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The Fourteen Year Economic Recession

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article44946.html

Mar 24, 2014 - 09:28 PM GMT

By: James_Quinn

“A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men … [W]e have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world—no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.”- Woodrow Wilson

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Walmart Just Revealed How Poor U.S. Shoppers Are

Walmart is no stranger to sensational headlines, but there’s at least one story this week that is just begging to be taken apart. Anyone who thinks “Walmart Just Revealed How Poor Its Customers Are” is an accurate reflection of the facts needs to keep reading.

Because the problem isn’t that Walmart revealed how poor its customers really are, it’s that Walmart revealed how poor U.S. shoppers really are.

The hook here, the news peg, is that Walmart released its annual report and in it, there’s a paragraph that states:

Our business operations are subject to numerous risks, factors and uncertainties, domestically and internationally, which are outside our control … These factors include … changes in the amount of payments made under the Supplement[al] Nutrition Assistance Plan and other public assistance plans, changes in the eligibility requirements of public assistance plans, …

The implication is that Walmart preys on the poor, that the retailer has somehow created poor people by paying low wages. That it relies on government assistance in a way that goes beyond accepting payment from shoppers via government programs. According to Business Insider:

Walmart, for the first time in its annual reports, acknowledges that taxpayer-funded social assistance programs are a significant factor in its revenue and profits. This makes sense, considering that Walmart caters to low-income consumers. But what’s news here is that the company now considers the level of social entitlements given to low-income working and unemployed Americans important enough to underscore it in its cautionary statement.

Not quite.

It’s not the first time Walmart noted that a reduction in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) would hurt business. It may have been the first time that was mentioned in an annual report, but that’s because the reduction took effect during the fiscal year in question.

In November, benefits for a family of four were reduced by $36 a month. Benefits had been increased as part of the Recovery Act in 2009, but Congress allowed the increase to expire on Nov. 1.

An estimated 48 million Americans benefit from SNAP while roughly 80% of U.S. consumers shop at Walmart at some point during the year.

Not all of them use SNAP, but the majority have some kind of budgetary constraint and it’s a number that keeps growing. Ten years ago, roughly 50% of Walmart shoppers cited low prices as the most important reason to shop at Walmart; today that number is 75%, said Andy Murray, Walmart senior vice president, creative, speaking at the Shopper Marketing Summit this week.

Walmart shoppers are particularly sensitive to fluctuations in the price of gas, to small tax increases or to anything that adds another $20 burden to a household in any given week. Budgets are tight and getting tighter all the time, in spite of a slowly recovering economy.

Walmart is hardly the only retailer to be affected by a reduction in SNAP benefits, or to say so in financial documents. The dollar store segment is also vulnerable. Roughly $4 billion in SNAP benefits were vaporized, money that was once spent at U.S. stores, not just at Walmart. This was bad news for shoppers and retailers, across multiple channels.

As one grocery executive said in an online retail forum regarding the issue, “This cut hurts all of our sales, not just Walmart, let me make that clear. The struggle is universal for retailers, and sales are down around 8-10% since the first of the year.”

I’m not a fan of criticizing other reporters or publications, but these headlines are designed to get clicks, to be shared, to fan the flames of outrage. In this case, it’s a false and very misplaced outrage.

Walmart didn’t just reveal how poor its customers really are, it revealed just how poor so many U.S. shoppers are.

Also see

=======

‘I Have To Choose Between Food And Rent’: Meet The McDonald’s Workers Fighting For Fair Wages

The Challenge Of Being Poor At America’s Richest Colleges

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Census Office Survey Scandal Grows as Inflation Stats Faked

By John Crudele The Census Bureau’s Philadelphia office wasn’t just corrupting the nation’s unemployment rate by fabricating data. It was also filing false information about inflation in this country.

Just how large an effect this fraud was having on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) — and consequently the cost of living adjustments for Social Security recipients and others — is not yet known.

Some background: Along with its monthly unemployment survey, the Census Bureau conducts thousands of interviews to figure out what Americans are buying. Once Census determines purchases, the information is turned over to the Labor Department, which then calculates how much prices have increased.

The whole survey is very long, messy and unpopular, both inside government and outside. And it is likely to be changed drastically in the years ahead.

Despite that, the CPI is still the sole determinant for retiree and military pay increases. And it is used by the Federal Reserve, companies and a lot of other organizations that need to determine how fast costs are rising.

I began writing about what was happening in the Philly Census office back in November, when I learned that a data collector named Julius Buckmon had been caught in 2010 falsifying information that went into Labor’s Current Population Survey, which determines the nation’s unemployment rate.

