Miscellaneous

[Stephen Wilson]

#5462

Gerald Celente puts his two cents in:

Past is Present With angry, destitute and starving
populations outraged and rising in protest against the
financial mobs, business monopolies and powerful politicians,
history was repeating itself in 2012.

The names and times had changed but the fundamentals
were essentially the same: a few people with a lot, in
control of everything – and a lot of people with very little,
going out of control. The Panic of ’08, and pre-1st Great
War of the 21st Century, were near-mirror images of post-
Crash of ’29 and pre-World War II.

For the general public and all of the media, even the
most obvious parallels were not being made. Ironically, as
economically ravaged Spain was being reduced to Francoera
poverty, so the stage was being set for a new Spanish
Civil War.

This time the civil war would not be cast, as it had been
in the 1930s, as a struggle between Fascism and Freedom.
In fact, it was just that. Back then it was championed by
Republican sympathizers as a struggle between “tyranny
and democracy,” while opposing Nationalists painted it
as a struggle between “communist/anarchist hordes” and
“Christian civilization.”

This time around the government would paint the war
as a struggle between the righteous forces of national security and stability and a rabble of anarchists, socialists,
malcontents, separatists and home-grown terrorists.
However, for the tens of millions of unemployed and
newly destitute who had lost everything and had nothing
left to lose, it was a struggle between themselves and
the criminal banking cartel, business monopolies and a political Mafia that controlled their money and their lives.

[Stephen Wilson]

#5461

The following youtube reports on current events that don’t seem to make our news:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hzP8znpQI9I

[Stephen Wilson]

#5460

In a recent lucheon engagement Senator Rand Paul stated he is working to curb the out-of-control E.P.A.

It is felt that environmental regulators can be easily influenced by greedy politicians with an ax to grind against companies that are competition to the companies that helped put them in office with all their direct and indirect gifting.

[Stephen Wilson]

#5458

12,000 South African miners lose their jobs while striking for fair wages and working conditions:

http://af.reuters.com/article/metalsNews/idAFWEA383820121005

[Stephen Wilson]

#5457

Too bad California doesn’t have the same mentality to create jobs, growth and prosperity so its residents so they can get off welfare and produce tax revenue for the State. Sacramento is a freak show full of over-stuffed corn fructose and GMO wheat heads.

This is good news for Tanzania and Canada.

PM announces agreement to protect Canadian investors in Tanzania
October 4, 2012
Ottawa, Ontario

Prime Minister Stephen Harper today announced the conclusion of negotiations toward a Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) between Canada and Tanzania. The announcement was made during an official visit to Canada by Jakaya Kikwete, President of Tanzania.

“Our Government is focused on creating jobs, growth and long-term prosperity, and to creating the right conditions for Canadian businesses to compete internationally,” said the Prime Minister. “This new agreement with Tanzania will encourage investment between our two countries and better-protect Canadians that do business in Tanzania.”

[Michael Miller]

#5453

GOLD HEIST IN CALIFORNIA…see “NEWS” for story

[Stephen Wilson]

#5452

James Corbett from this mornings International Forecaster has a few words concerning the UN annual meeting now taking place in NY:

Ahmadinejad’s speech was surprising, but not in the way his speeches at past meetings have been surprising (or inflammatory). In fact, this year the consensus is that the fiery Iranian leader was surprisingly sedate. Rather than dwelling on the existential threat coming from the Israeli-American nexus and their sanctions, their ongoing cyberwar, their covert campaign of bombings and terror, and their constant threats to bomb all suspected nuclear sites to smithereens (and potentially irradiate the entire region in the process), he instead decided to talk about how “social relationships are guided by respect, kindness and love” and wax philosophic on how “the world over, people are kind and loving.” Naturally, the U.S., Israel, Canada and all the other right-thinking sensible nations couldn’t bear to hear such rhetoric so they walked out in protest, as every year.

Exactly as expected, all of these speeches, and the many others that have been made in the past several days, have made good use of the typical buzzwords, platitudes and concepts that play well to the globalist crowd who are gathered for the festivities: “Rule of law.” “Community of nations.” “International legitimacy.” In other words, the kind of globalist claptrap that underlies the whole United Nations charade. It’s easy enough to laugh this sort of rhetoric off as the insincere musings of a self-serving political class looking to bank some goodwill from the more naive sections of their local electorate. It is very disturbing, however, to realize they are deadly serious.

Take this news from the latest session: the United Nations is back at the drawing board, once again trying to create a new excuse to get its foot in the door with the first-ever global tax. It doesn’t really seem to matter what the ostensible reason for the tax is. A tax on billionaires, a tax on currency speculation, the so-called Tobin tax on financial transactions, taxes on carbon emissions, taxes on airline tickets, royalties for any minerals dredged up more than 100 miles offshore of any nation’s territorial waters. All of these ideas have been floated in recent months, and they will all be on the agenda at the 67th General Assembly.

This is nothing new, of course. There has been talk of taxes like these for years. But with each fresh round of discussion, the idea of a global, UN-administered tax becomes that much more normalized, as if it weren’t the thin edge of the wedge of the rise of a truly global government. Of course, it’s coming couched in feelgood terminology about “development” money to address “global problems” and to “meet needs in developing countries.” Who could argue with that? It would be like arguing with those sensible and reasonable congress critters who instituted the income tax on Americans in 1913 at the reasonable rate of 1%. Surely you can chip in 1% to help out your fellow man. It’ll never get bigger or incentivize the political class to continue growing government as much as possible, we swear.

[Stephen Wilson]

#5444

The Decline of California as folks pack it up for Texas, Nevada and Arizona.

