YOU ALREADY PAID YOUR MORTGAGE

My cartoon website, eggsistense.com, has been hacked again, so I'm posting my latest cartoon (from a month or two ago) here (CLICK TO ENLARGE):

EGGS IS TENSE #22: Trespassing In Her Own Home, or, The Battering Ram

GOLDMAN SACHS RULES THE WORLD?

It certainly would seem so, given the fact that Goldman is suing this blogger, a former Goldman employee who now says the company is evil and should cease to exist. Articles at the blog have titles like:

Does Goldman Sachs Control the U.S. Government?

Did Goldman Sachs Manipulate World Oil Prices?

Does Goldman Sachs Manipulate the Stock Market?

And so on...check out the site before the lawyers shut him down...

EGGS IS TENSE #21: GEITHNER WON'T STOP DIGGING

NO ONE LIVES WITHIN THEIR MEANS

A post of mine from the Hattiesburg American forum:

OGH said:

"The ones not to blame [for the current depression] are the [sic] those that lived within their means, contributed to charities, and paid the bills."

Is there anyone who lives within their means? It's not really possible to live within one's means, if by that OGH means not spending more than one makes. Or does "living within one's means" mean not having any debts? If so, no one in America "lives within their means" because our money IS debt.

Again I'll say this: average annual inflation has never decreased since 1956. That's one way of putting it--another is this: average annual inflation has only decreased in 10 non-consecutive years since the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913. The last year in which average annual inflation was negative was 1955.

Inflation is a hidden tax on our labor that well all must pay and do not get any exemptions from. During the economic expansion from 2001-2007, most people's incomes just barely outdid inflation. Inflation created by all the fake, digital, worthless fiat currency that banks are allowed to create at our expense are the reason no one lives within their means. The savings rate of our citizenry has dipped into the negative numbers since 2005, personal debt is at record highs, and so on. No one is living within their means.

The bailout is now up to $12.8 trillion--almost as much as the $14 trillion 2008 GDP of the U.S. According to Bloomberg, that's over $42,000 now contributed by every person in America to keep this rapacious system going.

We all are to blame for this economic mess, then, in OGH's mind, because none of us lives within our means. And I'd agree with that statement, but only because the majority of us refuse to wake up and do something about getting rid of the parasitical Federal Reserve and its member banks.

Krugman is Wrong

The act of "creating financial structures" IS less valid than making a physical good. As Lincoln said:



"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."



Bonddad tries to argue that securitization helped people by making more credit available. Ultimately, credit is unhelpful to an individual because it is debt. If inflation weren't so high and the U.S. still had good-paying jobs producing physical goods, people wouldn't need credit.



But average annual inflation has never decreased since 1956. Inflation is of course a hidden tax on the worker, and it is caused by the presence of too much money in the system. Which of course is caused by things like securitization, which is a product of the fractional reserve banking system.



Don't be fooled--securitization may help the little guy a little bit in the very short run--i.e., he gets a house or a degree--but the grossly inflated prices of things ensure that the little guy is tangled up in debt for literally most if not all his life.



The real beneficiaries of securitization are/have been the big financial institutions, who can create money literally out of nothing and treat liabilities as assets in a way that the little guy is not allowed to do.
About Economy
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

MISSISSIPPI IS A THIRD-WORLD COUNTRY

From my post on the Hattiesburg American forum:

Extrano, are you implying that Mississippi doesn't have "dilapidated towns" or "crumbling infrastructure" or "crime and corruption" in government?

If so, you're dreaming. This state is a hellhole. And yes, I live here and pay taxes here and all the rest. So I'm allowed to say that. But even someone who doesn't live here or pay taxes here is allowed to say that. There is objective, independently verifiable evidence to point to the conclusion that Mississippi is, like I said, a hellhole.

Just go check out the "American Community Survey" at the Census Bureau website:
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GRTSelectServlet?ds_name=ACS_2007_1YR_G00_

Here are the facts:

Mississippi is dead last (or near it) in:

-Median household income
-Median Family Income (In 2007 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars)
-Percent of People 25 Years and Over Who Have Completed High School (Includes Equivalency)
-Percent of People 25 Years and Over Who Have Completed a Bachelor's Degree (next to last place)
-Employment/Population Ratio for the Population 16 to 64 Years Old (next to last place)

Mississippi is first (or in the Top 10) in:

-Percent of grandparents responsible for grandchildren (3rd place)
-Percent of People 65 Years and Over Below Poverty Level
-Percent of Children Under 18 Years Below Poverty Level
-Percent of People Below Poverty Level in the Past 12 Months (For Whom Poverty Status is Determined)
-Percent of Related Children Under 18 Years Below Poverty Level
-Percent of People 21 to 64 Years Old With a Disability (2nd place)
-Infant Mortality (2005 figure from this link: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/ranks/rank17.html)

Why Not Bank CEOs?

