the highest levels become Illuminati.

Icke claims the Canaanite Brotherhood was headed by the god/king Melchizedek, who may have been an Annunaki.  The King focused on a Hebrew understanding of the Ancient Mysteries. The Order of Melchizedek became the secret society associated with the Cabala.  King Solomon developed his vast wisdom studying the Sumerian Tables of Destiny which Abraham had possessed.  Abraham may have also been of Anunnaki origin.

Both he and Melchizedek had been tutored by the Sumerian Brotherhood of the Snake, whose name may have something to do with the Biblical creation story, where Adam and Eve are tempted from a bountiful garden of Eden (a hunting and gathering existence?) into a world of “sin and servitude” by a snake.  When the Bible says that the first couple ate the forbidden fruit, could it mean that Eve was impregnated by the snake – an Annunaki serpent (the Nephilim of the Book of Genesis) – thus damning all Adamus to a life of toil under serpent king bloodline control?

The basis of the Sumerian Tables of Destiny which Abraham possessed became known as Ha Qabala, Hebrew for “light and knowledge”.  Those who understood these cryptic secrets, said to be encoded throughout the Old Testament, are referred to deferentially as Ram.  The phrase is used in Celtic, Buddhist and Hindu spiritual circles as well.  The Knights Templar brought Cabbalistic knowledge to Europe when they returned from their Middle East Crusade adventures. [16]

The Knights created the Prieure de Sion on Mt. Zion near Jerusalem in the 11th century to guard such holy relics as the Shroud of Turin, the Ark of the Covenant and the Hapsburg family’s Spear of Destiny- which was used to kill Jesus Christ.  The Priory’s more important purpose was to guard Templar gold and to preserve the alleged bloodline of Jesus – the royal Sangreal – which they believe is carried forth by the French Bourbon Merovingan family and the related Hapsburg monarchs of Spain and Austria. [17]  The French Lorraine dynasty, which descended from the Merovingans, married into the House of Hapsburg to acquire the throne of Austria.

The Hapsburgs ran the Holy Roman Empire until its dissolution in 1806, through King Charles V and others.  The family traces its roots back to a Swiss estate known as Habichtburg, which was built in 1020.  The Hapsburgs are an integral part of the Priory of Sion. Many researchers believe that Spain’s Hapsburg King Philip will be crowned Sangreal World King in Jerusalem.  The Hapsburgs are related to the Rothschilds through Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa’s second son Archibald II.

The Rothschilds- leaders in Cabala, Freemasonry and the Knights Templar- sit at the apex of the both the Illuminati and the Eight Families banking cartel.  The family accumulated its vast wealth issuing war bonds to Black Nobility for centuries, including the British Windsors, the French Bourbons, the German von Thurn und Taxis, the Italian Savoys and the Austrian and Spanish Hapsburgs. The Eight Families have also intermarried with these royals.

Author David Icke believes the Rothschilds represent the head of the Anunnaki Serpent Kings, stating, “They (Rothschilds) had the crown heads of Europe in debt to them and this included the Black Nobility dynasty, the Hapsburgs, who ruled the Holy Roman Empire for 600 years.  The Rothschilds also control the Bank of England.  If there was a war, the Rothschilds were behind the scenes, creating conflict and funding both sides.”[18]

The Rothschilds and the Warburgs are main stockholders of the German Bundesbank.  Rothschilds control Japan’s biggest banking house Nomura Securities via a tie-up between Edmund Rothschild and Tsunao Okumura.  The Rothschilds are the richest and most powerful family in the world.  They are also inbred.  According to several family biographers, over half of the last generation of Rothschild progeny married within the family, presumably to preserve their Sangreal. [19]

The 1782 Great Seal of the United States is loaded with Illuminati symbolism.  So is the reverse side of the US $1 Federal Reserve Note, which was designed by Freemasons.  The pyramid on the left side represents those in Egypt- possibly space beacon/energy source to the Anunnaki- whose Pharaohs oversaw the building of the pyramids using slave labor.

The pyramid is an important symbol for the Illuminati bankers. They employ Triads, Trilaterals and Trinities to create a society ruled by an elite Sangreal few presiding over the masses- as represented by a pyramid.  The Brotherhood of the Snake worshiped a Trinity of Isis, Osirus and Horus- who may have been Anunnaki offspring.  The Brotherhood spread the concept of Trinity to Christian (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), Hindu (Brahma, Shiva and Krishna) and Buddhist (Buddha, Dharma and Sangha) faiths. [20]

The reptilian eye atop the pyramid depicted on the $1 bill is the all-seeing eye of the Afghan Roshaniya, known alternately as The Order and Order of the Quest- names adopted by Skull & Bones, Germanorden and the JASON Society. [21]  Take a magnifying glass and look at the eye’s pupil. There is an image of an alien inside the pupil. I’m not kidding.

Novus Ordo Seclorum appears beneath the pyramid, while Annuit Coeptis appears above the all-seeing eye.  Annuit Coeptis means “may he smile upon our endeavors (Great Work of Ages)”.  Above the eagle on the right side of the note are the words E Pluribus Unum, Latin for “out of many one”.  The eagle clutches 13 arrows and 13 olive branches, while 13 stars appear above the eagle’s head.  America was founded with 13 colonies.  Templar pirate Jaques deMolay was executed on Friday the 13th.

