The scale of the rot is something to behold. Something is grossly, wantonly wrong with Western Civilization, and lots of people know it, but they don’t know why (and for the next blind rebellion, see, “Occupy”).
But a head of the hydra popped into view last week. First a high profile whistleblower from Goldman Sachs wrote Why I am leaving in the New York Times. Then today (possibly, it’s unconfirmed), an insider from JP Morgan came forward to reveal something far worse, and dark to the core. It’s posted on the CFTC site (that’s The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission – the market watchdog, or rather watch-puppy). [UPDATE: The CFTC have removed the page after 48 hours, a copy of the text is here, screenshot here.]
A Goldman Sachs Executive Director — Greg Smith — resigned from the 143 year old firm explaining he felt ill with the callous culture where people would boast about how much they had ripped off clients, which they called “hunting elephants”, and calling their clients “muppets” and worse. He said that in 12 years the company had completely lost the culture that made him proud to join it. There was nothing left of integrity or humility. He was not alleging outright fraud, but something that sounds more like the company has been taken over by white collar psychopaths. These were people who cheered when someone sold a lemon to a client.
The anonymous whistleblower, allegedly from JP Morgan, was apparently inspired to pop up and describe something that really was market manipulation and fraud on a huge scale, everything from hiding assets from MF Global clients, to attempts to manipulate LIBOR (which affects the price of all derivatives). He or she claims JP Morgan is manipulating the gold and silver price: ” We have a little over a 25% (give or take a percentage) position in the short market for silver futures “.
“… this most recent crash in gold and silver during Bernanke’s speech on February 29th is of notable importance, as we along with 4 other major institutions, orchestrated the violent $100 drop in Gold and subsequent drops in silver.”
Why should you care about esoteric precious metals markets? It’s your currency, even if you don’t own any.
It’s like this. The governments and their central banks make as much free money from thin-air through fractional reserve banking and other methods as they can get away with — it benefits those who “spend that new money first”. They spend it at current prices, and pay it back later, after inflation has decreased its value. The people who pay the difference are those who saved and held money while its purchasing power fell. Speculators grow rich, while retirees and savers get poorer.
In a free market this would quickly lead to inflation, and people would rush to the only currencies the government can’t inflate (or “print” for free) — they’d buy and hold gold or silver and keep their purchasing power. Remember, gold and silver are the currencies that evolved in the marketplace over the last 5,000 years and are not directly under the control of government. (And “so?” you say?). The point is, if the prices of gold and silver rise fast, people would abandon bonds and get into metals instead, thus correcting the situation by making the printing and speculating game vastly less attractive while saving and production became more attractive. Essentially, people dump the government money and go for the competitor, which means the government (and or Fed) has to increase the interest rate and pay more for its money, and nobody wants that: God forbid that Governments or Banks should pay people a fair rate for borrowing “their” money.
Bonds and “treasuries” (US Treasury Bonds) are fancy words for loans to the government. But if no one wants to buy them, then the government has trouble raising funds for its massive pork barreling vote-buying schemes, and the investment bankers pay higher interest payments which takes all the fun out of Grossly Huge and Obscene Mergers, the SubPrime Parties and the High Frequency Festivals.
As Mrs T. said, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money“.
If the gold and silver markets are free, the bankers and government are much less able to join in cahoots to get more than their fair share off the people, because their government paper currencies suffer competition from gold and silver. The proverbial pot of gold sits at the end of the Fiddled-Gold-Market-Rainbow. If they can whip-saw the gold and silver market, and keep people from getting too much joy there, they can keep interest rates lower, surreptitiously transfer purchasing power from the public to the money printers, and fool the public into thinking that inflation really was only 3% — even as stocks hit record highs, executive salaries grew malignantly, and houses became unaffordable.
So right now a Nova-critic or two will be frothing-in-excitement: “Conspiracy theorist!”. To which I say “Deny this”:
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- a/ the official Money base growth, shows that two thirds of the money base is money that didn’t exist in August 2008. ECB growth is large too.
- b/ That CFTC data shows four US banks hold 22% of all the silver shorts and 30% of all the gold shorts. One class action lawsuit claims that HSBC and JPMorgan control as much as 85% of the silver shorts.
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Note that the big banks – who are supposed to be trying to make money on markets, and ought to have some ability to predict the price — have been systematically predicting (through their excessive short positions) that gold and silver would fall in price, ever since gold was $300 an ounce, and silver was $5. In other words, those big banks have been repeatedly, reliably, and excessively “wrong” in their predictions on the gold and silver market for a decade. Hands up all those who think those banks are trying to make money from speculating on the gold and silver contracts? Hands up those who think the banks are trying to make money from everything else they do, by keeping the prices of gold and silver down? Hands up who wonders why the CFTC can’t spot obvious market manipulation? The government didn’t have to ask the bankers to fiddle the market, they just needed to turn a blind eye to a practice that suited their big-spending habits.
Fixing the market doesn’t mean having precise control, but if you and your mates hold a large slab of the market, it only takes a bit of forward planning in a cafe to set dates for big dumps. The sudden collapses wipe out the little people. In a futures market, margins can vanish in an hour, and they are wiped out for good. The futures market is so phenomenally large, that the spot price of real gold and silver is strongly influenced by the paper futures market (in these markets the derivatives tail wags the physical dog). The less scrupulous only need to do this a few times a year to keep those markets subdued.
Corruption is endemic. It’s due to the amount of money-for-nothing pumped into sovereign currencies.
Gold is an anti-cheating device. So is silver. You have to earn before you can spend it; governments and banks cannot create it at the click of a keyboard. That’s why the reports of widespread manipulation matter to every citizen, not just to investors. Gold represents the natural limits to growth, it’s the pin the pops the Ponzi bubble.
“Free” money allows the psychopaths to rise to the top, it rewards the most brazen, fearless, and unscrupulous behavior. Honest players on a slow-and-steady realistic schedule get eclipsed by competitors that push the limits of the system.
This week we’ve seen two whistleblowers emerge. The second anonymous one called for more.
I call all honest and courageous JPMorgan employees to step up and fight the cronyism and wide-scale manipulation by reporting the truth. …Our deepest secrets lie within the hands of honest employees and can be revealed through honest regulators that are willing to take a look inside one of America’s best kept secrets. Please do not allow this to turn into another Enron.
“Money-for-nothing” corrupts everything
If you wonder how corruption in climate science could be connected, look no further than Climate Money. Without the printing presses running flat out at the Fed, which politicians would have had the luxury of glorious schemes to control the weather? How could they hand out grants to send, say, aquariums on tour to warn of impending storms? Underneath it all, if large financial institutions were not looking forward to a brand-spanking-new $2 Trillion market to trade carbon, who would have found millions to install 70 foot Carbon-Clocks, 50 page science reports and to donate and push into “green” education campaigns? Funny money makes for funny decisions. Shame no one is laughing.
If real people had to earn real money, investment bankers would need to make real decisions, scientists would have to find real evidence, and politicians would have to come up with real reasons.
If what is claimed by this “whistleblower” is even half true, and the regulators have the balls to do something, we might, just might be starting to actually correct this catastrophic situation instead of blundering towards the next crisis, and maybe the one after that.
Will I be crying over seeing another large scale merchant banking “Institution” collapsing?
Of course not. After all, I am a capitalist (and proud of it)!
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Government is FOR the people in government.
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Your assumption that the regulators have balls is false – they are already bought and paid for.
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Hang on a minute – I thought government was FOR the people?
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Hang on a minute – I thought government was FOR shafting the people?
Just corrected your typo Speedy
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Silly me – ta.
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Great article, Jo.
