Archive for February, 2011

Following loud complaints by Zero Hedge over the weekend about the retention of Bernanke’s FCIC testimony from the public’s eye, yesterday the commission caved and agreed to release Bernanke’s November 17, 2009 89-page closed session confidential transcript, in which, among other things, Bernanke complains about the… blogosphere. Arguably, among the most amusing comments are the circumstances which bring Bernanke to lament the surge of alternative media. On page 68, the Chairsatan, in responding to a question of why nobody could predict the disastrous consequences of Vissarionovich Jr’s actions, we see another face of Bernanke – that of the man who deflects his gross incompetence which almost destroyed civilization as we know it… to those who worry too much: “I think there were people — there were people saying — including people at the Fed but others as well — saying, in the year before the crisis, that risk was being underpriced, that spreads were very narrow, that markets seemed ebullient, that liquidity was, in some sense, excessive.

As described on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website, the Trusted Traveler Program allows applicants to receive a biometric border pass to facilitate cross-border travel, after undergoing a thorough background check against criminal, law enforcement, customs, immigration and terrorist files, including biometric fingerprint checks and a personal interview with a CBP officer.

The “Trusted Traveler Network” is more completely described on the “Global Entry website maintained by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.

“Global Entry is a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) program that allows expedited clearance for pre-approved, low risk travelers upon arrival in the United States,” the CBP website proclaims. “Though intended for frequent international travelers, there is no minimum number of trips necessary to qualify for the program. Participants may enter the United States by using automated kiosks located at select airports.”

MK: Various ways to avoid this increase in food and energy prices for Americans have included: routing labor through China, passing the CFMA (Commodity Futures Modernization Act), allowing banks to increase reserve ratios from 12:1 to 30:1, bailing out LTCM, bailing out the dot com meltdown with 1% interest rates, bailing out Wall St. holdings of toxic mortgages with trillions in swaps with the Fed, invading other countries to ‘manage’ their oil and gas reserves, allowing Monsanto to patent seeds, changing the definition of CPI, changing the criteria for defining employment, suppressing Gold and Silver, allowing oil companies to wage anti-AGW propaganda using the public’s airwaves and allowing HFCS to replace real sugar. These are just a few of the ways that government and Wall St. have been able to strong arm and manipulate markets so that the consumer does not experience rampant price inflation for food and energy these past few decades. But since peak credit (and peak oil) in 2007, the ability to mask price rises has run its course. What comes next? I don’t think we’ll see an orderly rise in interest rates to normalize markets (normal inflation). I think the US dollar will collapse and we’ll experience hyperinflation (deflation’s evil twin) – with only Gold and Silver surviving.

The key to our survival is not only to go after the culprits who have carpet bombed us, but to also build a better system to shield us from any financial shrapnel that might be hurled our way.

Ironically, the solution to this seemingly complex series of economic dominoes is one which we were supposed to be following from the very beginning. The alternative we seek against extreme centralization of markets is to develop truly free markets! That is to say, if we wish to fight back against the globalist feudalism thrust upon us, we must decentralize markets and rebuild local commerce and trade.

Centralization works by removing all options but those the establishment deems acceptable. To counter centralization, we must offer Americans a new option that supplies those necessities which the corrupt system denies them; including meaningful community, sound money, honest trade, independence, and privacy. With this philosophy in mind, neithercorp will be working with Oath Keepers, as well as other interested groups, to focus our energies on building new and flexible free markets from the ground up.

Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper quietly have taken a major step toward erasing the border between the two nations with a new “Beyond the Border” bilateral declaration.

In a ceremony designed to remain below the radar of national public opinion, Obama and Harper bypassed Congress to sign on the basis of their executive authority a declaration that put in place a new national security vision defined not by U.S. national borders, but by a continental view of a “North American perimeter.”

It happened Friday, the day the Obama administration usually pushes through issues that it prefers the media ignore.

Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, are only the beginning. The sting of inflation will be unbearable as austerity measures take hold in Europe, and the potential for riots in Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy looms large. The most volatile environment on the planet to date, however, is the United States, which, as we have shown in previous articles, is being dismantled deliberately and viciously in preparation for IMF regulation and centralization. Today, the IMF is stalking Egypt, ready to pounce as the nation goes mad. Tomorrow, it will be us. I will be very surprised if we are not hearing about IMF intervention in the U.S. economy and the dollar by the end of this year, offering more debt, and more unaccountable governance.

The secret to breaking the circle of debt is to adopt a policy of decentralization, and self sufficiency. To take back control of our local commerce and to establish micro-economies with self contained methods of trade. Debt must be removed from the equation altogether, and systems protected by flexibility and redundancy must be applied. Savings and meaningful production would have to take the place of endless spending and outsourcing. The claustrophobic nurse-maid philosophies of globalism would have to be cast aside and replaced with goals of independence and self reliance. By cutting our dependency on the corrupt establishment, we sever its ability to feed off of us. By building a better system, we make the faulty one obsolete. Whether or not we throw off the trappings of the debt machine is entirely up to us.

The Middle East and Africa are being ripped by food riots. But we can see that Western central banking heads are denying that there is a problem. These denials are necessary because Western countries are still too fragile economically to raise interest rates and otherwise reduce liquidity. If tightening were to be accomplished, the chances are that employment would be reduced, along with any nascent recovery.