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_71.htm

[Stephen Wilson]

#5442

It is expected that Mexico will produce more than 100 tons a year by 2017, as new projects ramp up to full production. Data from the Mexican Chamber of Mines showed that the country’s production grew by 22% in the past year to 88.6 tons, making it the fastest growing country in terms of gold production.

[Stephen Wilson]

#5440

The conclusion of the article written by James Corbett in this morning’s International Forecaster is important to post here for all to get, totally, what’s going on in Washington and Wall Street concerning your future as if you din’t know already.

That’s Neil Barofsky, aka the Voice of Reason. He’s an NYU Law Professor, a former TARP Special Inspector, and the author of Bailout: An Insider Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescusing Wall Street. Needless to say, he is not the head of the SEC, or the DOJ, or anywhere near any of the so-called government “regulators” who are supposed to stop this rampant criminality from happening in the first place…or at least prosecute it when it does take place.

And that’s precisely the problem. The people in positions of power are naturally not going to press charges against anyone. That’s how they get into the positions of power. Case in point: The top political donor to Chuck Schumer over the past 23 years? Goldman Sachs. Obama’s largest contributor in his 2008 campaign? Goldman Sachs. Don’t worry, though, if you’re ready for change (and who isn’t at this point?), you might be ready to vote Romney 2012. So is Goldman Sachs, who are now Romney’s largest contributor. In fact, Goldman contributions to political candidates are double that of all contributions from the PACs.

But wait, here’s the best part. After Goldman sells their MBS crud to their poor suckers clients, and after they then bet against those positions in the derivatives market, and after they earn back more money than they lost in the subprime collapse by shorting their own instruments, and after they and their bankster buddies bring the global economy to its knees, prompting trillions of dollars in bailouts from the Federal Reserve (backed up by the taxpayer), and after the world hovers on the brink of total collapse for year after year, what does Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke decide to do in order to ‘boost the employment rate’ (or so we’re told)? He commits the Fed to turning on the printing press in order to buy $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities every month from the very types of institutions that created the entire mess in the first place. That’s right, not content to let the banks literally get away scott free with the biggest financial fraud in the history of the world (well, until Libor, anyway), the non-Federal un-Reserve then promises to buy as much of that MBS garbage from those very same banksters as they can print, every month, for the rest of eternity (or until employment picks up, whichever comes first).

What other conclusion is possible? The system is bought and paid for. The candidates are controlled. The regulators are owned. The criminals are in bed with the investigators. The system is corrupt from top to bottom. But this is nothing that you don’t already know.

Most people think that criminals are irrational. Mentally unhinged. Bumbling deviants whose actions are, for the most part, inexplicable. On the contrary. If anything, they are ultra-rational. After all, the most rational response to an irrational system may itself look fairly irrational, and if the so-called “regulators” have made it explicitly clear time and again that the only risk that the criminals will face for defrauding the public is a complete bailout, record bonuses, and entire programs designed to prop up the very system that was at the root of their crime, what else would a rational criminal do but commit ever more brazen crimes? In a system that has divorced itself from the rule of law, what separates the criminals from the law-abiding is not rationality, merely morality. And there is very little of that to be found in Washington or Wall Street when cold hard cash is so much easier to come by.

The principles are the same in all of the great financial heists of recent times. Take foreclosuregate. The list of crimes potentially committed by the banks is as lengthy as it is damning: accounting fraud, loan origination fraud, robo-signing, forgery, tax avoidance, perjury. No one knows how much money was made from the scams, because no one even knows (or will ever be able to trace) who owes what, or even who owns what. Rather than bring the perpetrators to justice for their blatantly, openly illegal actions, the Obama administration persuaded key state AGs to go along with a $25 billion settlement deal. Well, not really $25 billion. After credits for principal modifications (which come from the mortgages owned by investors) and refinancing money, only $5 billion will actually be paid out. But the banks agreed not to break the law again, right? So all’s well that ends well. Unless you’re one of the homeowners who had their contract rights flushed down the toilet in the process, in which case you may be entitled to receive a whopping $1500 to $2000 for the minor nuisance of having your home illegally foreclosed on, your good name and your credit rating tarnished forever, and your dignity discarded in the gutter. Nothing that a couple thousand dollars won’t smooth over, surely.

Or take the Libor scandal, a.k.a. the largest financial fraud in history. It’s so large that no one knows exactly how large it is. Estimates of the value of the instruments that are based on Libor rates (and thus affected by the rigging that has gone on in those rates for years) run into the hundreds of trillions. It all gets a bit hazy after that. And of course there’s the question of exactly how much the rates were manipulated by, and on what days, multiplied by the millions of individual instruments affected by those rates. Given the variables involved, the problem of calculating how much money was swindled from lenders or borrowers on any given day (let alone over the life of the scandal) becomes literally insoluble. Sounds like the type of scandal that would lead to the trial of the century, right? The kind of event that would be reported on diligently by hard-hitting journalists and watched over closely by a concerned public. The kind of scandal upon which political dynasties would rise and fall, the details of which would be hotly debated across the land.

Fat chance. Barely a few months old, the scandal is already retreating into the back pages of the financial rags, and has all but disappeared from public view. Now it’s emerging that the banksters have a plan for beating the rap on this investigation: waiting until it goes away. The idea is not as absurd as it sounds. Given statute of limitations clauses, all the Wall Street bigwigs have to do is put off the investigators until the clock runs out and they’ll be off scott free, just like the Goldman gang with their MBS crud. In an attempt to head this off at the pass, the Justice Department is asking the banks to sign so-called “tolling” agreements to allow the DOJ to press charges after the statute of limitations runs out. One can imagine a similar scene in the prohibition era Chicago: “Oh, pretty please, Mr. Capone, won’t you agree to let us prosecute you?” It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.

