How NWO prepares US for martial law: STEP 1- Devalue the currency

[Dig]

Grandfather Economic Report: Who Says Inflation is Dead?
Posted November 16th, 2007 by manystrom
http://dailypaul.com/node/7747
The following information comes from this great page of The Grandfather Economic Report. It is one of those pages that looks like its has been around since the web first went up! No snazzy design, but solid information. These are the kinds of pages I learned so much from when I first started surfing the web back in 1996!

Without further ado:

A dollar in 1950 will buy only 12 cents worth of goods today, 88% less than before. Inflation in my adult years increased average prices 1,000% or more:
example 1: a postage stamp in the 1950s cost 3 cents; today's cost is 41 cents - 1,266% inflation;
example 2: a gallon of 90 Octane full-service gasoline cost 18 cents before; today it is $3.05 for self-service - 1,870 % inflation;
example 3: a house in 1959 cost $14,100; today's median price is $213,000 - 1,400% inflation;
example 4: a dental crown used to cost $40; today it's $1,100 - 2,750% inflation;
example 5: an ice cream cone in 1950 cost 5 cents; today its $2.50 - 4,900% inflation;
example 6: monthly government Medicare insurance premiums paid by seniors was $5.30 in 1970; its now $93.50 - 1,664% inflation; (and up 70% past 5 years)

example: several generations ago a person worked 1.4 months per year to pay for government; he now works 5 months.

[Biggs]

even Indian tourist sites are now shunning the everless dollar


Indian tourist sites refuse entry to dollar

By Jo Johnson in New Delhi

Published: November 16 2007 18:51 | Last updated: November 16 2007 18:51

Supermodels are not the only ones worrying about the value of their dollar contracts. After years of urging foreign tourists to pay in dollars whenever possible, the Taj Mahal and other Indian heritage sites will now insist on a proper hard currency – the rupee.

The country’s culture ministry took the step after confronting a sharp fall in the rupee value of its dollar ticket sales.

[Dig]

How we have been Enslaved by the Federal Reserve

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvQm8Khnbjo

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america freedom to fascism

www.video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656880303867390173

[Dig]

The Capitalist Conspiracy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_6P7LoJVuk

This 40 year old filmstrip presentation by G. Edward Griffin is only one of many films uncovering some of the real history of the Shadow Government of bankers behind most countries governments. They want to enslave us within a global government martial state with a cashless monetary system.

[Dig]

Aaron Russo - Mad As Hell

1 hr 30 min - Mar 21, 2007 -    (152 ratings)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1584595362217609102

[Dig]

U.S. could face $2 trillion lending shock: Goldman
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071116/bs_nm/economy_us_credit_dc;_ylt=AmdbPeq1qnWP5YidnjwDn.WyBhIF??
Fri Nov 16, 7:54 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - The impact of the U.S. mortgage market crisis on the underlying economy could be "dramatic" as leveraged investors may need to scale back lending by up to $2 trillion, according to investment bank Goldman Sachs (GS.N). In a report dated November 15, Goldman's chief U.S. economist Jan Hatzius said a "back-of-the-envelope" estimate of credit losses on outstanding mortgages, based on past default experience, was around $400 billion. But unlike stock market losses, which are typically absorbed by "long-only" investors, this mortgage-related hit is mostly borne by leveraged investors such as banks, broker-dealers, hedge funds and government-sponsored enterprises. And leveraged investors react to losses by actively cutting back lending to keep capital ratios from falling -- A bank targeting a constant capital ratio of 10 percent, for example, would need to shrink its balance by $10 for every $1 in losses. "The macroeconomic consequences could be quite dramatic," Hatzius said in the note to clients. "If leveraged investors see $200 billion of the $400 billion aggregate credit loss, they might need to scale back their lending by $2 trillion."

"This is a large shock," he said, adding the number equates to 7 percent of total debt owed by U.S. non-financial sectors. Hatzius said such a shock could produce a "substantial recession" if it occurred over one year, or a long period of sluggish growth if it occurred over two-to-four years. One of a number of caveats outlined in the report was that baseline economic forecasts may already include significant reductions in the pace of mortgage lending. But the conclusion remained a gloomy one regardless. "The likely mortgage credit losses pose a significantly bigger macroeconomic risk than generally recognized," he wrote. "While the uncertainty is large, the associated downward pressure on lending raises the risk of significant weakness in economic activity."

[Dig]

Dump the Dollar, China State TV Tells Viewers
http://www.cnbc.com/id/21829883
By Reuters | 16 Nov 2007 | 01:10 PM ET

Chinese lunchtime television on Friday gave ordinary people a basic tip on how to play the currency markets: sell the dollar! A state news program, quoting unnamed "wealth management experts," told residents with dollar accounts on the mainland to convert their holdings into yuan or a range of other foreign currencies, including the pound and the euro. The prospect of ordinary Chinese ditching the dollar should be less alarming than reports that have roiled global markets of Beijing diversifying its official foreign exchange reserves.

[Dig]

The Anti-Interventionist Geopolitical Potentials of a Declining Dollar
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/eolsen.php?articleid=11915
by Edward A. Olsen

The decline of the foreign exchange rate of the U.S. dollar – approaching ten percent this year – contributes to broader American anxiety about the U.S. economy. Despite the stock market's high level and many economists' reassurances that the economy is doing well, that national anxiety persists. Americans' unease is due to the real estate market's slump, the sharply rising costs of rent, food, and fuel, and fear that an inflation-driven recession might be over the horizon – despite many economists' reassurances to the contrary. Such economic concerns on the part of many Americans may or may not prove to be plausible. Time will tell. One can only hope that those economic experts who are positive about the country's future are correct.

