Swiss Banks Tackling Tax Evasion Head On

Swiss Banks Tackling Tax Evasion Head On

from Dealbreaker

By telling its employees to lock the doors, draw the shades, get under the bed and hide. The Financial Times reports that in the face of questions about innocent stuff like helping clients evade taxes from meddling bastard countries like the US, etc, Switzerland's private banks have begun banning top executives from traveling abroad, "even to neighbouring France and Germany, because of fears they will be detained as part of a global crackdown on bank secrecy."

The head of one leading private bank in Geneva said the growing determination of countries such as the US and Germany to tackle tax evasion and secrecy meant banks felt they had to take extra measures to protect employees.

"Some banks have taken this precaution," he said. "If today I go to Germany to visit two banks I deal with...German customs can take me in and question me."

"The partners are not leaving Geneva at all," said a senior industry figure close to several private banks

America's Worst Enemy: The Mainstream Media

from http://www.noonehastodietomorrow.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=960&Itemid=120

Regardless of the issue, the one thing standing between your cause and the resolution of your cause is the mainstream media. Today's media are in place to do one thing, create and maintain a false reality.

They ensure that the actions of the ruling elite, government included, are kept out of the public conscience.

In this brief video Jesse Richard, Founder of TvNewsLIES.org, explains how media deception works and shows you how to see it for yourself. He issues a challenge to the collective body of the establishment media and he provides a realistic and achievable solution to the problem.

A key point made in this commentary is that the public has only been receiving news reports that are politically divisive. This creates a misconception that bias is the key problem with our media. This is a false perception. The key problem has more to do with what does not get reported than what does.

There are thousands of issues that are intentionally hidden by the establishment media. These issues are hidden because they would unite the nation against the ruling class and against our elected officials. The key point of this commentary is to awaken people into seeing how we are being manipulated.

Please post a link to this video in as many places as you can. Let us unite in liberty and take back our world from the ruling elite.

Video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyF1FbSV2o0

part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZyUSnyB7sI

 

Bailed-out JPMorgan orders two new luxury jets and a deluxe aircraft hangar. from Think Progress

Last month, ThinkProgress reported that in a House hearing, seven out of eight bailed-out bank CEOs said their companies still "own or lease" private planes. ABC News provides more details today, reporting that JPMorgan Chase — which received $25 billion in TARP funds — "is going ahead with a $138 million plan to buy two new luxury corporate jets," complete with "the premiere corporate aircraft hangar on the eastern seaboard":

According to JPMorgan Chase architects, the new hangar will be built with reclaimed wood, quarry tile and even a "vegetated roof garden." The Gulfstream 650's are described by the manufacturer as the "fastest," "widest" and "most comfortable" private jet ever with superior cabin amenities, an optional stateroom, and 12 interior designs to choose from.

A JPMorgan spokesperson "said no TARP money would be used to make any payments for new jets or jet hangar improvements." More on JPMorgan in today's Progress Report.

Update Reuters reports that JPMorgan has responded: "JPMorgan spokesman Joseph Evangelisti, however, said the company would not buy any aircraft or spend money on a hangar until 100 percent of the TARP funds were repaid."

rest http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/23/private-jets-jpmorgan/

Bank Vies With Oil Industry to Build the Most Outlandish Jet Hangar from Gawker

from http://gawker.com/5180655/bank-vies-with-oil-industry-to-build-the-most-outlandish-jet-hangar

The outrage beast is hungry, and ABC News is feeding it a new story: JPMorgan Chase officials are fighting hard to build a new, $18 million private-jet hangar in Westchester County.

It will be "the premiere corporate aircraft hangar on the eastern seaboard," according to architects' documents obtained by ABC, and will have various eco-trendy features, including a so-called "living roof." (Turns out grass is a great insulator!) It will house four aircraft, including two replacement Gulfstream G650s, which are described as — gasp! — "comfortable" by their manufacture.

We are meant to be upset that JPMorgan Chase is spending any money at all on the project, since the U.S. government pumped $25 billion into the bank through its TARP bailout. (Never mind that the whole point of the bailout was to keep banks spending money on business as usual, or that Westchester County officials want JPMorgan Chase to pursue the renovation in part to help the local economy.)

Since there's no awful Goliath without a David, and ABC has found it in Mike Dolphin, the president of Avitat Westchester, a flight operator who currently occupies the hangar. Dolphin is protesting JPMorgan Chase's plans because his company would get kicked out if the bank's bid succeeds.

