Showing posts with label interest rate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interest rate. Show all posts

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Intruders Crash Investment Banking Awards Dinner

The Investment Banking Awards are the Oscars of the financial world. Dished out for so-called 'innovation', some of the world's richest bankers gather together to congratulate each other on devising ever more creative ways to make obscene sums of money.

One of 2012's most profitable scams was the bankers' 'innovative' approach to a key interest rate called LIBOR. Virtually every bank at the event was involved in illegally colluding to rig LIBOR, ensuring that they would always be the winners in the multi-million pound bets they were making on the markets.

When we noticed that this money-spinner had been overlooked in the ceremony, we decided to show up and make sure the LIBOR-riggers got the recognition they deserve.

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Wednesday, December 17, 2008

When the Dollar Becomes Worthless? What Then?

Wasn't it Albert Einstein who said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"? Isn't that what the Federal Reserve is doing? Cheap money got us into this mess, so, how exactly is cheapening it even more going to save us?

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the policy making arm of the Federal Reserve, in response to the financial crisis and committed to making sure liquidity remains in the system, cut the interest rate banks charge each other on overnight loans to an all time low, ranging between 0-0.25%. This aggressive move intends to "promote the resumption of sustainable economic growth and to preserve price stability."

In addition, the Fed promised to use all the tools at their disposal to speed up the process of economic recovery, including, purchasing Treasury notes and bonds to bid up the price and lower the yield, essentially, lowering the entire Treasury yield curve - the spread between the federal funds rate, and the 10-year Treasury note yield which is linked to the pricing of traditional fixed-rate mortgages. In reality, the Federal Reserve is using the crisis as an excuse to trade U.S. Treasuries for toxic debt, hence, their reluctance to disclose the recipients of $2 trillion.

It all sounds good, but why do visions of people hovered over cash-filled wheelbarrows, lined up outside the local store, waiting to buy a loaf of bread, stream through my mind?

Massive liquidity injections - Greenspan's hallmark - created an excess of cheap money, which, in turn, fueled the debt bubble which, in turn, caused the colossal rise in home prices. And, now, that the bubble has burst, sparking a financial crisis...what are we doing to repair the damage? The exact same thing that caused it...printing even more money. When borrower income is insufficient in relation to its debt, the Federal Reserve has no power to be a borrower of last resort, yet they are running the show, portraying themselves as martyrs for the cause. expanded the monetary base by 76%.

"Like gold, US dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the US government has a technology called a printing press (now its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes...it reduces the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services..." - Ben Bernacke
So, why, in the midst of economic and fiscal meltdowns, do we continue to "trust" these politicians who have turned our nation’s fate over to private bankers and corporate crooks? We know damn well that Henry Paulson, with his long history of intimate connections to the political and financial elite, and politicians do not have the public’s welfare as a priority. These major players along with central bankers lock in their profits all the while driving down the living standards of the population.

The banks have intentionally failed us miserably, yet use the crisis they have created - from their own fraud and criminal behavior - as an opportunity to generate new profits for themselves. The media coverage of the auto industry bailout is providing cover for TARP and the actions of the Treasury and Federal Reserve. The scrutiny of the auto workers and ever increasing standards to be met in comparison to the bankers, for one-fiftieth of the amount, speaks volumes.

Consider the $700 billion bailout, once the domain of the Treasury is now in the process of being inadvertently transferred to the Federal Reserve, a private corporation and therefore is not required by law to disclose their accounting and does not have the burden of oversight. The Fed has loaned trillions of dollars of our money, with no oversight or accountability.
"In the macroeconomic sense, foreclosure reduction is an essential part of getting us out of the problem we're in. The refusal so far to use the money to that purpose has been I think a violation of the intent and undermines the ability to get the votes in this Congress to do things in the future." - House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass
Just like the trillions of dollars that have gone unaccounted for during the Iraq War, trillions of dollars are now being transferred in the largest transfer of wealth in history.

How do they get away with robbing us blind, so easily, considering their "secrets" are hidden in plain sight? Well, besides relying on the vast majority of people to act like sheep, and the fact that anyone who is perceptive enough to figure out what is going on is immediately branded a crackpot, one tried and true method is cooking the calculations of economic and government reporting. By altering the way certain statistics are calculated - such as the inflation rate, unemployment rate, GDP, etc - and disclosing only what they want us to know, it has proven to be a great way to keep people in the dark and in denial of what's really happening.