One indication that things will work out well for the economy is how the relative decline of the dollar is helping the economy by making U.S. exports more competitive internationally due to their lowering comparative costs. It is becoming increasingly obvious that, if handled correctly, the dollar's decline could become a major asset for Americans' economic future. What is far less obvious is how there may well be hidden geopolitical virtues embodied within the dollar's decline.

An indication of such virtues is how the shift in the exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and nearly all major foreign currencies is rapidly improving the ways consumers in other countries perceive the "Made in USA" label on products. One major exception to that trend is China's refusal to join the floating exchange rate system, thereby keeping the yuan and the U.S. dollar tied to each other in ways that continue to make Chinese products cheap in the United States and fails to make the "Made in USA" label as financially attractive in China. Overall, however, the exchange rate situation helps American owned and operated companies producing products made by American workers export them to those foreign consumers who see them as good buys.

These circumstances auger well for reinvigoration of the United States' formerly lagging industrial base, enabling Americans to be far more competitive within a global economy by – ironically – pursuing what amounts to a more nationally focused approach to industrial self-reliance. Although this form of economic competitiveness will help restore the United States' industrial manufacturing base, thereby bolstering the already strong service sectors of the U.S. economy, it also will inject a dose of nationalistic pride into the "Made in USA" label and instill positive caution about naively excessive forms of free trade. That "Made in USA" trend may well be bolstered by widespread concerns about tightening border security in the context of global terrorism, socio-economic pressures for a well structured legal "guest worker" program, and American consumers' cautionary reactions to the tainted reputation of many "Made in China" products.

While the "Made in USA" virtues of a declining dollar within global exchange rates are fairly obvious, other aspects of its consequences are more hidden. One salient result of a declining dollar is the rising costs for American tourists who want to travel beyond U.S. borders. There has been considerable media coverage of how the major increases in costs for hotels, restaurants, etc. for Americans traveling abroad – including nearby Canada – has caused many complaints by these Americans. There also has been a fair amount of coverage about how more tourists from Europe, Canada, and prosperous countries in Asia are coming to the United States because of the attractive low costs of staying in U.S. resorts, seeing the sights, and shopping. Logically these comparative costs are not lost on most potential American tourists – excluding the very wealthy – who increasingly opt to not travel as much outside the United States and, instead, engage in what could be labeled an "America First" brand of tourism.

While the domestic tourism business – for obvious marketing reasons – does not utilize that "America First" label, the more American travelers choose to not go abroad because of higher costs, the more the hidden geopolitical virtues of a declining dollar will become evident. As Americans become less inclined to travel to other countries deemed to be too expensive, the more likely such Americans are to question the logic of the United States being substantially entangled in these wealthy countries' national security as part of American commitments to internationalist geopolitical paradigms.

The more that many Americans become aware of how expensive it is to be a tourist in these countries because of the foreign currency exchange rates, the more likely it will be that such Americans shall raise questions about how expensive it is for the U.S. government to continue to be a strategic benefactor for such countries. Becoming more conscious of these exchange rates may well cause a growing number of Americans to think about the rising costs in U.S. dollars of maintaining extensive military bases and some very large diplomatic posts with substantial security perimeters in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East which includes paying local supplies, transportation, and infrastructure bills as well as the salaries of numerous local employees. This will become even more evident as "host nation support" programs are cut back due to serious questioning about their virtues in several strategic partners. The more the exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the currencies of these allied states shifts in those states' favor, the more expensive the United States' strategic burden shall become. Similarly, as Americans become more conscious of this situation, they may well raise questions about the growing costs of large scale U.S. foreign aid programs in diverse countries due to how currency exchange rates influence the U.S. dollar's buying power overseas. In turn, this may cause Americans to ask why other wealthy countries are not doing more in this regard.

If Americans become more willing to question the fiscal rationality of such growing internationalist costs, a major example of a hidden geopolitical consequence of the dollar's decline in the international currency exchange system would be how it could create incentives for Americans to press the U.S. government to save money by refocusing upon truly "national" national defense. The more Americans become fiscal conservatives who are aware of, and sensitive to, the growing costs of interventionist international strategic commitments the more likely they are to exert political pressure on the U.S. government to shift the high costs of defending existing allies to all those countries' own national and regional defense programs. Just as Americans are being attracted to a de facto "America First" brand of less expensive domestic tourism as they become conscious of the high costs of traveling abroad, so too may Americans be attracted to a literally "America First" brand of defending their own country – utilizing a "Made in USA" form of defense industrial base – due to the excessively high costs of being an overly generous strategic benefactor for a number of countries around the world. Whether the currency exchange rate shift proves to be of short or long duration it can teach useful lessons to Americans about genuinely conservative U.S. priorities internationally.

[Dig]

Stutterer Bernanke Tips Hand on Gold
http://news.goldseek.com/RickAckerman/1195390620.php


When our bird flu correspondent, Erich Simon, is not immersed in the potentially world-ending details of the pandemic, he sometimes likes to tote up the ways in which gold bugs could eventually profit from behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the bankers and their Friends in (very) High Places. Some might think Erich paranoid for ascribing so much power to one firm in particular, Goldman Sachs. But even if Goldie does not in fact run the world, there can be no doubt that they have the kind of incestuous ties to big government that most lobbyists would kill for. By Erich’s reckoning, bullion investments are not likely to disappoint over the long run. More immediately, though, he sees a cap on the price of gold that will be lifted only when Goldman and its good friends are “over the hump” of the financial system’s present duress.  Here’s Erich:

