Serpo
16th July 2012, 04:32 PM
Elites Bilk Populace through Manipulation of Currency, Interest Rates and Precious Metals
J.T. Waldron
The mechanisms for transferring wealth from the majority to the elite involve a massive conspiracy to deceive with the primary goal of getting all to jump into tangled heaps of collapsing markets.
Starting with the currency market, the Federal Reserve responds to increased public scrutiny and pending audits by posting a study extolling the virtues of quantitative easing to keep high prices for the stock market. As reported by CNBC, the Federal Reserve claims that stock market prices woud be 50% lower without the Federal Reserve. The question should be, "So what? Do the prices accurately reflect the value of the stocks or not? " This inflation is fueled by the misconception that the price of stocks somehow reflect the state of the economy. Stocks from companies that rely on cheap labor overseas, downsizing, consolidation, liquidation - anything that could dismantle the domestic labor force.
Keeping news pundits with ample filler on their tele-prompters, one can often hear the excuse du jour for why indexes have slipped on any given day. This becomes its own clever PR technique suggesting concerns with the war on terror, public trends less favorable to investors, or whatever the desired suggestion is laid out for those who've bought into the system.
In the name of saving the market from dismal price performance on behalf of a handful of investors, U.S. currency has incurred a 97% loss in purchasing power since the Federal Reserve's formation in 1913.
The Federal Reserve is directly accountable for an average of 10% inflation in the last 10 years. The result is a population indirectly taxed through the reduction of real purchasing power, especially among those for whom purchasing power actually means something. They are robbed to please an elite handful of investors depending upon inflated stock prices.
But that is only one avenue for bilking the public. Apparently, interest rates were manipulated to draw more unwitting families and individuals into financial traps like various credit lines and mortgages. As a Barclay's employee reported to the New York Federal Reserve, “Our feeling is that Libors are again becoming rather unrealistic and do not reflect the true cost of borrowing.”.
There was nothing ambiguous about what was communicated by the Barclay employee to the New York Fed: “Where I would be able to borrow in the interbank market … without question it would be higher than the rate I’m actually putting in.”
Libor serves as a benchmark interest rate for trillions of dollars worth of loans to consumers and corporations.
Recollections of Geithner's handling of interest rate-fixing are no different from skilled bureaucracies at all municipal levels - make sure there is one memo or piece of paper to pull out of your ass for culpable deniability. A sincere effort to restore credibility to the markets would have seen Geithner demanding an end to the practice, stating the implications for fraud at this scale, and threats to go public. The staid approach in itself suggests that systemic deception is the norm, not the exception.
As much as 800 trillion dollars of financial products were were initially valued based on Libor rates. The consistent pattern was to present lower interest rates to sell more loans and financial products. This makes the market so inefficient, there is no reliance in determining the value of these debt instruments.
Some analysts, like Bruce Kastling, make the claim that consumers enjoyed initial lower rates and, because they entered at a lower rate, they have no claim.
How many people would have never qualified for or purchased mortgages or consumer loans had the cost truly reflected the market? Setting aside the folly of variable interest rate loans, illegal rescission of various credit lines, and extreme interest rate hikes, what about the effects from a massive fraud of this scale on the economy?
How many times have vast market corrections induced default and foreclosure among those who didn't see it coming? Are we to blame the victim for not anticipating huge market volatility that results from mass conspiracy to commit fraud? Probably not.
And what's in store for those who choose precious metals as a means of protecting real purchasing power? Are those investing in gold going to see an accurate reflection of their wealth over time?
According to Ned Taylor-Leland, an investment director at Cheviot, "like interest rates, gold and silver reflect the true value of money the same way interest rates do."
"It is effectively an intervention in two ways; one would be the fact that for central banks, gold and silver going up doesn't make their currency look any good, and secondly a number of the big commercial banks have very large short positions which they like to manage and make easy money from."
Under the guise of a safe haven for value, smaller investors are finding their prices subject to an elite group of investors corrupting market accuracy in exchange for speculative profits and the concerted effort to keep the value of the U.S. dollar artificially high in the wake of massive Bernanke-style currency dumps.
These conspiracies to deceive the public should open renewed dialog over U.S. taxpayer funded bailouts for institutions hiding behind the fascist concept of "too big to fail". Bailouts are another example of how the majority is bilked into thinking they are somehow supporting the saviors of capitalism when they are actually handing more wealth over to the criminal elite.
