Wednesday, 31 July 2013

A simple retort to anyone who says that Snowden or Manning should be jailed

The people who get upset and angry about people like Snowden and Manning and want to see them jailed are people that do not want to face up to the reality that the U.S. government is no longer the "good" guys.

If the government wasn't doing anything wrong there wouldn't be anything to whistle blow them out on.

Manning would of been able to report the U.S. war crimes in Iraq through his chain of command - as he was duty bound to do according to the US Military Code and as he tried to do.
Something would of been done to punish any rogue U.S. troops and to stop the mass torture of prisoners by the Iraqi authorities.

Snowden wouldn't of been able to blow the whistle on the fact that the NSA are collecting everything on everyone because the NSA would simply not of been ordered to do it by the government and it would of been stopped if the NSA had tried to spy on everyone through meaningful oversight from Congress.

Monday, 29 July 2013

Secret TPP Treaty “This Agreement Hands The Sovereignty of Our Country Over to Corporate Interests”

Corporations Push to Overrule National Laws

We reported last year:

Democratic Senator Wyden – the head of the committee which is supposed to oversee it – is so furious about the lack of access that he has introduced legislation to force disclosure.
Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is so upset by it that he has leaked a document on his website to show what’s going on.
What is everyone so furious about?
An international treaty being negotiated in secret which would not only crack down on Internet privacy much more than SOPA or ACTA, but would actually destroy the sovereignty of the U.S. and all other signatories.
It is called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Wyden is the chairman of the trade committee in the Senate … the committee which is supposed to have jurisdiction over the TPP. Wyden is also on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and so he and his staff have high security clearances and are normally able to look at classified documents.
And yet Wyden and his staff have been denied access to the TPP’s text.

Indeed, the decision to keep the text of TPP secret was itself classified as secret:

Saturday, 27 July 2013

We are not going to get anywhere on our own #NSA

We have to hook up with the growing outrage with Independents and non neo-Liberal/Obamatron Dems about civil rights abuses and the NSA scandal.

(I haven't seen any spark of life from any GOP supporters - they are still totally clueless and brainwashed.)

The recent collaboration between Justin Amash and Conyers is a good example of this.

We also have to encourage the outrage in the rest of the world.

The No.1 security threat to the Rest of the World today is America and it will only get worse as America descends into an outright authoritarian Fascist Police State.
(I am talking about Europe, South America, Canada, Australia etc.)

Any and all pressure we can bring to bear from any direction the better.

There have already been signs of growing public outrage around the world from the total mismanagement of their own governments.
E.G. in Brazil, Italy, Spain and Greece etc.
And most recently there have been anti NSA protests in Germany and anti mass spying protests in New Zealand.

Even, as is likely, it does not stop America's descent into economic carnage and total Fascism - it will wake up more people in America and around the world to start fighting back earlier.

The scariest quote from the trial you have never heard of - Bradley Manning

Obama tries for total censorship of the internet & the media.
He is using the Bradley Manning case as precedence to intimidate people into self censorship.

What prosecutor Fein said in those closing arguments was absolutely chilling.

“Pfc. Manning was not a humanist; he was a hacker,” Major Fein noted.

“He was not a whistle-blower. He was a traitor, a traitor who understood the value of compromised information in the hands of the enemy and took deliberate steps to ensure that they, along with the world, received it.”

The quote is scary.

Critics of this case have warned that a Manning conviction of “aiding the enemy” would criminalize journalism. Even here in this quote, Fein alludes to journalists as being "the hands of the enemy."

As the New York Times explains:

"As the trial has moved toward its conclusion, the more philosophical questions confronting [Col. Denise Lind] are re-emerging center stage — including whether WikiLeaks played a journalistic role and whether providing information to the anti-secrecy group was any different, for legal purposes, from providing it to a traditional news outlet."

It is believed that a guilty verdict for aiding the enemy would establish a government precedent that giving information to an outlet that publishes it online is the same as handing it over to an enemy, the Times adds.

Chris Hedges calls for the overthrow of the current system via non-violent mass protests (as the only means available)

JAY: Right. Okay. Question number six. Congress seems a wholly owned subsidiary of the multinationals, Obama is pimping for GE in Africa, the Koch brothers have made a down payment on the Supreme Court, and money will control the next federal election and most of the state elections. Is there any scenario you see that will return this government to the people? Now, we've been kind of talking a lot about that in the previous segments, but that was the next question.

HEDGES: Mass protests that begin to scare the hell out of these people and begin to disrupt systems that they care about, that really is the only solution. I think they're very fragile. I think internally they know how corrupt they are, which is why they passed the NDAA, because they want to be able to pull the military on the streets, because I think ultimately they don't trust the police to protect them. And those are the sentiments of a dying elite.

So I think when we begin to organize against all the formal structures of power, I think that they may crumble as the Stasi state in East Germany, which when I was in East Germany appeared monolithic, fell in about a week, and it fell in a week because Honecker, Erich Honecker, the dictator for 19 years, sent an elite paratroop division down to Leipzig to fire on 70,000 demonstrators, and they refused to do it. And after that, in the same way that the tsar sent the Cossacks in to crush the Petrograd bread riots and they fraternized with the crowd, both Honecker and the tsar only lasted another week in power. And once the foot soldiers of the elite will not protect the elite, they're done.

And that's why we have to be nonviolent, because ultimately what we are doing is trying to create a paralysis within systems of power, whereby we speak truth, we appeal to conscience, we expose corruption, fraud, lies by those in power so that when those forces are called into the street to stop us, they refuse to do so. That's how all revolutions happen. And that's really in the end what I'm calling for. I'm calling for the overthrow of this system. Let me say that again for Homeland Security. I mean, that's what I'm doing.

And I'm calling for it through nonviolent means, through mass protests, because as a father of four children, I know that if we don't stop these forces, they will kill us. They will destroy the ecosystem on which the human species and my children depend for their life. And that is really the stakes that lie before us and why there is an imperative for all of us to take risks. And I don't like going to jail as I have. Going to jail is more time than I care to donate to my government. But it really is the only option left, because if we fail at this, then it's not just this particular civilization that will be extinguished but human habitation.

Read more at:-
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10486

Revealed; The Men Who Own and Run the U S Government

Friday, 26 July 2013

Senator Ron Wyden's warnings to the American people about the #NSA 23rd July

This is a speech given on Tuesday, July 23, at the Center for American Progress in Washington.

When the Patriot Act was last reauthorized, I stood on the floor of the United States Senate and said, “I want to deliver a warning this afternoon. When the American people find out how their government has interpreted the Patriot Act, they are going to be stunned and they are going to be angry.”

....

Edward Snowden’s Revelations

Last month, disclosures made by an NSA contractor lit the surveillance world on fire. Several provisions of secret law were no longer secret and the American people were finally able to see some of the things I’ve been raising the alarm about for years. And when they did, boy were they stunned, and boy, are they angry.

.....

So, today I’m going to deliver another warning: If we do not seize this unique moment in our constitutional history to reform our surveillance laws and practices, we will all live to regret it. I’ll have more to say about the consequences of the omnipresent surveillance state, but as you listen to this talk, ponder that most of us have a computer in our pocket that potentially can be used to track and monitor us 24/7. The combination of increasingly advanced technology with a breakdown in the checks and balances that limit government action could lead us to a surveillance state that cannot be reversed.