Read the rest here.

http://www.blacklistednews.com/Census_Office_Survey_Scandal_Grows_as_Inflation_Stats_Faked/34072/0/38/38/Y/M.html

Edited by Steven Gaal
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Do you think and disagree with the main stream media in that the USA is experiencing a recession instead of a 'weak' recovery ????? You are having a non-conformity experince and are thus mentally ill. YES YOU ARE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Gaal)

Creativity and Non-Conformity Now listed as a Mental Illness by Psychiatrists

===============

What happens to a society when thinking outside of the box or being righteously enraged about your government going in the wrong direction becomes an excuse to be sedated and re-educated? It seems we don’t have to go too far back in history to find out.

The Soviet Union used new mental illness for political repression. People who didn’t accept the beliefs of the Communist Party developed a new type of schizophrenia. They suffered from the delusion of believing communism was wrong. They were isolated, forcefully medicated, and put through repressive “therapy” to bring them back to sanity.

Now thanks to thought policing by the American Psychiatric Association the latest addition of the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is setting up the dominoes for arbitrary diagnosis of any dissenting individuals.

listed as new mental illnesses are above-average creativity and cynicism. The manual goes on to identify a mental illness called “oppositional defiant disorder” or ODD. Defined as an “ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior,” symptoms include questioning authority, negativity, defiance, argumentativeness, and being easily annoyed.

A Washington Post article observed that, if Mozart were born today, he would be diagnosed with ADD and “medicated into barren normality.” What used to be known as personality traits are now diseases, and of course there are treatments available.

When the last edition of the DSM-IV was published, identifying the symptoms of various illness in children, there was a jump in the medication for children. Some states even have laws that allow protectives agencies to forcibly medicate, and even make it a punishable crime to withhold a prescribed medication.

Beware people with a strong sense of individuality! Though the authors of the manual claim no ulterior motives, labeling freethinking and nonconformity as a mental illness has a lot of potential for abuse. As a weapon in the arsenal for a repressive state, it seems societal reality is morphing into a playbook for autocrats borrowed from a Phillip K. Dick novel.

Inspired by and excerpts taken from:

“Is Free Thinking A Mental Illness?” & “Nonconformity and Freethinking Now Considered Mental Illnesses”

READ THE FOLLOWING LINK == TO BECOME MENTALLY ILL
Edited by Steven Gaal
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Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Union Sundown: The Decline of the American Economy And The Rise of the Bureaucratic Nightmare
===================================================
Butler on Business The unemployment rate is not U3. The rate of inflation is much higher than what is admitted and the jobs reports are not even reporting what they lead you to believe they measure.
see link
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OpEdNews Op Eds 4/4/2014 at 11:02:02
Sleepwalking to Armageddon?
==================
In a just published book that too few Americans will read, All the Presidents' Bankers, Nomi Prins lifts the cover from a century long cooperation and coordination between Wall Street and the White House, stretching back to Teddy Roosevelt in the years just before creation of the Federal Reserve.

As Wall Street veteran Pam Martens explains in a review of the book on her blog, Wall Street on Parade, "Wall Street can collapse, get bailed out by the taxpayers, cause a Great Recession and still call the shots in Washington."

Every American can now see that on account of Wall Street and with the collaboration of successive administrations, the prosperity of millions of Americans has been shattered, perhaps never to be recovered.

Massive unemployment is lied away by not counting the millions who have given up looking for work. Foreclosures roll on. Home sales are plummeting. A generation of young Americans now graduates college with massive debt and no jobs. Or they take the jobs at Wal-Mart that used to be filled by the less educated.

Who go where? Onto welfare, food stamps and unemployment, which many in Congress want to cut. Where does this lead? For the answer, look no further than Wal-Mart's most recent annual report.

It notes: "Our business operations are subject to numerous risks, factors and uncertainties, domestically and internationally, which are outside our control " These factors include " changes in the amount of payments made under the Supplement[al] Nutrition Assistance Plan and other public assistance plans, changes in the eligibility requirements of public assistance plans ""

Wal-Mart's major market is low-income shoppers. The company is acknowledging that public assistance programs are a significant factor in its revenue and profits. Increasingly, Wal-Mart's customers are too poor to shop at Wal-Mart.

The message in Prins' book is that the economic trends, Wall Street practices and federal government collusion of today are in so many ways and so very frighteningly like the years before the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed.

Are we sleepwalking into an economic Armageddon?

It is not the only looming catastrophe. The other is a confrontation with Russia.

Forget the story line from Washington parroted by the national media. The crisis over Ukraine has nothing to do with democracy and freedom. It is about an almost messianic assertion of American "exceptionalism," used as cover by Wall Street for more looting, in this case Ukraine.

Paul Craig Roberts is a former, high security clearance assistant secretary of the Treasury to Ronald Reagan, former editor of the Wall Street Journal and an acknowledged expert on Eastern European and Russian affairs. He is also not widely read. But you want to read his most recent blog.

