In 2001 Alan Greenspan at the Fed (Federal Reserve) lowered the interest rate to try to rejuvenate the economy after the fallout of the .com bubble burst. History will record that Greenspan went from the sublime to the ridiculous when he cut the interest rate to 1%. This set off a spate of irresponsible borrowing and lending the effects of which are still being dealt with today.The banks took advantage of this by starting to offer mortgages to subprime borrowers. Subprime borrowers are borrowers with a poor credit rating (specifically a FICO (credit) score of < 620). Typically these are individuals who habitually are unable to make credit card payments, or those who have suffered a foreclosure or bankruptcy. In the past they wouldn’t be able to get a loan, but thanks to the low interest rate, some could now afford the payments. With great fanfare out went the ads: “Send us your poor, your homeless, your great creditless masses!” Lured by the prospect of home ownership and lulled by the chimera of ‘buy now, pay later’, loans were issued as fast as the printers could print them.

Banks noticed that the default rates were lower than they expected. This led them to think that there was an untapped market in subprime lending. They developed many products, of which 3 were common 1) Variable rate mortgage with a higher rate due to the risk, 2) An interest only loan where they would start paying off the capital after an initial period and 3) low fixed rate initially, resetting to market rate after a few years.

The people who took these loans did so for two principal reasons 1) they hoped their income/credit would improve during the initial period of the loans and 2) the housing market was so hot, they hoped to use the newly gained equity in their homes to refinance the loans with more agreeable terms. Regrettably, Alan Greenspan, noting the now uncontrolled inflation, agressively started to increase the interest rates in 2004 right back up to around 5% and beyond.

For people with loans of type 1) and 3) above, the loans were typically huge so these interest rate increases made the payments impossible to cover, leading to defaulting. Those with loans of type 2) were pushed over the edge when the capital component of their loan kicked in.

Now, were it not for the avarice of the bankers, this crisis would have ended there; that is, a large number of repossessions but no further economic upheavel. However, bankers are weasels and behind the scenes they were pulling more ridiculous stunts.

Behind the scenes, bankers were looking to mitigate the risk of this subprime debt and also to make more profit on profit by creating and selling subprime mortgage bonds. To accomplish this they pooled together all subprime debt. Next they broke the subprime debt into levels. Suppose there were 3 banks involved in a given mortgage. The banks that would get hit by a default first were put into the lower levels and the banks that would be hit last were put into higher levels. By doing so, each level bore a reduced amount of the total risk. Now, many financial institutions that cannot purchase subprime debt were able to get around this limitation by purchasing bonds in the higher levels (less risk) of these mortgage bonds. Now, subprime debt was distributed all around the world to various institutions in this masked mortgage debt trading instrument.

So when the debt hit the fan, the big institutions which normally make loans to one another on a regular basis to keep the economy rolling, suddenly mistrusted one another. No one knew who held what amount of subprime debt. As a result the overnight lending rate went sky high and the Fed had to step in to push cash into the economy to help stave off a liquidity crisis — a crisis where cash flow starts to freeze.

At the time of this writing (Dec 2007) we are beginning to see the end result of this crisis. The large financial houses are beginning to crumble under the weight of their own stupidity. Just yesterday financial giant Morgan Stanley reported its first quarter loss in its 73 year history. Even more alarming, in seeking to assuage their woes, not only are they turning to the US government for help, but have successfully enlisted the help of the Chinese Government.

What may not be obvious, but should have the reader seeing red is that as the result of the irresponsibility of US financial institutions, we’re witnessing a wide scale buy out of US assets and institutions. What’s more, who speaks for the countless duped masses who have lost homes, equity and security as the result of this mass irresponsibility? There can be only a partial answer in paraphrasing Herbert Hoover who said: “Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.” In this situation it is the financiers who tinker with the economy. But it is the working class that must work and suffer.

AID · alan greenspan · ale · bank · banker · bankruptcy · bubble · Chinese Government · Economy · fed · federal reserve · Federal Reserve System · finance · financial giant · Herbert Hoover · http · inflation · interest rate · king · liquidity crisis · MIT · Morgan Stanley · mortgage · prime · Red · subprime · subprime mortgage finance recession economy · the fed · United States · US Federal Reserve · US government · writing

On this anniversary of Sept 11, I am privy to a pre-release of a recent report from the 9/11 committee.  The report details the wholesale destruction of the US economy by Al Qaeda operatives operating within the United States in a coordinated strategy to bring the US economy to its knees. 

Evidently the terrorist attacks on Sept 11, 2001 were really just a smokescreen for the more prolonged strategy to destroy our economy.  It started with Fedr Al Grin, a high ranking operative deeply embedded in the US banking system, decided to lower interest rates under the guise of stabilizing the economy. 

Below is a transcript of the interrogation of the recently captured Al Qaeda operative Hanny P’Alsin:

This [Fedr Al Grin's actions] led to freely available money which the “infidels gulped up like candy.”  Fedr Al Grin smiled happily watching the infidels load up on overpriced housing and cars they couldn’t afford until 2005 when he started to tighten the noose he had placed around the necks of the infidels.

In 2005 Fedr Al Grin started to raise the interest rates, again under the guise of protecting the economy, and the foolish infidels fell for it.  Suddenly they all began to realize that they were living beyond their means as the money supply evaporated.  Fedr Al Grin played the clarinet as the mortgage market burned.  The Department of Homeland defense became wise to Fedr Al Grin and had him removed from office.  Under water boarding at Abu Ghraib, Fedr Al Grin admitted to many of his sins and wrote an expose detailing the turbulent times he had overseen. 