Read more at:-
http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/blog/post/wyden-on-nsa-domestic-surveillance

Another link :-
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/sen-ron-wyden-nsa-spying-its-bad-snowden-says?paging=off

Thursday, 25 July 2013

America today - bottom 3 for developed countries

Amongst the 30 or so developed nations, America now ranks :-

Absolute bottom for civil rights
Top 3 for political corruption
Top 3 for fastest rising debt compared to GDP
Bottom 3 for social mobility
37th for Healthcare efficiency
32nd for Press Freedom.
Around 20th for Education standards.
Top for income inequality.
17th for average wealth (and rapidly falling).
Bottom or near bottom for average life expectancy and American's life expectancy is now falling while it is still rising in every other developed country.

And it's getting worse every year.
Welcome to the "Land of the Free"

In 1980 America was undoubtedly the best country to live with undoubtedly the best future prospects and living standards of any country on Earth.
That is far from where we are now and we are still rapidly heading in absolutely the wrong direction.

Corporatism and the absence of the Rule of Law is not a good economic model.
Large Corporations can pretty much get away with anything now and frequently do.

Wednesday, 24 July 2013

The names of the 217 TRAITORS in the House who voted to keep Mass Surveillance to suppress domestic political dissent

Plus 12 other traitors who didn't vote.

Picture courtesy of @williambanzai7

Justin Amash's amendment to defund part of the NSA's domestic surveillance was defeated by 12 votes.
The NSA blackmailed just enough Reps to defeat the motion.

The House can hardly plead ignorance now, that the NSA's Mass Surveillance does nothing to prevent terrorism plots and is purely to crush future political dissent.

The vote :-
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2013/roll412.xml

RECALL every single one that voted No to this amendment.
RECALL the 12 who didn't vote at all - too.
They are ALL anti-American.

These people didn't just vote to keep the programs that spy on every single person in America, they also voted for the end of the Republic and the end of democracy itself, as well.

People who vote for an authoritarian Police State and Fascism can hardly be described as "Americans".

The facts about the NSA Mass Surveillance programs :-
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/saying-nsas-mass-surveillance-programs.html
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/the-nsa-mass-surveillance-scandal-story.html

Apart from countries that are universally recognized as being authoritarian regimes, Burma, Mugabe's Zimbabwe, communist China etc., America is now plum last for the human rights of it's OWN citizens.

I.E. America is now last behind EVERY other developed country and behind most developing country's for civil rights.
So much for the "Land of the Free".

The modern American political system - Fascism

The big banks, the arms companies, Monsanto, large pharmaceutical companies, other large Corporations and billionaires buy the politicians and thence the government with campaign contributions and lobbying.

In return the government steal over $2.5tn a year from honest Americans and give it away to the large Corporations via Corporate Welfare.

The media is fully complicit in this massive scam.
All TV channels and all the main papers.
They are reliant on ad revenues from the large Corporations and loans from the big banks.

The $2.5tn a year of Corporate Welfare is comprised of :-
$780bn in direct government subsidies to the big banks
$500bn of bailouts through QE printing by the Federal Reserve private bank
Over $1.3tn of direct Corporate Welfare by the government.

No country can withstand the theft of 15% of it's GDP to make a few very wealthy people even richer, for very long.
The government knows this.
Therefore it has embarked on a program to take all Americans civil rights away from them and to institute massive surveillance to spy on their every move.
The government is expecting largescale civil unrest in the fairly near future, due to the large increase in unemployment and extreme economic deprivation directly resulting from their programs.

It's called Fascism - pure and simple.

Appendices

1. The $780bn of annual direct subsidies to the big banks
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-780bn-of-annual-subsidies-to-big.html

2. The $500bn a year of bailouts to the big banks by the Federal Reserve private bank, which is owned by the big banks.
This largely comprises the $480bn a year program of QE3 whereby impaired mortgage assets are bought by the Federal Reserve at far more than they are worth.

3. The over $1.3tn a year of other Corporate Welfare
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/it-is-very-easy-to-cut-1tn-from-federal.html

4. Military spending for 2012 was $1,219bn or 8% of GDP
50% more than Bush ever spent and triple what America spent during the cold war.
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/military-spending-1962-to-date.html

5. No Rule of Law
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-heinous-and-serious-crimes-of-obama.html

6. No civil rights
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/obamas-civil-rights-violations.html

7. The inconvenient truth for Barack Obama - he is a Corporatist aka Fascist
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/why-do-people-still-think-that-barack.html

Why is the Walmart family supporting an Islamic cult that teaches Jihad in American schools?

The cult is the Gulen movement, whose leader lives in Pennsylvania.
Any organisation whose members are expected to blindly obey it's leader and elders can only be described as a cult.
The Gulen movement is active in Turkey and America.

Why are American taxpayers funding Islamic Jihadist schools in America?

The Gulen movement keeps it's motives and aims secret but here is one assessment :-

The Gulen Movement: Indoctrinating For Jihad In Charter Schools:
http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/05/the-gulen-movement-indoctrinating-for-jihad-in-charter-schools/#.Ue--bGYxrMc.twitter

Eye Opener: Turkish Charter Schools Sweep Across America supported by the Walmart Family and funded by American taxpayers

Sharon Higgins, the independent researcher and blogger who helped found Parents Across America, reported in the Washington Post this week that the largest charter school network in the United States is a Turkish religious sect that few Americans know about.

The Turkish newspaper Milliyet reported in 2010 that the Walton Family Foundation gave $1 million to Gülen's charter schools in California. Because of the loose and permissive charter school laws advocated by Sam Walton, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and others throughout the last two decades, the United States is the only country where Gülen has been able to fully fund schools with taxpayer money. In all other nations, Gülen schools are what one would expect they would be: private religious schools.

The Gülen Movement is a secretive and controversial Turkish group that nonetheless has more than 135 schools in the United States -- often operated by Concept Schools or other companies -- and enrolls more than 45,000 students in at least 26 states. Concerns have been raised about Gülen's hiring, labor, business and admissions practices, political connections and curriculum. That has not stopped state governments and education commissioners from approving the company's applications to run charter schools.

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/03/11388/eye-opener-turkish-charter-schools-sweep-across-america-funded-walmart-family

Wikipedia :-

Members of the Gulen movement are expected to show blind obedience to it's leader and elders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement

Monday, 22 July 2013

The purpose of the drone warfare program is to .... create more Islamic Extremists

The above is from testimony to Congress in April 2013.

The purpose of the "War on Terror" is to propagate the war on terror.
The purpose of the drone warfare program is to recruit more Islamic Extremist enemies.
The purpose of recruiting more Islamic Extremist enemies is to justify the astronomical amounts now being spent on the military - $1,219bn in 2012 or 8% of GDP.

Drone strikes kill ten times as many civilians as manned airstrikes
http://endthelie.com/2013/07/02/study-afghan-drone-strikes-resulted-in-10-times-more-civilian-casualties-than-manned-air-strikes/#axzz2ZvpF1ceL

The drone warfare program is specifically designed to :-

Kill off a few Islamic Extremist leaders
Kill hundreds of innocent civilians, including women and children, thereby recruiting thousands upon thousands of new Islamic Extremists and Jihadists.

Roughly 200 million more people in the Muslim world now consider the American government their enemy than they did 7 years ago - it is the specific intention of the drone warfare program to do this.
If it wasn't the intention to recruit more Islamic Extremists, they would stop the drone warfare program.

