Pie

As we pass the anniversary of the beginning of the rally that climbed out of the March 2009 lows, we can see a little desperation from the market makers. They have spent a year building a low volume frothy rally with borrowed money and government welfare injected into their high frequency prop trading machine. They've been telling the small investors for a year that, "the water is fine, jump back in the pool, come on, dive in, dive in!", but so far, most small investors have not made that dive ( maybe the unemployment numbers tell us a lot about why? ).

The banks are giving no ground. They are paying less than inflation on money parked in savings. You can't go to bonds- the Fed is buying those up to keep yields low. Anyone who wants a decent yield is being teased by the equity markets. They're looking like the only game in town.

When will we know that the rally is over? When the small investors make that dive. They will be sold to, and then the floor will drop out.

Like any Ponzi scheme, you can't add a horde of new investors to the pool and keep the returns at the same level. The pie is cut into more pieces, and that means smaller pieces..

Far Right, Far Out

If the Tea Party really is this 'fringe racist far right' movement, then why exactly are liberals and Democrats so infuriated by the Tea Party's success? If the Tea Party really is the far right movement they claim it is, then the Tea Party could only be drawing followers from the Republican party ( according to the logic of the liberals, who think that racism is only found on the right ).

Why does the left keep complaining about the Tea Party if it is only drawing members away from the GOP? Shouldn't they be popping champagne corks?

I think the real story is that Democrats know that their party is also losing members to the Tea Party, as people wake up to the fact that multinational corporate and financial interests own both the Dems and the GOP. The Democrats know that the TP is attracting pro-labor/

anti-globalization/anti-open borders/anti-Wall Street former Democrats. Rather than make an honest attempt to earn back the support of such people, they show the worst kind of sour grapes, and scream insults like 'racist' at them.

Liberals go on and on about 'the anger' in the Tea Party but liberals themselves are fuming that some Democrats are exploring their third party options. Their herd is restless. Why? Because Democrats talk a good game about fighting for the working class but don't follow through. Once they get in power, they work for the powerful.

Bus

A political movement is just a vehicle to get where you're going. It's like a city bus. You get on the bus because you have a destination. There are going to be people on the bus you don't like, but if you stand on the bus stop waiting for the bus with the perfect driver and the perfect collection of passengers, you are going to be stuck on the same street corner for a long time.

Does every Democrat like every other Democrat? Does every Democrat have to answer for every other Democrat? Why are the rules different for the Tea Party?

Colonies

The Revolutionary War was fought by primarily white colonists against the army of the white King of England, which was primarily made up of white soldiers. You can find the same racial demographics at work in the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution- the point is, just because you see a lot of angry white people grouped together, it does not mean that they are acting as racists.

The Tea Party movement is angry at the Washington/New York/globalist power structure, which is the property of overwhelmingly white power brokers. The people who are insisting that the anger of the Tea Party 'can only be about Obama and can only be about his skin color' are doing a great favor for the overwhelmingly white power brokers who funded the Obama campaign victory.

Those white power brokers couldn't ask for a better situation than to have any challenges to their power misrepresented as 'racism against Obama'. By putting Obama on point for their agenda, they give themselves a lot of extra breathing room.

Boomers

Boomers not only spent like crazy, but they were the generation that fertilized the greedy Wall Street culture. After the Great Depression, it took a long time for middle class folks to look at the stock market as the place to be- but when the baby boomers got their money, they jumped in with both feet. The financial sector rose to dominance over the US economy because baby boomers couldn't get enough of Wall Street. They threw their money at every pump and dump hustle Wall Street laid out for them:

Asian stocks- and then that bubble popped.
Tech stocks- and then that bubble popped.
Housing fraud- boomer money flooded into that.

Why is Wall Street so overgrown and out of control today? Why is 'share price' what dominates the business news today? Why do we have CNBC and Bloomberg news around the clock market coverage? Why do we have all these 'trade at home' brokerages? The boomers. They dreamed of fictional wealth like fiends.