However, the link to the CFTC letter is now dead. You can find a copy at Zerohedge: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/cftc-pulls-jpm-whistleblower-letter
Have you read this article? http://ex-skf.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/australia-is-ideal-for-contaminated.html
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If Government was FOR the people we would not have seen so many political parties making promises before elections that they signally failed to honour when they became the Government. Maybe it’s just that I’m growing wiser but politicians seem to be less and less bound to the ideas of honour and integrity than they used to.
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Looks like the link “an insider from JP Morgan came forward to reveal something far worse” has disappeared. Interesting.
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Thanks to you and Madjak turthseeker, Graeme- yes the link disappeared. I had a screenshot saved. They are slow at the CFTC. It was up for 48 hours. [UPDATE: The CFTC have removed the page after 48 hours, a copy of the text is here, screenshot here.]
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Madjak turthseeker is of course my cousin, a regular contributor to Jean Nora’s excellent blog … 🙂
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Sorry: Madjak, Truthseeker, Graeme …. 🙂 Cheers, Jo
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Jo, the link to the JP morgan insider comment goes to a page on the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission website that says the comment has been removed.
Conspiracy perhaps? Say it isn’t so …
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Confirmed disappearance.
Try
http://stopforeclosurefraud.com/2012/03/15/anonymous-jpmorgan-whistleblower-tells-cftc-jpm-manipulates-the-silver-market-conspires-in-manipulating-gold/
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In the late 80’s when our children finally reached an age when they could get Christmas presents for Mum and Dad, and use their own money, the three of them asked me what I wanted for Christmas.
I mentioned that book vouchers would be nice, as I was just beginning to enter my heavy reading phase.
Our youngest boy thought that this was akin to just giving money, and was somehow devalued, although I suspect that he really did want to go out and do the shopping part. So he asked me to write down 6 titles that I would like, and he’d get me a couple from that list. He also probably suspected I wouldn’t even know of six current titles.
I completed the exercise, and on Christmas day, a large parcel waited under the tree, with three thick paperbacks inside.
I also received book voucher’s from my good lady wife and our daughter, while our other son got me two Lacoste Golf shirts.
In all, I ended up with ten thick books, thinking that this would either hook me or kill off reading for me altogether, and that these novels were something that would indeed last the whole year, which proved wrong as I flew through them all in 8 months, and have been hooked ever since.
One of those three novels mentioned above, the Tom Wolfe book, was about a Wall Street Bond Trader, and was the single greatest insight into that lifestyle I have ever come across.
While the movie Wall Street got all the attention, I would recommend that if you can get hold of a copy of this novel, read it, because the insight it offers is priceless.
Meticulously researched, the novel shows these traders for what they really are, and even while painting them as average people (as they might think of themselves) it shows that they are nothing at all like real people, playing with real people’s money like it’s a game of Monopoly.
None of these people have any scruples whatsoever, and it goes all the way to the top, and in fact, the greedier you are, the faster you advance.
It’s a plaything to these people, and if they lose everything you have, then they don’t even blink, but just move onto the next source of other people’s money.
From that, my perception of the coming Carbon market will have nothing whatsoever to do with altruism, or thought for the environment, no matter what smarmy assed politicians tell you.
It’s just another of their scams.
Tony.
PS. If you’re inspired enough to get a copy of the novel, DO NOT get the movie. Enormously expensive to make, it bombed monumentally, and the only resemblance to Wolfe’s novel was the title. To even refer to the movie as a turkey is to praise it considerably.
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In the same vein – you could also add the non fiction writer, Michael Lewis another former Banker who worked for Salomon Bros after graduating from Princeton and LSE. He wrote Liar’s Poker; in the aftermath of the 1987 crash, describing the toxic and infantile behaviour of employees on Wall Street, and The Big Short; Inside the Doomsday Machine which described the housing bubble and crash in the 2000’s and who made money off it. He is very readable and tells it like it was.
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I was just recommended the film Inside Job by my Corporate Finance lecturer, which was a fascinating look at the industry. They did a really neat job of summarising the problems with Wall St deregulation that lead to the GFC. Seeing those deceitful b*st*rds in the courtroom just flat-out lying about their activities was amazing.
Which brings me to… so the solution is more regulation of the finance industry? More government is never the answer… or is this the exception that proves the rule?
Though the Wall St regulators don’t seem to have enough power to do their job at the moment, so maybe it’s not more regulation, but better regulation is the answer.
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Cheerful Chap,
Yes, Inside job was a good summary of GFC Mark 1.0. It was really a collation of everything that was known or revealed including the months before Lehman brothers went under and the revelations that came out just afterwards.
IMO, the answer isn’t more regulation or more government interference per se. IMO the solution is to re-establish the glass segals (?) legislation as well as the other legislation introduced in the 30s which was designed to ensure banks actually had something real behind their names.
From there, the government should completely back out of the markets. Let the markets deal with and punish businesses that until now hav ebeen protected “because they’re too big to fail”. Let the market rip them to pieces. They can only get as large as they have with government interference in the first place.
In order for capitalism to work, bad businesses and bad governments have to fail – not necessarily in a clean way either. With GFC v1.0 – all of those troubled institutions should have been left to burn. Some would have burnt before others and the pieces may well have saved a few of them. Government has no place interfering with the natural course of capitalism. Of course, bad governments should never have manipulated the situation to allow them to get as big as they did either.
Yes, in otherwords, I am saying let capitalism rule for once, because this bastard child of capitalism is a zombie by comparison.
Radical thought eh? WHo would have thought that maybe we should give capitalism a go?
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Inside job is excellent – watched it a couple times myself. The Act you are thinking of is Glass-Steagall:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act
IN addition, there would be a simple piece of regulation that would eliminate a lot of foul play – i.e. only let the holders of securities be able to take out an equivalent amount (or less, of course) of insurance against their failure (the instruments referred to as CDSs):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_default_swap
Simple regulations such as this would reduce a lot of risk in the market. CDSs are best described through the home insurance analogy:
The latter scenario describes the way CDSs work – anyone can use them to bet against the failure of a security. The worst case scenario, in my opinion, was when the (Congressional?) committee was interviewing the quants and it was revealed they were taking out CDSs against the securities they were selling to their muppet clients. The last quant was distraught that someone had put this in an email … in his mind that was the error, not the act of betting against the dogs they were pushing on clients. Classic sociopath reasoning.
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Another interesting one is that anyone buying a commodity must actually take receipt of that commodity.
Sure would make life difficult for the oil speculators.
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Recent reading I have enjoyed, you might want to add it to your list:
– Currency Wars (covers the topic of this thread in much greater depth and detail)
– Waffle Street (covers the topic of the recent crisis by an insider in an amusing way)
– The Zeroes (covers the history of a magazine publisher who started reporting on the antics of traders and ended up ‘inside’)
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I doff my hat to you Jo, even though I’m not so sure about the whole precious metals manipulation thing. Ignorance would seem to suffice, there are some pretty clueless people around.
Do you read Doug Noland? Nobody understands credit like Mr Noland. His latest article is worth a read
http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php/creditbubblebulletinview?art_id=10642
In fact all his articles are worth reading. You can’t begin to understand the contemporary global financial system & its corrupting influence without understanding the ‘moneyness’ of debt, that is, debt that trades as money.
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All a bit conspiracy theorist, don’t you think, Jo?
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And the “Great Depression” was just a happy accident? Alot of very wealthy people, including JP Morgan and the Rockefellers, concentrated their wealth beautifully through that “crisis”, just due to luck of the draw I suppose. How naive does one have to be?
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My suspicion, since first reading it on the CFTC site three days ago, is that, with 95% certainty, the author is not an employee of JP Morgan and that the letter is a “fake.” The writing style and mistakes etc. don’t feel right.
Nevertheless, I suspect all of that which is claimed, and much, much more, is true.
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I suspect the same, however, the author wouldn’t be the first person in a responsible position to have bad spelling and prose.
If true, I would hate to give JP Morgan an out.