The numbers 3, 9, 13 and 33 are significant to the secret societies.  33^rd-degree Freemasons are said to become Illuminati. According to the late researcher William Cooper, the Bilderberger Group has a powerful Policy Committee of 13 members.  It is one of 3 committees of 13 which answered (until his recent death) to Prince Bernhard- member of the Hapsburg family and leader of the Black Nobility.  The Bilderberg Policy Committee answers to a Rothschild Round Table of 9. [22]

Next Time: The Creature from Jekyl Island

[1] “The Secret Financial Network Behind ‘Wizard’ George Soros”. William Engdahl. Executive Intelligence Review. 11-1-96

[2] Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History that Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons and the Great Pyramids. Jim Marrs. HarperCollins Publishers. New York. 2000. p.83

[3] Ibid. p.89

[4] Fourth Reich of the Rich. Des Griffin. Emissary Publications. Pasadena, CA. 1978. p.77

[5] The Robot’s Rebellion: The Story of the Spiritual Renaissance. David Icke. Gateway Books. Bath, UK. 1994. p.195

[6] Ibid

[7] Dope Inc.: The Book that Drove Kissinger Crazy. The Editors of Executive Intelligence Review. Washington, DC. 1992. p.264

[8] Ibid. p.538

[9] Dope Inc.

[10] Ibid

[11] Ibid

[12] Marrs

[13] Icke. p.148

[14] Bloodline of the Holy Grail. Laurence Gardner. Element Books, Inc. Rockport, MA. 1996

[15] Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Michael Bagent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. Dell Publishing Company New York. 1983

[16] Icke.

[17] Behold a Pale Horse. William Cooper. Light Technology Press. Sedona, AZ. 1991. p.79

[18] Children of the Matrix. David Icke. Bridge of Love Publishing. Scottsdale, AZ. 2000.

[19] Marrs. p.71

[20] Icke. 1994. p.42

[21] Ibid. p.71

[22] Cooper

www.deanhenderson.wordpress.com

max keiser on financial news.

Bob chapman

A plan for the euro, a response to declines is made with gold, pension benefits exposed, BP will default, Baltic Dry Index gets drier, oil deluge to flow for years, Fannie and Freddie to delist from exchanges, banks missing TARP payments.

Note how gold explodes whenever the euro takes a dive.  Those of you who think that the euro is going much lower in the near future had better think again.  The explosion of gold whenever the euro goes down will alone give the Illuminati powerful reasons to support the euro, as will the potential for a devastating trade imbalance that will aggravate the US debt problem from a balance of payments perspective.  Gold is now rising with the dollar because it is now competing with the dollar for safe-haven money, even when the stock markets are tanking.  Gold will win this battle eventually once it is clear that the US economy is going to go under, and that event is not far off. Silver may catch up with gold based on the ridiculous gold to silver ratio alone, but could suffer if the stock market starts to tank, since the combined attack from J P Morgan Chase and the ensuing downward expectation for commodities demand could take their toll.  Gold will continue strong in the current environment no matter what due to the unsolvable sovereign debt crises that have become evident around the world.

Remember what J P Morgan himself said:  “Gold is money, period.”  And soon it will be the only money that has any value, period.  Gold, silver and their related shares are the only place to be.  Stay clear of paper gold and silver and buy physical only and take possession.  These paper gold and silver Ponzi schemes, like GLD, SLV, OTC derivatives and mint certificates are going to be exposed soon.  The Sprott Gold Bullion Fund is a viable possibility if you want to buy some paper gold, otherwise go physical only.  Very shortly, JP Morgan will be sued in class actions by big players that have been criminally screwed in the silver markets, and this could be the catalyst that finally blows the whole precious metals fraud wide open.  So load up! Don’t forget as well, for those who want inherent leverage, do not forget the gold and silver shares that is where the most money is made with moderate risk.

Let’s start with your annual letter from the commissioner of Social Security. It recaps your work record and projects your future retirement benefits. It also warns that benefit payments will exceed employment tax collections by 2016. Worse, it says the Social Security Trust Fund will be exhausted by 2037. When that happens, employment taxes will cover only 76 percent of promised benefits.

As it turns out, the letter is optimistic.

Benefit payments already exceed employment tax collections. According to the Congressional Budget Office, a crush of retirees and fewer w

orkers has turned the expected surplus of employment taxes over benefit payments into a shortfall.

Fortunately, it’s estimated at only $29 billion this year, piffle in government finance. The piffle, however, is expected to continue. There will be a need to find cash, and we will be talking about it in 2012.

Some readers will say, “Gee, isn’t that what our Social Security Trust Fund is for?’’ It’s a reasonable, if naive, idea. While it is true that anyone who worked between 1983 and today has shoveled some extra money into the trust fund, it’s not sitting there like dollar bills in Scrooge McDuck’s vault. The trust is just a collection of IOUs from the Treasury.

In 1983, when Alan Greenspan led a commission that reformed Social Security, federal debt was only $1.4 trillion. Our reformed Social Security was supposed to be solvent for a full 75 years. Its accumulating surplus, held in trust, would cover the hefty cost of the baby boomers when they retired.