However, while Fedr Al Grin was on one hand admitting to the evils of the system he had overseen, he had already placed a backup, his protoge Bin Bernik in place.  Bin Bernik watched as banks suffered and fell.  In their weakest moment, he offered help with a secret system to bail them out with infidel taxpayer dollars.  Bin Bernik was well trained by Fedr Al Grin to use a financial terrorist tactic to counterfeit US treasury notes.  By printing too many of them and using this counterfeit money to bail out and own financial institutions, Ben Bernik was and is covertly taxing the entire infidel population into bankruptcy.

One by one the mighty infidels fell.  Bear Sterns, survivor of the great depression sacrificed itself at the feet of Ben Bernik and his plan.  Freddie and Fannie, sacrificed themselves to Bin Bernik saddling the infidels of America with $5 trillion dollars in debt in a single weekend.  Even to this very day, the great intelligence of this plan is still giving fruit.  Lehman Brothers of New York is faltering, soon to fall. 

The US infidel automakers are also rallying to the cry of Bin Bernik.  They too want this free money which secretly bankrupts the US economy.  Airlines, insurance companies, all too big to fail, will sing the song of Bin Bernik to their destruction.  Bin Bernik will happily supply all these companies with counterfeit currency and thus dilute the savings of all the infidels until their lavish economy implodes.

On this anniversary of 9/11 we as Americans have come to realize that all our problems exist overseas.  Clearly this latest report serves only to amplify our need for our continued efforts in the Middle East occupying more sovereign nations to ensure our freedom.  I call on all Americans to pick one of the non-invaded ’stans (Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan) for immediate attack.  It doesn’t matter which one, clearly any country ending in ’stan will harbor some sort of terrorist.  Only in so doing will we secure freedom for our children and security at home.

9/11 · Al Grin · Al Qaeda · ale · Allan Greenspan · America · anniversary of 9/11 · anniversary of Sept 11 · bank · banking · bankruptcy · bear sterns · Ben Bernake · Ben Bernik · cent · Department of Homeland · Economy · fannie · fannie mae · fed · federal reserve · Fedr Al Grin · financial terrorist · freddie · freddie mac · great depression · Henry Paulson · high ranking operative · ILS · insurance · interest rate · king · lehman brothers · middle east · MIT · mortgage · New York · operative · Pakistan · printing · quote · Red · Tajikistan · Turkmenistan · United States · USD · Uzbekistan

PDF Version: AncientInjustice.pdf

Growing up, my Jewish education consisted of an after school program (‘cheider’ to the Yiddish inclined) while I attended public school by day.  On my walk to Hebrew School I would often try to marry the two bodies of knowledge from the two respective school systems.  A happy romance occurred around 1987 between the religious and secular bodies of knowledge.  As many may recall 1987 was the year of the big crash on the stock market.[1]  Debt and the economy were on the lips of many in those days.

In the secular world there was tremendous talk of personal and national debt, interest rates, unemployment and the like.  All the while, the Torah I was reading in Hebrew school was definitely running on about the sabbatical forgiveness of debt and the precept that “there should be no poor among you”. (Deut 15:1-4)  Now my mental image of the ancient Israelites was that of a pastoral, agrarian people.  With hindsight I can say that this image was only slightly misguided.  Despite the rumored grandeur of the Davidic kingdom, archaeologists hold that their society was more rural than urban.

But this left me with a theological problem:  I saw debt as a product of banks which were on city streets.  I failed to conjure an image of rolling agricultural fields dotted with banks and/or ATMs at the Temple gates. (Parenthetically, it turns out that if the Gospels have any historical veracity, there may have been just such an ancient equivalent of an ATM at the Temple gates.  More to follow shortly.)  Failing to imagine ancient banks, I was puzzled about what the ancient Israelites knew of debt and how then did this prescient warning against the accumulation of debt make it into the Torah?  I questioned my Hebrew school teacher along these lines and I was given the answer that ‘the Torah contained the writ word of God and all His wisdom.  It was written for all times and addressed all the problems that we would encounter until the end of days.’

Platitudes such as this are to young inquisitive men, such as I was, like drinking sea water when thirsty:  quenching only at first and then leaving you more thirsty than ever.  If my teacher’s answer was to hold water (pun intended) then there were conspicuous absences from the ‘writ word of God’.  Where were the foundations for democracy?  Where were the specific prohibitions against slavery (beyond the sabbatical release of Hebrew slaves)?  Where was the discussion about protecting the environment beyond the scant ordinances for burying excrement beyond the outskirts of camp (Deut 23:14)?  From those grandiose absences there were more mundane absences like: Where were the prohibitions against smoking and where were the prohibitions against high cholesterol foods?  My attempts to marry the religious and secular belief systems were thwarted by the absence of these secular guidelines which I had determined to be legitimate and necessary.  After a brief flirtation the attempted marriage failed in divorce with the judgment pronounced by my rationality decreeing that the Torah was not indeed the writ word of God.

Literalists may be tempted by the previous sentence to toss this work out of hand directly into the fire.  Indeed this may provide needed warmth to those suffering the effects of debt.  Just the same, with a bit of patience on both sides of the theist/atheist debate, I believe there is commonality to be found in the good intentions of the Torah.  While we may debate its authorship I will not debate that it was written with the best of intentions.  Further, I hold that it was written to describe an ideal rather than the actual practice of the day.  There is a common modern Israeli expression: “The synagogue I don’t go to is Orthodox.”  Similarly, I believe that the Torah describes an ideal set out for the people to follow which was likely, based on archaeological evidence, considerably different than religion actually practiced by the ancient Israelites.  Specifically, archaeology reveals the rampant practice of polytheism and idolatry up to the Babylonian exile.[2]  Biblical archaeology contends that the Torah was a compendium of tales written by a reformist movement railing against the practices of the day.  Setting aside the issue of biblical authorship, I will continue the discussion in the context of the good intentions of the author presently.

