Nuclear Deal with Iran Allowed Its Return to the Global Oil Market; the Additional 1-2 Million Barrels Per Day from Iran will Result in a Sustained Drop in the Price of Oil

“The Iran nuclear deal is a massive blow for the oil price, and we could see the crude-oil price falling to $30 very easily. This deal actually represents 1 million barrels a day of extra oil on the market, so net effect on the supply equation will be nearly 2 million [barrels a day].” - Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at AvaTrade

Oil dives below $35, lowest in 11 years, as U.S. supply swells

January 6, 2016

Reuters - Crude oil prices plunged 6 percent on Wednesday, diving below $35 per barrel for the first time since 2004 as data showing a shockingly large build-up of U.S. gasoline supplies fed fears that a global surplus was still growing.

The sell-off, the biggest one-day drop for global benchmark Brent futures since the start of September, takes losses this year to more than 8 percent, a descent stoked by worsening Chinese economic data, the world's No. 2 oil consumer, and a fierce row between Saudi Arabia and Iran that some say may be more bearish than bullish.

The focus on Wednesday was U.S. government data showing a 10.6 million-barrel surge in gasoline supplies, the biggest build since 1993, which some traders said signaled a slow-down in demand that could prolong the global glut. The figures overshadowed a 5.1 million-barrel fall in crude stocks. [EIA/S]

"Gasoline was the sole source of strength within the complex, and that looks to have ended," said John Kilduff, a partner at energy hedge fund Again Capital [an oil speculator, see below: Behind Oil Price Rise: Peak Oil or Wall Street Speculation?].

Brent futures LCOc1 fell $2.19 to settle at $34.23 a barrel. Earlier, it fell to as low as $34.13, its lowest level since the start of July 2004.

U.S. crude futures CLc1 fell $2.00 to settle at $33.97 a barrel, its lowest close since February 2009.

Traders shrugged off rising geopolitical risks, including an apparent North Korea nuclear test. Many reckoned that the row between Saudi Arabia and Iran posed little threat to oil shipments, but made an agreement on output even less likely.

"I think we'll see a price war soon to keep market share," said Tariq Zahir, an analyst at Tyche Capital Advisors. "Prices will get lower and I think we'll hit $32 again."

Iran Nuclear Deal Likely To Cause Sustained Drop In Oil Prices 

July 16, 2015  

Americans.org - Terrible days lie ahead for oil exporters after the Iran nuclear deal opened the world to additional oil supplies from the oil rich country. Already blessed with some of the deepest oil reserves in the world, Iran’s comeback in the oil market will further tilt oil prices downward, spelling liquidity problems for exporters and greater travel options for end consumers.

Oil prices dipped on Wednesday after the news of the Iran nuclear deal hit the wires. The deal would see decades old sanctions imposed by the U.S., the E.U. and the UN, against the Middle East country eased in exchange for curbing their nuclear program. The sanctions effectively locked out a key player from international oil markets, crippling the country’s export capability and gradually reducing its contribution from over 4 million barrels per day (bpd) at its peak to only 1 million bpd.

With the sanctions lifted, oil prices face an inevitable widening glut that will most certainly mean a negative price hit and in turn a positive boost to the global economy.

The Illuminati’s Secret $20 Trillion Bank; the Estimated Value of the Rothschild Family’s Total Holdings is $500 Trillion

The Illuminati’s Secret 20 Trillion Dollar Bank

February 9, 2011

Zen Gardner - Of all the scams, the worldwide banking system is one of the most mind-boggling. Never mind the entire false premise of fiat money and the debt system, that vast amounts of this illusory “currency” get shifted every micro-second just begs deceit and piracy.

Trouble is, if you “buy into it” you’re already ensnared, and it’s either eat, or be eaten. That’s their design.

Ownership by Whom?

The estimated value of the Rothschild family’s total holdings is at 500 Trillion dollars. So what. The entire planet is supposedly “owned” by a very small percentage of people. So?

Can anyone “own” anything? Ownership is a temporary power trip for the unenlightened—everything always gets passed on. Like the temporary unit we all live in called our body, it’s an illusion that anyone can “live forever” physically, never mind truly “possess” anything if we look at things truthfully.

However…

That would be fine if it was just a matter of perception. Trouble is, these ultra-possessive creeps called the global elite or Illuminati impose their system of temporal power beliefs on the rest of us. Either we play the game their way, or we’re locked out of the playground and cut off from supplies by their hired thugs.

It’s a beautiful planet with lots of beautiful people, but the world “system” is very ugly and run by non-empathetic psychopaths.

But again, it’s all temporal.

Banking Scams Coming to Light

The recent economic manipulations have made a lot of things very obvious. While the MSMedia has tried to downplay or ignore these revelations, the globalist central bankster cartel is being exposed regularly.

While people are pounding on the obvious manipulation of and by the private Federal Reserve Bank hoax and Goldman Sachs and the like, there’s another part of that story few have noticed.

It’s a little known off-shoot of the FED called the DTCC aka “Cede and Co.”

What is the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation?

There is a busy little private company you probably never have heard about, but which you should. Its name is the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. See their website. Looks pretty boring. Some kind of financial service thing, with a positive slogan and out there to make a little business. You can even get a job there.

Now, go and take a look at their annual report. Starts with a nice little Flash presentation and has a nice message from the CEO. And take a look at the numbers. It turns out that this company holds 23 trillion dollars in assets, and had 917 trillion dollars worth of transactions in 2002 alone. That’s trillions, as in thousands of thousands of millions. 23,000,000,000,000 dollars in assets.

As it so turns out, it is not because DTCC has a nice website and says good things about saving their customers money that they are trusted with that kind of resources. Rather it is because they seem to have a monopoly on what they do. In brief, they process the vast majority of all stock transactions in the United States as well as for many other countries. And—and that’s the real interesting part—99% of all stocks in the U.S. appear to be legally owned by them.

How did this happen?

And why is this mega-monopolizer so hidden from public scrutiny? It turns out it’s part of the Federal Reserve Bank. Big surprise. These same owners and players mandated that all transactions have to go through their subsidiary. And not just go through it for all the profits and asset holding interest the transaction will bring, but they are given ownership of everyone’s assets in the process!

In the old days, when you owned stocks you would have the stock certificates lying in your safe. And if you needed to trade them, you needed to get them shipped off to a broker. Nowadays that would be considered very cumbersome, and it would be impractical to invest via computer or over the phone. So the shortcut was invented that the broker would hold your stocks instead of you. And in order for him to legally be able to trade them for you, the stocks were placed under their “street name.” I.e. they’re in the name of the brokerage, but they’re just holding them in trust and trading them for you. And you’re in reality the beneficiary rather than the owner.

Which is all fine and dandy if everything goes right. Now, it appears the rules were then changed so the brokers are not allowed any longer to put the stocks in their own name. Instead, what they typically do is to put the stocks into the name of “Cede and Company” or “Cede & Co” or some such variation. And the broker might tell you that it is just a fictitious name, and will explain why it is really more practical to do that than to put it in your name.

The problem with that is that it appears that Cede isn’t just some dummy name, but an actual corporation that DTCC controls. And, well, if you ask anybody about this, who actually knows about it, they will naturally tell you that it is all a formality. To serve you better, of course. And, well, maybe it is.

DTCC seems like a nice and friendly company. It is a private company, owned by the same people (major U.S. banks) who own the Federal Reserve Bank. And if they all stick to their job, and just keep the money and your stocks flowing smoothly, I’m sure that is all well and good. But if somebody at some point should decide otherwise, and there’s a national U.S. emergency and/or the U.S. government becomes unable to pay its debts, well, they might just not give you your stocks back. Because legally they own them. Something to think about. (source)

Sound impossible?

Here’s an explanation from another researcher:

China Admits That Its Stock Market Was a Bubble That Has Burst

China just gave the game away

September 8, 2015

Business Insider - Chinese leaders expressed deep concern for their country's economy last weekend at a meeting of G-20 nations in Ankara, Turkey.

That is weird for two reasons.

First, China's leaders are normally incredibly confident about their economy in public.

Second, amid the worry — despite the Chinese economy's visible slowdown and dramatic action over the past month — officials maintained that the economy would continue to grow at 7% annually.

Basically, that means Chinese officials just gave the game away: They expect us to believe that the country's economy will close this year growing the same way it did last year: 7%, always 7%.