Yes, I don’t like them much, because I am a capitalist. They are not.
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If I am correct, the stock market was created so that those with extra money could invest in ventures that had promise, but no money? In return the investors shared the profits or losses. That is what fuelled the industrial revolution, for better or worse.( better! sorry B. Brown ).
What we now have is a system that rewards entities that produce and contribute nothing to society beyond their ability to manipulate the prices we all have to pay.
Today I shopped for groceries, filled up the car, and paid a few bills on line. Not one company gives a damn about me, the customer/client, I am just one of the herd of cattle that has to be fed just enough to keep paying those bills, and keeping the shareholders happy.
Next week I’ll do the same, and again, and again….
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Why?
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The stock market still performs that original role of linking investors and business. It’s all done electronically now, so there are none of those Wall Street scenes on the trading floor with people yelling and gesticulating. Then there’s the crazy stuff in the secondary markets…
Want me to tell you how to make a small fortune in the futures market? First, you start with a large fortune…
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And the reason is that the “house” always wins- because the game is rigged. As Jo points out above, instead of being kept in line and monitored by vicious Dobermans who have not been fed for a week, we have the “watchdog” being a half-drugged, overfed, toothless cocker spaniel that just wags it’s tail and would be more likely to lick any “intruders” to death.
G-S friends and alumni have weedled themselves into every nook and cranny of the financial position available in order to continue to rape and pillage the general population in an orgy of monetary blood lust- from the current and possibly future US president, through climate overlord Al Gore, to Aussie PM wannabe Malcolm Turnbull, to leaders of Spain and Greece, to head of the Fed, through heads of many of the very regulatory bodies meant to keep this in check, and lawmakers governing financial policy which have eroded such protections as Glass – Steigal and restrictions on derivatives trading, etc, etc.
Someone finally must takes a stand against them and sends as many of them to the nearest penitentiary. An orange jump suit is very fetching I hear, the showers are an adventure, and prison food is not all bad- so, from me to you, and you know who you are- Bon Appetit!
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Every morning during the drive to work and during the drive home I listen to Alex Jones (streaming through my phone via the ‘Tune in Radio’ app.
A lot of people dismiss him as a Texas radio announcer, shock jock, conspiracy theorist. He talks a lot about the crashing economies, the US political races, the Rothschilds, Rockerfellas, JP Morgans, the various wars around the world, government corruption, the TSA, etc etc. . .
Hes called a conspiracy theorist because he is forever trying to uncover the truth about the global governments, the truth behind the US/UN invasions, the banking scams, the carbon tax scams, the reasons why the western nations are crumbling.
And I have to tell you that everything he has told us has come true. Everything!
Please, dont just dismiss him. Have a few listens of his shows. It has the biggest listening audience in the world for a reason.
I dismissed him for a long time until I realised what he was saying was coming true.
Go here and search for ‘infowars’
http://www.shoutcast.com/
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A good time to have punt on Ag I believe… $31 per oz, Perth Mint..
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“Cashless currency takes off in Greece”.
An on-line exchange network has been developed in Greece, bringing barter into the Internet age. People exchange goods and services through the intermediary of “Local Alternative Units”. Since they have been so poorly served by their government’s determination to participate in the Euro, it makes perfect sense that they would, in effect, create their own currency.
This sort of thing should be encouraged. Monopolies without competition are a bad idea even (especially) when it is Government monopolizing the creation of money. Australia used to have private issuance of money (free banking) along with Scotland and parts of the US. These short episodes were shut down by central bankers, but there is no reason they couldn’t be revived, and the Internet is a perfect vehicle for such new forms of competition.
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Jo should stick to climate science. And avoid a subject she knows little about
“Bonds and “treasuries” (US Treasury Bonds) are fancy words for loans to the government. But if no one wants to buy them, then the government has trouble raising funds for its massive pork barreling vote-buying schemes”
What is the US treasury interest rate a present. And why is it so low.
The US Govt issue bonds in exchange for goods and services. These bonds then become a critical interest bearing asset held by the likes of pension funds
Monetary Sovereignty: The key to understanding economics
By contrast, if the debts of France, Germany et al, exceed their ability to obtain euros they, as monetarily non-sovereign nations, could be forced into bankruptcy.
Everything you believe about your personal finances — debts, deficits, spending, affordability, saving and budgeting — are inappropriate to U.S. federal finances. For this reason, your personal intuition about U.S. financing likely is wrong.
Because no Monetarily Sovereign nation can be forced into bankruptcy, none of that nation’s agencies can be forced into bankruptcy. The U.S Supreme Court, the Department of Defense, Congress, Social Security, Medicare and any of the other 1,300 federal agencies cannot go bankrupt unless the federal government wishes it. (All the talk about Social Security or Medicare going bankrupt is misguided. Even if FICA were eliminated, Social Security and Medicare would not need to go bankrupt.)
The unlimited ability to create money is an uncontested fact for Monetarily Sovereign nations,
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RJ, and the “unlimited ability to create money” worked out so well for the Weimar Republic … didn’t it?
The value of money is that it is the cheapest way to perform economic transactions. If it looses that value, then it has no value. Printing money without perceived backing of real things in the economy and that value evaporates. RJ stick to subjects you know something about. This is not one of them.
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Anyone who uses this Weimar Republic example needs to do a large amount of reading on money and banking
Its like comparing a Euro country to the US. Or a household as many do.
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RJ, the Weimar Republic did have monetary sovereignty at the time it was printing money to clear the debt imposed as reparations by the WWI Allied powers, just like the US is printing money to cope with its self-imposed debt. Yes some of us do read things other than dubious references about money and banking. The current Eurozone countries are different because they are a shared currency which is one of the reasons for their particular version of the debt problem.
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It did not have monetary sovereignty. No country was until around 1971 when the stupid idiotic gold standard was dropped and currencies allowed to float.
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RJ, check the term “monetary sovereignty“. I do not think it means what you seem to think it means.
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Congratulations, you have the dubious honour of making the most ignorant comment ever on the Nova blog.
Any more pearls of wisdom Einstein?
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RJ,
By putting an emphasis on the technicality of countries becoming bankrupt, I fear you may be missing the point.
If a Monetary Sovereign nation doesn’t conduct it’s liquidity in a responsible manner, it causes a significant amount of pain on the world as a whole -especially when it gets past the point where an non monetary sovereign nation would become bankrupt.
The fact that the US cannot become technically bankrupt, is, in my opinion, utterly irrelevant.
In this situation you see investors trying to flock to a more stable currency. With very little currencies on offer, we see a migration to teh commodities market. This is a perfectly appropriate response for investors and people at large to make when the institutions who are meant to handle the worlds reserve currencies in a responsible way behave in an utterly irresponsible way instead.
And they are behaving in an utterly irresponsible way, and have been for a very long time.
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“The fact that the US cannot become technically bankrupt, is, in my opinion, utterly irrelevant”.
But at least you understand this critical point. Many including economists do not
“In this situation you see investors trying to flock to a more stable currency.”
US Treasury bonds were recently sold at 0%. So the reality is very different
US treasury bonds and the US deficit is the only reason why the world is not now in a massive depression. They are doing what other incompetently run countries should be as well but will not.
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RJ,
I agree and disagree with your point, I disagree that your point is in anyway critical. It is irrelevant what a technical categorisation is. What is relevant is the effect it has on the economies at large. Again, whilst you may be only partially technically correct with the following statement:
It is still utterly irrelevant, this situation would not have occurred in the first place without the rampant mismanagement and manipulation of capitalism by the powers that be.
One of the main reasons the world isn’t in a major depression is not only due to fudged figures, but also the fact that people in the western world have a higher level of wealth to start with. Ak all those northern hemisphere residents who equity values have halved (or worse).
