See 500 years of silver etc prices.
What is the "CRB commodity" since 1449 measured in, 30g of SLV?
(ritholtz, 4810). Caesar's legions grabbed slaves (old style,
not 'debt slaves?)
for free? C 1860 a good bonded worker cost...$1500 in
metal coin of the realm. What next?
I put the Fed one because it's funny and well done. While I do not want Bernanke, agree with all on the Fed's behavior, secrecy and in league with the financial sector, there are a lot of great people, obviously working at the Fed and I use their graphs, databases, read their papers a lot. So, I don't want to imply I agree with that everyone is somehow bad news there.
and it's just hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. I mean oh we must bail out AIG, Fannie/Freddie "for the American people" and frankly it should read "for Goldman Sachs" and my pals. Seriously, I've yet to find proof that the entire bail out was for the "American people" and it's like this guys world was the Zombie financial institutions so I guess to him it would seem like the end of the world if their ponzi scheme, gambling casino imploded....but the end of the world for the American people and the U.S. economy?
To this day I have never been convinced and believe me, I'm fact oriented, open minded and I've yet to see any reason that makes me say "OK" that has to happen...
the only thing was the guarantee of the money market funds.
Did you see the Sunday Morning Comics? Watch the first clip, it's really well done and Ron Paul Fans esp. will LOVE IT!
That's what whistle-blower Andrew Maguire has just said.
"JPMorgan acts as an agent for the Federal Reserve; they act to halt the rise of gold and silver against the US dollar. JPMorgan is insulated from potential losses [on their short positions] by the Fed and/or the US taxpayer," Maguire said.
It's an interesting charge. Once again, the Fed is accused of being in the middle of massive fraud.
Seems 1 must still report any interest in overseas
accounts at $10k+.
But if 1 sends funds to a bank that does not report
details (most will), then if over $50k, 30% will be held back.
0 hedge,32810, etc comments say experts not clear yet.
But new rules seem to include all accounts
including with 'non financial entities."
But what about antiques, houses, held overseas
directly owned (with no account except to pay overseas
taxes on houses)?
I just watched a "program" on the now mealy mouthed, kind of clueless "political neutral neutered" CNN of another I.O.U.S.A. "solutions" special.
What is astounding is we all know, we have so many other national examples of how to contain health care costs plus we just had a bill which ignored all of it and of course this "special" does not mention a single one to reduce health care costs, already implemented in Canada, France, the U.K, Japan and so on. Nothing about the for profit system, big pharma, health insurance companies, greedy doctors and so on. Unreal.
So, they present this limited "set of solutions" which of course involve screwing the U.S. workforce, middle class and then claim the U.S. must "muster the political will" to "do this".
they need to be taken to town. Yes the debt is real but their pushing this privatization/screw the workforce agenda has to be confronted.
so, I changed the publication date on yours so it pops up first in the RSS feed.
My question, which I didn't really answer is why the IMF alone didn't come to the rescue. I suspect it is because of the IMF terms, which would have decimated the real greece economy through their Draconian conditions.
The U.S. government has broken up many a too large corporation in the past. AT&T is the one which comes to mind lately. The government was going after Microsoft, but of course Bush came into office and amazingly, all of that effort was stopped and suddenly Microsoft became their best buddy. (lobbyists).
Although trying to get an accounting for behavior is yet another piece of the puzzle. We need major corporate governance reform, including making executive officers more personally liable, executive pay needs to be capped, the corporation needs to be aligned to U.S. economic interests through law, a host of things...
then derivatives is yet another major area of much needed regulation and reform.
But simply breaking up these 6 isn't unheard of at all.
We can not go back and split these banks up. There needs to be an accounting, reorganization and nationalization. All management fired. Anything short of those proposals would be inefficient.