But the commission missed the mark. Today the unfunded liabilities of Social Security alone are $5.3 trillion. And the surplus is no more. Worse, Treasury debt is now $12.4 trillion which includes $2.3 trillion of IOUs held by the trust fund. So when Social Security goes to redeem its IOUs and cover that $29 billion shortfall, it will go to the Treasury. Sadly, the Treasury is empty except for its tax revenue and whatever it can borrow.

And what does that mean?

You can get an inkling by reading a recent report from the Senate Committee on Aging. It provides an extensive menu of steps to address the problem. Here are two extremes on the list:

■ “Increase worker and employer contributions by 1.1 percent.’’ Since worker and employer now pay 12.40 percent of payroll in employment taxes, the 2.2 percentage point increase in the tax would be a 17.7 percent increase on all workers, including those working short shifts at McDonald’s.

■ “Reduce benefits by 5 percent for new beneficiaries in 2010 and later.’’ That’s a hefty cut, but hardly enough. It would cover only 30 percent of the projected 75-year shortfall.

Between those two extremes, the Senate committee lays out a list of tools and calls it “modernization.’’ The bottom line is that more will be going in and less will be coming out at least to the people who paid it in.

BP and the Obama administration have reached a preliminary agreement that the oil company will place $20 billion in an escrow account to be administered by Kenneth Feinberg, a White House official said. Feinberg also oversaw payments to families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Credit investors are pricing in a more than 39 percent chance BP Plc will default within five years as it tangles with the Obama administration over cleanup costs and claims for the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

The risk implied by credit-default swaps is up from 7 percent a month ago, according to CMA DataVision. BP swaps climbed 112 basis points today to a record 618. Investors are demanding 800 basis points more in yield to own BP debt due next year rather than Treasuries.

The Baltic Dry Index, a measure of commodity-shipping costs that’s tumbled 28 percent during its longest losing streak this year, may decline further, according to technical analysis by Barclays Capital.

The gauge fell to 3,020 points yesterday, extending a 13- day fall on speculation weaker Chinese construction may curb raw material demand. That may include iron ore, more of which is hauled at sea than any other dry-bulk commodity. The attached chart shows the index’s 200-day moving average of 3,164. It fell as low as 2,911 points in April, 3.6 percent less than now.

Fitch lowered BP’s credit rating 6 notches from AA- to BBB-, one notch above junk. Pensioners and other UK investors are about to get crushed, as if the black nobility run by the Queen and the Rothschild’s cared. It is obvious BP is destined for failure. Wait until the public finds out the oil fiasco was a false flag operation to pass Cap & trade and carbon taxes among other things. BP is junk and everyone knows it in spite of the attempted payoffs to Fitch. It won’t be long before the rating is junk and institutions are forced to sell the bonds for virtually nothing. It is even money BP will bite the dust. The bad news on the oil blowout gets worse every day as Obama tries to

hide what is really going on so they can get carbon taxes.

The Illuminists blew it. They didn’t know they were drilling into an oil volcano. There will be no way to plug the hole. The deluge will flow for years.

Between the real estate fiasco and now the oil mega disaster the banking system is closing in on collapse. Unemployment is definitely headed higher as millions of additional jobs are lost. Now the US economy is beset with the worst environment disaster in history that will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. The banking system is beset with trillions of dollars in toxic assets to accompany financial entities with two sets of books. When have you ever heard of banks being given a trillion dollars to stay in business rather than go bankrupt and the taxpayer is allowed to pay for it. The main culprit in this fiasco, the Fed, is about to be rewarded with new monopoly power to financially subject the American populace. What kind of a system is that? In the meantime the public is thrown a bone. There is no end to the toxic assets and the monetization. Is it any wonder gold and silver are climbing higher?

Government-sponsored mortgage purchasers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac plan to delist their shares from the New York Stock Exchange.

The companies’ regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said Wednesday that it expects Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shares to trade on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board, an electronic quotation service.

Wynn Resorts Ltd. on Tuesday laid off 220 hourly and 41 salaried workers from its two Las Vegas hotel-casinos, CEO Steve Wynn said.

Wynn told The Associated Press the cuts were made after some workers expressed support for layoffs instead of wage and hour reductions. The company cut wages and hours 18 months ago, and were meant to be temporary, he said.

“It became a morale issue,” Wynn said.

Wynn says 2,300 hourly workers who want to work full time but were reduced to 32 hours per week will have their hours restored. Wynn said 1,400 workers earning less than $200,000 per year who took 15 percent pay cuts will have their salaries restored.

Wynn said the moves will add $7.7 million to the company’s payroll. Without the layoffs, restoring the hours and salaries would have cost nearly $10 million.

Total housing starts were at 593 thousand (SAAR) in May, down 10% from the revised April rate of 659,000 (revised down from 672 thousand), and up 24% from the all time record low in April 2009 of 477 thousand (the lowest level since the Census Bureau began tracking housing starts in 1959). 

Single-family starts collapsed 17.2% to 468,000 in May. This is 30% above the record low in January 2009 (360 thousand). 

The second graph shows total and single unit starts since 1968. This shows the huge collapse following the housing bubble, and that housing starts have mostly been moving sideways for over a year.

.

Housing Starts:

Privately-owned housing starts in May were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 593,000. This is 10.0 percent (±10.3%)* below the revised April estimate of 659,000, but is 7.8 percent (±9.7%)* above the May 2009 rate of 550,000.