These systems were only ever really proposed to provide a shock absorber in times of crisis. Unfortunately the shock absorber was already compressed when the crisis occurred.
Again, the technicalitlies of what your’e stating is irrelevant. The pain exists and will continue to get worse until the root causes of this crisis are faced up to, resolved and safeguards are put back in place to prevent them from occurring again. The best way to do this is to let capitalism exist and for the laws of supply and demand to exist unhindered.
And as for people investing in bonds providing a 0% yield, doesn’t that tell you that the game has now changed from making as much money as possible to losing less money than everyone else – hardly a great example, surely. Of course, long term with respect to inflation, a 0% yield will of course lead to the poor house.
Right now, IMO, the world needs a viable reserve currency which cannot be manipulated by the partisan and self serving interests of any one nation. I don’t trust any nation to not be tempted even just a little bit with that amount of influence at their disposal.
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I think that was what carbon credits were supposed to be before CAGW tanked.
Ahh, there’s the rub!
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Winston,
Errata for the end of my statement:
“the world needs a viable reserve currency which cannot be manipulated by the partisan and self serving interests of any insignificant minority group or groups whose irrational belief system is in complete contradiction with capitalism or democracy“
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If we still had the classical gold standard, the Chinese Navy would have shown up in the USA in 2009 and shipped away the entire contents of Fort Knox. All of it. How do you think that would have gone down in the media, watching long lines of trucks shipping the entire gold hoard away?
That’s how bankrupt the USA is. Yet Nixon’s little sideswipe move in 1971 postponed the inevitable currency collapse for a generation or so. And that’s the theme of modern democracy – just kick the can far enough down the road and let your descendants deal with it.
It’s ironic that the fuel crises of the 1970s are still blamed on the Arabs being nasty, rather than the fact that their debtors decided to destroy the value of the paper they were being paid with.
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Please, don’t get RJ started on this crap again. Please, don’t feed the troll, don’t answer, don’t engage, or the thread will be doomed. Mods, can we get some help with this?
RJ will end up calling us all ‘deficit hawks’ and going on about how you can print money to solve all problems. The ‘RJ’ commenter has no grasp at all of reality, and will not engage with sensible arguments.
Don’t destroy this thread. Save it by refusing to reply to RJ’s nonsense.
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Good advice. I’ve put my bag of troll food away.
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Why indeed? Could it be that the only price that counts in a free market is not free? The price of money – the interest rate — is not set by the market, its set by a committee.
The same sort of corrupt adjustments we have seen in climate science has been going on with many government financial markers. The CPI, the unemployment stats, the GDP. The fixed basket of goods is not fixed, the definition of “unemployed” is a moveable feast. You can flex those number with geometric addition, hedonic adjustments and weighting changes.
RJ: I didn’t say it could. But since you mentioned it, yes, the US can print money to keep it from monetary bankruptcy, but then we get what we’ve got. Moral bankruptcy. That’s worse.
There is no free lunch. Not for a house, and not for a nation. A country can make money-from-thin-air, but it does not put food on the table. Someone somewhere pays.
Apologies to brc. #16.4
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Jo- it’s your site- I think you can safely pull rank and provide the canonical response 🙂
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Some would say that the USA has been bankrupt for some time.
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The above post was in part from this article
http://rodgermmitchell.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/monetarily-sovereign-the-key-to-understanding-economics/
Perhaps no words more accurately and succinctly illustrate the confusion about economics than “Monetary Sovereignty.” It is not a theory or a hypothesis or a philosophy. In its essence it merely is a description of the way federal financing actually works.
A Monetarily Sovereign government has the exclusively unlimited power to create its sovereign currency.
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RJ & ROGER,
Your Blog or Selling site is down to 2 comments per article and you come here with your arrogant intellectual approach to gleen more readers! This is Australia Rodger – not the Back of Bourke. (Or the Black Stump) Not that you’d understand where that is anyway!
Then you have the hide (or ROO SKIN) to state:
This is about CAGW – read the whole article before trolling – you’re even known at http://www.chrismartenson.com/ – not that I agree with anything there either – but a salesman TROLL you are!
Have a good look in the mirror Rodger – OH! but you already do – thousands of times with your photo sprooked all over any site you can get to!
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And where did this come from?
“It’s like this. The governments and their central banks make as much free money from thin-air through fractional reserve banking and other methods as they can get away with — it benefits those who “spend that new money first”. They spend it at current prices, and pay it back later, after inflation has decreased its value. The people who pay the difference are those who saved and held money while its purchasing power fell. Speculators grow rich, while retirees and savers get poorer.”
Do you even know what FRB is. And what OTHER METHODS.
And what is this FREE money that central banks create. All central banks create as far as I am aware is central bank reserves (the banks money). These reserves like our money is supported by debt (by central bank debt and then indirectly by Govt debt).
So come on Jo what is this free money?
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RJ or Roger Malcom Mitchell!
You say:
Only to sprook more customers to your money grabbing little publication called Free money!!!
Amazing that you ask the same question as the title of you book! Just go away!
Even Brooksie and MattyB (maybe not Tristan) wouldn’t stoop as low as you!
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Free money: The US Government owes trillions to current and future retirees. The Government does not have this money (there is no ‘trust fund’), even in fractional reserve. And yet the checks keep going out, as they have in the past and as they will in the future. This money is not even printed. It’s electronic digits on a computer. It costs literally nothing to produce it.
If this isn’t ‘free money’ I don’t know what is.
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But it is always supported by debt. So the US Govt will exchange this money for tax or bonds
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http://www.independent.ie/national-news/pensions-free-travel-and-medical-cards-on-imf-hitlist-3038459.html
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Anyone interested in a comprehensive yet straightforward look at the whys and hows, you just have to go to Bill Still’s “The Money Masters”. The documentary that provides you with what you need to know about money and where it took us in the past and where we are headed in the future.
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It’s like this. The governments and their central banks make as much free money from thin-air through fractional reserve banking and other methods as they can get away with — it benefits those who “spend that new money first”. They spend it at current prices, and pay it back later, after inflation has decreased its value. The people who pay the difference are those who saved and held money while its purchasing power fell. Speculators grow rich, while retirees and savers get poorer.
Well, not really. I think it’s important to differentiate a couple of fine points, because, when faced with a problem, it’s always best to have a clear understanding of what the problem really is. It’s generally wise to not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Firstly, All banks use fractional-reserve banking (FRB), and it’s entirely rational. From some unfathomable reason, it’s frequently held out as the bogey-man, but it’s a key component of the liquidity of our financial system. It allows the money-supply to expand and contract with the economy. Of course, its success depends in no small measure on the quality of the assets and regulations on which it is based, which is the risky part of it (more about that in a paragraph or two).
Secondly, your assertion that FRB benefits those who spend new money first seems to ignore one little component: the interest rate. People who borrow money are naturally expected to repay the principle, but they generally are also expected to pay interest. The interest represents the time-value of money. If a bank (or your credit union, if you feel a bit more sanguine about them) lends you a sum of money on which you will make monthly payments, and it expects each payment to have been reduced in value through inflation, it will increase its interest rate to compensate for that, so that the amount you repay over time will equal the amount you borrowed, plus the amount inflation is expected to have eroded the value of the repayments, plus the cost to the financial institution of the money (the interest the bank had to pay) plus a component for profit for the bank (which, in part, compensates it for the risk it assumed that you may not have been able to repay the entire loan). The theory is that competition among banks will encourage them to keep their profits in line. Of course, we see that, in practice, that’s not always 100% satisfactory. Naturally, there are several components to that phenomenon, and I believe over-regulation is one of them.