This whole system relying on the "magic of the market place" needs to be dismantled. Here are some additional statistics indicating this mass exodus of wealth from the majority to the criminal elite from an earlier article by J.D. Sayles:
#1 - The “corporate-tax-percentage” of all federal revenue plummeted from 32% to7% since 1960.
#2 - Two out of three U.S. corporations paid no federal taxes from 1998-2005 on sales of $2.5 trillion
#3 - Tax rates for the wealthiest plummeted from 91% to 36% - which goes far lower with loopholes. All of which combined to cause a collapse in tax revenues from these sectors. Our revenue this past decade was about $41 trillion. Had we received just an additional 10% over this time period we could have our debt reduced by: $4.1 trillion
#4 - Multi-Billion dollar corporate subsidies have doubled over the past decade to over 2000 programs. Energy subsidies cost roughly $200 billion the past 20 years and farm subsidies over the same period of time cost taxpayers roughly $300 billion more: $500 billion
#5 - Tax-payer bailouts for bankers, who provide 40% of all campaign donations: $700 billion
#6 - More than one trillion tax dollars have been wasted on wars, subsidizing the corporate war machine with another $2 trillion predicted in future commitments resulting from these wars: $1.167 trillion plus $45 billion for aid to repair the destruction that we caused.
#7 - Trillions of dollars were admittedly "misplaced" by the Pentagon, subsidizing the corporate war machine: $2.3 trillion
#8 - Billions of tax dollars given in foreign “aid”, subsidizing the corporate war machine: $200 billion
#9 - Trillions of dollars in salaries and bonuses for the political/corporate elite the past few decades
#10 - The corporate elite (top 1%) own almost 50% of America’s wealth and 23% of America’s income. The last time these numbers happened were as we exited the "Guilded Age", the collapse of the stock market in 1929 and entered into the age of "The Great Depression". Yet they push for more...
#11 - Politicians make fortunes legislating to the gain of their personal corporate stock portfolios
#12 - Politicians make fortunes in the political after-life with corporate lobbying income
#13 - An unfunded big PHRMA bill (03 modernization act) cost taxpayers another: $534 billion
#14 - Due to market manipulations, pensions lost: $3.3 trillion
#15 - Small investors and 401ks invested in the stock market lost: $9.3 trillion
#16 - In addition to 3 million foreclosures, homeowners lost in home equity: $9 trillion
http://weeklyintercept.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/elites-bilk-populace-through.html
J.T. Waldron
The mechanisms for transferring wealth from the majority to the elite involve a massive conspiracy to deceive with the primary goal of getting all to jump into tangled heaps of collapsing markets.
Starting with the currency market, the Federal Reserve responds to increased public scrutiny and pending audits by posting a study extolling the virtues of quantitative easing to keep high prices for the stock market. As reported by CNBC, the Federal Reserve claims that stock market prices woud be 50% lower without the Federal Reserve. The question should be, "So what? Do the prices accurately reflect the value of the stocks or not? " This inflation is fueled by the misconception that the price of stocks somehow reflect the state of the economy. Stocks from companies that rely on cheap labor overseas, downsizing, consolidation, liquidation - anything that could dismantle the domestic labor force.
Keeping news pundits with ample filler on their tele-prompters, one can often hear the excuse du jour for why indexes have slipped on any given day. This becomes its own clever PR technique suggesting concerns with the war on terror, public trends less favorable to investors, or whatever the desired suggestion is laid out for those who've bought into the system.
In the name of saving the market from dismal price performance on behalf of a handful of investors, U.S. currency has incurred a 97% loss in purchasing power since the Federal Reserve's formation in 1913.
The Federal Reserve is directly accountable for an average of 10% inflation in the last 10 years. The result is a population indirectly taxed through the reduction of real purchasing power, especially among those for whom purchasing power actually means something. They are robbed to please an elite handful of investors depending upon inflated stock prices.
But that is only one avenue for bilking the public. Apparently, interest rates were manipulated to draw more unwitting families and individuals into financial traps like various credit lines and mortgages. As a Barclay's employee reported to the New York Federal Reserve, “Our feeling is that Libors are again becoming rather unrealistic and do not reflect the true cost of borrowing.”.
There was nothing ambiguous about what was communicated by the Barclay employee to the New York Fed: “Where I would be able to borrow in the interbank market … without question it would be higher than the rate I’m actually putting in.”
Libor serves as a benchmark interest rate for trillions of dollars worth of loans to consumers and corporations.