"The drive to war is blatantly obvious. The lies are obvious, and the entire West is participating, both media and governments" Everywhere in the West the message is the same. 'Putin invaded and annexed Crimea, Putin is determined to rebuild the Soviet Empire, Putin must be stopped'" The extraordinary transparent lie that Russia sent an army into Ukraine and annexed Crimea is now accepted as fact everywhere in the West""

What actually happened is that the elected government of Ukraine backed out of a U.S. deal to join the EU, when many of its citizens understood that was a set-up for "austerity" and the looting of their pensions and assets by Wall Street.

The U.S. organized a coup and now calls the government it installed freedom loving heroes. Nuts. They are Washington puppets -- and Nazi thugs into the bargain -- and they are Wall Street patsies. That government immediately signed off on the Wall Street "aide" package: high interest loans to be paid for by the extraction of the wealth and prosperity of every Ukrainian.

Well, not every. Those parts of Ukraine that were historically a part of Russia went running right back to Russia, in a thoroughly democratic referendum, the kind of self-determination Washington says it supports -- except where Wall Street profits are concerned.

To get Wall Street its way Washington is playing a juvenile game of "Chicken" with Russia, an energy rich, nuclear power, ratcheting up the threat of military action.

Roberts concludes that this entire chain of events looks like the manipulation, cupidity and stupidity that led Europe and the U.S. into World War I and warns of the horrific consequences of another war in Europe -- a nuclear war.

For your own security and safety and that of your family and neighbors, give Fox, CNN and all the rest a rest. Read Prins, Roberts and Martens. Decide for yourself if the nation is sleepwalking to Armageddon

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Retail Tsunami: 16 Major Chains Closing More Stores

http://wealthydebates.com/retail-tsunami-16-major-chains-closing-more-stores/

Housing: One Chart Says it All
by MIKE WHITNEY
unnamed-1-e1395415849753.jpg

As you can see, there’s a pretty close connection between incomes (the green line) and the mortgage purchase applications index. (The people who can afford to buy homes.)

Surprised?

Of course not, because most people assume there’s a relationship between ‘what a person earns’ and his ‘ability to buy a home’. After all, we haven’t always lived in this bizarro credit-addled world where anyone who can sit upright in a chair and sign his name on the dotted line can buy a $450,000 rambler in Orchard Hills. That’s a fairly new development.

And that brings us to the point of this article, which is to show that all the monetary hocus pocus has achieved nothing. The Fed’s Koolaid infusions have been a dead-loss. The market is still flat on its back. Kaput. Which shows, that if you want to fix housing, you have to fix the economy. And if you want to fix the economy; you have to put people back to work and pay them a fair wage. It’s that simple.

So why can’t anyone in Washington figure it out?

(Note: As this article was going to press, the latest “existing home sales” data was released.) According to USA Today:

“Existing home sales slowed again in February, falling to the lowest pace in 19 months.”

Edited by Steven Gaal
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Americans live in matrix of total lies

357424_total%20lies.jpg

Sun Apr 6, 2014 10:23AM GMT
Paul Craig Roberts

The March payroll jobs report released April 4 claims 192,000 new private sector jobs.

Here is what John Williams has to say about the claim:

“The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) deliberately publishes its seasonally-adjusted historical payroll-employment and household-survey (unemployment) data so that the numbers are neither consistent nor comparable with current headline reporting. The upside revisions to the January and February monthly jobs gains, and the relatively strong March payroll showing, reflected nothing more than concealed, favorable shifts in underlying seasonal factors, hidden by the lack of consistent BLS reporting. In like manner, consistent month-to-month changes in the unemployment rate or labor force simply are not knowable, because the BLS cloaks the consistent and comparable numbers.”

Here is what Dave Kranzler has to say: “the employment report is probably the most deceptively fraudulent report produced by the Government.”

As I have pointed out for a decade, the “New Economy” jobs that we were promised in exchange for our manufacturing jobs and tradable professional service jobs that were offshored have never shown up. The transnational corporations and their hired shills among economists lied to us. Not even a jobs report as deceptive and fraudulent as the BLS payroll jobs report can hide the fact that Congress, the White House, and the American people have sat sucking their thumbs while corporations maximized profits for the one percent at the expense of everyone else in the United States.

Let’s look at where the alleged jobs are. The BLS jobs report says that 28,400 jobs were created in March in wholesale and retail sales. March is the month that Macy’s, Sears, JC Penny, Staples, Radio Shack, Office Depot, and other retailers announced combined closings of several thousand stores, but more retail clerks were hired.

The BLS payroll jobs report claims 57,000 jobs in “professional and business services.” Are these jobs for lawyers, accountants, architects, engineers, and managers? No. The combined new jobs for these middle class professional skills totaled 10,400. Employment services accounted for 42,000 of the jobs in “professional and business services” of which temporary help accounted for 28,500.“Education and health services” accounted for 34,000 jobs or which ambulatory and home health care services accounted for 28,000 of the jobs.