The reason car company CEOs are required to step down and not bank CEOs?



Because the country is now owned and run by the banks. This was sealed by the forced passage of the October 2008 Banker Takeover Bill, otherwise known as the TARP, or bailout. It's as simple as that.



Also, car companies actually produce things, i.e. vehicles. The bankers who now openly run the country don't like production--they like producing fake money and getting people into literal debt slavery. Companies that actually produce things are a threat to the bankers, who produce nothing except debt for us and gargantuan profits for themselves.



Why are productive companies a threat? Because they can provide good-paying jobs which people might use some of the proceeds from to actually pay off debts or even worse (in the minds of the bankers), not have to borrow money (read: finance their own indebtedness) at all!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

WATCHMEN: PRO- OR ANTI-NWO PROPAGANDA?

This was the question debated on the Prison Planet forum. I offered my two cents:

Wow! I'll have to check out the podcast of Alex's comments about the movie. The movie sucked compared to the comic. I have to agree with Roarshock and tonyg--the Rorschach character is the true hero. He's kind of the Alex Jones of the story, now that I think about it. He's real, he doesn't buy into the right/left paradigm, he's hardcore, he wants to get the truth out, etc.

Alex is fond of the saying "Justice be done, though the heavens fall." Rorschach says something similar when he tries to leave Ozymandias' compound to go reveal the truth of Ozy's false flag attack:

Nite Owl: "Rorschach, wait! Where are you going? This is too big to be hard-assed about! We have to compromise..."

Rorschach: "No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise."

Rorschach also sounds like Alex in the scene right before Dr. Manhattan vaporizes him:

Dr. Manhattan: "Where are you going?"

Rorschach: "Back to Owlship. Back to America. Evil must be punished. People must be told."

Yes, the NWO is present in the book and the movie, in the form of Ozymandias, who is the villain. Ozymandias is shown to be someone who believes that the ends justify the means. In other words, the NWO imagery is included so it can be shown for what it is--evil. The NWO is portrayed as something bad, and in the story, the villain Ozymandias represents the NWO.

For Pete's sake, Ozymandias acts just like the NWO--uses propaganda, murders people who would become whistleblowers, sets up front corporations, plans and executes false flag terror attacks, and so on. There is no mistaking what Ozymandias represents--the evil NWO.

For those concerned about the delivery company and the Pyramid company--those are owned by Ozymandias, the bad guy. Those things are not meant to be portrayed as good.

And yeah, Silk Spectre...hoo boy...

Alex should read the book. The movie is fairly faithful to the book, but the book is much better.

One more thing: Moore uses lines from "All Along The Watchtower," a song Alex obviously likes, in the book. The song is also used in the movie. And for those who say Moore is anti-Christian, he uses Genesis 18:25 as an epigraph in the book: "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"

AN ANALOGY TO EXPLAIN THE FRAUDULENT NATURE OF MONEY CREATION BY BANKS

First, the comment that I'm responding to:

Sugar1:
"Sure every bank is in business to make a profit. If you have a business don't you expect to make a profit. I sure wouldn''t call it fraud if you did. Get your head on straight!"

The analogy:

Of course I don't begrudge anyone their profit. But suppose the way I made a profit was by producing sugar pills (i.e., a placebo) that I was allowed by law to sell as a cancer treatment. Suppose that I could just crank out sugar pills with nothing in them but ordinary sugar, but the government allowed me to market them as a cancer treatment with ingredients besides sugar that have been proven to treat cancer. In fact, the government supports my marketing claim that the pills are useful for treating cancer. I wouldn't have to pay for any research on cancer treatments, I wouldn't have to pay to have any medicines developed that actually treat cancer.

Let's further suppose that the government required all cancer patients to buy my pills from me, even though they're just sugar pills, or placebos. And no one else can make these pills but my company. And so I make obscene profits off my simple sugar pills that cost almost nothing to make. Would you find that at all objectionable? Shouldn't you call that fraud, even though it's all nice and "legal?" I should think so.