What else did they do with their money instead of saving for retirement? Mountains of drugs. About all they liked more than the NASDAQ was cocaine.

Sticks

The 'recovery' is a product rollout campaign, it's marketed just like a car. The process builds in stages. At the beginning, they're just rubbing two sticks together to make a fire, hoping to create a buzz of positive feeling towards a product, which will then turn into a fire that casts a glow that will attract other moths.

It's natural for people to want a recovery, so it's not that hard to transition people from the 'wanting' state of mind to the 'belief in the recovery' state of mind- the architects of the marketing campaign are telling people to see something that they are hoping to see anyway. People who believe in a God will see signs of God's handiwork everywhere in their daily lives. People who think that UFO's exist will, predictably, be more receptive to reports of UFO's ( I'm not saying anything either way about God or UFO's here, just describing how wants intersect with beliefs ).

There's also a substantial amount of peer pressure at work- pessimists will be characterized as somehow 'anti-American' or 'anti-capitalism' ( which is funny, because we have statism, not capitalism ). Analysts who turn a more pessimistic eye to the economy will be treated more harshly by the dominant media . They'll be described as 'prophets of doom' as though they are scary monsters who have come to terrify us.

Basically- if reality contradicts with the message, dispense with reality and guard the message.

HP Playing The Race Card Overtime

Here's what I don't get: if the Tea Party really is this 'fringe racist far right' movement, then why exactly are liberals and Democrats so infuriated by the Tea Party's success? If the Tea Party  really is the far right movement they claim it is, then the Tea Party could only be drawing followers from the Republican party ( according to the logic of the liberals, who think that racism is only found on the right ).

Why does the left keep complaining about the Tea Party if it is only drawing members away from the GOP? Shouldn't they be popping champagne corks?

I think the real story is that Democrats know that their party is also losing members to the Tea Party, as people wake up to the fact that multinational corporate and financial interests own both the Dems and the GOP. The Democrats know that the TP is attracting pro-labor/anti-globalization/anti-open borders/anti-Wall Street former Democrats. Rather than make an honest attempt to earn back the support of such people, they show the worst kind of sour grapes, and scream insults like 'racist' at them.

Liberals go on and on about 'the anger' in the Tea Party but liberals themselves are fuming that some Democrats are exploring their third party options. Their herd is restless. Why? Because Democrats talk a good game about fighting for the working class but don't follow through. Once they get in power, they work for the powerful.

Brakes

The reason why auto manufacturers must comply with safety standards for their vehicles is so we don't have an epidemic of car crashes caused by faulty equipment. If some auto manufacturer decided to make a cheap car that was affordable to lower income people who could not normally buy a car, but they hit their price point by using really bad brake systems that led to accidents, no one would be saying 'how dare those people dead on the highway buy those cheap but dangerous cars'. The banks created loans that did not meet safety standards, the brakes failed, and foreclosures ( car crashes ) soared.

It's all on the banks. Yes, there was a ton of mortgage fraud and shady home flippers who also had Christmas day for five years thanks to the cheap credit policies, but it all took place right under the banking industry's nose. They knew that money was pouring into real estate and they knew that the system was running without good safety standards.

Locomotive

>>"The lax lending standards and loose monetary policy was the effort by the federal govt and Federal Reserve to mitigate the crash following the tech-bubble."

I would disagree. They committed themselves to the creation of a new bubble to replace the dot-com bubble. They did this fully aware that the consequences at the tail end would be even worse, because the phony housing bubble would hit more average citizens right where they lived ( literally ) than the more speculator-oriented dot com bubble, which was more of a 'stock players' crash.

I don't care how many times the Fed tries to correct an economy overdriven by loose credit with more loose credit- it's the wrong prescription, every time. When the economy stalls after a credit-driven bubble, it is demanding rest and rehabilitation to return to equilibrium. The Fed prevents this by hurling even more coal into the locomotive.

It's like rushing to the accident scene where a drunk driver has just crashed his car, handing him whiskey and the keys to another car, and telling the drunk to 'Get back on the road and drive even faster!'