You probably realize I'm not too big on "personal stories" but maybe someone else, if they are of the mind, can show the fact that what should be high income earning upper middle class, highly educated, insightful, creative, hard working people are getting wiped out in a personal story sort of thing, maybe even taken by some of the bloggers who are financial but at the same time, kind of witness to their own destruction too. I don't have some issue that somehow "blue collar" should get screwed and white collar should not, neither should be financially wiped out, but I think it takes away a lot of myth when people who are "media presented as" these super accomplished types are in just as much trouble as the waitress working 3 jobs.
In his seminal 2007 book, "Dear Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches From America's Class War", Joe Bageant first raised the notion of the American Hologram. Later in 2007, he expanded on this idea in an essay on his weblog, entitled The Great American Media Time Warp.
But having been in the media business one way or another for almost 40 years, and having watched it increasingly take on a life of its own, I know that nothing of significance in the news is what it appears to be. This is not the result of some media conspiracy, mind you, but rather that the people working in the media have internalized the process so thoroughly they do not even know they are conditioned creatures in a larger corporate/state machine. Put simply, Katie Couric and the dumbshits grinding out your local paper actually believe they are in the news business. In today's system, everybody is a patsy for the new corporate global order of things -- the well-coiffed talking head, the brain dead audience, even the terrorists themselves. All play out their parts in our holographic image and information process.
All Americans, regardless of caste, live in a culture woven of self-referential illusions. Like a holographic simulation, each part refers exclusively back to the whole, and the whole refers exclusively back to the parts. All else is excluded by this simulated reality. Consequently, social realism in this country is a television commercial for America, a simulated republic of eagles and big box stores, a good place to live so long as we never stray outside the hologram. The corporate simulacrum of life has penetrated us so deeply it now dominates the mind's interior landscape with its celebrities and commercial images. Within the hologram sparkles the culture-generating industry, spinning out our unreality like cotton candy.
{emphasis mine}
Of course Joe's holographic depiction of american reality is part and parcel of the larger idea of "American Exceptionalism" that has been promulgated for at least the last 2 generations of Americans. I like reading Joe Bageant a lot. And it is not just because he is an aging ex-hippie who is almost exactly my age. No, I like Joe more because he is a gifted observer and writer, who can relate the obvious reality without trying to analyze it.
I have very siimilar feelings about the blogger Ilargi at The Automatic Earth, when he has the awareness to write:
Picture this: you get the feeling that you're hanging, no place special, weightless and suspended in mid-air, and something tells you this may last quite a while. For all intents and purposes, you should be falling, and gaining speed while you do. But it doesn't happen, and you're not Wile E. either. What's more, you’re incessantly being promised that you’ll never fall as long as you keep moving your arms and legs. And though you wonder what fate will have in store once you get too tired of swimming, you try very hard to believe that the breaststroke and the butterfly, when executed properly, nullify gravity, because you think you know what's next if you don't. Nothing to do but to keep swimming and tell yourself you have faith. Mind over matter and all that.
Yeah, and whatever you do, don't look down, or so they say, but that's easier said then done. You peeked, you couldn't help yourself, who do they think they're fooling, after all it's your life too, and more than it's theirs, and you see "they" are losing over a third in their life blood tax income, while they rake up debt as if it's cotton candy, the kind that you can feel is being spun out of your living tissue, and you're afraid that might start hurting something bad sometime soon. And if that would happen, you now realize that no medicare is all too bleeding very likely to pay for your medical bills, and the insurance that came with your job is sure to leave with it too, and one out of every 6 of your neighbors is out of work already and once it's one out of every five you're pretty darn sure it'll be your turn too.
And you might get up and shout, and vent your doubts and anger, or so you think, and so you keep repeating in your head, if only you were sure you would not have to be alone. What, you ask, is bound to become of the one who is the first to lose the belief? Is that one destined to fall into the bottomless pit reserved for ye of little faith and none at all, or will it be a ritual tearing off of life and limbs by the hands of the truer followers? What are the chances that the first head to stick out above the evenly waving fields of grain will be hailed as a liberator, and not cut off at the neck in order to let what everybody knows their place is to go on and on and on?
