The Federal Reserve Refuses to Provide Names Requested by Congress in Probe

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Over the past week or so, I’ve written several posts highlighting the dangers of “public-private” partnerships. This is the preferred term being used by savvy members of the status quo to provide cover for their relentless pursuit of economic fascism. It provides a good soundbite, but in reality is nothing more than a license to loot and pillage with government backing. Here’s how I described the scam in the post, Meet Cyber P3 – The U.S. Military’s Public-Private Partnership to Create Corporate/Government “Cyber Soldiers.”

It makes perfect sense if you think about it. If you’re a large corporation, there’s nothing better than guaranteed profits; and there’s no better way to guarantee profits than by going into business with the one entity that can do this: government. On the other hand, if you are an ambitious and greedy politician, what better way to earn a fortune while ostensibly engaging in “public service” than by lining the pockets of big corporations, which will then line your pockets in return in various opaque ways. Extraordinary fees for speeches is one preferred way of doing this, as is the classic revolving door that gives the person a cushy corporate job after leaving government.

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RED ALERT – IBM Moves to Create a Centralized, Central Bank Controlled Blockchain for Currency Control

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International Business Machines Corp is considering adopting the underlying technology behind bitcoin, known as the “blockchain,” to create a digital cash and payment system for major currencies, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Unlike bitcoin, where the network is decentralized and there is no overseer, the proposed digital currency system would be controlled by central banks.

– From the Reuters article: IBM Looking at Adopting Bitcoin Technology for Major Currencies

Many activists and thinkers in the anti-status quo world were understandably very suspicious of Bitcoin when it first entered mainstream consciousness during its run-up from $10 to $260 in spring 2013. I myself had heard of Bitcoin years before I publicly expressed my interest and support of the technology. With no tech background, I was immediately overwhelmed with the concept, and so I initially dismissed it and forgot about it. It was only in 2012, that I started asking questions of tech experts who I had become friends with it about it in order to calm my concerns. Considering these people have similar political leanings and are even more paranoid than I am about the corporate-gulag state, I felt somewhat reassured. Then, when I recognized the powerful political implications of the technology, I wrote my first public thoughts on it. The post was titled, Bitcoin: A Way to Fight Back Against the Financial Terrorists?

Here’s a key excerpt from the post, and what really got me interested in Bitcoin:

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Meet the Extreme Super Rich – A List of the 80 People Who Own as Much as the World’s Poorest 3.6 Billion

Screen Shot 2015-01-27 at 1.41.05 PMBefore I get into the meat of this post, I want to make it clear that the definition of oligarch, a term I use a lot, does not center solely around money.

Late last year, in the post Inside the Mind of an Oligarch – Sheldon Adelson Proclaims “I Don’t Like Journalism,” I attempted to frame the word oligarch as I use it. I wrote the following:

In a nutshell, while many oligarchs are extremely wealthy (or have access to extreme wealth), not all people with extreme wealth are oligarchs. The term oligarch is reserved for those with extreme wealth who also want to control the political process, policy levers and most other aspects of the lives of the citizenry in a top-down tyrannical and undemocratic manner. They think they know best about pretty much everything, and believe unelected technocrats who share their worldview should be empowered so that they can unilaterally make all of society’s important decisions. The unwashed masses (plebs) in their minds are unnecessary distractions who must to be told what to do. Useless eaters who need to be brainwashed into worshipping the oligarch mindset, or turned into apathetic automatons incapable or unwilling to engage in critical thought. Either outcome is equally acceptable and equally encouraged.

With that out of the way, Five-Thirty-Eight provided the following:

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A Billionaire Lectures Serfs in Davos – Claims “America’s Lifestyle Expectations are Far Too High”

Screen Shot 2015-01-21 at 11.46.47 AMIf you listened closely this morning, you could hear humanity vomit as JP Morgan CEO, Jamie Dimon, began to speak at Davos. In what amounted to some of the most egotistical and delusional statements heard at a conference filled with egotistical and delusional participants, Mr. Dimon didn’t disappoint. Here are a couple highlights courtesy of Twitter:

Such shameless insincerity would even make his Best Banker Buddy (BBB) Barry Obama blush. I don’t know about you, but I’m eagerly awaiting Mr. Dimon’s 2028 Presidential run with Chelsea Clinton as running mate.

But I digress. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it has. Enter billionaire Jeff Greene, who’s comments at Davos make Sam Zell look enlightened.

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Gotta Keep Dancing – Honda Executive Laments “Stupid” Auto Loans Driving U.S. Sales Higher

Screen Shot 2015-01-20 at 10.58.01 AMWhen the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.

– Chuck Prince, Citigroup CEO, July 2007

We’ve seen this movie before, we know how it ends, and it’s not pretty. But I say that it has longer to run, and we have already paid the price of admission. So we might as well stay to the end. You just keep your eyes on the exit door.

– Tom Webb, Chief Economist at Manheim Consulting, January 2015

The junk being peddled around as auto loans has been well documented here and elsewhere, and links to several articles highlighting this troubling trend will be attached at the end. That said, what is so stunning about what we heard from an executive at one of the world’s biggest car manufacturers, is the willingness to call out the stupidity of what is currently going on. In the process, he shows how completely brain-dead and collectively insane everyone around him is.

Bloomberg reports that:

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New Interview with Gold Money: Tear Down Those Pyramids!

It’s only been a few hours since my interview with Gold Money News’ Félix Moreno was posted to youtube, but I’ve already experienced a flood of positive feedback.  It’s almost impossible to fathom the tremendous ground covered.  We start off discussing some of the more interesting aspects of my time on Wall Street (a topic I … Read more

Bit-Dating Has Arrived: OK Cupid Now Accepts Bitcoin

At the end of the day, the ultimate value of Bitcoin will have nothing to do with speculators or DDOS attacks.  The ultimate value of Bitcoin will be determined by end market adoption, which despite the dramatic rise and fall in recent weeks, appears to be continuing at an extremely rapid clip.  I supported Bitcoin publicly when it was only trading at 10, well before the recent run-up and mainstream financial media hype.  I support it just as much today as I did then, and I think the prospects have never looked better for the crypto-currency than right now.

In the latest news, we discover the OK Cupid dating site has decided to accept it as payment.  From Forbes:

As a company whose business proposition has gone from kind of weird to utterly commonplace in the space of a few years, OK Cupid has always been comfortable with novelty. Now it’s embracing a new technology that strikes a lot of people as too futuristic for comfort: Bitcoin.

Starting today, premium users of the IAC-owned dating service can pay for their subscriptions with the untraceable peer-to-peer digital currency.

OK Cupid CEO Sam Yagan says this is a forward-looking move, driven not by user demand but by the imperative to embrace a technology that’s not going away.

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