Something here doesn't fit.

Here's what they said

The reports started leaking out on Friday, when Japan's finance minister, Taro Aso, revealed that Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of China's central bank, had repeated several times in a meeting that the Chinese stock market bubble had "burst."

This is the same stock market that the government helped inflate and has since been trying to prop up. Goldman Sachs strategists estimate that China's "national team" of state-backed brokerages and funds has pumped about $240 billion into the stock market since June.

It is also the same stock market that China has been trying to "purify" and that has been falling because foreign investors don't understand China's growth model, according to Chinese media.

Admitting that the market was a bubble, and that it has now popped, is a big step.

Of course, that's just the stock market — a stock market in which only 5% of Chinese people are invested. Far worse is what was reportedly said about the country's real economy.

According to Japan's Nikkei news service, Chinese finance minister Lou Jiwei told a group of delegates that China would face up to 10 years of tough economic conditions. The next five years, he said, would most definitely be painful.

That doesn't tally with the 7% growth target China keeps repeating, a target that China's richest man has dubbed a fantasy.

Contrast what was said this weekend with what you read in China's state media and you get a picture of policy going forward. It's not pretty at all. It is the picture of the government whose carefully laid plans have gone awry.

The plan goes awry

Right now, China is trying to move its economy from one based on foreign investment to one based on domestic consumption. Leaders knew that as this happened, the economy would slow down.

Ultimate Goal of the New World Order: "A Supranational Sovereignty of an Intellectual Elite and World Bankers"

Many of the people on earth today, especially those in charge of society, are materialists and atheists, consumed by fear, selfishness, violence, egotism, militarism, and greed, spiritually either deeply asleep or dead, destroying through negligence whole nations and even perhaps the planet we live on. A world where war is viewed as normal, where human beings knowingly and willingly torture other human beings to death then lie about it, where governments terrorize their own populations, where millions are deliberately subjected to addictive legal and illegal drugs, where the food supply is degraded for profit, where radiation is purposely introduced into the environment through devices like depleted uranium, where space is viewed as the ultimate high ground for weapons deployment, where assassination is official policy, where pandemics are declared to market dangerous vaccines, where trillions are lavished on financial institutions while families are denied adequate income, where initiative is smothered by taxes and regulations, where justice is bought and sold, where the laws favor mainly the rich, where the media put people to sleep with pablum and nonsense, and where the intellectuals justify the status quo is a world whose time is up. - Richard C. Cook, July 17, 2009

Is an International Financial Conspiracy Driving World Events?

By Richard C. Cook, Global Research
Originally Published on March 27, 2008

"They make a desolation and call it peace." -Tacitus

Was Alan Greenspan really as dumb as he looks in creating the late housing bubble that threatens to bring the entire Western debt-based economy crashing down?

Was something as easy to foresee as this really the trigger for a meltdown that could destroy the world’s financial system? Or was it done, perhaps, "accidentally on purpose"?

And if so, why?

Let’s turn to the U.S. personage that conspiracy theorists most often mention as being at the epicenter of whatever elite plan is reputed to exist. This would be David Rockefeller, the 92-year-old multibillionaire godfather of the world’s financial elite.

David Rockefeller at Harvard in 2006

The lengthy Wikipedia article on Rockefeller provides the following version of a celebrated statement he allegedly made in an opening speech at the Bilderberg conference in Baden-Baden, Germany, in June 1991:

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during these years. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government which will never again know war, but only peace and prosperity for the whole of humanity. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in the past centuries."

This speech was made 17 years ago. It came at the beginning in the U.S. of the Bill Clinton administration. Rockefeller speaks of an "us." This "us," he says, has been having meetings for almost 40 years; if you add the 17 years since he gave the speech, it was 57 years ago—two full generations.

Not only has "us" developed a "plan for the world," but the attempt to "develop" the plan has evidently been successful, at least in Rockefeller’s mind. The ultimate goal of "us" is to create "the supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers." This will lead, he says, toward a "world government which will never again know war."

Just as an intellectual exercise, let’s assume that David Rockefeller is as important and powerful a person as he seems to think he is. Let’s give the man some credit and assume that he and "us" have in fact succeeded to a degree. This would mean that the major decisions and events since Rockefeller gave the speech in 1991 have probably also been part of the plan or that they have at least represented its features and intent.

Therefore by examining these decisions and events we can determine whether in fact Rockefeller is being truthful in his assessment that the Utopia he has in mind is on its way or has at least come closer to being realized.

In no particular order, some of these decisions and events are as follows:

Only Government, Government Contractors, Wall Street, International Mega Corporations, Military Industrial Complex, Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex, and Virtual Business Monopolies Like Google, Microsoft and Amazon Can Pay Workers Wages Unrelated to the Value of Their Work

Restaurants in Seattle Going Dark as $15 an Hour Minimum Wage Looms

Inferior food at higher prices delivered by over-worked servers during restricted hours: recipe for failure. 

March 14, 2015

PJ Media - I like this simple, elegant explanation from Reason’s Ronald Bailey about the value of labor and the minimum wage:

If all other factors remain equal, the higher the price of a good, the less people will demand it. That’s the law of demand, a fundamental idea in economics. And yet there is no shortage of politicians, pundits, policy wonks, and members of the public who insist that raising the price of labor will not have the effect of lessening the demand for workers. In his 2014 State of the Union Address, for example, President Barack Obama called on Congress to raise the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour. He argued that increasing the minimum wage would “grow the economy for everyone” by giving “businesses customers with more spending money.”

A January 2015 working paper by two economists, Robert Pollin and Jeanette Wicks-Lim at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, claims that raising the minimum wage of fast food workers to $15 per hour over a four-year transition period would not necessarily result in “shedding jobs.” The two acknowledge that the “raising the price of anything will reduce demand for that thing, all else equal.” But they believe they’ve found a way to “relax” the all-else-being-equal part, at least as far as the wages of fast food workers go. Pollin and Wicks-Lim argue that “the fast-food industry could fully absorb these wage bill increases through a combination of turnover reductions; trend increases in sales growth; and modest annual price increases over the four-year period.” They further claim that a $15/hour minimum wage would not result in lower profits or the reallocation of funds away from other operations, such as marketing. Amazing.

Seattle is going to put that theory to a real world test. Starting April 1, businesses in the city will be forced to raise the minimum wage to $11 an hour, reaching $15 an hour by 2017 for large businesses and 2019 for smaller companies. There are allowances if a business offers health insurance benefits, but all businesses will be paying employees $15 an hour in salary, tips, or benefits by 2021.

Feds Targeting Personal Retirement Accounts

White House looking to creep into 401(k)s

February 28, 2015

Last Monday, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at his side, President Obama attacked Wall Street, again, for essentially helping in what the federal government and businesses can no longer provide — a decent retirement.

Under the false pretense of calling for new and tougher so-called fiduciary standards for financial brokers, advisers and retirement plan representatives, the White House once again horned in on Wall Street’s compensation formulas.

However, what the president surely knows is that a vast majority of retirement plans — IRAs and 401(k)s — are in simple fee-based products like mutual funds. The commission-based accounts are for those who prefer to direct their brokers in certain purchases inside some of their retirement products.

The key to the White House’s interference is in its nuanced language.

Investment Advisers Don't Act in the Best Interest of Their Clients: They Siphon from Investors Between $8 Billion and $17 Billion a Year in Fees and Lower Returns

Roughly one-third of all U.S. families have no money set aside for retirement, Federal Reserve data shows. This includes 19 percent of people aged 55 to 64. The average 401(k) balance reached a record high of $91,300 at the end of 2014, Fidelity Investments reported on February 5, 2015. The average balance for employees in the plan for at least 10 years was $248,000. However, the median account size at Fidelity is just $24,600. That means there are a lot of high net worth accounts skewing the overall average far higher. Baby boomers, who are at or near retirement, are 36 percent of account holders, according to Fidelity. The $91,300 record is also just 2 percent higher than a year earlier. That’s actually a pretty puny gain when you consider the Standard & Poor’s 500 index returned 14 percent in 2014 and an average of $9,670 was added to each plan (in a combination of employee and employer contributions) over the year. That implies that investors are either being very conservative with their 401(k) selections or are making mistakes trading in and out of stocks. [Source]

How Wall Street is fighting to rip off your retirement money

February 6, 2015

The Fiscal Times - There’s an imminent fight looming over whether financial advisers should be prohibited from cheating their clients when working with over $11 trillion in retirement savings.