Single-family housing starts in May were at a rate of 468,000; this is 17.2 percent (±7.9%) below the revised April figure of 565,000.

Building Permits:

Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in May were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 574,000. This is 5.9 percent (±2.2%) below the revised April rate of 610,000, but is 4.4 percent (±2.6%) above the May 2009 estimate of 550,000.

Single-family authorizations in May were at a rate of 438,000; this is 9.9 percent (±2.1%) below the revised April figure of 486,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 117,000 in May.

Note that permits fell sharply, suggesting another significant decline in housing starts next month. This is way below expectations (I took the under!), and is good news for the housing market longer term (there are too many housing units already), but bad news for the economy and employment short term.

George Osborne, the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, a role equivalent to that of Tim Geithner in the US, at least in public office, not sure about tax “avoidance”, has just announced the abolition of the FSA – the English just as worthless equivalent to the SEC. It is time Mary Shapiro’s corrupt organization share the same fate. “George Osborne moved to redress what he described as the spectacular regulatory failure of the City, announcing the abolition of the Financial Services Authority and a sweeping increase in the Bank of England’s powers.” And in other news, UK’s Bernanke-equivalent will now double up as uber regulator and Viceroy of the West Indies, due to amazing new powers given to him by the Osbourne super mushroom: “Mervyn King, the Bank’s governor, will become one of the most powerful central bankers in the world, with a new remit to prevent the build-up of risk in the financial system in addition to his monetary policy role.” In other words, one big step forward, and an infinite number of steps back. After all why bother with petty theft, when the Central Banks will soon be funneling trillions away from what’s left of the global middle class, perfectly legally, in broad daylight, and at record 2s10s. [This is a move towards consolidation of power and a monopoly of everything to do with things financial in England, the same as we are seeing under financial legislation in the US. Financial tyranny is about to hit England as well as the US. Next will come exchange control.]

The former chairman of a large mortgage lending company has been charged in a $1.9 billion fraud scheme that contributed to the failure of Colonial Bank, one of the nation’s 50 largest banks before it was seized by regulators last year, the Justice Department said yesterday.

Lee Bentley Farkas, who led Florida-based Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, was arrested Tuesday in Ocala, Fla., after being indicted by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., on bank fraud and other charges.

Taylor, Bean was one of the nation’s largest privately held mortgage lending companies before it filed for bankruptcy protection last year, and officials said the fraud scheme precipitated its collapse as well.

Court documents said Farkas and coconspirators at both companies misappropriated more than $400 million from Colonial and about $1.5 billion from a Taylor, Bean-owned firm to cover the firm’s operating losses.

Farkas, 57, is also charged with trying to defraud the government out of $553 million in Troubled Asset Relief Program bank bailout funds as the losses mounted. If convicted, Farkas faces a likely sentence of life in prison.

The state’s foreclosure crisis continued in May as the number of homeowners who lost their properties more than doubled compared with the same month a year ago, according to data released yesterday.

Warren Group, a Boston firm that tracks local real estate, reported that 1,283 residents lost their homes in May, a 119.7 percent increase from the 584 foreclosures reported in May 2009. There were 6,107 completed foreclosures reported from January to May, a 48.4 percent hike from the same time last year. But fewer homeowners are now on the precipice of foreclosure, which means the problem may eventually begin to ebb. Foreclosure petitions, the first step in the process, fell to 2,110 in May, a 9.4 percent drop compared with the same time last year, Warren Group said. Petitions also were down 13.2 percent from April.

The fact the HFT, which is nothing more than front-running customer orders, is still allowed is the strongest evidence possible that regulators and solons are grossly inept and/or abjectly corrupt.

One reason that solons allow, even encourage, HFT and other computer trading is because it is useful in manipulating stocks higher – by both the whims of traders and under direction by the elites.

Solons and regulators know that trader games and manipulations are usually to the upside, so they allow the pillaging of customers because it is a useful tool of market manipulation. Traders and wise guys know that upside manipulation is allowed and encouraged, so they eagerly manipulate stocks, futures and options to the upside. This is why there is a triple digit rally for expiration week for something like 10 of 12 expirations each year. After the 1987 Crash, program trading and OEX/SPU trading came under great scrutiny. So the Street colluded to prevent large downside expirations. This is not a guess or conjecture; we received the calls.

If there was a large imbalance of stock to sell on expiration, NYSE brokers called traders to buy up the shares in order to prevent the expiration from showing a large decline. The Street did this to keep Congress and regulators from shutting down the very profitable derivative schemes and trading.

Delaware Senator Ted Kaufman told CNBC’s Jim Cramer that aberrant trading recently in Diebold Inc. and the Washington Post Co. isn’t good for the market.

“Markets must be credible, or they’re no good,” he said. Such extreme advances and declines in stocks for no apparent reason is “death by a thousand cuts,” he said.

Note” Diebold plunged 30% in six seconds on June 2. Volume exploded to 11 times normal activity.

Senate Democrats suffered a blow Wednesday in an attempt to conclude debate on a sweeping bill that would extend a range of popular tax credits, renew several expired federal programs and provide financial aid to states.