“I mentioned to you earlier that Bernanke shows his hand when he stutters. During his recent appearance before a joint Congressional panel, I was somewhat surprised by which subjects caused him to stutter and which did not. I was also pleased that his stuttering may be telegraphing some bargain-hunting opportunities ahead in gold. “According to Bernanke there are 450,000 mortgages resetting every quarter extending through the end of next year. No surprise there. Many of these are doomed to foreclosure. On this point Bernanke's voice was all a-stutter. He then went on to speak about "growth" in the domestic economy, and on this point his voice went beyond a stutter. It shook. The deflationary implication is now obvious.  Curiously, on the subject of our huge trade deficit, his voice did not stutter.  And when Ron Paul admonished the Fed Chairman about the dollar's collapse Bernanke literally wiped his nose with his index finger. The look in his eye was as scathing as it was telling. “The job of the Fed is twofold: 1) maintaining America's leadership in the global financial forum; and 2) preserving the domestic status quo. Bernanke has shown his cards, and the implications for the price of gold, among other assets, is clear.  Bernanke's foremost responsibility is to his crony Goldman Sachs. (Kudlow and Cramer, by the way, hail from that same institution, as do former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin -- now head of the largest U.S. bank -- and present Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Goldman Sachs IS the U.S. government.

‘Save Lenders First’
“What is a government? A militarily underwritten institution that apportions scarce resource according to man-hours of work, denominated in currency.  Accordingly, Bernanke announced in his congressional testimony that his foremost responsibility is to save lending banking institutions. He advocates protecting Goldman Sachs' empire by shifting the firm's problems onto the GSEs. On this matter, the Fed Chairman's voice did not stutter. “The implications in all of this are clear. The gold price is capped, and while it will eventually break the cap set by Goldman Sachs, whatever the price may come to be, it will do so at the discretion of Goldman Sachs and on their time. If the POG runs to $2,500, you can be sure that they will garner more than the average pound of flesh. Correspondingly, the US dollar will not, as prescients like Peter Schiff entertain, go the way of the dinosaur under such metric. War or Pandemic, however, is a far different cry.

Rigging of Dollar
“Paulson has successfully orchestrated the rigging of the dollar in collaboration with crony banks like the BIS, ECB, BOJ and BOE (Barclays); and, surprisingly, for the moment, China. The "smart money" -- no small part of which are the insiders, the henchmen providing logistical support to the Goldman empire (self-aggrandizing CEOs, etc.) -- has long moved into gold (back when the Rothschilds abandoned the London gold fix), Euros and, increasingly, tangible properties lying outside of the sinking-ship America, into high growth regions like Asia and India -- and now, increasingly, mineral rich Africa. “This explains the absence of the bond vigilantes. The wealthy have never held their money in the equity casino. Their lifestyles are framed in the triple-A credit markets, taking sustenance from the interest earned on the shoulders of the working man. With interest payments no longer covering the cost of inflation, the Goldman Sachs oligarchy has corralled the wealth and relocated it offshore.

Orca vs Great White
“This is the essence of the fight between the Orca and Great White that I have been observing and which is now at a climax. The battle of the Big Money between those on the inside and those on the outside (i.e., the remainder of the speculating and investing community long ago disappeared from view).

“The banking system has evolved into the modern equivalent of feudalism, rooted so obviously in our present and growing real estate quagmire. Only today, rather than a feudal lord holding whip over fief and vassal, the banking system holds whip (for the time being) over the global village through the lending mechanism, usury and the strong arm of Goldman Sachs and ultimately, the U.S. military-industrial complex.

“The implications are clear. The battle between the Orca and Great White is the final battle in the global financial marketplace. In this denouement Bernanke is buying time by shifting Congress toward a taxpayer base (long in default) and Nationalization of the real estate (and banking) industries in lieu of write-downs and amends. He is not, as I had hoped, motivated to break the back of inequity, but rather to preserve it. His motive is not philanthropy. And whether the outcome is martial law, taxpayer revolution, inundation by organized crime or World War III, he is now all tooth.”

[Dig]

Saudi minister warns of dollar collapse
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/november2007/171107collapse.htm
Edmund Conway London Telegraph Saturday November 17, 2007

The dollar could collapse if Opec officially admits considering changing the pricing of oil into alternative currencies such as the euro, the Saudi Arabian foreign minister has warned. Prince Saud Al-Faisal was overheard ruling out a proposal from Iran and Venezuela to discuss pricing crude in a private meeting at the oil cartel's conference. In an embarrassing blunder at the meeting in Riyadh, ministers' microphones were not cut off during a key closed meeting, and Prince Al-Faisal was heard saying: "My feeling is that the mere mention that the Opec countries are studying the issue of the dollar is itself going to have an impact that endangers the interests of the countries. "There will be journalists who will seize on this point and we don't want the dollar to collapse instead of doing something good for Opec." After around 40 minutes press officials cut off the feed, which had been accidentally broadcast to the press room. Prince Al-Faisal added: "This is not new. We have done this in the past: decide to study something without putting down on paper that we are going to study it so that we avoid any implication that will bring adverse effects on our countries' finances."

[Dig]

The dollar's decline from symbol of hegemony to shunned currency
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/november2007/171107decline.htm
Andy McSmith  London Independent Saturday November 17, 2007

The decline of the dollar, symbol of US global hegemony for the best part of a century, may have become so entrenched that some experts now fear it is irreversible. After months of huge and sustained turmoil on the money markets, lack of confidence in the world's totemic currency has become so widespread that an increasing number of international traders are transferring their wealth to stronger currencies such as the euro, which recently hit its highest level against the dollar. "An American businessman over here who is given the choice would take anything but the dollar," David Buik of Cantor Index said yesterday. "I would want to be paid in yen, and if not yen then the euro or sterling." Matthew Osborne, of Armstrong International, added: "The majority would say sterling. There are a few dealers in the City who may take the view that they'll take dollars now, while they're cheap, and hold on to them for 12 months. "But the problem is so serious that there are people who in July or August might have been thinking, 'I'm paid in dollars, how annoying' for whom it's now a question of, 'Do you have a job; do you have a bonus?' " The collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market in the US, which is fuelling the dollar unrest, has already brought down one British bank, Northern Rock, and has forced others to declare vast losses. Yesterday, just as it appeared that the dollar might have finally reached its floor, there was another warning that the sub-prime crisis is going to get worse. The US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, warned an international business summit in South Africa: "The sub-prime market, parts of it will get worse before it gets better." Huge numbers of US homeowners are still cushioned by introductory interest rates set when they took out loans in 2005 or 2006, he said. When these introductory offers run out, their interest payments will increase, setting off another wave of defaulting and repossessions. And the dollar is enduring its rockiest spell in recent memory.

