oligarch recovery

American Food Banks Struggle to Keep Up Amidst “Surprising” Demand

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Food banks across the country are seeing a rising demand for free groceries despite the growing economy, leading some charities to reduce the amount of food they offer each family.

U.S. food banks are expected to give away about 4 billion pounds of food this year, more than double the amount provided a decade ago, according to Feeding America, the nation’s primary food bank network. The group gave away 3.8 billion in 2013.

While reliance on food banks exploded when the economy tanked in 2008, groups said demand continues to rise year after year, leaving them scrambling to find more food.

Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Food Banks, who has been working in food charities since the 1980s, said that when earlier economic downturns ended, food demand declined, but not this time.

From the AP article: Food Banks Struggle to Meet Surprising Demand

It’s an economic recovery so robust, food bank demand has increased every single year during it.

It’s an economic recovery so robust, people running food banks say they’ve never seen food bank demand increase during a recovering economy. Ever. Except this time.

It’s a fraud. The entire thing. This recovery has been a mainstream media meme used to cover up what is really happening: oligarch theft.

But don’t take it from me. From the AP:

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TBTF Mega Banks Lowering Downpayments and Credit Standards to Keep High End Housing Market Going

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What do you do when even wealthy people begin to face an increasingly hard time purchasing a home in a vertical market completely disconnected from income trends? You reduce downpayments and lower credit standards, of course.

Where have we seen this story before…

From the Wall Street Journal:

The nation’s largest bank by assets plans to announce Wednesday that it is lowering the minimum credit score and down payment it requires for mortgages as big as $3 million.

The New York firm’s moves follow similar steps at Bank of AmericaCorp., Wells Fargo & Co. and other banks on requirements for “jumbo” mortgages—those that exceed $417,000 in most parts of the country or $625,500 in pricier markets. At the same time, some big banks are backing away from smaller loans where they see higher regulatory costs and litigation risks.

Guess it’s gonna be shipping container apartments for everyone else.

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American Oligarchy – 400 Families Represent 50% of Money Raised by 2016 Presidential Candidates Thus Far

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Ever since I started this website in 2012, one of my primary objectives was to convince readers that the American system of government is nothing like what we are told in school and via the oligarch-owned mainstream media. That the country has become so captured and corrupted by sociopathic oligarchs, that a neo-feudal modern serfdom was emerging where the opportunities to enjoy rising standards of living for the vast majority of people was rapidly becoming a pipe dream.

I think many readers appreciated my warnings, but it wasn’t until an academic study from Princeton and Northwestern came out and factually proved it, that it become undeniable to many people. Here’s a brief excerpt from that post titled, New Report from Princeton and Northwestern Proves It: The U.S. is an Oligarchy:

Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.

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A Message to the Peasants – Jeb Bush Says Americans Need to Work Longer Hours

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Over the past several years, as the U.S. economy has transitioned more and more into a corrupt oligarchy, we’ve seen an increase in statements by certain members of the so called “elite” class, in which they condescendingly lecture the average American. The message is always a variant of, “you need to work harder,” or “prepare for tough times ahead.” Of course, there’s never any reference to the fact that the entire U.S. economy has morphed into little more than a rigged fraud, intentionally set up to result in the current neo-feudal environment we see before us.

I first picked up upon this trend after witnessing a disgustingly ignorant appearance by real estate mogul Sam Zell on CNBC. It prompted me to compose a lengthy post titled, An Open Letter to Sam Zell: Why Your Statements are Delusional and Dangerous. Here’s an excerpt:

Your misdiagnosis of the root cause of the current dissent in America is a result of your obliviousness to the actual concerns of the 99%. A group about which you speak with such certainty, yet certainly know almost nothing about. In fact, my website is dedicated to highlighting all of the destructive trends happening in this nation today. From record high food stamp participation, to declining real wages and the reality that young people need to take on so much debt they become indentured serfs from the moment they enter the workforce. From a loss of 4th Amendment rights due to illegal NSA spying, to the militarization of the police force. From oligarch immunity from serious financial crimes that average citizens would be thrown in jail for life for, to trillion dollar bailouts with zero strings attached for the financial community. From the over-prosecution of some of our bravest citizens such as Aaron Swartz, Barrett Brown and Private Manning to a fraudulent two-party sham political system entirely controlled by your socio-economic class.

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Shots Fired – Jamie Dimon Questions Elizabeth Warren’s “Understanding of the Global Banking System”

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I think the following comments will come back to haunt Jamie Dimon. They represent the perspective of an out of touch, financial oligarch who is so consistently fed bullshit compliments by all those surrounding him, he has no idea how badly this will backfire in the long-run.

What Jamie Dimon doesn’t understand, is that people still hate the big banks. Half a decade into this oligarch theft marketed as an economic recovery, have you ever met a single person who didn’t harbor bad feelings toward the banks and the bailouts? I haven’t.

While Elizabeth Warren herself might not be personally popular across the political spectrum, her message on the banks is. If this message still resonates now, it will only resonate much more in the years ahead when the economy enters its next downturn. At that point, Mr. Dimon will be very sorry he made this comment.

You don’t want to poke Elizabeth Warren in the eye with a stick, and that is exactly what he just did. This was a really stupid move. One that can only be explained away by mindless hubris; something disconnected elites are famous for throughout history.

From Bloomberg:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon took aim at U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a critic of large banks, as he expressed broad concerns about leadership in Washington.

