Banking Vultures picking over Detroit's carcass

[carcass of the rail station]

This is a continuing sad story about one of the great
cities of 20th c capitalism, Detroit. Its latest fall
in standing comes at the hands of those helpful
bankers that sold the city some pieces of ass-wipe
paper derivative that always loses.

Anyway, here's some media about the former
greatness of Detroit. You'll see the train station
which is a gargantuan building that you can
sneak into. very creepy.
I hold Detroit to be a cultural mecca of a sort. Here's
the next chapter in that, Disclosure.


[Disclosure- White noise]

checkit: Bloomberg

Only Wall Street Wins in Detroit Crisis Reaping $474 Million Fee

By Darrell Preston & Chris Christoff - Mar 14, 2013 12:24 AM GMT

Jeff Kowalsky/Bloomberg

The city started borrowing to plug budget holes in 2005 under former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was convicted this week on corruption charges. That year, it issued $1.4 billion in securities to fund pension payments. Last year, it added $129.5 million in debt, 9.3 percent of its general-fund budget, in part to repay loans taken to service other bonds.

The only winners in the financial crisis that brought Detroit (9845MF) to the brink of state takeover are Wall Street bankers who reaped more than $474 million from a city too poor to keep street lights working.

The city started borrowing to plug budget holes in 2005 under former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was convicted this week on corruption charges. That year, it issued $1.4 billion in securities to fund pension payments. Last year, it added $129.5 million in debt, 9.3 percent of its general-fund budget, in part to repay loans taken to service other bonds.

Detroit, which is trying to avoid becoming the largest U.S. municipal bankruptcy, struggles to serve residents after revenue declined when the auto industry collapsed and the city began to empty. Michigan (BEESMI)’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, is preparing to name an emergency manager, who will have to address debt and derivatives taken on in the last eight years.

“We have no lights, no buses, poor streets and now we’re paying millions of dollars a year on our debt,” said David Sole, a retired municipal worker and advocate for Moratorium Now Coalition, a Detroit group that fights foreclosures and evictions. “The banks said they need to be paid first. But there is no money.”

The city, which peaked at 1.85 million residents in 1950, has lost more than a quarter of its population since 2000. The 700,000 inhabitants who remain endure unreliable buses, inadequate police and fire protection and broken street lights that have darkened entire blocks.

I'll see your Franklin and raise you a Teddy

I used to think that Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) who solved
the disaster that was the Great Depression of the 20th c.,
unlike our 21st c. version, but his work was made easier
by a previous US president who busted up the great
business "trust". That would be Teddy Roosevelt.

I'll post what I have after I finish my skirmish with
Microsoft and its monopolistic sales people, the
f%^&king bastards. What was I saying about
harmful business practices? Oh ya, Microsoft should
be broken up too.
I'm sure they're spying on us right now, so
Hi Bill!

OK. solved. Only took them 5 working days (4, if you
don't count good Friday) to deliver a 25-digit code,
in an envelope.

Where were we.

Check this out:Us history

43b. The Trust Buster

Teddy Roosevelt

C. Gordon Moffat

Teddy Roosevelt (not Ned Flanders) leading the charge against trusts in a cartoon from 1899.

Teddy Roosevelt was one American who believed a revolution was coming.

He believed Wall Street financiers and powerful trust titans to be acting foolishly. While they were eating off fancy china on mahogany tables in marble dining rooms, the masses were roughing it. There seemed to be no limit to greed. If docking wages would increase profits, it was done. If higher railroad rates put more gold in their coffers, it was done. How much was enough, Roosevelt wondered?

The Sherman Anti-Trust Act

Although he himself was a man of means, he criticized the wealthy class of Americans on two counts. First, continued exploitation of the public could result in a violent uprising that could destroy the whole system. Second, the captains of industry were arrogant enough to believe themselves superior to the elected government. Now that he was President, Roosevelt went on the attack.

The President's weapon was the Sherman Antitrust Act, passed by Congress in 1890. This law declared illegal all combinations "in restraint of trade." For the first twelve years of its existence, the Sherman Act was a paper tiger. United States courts routinely sided with business when any enforcement of the Act was attempted.

For example, the American Sugar Refining Company controlled 98 percent of the sugar industry. Despite this virtual monopoly, the Supreme Court refused to dissolve the corporation in an 1895 ruling. The only time an organization was deemed in restraint of trade was when the court ruled against a labor union

Roosevelt knew that no new legislation was necessary. When he sensed that he had a sympathetic Court, he sprung into action.

Teddy vs. J.P.

Theodore Roosevelt was not the type to initiate major changes timidly. The first trust giant to fall victim to Roosevelt's assault was none other than the most powerful industrialist in the country — J. Pierpont Morgan.

"Try your strength, gents!"

This 1912 cartoon shows trusts smashing consumers with the tariff hammer in hopes of raising profits.

Morgan controlled a railroad company known as Northern Securities. In combination with railroad moguls James J. Hill and E. H. Harriman, Morgan controlled the bulk of railroad shipping across the northern United States.

