LA DEUDA ES LA ESCLAVITUD MODERNA

debt is modern day slavery

Libertarian John Tamny Excuses LIBOR Low-Balling Because It Didn't Hurt Anybody

John Tamny's logic fails on two counts.

Throwing out low-balled LIBOR rates along with the high rates, to achieve the average reported, misses the fact that the low-balled rates would have been higher if accurately reported, thus aggregating all reported interest rates paid on the low end higher up the ladder, necessarily boosting the level at which the lowest rates were thrown out and skewing the average higher.

Here he says it:

As readers are aware, the banks that participate submit what they estimate to be their cost of credit, and the 4-5 highest and lowest estimates are thrown out. ...

Of course assuming Barclays truly lowballed the number in question, its false estimate wouldn't have factored into the calculation. And if it did, as in if Barclays' estimates actually worked to lower various Libor-informed interest rates, then the borrowers on whom lenders allegedly predate would have been made better off.

No, false low estimates most certainly would have factored into the calculation precisely because their input at their true higher level was missing. 

But the real kicker is, so what if they succeeded at cheating! Big deal! At least borrowers got a better deal!

I don't know how much more morally obtuse you can get.

For some people, nothing more than materialism can be imagined, and they're usually either communists or libertarians. For both of them, the end justifies the means.

Hey Nolan You Hypocrite, Your "Home" Is Full Of Blood, Real And Imagined

There's nothing innocent and hopeful about the place you live in, you fraud.

Quoted here:

"The movie theater is my home, and the idea that someone would violate that innocent and hopeful place in such an unbearably savage way is devastating to me.”

Democrat Senator Pat Leahy Of Vermont Loves Violent Batman Film "Best Of The Three"

As reported here at The Hill:

The Vermont Democrat and big-time Caped Crusader fan got a sneak peek of “The Dark Knight Rises” at an advance screening Sunday in his home state and says he “Loved it.” The flick, which hits theaters Friday, is the last installment in the three-part series starring actor Christian Bale. ...

When asked how “The Dark Knight Rises” compares to the first two “Batman” films in director Christopher Nolan’s trifecta, the unlikely big-screen star beamed, “I liked it the best of the three.”


From a review which refuses to spoil it (how do you spoil what's already reeking?):

After the murderous clown heist, things slip downhill. A man's face is filleted by a knife, and another's is burned half off. A man's eye is slammed into a pencil. A bomb can be seen crudely stitched inside another man's stomach, which subsequently explodes. A trussed-up man is bound to a chair and set alight atop a pile of banknotes.

A plainly terrorised child is threatened at gunpoint by a man with a melted face. It is all intensely realistic. Oh but don't worry, folks: there isn't any nudity.

And by the way, the director of the film appears to have contributed funds to Sen. Pat Leahy's political campaign in 2010. Did I mention he was the Democrat Senator from Vermont? Not to be confused with the Socialist Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders?

Moral Failure Friday in Colorado Gives Way To Bank Failure Friday, Cinco Iteraciones

The 34th bank failure of 2012 is The Royal Palm Bank of Florida, Naples, Florida, costing the FDIC $13.5 million.

#35 is Georgia Trust Bank, Buford, Georgia, costing the FDIC $20.9 million.

#36 is First Cherokee State Bank, Woodstock, Georgia, costing the FDIC $36.9 million.

#37 is Heartland Bank, Leawood, Kansas, costing the FDIC $3.1 million.

#38 is Second Federal Savings and Loan Association of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, costing the FDIC $76.9 million.

When The Purge Comes, It's Inspiration Will Be Obama's Barbarians In Hollywood

From The UK Daily Telegraph, here, which does a pretty good job of exposing the vulgar and violence-loving friends of Obama in Hollywood who represent the popular face of the global reach of Obama's crony capitalism fascism:

Spider-Man now looks like Bambi when set next to The Dark Knight. Even since 2002, the public's willingness to expose children to previously unthinkable levels of screen violence has soared, and the BBFC finds itself virtually powerless to stop it. ...

Britain appears to be gulping down entertainment values wholesale from a Hollywood intent upon mining the profit margin from barbarism. America, for all its manifold strengths, is still a country in which the population can be roused to a frenzy of condemnation by the sight of Janet Jackson's escaped nipple on the Super Bowl, but views the sight of a bound man being torched to death as all-round family entertainment. ...