The other old standby, waitresses and bartenders, accounted for 30,400 jobs. The number of Americans dependent on food stamps who cannot afford to go out to eat or to purchase a six-pack of beer has almost doubled, but the demand for restaurant meals and bar drinks keeps rising.

There you have it. This is America’s “New Economy.” It the jobs exist at all, they consist of lowly paid, largely part-time employment that fails to produce enough income to prevent the food stamp rolls from doubling.

Without growth in consumer income, there is no growth in aggregate consumer demand. Offshoring jobs also offshores the income associated with the jobs, resulting in the decline in the domestic consumer market. The US transnational corporations, pursuing profits in the short-run, are destroying their long-run consumer base. The transnational corporations are also destroying the outlook for US universities, as it makes no sense to incur large student loan debt when job prospects are poor. The corporations are also destroying US leadership in innovation as US corporations increasingly become marketeers of foreign-made goods and services.

As I predicted in 2004, the US will have a third world work force in 20 years.

The unemployment figures are as deceptive as the employment figures. The headline unemployment rate of 6.7% does not include discouraged workers. When discouraged workers are included among the unemployed, the US rate of unemployment is 3.4 times higher than the announced rate.

How many times has John Williams written his report? How many times have I written this article? Yet the government continues to issue false reports, and the presstitute financial media continues to ask no questions.The US, once a land of opportunity, has been transformed into an aristocratic economy in which income and wealth are concentrated at the very top. The highly skewed concentration at the top is the result of jobs offshoring, which transformed Americans’ salaries and wages into bonuses for executives and capital gains for owners, and financial deregulation, which produced financial collapse and the Federal Reserve’s bailout of “banks too big to fail.” The trillions of dollars of new money created by the Federal Reserve has produced massive inflation of stock prices, making owners even richer.

Sooner or later the dollar’s value will suffer as a result of the massive creation of new dollars. When that occurs, the import-dependent American population will suffer a traumatic drop in living standards. The main cost of the bank bailout has yet to hit.

As I write I cannot think of one thing in the entire areas of foreign and domestic policy that the US government has told the truth about in the 21st century. Just as Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, Iran has no nukes, Assad did not use chemical weapons, and Putin did not invade and annex Crimea, the jobs numbers are fraudulent, the unemployment rate is deceptive, the inflation measures are understated, and the GDP growth rate is overstated. Americans live in a matrix of total lies.

What can Americans do? Elections are pointless. Presidents, Senators, and US Representatives represent the interest groups that provide their campaign funds, not the voters. In two decisions, the Republican Supreme Court has made it legal for corporations to purchase the government. Those who own the government will decide what it does, not those who vote.

All Americans can do is to accept the serfdom imposed on them or take to the streets and stay in the streets despite being clubbed, tasered, arrested, and shot by the police, who protect the power structure, not the public.

In America, nothing is done for the public. But everything is done to the public.

Edited by Steven Gaal
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More Americans Go Hungry Than All But 2 European Nations

Source: Zero Hedge

Since 2007, when the financial crisis touched down across the world, the proportion of people going hungry in Europe has soared, according to the OECD. As Bloomberg’s Niraj Shah notes, the number has doubled in Greece alone from 8.9% in 2007 to almost 18% currently unable to afford food. Across the European Union, the proportion of people going hungry ranges from 4.6% in Germany to over 30% in (ironically) Hungary. However, before one gloats at the weakness in Europe and the cleanest dirty shirt the US pretends to be, at 21.1% of Americans unable to afford food, only Hungary and Estonia are in worst shape… USA USA USA…

20140408_food_0.png

Source: @economistniraj via Bloomberg Briefs

Edited by Steven Gaal
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Two More Victims Of The Retail Apocalypse: Family Dollar And Coldwater Creek
===========
Source: Michael Snyder

Did you know that Family Dollar is closing 370 stores? When I learned of this, I was quite stunned. I knew that retailers that serve the middle class were really struggling right now, but I had no idea that things had gotten so bad for low end stores like Family Dollar. In the post-2008 era, dollar stores had generally been one of the few bright spots in the retail industry. As millions of Americans fell out of the middle class, they were looking to stretch their family budgets as far as possible, and dollar stores helped them do that. It would be great if we could say that the reason why Family Dollar is doing so poorly is because average Americans have more money now and have resumed shopping at retailers that target the middle class, but that is not happening. Rather, as you will see later in this article, things just continue to get even worse for Americans at the low end of the income scale.

I was also surprised to learn that Coldwater Creek is closing all of their stores...

Women's clothing retailer Coldwater Creek Inc. on Friday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after failing to find a buyer said it plans to close its stores by early summer.