All of this raises the question of why regulators are focusing their investigations on individual traders, anyway, rather than the institutions and executives who necessarily knew about the scandal and (at the very least) let it proceed? And are the so-called regulators really just gearing up to offer another “no admission of guilt, slap-on-the-wrist fine” sweetheart settlement to the banksters who are funding their bosses’ political campaigns? One might as well ask a bear if he is planning to defecate in the woods. Sadly, the ending to this saga is a foregone conclusion. Some will lose their jobs. Some will pay fines. Some will grandstand and make political hay out of their supposed role in supposedly sticking it to the bad guys. But in the end, no one will go to jail.

The worst part of all of this is not that the criminals are committing their crimes. It’s not that the politicians and regulators are in the criminals’ back pocket and justice is nowhere in sight. It’s that after each and every scandal the criminals and their cronies are able to make the case to the public that it all happened because the regulators just didn’t have enough power. If we could just give more power to the regulators, if we could just get the right guys into political office, if we could just get the criminals to cooperate, then everything would be better. Sadly, so much of the public believes this, and are willing to go along with “reform” after “reform,” each one strangely failing to keep the banksters/criminals in check, and each one proceeded by bigger and yet bigger financial crimes.

Oh, crime pays alright. It might cost a bit to buy out the regulators and smooth the gears of justice, but in the end the criminals come out ahead. And that (combined with a complete lack of morality) is why they do it, again and again and again, and it’s precisely why they will continue to do it until the public finally realizes that there is no regulator or politician going to come from the heavens to save the day and put everything back it its place. Maybe then they will finally, fully withdraw all of their business and support from the Big Banks and their cronies.

Still, it’s a long way from here to there and there are too many people who are happy to go along with the system as it is because it’s the only one they’ve ever known. It’s enough to make you wonder: Where’s The Shadow when you need him?

[Stephen Wilson]

#5439

I guess it’s who you know and whose political campaign you have handsomely contributed to. What else are we suppose to think?

From this morning’s International Forecaster:

If only life were like an old-time radio drama. Unfortunately in this age of liar’s loans and mortgagegate, robo-signing and QE Infinity, too big to fail and too big to jail, any pretense that the globalist financial system is based on the rule of law has long since been jettisoned. In the current environment, crime not only pays, it pays handsomely. And just as Adolf Hitler outlined the old principle of propaganda that ‘the bigger the lie, the more likely people are to believe it,’ the banksters of our age seem to have discovered a corresponding principle in the financial realm: the bigger the fraud, the more likely they are to get away with it.
Take the SEC/Goldman Sachs debacle from earlier this year. Back in February, Goldman received a Wells Notice. For those not in the know, a Wells Notice is a type of courtesy card from the SEC letting an institution know they may or may not be facing enforcement action for their alleged crimes. The charge in this case? Goldman’s role in the mortgage backed security scam in the subprime mortgage crisis that led to the housing collapse of 2007 and the near total destruction of the global economic system. You know, that little problem? Goldman’s role in this debacle was not a matter of conjecture. A Senate inquiry into the MBS scam laid it bare. As Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Carl Levin put it in a statement from the inquiry:
“Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs were not simply market-makers, they were self-interested promoters of risky and complicated financial schemes that helped trigger the crisis. They bundled toxic mortgages into complex financial instruments, got the credit rating agencies to label them as AAA securities, and sold them to investors, magnifying and spreading risk throughout the financial system, and all too often betting against the instruments they sold and profiting at the expense of their clients.”
Those are some pretty heavy accusations. So what proof did the Senate have to back up those claims? Goldman’s own words. “Sounds like we will make some serious money,” one senior Goldman manager emailed his colleague at the start of the crisis. “Yes we are well positioned,” his colleague responded, referring to Goldman’s strategy to sell the AAA-certified toxic garbage subprime MBS to customers and cover their posteriors by betting against those very securities in the derivatives market.
Open and shut case, right? Surely this type of behaviour has to be made an example of. Surely the agency in charge of regulating the institutions at the core of the global financial system would not let this type of conduct go unpunished? Surely, even if the investigation was not to end up in the trial of the century it would, at the very least, result in hefty fines and crippling sanctions against the institutions that helped to bring about the mess. Surely, at the very very least, there would be an obligatory slap on the wrist after a lengthy, headline-grabbing show trial?
Surely not. Last month the SEC announced there would be no criminal charges at all against Goldman. The vampire squid was free to go about its business, sucking the blood from the real economy, wrapping its tentacles around the levers of finance and releasing its inky smoke trail to deflect any would-be prosecutors.
So what is a rational response to this irrational decision?
“On the sixth month anniversary of the announcement of the so-called financial crisis task force, the twin announcements yesterday that Goldman Sachs and its executives will not be charged by either the SEC or DOJ for conduct directly related to the toxic assets at the heart of the crisis is a stark reminder that no individual or institution has been held meaningfully accountable for their role in the financial crisis. And without such accountability, the unending parade of megabanks scandals will inevitably continue.”

[Rick Montgomery]

#5438

I’d never heard Rita Hosking sing before, a small pot-luck group-of-us pickin’ in Joe-Bob’s backyard.

Late in the evening, Sean suggested she sing one. She picked up a guitar and blew me away.

Wait…Rita sings? Okay, this’ll be cool. Jay and Mary were there too.

I’d never heard a voice like that in my entire waking state, but had heard it in my dreams.

The longest most cherished years of my life, which amount to only two years there in a small mountain community below Hatchet Mountain, were the most impressive years of my life.

Rita’s voice. Cutting, stark, beautiful, true, back porch.

She grew up just over the mountain.