The Extremist leaders are replaced by younger, more energetic and even more hateful leaders.
There is no shortage of volunteers joining the ranks.

After all, where would the MIC be without active enemies?

As the Yemeni witness who testified to Congress earlier this year said :-
"The Jihadists tried for years to radicalize our village and failed. One drone strike did it for them."

The drone warfare program has been successful at :-

Turning Libya from a secular country to one governed by Islamic Extremists

Turning Egypt from a secular regime to an Islamic Extremist one.
The U.S. government are not happy that the Egyptian government was recently overthrown in a popular uprising
All of the Christians in Egypt are on the side of the uprising. It was a coalition of moderate Muslims and Coptic Christians.
The Morsi regime did nothing to stop the crucifixion of Christians, just because they were Christian, in Egypt.

Greatly exacerbating the civil war in Yemen, by propping up a corrupt dictator
There have been large numbers of civilian casualties in Yemen.
The U.S. has been using cluster bombs on villages.
Yemen is a prime recruitment ground for more Islamic Jihadists due to the large number of young unemployed males.

Greatly exacerbating the civil war in Syria.
Almost all the Syrian "rebels" are Islamic Extremists.
A lot of them are foreign fighters - not Syrians at all.
ALL of the Christians in Syria are on the side of Assad.
The Syrian rebels publicly executed a senior Christian Bishop in Syria, by beheading him with a kitchen knife in front of a cheering crowd.

One of the main creators and funders of Islamic Extremists is Saudi Arabia.
Why does the American government do nothing about that dictatorship?
Saudi Arabia's human rights record is appalling.

Appendices

Latest report on civilian casualties from drone strikes - in Pakistan
http://rt.com/news/drone-strikes-pakistan-civilian-casualties-431/#.Ue2kyMCkTD0.twitter

Drones are killing women and children, terrorizing entire regions and turning civilians against America.
Earlier reports on the numbers of civilian casualties from drones from Stanford and NYU.
How to end the so called "War on Terror"
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/us-drones-are-killing-children.html

Judge challenges White House authority on extra judicial drone strikes
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/20/us/politics/judge-challenges-white-house-claims-on-authority-in-drone-killings.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Update 07/31

President Obama Sending Drones All Around the Globe
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/16125-pres-obama-sending-drones-all-around-the-globe

America no longer has a functioning judicial system

The Separation of Powers Which Define Our Democracy Have Been Destroyed

The Department of Justice told a federal court this week that the NSA’s spying “cannot be challenged in a court of law”.

(This is especially dramatic given that numerous federal judges and legal scholars – including a former FISA judge – say that the FISA spying “court” is nothing but a kangaroo court.)

Also this week, the Department of Justice told a federal court that the courts cannot review the legality of the government’s assassination by drone of Americans abroad:

“‘Are you saying that a US citizen targeted by the United States in a foreign country has no constitutional rights?’ [the judge] asked Brian Hauck, a deputy assistant attorney general. ‘How broadly are you asserting the right of the United States to target an American citizen? Where is the limit to this?’
“She provided her own answer: ‘The limit is the courthouse door’ . . . .
“‘Mr. Hauck acknowledged that Americans targeted overseas do have rights, but he said they could not be enforced in court either before or after the Americans were killed.’”

(Indeed, the Obama administration has previously claimed the power to be judge, jury and executioner in both drone and cyber-attacks. This violates Anglo-Saxon laws which have been on the books in England and America for 800 years.)

There hasn't been ANY economic recovery since 2009

Despite the Washington Post trying to dress up as best they can a most depressing picture.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/middle-class-still-left-behind-in-recovery/2013/07/18/a408b174-ef9f-11e2-9008-61e94a7ea20d_story.html

The simple fundamental fact is that when official reported GDP is adjusted for REAL inflation it has been significantly negative every year since the recession began in 2008.

REAL inflation is at least 4% higher than that officially reported in cpi.
It could be as much as 7% higher.

REAL GDP growth is the same amount (i.e 4 to 7%) LOWER than the official numbers reported in the media.

Recent official GDP growth
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth

There has been NO recovery.

Disposable incomes continue their relentless decline.
Median incomes continue to fall.
Total wages have fallen in 2013.

Sure the stock market has been pumped up with the Fed printing $1tn a year, but that's about all.

Even the recent house price rise is just an illusion.
That has been pumped up by hedge funds buying tens of thousands of properties to rent out.
The largest price rises are in the previously worst affected bubble areas in the run up to 2007.
There is obviously something of a geographical spread out from this to some other regions.

The most savvy hedge funds (those who started buying up property in 2009) are now getting out of the market.

Interest rates for new mortgages have increased from 3.3% early May to 4.5% now (St Louis Fed data).
This will kill off the housing market.
Mortgage applications have already seen recent drastic falls.
The number of new homes under construction has also seen recent dramatic falls.

The vast majority of the jobs that have been created in 2013 have been poorly paid part time jobs.
The number of relatively well paid full time jobs is lower now than it was at the start of the year.

The ONLY age group that has seen a rise in labor participation rates is the over 54's.
Simply because far fewer people can afford to retire early.
Indeed the employment rates of the over 65's is increasing - they can no longer afford to retire at all.
This is further excluding younger age groups from the jobs market.
The under 25 unemployment rate is rising rapidly and we are just about to see the effect of the latest graduates from college and High School - they are going to find it very tough to find employment in the current environment.
Companies just aren't hiring.

The headlines of job number creation are being overstated by nearly 100,000 per month.
This is primarily due to two factors :-

The extremely high number of people that are taking on a second (or third) poorly paid part time job to try and keep body and soul together (see the recent articles about the McDonalds budget tips and employee earnings)
Around 400,000 people now have a second (or third) part time job than they did at the start of the year.

The large overstatement in the BLS Birth/Death model for the number of jobs in new business start ups (around 100,000 overstatement so far in 2013).

If the official government inflation figures were anywhere close to reality the US would never have been out of recession since 2008.

Official GDP growth numbers have been sliding since 2011/early 2012.

The big banks are currently busy slashing their Q2 GDP growth forecasts in light of the recent economic data.
E.G. JP Morgan and Goldman Sacs recently cut their forecast for Q2 GDP from 2% to 1% - other banks are doing the same - Barclay's lowered their estimate to +0.6%.
The initial Q2 GDP estimate comes out on July 31st.

I said a few weeks ago that I expected final Q2 GDP to come in around +0.6%, when all the big banks were forecasting 2%+.

As ever only a select few of the top 1% have been any better off over the last few years.
This is primarily due to the over $2.5tn of Corporate Welfare that the government and the Federal Reserve is currently handing out to the big banks, arms companies and other large Corporations.

The over $1.2tn of ANNUAL freebies, subsidies and handouts that are being given to the big banks. See 1

The over $1.3tn of other ANNUAL Corporate Welfare See 2

Military spending is now 50% higher than it ever was under GW Bush and TRIPLE what America spent during the cold war against the USSR and during the Vietnam war. See 3

The 99% are considerably worse off now, than they were in 2010/2011.
They are worse off now than they were in 2009!

Real unemployment rates
U6 unemployment is now at 14%.
REAL unemployment is now at 23% (this includes the overhang of people who have given up looking for work because decent paying jobs just aren't out there).

