Oligarchy

The Credit Bubble’s “Final Frontier” – Meet Goldman’s Fixed Income Global Structured Covered Obligation

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Fixed Income Global Structured Covered Obligation. Say that three times fast.

According to yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, the bailed out financial criminals at Goldman Sachs are set to launch the latest and greatest toxic derivative product directly into the portfolios of willing muppets the world over. It all starts this September, so public pension funds may as well just start taking out stacks of hundreds and torching them at Burning Man while they still have a chance.

Yes, it’s called the “Fixed Income Global Structured Covered Obligation,” and no, you will not have a clue what’s in it. No seriously, you won’t have a clue.

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Obama Wines and Dines Some of the World’s Most Brutal Dictators at the First Ever U.S.-Africa Summit

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Screen Shot 2014-08-07 at 4.15.32 PMLast month, I wrote an article highlighting the fact that President Barack Obama apparently had become so tired of being President that he decided to just hang out and socialize instead. The piece was titled, The New York Times Describes Obama – “A Restless President Weary of the Obligations of the White House…” 

Apparently, Mr. Obama has found a middle ground. A perfect mix of dinner-party diplomacy with some of the world’s most violent and homophobic dictators. Introducing the first ever U.S.-Africa summit, which just ran from August 4-6th. As the Daily Mail points out, President Obama had no problem smiling and hobnobbing with a cornucopia of murders and human rights abusers. If there was a Hollywood celebrity hashtag campaign of outrage protesting the event, I must have missed it.

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Meet OIRA – The Secretive White House Office with Disturbing Regulatory Powers

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Screen Shot 2014-08-05 at 11.42.23 AMBut in practice, OIRA operates largely in secret, exempt from most requests under the Freedom of Information Act. It routinely declines to release the changes it has proposed, the evidence it has relied upon to make them, or the identities and affiliations of White House advisers and other agencies’ staff it has consulted. OIRA doesn’t even disclose the names and credentials of its employees other than its two most senior officials.

In 2013 the Administrative Conference, an independent federal agency that reviews government administrative processes, released a study of OIRA’s effect on the application and interpretation of science the agencies gather and analyze to write rules. In examining a group of air-quality regulations, the study found that most of OIRA’s suggestions involved substantive changes. The report concluded that in some instances, the office has proposed changes to the basic science underlying the rules. These included revising numbers in tables created by the EPA, altering technical discussions and recommending different standards altogether.

– From ProPublica’s extremely important article: Lobbyists Bidding to Block Government Regs Set Sights on Secretive White House Office.

Have you ever heard of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, otherwise known as OIRA? Yeah, neither had I.

As someone who prides himself on being a relatively informed citizen, it is always shocking and disturbing when I learn of a powerful organization operating in the shadows of America’s faux democracy with which I am almost entirely unfamiliar. While I’m sure I’ve read many articles in which OIRA was mentioned, I had never fully understood exactly what it is, and how it is used by lobbyists and large corporate interests to further entrench the established oligarchic power structure. We can thank ProPublica for providing this service.

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“Three Lost Decades” – How the American Middle Class is 20% Poorer Now vs. 1984

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Screen Shot 2014-07-30 at 11.16.01 AMLike so many other things in popular American culture, this quaint notion of a “middle class” in the U.S. is at this point nothing more than a myth; a rapidly fading fantasy from a bygone era. As myself and many others have noted for quite some time, the decimation of the middle class began long ago. It really got started in the early 1970’s after Nixon defaulted on the gold standard and financialization began to take over the American economy. Median real wages haven’t increased since that time and the rest is history.

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Silicon Valley Artist Strikes at the Heart of Obama’s Oligarch Infatuation – “A Feast in Time of Plague”

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Screen Shot 2014-07-29 at 1.57.24 PMLast week, I highlighted a series of billboards and painted benches that sprung up overnight in Hollywood as Obama prepared to host a $32,000 a plate fundraiser at the home of Scandal creator Shonda Rhimes.  Naturally, this was merely stop number one on Obama’s oligarch groveling circus.  The next stop on the crony train is another $32,000 a plate fundraiser. This time with none other than Nancy Pelosi.

Fortunately for us, California’s ever creative street artists were right there waiting for him. This is what they delivered:

Screen Shot 2014-07-29 at 1.57.43 PM

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Pentagon Correspondent for the New York Times Refers to American Citizens as “Children”

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Screen Shot 2014-07-12 at 1.24.54 PMYesterday afternoon, I happened to read a seemingly innocuous enough article in Time by Justin Lynch titled: Bloggers, Surveillance and Obama’s Orwellian State. The article covered the usual bases. Such as the fact the Obama Administration is the least transparent ever, how it has attacked whistleblowers and journalists more than all other Presidents combined, and how citizen journalists pose a threat to the corrupt and dying status quo. All things that we already know.

One of the people quoted in the article is Pentagon correspondent for the New York Times, Thom Shanker, who proudly noted “his employer has implemented rigorous standards to balance the security risks of reporting classified information with the public’s right to know.”

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Introducing Ghost Skyscrapers – NYC Real Estate Goes Full Retard

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Screen Shot 2014-07-10 at 12.59.26 PMLate last month, New York Magazine published a lengthy and very important article titled: Stash Pad – Why New York Real Estate is the New Swiss Bank Account. The entire article is well worth a read, and left me shaking my head in disbelief the entire time. As someone who grew up in New York City, it’s a real shame to see the continued transformation of Manhattan into nothing more than an oligarch playground, or as I sometimes like to call it, “Disneyland for Wall Street.”

One of the most shocking and disturbing revelations from that article was the fact that:

“The Census Bureau estimates that 30 percent of all apartments in the quadrant from 49th to 70th Streets between Fifth and Park are vacant at least ten months a year.”

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Interview with Dr. Dave Janda – June 2014: Ushering in a Decentralized Future

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It’s been a little while since I’ve done an interview, so here’s my first audio update in a while courtesy of the always excellent Dave Janda. I continue to be very optimistic that we are rapidly headed into a revolutionary new world characterized by decentralization, versus the current centralized, incredibly corrupt, and overly bureaucratic status quo. … Read more

Video of the Day – “End the Fed” Rallies are Exploding Throughout Germany

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Screen Shot 2014-06-19 at 3.14.21 PMThis is a fascinating development and one that I had no idea was happening until today. It seems that rallies are spreading throughout Germany protesting the corrupt and dying global status quo. One of the key targets of these groups is the U.S. Federal Reserve system, which as I and many others have maintained, is the core cancer infecting the entire planet.

As I tweeted earlier today:

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Poverty in the UK Doubles Over the Past 30 Years, Despite Robust “Economic Growth”

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One of my favorite lines about the current oligarch theft continuing to occur throughout the world is courtesy of the “Artist Taxi Driver,” who likes to state:

“This is not a recession its a robbery.”

Truer words were never said, but this theft goes back a lot further than the latest economic catastrophe. As we all know by now, real median wages haven’t increased in the U.S. for the past 45 years, while at the same time, so-called economic growth according to traditional metrics has exploded higher. As yesterday’s article from the Guardian below demonstrates, this is not just an American problem. It is pervasive throughout the Western world.

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