[Dig]

Ron Paul and Ben Bernanke, part 1 of 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVCStbbIvDg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8pLpI5rzKI
On July 18, 2007, Ben Bernanke is explaining the Monetary Policy and the State of the Economy to members of the House Committee on Financial Services. These are the opening comments by Presidential Candidate Ron Paul to the Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.
_________________________________________________
Ron Paul Schools Ben Bernanke Again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAwvlDJgJbM

Ron Paul on CNBC Talking Monetary Policy 11-8-07

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZsZ0_OLer4

[Dig]

Ron Paul - Honest Money, 1995, Part 1-4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF5pwDCpz4s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-M8En38oFQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH6iEbP9ozw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojtxgCYeagE

[Dig]

OPEC interested in non-dollar currency
http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/OPEC_interested_in_non_dollar_curre_11182007.html
Ahmadinejad: OPEC Members Interested in Converting Cash Reserves Into Non-Dollar Currency
SEBASTIAN ABBOT AP News Nov 18, 2007 18:46 EST

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday that OPEC's members have expressed interest in converting their cash reserves into a currency other than the depreciating U.S. dollar, which he called a "worthless piece of paper."

[Dig]

Dollar continues near record lows
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7101194.stm
Monday, 19 November 2007, 14:23 GMT


The US dollar has remained weak against both the euro and the yen in Monday trading as worries about the strength of the US economy continue. The dollar fell to $1.4666 against the euro by early afternoon in Europe, and dropped to 110.30 yen. At the start of November, the dollar hit a record low of $1.4752 against the single European currency. The strength of the dollar had been undermined further by weak US economic data released on Friday.

Interest rate cuts
As a growing number of US banks reveal their exposure to bad US mortgage debt, data on Friday showed the biggest drop in American industrial production since January. Taken together, analysts say this suggests further cuts in US interest rates. "There are no fundamental reasons to buy the dollar," said Tsutomu Soma, senior manager of foreign securities at Okasan Securities. The US Federal Reserve last cut interest rates in October to 4.5%, in an effort to kick-start the faltering housing and credit markets, as well as making borrowing cheaper to encourage consumer spending in the run-up to the key Christmas shopping period.  Despite signalling that it will adopt a wait-and-see approach to the future direction of interest rates, most economists expect a further cut in rates when Fed officials next meet in December. "Are there inflation fears in the United states? Yes," said David Watt, senior currency strategist at RBC Capital Markets in Toronto. "But as long as housing remains a downside risk, people will think the Fed is biased to cut rates in the near term."

[Biggs]

DOW down 224 points, NAsdaq down 43 points, sinking sinking sinking, on course for the worst month since August 2002

[Biggs]

Chavez in Tehran: "Empire of dollar is crashing"

By Reuters

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18746.htm
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Monday the "empire of the dollar is crashing," a day after his country and "anti-U.S." ally Iran advocated action over the weakening U.S. currency during an OPEC summit in Riyadh.

Chavez, who on Saturday said oil prices could double to $200 per barrel if the United States attacks Iran over its disputed atomic ambitions, spoke to reporters after talks with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"Soon we will not talk about dollars because the dollar is falling in value and the empire of the dollar is crashing," Chavez said in comments translated into Farsi from Spanish.

"Naturally, by the crash of the dollar, America's empire will crash," Chavez said at a joint news conference with Ahmadinejad. The two presidents share the same viewpoint in denouncing U.S. influence in the world.

The final statement of the oil cartel's November 17-18 summit in Riyadh did not include any reference to the falling dollar, in an apparent victory for U.S.-allied moderates led by Saudi Arabia.

But Iran and Venezuela made clear before and after the summit that they would press for action, which could include pricing oil in a basket of currencies, with Ahmadinejad on Sunday calling the dollar a "worthless piece of paper."

A fall in the value of the U.S. dollar on global markets helped fuel oil's rally to a record $98.62 on November 7 -- causing the West to call for more OPEC supplies to cool prices -- but it has also eroded the purchasing power of OPEC members.

Fears the United States or its ally Israel could attack Iran -- over a nuclear energy program Washington says is a cover for seeking atomic weapons -- have also contributed to higher crude prices. Tehran denies the charge.

(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi; Writing by Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Ron Askew)

[larsonstdoc]

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/News/FedsBudgetTricksHideTrillionsInDebt.aspx


Why are they admitting this now?  We who have been listening to Alex and others have known this for years!

[Dig]

Trump Blames Leaders For High Oil Prices, Gives Tips For Surviving The Subprime Crisis
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/11/21/trump-blames-leaders-for-_n_73707.html
Huffington Post   |  Danny Shea   |   November 21, 2007 11:25 AM



Donald Trump was on Live with Regis and Kelly today to talk about his MTV show "Pageant Place." But before talk went light, Regis asked The Donald some questions about the economy. Donald is enraged at the oil price, creeping towards $100/barrel, and blames it on a failure of leadership. "We don't have anybody calling these leaders and saying, 'You get that damn oil price down.' Because it's a joke....Between the oil companies and these oil-producing states, what's going on is a disgrace. And we don't have the people to talk it down." Donald then boldly declared, "I'd talk it down to 10!"

