China Is Crashing … As Predicted

Posted on March 7, 2014 by WashingtonsBlog

Big Bubble Brutally Bursting Brings Bankruptcies & Bond Busts

The head of China’s sovereign wealth fund noted in 2009: “both China and America are addressing bubbles by creating more bubbles”.
He’s right …
Global credit excess is worse than before the 2008 crash.
The U.S. and Japan have been easing like crazy, but – as Zero Hedge notes  – China has been much worse:

 Here is just the change in the past five years:

You read that right: in the past five years the total assets on US bank books have risen by a paltry $2.1 trillion while over the same period, Chinese bank assets have exploded by an unprecedented $15.4 trillion hitting a gargantuan CNY147 trillion or an epic $24 trillion – some two and a half times the GDP of China!
Putting the rate of change in perspective, while the Fed was actively pumping $85 billion per month into US banks for a total of $1 trillion each year, in just the trailing 12 months ended September 30, Chinese bank assets grew by a mind-blowing $3.6 trillion!
Here is how Diapason’s Sean Corrigan observed this epic imbalance in liquidity creation:

Total Chinese banking assets currently stand at some CNY147 trillion, around 2 ½ times GDP. As such, they have doubled in the past four years of increasingly misplaced investment and frantic real estate speculation, adding the equivalent of 140% of average GDP – or, in dollars, $12.5 trillion – to the books. For comparison, over the same period, US banks have added just less than $700 billion, 4.4% of average GDP, 18 times less than their Chinese counterparts – and this in a period when the predominant trend has been for the latter to do whatever it takes to keep commitments off their balance sheets and lurking in the ‘shadows’!
Indeed, the increase in Chinese bank assets during that breakneck quadrennium is equal to no less than seven-eighths of the total outstanding assets of all FDIC-insured institutions! It also compares to 30% of Eurozone bank assets.

Truly epic flow numbers, and just as unsustainable in the longer-run.

And here:

So what’s the problem?
Well, the world’s most prestigious financial agency – the central banks’ central bank, called the Bank of International Settlements or “BIS”  –  has long criticized the Fed and other central banks for blowing bubbles.  The World Bank and top economists agree.  So do many others.
As such, it was easy for us to predict a crash in China when the bubble collapses.
We argued in 2009 that China’s period of easy credit was analogous to America’s monetary easing starting in 2001 … and Rome’s in 11 B.C.
We noted in 2009 and against in 2011 that China is suffering from a lot of the same malaises as the American economy, including corruption, crony capitalism, and failure to disclose bad debt.
In 2010, we asked “When Will China’s Bubble Burst?”

China’s $23 Trillion Dollar Credit Bubble Is Bursting

International Business Times noted last year that China’s debt-laden steel industry was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Quartz reported in December that a huge coal company called Liansheng Resources Group declared bankruptcy with 30 billion yuan ($5 billion) in debt.
Chinese Business Wisdom argues (via China Gaze) that waves of bankruptcies are striking in 10 Chinese industries: (1) shipbuilding; (2) iron and steel: (3) LED lighting; (4) furniture; (5) real estate development; (6) cargo shipping; (7) trust and financial institutions; (8) financial management; (9) private equity; and (10) group buying.
AP notes today:

Chinese authorities have allowed the country’s first corporate bond default, inflicting losses on small investors in a painful step toward making its financial system more market-oriented.
A Shanghai manufacturer of solar panels paid only part of 90 million yuan ($15 million) in interest [it owed] …
Until now, Beijing has bailed out troubled companies to preserve confidence in its credit markets. But the ruling Communist Party has pledged to make the economy more productive by allowing market forces a bigger role.

Time asks whether China has reached its “Bear Stearns moment”:

A dangerous build-up of debt and an explosion of risky and poorly regulated shadow banking have raised serious concerns about the health of China’s economy. That’s why the Chaori default — the first ever in China’s domestic corporate bond market — has sparked fears that the country could be headed for a full-blown economic crisis like the one that slammed Wall Street in 2008. “We believe that the market will have reached the Bear Stearns stage,” warned strategist David Cui and his team at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch in a report to investors.
The concern of Cui and others is that the Chaori default will be the tip-off point for an unravelling of China’s financial system. The default could wake investors and bankers to the realization that companies they thought were safe bets are potentially not, and they could begin to reassess other loans and investments to other corporations. In other words, they might start redefining what is and is not risky. That could then lead to a credit crunch, when nervous bankers become wary of lending money, or lending at affordable interest rates. More bankruptcies could result. That eventually causes the financial markets to lock up — and we end up transitioning from a Bear Stearns moment to a Lehman Brothers moment, when the financial sector melts down. “We think the chain reaction will probably start,” Cui wrote. “In the U.S., it took about a year to reach the Lehman stage when the market panicked … We assess that it may take less time in China.”

The Financial Post reported in January:

The U.S. and Europe learned the hard way about the dangers of shadow banks in the financial crisis but, five years later, China appears set to get its own painful lesson about what can happen when large capital flows get diverted to unregulated corners of the financial system.
***
“We estimate that 88% of the revenues of Chinese trust companies is at risk in the long term,” said McKinsey and Ping An.
***
Billionaire investor George Soros recently wrote on a popular news website that the impending default and the growing fear reflected in Chinese markets has “eerie resemblances” to the global crisis of 2008.