Coldwater Creek joins other retailers to seek protection from creditors in recent months as consumers keep a lid on spending.

The company said it plans to wind down its operations over the coming months and begin going-out-of-business sales in early May, before the traditionally busy Mother's Day weekend.

Coldwater Creek, which has 365 stores and employs about 6,000 people, has five stores in Maryland.

I remember browsing through a Coldwater Creek with my wife and mother-in-law just last year. At the time, my mother-in-law was excited about getting one of their catalogs. But now Coldwater Creek is going out of business, and all that will be left of that store is a big, ugly, empty space.

Of course the fact that a couple of major retailers are closing stores is nothing new. This kind of thing happens year after year.

But what we are witnessing right now is really quite startling. So many retailers are closing so many stores that it is being called a "retail apocalypse". In a previous article entitled "This Is What Employment In America Really Looks Like…", I detailed how major U.S. retailers have already announced the closing of thousands of stores so far this year. If the economy really was "getting better", this should not be happening.

So why are so many stores closing?

Well, the truth is that it is because the middle class is dying. With each passing day, more Americans lose their place in the middle class and fall into poverty. The following is an excerpt from the story of one man that this has happened to. His recent piece in the Huffington Post was entitled "Next Friday, I'll Be Living In My Car"...

For the past 13 years, I've mostly been doing facility management in several locations across the state. After the position turned into more of a sales role, they laid me off. Since then, I've been looking to find any type of work. I've applied for food stamps, and I'm waiting for that. I'm mostly eating soup from a food pantry.

I've been on several interviews -- second, third, fourth interviews -- and just haven't been able to land a job for whatever reason. I definitely have the qualifications and the experience. Last week, I had a job offer that I thought was secure, and we were talking my work schedule. They decided to call me back and go with an assistant rather than a manager.

For a number of applications, I've dumbed down my resume. I don't even go with a resume sometimes, just because I don't want them to know that I'm educated and have a master's degree. It shoots me in the foot. They don't want me because they don't think I'm going to stay. I don't blame them. I was making six figures at $60-70 an hour. Now, I'm looking for a $10 an hour job.

There are millions upon millions of Americans that can identify with what that man is going through.

Once upon a time, they were living comfortable middle class lifestyles, but now they will take any jobs that they can get.

Just today I came across a statistic that shows the massive shift that is happening in this country. A decade ago, the number of women working outnumbered the number of women on food stamps by more than a 2 to 1 margin. But now the number of women on food stamps actually exceeds the number of women that have jobs.

Wow.

How could things have changed so rapidly over the course of just one decade?

And sadly, things continue to go downhill. Every day in America, more good jobs are being sent out of the country or are being replaced by technology. I really like how James Altucher described this trend the other day...

Technology, outsourcing, a growing temp staffing industry, productivity efficiencies, have all replaced the middle class.

The working class. Most jobs that existed 20 years ago aren’t needed now. Maybe they never were needed. The entire first decade of this century was spent with CEOs in their Park Avenue clubs crying through their cigars, “how are we going to fire all this dead weight?”. 2008 finally gave them the chance. “It was the economy!” they said. The country has been out of a recession since 2009. Four years now. But the jobs have not come back. I asked many of these CEOs: did you just use that as an excuse to fire people, and they would wink and say, “let’s just leave it at that.”

I’m on the board of directors of a temp staffing company with one billion dollars in revenues. I can see it happening across every sector of the economy. Everyone is getting fired. Everyone is toilet paper now.

Flush.

There is so little loyalty in corporate America these days. If you work for a major corporation, you could literally lose your job at any moment. And you can be sure that there is someone above you that is trying to figure out a way to accomplish the tasks that you currently perform much more cheaply and much more efficiently.

Most big corporations don't care if you are personally successful or if you are able to take care of your family. What they want is to get as much out of you as possible for as little money as possible.

This is a big reason why 62 percent of all Americans make $20 or less an hour at this point.

The quality of our jobs is going down, but the cost of living just keeps going up. Just look at what is happening to food prices. For a detailed examination of this, please see my previous article entitled "Why Meat Prices Are Going To Continue Soaring For The Foreseeable Future".

As the middle class slowly dies, less people are able to afford to buy homes. Mortgage originations at major U.S. banks have fallen to a record low, and the percentage of Americans that live in "high-poverty neighborhoods" is rising rapidly...

An estimated 12.4 million Americans live in economically devastated neighborhoods, according to American Community Survey data collected from 2008 to 2012. That's an 11 percent jump from the previous survey, conducted from 2007 to 2011. Even more startling, it's a 72 percent increase in the population of high-poverty neighborhoods since the 2000 Census.

If nothing is done about the long-term trends that are slowly strangling the middle class to death, all of this will just be the beginning.