For now you see no other way, no choice or option, than to believe that believing will keep you from falling, like everyone else around you tells you they do, and you do feel somewhat comforted by the notion that ever since the days of old, those who live in their faith have pledged they will take care of their own. But mostly, if you're open and lucid and honest, you're just simply scared out of your wits. And what you're most afraid of above all is that somewhere high above the waving fields of grain, your very fear will freeze you, no place special, in mid-air, suspended and weightless and unable to keep on moving your arms and legs. And you think you know what's next.
These are truly insightful individuals who can transcend the BS of the day and casually invite the reader to consider his/her real condition, for better or worse. Naturally, they are non-existent within the American Hologram.
"I like Elizabeth, and Simon Johnson, and Dylan Ratigan, and many other "truth tellers", but the real "truth" is that the political system that controls all Americans is corrupt beyond repair. Anyone who believes that any kind of democracy, or democratic solutions, exist in today's America is delusional."
First, thank you for the kind words, commongood. They're very much appreciated.
Yes, indeed, Johnson, Warren and the like offer important insights but from the perspective of their audience all that one meaningfully takes away from what they are saying is the utter hopeless of it all. If one is not out simply to build a reputation and sell books, what point is there to speak in terms of reform and at the same time point to the operational impossibilty of there being any? All of these folks when they are courageous enough - and that's not frequently - point to the political cesspool from which our problems emerged and to the unlikelihood of it ever changing. It would seem to me almost obligatory, then, when speaking of solutions not to eschew the most obvious: Demonstrations and strikes. But that's not their personal style. They have appearance to keep, after all. Can you imagine Simon Johnson even raising his voice let alone leading a strike? I can't.
One must ask, then, why their prominence? As I'd speculated earlier, is it to sell books and to build and exploit an emerging public persona? Hard to say. There have been countless people in public life that have done that, of course. But, if so, what becomes of the exploited that draw absolutely no benefit from the moralizing of these academics? When the Warrens and the Johnsons go to sleep in their gated communities, how do they fare? I think we both know the answer to that question.
or the globe is completely controlled by a few super rich elites and MNCs, I will not argue and I don't know how to change it.
History says it can be changed, the robber barons were finally brought somewhat down, we had a FDR, on the other hand we have loads and loads of dictatorships, bloody revolutions where things became even worse and so on.
But, what I think exposing the truth is critical, I too am completely disgusted (see my post this week) on no matter how much truth comes out, how much public outrage there is, how many people promote great policies....the people who have the power won't let any of that get enacted in law or policy. Puppets on a string.
Your comments are a breath of fresh air here and I absolutely agree that any kind of incremental change to our situation is DOA. I like Elizabeth, and Simon Johnson, and Dylan Ratigan, and many other "truth tellers", but the real "truth" is that the political system that controls all Americans is corrupt beyond repair. Anyone who believes that any kind of democracy, or democratic solutions, exist in today's America is delusional.
Robert, we all luv ya, but logic and mathematics go hand in hand. Look at the realities of our present day condition. The enormous number of unemployed, under employed and unemployable. Consider the manipulation of statistics by the government agencies over the past 20 - 30 years, and not just the fog of manipulated statistics presented on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis.
Look at the equities markets and the relaxation of any kind of reasonable accounting methods. What do any of the quarterly reports of the megabanks and MNCs mean when they control the valuation of "assets"? We live in a made up, fantasy America and TPTB have allowed it to be! How many times and in how many ways do we need to report this tripe statistically to satisfy the "so what" test?
Elizabeth Warren, and many other "critics" of the status quo, may not be willing "potemkin villages", but that is indeed how the TPTB are using them.