Morgan was enjoying a peaceful dinner at his New York home on February 19, 1902, when his telephone rang. He was furious to learn that Roosevelt's Attorney General was bringing suit against the Northern Securities Company. Stunned, he muttered to his equally shocked dinner guests about how rude it was to file such a suit without warning.

Four days later, Morgan was at the White House with the President. Morgan bellowed that he was being treated like a common criminal. The President informed Morgan that no compromise could be reached, and the matter would be settled by the courts. Morgan inquired if his other interests were at risk, too. Roosevelt told him only the ones that had done anything wrong would be prosecuted.

The Good, the Bad, and the Bully

This was the core of Theodore Roosevelt's leadership. He boiled everything down to a case of right versus wrong and good versus bad. If a trust controlled an entire industry but provided good service at reasonable rates, it was a "good" trust to be left alone. Only the "bad" trusts that jacked up rates and exploited consumers would come under attack. Who would decide the difference between right and wrong? The occupant of the White House trusted only himself to make this decision in the interests of the people.

The American public cheered Roosevelt's new offensive. The Supreme Court, in a narrow 5 to 4 decision, agreed and dissolved the Northern Securities Company. Roosevelt said confidently that no man, no matter how powerful, was above the law. As he landed blows on other "bad" trusts, his popularity grew and grew.

Working on a Cyprus Theory

UPDATE: Cyprus was blackmailed. Haircut/beheading
has not bee sorted yet. Going long #7 (see below)

We all know that a country's power is not equal to the size
of the country or population, it's the damage that it can do
to other countries and organisations.
In this way, Cyprus is a giant-killer.

The Cypriots are, in my mind, masters at the double-
triple- and quadruple- fake. Very cunning.

First, they wanted to get a few guarantees that the Turks
wouldn't kill them all, and so they joined the EU.
But, before being allowed to do so, they got put
under immense pressure by the UN's puppet Annan,
with Colon Powell's hand wedged well up his backside.

The Cypriots had to make it look like they were playing
along. The leader of the opposition, the erstwhile
Annan Yes Man (who has the poison chalice of the
presidency, right now) was winking at the cameras,
as if saying "ya. ya.just ignore me until these bastards
go away. We know what we're doing"
The Annan plan was akin to living with your hands
tied behind your back, so they rejected it.

Now, one of the reasons they got allowed into the EU in
the first place was in order for London, and others,
 to have a chance to shut down the Cyprus offshore
tax haven game and its Russian money. That was not
because London was righteous, but because they didn't
want the competition.

So, Cyprus, as I believe was the order of the day,
had to join the Euro. That meant that a big target
could be painted on the map of the Eastern Med,
over Cyprus.
"We're gonna get ya" is what they've been saying for
close to a decade in the power centres.

Somehow, perhaps out of a feelings of support, Cypriot
banks got a stack of stinking Greek government bonds.
George Papandreou, PM of Greece then, on behalf of
who-knows?, made sure that those bonds collapsed
(killing his own country's banks at the same time).

That set the stage for this showdown where Cyprus is
presented as being evil because it has Russian money
stashed in its banks. The truth is the others want the
Russian money, but the Russians don't trust them.
They trusted Cyprus.
And we're talking mostly tax haven money, that just
happens to include mafia money, just like in London
and New York, with their drug money laundramats.

Now Cyprus is done as a tax haven. The Europeans
have succeeded in that. There's no trust left in Cypriot
banks or politicians.
But, the Euro crew had to shoot their own faces off,
in order to spite Cyprus. The issue of trust is that
intangible, thin, sensitive film of respectability that
allows a country, currency or organisation survive
in cut and thrust times.
That is now fast disappearing. Small to medium cash
holders, with their savings in banks (the big money
people have their money in Germany already) are
considering yanking them out, meaning the death
of many PIIGSy banks. This is what many have
been trying to get consumers to do because of the
fragility of banks and the pain of austerity. But,
most consumers are too wed to their mortgage,
precarious job and corn flakes. Now, Cyprus has
just pissed in the EU consumers' corn flakes!
As you know, the safest banks are leveraged around
30 times their deposits. So, if 3% of their "holdings"
(which have long since been spent) are requested back,
those banks are f%&*ked.
Now, the ECB will not be able to save a medium-size
run on periphery banks, meaning the Euro should
collapse this year.

Possible future scenarios and theories about Cyprus
and its strategies:
1 When rotating leaders of EU (2011?12?),
Cyprus went wobbly and then asked Russia for money,
instead of the ECB/Troika, just to stick it to the EU
after what they did to Greece.
That seems to  have worked, for 6 months.
[Cyprus has unique links
with Russia, and that has always pissed off the US and
Europe. They probably wanted to make Russia a player
at the EU table.]
2  I thought that was what was going to happen again
recently. FAIL
3 Cyprus never wanted the Euro, but was put under
pressure, and this was their way
of slough off debts and get kicked out at the same
time, dealing a mortal blow to the Euro. RISKY,
short-term dangerous, but it could work.
4 Cyprus wanted to get the EU back for the Greek bonds
it bought (but I don't know why they bought them)
5 The Cypriots wanted to pledge their gas to Russia
to make triply-sure that they actually could get it
out of the seabed, because the Turks think it's all
theirs. They've already got Israel and the US on side
but that might not have been enough.
6 That this mess made such a ripple in the UK army
bases, that they might have to leave. LONG SHOT
and probably not wise, with the Turks on the island.
Maybe an EU force is in their plans, just to get the
UK off their backs.
7 They wanted to make sure that if their tax haven
status was screwed that they would screw as many
of their enemies as possible. The Euro is on its
way down, which means a full-blown crisis for
Germany just in time for its elections. I don't think
they have hurt London yet, but if Germany goes
tits up (i.e. the Euro), then London will probably
not be able to keep the charade up much longer.
VERY PROBABLE that it was their goal, to me
and that it will work.

