Americans Favor Bush Over Obama

Dr. Jon said:

And here I thought we could have an intelligent, adult discussion involving different views. Silly me.

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Dr. Jon said:

Uncle Buck, are you always this hostile and insulting with people who don't agree with your viewpoint? That must make it a very unpleasant world to live in.

And here I thought we could have an intelligent, adult discussion involving different views. Silly me.

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cc2012 said:

Americans Favor Bush Over Obama: Poll
International Business Times - Amy Nordrum

© Provided by IBT US Bush
/QUOTE]

I miss you every time BarryO opens his pie hole.

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althor said:

Just put him on ignore. He is so messed up he doesnt realize he is the most close-minded, egotistical, bigoted, racist on the entire web.

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nitro harley said:

Thats what I did and it cleaned up the forum pretty good. Its that simple. And I agree with every description you mentioned.

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althor said:

Just put him on ignore. He is so messed up he doesnt realize he is the most close-minded, egotistical, bigoted, racist on the entire web.

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nitro harley said:

Thats what I did and it cleaned up the forum pretty good. Its that simple. And I agree with every description you mentioned.

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Darth Vapour said:

A dangerous new trend is the successful manipulation of the financial markets by the Federal Reserve, other central banks, private banks, and the US Treasury. The Federal Reserve reduced real interest rates on US government debt obligations first to zero and then pushed real interest rates into negative territory. Today the government charges you for the privilege of purchasing its bonds.

The fee is paid in a premium, which raises the cost of the debt instrument above its face value and is paid again in accepting a negative rate of return, as the interest rate is less than the inflation rate.

Think about this for a minute. Allegedly the US is experiencing economic recovery. Normally with rising economic activity interest rates rise as consumers and investors bid for credit. But not in this “recovery.”

Normally an economic recovery produces rising consumer spending, rising profits, and more investment. But what we experience is flat and declining consumer spending as jobs are offshored and retail stores close. Profits result from labor cost savings from employee layoffs.

The stock market is high because corporations are the biggest purchases of stock. Buying back their own stock supports or raises the share price, enabling executives and boards to sell their shares or cash in their options at a profitable price. The cash that Quantitative Easing has given to the mega-banks leaves ample room for speculating in stocks, thus pushing up the price despite the absence of fundamentals that would support a rising stock market.

In other words, in America today there are no free financial markets. The markets are rigged by the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing, by gold price manipulation, by the Treasury’s Plunge Protection Team and Exchange Stabilization Fund, and by the big private banks.

Allegedly, QE is over, but it is not. The Fed intends to roll over the interest and principle from its bloated $4.5 trillion bond portfolio into purchases of more bonds, and the banks intend to fill in the gaps by using the $2.6 trillion in their cash on deposit with the Fed to purchase bonds. QE has morphed, not ended. The money the Fed paid the banks for bonds will now be used by the banks to support the bond price by purchasing bonds.

Normally when massive amounts of debt and money are created the currency collapses, but the dollar has been strengthening. The dollar gains strength from the
rigging of the gold price in the futures market. The Federal Reserve’s agents, the bullion banks, print paper futures contracts representing many tonnes of gold and dump them them into the market during periods of light or nonexistent trading. This drives down the gold price despite rising demand for the physical metal. This manipulation is done in order to counteract the effect of the expansion of money and debt on the dollar’s exchange value. A declining dollar price of gold makes the dollar look strong.

The dollar also gains the appearance of strength from debt monetization by the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank. The Bank of Japan’s Quantitative Easing program is even larger than the Fed’s. Even Switzerland is rigging the price of the Swiss franc. Since all currencies are inflating, the dollar does not decline in exchange value.

As Japan is Washington’s vassal, it is conceivable that some of the money being printed by the Bank of Japan will be used to purchase US Treasuries, thus taking the place along with purchases by the large US banks of the Fed’s QE.

The large private US and UK banks are also manipulating markets hand over fist. Remember the scandal over the banks fixing the LIBOR rate (the London Interbank Borrowing Rate) and the opening gold price on the London exchange. Now the banks have been caught rigging currency markets with algorithms developed to manipulate foreign exchange markets.

When the banks get caught in felonies, they avoid prosecution by paying a fine. You try doing that.

The government even manipulates economic statistics in order to paint a rosy economic picture that sustains economic confidence. GDP growth is exaggerated by understating inflation. High unemployment is swept under the table by not counting discouraged workers as unemployed. We are told we are enjoying economic recovery and have an improving housing market. Yet the facts are that almost half of 25 year old Americans have been forced to return to live with their parents, and 30% of 30 year olds are back with their parents. Since 2006 the home ownership rate of 30 year old Americans has collapsed.
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The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act during the Clinton regime allowed the big banks to gamble with their depositors’ money. The Dodd-Frank Act tried to stop some of this by requiring the banks-turned-gambling-casinos to carry on their gambling in subsidiaries with no access to deposits in the depository institution. If the banks gamble with depositors money, the banks’ losses are covered by FDIC, and in the case of bank failure, bail-in provisions could give the banks access to depositors’ funds. With the banks still protected by being “too big to fail,” whether Dodd-Frank would succeed in protecting depositors when a subsidiary’s failure pulls down the entire bank is unclear.