The big picture:  the $23 trillion dollar Chinese credit bubble is starting to collapse.
As Michael Snyder wrote in January:

It could be a “Lehman Brothers moment” for Asia.  And since the global financial system is more interconnected today than ever before, that would be very bad news for the United States as well.  Since Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, the level of private domestic credit in China has risen from $9 trillion to an astounding $23 trillion.  That is an increase of $14 trillion in just a little bit more than 5 years.  Much of that “hot money” has flowed into stocks, bonds and real estate in the United States.  So what do you think is going to happen when that bubble collapses?
The bubble of private debt that we have seen inflate in China since the Lehman crisis is unlike anything that the world has ever seen.  Never before has so much private debt been accumulated in such a short period of time.  [Note: Private debt is much more dangerous than public debt.] All of this debt has helped fuel tremendous economic growth in China, but now a whole bunch of Chinese companies are realizing that they have gotten in way, way over their heads.  In fact, it is being projected that Chinese companies will pay out the equivalent of approximately a trillion dollars in interest payments this year alone.  That is more than twice the amount that the U.S. government will pay in interest in 2014.
***
As the Telegraph pointed out a while back, the Chinese have essentially “replicated the entire U.S. commercial banking system” in just five years…

Overall credit has jumped from $9 trillion to $23 trillion since the Lehman crisis. “They have replicated the entire U.S. commercial banking system in five years,” she said.
The ratio of credit to GDP has jumped by 75 percentage points to 200pc of GDP, compared to roughly 40 points in the US over five years leading up to the subprime bubble, or in Japan before the Nikkei bubble burst in 1990. “This is beyond anything we have ever seen before in a large economy. We don’t know how this will play out. The next six months will be crucial,” she said.

As with all other things in the financial world, what goes up must eventually come down.
***
The big underlying problem is the fact that private debt and the money supply have both been growing far too rapidly in China.  According to Forbes, M2 in China increased by 13.6 percent last year…

And at the same time China’s money supply and credit are still expanding.  Last year, the closely watched M2 increased by only 13.6%, down from 2012’s 13.8% growth.  Optimists say China is getting its credit addiction under control, but that’s not correct.  In fact, credit expanded by at least 20% last year as money poured into new channels not measured by traditional statistics.

Overall, M2 in China is up by about 1000 percent since 1999.  That is absolutely insane.
***
But I am not the only one talking about it.
In fact, the World Economic Forum is warning about the exact same thing…

Fiscal crises triggered by ballooning debt levels in advanced economies pose the biggest threat to the global economy in 2014, a report by the World Economic Forum has warned.

***
What has been going on in the global financial system is completely and totally unsustainable, and it is inevitable that it is all going to come horribly crashing down at some point during the next few years.
It is just a matter of time.

Posted in Business / Economics, Politics / World News | Leave a comment

High tech isn’t driving the economy any more Opinion: Collapse of high-tech investment is killing our growth rate

March 7, 2014,

By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch// http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-collapse-of-high-tech-is-killing-the-economy-2014-03-07?link=sfmw

MarketWatch

The growth rate of high-tech investments has slowed dramatically over the past 10 years, especially since the Great Recession.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Everyone has a pet theory explaining why the economic recovery has been so weak, but here’s one overlooked factor: The productivity revolution driven by computers, software and the Internet is fading, and nothing has yet emerged to take its place as an engine of growth.

For all of the incessant buzz in the markets about the latest tech start-up, few businesses are investing much in high-tech equipment or software. Investments in information processing equipment and software are growing at the slowest pace in decades, just a fraction of the booming growth rates of the late 1990s. See the Bureau of Economc Analysis data.

High-tech investments were a major driver of the economy in the 1980s and 1990s. Businesses were spending a lot on new equipment, software and research, and those investments were paying off by boosting output.

Click to Play

William Dudley discusses U.S. growth rate

Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley tells WSJ Chief Economics Correspondent Jon Hilsenrath why his long-term forecast on the U.S. economy remains unchanged, with growth coming in around 3%, enough to generate payroll gains.

But now 60 years of electronics-led productivity could be grinding to a halt. The slowdown in high-tech investment today means a slower growing economy tomorrow.

Some economists, notably Robert Gordon, claim that we’ve reaped most of the benefits of the electronics revolution. They say productivity growth is destined to be slower in the future, which means a slower rise in living standards. Read Gordon’s seminal paper “Is U.S. economic growth over?”

I’m not so foolish as to pretend to know what the future will hold. I believe many sectors of the economy are just beginning to take advantage of cheap, mobile computing and communications services. What’s more, technological advances in other areas — biotechnology, energy, nanotechnology, robotics — have the potential to be just as transformative as the electronics revolution.

But that’s the future.

The present and recent past show a sharp deceleration in high-tech investments.

Perhaps more troubling, investments in basic research and development have slowed to the lowest rate in 20 years, reducing the chances that the next big breakthrough will happen in America. The nation’s stock of intellectual property — such as software, patents and research — is growing about 2.5% per year, only half the pace of the 1980s and 1990s, when many of today’s cutting-edge technologies were invented.

Business investment in general has been weak as the economy recovered from the 2008 recession. With demand growing only slowly, most businesses don’t see much urgency in investing in new equipment, software or processes. Meanwhile, government investments in R&D are falling.

One big factor restraining growth in high-tech investments is that most products just aren’t getting much better. In the 1980s and 1990s, each new product cycle represented a giant leap forward in speed and usability, following Moore’s Law that semiconductor performance doubles every 18 months. Prices for high-tech goods fell rapidly, which encouraged businesses to invest heavily

But now, faster chips and minor revisions to software just don’t have the same payoff for businesses. The leap from MS-DOS to Windows 3.0 was huge, but few businesses have rushed to adopt Windows 8, because Windows 7 works just fine.

For most purposes, the hardware and software are as fast as our wetware can use. Most of the action in the tech world now is on consumer products, which are fun and flashy, but don’t do anything to increase the economy’s productivity.

MarketWatch

Productivity in the nonfarm business sector has slowed, and is expected to remain weak in coming years.

Economists Michael Feroli and Robert Mellman of J.P. Morgan Chase said in a research note that the slowing in technological advancements means the “future isn’t what it used to be. “ In the late 1990s, when productivity and the labor force were growing rapidly, the economy’s potential growth rate was about 3.5% per year. Now it’s about half that.

Demographic trends point to slower growth in the labor force, which explains part of the deceleration in the economy’s potential speed limit, but lower productivity is also a factor. Feroli and Mellman figure that trend productivity is growing about 1.25% per year, about half the pace of the 1995-2004 productivity boom.