more on the Blix Bollix on Iraq

About five stories below, I mentioned what an idiot
automaton Hans Blix was. He was the WMD Inspector
Clouseau with the magnifying glass, when GWB43
and Tony were making deals with their respective
oil companies to get a slice of the Hydrocarbon Pie.

Now we have access to info docs that prove the oil deal
was cooked up first and then the invasion plan.

Sh-TiNG: Independent
Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq
By Paul Bignell

Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.

The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.

The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK's involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as "highly inaccurate". BP denied that it had any "strategic interest" in Iraq, while Tony Blair described "the oil conspiracy theory" as "the most absurd".

But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture.

Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change.

The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP's behalf because the oil giant feared it was being "locked out" of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.

Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31 October 2002 read: "Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis."

The minister then promised to "report back to the companies before Christmas" on her lobbying efforts.

The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq "post regime change". Its minutes state: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity."

After another meeting, this one in October 2002, the Foreign Office's Middle East director at the time, Edward Chaplin, noted: "Shell and BP could not afford not to have a stake in [Iraq] for the sake of their long-term future... We were determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq."

Whereas BP was insisting in public that it had "no strategic interest" in Iraq, in private it told the Foreign Office that Iraq was "more important than anything we've seen for a long time".

BP was concerned that if Washington allowed TotalFinaElf's existing contact with Saddam Hussein to stand after the invasion it would make the French conglomerate the world's leading oil company. BP told the Government it was willing to take "big risks" to get a share of the Iraqi reserves, the second largest in the world.

Over 1,000 documents were obtained under Freedom of Information over five years by the oil campaigner Greg Muttitt. They reveal that at least five meetings were held between civil servants, ministers and BP and Shell in late 2002.

The 20-year contracts signed in the wake of the invasion were the largest in the history of the oil industry. They covered half of Iraq's reserves – 60 billion barrels of oil, bought up by companies such as BP and CNPC (China National Petroleum Company), whose joint consortium alone stands to make £403m ($658m) profit per year from the Rumaila field in southern Iraq.

Last week, Iraq raised its oil output to the highest level for almost decade, 2.7 million barrels a day – seen as especially important at the moment given the regional volatility and loss of Libyan output. Many opponents of the war suspected that one of Washington's main ambitions in invading Iraq was to secure a cheap and plentiful source of oil.

Mr Muttitt, whose book Fuel on the Fire is published next week, said: "Before the war, the Government went to great lengths to insist it had no interest in Iraq's oil. These documents provide the evidence that give the lie to those claims.

"We see that oil was in fact one of the Government's most important strategic considerations, and it secretly colluded with oil companies to give them access to that huge prize."

Lady Symons, 59, later took up an advisory post with a UK merchant bank that cashed in on post-war Iraq reconstruction contracts. Last month she severed links as an unpaid adviser to Libya's National Economic Development Board after Colonel Gaddafi started firing on protesters. Last night, BP and Shell declined to comment.

www.fuelonthefire.com


Not about oil? what they said before the invasion

* Foreign Office memorandum, 13 November 2002, following meeting with BP: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP are desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity to compete. The long-term potential is enormous..."

* Tony Blair, 6 February 2003: "Let me just deal with the oil thing because... the oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it. The fact is that, if the oil that Iraq has were our concern, I mean we could probably cut a deal with Saddam tomorrow in relation to the oil. It's not the oil that is the issue, it is the weapons..."


* BP, 12 March 2003: "We have no strategic interest in Iraq. If whoever comes to power wants Western involvement post the war, if there is a war, all we have ever said is that it should be on a level playing field. We are certainly not pushing for involvement."

* Lord Browne, the then-BP chief executive, 12 March 2003: "It is not in my or BP's opinion, a war about oil. Iraq is an important producer, but it must decide what to do with its patrimony and oil."


* Shell, 12 March 2003, said reports that it had discussed oil opportunities with Downing Street were 'highly inaccurate', adding: "We have neither sought nor attended meetings with officials in the UK Government on the subject of Iraq. The subject has only come up during conversations during normal meetings we attend from time to time with officials... We have never asked for 'contracts'."

thank Draghi for the downsizing trend

I've long thought that people just over-leverage
themselves when given half an opportunity.
They would rather bet on a 40-year mortgage
for a house that's twice the size they need,
because they figure that there's a housing
ponzi, so they'll win.
Those days are over.

Think again chump. I won't crunch the
numbers, but I'm not arguing mortgage
over rent. Mort= death, by the way.