Trump also had tips for homeowners hoping to survive the subprime mortage crisis: stay put. "Don't move out of your house," he said. "Call your bank and negotiate. Because the last thing they need is another house." He advised people with raw subprime deals to "get yourself a good lawyer, call your bank, work out a deal. You'll end up with a very nice house and a very low mortgage."

One last nugget from Donald: "I just heard just a little while ago before the show, there's another bank going to announce tremendous numbers in terms of losses from subprime." Which could it be? JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said his company was "fine." So which bank do you think it is?

Watch:

[Dig]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ad3_1195823673

The U.S. dollar is valueless wastepaper.

[Dig]

Gerald Celente: Dollar Will Fall 90 Percent
http://www.truthnews.us/?p=964
Kurt Nimmo TruthNews November 24, 2007

Gerald Celente is not your garden variety doom-and-gloom crackpot. Celente, director of Trends Research Institute, forecasted the subprime mortgage financial crisis and the decline of the dollar a year ago and gold’s current rise in May. He also predicted the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis and the fall of the Soviet Union. “We are going to see economic times the likes of which no living person has seen,” he told United Press International.

Wait a minute. That includes people who lived through the so-called “Great Depression.” Does Celente think the “Panic of 2008″ will be worse than the Depression? It would appear so.

“The Panic of 2008 will lead to a lower U.S. standard of living, he said.”

“I have no crystal ball, nor do I claim to have well-developed psychic powers, but I’d be willing to bet almost anything that next Thanksgiving season will be dramatically different from this one,” writes Carolyn Baker.

We are confronting “dollar plummeting hysteria, monumental levels of debt, foreclosure, bankruptcy, unemployment, energy depletion, skyrocketing gas and food prices, illnesses treated without health insurance coverage—or just not treated, unprecedented levels of homelessness, and by all indications, within a few months into 2008, America will be well on the road to a re-run of 1929-or something inconceivably worse,” Baker frets. “These are the good ole days, my friend, and these are also the dark new days. Happy Thanksgiving; savor every bite.”

“Derivative dealers, hedge funds, buyout firms and other market players will also unravel,” Celente predicts.

Massive corporate losses, such as those recently posted by Citigroup Inc. and General Motors Corp., will also be fairly common “for some time to come,” he said.

He said he would not “be surprised if giants tumble to their deaths…”

Some giants, however, stand to gain, especially when it comes to real estate. “There is going to be a grab on this property by people who have cash, and that’s not going to be the middle class. People will lose their homes if they have large mortgages that they cannot comfortably sustain or pay off,” Jerome Corsi, economic expert and foe to the emerging North American Union told Alex Jones last August. “There’s going to be a grab where the institutions and the people already wealthy will only gain, it’s not going to be an opportunity for the average person to gain.”

Corsi believes the economic crisis now revealing itself is engineered. “It is engineered because again, the move toward globalism, the pumping of this liquidity to stimulate the markets was totally artificial.”

The federal reserve is going to get caught right now in a total dilemma, if it raises rates to protect the dollar, its going to further tank the economy and cause the housing markets to be in even more of a crisis. We have economic stagnation, the loss of real income, the loss of real wealth and inflation at the same time. With the dropping of the dollar the crisis is going to be manipulated to the point where people will take the Amero or any regional solution if it is proposed as the way you get out of your problem.

It’s all about wiping the chessboard clean, or rather turning it over and dumping all the pieces:

“This is the fastest run I’ve seen ever to get to the goal line of creating a Untied States regional economy, a North American Union. The elite are running like they’ll never have this chance again. It is the tenth hour, the eleventh hour where this battle will be fought. They believe that they can win now and they are going for broke to create a North American Union and tank the dollar.”

Steven Watson, writing for Infowars, summarizes:

The decline of the economy in the US is being caused by the very predatory globalist policies that are still presented to us as the solution for economic turmoil. Globalist vampires such as the IMF and the World bank, but two of the elite central banks and private interests, have drained the third world dry, and are now focusing their attention on enslaving the developed world.

The single currency and a ‘new economic order’ is a major step on the road to global governance. Europe already has its own strong single currency, while the dollar’s days seem to be numbered. When money is being printed and distributed by private corporations is it any surprise to see a push for a merger with other countries’ currencies?

Of course, in order to realize this “new economic order,” a whole lot of people will need suffer—and if we are believe Gerald Celente, worse than their grand and great-grand parents did during the so-called “Great Depression.”


“There’s no doubt now, that Fed chairman Alan Greenspan’s plan to pump zillions of dollars into the system via ‘low interest rates’ has created the biggest monster-bubble of all time and set the stage for a deep economic retrenchment,” writes Mike Whitney. “Greenspan’s inflationary policies were designed to expand the ‘wealth gap’ and create greater economic polarization between the classes. By the time the housing bubble deflates, millions of working class Americans will be left to pay off loans that are considerably higher than the current value of their home. This will inevitably create deeper societal divisions and, very likely, a permanent underclass of mortgage-slaves.”

Greenspan has successfully piloted the nation into virtual insolvency. In fact, the parallels between our present situation and the period preceding the Great Depression are striking. Just as massive debt was accumulating in the market from the purchase of stocks “on margin”, so too, mortgage debt between 2000 and 2006 soared from $4.8 trillion to $9.5 trillion. In both cases the “wealth effect” spawned a spending spree which looked like growth but was really the steady, insidious expansion of debt which generated economic activity. In both periods wages were either flat or declining and the gap between rich and working class was growing more extreme by the year.