"In politics, nothing happens ‘by accident.’ If it happened, you can bet it was ‘planned’ that way." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Legal Tender: Is it Legal, Lawful, Constitutional? Part 3: Interest

In 1971, when the U.S. decided that the value of the dollar did not need the backing of gold, the dollar continues to dematerialize more and more every day. This process enables us to see that money is not so much an object as it is a force, that it takes on a life of its own and its vitality depends on certain conditions to thrive.

Bank-debt based currency, the medium of exchange our monetary system is based, depends on scarcity to flourish. This insufficiency of amount must be artificially introduced and maintained in a systematic and consistent manner. This is the number one reason the free market advocates of the last 30-years are either deceitful or stupid because the Central Bank must intervene constantly to preserve the conditions necessary for money to flow.

“Debt-money derives its value from its scarcity relative to its usefulness.” - Jackson and McConnell, Economics. (Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 1988.
It's hard to believe that charging for the use of money was prohibited throughout most of history. Up until the 19th century, the Catholic Church fought against usury, declaring it a sin.

The application of interest also reinforces competition rather than cooperation. Charging for the use of money also continually stokes the need for endless cycles of economic growth and concentrates wealth in the hands of smaller and smaller numbers, as new money is always needed to cover the intrinsic deficit in our monetary system. Default and bankruptcy are built right into the structure. This guarantees that a certain portion of our population will be poor, as it is designed to transfer wealth from the individual to the banks.

In other words, the money owed to the banks in the form of interest will always exceed the amount of money that is available in circulation. Why? Because when the government borrows money from the Federal Reserve (FR), or when a person borrows money from a bank, that money must be paid back with interest. However, the money creation process only creates the "principal" - the amount of the initial loan credited to the account. The interest is/was never created. So, where does the interest come from? Someone else's principal. That's right...in order to pay the interest, people must compete with each other for money that was never created in the first place! And the premeditated lucky losers get to claim bankruptcy.

What happens when you can't pay your mortgage? Your car loan? Your utilities? "It" gets foreclosed, taken away, shut down, etc. Some might say..."Oh well, that's the breaks. If you can't pay, you can't play?" However, when you realize, a certain percentage of default and bankruptcy is inevitable, and that the money the bank loaned to you did not legally exist in the first place, and that an infinitesimally small segment of our population not only is immune from this process, but benefits from our "bad luck", it's just a little infuriating.

Why can't we create a debt-free and heaven forbid, an interest-free currency, and tell those elitist international power hungry bankers to find another universe to pick on? Well, a few Presidents tried that, including Abraham Lincoln (Greenback) and John F. Kennedy, (Executive Order 11110), and it didn't work out so well.
"...(we) gave the people of this Republic the greatest blessing they have ever had - their own paper money to pay their own debts..." -- Abraham Lincoln on the Greenback
To which the London Times responded:
"If this mischievous financial policy, which has its origin in North America, shall become endurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world. The brains, and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That country must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe." -- London Times 1865
The United States Notes that President Kennedy issued were immediately taken out of circulation the day after his assassination on November 22, 1963, and Federal Reserve Notes continued to serve as the "legal currency" of the nation. None of this information was shared with the American people.

So, it's not so easy to rid the nation of the fractional reserve policy perpetrated by the Federal Reserve. This practice has spread to the most of the banks in the world. Besides the obvious profit motive, what else is it about this system of banking that make those in control of it so willing to do anything to keep it in tact? Considering their great wealth, one would think they could discover other ways to profit, however finding another way to claim the global population as your "slaves" might be a little more difficult.

Granted, we are not shackled or whipped...in fact, some of us feel as if we are free as birds, able to soar to great heights, but those of us that feel that way are growing smaller and smaller in number.

Many claim that our current monetary system is a form of modern slavery. That most of us are nothing but wage slaves. I certainly don't feel like a slave, and if indeed I am a slave, I can't complain. But it kind of, sort of, makes sense when you think that money is created out of debt...and that we are all competing for something that does not exist, which makes us battle for what each of us already owns...and that this struggle is an intrinsic part of our economic system...and that only the very few at the tip of the iceberg will truly benefit...OK, now, I feel like a slave.

From Aristotle to our Founding Fathers, to Adam Smith, intellectuals, philosophers and economists believed society and government exists to evolve better conditions for people to thrive in order that they may live virtuous and moral lives. Our current monetary system encourages the exact opposite, which we have come to believe is not only normal but desirable.
However, it appears the people in control of our money supply know better as was stated in the aforementioned quote from the London Times in 1865.

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