Nowadays, most folks can't even sniff
at a house mortgage. That's a good thing
if it gets people to downsize their
appetite for land acquisition & stuff.

checkit: Automatic earth

Spain Has A Long Way To Go Down

MONDAY, MARCH 04, 2013 12:59 PM

Ilargi: I received another entry from Dave Fairtex, who delves into Spanish housing data this time around. We had a nice discussion about it, since I question some of the assumptions on which he bases his interpretation of the data. In particular, I think Dave assumes 2 things:

1) That, during the - ongoing - bust, Spanish home prices will fall to the level they were at when the boom began (a drop of 55%), and then stop falling right there.

2) That there is a bottom underneath prices, determined by their "utility value", i.e. people will always need to live somewhere.

As for 1), it immediately makes me think of a series of 3 graphs we use in Nicole's presentations, and which those of you who have acquired our DVD set "A World of Change" will readily recognize:

What you see is that in these 3 crises, the end point is (way) below the starting point, due to what can be called the "undershoot". In each case, it makes prices fall by well over 90% of its peak level. Now, Dave says he thinks homes are not tulips,

and so 2) the utility value of a house will make sure prices won't fall below the point their boom started. Not only do I find this too arbitrary an assumption (though, granted, in Dave's view he derives it from his data), there are a few other things that I feel may well influence this. That is, Spain built a huge amount of homes (more than Germany, France and Britain combined for 10 years), of which many are of too poor a quality to last for more than 20 years.

Moreover, something is true in Spain as it is all over the west: compared with 50 or 100 years ago, we occupy far more square meters per capita. That means there's a potential elasticity in that if prices remain too high, people will - forcibly - move (back) in together with family. Because we can. Demand is not what we want, but what we can afford. Seeing that youth unemployment in Spain presently stands at some 60%, you really need to wonder who's going to buy any homes there at all in the near future, and hence what bottom is supposed to apply to this housing market. It's tempting to think things must normalize at some point, but Spain has a crisis that extends far beyond housing.

I think we too easily overlook the potential for self-reinforcing, positive feedback across an economy. If Spain were to recognize the full 55% price drop, that would be the end of a large part of its banking system. And that in turn, for instance, would drive prices further down.

Occupy's Branch Political meets City of London mafia

Beppe Grillo would be proud.

I hope they have their cameras turned on.
Somebody will need to televise the 
brutality that this political movement 
will face. 

This movement will not use stupid little 
explosives. No, I mean they will try
the most dangerous move the world has
ever seen. It will take on Mamon 
(that's Big Money, to you and me).

I ask you: what would help hasten
the collapse of the banksters? 

Getting control of the City of London
Corporation must rank very high. If,
that is, the Corp can affect the banks
that actually run the show. I'm not so
sure, but the symbolism is mind-blowing.

The City Corp are some pretty tough catsos. 
You'd say:
But, they've got government protection..
but, they've got a one-company-
many thousands of votes- policy
But, they've got corrupt police
and you'd be right.
William the Conqueror, who didn't get his name
from picking roses, gave up and signed a deal
with the Corp, in the 11th century, dudes!
This Corp are some Medieval f*dderm*ckers.

So, a new political movement is
up to trying the impossible. to get
elected to run THE Corp.

One of the pillars of the Bankster state
is being gnawed on, ever so politely.
I hope they literally get bloodied, and show
the world. It was worth your lives, boys.

checkit:Guardian

Alliance of Labour, Ukip and Occupy members attempt to reform City of London

Ahead of elections this month to the City of London Corporation, an unlikely political alliance is pressing for radical reform and greater accountability from an institution where many ancient traditions continue to hold sway

    Ben Quinn

    guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 March 2013 14.25 GMT

It’s an unlikely political alliance: members of Labour and Ukip, veterans of the Occupy movement, clerics and non-party political newcomers — all signed up to an agenda backed by, among others, the Tory MP David Davis.

Yet after last month’s Eastleigh byelection pointed the way towards a possible breaking of the mould in British politics, the slate of candidates assembled under the umbrella of the City Reform Group are seeking to do just that for the local authority that governs the country’s powerful financial heart - the Square Mile.

Ahead of elections this month to the City of London Corporation, the group is pressing for radical reform and greater accountability from an institution where many ancient traditions continue to hold sway, along with unprecedented scrutiny of a £1.3bn "private" account which the public body has cloaked in secrecy and used for lobbying on behalf of the financial sector.

With tensions are already running high in the poll amid allegations of intimidation of candidates and the sending of anonymous emails, the City Reform Group’s arrival has further raised the stakes.

For Shanaz Khan, a restaurateur whose first taste of politics is as a CRG candidate, the election is an opportunity to shake up a body which she says resembles an "old school boys’ network".

"It’s that one square mile where the local councillors have a budget of more than £1bn. That level of power in quite a small number of people is quite unique so it’s really important to change the ethos and culture and open up dialogue with the community beyond the financial services,” she added.

Khan and her colleagues accuse the Corporation of “failing to live up to its leadership role” at a time when the City, which is home to hundreds of banks and is described as the world’s premier financial centre, has been rocked by crisis.