But why? He's certainly not an opponent of private aviation or opulent surroundings. Or, for that matter, flying JPMorgan Chase bankers. An article in Executive Traveler describes a recent renovation of Avitat's facility:

A major renovation of Avitat Westchester's fixed base operations (FBO) facility at Westchester County Airport in White Plains, New York, is now complete, offering clients such as J.P. Morgan Chase, American Express, Paul Newman, and Richard Gere surroundings that have been designed with the five senses in mind. In addition to one-of-a-kind amenities, including a baby grand piano, Starbucks coffee, and floor-to-ceiling fish tanks, the new facility includes a new 21,000 square foot, two-story, lean-to terminal, multi-tenant offices, crew facilities, maintenance shops, and storage facilities.

Here are pictures from Avitat's website:

"I am the little guy," Dolphin complains, but what ABC News neglects to mention is that Avitat itself is affiliated with ExxonMobil's jet-fuel distribution subsidiary. It prides itself on slavishly catering to its customers' every whim.

So basically, what we have here are two arms of corporate America tussling over who gets to fly executives in private jets. Outrageous, indeed.

Another inexplicable lie from Fox from Daily Kos

from http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/21/711335/-Another-inexplicable-lie-from-Fox

Less than a week after presenting a six-month old clip of Joe Biden as new, Fox's The Live Desk is at it again.

This time, Fox News's Trace Gallagher falsely claims the Dow dropped 56 points during a speech by President Obama. According to Gallagher, when the President began, the Dow was up 28 points; by the time the Presidnet finished, Gallagher said the Dow was down 28 points.

The reality: when President Obama started, the Dow was down 34; it was down 28 when he finished. So it actually gained 6 meaningless points.

Links: DKTV | digg | reddit

Of course, even if Gallagher's false claim were true, it wouldn't have been an interesting or relevant point -- you cannot measure the success of speeches by short-term fluctuations in the Dow.

But it wasn't at all true, and that underscores just how dishonest Fox News is when it comes to attacking President Obama.

h/t: Media Matters (video by DKTV)

Krugman Not Happy With Financial Policy from THE DAILY BANTER.COM

By Ben Cohen http://www.thedailybanter.com/tdb/2009/03/krugman-not-happy-with-financial-policy.html

The leaked Obama plan to rescue the banks has Krugman up in arms. He writes:

The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system — that what we're facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to pay for it, all our problems will be solved.

I hope to God Obama and Geithner come up with something better than this. The impression that Wall St and Washington are working to conspire against the people is stronger than ever, and nothing short of dramatic action will quell the fear. And that means putting Wall St in its place with more than testy language. It means action.

Geithner = Warren? from Open Left

Is Tim Geithner another bad choice, like Rick Warren, that Barack Obama is simply incapable of recognizing, admitting and acting on?  And is his unwillingness to recognize this a symptom of some much deeper problem with how he will govern?  I fear it very well could be.

There was a headline at Huffington Post, it's gone now--I blinked and it went away--but it made a sharp impression before it was replaced with something far more benign.  I forget the exact wording, but basically it was the Obama told 60-Minutes there was no way he was letting Geithner go. It came across like it was a point of honor with him.  And I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I saw that.

I don't know what story Huffpo was linking to, but BBC puts it like this:

Obama fends off Geithner doubters
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will not be allowed to resign amid criticism of his short term in office, President Barack Obama has said.

Mr Obama told CBS News he would turn down any offer by Mr Geithner to quit, and would tell him: "Sorry, buddy, you've still got the job."

I'm having a flashback right about now, to Barack Obama posting a diary at Daily Kos, telling all us dirty fucking hippies to lay off his buds in the Senate.  That was the first instance when Obama used his popularity with the Democratic base to shield his personal friends from justly earned criticism--criticism that had nothing, necessarily, to do with them as private people, and everything to do with their public duties.

Then, there was his still-unexplained infatuation with Rick Warren....  
who clearly tried to sabotage him with the ludicrous "cone of silence" debate--not so much that he colluded with McCain, but simple that it was a stacked debate from start to finish, and everyone with a lick of sense knew that long in advance.  If anything, that public betrayal only made Obama more determined to further elevate him at the inauguration, and simply dismissed the anguished objections of the GLBT community and its allies.

rest http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=12386

Madoff’s Victims Speak Out from Truthdig

Some of them have only their homes, while others have no remaining assets and no means to earn income, but all of the former clients of Bernard Madoff whose statements were made public by the government on Friday described in nightmarish terms their experiences since Madoff's fraudulent investment empire crumbled.