Little boys have always played with swords and guns. But they did not always play at beating a prisoner's genitals with a rope, or stitching a live bomb inside a man's stomach. For that innovation we must thank Hollywood, the industrious factory of dreams, now frequently devoted to churning out nightmares.

These evil dreams, repeated often enough to the young, prepare them to commit crimes such as have occurred in the past, for example at the hands of this woman, executed in 1945 at the age of 22 for her crimes at Bergen-Belsen:

She admitted that she regarded the inmates of the concentration camps as "dreck", i.e. subhuman rubbish and like you or I may kill an insect without feeling guilty about it, she saw nothing inherently wrong in what she was doing. At her trial, she denied selecting prisoners for the gas chambers although she did admit she knew of their existence. She did admit to whipping prisoners with the cellophane whip and also to beating them with a walking stick, despite knowing that both practices were contrary to the camp rules.

Hers is a classic case of what happens when an immature person is given total charge of a large number of people who are viewed by those in authority as totally expendable. No one seemed to care how many of the concentration camp inmates were killed or beaten by her even though there were nominal rules against mistreatment of prisoners. So Irma had, effectively, freehand to kill and torture to her heart's content. She clearly felt that she was carrying out Hitler's and Himmler's policies, which in her mind largely exempted her from responsibility for her actions.

It has been said that Nazism replaced this young girl's normal sex life and that her sexuality manifested itself in the brutal and sadistic treatment of her female prisoners. 

Ingenious Interpretations of "You Didn't Build That"

If you didn't build that then they can take it.

You didn't build that, my cronyism did.

Oh yeah. Yankee ingenuity.

Full Time Employment In June 2012 Is At The Year 2000 Level

America first achieved full time employment at today's 114 million level way back in the year 2000.

Things are not fine in the full time employment sector, which remains 6 percent depressed from the all time high in November 2007 when nearly 121.9 million worked full time.

Examine the data for yourself, here.

Not only should the country have back all those 7 million lost full time jobs by now in a normal recovery, there should be even more working full time than that to accommodate the natural increase in the population in the last five years. The trend line would suggest that we should have in excess of 125 million or more working full time, 11 million more than work full time today.

Not Only Should The Young Have No Guns, They Should Have No Movies

And while we're at it, no one shall vote for president who isn't also at least 35 years of age.

ABC News reports here that the gunman's gear and m/o resembled the film:

Holmes was wearing a bullet-proof vest and riot helmet and carrying a gas mask, rifle, and handgun, when he was apprehended, according to police. Federal Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms sources told ABC News that agents will begin tracing an assault rifle, shotgun, and two handguns used in the attack. ...

The highly-anticipated third installment of the Batman triology opened to packed auditoriums around the country at midnight showings on Friday morning, and features a villain named Bane who wears a bulletproof vest and gas mask. Trailers for the movie show explosions at public events including a football game. Though many moviegoers dressed in costume to attend the opening night screening, police have made no statements about any connection between the gunman's motives and the movie.

Rep. Amash, Other Opponents Of Spending, Cave To Avoid A Government Shutdown Crisis

 

 

The Tea Party in Congress is dead, if it were ever alive.

 

Its most ardent wannabes in the Congress have been now fully and completely co-opted by the Republican Party, which couldn't use a crisis to get what it wants if a Democrat spelled it out in an instruction manual. Republicans not only have no principles, they have no skills.

Republican opponents of increased government spending have caved in to a plan to avoid a government shutdown crisis and accept a continuing resolution of at least six months, enshrining spending at the high levels they formerly opposed.

The mood is not dissimilar to the banking panic period around the election of 2008, when Republicans caved in to TARP in order to get past the crisis. They got past it alright, and deservedly lost everything in the process.

The whole point now, they say, is to get past the danger the upcoming election represents, and the lame duck session, periods when government is most responsive to, and most dismissive of, politics, and it is politics which the so-called conservatives now fear. It doesn't occur to them that one of the rewards of an election is the free hand given to the winners to do the will of the people. Gov. Scott Walker's victories on behalf of the people of Wisconsin evidently mean nothing to them. Fear of a lame duck session is simply proof that so-called Tea Partiers in Congress don't have the courage of their convictions.

The election, on the contrary, is the perfect opportunity to crucify the Democrats on the issue of spending, and especially their intransigence on it. Nothing focuses the mind like when your job is on the line.

Well guess what, Republicans? Your job is on the line, too. And I have a keyboard, and an internet connection.