?hl=ad&t=1351861609

Household median incomes are now below the levels of 1995

Real median male wages are now back to the levels of 1970

REAL inflation is now somewhere between 6% and 9% - not the 1% to 2% being officially reported.

?hl=ad&t=
Real inflation is at 9% for the model in use in 1980.
Real inflation is at 6% for the model in use in 1990.
The truth lies somewhere in between.

You know yourself that real inflation is much higher than is officially reported every time you fill up your tank or go to the grocery store.
And lots of other things that affect ordinary people disproportionately compared to the very wealthy, have also risen dramatically in price over the last 10 years - things like College fees and Healthcare costs.

Labor participation rates - no recovery

Source - Bureau of Labor Statistics

The numbers on disability continue to grow by between 250,000 and 300,000 a year.
(This despite a declining industrial accident rate.)
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibStat.html

See this for the comments to the above article on Democratic Underground.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023293703
N.B. it is easy to spot the trolls for Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan on DU who are trying their best to keep the Dems under informed.

The solutions to rebalance America's economy and turn it around from a death spiral into a virtuous circle.
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/how-to-fix-americas-economy-create-jobs.html

Appendices

1. The over $1.2tn of ANNUAL freebies, subsidies and handouts that are being given to the big banks

http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-780bn-of-annual-subsidies-to-big.html

N.B. This article does not mention some other large subsidies to the big banks.
The Fed is currently spending $480bn a year on buying up distressed mortgage backed assets from the big banks at far more than they are worth in QE3.
The Fed is spending $520bn a year on buying longer dated treasuries in QE to infinity. This is free money to the big banks who are using it to speculate with and pushing up the price of food & gas (and stocks).
70% of February's official inflation was due to increases in the prices of food & gas.

Take ALL of the current subsidies to the big banks away - they are INEFFICIENT and a complete liability to America.
This would allow smaller better run and managed smaller banks and credit unions to fairly compete.
It would take business away from the big banks and force them to slim down.

The big banks are holding the entire country to RANSOM.
Reinstate Glass Steagal immediately.
Remove ALL of their over $1tn a year subsidies.
Prosecute the big banks for their multiple crimes - Libor fixing, money laundering, mortgage fraud, robosigning etc. Fine them $200bn+. Send the execs to jail for 30 years+.
Madoff got 102 years for his crimes.
The execs of the big banks have stolen far more than Madoff ever did.
Split the big banks up.
Prosecute them for their multiple crimes.
Force them to slim down.
Then SHUT THEM DOWN.
They are criminal enterprises, a complete liability to the economy and holding the country to ransom.

A catalog of massive criminality - the Big Banks
Mainstream media is finally waking up. The economy will never recover unless senior bankers are prosecuted and get sentenced to long jail terms.
http://ian56.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-catalog-of-criminality-big-banks.html

2. The over $1.3tn of other ANNUAL Corporate Welfare

http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/it-is-very-easy-to-cut-1tn-from-federal.html

3. Military spending is now 50% higher than it ever was under GW Bush and TRIPLE what America spent during the cold war against the USSR and during the Vietnam war.

http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/military-spending-1962-to-date.html

Obama's latest budget proposals increase Pentagon Pork even more and cut social security to pay for it.
A Democrat organization calls it "disgusting"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022772461

Who are the real traitors? #NSA

There are weeks that change the course of human history. There are weeks when people must choose sides. There are weeks that expose the real American traitors. There is no middle ground in this debate. You are either on the side of freedom, liberty, truth, transparency and the U.S. Constitution or you are on the side of mindless obedience, oppression, deception, corruption and tyranny. A courageous young Millennial named Edward Snowden has risked his life and his future to expose the illegal, surreptitious surveillance programs being conducted by the United States government in clear violation of the 4^thAmendment to the U.S. Constitution. The NSA, with the full knowledge of Barack Obama and Congress, has been covertly collecting phone and internet records on millions of Americans with the full cooperation of Verizon and other mega media/data corporations. Our owners have been using the U.S. Constitution to wipe their asses. The 4^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is so unambiguous that any intelligent politician, bright journalist or fifth grader in Miss Sabatini’s history class could interpret its meaning and intention. Our founding fathers believed in truth, clarity and simplicity. The traitorous sociopaths in control of our government today believe in obfuscation, ambiguity and complexity.

Living Constitution?

Do you believe the mass collection of metadata information from millions of Americans with no probable cause is an unreasonable search as defined by the 4^th Amendment? Do you believe the complete lockdown of one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the country and the door to door search by heavily armed government security thugs for one wounded teenager, without warrants or probable cause, was a violation of the 4^th Amendment? Do you believe secretive governmental agencies have the right to partner with the biggest internet/communications/mass media corporations in the world to record your phone calls, read your emails, and monitor your internet communications under the bogus justification of the War on Terror (you are more likely to be struck by lightning twice than to be killed by a terrorist)? Do you believe that government agencies tasked with revenue collection can be used to create an enemies list based upon whether you donated to the Ron Paul campaign, believe in liberty, or belong to a Tea Party organization? Do you believe allowing minimum wage government drones to molest little old ladies, paraplegics and three year old children, while conducting full body scans on all airline passengers really makes you safer from phantom terrorists? Do you believe having 30,000 high tech surveillance drones that can see you picking your nose in your driveway from 25,000 feet are not a violation of your privacy rights?

Sunday, 21 July 2013

The Hertzberg question - The End of Press Freedom #NSA

Hendrik Hertzberg said in The New Yorker that the threat to civil liberties these programs pose is “abstract, conjectural, unspecified.” What, if any, are the tangible threats?

There’s an important distinction between people who are extremely privileged and who believe in and obey pieties and orthodoxies — people like Hertzberg, who aren’t dissenting from anything and who are basically defenders and supporters of political power, the royal court. The real measure of how free a society is isn’t how its good, obedient servants are treated; it’s how dissidents are treated. And if you go and do any kind of investigative journalism and talk to whistleblowers, or talk to people who are dissenting or are otherwise engaged in activism against the government, or journalists who do that, you find this incredibly disturbing, intense climate of fear. Nobody will talk unless they’re using very sophisticated encryption technologies. So yeah, good little New Yorker writers who love Obama . . . you know, he’s right. For him it is abstract and conjectural. But for people who are engaged in actual critical thinking and opposition to those in power, surveillance is menacing. It intimidates people out of engaging in real dissent. That’s its principal danger.

And let me just say one other thing: sometimes it is hard to convey why privacy is so important, because it’s kind of ethereal. But I think people instinctively understand the reason it’s so important, because they do things like put passwords on their email accounts and locks on their bedroom and bathroom doors, which reflect a desire to keep others out of certain spaces where they can go to be alone. That’s a way of making clear that they value privacy. And the reason privacy is so critical is because it’s only when we know we’re not being watched that we can engage in creativity, or dissent, or pushing the boundaries of what’s deemed acceptable. A society in which people feel like they’re always being watched is one that breeds conformity, because people will avoid doing anything that can prompt judgment or condemnation. This is a crucial part of why a surveillance state is so damaging — it’s why all tyrannies know that watching people is the key to keeping them in line. Because only when you’re not being watched can you really be a free individual.

http://harpers.org/blog/2013/07/snoop-snoop-song/

Paul Krugman admits that the Federal Reserve is damaging the US economy

"The need for rebalancing has been obvious for years, but China just kept putting off the necessary changes, instead boosting the economy by keeping the currency undervalued and flooding it with cheap credit. (Since someone is going to raise this issue: no, this bears very little resemblance to the Federal Reserve’s policies here.) These measures postponed the day of reckoning, but also ensured that this day would be even harder when it finally came. And now it has arrived."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/opinion/krugman-hitting-chinas-wall.html?_r=0

Krugman says it is not the same as the Federal Reserve policy, but offers no explanation as to why not.