The now dubious authorship of the Torah made my original question even more pronounced.  If the Torah was not written by God, then who wrote it and how were the ancient Israelites aware of debt and its effects?  My research would lead me to the field of biblical archaeology.  I studied the works of William Dever and Israel Finklestein amongst others with the following results.  The ancient Israelites never conquered Canaan as told in the Torah canon.  They were instead Canaanites themselves who survived and replaced a decaying social order with a more egalitarian one.  For those interested in how I arrived at this conclusion there is a wonderful précis of biblical archaeology available on Public Broadcastings’ NOVA series: “The Bible’s Buried Secrets.”[3]  There you’ll find a terrific summary of all the archaeological and scientific findings to date.  I only wish this series had existed at the outset of my research for it would have saved me much trudging through many inaccessibly written academic works on the topic.  Researching biblical archaeology was much like archaeology itself: sifting through piles of academic detritus to yield occasional relics and then putting the pieces together.

So, accepting for the moment that the Israelite race emerged from the nadir of the Canaanite civilization, Zephaniah 1:11 becomes ever more clear:
“The dwellers of Machtesh [, a quarter of Jerusalem,] howl;/ For all the tradesmen [nation of Canaan] have perished, All who weigh silver are wiped out.”
Two things are critical in this passage.  First the time of Zephaniah, well past that of the Canaanite era, and second the reference to the weighing of silver.  Zephaniah was not admonishing the Canaanites but rather the Jewish merchants of Jerusalem who were acting like Canaanites.[4]  As to the reference to the weighing of silver, silver was then as it is now, a monetary metal.  All throughout history, every society has been plagued by the manipulation of their currency leading to their ultimate downfall.  Economists call the process seigniorage gain.

Seigniorage gain is the process by which the minter (usually the government) gains on the difference between the face value of the coin and the actual value of the metal used to make it.  I often think it is the job of economists to construct palatable names for what in the end turns out to be sheer larceny.  Those unfamiliar with the term may be more familiar with the contemporary synonyms such as ‘inflation’.  Whatever you choose to call it, ‘a lemon by any other name would taste as sour’ and inflation, currency manipulation, or seigniorage gain is quintessentially a tax on the middle class leading to widespread debt, poverty and wealth inequality.  It is a fundamental violation of the biblical injunction to have “fair weights and measures” (Deut 25:13-16).

It is my supposition that it was an economic collapse brought about by currency manipulation which spelled the end of the Canaanite civilization.  I will support this supposition by reviewing the log roll of history vis a vis currency manipulation and the subsequent unfolding of the relevant civilization.  Biblical archaeology tells us that the proto-Israelites literally fled for the hills in the face of the collapse of the Canaanites.[5]  There they regrouped and sought to set themselves apart from the evils of their past.  After the dust had settled they returned with a renewed spirit and purpose to set out a more equitable system.  To that end they developed laws against the accumulation of debt and the slavery that results.  Those laws were later canonized in the Pentateuch around the end of the Babylonian exile (4th to 6th centuries BCE).[6]

Some 600 years later we know that these laws were largely being ignored and that corruption again loomed large.  We have the historical testimony of the gospels of Luke and John which recount Jesus’ banishing of the money changers from the temple gates.  Around the time of the year 0 CE Roman currency was the common currency in the holy land.  These coins typically bore the images of pagan gods and were unacceptable for use in temple worship.  At the temple gates, benches of money changers would exchange these coins, at predatory exchange rates, to Levite coins for use in temple services.  These same money changers would charge the Levites unreasonable rates to change these coins back into Roman coins such that the Levite priests could make purchases in the markets.  Jesus found the entire process abominable and forcibly drove them from the temple.[7]  Whether you believe the historical veracity of the gospels is beside the point here.  What is known is that currency manipulation was clearly on the mind of the authors of the gospels and the gospels were known to be written around this time (admittedly within 400 years).  As a pertinent aside, the word ‘Bank’ comes from the Latin for ‘bench’ precisely referring to this historical antecedent.[8]  I believe it is social disarray caused by the financial ruin of Israel which led to its overthrow by the Romans.  There is textual evidence for this in the bible itself:  Jeremiah 7:11 reads “Is this house, whereupon My name is called, become a den of robbers in your eyes?”  Amos 5:7 reads “Ah you who trample the heads of the poor into the dust of the ground, and make the humble walk a twisted course.”

It is an irony of history, if not a recurring leitmotif, that the very same financial snare which destroyed Israel also destroyed its captors.  In Hebrew school we all learned of the famous (infamous) “Judea Capta” coin.[9]  This coin depicts the pride of the Romans in defeating ancient Israel.  It is in the silver or precious metal content of roman coinage with which we can track the decline of the Roman Empire.  The backbone coin of the Roman economy was the Denarius which started out with a silver weight of approximately 4.5 grams.  Have you ever noticed the ridges on the edge of a quarter?  These same ridges were present on the Denarius and there intention is to make any shaving of the coin obvious.  This made it harder for individuals to debase the currency but the government was free to mint coins with less and less silver content.  By the year 274 CE under Aurelian’s reign the coins had almost no silver content at all.[10]  The causes of the fall of Rome are admittedly complex, including the outsourcing of their military defense to barbarian mercenaries.  Just the same, the economic decline of Rome is certainly one of the principle causes and is yet another exemplar of the debasement of currency leading to the debasement of the underlying civilization.

The collapse of the Roman Empire led the world into the dark ages.  The Christian religion took hold championing the cause of the poor all through these long dark ages.  Eventually a fair monetary system was developed called the tally stick system.[11]  Very strict Christian based laws against usury (interest) prevented any monetary abuse.  However, in the 1500’s Henry VIII, obviously unaware of the peril, deregulated the economy and allowed for certain forms of usury.[12]  The economic maelstrom unleashed destroyed the English economy.  In the wake of the upheaval and in the aftermath of the English revolution of 1642, the Bank of London was established.  Oddly enough, the initial shares were bought with no other currency than talley sticks.  The bank of England replaced this monetary system with their own manipulated (or ‘fiat’) currency.  Currency manipulation was now institutionalized in the form of this ‘Central Bank’ put in place to ‘protect and regulate’ the money supply.