If I invest in a bank (that is, deposit my savings there), I expect to receive interest on my money. This, theoretically, compensates me for not having the use of my money otherwise. If you notice, you will probably get considerably lower rates on a demand-deposit than you will if you make a commitment to lend the bank your money for a fixed period (a certificate of deposit). This is because the bank can’t really count on your funds being in your checking account for any particular amount of time, so the amount of cash they have on-hand in the aggregate of all checking accounts is volatile, which translates to “risk”, which translates to “someone has to pay for that”. Again, the “market” is theoretically supposed to cause banks to compete, by offering better rates, for deposits. How well this really works is subject to debate, but remember that the bank can’t rationally pay you for your deposit more than it must pay for money issued by the “central bank”, or from its other sources of funds (e.g. shareholders).
Commercial banks that use FRB to create money are creating “commercial bank money”, and that’s an entirely good thing, as it encourages economic growth. People and businesses who borrow money to invest it wisely, say, in expanding the productive capacity of their businesses (and, to some lesser extent, even if they just spend it on consumption), generally create value in the economy by doing so. That’s the important point!
Central banks create “central bank money”, and that’s where the debauchery is occurring. In the U.S., the Federal Government (which it no longer legitimately is, instead it’s a racket) has such a staggering volume of financial liabilities that it’s not really possible that they will ever be repaid at their actual value. They only way they can be nominally repaid is to pay them back with dramatically smaller dollars. This amounts to robbing the U.S. citizenry (and ultimately everyone else on the globe) by inflating the currency (and thus devaluing dollar-denominated assets, and making wage-earners work for less value, even though their pay packets keep increasing). This is where the “printing money” thing comes in: central banks take the IOUs from the Federal Government and convert them to currency. Since there has been no value added to the economy by this transaction, the amount of money that represents the underlying “value” in the economy is increased, and therefore, there are more dollars for each unit of value in the economy, thus the dollar becomes worth less (and will soon be worthless).
But that’s hardly the worst of the sins. There are a couple of other big boo-boos: Using the financial system as a vehicle for welfare (specifically, out of some horribly misguided notion of “fairness”, embarking on a large-scale enterprise of making housing loans to people who can’t afford to repay them) is a nasty one, but it is really just a consequence of the big, big one: the commingling of government and the financial sector. When you have the regulators and the central bankers becoming active participants in the commercial market, (as evidenced by unrestricted flows of key people between government and large-scale players in the financial industry, for example), bad things can, will, and are happening. If you believe anybody but hapless middle-level people are ever going to be prosecuted for the outright fraud in, say, the GSEs or MF global, you may need to adjust your medication.
More eye-popping, even for a cynic like me, who has *always* been suspicious of government programs that are supposed to “help” people, and also suspicious of the “war on drugs” is this article. It’s a few years old, but I’ve only just read it. I’m still digesting it, and will need to give it considerably more thought, but it does, on its face, sound very plausible despite the sickening implications.
The pendulum has swung too far to massive centralization, and this is a recipe for destruction. The power and money are far too great to reasonably expect that people, regardless of how noble their intentions may be, will be immune to corrupting influences. Therefore, it’s probably better if power is greatly decentralized: a corrupt local government at least can’t bring down the world’s economy, and the corrupt officials are accessible to those with the torches and pitchforks (metaphorically speaking). That was the original design goal of the U.S. Constitution, which has been badly corroded by a century of “progressive” thought, the consequence of which we are seeing unfold today.
The fall of the Soviet Union was caused by centralization. We are but a few decades behind — the label we assign to the centralization: “Communism” or “Progressivism” or whatever else you care to call it is immaterial. To see the future of the U.S. (and the misguided experiment that was the E.U.), look at the former Soviet empire.
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“your assertion that FRB benefits those who spend new money first seems to ignore the interest rate”.
The interest rate has nothing to do with it, and Jo’s point is correct:
Where the government is inflating the currency those who receive the new money first (eg Government contractors) get to spend it at today’s prices. But this extra money now being spent bids up those prices, and so everyone else then has to pay higher prices without yet having received any of this extra money. Those on fixed incomes never see any of the new money; just the higher prices.
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Well, the government (and the central banks) are inflating the currency by monetizing US government securities. I guess you could make an argument that capital markets don’t reflect coming inflation. But you have to remember is that the way “contractors” benefit is not from the government money itself, but from the earnings multiplier on their market-listed securities.
The point I was trying to make is that it’s not (commercial) FRB that’s the culprit, it’s corruption of the currency by the central bank/government nexus.
While I agree that it’s crony capitalism that’s wrecking the financial system, as well as the economy, I think the mechanism of its destruction is a little more pervasive, and not quite how you suggest. For example, what is the “extra money” being used to do? Well, it pays people, for one… While I would certainly agree that it’s destructive to the economy for the government to waste money on foolish enterprises, and that government spending in general harms the economy (by funding spending with confiscated capital that might otherwise have been more productively used), the bigger fish is the collusion between government, the central bank and the financial sector. This has only little to do with “getting to spend it at today’s prices”, which, I assume is an argument that the cost of capital of the contractors is somehow immune to inflation — an assertion whose factual basis is not entirely obvious.
Do read the article I linked above to get an idea of the scope and scale, and some of the mechanisms, of how big government is ripping us off, and what’s driving it. While it’s a little dense, and you may have to do a little research, as I intend to do, before accepting it wholesale, it has a gut-wrenching plausibility to it.
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Mike
FRB has now been now been discontinued
It was a method used in the past TO RESTRICT BANK LENDING. So banks could only loan money if they held BASE MONEY (reserves or vault notes and coins)
Bank lending is now restricted by capital requirements.
Banks in effect create new money (AND ALWAYS HAVE) whenever they loan money to someone
By a journal entry
DEBIT BANK LOAN = DEBT
CREDIT CUSTOMER CHEQUE ACCOUNT = MONEY
Money is a financial asset ALWAYS supported by debt. Either Govt debt or non Govt debt
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Call it what you like, but it’s still essentially FRB. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_banking#Reserve_requirements
For the bank’s accounts, the journal in your example would be:
Debit customer account = Asset for the bank, money (liability) for the customer.
Credit – What? Debt? Debt to who?
This is why banks can’t create money from a journal entry. There has to be something else behind it.
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NO not correct
The banks journal entry IS AS SHOWN ABOVE
DEBIT Reserves or bank debt (banks asset / our or the central banks liability)
CREDIT Customers cheque account (our ASSET (money)/ banks liability)
DEPOSITS ARE A BANKS LIABILITY NOT AN ASSET
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That’s why when we received a bank statement in the old days a positive balance (debit to us) use to be shown as a CREDIT balance
Its our asset (a debit) but the banks liability ( a credit)
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Yes, but it’s not a deposit, it’s a loan. So it’s an asset for the bank.
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Well, I don’t really think the practice of fractional reserve banking has been ended as much as the fraction has been increased — there are higher capital restrictions, so that the banks must have a greater fraction of their lending in preserved capital. This is ostensibly to tighten lending standards and preserve bank stability, but I think also had a lot to do with the cram-down of “TARP” funds that banks were pretty much forced to take. Probably partly as well because of a lack of trust in the banks’ balance sheets (because who knew how much the write-offs of “toxic assets” would be). Remember, increasing the required reserve also increases the cost to the banks. But then the Fed is supplying them money at 0%, so maybe that’s no big deal.
It would probably be very difficult to end fractional-reserve banking in short order, because either the banks would have to get vastly more capital (probably not possible) or they would have to call in a lot of loans, which I believe, if it had happened, would have had a much greater apparent effect on the economy.
One thing I do know for sure: there are going to be winners and there are going to be losers. I can guarantee you the Friends of Barack on Wall St and in Government aren’t going to be the losers, it’s going to be we punters who end up getting it in the neck. Happens every time…
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Be careful with this one, Jo. The “whistleblower’s” prose, spelling, grammar and claims do not ring true. I smell a rat.