The theme of improving transparency is meanwhile what attracted another CRG’s candidates, Peter Lucas, a Ukip member, who said: “I have always been a believer in transparency but in a lot of ways the City of London Corporation is so archaic, being run as if it was still in the 18th century. There are secret funds which are not subject to full public scrutiny while it just seems to focus on shamelessly promoting the financial services sector.”

Other CRG candidates include William Campbell Taylor, an east London vicar who has been a long-standing opponent of the way the City is run, the Oscar-nominated dramatist and novelist Jonathan Myerson, and Robin Ellison, a former chairman of the National Association of Pension Funds who stood as an independent in the last general election on a ticket of reforming the pensions system. Ten Labour candidates are also standing in support of the CRG’s aims, which have been endorsed by Davis, the former chair of the Future of Banking Commission, and others, including Simon Walker, director general of the Institute of Directors,

City Reform Group: Shanaz Khan, William Taylor and Jonathan Myerson, who are running in elections City Reform Group: Shanaz Khan, William Taylor and Jonathan Myerson, who are running in elections to be councillors on the City of London Corporation. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Elections to the corporation differ markedly from those elsewhere. Businesses as well as individual residents of the City can vote and bodies including banks and others based in the City can nominate voters based on the size of their workforce. Party politics has also largely been absent from the Corporation, where the current councillors sit as independents, despite many being members of political parties.

They include Mark Clarke, a Conservative party member who was elected in a byelection last year and who mounts a robust defence of how the City is governed and accused the CRG of being a “front” for the Occupy movement.

“Bizarrely, they seem to believe that the Corporation of the City of London should have some role in regulating banks, but the idea that a local council should play a role in that way is absurd. You wouldn’t go to Sheffield and say that the council was involved in regulating the steel industry,” said Clarke.

“It’s also the job of the Corporation of the City of London to lobby on behalf of the financial services industry in the same way as, for example, the council in Sheffield would lobby on behalf of its primary industries.”

Clarke also defends Corporation funds such as the City Cash fund, which he says has been prudently managed for hundreds of years, to a point where there the authority is able to use the interest accumulated to fund charities and good causes.

Ahead of next week's elections, however, temperatures have been increasing, according to one veteran councillor, who used a meeting of the Corporation’s council last week to raise concerns about alleged intimidation of some candidates.

“We are not talking about horses' heads being left on pillows but there has been, shall we say, some less than gentlemanly behaviour,” said Martin Dudley, an Anglican priest who added that the intimidation had taken the form of individuals being “warned off” standing in certain wards.

“There have been a few telephone calls made and at least one anonymous email sent. When the ISP was checked it turned out that the source of the email was the House of Parliament, which might tell you something about the sender.”

with visions of Mesopotamian fast food in styrofoam

...dancing in their dreams.

Praise be to our god- Ronald McDharma:

Inshallah Burgers- one pita and you might get some meat, inshallah.
For comparison , see Wish Sandwich:


 
that's why they built a $2 million chicken
meat factory in the Iraqi desert. I guess they
thought they'd be around to buy the
chicken nuggets for a long time. They
being the US army.

[Private Spurlock on furlong]

I know one chicken that's sleeping easy now:

[fast food nightmare]

The business of America is
business...fast food business.
It's so easy, you don't even need a good supply
of dead animals, just a thorough chemist.
The customer's health? What are you? a
Communist?

[banksy- Planting Advertising in Your Psyche]

derisive laughter alert. clear the room

checkit: Tom Dispatch 

By Peter Van Buren

The Worst Mistake in U.S. History -- America Will Never Recover from Bush's Great Foreign Policy Disaster

Ten years ago, George Bush made a decision that this country will regret for a very long time.

March 7, 2013  | 

I was there. And “there” was nowhere. And nowhere was the place to be if you wanted to see the signs of end times for the American Empire up close. It was the place to be if you wanted to see the madness -- and oh yes, it was madness -- not filtered through a complacent and sleepy media that made Washington’s war policy seem, if not sensible, at least sane and serious enough. I stood at Ground Zero of what was intended to be the new centerpiece for a Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the invasion of Iraq turned out to be a joke. Not for the Iraqis, of course, and not for American soldiers, and not the ha-ha sort of joke either. And here’s the saddest truth of all: on March 20th as we mark the 10th anniversary of the invasion from hell, we still don’t get it. In case you want to jump to the punch line, though, it’s this: by invading Iraq, the U.S. did more to destabilize the Middle East than we could possibly have imagined at the time. And we -- and so many others -- will pay the price for it for a long, long time.

             The Madness of King George

It’s easy to forget just how normal the madness looked back then. By 2009, when I arrived in Iraq, we were already at the last-gasp moment when it came to salvaging something from what may yet be seen as the single worst foreign policy decision in American history. It was then that, as a State Department officer assigned to lead two provincial reconstruction teams in eastern Iraq, I first walked into the chicken processing plant in the middle of nowhere.

By then, the U.S. “reconstruction” plan for that country was drowning in rivers of money foolishly spent. As the centerpiece for those American efforts -- at least after Plan A, that our invading troops would be greeted with flowers and sweets as liberators, crashed and burned -- we had managed to reconstruct nothing of significance. First conceived as a Marshall Plan for the New American Century, six long years later it had devolved into farce.