Just around this time, gold was being used as a currency.  Carrying ones gold on their person could be cumbersome and moreover, dangerous.  A robbery could erase ones savings.  The goldsmiths of the day agreed to hold gold for consumers at a nominal fee and issued them a certificate which they could then use to redeem their deposits.  These little slips of paper were much easier to work with and in a very short time, the slips of paper would be used in transactions instead of gold.  The goldsmiths made an astute observation.  Not all of their clients came to collect their gold at one instant.  As such they could lend out some of the deposited gold at interest making money on money they did not really have.  While this seems relatively harmless provided customers do not all come for their gold at once, it is in fact at the core of everything wrong in the world today.  The fraud is subtle yet essential to understand.  By using gold that say a farmer had deposited to make loans, you are using the hard labour of the farmer to make money with very little labour.  In a nutshell, this practice siphons up the value of labour and puts it in the hands of the advantaged few who are in a position to leverage it.  This is the practice of fractional reserve banking with is with us to this very day.[13]  When a middle class family takes out a loan to get an SUV, the bank does not lend you their money.  They lend you the savings of an auto worker who drives a compact sedan.  The banker turns interest on money s/he never owned and drives a luxury sports car on the profits.  Such is the food chain of fractional reserve banking.  Bankers love the practice for obvious reasons.  Politicians love it because they can finance their projects without reaching for tax dollars.  Projects can now be financed with thusly conjured money with only a nodding concern for inflation and the ever growing national debt. The average person neither loves it nor hates it because they do not understand it.  Hopefully, that is, until now.

The Bank of England was aware of the practice of the goldsmiths but instead of outlawing it, embraced it.  As such they succeeded in protecting and regulating the money supply insofar as her citizens of wealth were concerned but all to the detriment of the English parliament and the general public.  The bank so bankrupted England that England was forced to place a heavy tax burden on its colonies.  The American colonies revolted to the cry against ‘taxation without representation’ in the war of independence of 1762.  By the end of this revolution, with the effects of the Bank of England in mind the Americans set out to “form a more perfect union”.  Into their new constitution section 10 forbids “…emit[ing] Bills of Credit; mak[ing] any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts…”.[14]  It was pursuant to this section that the United States was on the Gold Standard for most of its existence up until 1933.  The Gold Standard ensured that every bill was backed by gold.  Bills printed prior to 1933 were marked “redeemable in gold”.  After 1933 they were marked as only “legal tender”.  The founding fathers knew of the threat of a manipulated currency but that memory and warning was, as we now see, historically fleeting.

The Americans had the first and second Banks of America which again started to manipulate the currency.  Andrew Jackson famously put a temporary stop to the banking cartels saying: “You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, will rout you out.”[16]  For a short while he succeeded.  From 1836 to 1913 the United States was free of a central bank and the currency manipulation they bring with them.

During this hiatus in central banking while financial crises persisted, inflation was flat.  That is to say that one dollar was worth one dollar for this interim period.[17]  This allowed for the accumulations of savings which is the true practice of capitalism.  Indeed by the early 1900’s bankers were concerned with the prevalence of self-financing of business development.  So concerned were the bankers that they sought to reassert themselves and in 1913, taking advantage of a recent (some say engineered) financial crisis, the Federal Reserve was born and central banking was reborn in America.[18]  Again too, the promise of the Federal Reserve was to regulate the money supply and again, so it did, to the advantage of the wealthy few.  As it has always been throughout history, currency manipulation manufactures debt and poverty.  Since the inception of the Federal Reserve, the purchasing power of the dollar has decreased by 95%.  Inflation has increased by 1929% (that’s 19 hundred and twenty nine percent!).[19]  The effect of this is that wealth inequality is now staggering.  As of 2001, in the U.S., the top 20% held 84% of all the wealth.[20]  For those who have trouble dealing with math, what this means is that if you are in the class of the remaining 80% (most of us are) then in a more fairly distributed economy – which would necessarily feature a fair currency – you would have approximately 5 times your current assets.

As common as monetary manipulation is throughout history, so too are the attempted fixes when the system gets out of whack.  A fiat currency (recall a ‘fiat’ currency is an ‘on faith’ currency) is a sort of monetary Golem: this time made of minted coins instead of clay.  Generally it functions impeccably as designed, siphoning wealth upwards but occasionally and often dramatically, it causes large financial upset.  When this Golem takes a swat at its banker creators the solution is to placate it with, yes, ever more printed or minted money.  This maneuver results in one of two results: 1) a temporary stabilization of the monster or 2) a hyperinflationary death when the monster collapses under its own weight.  Note that in either outcome, the best that can be accomplished is a temporary shoring up of the system.  Inevitably, the Golem collapses back into the imaginary ore it came from, only after raping the value of the land and passing it into the hands of the elite few.  Revisiting the economic death of Rome, Nero and other Emperors debased the currency via inflation fiddling and minting as it were while Rome burned.