The Department of Labor is scheduled to advance the “fiduciary rule,” which would legally require advisers who offer individual investment advice for a fee to act in their clients’ best interest. Right now, they are subject to a lower “suitability” standard, where the broker must reasonably believe the recommendation is suitable for their client. This standard is vague and easily gamed by the industry.

The new proposal would be the first update to the rule in 40 years and would finally cover employment-based retirement accounts like 401(k)s, which didn’t exist in 1975.

Mortgage Insurance Companies Seek Money from Former Homeowners to Recover Their Loses from Foreclosures

Homeowners billed for houses lost in foreclosure

January 18, 2015

New England Center for Investigative Reporting - When Guillermo Galindo lost his two-family Revere home to foreclosure in 2009, the soft-spoken Colombian thought he had finally freed himself from the flood of threatening collection letters from his lender and a ballooning, untenable debt.

All of his savings, scraped together over years delivering medicine for local pharmacies, were gone, along with the home he bought in 2005 for $410,000. Devastated, the 54-year-old immigrant, along with his wife and 3-year-old daughter, packed their belongings and moved into a small apartment, hoping to rebuild.

But that hope evaporated in a matter of months, when Galindo received a letter from a lawyer saying he owed $136,547 on the family home he’d left behind.

The lawyer represented a mortgage insurance company that Galindo had paid premiums to for years. He’d never given his insurance policy much thought — it was just something he needed to buy to qualify for a mortgage, since he couldn’t afford a big down payment. He thought it would help him if he got in a bind.

Too late, Galindo realized that the policy protected only the bank, and nothing prevented the insurer from coming after him for losses related to the foreclosure on his former home in Revere.

Why Your Mortgage Interest Isn't Actually Tax Deductible

Why Your Mortgage Interest Tax Deduction Doesn't Really Help Much

January 11, 2015 

The Motley Fool - No tax deduction is more misunderstood than the mortgage interest tax deduction. By law, taxpayers can deduct interest paid on their mortgage, but most middle-class taxpayers save little or nothing at all from the mortgage interest tax deduction.

In fact, the mortgage interest tax deduction is more for the benefit of millionaires than it is the average American.

How the mortgage interest deduction works

Americans Are 40% Poorer Today Than They Were in 2007; 44% of Senior Citizens Have Enough Savings to Cover Unexpected Expenses Versus 33% of Millennials

Most Americans are one paycheck away from the street

January 7, 2015

Market Watch - Americans are feeling better about their job security and the economy, but most are theoretically only one paycheck away from the street.

Approximately 62% of Americans have no emergency savings for things such as a $1,000 emergency room visit or a $500 car repair, according to a new survey of 1,000 adults by personal finance website Bankrate.com. Faced with an emergency, they say they would raise the money by reducing spending elsewhere (26%), borrowing from family and/or friends (16%) or using credit cards (12%).

“Emergency savings are not just critical for weathering an emergency, they’re also important for successful homeownership and retirement saving,” says Signe-Mary McKernan, senior fellow and economist at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit organization that focuses on social and economic policy.

The findings are strikingly similar to a U.S. Federal Reserve survey of more than 4,000 adults released last year. “Savings are depleted for many households after the recession,” it found. Among those who had savings prior to 2008, 57% said they’d used up some or all of their savings in the Great Recession and its aftermath. What’s more, only 39% of respondents reported having a “rainy day” fund adequate to cover three months of expenses and only 48% of respondents said that they would completely cover a hypothetical emergency expense costing $400 without selling something or borrowing money.

Why aren’t people saving?

“A lot of people are in debt,” says Andrew Meadows, a San Francisco-based producer of “Broken Eggs,” a documentary about retirement. “Probably the most common types of debt are student loans and costs related to medical issues.” 

He spent seven weeks traveling around the U.S. and interviewed over 100 people about why they haven’t saved enough money. “People are still feeling the heat from the Great Recession.” Some 44% of senior citizens have enough savings to cover unexpected expenses versus 33% of millennials, Bankrate.com found.

On the upside, the Bankrate survey found that 82% of Americans keep a household budget, up from 60% in 2012. Even in the age of the smartphone, most people keep a budget the old-fashioned way, either with a pen and paper (36%) or in their heads (18%). Just 26% of those surveyed say they use a computer program or smartphone app.

“A solid majority of Americans say they have a household budget, which is a good thing. But too few have the ability to cover expenses outside their budget without going into debt or turning to family and friends for help,” said Claes Bell, a banking analyst at Bankrate.com.

But while the jobs market is improving and the Affordable Care Act has given an estimated 15 million people access to medical care, the Great Recession does appear to have taken its toll on Americans’ finances; in fact, they’re 40% poorer today than they were in 2007. The net worth of American families — that is, the difference between the values of their assets, including homes and investments, and liabilities — fell to $81,400 in 2013, down slightly from $82,300 in 2010, but a long way off the $135,700 in 2007, according to a report released last month by the nonprofit think tank Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C.

Financial Elite Scamming the People Out of Their Hard-earned Wages by Charging High Fees for Pension Plans and 401(k) Accounts

Politicians support generous compensation packages for public sector employees to pander for their votes but also to further enrich the fat cat bankers. The pension pot grows with every public sector wage increase (and with every new employee added to the public payroll). It is all based on percentages, so the higher the wages (and the more people on the public payroll), the more money for Wall Street. In other words, if the hedge fund or private equity fund charges 10 percent to manage a public pension fund, it makes more money if the fund is $500 million versus $100 million. So government cronies keep increasing pubic sector wages beyond what their counterparts in the private sector make, all while forcing the taxpayers to fund the majority of their pensions. The fat cats are getting even fatter off the backs of the working man in the private sector, whose standard of living is declining because he is the one making all the sacrifices.

Federal workers get a 401k-style plan, but they also get an old-fashioned defined-benefit pension plan with inflation protection. They also get health care benefits when they retire above and beyond Medicare. You just don't see that kind of stuff in the private sector anymore, and I think the federal work force ought to reflect the private work force. It shouldn't be an elite island separated from the rest of us.

For example, a federal employee contributes only 0.8 percent of their pay toward the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), while taxpayers put in 4.8 percent per employee (this is exclusive of the 6.2 percent Social Security tax paid by each federal employee, which is matched by taxpayers). FERS is a three-part retirement system consisting of Social Security coverage, a defined-benefit pension, and the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), which is similar to 401(k)s offered to employees in the private sector. All federal employees under FERS automatically are enrolled in TSP. Even for those federal employees who elect not to contribute toward TSP, taxpayers are forced to contribute one percent of the employee's basic pay to TSP. For federal employees who elect to participates in TSP, taxpayers match their contributions on the first 5% of pay (the first 3% of pay is matched dollar-for-dollar; the next 2% is matched at 50 cents on the dollar; contributions above 5% are not matched). That is a boatload of money for Wall Street to profit on by charging management fees based on a percentage of fund total.

Some states have moved to, or are considering moving to, a 401(k)-style retirement plan for the public pension systems, along with other reforms for public sector employees. For example, Oklahoma's governor in 2011 signed a pension reform law, signaling the beginning of the end of years of piled-up pension responsibilities due in no small part to governmental inaction. The Oklahoma reforms include increasing the retirement age for many of those in the systems and forbidding lawmakers from offering cost-of-living increases without identifying a funding source. Also in 2011, Wisconsin's governor signed a pension reform law, ending collective bargaining for most public employees and requiring most state and local government employees to pay a larger share of the cost of their pension and health benefits, which is typical for workers in the private sector. For years in the Wisconsin system, state and local taxpayers paid not only the employer share of public pension contributions but, primarily due to collective bargaining, paid essentially all of the public employee contributions. The new Wisconsin law requires that for most public employees, pension contributions be split equally between employees and taxpayers (the pension costs didn't disappear; rather, they were transferred from taxpayers as a whole to the public employees paying their fair share).

Policymakers must remain vigilant in not rolling back the reforms and letting the pensions again become victims of shifting political winds. Oklahoma's governor said he'll recommend more changes in the future to modernize the pension systems, but that effort absolutely depends on future legislatures showing the same sort of leadership as this one.

