I never was very good at math

but the situation is so painfully obvious.  What scares me more than a self-serving gorenment is the apparent depth of denial the middle-class of our great nation is in regarding our new place in society.  My personal favorite is blaming it on immigrants.  Blaming and hating those who are even worse off than you for much the same self-serving economic policy reasons might feel good in the moment but going along with those who run this game won't give you a free pass for long ... those  who think that just because they agree with the elite assesment of reality they are safe...don't make me laugh. Pawns are always expendable.

I would also be curious to ask Mr. J P morgan/chase why his company sends me at least one, usually two envelopes full of "convenience checks" solicitaions for credit they know I can't pay back.  What exactly is going to happen to the many Americans who are using those to supplement their income in order to survive when they max out and can't pay it?

Debtor's prison?

Nahhh...that would raise expenses and reduce profitability.

Maybe you could have the option to serve in Iraq protecting our new oil wells to work off your debt.

Got to keep an eye on tha ROI.

Great article.

http://creatingprogress.blogspot.com

by kgongre (17 articles, 0 quicklinks, 21 diaries, 21 comments) on Monday, July 7, 2008 at 4:05:55 PM
 

kgongre

Thanks for the response. Dimon should have said a lot of other things, including the fact that the banks are ultra villains in the plot to take Middle America out.

What really went wrong with the Fed, Congress, Banks and Big Business's plan was that wages did not inflate as expected. Normally, when purposely induced inflation is enacted (very low rates, expanding the money supply), wages inflate to meet new prices and we reshuffle for a new deal.

This time, real wages are actually contracting which is bustin' up the game. The banks got caught holding the bag. With more that 8.5 million Americans unemployed, wages will not rise to meet the higher cost of living.

It's called Stagflation and economically speaking, isn't supposed to be possible. But Jimmy Carter will argue all day long that it is more than possible.

by Mike Folkerth (120 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 566 comments) on Monday, July 7, 2008 at 9:43:36 PM
 

Wages

Wages inflate only when their is competition for labour in an expanding economy.  The economy has expanded largely due to immigration.  However, this immigration taking place at a time of globalization, ie, exporting jobs abroad, obviously will suppress wages.  Wages at best could simply meet inflation, and only at the better companies.

But under Clinton and until today CPI was been manipulated to artificially reduce inflation figures. Since CPI  is the basis for COLA's and wage increases,  real income is lower than it would be.  Housing prices were tracking real inflation, but "real" income was declining so fewer people could qualify for prime loans, and along came sub-primes to the rescue.  They say housing was a bubble, and at the end in certain areas it is true, but the real problem was wages rolled down the hill for the last decade or more.

As for JP Morgan and Oil prices.  Oil prices today are determined by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank or UBS.  For under 15 dollars they can buy a barrel of oil futures, and their coordinated volume in this direction ensures the price will go up.  They sell before the contract expires, never taking delivery of a drop.  When the bubble bursts or whenever there is a correction, you can be sure they have dropped their long positions and went short.   Increasing margin requirements would drop oil prices like lead in water. 

It is a well planned attack on America by the international globalists.  No accidents here. 

As for where money would come from should it be needed to provide a safety net.  Where does it come from now?  Banks create the money out of thin air  to make loans and issue credit to those who are not credit worthy.  China creates it's own money to buy USD their manufacturers want to exchange, and then uses the USD they bought with money created out of thin air to loan back to us at interest.

If governments can issue bonds for bankers to buy with money they create out of thin air,  governments can create their own money.  This is not inflationary when a country is at less than full employment and in a recession. 

by pft (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 466 comments) on Monday, July 7, 2008 at 11:38:05 PM
 

PFT

In my honest and educated opinion, you are wrong about oil. Considering that U.S. banks control all of the oil pricing structure in the world, 75% of which isn't our oil, would require a conspiracy beyond reason.

Your understanding of inflation on a macroeconomics scale is also flawed. Once the gold and silver standards were abandoned, the basis for our currency simply became a belief system. Printing fiat currency in an amount that exceeds a balance between real wages and output is inflationary regardless of current economic trends.