Oh, I suppose Elizabeth is well enough intentioned, Robert, its just that she's become so taken with her new found prominence that she can't see that she's being used so thoroughly by these slime. There are the TV cameos, the televised hearing (in which she's been just monumentally supine), and the liberal foundation appearances in which she's envisioned as a kind of god-woman. These things go to one's head, of course, and, in my view, its becoming quite clear that they've gone to hers. Elizabeth Warren is the typical Ivy League law school type, earnest, briming with compassion and just convinced that if we try hard enough we can right the system and bring justice to all those not quite as fortunate as we've been, you know, Mario Procacchino's quintessential "limosene liberal". This belief has always been at the core of the liberal mythos and grounds its naive romanticism. What we have in Elizabeth are all the imbecile enthusiasms of a recent member of the League Of Women Voters, a kind of big sis that one's terribly well educated daughter can emulate. Truth be known, Elizabeth Warren is no more or less than a creation of the powers that be, an enormous black hole into which they can safely funnel public anger. Why she almost makes it seem as though you've got a voice in Washington after all. But tell that to the guy who just lost his home and his job at the Lorain, Ohio, Ford Plant. He'll tell you whether he thinks he's got or has ever had "a voice" in Washington. And he understands that they've got Elizabeth Warren on a very tight leash and that if she barks too loudly or too effectively, they'll just throttle her then and there. If Elizabeth Warren wishes to do something meaningful for the middle class, let her help organize and participate in a massive general strike. Somehow I just can't see that happening any time soon, eh?
I have no idea why you would put her down, she's one of the few voices out there piping up for the U.S. middle class! She also has some pretty serious research out there. The COP has covered derivatives in detail, about the only thing that's going on, which really isn't her fault, is her CFPA is being used as political masking, political cannon fodder to avoid regulating shadow banking and derivatives.
on the silver market manipulation piece.
I'm so sick of turning on the news and some over paid bobble head is vilifying a public employee because he's making a living wage.
Thank You.
See 500 years of silver etc prices.
What is the "CRB commodity" since 1449 measured in, 30g of SLV?
(ritholtz, 4810). Caesar's legions grabbed slaves (old style,
not 'debt slaves?)
for free? C 1860 a good bonded worker cost...$1500 in
metal coin of the realm. What next?
I put the Fed one because it's funny and well done. While I do not want Bernanke, agree with all on the Fed's behavior, secrecy and in league with the financial sector, there are a lot of great people, obviously working at the Fed and I use their graphs, databases, read their papers a lot. So, I don't want to imply I agree with that everyone is somehow bad news there.
and it's just hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. I mean oh we must bail out AIG, Fannie/Freddie "for the American people" and frankly it should read "for Goldman Sachs" and my pals. Seriously, I've yet to find proof that the entire bail out was for the "American people" and it's like this guys world was the Zombie financial institutions so I guess to him it would seem like the end of the world if their ponzi scheme, gambling casino imploded....but the end of the world for the American people and the U.S. economy?
To this day I have never been convinced and believe me, I'm fact oriented, open minded and I've yet to see any reason that makes me say "OK" that has to happen...
the only thing was the guarantee of the money market funds.
Did you see the Sunday Morning Comics? Watch the first clip, it's really well done and Ron Paul Fans esp. will LOVE IT!
That's what whistle-blower Andrew Maguire has just said.
It's an interesting charge. Once again, the Fed is accused of being in the middle of massive fraud.
Seems 1 must still report any interest in overseas
accounts at $10k+.
But if 1 sends funds to a bank that does not report
details (most will), then if over $50k, 30% will be held back.
0 hedge,32810, etc comments say experts not clear yet.
But new rules seem to include all accounts
including with 'non financial entities."
But what about antiques, houses, held overseas
directly owned (with no account except to pay overseas
taxes on houses)?