Meantime, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled that the accused Ponzi schemer will have to stay in jail as he awaits sentencing in mid-June.

Bloomberg:

Some of the messages released today by prosecutors had senders' names blacked out. Others were written by relatives on behalf of elderly or ailing victims, including an 87-year-old Alzheimer's patient who lost her $500,000 life savings.

"That money was for her to live out the rest of her life in comfort," a child of the Alzheimer's patient wrote in a March 9 e-mail that had the name redacted. "She is very depressed and can't understand why this happened to her."

Until now, most attention has been given to celebrities, hedge funds and banks around the world that lost money in Madoff's scam. Many of the victims revealed [Friday] cite relatively smaller losses that accounted for larger shares of wealth.

"I am not rich," a 52-year-old self-employed woman in California wrote in a letter. "The entire amount I lost was nowhere near a million dollars, but I was proud I had saved it. I do not own a home to sell. I do not have anyone to support me in my old age."

Many of the letters called on the government to make an extra effort to help victims.

Given the SEC's failure, "it is certainly justice that everyone in the federal government do what he or she can to ameliorate this situation," said Eugene Wolsk, 80, of Montauk, New York, who invested with Madoff for 21 years.

rest http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20090321_madoffs_victims_speak_out/

White House seeks broad new authority to reform financial system from Daily Kos

from http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/21/711446/-White-House-seeks-broad-new-authority-to-reform-financial-system

This is going to drive Republicans Rush Limbaugh crazy:

Administration Seeks Increase in Oversight of Executive Pay

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies as part of a sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation, government officials said.

The outlines of the plan are expected to be unveiled this week in preparation for President Obama's first foreign summit meeting in early April.

Increasing oversight of executive pay has been under consideration for some time, but the decision was made in recent days as public fury over bonuses has spilled into the regulatory effort.

The officials said that the administration was still debating the details of its plan, including how broadly it should be applied and how far it could range beyond simple reporting requirements. Depending on the outcome of the discussions, the administration could seek to put the changes into effect through regulations rather than through legislation.

One proposal could impose greater requirements on the boards of companies to tie executive compensation more closely to corporate performance and to take other steps to assure that outsize bonuses are not paid before meeting financial goals.

This proposal is no joke. It isn't limited to just AIG, or even just TARP recipients. It aims at a fundamental overhaul of the way things work at financial institutions and publicly traded companies, not only with respect to executive compensation, but also in terms of how complex financial instruments like derivatives are regulated.

It's going to draw a bright line between those who are simply bloviating about executive pay (Republicans focusing 100% on AIG's bonuses) and those who want the fundamental reform and change President Obama promised during the campaign (just about everybody else).

In short, it's going to make hacks like John Boehner and Eric Cantor put up or shut up. Take a guess at which they're going to do.

You Think The Bonuses Were Bad? Take A Look At Executive Retirement Plans from Crooks and Liar

from http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/you-think-bonuses-were-bad-take-look-

The rich, they are different from you and me:

The furor over bonuses for some employees at AIG International Group has focused public attention on the sizable checks employees received at firms that were bailed out by the federal government or received some taxpayer support. Less noticed, though, are the rich retirement benefits. That's partly because firms only recently began to disclose the value of executive retirement benefits in their annual proxy statements, which are filed this time of year ahead of yearly shareholder meetings.

Equilar, a California compensation consulting company, said the average additional value in 2008 to a chief executive's retirement plan was $1.23 million, based on its review of those firms that have filed proxy statements. In 2007, the average was $1.38 million.

These executives continue to accumulate enormous benefits while fewer rank-and-file workers have guaranteed retirement benefits. Just one-third of workers in mid- to large-size companies were in so-called defined benefit plans in 2007, down from 52 percent in 1995, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Some compensation specialists say the executives' sums are far more than what any individual needs for retirement.

"Retirement packages are supposed to help you if you're unable to save for retirement. I don't believe any of these guys could have spent all the cash they've earned in their careers as CEOs," said Paul Hodgson, senior researcher at the Corporate Library in Portland, Maine, which researches executive compensation and corporate governance issues for shareholders and insurers.

