Shock waves went around the world when the IMF, the EU, and the ECB not only approved but mandated the confiscation of depositor funds to “bail in” two bankrupt banks in Cyprus. A “bail in” is a quantum leap beyond a “bail out.” When governments are no longer willing to use taxpayer money to bail out banks that have gambled away their capital, the banks are now being instructed to “recapitalize” themselves by confiscating the funds of their creditors, turning debt into equity, or stock; and the “creditors” include the depositors who put their money in the bank thinking it was a secure place to store their savings. Continue reading →
For Americans, financial and economic Armageddon might be close at hand. The evidence for this conclusion is the concerted effort by the Federal Reserve and its dependent financial institutions to scare people away from gold and silver by driving down their prices. Continue reading →
Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few Eurozone “troika” officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making; that they originated with the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland (discussed earlier here); and that the result will be to deliver clear title to the banks of depositor funds. Continue reading →
The deposit confiscation scheme has long been in the making. US depositors could be next
On Tuesday, March 19, the national legislature of Cyprus overwhelmingly rejected a proposed levy on bank deposits as a condition for a European bailout. Reuters called it “a stunning setback for the 17-nation currency bloc,” but it was a stunning victory for democracy. As Reuters quoted one 65-year-old pensioner, “The voice of the people was heard.” Continue reading →
As Congress struggles through one budget crisis after another, it is becoming increasingly evident that austerity doesn’t work. We cannot possibly pay off a $16 trillion debt by tightening our belts, slashing public services, and raising taxes. Historically, when the deficit has been reduced, the money supply has been reduced along with it, throwing the economy into recession. Continue reading →
It’s been over four decades since I’ve used the adjective transgressive in the context of economics. It was in graduate school, and my professor proved to be not very receptive to my coining of a new word, or meaning in this case, for “any taxation exceeding the boundaries of social acceptability.” In those days, long before the viral expansion of for-profit schooling -–questionably called education—deference, and not just discretion, was the better part of valor. Continue reading →
The Crash of 2008 was not caused by irrational exuberance, as Alan Greenspan euphemistically put it, but by greed, cunning and ambition, held in check since 1935 by the Glass-Steagall Act, which was unleashed when President Bill Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act of 1999. Continue reading →
One crisis averted, three to come! Indeed, that’s what can be said after the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation on January 23, 2013, to suspend the government’s statutory borrowing limit for three months. Continue reading →
Even the most ardent optimist has to confront the consequences of low interest rates. The macro analysis of ivory tower academics seldom reflects the struggle of ordinary consumers or retirees. One such pinhead is Ben Bernanke. Continue reading →
The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs lists the oldest written version of the saying “what you don’t know can’t hurt you” as coming from playwright George Pettie’s Petit Palace in 1576: “So long as I know it not, it hurteth me not.” Continue reading →
This question is one of the most relevant questions that could be posed to US citizens and their elected representatives, which, if answered correctly, could possibly restore the fiscal health and happiness of the US. Continue reading →
The Virgin birth. The Chosen people. The Resurrection of the dead. The Free Market. Which of those is unsupported by material evidence but exists by virtue of practice based on fervent, coerced, or simply uncritical belief and is thus subject to failure at any moment when the belief is shaken to its roots by experienced reality? All of them. Continue reading →
WASHINGTON, DC—A long standing Money Party front, the Business Roundtable, wants you to wait until you’re 70 years old before you get Social Security and Medicare benefits. This is just a reprise of the November 2012 dictate from the king of corporate cronyism, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Continue reading →
The trillion dollar coin actually represents one of the most important principles of popular prosperity ever conceived: the creation of money by sovereign governments, debt-free. Continue reading →
The “Federal Reserve Bank” (Fed) is not part of the United States Government. The Fed is a private, for-profit corporation ultimately owned by eight elite banking families. Continue reading →
First of all, who is Jack Lew, nominated for Treasury secretary by Barack Obama? He’s a Citibank alumnus, a former White House budget director, under Clinton and Obama, then became Obama’s chief of staff. Continue reading →