The sharp practices in which banks engage today are risky. Why gamble with their own money if they can gamble with depositors’ money. The banks led by Citigroup have lobbied hard to overturn the provision in Dodd-Frank that puts depositors’ money out of their reach as backup for certain types of troubled financial instruments, with apparently only Senator Elizabeth Warren and a few others opposing them. Senator Warren is outgunned as Citigroup controls the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve.

The falling oil price has brought concern that oil derivatives are in jeopardy. Citigroup has a provision in the omnibus appropriations bill that shifts the liability for Citigroup’s credit default swaps to depositors and taxpayers. It was only six years ago that Citigroup was bailed out to the tune of a half trillion dollars. Already Citigroup is back for more while nothing whatsoever is done to bail the American people out of their hardships caused by Citigroup and the other financial gangsters.

What we are experiencing is not a repeat of the past. The ability or, rather, the audacity of the US government itself to manipulate the major financial markets is new. Can this new trend continue? The government is supposed to be the enforcer of laws against market manipulation but is itself manipulating the markets.

Governments and economists take their hats off to free markets. Yet, the markets are rigged, not free. How long can stocks stay up in a lackluster or declining economy? How long can bonds pay negative real interest rates when debt and money are rising. How long can bullion prices be manipulated down when the world’s demand for gold exceeds the annual production?

For as long as governments and banks can rig the markets.

The manipulations are dangerous. Manipulations blow a bigger bubble economy, and manipulations are now being used by Washington as an act of war by driving down the exchange value of the Russian ruble.

If every time the stock market tries to correct and adjust to the real economic situation, the plunge protection team or some government “stabilization” entity stops the correction by purchasing S&P futures, unrealistic values are perpetuated.

The price of gold is not determined in the physical market but in the futures market where contracts are settled in cash. If every time the demand for gold pushes up the price, the Federal Reserve or its bullion bank agents dump massive amounts of uncovered futures contracts in the futures market and drive down the price of gold, the result is to subsidize the gold purchases of Russia, China, and India. The artificially low gold price also artificially inflates the value of the US dollar.

The Federal Reserve’s manipulation of the bond market has driven bond prices so high that purchasers receive a zero or negative return on their investment. At the present time fear of the safety of bank deposits makes people willing to pay a fee in order to have the protection of the government’s ability to print money in order to redeem its bonds. A number of events could end the tolerance of zero or negative real interest rates. The Federal Reserve’s policy has the bond market positioned for collapse.

The US government, perhaps surprised at the ease at which all financial markets can be rigged, is now rigging, or permitting large hedge funds and perhaps George Soros, to drive down the exchange value of the Russian ruble by massive short-selling in the currency market. On December 15 the ruble was driven down 19%.

Just as there is no economic reason for the price of gold to decline in the futures market when the demand for physical gold is rising, there is no economic reason for the ruble to suddenly loose much of its exchange value. Unlike the US, which has a massive trade deficit, Russia has a trade surplus. Unlike the US economy, the Russian economy has not been offshored. Russia has just completed large energy and trade deals with China, Turkey, and India.

If economic forces were determining outcomes, it would be the dollar that is losing exchange value, not the ruble.

The illegal economic sanctions that Washington has decreed on Russia appear to be doing more harm to Europe and US energy companies than to Russia. The impact on
Russia of the American attack on the ruble is unclear, as the suppression of the ruble’s value is artificial.

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Fogdog said:

Actually, a lot of people didn't like Reagan. He garnered 50.75% of the vote to win his first term and 59% - a landslide by US standards for his second term. Still, I would say that at least 40% of this nation saw what was coming. We lost the elections. Elections matter.

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Dr. Jon said:

Ttystikk, I agree with you. Eventually, all the foolish decisions (by politicians of both parties) have to produce an effect. You cannot go on spending money we don't have and ignoring fundamental economics forever without paying a price. I, too, feel there is a major economic crisis coming, and almost certainly within the next decade. I would bet on sooner, rather than later, and I would bet on a major economic upheaval, an order of magnitude greater than this last crisis.

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Dr. Jon said:

I, too, feel there is a major economic crisis coming, and almost certainly within the next decade.

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ttystikk said:

\
I'm not a fear monger. But I do watch the signs, and they all tell me a financial hurricane is coming. The 'whether' men on television say nothing to reassure me of any other outcome.

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ginwilly said:

Did you catch the video Heckler posted in Sky's thread about Millenials? It talks about man's cyclical nature and by that cycle what we are heading into. It would only confirm the signs you are seeing, but I bet you'd find it interesting. It's from 1997 and it's like he's telling us what we already know. Good stuff.

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UncleBuck said:

awesome prediction!

since there is a recession just about every decade, and since it has been about 7 years since the last recession, i'd say you just became a regular miss cleo with that prediction!

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ttystikk said:

This is nice, but it's an average- which doesn't give much specific information. More to the point, it also gives few clues as to severity, and THAT'S what has me so worried.

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ttystikk said:

I didn't catch that one. It's fun to watch predictions from yesterday, it helps hone one's intuition about the future implications of current events. My intuition is telling me to be terrified.

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ginwilly said:

It may be a little new-agey for some tastes, but I get into that crap (yes, I know most of it is crap, but I'm easily entertained and optimistic).

It's also funny when you watch it he talks about how we handle each phase and how The New Deal was example of good coming out of that particular cycle while completely ignoring the rise of Hitler at the same time (he was focusing on the US to be fair though). So take it for what's worth, just thought it was pretty cool.

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