Instead of postponing the issue to next March, outrageous spending should be front and center in October when Americans spend a few days paying attention to it for once. Republicans obviously have no stomach for such fighting. But Democrats do, which is why they win.

Making Democrats take the fall for increased spending and taxes may be difficult work, but if you can't figure out how to do that, then quit, but don't piss down our necks and tell us it's rainin'.

The truth appears to be that the so-called conservatives can see the handwriting on the wall. They have a candidate for president who won't cut spending if elected because that candidate, Gov. Mitt Romney, thinks cutting spending would put the country into depression. So-called Tea Partiers in Congress evidently agree with this Keynesian analysis. They'd rather look like they support this absurdity for political ends than do the right thing for the country. They don't want to continue in lonely isolation under a Romney administration. And they certainly don't want to be held responsible for a depression.

In taking this step, the conservatives no longer deserve our support, or our respect.

It's just one more reason why alliance with the Republican Party is the kiss of death for conservatism.

The Christian Science Monitor has the story, including these excerpts, here:

In a bid to avoid a potential government shutdown, several of the House’s most conservative Republicans say they would be willing to go along with a six-month extension of government funding, which is currently set to run out at the end of September, at levels they’ve voted against in the past. ...

The idea is spearheaded by Sens. Jim DeMint (R) of South Carolina, the most prominent tea party figure in Congress, and Lindsey Graham (R), South Carolina's senior senator. It was laid out in a letter signed by 20 Republicans to House and Senate GOP leaders on Wednesday. But support for the move is wider than the initial signatories: Even Rep. Justin Amash (R) of Michigan, who voted against the Republican budget proposal in March because he said it cut too little from government spending, said he would vote in favor.

And here's a little news flash for you: Lindsey Graham is not now, nor has he ever been, a member of the Tea Party, or a conservative.

As for Rep. Amash, I guess your precious "consistency" has its limits, eh Justin?

Fired American Workers Take 50 Percent Pay Cuts And Do Nothing About It. Spaniards Take 15 Percent Cuts And March.

The American people will do anything for money.

Ask anyone over 50 who's been fired despite being highly productive and highly skilled, now working any job, or any number of jobs, just to pay the bills, but making half what they used to make. We're too old to sustain a fight, and they know it.

But they marched today in Spain, and over far less, as reported here:

"There's nothing we can do but take to the street. We have lost between 10 and 15 percent of our pay in the past four years," said Sara Alvera, 51, a worker in the justice sector, demonstrating in Madrid. ...

Protestors complained that they were being made to pay for the financial crisis while banks and the rich were let off.

"We have to all come out into the street, firefighters, street-sweepers, nurses, to say: enough," said Manuel Amaro, a 38-year-old fireman in Madrid holding his black helmet by his side.

"If we don't, I don't know where this is going to end."

I think prosperity has bred the fight out of Americans. Many have lost 40 percent of their net worth since 2008, but here we sit, just taking it, while Spaniards march over just 15 percent.

Something has put the fight back into Spaniards somehow. I admire them for that.

Don't you know that you can strike back at your oppressors, too, America?

Just stop working. Just stop cooperating. 

What if everyone just said "No" to work for a month, say starting August 1? And "No" to volunteering. And "No" to everything anyone expects of you. Employers would absolutely panic. You might even bankrupt them. Shouldn't someone go bankrupt for a change besides you?

The government would panic because it desperately needs the tax revenue. You might even get rid of the government, considering that its reaction just might de-legitimize it.

How about making someone else panic for a change?

How about if America protests for a change?

How about taking August off? Europe does. Why don't we?

What Do Hillary and Huma Have In Common?

Dicks.

They even work for one.

Pelosi Backs Off Romney Tax Returns. Does She Fear Having To Release Her Own?

She's rich as Croesus, after all. Her financial disclosure for 2010 makes her nearly as rich as Romney.

Roll Call reports here that only 17 of 535 elected members of the US House and Senate have disclosed their tax returns:

The Minority Leader faced questions about the issue after a McClatchy News report showed only 17 of 535 Members released their tax returns when asked. ...

“Some people think the same standard should be held to the ownership of the news media in the country who are writing these stories about all of this. What do you think of that?” she asked.

How quickly they pivot to put the focus anywhere but where it belongs get the stink off.