However, one need not look as far afield to find a terrific example of the hyperinflationary death of an empire.  Just recently, the Weimar republic died just such a death.[21]  In the 1920’s Germany forced under the WWI reparations act to make payments to the victor nations.  The victor nations, most notably France and England who were in their own financial distress due to – you may have guessed by now – their own currency manipulation, pressured the Germans to make good on their obligations.  The German coffers were largely empty and as a result they decided to print money to meet their obligations.  The German citizens were wary of the stability of their currency and began to hoard cash fearing a crisis.  Simultaneously the German creditors began to fear default on their loans and closed the taps of credit.  The German economy stalled and went into a brief bout of deflation.  The Germans did what every other economy has tried all throughout history to solve the problem:  they threw more money into the market to try and jumpstart it.  The German citizens feared for their nest eggs which caused them to attempt to convert any cash they had on hand to real assets.  This unleashed a torrent of cash on the market which immediately lead to hyperinflation.[22]  Hyperinflation is runaway inflation fueled by panic and distrust of the underlying currency.  A corollary to the loss of trust in currency is an inevitable loss of trust in the government that promotes it.  It was thus that the Weimar republic fell leaving a political vacuum in its wake which would soon be filled by the Nazis.  Malcolm Muggeridge once wrote that: “It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.”[23]  History will record that this is equally applicable to the cessation of belief in government.

Historians and economists alike may be quick to point out that there would appear to be a historic precedent for economic spending or stimulus as an escape to recession.  They undoubtedly would point to the Roosevelt era and the “New Deal”.  So hope filled were the citizens of the day that the New Deal was rhapsodized into the Great Depression era musical: ‘Annie’.  Daddy Warbucks swooned “I know the depression is depressing… But we’ll get a new deal for Christmas this year.”[24]  The character Daddy Warbucks was modeled after Paul Warburg.[25]  It was common knowledge at the time that this was so.  Warburg was one of the chief architects of the Federal Reserve which is the United States arm of the Bank of England.  The bitter irony here is that it was the Federal Reserve System which caused and exacerbated the Great Depression.  They were anything but the cure.  The famed economist Milton Friedman spent a lifetime promoting this interpretation of events.  On the occasion of his 90th birthday Ben Bernanke, the current chairman of the Fed said: “I would like to say to Milton… Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”[26]  While I believe that Roosevelt was well intentioned, he was fatally naïve.  His New Deal served only to confiscate all public monetary gold and transfer yet more power to the Federal Reserve to manipulate currency.  The hidden tragedy of the musical Annie is that while she shares a stage with the theatric Roosevelt and Warbucks (Warburg) singing their accolades as her saviour, she is actually praising the instrument of her orphan plight.  (Annie was orphaned due to the financial insolvency of her parents.)

While unwittingly kissing the hand that starves you may be tragic when it occurs on stage, it is far more tragic when it occurs in the real world.  It is still a mainstream notion that Roosevelt’s New Deal was what rescued the Americans from the Great Depression.[27]  Even though all through history, government salvation through spending has led to financial ruin at every attempt some still espouse the idea that it is possible to spend our way out of the damage wrought by currency manipulation.  Currency manipulation is good for bankers and bankers fund business schools which produce bankers.  It is no wonder then that currency manipulation which goes hand in hand with government spending ‘has’ to be a good thing.  If you want to be at the top of this pyramid scheme you have to support the bricks that build it.  In this light, when the financial meltdown of 2008 hit, how did the pyramid builders propose to deal with the ‘Gre08er Depression’?  You guessed it, with more government spending.

Journalists are already pointing out the similarities in circumstances between Barack Obama and Roosevelt.[28]  I believe the comparisons are justified and that Obama is, like Roosevelt, well intentioned but critically misguided.  Mind you, not only is Obama misguided but most people are ill aware of monetary policy and its implications.  Obama promises trillion dollar deficits running for the next many years.[29]  It is his hope that this massive spending will shock the economy back to life.  The only shock it can reasonably hope to achieve though is shocking the Frankenstein of currency manipulation to life to turn on its creator.  The only reason Roosevelt’s New Deal appeared to work was that by the end of WWII, the US had developed tremendous manufacturing capabilities and the US was a burgeoning economy; the US emerged from the Great Depression despite Roosevelt’s New Deal, not because of it.  The situation in this Gre08er Depression is different.  There is no new manufacturing potential, indeed it is declining.  The US is not a burgeoning nation but is instead a declining one.  Thus the only shock government spending is capable of producing on the US economy is an electrocution.

Growing up I had trouble relating to the ancient Israelites I was reading about.  I could relate only to their enslavement in Egypt which I read as an allegory for my forced attendance at school.  Beyond that, they were a people very far from me both spatially and temporally.  My time was dominated by discussions and anxious anticipation of new technologies and new scientific discoveries.  While I could ‘upconvert’ an ordinance to help a neighbour right a fallen cattle to a more modern equivalent of assisting ones neighbour with a crashed computer in general the setting for torah morality written in terms of cattle, oxen and sheep failed to connect with me.  I was always amazed then as to how these seemingly simple people understood concepts such as debt.  Most debt in modern times comes from securing shelter.  In ancient Israel this could be accomplished by erecting four poles and securing canvas.  So where did these biblical injunctions come from, what wrong were they trying to right?

In trying to answer that question I would have to journey through studies of biblical archaeology and general history.  After so doing, I have found a new connection with the ancient Israelites.  They were trying to solve a very old and fundamental problem:  how to govern a large group of people equitably while preventing corruption.  Currency is one of the fundamental cornerstones of any civilization.  It is fundamental to most of our interactions and if it is corrupt, so too will inevitably be anything built on top of it.  Disappointment then comes in reading the scroll of history with each entry echoing the previous:  “Empire rises with high ideals.  The high ideals erode under complacency.  Corruption then leads to inequality and fiscal malaise.  Empire manipulates the currency to buy time.  Empire runs out of time.”

The tenet of monotheism according to the bible started with Abraham.  What the Torah describes as a moment of epiphany is revealed by biblical archaeologists to in fact be a long arduous process which took several hundreds of years.  Key here is that a stated ideal can become a practiced ideal with exertion of effort over time.  It is thus to the commandment that we “should have no poor among [us]” that we must redirect our time and efforts.  I have recently come to a conclusion that the reformed Canaanite predecessors of the world’s ‘big 3’ monotheistic religions likely came to long ago; poverty is not the result of a lack of wealth but instead a lack of justice.