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Investments in productivity-enhancing technologies are still artificially depressed by the slow recovery in the economy. Most likely, high-tech investments will eventually rebound somewhat, but they won’t return to the booming growth rates we saw in the 1980s and 1990s.

The good news is that slower productivity gains mean that even modest economic growth will reduce the large number of unemployed and underemployed people. The bad news is that living standards won’t be growing as fast as we’ve become accustomed to. Debts will be harder to repay, and individuals and organizations will have to make difficult choices to prioritize their budgets.

With the pie expanding at a slower pace, concerns about fairness and inequality will only increase.

We shouldn’t get too discouraged, however. Technology is advancing in many fields besides computing and communications. Improvements in biotech, energy or robotics could sweep through the economy, just as the electronics revolution did, boosting productivity and our living standards yet again.

Secret "Occult Economy" Coming Out of the Shadows?

Secret "Occult Economy" Coming Out of the Shadows?

Dees Illustration

Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post

During December 2011 and January 2012, I wrote two articles dealing with the announcement of two different lawsuits being filed in U.S. District Courts regarding astronomical amounts of money in the forms of U.S. Bonds, Federal Reserve Notes, foreign government-issued bonds, and other financial instruments.

The first article, entitled, “Unprecedented Lawsuit Reveals Bizarre Worldwide Banking Connections,” deals with a lawsuit filed by Neil Keenan, an acting representative of the Dragon Family of Asia, that contains a list of plaintiffs including individuals, governments, private institutions, and secret societies that spans the entire globe. Keenan is alleging that a trillion dollars worth of Federal Reserve Notes, Kennedy Bonds, and Japanese Government Bonds were stolen from himself and the Dragon Family by a worldwide cartel network.

The second article, entitled, “Massive New Lawsuit Filed Against U.S. Federal Government in Bond Theft Scheme,” deals with a similar situation. In this lawsuit, plaintiff Joseph Riad alleges that $15 billion worth of Federal Reserve bonds were stolen from him by similar criminal cartel network involving many agencies of the U.S. Federal Government such as the Department of Homeland Security and the Bureau of Public Debt.

In the latter incident, the bonds are supposedly dated back to 1934. However, the facts surrounding both of these lawsuits are quite difficult to decipher. With such an interconnected web of players including very secretive persons and institutions, as well as historical questions and connotations, it will likely be some time before the convoluted inter-workings of these incidents are unraveled -- if indeed they ever are.

Add to this the seizure of $6 trillion worth of U.S. Treasury bonds by Italian prosecutors and one might begin to see a trend developing. In this instance, according to the Italian prosecutors, the bonds had been hidden in makeshift compartments in three different safety deposit boxes in Zurich. The investigation, dubbed “Operation Vulcanica,” resulted in the arrest of eight individuals who were allegedly planning to buy plutonium from Nigerian sources. Interestingly enough, the bonds were sealed in crates labeled as property of the Chicago Federal Reserve System – Treaty of Versailles Mother Boxes to be exact.  In this case, as in the case of the Joseph Riad lawsuit, the bonds were dated back to 1934.

Although the bonds are alleged to have been fake, at this time we cannot confirm that this is really the case.

The claim that these bonds are fake, of course, might very well be true. However, there is also a great deal of evidence to the contrary.

As I have mentioned in a previous article, the sheer number of U.S. bonds involved is so large that it presents one argument against the theory of a rogue counterfeiter. U.S. bonds are intentionally made incredibly difficult to forge and, considering the technology required to do so, the odds of such technology residing in the possession of a rogue network of underground counterfeiters is highly unlikely. If the bonds had indeed been faked, then it would be much more reasonable to assume that the counterfeiting operation was undertaken by a State – the only type of institution that would have had the infrastructure to oversee such a massive operation.

That being the case, the question would then become “Who?” and, necessarily, “Why?”

Yet, if the bonds were indeed counterfeited, it also seems that the counterfeiters took the long way around as they were produced inside sealed boxes thus indicating that the boxes themselves had been counterfeited. As Madison Ruppert of End The Lie points out:

If these bonds were indeed forgeries, it implies that the box itself might be fake as well, which raises the question: why would counterfeiters go through the effort of not only faking $6 trillion in $1 billion bonds but also go through the effort of creating  a fake Treaty of Versailles Mother Box?

When I try to imagine the mindset of a thief, I cannot bring myself to understand why I would counterfeit two things instead of just one, thus doubling my chances of forgeries being detected.

Furthermore, why hide the bonds in makeshift compartments within the Mother Box? It all just makes so little sense I’m not sure what to think at this point.

Of course, this argument is not concrete enough to prove whether or not these bonds are real. Indeed, it is important to point out that this writer is not declaring judgment one way or the other. Clearly, the situation continues to develop and more information will hopefully come to light. Whatever one may suspect regarding this issue, it would be wise not to rush to judgment until a significantly larger amount of facts emerge.

Regardless, a suggestion made by many in the “fake bond” camp is that the amount of money is too great to be real. The argument here is that this much money simply does not exist within the Federal Reserve/U.S. Treasury bond system. Furthermore, there are questions as to how so many of these bonds found their way into Asian hands, particularly those bonds dated around the 1930s.

It is true that interest has accrued on the initial value of many of these bonds and financial instruments over time, particularly those instruments which have been held for a long period of time. However, many might point that the number of bonds/instruments that would have been required to be issued in the first place would have been enormous. Not only that, but there is no popular record of such massive financial exchanges having taken place involving the issuing of such instruments as Federal Reserve/U.S. Treasury bonds. That is, at least transactions that number in the “many thousands of trillions” of dollars that the Neil Keenan lawsuit alludes to.

However, one must remember that the world of banking, particularly privately administered, international, government-based financial instruments of which the Federal Reserve specializes in, is not an industry in which transparency is the order of the day.

After all, it was only recently revealed that the Federal Reserve had loaned a whopping $16 trillion dollars to major banks as a result of the current American bailout culture. There was no public announcement of these transactions, and acknowledgement only came after a watered-down and quite narrow audit provision was passed by Congress. If massive transactions made by the Federal Reserve such as the one mentioned above have only recently been uncovered, one is clearly justified in wondering how many other enormous financial transactions have taken place in the past between similar institutions? 