We will see millions more Americans lose their jobs, millions more Americans lose their homes and millions more Americans living in poverty.

The United States is being fundamentally transformed, and very few people are doing much of anything to stand in the way of this transformation. Decades of incredibly foolish decisions are starting to catch up with us, and unless something dramatic is done right away, all of these problems will soon get much, much worse.

Edited by Steven Gaal
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Glaring Q.E. Failure Spotted - Money Velocity Is Falling Rapidly

Interest-Rates / Quantitative Easing Apr 16, 2014 - 04:21 PM GMT

By: Jim_Willie_CB

=================================

Sometimes pictures are far more effective in communicating an important point. They are extremely effective in undermining respect and confidence, when in the cartoon format. A sequence of graphics struck the cognitive circuits recently. Long explanations will not serve well. The US Federal Reserve has been printing money since 2011 to cover USGovt debt securities in a frenetic manner. They have lost control. They call it stimulus, when it is actually the opposite. It does assist the speculators with nearly zero cost money to borrow, but one must be a club member to win loan grants.

The Quantitative Easing programs are deceptive. When the program was initially announced, the Jackass claimed it would be part of an endless sequence. With QE1 and QE2 and Operation Twist and QE3, following the failed trial balloon called Taper Talk, it is quite clear to anyone with an active brain stem and absent rose colored glasses that the USFed is caught in a trap called QE to Infinity. It is not stimulative. Instead, the uncontrollable bond monetization causes capital destruction. It causes economic degradation. It causes lost jobs and vanished income. It is a gigantic wet blanket to smother and destroy the USEconomy slowly, amidst unending propaganda. QE is the device that will result in Systemic Failure, which is already flashing signals of its arrival.

MONEY VELOCITY FALLING RAPIDLY

Money Velocity continues to fall rapidly in both the USEconomy and that of Canada, reaching 50-year lows in the Untied States. The indication is failure in monetary policy, as hyper inflation has killed capital on an extensive basis. The capital destruction is in its fourth year, probably having reached critical mass. Compared and contrasted with fast rising money supply, the systemic failure is obvious to conclude. The exception is to morons, Wall Street junkies, Big Bank criminal elite, and USGovt hacks. The fast decline in Money Velocity means that it is not moving in the body economic. The reason is simple. The blood system is contaminated with the USDollar, a toxic currency with no backing in a hard asset. The new money is toxic currency under phenomenal debasement by its own steward, the USFed itself. They redouble their harmful policy instead of abandoning it.

qe-failure_image002_0000.jpg

The Money Velocity picture is not pretty. The declining rate has broken lows set 50 years ago. Technically, the velocity of money is the frequency at which one unit of currency is used to purchase domestically produced goods and services within a given time period, like an inventory cycle time. In other words, it is the number of times one dollar is spent to buy goods and services per unit of time. If the velocity of money is increasing, then more transactions are occurring between individuals in an economy. The result would be that growth (as measured in GDP) should be rising. With falling velocity of money, then fewer transactions are occurring and a recession is indicated. Such is the present case in astonishing rapid deterioration. Consumers and business are holding firm their money rather than investing it, as they see poor prospects. New capital formation is not occurring inside the USEconomy, or pitifully little. Debts are being dissolved, usually in default. It should be noted that the velocity of money has also been falling in the EU and Japan. The entire global economy is in recession, the pathogenesis shared.

DESTRUCTION OF CAPITAL

The claim that the QE bond monetization is stimulus is pure propaganda, and could not be further from the truth. The claim disguises the nature of the hidden Wall Street bailout, which is to cover their worthless mortgage bonds, and to cover all manner of derivatives, in addition to the obvious coverage of USTreasury Bond sales. Nobody wants the USGovt bonds anymore, except for Belgium operating as hidey hole on behalf of the Euro Central Bank, and for Japan operating as the usual lackey servant. The claim of stimulus is 180 degrees wrong. The bond monetization is pure unsterilized monetary inflation, free money shoved into the system without offset. To be sure, Bernanke had a machine to produce money at no cost, except that like with acid it ruins capital. The result is pure inflation, and extreme motivation for the entire world to take on hedge positions with energy, metals, farmland, and more in order to protect themselves from the ruin of money. The effect is felt as a rising cost structure, felt across the world, and thus shrinking profit margins for the entire global business sector.

As businesses realize the lost profitability, they shut down and retire their capital. They turn idle their factor machinery, their design workstations, their office computers, their transportation vehicles, their company buildings and offices. The destruction of capital is the ugliest dirty secret behind the official New Normal of central bank monetary policy. They are killing the system, so as to avoid liquidating the big banks. By refusing to take the proper capitalism path in liquidating failed corporate structures, they have instead chosen to kill capital, force income engines to the sidelines, generate capital formation in other nations (like the East & Asia), and destroy the USEconomy. The US and West has forgotten capitalism and embraced socialism with a fascist twist.