I just watched a "program" on the now mealy mouthed, kind of clueless "political
neutralneutered" CNN of another I.O.U.S.A. "solutions" special.What is astounding is we all know, we have so many other national examples of how to contain health care costs plus we just had a bill which ignored all of it and of course this "special" does not mention a single one to reduce health care costs, already implemented in Canada, France, the U.K, Japan and so on. Nothing about the for profit system, big pharma, health insurance companies, greedy doctors and so on. Unreal.
So, they present this limited "set of solutions" which of course involve screwing the U.S. workforce, middle class and then claim the U.S. must "muster the political will" to "do this".
they need to be taken to town. Yes the debt is real but their pushing this privatization/screw the workforce agenda has to be confronted.
so, I changed the publication date on yours so it pops up first in the RSS feed.
My question, which I didn't really answer is why the IMF alone didn't come to the rescue. I suspect it is because of the IMF terms, which would have decimated the real greece economy through their Draconian conditions.
The U.S. government has broken up many a too large corporation in the past. AT&T is the one which comes to mind lately. The government was going after Microsoft, but of course Bush came into office and amazingly, all of that effort was stopped and suddenly Microsoft became their best buddy. (lobbyists).
Although trying to get an accounting for behavior is yet another piece of the puzzle. We need major corporate governance reform, including making executive officers more personally liable, executive pay needs to be capped, the corporation needs to be aligned to U.S. economic interests through law, a host of things...
then derivatives is yet another major area of much needed regulation and reform.
But simply breaking up these 6 isn't unheard of at all.
We can not go back and split these banks up. There needs to be an accounting, reorganization and nationalization. All management fired. Anything short of those proposals would be inefficient.
You probably realize I'm not too big on "personal stories" but maybe someone else, if they are of the mind, can show the fact that what should be high income earning upper middle class, highly educated, insightful, creative, hard working people are getting wiped out in a personal story sort of thing, maybe even taken by some of the bloggers who are financial but at the same time, kind of witness to their own destruction too. I don't have some issue that somehow "blue collar" should get screwed and white collar should not, neither should be financially wiped out, but I think it takes away a lot of myth when people who are "media presented as" these super accomplished types are in just as much trouble as the waitress working 3 jobs.
In his seminal 2007 book, "Dear Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches From America's Class War", Joe Bageant first raised the notion of the American Hologram. Later in 2007, he expanded on this idea in an essay on his weblog, entitled The Great American Media Time Warp.
{emphasis mine}
Of course Joe's holographic depiction of american reality is part and parcel of the larger idea of "American Exceptionalism" that has been promulgated for at least the last 2 generations of Americans. I like reading Joe Bageant a lot. And it is not just because he is an aging ex-hippie who is almost exactly my age. No, I like Joe more because he is a gifted observer and writer, who can relate the obvious reality without trying to analyze it.
I have very siimilar feelings about the blogger Ilargi at The Automatic Earth, when he has the awareness to write:
These are truly insightful individuals who can transcend the BS of the day and casually invite the reader to consider his/her real condition, for better or worse. Naturally, they are non-existent within the American Hologram.
"I like Elizabeth, and Simon Johnson, and Dylan Ratigan, and many other "truth tellers", but the real "truth" is that the political system that controls all Americans is corrupt beyond repair. Anyone who believes that any kind of democracy, or democratic solutions, exist in today's America is delusional."
First, thank you for the kind words, commongood. They're very much appreciated.
Yes, indeed, Johnson, Warren and the like offer important insights but from the perspective of their audience all that one meaningfully takes away from what they are saying is the utter hopeless of it all. If one is not out simply to build a reputation and sell books, what point is there to speak in terms of reform and at the same time point to the operational impossibilty of there being any? All of these folks when they are courageous enough - and that's not frequently - point to the political cesspool from which our problems emerged and to the unlikelihood of it ever changing. It would seem to me almost obligatory, then, when speaking of solutions not to eschew the most obvious: Demonstrations and strikes. But that's not their personal style. They have appearance to keep, after all. Can you imagine Simon Johnson even raising his voice let alone leading a strike? I can't.