[Rick Montgomery]

#5436

Crawling among the rubble with
Silence as my guide
Starkly more still
‘Til I push the pile aside

Forever struck by the
Silence

Darker than dark when
I shut down the lamp.
Still. Silence.
Deep within this awesome mine!

Such times rarely come along
To stand among such glory
Of quartz and wet and rubble…
Yet beneath my feet
Quartz breaks the silence!

[Stephen Wilson]

#5435

“If we have an economic crisis in the Western world it’s because the government makes up 50 percent or more of the economy. This is a cancer that is taking away people’s freedom.”

Marc Faber

[Stephen Wilson]

#5432

Martin Armstrong voices his opinions concerning recent Fed actions and it’s not pretty.

http://www.martinarmstrong.org/files/QE3%20Confirms%20the%20Economic%20Implosion/index.htm

[Stephen Wilson]

#5429

Comments by G. Edward Griffin at the recent Casey-Sprott Summit in Carlsbad, California along with a few others:

Griffin makes no secret of his conviction that the Fed is a criminal organization, engaged in the legalized plunder of the American population. Through excessive money printing and the ensuing inflation, the Fed is basically imposing a massive tax. It’s a stealth tax, says Griffin – but as old Will so aptly stated, a rose is still a rose by any other name.

The public, says Griffin, has been completely hoodwinked as to what’s happening, namely that they are being robbed on a massive scale. Since the gold standard was abandoned in 1971, the dollar has lost 80% of its value. If this kind of larceny had been done out in the open – say, by the government imposing an 80% income tax for 40 years – we would have had another “Off with their heads” French Revolution in Washington a long time ago.

If Griffin’s arguments left any shreds of trust in the US government, they were swept away by the Hoover Institute’s Peter Schweizer. Schweizer, author of the instant best-seller Throw Them All Out, demonstrated how members of Congress can arrive in Washington as middle-class citizens and leave a few years later with millions in the bank. Their “secret of success”: due to convenient loopholes, it is perfectly legal for our nation’s finest to act and trade on insider information they hear in closed-door meetings. Accordingly, the crash of 2008 that nearly bankrupted many ordinary investors, says Schweizer, made a lot of legislators from both sides of the aisle a fortune.

[Stephen Wilson]

#5425

South African government senselessly out of control

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE88604D20120907

[Stephen Wilson]

#5422

Jim Sinclair’s Commentary

On the subject of wealth and spirit:

Earning wealth is one of the legitimate objectives of human endeavor, without a doubt. It is one of the four objectives of every human life, the four being – righteousness, earning wealth, desire and liberation. The order they are mentioned in, has a purpose too. Righteousness has to direct and control the process of earning wealth and liberation has to be the regulating factor for one’s desires. All wealth accruing through unrighteous means is to be treated with contempt as unworthy. All desires that do not subserve the one supreme need for liberation are to be given up as beneath one’s dignity. So the spiritual basis of righteousness and liberation must be the root of both the pursuit of wealth and fulfilment of other desires.
–SSB 1966

[Stephen Wilson]

#5424

September 6, 2012
The words of Jim Willie

“The Hippocratic Oath dictates never to do harm to the patient. The central bankers instead take the Hypocritical Oath that dictates to cripple the patient, to drain the blood, to preserve power by tightening the straps, to erode buying power from hard work, and to render life savings a weak shell, while whispering lies in the ears on blame for what went badly wrong, against the background din of endorsed war themes. The effectiveness of the latter oath is seen in the systemic failure of the USEconomy, whose financial and economic structure has been destroyed by bad economic policy, the poor paper financial foundation from the monetary system, corrupt bond market practices marred by $trillion frauds, and a marriage between the state and sanctioned large corporations whose only efficiency is seen in dark corners protected by criminal impunity. The Fascist Business Model showed itself in bold terms in the 1990 decade, in the strengthened links between state and major corporations, where inefficiency, favoritism, and corruption produce the bitter fruit of a sclerotic financial structure and weakened body economic. The Gold price responds to the systemic failure of the ruinous financial and economic policy, aggravated by the devoted ghoulish doctors and their perverse solutions that neither fix anything nor attempt to apply remedy.”

[Rick Montgomery]

#5423

Well, of course, Freedom is our driving force. Freedom to independently survive as individuals and develop independent goals we create with worthy partners.

Our mine is the pinnacle of free ambition, freedom from oppression, and when we find ourselves oppressed, we are the expressed definition of FREEDOM!

This isn’t righty-lefty politics, although the ugly head of regulation does have an affiliation with one perspective…and we recognize the roll of regulation in its true intent (I won’t get distracted here…simply move along acknowledging the obvious roll of true law-enforcement needs we all agree upon). Rest assured that FREEDOM is imperical, in all of our souls.

Yet FREEDOM! is under attack by our nemisis…unfettered crap regulation, etc, etc, etc. We know the drill…

The whole reason I’ve just started this topic is to focus…we need to preserve the freedom we’ve been so fortunate to have.

November is critical.

[Rick Montgomery]

#5421

Wisdom in our eyes,
Wisdom in our eyes,
Wisdom in the vision,
Yeller below.

Wisdom in our call,
Wisdom in our falls,
Wisdom in our faith and vision,
Wisdom: yeller shows!

Inside, inside.
Deep inside we strive.
Strength of wisdom inside,
Strength when yeller shows.

Drill deep, drill deep,
Drill our vision’s reap.
Inside, upside, inside, up,
Strength where yeller shows.

Banter above,
Faith below,
Faith in both the visions.
Banter above,
Faith below,
Faith where yeller flows.

[Michael Miller]

#5419

I’ve placed my finger on the delete button for this topic more than once, moving its entries to Miscellaneous. But it survives another day, Labor Day. Daniel Webster penned a little ditty about labor:

“Labor in this country is independent and proud. It is not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor.”