Our monetary system is by design inflationary due to the element of compounding interest which demands continual printing of additional dollars to service interest bearing debt. Doing so creates the need for infinite growth in the money supply. This practice is in direct conflict with our physical/energy system (the basis for all that is real) which is finite.

From the very beginning, our system of exponential growth in a finite world was mathematically flawed and doomed from inception. We are currently playing out the final hand against Universal Law, who hasn't lost a game yet.

by Mike Folkerth (120 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 566 comments) on Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 8:06:40 AM
 

Well

 In a recent hearing held by the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee,  four industry experts, representing energy consultants, all agreed, under questioning, that oil prices could quickly be cut in half, with no harm to producers, just by removing the speculative aspect of the market. One, Michael Masters, (who has recently testified for other Committees) even said that if the CFTC (Commodities Futures Trading Commission) would simply enforce their rules as written, a big portion of the speculative bubble could be immediately contained.

http://www.larouchepub.com/pr/2008/080623halve_oil_prices.html

As for the fiat money system being responsible for inflation today, I do not see it.  We had inflation while on the gold standard, especially during wars when the government was forced to go into debt, and we have been at war of one form or another for 60 years. The Great Depression occurred while we were on the gold standard.  You are correct on the role interest due on debt plays in inflation.  Usury is the curse.  The income tax is required to ensure the governmnet has sufficient money to pay the interest on debt incurred to fight all of our wars.  Unlike the rest of us, the government never pays back the principal, just the interest.  The way the system works, is if there is no debt, we would have no money. 

The magic is in fractional reserve banking.  For every 3 dollars the system has in reserves, 97 dollars can be created and loaned out.   Our entire financial system is based on credit market debt bubbles that get blown up and popped.  Since the debt is asset backed, each bubble collapse results in a transfer of wealth from those who default and surrender their assets to the money powers.  These assets were produced by labour.  The money that was loaned out to obtain these tangible assets was created out of thin air.  It did not exist until the loan was approved, upon which it gets created.

Since our domestic economy outside the finance service sector, agribusiness cartels, Big Oil and MIC is so weak, inflation is manifested by cartel pricing practices of these industries and speculative forces in commodities, not to mention crony capitalism and no-bid contracts.  The flood of USD on the global market has resulted in currency depreciation, which makes the costs of imports more expensive.

However, this inflation is not the inflation of an overheated economy that struggles to increase domestic production to meet global demand.  It is the inflation of a economic system that creates more and more fictitous capital to feed on what is left of the productive economies wealth.  This type of banking started in 1694 with the BOE following the Glorious Revolution, and was adopted in the US in 1913 with the establishment of the Fed.    This type of banking facilitated the Illuminatis' efforts  to control nations in order to destroy them, in furtherance of their goal of One World Government.

These central banks have been used to finance both sides of virtually every war of the last 200 years.  Control a nations money supply and you control the nation, and you can get them fighting with each other to gain more and more control.  

The US has fulfilled it's role in the Illuminati's march toward Globalization.  We have been sucked dry, and our productive economy exported abroad.  The next step is the final destruction of the USD as the worlds reserve currency, and to replace it with a new world currency controlled by the IMF (which is controlled by the worlds central banks under the direction of the BIS).  Once that happens,  America as a Superpower is toast.  We will be treated like other 3rd world nations who go into debt that they can't pay.  We will still have our military power, but it will continue to be under the control of the Illuminati's UN and the taxes the worlds nations pay to the UN will finance it's operation. 

by pft (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 466 comments) on Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 11:44:56 PM
 

What Planning?

If you can't understand what's happening in America and you would like to,  I have a simple solution. It's so simple it's too easily dismissed.

Get five friends and sit down for a game of Monopoly. Add some liquor to make the game more realistic, it will enhance everyone's competitiveness,  or greed, whichever term you prefer. No matter the semantics,  results will remain the same.