Indeed, such transactions cannot be considered abnormal in the upper reaches of the international banking cartel.

Nevertheless, some clues have appeared that might explain the nature of some of the bonds at issue (if they are real) as well as the reason why the 1930s keep popping up as the birth year of so many of them.

At this point, I would like to encourage the reader to take a look at David Wilcock’s series FINANCIAL TYRANNY: The Final Sections. Wilcock has been sounding the alarm on many of these banking issues such as the stolen bonds and lawsuits for some time and, should his information pan out, deserves much credit for his work on this issue. There is a great deal of information collected in Wilcock’s series so make of it what you will.

One of the questions central to this entire issue is whether or not these types of bonds have ever been issued in this first place and, if they have been issued, whether or not they have been issued in such large quantities. In searching for an answer to this question, we find ourselves as far away as China and as far back as the early 1930s.

During the 1930s Chiang Kai-Shek was facing war on two fronts – from Mao Tse-Tung’s Communist insurgency and from the Imperial Japanese. As a result, China was incredibly unstable and, likewise, Chinese gold held by Kai-Shek’s China was in danger of being seized by one or both of its enemies. In an effort to protect this gold in the event of a successful push from either of the usurpers, an arrangement was made for the gold’s safekeeping inside the United States under the care of the U.S. Federal Government in the form of the Federal Reserve as well as the BIS (Bank of International Settlements). This was a plan that was apparently deemed acceptable by both Kai-Shek and the United States government, although the public was not notified of its existence.

The CIA, around 1948, played a major role in the physical removal of much of this gold as Tse-tung marched successfully through China. As Professor Richard Aldrich of Nottingham University and co-editor of the Journal Intelligence and National Security reveals, the CIA used their cover operation known as the Civilian Air Transport (CAT) to fly large shipments of Chinese gold to the United States.

But that was in 1948. “What about the 1930s?” you might ask. “Is the 1948 shipment all of the gold brought to the U.S.?”

Evidently not.

Source

As David Wilcock states in his article, news reports from The New York Times give us a glimpse into the gold shipments taking place from China to the United States in the 1930s. Indeed, Wilcock includes the photo of six reports published in the newspaper from 1934 to 1938 clearly indicating the receipt of Chinese gold. Bringing all of these reports into perspective, he writes;

The last newspaper article we just read, from December 1, 1934, reveals a total excess of $222 million, 385 thousand and 270 dollars' worth of 'imported' gold to the US between 1929 -- when the BIS was officially founded -- and 1934.

At the stated 'new price' of $35 an ounce, this adds up to roughly 6,540,743.23 troy ounces, or 203.43 metric tons of gold.

As we can see, this process continued well after 1934. Our first article revealed that $6,120,500 in gold was taken in by the Federal Reserve in a single day -- on February 19, 1937.

Chiang Kai-Shek supposedly sent 125,000 metric tons of gold to the US in 1938. This is obviously much higher than the publicly-reported 203.43 metric tons that had been taken in from various countries between 1929 and 1934.

However, let's not forget that we now have documented proof that secret gold shipments were conducted from China to the US in 1938.

Japan intercepted 2.488 metric tons of gold, bound for the Federal Reserve, on October 24, 1938. It is very likely that many other shipments occurred and were not intercepted -- just as we have been told -- and Federal Reserve bonds were issued.

Special attention should be paid to the last statement because the reports that Wilcock produces are only from The New York Times and most do not mention U.S. receipt of gold as anything other than a footnote. If we were able to examine all of the leading newspapers during this time period, or even a more detailed search of The New York Times itself, there might turn up even more reports of gold shipments. Not only that, but we certainly can’t count out the fact that many of these shipments might have been kept secret from the very beginning. If this is the case, it would stand to reason that there would be no reports published about them.

Regardless, Wilcock claims that these bonds were used to create what he calls the “Occult economy,” where loans are made based on the value of the secret gold stockpiles and transactions between private individuals and central banks are made in secret.

Not only that, but because “operational loss” of bonds/notes was to be expected there would necessarily have been more of the bonds/notes created than the exact number needed by the Chinese.

Furthermore, as Professor Aldrich states, “Regional banks receiving FRNs [Federal Reserve Notes] in return for their gold were aware that the FRNs were likely to be redeemable for only a proportion of their face value. Therefore a much larger value in FRNs would have been required than the total value of the gold that the Americans and Chinese nationalists were trying to extract from China.”

Some might even argue that printing so many bonds essentially under the table would be done with very little concern since the CIA, with its high level of intelligence, would have foreseen that Kai-Shek would soon be in no position to cash the bonds in any event. In short, the money changers could have provided the Chinese with the bonds with no intention of ever honoring them. Likewise, there would be no concern of ever finding themselves in the position of having to do so.

But for all the questions surrounding the bonds, Federal Reserve Notes and other financial instruments seized or mentioned in the various lawsuits recently filed, there are documented instances of fake bonds surfacing in cases very similar to those mentioned at the start of this article.

For instance, in 2003,* two men – a Canadian and a Korean living in Japan – tried to use $25 million worth of US Treasury bonds in order to secure a line of credit from the Imperial Bank of Commerce. The bonds presented by the men were easily spotted as fake and the men, along with Graham Halksworth – a 69-year-old British man and his associate, Michael Slamaj, a former Yugoslav spy -- were arrested and charged.

The story behind the acquirement of the bonds provided by Halksworth and Slamaj directly coincided with the chronology of events as recorded in the files of the Foreign Office.

Yet, although the bonds/notes in the Halksworth case were demonstrably false, they did reveal some rather startling information – that fake bonds were often included amongst large quantities of real bonds so as to preclude the holder from ever being able to cash them.

Indeed, when questioned by the police as to his role in the fake bond scandal, Halksworth responded by telling police that “Deliberate mistakes were often made in such bonds as a security device; ask the CIA.” When the police pointed out that the mistakes were so obvious it looked like a child had made them, Halksworth responded, “Exactly.”