Longfellow wrote this short poem:

“Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.”

Twenty years ago I saw the personification of the labor force at the Sixteen to One and created a photo essay usually called a calendar. Printed for 1992, my mistake was not allowing adequate time to sell them. Many remain in their boxes unopened. The time was our “Go for the Gold” crew of twelve. The Company had just purchased the assets from our lessee, Royal Gold. I added some of its miners to our crew and off we went. The photographs are great shots with each miner underground at work; I saw the emblematic representation of an abstract quality by a human figure wearing a hard hat and cap light. I wrote 28 thoughts to represent mining gold in this unusual mine and honor our labor.

Here are two: “Exciting and dangerous, underground gold mining has long been a tradition in California. Miners are acutely aware of the risks which constantly surround them. They drill holes in solid rock 2000 feet beneath the earth’s surface. Those holes are filled with explosives, ignited, and then the surrounding hard rock ore is blown into bits. Mining combines high risk, pure chance and skill. We would not have it any other way.”

“Gold in the right hands is a peace keeping element that preserves freedom and the legacy of mankind. It is abused by man. In time, its strength reaches those who maintain responsibility for goodness.”

Abe Lincoln sure walked the blade edge of reason when he wrote, “By some it is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital – but nobody labors unless somebody else owning capital, somehow, by the use of it, induces him to do it. But another class reasoners . . . holds that labor is prior to and independent of capital; that is; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed.”

Abe was a lawyer and a wise man.

[Michael Miller]

#5418

I do not favor the idea of returning to a gold standard as it existed in the past. It will be ripe for manipulation. As a gold producer and a gold mining activist for 37 years, I favor the present free market pricing of gold. I like it and breathlessly await the time our small gold producing company regains its proven, gold mining operation. The current sales price for an ounce of gold is beyond my expectations. Actually, thanks to a splendid board of directors during the 1990’s, I have no expectations for the future price of gold. My belief in an outstanding future of Sixteen to One mine is grounded in its amazing gold deposit. We operated when gold was $300 per ounce, $450 per ounce, and its former long-time high of $810. Under the sage advice of Director Lee Erdahl, I copied his answer to the question, “What do you think the price of gold will be?” He said, “Well, there is one thing I know for sure. It will either go up or it will go down.” Thank you Lee, I have used that answer many times.

I do believe that an individual, household or business should have some gold or interest in a respectable gold mining company. The amount can be as little as a pennyweight. Even if it is only a token of one’s wealth, you will gain a benefit by knowing that you’re in-the-game. I know that most of our shareholders are not feeling that their shares will bail them out when the dollar is inflated. However, I know that those of you out there with an equity stake are walking a little taller as all this talk about currency, bank misconduct, Wall Street skullduggery, gold (as a financial savior and touted to reach $5,000 an ounce) continues. Our day will come. I remember what a Silicon Valley banker told me after he turned down an offer to check out our company (many years ago). He said, “Mike, you run a trailing edge business not a leading edge like most around here are familiar with. You run patient capital.”

While I don’t have expectations, I have hope.

[David Ingraham]

#5417

I think realastate is a good investment, along with gold. By low as it is now. and just wait. It will go back up.

[martin newkom]

#5416

If you have doubt about our system
arrange to buy gold bars either
refined or unrefined from Origsix
and stash them in a secret spot
but don’t forget where you put them.

[Stephen Wilson]

#5415

Save Yourself

From this morning’s International Forecaster:

7 Yummy Trillions –by Bob Rinear

Last week I made a lot of waves when I suggested that the recent Sentinel court ruling is the door opener for financial institutions to co-mingle customer funds with their proprietary trading desks and if they lose your money… “too bad”. I said pretty much straight out that the appeals ruling makes it easy for Wall Street to play cowboy with your money and if they lose it, they are not on the hook. All they have to say is that they used your money to make you even more, but it went bad and it was lost. No fraud, no illegality.
As one might imagine, my inbox was flooded with people that asked if 1) I was serious and 2) if I believed that, why was I still in the market and 3) why would the court come out and basically open the floodgates for institutions to co-mingle your money with others?
So the answers are… 1) yes I was dead serious, 2) I’m still in the market because we make our living investing/trading stocks and options. We do this in our accounts, unlike the Sentinel and MF Globals where you pay someone else to invest. I think the hedgies and fund managers that have billions under management are where this will continue, and 3) Why would the court go along with what was obviously criminal? It’s all about the money folks. With over 7 trillion dollars sitting in pension funds and 401K’s, that’s about 50% of our deficit just sitting there. If they can get their hands on it, they will.
So, lets dive into this concept a bit and see where it all started. The Court usually doesn’t go along with criminal rulings out of the clear blue. No, they do that sort of thing after being summoned by the powers that be, to clear the road for their plans. But then… what were/are the plans? We have to go all the way back to 2007 through 2010 to start to understand all this.
The Government was broke, the banksters had taken down the financial system and they were looking everywhere for money. Day after day the Unions would come to Obama and tell them that they were underfunded in their pensions. The market crash had taken a lot of people from hero to zero in a very short time period. So the calls went out to find cash, any way they could. Well they found it. At the time it amounted to 6 TRILLION dollars. It was the 401k’s and Roth IRA’s around the country, many sitting there…almost forgotten. But the question was, how would we get our hands on it?
Vice President Joe Biden floated the idea, called “Guaranteed Retirement Accounts” (GRAs), in the February 2010 “Middle Class” report. I remember reading it and going ballistic in that weeks issue of our Newsletter. These people were seriously dreaming up ways to force you liquefy your retirement money into a Government run MANDATORY plan.
In conjunction with the report’s release, the Obama administration jointly issued through the Departments of Labor and Treasury a “Request for Information” regarding the “annuitization” of 401(k) plans through “Lifetime Income Options” in the form of a notice to the public of proposed issuance of rules and regulations.
Teresa Ghilarducci teaches economics in an outright socialist thinktank called the “new school”. She had written a book called “when I’m 64” and it was about a mandatory plan the citizens would belong to, where a Government run program administered by the Social Security service would be a “supplement” to Social Security. In November of 2007 she had written a paper which was presented to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, for a project named (can you believe it) “Agenda for Shared Prosperity” In that paper she outlined her ideal plan for these “Guaranteed Retirement Accounts”.
In that paper, she proposes that our current system is failed, too few people are in 401K’s and taxes etc are straining the elderly. So, a “guaranteed retirement account” run by Uncle Sam where you are forced to donate to this program is her way of solving things. To quote a part of her paper on Contributions…which Biden and Obama attempted to say would be voluntary, please read this…
“Contributions. Contributions equal to 5% of earnings are deducted along with payroll taxes and credited to individual accounts administered by the Social Security Administration. The cost of contributions is split equally between employer and employee. Mandatory contributions are deducted on earnings up to the Social Security earnings cap”
Uhm… hello? See the word mandatory there? Of course it’s mandatory; it’s what they drool over. So here’s the Obama administration looking for cash, hiking taxes, desperate to save their union buddies and old Teresa here had already published out a Socialist “agenda for shared prosperity” book and paper about how to make giving Uncle Sam your money mandatory, and they took it even further and said “hey, we can do better than that, we can confiscate everyone’s pension/401K/IRA and “annuitize” it into this plan!
The problem as you might expect was that the republicans fought back hard and said “get lost, keep your hands off our people’s retirement money”. Well what do slimy politicians do when their first attempt fails? They find the back door. This is why I believe that the Sentinel Court case was not some off the wall, one time goofy, mistake. No, ever since February of 2010 when they first floated the idea of these Government sponsored retirement accounts, they’ve been fixated on getting that pool of money.
So if the Republicans won’t let them just take it without a fight, and the population doesn’t really trust Uncle Sam, but doesn’t much trust Wall Street either, you can see what they’ve decided to do. Let Wall Street rape the common man enough, and he’ll come to Uncle begging for safety. This is why the court found nothing wrong with Sentinel. This is why Corzine was allowed to take a billion customer dollars and roll the dice. This is why I know that there’s going to be more “co – mingling” of funds and more accounts vaporized. They want the 401K and Pension plans so afraid of being in the market, they rush to the safe arms of Uncle Sam.
Bernie madoff “made off” with billions and no one knows where it went? Sentinel uses customer funds that they stated over and over were segregated and safe, yet they used the customer funds and lost it all… court says fine. Corzine loses a billion in customer funds? Not a peep, in fact he now wants to open a hedge fund ( I kid you not) Knights algorithms, the flash crash, PFG Best, the LIBOR disaster, HFC money laundering, Gold and silver manipulation….do you see a pattern here? They’ve let the market go wild, so they can come out and declare that the average person should not have their money in a 401K where bad things can happen to it. Let Uncle Sam take care of you.
If Obama is re elected, they ARE coming straight for your 401K and your IRA. Mandatory participation in their plan. The paperwork’s already been created. The plan exists. Now all they have to do is get it implemented. Now you know exactly why we liquidated our major 401K plan in 2007 and went to physical gold and silver with it. I can’t be “co-mingled”. I don’t suppose you should be either.

[Stephen Wilson]

#5414

Beware of the banksters

Citigroup settles shareholder CDO lawsuit for $590 million
By Jonathan Stempel
Thu Aug 30, 2012 4:30am EDT

(Reuters) – Citigroup Inc agreed to pay $590 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit accusing it of hiding tens of billions of dollars of toxic mortgage assets, one of the largest settlements stemming from the global financial crisis.

[martin newkom]

#5410

Looks like the age-old addage is
applicable: “Don’t trust anybody
even your own father or family.

[Stephen Wilson]

#5407

Just in from Jammes Corbett, an excerpt from today’s International Forecaster:

And this is the point to keep in mind: the game is rigged. No matter how we play, the banksters win. Sometimes they win big, sometimes they win small, but each time the roulette wheel is spun, the banksters will take their cut. And once again we find that the only way for the people to win this rigged game is not to play it. To remove our savings from their institutional financial framework and store it in precious metals. To help support the creation of local alternative currencies. To support local farmer’s markets and community-based initiatives. To simply remove ourselves from the system. In the end, this is the only thing that the banksters really fear, and the only way they can lose.

Maybe it’s time we started thinking big for a change.

[Stephen Wilson]

#5408

from jsmineset.com:

Customer Deposits Are Property of the Bank: Close Your Account NOW

Susanne Posel, Contributor
Friday, August 24, 2012

In June of 2012, Eric Bloom, former chief executive, and Charles Mosely, head trader of Sentinel Management Group (SMG) were indicted for stealing $500 million in customer secured funds. Both Mosely and Bloom were accused of “exposing” customer segregated funds “to a portfolio of highly risky derivatives.”

These customer funds were used to “back up personal investments” which were part of “collateral for a loan from Bank of New York Mellon” (BNYM). This loan derived from stolen customer monies was “used to purchase millions of dollars worth of high-risk, illiquid securities, including collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, for a trading portfolio that benefited Sentinel’s officers, including Mosley, Bloom and certain Bloom family members.”

Fast forward to August 9th of 2012, and the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals (CCA) rules that BNYM can be moved to first in line of creditors over the customers that had their funds stolen by SMG.

