When a national police association accuses its government of what amounts to treason it is time to sit up and pay attention. Michael O'Boyce, President of the Garda Representative Association (GRA), said at its annual conference in Limerick, at the end of April, 2010, that the Irish Government had been 'corrupted' and had been 'bought' by developers and bankers. (A garda is an Irish policeman, gardaí in the plural.)
Everybody knows that people go to work so they can get money to buy things. The things people buy are paid for with money people earn by making the things people buy. And that would be all there is to say about it if it weren't for a big problem that keeps happening: "From conspiracy theorists to conspiracy watchers - Seigniorage fraud."
On this edition of the Keiser Report, Max and co-host Stacy Herbert look at the latest scandals of filling black holes of debt with austerity plans and imperial plans. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Cedric de Serigny of the School of Economic Warfare in Paris about rating agencies and financial terrorism.
Is Europe facing its own “Bear Stearns” moment? That was the question hanging over the markets on Wednesday as the sense of uncertainty spread. The AFP reports that three people were killed in a firebomb attack on a bank in central Athens on Wednesday during a demonstration. Twenty others were being evacuated from the building. It’s obvious that the firebombing is the result of the major economic crisis in Greece. People are upset, they fear that their futures, which once seemed so bright, are being taken away from them or at the very least clouded in darkness. This truly is a country on the brink of collapse. We can only wonder what its impact will be on the Euro and, of course, on the European Union as a whole.
"All of us are angry, very, very angry," bellowed Stella Stamou, a civil servant standing on a street corner, screaming herself hoarse, a block away from where the bank had been set alight. "You write that – angry, angry, angry, angry," she said, after participating in one of the biggest ever rallies to rock the capital since the return of democracy in 1974. "Angry with our own politicians, angry with the IMF, angry with the EU, angry that we have lost income, angry that we have never been told the truth.
Across Athens today the signs of that anger were everywhere: in the central boulevards and squares that resembled a war zone, the burning cars, the burning hotels, the burning government buildings and rubbish bins and shattered windows and pavements. What had started as a general strike called by unions to protest against deeply unpopular austerity measures turned into a tidal wave of fury as an estimated 100,000 private and public sector workers took to the streets screaming "let the plutocracy pay".
"Why should we, the little man, pay for this crisis?" said Giorgos Didimopoulos. "What people forget is that we Greeks don't like authority. We have always resisted when we think something is unfair. We fought against the Persians at Marathon, the Germans during the second world war and we will fight the IMF because in reality we no longer have a government. It is foreign forces who are in charge of us now."
The Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico is a disaster unfolding before our eyes. Eleven lives were lost in the initial explosion, and that incalculable loss is compounded daily as oil continues to flow from the wellhead despite efforts on the part of BP and TransOcean to quell it. No one can accurately predict how long it will take to cap the leaking wellhead: it could be a matter of days, weeks, months.
Do you remember Bloomberg News for August 15, 2007? In case you missed it, here's why it's so important: "The reality is an entire market in default"! The reality of what we, our children, our grand children and their children truly owe is a debt into infinity. It did not take too long for Greece contagion to spread (one day), smack in the face of EU statements that contagion was no risk. Greece government bond market panic crash, yields hit 18%, who's next? Portugal, Spain, United States, or we're all Greek now?
We're All In The Same Boat: Bohemian Bankruptcy - A Tragedy
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) knows that High-Frequency Trading (HFT) manipulates the market and bilks investors out of tens of billions of dollars every year. But SEC chairman Mary Schapiro refuses to step in and take action. Instead, she's concocted an elaborate "information gathering" scheme, that does nothing to address the main problem. Schapiro's plan--to track large blocks of trades by large institutional investors-- is an attempt to placate congress while the big Wall Street HFT traders continue to rake in obscene profits. It achieves nothing, except provide the cover Schapiro needs to avoid doing her job.
High-frequency trading (HFT) is algorithmic-computer trading that finds "statistical patterns and pricing anomalies" by scanning the various stock exchanges. It's high-speed robo-trading that oftentimes executes orders without human intervention. But don't be confused by all the glitzy "state-of-the-art" hype. HFT is not a way of "allocating capital more efficiently", but of ripping people off in broad daylight.
Merrill Lynch & Co. engaged in the "same type of fraudulent conduct" that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was accused of committing by the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission in a lawsuit on Friday, a Dutch bank said Friday.
In a letter filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Friday, lawyers for Cooperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen-Boerenleenbank BA, or Rabobank, said Merrill Lynch committed a similar fraud in the structuring of a $1.5 billion collateralized debt obligation, known as Norma CDO Ltd.
Two years ago, Iceland’s banks blew up spectacularly, taking much of the world by surprise and leaving the British and Dutch governments angrily out of pocket. Now, the sparsely populated north Atlantic island has produced another big explosion – again affecting the two countries. This time, nature rather than the bankers, is to blame. A volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, has erupted for the first time since 1821, sending a plume of dust up to seven miles (11 kilometres) into the atmosphere.
The volcano is situated in a remote area, so mercifully there have been no casualties. The dust cloud from the eruption has been blown east away from the island itself. Indeed, it is beyond Iceland’s shores that it is causing the most bother. The cloud has settled over large parts of north western Europe. The fine silicate dust ejected by Eyjafjallajökull turns out to be ideally designed to do critical damage to aero engines. Consequently, big chunks of European airspace have been closed.
The Age Of Ignorance And The Great Con Job - There Is No Money!
In America today we are getting closer to fully exposing the greatest con and cover-up in this history, it involves our banks, the federal reserve, our congress, and, of course, you and me.
Crom Alternative Exchange Association 
in Ekonomija by patka, 31-07-10 16:10
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