The costs if Obama fails: "an America run by religious fanatics, locked in holy (thermonuclear) wars abroad while engaging in ethnic cleansing at home"

The Cost

from Open Left - Front Page by Paul Rosenberg

Right now, it's becoming particularly apparent that there's a real danger of Obama's Administration going really wrong.  I've long been hopeful that the historical logic Mike Lux writes about in his book will take hold, and that Obama will be forced to move to the left, to institute progressive reforms, as has happened at crucial times before.  But what if he doesn't?  What if his current support for Timothy Geithner and his misbegotten plan is the harbinger of all that's to come?  How bad could it get?

What Would Be The Cost?

In my last diary, "Geithner = Warren?", one answer was suggested by limpidglass, writting:

theocratic dictatorship, here we come!
Recipe:

• A lot of God talk and flag-waving;
• A lot of railing against the evil Fed and the banking class (which will be conflated with American Jews);
• A lot of talk about we shouldn't waste money on "wasteful" and "bloated" government social programs, and how we should instead give it directly to the churches so they can help the poor like Jesus told them to do;
• A little dose of the Dolchstosslegende about how the Democrats pussied out and retreated from Iraq and Afghanistan when those wars could have been won, + a sacred vow to go into the Middle East, wipe out all those "heathens," and take back the oil that belongs to the American people by right;
• A lot of raving against Muslims (for "being terrorists"), immigrants (for "stealing jobs from honest, decent Americans"), homosexuals (for their "decadent lifestyles"), and liberals (for "hating America");

Bake for four years or so, and you've got yourself an America run by religious fanatics, locked in holy (thermonuclear) wars abroad while engaging in ethnic cleansing at home.

I don't think that's anywhere near guaranteed if Obama fails.  But I certainly think it's a distinct possibility.  And in responding to limpidglass, Master Jack sketched out a different sort of cost--the opportunity cost of what's potentially going to be wasted if we continue in this way:

What a wasted opportunity.
This banking meltdown COULD have led to a new progressive era -- as previous American economic collapses have done. It could have been a massive, once-in-a-generation teachable moment about the disastrous consequences of unbridled, unregulated capitalism.

And we have a "Democrat" in the White House, as well as "Democratic" majorities in both houses. The mechanism was in place to truly move beyond Reaganism.

The last time the Democrats availed themselves of that teachable moment, they set the stage to dominate American politics for a half-century.

This generation of "Democratic" leaders has used this opportunity to move the country even further to the right.

This will not end well. This is the first time I'm wondering if it would have been better if McCain had won -- he'd be coddling Wall Street just like Obama is now, but at least it would be Republicans he'd be setting up for permanent irrelevancy.

We have to think about these costs very seriously, because they are very serious costs, which are all the more serious because of how oblivious to them Obama and the rest of the Versailles Dems seem to be.  Do I hope that these are both overblown?  Of course!  But hope is not a plan.  We cannot ignore the costs we face if we allow failure to prevail.

Still losing from Daily Kos - John Boehner is misinformed or lying (or both)

Apparently, the GOP thinks they finally have a winning issue:

The Republican National Committee (RNC) today launched a new Web video, titled "Mystery Solved." The video highlights the mystery of the Democrats' slipping in the language to the stimulus bill that allowed AIG to deliver bonuses to its executives with hard-earned tax payer dollars.

John Boehner leveled the same attack on Thursday:

Had President Obama not signed the bill, AIG executives wouldn't be getting $165 million in bonuses funded by American taxpayers.

But that just wasn't true, as David Waldman explained at Congress Matters:

Had President Obama not signed the bill, not only would AIG executives in fact be getting $165 million in bonuses funded by American taxpayers, but there would also be no restrictions on any bonuses paid by TARP recipients going forward.

Aside from the fact that Boehner is misinformed or lying (or both), there's three very important things to remember from this:

1. John Boehner and a substantial portion of the GOP caucus supported the original TARP legislation, and that legislation permitted AIG to make these bonus payments. In other words, Boehner and many of his cronies voted for the law that made it possible to pay these bonuses.

2. The stimulus bill included new executive pay restrictions that were not in the original TARP. John Boehner and virtually every Republican voted against the stimulus bill -- and therefore against the new executive pay restrictions.

3. It is true that the stimulus bill failed to impose new restrictions that would have blocked the AIG bonuses. But the stimulus bill did not create a new loophole allowing the AIG bonuses -- the bonuses were already legal.