In a defeat that saw Democrats abandoned by moderate lawmakers on both sides of the aisle concerned over the cost of the $140 billion measure, Senate leaders will now be forced to go back to the drawing board to devise a way to get a pared down bill through the Senate.

For almost a year, we have noted each expiration week that Ben Bernanke pours liquidity into the system to juice stocks. Even though the Fed’s MBS monetization scheme officially ended in March, Bennie Mae has been monetizing MBS for each expiration week since the official termination date.

Bennie Mae again monetized MBS for the current expiration week. The $13.922B of MBS monetized this week increased the Fed’s balance sheet by $12.778B.

Last week Ben told a Congressional inquirer that the Fed does not intervene in the stock market. This is another Bernanke deception. The Fed does not directly intervene, i.e. buy stocks or SPUs. But the Fed indirectly intervenes incessantly in the stock market by injecting juice into the system and by sending surrogates into the market. Think Al Capone ordering subordinates to do dastardly deed.

Consumer prices recorded their biggest decline in nearly 1-1/2 years in May as energy costs dropped, according to a government report on Thursday that pointed to tame inflation pressures and low interest rates.

The Labor Department said its seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index fell 0.2 percent last month, the largest decline since December 2008, after dipping 0.1 percent in April.

The number of U.S. workers filing new applications for unemployment insurance unexpectedly rose last week as the manufacturing, construction and education sectors shed employees, adding to worries that the economic recovery is slowing.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 472,000 in the week ended June 12, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

The four-week moving average of new claims, considered a better measure of underlying labor market trends, slipped 500 to 463,500.

In the first week of June, the number of people still receiving benefits after an initial week of aid rose 88,000 to 4.57 million, the Labor Department said.

The insured unemployment rate, which measures the percentage of the insured labor force that is jobless, edged up to 3.6 percent from 3.5 percent.

The U.S. current account deficit widened in the first quarter to $109.0 billion, or 3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, from a sharply smaller estimate for the fourth quarter of 2009, a Commerce Department report said on Thursday.

It was the third consecutive quarterly increase from a low of $84.4 billion in the second quarter of 2009, when world trade fell sharply because of a global recession.

The Commerce Department lowered its estimate of the fourth quarter current account deficit to $100.9 billion, or 2.8 percent of GDP, from a previously reported $115.6 billion. Wall Street analysts had expected the first quarter deficit to widen to about $120.7 billion.

The Conference Board, an industry research group, said on Thursday its gauge of leading indicators rose to a new peak, suggesting the U.S. economic recovery will continue. The leading index, which tries to predict future levels of economic activity, rose 0.4 percent to a record 109.9, after stagnating in April. Analysts polled by Reuters had been looking for a slightly firmer 0.5 percent gain.

The Conference Board found the average length of unemployment had risen to 34.4 weeks in May from around 30 at the start of the year.

Factory activity growth plummeted in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region in June, a survey showed on Thursday, adding to worries that the short and tepid U.S. economic recovery is now fizzling.

The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank said its business activity index dropped to 8.0 in June from May’s 21.4. Economists had expected a reading of 20.9, based on the results of a Reuters poll, which ranged from 10.0 to 24.0.

More than 90 U.S. banks and thrifts missed making a May 17 payment to the U.S. government under its main bank bailout program, signalling a rising number of lenders are struggling to meet their obligations.

The statistics, compiled by SNL Financial from U.S. Treasury data, showed 91 banks and thrifts skipped the May dividend payment under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. It was the first missed payment for 23 of the banks; for the others, it was at least their second miss.

The number of banks missing their TARP payments rose for the third straight quarter. In February, 74 banks deferred their payments; 55 deferred last November.

SNL Financial’s analysis found 20 banks have missed four or more payments since the program began in 2008, while eight banks have missed five payments.

Under the TARP program, the U.S. Treasury invested in preferred shares issued banks looking for funds. The banks were to make regular dividend payments to the Treasury, and have the right to repurchase the shares at some point in the future.

max keiser on financial news

Gerald Celente on Alex Jones- this guy is spot on.

bobchapman on the economy

Deflationary Depression and Purging To ComePosted: June 2 2010

What now that stimulus packages are ending, money set to plunge, market control by insiders has to end, Fed doesnt need a monopoly, bond sales down, still high expectations for gold.

We believe an inflationary depression began in February of 2009, and little has changed. Since then factory output has increased, as have inventories and other outward signs, such as retail sales. We believe that one-year spurt is ending, unless a new stimulus program is put in place. This past week we saw a $78 billion addition to unemployment benefits and Larry Summers has said they need an additional $200 billion. In order to keep the economy going sideways a total of another $800 billion will be needed. The Fed may have cut back the creation of money and credit to zero, but it is still dishing out trillions to domestic and foreign banks, which can only affect the domestic economy in a residual way. The key is real personal income. Including government programs it has fallen $500 billion over the past 16 months. In addition real unemployment remains at a high of 22-3/8%. That is U-6 less the birth/death ratio. This terrible dilemma is a first and is surprising in as much as government addition to income has gone past 18% for the first time ever. We expect that part of the reason for both situations is the perpetual drag of free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing, which has continued unabated.

There is no question that the $800 billion stimulus has come to an end. During the past 16 months $200 billion of that $800 billion has shown up in consumer spending. The rest has raced through the economy and the result is a budget deficit in the vicinity of $1.8 trillion.