PhillyDeals: Public pension plans pay hedge-fund fees with little gain

October 6, 2014

Philly.com - Struggling to raise cash for future pensions without bigger taxpayer bailouts, state workers' and teachers' retirement plans in the last dozen years or so have sought higher returns by betting on "alternative" investments not traded on public markets: hedge funds, real estate, private equity.

Hedge-fund managers have collected billions in fees, but their returns have mostly trailed stocks in recent years. The largest U.S. pension plan, the California Public Employees Retirement System, plans to dump its $4 billion hedge-fund portfolio, citing "complexity, cost," and the difficulty of buying enough good ones.

Hedge funds were supposed to make money even when stocks didn't, but they lost money when stocks went down in 2008.

Nicholas Maiale, who chaired the Pennsylvania State Employees' Retirement System (SERS) when it started buying hedge funds in 2002, says he has "soured" on the class. (Maiale feels better about private-equity funds, whose values rose with stocks in the recent bull market.)

It is tough for civilians to track what the state is getting from these high-fee investments. Unlike with stock and bond managers, pension plans don't post each alternative manager's yearly performance. Aggregate results for alternative-asset portfolios include managers' estimates of what their investments might be worth some day.

It's also hard to track the fees that managers collect, says Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, who wants SERS and the Public School Employees' Retirement System (PSERS) to disclose more about their $7 billion in hedge funds.

"This is public money. This needs to be transparent," DePasquale told me. "It is very difficult to find out, through their own reporting, what the actual fee structures are."

"There is no uniform reporting" for state pension assets, Evelyn Williams, spokeswoman for PSERS, told me. "It is nearly impossible to compare the value of fees paid among various pension funds."

SERS, for example, signed an agreement with the hedge-fund manager Tiger Keystone Partners to prevent "the economic terms of this Agreement and any sensitive investment or financial information from public disclosure," when it invested $250 million in Tiger in 2012.

In its annual "Investment Program Expenses & Fees" report to state legislators, SERS does not list any fees paid to Tiger, even though a consultant report, circulated to the pension's board members but not published, lists "management fees" totaling $5.5 million and "incentive fees" totaling $5.7 million as paid to Tiger in 2012 and 2013. SERS staff declined comment on the consultant report.

PSERS reports some but not all the fees its alternative managers collect. Private-equity and hedge-fund managers are typically paid annual management fees of up to 2 percent of the money they invest, plus 20 percent of the investment's profits above a basic target. Fund managers call that 20 percent they collect "carried interest," and cherish it, since the government taxes it as capital gains, at lower rates than other income.

Hedge-fund managers typically collect carried interest each year. PSERS reports their carried interest along with management fees. But private-equity managers tend to let carried interest mount until their funds are liquidated years later; PSERS doesn't report what those managers collect.

New Jersey, similarly, does "not include carried interest earned by private equity and real estate managers," in reporting pension manager fees, state Treasury spokesman Christopher Santarelli told me.

Why should citizens care if pro investors get rich, as long as the pension plan does all right?

Americans have long worried that people who make fortunes from public contracts may influence how government does business. Congress in 2010 banned money managers from collecting fees from states and towns where they donated cash to politicians. The ban doesn't apply to donations to national political committees or candidates for Congress. Indeed, so many money managers give to national campaigns that "it would basically shut down the alternative portfolio if we were to go in that direction," Christopher McDonough, director of the New Jersey Division of Investment, told a state investment council meeting in September, according to my Inquirer colleague Andrew Seidman.

At the very least, we should know what we're paying them.

Wall Street Controllers Sold Out the U.S. to China, Which is Loaded with $1.3 Trillion in US Treasury Bonds

The quintessential points in time to guarantee the national failure are the creation of the US Federal Reserve in 1913, the abrogation of the Bretton Woods Gold Standard in 1971, the removal of the Glass-Steagall Law in 1999, and the granting of Most Favored Nation status to China in 1999. The destruction with its clear steps appears to have been motivated and intentional. The United States has been on a destructive course since the elimination of President Kennedy, which cleared the path for the hidden fascists. As Kurt Richebacher told me in August 2003 from his patio as we sipped iced tea, "The Americans are the last fascists. The British have always been fascists, bound by the sea and lacking in resources." - Jim_Willie_CB

Central Banker Liars, New Currency, Fatal Errors, Psycho War (Excerpt)

Legitimate income from industry was exported out of the United States, and reliance upon asset bubbles was the result, and eating home equity. The Wall Street executives are locked and loaded with huge gold accounts, hidden in off-shore accounts and even in Carlyle Group accounts. Pressure is building for the United States to lose its own currency. For three decades the US has exported inflation, but next it will rapidly import inflation. This is the key which when turned will open the door to the Third World. The US nation has already been de-industrialized. The process began in the 1980 decade with the outsourcing to the Pacific Rim. It culminated in the Chinese Renaissance after bargaining for the Most Favored Nation status. When the New Scheiss Dollar is launched, expect sudden price inflation to surge, expect sudden supply shortages to appear, and expect sudden violence to break out. The result will be acute shortages in food at supermarkets, acute shortages in fuel at service stations, and acute shortage in cash at ATM machines. The US population will not finally suffer a rude awakening until the vast broad painful shortages arrive and meet them face to face. If a 30% devaluation comes as part of the initial currency launch, then the (10/7) factor dictates a ripe 43% price inflation hit from the import channels. For reference to an actual model, see Venezuela for a peek into the US future of disorder, chaos, violence, and severe disruption. They struggle with 100% annual price inflation and deep shortage of staples, amidst almost daily demonstrations. - Jim_Willie_CB, June 3, 2014)

April 9, 2014 
 
Jim_Willie_CB - The fatal errors in US banking and economic policy could fill a book.

The Jackass has harped on the concept for other eight years on a regular and frequent basis, pointing out the merger of state with big corporations (led by banks), pointing out the permitted financial fraud and banker welfare, even General Motors welfare, pointing out the economic effect, pointing out the war levers used to guarantee supply, and pointing out the systemic failure it has caused.

Not 10% of Americans comprehend what fascism is, but 30% of the nation would qualify easily to serve as Nazi Youth Group leaders, possibly without realization of the group functions. Witness the honor guards and flag ceremonies at sporting events, including an occasional fighter jet flyover. This is not healthy, but rather a slippery path to a dark place. The bigger question is whether the US nation will recognize the Third World when it approaches with all its nasty trappings.

The fatal errors are many. They cannot be fully detailed. The seminal original sin was breaking off the Gold Standard by Nixon. In my book, the move was probably the second half of the arrangement to have Kennedy removed, followed by a clever deft move to install Kissinger. He created the Petro-Dollar mechanisms, by pushing for a quadruple in the crude oil price, then instituting the Petro Surplus Recycle plan, having the Saudis run OPEC, forcing nations to accumulate USTreasurys in their banking system.

The Petro-Dollar defacto standard replaced the formal Gold Standard. The kicker benefit was that Arab nations and Iran were able to fill their coffers, buy fancy yachts, build casinos in the desert, erect oversized palaces to stroke their egos, arrange $million allowances for royal kids, and kick back profits to the USMilitary industrial complex, the monster to be fed.

The Petro-Dollar has permitted the USEconomy to live off a credit card, without direct consequence to abused debt. The Petro-Dollar has permitted the USMilitary to seek out and conquer, to effect the hearts and minds, and to plunder.  

The creditor nations of the world realize their role as the victims who finance the field operations and covert operations. That all changed with the narcotics industry born in the Cambodia Triangle, advanced in the Kosovo depot, and accelerated in the Afghan poppy fields. The USGovt security agencies have had independent income for over three decades. Witness the first Langley coup of a foreign state in Ukraine. The untold story is the conflict between the USMilitary and the Langley Mercenaries. Look later to find the Odessa Ltd split, just like in the 1950 birth for the old Nazi Germany war machine enterprise.

Many are the errors.

The US corporate titans responded to both environmental strictures and labor union demands, by relocating many operations in the Pacific Rim. The US domestic income source was displaced. The Americans sought to rely upon asset bubbles for income. They spent home equity on consumerism objectives, but in fairness often for necessities.

