The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled. With something so important, a deeper mystery seems only decent.
– John Kenneth Galbraith
Today what we are doing is modernizing the financial services industry, tearing down those antiquated laws and granting banks significant new authority.
-Bill Clinton at the signing of Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 (which ended Glass-Steagall and gave banks full control of the United States of America)
Obama delivered heated rhetoric, but his actions signaled different priorities. Had Obama wanted to strike real fear in the hearts of bankers, he might have appointed former special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald or some other fire-breather as his attorney general. Instead, he chose Eric Holder, a former Clinton Justice official who, after a career in government, joined the Washington office of Covington & Burling, a top-tier law firm with an elite white-collar defense unit. The move to Covington, and back to Justice, is an example of Washington’s revolving-door ritual, which, for Holder, has been lucrative–he pulled in $2.1 million as a Covington partner in 2008, and $2.5 million (including deferred compensation) when he left the firm in 2009.
Putting a Covington partner–he spent nearly a decade at the firm–in charge of Justice may have sent a signal to the financial community, whose marquee names are Covington clients. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Deutsche Bank are among the institutions that pay for Covington’s legal advice, some of it relating to matters before the Department of Justice. But Holder’s was not the only face at Justice familiar to Covington clients. Lanny Breuer, who had co-chaired the white-collar defense unit at Covington with Holder, was chosen to head the criminal division at Obama’s Justice. Two other Covington lawyers followed Holder into top positions, and Holder’s principal deputy, James Cole, was recruited from Bryan Cave LLP, another white-shoe firm with A-list finance clients.
– Peter J. Boyer in his excellent recent article “Why Can’t Obama Bring Wall Street to Justice?”
Six Months Left…Can They Do It?
I have to hand it to the Central Planners. They are good. Really, really good. Of course, they are battling a crippled opponent considering so much of America consists of lobotomized sheeple, but nevertheless to be able to steal so much from many people with such blatant and simplistic methods and not be widely discovered is an act of devious brilliance. The reason I say this now is because ever since last fall TPTB have changed tactics and totally taken over the markets and with it shoved many people into what is best described as a trance. The people know something is very wrong. They know they are getting poorer; that life is getting harder, yet the television and the markets have cloaked a blanket of sedation upon their minds.
Ever since roughly early October 2011 the markets have been fed line after line of carefully crafted bureaucratic garbage couple with tactical market interventions to create reality that they wish to sell. I remember back to those last months of 2011; what it was like. It was pure madness. There would be a crisis and then TPTB would come out with some meeting in the next week or two that would solve everything. Then the date would come and go and nothing would be solved and they would move the meeting to the following week. Meeting after meeting that would be “decisive” and “bold” and would save us poor ignorant peasants from the ravages of the mean world by thrusting us into the parental arms of those who know best. Big government and big financial institutions. They are your new overlords, get used to it. Subliminally that has been and continues to be the message that these guys are trying to hammer into your head. It’s the Stockholm Syndrome. You are being programmed to love your abuser.
In any event, the point is this. Since around fall of last year, if we tally up the score of government vs. markets as Angela Merkel so candidly noted in 2010, the government has had seven months of pretty much victory after victory. At least this is how it appears on the surface. Under the surface believe me they are not so smug and they know they are losing. You could see the fear and doubt in The Bernank at his latest press conference. You can see the reality of the situation as it pops up through to the surface every now and again despite the media blackout of any “unfavorable” news. These bureaucrats know full well this is all a hologram, an illusion, but it is one they are trying to sustain for as long as possible. A line my friend said yesterday really sums it up. So the news headline came out that “Fed Exit Should Start in 6 to 9 Months: Kocherlakota (current President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis). ” My friend’s response was: “is that the Apache to Paraguay midnight print.“
Well the past is the past and the future lies right ahead, so how should we be thinking about things? The assumption that is being made, and to some extent has to be made, is that if they have been able to pull off this total coup of the financial markets for the past seven months why can’t they keep it going until the election. Well if we are to assume this, it means we must assume they can pull it off for six more months, which would bring the total to thirteen months. This would be quite a feat. They know how difficult it will be to keep things “together” in the markets amid a real world that is falling apart. This is why the Fed is pretending there will be no more liquidity added to the system. In their minds, the best strategy is to talk down QE while at the same time attacking commodity markets behind the scenes. In their mind, this will give them the cover to create trillions more for their banker shareholders. I have stated that this would be the plan and as we can see in the markets lately, it has been executed to precision.
There is a problem to this strategy; however, and that problem is reality. The reality is that pretty much all of the engines of global growth in the emerging markets have economies that were similarly fueled by ponzi finance and money creation and they are rolling over hard. I don’t even need to mention Europe. Then there is the United States of Propaganda, which has held up relatively well due to the reserve currency status. That said, relatively wellI does not equal good and recent indicators are pointing to a serious loss in momentum here as every unemployed EBT carrying subprime borrower in these 50 states has just purchased a car they can’t afford with free money from Ally Financial (74% owned by the U.S. government and the former GMAC, or General Motors’ financing arm).
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