The stimulus bill should have gone further. But it didn't, and it's not like the GOP was complaining about that aspect of the stimulus bill. Even moderate Republicans like Olympia Snowe kept quiet.

So when Republicans act like they've now found the issue that's going to propel them back to power keep in mind that this "issue" is mostly a fiction, driven by the GOP's willful distortion and misrepresentation of the facts and a compliant media eager to ride the wave of legitimate anger at the AIG bonuses and how they were handled.

Mistakes were made all around -- by the Obama Administration, including Tim Geithner; by Democrats in Congress who allowed TARP to pass with insufficient restrictions on compensation; and most of all by the Republican Party, who fought those restrictions every step of the way.

And let's not forget where the original AIG bailout came from: George W. Bush's Treasury Department. And who led Bush's Treasury Department? None other than Hank Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs -- the second largest beneficiary of funds from the AIG bailout.

So if Republicans want to make AIG the issue of the day, fine. Let's have at it. See how they lose.

Meanwhile, President Obama and the Democratic Party need to focus on what people ultimately care about: making sure these bonuses are repaid, that the problem never happens again, and most importantly, that we get this economy back on track.

There's plenty of blame to go around, but pointing fingers isn't going to get the job done.

So the GOP might think they finally have a winner on their hands, but this fact still remains: as long as they are the party of no, their one and only hope for victory is if the nation fails.

Maybe that's why they all love Rush Limbaugh so much.

Obama's Critical Early Test: Corporate Arrogance

from http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/18/obamas-critical-earl.html

Posted: 18 Mar 2009 09:33 AM PDT

Dan Gillmor is a BoingBoing guest-blogger.

This is Obama's air-traffic controllers opportunity.

In 1981, not long after taking office, President Reagan faced a strike by the nation's air-traffic controllers. He fired them, broke the union and set in motion a generation of anti-labor policies that were a tenet of Republican orthodoxy. Whether those policies were ultimately more positive or negative is still a topic of political and economic debate, (I think the aggregate outcome was damaging) but Reagan's decisive action made a huge difference that reverberated through his presidency and several more.

Today, we face corporate arrogance that is almost transcendent and vastly more damaging than any of organized labor's excesses. Wall Street's barons, and the people who have been running and allegedly governing many of the nation's biggest companies, have raised a collective middle finger to America even as they've forced us to bail out the enterprises they've run into the ground. When commentators fret about corporate leaders' tone-deafness, they are implying that the executives simply don't get it. Oh yes they do.

In coming to Washington for bailouts, they said: "This is a stick-up. Give us the money or we'll kill the economy."

In creating their disgusting compensation schemes, they said: "Pay us as usual, not for performance but because this is our just due as masters of the universe. And because we deserve anything we can loot from whoever has the money, whether it's shareholders, customers, taxpayers or anyone else."

The puzzle of the past week is not that Americans are furious. Only an idiot (or a Wall Street banker) wouldn't be angry upon learning of the unconscionable "bonuses" renegade ward-of-the-taxpayers AIG wants to pay to its employees -- including well over $100 million to people in the same unit that completely screwed the company and then threatened to take down the entire global economy if we refused to subsidize (so far) to the tune of $170 billiion.

No, the mystery is why this outrage hasn't come to the surface sooner. And why it's not more dangerous.

Why, for example, didn't Americans take to the streets earlier this year when we found out that Merrill Lynch and its conniving buyer, Bank of America, had paid almost $5 billion in bonuses -- a number that makes the AIG bonus money seem small -- after taking tens of billions from taxpayers? Why didn't we scream bloody murder when the Bush administration flatly refused to disclose where the hundreds of billions in bailout money was going in any kind of detail?

One reason, perhaps, is that we are a soft and lazy and uncurious people. We are quick to being pissed off at relatively small things -- typically minor but sensationalized stuff that tabloid TV news programs (i.e. CNN, MSNBC and Fox and local stations) decide to make into issues -- but slow to grasp the significance of the really big and crucial stuff until it's so powerfully in our faces that we can't avoid it any longer.

AIG's bonus payout tipped the scales, or, maybe more accurately, removed another kind of scales from people's eyes. It demonstrated precisely what suckers the Wall Streeters have been taking us for.

How can we blame them for deciding that they were entitled to loot us, again and again? We were electing politicians of both parties who have been corrupted by and enablers of the very system that created the credit bubble and its catastrophic outcome. We weren't demanding accountability from anyone, including ourselves.