The Greenspan Fed contributed significantly to the wrecked state. They moved away from valid monetary policy whereby money supply increase was to match economic growth. Instead, following the Rubin directive, the Mr Magoo cutout ordered the monetary aggregate to follow the Consumer Price Inflation index in the most egregious central bank error in modern history to that date. The falsified CPI enabled unchecked increases in money released within the system. Debt growth also exploded to create a USEconomy that resembled a cross between a hedge fund and a Ponzi scheme. The Irrational Exuberance speech was his disclaimer, a weak statement easily seen through by the Jackass and many others.

The promoted strategy of easy money being stimulus is patently false. The low interest rates actually act like a wet blanket, reducing income to savers, but keeping interest payments down. Unfortunately twice as much volume exists in accounts due interest income payouts, versus loan portfolios due interest from monthly service payments.

To the contrary, easy money is a debt bomb and capital acid. The climax error was likely more a grand betrayal, granting China the Most Favored Nation status. The purpose stayed hidden for many years, to lease their gold by Wall Street firms. The result has been a loss of US legitimate income, during a period of profound capital investment in China by Western firms. The Western Govts idiotically complained about Chinese trade surpluses, when two thirds of their surpluses came from subsidiaries of Western firms with heavy blessed foreign direct investment. The result has been debt writedowns that take capital equipment and other fixed assets into the mothballs, while hyper inflation has killed capital directly. The result is systemic failure for the US nation, which can no longer finance its debt.

The mindset of the nation has been that to promote recovery, the people must be given money to put in their pockets for spending purposes. Wrong again, since what the people need is jobs, removal of heavy corporate taxation, and clearing of malodorous federal regulatory obstacles.

The US nation has lost its way on what capitalism is. It embraces socialism, with all its ravages. It endorses austerity, which is nothing more than poison pills. It permits war machine aggression as foreign policy for both infrastructure alteration and currency defense.

The nation can rebound if the capital structures are renovated and permitted to grow from seed, namely capital formation. This has become a foreign concept in the nation once considered the cradle of capitalism. The former communist nations have become the capitalism adopters, while the former capitalist nation leader has adopted national socialism (aka nazi). The United States will undergo re-industrialization again, but by the Chinese carpet baggers. They are loaded with $1.3 trillion in USTreasury Bonds.

Look at the new businesses that have been hatched in the last decade, as they litter the Wall Street landscape. They are truly pathetic. See NetFlix and FaceBook and Groupon and LinkeIn, even Twitter and Monster. The list is long and unimpressive. These are disk drive racks and elaborate living room couches and kitchen boxes. These are not corporations with deep capital investment and useful products flowing, intellectual capital exploited, value added from talented work forces, and enduring contributions to both economy and society.

Look at the new national initiatives.

There was the Green Revolution sponsored by Obama, but it proved to be a sham. See Solyndra and its fraudulent loans, the favorite personal Obama portfolio investment. There should have been a freight firm IPO to reward Obama ventures on gun running to Mexico. It could have become a good movement, for solar, for wind, for waves. Instead a fraudulent field, just like the mortgage weeded field.

The new national initiative is the shale oil and fracking gas strategy, which is both short-lived and destructive. The shale oil revolution is a fleeting flash in the pan, requiring a Ponzi growth in new wells to compensate for extremely rapid wellhead depletion. The fracking gas movement punctures the natural tables, and thus contaminates the water supply, catering to the Halliburton monopoly on fracking chemicals. Not even witnessing evidence of tens of thousands of water pools on fire can stop this administration, hellbent on destruction.

Even the Obamacare national health insurance plan has hidden malignant tumor-like motives. See the slush funds to cronies, where money vanished. See the triple cost versus touted by officials. See the required financial statements that enable tracking other assets wished to remain in shadows. See the eventual ID chip implanted on the upper left arm. Feel the part-time nightmare response to the labor market.

The disasters of the Obama Admin will be the stuff of history books. What Bush Jr Admin did to wreck the USEconomy from aggressive war costs, the Obama Admin complemented with wreckage of the USEconomy from internal caustic seeds.

The US nation is filled with households that cover the spectrum. Many are very unhappy about the current path taken by the nation. Many are suddenly insecure with the popular inflation hedge in the home equity having vanished. Many are suddenly insecure also from the poor labor market, and the plethora of substandard jobs. Gone are the engineering jobs and foremen posts that used to pay well, or even bond issuer posts. They are replaced by fast food marts, cashier posts, retail sales, customer service, freight movers, secretaries, night watchmen, janitors, and cleaning staff.

The nation has a new disease uncovered in many households, if the scattered reports from Hat Trick Letter clients reflects the masses. The Jackass refers to it as Arrogant Ignorance, which separates the ordinary bright educated masses from the Intellectuals. Take an intelligent person, remove the scientific method of working with verifiable evidence, add on assumptions embedded in defiance, sprinkle with some righteous indignation, add some old fashioned anger and insult, and you arrive at Arrogant Ignorance.

This disease is rampant, and divides families. The Contempt Before Investigation, with harsh dismissal of actively thinking people, is a horrendous mental rotten apple all too often seen on the table. Both factors are ripe in the Jackass own original family, although the new adopted Latina families are far more open minded and promising. Let it be known that my father, although not in agreement with many perceptions and beliefs, has supported the newsletter, in particular with 2004 seed capital to accompany the intellectual sweat equity and shoestring needs. If professional workers used these weak mental methods in the work place, the would fail on a widespread basis, lose and look bad. The national condition is not being examined rationally, but rather emotionally and against weird psychological frameworks built in flimsy defense.

In the last three years, a few colleagues and the Jackass have investigated reasons why people do not investigate or show interest in the decayed financial structures and depleted economy. We examine why they choose to remain uninformed and in the dark. This is a new intriguing aspect of human psychology to me, and as fascinating as disturbing. Here are some conclusions after a couple of years: 

a) We conclude that some people have over-arching belief systems for their lives that are sacrosanct and not challenged.
b) We conclude that some people are so frightened by certain threats, that they wish to ignore them.
c) We conclude that some people wish to believe the leaders, laws, and system protect them, another sacred belief.
d) We conclude that some people are successful in their work, and deeply invested in the current system, that they do not wish to alter the system in which they succeed. 

These justifications and phenomena are not comprehensive or exhaustive. They are a work in progress, which go together with the Stockholm Syndrome and the Warsaw Effect. These two address the emotional integration between victim and assailant, and the denial of threat while trapped within walls. However, integrate the four described items and something more perverse emerges. What appears is defense mechanisms for a failed nation and delusional defeated masses. Too many people have succumbed to the pressures, and remain hidden in their little anal caves.

Hats off to Gonzalo Lira for his book "A Secret History of the American Crash" which is a docu-drama work in the year 2020 set in Los Angeles. It provides a real life look on the streets and offices at where the broken Untied States is heading, based upon systemic failure, economic ruin, and society impact. From Lira's blog:

What are the scary parts of this novel? Or let me rephrase: What events described in this novel would scare the crap out of a reader in 2014? Well, there’s the issue of blatant, open anti-Semitism among the characters in the year 2020, and how Jewish people are openly persecuted under the guise of “networker targetting”. There’s the issue of women in the year 2020 being practically chattel, and how “plural marriages” are used to simultaneously keep women down and maintain social control. There’s the issue of total surveillance, up to and including all citizens having their DNA, picture and fingerprints taken, and every computer and electronic device being “tethered” to an owner—so that the government can quickly find out who is not “in compliance”. Then there are the concentration camps—excuse me, the “Detention and Processing Facilities”—where Americans who are “non-compliant” and have therefore lost their “American Privileges” are held, without recourse to the law or the courts because they haven’t been properly arrested—they have received “Administrative Detention”, and thus cannot contact a lawyer or a judge.

Gotta make it clear how in the year 2020, there’s no revolution or protest against the injustices and outrages of the government because (a) the fight has been literally bred out of people, and (b) people’s source of food depends on being “in compliance” with the government, so they are exceedingly wary of pissing off the G-Man.

In 2020, all drugs are legal, and their use is encouraged by the government, especially weed. Parts of the classified laws of the Domestic Pacification and Normalization Program (DOPA-Norm) of 2017 explicitly state that “the Federal Government should encourage the use of cannabis as a social lubircant and soporific. Don’t forget to include that somewhere. (Should weed be encouraged in the Detainee Camps as well? Think about it.)