In my act of the play, the U.S. spent some $2.2 million dollars to build a huge facility in the boondocks. Ignoring the stark reality that Iraqis had raised and sold chickens locally for some 2,000 years, the U.S. decided to finance the construction of a central processing facility, have the Iraqis running the plant purchase local chickens, pluck them and slice them up with complex machinery brought in from Chicago, package the breasts and wings in plastic wrap, and then truck it all to local grocery stores. Perhaps it was the desert heat, but this made sense at the time, and the plan was supported by the Army, the State Department, and the White House.

Elegant in conception, at least to us, it failed to account for a few simple things, like a lack of regular electricity, or logistics systems to bring the chickens to and from the plant, or working capital, or... um... grocery stores. As a result, the gleaming $2.2 million plant processed no chickens. To use a few of the catchwords of that moment, it transformed nothing, empowered no one, stabilized and economically uplifted not a single Iraqi. It just sat there empty, dark, and unused in the middle of the desert. Like the chickens, we were plucked.

In keeping with the madness of the times, however, the simple fact that the plant failed to meet any of its real-world goals did not mean the project wasn't a success. In fact, the factory was a hit with the U.S. media. After all, for every propaganda-driven visit to the plant, my group stocked the place with hastily purchased chickens, geared up the machinery, and put on a dog-and-pony, er, chicken-and-rooster, show.

In the dark humor of that moment, we christened the place the Potemkin Chicken Factory. In between media and VIP visits, it sat in the dark, only to rise with the rooster’s cry each morning some camera crew came out for a visit.

banks begging Kyle Bass for mercy

That's more like it. I'm beginning to think that angels
come in strange packages. You take a soft-spoken
intelligent hedge fund manager (already a weird
outlier occurrence) and you think:
this guy could hasten the crash that we all need.

He'll be doing so because casino banks are
run by short-sighted, government-sponsored
idiots. and he'll make billions on it.
ah, natural justice reaches into the bankster
misery factory.

sh-ting: Biz insider

KYLE BASS: One Of The Biggest Banks In The World Wants Me To Close My Japan Trade

Matthew Boesler     | Mar. 14, 2013, 3:11 PM | 4,999 | 11

Prominent hedge fund manager Kyle Bass – whose big trade right now, known as the "widowmaker" in market circles, is betting against Japanese government bonds – gave a talk at the University of Chicago last week.

…

The AIG of the world is back. Here's what I mean by that.

I have 27-year-old kids selling me one-year jump risk in Japan for less than one basis point. $5 billion worth at a time.

You know why? Because it's outside of a 95 percent VaR. It's less than one year to maturity. So guess what the regulatory capital hit is for the bank? It rhymes with "hero." Right?

And, if the bell tolls at the end of the year, the 27-year-old kid gets a bonus. And if he blows the bank to smithereens, ah. He got a paycheck all year.

We're right back there. I mean, the brevity of financial memory is only about two years.

…

And it's happening in huge size. You know, huge. We bought $0.5 trillion worth of these options.

Interestingly enough, recently, one of the biggest banks in the world called me and asked me if I would close my position. That was an interesting day for us. That happened to me in 2007, right before the mortgages cracked.

They said, "You know, we ran some new risk tests."

And I said, "Really?"

And they said, "Yeah, you know, our new stress scenario is a little bit more punitive than the last one."

And I said, "Well, what is it?"

And he says, "We don't want to share our proprietary secrets of our bank with you."

And I said, "OK, then I'm not closing it."

fascism is not incompatible with a Federal Europe

UPDATE: Check how Cyprus just got screwed by the EU.
a new low. Now, back to the arts:

I realise that Yanis Varoufakis, an economist 

good-guy, is trying to make a clean 

message that the EU's dreams of total 

control are very much nazi-like, however

history has already moved on. Look at what

direct rule from Brussels is doing to the Greek

nation. Varoufakis' nation. It's like eugenics.

leaked research document:

Aim of Troika intervention: cut off money to 

economy, making tens of thousands lose

their jobs, and let's not control for food

supply. They might starve, but this is 

science.

In other words, what the Nazis were stopped
from doing (ghettoisation, weening people 
off food, not really murder just benign neglect, 
fascist economics),  Barroso and friends are 
doing, TO THE LETTER.

Yanis is forgetting the bodies that piled up by 

the thousands in Athens during the Nazi stint.

Nobody's counting now.

[Athens 2 years ago]

His argument is pretty , but illogical.
He says: dreams of federalism could be fascistic
because the Nazis sounded like EC bureaucrats

what he means, and what I say: 
the EU has real dreams of federalism that 
are fascistic and fascist methods are being
used to promote that goal, including 
death by neglect

anyway,

please read this creepy text and stop the EU:

checkit: Varoufakis

Lest we forget: The neglected roots of Europe’s slide to authoritarianism

14 Mar

Europe is being torn apart by a titanic clash between (a) the unstoppable popular rage against misanthropic austerity policies and (b) our elites’ immovable commitment to more austerity. Precisely how this clash will play out no one knows, except of course that the odds do not seem to be on the side of the good. While at the mercies of this crushing uncertainty, it is perhaps useful to take a… short quiz. So, dear reader, will you please read the following ten quotations and, while so doing, try to imagine who uttered or wrote these words?