Over the past several months we have seen a decreasing number of new unemployed, but last month those official figures rose. That to us was the signal that the growth in employment had ended as well as the mini-recovery. We will know better the situation when May’s figures are released. The small increase in non-farm payroll tells us our appraisal of offshoring and outsourcing is correct. We predicted the effects of offshoring and outsourcing in 1967, but, of course, no one was listening.

Small business’ contribution has been zero. Many of these businesses are failing and most cannot get loans. We expect that condition to persist indefinitely, which means job stability is nowhere to be seen in the immediate future. In spite of bogus government figures the economy is not growing and won’t grow. Unless the system is totally purged in a classic way there will never be any recovery.

Sooner or later the deflationary depression and purging will come. The economy is stagnant and that is with an $800 billion stimulus program and $2.3 trillion in spending by the Fed, some of which had to have entered the economy. Just think of where we would be without both additions. With stimulus, over the past year, we have only seen an average of 2.38% growth. This is certainly a very weak “recovery,” especially in view of the tremendous amount of money and credit injected into the economy.

As a result excessive spending is over. Over 70% of Americans expect to be savers and to lower their credit card balances; that is those who are still employed. We see consumers back at about 70% of GDP. Without stimulus we see much lower figures; with stimulus only 68% at best can be maintained.

Manufacturing is climbing yet employment in the sector is stagnant. That means people are working much harder to keep worker productivity at a very high abnormal level. This is all well and good, but who will buy the products produced? Exports did well through March, but we have to believe the much stronger dollar will make US exports at least 15% more expensive and those of the euro zone 15% less expensive. Exports make up 20% of GDP.

Even with auto and appliance incentives sales are still under the weather. We have also just seen an end to housing purchase incentives. All indications are we are headed toward a flaccid economy without major stimulus. Business will find out again how dangerous it is to listen to your government. The residential housing inventory is again going to build this time to a real three-year inventory overhang. We expect 20% lower prices over the next year. These are not the things recovery is made of.

As we look forward we see money supply plunge to the same levels of the 1930s. This is the same thing the Fed did between 1929 and 1933. We have zero interest rates, but they really only help the large borrowers and those with AAA ratings. In the first quarter $300 billion was removed from the economy, or a contraction of 9.6%. By the way that proves the upward move in gold and silver have not been the result of anticipated inflation, but by other factors, such as Europe’s problems. We cited the fall a year ago of European M3 and M4 like figures, and as usual, no one was listening. We, as you can see, have had the same result in the US. These reductions obviously were well coordinated. In addition, the assets of institutional money market funds have fallen at a 47% rate, the sharpest drop ever. Part of this Fed move is for banks to raise capital asset ratios as the Fed removes and overpays them for their toxic assets, which the taxpayer gets to pay for. That in part is why banks won’t lend to small and medium-sized companies, and this is why there cannot be a recovery. The banks, Wall Street, and insurance companies are selectively being bailed out, irrespective of the consequence to the US and European economies. Unfortunately, we are following the path of the “Great Depression.” That means gold and silver are being purchased in a flight to quality. Yes, we believe inflation is on the way in bigger numbers, but unless things change dramatically it won’t be long before that inflation is overcome and deflationary depression takes hold.

As you have seen the titans of banking and Wall Street savaged the market on 5/6, and again are in the process of doing so, to convince Congress not to audit the Fed and to give it tyrannical monopoly powers to run America. Congress is being threatened. They are being shown the power of the Fed and its owners, if they do not do what they are being paid to do. It shows you the power of Goldman Sachs, which controls 72% of all NYSE trades and can move the market at will by front running all orders and by restricting all credit into the system. Isn’t this what derivatives are all about? They totally control all markets and it has to end. That is why you have to unseat almost all the incumbents in Congress and the Senate and bring this monopoly to an end. The Working Group on Financial markets” has to be disbanded and “Executive Orders” have to be terminated. The “Imperial Presidency” has to end if we are to continue to have a democracy. How can you have markets recovering every time they fall, as if by magic? You cannot have manipulation of markets, as we have experienced in gold and silver since 1988. We wrote our first article on the subject in August 1988 in the “Bull & Bear,” which David still publishes. How can we continue to have SEC authorized rule breaking by allowing naked shorting?

How can we allow corporations to carry two sets of books and mark assets to model? What is wrong with American businessmen and our representatives? They allow this to go on supposedly for the better good, as they stuff their pockets with cash. Now they want to allow a Federal Reserve monopoly, what is wrong with these people? What has happened to our country? The Illuminists who run our country from behind the scenes do whatever they please and it has to stop. Our country has become the laughing stock of the world, as Europeans and Asians, as well as Latin Americans rush to buy gold and silver. They cannot get rid of dollars and euros fast enough. Obviously some people are waking up, but not more than 2% of Americans. In Wall Street and banking if you do not roll with the establishment you get destroyed. Look at what we have had to put up with for 50 years. Look at what happened to Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and countless others who you have never heard of. Most people on Wall Street know what is going on, but they won’t talk about it. They do not want to be ostracized or run out of business. We as well can assure you Wall Street and banking owns the SEC, CFTC and most of the House and Senate.