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“Goldman Banker Goes Rogue”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1J20wvO1ZY&feature=player_embedded
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http://www.tfmetalsreport.com/ explains how the price of gold and silver is manipulated.
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http://www.mega.nu/ampp/rothschild2.html
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Thanks for the link- from the comments an interesting link showing how G-S and their ilk ramped up food prices to make big dollars on derivatives trading by promoting third world starvation-
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-goldman-gambled-on-starvation-2016088.html
Mighty nice of them!
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http://constitutionalgov.us/Archive/Economics/NatureofMoney16-AAdask.pdf
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If you don’t have a chest of gold and/or silver buried in your backyard, you own fiat.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUhb0XII93I
Merchant Banker, Monty Python sketch.
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Kevin – that sketch looks like where the merchant bankers got the idea of governments bailing them out!
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OT,
But i like to keep my finger on the pulse of all the scary predictions/projections so here is the daily Arctic ice measurement
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
As you can clearly see this prediction is blowing up in ther faces like a bad trick cigar…………….and without the “no more Arctic ice” scare what have they got left?
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Here is the Antarctic ice extent (notice how far above normal it is)
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
Now earlier on i mentioned to JB that the NOAA info is nothing but a cherry pick this was a little too subtle for JB as it semed he did not understand the comment so here is an attempt by WATTS to reconstruct the Arctic ice data since 1971.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/arctic_sea_ice_1971-2012_c2day_and_ipcc.png
And this is what he has to say:
Full article here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/18/sea-ice-news-volume-3-2/
Can we call an end to this scam already? Yes i am talking to you JB and your silly little firends as you are the ones keeping this crap going. Morons like you that believe this shit allow our government to get away with this crap.
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15 March: Tennessean: TN House passes resolution condemning Agenda 21
The state House of Representatives voted 72-23 in favor of House Joint Resolution 587, which denounces the non-binding Agenda 21 plan adopted by a United Nations environmental conference two decades ago…
Little known even in environmental and planning circles until recently, Agenda 21 has grabbed the attention of conservative groups, who say the document calls on national and local governments to pursue environmental goals by limiting property rights and freedom..
Two other states, Georgia and New Hampshire, have considered anti-Agenda 21 measures this year…
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120315/NEWS/303150098/TN-House-passes-resolution-condemning-Agenda-21
there is no downside whatsoever in the Coalition coming clean on the entire CAGW scam at this point in time. so what’s stopping them?
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James Delingpole has a nice illustration about the price of silver:
Manipulation is not only by the “masters of the universe”.
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This is a fascinating and very contemporary topic for the following reasons:
– the government in Australia is about to institute another means by which it can print, called a carbon credit. At a fixed value of $23/tonne, it is 23 times more effective than printing dollars alone, and the targeting of the printing is much more selective – ie, favoured firms and industries rather than the general economy. Nonetheless, creating money out of thin air is inflationary no matter which way you slice or dice it.
– as someone linked above – the price of fossil fuels, denominated in non-fiat money is actually quite low. The government inflation figures are increasingly manipulated by excluding things that have real impact on the cost of living, but aren’t included in the calculation.
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left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing?
18 March: Jakarta Globe: Grace Chua: Straits Times: WWF, Singapore Disagree Over Carbon Emissions Count
Your carbon emissions are still too high but, hey, Singapore is doing a great job when it comes to energy efficiency and others can learn from you.
That seems to be the “yes, but…” response from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), in the wake of a rebuttal by Singapore’s National Climate Change Secretariat (NCCS) to scathing remarks about the Republic’s greening efforts.
Earlier this month, media reports said that the WWF’s Living Planet Report (2010) had named Singapore as having the highest per capita carbon footprint in the Asia-Pacific region…
Last week, the NCCS — which comes under the Prime Minister’s Office — responded sharply, saying the comment “seriously misrepresents the situation.”
The key bone of contention is the methodology. The WWF counts emissions from goods that a country imports as attributed to that country.
But in the United Nations’ methodology, adopted by Singapore, those emissions are attributed to the country producing those goods…
National University of Singapore geography associate professor Victor Savage, who studies sustainable development, agreed with the NCCS’ point about “per capita” distortions.
He said using per capita emissions ratings lets large carbon emitters like China, Germany and Australia off the hook. They may not have high per capita emissions, but they are large overall emitters…
In February, a University of British Columbia study ranked the Republic bottom of 150 countries in its “ecological deficits,” meaning it used far more of the earth’s resources than it could supply.
In response to that study, the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources said Singapore should be compared with other city-states, not larger nations with more natural resources.
The Asian Green City Index by technology firm Siemens last year rated Singapore tops in its management of waste and water resources, and gave it high marks in sanitation and environmental governance.
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/international/wwf-singapore-disagree-over-carbon-emissions-count/505564
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Australia a large emitter?????
Our emissions are 1.4% of the World’s total. Our emissions per capita are high, but we aren’t the highest per capita in the World as the Greenies like to claim.
But as the dispute with Singapore shows, there are Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics. All are employed in the Great Warming Scam.
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Nowadays that should be “Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics & AGW!”
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18 March: Sunday Telegraph: Samantha Maiden and Caroline Marcus: Carbon tax puts fridge repairs on ice
REFRIGERATION technicians say they will be left out in the cold when the federal carbon tax comes into effect, with the cost of key repairs and installations expected to double.
While refrigerant gases were left out of the carbon tax deal, Refrigerant Australia said the industry will instead be hit with a levy equivalent to the carbon tax.
Under the levy, the cost of some refrigerant gases could increase by 500 per cent or by more than $800 extra a bottle from July 1. It was introduced because a kilo of the gas can be equivalent to a tonne of carbon or more.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet confirmed the gas increases, saying it took “account of their very potent effect on the atmosphere”…
The president of the Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Contractors Association, Kevin O’Shea, said service calls would double from $300 to $600 as a result of the levy…
Consumer watchdog chief Rod Sims warned dodgy builders and solar panel installers they faced million-dollar fines if they try to cash in on the carbon tax…
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/carbon-tax-puts-fridge-repairs-on-ice/story-e6freuy9-1226302757779
19 March: China Post: UK to set carbon limit high enough to allow gas plants
Britain’s energy minister promised on Saturday to keep the limit on power plants’ carbon emissions high enough until 2045 to ensure that modern gas-fired stations can continue to operate…
The previous draft had proposed that the limit on carbon emissions allowed per plant would be reviewed over time…
Gas plant operators will be able to take part in competitive auctions to provide backup capacity for a certain year and receive payments for making power plants available when needed.
The minister will also publish a strategy for Britain’s gas market this autumn, detailing whether the government needs to intervene in the market to guarantee security of supply and investments in new gas-fired power plants…
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/international/europe/2012/03/19/335038/UK-to.htm
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17 March: Councils’ carbon tax rate rises
by David Nankervis, Sunday Mail South Australia
SA homeowners could face a rate rise of $100 or have services slashed as councils combat carbon tax.
Ratepayers have received the first indication of the impact of the carbon tax with the Sunday Mail obtaining internal Marion Council documents that foreshadowed a 3.25 per cent rate increase from July to cover an estimated $2 million budget blowout due to the tax.
Utility, fuel and costs of concrete and bitumen would all rise under the tax, according to the document titled Internal Working Paper – Carbon Pricing.
The council’s modelling means the carbon tax impact on ratepayers is five times greater than the 0.6 per cent rise calculated by the Federal Government…
On Friday, a Marion Council spokesman said the one-off 3.25 per cent rate increase was “one of many hypothetical options considered as part of modelling on the impact of the carbon tax”.
“Council will not be passing on the cost of carbon pricing to ratepayers, . .” he said.