One must ask, then, why their prominence? As I'd speculated earlier, is it to sell books and to build and exploit an emerging public persona? Hard to say. There have been countless people in public life that have done that, of course. But, if so, what becomes of the exploited that draw absolutely no benefit from the moralizing of these academics? When the Warrens and the Johnsons go to sleep in their gated communities, how do they fare? I think we both know the answer to that question.
This may help you coalesce those connections:
http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/2010/04/08/the-bilderberg-group...
or the globe is completely controlled by a few super rich elites and MNCs, I will not argue and I don't know how to change it.
History says it can be changed, the robber barons were finally brought somewhat down, we had a FDR, on the other hand we have loads and loads of dictatorships, bloody revolutions where things became even worse and so on.
But, what I think exposing the truth is critical, I too am completely disgusted (see my post this week) on no matter how much truth comes out, how much public outrage there is, how many people promote great policies....the people who have the power won't let any of that get enacted in law or policy. Puppets on a string.
Andrei,
Your comments are a breath of fresh air here and I absolutely agree that any kind of incremental change to our situation is DOA. I like Elizabeth, and Simon Johnson, and Dylan Ratigan, and many other "truth tellers", but the real "truth" is that the political system that controls all Americans is corrupt beyond repair. Anyone who believes that any kind of democracy, or democratic solutions, exist in today's America is delusional.
Robert, we all luv ya, but logic and mathematics go hand in hand. Look at the realities of our present day condition. The enormous number of unemployed, under employed and unemployable. Consider the manipulation of statistics by the government agencies over the past 20 - 30 years, and not just the fog of manipulated statistics presented on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis.
Look at the equities markets and the relaxation of any kind of reasonable accounting methods. What do any of the quarterly reports of the megabanks and MNCs mean when they control the valuation of "assets"? We live in a made up, fantasy America and TPTB have allowed it to be! How many times and in how many ways do we need to report this tripe statistically to satisfy the "so what" test?
Elizabeth Warren, and many other "critics" of the status quo, may not be willing "potemkin villages", but that is indeed how the TPTB are using them.
Oh, I suppose Elizabeth is well enough intentioned, Robert, its just that she's become so taken with her new found prominence that she can't see that she's being used so thoroughly by these slime. There are the TV cameos, the televised hearing (in which she's been just monumentally supine), and the liberal foundation appearances in which she's envisioned as a kind of god-woman. These things go to one's head, of course, and, in my view, its becoming quite clear that they've gone to hers. Elizabeth Warren is the typical Ivy League law school type, earnest, briming with compassion and just convinced that if we try hard enough we can right the system and bring justice to all those not quite as fortunate as we've been, you know, Mario Procacchino's quintessential "limosene liberal". This belief has always been at the core of the liberal mythos and grounds its naive romanticism. What we have in Elizabeth are all the imbecile enthusiasms of a recent member of the League Of Women Voters, a kind of big sis that one's terribly well educated daughter can emulate. Truth be known, Elizabeth Warren is no more or less than a creation of the powers that be, an enormous black hole into which they can safely funnel public anger. Why she almost makes it seem as though you've got a voice in Washington after all. But tell that to the guy who just lost his home and his job at the Lorain, Ohio, Ford Plant. He'll tell you whether he thinks he's got or has ever had "a voice" in Washington. And he understands that they've got Elizabeth Warren on a very tight leash and that if she barks too loudly or too effectively, they'll just throttle her then and there. If Elizabeth Warren wishes to do something meaningful for the middle class, let her help organize and participate in a massive general strike. Somehow I just can't see that happening any time soon, eh?
I have no idea why you would put her down, she's one of the few voices out there piping up for the U.S. middle class! She also has some pretty serious research out there. The COP has covered derivatives in detail, about the only thing that's going on, which really isn't her fault, is her CFPA is being used as political masking, political cannon fodder to avoid regulating shadow banking and derivatives.
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