Now, this is pretty complex so pay close attention. (facetiousness, for those of you who insist on being literal at all costs. You especially will need to flex your imaginations and set aside your need for argumentiveness. this isn't rocket science.) Mind you, you need the capacity to analogize.

How many people win?       What do the losers do?    What's the problem?

by PeterJ (11 articles, 2 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 131 comments) on Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 8:55:19 AM
 

PeterJ

I once wrote a column comparing unchecked capitalism with the game of monopoly. The resemblance is striking with the exception that the bank doesn't give loans under the game rules. When you're broke, your broke.

I posted an article today that compares the imbalance between our physical system and our monetary system which are at direct odds with one another.

by Mike Folkerth (120 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 566 comments) on Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 9:49:14 AM
 

"Loan" rhymes with "Own"

Good point Mike, but maybe we should change the game rules in the game we play.

Let's appoint a new "participant player", being the banker but let's call him the "Fed".  He can issue loans, charge interest rates as he sees fit, print up new money when he feels up to it. The only part we need to figure out, seeing how it's only a game, is what will the bank do with everyone once it owns them?

The game does NOT work! The system, does not work. Now, for all of the "literal" morons who's answer for everything is "It's still the best game we got",  That's what everyone keeps saying about America. That doesn't mean we can't make it better. Or would you rather wait until we're the "best" Third World Nation on Earth?

by PeterJ (11 articles, 2 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 131 comments) on Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 10:41:18 AM
 

Peter J

I like that line, "The best 3rd world nation on earth." My article, "3rd World, one pink slip away," garnered a lot of attention. Our system of economics in the U.S. is that of giant pyramid scheme. There is a reason that true pyramid schemes are illegal; they are mathematically impossible to continue long term.

I hear the same argument that "Until something better comes along, ours is the best system in the world." Horse pucky. As you say, we better get to changing it before we are the best 3rd world nation on earth.

by Mike Folkerth (120 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 566 comments) on Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 11:04:02 AM
 

It Will Change, Sooner or Later.

It only stands to reason it will change. I'm not an intellect, in any sense of the word but it doesn't take an analyst to figure the outcome.

It's obvious that those who have the power to "fix" this, won't. Why? because they have money to lose and even though they have more money than anyone could possibly use they have to have more. Like a junkie "chasing the Dragon", it's a disease and they have it so badly that it outweighs all of their better judgement. Their greed even outweighs their fear. Well, if I were them, I'd be afraid. Not of god or whoever they "pay off" to assure their salvation but of their fellow man walking the earth.  The poor in this country, fifth, sixth or more generation welfare have been missing out for so long that they've lost the desperation, the fight. But the working, middle class, whose debt has or is catching up and are losing homes, families, posessions, hope and sanity are beginning to feel overwhelmed with that desperation. The Establishment feels safe, far from the reach of these people but they're not. They're right outside the doors of the boardrooms. Even politically there is no protection when this society feels all hope lost. Let's not forget that the military and police forces are consumers too and all the way up the ladder people flip. Remember, it took a coup to put these clowns in office. Who would have believed that there could possibly be enough complicity politically and militarily to pull that off, not to mention all of the involvement that took place on 9-11. If powerful people stepped over that line because they actually believed it was best for the country do you think that they won't step up to protect their own interests, their own families? And as far as the civilian population goes? Hell, there's been a fringe waiting in the wings for a revolution since before the sixties and they're well armed fanatics who, thanks to the powers that be, have been so desensitized to violence it would just take a drop of the hat.

I don't know about you but if I were in power I'd be looking for sincere solutions, not ridiculous bandaids, to  put things in proper perspective, even if it meant cutting my ten mil a year or more down to two and you guys  making hundreds of millions, you shouldn't have to be told. You can just wait and lose it all. Like I said, it's just common sense, it's inevitible. People just aren't buying your bull anymore.

Somethings going to change, one way or the other. It's up to the people with the power to decide how.

Now, Monopoly anyone?

by PeterJ (11 articles, 2 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 131 comments) on Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 1:40:56 PM