Last month the Sunday Mail revealed AGL wants to slug electricity customers an extra $150 a year from July to cover the cost of the carbon tax.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/councils-carbon-tax-rate-rises/story-e6frea6u-1226302720662
18 March: UK Telegraph: Emily Gosden: UK carbon tax will leave British companies uncompetitive, warns Energy Select Committee chairman Tim Yeo
British businesses will lose out to European rivals unless Chancellor George Osborne uses his Budget to scrap plans for a unilateral carbon tax, Tim Yeo, the Conservative chairman of the Energy Select Committee, has warned.
Mr Osborne is this week expected to reveal an increase in the “top-up” tax faced by UK power generators for their carbon emissions under the Carbon Price Floor, meaning British business could face significantly higher costs than those in Europe…
The Government risks another energy policy “fiasco” such as that seen on feed-in tariffs unless it is “open about the effects of the difference between UK prices and what everyone else in the EU pays”, he said. Mr Yeo’s committee warned in January that “exorbitant” top-up taxes could have a “devastating effect on UK industry”…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/9150665/UK-carbon-tax-will-leave-British-companies-uncompetitive-warns-Energy-Select-Committee-chairman-Tim-Yeo.html
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18 March: UK Register: Microsoft signs up Aus eco geeks
Australian cloud computing eco-warrior Carbon Systems has scored its most significant deal to date with a global Microsoft agreement.
Carbon Systems’ Australian developed cloud app, Enterprise Sustainability Platform (ESP), will be implemented across Microsoft’s 600 global facilities across 110 countries…
The privately owned and funded Australian company with digs in London, New York and Sydney, started in 2004 developing its core technology for electricity smart meters readings.
The company has also been supported by business incubator ATP Innovations and now has over 110 clients globally, 25 of which have stemmed from the sustainability software market which the company entered three years ago…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/18/carbonsystems_wins_microsoft_deal/
Carbon Systems: Executive Team
David Solsky – Chief Executive Officer
David also spent seven years with PricewaterhouseCoopers in their Corporate Finance and Assurance Divisions and has applied this experience to CarbonSystems’ technology platform, ensuring it meets the rigorous information-integrity standards of the corporate sector…
ABC Carbon named him beside David Suzuki, Nicholas Stern and Tim Flannery as one of 100 Global Sustain-Ability Leaders that have made a significant contribution to sustainability…
Dan Gaffney – Manager, Marketing, PR and Media
Dan joined CarbonSystems in 2011 after running his own boutique PR agency, consulting to agencies including the Australian Federal Government, the University of NSW, NSW Police, NSW Health, NSW Tourism and the National Breast Cancer Centre. A former journalist and broadcaster, Dan brings senior communications experience in climate science, renewable energy, technology transfer, public health, and advanced computing…READ THE REST
http://www.globalcarbonsystems.com/About/Executive-Team.cfm
linked for the bio, but u can find Gaffney doing abc’s health report, on Crikey, etc:
ABC Unleashed: The Drum: Dan Gaffney
Dan Gaffney gives media relations advice to organisations that take an ethical and strategic approach to corporate communication. A former psychologist and adult educator, he has been a contributing journalist for News Limited and ABC Radio, and held communications roles in Federal Parliament, NSW Police and the Univesrity of NSW. He is a member of the Mankind Project.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/dan-gaffney-31680.html
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Sell Microsoft now!
Obviously the company is way behind the times, and thinks that AGW has years to go.
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ACM’s article effectively tells it..
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/ “Effective World Government Will Be Needed to Stave Off Climate Catastrophe..” Right inline with the Iluminists (Rothchilds producers of Goldman Sachs etc.) bankers plan of world Govt and domination..but there a wart in their dastardly plan..200 years ago they didnt expect the rise of CHINA, (although they tried to destroy it in 1840-1860).
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18 March: EarthTechling: Kristy Hessman: Carbon-Cutting Kids Cop Cool Cash
Helping reduce carbon emissions is not only good for the environment, it can also have financial advantages. That’s what the schools that participated in Make an Impact: Change Our 2morrow (CO2) discovered. The month-long energy conservation challenge, put on by Alcoa Foundation and the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), ended with six of the eight schools winning grants totaling $9,000.
The Gilbert School in Winsted, Conn., won the grand prize. The school completed a whopping 793 percent of its pledge list, according to the competition’s leader board. The school was rewarded with a $5,000 grant for engaging the most students, teachers, families and community members…
Regional runner-up schools included…ETC
http://www.earthtechling.com/2012/03/carbon-cutting-kids-cop-cool-cash/
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WARNING: This is not a joke:
18 March: GreenProphet: Miriam Kress: Christians Take on Carbon Fast for Lent
Among other eco-conscious Church leaders, the Archbishop of York has gone vegan and fair-trade for the duration of Lent…
And recently, churches are encouraging their congregations to take on an innovative Lenten sacrifice. It’s called the Carbon Fast.
Congregants are encouraged to take simple, carbon-reducing steps like eating less meat. (Our vegewarian recipes, like this risotto, give some good ideas for meatless meals.) Or packing groceries in reuseable bags instead of using that eco-menace, plastic bags. Walking, bicycling, or riding a bus rather than driving. You get the idea. These churches provide weekly calendars with suggestions and tips for carbon reduction, each paired to a spiritual goal. An intriguing example is, “Remember your baptism and the power of water. Conserve water: leave a bucket near the kitchen sink and water your plants with grey water.”…
This year communities in Canada, the Netherlands, India, Hong Kong, Australia, and Brazil are observing Carbon Fast.
Fully aware that individual acts must eventually lead to popular support for green legislation, Tearfund still calculates that the Carbon Fast’s actions, taken over the whole year, might save more than 7 tons of CO2 per person. This article in The Center for American Progress reports that 6000 people committed to last year’s Carbon Fast. With promotion through social media plus adaily carbon-lowering tip in congregant’s email inboxes, there should be even more this year. That sounds powerful.
Tomorrow’s interfaith convention on climate change and sustainable energy in Jerusalem promises to bring forward the power of religion in effecting eco-consciousness…
http://www.greenprophet.com/2012/03/christians-carbon-fast-for-lent/
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Oh, ho ho ho!
This is just classic
So, let me see if I’ve got this right.
Each morning the Sun comes up, and blink, the light from the Sun turns on every green thing that grows in the ground, starting the process.
All those green things then begin to suck the CO2 out of the surrounding air.
The Carbon in that CO2 is then sequestered in the plant, and the Oxygen is given back off into the surrounding air.
Your human body has a set amount of elements in it and Carbon is one of them. You breathe in the air, with its Oxygen component. That air is drawn through the lungs and then into your bloodstream for transmission throughout your body, that O2 component oxygenating your blood. On the way around your body, elements in your body that are excess to your set amount are drawn into the blood, and eventually passed back into the lungs where you breathe it out.
Those excess elements include that Carbon content over and above your body’s set level which joins with excess oxygen and is breathed out as CO2.
So, the farmer digs up all his vegies, each with a sequestered amount of Carbon in them. You eat the vegies and that Carbon content is drawn through the stomach lining and into your bloodstream. What is over and above your set level is the tansferred back to the lungs and breathed out.
So, eat more vegies and take in more Carbon, and then breathe out more CO2.
Classic.
The Archbishop of Canterbury tells us to go Vegan for Lent.
Methinks the good Archbishop should stick to fire and brimstone, umm, on second thoughts hasn’t that too got a high CO2 content.
Tony.
PS. I can see all those Warmists out there laughing their heads off, and unable to resist replying and tearing strips off me, but if I may offer a wry comment, everybody will use all the spin they can to push their meme. Even ‘good’ people get sucked into doing the same, unwittingly lacking CDF to even understand what they are saying. (I hope Dr Smith doesn’t read this. He still thinks CDF is the Chief of the Defence Forces)
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That should read Archbishop of York and not Canterbury.
Tony.
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“Conserve water: leave a bucket near the kitchen sink and water your plants with grey water.”