It was a year and one-half ago we told you that $800 billion in stimulus wasn’t enough. That is now proving to be the case. Get ready for another liquidity barrage, called quantitative easing. It will also mean real interest rates will rise again. The backbone of most all nations of the world is debt not gold, silver or a basket of commodities. Greece is being blamed, but all told, 19 nations are on the edge of bankruptcy. In fact, central banks in these countries are among the biggest speculators. In the euro zone countries cannot print money so they sell bonds in spite of the rules of the bailout. Many are having a hard time selling bonds. Thus other nations are secretly doing so.

There is talk of another Northern European currency backed by gold. If that happens the dollar will fall because it won’t be able to compete. Those in the southern tier will have to return to their own currencies and do as Argentina did ten years ago. Those long dollars do not get too comfortable. The corporatist fascist corrupt model will fail because it is already bankrupt, as will many other countries.

Last week was another mixed week for most markets. The Dow fell .06%; S&P rose 0.2%; the Russell 2000 rose 1.9% and the Nasdaq 100 rose 1.6%. It was a week of “Hail Mary” finishes. That is averages reversing in the last hour of trading. Broker/dealers rose 0.2%; cyclicals 1.7%; transports 2.2%, as consumers fell 0.5% and utilities 0.1%. High tech rose 1.2%; semis 1.9%; Internets 1.7% and biotechs 1.1%. Gold bullion rallied $37.00, the HUI 5% and the USDX rose 1.7% to 86.78.

Two-year T-bills fell 1 bps to 0.75%; 10-year notes 5 bps to 3.30% and the 10-year German bund 2 bps to 2.68%.

Freddie Mac 30-year fixed rate mortgages fell 6 bps to 4.78%; the 15’s fell 3 bps to 4.21%; one-year ARMs fell 5 bps to 3.95% and the 30-year jumbo rose 5 bps to 5.64%.

Fed credit fell $15.3 billion to $2.324 trillion, up 11.6% ytd and 12% yoy. Fed foreign holdings of Treasuries and Agency debt jumped $9.6 billion. Custody holdings for foreign central banks rose $111 billion ytd, or 9.3% or 12.6% yoy.

M2, narrow, money supply rose $43.9 billion to $8.573 billion.

Money Market fund assets rose $5.2 billion to $2.849 trillion. Year-to-date funds are off $444 billion, after a 1-year decline of $940 billion.

The House passed a bill on Friday that would end a tax break for executives of investment funds, leaving hedge funds, private equity firms and venture capitalists scrambling to ease the effects of the bill before it is taken up by the Senate next month.

It seeks to change the tax treatment of “carried interest,” which is the portion of a fund’s investment gains taken by fund managers as compensation. Under current rules, carried interest is taxed federally at a rate of 15 percent because it is treated as a capital gain. That contrasts with the tax rate on ordinary income, which can be as high as 35 percent.

So, it appears that wise-guy welfare might be repealed. However, wise guys made one of their best investments ever by bribing Congress with hundreds of millions of dollars. In return, wise guys garnered tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars in compensation.

Companies sold the least amount of bonds in a decade this month as concern Europe’s sovereign debt crisis will slow the global economy drove up relative borrowing costs by the most since the aftermath of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s collapse.  Borrowers issued $66.1 billion of debt in currencies from dollars to yen, a third of April’s tally and the least since December 2000.

Yields on junk bonds rose to the highest since December relative to Treasuries. Spreads widened 27 bps yesterday to 724 bps, the highest since Dec. 9. That’s up from a low this year of 542 basis points on April 26.  High-yield debt has lost 4.6% in May, on pace for the first drop in 15 months. ‘We’re seeing high yield under a lot of pressure here,’ said Nicholas Pappas, the co-head of flow credit trading in the Americas at Deutsche Bank. ‘There is a flight to quality to solid investment-grade companies.’ The percentage of corporate bonds considered in distress surged this week to the highest since 2009 as investors dumped debt of the neediest borrowers.  Some 17% of junk bonds yield at least 10 percentage points more than Treasuries, up from 9.2% last month. The jump is the biggest since the distress ratio rose 11 percentage points in November 2008.

The U.S., Spain and Greece are among developed nations whose borrowings put them in a ‘ring of fire’ amid sovereign debt concerns, said Pacific Investment Management Co.

The Netherlands has experience with controlling water: 2,000 miles of dykes preventing the sea from flooding the country’s nether regions have taught the Dutch a thing or two about hydroisolation and spillover control. Unfortunately, as the last 40 days or so demonstrate so amply, neither the US nor the UK have the faintest clue how to stop the GoM oil spill which is now entering into the realm of the surreal. Which is why it may be time to learn from those who do know something about the matter. Zero Hedge has received the following proposal from Van Den Noort Innovations BV, which asserts it can get the GoM oil spill under control within days, and it doesn’t even involve nuking the continental shelf.

The US ISM Manufacturing index fell to 59.7 in May from April’s 60.4; remaining above market expectations of a decline to 59.0. The Prices Paid index fell to only 77.5 from last month’s 78.0, an upside surprise on an expected fall to 72.0.

Construction spending in the U.S. rose in April by the most since 2000 as demand related to the end of a tax credit spurred builders to break ground on more houses. The 2.7 percent increase brought spending to $869 billion, after a revised 0.4 percent gain in March that was more than previously estimated, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. Economists projected no change for April, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey.