Previously Krugman has stated that the Federal Reserve can print all that it likes because the US Dollar is the Global Reserve Currency.
This is patently absurd.
There have been 5 Global Reserve Currencies since 1500 - Portugal, Spain, France, Great Britain and now America.
Global Reserve currencies do not last for ever.
China and Russia along with the other BRICS are already working to create the next one - they know the U.S. is already in DEEP trouble from it's massive debts.

http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/greek-scenario-and-us.html

Paul Krugman gets a number of other things wrong in his article due to his deep level of ignorance, misunderstanding, flawed economics, or just blatant lies.

Social unrest in China is growing because :-

It cannot create enough decent paying manufacturing jobs to meet the current demand.
The steep slowdown, due to the recession in Europe and the coming recession in America is obviously going to make things worse.

Price inflation is high in China (as it is in a lot of other countries) because of the steep rises in things like the price of food and energy.
Wage increases have not kept up with real inflation - as is true in just about EVERY other country in the world.
The steep rises in the price of food and energy are overwhelmingly due to the current policies of the Federal Reserve private bank printing $1tn a year, the US government and the speculative activities of big banks like Goldman Sacs and JP Morgan.
http://ian56.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-2tn-of-excess-bank-reserves-is.html

There are fairly accurate ways to assess Chinese GDP growth figures (as Krugman says official numbers are notoriously unreliable).
If we go by the growth in energy usage, Chinese GDP growth is now around 3.0% - not the 7.5% official number.
If we go by the discrepancies between what China says it is exporting to other countries and Hong Kong; and what Hong Kong and other countries are saying they are importing from China we also get to something around 3% growth for China.

It is true that the Chinese are desperately trying to avoid a hard landing.
They can see the coming severe recessions in both Europe and America.

America also needs to go through a massive rebalancing.
It needs to rebalance the current record levels of Corporate profits with record low levels of real wages and high levels of poverty.
If people do not have money to spend - Corporate profits will also decline.
We are already seeing signs of declining Corporate revenues.

Corporate Welfare is currently running at over $2.5tn a year made up of :-

Over $1.3tn a year of direct handouts by the government to large Corporations.
Over $1.2tn a year of indirect subsidies to the big banks by the government and by the Federal Reserve private bank (which is owned by the big banks).

If the disposable income of ordinary people does not start to rise again there will never be a recovery in America.
Disposable incomes have just taken some massive hits :-
$200bn a year tax hike in the fiscal cliff deal
Large rises in the prices of food and energy
Large numbers of employers are switching to part time employment to avoid the massive coming costs of Obamacare - all sorts of employment benefits are lost when an employee loses Full Time status.

Almost all of the reported jobs growth in America so far this year has been in poorly paid part time jobs.
The number of part time jobs has increased by about 500,000, while the number of full time jobs is almost flat.

Total wages have declined since the start of the year (but nobody reports total wages - it doesn't match the narrative the government and the media want to convey).

How to rebalance America's economy and turn it around from it's current death spiral and into a virtuous circle
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/how-to-fix-americas-economy-create-jobs.html

How could the GOP argue against these proposals to fix America's economy & bring back prosperity?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023302479

How to fix America's economy & create jobs & prosperity again

Cut over $1.3tn a year of Corporate Welfare.
Use that money for massive tax cuts for middle earners and below to increase people's disposable incomes and get bottom up spending going again.

Use some of the money for tax cuts for small & medium sized businesses.

The two above will get recruitment going again.
Small and medium sized businesses are the true jobs and wealth creators - not large corporations.

Stop bailing out the big banks to the tune of $1.2 tn a year.
This is increasing the price of things like food & gas, lowering ordinary people's disposable incomes and thus lowering GDP growth.

Break up the Corporate cartels that now operate in each major industry.

Reinstate the Rule of Law in America
Little guys get long jail terms for minor offenses, while the crimes of Corporate America go unpunished.

Scrap Obamacare, which is the worst possible scheme for expanding healthcare coverage and will cost millions of American jobs and make healthcare even less efficient.
Healthcare premiums are set to rise by between 30 and 100% with the full implementation of Obamacare (it varies a lot by State).

Completely reverse the current policy of sending more and more people to college when they increasingly end up in jobs that do not need a college degree or they have no job at all.
It is just loading young people up with debt.

Completely reform the current education system so that people learn how to make a decent living.

America's Current Death Spiral

Corporate profits are at record levels.
So is poverty.
Real wages are at record lows and continue to decline.
This trend needs a dramatic reversal and soon.

Cut Corporate Welfare by over $1.3tn a year.
Use that money for massive tax cuts for middle earners and below.
Raising the tax thresh hold from $8,700 to $45,000 would cost $500bn a year.
Reversing the payroll tax hike would cost $108bn a year.

Making the Corporate tax rate 25% would be slightly more than revenue neutral, by removing all of the subsidies to large corporations. No tax breaks or deductions whatsoever.
Make the first $100,000 of profits tax free to give a tax break to small and medium sized businesses (like Singapore does).

What do you want to do with the rest of the circa $600bn a year we have just saved?
It can be a mixture of things :-
Lowering the tax rate for $45,000 to $80,000 of income
Lowering the Corporate tax rate further / tax the next $200,000 of profits at half rate (like Singapore does)
Deficit reduction
Infrastructure improvements - how about repairing some bridges?

America's debt spiral
By 2023 :-
spending will be nearly $6tn a year
the deficit will be over $3tn
the national debt will be over $40tn
See 1.

The government is being incredibly stupid. It is allowing the Federal Reserve to be incredibly stupid as well. See 2

Paul Ryan's so called budget plan would cause a major depression
Raising military spending even higher, cutting taxes on the rich, taxing the poor more and cutting welfare benefits are EXACTLY the wrong thing to do.
To make his numbers work, Ryan assumes growth rates of 6% a year which is plainly ridiculous and to close $750bn of middle class tax loop holes a year by 2022 - which really would put America in a severe depression.

The list of items that add up to over $1.3tn a year of cuts to Corporate Welfare
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023293763

The current bank bailouts are killing America
The current $1tn+ subsidies to the big banks should all be ended to allow much better run smaller banks to fairly compete.
$780bn of annual subsidies to the big banks
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023293726
Plus QE3 and QE to infinity.
QE3 is a direct subsidy to the big banks by buying up distressed mortgage backed assets at far more than they are worth at the rate of $480bn a year.
Why current Fed policy is making things worse by increasing inflation and unemployment see 2.

Reinstate the Rule of Law in America
Reinstate deterrent penalties for criminal behavior of Corporate execs.
Send senior bankers to jail for 30 years+ for their multiple crimes.
Fine the big banks $200bn too.
The only thing you can be sure of without deterrent penalties, is more crime.
Reinstate civil rights - scrap NSA mass surveillance, NDAA and the Patriot Act etc.