Halksworth might be in some position to speak on the matter considering his background. He was a forensic specialist and a member of the Forensic Science Society who helped develop a fingerprinting system for Scotland Yard in 1967. He also worked for a company that provided forensic equipment for many foreign governments as well as authenticated historical documents for the Chinese and German governments. He helped issue bonds from both commercial banks and the Bank of England. He also authenticated and approved U.S. Federal Reserve bonds for churches, Saudi princes, and Native American tribes. With a career history such as this, Halksworth is likely to know whereof he speaks.

In addition, David Wilcock claims that he has inside information that Halksworth’s assertions are indeed true. That is, at least his assertions about deliberate mistakes being added to real bonds and other financial instruments of a high value and secretive nature. Wilcock claims that his insider explained to him that for every box of real bonds created, four boxes of fake bonds are created along with it. According to Wilcock, the source also claims that even the real boxes contain up to 20 percent fake bonds.

This is designed, Wilcock suggests, in order to prevent the bonds from ever being cashed and endangering either the “Occult economy” or the real economy that is now made up of derivatives and private central banks. If anyone ever comes into possession of these bonds, they will be “caught” with the forgeries, arrested, their bonds will be seized, and the Secret Service or other relevant agency will escape with the real financial instruments.

Unfortunately, at this point, it is still impossible to make a final judgment about the Riad/Keenan lawsuits, seized bonds, or even many of the claims made by David Wilcock. However, by taking a look at each of these cases while keeping in mind the big picture, it is possible that some light may be shed on the shadowy edges of international finance and worldwide banking cartels.

Throughout this saga, if the information we have received so far can be believed, we are approaching great revelation into the tunneled spider web of the global control system that, up until this point, has remained well hidden.

*NOTE: The original article from the UK Independent has apparently been scrubbed from the Internet. It is, however, preserved in the archives on Rense.com.

America’s new healthcare system: Man dies in hospital waiting room

i don't know which is worse this dumb ass  ..or you's dumb asses who 1.) voted the bitch in 2.)  U.S. dumb bastards ...who stand there & don't call these fucking ass pipes OUT ! lol :O

Pelosi: "We Have to Pass the Bill So That You Can Find Out What Is In It"

Julie Wilson

Thirty-year-old John Verrier died in a NYC emergency waiting room on January 19 after waiting eight hours for hospital care due to a rash, reported ABC News. Reports confirm that his named was called at least three times over the facility’s PA system since his 10 p.m. arrival, yet hospital staff failed to check on him when he did not respond to his name being called.

While it’s unclear exactly what time Verrier passed away, security guards discovered him slumped over in a chair cold, blue and stiff around 6:00 a.m. the next morning. Surveillance footage shows that the young man was active and moving around 3:45 a.m.
An emergency room employee working that night gave an anonymous interview, in fear of retaliation from the hospital, stating that he felt the incident was being “covered up” by the facility in an attempt to conceal any wrongdoing. The hospital employee blames the incident on short staffing and admits that there’s no procedure or policy that includes checking up on patients once they’ve received the initial vital checks upon arrival.

Attempting to avoid being at fault, the hospital claims that they did in fact check on Verrier several times; however, the anonymous hospital worker disputes these claims, calling them “100 percent false.” He added, “[W]as his name called? Yes.” But, “Based on [the] number of people in the waiting room it is impossible to check on each person physically.”

Hospital spokesperson Steven Clark insists that security checked on several patients, including Verrier, affirming that “all hospital guidelines were met.” The ER worker said, if the hospital fails to own up to their mistake, it will certainly happen again.

At this time, Verrier’s cause of death is unknown.
Spokesman Clark says it is the patient’s responsibility to report to the doctor once your name is called. However, it’s clearly impossible for extremely ill, or even yet, deathly ill patients to do so, pointing toward the ridiculousness of not having some sort of procedure that includes staff checking on waiting room patients, assessing their condition and offering estimates as to when they might be seen.
Sadly, Verrier’s family discovered their son’s death on the local news and has since reached out, asking the public for help and information related to the night of John’s death.
A recent Facebook message posted yesterday by John’s brother Chris of New Haven, Conn., after slight editing, states:
Hello to Facebook friends and public. I am reaching out to everyone and everybody the best way I can. As some of you may all know and heard about my younger brother Jon who passed away in St. Barnabas hospital on Jan. 20, 2014, myself, my mom and my other brother are trying to put this puzzle together of how he died and nobody noticed in the emergency room; it’s tragic and so painful, it’s a loss that pain can’t describe. So I am asking for help if anyone out there was at St. Barnabas between 1-19-2014 after 10 pm to 1-20-2014 around 6 am or anywhere in between that time. Please if you know something or saw him there while you were there. We gladly need your help to piece this together. So friends ask friends and spread the word. If anybody has any info, please send me a friend request and inbox me please. I am asking because this is so important; don’t let this tragic incident go unnoticed, so if anyone knows something or saw something, please contact us.
Thank you, a brokenhearted brother.
As the implementation of Obamacare progresses, more and more patients will see shortages in physician care, including both preventive care practices and emergency room situations.
As medical practices prepare to deal with an influx of patients under the new healthcare reform, many physicians are trying to decide on the best course of action in response to increasing financial demands. Dr. Charles Cutler, a private practitioner in Norristown, Pa., says, “A lot of patients that went down to emergency rooms won’t be getting care in the emergency room anymore. We’ll be doing more preventive care, more screening.”
The progression of the new healthcare reform will force more patients into higher medical expenditures, penalties for the uninsured and even the blatant denial of medical help. Unfortunately, this process is expected to worsen before it improves.

9/11 and War-Initiating Deception: The Path to a World Beyond War

we's go~in the wrong way ..folks     surely you must C that by now ,no ?