Sales boosted by a government incentive of as much as $8,000 helped reduce the number of unsold new houses in April to the lowest level in more than three decades, spurring housing starts. While government construction also increased for a second month, spending may be limited by tighter state and local budgets.

“The turn in housing is encouraging,” Michael Englund, chief economist at Action Economics LLC in Boulder, Colorado, said before the report. “We’ve cleared away enough new homes inventories that at least we can add some construction. Non- residential construction is still quite weak.”

The gain in April was the biggest since August 2000. Estimates of 53 economists surveyed by Bloomberg ranged from a drop of 1 percent to an increase of 2 percent, after a previously estimated gain of 0.2 percent in March.

Construction spending decreased 11 percent in the 12 months ended in April.

Private construction spending rose 2.9 percent, the most since July 2004. Homebuilding outlays jumped 4.4 percent, the biggest gain since October 2009. Private non-residential projects increased 1.7 percent, the most since September 2008 and led by factories and power facilities.

The IMF has announced its gold reserves declined to 2,966.4 in April from 2,981.5 tons in March, a 15.1 ton decline. And while the IMF sold well over half a billion worth of gold in April, Russia was once again taking advantage of what some are calling fire sale prices, bulking up its gold holdings by 5 tons, which increased from 663.7 to 668.7. Russia has now been adding gold every month since February. As has long been known, in 2009 the IMF announced it would sell 403.3 tons of gold, of which 212 was purchased in prearranged deals by India, Mauritius and Sri Lanka. This means the IMF, after accounting for all disclosed sales, has 152.1 tons of gold left to sell from its original quota. Bloomberg discloses who has been doing the most buying recently: “Central banks and governments added 425.4 tons last year to 30,116.9 tons, the most since 1964 and the first expansion since 1988, data from the World Gold Council show. Official reserves may expand by another 192 to 289 tons this year, according to CPM Group, a research and asset-management company in New York.” Keep your eyes on Russia: “Russia’s central bank bought 142.9 tons of gold last year, raising its holdings of the metal by 29%, RIA Novosti reported last month, citing Bank Rossii’s annual report submitted to parliament.

Tuesday spot gold rose $12.70 to $1,224.80, as July rose $12.40. Spot silver rose $0.13 to $18.54, as July rose $0.01. Gold traded as high as $1,229 in London. Physical gold dictated prices in spite of strong selling. Gold open interest fell 10,394 contracts to 547,525. Silver OI rose 472 contracts to 120,952. The HUI traded higher earlier, but the outside month for silver just couldn’t hold its gains. The HUI fell .69 to 454.39, whereas it should have been up about 8 to 10 points. The XAU lost .91 to 173.02. Government was again unsuccessful in suppressing gold. They brought the Dow back from minus 150 to plus 80 to off 112. The S&P fared worse, off 168 and Nasdaq 208 Dow points. The euro hit a low of $1.21, and Larry Summers stepped in and drove it back up to $1.23. It closed off .0088 to $1.2236. There was plenty of bad news. Israel, Turkey, Syria, Iran, China, North and South Korea, Greece and most of Europe; then in California, Illinois, Pennsylvania and many other states. Canada raised interest rates. Italy is even being questioned regarding their financial situation. One European bank sold 3,645 ounces of gold last week worth 3 million euros. The IMF again sold 14.4 tons of gold in April. They said they would never sell into the market. This shows you what their word is worth. Wholesale premiums on British sovereigns have jumped from 3.5% to 7% in just one month.

The yen fell .0036 to .9106; the pound rose .0158 to $1.4646; the Swiss franc fell .0003 to $1.1564; the Canadian dollar fell .0024 to $.9485 and the USDX rose .20 to 86.79. The 10-year T-note closed at 3.30%.

Oil fell $1.70 to $72.27, gas fell $0.04 to $1.98 and natural gas fell $0.11 to $4.24. Copper fell $0.06 to $3.05, platinum fell $0.90 to $1,548.50 and palladium fell $3.85 to $453.45. The CRB Index fell 2.41 to 252.39.

Gold at $36,000 Not as Ridiculous as It Sounds?

CNBC.com | May 26, 2010 | 07:20 AM EDT

Gold has reached record highs in recent weeks, but it will continue to rise, Ben Davies, CEO of Hinde Capital told CNBC Wednesday.

Gold should be viewed not as a commodity, but as a cash supplement, Davies said.

“There’s been such proliferation of currency,” he said. “As a consequence, gold is very undervalued.”

“I could be really obtuse and say $36, 000,” he said. “But actually it’s not as ridiculous as it might sound.”

If all the reported Fort Knox gold was re-valued at $36,000 per ounce, it would pay off all the debt in the US, he said.

On Monday, Dennis Gartman reversed his call for gold investors to rush to the exits, saying the precious metal was no longer overbought, but also warned that it was a technical call and he is “not a gold bug.”

Davies argued that as the money supply increases, gold will see an increase in use as currency, boosting demand. Emerging markets will also buy gold to increase reserves, he added.

Great dynasties in history have come out of crises with large amounts of gold to use in the markets to buy cheap assets, Davies said.

Max Keiser- BP & financial crisis