Stop sending large numbers of people to jail for non violent drugs offenses, to feed the private business business - it wrecks lives and costs everyone else too.

College education policy needs to be completely reversed
See 3.

Education policy needs to be completely reformed
America's education system is now well behind a whole host of other developed countries.
America is now in the bottom 3 out of 30, for social mobility as a result.

The Corporate cartels that now operate in each major industry need to be broken up :-
Banking
Arms companies. The top 20 suppliers to the US government are consistently making an average of 10% on sales. Name me another industry that manages that.
Oil. The big oil companies have had a decade of record profits, yet still receive sizeable government subsidies. End them.
Pharmaceuticals. America pays by far the highest prices for prescription drugs in the world. Lower the price or go generic earlier. Half the large drug companies are foreign owned and making huge profits on the backs of the American taxpayer.
Monsanto. The Monsanto protection act has just been passed by Congress - reverse it. Ban all ex Monsanto employees from working at the FDA.

Meet Michael R. Taylor
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzpMarruOiLjya6teu_FJB-b_RGfQeit1hHjydH0sj4m7rHUC-Acib-Nu5bm5vQEKKg6t4GxOAqEIs058NaEvnwoe2sDyDEjxHXLxBnBopWA1mkrNm9SuaFMrbNcFx2FlHPJYmRBSWSLE/s400/March+against+monsanto.jpg

Healthcare (soon to be a cartel of a few large companies controlling most of the market with Obamacare).

Appendices

1. CBO projections of future GDP growth rates, deficits and the National Debt are pure fantasy

The CBO is taking a very benign and EXTREMELY optimistic view of future US GDP growth rates, which is not borne out by history or by current global economic conditions or by current global debt levels.

E.G. the recession that has just started in Europe.
E.G. China is reportedly now hitting around 3% GDP growth - officially they say it is still about 7.5%, but the Chinese government have always overstated GDP growth.
You can see why China's GDP growth might be at 3% and rapidly slowing, with the slowing of European and American current growth rates.
India and Brazil are also rapidly slowing down.

Average GDP growth from 1950 to 2000 was 3.3%. These were the boom times.
And from circa 1980 onwards, GDP growth was massively fuelled by an exponential increase in the money supply.
Money supply has stopped growing since the housing bubble burst in 2007 (despite the Federal Reserve's massive attempts at more printing).

Since 2000 GDP growth has averaged just under 2%.

The CBO is assuming an average of 3.5% GDP growth from 2014 and ever after. I.E. substantially higher than any lengthy period over the last 100 years.

Even the CBO recognises that future GDP growth is substantially reduced by higher levels of debt.

The CBO future GDP growth forecasts are pure fantasy.
As are their forecasts for future tax revenues which are highly dependent on future GDP growth rates.
The deficits are going to be very substantially higher than the CBO are currently predicting. And so is the National Debt.

The National Debt is now nearly $17tn.
GDP is $15.85tn as at end of 2012.
Debt to GDP ratio is now 107% and rapidly rising.

Government spending is planned to rise from $3.6tn in 2012 to $6tn in 2023 (with or without the sequester).
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRm0qlupT_1_qsrm8OlB50ZJRM7VLnX53I02b8EA0KfHFf9Ksf1bnM46wR6HJJ7oWpPKtx8zcXjL3pedZbltyide0ONOAhnhd0ozzwYQMMCSe9kzQSjThlyXqrezw-rTfOlSOIFmVlpl8/s640/Total+Federal+spending+to+2023.jpg

The following scenario is much more likely.
A sudden spike in rates within a few weeks from around 2% to around 7% as has already happened to some European countries - Greece, Spain and Italy etc.

I predict that with current policies (of BOTH parties) the US National Debt will be over $40tn by 2023.
The debt to GDP ratio will be about 250%.

That assumes the US has not already started defaulting on it's debt and the dollar has not already plunged in value.
In which case economic and fiscal conditions in the US will be FAR worse than the predictions above.

At some point in time the market WILL realise that America is NEVER going to pay off it's debts.
Interest rates will soar past 5%.

Interest payments on new borrowings will also soar (as above the Federal budget deficit is expected to be above $3tn in 2023 with current policies).

The value of the dollar will plunge and lose it's Global Reserve Currency Status.
The Chinese are already planning for that and to take over, with a new Global Reserve "Currency" and a "BRICS bank" to takeover from the Federal Reserve as the largest influencer of global monetary policy.
The Chinese think the American government is already bankrupt. (So do the Russians.)
The Chinese are expecting a fire sale of US assets in the not too distant future. They have already carried out rough surveys to determine America's net worth - it's natural resources, farmland and water resources.

The collapse in the value of the dollar and the rise in interest rates will cause economic carnage in the United States.
America is running trade deficits of over $500bn a year.
The price of all imports will double in a fairly short space of time, while wages are held down. There will be an even greater over supply of labor.

This realisation by the market that the American government will never repay it's debts is still some time away.
But it WILL happen if there is not a complete reversal of government policy (by BOTH parties).

The official CBO headline deficit charts ignore the cost of debt servicing (the cost of interest payments).

According to the CBO's own forecasts elsewhere, interest payments are expected to rise by about $750bn a year to $1tn a year in 2020 (and keep rising).
There is a lot of uncertainty over where interest rates will be in a few years.
(CBO estimates are that new government debt will be issued at 5% interest in 2020.)
The long term historical average for US 10 year government debt is between 5 and 6% (averaged over the last 200 years).
Other scenarios are more likely.

Some people (and in at least parts of the CBO site) are quoting US National Debt levels of $11.5tn.
This is just financial trickery.
The National Debt is now nearly $17tn.
GDP is $15.85tn as at end of 2012.
Debt to GDP ratio is now 107%.
Canada uses a similar piece of accounting trickery to the US to reduce their officially reported national debt. No other countries do and most statisticians and real economists ignore the sleight of hand by the US government to reduce the reported National Debt to $11.5tn.
(Why all the arguments over the debt ceiling if the National Debt is only $11.5tn?
It's just another piece of disinformation by the US government.)

CBO headline predictions
N.B. Note that these headline charts EXCLUDE the cost of interest payments on the rapidly rising National Debt.

The CBO itself predicts that debt servicing will increase by about $750bn a year to $1tn by 2020 and continue to rapidly increase thereafter.

(After 2020 the demographic time bomb of more retirees per worker really kicks in.)

These charts are therefore pure fantasy.
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/06-05-Long-Term_Budget_Outlook_2.pdf

CBO information on future government spending plans

The CBO revised their projections in May with some even more ludicrous assumptions in order to predict that the deficit is going to come down.

The CBO assessment of the deficit profile relies on every trick in the book. The assumption is that all of the variables that weigh on the deficit will be improving over the next few years. Tax collections will remain at historically high levels. Government spending will decline as the economy improves. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be kicking $95Bn into the coffers. Social Security will cost less than previously thought, the same favorable result is assumed for both Medicare and Medicaid. And of course, there will be no wars or military incursions that have to be paid for. But, by far, the biggest driver of the reduced deficits will come from the robust economic recovery that they predict to occur (which are totally without foundation and frankly ludicrous).
This is the CBO forecast for top line GDP growth:

Healthcare spending is set to rise by about $300bn in 2014.
Partly as a result of more people having access to free healthcare, but mostly due to the steep rise in Healthcare premiums of between 30% and 100% in 2014 (it varies a lot by State).