[1] “Above and beyond the concept of the nation-state, the idea of a new community will transform the living space given us all by history into a new spiritual realm… The new Europe of solidarity and cooperation among all its peoples, a Europe without unemployment, without monetary crises, … will find an assured foundation and rapidly increasing prosperity once national economic barriers are removed.”

[2] “There must be a readiness to subordinate one’s own interests in certain cases to that of the European Community.”

[3] “The solution to economic problems… with the eventual object of a European customs union and a free European market, a European clearing system and stable exchange rates in Europe, looking towards a European currency union.”

[4] “The results of excessive nationalism and territorial dismemberment are within the experience of all. There is only hope for peace by means of a process which on the one hand respects the inalienable fundamental patrimony of every nation but, on the other, moderates these and subordinates them to a continental policy… A European Union could not be subject to the variations of internal policy that are characteristic of liberal regimes.”

[5] “A new Europe: that is the point, and that is the task before us. It does not mean that Italians and Germans and all other nations of the European family are to change their spots and become unrecognizable to themselves or to one another, from one day or one year to the next. It will be a new Europe because of the new inspiration and determining principle that will spring up among all these peoples.” … “The problem of the hierarchy of states will no longer arise. At least in its usual form, once we have cut off the dragon’s head; that is, the notion of state sovereignty. Moreover, this does not have to be dne outright, but can be achieved indirectly, e.g. by creating interstate European bodies to look after certain common interests (exchange rates, communications, foreign trade etc….)”

[6] [Here I shall quote from a well received, at the time, policy document which recommended the need to] “…put forward a European con-federal solution based on free cooperation among independent nations” [culminating into uniting Europe] “on a federal basis” [and adding that, to see this federation process through], “all that is required of European states is that they be loyal, pro-European members of the community and cooperate willingly in its tasks… The object of European cooperation being to promote peace, security and welfare for all its peoples.”

[7] “We must create a Europe that does not squander its blood and strength on internecine conflict, but forms a compact unity. In this way it will become richer, stronger and more civilized, and will recover its old place in the world.” “National tensions and petty jealousies will lose their meaning in a Europe freely organised on a federal basis. World political development consists inevitably in the formation of larger political and economic spheres.”

[8] “It is not very intelligent to imagine that in such a crowded house like that of Europe, a community of peoples can maintain different legal systems and different concepts of law for long.”

[9] “In my view a nation’s conception of its own freedom must be harmonised with present-day facts and simple questions of efficiency and purpose… Our only requirement of European states is that they be sincere and enthusiastic members of Europe.”

[10] “The people of Europe understand increasingly that the great issues dividing us, when compared with those which will emerge and will be resolved between continents, are nothing but trivial family feuds.” … “In fifty years Europeans will not be thinking in terms of separate countries.

OK, now that you have read the quotations, you may take a look at the list of their authors below.

Lest I be misunderstood, allow me categorically to state what the purpose of listing these quotations is not: It is not to imply that the European Union we have created since WW2 was founded on nazi-fascist principles. And it is not to insinuate that today’s Germany bears similarities with Hitler’s Germany (for why else would I be calling for an hegemonic Germany?).

No, the reason for relating these quotations here is that we Europeans have a moral obligation to dispel the dangerous illusion that the notion of a European Union, within which nationalisms and the nation-state might gradually dissolve, was an enterprise to be understood as the polar opposite of plans drawn up by the autocratic, misanthropic, racist, inhuman war-mongers that rose to prominence as a result of the mid-war European Crisis.

As the quotations above demonstrate (and however insincere their authors might have been)[THEY WERE NOT INSINCERE, JUST FORGOT TO SAY THAT "WE FASCISTS WILL BE GETTING ALL THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF THIS, OH, AND WE'RE ANTI-DEMOCRATIC FASCISTS, AND COMPLAINERS WON'T BE LEFT TO LIVE THROUGH THE  HELL WE HAVE PLANNED FOR THE 99%." HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT FROM THE EU, I ASK?- COSTICK67], the notion of a European Confederation or even Federation is, in itself, not incompatible with what the Nazis had in mind. The lesson to be drawn from this is not that the European Union is totalitarian by nature but, instead, that it is not incompatible with totalitarianism and, thus, that the current democratic deficit that grows with every twist of the austerity screw bodes ill for Europe’s democrats.

In brief, a multitude of evils can hide behind the ideological veil of top-down European integration, especially when it is accomplished in the midst of (even by means of) a vicious, asymmetrical recession. So, I am writing today’s post as a Europeanist who wants to imagine Europe as our common home but who also fears that Europe is sliding into an unbearable authoritarianism threatening to turn our common home into a shared concentration camp.

[1] Arthus Seyss-Inquart, Minister of Security and the Interior in the post-Anschluss Nazi government, 1938, and later Prefect of Occuppied Holland – here he is addressing his Dutch subjects

[2] Walther Funk, Finince Minister in Hitler’s government, 1942.