You have to let the economy sober up, not hand it more poison.

Natural Money

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Natural money is completely sound. The cessation of interest collection and fractional reserve lending does not produce deflation but a cancellation of inflation. When inflation is corrected, that is a good thing.

>>"Deflation would quickly turn growth or mild recession into a full blown viccious cycle of depression."

You must distinguish between prices and value. In an inflationary monetary system, prices are constantly out of sync with value, because of the distortions introduced by interest charges and the fractional reserve multiplier. Prices are constantly forced to adjust because the supply of money is growing faster than the value of the underlying assets. We can see that this is so by observing the prices of debt-backed assets during a crash- prices plummet, because the prices are fictions distorted by unnatural money.

In a natural money system, the medium of exchange ( the currency ) is convertible into a tangible asset. Prices remain an honest depiction of value, and without the torque of interest on the money supply, prices and value remain in sync.

The reason why the propaganda against honest money is so strong is this: the bankers' only product is dishonest money that has no real value and thus distorts prices. This distortion of prices provides opportunities for speculators to buy assets low and then sell at a higher price once inflation distorts prices. The paper profits are then moved into assets that survive the inevitable credit-driven collapses.

http://www.naturalmoney.org/introduction.html

Greenspan

The 'deregulation' promoted by Greenspan, Rubin, Summers et al was not to free the markets, though, but to empower an entrenched club of insiders to manipulate the markets. Because monopolistic control of the monetary supply is in the hands of a banking cartel, it is a manifestation of centralized oligarchical power, and it supplants free competition with organized 'competition' within a framework established by a single entity, the Fed cartel.

It's analogous to something like the NFL- the Bears and the Packers players will play a competitive game on the field, but the two business organizations are partners in a league, the NFL, where their overriding concern is the financial success of the league as a whole, not points on the game scoreboards. All the major banks are partners in the Fed system, and they would not behave in ways that would put themselves individually above the success of their league ( cartel ).

Greenspan manipulated the monetary supply not to set the markets free, but to create a shared profit opportunity for the 'teams' inside their league.

When Greenspan was still listening to Rand, he was writing things like this:

"In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value." AG, 1967.

And then he went on to head the single largest generator of inflation and wealth confiscation through fiat.

Jackson

The Federal Reserve is actually more privately-owned and less subject to government supervision than the Second Bank of the United States, which was defeated by President Jackson.

Funny how Jackson became the target of assassination attempts for challenging bankers who, according to ThunderclapNewman, are already government employees working for no profit... ;-)

I wonder why the bankers always seem to react so violently when their allegedly 'pro bono government job' of tending to the monetary supply is challenged

... ( see various head wounds suffered by Presidents Lincoln, Kennedy ).

Explode

Not only did the Fed's owners explode the market for CDO's and MBS and derivatives as soon as they purchased the repeal of Glass Steagall from the government, but then they immediately used the government to distort the risk equations of their new financial products, by using Fannie and Freddie to backstop the crap mortgages they were bundling. Then the ratings agencies rolled over and slapped AAA on them and then the credit default swaps exploded because after all, who wouldn't write insurance on a government-backed debt?

The rest is history. Organized manipulation of the markets by a financial sector/government partnership. The markets were not free. Just like when termites invade your foundation, they are collaborating with a single goal: to eat the pilings out, harvest the profits, and leave the carcass for the taxpayers to clean up.

Two Masters

It is impossible for a man to serve two masters. All the governors are from the banking industry, and they cannot arbitrate between what would be best for the citizens and what would be best for the success of the bank. They don't even try. It is a long slow burn and transfer of wealth that they patiently execute at a pace that does not scare the golden goose or kill it.

The Fed exists to make the citizens pay retail prices for access to money that the founding fathers established should be created at wholesale.

Reptilian Slime Lords

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/07/fed-to-keep-bank-oversigh_n_489477.html

I'm not trying to feed any paranoia, but take a look at the big photo of the Fed building that is/was on the HuffPo front page. Count the long glass windows on the building's face. 10 to the left of the center entrance, 10 to the right of the center entrance, and three around the entrance itself. Total of 23. Lots and lots to do with 23's and 10+13 in various numerology/symbology

Fed established in 1913. December 23, 1913, to be exact. This probably breaks the rules of numerology, but (19) 1+9=10, plus 13, you reach 23.