Call it the “New Feudalism.”

[bigron]

"A Generalized Meltdown of Financial Institutions"

Take a Look at Professor Roubini's Crystal Ball

By Mike Whitney
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18777.htm

11/24/07 "ICH" -- - Reality has finally caught up to the stock market. The American consumer is underwater, the banks are buried in dept, and the housing market is in terminal distress. The Dow is now below its 200-Day Moving Average -- the first big "sell" signal. Anything below 12,500 could trigger program-trading and crash the market. The increased volatility suggests that we are watching a "real time" meltdown.

International Business editor for the UK Telegraph, Ambrose Evans Pritchard, summed up yesterday's action in the Asian markets:

"The global credit crisis has hit Asia with a vengeance for the first time, triggering a massive flight to safety as investors across the region pull out of risky assets. Yields on three-month deposits in China and Korea have plummeted to near 1pc in a spectacular fall over recent days, caused by panic withdrawals from money market funds and credit derivatives.

"'This' is a severe warning sign,' said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas. 'Asia ignored the credit crunch in August but now we're seeing the poison beginning to paralyze the whole global economy.'" (Credit 'Heart attack' engulfs China and Korea" Ambrose Evans Pritchard,UK Telegraph,)

The credit storm that began in the United States with subprime mortgages has spread to markets across the globe. In fact, the train has already crashed. What we're seeing now is the boxcars piling up on top of each other.

On Tuesday Chinese government officials ordered a complete halt to bank lending to slow the speculative frenzy that has created an enormous equity bubble in the stock market. According to the Wall Street Journal:

"Chinese authorities are slamming the brakes on bank lending, in their latest attempt to curb the runaway investment threatening to overheat what is soon to be the world's third-largest economy. In recent weeks, regulators have quietly ordered China's commercial banks to freeze lending through the end of the year, according to bankers in several cities. The bankers say that to comply, they are canceling loans and credit lines with businesses and individuals." ("China freezes lending to Curb Investing Frenzy" Wall Street Journal)

The move illustrates how concerned the Chinese are that a slowdown in US consumer spending will trigger a crash on the Shanghai stock market. It also shows that the Chinese are having difficulty dealing with the inflation generated by the hundreds of billions of US dollars absorbed via the trade imbalance with the US. China is awash in USDs and that surplus is causing a steady rise in food and energy costs. This could be mitigated by allowing their currency to "float" freely. But a sudden, steep increase in the Chinese yuan's value could also send the world headlong into a global recession. For now, the lending freeze and price fixing appear to be the way out.

Another sign that the markets have reached a "tipping point" appeared in a Reuters article on Wednesday; "Interbank Covered Bond Trading Halted on Volatility":

"Renewed credit turmoil and volatility led the European Covered Bond Council (ECBC) on Wednesday to suspend inter-bank market-making in covered bonds until Monday, Nov. 26.

The move is a sign of the stress in the covered bond market, which is dominated by German institutions that have almost a trillion euros of covered bonds outstanding.

Covered bonds -- backed by pools of assets that remain on the borrower's balance sheet -- are usually highly liquid and typically rated triple-A by ratings agencies. The ECBC's recommendation is aimed at relieving the pressure on market makers who are forced to quote prices at a fixed bid-offer spread.

"In light of the current market situation and in order to avoid undue over-acceleration in the widening of spreads, the 8-to-8 Market-Makers & Issuers Committee recommends that inter-bank market-making be suspended," the ECBC said in a release."

Note: This isn't mortgage-backed junk that's being sold, but highly liquid bonds that are usually easy to cash in. The ECBC's action is a sign of pure desperation and indicates that credit paralysis has infected the entire euro banking system.

Reuters: "Due to general market conditions and the specific mechanics of the inter-dealer market making it even seems possible that inter-dealer market making will not be resumed this year."

That's bad. The mechanism for converting covered bonds into cash has broken down.

The dollar took another pasting on Wednesday, sliding to $1.49 on the euro; another new record. Gold shot up to $814 per ounce. Oil continues to flirt with the $100 per barrel mark, and the yen rose to 107 per dollar forcing a sell-off of hedge fund assets levered through the carry trade.

Jon Basile, economist at Credit Suisse, summed it up like this: "There's a heck of a lot of bad news out there." Indeed.

In California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has joined with four mortgage lenders to freeze adjustable interest rates (ARMs) for some of the state's highest-risk borrowers; another unprecedented move. The Governor hopes to avoid a collapse of the California real estate market which has gone into a tailspin. Home sales have plummeted more than 40 per cent for the last two months. Prices have dropped sharply---roughly 12 per cent statewide. New construction has slowed to a crawl. Layoffs are steadily rising. Jumbo loans (mortgages over $417,000) have been put on the "Endangered Species" list. Even qualified borrowers can't get mortgages. Nothing is selling. California housing is "off the cliff".

Schwarzenegger's plan to keep over-extended subprime mortgage-holders in their homes faces an uncertain future. What incentive is there for homeowners to continue paying exorbitant monthly rates when their payments are not applied to the principle? The homeowners would be better off bailing out, accepting foreclosure, and starting over with a clean slate.

It's unrealistic to thinks that Schwarzenegger can stop the tidal wave of foreclosures that are sweeping across the state. An estimated 3 million homeowners will lose their homes nationwide.

If you want to blame someone; blame Alan Greenspan. He's the one who created this mess. According to the economist Mike Shedlock:

"The Fed caused the credit crunch by slashing interest rates to 1 per cent to bail out its banking buddies in the wake of a dotcom bubble collapse. All the Fed did was create a bigger bubble. This bubble is so big in fact that it cannot even be bailed out. It's the end of the line for a serially bubble blowing Fed.