[3] Memorandum of the Reich Chancellery), 9 July 1940, signed by Hermann Göring

[4] Alberto de Stefani, Finance Minister in Mussolini’s government, 1941

[5] Camillo Pellizi, editor of Civilita Fascista, in an article entiled ‘The Idea of Europe’

[6] Cicile von Renthe-Fink, Nazi official holding the diplomatic rank of minister of state, 1943.

[7] Vidkun Quisling, Norwegian Nazi Collaborator, ‘Prime Minister’ of Occupied Norway, 1942

[8] Adolph Hitler, addressing the Reichstag, 1936

[9] Joseph Goebbels, 1940

[10] Joseph Goebbels, 1942

farming out public services raises GDP

And, it raises tax revenue. Unfortunately, the public purse
will have to pay more money for the same services, thus
bankrupting the country ever faster.

That's what the UK government is doing for

"growth"

Checkit: Tax research

Large parts of the government are to be moved into the private sector to raise revenue

Posted on March 14 2013

This comes from the Guardian this morning:

    The feverish atmosphere [in the Conservative Party] is highlighted in today’s Spectator whose political editor, James Forsyth, reports that No 10 is preparing an alternative spending review for this summer as a group of ministers led by May resist deeper cuts to their departmental budgets. Paul Kirby, the outgoing head of the No 10 policy unit, is examining moving large parts of the government into the private sector to raise revenue.

Let’s just think about that for a moment, shall we?

You only raise revenue by moving something into the private sector if they’re willing to either pay for the asset worth it represents or can take a long term profit margin out of it.

Most of the government is not saleable: we’ve flogged off most buildings now through PFI (even down to and including the Treasury itself – now owned by a tax haven company).

..

That means that the only way to achieve this goal is to transfer services to the private sector and to then provide them with an ongoing income stream out of tax revenue from which they can extract a margin currently not suffered which they will pay an upfront sum to acquire. Now this is, of course, the age-old behaviour of bankrupt governments: it’s akin to the sale of monopolies in the Tudor era, for example. Indeed; it is exactly the same thing. And three things follow. First there is monopoly abuse as the private sector operator seeks to maximise yield without concern, unconstrained by the democratic accountability imposed on government. Second, there’s a loss of service: that’s how the margin is extracted, of course. Third, there’s a loss of control as government passes into the long term control of ‘favourites’

This is profoundly corrupt.

Available for bankster roasts

There's a group that feels that they can rerun the
crimes of banksters and do this as a public
service for investors. This doesn't mean that
the evidence will be turned over to the
authorities. There are no authorities. not
even a f%&8kin' scarecrow.

This is what makes this revelation such an
Orwellian-world-first.
enjoy some naked capitalism:

checkit: Naked capitalism

David Dayen: Out of Control – New Report Exposes JPMorgan Chase as Mostly a Criminal Enterprise

By David Dayen, a lapsed blogger, now a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, CA. Follow him on Twitter @ddayen

…

As an excellent preview for the Friday fireworks, I urge you to read an astonishing new report, which I’ve embedded below, from analyst Josh Rosner of Graham-Fisher and Co. The best way to describe the report, “JPM – Out of Control,” is that it reads like a rap sheet. Notably, Rosner takes mortgage abuses almost entirely out of the equation, and yet still manages to fill a 45-page report with documented case after documented case of serious fraud and abuse, most of which JPM has already admitted to (at least in the sense of reaching a settlement; given out captured regulatory structure the end result is invariably a settlement with the “neither admit nor deny wrongdoing” boilerplate appended). Rosner writes, “we could not find another ‘systemically important’ domestic bank that has recently been subject to as many public, non-mortgage related, regulatory actions or consent orders.”

…[THE RAP SHEET]

Bank Secrecy Act violations;

Money laundering for drug cartels;

Violations of sanction orders against Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and former Liberian strongman Charles Taylor;

Violations related to the Vatican Bank scandal (get on this, Pope Francis!);

Violations of the Commodities Exchange Act;

Failure to segregate customer funds (including one CFTC case where the bank failed to segregate $725 million of its own money from a $9.6 billion account) in the US and UK;

Knowingly executing fictitious trades where the customer, with full knowledge of the bank, was on both sides of the deal;

Various SEC enforcement actions for misrepresentations of CDOs and mortgage-backed securities;

The AG settlement on foreclosure fraud;

The OCC settlement on foreclosure fraud;

Violations of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act;

Illegal flood insurance commissions;

Fraudulent sale of unregistered securities;

Auto-finance ripoffs;

Illegal increases of overdraft penalties;

Violations of federal ERISA laws as well as those of the state of New York;

Municipal bond market manipulations and acts of bid-rigging, including violations of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act;

Filing of unverified affidavits for credit card debt collections (“as a result of internal control failures that sound eerily similar to the industry’s mortgage servicing failures and foreclosure abuses”);

Energy market manipulation that triggered FERC lawsuits;

“Artificial market making” at Japanese affiliates;

Shifting trading losses on a currency trade to a customer account;

Fraudulent sales of derivatives to the city of Milan, Italy;

Obstruction of justice (including refusing the release of documents in the Bernie Madoff case as well as the case of Peregrine Financial).

...