I wonder if the Fed will finish collapsing the dollar at the end of the Mayan calendar. Which comes on December 23, 2012. 20 + 1 + 2=23

Reptilian slime lords have got our number.

Tea Party

The major candidates of both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are approved by groups like the CFR, Trilateral, Bilderberger, organizations dominated almost exclusively by old, rich, powerful white males- so how racist does that make the two major parties?

Compression

The metastatasizing tumor of elite money power has our constitutional system of government pinned to the ground and is choking the last breaths right out of it. Big Business and Big Government have formed a symbiotic hybrid beast and anyone who still discusses them as adversaries is living way way back in the past.

Continental

A private corporation like the Fed would have no interest in operating such a system without the profit motive. The Treasury could default on the debt brokered by the Fed and replace it with a constitutional monetary system, but if it established a fractional reserve/fiat system, inflation worse than ever would result, just like with the Continental after the Revolutionary war or the Greenbacks after the Civil War. Fractional reserve by definition is a constant expansion of the monetary supply that translates into currency depreciation and then price inflation.

Money must be convertible into a tangible asset or it is unsound. Paper fiat will always return to its intrinsic value: zero.

Back To The Debt

>>"The GOP ran up $10 trillion in debt during the Reagan and Bush years."

That's twenty years across three presidential administrations. I looked up the numbers.

Reagan, 80-88, added $1.7 trillion to the public debt.
Bush 41, 88-92, added $1.4 trillion to the public debt.
Bush 43, 2000-2008, added $4 trillion to the public debt.

Total of $7.1 trillion not $10 trillion.

$7.1 trillion into 20 years is only an average of $350 billion in debt each year.

Obama will probably add around $6 to 8 trillion in four years, for an average of well over a trillion in new debt each year. Even adjusting for inflation, Obama's deficit numbers are no improvement.

Profound Insult

“>>"it's a profound insult to the richest country on Earth. " http://www.huffingtonpost.com/les-leopold/why-are-we-afraid-to-crea_b_487041.html

When the distribution of wealth is so out of wack , it's hard to believe that calling us 'the richest country on Earth' really means anything. America has the widest income distribution of any industrialized country on the planet. The wealthiest 1 percent of families owns roughly 34.3% of the nation's net worth, the top 10% of families owns over 71%, and the bottom 40% of the population owns way less than 1%.

Rather than saying 'America is the richest country on Earth', I think it is more accurate to say this: 'America is a country that contains a number of very very rich people.' A big part of the population is using some form of government assistance, and a majority require credit to supplement their income. As a country, we borrow more than any on Earth. So I don't know how 'rich' we really are.

We got to this point because America's rich have successfully underpaid labor or outsourced it, for a long time. We are not going to create good high-paying jobs because the sliver of Rich People do not want to reverse this process. They won. They bought the politicians and the media and they're not going to start creating American jobs again unless it works for their bottom line.”

Funhouse

Have you ever stopped to consider that your view of the Tea Party is through the lens of the dominant media?

The bread and butter of the dominant media's political coverage is the phony Coke vs. Pepsi duopoly of the two corporate major parties. The corporations that buy ads on the dominant media are all affiliated with the two major parties. The dominant media has every motive in the world to present a funhouse mirror view of the Tea Party.

The Tea Party opposes the Fed, Wall Street, foreign wars and globalization. The dominant media has delivered nothing but a sanitized view of the Fed, hypes foreign wars, and sold us the hoax of globalization. The Tea Party is not only opposed to the sellout leaders of both corporate globalist major parties, but is also a threat to the propaganda machine of the mass media.

It greatly serves the needs of the ruling power structure to destroy any upstart movements, because if they don't destroy them, then they have to buy them off and neutralize them, like they have done with the Democrats.