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Use of Alternative Financial Services, Such as Payday Loans, Continues to Increase Despite the “Recovery”

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Families’ savings not where they should be: That’s one part of the problem. But Mills sees something else in the recovery that’s more disturbing. The number of households tapping alternative financial services are on the rise, meaning that Americans are turning to non-bank lenders for credit: payday loans, refund-anticipation loans, pawnshops, and rent-to-own services.

According to the Urban Institute report, the number of households that used alternative credit products increased 7 percent between 2011 and 2013. And the kind of household seeking alternative financing is changing, too.

– From the Citylab article: Half of All American Families Are Staring at Financial Catastrophe

It’s an economic recovery so lopsided, corrupt and fraudulent only an oligarch could love it.

One of the key themes at Liberty Blitzkrieg since inception has been to point out that the current economic recovery is largely a sham. While there are certainly meaningful innovations happening in the less regulated and corrupt parts of the economy, such as the technology sector, much of the landscape is riddled with waste, fraud, cronyism and stagnation. So much so, that I have gone ahead and characterized the entire post crisis economic environment to be the “oligarch recovery.”

Nowhere is this more evident than within the many statistics demonstrating that things for the growing American underclass are getting worse, not better. An article published last week by Citylab makes the point. It notes:

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Number of NYC Apartments for Rent Above $50k/Month Triples Since ’08; 82% of U.S. Construction = Luxury Units

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Here is good news for the plutocrat who wants to try out Manhattan’s ritziest neighborhoods before taking the multimillion-dollar plunge. The market for super-high-end rentals is booming, with plenty of enticing options for tenants of every taste.

In all, 82 apartments renting for at least $50,000 a month were listed on StreetEasy during the first three months of the year, more than triple the number listed in the first quarter of 2008. At lower thresholds, luxury listings are also on the rise. Apartments renting for more than $25,000 a month made up 0.95 percent of total inventory in the first quarter of 2015, up from 0.46 percent in the first quarter of 2008…

Of 370,000 multifamily rental units completed from 2012 to 2014 in 54 U.S. metropolitan areas, 82% were in the luxury category, according to CoStar Group Inc., a real-estate research firm. The firm defines luxury buildings as those that command rents in the top 20% of the market. In some places, including Denver, Tampa, Baltimore and Phoenix, virtually all new apartment construction has been targeted to high-end renters. In Atlanta, about 95% of new apartments have been in the luxury category.

– From Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal:

The oligarch recovery marches forward with reckless enthusiasm, despite extremely disturbing underlying trends which are all but guaranteed to result in significant societal unrest in the years ahead. The U.S. economy, and indeed the global economy, is much more similar to pre-1789 France than any other historical period I can think of.

You have a handful of super wealthy people, completely disconnected from any sense of reality, running around telling governments what to do. All the same characters who created the global financial crisis remain in charge of the world’s most powerful institutions, and continue to benefit handsomely from its aftermath. While claiming to have “saved the global economy,” the only things they really saved were their own positions of power and wealth. The only thing that was saved, was the very thing that should have been completely discarded, the global status quo. 

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NYC Residents Will Pay $2-3k a Month for “Micro-Apartments” as Luxury Car Sales Outpace Regular Car Sales

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Screen Shot 2015-03-02 at 11.23.29 AMIn the past five years, global registrations of the seven largest ultra-premium car brands–a group that also includes Aston Martin and Lamborghini–have surged by 154 percent, far outpacing the 36 percent gain in overall car sales worldwide. 

Rolls-Royce registrations have risen almost five-fold. Almost 10,000 new Bentleys cruised onto the streets last year, a 122 percent increase over 2009, while Lamborghini rode a 50 percent increase to pass the 2,000 vehicle mark.

– From the Bloomberg article: Hyper-Luxury Cars Are Now Selling Faster Than Normal Ones

It’s an oligarch’s world, you’re just living in it.

One of the main reasons “hyper-luxury” cars are outselling regular cars, is because all of the wealth gains from the oligarch recovery are going to, well, oligarchs. This has been a regular theme here at Liberty Blitzkrieg, and is further evidence that global policies implemented since the oligarch created financial melt-down, have been used to cover up its criminality, and further advance the status quo’s consolidation of wealth and power. A continuation of this trend presents the greatest threat to liberty, free markets and an evolution of human consciousness on the planet today.

First, let’s take a look at how the average standard of living in my hometown of NYC is being impacted by the oligarch recovery. From the New York Post:

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Occupied by Wall Street – The Latest TARP Taxpayer Screw-Job is Revealed

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Screen Shot 2015-01-28 at 1.25.20 PMThe Treasury-created market has benefited a few savvy investors, while saddling taxpayers with a loss. Three private funds, which the report didn’t name, have won almost half the shares available at auction, often netting either a profit on paper or on the resale, according to the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The Treasury, which has held 185 auctions to date, said it has raised about $3 billion on TARP investments that were originally valued at $3.8 billion, for a loss of $800 million at the auctions.

The Treasury “set up this market where investors could come in quickly and flip and profit,” said Christy Romero, TARP’s special inspector general, in an interview.

– From the Wall Street Journal article: Hedge Funds, Private Equity Win Big at TARP Auctions

One story that I’ve told several times on this site has to do with the day TARP passed. How I got into work extremely early and starting irately yelling about how TARP represented the end of America as we knew it. There weren’t many people on the trading floor at the time, but my boss was there and he told me to take a “walk around the block.” I politely declined, but continued to seethe at my desk.

It’s almost shocking to see the horrific transformation that has occurred in the subsequent six years. It’s so bad, that many people now take things that would’ve been considered unconscionable just a few years ago as part of the “new normal.” There will be a horrible price to pay for this perspective.

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