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[1]   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1987)
[2]   William G. Dever: “Did God Have a Wife?”
[3]   http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bible/program.html
[4]   http://books.google.ca/books?id=sIWn6lYS-MQC&pg=PA171
[5]   Smith, Mark “The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel” (pp 6-7)
[6]   McDonald & Sanders, editors of The Canon Debate, 2002, The Notion and Definition of Canon by Eugene Ulrich, pg 4
[7]   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_the_money_changers
[8]   http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bank
[9]   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaea_Capta_coinage
[10]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Roman_Empire#Michael_Rostovtzeff.2C_Ludwig_von_Mises.2C_and_Bruce_Bartlett [11]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talley_stick
[12]  http://books.google.ca/books?id=pnszAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA8
[13]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking#History
[14]  http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A1Sec10.html
[15]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard
[16]  http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quotes_by/andrew+jackson
[17]  http://www.economics-charts.com/cpi/cpi-1800-2005.ht ml
[18]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve
[19]  http://postworthy.com/Worthy/ex/US_Dollar_Purchasing_Power_Decline/205.aspx[20]  http://mwiner.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/wealthdistribution.gif
[21]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920s_German_inflation
[22] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation
[23]  http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/malcolm_muggeridge.html[24]  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2vGeaqM33g
[25]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Warburg#Legacy
[26]  http://www.federalreserve.gov/BOARDDOCS/SPEECHES/2002/20021108/default.htm[27]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal
[28]  http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20081124,00.html
[29]  http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-01-06-obama-economy_N.htm

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Being foreclosed on?  No worries if you follow the example of Jerome Daly, a lawyer and political activist of sorts, who successfully had his mortgage declared null and void. 

In order for a mortgage agreement to be legal, the bank must put up legal ‘consideration’.  That’s a fancy lawyer word for ‘money’ or some such other tangible asset.  The Federal Reserve System creates money for lending as bookkeeping entries and as such, the bank fails to provide any real consideration in the contract.  As a result, the whole thing is null and void and you can’t be foreclosed upon. 

Don’t believe me?  Read it for yourself here:

http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/CreditRiver/1968-12-09judgmentanddecree.pdf

This decision has never been overturned and Daly was able to keep his house.

bank · fed · federal reserve · Federal Reserve System · http · ILS · Jerome Daly · lawyer · lawyer and political activist · legal consideration · mortgage · Mortgage Crisis · pdf · Red · Rome · the fed · US Federal Reserve

For years now, I’ve tried to understand how the Federal Reserve (the Fed) lowers interest rates and how it affects inflation. I mistakenly thought that the Federal Reserve was a wholesaler of money. I thought that it was a Federal institution which under the direction of the government could make money available to banks at a certain lending rate. Thus when the Fed lowered rates to say 3%, the banks could get money at that rate and pass the savings along to their customers by lending money at say 3.5%. I was partially mistaken in my interpretation as to how that affected interest rates. I thought that as a result of people being able to get money at a lower rate, people would spend more, and the more they spent, the more the market could tolerate higher prices for common goods. This is true, but isn’t the full story. So let’s get the full picture.

My first mistake occurred when I assumed the Federal Reserve was a federal institution of any sort. This is not at all true. It is a private bank enacted by an act of congress in 1913 to oversee the US monetary policy. I offer the following interesting nugget of information for those who are interested: It was passed on Dec 23 1913 when most of congress was on vacation, in absence of a proper quorum. If that tidbit piqued your interest, please see this post: http://mwiner.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/terrific-documentary-explaining-the-economy/

So how then does the Fed manage to control interest rates? First off, when you hear of the Fed lowering or raising the interest rate, it isn’t directly lowering or raising the interest rates, it is changing the target interest rate. At a high level, the Fed accomplishes this by controlling the supply of money. Money, just like any other commodity can respond to supply and demand. If there is a lot of money in the economy, interest rates will drop because banks will have an easier time of procuring money to loan. However, having more money in the economy encourages inflation because the value of the currency is lowered by increased supply.

If you want to understand how the Fed manages to expand or contract the supply of money, we need to first understand a few key concepts. The first is partial reserve banking. It was long ago that banks discovered that not every person needed their cash at any given time. It was thus that banks could loan money that technically they didn’t have on reserve. In the US, banks are required to maintain a 10% reserve which means they can loan out 10 times the amount they have on reserve. (This is often referred to as ‘banker’s reach’.)

Next you need to understand what a treasury bill is. A treasury bill is a promise issued to the buyer by the federal government to give you the maturation price of the bill on the maturation date. The bill is always sold at a discount rate, that is a rate, less than the maturation date. For example, a treasury bill may be sold at a discount rate of $950, a maturity rate of $1000 and a maturity date which is a year from now. This means you can buy the bill at $950 and make $50 dollars profit when it matures in a year.

So we now have enough knowledge to work a simple example of how the system works. Suppose that the interest rate is currently 8%. Suppose too that there are 100 people who have $10 each. These 100 people each put $2 in the bank. The bank thus has $200 in reserves and due to partial reserve banking, they can make ten times that amount, some $2,000 in loans. This means they can make a loan of $20 per person.

People typically want to buy things that are 4 times the amount they have on hand. In housing the standard financing model is you must have 1/4 the purchase price in capital. So people with $10 typically want to make a major life purchase which would be $40, but as we see, the bank can easily lend everyone $20, but $40 would be hard to come by at a reasonable interest rate. Thus, people stop purchasing, the economy stalls and the Fed decides to step in.