But now it's time. The American public is not blameless in what's happened. But we are finally waking up to the level of arrogance that dominates wide swaths of corporate America, particularly Wall Street. These transcendently greedy people, who aren't just indifferent to what the rest of us think but who actually believe they're entitled to loot the treasury and our children's futures, need a slapping down.

President Obama has a chance to turn this in a positive direction, but he's going to have to risk a lot of his political capital. He's going to have to admit that he, too, has been player in the corrupt system, albeit a relatively bit player.

Then he has to say, and mean it, that this crap is going to stop, right now -- and explain how he's going to do something about it.

We have a chance to reform the corrupt political and corporate governance that has created a system in which the people at the top brazenly tell the rest of us to go screw ourselves. It's a small chance, but if we don't do it now we will never do it, and the market economy itself will have no real future.

One institution can most effectively lead the charge in a way that can create change that doesn't turn into a mob-driven frenzy: the presidency. Is this president up to it?

Georgia Republicans block resolution honoring Obama from Crooks and Liars

Legislative bodies vote for the passage of thousands of these types of resolutions all the time. Even in the House of Representatives. But in Georgia they just couldn't do the honorable thing:

The Georgia House voted Thursday 70-68 to reject a resolution that would have honored President Barack Obama as a politician with an "unimpeachable reputation for integrity, vision and passion."

The vote by the Republican-controlled chamber infuriated members of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus, who designed the proposal to make Obama an honorary member of the group. They said it would have been the first such proposal in the country.

"I've never seen this type of action taken on the floor of the House, said state Rep. Calvin Smyre, a Columbus Democrat and 35-year veteran of the Legislature who is president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators. "I'm appalled, I'm disappointed, I'm shocked. The fact of the matter is there's a dark cloud over Georgia."

rest http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/georgia-republicans-block-resolution-ho

Inviting the Sheep for Another Shearing from The Existentialist Cowboy

from http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2009/03/inviting-sheep-for-another-shearing.html
By Ed Encho

What do you get for pretending the danger's not real.
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel.
What a surprise!
A look of terminal shock in your eyes.
Now things are really what they seem.
No, this is no bad dream.

-Pink Floyd (sheep)

In the ongoing madness of an America in terminal decline, the great Surge II is now underway. This one has nothing to do with mass brainwashing that all is ell in Iraq and that we are indeed winning thanks to our shining medal festooned superstar quarterback otherwise known as General God (aka David Petraeus) to divert the flocks attention away from a doomed imperialist crusade. Nope, this one hits closer to home, it started last Monday with a sly piece of internal propaganda from Citigroup's CEO Vikram Pandit having its best quarter since 2007 which triggered a sucker rally in the Wall Street casinos that dictate to the inhabitants of chumpland. The pocket media once again did their job, selling this latest call for the sheep to come and be sheared with all the effectiveness that they pimped the murderous lies of George W. Bush, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. Things – ARE getting better you see, the gloom-gloomers, the glass is half-empty pessimists, the neurotic nervous nellies and the naysaying Eyores are all wrong, it's a disease, in their heads, the economy is rocketing its way back to robustitude. The most incredible example of just how thoroughly corrupt that the corporatist media has become is the pernicious cover story of the latest edition of Newsweek magazine that has a picture of good ole Uncle Sam saying that he wants YOU to START SPENDING!... YOU need to INVEST in America – before it's too late.

The Newsweek story, by Daniel Gross which inside is even more insidious in that it beats the reader over the head with STOP SAVING NOW! – in all caps and taking up the better part of page 27, page 26 is a picture of a squirrel (a cartoon representation of those greedy pigs who dare to save their own money rather than gamble in the Wall Street casinos who holding onto a backload of acorns has caused the branch of the tree to CRAK! Jesus fucking Christ, this is propaganda at its finest, even a cynic like me is astounded by the dastardly nature of this banker swill in one of the nation's premier 'news' magazines.

A more sophisticated version of Mad Money Cramer, Gross goes on to say:

The hum of ambient noise in midtown Manhattan is several decibels lower than it was a year ago. Fewer black Town Cars idle outside the investment-bank offices on Park Avenue. The aisles of the flagship Saks Fifth Avenue are so quiet you'd think you were in a library. The restaurants and shops at Rockefeller Center are open as usual, but they seem oddly depopulated. Where are all the tourists and office workers, the hordes of junior analysts lining up in Starbucks?