How to describe people’s acquiescence? A lot of it has to do with the Capitol Bombing, and the rise of the so-called “insider threat”. The authorities are crazy about “insider threats”, gotta make that clear. But people’s acquiescence—their allowing the authorities to do bad things—has to do with having been slowly conditioned over the years. Think all those lock-down drills in schools.

Related: 

World War III, the Islamic State, and the New World Order into Which We Entered After 9/11/2001 (Richard Maybury)

Jim_Willie_CB (excerpt from May 7, 2014):

Saudi Arabia is critical, and it will flip eastward. It already has. The nation has a notable recent history in serving as the linchpin of the Petro-Dollar itself, leading the ragtag OPEC nations. The British created the nation from a bedouin desert into a kingdom, with a stroke of a pen. The big lie maintained for ten years is the excess capacity of Saudi oil output. There is no excess capacity, as the nation is heavily depleted. The Chinese have entered the tent. Huge projects are well along like the vast petro-chemical facility in the west by the Red Sea. More huge projects are  planned. The recent Chinese missile deal, complete with parade, should serve as clear indicator of the next chapter. The Chinese will operate the new protectorate role, thus to expect more Chinese naval vessels in the criss-crossed waters. The Chinese have already captured the commercial fronts, not so much with big energy projects, but with instead the archipelago of retail centers and distribution points. With the UAE and Saudi, the Gulf region was conquered years ago.

Enter Iran, often mentioned by the Jackass in the context of the Paradigm Shift eastward. The OPEC oil cartel under Saudi guidance will be replaced by the NatGas Coop under Russian guidance. The network of Iran gas pipelines will be strategically important. The Saudis are suddenly expendable. The USDollar has an insolvent foundation and the Saudi gold has been dislodged from its London moorings. The Iranians have two big allies in Russia and China, kept under their wings during the entire painful sanctions period. Suddenly the Saudis are expendable. Watch with amazement how the Western press will vilify the Saudis, while painting a picture of Iran having been reformed and cleaned up. The Chinese are making great strides as the new global diplomat. The Beijing leaders have dictated that the Iran conflict with the US/UK be brought to an end. Find a way, those are the marching orders. Lastly, notice the new Saudi Royal succession announced.

The announcement made by Russia, China, and the Saudis to settle oil and gas trade in Yuan and Ruble currency will blow the doors off the global financial system. The pact will center upon energy trade payment system as core, but will serve a general purpose for trade. The resulting effect might trigger a US-based derivative meltdown, possibly even a Japanese meltdown. The BRICS nations will start central bank function, converting USTBonds to gold. The number of BRICS Associate nations will approach one hundred nations, such minor players like Vietnam, Bolivia, and Indonesia taking part, along with the stalwart Iran. The BRICS Development Fund will offer continued cover as a crisis reserve fund to rescue financial arenas in the Emerging Markets, and offer some aid in deficit coverage. Apart from infrastructure project fund, look for hidden gold conversion of toxic paper. The best part is, all the events would indicate a return to Gold Standard, without the standard announced. The Jackass is just thinking outside the box.

Since 2008 and the Lehman failure (including Fannie Mae adoption and AIG assumption), this has been a financial war with a monetary battle front. The motive toward solution has been nowhere, since liquidation of big broken banks has never been an option.

Jim_Willie_CB (excerpt from June 3, 2014):

The tipping point was the Lehman kill in Sept 2008, following the subprime mortgage collapse. (Forecasted in advance by the Hat Trick Letter). It was a death event for the US banking structure, which should have forced liquidation of all Wall Street firms. Then came the Financial Accounting Standards Board relaxation of rules in April 2009, which still permits the big US banks to declare their assets at any value they wish. They hide grotesque insolvency. Their liquidation would not happen, instead zombies walked.

The next tipping point was the Federal Reserve announcing a move toward the Zero Percent Interest Rate (ZIRP) in early 2009. (Forecasted in advance by the Hat Trick Letter). The next tipping point was the Federal Reserve announcing the bond monetization initiative (QE) in early 2012. (Forecasted in advance by the HTLetter). The next tipping point was Taper Talk removed in September 2013, an obvious declaration of QE to Infinity. (Forecasted in advance by the HTLetter). The most recent tipping points are the Syria War and the Ukraine War to obstruct the Russian Energy Monopoly in the European energy market. Further signals abound, but are more effectively hidden. Cyprus, Syria, and Ukraine all have Gazprom obstruction in common. The defense of the USDollar has taken historically unprecedented turns.

The USDollar support has been military for a long time, but implicitly so. In recent months, the military support has been more overt and obvious. It will be full of intrigue to see if Putin can keep the battles on the financial front, while freezing the military front in a standoff, even if a messy standoff. The military battles can happen, as long as they are isolated. There will be many confrontations like on the Black Sea in the last couple weeks. The Russia Air Force offered a demonstration to the USNavy of their advance radar jamming equipment. The USNaval battlefield was left blind and without targeting systems. The USDollar Regime loses the global battle on the financial front, since it has no legs.

The role played by the Saudis has become clear. They recently had a parade to show off their new Chinese missiles, a bold step. This follows an economic conference in March held in Beijing between the two nations, to settle on large scale projects, cross border investments, political alignment of the minds, and some charity offerings. To be clear, as forecasted in the last few months, the Saudis have divorced the United States. The Saudis will next crawl under the Chinese wing. In vengeance, the Saudis will be treated with some terrorism, while the London bankers continue to steal their gold. The Riyadh thwarted terrorist incident is just the beginning. It bore a Langley signature.

The Jackass forecast is that the USDollar is not going to tank, not going to suffer a rapid decline. The financial structure is very complicated. Failed financial structures across the Western world will require a large pile of USDollars to settle broken derivative contracts. The USGovt will be forced to launch a domestic Dollar, which deserves the name Scheiss Dollar. It will be seriously devaluated in a sequence of steps. Expect severe problems inside the USEconomy. Refer to price inflation (imported after 30 years), supply chain disruption (uncertainty on short-term currency issues), and violence (at gasoline stations, food markets, and ATM cash centers).

Expect to see the mass of paper currencies suffer severe problems from direct dependence upon central bank inflation machinery and special bond patches. Expect to see a table full of new gold-backed currencies arrive like in a parade.

Refer to new Yuan, new Ruble, new Gulf Dinar, new Nordic Euro, and possibly new Norway Krone. The new US Republic Dollar will be the joker in the deck, the toilet paper item on the elite counter top. The new currencies will all be gold-backed and form a global critical mass, which might include about 60% to 65% of global trade. They will slowly bury all the present day paper currencies. In order to comprehend the next chapter, the observer and the analyst and the student must think in terms of the new currencies. Russia and China each in possession of over 20,000 tons of gold, ready to back new currencies. The United States has an empty vault and a sprawling military which no longer can boast Full Spectrum Dominance.


Jim_Willie_CB (excerpt from June 3, 2014):

Nowhere has the betrayal of the US nation been more stark and ugly as with the granting of Most Favored Nation status to China in 1999. The story told is shallow and insipid, if not deceptive and loaded with treason. Reducing the cost of import items is a very shallow empty argument, with no long-term benefit, since legitimate income from industry was exported out of the United States. Reliance upon asset bubbles was the result, and eating home equity. It took time to come to light, but the MFN grant was done with a hidden backend lease of a sizeable portion of the Mao Era gold horde. Follow the collateral trails. My guess is it involved about 2000 metric tons.

The Chinese demanded collateral, like any prudent organization would. They received it in two forms, in the Jackass best estimation, as a result of the sequence of events which have followed. First, the Wall Street and Federal Reserve hive pledged the JPMorgan Chase headquarter complex as collateral, maybe other buildings as well. But the big enchilada was how the Chinese were given by Wall Street a securitized sovereign bond (like a mortgage bond) on the IRS income tax stream. Such derivatives are regular menu items for the Exchange Stabilization Fund managed by the USDept Treasury, with big arm assists by JPMorgan’s Chief Investment Office.

Such derivatives hold together the USTreasury Bond complex, which China has been actively involved with. They were the primary beneficiary to Operation Twist in 2012, and probably designed it, then force fed it down the USFed throats. When the USEconomy suffered consecutive 3% and 4% recessions every year in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, the brutal impact was a default on the income tax bond derivative. Chronic recessions do that. The officially stated 1% or 2% GDP growth must be reduced by the inflation lie. For several years, the true CPI has been 7% to 9%. Inflation is called growth, according to Reich Finance. Subtract a chunk off every officially stated GDP, as the USEconomy is mired in a deep recession if not depression.

