Saturday, December 13, 2008

IF ONLY EVERYONE WOULD DO WHAT ECUADOR IS DOING...

...and "default" on their "debts," the bankers would be powerless. Correa has a good slogan: "Life before debt." Here's the story:

" GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador, Dec 12 (Reuters) - President Rafael Correa declared a default on Ecuador's foreign sovereign bonds on Friday, vowing to fight "monster" debt-holders in court in one of most aggressive moves against investors in the region for years.

Ecuador's dollar-denominated debt prices plunged on news of its second default in a decade and the first in Latin America since Argentina in 2002, although the decision was not expected to lead to similar moves around the region.

Correa, a U.S.-trained economist and ally of Venezuela's anti-U.S. President Hugo Chavez, refused to make a $31 million interest payment due on Monday on 2012 global bonds, saying the debt was contracted illegally by a previous administration.

"I gave the order not to pay the interest and to go into default," Correa said. "We know very well who we are up against -- real monsters.""


Correa is right--these "creditors" are monsters. Interest is nothing short of robbery, especially when it's supposed to be paid on fake money, which is what this "debt" is.

Monday, December 08, 2008

WHY DON'T YOU HAVE ANY MONEY?

I don't have any either. This New York Times story illustrates why:

"During the economic expansion that lasted from 2001 until December 2007, when the recession began, incomes for most households barely outpaced inflation. It was the weakest income growth in any expansion since World War II."


Most people's income just barely kept up with inflation. That was over a year ago. With the gas prices of this past year, it would probably be accurate to say that the income of many, if not most, households did not "outpace" inflation.

Bailout Commitments=Coming Hyperflation?

The bailout of our fraudulent financial system is just over 2 months old (awww...look at the little bailout...it's so cute...cute wittle bailout) and over $7 trillion dollars have been committed to various institutions. A study by Casey Research (whoever that is) has determined that the bailout costs "more than all U.S. wars and many big programs combined."

That's at least $24,000 for every person in America.

And that much new money floating around the economy is going to cause hyperinflation, possibly on par with that of the Weimar Republic. And then no one's income will outpace inflation.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

HOLD THE PRESSES: PAKISTAN DIDN'T DO IT

Here's how you can tell--just read the first sentence of this article:

"WASHINGTON (AFP) — Terrorists are "likely" to use nuclear or biological weapons in the next five years, a US commission warned, highlighting Pakistan as the weakest link in world security."


Seems someone--our government, natch--is trying to set up Pakistan. Again, that's a country that Obama singled out for saber-rattling during his campaign.

And note how this report dovetails so nicely with the announcement of 20,000 troops to be stationed in the U.S., with blame being assigned to Pakistan for the Mumbai attack, with the warnings from Colin Powell and others that January 21st or 22nd specifically, but Obama's first few months in office generally will be a time of testing for Obama and the U.S.

Oh dear.
MUMBAI: WHO'S TELLING THE TRUTH?

India says a Pakistani guy did it:

MUMBAI -- India has accused a senior leader of the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba of orchestrating last week's terror attacks that killed at least 172 people here, and demanded the Pakistani government turn him over and take action against the group.

Just two days before hitting the city, the group of 10 terrorists who ravaged India's financial capital communicated with Yusuf Muzammil and four other Lashkar leaders via a satellite phone that they left behind on a fishing trawler they hijacked to get to Mumbai, a senior Mumbai police official told The Wall Street Journal. The entire group also underwent rigorous training in a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, the official said.

Mr. Muzammil had earlier been in touch with an Indian Muslim extremist who scoped out Mumbai locations for possible attack before he was arrested early this year, said another senior Indian police official. The Indian man, Faheem Ahmed Ansari, had in his possession layouts drawn up for the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel and Mumbai's main railway station, both prime targets of last week's attack, the police official said.

Mr. Ansari, who also made sketches and maps of locations in southern Mumbai that weren't attacked, had met Mr. Muzammil and trained at the same Lashkar camp as the terrorists in last week's attack, an official said.

U.S. officials agreed that Mr. Muzammil was a focus of their attention in the attacks, though they stopped short of calling him the mastermind. "That is a name that is definitely on the radar screen," a U.S. counterterrorism official said.

Information gathered in the probe also continues to point to a connection to Lashkar-e-Taiba, that official said. Along with a confession from the one gunman captured in the attacks, officials cited phone calls intercepted by satellite during the attacks that connected the assailants to members of Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan, and the recovered satellite phone from the boat.


It also emerged Tuesday that U.S. authorities had warned Indian officials of a pending attack by sea.
Hasan Gafoor, Mumbai police commissioner, told reporters there was a general warning issued in September that hotels could be targeted as well, after the bombing of the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad.


Pakistan says they had nothing to do with it:

WASHINGTON: President Asif Ali Zardari said Tuesday that Pakistan was not involved in the lethal attacks on Mumbai last week.

"I think these are stateless actors who have been operating all throughout the region," Zardari said on U.S. based television channel in an interview aired Tuesday night. "The gunmen plus the planners, whoever they are stateless actors who have been holding hostage the whole world."

President Asif Ali Zardari informed that it was wrong to put blame on Pakistan as the person arrested has no connection with Pakistan and he does not posses Pakistani nationality.

Indian officials have publicly blamed Pakistani militants for the attacks, and called on Pakistan to hand over a group of wanted militant leaders suspected of plotting them. On Tuesday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi proposed a joint investigation into the attacks and said, "This is not the time to point fingers."