By Kevin Ryan

Global Research, March 08, 2014

digwithin.net

Theme: Culture, Society & History, US NATO War Agenda

 Everyone says that they hate war, and most people really do, yet war has always been a part of human life. Nearly all societies throughout history have engaged in some form of warfare. And for as long as there has been war there have been good people trying to end it. Unfortunately, despite minor successes lasting peace has been a dream that has been impossible to realize. That dream has not died, however, and people continue the fight to end all war. A recent example is the new campaign called World Beyond War (WBW).

At the WBW website, the organizers call for new ideas and ask for feedback on the strategies outlined there. The group’s approach to ending war calls for “defeating the propaganda of war promoters and countering the economic interests of war promoters with alternative economic possibilities.” Furthermore, WBW stresses the need for “a combination of disarmament and investment alternatives.” This means that nations must disarm, stop selling arms, and negotiate disarmament agreements.
How to accomplish such things is the problem. The disarmament ideas would require governments to dramatically change course but the governments are often led by the “war promoters.” Changing the governments in any substantial way would necessitate a dramatic change in the mindset of most citizens. Similarly, although there are theoretical ways to counter the economic interests of war promoters, such as coordinating the purchasing and tax-paying decisions of citizens en masse, organizing for it would require unprecedented changes in public opinion. The arguments of the past won’t make that happen.
Like many others, I believe that unprecedented changes in public opinion can be achieved by taking a more courageous and committed approach to one of WBW’s key objectives. That objective is to “communicate the facts about war and discard the myths.” It takes courage to really examine the facts and myths about how wars begin and how they are maintained because most of us—even people who see themselves as peace activists—play a part in that process.
How do wars start, for what reasons, and by what mechanisms? To answer these important questions it might help to begin by dispelling several powerful myths about the origins of war.
Wars are often mistakenly seen as disputes based primarily on the differences between religions. But a closer examination of individual conflicts shows that this is not true. Sometimes differences in religion are emphasized by war promoters as a means of dividing the people and pitting them against each other. But war is not ever fundamentally about religion. The Arab-Israeli conflict, for example, began as a political and nationalist land grab following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Only later did various arguments about who might be God’s “chosen people” play a part. Similarly, the 350-year long conflict in Ireland never had much to do with the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism. Although Oliver Cromwell was a Puritan, he was sent purely for the purpose of seizing the land.
War is also not about vengeance. It’s true that some people have been known to spend years seeking vengeance in small-scale acts of violence. The Apache chief Geronimo is an example as described in his memoirs. He spent decades killing Mexicans in guerrilla raids because of the murder of his wife and children in a place now called Arizona. But Geronimo and his small band of fighters ultimately fought, as did most Native Americans, simply to keep their land.
To be clear, war is not about religion or vengeance—it’s about the land and its resources.
The beginnings of every war can be traced back to efforts by a powerful few to control land and its strategic benefits. This fact is most easily seen in the wars that have been fought by the United States, the country that WBW hopes to focus on first. Whether it was for trade routes, or bases to establish military presence, or some other corporate access, all of the wars in which the U.S. has engaged have been about securing strategic property.
The ability to start and perpetuate large-scale war depends on the ability of the few to manipulate the emotional state of the masses. An old saying is that “truth is the first casualty of war” but that is misleading. War is born of deception and is manufactured for the benefit of the wealthy few. It is supported by people who gain through the military-industrial complex, and it is sold to everyone else through more deception.
The lies used to start and maintain wars are based on manipulating the natural mechanisms by which individuals protect their self-image. The most common form of this trickery was described by the founder of the Nazi Gestapo, Hermann Göring, who said “Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? [But] the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
Göring and his cohorts used that very mechanism of deception to bring the Nazis to power in 1933 via the Reichstag Fire. The result was World War II and 60 million people dead. Since that time, the wars in which the U.S. has engaged have been initiated through the same kinds of lies. The U.S. military was committed to the Vietnam War as a result of a false claim about an attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. And the 1991 Gulf War was started by way of false testimony from a Kuwaiti girl who claimed that Iraqi troops were killing babies. Dick Cheney then falsely claimed that satellite photos showed Iraqi troops massing at the Saudi border. The cooperation of the American public and the Saudis followed quickly thereafter.
How are wars started? By telling the people that they are being attacked and by inventing outrageous claims that demonize the intended enemy. You know, the terrorists are out to get us. They want to steal our freedoms. They are a dark people with inhuman culture and violent religion. We’ll never know where they will strike next.
Once started, wars are perpetuated through propaganda that manipulates the public’s sense of patriotism. Whoever doesn’t support the war is accused of not supporting the troops. Whoever reveals anything truthful about the situation is accused of putting the country at risk, or of being a conspiracy theorist.
By recognizing what is happening we can understand how to eliminate war. The first and most important step is the same as for solving any other challenge. It is to realize the problem. As Sun Tzu said in The Art of War, “All warfare is based on deception.” Therefore war can only be ended by realizing and managing the mechanisms by which we are deceived. How do we realize when mass-deception has occurred? We can understand it academically or by rationalizing but it is only a gut wrenching here-and-now realization that can move us to do anything about it. Emotions are what drive people to do something.
This leads directly to the war-ending idea that has been ignored by many peace activists for the last 13 years. It’s an idea that has been shared by many others, including over one third of the American public according to a 2006 Scripps Howard poll. We don’t know what happened on September 11, 2001 and many people understand that fact. But it is overwhelmingly clear to anyone who examines the evidence that the accused 19 young men could not have accomplished most of what happened. And it’s clear that the 9/11 events and government responses followed the pattern of a war-initiating deception.
Those facts lead people to a catastrophic and catalyzing realization. The crimes of 9/11 represent the greatest war-generating scam of our lifetime. What a great opportunity to begin solving the problem of war!  If we have the courage to re-evaluate our understanding of that seminal event, we might still have the chance to leverage the resulting emotional power to drive the changes needed.
We can defeat the propaganda of war promoters and counter their economic interests with peace-promoting possibilities. We can disarm, stop selling arms, and negotiate disarmament agreements. We can do all these things now if we are willing to recognize and overcome the ego-based deceptions behind war. To do so we need to be willing to face the problem fundamentally and get out of our comfort zones. The good news is that 9/11 provides a real opportunity to do that and we still have time.