Hmm… If you live in SE Australia, maybe it could be said: Leave a bucket near the kitchen sink. Wait about 12 months and the floods will fill the bucket then you can, Ummm … water your plants?
Conserve water, isn’t that what dams do?
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MaxL
I laugh whenever I hear the term “conserve water”.
My question is “What for?” “Are we going to run out?” “Where is it all going go?”
It’s just such a STUPID statement that it really warrants and deserves UTTER CONTEMPT.
There is the same amount of water on earth as there always has been and always will be. It doesn’t disappear anywhere!
EVERY drop of water we drink or use has been pee’d out by an elephant (or woolly mammoth) at some stage of earth’s development. Where do these idiots think the water is going to go? Out into space, down to the centre of the earth – sheesh!!!
If we had enough dams we wouldn’t need to conserve water and could use (OR waste) whatever we as individuals wanted to pay for – oh, but that’s right – the Watermelons don’t allow that do they.
Cheers,
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It is the borrowers signature guaranteeing their productivity and assets that allow banks to create electronic digits called money.The borrower presents the real wealth, the bank assets consist solely of their mastery of deception. As interest can never be repaid every ‘dollar’ borrowed increases the national debt.
“Abolition of private property” is the main plank of the Communist Manifesto. The Money Masters job won’t be finished until they own every piece of real estate and everybody standing on it in the world.
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“White collar psychopaths” – See Bret Easton Ellis’ “American Psycho” – While much chatter focussed on the extreme violence of itself in this book, it’s purpose was to satirize the Wall Street psyche. It is far more disturbing than “Bonfire of the Vanities” because it is a far bleaker examination of people warped by greed.
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Associated with the topic of the thread is this from Martin Durkin
http://www.martindurkin.com/blogs/greens-warning-history-volume-two
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Wow, cool stuff. I wish he’d put more into the ancient Greek aspect as the oligarchs reacted in the same way to democracy (those trumped-up peasants) as the Greens are reacting to the ordinary voters who just want to have a good life and feed their family.
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[…] excuse for a literate person not to know what finance houses “do” to people, though “how” is complex, devious and harder to grasp. Even I once read a book by Michael Lewis, formerly of Solomon Brothers, […]
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Dr Michael Hudson’s commentary is always worth a read, especially about
the banks and the banking system. As an ex-Wall St analyst …
http://www.michael-hudson.com
…he doesn’t miss much; for example:
http://michael-hudson.com/2012/02/wall-streets-capital-gain-planning/
Enjoy.
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You have a successful and respected site on climate-related matters, which I enjoy visiting. However, there are risks to expanding into other areas which are evident in this post. The selected topic is huge and addressed with a lot of passion but not enough analysis.
Surely any investor doing business with an investment bank (stockbroker) would be naive not to hold as a working assumption that his bank is also trading the other side of his transaction? They usually are. Anyone reading “The Big Short” by Michael Lewis would have as a take-away that investment banks should not be allowed to be listed companies: the staff act against the interests of shareholders and the customers. But that is the nature of the beast. The customer should use investment bank services with appropriate precautions, especially as to advice.
As to currencies, the build-up of sovereign debt is being managed by overseas central banks by financial repression, involving very low (sometimes negative real) interest rates. This policy is nominally to the advantage of taxpayers but at the expense of investors (often the same person). Australia is affected because Commonwealth Bond yields are artificially low because of the weight of overseas investment (80% of our bonds) seeking better yields.
So it is alarming that people like Henry, Cooper, Murray and Keating are all advising Australians to reduce their superannuation equities holdings and put more in bonds (without any conflict of interest disclosure with respect to the interests of government): to follow the advice literally would result, for many people, in selling equities at a loss and buying low yielding bonds just when bond prices are at a peak and must fall (thus setting superannuation-holders up for a double whammy).
As for commodities markets, it is well known that people have been trying to corner markets for 400 years. They usually come to grief, as the Bunker Hunts did in relation to silver. But speculation is human nature. Futures markets play a valuable role for commodities but they are not the place for the average retail investor. No one knows the “real” value of gold but it is as well to remember that central banks have large holdings (for example, the Bundesbank) and so can manipulate markets to some degree. Indeed, from time to time, the Reserve Bank has tried to manipulate the Australian exchange rate. Other central banks do the same. If this is OK, just when is it wrong for other price-takers to influence market prices?
I do not wish to give the impression that improvements are not needed. But the discussion of what might be done needs to be more targeted. General assertions of corruption, etc are usually not productive.
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From an ABC radio interview a while back there was the comment that the current US Treasury had taken US bonds
“From a risk-free income to an income-free risk”
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Gold & Silver – Debt Collapse – $20,000 Gold – Mike Maloney on Economic Crisis
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Carbon Credits are the new fiat currency. This has been admitted twice in the last six months on LinkedIn during the increasingly heated insider discussions on carbon trading, environmental projects and the latest wolf in sheep’s clothing “sustainability” (hint: sustainability doesn’t mean remotely what you think it means and it applies differently between Anglo-Saxon civilisation and everyone else).
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“A Goldman Sachs Executive Director — Greg Smith — resigned from the 143 year old firm explaining he felt ill with the callous culture where people would boast about how much they had ripped off clients…”
I encourage everyone to watch “Inside Job”. It is an excellent documentary on how the GFC happened, why it happened and who were the culprits… and it certainly does not hold back in naming the individual culprits responsible. Greg Smith would know.
The saddest revelation in the documentary comes towards the end, with Obama appointing the very characters that were at the heart of the problem to plumb positions. It seems that rather than these guys being arrested and prosecuted, they were rewarded by Obama with cushy jobs to fix up the mess they created in the first place.
Yep, and Goldman Sachs one one of a handful of banks behind the global financial mess!
Welcome to America… the place of broken dreams under President “Yes we can” Obama… the first US President to oversee a self-inflicted economic decline of America.
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[…] blogger Jo Nova – and it's not on her usual topic climate change. The title says it all: The Ground Zero of Global Corruption: it starts with The Currency. It’s like this. The governments and their central banks make as much free money from thin-air […]
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[…] blogger Jo Nova – and it’s not on her usual topic climate change. The title says it all: The Ground Zero of Global Corruption: it starts with The Currency. It’s like this. The governments and their central banks make as much free money from thin-air […]
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[…] the original article here. The scale of the rot is something to behold. Something is grossly, wantonly wrong with Western […]
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{Money-printing + cronyism + bailouts} => lack of accountability
The lack of accountability provides a great environment for immoral behavior to flourish.
Whether it’s the bailing out of the banks or the financing of govt spending, central banks lead to immoral and corrupt behavior in bankers and politicians respectively.
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An excellent observation, let’s take it a couple of steps further.
Carbon rights are indeed what has given an incentive to many participants in the AGW scam, and equally important in the renewables scam. The revenue from carbon rights is a not insignificant component of renewable cash flow. Free carbon right were given to all “European” countries as a sweetener to get them to say “yes”, just like with the airlines.
Now, if you observe the diverging behavior of EU carbon rights and the US equivalent (CCX) you will notice thw obvious: Carbonm rights went to “zero” in the US as soon as cap&trade was voted down in the summer of 2009, shortly before Copenhagen
European carbon rights held their own until the recession set in and Greeks fantasized about selling their free quota. The reason that they held their own is because of the carbon tax! Ex the tax, the rights aren’t worth the paper they are printed on.
And my last point: When Australia voted to introduce a carbon tax, in reality it voted to subsidize the price of EU carbon rights (and to give itself a little comeptitive disadvantage).
Who is sponsoring carbon rights? Who manages carbon rights supply, loosening it after Fukushima, to prevent the price from rising excessively? I believe it is the same Central European country that is also guiding all the eco-NGO’s that pushed YOUR own Government to pass such tax.
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[…] […]
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