When a banking customer deposits their money into their bank account, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SPIC) are in place to protect the customer from fraud or theft. The ruling from the CCA means that these regulatory systems will not insure customer funds, investments, or depositors and retirees who hold accounts in banks. In fact, the banking institution is now legally allowed to use those customer funds deposited as collateral, payment on debts for loans made, or free use on the stock market to purchase investments as the bank sees fit.

[Stephen Wilson]

#5405

Recent comments by Martin Armstrong:

It is true that one begins to wonder what is going to happen to the human race. Technology keeps on advancing with greater and greater power, either for good or for destruction, as government desires to eliminate all rights, privileges, and immunities. But this is part of the cycle that constantly repeats. Government is the enemy of the people. Historically it always has been. They seek only one thing, power over others. They will do anything to retain that power. For they cannot sleep at night worrying that someone has something they want or is doing something they do not approve of. This is part of a long cyclical process where government is always the great evil empire for it ultimately always seeks to dominate the people regardless of what form it has taken.

[Stephen Wilson]

#5401

This is certainly worth the read:

Written by Jeff Nielson Wednesday, 15 August 2012 11:50

http://www.bullionbullscanada.com/intl-commentary/25744-iceland-was-right-we-were-wrong-the-imf

For approximately three years; our governments, the banking cabal, and the Corporate Media have assured us that they knew the appropriate approach for fixing the economies that they had previously crippled with their own mismanagement. We were told that the key was to stomp on the Little People with “austerity” in order to continue making full interest payments to the Bond Parasites – at any/all costs.

Following three years of this continuous, uninterrupted failure; Greece has already defaulted on 75% of its debts, and its economy is totally destroyed. The UK, Spain, and Italy are all plummeting downward in suicide-spirals, where the more austerity these sadistic governments inflict upon their own people the worse their debt/deficit problems get. Ireland and Portugal are nearly in the same position.

Now in what may be the greatest economic “mea culpa” in history, we have the media admitting that this government/banking/propaganda-machine Troika has been wrong all along. They have been forced to acknowledge that Iceland’s approach to economic triage was the correct approach right from the beginning.

What was Iceland’s approach? To do the exact opposite of everything the bankers running our own economies told us to do. The bankers (naturally) told us that we needed to bail-out the criminal Big Banks – at taxpayer expense (they were Too Big To Fail). Iceland gave the banksters nothing.

The bankers told us that no amount of suffering (for the Little People) was too great in order to make sure that the Bond Parasites got paid at 100 cents on the dollar. Iceland told the Bond Parasites they would get what was left over, after the people had been taken care of (by their own government).

The bankers told us that our governments “could no longer afford” the same education, health-care and pension systems which our parents had taken for granted. Iceland told the bankers that what the country “could no longer afford” was to continue to be blood-sucked by the worst financial criminals in the history of our species. Now, after 3+ years of this absolute dichotomy in economic policy-making a clear picture has emerged (despite the best efforts of the propaganda machine to hide the Truth).

In typical fashion, the moment that the Corporate Media is forced to admit that it has been serially misinforming us for the past several years; the Revisionists are immediately deployed to rewrite history:

…the island’s approach to its rescue led to a “surprisingly” strong recovery, the International Monetary Fund’s mission chief to the country said. [emphasis mine]

In fact, from the moment the Crash of ’08 was orchestrated and our morally-bankrupt governments began executing the plans of the bankers I have written that the only rational strategy was to put People before Parasites. While I wouldn’t expect national policy-makers to take their cues from my own writing, when I wrote out my economic prescriptions for our economies I didn’t base my views on compassion, or simply “doing the right thing.”

Rather, I have consistently argued that it was a matter of simple arithmetic and the most-elementary principles of economics that “the Iceland approach” was the only strategy which could possibly succeed. When Plutarch wrote 2,000 years ago that “an imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all Republics” he was not parroting socialist dogma (1500 years before the birth of Socialism).

Plutarch was simply expressing the First Principle of economics; something which all of the modern capitalist economists who followed in his footsteps have based their own theories upon. When modern economists produce their own jargon, such as the Marginal Propensity to Consume; it is squarely based upon the wisdom of Plutarch: that an economy will always be healthier with its wealth in the hands of the poor and the Middle Class instead of being hoarded by rich misers (and gamblers).

So when Bloomberg’s Revisionists attempt to convince us that Iceland’s strong (and real) economic recovery was a “surprise”; this could only be true if none of our governments, none of the bankers, and none of the media’s precious “experts” understood the most-elementary principles of arithmetic and economics. Is this the message Bloomberg wants to convey?

What is even more disingenuous here is the congratulatory tone in this exercise in Revisionism, since nothing could be further from the truth. As I detailed in a four-part series one year ago, the campaign of “economic rape” perpetrated against the governments of Europe over the past 2 ½ years (in particular) has been expressly designed to take away “the Iceland option” for Europe’s other governments.

One of the reasons for Iceland being able to escape the choke-hold of the Western banking cabal is that it’s economy (and its people) still retained enough residual prosperity to tough it out — as the banking cabal tried to strangle Iceland’s economy as retribution for rejecting their Debt Slavery. Thus Austerity has been nothing less than a deliberate campaign to destroy these European economies so that the Slaves would be too economically weak to be able to sever their own choke-holds. Mission accomplished!

One can only assume that neither the Corporate Media nor their Banker Masters would have allowed this clear acknowledgment that Iceland was right and we were wrong to appear within its own pages, unless it felt secure in the knowledge that all the remaining Debt Slaves had been crippled beyond their capacity to ever escape this economic oppression.