Something less tangible is also absent: the spirit of caffeinated, heedless risk taking. For a generation, risk has been the adrenaline of the nation's economy, the substance that made us all—from the denizens of midtown Manhattan to the residents of Manhattan, Kans.—run a little faster and stay up a little later. Now, with the economy in its 16th month of recession and the markets scythed in half, it seems we've all either switched to decaf or simply lost the taste for risk.

And

As consumers hibernate and investors hoard cash, the economy is withering. This new age of thrift is understandable. But for a recovery to take hold, Americans will need to start taking risks again.

And

Saving cash and building up reserves is a necessary first step to recovery. But eventually the mountain of cash has to be put to work. Last week's sharp market rally was certainly a sign—however fleeting it may turn out to be—that investors are putting money to work again. Retail sales in February provided another hint that purse strings may be loosening. But there's much more work to be done. Ironically, post-bubble periods are frequently great times to start new ventures. The best time to start a dotcom wasn't in 1999 when the IPO market was raging, it was in 2002, when the price of everything associated with the business—office space, programming talent—had plummeted. When Allied Corp. in the late 1980s didn't want to pursue the development of consumer products based on global-positioning-satellite technology, Gary Burrell left, raised $4 million and formed Garmin, which today employs about 7,000 people.

Great solution, just trust Wall Street with that money, think long term, be patriotic even if the malefactors of great wealth do not and are more than happy to wallow in international troughs and then come back to shit on America. Gross, a highly-paid, high profile stooge is just playing his part in the ongoing relaunch project to save Wall Street looters and protect their plunder. We have seen this story already, Americans with dollar signs in their eyes and cash register bells going off in their heads like some bizarre real life Uncle Scrooge cartoon, duped into thinking that they can actually become rich and powerful themselves just like The Donald line up to be fleeced by the flim-flam men with the political juice and insider knowledge as they seek to cash out one more time. Perhaps a final time before the country impoldes inward upon itself. All aided and abetted by the media, the Wall Street cadre occupying Barack Obama's White House, guys like Lawrence Summers and the conniving little twit Tim Geithner whose announcement as the new treasury secretary was greeted by a 6.5 % spike in the DOW, the crack-ho economy got a mainline spike into the arm and knew that the paper pusher inside the administration would ensure them that the game would go on and on. In the end of course, all has been enabled by the bewildered herd of sheeple themselves, brainwashed from birth into the bastardized capitalist system that is already drooling over being able to suck the blood from their grandchildren on account of their greed, stupidity and folly.

As a counter to the mainstream drivel that Gross and Newsweek are peddling as pearls of infinite wisdom I counter with an excerpt from a piece from his month's Harpers. Infinite Debt by Thomas Georghegan discusses the ruinous and usurious effects of the debt based economy and its victims The same ones that Gross and his fellow pocket media hacks are now trying to swindle out of whatever little they may now have in their piggy banks having been badly burned by the existing system that has beggared them and cast them out of jobs and homes in addition to destroying their pensions and 401k retirement plans. From the Harper's piece (which I will be addressing at length in my coming post Usurious Bastards):

What is history, really, but a turf war between manufacturing, labor and the banks? In the United States, we shrank manufacturing. We got rid of labor. Now it's just the banks.

Which is why the middle class is shrinking. Basically, we're all waiters now; we're bowing and scraping and working for the banks. Look closely at any American, and it's even odds that he or she, directly or indirectly, is somehow employed by the "financial services sector," which covers insurance and real estate and financial instruments of any kind. As brokers, lawyers, loan collectors, loan consolidators, secretaries at big investment firms, chauffeurs of private limousines, or even the high-tech types who exist solely to service banks — all of us, millions of us, are part of it, living off it in some way, as three generations ago we lived off manufacturers.

The game is rigged people, and the hit job done on America by the rotten fuckers on Wall Street and their institutionalized system of debt slavery is all that is left, and STILL the banksters on the street and the gangsters in D.C. are doint everything that they can to continue to bleed the silly and naive masses of asses by doing all that is possible to get the debt/consumerism bubble reinflated. In a rare piece of sanity that slipped by the censors and minders of the memory hole a Reuters story, More debt: a curious solution to a credit crisis dared to utter the heresy that:

Indeed, a huge part of the Treasury's economic rescue plan is based on reviving securitization. This is the process by which everything from real estate and auto loans to credit cards and student debt gets repackaged into bonds and is then sold on to investors in a secondary market.