The Fed does some research and discovers that if the lending rate reduces to 5%, then most people will be able to make the payments and will take out loans and start spending again. So the Fed set the TARGET rate to 5%. To reach this level, the Fed offers to buy a treasury bill the bank has on hand with a maturity value of $500. The bank accepts and now the bank has $700 in reserves. Recall that the bank is allowed to loan out 10 times the amount it has on reserve. So the bank can make $7000 dollars in loans or $70 dollars per person. Since the amount to loan out is plentiful the bank lowers its lending rate to 5% to entice people to take out loans.

It’s important to keep track of the total amount of money in the economy while all this occurs. We started with 100 people having $10 each. Thus there was $1000 in the economy. When the Fed purchased the treasury bill, it printed money to do so. So now there is another $500 dollars in the economy for a total of $1500. You may be scratching your head over the previous sentence, but this is the second part of the misnomer “Federal Reserve”. The Federal reserve is not federal and it doesn’t have any reserves. It prints money to make purchases. I don’t want this post to become a rant against the Fed so I’ll cut it short here and explain the other side of the coin: how the Fed contracts the supply of money.

So now in our moot world, everyone can take out a $30 loan to get the $40 item they’ve been dreaming of. However, one of the principles of a free market is that prices will rise to the maximum that the market will bear. As a result, since most people can afford the $40 item, the market starts charging $42 or $44. Slowly the price creeps up because the value of money has been decreased by an increased supply. In short we are experiencing inflation.

So the Fed sees this situation and decides to curb inflation by raising the target interest rate. By raising the target interest rate, the Fed makes money harder to get, more scarce and thus the market can’t bear higher prices, slowing spending and curbing inflation. To accomplish this, the Fed sells treasury bills. By selling treasury bills, banks that purchase them are forced to spend their reserves to make the purchase, thus pulling cash out of the economy. Recall that banks can loan 10 times the amount they have on reserve. By lowering the amount of cash banks have on reserve, the Fed restricts the bank’s ability to make loans. Since the bank has less money to loan, it must charge more interest to compensate, and the interest rates rise. The key point here is that the difference between the discount rate and the maturity rate must be paid for at some future rate. When the bank comes to collect on this treasury bill, the Fed must pay the bank the promised maturity price. If you have an eye for catching trends then you may have already guessed that the money to pay the difference comes from, yup, you guessed it, printed money.

In conclusion, the Fed controls the supply of money. It accomplishes this by buying and selling treasury bills on the common market. It’s important to remember that when the Fed buys treasury bills it does so with printed money. Also when the Fed issues treasury notes and those notes are redeemed, the difference owed to the purchaser is paid with printed money. This is called a fiat currency, or a currency based on credit — in this case the credit of the United States. It doesn’t take a Harvard ecomonist to realize that every time the Fed runs through one of these cycles of inflation and contraction, that the amount of money in the economy is increased. It is only a question of time before the Fed destroys the currency it relies upon by making it too common. This process is called devaluation. If you want to see devaluation in action, see this graph of the US dollar vs. the Euro over the past 5 years:

http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?from=USD&to=EUR&amt=1&t=5y

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The media coverage of the AIG crisis is completely off the mark.  The Fed DID NOT bail out AIG.  It did something better and worse.  The fed had two choices, 1) bail out AIG or 2) let it go bankrupt.  The Fed made both choices.  It bailed them out per se with an $85 billion dollar loan, taking 80% of the company in the process.  However, the loan came with an 11% interest rate.  This effectively prevents AIG from ever getting back on its feet.  Instead the company has been given time to arrange for the orderly sale of its assets to repay the loan, but AIG will not survive the process.    So the correct coverage of this story would  be to say that AIG has gone bankrupt and the Fed has stepped in to allow for a slow controlled sale of its assets.

aig · ale · bailout · bank · blog · fed · Federal Reserve System · http · interest rate · king · media coverage · the fed · US Federal Reserve · USD

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2005/08/21/business/21real.graphic.html

This is a graph of historical housing prices relative to inflation since 1890.  The graph is indexed to inflation so you are seeing the bubble in house prices above and beyond inflation. 

The take home message to this graph is the following.  Take a look at the average home value over the past 100 odd years.  It seems to average somewhere around $112,000.  Now look at the peak which is somewhere around $180,000.  Dividing through we get a ‘bubble-factor’ = 180/112 = 1.6 .  What that means to you is that if you own a house currently valued at $500,000, if the bubble corrects you’ll actually own a $312,500 house (500/1.6 = 312.5).

Will the bubble correct?  Historically bubbles do one of two things:  1) they correct or 2) they flatten and wait for inflation to catch up with them.  What will this bubble do?  I can’t tell you and neither can any of the supposed experts. 

What caused this bubble?  The Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to as low as 1%.  This flooded the market with money which people invested in housing, since the internet bubble had burst. 

Who benefits from this bubble?  This bubble benefits 3 groups of people, bankers, the recently dead, and people with in laws.  Bankers make huge profits on the the inflated mortgages people must now take out to put a roof over their head.  Those who have recently died (since we’re at the peak of the bubble) benefit as their estate sells their property at the inflated price with record profit.  Hopefully they have children to benefit from the heavily taxed inheritance.  Regrettably, if they don’t have children to pass the benefit on to, then it’ll be hard to enjoy their windfall, being dead and all. 

If you’re alive you never benefit from this type of bubble.  People typically want to move up, that is move to a better home.  Thus you have to sell your current home and move to a better home.  Thus, you make a profit on the sale, but take a hit on the inflated purchase.  Basically it’s like borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and it all ends up even in the wash. 

If you have in laws and can sell at the inflated price and move in with your in laws (avoiding having to buy an inflated property) you may benefit from the bubble by waiting for it to bottom out, if indeed it does.  Living with your in laws may allow you to sell high and buy low, but that assumes the bubble corrects and moreover, living with your parents you may wish you were recently dead.