The visible part of the default is seen in the distressed sale (more like asset seizure) of the JPMorgan HQ for the paltry price of $725 million to a state-owned Chinese property conglomerate. The stated value at the time was $1.9 billion, but informed sources indicate the entire multi-purpose property complex to be worth easily $3 or $4 billion. They grabbed the gold vault too, and the conference center. The vault is connected to the USFed gold vaults underground via tunnels. The Chinese could have just as easily demanded the HQ of other Wall Street banks. Instead, they were given the JPMorgan HQ as collateral, since it is the operating arm of the USFed itself.

With very high likelihood, conclude that China has taken control of the Federal Reserve, taken control of One Chase Plaza. Either the Federal Reserve has been shut down or purchased. Its lease expired in 2013, amidst much speculation. No story ensued on the contract continuation or other disposition. The Jackass believes China took the Fed by default force. Further evidence was seen at the Dallas Fed, where the US and Chinese flags were jointly flown until public complaints recently. The Chinese always prefer a low profile, especially when colonizing the United States. Next come industrial parks and vast commercial property purchase. Later comes the re-industrialization of the nation.

The biggest betrayal in modern history of any sovereign nation and its populace might have taken place last year. The USGovt defaulted apparently on the IRS tax stream bond held by China as collateral for the massive gold lease. The JPM HQ seizure is simply the visible portion on the asset seizure. The renege on returning leased Gold caused a trade war to commence back in 2007. Then the default on the IRS mortgage came last year, due to the powerful USEconomic recession.

The Wall Street controllers to the USGovt sold out the nation, effectively handing over sovereign control to China in a lost gold poker bet. That is precisely what appears to be the case. In the meantime, the Obama Admin seems particularly pre-occupied with amending the laws for treason as much and for gay marriage. He has vested interest in both, along with Clinton and Bush the Lesser. The clowns who decry terrorism the most are the architects and purveyors of treason. But hey! The Jackass is delusional and crackpot. No American leaders would steal Fort Knox for the national treasury (see Rubin, Bush, Clinton), and then hand over foreign direct investment to China with a gold lease (see same clan) secured by a pledge of income tax revenue on collateral. To do so would be a coordinated betrayal using the US corporate sector in an abandonment of the American workers. Methinks the Paradigm Shift eastward has had some significant lubrication in the moving hind parts.

China is Hoarding Gold; Is the U.S. Dollar About to Collapse?

?

Iran and its leading oil buyers, China and India, found ways to skirt U.S. and European Union financial sanctions on the Islamic republic by agreeing to trade oil for local currencies and goods including wheat, soybean meal and consumer products. The second-largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Iran said in February 2012 that it will accept payment in any local currency or gold as new sanctions make it harder for trading partners to pay in dollars and euros. [Source]

First, let’s backtrack. In March 2012, the United States and European Union beefed up their economic sanctions on Iran, shutting Iran out of the global payments network called SWIFT. Also in March 2012, Turkey’s gold exports to Iran doubled from the month before and exploded 37 times over the March 2011 figure. “Natural gas is the source of almost all electricity in Turkey. I wrote in Apogee Advisory. “More than 90% of Iran’s gas exports go to Turkey. Iran furnishes 18% of Turkey’s natural gas. Without Iran, Turkey would depend almost entirely on a single gas supplier to keep the lights on — Russia. Under the sanctions, Turkey can’t pay for Iranian gas with dollars or euros. So it pays with gold.” India likewise paid with gold for Iranian oil. Iran could then use the gold to buy food or manufactured goods from Russia and China. “The United States,” Rickards writes,” had inflicted a currency collapse, hyperinflation, and a bank run and had caused a scarcity of food, gasoline and consumer goods, through the expedient of cutting Iran out of the global payments system.” Gold had become Iran’s lifeline...When Iran agreed to resume nuclear talks, a conceit took hold in Washington that “the sanctions worked” — the Iranians had been more or less starved to the negotiating table. Not so, says former Ambassador William Miller, who was stationed in Iran during the 1960s and is in contact with the current regime. “Sanctions only made them more defiant,” he tells the Los Angeles Times. Want proof? Iran put the same offer on the table in 2003 — only to be spurned by the United States. Actually, it was a better offer from Washington’s perspective. Back then, Iran had only 164 nuclear centrifuges; by 2013, it had 19,000. That’s a heck of a lot more bargaining chips to hold once negotiations begin in earnest. [Source]

Soon the feds will seize all retirement accounts, and redemptions will be blocked. Many who are around 60 years old and possessing gigantic “paper wealth” and close to retirement seem absolutely frozen, immobilized, stuck in neutral gear, either unwilling or unable to make that 401K—IRA—Keogh—pension account redemption call. Obama will pitch as an annuity or “guaranteed” income stream from that Mother of All Safe Financial Instruments... U.S. Treasury Bonds!! And how coincidental / convenient that it turns out that the sum total of all retirement accounts is right around 17 trillion…close to at least the federal debt figure quoted in the mainstream media. Neat and tidy and more digestible…..when of course (without regard to derivatives losses of one-and-a-half quadrillion)….America’s REAL debt — including unfunded liabilities like Social Security, Fannie, Freddie, Medicare, et.al — is a staggering $240 trillion. TO ANYONE READING THIS—Please take aside those you care about and do whatever it takes to just “get over” the 20% early withdrawal penalty and CALL THEIR MUTUAL FUND ADVISOR, stock broker, etc. The window of opportunity to re-invest those soon-to-be-worthless dollars into things with high intrinsic value closes a little more each day. [David Carswell]

The global rejection of the Petro-Dollar is well along, which began with the introduction of QE, then QE2, then Operation Twist. But the global rejection took flight after Taper Talk failed in its trial balloon, and achieved supersonic speed with the recognition of QE to Infinity was implicitly endorsed. The global rejection saw the prototype built in the hangar with the Iran sanction workarounds, where India bought Iran's oil and gas, but paid with Turkish gold, delivered to Tehran banks. The global rejection will achieve escape velocity with the acceptance of Russian Rubles for its energy products. The global rejection will achieve additional escape velocity with the acceptance of Chinese Yuan payments for Saudi crude oil (then all OPEC oil). Coming is the launch of both the gold-backed Russian Ruble and the gold-backed Chinese Yuan. The global rejection will be final, and the funeral will be announced. They will enter the financial airspace first, followed by others. When the US Military defense of the US Dollar is recognized as blatant, dishonorable, toothless, and ineffective, the other gold-backed currencies will follow. The isolated paper tiger was revealed in Syria. The toothless rampaging tiger will be revealed in Ukraine. The Kiev Govt is almost ready to collapse already. The Russians and Chinese might put the first daggers in the USDollar heart, but numerous death blows will come from other parties. [Source]

Is China Hoarding Gold to Challenge the U.S. Dollar?

November 19, 2014

WallStCheatSheet - In a world filled with fiat currencies, how important is gold’s role in the financial system? Proponents often view the precious metal as a hedge against economic chaos, while critics typically claim gold is hardly more than an unproductive rock. Interestingly, some countries appear to believe gold is quite important, and one former Fed chair explains why.

Alan Greenspan, who served at the helm of the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades, recently penned an op-ed for the Council on Foreign Relations discussing gold and its possible role in China, the world’s second-largest economy. He notes that if China converted only a “relatively modest part of its $4 trillion foreign exchange reserves into gold, the country’s currency could take on unexpected strength in today’s international financial system.”

Greenspan also believes the downside risks for China stockpiling gold are limited, at least from a pure investment point of view. “It would be a gamble, of course, for China to use part of its reserves to buy enough gold bullion to displace the United States from its position as the world’s largest holder of monetary gold,” he wrote. “But the penalty for being wrong, in terms of lost interest and the cost of storage, would be modest.”

The People’s Bank of China has not formally disclosed any changes to its gold holdings in years, but it’s believed that the central bank is purchasing gold to diversify its reserve holdings. In 2009, China announced that it boosted its gold reserves by 454 tonnes via acquiring gold quietly over the previous five years. That represented an impressive 76 percent increase in gold reserves. Today, China still shows that it holds 1,054.1 tonnes in reserves, but it’s speculated by analysts to actually have around 2,000 to 3,000 tonnes.