Anemic US jobs Report Shows Growth in Long-Term Unemployed

the "only" thing we produce anymore ...besides ass pipes (think any gov. position & poll here or 'capt.'  of industry? )  ...is fucking un~employ~ment  ... hows that 3000 +/-  yrs of these "elites"   run~in things ...hows that work~in fer US    huh  

By Andre Damon

Global Research, March 08, 2014

World Socialist Web Site

Region: USA

Theme: Global Economy

The US economy added 175,000 jobs in February; barely enough to keep up with population growth, according to figures released Friday by the Department of Labor. The ranks of the long-term unemployed, those who have been out of work for more than 27 weeks, grew by 203,000, hitting 3.8 million.
Thirty-seven percent of unemployed people have now been out of work for six months or more. Before the 2008 crash, the long-term unemployed never amounted to more than 26 percent of the total jobless, while the total number of long-term unemployed was one-third its present level. The mean duration of unemployment currently stands at 35.4 weeks, up from 16.9 weeks in 2006.
The continued growth in the number of long-term unemployed comes after Congress and the White House cut off emergency federal jobless benefits at the end of last year for 1.3 million people. The number of unemployed workers denied benefits has since increased by 576,000, bringing the total to nearly 2 million. Counting the family members in these households, those affected could number as high as 6 million.
The latest report follows two months of dismal jobs reports. Job growth in December and January was the worst for any two-month period since 2010, and well below the already tepid monthly average of 160,000 from January through November of last year. The US economy created 129,000 jobs in January, and followed December’s increase of 75,000.
The total number of unemployed hit 10.5 million in February, up 223,000 over the previous month, and up from 6.8 million in 2007, according to Friday’s report.
February’s jobs figure was “well below the 200,000 to 300,000 jobs a month that a robust jobs recovery would have generated,” said Chad Stone, chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
There are now 651,000 fewer jobs than there were before the recession, even though the working-age population has grown by about 8 million during that time. Friday’s jobs report noted that the labor force participation rate is down by 0.5 percent from a year ago and is down by about 3.5 percentage points since 2007.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, 5.66 million “missing workers” have dropped out of the labor force over the past five years for economic, not demographic, reasons. If these missing workers were counted as unemployed, the unemployment rate would be 10 percent.
A large section of the jobs added in February were low skilled and low wage, such as food service workers and home health aides. Professional and business services added 79,000 jobs, a significant portion of which (24,000) came from temporary employment.
The food service sector added 21,000 jobs. The typical food preparation worker receives $9.18 per hour, or $19,100 per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Private education and health services added 18,200 jobs, including 6,900 in home health care services, mostly consisting of home health care aides, who have a median pay of $9.70 per hour.
The number of federal government jobs fell by 6,000 in February, although the reduction was partially offset by increases in the number of state and local government jobs. Since February 2010, 617,000 government jobs have been eliminated, led by a reduction of 392,000 in local government.
February’s tepid jobs report comes amid a string of layoff announcements. Earlier this month, IBM began its planned series of layoffs that could entail the elimination of up to 15,000 workers, according to media reports. This will be on top of last year’s layoffs, in which some 3,000 workers lost their jobs.
This week, electronics retailer RadioShack announced that it would close over a thousand stores after worse than expected holiday sales, while Staples Inc., the office supply chain, announced plans to close 225 stores by the end of 2014.
Amid the staggering growth in the number of long-term unemployed, the media has dropped the issue of extended jobless benefits, with next to no coverage of the impact of the ending of the program.
The cutoff of emergency jobless aid is only the latest in a series of sweeping attacks on bedrock antipoverty programs. On November 1, food stamps were slashed by $11 billion, leading to benefit reductions for 46 million people. In January, Congress voted to slash an additional $8.7 billion from food stamps. Thus, millions of long-term unemployed workers are not only being cut off from cash assistance, but are also being hit with reductions in food aid.

THE TRANSHUMANIST SCRAPBOOK: FDA SEEKS APPROVAL OF THREE-PARENTED BABIES     

Posted on March 8, 2014 by Joseph P. Farrell • Filed Under: Alchemy • http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/03/transhumanist-scrapbook-fda-seeks-approval-three-parented-babies/

There is another significant story out there that is developing as we speak, folks, and once again, it concerns transhumanism, and in this case, the very essence of what it is to be human, both biologically, and as we shall see in a moment, in law. This story I found while surfing, and it must have been one of those synchronicities or “in the aether”, because so many of you sent me not only this exact article but variations of it, I lost count. Here’s the story as reported by Stuart A. Newman at The Huffington Post:
FDA Asked to Approve Creation of Genetically Modified Children
This is a detail-rich, well-written, and informative article. For me, however, the central paragraph which concerns us is this:

“It is clear, however, that much more than mitochondria is being transferred or donated in MST. This is obscured in most reports on the subject, even in scientific journals. A recent report in the journal Nature states, “The technique [combines] genetic material from a mitochondria donor, the mother who provides the nucleus and a father.” To use the emotive term “mother” only for the donor of the maternal set of chromosomes downplays the unique biological role of the egg and of the woman who contributes it. It has the further effect of endorsing the false assertion of MST’s advocates that the procedure comes down to the transfer of a few (i.e., the mitochondrial) genes. What is actually being transferred are 20,000 or so genes provided by the chromosome donor.’