Hey, but while we're at it, how about Diane Sawyer, who married the descendant of a famous communist? She makes an awful lot of money, asking no important questions of anyone, especially of Democrats.

According to salon.com, here:

In 2008, Forbes ranked her 65th on the list of the “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.” She is said to command a salary of between $12 and $15 million a year.

Obama has spent about $100 million trying to put the stink on Romney, and it isn't working. Obama's rating on his handling the economy has slipped into the 30s during the same interval.

Pelosi is telling him it's time to move on.

MoveOn!

Forward! 

Dick Bove Sounds Just Like George Bush: We Tampered With LIBOR To Save The Banks

The hypocrisy just never ends. It gets so common no one has the energy left from all the outrage to pick up a torch and a pitchfork anymore. The whole industry is corrupt and all we can hope for is God sends a meteor attack to destroy them all, preferably at the opening bell.

Dick Bove, quoted in a story here:

Bove acknowledged holding what "may be a contradictory stance," but he is sticking to it.

"It will be recalled that the regulators were dealing with a significant financial crisis. To stem the panic, they lowered interest rates, invested in banks, loaned trillions of dollars to these institutions and guaranteed trillions more in bank liabilities," he said in an analysis for clients.

"If the dollar Libor rate had risen sharply in this period all of this activity would not have succeeded."

Every time some new misdeed is discovered we're told that it was necessary to bend the rules in order to keep everything from falling apart.

We're nearly four years on from the onset of the panic, and here we have a leading cheerleader for the banking industry telling us that suppressing LIBOR was necessary to save the system. I seem to recall that was the argument for TARP which relieved NOT ONE SINGLE TOXIC ASSET, and for the Fed opening the discount window to the world with nearly $10 trillion in liquidity loans at ultra-low rates homeowners will never get, and for every other violation of the principles of free markets we have witnessed under Republicans and Democrats alike, all of which amounts to the biggest fascist swindle ever perpetrated on a once free people.

A pox on all your houses! 

"Look. I obviously have made a decision to make sure the economy doesn't collapse. I have abandoned free market principles to save the free market system. Having said that, I'm very confident that with time the economy will come out and grow and people's wealth will return."

-- President Bush, 2008

Germany's Lonely Realists About The Euro

From Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, here:

Thilo Sarrazin is not everbody’s cup of tea. The ex-Bundesbanker and shock-jock critic of Islam in Europe loves to make mischief.

But his latest broadside against monetary union in the Frankfurter Allgemeine is spot on. ...

Mr Sarrazin is almost alone in German public life, at least until the dam breaks, which cannot be far away.

His one big ally is Hans-Olaf Henkel, former head of the German industry federation and author of a master plan to break EMU in two – with Germany and northern allies withdrawing, leaving France and the Latin bloc with the euro. ...

He is a brave man, the survivor of two years of vilification in the German press for daring to challenge orthodoxy.

Elizabeth Warren Is Still Talking Bull: Defends Obama's Theft Of Her Idea In "You Didn't Build That"

The Boston Herald quotes her here:

Elizabeth Warren yesterday came to the defense her former boss President Obama’s controversial statement that businesses’ owners can’t take credit for their success, repeating her own campaign line that, “nobody got rich on their own.”

Warren’s reiteration of her statement — which became an iconic and controversial cornerstone of her campaign — comes as conservatives have leapt on Obama for saying “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

Warren said during a campaign stop in Dorchester yesterday, “I think the basic notion is right. Nobody got rich on their own. Nobody. ... they moved their goods on roads the rest of us helped build, they hired employees the rest of us helped educate, they plugged into a power grid the rest of us helped build,” she said.

“The rest of us made those investments . . .."

Class consciousness blinds the left from seeing the obvious defect in the argument. The successful also helped build the roads, build the power grid, and educate the employees in addition to doing what they did on their own.

You know, she should be a little upset with Obama for stealing her arguments without attribution. Obama didn't build those, she did. 

Price Of Gold Adjusted To The Purchasing Power Of The Dollar

What is today's fair value price of an ounce of gold? Is it really $1,579 the ounce?

In 1913 the price of gold was still fixed at $20.67 the ounce and remained there until FDR devalued the dollar and fixed the price at $35 the ounce. It wasn't until 1971 that gold convertibility was finally ended and the dollar allowed to float completely freely. Today's gold price represents a price increase of over 7500 percent from $20.67 the ounce, which was gold's prevailing price after the War Between The States until the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913 and right up to the Great Depression election of FDR in 1932.