Some market participants also believe China is building up its gold reserves to challenge the U.S. dollar, which is currently the world’s reserve currency. A few years ago, China’s official news agency, Xinhua, said, “International supervision over the issue of U.S. dollars should be introduced and a new, stable and secured global reserve currency may also be an option to avert a catastrophe caused by any single country.”

Gold already plays a significant role in China’s economy. In 2013, China’s gold consumption surged 41 percent year-over-year to 1,176.40 tonnes, exceeding 1,000 tonnes for the first time on record, according to the China Gold Association. Demand for jewelry was the biggest contributor, with an increase of 43 percent to 716.50 tonnes, while bullion demand rose 57 percent to 375.73 tonnes. China is the largest gold consumer and producer in the world.

China faces an uphill battle if it’s going to challenge America’s gold stockpile. According to the most recent data from the World Gold Council, the U.S. holds 8,133.5 tonnes of gold, representing 71.8 percent of reserves and the most held by any one country in the world. Furthermore, a behind-the-scenes look from Greenspan reveals that the U.S. is not likely to sell its gold stash anytime soon.

“In 1976, for example, I participated, as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, in a conversation in which then U.S. Treasury Secretary William Simon and then Federal Reserve Board Chair Arthur Burns met with President Gerald Ford to discuss Simon’s recommendation that the United States sell its 275 million ounces of gold and invest the proceeds in interest-earning assets,” said Greenspan. “Whereas Simon, following the economist Milton Friedman’s view at that time, argued that gold no longer served any useful monetary purpose, Burns argued that gold was the ultimate crisis backstop to the dollar. The two advocates were unable to find common ground. In the end, Ford chose to do nothing. And to this day, the U.S. gold hoard has changed little, amounting to 261 million ounces.”

Top 10 Percent of American Earners Own 80 Percent of All Stocks and Pull In 50 Percent of Total Wages

Top 10 percent of American earners pulled in 49.7 percent of total wages

Ttop 10 percent of Americans own more than 80 percent of all stocks

$23.7 trillion Wall Street bailout was paid for by the bottom 99 percent

Goldman gets $52 billion in low-interest loans from the government (the taxpayers) to finance its trading

[Source]

According to data from Spectrem Group, the Chicago-based wealth research firm, in 2013 they were 8.99 million U.S. households whose net worth totals $1 million or more (not including primary residence). That was up from 8.6 million in 2011 and just short of the all-time record set in 2006, when the United States had 9.2 million millionaire households.

The stock market's rise has been the biggest driver of millionaire creation. With 2013's gains, Spectrem said, the United States may have already exceeded its all-time record.

Most of the benefits from rising stocks have gone to the wealthy, since the top 10 percent of Americans own more than 80 percent of all stocks, according to research from Edward Wolff of New York University. But the recent stock surge has also created a new gap within the wealthy, or at least between millionaires and the so-called affluent.

According to Spectrem, the number of households worth $1 million or more, and $5 million or more is near the record. But the number of households worth $500,000 or more (the affluent) is much lower than the record in 2007. There are 14.3 million households worth $500,000 or more — down from 15.7 million in 2007.

Public Pension Funds Became Money Pots for the Biggest Risk-takers on Wall Street

Pension Fund Capitalism or Wall Street Bonanza?

A Critique of the Claim That Pension Funds Can Influence Corporations

First posted August 2009; most recently updated April 2013

G. William Domhoff - "Pension fund socialism" in the 1970s. "Investor capitalism" driven by pension fund activists in the 1990s. Such are the large claims that have been made for the potential importance of public pension funds, working in tandem with union-controlled pension funds, in shaping the decision-making of corporate boards.

This document examines these claims and casts a cold eye on them by tracing the history of the "institutional investors' movement" since the 1980s. It suggests that there always has been far less to this movement than the media attention it receives. At the outset, it was an effort by moderate Republicans and centrists, speaking in the name of stockholders in criticizing allegedly self-serving corporate executives, who supposedly do not look out for stockholder interests in a vigorous enough fashion. This emphasis on "shareholder value" led to common cause with liberal elected officials and union leaders, but the movement as a whole has had no lasting successes, just temporary and symbolic ones, as best seen by the rapacious and often illegal actions of a good number of corporate boards between 1998 and 2008 despite 25 years of effort by those who thought they could use public pension funds as a way to make corporations better for employees.

Not only did the movement fail, but many of the public pension funds themselves became money pots for the biggest risk-takers on Wall Street, who carried out hostile corporate takeovers and corporate buy-outs in the 1980s with their help, then bundled mortgages -- including subprime mortgages -- into new kinds of "securities" in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which they sold to naive pension fund managers caught up in the excitement of the housing bubble. Indeed, several public pension funds ended up among the many financial organizations that received government bailouts via the billions of dollars that the Department of Treasury gave to AIG (American International Group, an insurance company) in early 2009.

Meanwhile, an April 2010 study for the New York Times, discussed more fully in the next section, showed that "private equity funds" (e.g., hedge funds, venture capital funds, real estate investment trusts) made tens of billions of dollars between 2000 and 2010 by (1) charging public pension funds a "management fee" of 2% on every dollar they managed; and (2) taking 20% of the profits they made through investing the pension funds' money. The 10 largest public pension funds alone paid $17 billion to private equity firms in that time period (Anderson, 2010).

To top it all off, the biggest financiers on Wall Street tried to make money by working insider deals to invest some of the funds held by the same federal government agency -- the Pension Fund Guaranty Corporation -- that manages $50 billion in retirement funds for the unlucky souls who worked for corporations that went bankrupt. They grabbed this business by cultivating relationships with Charles E. F. Millard, the former Wall Street investment banker that the Bush Administration had appointed to head the fund. You can read the story, and excerpts from some of the very revealing e-mails, on the New York Times' Web site. (In July of 2009, under scrutiny from Congress and others, the PFGC revoked the sweetheart deals with Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, and JPMorgan Chase.)

(There are also plenty of scams being uncovered at the state level that are a total embarrassment to those who once claimed that pension funds could have any influence on corporations or be a force for the general good. Instead, they became another source of money for Wall Street to invest in risky deals, and also a way for politicians to help out businesses in exchange for campaign donations. And of course, they lost some of the people's money in the process, which has been the story of Wall Street for well over 100 years: use other people's money to pay for the riskiest gambles. This is an unfolding story, so we will add new links to this document from time to time. For example, an article in the New York Times discusses the scandal surrounding the state of New York's pension fund, where one of the scammers pleaded guilty in March of 2010.)

Then, just at 2010 ended, one of the most respected Wall Street financiers of the past 25 years, Steven Rattner -- a one-time New York Times reporter who went to work for a fabled investment firm, Lazard Freres, and then opened his own firm, Quadrangle -- sort of and indirectly admitted guilt to bribing a pension fund official via a kickback scheme. He did so by reaching an agreement with the attorney general of New York to pay a $10 million fine and accept a five-year ban on his involvement with any work involving state pension funds. Earlier, he had reached an agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to pay a $6.2 million fine and agree to a two-year ban on working in certain Wall Street businesses for the same alleged kickback scheme.

But, since Rattner did not have to admit to any wrongdoing, he can still say his record is without blemish. (He can say he paid the unfair fines and accepted the bans because the government is so powerful.) However, his net worth was down to the $188 to $608 million range, according to a 2009 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and his chances of becoming Secretary of the Treasury, a goal made plausible by his role as a major Democratic fundraiser on Wall Street, have probably ended -- at least for the next few years.

Something even bigger popped up in March 2013, when the former chief executive of the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) was indicted for stealing $14 million from one of the private firms (Apollo Global Management) that invested money for CalPERS. Apollo had been paying one of the CalPERS chief's buddies to steer at least $48 million in CalPERS business its way, which gave Apollo the opportunity to make hundreds of millions from investing some of the pension fund's billions. But that was apparently not enough for the chief and his partner in crime, so they perpetrated the $14 million fraud. When the chief exec left CalPERS in 2008, he too became a "placement officer" for investment firms, but the law finally caught up with him five years later.

The New York Times called the March 2013 indictment the latest in "a nationwide pay-to-play scandal that erupted several years ago. Regulators from numerous states, including California and New Mexico, have cracked down on widespread influence peddling in how their state pension funds were invested."