But that is no different than what is being done with the money supply. The money created by banks is equivalent to my sugar pills--it costs nothing to produce, everyone in the country must use it, and no one else is allowed to produce it. Just like my sugar pills are not in any way a cancer treatment--but the government says it is--money created by banks is not in any way real money, the kind that is derived from labor and productivity. But the government says it is real money and that we must treat it as such. This fake money is fraudulent, then, even though it is legal.

MY UNDERSTANDING OF HOW BANKS CREATE MONEY OUT OF THIN AIR

Written today for Hattiesburg American forum:

1. A new bank opens and has no deposits. Bill, the new bank’s first customer, deposits $1,000 in the bank.

2. For some reason, the bank doesn’t receive any other deposits.

3. However, Jane comes in and wants to borrow $1,000 from the new bank.

4. The bank loans Jill $1,000 and opens an account in her name because under current reserve requirements (that went into effect 1/1/09) a bank with deposits of $10.3 million or less does not have to keep any money in reserve.

5. The bank deposits $1,000 in Jill’s new account. The bank is now allowed to say it has $2,000 in deposits, even though Bill is the only customer who has deposited money that originated from outside the bank. Also, if Bill wanted to come in and take out his $1,000, the bank would be obligated to give it to him.

HERE’S WHERE THE FRAUD BEGINS

6. Jim comes in and he also wants a $1,000 loan. The bank says “No problem,” opens an account for Jim, and deposits $1,000 into Jim’s new account.

7. The bank has now loaned out $2,000 even though they have only received $1,000 that originated outside the bank (namely, Bill’s deposit of $1,000).

8. Thus, the bank has created $1,000–a 100% profit off of Bill’s original deposit. The bank has not performed any useful work to create this $1,000. They are merely allowed by law to do this.

9. The bank also is allowed to charge interest to both Jill and Jim. In Jim’s case, the bank did not receive any new money to fund his loan, so Jim has been lent phantom money–money that did not previously exist until he agreed to pay it to the bank over time.

10. Now the bank can say it has total deposits of $3,000, all because of Bill’s original $1,000 deposit.

11. Mary comes in and wants a $3,000 loan. The bank can give her the entire amount because they still have less than $10.3 million in deposits. They open an account for her and deposit $3,000 into it.

12. Meanwhile, no one other than Bill has deposited any money that originated from outside the bank

13. The bank is now allowed to say it has $6,000 in deposits and has created $4,000, all due to Bill’s original deposit of $1,000. Jill, Jim, and Mary are now all indebted to the bank for their respective amounts PLUS interest. The only one of the three who could conceivably be said to have received “depositor’s money” was Jill.

14. Don’t forget, the bank is still obligated to give Bill his $1,000 anytime he asks for it. Even if the bank did give the money to Bill, it would not cancel the loans to Jill, Jim, and Mary even though the bank would no longer have even the original $1,000 that allowed the bank to be able to “lend” “money” to Jill, Jim, and Mary.

15. Also, if Bill does come in and withdraw his $1,000, the bank is not obligated to share one cent of the 400% + profit it has made from his $1,000 deposit.

16. One last thing: Jim and Mary have literally been charged (via interest) for creating money for the bank. In other words, the bank did not actually have on hand the money to loan to Jim and Mary. But the promissory notes signed by Jim and Mary allow the bank to treat future repayment as real money in the here and now. So even though Jim and Mary are literally funding the amount of their loans, which is a favor to the bank, the bank is charging them Jim and Mary money to do them this favor. And only at the end of the term of the loan will the bank then have the money they “loaned” to Jim and Mary. Therefore, many “loans” from banks aren’t “loans” in any commonly understood sense of that word–they are favors done for the bank by customers that banks charge the customers for doing for them.

This sounds like it can’t be real, but that’s exactly what the Federal Reserve tells us that banks do. The big question to ask after realizing that this is how the system works is: Why do we allow banks to do this but not ordinary citizens? Why are banks allowed to use money as only profit whereas it is only debt for ordinary people? Why do we allow banks the privilege of charging us for funding our own “loans?”

If this doesn’t strike you as an outrage, then nothing will.

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.

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.

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.

THANK YOU, PRESIDENT BUSH...