"So not only was this the biggest credit bubble in history, this was also the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the already enormously wealthy. That is the real travesty of justice regardless of whether or not the price tag is $1 trillion, $2 trillion, or $10 trillion." (Mike Shedlock, "Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis")

The problem has gotten so serious that even Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, is putting up red flags. Last week, Paulson ignited a sell-off on Wall Street when he made this statement:

"The nature of the problem will be significantly bigger next year because 2006 [mortgages] had lower underwriting standards, no amortization, and no down payments....We're never going to be able to process the number of workouts and modifications (to mortgages) that are going to be necessary doing it just sort of one-off. I've talked to enough people now to know that there's no way that's going to work."

The desperation is palpable. Like Schwarzenegger, Paulson is trying to get mortgage-lenders to provide a safety net for struggling borrowers who are defaulting on their loans.

Paulson is calling for emergency legislation that will allow the Federal Housing Administration to play a greater role in the relief effort. The FHA has already expanded its traditional role by taking on hundreds of billions in extra debt just to keep a few "private" mortgage lenders and banks from going bankrupt. Of course, when Paulson's plan goes kaput and the debts pile up; it'll be the taxpayer that foots the bill.

"Paulson also called the Senate's failure to pass legislation overhauling mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac frustrating," saying that the two government-sponsored entities need to be playing a bigger role in the housing market.

"If we ever need them it's during times like today, and they're most valuable when there is distress in the mortgage market," he said. "I'd like to see them playing an even bigger role."(Wall Street Journal)

Fannie and Freddie, have already posted enormous quarterly losses and don't have the capital reserves to put millions of subprime mortgage-holders under their "government-sponsored" umbrella. Paulson is just grabbing at straws.

Similar troubles are brewing in the broader market where late-payments and defaults have spread to credit card debt and new car loans. Every area of "securitized" debt has suddenly veered off the road and into the ditch. Last week the Fed injected more credit into the teetering banking system than anytime since 9-11.

No one has predicted the downward-spiral in the market more accurately than Nouriel Roubini. Roubini is a Professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University. His analysis appears regularly on his blogsite, Global EconoMonitor. Last week's prediction was particularly dire and is worth reprinting here:

"It is increasingly clear by now that a severe U.S. recession is inevitable in next few months...I now see the risk of a severe and worsening liquidity and credit crunch leading to a generalized meltdown of the financial system of a severity and magnitude like we have never observed before. In this extreme scenario whose likelihood is increasing we could see a generalized run on some banks; and runs on a couple of weaker (non-bank) broker dealers that may go bankrupt with severe and systemic ripple effects on a mass of highly leveraged derivative instruments that will lead to a seizure of the derivatives markets... massive losses on money market funds with a run on both those sponsored by banks and those not sponsored by banks; ..ever growing defaults and losses ($500 billion plus) in subprime, near prime and prime mortgages with severe knock-on effect on the RMBS and CDOs market; massive losses in consumer credit (auto loans, credit cards); severe problems and losses in commercial real estate...; the drying up of liquidity and credit in a variety of asset backed securities putting the entire model of securitization at risk; runs on hedge funds and other financial institutions that do not have access to the Fed's lender of last resort support; a sharp increase in corporate defaults and credit spreads; and a massive process of re-intermediation into the banking system of activities that were until now altogether securitized." (Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor)

"A generalized meltdown of the financial system".

Looks like Chicken Little might have gotten it right this time; "The sky IS falling."

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com

[bigron]

Forecast: U.S. dollar could plunge 90 pct

By UPI
[url][http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18776.htm/url]


11/24/07 -- -, Nov. 19 (UPI) -- A financial crisis will likely send the U.S. dollar into a free fall of as much as 90 percent and gold soaring to $2,000 an ounce, a trends researcher said.

"We are going to see economic times the likes of which no living person has seen," Trends Research Institute Director Gerald Celente said, forecasting a "Panic of 2008."

"The bigger they are, the harder they'll fall," he said in an interview with New York's Hudson Valley Business Journal.

Celente -- who forecast the subprime mortgage financial crisis and the dollar's decline a year ago and gold's current rise in May -- told the newspaper the subprime mortgage meltdown was just the first "small, high-risk segment of the market" to collapse.

Derivative dealers, hedge funds, buyout firms and other market players will also unravel, he said.

Massive corporate losses, such as those recently posted by Citigroup Inc. and General Motors Corp., will also be fairly common "for some time to come," he said.

He said he would not "be surprised if giants tumble to their deaths," Celente said.

The Panic of 2008 will lead to a lower U.S. standard of living, he said.

A result will be a drop in holiday spending a year from now, followed by a permanent end of the "retail holiday frenzy" that has driven the U.S. economy since the 1940s, he said.

[bigron]

Banks Gone Wild

By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/23/opinion/23krugman.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin


“What were they smoking?” asks the cover of the current issue of Fortune magazine. Underneath the headline are photos of recently deposed Wall Street titans, captioned with the staggering sums they managed to lose.

The answer, of course, is that they were high on the usual drug — greed. And they were encouraged to make socially destructive decisions by a system of executive compensation that should have been reformed after the Enron and WorldCom scandals, but wasn’t.

In a direct sense, the carnage on Wall Street is all about the great housing slump.

This slump was both predictable and predicted. “These days,” I wrote in August 2005, “Americans make a living selling each other houses, paid for with money borrowed from the Chinese. Somehow, that doesn’t seem like a sustainable lifestyle.” It wasn’t.

But even as the danger signs multiplied, Wall Street piled into bonds backed by dubious home mortgages. Most of the bad investments now shaking the financial world seem to have been made in the final frenzy of the housing bubble, or even after the bubble began to deflate.

In fact, according to Fortune, Merrill Lynch made its biggest purchases of bad debt in the first half of this year — after the subprime crisis had already become public knowledge.