Zardari confirmed he is willing to have Pakistani security officials participate with India in a joint investigation.

"The state of Pakistan is in no way responsible," he told media "Even the White House and the American CIA have said that today. The state of Pakistan is, of course, not involved. We’re part of the victims. I’m a victim. The state of Pakistan is a victim. We are the victims of this war, and I am sorry for the Indians, and I feel sorry for them."


India and Pakistan. Both our allies and each other's mortal enemies. And both nuclear powers. Obama said even before this happened that he'd be willing to strike Pakistan if necessary.

Oh dear.
TROOPS AND RECESSION, PART TWO

Forgot to include this info in the post below. The London Telegraph quotes a leaked internal memo from Tom Fitzpatrick, the chief technical strategist for Citigroup in which he validates the "Troops + Recession=Mayday" scenario:

The bank said the damage caused by the financial excesses of the last quarter century was forcing the world's authorities to take steps that had never been tried before.

This gamble was likely to end in one of two extreme ways: with either a resurgence of inflation; or a downward spiral into depression, civil disorder, and possibly wars. Both outcomes will cause a rush for gold.

"They are throwing the kitchen sink at this," said Tom Fitzpatrick, the bank's chief technical strategist.

"The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done. When the dust settles this will either work, and the money they have pushed into the system will feed though into an inflation shock.

"Or it will not work because too much damage has already been done, and we will see continued financial deterioration, causing further economic deterioration, with the risk of a feedback loop. We don't think this is the more likely outcome, but as each week and month passes, there is a growing danger of vicious circle as confidence erodes," he said.

"This will lead to political instability. We are already seeing countries on the periphery of Europe under severe stress. Some leaders are now at record levels of unpopularity. There is a risk of domestic unrest, starting with strikes because people are feeling disenfranchised."

"What happens if there is a meltdown in a country like Pakistan, which is a nuclear power. People react when they have their backs to the wall. We're already seeing doubts emerge about the sovereign debts of developed AAA-rated countries, which is not something you can ignore," he said.


Collapse of 2009

Gerald Celente has been in the news lately, mostly because he makes accurate predictions. I'll let the article take it from there:

The country’s top trends forecaster, who accurately predicted the “panic” of 2008 nearly a year before it unfolded, is now ominously suggesting that next year will come to be known as “the collapse of 2009″.

Gerald Celente, CEO of Trends Research Institute, sent out a letter to his subscribers announcing that he had purchased a domain name called “Collapseof09.com”.

Around this time last year, Celente sent the following message to his subscribers:

"In 2008, Americans will wake up to the worst economic times that anyone alive has ever seen. And they won’t know what hit them. Just as they were in a state of shock on 9/11, they’ll be frozen in fear when the Economic 9/11 strikes at the heart of Wall Street.

Dismiss this trend forecast at your own peril. If you believe everything will be all right, and that the ship of state is sailing along just fine, toss this out and go about your business."


Having correctly forecast the “Economic 9/11″, Celente is warning that people should prepare for something much worse in 2009.

As we reported last month, Celente recently told Fox News that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.

Celente’s accuracy is widely heralded since he correctly predicted the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, the subprime mortgage collapse and the massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar.

In 2007, Celente forewarned that “giants (would) tumble to their deaths,” which is exactly what we have witnessed with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and others.


Celente has stated that the current financial downturn will ultimately lead to nothing less than revolution.

“There will be a revolution in this country,” he said. “It’s not going to come yet, but it’s going to come down the line and we’re going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for it: the takeover of Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall Street in this bloodless coup. And it will happen as conditions continue to worsen.”
20,000 MORE TROOPS + "RECESSION"=MAYDAY! MAYDAY!

And so the police state approacheth...

The Washington Post says that 20,000 more U.S. troops will be stationed in the U.S. to "bolster domestic security."

"The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said. "


This is on top of the brigade that began its tour of the "homeland" over two months ago. I cartooned about that here:
http://eggsistense.com/EggsIsTense16Large.jpg

Didn't Bush "keep us safe?"


But why is this happening now? What happened to the argument that "Bush kept us safe" from a terror attack for the last 7+ years? We didn't have the U.S. military stationed here for "domestic security" or "civil unrest" and "crowd control" during that time. I thought it was all the warrantless spying and the Patriot Act and all that other crapola that kept us safe, not troops in the streets.

"Recession" is the key

The reason they're moving the troops in at this juncture, then, is obviously because the economy is collapsing. Even though it was completely unnecessary, it was officially declared yesterday that we've been in a recession since December 2007.

People are starting to freak out. The cost of literally everything is going up, and people are already in debt beyond all semblance of their ability to pay. They have no savings, me included. The unemployment rate continues to climb. Even those who did have investments, i.e., real estate and stocks, have seen the value of those investments simply disappear into thin air.

Eventually people are going to do something about it. Hopefully it will be peaceful--my personal favorite option--but it may not be. Well, not to worry, says the Federal Reserve (the main culprit of all these shenanigans), we've got U.S. troops right here in America to enforce "domestic security." But the security being enforced will be for the bankers, not for the people.

The people are trained to think they're "safe" and "secure" as long as there are no ghastly terror attacks. Meanwhile, the security and safety of our finances, our civil liberties, our health--literally everything else--is being attacked and eroded.

God help us.