RAMPANT MONETARY GROWTH

Contrast the declining Money Velocity with fast rising Money Supply growth (presented in March). The conclusion is both galloping economic recession and systemic failure, hardly a reward. Yet it continues without interruption, only the promise of interruption. The systemic failure and breakdown is upon us, the evidence stacking up, the message no longer escapable. The two charts back to back make the point convincingly. New money is wrecking the financial structures and economic systems by destroying capital. The USFed balance sheet is well over $3 trillion, and continues to grow. The new money is going largely in a hidden Wall Street bailout of their bonds and derivatives. The USFed is a grand xxxx, as their QE volume is growing, not tapering. They are using proxies and back doors, in addition to airborne dirigibles like the Interest Rate Swap contract. Like with the Hindenburg, the floating monsters will explode someday. The growth in money supply is frightening and alarming, evidence of the wrecked capital and wrecked system. Many have called the Jackass a lunatic and alarmist, but they seem incapable to explain the fast rise in monetary base, yet fast decline in money velocity. Monetary policy is a failure. The fiat paper money is toxic. The big banks are insolvent. The global franchise system of central banks should be shut down, except they control the governments, control the finance ministries, control the central banks, control the regulators, and control the militaries.

qe-failure_image004.gif

LOST CRITICAL MASS IN INDUSTRY

It is very confusing that money velocity is falling fast, yet central banks are creating new money very rapidly. Imagine a Ferrari or Lamborghini race car spinning its gears, burning its engine out, running out of oil, making no movement. It aint working, started by Alan Greenspan, amplified by Benjamin Bernanke, and to be continued by Janet Yellen. They are stuck with failed monetary policy, and cannot alter the destructive course. The Jackass has maintained that a critical error was committed by granting China the Most Favored Nation status for trade. It was actually a fatal error. The industrial investment is taking place in Asia, led by China. Wall Street and the USGovt leadership at the time, under President Clinton and Robert Rubin, betrayed the nation. They leased gold from the Chinese, in order to perpetuate the fiat paper USDollar regime. They deployed the lunatic Rubin Doctrine, to wreck next year for a few more tomorrows. In doing so, the Chinese benefited from $23 billion in foreign direct investment in the space of a mere two to three years. But the blowback was fatal. The USEconomy lost its industrial critical mass, and has inadequate traction from monetary policy in accommodation. It still has some industry, but not enough. The ultra-low interest rate makes borrowing costs low, but grotesquely inadequate new capital formation has taken place in the USEconomy. It is being done in Asia. Worse, the new industrial parks are springing up across the US landscape, operated by Chinese industrial masters. The QE is not stimulating the USEconomy because 1) the US lacks critical mass industrially, 2) the regulator burden and corporate tax burden and ObamaCare burden are too great, and 3) the nation is too busy with court cases against the big banks and waging war against fabricated enemies. This is Game Over !!!

As David Chapman points out, "It all seems counter-intuitive that the velocity of money should be falling even as the ECB, the Fed, the BOJ, and the Bank of Canada have been maintaining low interest rates for years in order to encourage borrowing and keep the cost of money low. The central banks have also pumped billions of dollars into the economy through QE and other stimulative measures. The result has been an explosion in the monetary base, a sharp rise in M1 but lower growth for M2 and sluggish M3. The economies are weighed down with debt, banks are reluctant to lend, consumers and corporations are unwilling to borrow. The money instead has been used for speculation, primarily going into risk assets such as the stock market. Corporations instead of investing in new plants and investment are sitting on cash hoards or buying back their own shares. Both are non-productive."

qe-failure_image006.jpg

CANADA DITTO ON FAILURE

The Jackass howls in laughter at the claim that Canada is different, an independent nation, a refuge of wiser leadership, the Great White North with more integrity. What nonsense! Canada is in the US pocket, and has been for a very long time. The arguments that Canada is different or better or free from gold corruption are truly baseless and stupid. The big Canadian banks short gold with Wall Street banks, and have been doing so for a long time. See the Scotia Mocatta alliance with JPMorgan in recent months. The Canadian Govt efficiently vacated all their gold in the 1980 and 1990 decades. It was probably stolen in part by Mulroney, just like as Bush & Clinton & Rubin stole the US gold. See the hidden brisk activity at Barrick Gold, where the ex-prime minister sat on the Board of Directors. Pay close attention to the Evergreen gold contracts by Barrick, which never force under contract the delivery of gold, only the sale under dubious specious contracts. Then the big Canadian banks are deeply committed in the Wall Street and London derivative entanglements, just like the big US banks. All their big banks are hollow reeds, just like in the Untied States. Lastly, the Canadian stock exchanges engage in rampant naked shorting of the mining stocks, not by those who wish to preserve the fiat currency system, but rather by the investment banks that fund the capital requirements for the mining firms themselves. They sell more shares than granted on finance deals. The most disturbing gold factor from Canada in the last year has been the collusion of Scotia Mocatta with JPMorgan in the provision of gold bullion. They have been offered some special deal for the future, but that future will include a charred landscape and devils as warlords. Scotia Mocatta is in Satan's service at the Wall Street altar. The old formula still holds: CANADA = UNITED STATES / 10 (just like always). The Jackass expects an extreme conflict very soon, as Canada is far more a Chinese commercial colony than the Untied States. My expectation is that Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver will soon begin marching to a different drummer out of Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. A big hat tip to David Chapman for his recent article (CLICK HERE) on the Money Velocity subject, where the graphic was obtained.