This additional $300bn will be almost exclusively paid for by the middle class, who will not be able to spend it on everything else.
The consumer is already tapped out as demonstrated by the decline in personal credit.
The only personal debts that are rising are Student Loans and subsidized auto loans.
Other debt, e.g. credit card debt, is going down.

The economic indicators have nosedived off a cliff since early April.
Recent data issued last week indicates that recession is not that far away - both the NY and Philly Fed data had negative prints indicating recession plus there was the major 16.5% decline in new housing starts.

The job numbers are also being dramatically overstated.
The aggregate job numbers for 2013 show the Establishment (business) survey reporting a total of 480,000 more jobs than the Household survey so far this year.

The reasons are two fold :-
400,000 more people now have a second (or third) poorly paid part time job to keep body and soul together.
The BLS Birth/Model is overstating the number of people employed in new business startups by around 100,000 people so far this year.

Analysts are currently expecting company earnings growth to be +22% (annualised) for Q2, when earnings growth for the last 12 months has been +0.4% and the latest economic data indicates recession soon.
The recent rise in the value of the US Dollar will also not help foreign earnings reported in dollars or exports, if it is maintained.
Expect a large number of downgrades to analysts forecasts before Q2 earnings start being reported in July.
This will also lead to downward revisions to GDP growth forecasts for 2013.

Eventually the CBO will revise their GDP forecasts again.
They will need very substantial downward revision.
America will be very lucky to see 2% growth a year for the next 10 years (the average rate it has been since 2001).

2. How the government and the Federal Reserve are WRECKING the US economy

Fixing America's current economic ills won't come about by Fed printing - which makes things much WORSE.

It will only come about if ordinary people's disposable incomes start rising instead of plummeting as they currently are.

Both government and Federal Reserve policy are the EXACT opposite of what is required to improve things.

What needs to happen to fix America's economic ills

Immediate cuts of over $1tn a year in Corporate Welfare.

Immediately raise the personal income tax thresh hold from $8,700 to $45,000. More than reversing the huge $200bn tax hike handed out to the middle class and the working poor in the fiscal Cliff deal. It would be a $500bn TAX BREAK, almost all of it going to middle earners and below.

Stop the $1tn a year bailout to the big banks which is increasing food & gas prices.

Break up the Corporate cartels that now operate in each major industry.
Reinstate the Rule of Law.
Jail senior bankers for 30+ years for their white collar crimes. Fine the big banks $200bn for the same.

Completely reform Corporation Tax. Current policy is strongly in favor of large multinationals and strongly against small businesses.
Set a flat Corporate tax rate of about 25% - no loopholes, no tax breaks whatsoever.
Make the first $100,000 tax free to give a huge tax break for small and medium businesses.

Nick Leeson and Barings bank vs the Federal Reserve and America

The Fed are behaving in exactly the same way as Nick Leeson, who kept doubling down on his bets that the Nikkei would turn around and start rising again in the early 1990's.
The Nikkei was way over valued at the time - just like US Treasuries are now.
It was a sure fire losing trade.
Nick Leeson broke Barings Bank.
Barings Bank had been a profitable institution for 230 years - it was founded in 1762.
The Federal Reserve private bank is going to do the same thing to the whole of America.
America has also been a profitable institution for about 230 years.

The Federal Reserve's sure fire losing bet

The Fed is currently making healthy profits from it's greatly expanded balance sheet - $96bn for 2012.
But just a small rise in interest rates will turn these current profits into losses.

The Fed is now doubling and tripling down on a 100% sure fire losing bet (they are exactly akin to the worst kind of rookie trader).

They are increasing their balance sheet by $1tn a year ad infinitum, by buying US Treasuries at record high prices and overpaying for impaired mortgage debt in QE3.

WHEN (not if) interest rates start rising back towards normal historical levels the Fed will start making losses.
The longer the Fed continues with their current policy of buying huge quantities of debt at extremely high prices the greater these future losses will be.

Instead of returning a health sum to the US Treasury each year, the Fed will call upon the US Treasury (i.e. taxpayers) to pay for their losses.

These future payments by the US Treasury to the Federal Reserve private bank have not been factored into future deficit or National Debt calculations.

The Federal Reserve will not be able to escape the path that it is on.
There is no way out.
The Fed is already buying US debt equivalent to the ENTIRE annual government deficit every year.
There is an extreme shortage of other buyers at current rates.
The Fed will not be able to reduce their balance sheet at any stage in the future without taking a very substantial loss.

Any selling by the Fed in any quantity would lead to a dramatic decrease in the price of US Treasuries (and other US debt held on the Federal Reserve's balance sheet).
The Federal Reserve is by far the largest player in the market for US debt - they are greater than all the other Central Banks put together.
The market has already priced in that the Fed will be buying $1tn of US debt a year ad infinitum and any change in that policy (even without actually buying or selling anything) would dramatically lower the perceived worth of US debt.

The interest rate for 10 year government debt averaged over the last 200 years is between 5 and 6%.
An interest rate of between 5 and 6% is the historical norm.
Markets ALWAYS revert back to historical norms sooner or later (unless they cease to exist entirely).

Source : Société Générale Institutional Research

10 Year US Treasuries currently have an interest rate of 2%.
Some estimates put the break even point for the Fed at 4.5% at the end of 2013 (below this and the Fed makes a profit).
Some estimates put it as low as 2.5%.
There is no doubt it is closer to the latter number.
You have to factor in the future losses on the huge amounts of debt the Fed has already bought while the 10 year note has averaged between 2.5% and 3% over the last 4 and a half years ($2.1tn from mid 2008 to January 2013).
You have to factor in the $1tn of US debt the Fed will be buying each year while the 10 Year note is paying around 2% interest, as it currently is.

The future Federal Reserve bank crisis is already set in stone alongside the US sovereign debt and bank crises.
By the end of 2013, if not earlier, the future will of already been set in stone. It is only a question of when these future events happen.

It wouldn't be so bad if taking these huge future Fed trading losses was helping now but the current Fed printing is making things MUCH WORSE.
It is raising food and gas prices and lowering the disposable incomes of ordinary people. see 4

It is really funny (and extremely sad too) when press articles somehow suggest the Federal Reserve is somehow helping or somehow knows what it is doing when it has repeatedly demonstrated on numerous occasions over many years that it is completely clueless and makes things MUCH WORSE.

3. College education policy

The current policy of making people go to college and rack up $10,000's of debts to obtain increasingly worthless degrees should be reversed.

It is DRAMATICALLY increasing the cost of college education.
If there is more demand for something, prices ALWAYS increase.
If something is more prevalent, like the number of people with degrees, the value ALWAYS goes down.

One of the items that has increased in price the most over the last decade, is the price of college education. It is increasing in price by about 10% a year.

The ONLY beneficiaries of current policy are the colleges.
Maybe you should look at the campaign donations to Obama from large colleges. They want the current system to be enhanced and extended.
It is in the interests of ALL Americans (except those running the colleges) that current policy be reversed.

Most jobs, except things like the sciences, engineering and doctors, don't need a college degree.
It would be much better if we returned to the old system, where most people received on the job training, while earning a basic wage - not racking up student debts.

About 40% of current college entrants don't even graduate.
They still get landed with the student debt that they have incurred.
The default rate on student loans has recently started increasing dramatically.