Indeed, for evidence of this we need only look to Greece: the one other European nation where there had been “rumblings” (i.e. riots) aimed at toppling the Traitor Government which served the banking cabal. After two elections, the combination of fear and propaganda bullied the long-suffering Greek people into choosing another Traitor Government – which had expressly pledged itself to reinforcing the bonds of economic slavery. When the Slaves vote for slavery, the Slave Masters can afford to gloat.

Here, the purpose of this Bloomberg propaganda was not to praise Iceland’s government (when both the bankers and Corporate Media despise Iceland with all of their considerable malice). Rather, the goal of this disinformation was to manufacture a new Big Lie.

Instead of the Truth: that from Day 1 Iceland’s approach was the only possible strategy which could have succeeded, while our own governments chose a strategy intended to fail; we get the Big Lie. Our Traitor Governments were acting honestly and honourably; and Iceland’s success and our failure was yet another “surprise which no one could have predicted.”

We saw precisely the same Revisionism following the Crash of ’08 itself, where the mainstream media trotted out all their expert-shills to tell us they had been “surprised” by this economic event; while those within the precious metals sector had been predicting precisely such a cataclysm, in ever more-assertive terms, for several years.

The real message here for readers is that when an economic strategy of People before Parasites succeeds that there is nothing the least-bit “surprising” about this. As with all the remainder of the world around us, promoting the health of Parasites is only good for the Parasites themselves.

[Stephen Wilson]

#5398

From this morning’s International Forecaster:

In recent news Monsanto, the leader in genetically modified foods “GMO’s” has in the last week along with Dupont, donated around $6.8 million dollars in hopes of crushing the ability of activists in California to get a majority of voters to pass Proposition 37, which would require genetically modified foods to be labeled as such.

Monsanto itself has donated $4.2 million to serve its purpose in its pursuit to oppose the new law. The No on 37 spokesperson Kathy Fairbanks told the associated press that Prop 37 leaves consumers with an incorrect impression that there is something wrong with GE crops(hello).

We should take note that anytime multibillion dollar chemical companies with strong GMO ties, such as Dow Agrosciences or Dupont, join the forces in which cold shut down a bill such as Proposition 37 in which we as the public would be able to choose less genetically modified food as part of our daily diet, if the bill were to pass legally forcing food to be labeled as GMO, maybe Monsanto, Dow, and Dupont should eat their own genetically modified garbage as has been mentioned in an article not too long ago that the employee cafe at Monsanto intentionally has as few GMO products on the menu as possible per company request.

That in of itself has to say something about what they think about the benefits or lack there of in their own genetically modified foods.

[martin newkom]

#5397

With regard to the hydraulic min-
ning litigation years ago, there was formed the “Calif. Debris
Commission” which functioned as
an “arm” of the Army Corps of
Engineers for formulating methods
to hold the dirt and sand from the
mountains being washed down by the big “monitor” hoses and nozzles.Two dams for that
purpose were built on the Yuba River: The first was Daguerre Point in the early 1900’s and then Englebright Dam in the 1940’s in Nevada east of Smartville. Also in his memoirs
Gen Douglas MacArthur mentioned
that he was assigned to the Calif. Debris Commission soon after his graduation from West
Point.

[Stephen Wilson]

#5396

From the Telegrph

South African police say they were forced to fire on striking miners, killing 34

South Africa’s police were forced to open fire on striking miners with live rounds because they were charged by armed men and compelled to “defend themselves”, the national police chief said on Friday

[Stephen Wilson]

#5395

U.S. Government Debt Grows $10 Million a Minute

[Stephen Wilson]

#5394

South African riot police open fire on miners.

http://news.yahoo.com/south-africa-police-open-fire-miners-several-dead-141246673–finance.html

[Stephen Wilson]

#5392

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb_eXbsmyAU

[Stephen Wilson]

#5390

You should NEVER have anyone between you and your money.

Jim Sinclair’s Commentary:

This is an interesting position for all of you that believe assets held by your securities and commodity brokers are safe!

RED ALERT: It’s Open Season on All Customer Funds

“This ruling and precedent will be used by every brokerage, every bank, every insurance company and every pension fund to deny you your money when the financial system finally collapses, be it on Monday, or be it two years from now. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? You have GOT to GET OUT.”

by Ann Barnhardt, Barnhardt.biz:

The National Futures Association is collusion with the Banksters, government and judiciary and have achieved their goal. The entire concept of “customer segregated funds” is officially, completely, legally dead.

Guys, it is OVER. I know that many of you are still cowering in normalcy bias, unable to deal with reality, unable to face the world as it is, but you have GOT to snap out of it. The marketplace is DESTROYED. You CANNOT be in these markets. All legal protections are now officially gone.

[Stephen Wilson]

#5391

We should take a deep look into who are the responsible ones that allow this sad financial “Wild West” show to continue while it continues to drain the resources of society.

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

Dear CIGAs,

Professor William Black is an outspoken critic of Wall Street. Black, a former bank regulator and professor of law and economics, says, “Outright fraud caused the great recession, and they are able to do it now with impunity.” Not a single financial elite that caused the crisis has gone to jail. Because laws are not enforced and crooked bankers are allowed to do whatever they wish, Black says, “Each crisis is getting bigger by an order of magnitude.” Meaning, the next financial meltdown is assured to be much greater than the last. According to Professor Black, “Just the household sector lost $11 trillion, a trillion is a thousand billion.” He goes on to say, “You can get to the point where even the United States could be thrown into a long term collapse scenario.” When I asked, “Any day something could happen and we could be in another collapse?” The Professor unequivocally replied, “Yes.” Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Professor William Black.

The above is an excerpt from an interview on youtube available at http://www.jsmineset.com.

[Author]

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