Recollections of Geithner's handling of interest rate-fixing are no different from skilled bureaucracies at all municipal levels - make sure there is one memo or piece of paper to pull out of your ass for culpable deniability. A sincere effort to restore credibility to the markets would have seen Geithner demanding an end to the practice, stating the implications for fraud at this scale, and threats to go public. The staid approach in itself suggests that systemic deception is the norm, not the exception.
As much as 800 trillion dollars of financial products were were initially valued based on Libor rates. The consistent pattern was to present lower interest rates to sell more loans and financial products. This makes the market so inefficient, there is no reliance in determining the value of these debt instruments.
Some analysts, like Bruce Kastling, make the claim that consumers enjoyed initial lower rates and, because they entered at a lower rate, they have no claim.
How many people would have never qualified for or purchased mortgages or consumer loans had the cost truly reflected the market? Setting aside the folly of variable interest rate loans, illegal rescission of various credit lines, and extreme interest rate hikes, what about the effects from a massive fraud of this scale on the economy?
How many times have vast market corrections induced default and foreclosure among those who didn't see it coming? Are we to blame the victim for not anticipating huge market volatility that results from mass conspiracy to commit fraud? Probably not.
And what's in store for those who choose precious metals as a means of protecting real purchasing power? Are those investing in gold going to see an accurate reflection of their wealth over time?
According to Ned Taylor-Leland, an investment director at Cheviot, "like interest rates, gold and silver reflect the true value of money the same way interest rates do."
"It is effectively an intervention in two ways; one would be the fact that for central banks, gold and silver going up doesn't make their currency look any good, and secondly a number of the big commercial banks have very large short positions which they like to manage and make easy money from."
Under the guise of a safe haven for value, smaller investors are finding their prices subject to an elite group of investors corrupting market accuracy in exchange for speculative profits and the concerted effort to keep the value of the U.S. dollar artificially high in the wake of massive Bernanke-style currency dumps.
These conspiracies to deceive the public should open renewed dialog over U.S. taxpayer funded bailouts for institutions hiding behind the fascist concept of "too big to fail". Bailouts are another example of how the majority is bilked into thinking they are somehow supporting the saviors of capitalism when they are actually handing more wealth over to the criminal elite.
This whole system relying on the "magic of the market place" needs to be dismantled. Here are some additional statistics indicating this mass exodus of wealth from the majority to the criminal elite from an earlier article by J.D. Sayles:
#1 - The “corporate-tax-percentage” of all federal revenue plummeted from 32% to7% since 1960.
#2 - Two out of three U.S. corporations paid no federal taxes from 1998-2005 on sales of $2.5 trillion
#3 - Tax rates for the wealthiest plummeted from 91% to 36% - which goes far lower with loopholes. All of which combined to cause a collapse in tax revenues from these sectors. Our revenue this past decade was about $41 trillion. Had we received just an additional 10% over this time period we could have our debt reduced by: $4.1 trillion
#4 - Multi-Billion dollar corporate subsidies have doubled over the past decade to over 2000 programs. Energy subsidies cost roughly $200 billion the past 20 years and farm subsidies over the same period of time cost taxpayers roughly $300 billion more: $500 billion
#5 - Tax-payer bailouts for bankers, who provide 40% of all campaign donations: $700 billion
#6 - More than one trillion tax dollars have been wasted on wars, subsidizing the corporate war machine with another $2 trillion predicted in future commitments resulting from these wars: $1.167 trillion plus $45 billion for aid to repair the destruction that we caused.
#7 - Trillions of dollars were admittedly "misplaced" by the Pentagon, subsidizing the corporate war machine: $2.3 trillion
#8 - Billions of tax dollars given in foreign “aid”, subsidizing the corporate war machine: $200 billion
#9 - Trillions of dollars in salaries and bonuses for the political/corporate elite the past few decades
#10 - The corporate elite (top 1%) own almost 50% of America’s wealth and 23% of America’s income. The last time these numbers happened were as we exited the "Guilded Age", the collapse of the stock market in 1929 and entered into the age of "The Great Depression". Yet they push for more...
#11 - Politicians make fortunes legislating to the gain of their personal corporate stock portfolios
#12 - Politicians make fortunes in the political after-life with corporate lobbying income
#13 - An unfunded big PHRMA bill (03 modernization act) cost taxpayers another: $534 billion
#14 - Due to market manipulations, pensions lost: $3.3 trillion
#15 - Small investors and 401ks invested in the stock market lost: $9.3 trillion
#16 - In addition to 3 million foreclosures, homeowners lost in home equity: $9 trillion
http://weeklyintercept.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/elites-bilk-populace-through.html