The total amount of student loans has just gone past $1tn.
It is now larger than the sub prime mortgage scandal.

Nearly half of all college graduates don't end up in a job that requires a college degree.
Over one third of college graduates now end up in a job that does not even require a High School diploma.

284,000 graduates last year, ended up in a job paying minimum wage.
They are still saddled with $10,000's of student loan debt.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/31/college-graduates-minimum-wage-jobs_n_2989540.html

Under half the people that currently enter college, get any benefit from starting a college course.
OVER HALF the people that currently enter college DO NOT get any benefit from a college education. They just get saddled with $10k's of student debt.
If you take into account the drop out rates, about 36% of current college entrants end up in a job that needs a college degree.
Those who do get a benefit from a college education are paying a much higher price for their college degree than they should be and a much higher price than they used to pay in the past.
This doesn't affect the wealthy very much - if you have $10m in the bank paying another $50k for college education isn't an issue.
Paying $50k or so more than people should be paying for a college degree is only an issue for the 99%.

53% of recent graduates are jobless or underemployed.
Youth unemployment has got worse since this article was written a year ago.

N.B. This article does not take into account the drop out rate, which is now 40%.
How many of those people are now unemployed or in very low paying jobs?
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/53-of-recent-college-grads-are-jobless-or-underemployed-how/256237/

The student loan debt crisis in 9 charts
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/student-loan-debt-charts

4. Why current Fed policy is pushing up inflation and costing jobs.

The large banks currently have $1.7tn of "excess" reserves.

A large part of the current $1.7tn of excess bank reserves is currently being used for short term speculation by the speculative banks - mostly on the stock and bond markets, but enough is going to buy up commodities, principally oil and food to make a sizeable difference.

The oil price is rising against a backdrop of a lowering of future global GDP forecasts.

Rising inflation for basic necessities will make the coming economic slowdown much worse.
Particularly in developing countries like China, but also for most of the populations of America and Europe - they are going to have less disposable income with higher gas and food prices.

Inflation in the developing world and the Brics will eventually follow through in increased prices of their exports, compounding the inflation issue in the developed world.

Meanwhile the Fed continues to pump out new money to the big banks at the rate of $1tn a year.
Adding to the money the banks have available for speculation and thus increasing inflation.
The Fed balance sheet has just gone past $3tn.
It will be $4tn by the end of 2013.

Current Fed policy LOWERS future global GDP growth.
Proportionally more money is spent on basic commodities, there is less money available to buy manufactured goods and manufactured goods will increase in price.

This is basically the inflation tax, when the Fed prints too much money.
It hurts the poor and the middle class hardest.

It will particularly hit people on low wages and fixed incomes, e.g. seniors.
The current method of calculating CPI (Consumer Price Index) drastically understates the contribution to inflation by gas & food.
The inflation adjustment made to pensions every year is well below the inflation rate experienced by pensioners.
The same applies to those on benefits.

Those in lower paid employment will also suffer.
Basic wages are largely set by reference to CPI.
Official CPI numbers are well below the inflation rate actually experienced by those with lower incomes.

There will not be raging inflation.
Basic wages are being held down by the large global oversupply of labor and high unemployment in the West.
The effects of the Feds money supply inflation will not be reported in any news headlines.
It's effects will largely be hidden from official statistics, but it will be insidious nonetheless.
It WILL be a further acceleration of the steady erosion of the living standards of the poor and the middle class that has happened over the last decade in the West.
It WILL make poor people, around the entire world, poorer.

Current Fed policy and Goldman Sachs speculation will cause a deeper recession in America in 2013.
It will also cause higher unemployment.
Adding the Feds extremely poor monetary policy to the current extremely poor economic policies of just about every government, will probably be enough to tip the entire global economy over the edge into global recession.

The big banks and the big oil companies don't care though - they are making lots of money out of other people's suffering.

Money printing and QE3 amounts to theft from our children

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Davide Serra, founder of leading hedge fund Algebris, and Nouriel Roubini, the head of Roubini Economics known as Dr Doom for predicting the financial crisis, set out the case against those who think quantitative easing (QE) and low rates are benign policy tools.
“When governments borrow, they are taking money from our children. QE is the same – we are lowering returns for future generations. QE creates an inter-generational dilemma,” Mr Serra said.
Mr Roubini warned that central bankers need to think about turning off the cheap money tap or risk creating another, possibly even worse, bubble.
He argued that policymakers have encouraged markets and individuals to take on crippling levels of debt by leaving asset bubbles unchecked in a boom and coming to borrowers’ rescue in a crisis.
"Ten years ago we had the Greenspan put, now we have the Bernanke put. What are the long term economic consequences?" he asked.
He said loose monetary policy is creating a system biased to creating bubbles, "that's why we've been moving to more unconventional territories" in policy responses - from low rates to QE to credit easing.
"Central bankers have affected the behaviour of the private sector. They have to think about that," he said. "As you do a slow exit out of QE you may create another bubble and make another crisis.
“At some point, the consequence of postponing deleveraging is that you end up with zombie banks, zombie companies, zombie households, and zombie governments.”

Read more at :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/davos/9822372/Money-printing-amounts-to-theft-from-our-children.html

How Goldman Sachs make millions betting on the starvation of others

Johann Hari: How Goldman gambled on starvation
Speculators set up a casino where the chips were the stomachs of millions. What does it say about our system that we can so casually inflict so much pain?

By now, you probably think your opinion of Goldman Sachs and its swarm of Wall Street allies has rock-bottomed at raw loathing. You're wrong. There's more. It turns out that the most destructive of all their recent acts has barely been discussed at all. Here's the rest. This is the story of how some of the richest people in the world – Goldman, Deutsche Bank, the traders at Merrill Lynch, and more – have caused the starvation of some of the poorest people in the world.
It starts with an apparent mystery. At the end of 2006, food prices across the world started to rise, suddenly and stratospherically. Within a year, the price of wheat had shot up by 80 per cent, maize by 90 per cent, rice by 320 per cent. In a global jolt of hunger, 200 million people – mostly children – couldn't afford to get food any more, and sank into malnutrition or starvation. There were riots in more than 30 countries, and at least one government was violently overthrown. Then, in spring 2008, prices just as mysteriously fell back to their previous level. Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, calls it "a silent mass murder", entirely due to "man-made actions."
Earlier this year I was in Ethiopia, one of the worst-hit countries, and people there remember the food crisis as if they had been struck by a tsunami. "My children stopped growing," a woman my age called Abiba Getaneh, told me. "I felt like battery acid had been poured into my stomach as I starved. I took my two daughters out of school and got into debt. If it had gone on much longer, I think my baby would have died."
Most of the explanations we were given at the time have turned out to be false. It didn't happen because supply fell: the International Grain Council says global production of wheat actually increased during that period, for example. It isn't because demand grew either: as Professor Jayati Ghosh of the Centre for Economic Studies in New Delhi has shown, demand actually fell by 3 per cent. Other factors – like the rise of biofuels, and the spike in the oil price – made a contribution, but they aren't enough on their own to explain such a violent shift.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-goldman-gambled-on-starvation-2016088.html

Goldman Sachs just announced that it made another $400m in 2012 speculating on Food prices.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/goldman-sachs-food-prices_n_2525571.html

Goldman Sach's food speculation turns Global Hunger into Wall St profit
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/01/22-5