As 2012 was coming to an end, Americans became concerned with what was referred to as the “fiscal cliff” . . . while the unrecognized problem all along has been what might be more appropriately called the “fiscal eclipse.” Continue reading →
In November the largest chunk of new jobs came from retail and wholesale trade. Businesses gearing up for Christmas sales added 65,700 jobs or 45% of November’s 146,000 jobs gain. With December sales a disappointment, these jobs are likely to reverse when the January payroll jobs report comes out in February. Continue reading →
In a shameless display of putting politics before human needs, Congress began 2013 still scrapping over a $60 billion Hurricane Sandy relief bill fully nine weeks after the disaster hit. And if the Katrina experience is any indication, the bill may not bring adequate relief to struggling and displaced homeowners even when it is finally passed. Continue reading →
The “fiscal cliff” is another hoax designed to shift the attention of policymakers, the media, and the attentive public, if any, from huge problems to small ones. Continue reading →
On November 6, 2012, American voters chose not to entrust their central government to ultra-conservative billionaires and their candidates, and they rejected their anti-government, low taxation and no regulation ideology. Continue reading →
Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) calls the government’s latest jobs and unemployment reports “nonsense numbers.” Continue reading →
The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and the Bank of Scotland have been pillars of Scotland’s economy and culture for over three centuries. So when the RBS was nationalized by the London-based UK government following the 2008 banking crisis, and the Bank of Scotland was acquired by the London-based Lloyds Bank, it came as a shock to the Scots. They no longer owned their oldest and most venerable banks. Continue reading →
The largest headline on page 1 of today’s (December 4, 2012) Statesboro (Georgia) Herald, here in the Bible Belt, reads “GOP Issues New ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Offer.” Continue reading →
Is the “fiscal cliff” real or just another hoax? The answer is that the fiscal cliff is real, but it is a result, not a cause. The hoax is the way the fiscal cliff is being used. Continue reading →
We are just a decade-short from a century since Balliol College (Oxford) introduced interdisciplinary studies in philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) as a modern alternative to the study of the Classics. Academic programs in much of the world, adopting the granting of degrees which combined the study of these three fields, have been slowly discarding philosophy in the mix, making the three-strand braid just the enmeshment of two fields: politics and economics. After all, that’s the living reality and we are better served acknowledging it. Continue reading →
In the 2012 edition of Occupy Money released last month, Professor Margrit Kennedy writes that a stunning 35% to 40% of everything we buy goes to interest. This interest goes to bankers, financiers, and bondholders, who take a 35% to 40% cut of our GDP. That helps explain how wealth is systematically transferred from Main Street to Wall Street. The rich get progressively richer at the expense of the poor, not just because of “Wall Street greed” but because of the inexorable mathematics of our private banking system. Continue reading →
The West’s attempts to destroy the Iranian economy through heightened sanctions—including most imports, oil exports and use of banks for trade operations—is having its effect. Continue reading →
Since mid-2009 the US has been enjoying a virtual recovery courtesy of a rigged inflation measure that understates inflation. The financial presstitutes spoon out the government’s propaganda that prices are rising less than 2%. But anyone who purchases food, fuel, medical care or anything else knows that low inflation is no more real that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction or Gadhafi’s alleged attacks on Libyan protesters or Iran’s nuclear weapons. Everything is a lie to serve the power-brokers. Continue reading →
During the second half of the 20th century the United States was an opportunity society. The ladders of upward mobility were plentiful, and the middle class expanded. Incomes rose, and ordinary people were able to achieve old-age security. Continue reading →
QE3, the Federal Reserve’s third round of quantitative easing, is so open-ended that it is being called QE Infinity. Doubts about its effectiveness are surfacing even on Wall Street. Continue reading →
Friday’s employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows 114,000 new jobs in September and a drop in the rate of unemployment from 8.1% to 7.8%. As 114,000 new jobs are not sufficient to stay even with population growth, the drop in the unemployment rate is the result of not counting discouraged workers who are defined away as “not in the labor force.” Continue reading →