This worked wonders during the boom of the past couple of decades, leading to rapid capital formation that underpinned a huge rise in lending. But when the music stopped, many investors were left looking for an empty chair as these products of financial "innovation" proved ruinously difficult to value.

Given this history, Wray, also a senior fellow at the Levy Economics Institute, said asset-backed bonds are the problem, not the solution. "We need to kill off securitization and go back to banking -- loan officers and underwriting."

Wall Street is a con game, it depends on confidence in order for the moneychangers to book their fees and peddle their bad paper, given the Surge II it's apparent that the entrenched elitists are determined to wage war against any sort of change that Obama may have in mind. Given the first two months of the administration and while being mindful that it's still early, despite some initial guarded optimism I am becoming more and more certain that nothing is changing except the management of the whorehouse. I now find myself in agreement more or less with those progressives who were wary of Obama from the onset, with his government packed with recycled Clinton era swine, the usual assortment of Wall Street and Federal Reserve grifters running fiscal policy and his still stinging kick in the balls from the Israel lobby over the Freeman resignation it only looks like more of the same shit but in a different package. Helicopter Ben's announcement that the Fed would now be buying American debt to save their fucking system, the dollar immediately took a shit and with the coming wave of hyperinflationi as a result of this latest idiocy this story should send a cold chill up the spine of all who are onto what has really been going on as America has been gutted: The US is Facing a Weimar Moment. Read it if you dare.

As Orwell once wrote in the literary classic Animal Farm:

"All animals are equal, some are just more equal than others"

Republican 'free marketers' are unscrupulous and pathologically greedy, they also delight in the trafficking of human misery for profit. It makes them feel empowered. They are like the S.O.B. sitting at the Monopoly table who is not content in owning Boardwalk and Park Place as well as all of the utilities and railroads but also buys Baltic and Mediterranean and loads them up with houses and hotels then squeals with childlike glee when some poor bastard lands on one of them and is driven into bankruptcy. The game of Monopoly is very relevant to life itself in laissez-faire hell, where the rich are able to accumulate property on a rapidly escalating scale and as wealth rapidly increases the less fortunate are driven into bankruptcy with the winner being the monopolists.

This is Laissez-Faire 'free market' Capitalism in its ultimate form, the 'free market' is only truly advantageous and 'free' to those who have the most cash and assets and they are gathered at the expense of the poor who eventually are the losers but hey, that's what it's all about isn't it in the Wall Street Journal's perfect world. Now that the rape of the system has nearly been completed how long is it going to take until there is a realization of just how thoroughly the free market fanatics have cannibalized the country in pursuit of profit? And the denial needs to stop immediately, the existing system has already failed and failed miserably.

Capitalism is eating itself. Like a python slowly trying to digest it's own tail, the economic master plan, the Shock Doctrine has come home now and the sheep are being prepped for yet another shearing, soon they will served up with a side of mint jelly.

It is important to understand that a distinction needs to be made when it comes to capitalism between that which is regulated and the 'free market' aka Lassez Faire strain that the road to hell is paved with. The end result of unregulated capitalism is monopoly of the most extreme sort as well as the redistribution of wealth to those at the top of the class system, I wonder why nobody has ever dubbed this as 'trickle up economics' which is of course exactly what it is. One of history's most important and enduring lessons is that hundreds of thousands must toil in the muck in order to allow one rotten, greedy son of a bitch to have his face displayed on a sphinx. The American middle class are the ones who are forced by their Wall Street pharaohs to build the bricks for the monuments to the super wealthy under increasingly hostile conditions in increasingly dangerous work environments with an increasingly smaller amount of straw.

The establishment after all has a vested interest in the existence of a huge and desperate underclass. The accompanying crime and urban rot helps to breed the necessary fear that justifies increased police powers and surveillance so as to keep the interests of the elite safe and sound while they sleep behind the walls of their gated communities each night. We were swindled by the free market pimps and deregulation pushers, all that it all did was create conditions for monopolies and trusts and consumer gouging. Take an honest look at yourself, are you truly better off today than you were yesterday? Or the day before? Or five years ago?

Well understand one thing.....today is as good as you are going to have it for the rest of your life under this existing rotten system.

We Are All Losers: The system itself is designed to make losers of us all except that extreme few with the means to purchase influence and therefore protection.

rest http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2009/03/inviting-sheep-for-another-shearing.html