BLACK HOLE DYNAMICS

Bernanke was correct. The cost of newly printed electronic money is zero. But he left out the other half of the statement, since he is a lousy economist. The value of the newly printed electronic money is zero. Due to his pathetic education, Bernanke overlooked or fails to comprehend the effect of hyper monetary inflation. Endless spigots of new fiat money are not the salvation of a system, but rather a cornucopia of new capital formation can lift the system in an effective legitimate manner. The unchecked inflation results in the destruction of capital, the wreckage of income producing engines, the extreme ruin of jobs. The new money goes down a drain. The curvature to the drain is defined by toxic bonds even as the inflection is marked by harmful derivatives. The stubborn behavior of the central bank franchise system operations, their deep collusion, their phony patches to the bond structures, their self-dealing $23 trillion in near zero interest loans to themselves, their waged war to protect the King Dollar regime, it is all destructive. Sooner or later the people and madding crowds will awaken, surely very late in the end game.

Edited by Steven Gaal
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H-1B loophole may help California utility offshore IT jobs It is the second major utility in a year to announce IT outsourcing
April 17, 2014 05:41 PM ET

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9247744/H_1B_loophole_may_help_California_utility_offshore_IT_jobs_?taxonomyId=72&pageNumber=1

Computerworld - Southern California Edison is outsourcing part of its IT operations, and the jobs may be going overseas.

Edison (SCE) is working with Infosys, which is based in India, and iGate, a New Jersey-based company with major offshore centers, as it prepares to lay off workers, according to U.S. government records.

SCE said it is still actively evaluating outsourcing vendors, "and expects to select vendor partners by mid-year." It didn't say which vendors are in consideration.

Northeast Utilities, last fall, announced it was outsourcing part of its IT operations to Infosys and another Indian-based IT services giant, Tata Consultancy Services, and cut about 200 jobs. SCE isn't disclosing how many jobs may be cut, but the Los Angeles Times reports the number is in the hundreds.

NU employees have been training their replacements as a condition of their severance, a process that will likely occur at SCE, if it goes forward with its plan.

Edison said it expects to pick a vendor by mid-year.

The evidence pointing to offshore outsourcing, and to Infosys and iGate as at least two of the vendors, is based on government records. Edison runs some of its IT operations in Irwindale, Calif. As part of the hiring process for H-1B visa-holding workers, outsourcing vendors file a Labor Condition Application (LCA), a U.S. document with salary information and the address of the visa workers' worksite. There were as many as 130 LCAs filed by Infosys alone in the past year for the Irwindale address associated with SCE's offices, according to a large sampling of those filings collected by visa data analysis firm MyVisaJobs.

H-1B rules make it relatively easy for offshore outsourcing companies to replace U.S. workers, despite a rule to curb it.

If H-1B workers comprise 15% or more of an employer's workforce, the employer is classified as "H-1B dependent" by the U.S. government and subject to additional requirements. All the major offshore firms, including Infosys and iGate, are H-1B dependent.

H-1B dependent firms are required to take "good faith steps to recruit U.S. workers for the job for which the alien worker is sought" as well as to "offer the job to any U.S. worker who applies and is equally or better qualified than the H-1B worker," according to the government rules. But there's an easy workaround.

H-1B-dependent employers are exempted from U.S. worker protection rules if the H-1B worker is paid at least $60,000 or has a master's degree.

An annual salary of $60,000 is low for an IT professional, especially in the high-wage region of Southern California. The National Association of Colleges and Employers reported this month that the average starting salary for new college graduates -- nationally -- in computer science was $61,741.

The offshore companies, iGate and Infosys, both pay wages of more than $60,000 a year and therefore aren't obligated to meet the H-1B dependent rules.

Ron Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, said H-1B-dependent firms are required to make three attestations: They must make a good faith recruitment of American workers prior to filing an LCA; they can't replace their American workers with H-1B workers; and they can't replace American workers employed with a client's company.

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