Does that sound right to you? 7500 percent?! 

One way to decide is to see what's happened to the dollar in terms of its purchasing power since 1913, which marked the end of a long 35 year period of dollar purchasing power stability.

From 1913 through 2011, the dollar's purchasing power has declined so much that it took $23.40 to buy in 2011 what $1 could buy in 1913. Another way to say that is the dollar has suffered a devaluation of 2340 percent over the period.

So if you applied that percentage to the price of gold in 1913, you'd arrive at a gold price in 2011 of $484 the ounce, suggesting that today's gold price is inflated by about 226 percent and needs to fall about $1,095 the ounce.

Opinions vary on the fair price of gold, from $218 (Woodhill's calculation of purchasing power) to $800 (Tamny's ten year average) and even today's market value around $1,500 (Lewis).

I think it is interesting that gold ended both 2003 and 2004 below $440 the ounce. It was in November of 2004 that GLD, the SPDR Gold Shares, first made its appearance on the NYSE, making daily speculation in gold like daily trading in a stock.

It has hardly looked back since, but it probably should, and probably will.

The Purchasing Power of the Dollar Under Post-War Presidents Is A Catastrophe

The purchasing power of the dollar under Truman fell 12 percent in four years (1949-1953).

The purchasing power of the dollar under Eisenhower fell 12 percent in eight years.

The purchasing power of the dollar under Kennedy/Johnson fell 23 percent in eight years.

The purchasing power of the dollar under Nixon/Ford fell 65 percent in eight years (gold convertibility went out the window in 1971).

The purchasing power of the dollar under Jimmy Carter fell 50 percent in four years.

The purchasing power of the dollar under Ronald Reagan fell 36 percent in eight years.

The purchasing power of the dollar under GHW Bush fell 17 percent in four years.

The purchasing power of the dollar under Bill Clinton fell 23 percent in eight years.

The purchasing power of the dollar under GW Bush fell 21 percent in eight years.

Overall, the purchasing power of the dollar has fallen 800 percent in the sixty years between 1949 and 2009. It takes $9 in 2009 to buy what $1 could in 1949.

People like Larry Kudlow who talk about "strong dollar" presidents "like Ronald Reagan" don't know what they are talking about.

We haven't had a single strong dollar president in the post-war period. All eleven have presided over inflationary (monetary) policies which have impoverished the American people.

For the 35 years between 1878 and 1913 the dollar ACTUALLY GAINED A PENNY in its purchasing power, when the dollar was fixed at $20.67 per ounce of gold.

The strong dollar presidents? Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt and Taft.

A different breed of men.

Stocks Are Really Cheap? I Don't Think So.

Stocks are not "really cheap".

The Shiller p/e ratio is at 21.90 as of yesterday, 33.3 percent elevated off the mean of 16.43.

Stocks weren't even "really cheap" in March 2009 when the Shiller p/e ratio dipped dramatically to 13.32. Which is not to say stocks weren't "on sale" then. They certainly were, compared to the mean now, but that was barely a 19 percent discount.

"Really cheap" is rare in market history, say a Shiller p/e of 6.64 in 1982, or 4.78 in 1920, or 5.56 in 1932. Compared to the mean today, a Shiller p/e of 5 represents something like a sale of nearly 70 percent off.

Now that's "really cheap".  

Getting Out While The Getting's Good: Decade-Long Retirement Spree Exacerbated Unfunded Liabilities

So says Steven Malanga for RealClearMarkets, here:

From 2001 through 2010, the number of government workers or their beneficiaries receiving pensions from state and municipal funds soared by 2.3 million, or 38 percent, to 8.25 million. During that time, total government workers active in pension funds increased by just 5 percent. As a result, the ratio of public employees still working to those retired fell by a full half worker during the decade, from 2.3 to 1.8. The outflow of money from funds soared, doubling from $100 billion paid to beneficiaries in 2001 to $200 billion in 2010 (the latest year comprehensive statistics are available). ...

Since we haven't set aside enough money to fund these beneficiaries, the massive outflows of funds are troubling. In 2001, governments and workers contributed $65 billion toward pensions while $112 billion went out the door, counting not only payments to beneficiaries but other kinds of withdrawals too. In 2010, workers and government contributed $125 billion to the funds, thanks largely to a sharp increase in contributions from governments (that is, taxpayers), but $213 billion exited the funds.