Now the bill is coming due, and almost everyone — that is, almost everyone except the people responsible — is having to pay.

The losses suffered by shareholders in Merrill, Citigroup, Bear Stearns and so on are the least of it. Far more important in human terms are the hundreds of thousands if not millions of American families lured into mortgage deals they didn’t understand, who now face sharp increases in their payments — and, in many cases, the loss of their houses — as their interest rates reset.

And then there’s the collateral damage to the economy.

You still hear occasional claims that the subprime fiasco is no big deal. Even though the numbers keep getting bigger — some observers are now talking about $400 billion in losses — these losses are small compared with the total value of financial assets.

But bad housing investments are crippling financial institutions that play a crucial role in providing credit, by wiping out much of their capital. In a recent report, Goldman Sachs suggested that housing-related losses could force banks and other players to cut lending by as much as $2 trillion — enough to trigger a nasty recession, if it happens quickly.

Beyond that, there’s a pervasive loss of trust, which is like sand thrown in the gears of the financial system. The crisis of confidence is plainly visible in the market data: there’s an almost unprecedented spread between the very low interest rates investors are willing to accept on U.S. government debt — which is still considered safe — and the much higher interest rates at which banks are willing to lend to each other.

How did things go so wrong?

Part of the answer is that people who should have been alert to the dangers, and taken precautionary measures, instead blithely assured Americans that everything was fine, and even encouraged them to take out risky mortgages. Yes, Alan Greenspan, that means you.

But another part of the answer lies in what hasn’t happened to the men on that Fortune cover — namely, they haven’t been forced to give back any of the huge paychecks they received before the folly of their decisions became apparent.

Around 25 years ago, American business — and the American political system — bought into the idea that greed is good. Executives are lavishly rewarded if the companies they run seem successful: last year the chief executives of Merrill and Citigroup were paid $48 million and $25.6 million, respectively.

But if the success turns out to have been an illusion — well, they still get to keep the money. Heads they win, tails we lose.

Not only is this grossly unfair, it encourages bad risk-taking, and sometimes fraud. If an executive can create the appearance of success, even for a couple of years, he will walk away immensely wealthy. Meanwhile, the subsequent revelation that appearances were deceiving is someone else’s problem.

If all this sounds familiar, it should. The huge rewards executives receive if they can fake success are what led to the great corporate scandals of a few years back. There’s no indication that any laws were broken this time — but the public’s trust was nonetheless betrayed, once again.

The point is that the subprime crisis and the credit crunch are, in an important sense, the result of our failure to effectively reform corporate governance after the last set of scandals.

John Edwards recently came out with a corporate reform plan, but it didn’t receive a lot of attention. Corporate governance still isn’t regarded as a major political issue. But it should be.

[Dig]

I cannot believe the last post on this was a year ago

[stymo1]

I cannot believe the last post on this was a year ago

It took them a little longer than they thought it would.

[JBS]

How do I get foreign currency, it's not gold but anything is better than a dollar, even toilet paper.

[EvadingGrid]

How do I get foreign currency, it's not gold but anything is better than a dollar, even toilet paper.

In Europe you used to just walk into a main street bank and queue up at the counter.
Mind you nowadays it might not be so easy,
and if you are in the US they are a little anal.

When I tired to exchange GBP for USD in Philladelphia I had to go to centre city, and they wanted to see my passport, though I never fathomed why,. and that was before 911...

[gEEk squad]

Gerald Celente: Dollar Will Fall 90 Percent
http://www.truthnews.us/?p=964
Kurt Nimmo TruthNews November 24, 2007

Gerald Celente is not your garden variety doom-and-gloom crackpot. Celente, director of Trends Research Institute, forecasted the subprime mortgage financial crisis and the decline of the dollar a year ago and gold’s current rise in May. He also predicted the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis and the fall of the Soviet Union. “We are going to see economic times the likes of which no living person has seen,” he told United Press International.

Wait a minute. That includes people who lived through the so-called “Great Depression.” Does Celente think the “Panic of 2008″ will be worse than the Depression? It would appear so.

“The Panic of 2008 will lead to a lower U.S. standard of living, he said.”

“I have no crystal ball, nor do I claim to have well-developed psychic powers, but I’d be willing to bet almost anything that next Thanksgiving season will be dramatically different from this one,” writes Carolyn Baker.

...

Some giants, however, stand to gain, especially when it comes to real estate. “There is going to be a grab on this property by people who have cash, and that’s not going to be the middle class. People will lose their homes if they have large mortgages that they cannot comfortably sustain or pay off,” Jerome Corsi, economic expert and foe to the emerging North American Union told Alex Jones last August. “There’s going to be a grab where the institutions and the people already wealthy will only gain, it’s not going to be an opportunity for the average person to gain.”

Corsi believes the economic crisis now revealing itself is engineered. “It is engineered because again, the move toward globalism, the pumping of this liquidity to stimulate the markets was totally artificial.”

......

It’s all about wiping the chessboard clean, or rather turning it over and dumping all the pieces:

“This is the fastest run I’ve seen ever to get to the goal line of creating a Untied States regional economy, a North American Union. The elite are running like they’ll never have this chance again. It is the tenth hour, the eleventh hour where this battle will be fought. They believe that they can win now and they are going for broke to create a North American Union and tank the dollar.”

These quotes all came true. We're in for another big dip on the rollercoaster before October is over. Just think of what could happen when they'll allow shorts next week.

[EvadingGrid]

These quotes all came true. We're in for another big dip on the rollercoaster before October is over. Just think of what could happen when they'll allow shorts next week.

I confess to being to scared to think about it, except I will be emptying our savings account to buy as much food, tobbaco and food.