We have here a clear case of offspring that would not have arisen naturally, but can only do so by the intervention – quoting the crucial phrase of American patent law – of “the hand of man.” This intervention has, in all cases of genetic techniques – including those used to justify the patenting of GMOs – been used to argue the “patentability” of not only of the technique, but of the product of that technique. Hence, the technique, as I argued in Genes, Giants, Monsters and Men – as as we again argued in Transhumanism” A Grimoire of Alchemical Agendas, now brings directly to the forefront of the jurisprudential debates surrounding emerging technologies, the definition of human personhood and individual rights, and brings it home with some urgency.
We cannot afford to leave it to the vagaries of later decisions to emerge “down the line” as the growth and application of such technologies increases, for inevitably, there will be a segment of humanity arguing that such persons so created are “less than human,” and equally, there will be individuals either with access to such technologies or who are the result of the application of the transumanists’ GRIN (genetics robotics informational and nanotechnologies) who will inevitably be tempted to argue the opposite, that they are either “super-human” or that the rest of “non-engineered” humanity is sub-human. We cannot, of course, legislate out of existence these inevitable human responses. But we can ensure, in law, that such individuals and their progeny are recognized as persons, and not patentable property.

FDA Asked to Approve Creation of Genetically Modified Children

Posted: 02/20/2014 2:46 pm EST Updated: 02/20/2014 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stuart-a-newman/fda-asked-to-approve-crea_b_4809876.html

• Genetic Engineering Human Biotechnology Germline Modification Maternal Spindle Transfer Science News

In a public meeting scheduled for February 25-26, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will consider approval of experiments to produce children by the in vitro fertilization of an egg containing DNA derived from both the intended mother and another woman. Although such large-scale genetic engineering has never before been attempted in humans, the procedure -- to create "three-parent babies" -- is paradoxically being touted by its developers as a relatively trivial tweaking of the reproductive process to enable women with compromised eggs to become genetic mothers of unaffected children. These claims of high impact health benefits from a low-risk procedure cannot be squared with scientific reality.
The FDA's meeting announcement promises to "discuss oocyte modification in assisted reproduction for the prevention of transmission of mitochondrial disease or treatment of infertility." But while an oocyte (the immature form of an egg) is an absolute requirement for generating an embryo, and ultimately a new person, the immature eggs to be modified are not those of the women seeking assistance in child-bearing. A second woman would contribute the "healthy" egg; the woman arranging for the procedure would contribute only the genes extracted from one of her own eggs.
The only reason a prospective female parent would consider the procedure, known as "maternal spindle transfer" (MST), is if her own oocytes contained impaired mitochondria, or energy-extracting organelles. Only a handful of women who are affected by certain forms of mitochondrial disease would be candidates for MST, and they could use existing and far safer IVF techniques to have a healthy and genetically related child. But the researchers working on MST at Oregon Health Sciences University and Columbia University are eager to move ahead with it.
One can make arguments in either direction about which of the female parents in an episode of MST is the "mother," but biologically speaking, the woman who provides the egg has a unique role in the reproductive process. To see why this is the case it is helpful to note that many animals -- some fish and frogs under natural conditions, and experimentally, mammals -- can produce embryos from the egg alone, without fertilization. Such "parthenogenesis" is not possible starting from an oocyte's chromosomes or even an intact sperm cell.
The egg is essential because in addition to its mitochondria it contains hundreds of different protein and RNA molecules it incorporates during its formation in the egg producer's ovary. This information directs the use, or "expression," of the transferred genes at the early stages of the embryo's development. From the standpoint of the woman who contributes this one non-redundant ingredient, the extent of genetic engineering of her egg in MST is massive.
The FDA refers to MST as "oocyte modification," an understandable framing by a regulatory agency primarily concerned with the technique's safety. Specifically, if it could be established that the procedure generates embryos from a healthy oocyte modified with sound components, the FDA could justify certifying it. But as we have seen, the woman whose oocyte would be modified (extensively, as we have seen), is not the woman who intends to be the parent of the resulting infant.

For the researchers working to develop MST, the objectives are different and so is the framing. These advocates have an interest in maximizing the potential benefits while minimizing the extent of the intervention. Their characterization of the procedure as "mitochondrial transfer" or "mitochondria donation" has been adopted by journalists and even by critics of the procedure.
It is clear, however, that much more than mitochondria is being transferred or donated in MST. This is obscured in most reports on the subject, even in scientific journals. A recent report in the journal Nature states, "The technique [combines] genetic material from a mitochondria donor, the mother who provides the nucleus and a father." To use the emotive term "mother" only for the donor of the maternal set of chromosomes downplays the unique biological role of the egg and of the woman who contributes it. It has the further effect of endorsing the false assertion of MST's advocates that the procedure comes down to the transfer of a few (i.e., the mitochondrial) genes. What is actually being transferred are 20,000 or so genes provided by the chromosome donor.

Neither the FDA, with its charge of protecting safety, nor prospective clients, with their desire for an effective outcome, should be heartened by the outcomes of experimental evaluation of MST. Half of the human eggs tested underwent abnormal fertilization, with excess DNA being carried over to the embryos, resulting in chromosomal abnormalities. This phenomenon was rarely seen with animal eggs experimented on in the same fashion. As one of the principal MST scientists acknowledged to a Nature reporter, "It looks like human oocytes are more sensitive."
Other scientists have suggested that co-evolution of mitochondrial and maternal nuclear genomes has selected against deleterious genetic incompatibilities. Animal experiments have indicated that these could be reestablished, to the detriment of the engineered child and the wider human population, in the proposed "mix-and-match" experiments.
Nonetheless, the FDA, following in the tracks of the British Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority which has already approved a similar technique, is taking steps that may eventually lead to the procedure's becoming an option in assisted reproduction for a small group of affected individuals. But because it is a much more extensive manipulation than advertised, it will open the door to routine applications of germline (i.e., inheritable) gene modification. In particular, once the transfer of an entire haploid (i.e., one-parent's) set of chromosomes into a woman's egg is considered acceptable, transfer of a smaller number of chromosomes or genes will be a much easier sell.
Narrow and selective application of scientific information can be misleading about the contributions of, and impacts on, each of the adult participants of MST. Few would disagree that the biologically most relevant perspective for judging the procedure is that of the new individual who would be brought into being by it. This person would develop from a fertilized egg in which all but a few genes (those of the mitochondria), not just those of the male parent, come from a source other than the egg itself. This clearly makes any such person a product of wholesale genetic engineering. We do not know nearly enough about the process of embryonic development for the FDA to even contemplate approving this procedure.