Thought I'd share a nice letter I ran across today. It's right in line with a letter to the editor that appeared today in my local paper.

Here's a nice letter I ran across today that I thought I'd share with the group:

"Thank you, President Bush.

Thanks for legalizing torture.
Thanks for getting rid of habeas corpus.
Thanks for the "unitary executive" theory.
Thanks for making every man, woman, and child in America give $24,000 to private corporations and banks.
Thanks for the increase in poverty and hunger.
Thanks for the millions of dead and wounded soldiers and civilians.
Thanks for keeping us safe.
Thanks for the no-bid contracts.
Thanks for your response to Katrina.
Thanks the warrantless wiretapping and the telecom immunity.
Thanks for helping us undermine that pesky constitution.
Thanks for overturning posse comitatus.
Thanks for NSPD 51.
Thanks for the record average gas prices.
Thanks for kissing and holding hands with dictators and terrorists.
Thanks for invading countries that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Your friend,

The Military-Industrial Complex"

BAILOUT: SINGLE BIGGEST LAYOUT IN U.S. HISTORY

And so the propping up of the fraudulent, predatory system known as the "free market" continues. Everybody's getting billions of handouts except the people who need it--you and me.

The money passed out since the bailout passed just a few weeks ago after Congress was threatened with a depression and martial law (both of which were/are likely to come down the pike sooner or later even with a bailout) now comes to a grand total, according to this article, of basically $5 trillion. Here's the horrific breakdown:
Jim Bianco of Bianco Research crunched the inflation adjusted numbers. The bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

The bailout, in the 6 to 8 weeks since it was passed, has cost more than our involvement in WWII!

You just gave these criminals $24,000...

...and so did everyone else you know (according to Bloomberg). My household, then, has contributed $72,000 to these private banks and corporations. That's $72,000 grand we ain't got, quite simply. This is going to cause massive inflation--how can $5-7 trillion dollars in free money to banks in less than two months not cause hyperinflation? Bloomberg points out that

"Federal Reserve lending last week was 1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis."

People, not banks, create money

So in effect what is happening, as I've pointed out in previous posts, is that we are giving banks money so they can then turn around and lend it back to us. Kashkari told us that helping people directly with the bailout money would keep it from going very far and wouldn't help people to get the credit they need. Well, if my family was given its $72,000 directly, that'd go a long way toward helping us out. We don't need credit. CREDIT CREATES DEBT, WHICH IS WHAT THEY WANT.

Oh, I can't take this...I gotta go to bed. But first, one more short post about Afghanistan...

ECUADOR'S DEBT "ILLEGITIMATE?" OF COURSE...

...but not for the reason they say it is. According to this article, 44% of Ecuador's debt is to private banks. Ecuador has declared this and other foreign debts "illegitimate" because of the following:

"The commission found that usurious interest rates were applied for many bonds and that past Ecuadorian governments illegally took other loans on. Debt restructurings consistently forced Ecuador to take on more foreign debt to pay outstanding debt, and often at much higher interest rates. The commission also charged that the U.S. Federal Reserve's late 1970's interest rate hikes constituted a "unilateral" increase in global rates, compounding Ecuador's indebtedness."

Hey, those are all great reasons for Ecuador to declare its debt illegitimate. But, as we've seen, the overarching reason the debt is illegitimate is that the money loaned to them was fake. That is to say, it didn't and doesn't exist except as entries in computer databases.

So are we going to invade Ecuador?

The article notes that:

"Ecuador's findings could set an important precedent for the poorest of indebted countries, whose debt burden has long been criticized as inhumane."

Holy crap, that's the one thing the corporatists absolutely hate--setting an example for other countries, especially when the example being set is throwing off the chains of fraudulent debt slavery. Presidents are hunted down and killed and/or countries are invaded and/or overthrown via black ops for that kind of stuff.

U.S. declares debts illegitimate, why not Ecuador?

A former Ecuadorian government official points out the following:

"The United States itself has embraced the concept of illegitimate debt in encouraging countries to forgive the debt accrued in Iraq under Saddam Hussein."

Good point. Especially when one takes into account that the U.S. put Saddam in place to begin with.

The article makes a similar point:

"In fact, the U.S. originated the concept of foreign debt after the Spanish-American war. The U.S. refused to pay Cuba's outstanding debt to Spain, arguing that it was created by agents of Spain in Spain's self-interest, a matter in which Cubans had no say."