Western central bankers are obviously worried that if Western economies fall back into severe recession, that civil unrest similar to that of the Middle East’s will be the result. Despite overwhelming evidence that currency is now beginning to circulate and that the velocity of money is starting to approach dangerous levels, these central bankers will issue what are essentially political statements in order to avoid removing money from overheating economies. Ordinarily this would be bad news, but given the amount of extra money in the system, central bankers are playing a most dangerous and hyperinflationary game.

Read the following in this context:

“What can’t be paid back, won’t.”

You can safely ignore the National Debt. It is reported on a cash-basis, and it is only $1.4 trillion Dollars.

What you should NOT ignore are the unreported unfunded National obligations that are more tha $100 trillion Dollars!

This is exactly WHY the US has been debasing its currency…it beats defaulting [for Democrats (C) read: we can't pay this back, so we won't]. Better to ‘pay back’ loans on nickels or pennies on the Dollar.

In two years we’ll be ‘celebrating’ 100 years of the Federal Reserve (the FED). Yippee! Let’s ignore the dabate over ‘policy’ this or ‘policy’ that for a moment, and consider not what has been SAID but rather what has been DONE!

Now that a federal judge has obliterated Obamacare by ruling it unconstitutional, Alaska’s governor is asking the obvious question: would continuing to spend money implementing an unconstitutional law represent fraud against the U.S. taxpayer?

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell is asking his attorney general to advise him on whether implementing the federal health care overhaul would put Parnell in violation of his oath of office.

A federal judge in Florida this week struck down the law as unconstitutional in a case joined by 26 states, including Alaska. A major point of contention is a provision requiring citizens to buy health insurance… Parnell says he took an oath to support and defend the constitutions of the United States and Alaska. While the Republican governor concedes the issue is expected to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, he says he has a duty to uphold the law and wants the attorney general to advise him on what the duty is after the Florida ruling.

One of the most laudable movements in America today is the group known as “Oath Keepers”. (Visit the “Oath Keepers” website.)

The Oath Keepers represent the very best in American law enforcement (as well as the U.S. military … but that’s another story). The police of Oath Keepers are the “Good Cops”, the truly Good Cops.

These loyal men and women have publicly re-declared that they will keep their oath to support and defend the Constitution from all enemies “foreign and domestic”. To them, this solemn promise is a sacred honor, not just some patriotic homily. This means they have sworn to obey the Second Amendment.

Tunisias’s “President” has been overthrown. Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali controlled Tunisia and its people for twenty three years, creating “stability” by developing a repressive police state. He was forced from power by protesters in the streets and the refusal of his military chief to shoot his countrymen and women. General Ammar refused his presidents order to fire on protesters, and individual soldiers stepped in to prevent security forces from doing so, precipitating Mr. Ben Ali’s departure from power.

Rather than take control of the country, as has so often been the case in Tunisia’s neighborhood (think of Colonel Qadaffi in Libya, Colonel Saddam Hussein in Iraq, General Hafez al-Assad in Syria), General Ammar left the business of governing to civilians. This is a huge and hopeful sign for Tunia.

Virginia state Delegate Robert G. Marshall has introduced legislation to study whether the Commonwealth should make the preparations now to switch suddenly to an alternative currency in the event of an implosion of the Federal Reserve System and the destruction of the dollar.

House Joint Resolution 557 is another piece of a growing movement among state legislators who are concerned about the dollar’s demise. Ten states have considered similar bills, recommending a return to some form of a commodity-based currency, using either silver or gold.

This past week was a perfect example of how the “Internet kill switch” is rapidly becoming one of the favorite new tools of tyrannical governments all over the globe. Once upon a time, the Internet was a bastion of liberty and freedom, but now nation after nation is cracking down on it. In fact, legislation has been introduced once again in Congress that would give the president of the United States an “Internet kill switch” that he would be able to use in the event of war or emergency. Of course there would be a whole lot of wiggle room in determining what actually constitutes a true “emergency”. The members of Congress that are pushing this “Internet kill switch” bill want the U.S. to become more like China in this regard. In China, the Internet is highly controlled, highly regulated and highly censored. In fact, China has shut down the Internet in entire regions when they have felt it necessary. So what Egypt did in shutting down the Internet this past week is not unprecedented – but it was quite shocking.

Organizers of the protests in Egypt had been using the #Jan25 hashtag on Twitter and had been communicating with each other via Facebook, and so the Mubarak regime thought that they could significantly derail the protest movement by shutting down the Internet.

As protests continue despite President Mubarak’s efforts to placate them, it’s more clear than ever that what happens next in Egypt depends on what the Egyptian military does:

Even as armored military vehicles deployed around important Egyptian government institutions on Friday for the first time in decades, it remained difficult to predict what role the armed forces might play in either quelling the disturbances or easing President Hosni Mubarak from power.

“Are they on the side of the nation or are they on the side of the regime?” a former senior Western diplomat with long service in Cairo asked. “That distinction had been blurred. We are now seeing a modern test of whether there is a separation between the two.”

The military said it considers the people’s demands “legitimate”.

It comes as Egypt’s new vice president, Omar Suleiman, says he has been asked by Mr Mubarak to begin a dialogue with the opposition for constitutional change.

Interestingly, it comes as those various political factions, which as a rule do not get on, said they are prepared to talk and work together to bring about change.

To many people it is being seen as an attempt by Mr Mubarak to cling onto power – to get his political opponents to do some type of deal with him by which he stays in place.

When the military made its announcement, several tanks blocking access to Cairo’s main square where protests have been held, rolled back some 500 metres.