Who suffers from this bubble?  The most notable group of people to suffer are the first time home buyers.  Entering the market at the peak you’ll be paying 1.6 times what you should hadn’t the bubble occured.  Ultimately all property owners suffer because the bubble leads them to think that they have more money than they actually do.

ale · bank · banker · bubble · cent · fed · federal reserve · Federal Reserve System · head · html · http · inflation · interest rate · Internet · internet bubble · mortgage · real estate · Red · Robert J Shiller · the fed · US Federal Reserve · USD

Growing up I often heard people remark that the “poor get poorer as the rich get richer.”  I was led to believe that this was an unfortunate side effect of a free market economy.  This flaw aside, the free market economy was said to be a much better approach than anything else that had come along.  I spent my time focused on ways of making laissez faire capitalism more compassionate.  We exist in a welfare state and I, living in Canada, live in a society which offers socialized medicine.  Both of these measures are great first steps in assuring the compassion of capitalism however, I was always frustrated knowing that the only true compassion of capitalism would come in allowing everyone to earn wealth.

As I continued to study the problem, imagine my shock and dismay when I learned that we do not live in a free market system.  We live in a central bank monetary system (ie, the Federal Reserve) which has an invisible, moreover, malevolent hand in conducting the nation’s monetary policy.  This may sound like a conspiracy theory however if it was, it’s an awfully dull one given that the chairman of the Federal Reserve openly admits this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x56MpWZh88s
http://broadband.thecomedynetwork.ca/comedy/?vid=19058

Through the Federal Reserve’s mucking with the money supply and the resulting inflation, those with savings saw their savings erode silently falling into the hands of the nations richest few.  In order to escape inflation, you must own debt free assets which index to inflation.  Only the richest few of us can accomplish this and thus evade the silent erosion of our savings into the hands of bankers and the financial elite.  Here are a few graphs showing the effects:

source : http://lanekenworthy.net/2008/03/09/the-best-inequality-graph/

source : http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Central banking (The Fed) is an age old scheme of mob rule over the money supply. 

“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.”
– Mayer Amschel Rothschild

It has origins dating back to the temple days when Jesus drove out the money changers.  (The word ‘bank’ comes from the Latin ‘bench’ from which the temple money changers made their predatory exchanges.)  The only way to restore justice and equity is to restore the issuing power over money back to the people.  For more info, please see:

http://inflationtax.blogspot.com/

AID · alan greenspan · ale · America · bank · bank monetary system · banker · banking · blog · Canada · capitalism · cent · central bank · central banking · chair · chairman · Economy · fed · federal reserve · Federal Reserve System · free market · html · http · income disparity · inflation · king · MIT · monetary policy · money changers · piracy · quote · Red · socialized medicine · the fed · US Federal Reserve · wealth · welfare state

“Brent T. White, a University of Arizona law school professor, says that it’s in the homeowners’ best financial interest to stiff their lenders and that it’s not immoral to do so.”

– http://www.latimes.com/classified/realestate/news/la-fi-harney29-2009nov29,0,3801270.story

This story, suggests that mortgage holders politely flip the bird to their debtors when they come to collect on underwater mortgages.  The argument provided is that when times were good, the banks were negligent and irresponsible in handing out loans.  As such, now that times are bad, it’s fine to simply walk away, and you should do so with a clear conscience.  I agree with the message but not with the reasoning.

The real reason is that you may think the bank has offered real money to the previous seller of your home; not so.  The bank instead paid the former seller of your house with money it conjured into existence from another mortgage.  The fractional reserve banking system allows the bank to ‘leverage’ 90% of its deposits, reserving only 10% for those who make periodic withdrawals.  So the money that the bank put up for the house is actually someone else’s deposits which theoretically could be called in on a moment’s notice?

Confused?  Good, you should be.  Suppose your neighbour lent you 5 DVD’s on condition that he might ask for then to be returned at any time.  You then turn around and rent out those 5 DVD’s for a dollar each for 1 week.  If your neighbour doesn’t ask for his DVD’s back during that week, you just made 5 bucks.  But suppose your neighbour comes back 2 days later to reclaim his DVD’s – what then?  Legally, in either case, the DVD’s weren’t yours to rent; the agreement between you and the people you rented the DVD’s to is null and void.  The only difference in the two scenarios was whether you got caught or not in the fraudulent activity.

Believe it or not, the banking system, worldwide, is currently this fraudulent.  The loans a bank issued are from the unwitting depositors funds’.  Only due to the Federal Reserve Act (and similar acts worldwide) is this fraud considered ‘legal’.  Even so, the bank never puts up its own assets for a loan.  As such a successful, yet rarely mentioned case, makes the argument that having failed to put up legal ‘consideration’ (hard assets) for a mortgage, the mortgage is null and void.

Here an article about this decision including links to the actual decision on file.
http://www.martincwiner.com/a-fast-way-out-of-the-mortgage-crisis/

AID · ale · Arizona · bank · banking · Brent T. White · Case · fed · federal reserve · Federal Reserve System · former seller · fractional reserve banking · fractional reserve banking system · http · king · law school professor · mortgage · professor · quote · Red · reserve banking · the fed · University of Arizona · US Federal Reserve

Many discuss, argue and berate the contents of the big three religious texts: the Quran, The Old Testament and The New Testament.  Discussions have been going on for millenia about what is contained therein.  I’ve been more interested, indeed dismayed, by what is missing.  These books are held to be the writ word of God by the adherents of their respective faiths.  Now, if God be the author of these texts, I wonder how it was possible to omit some critical information.

Slavery:  All the aforementioned texts allow slavery.  Sure, they may put limits on it.  They may even dictate humane ways to treat your slaves, but slaves be they just the same.  It was humans, noble humans at least, that put a stop to the practice only not so long ago.  All of humanity has been enriched by the emancipation.  Wouldn’t God know that?

Environment:  “Be fruitful and multiply” the Lord of the Old and New Testament declares boldly.  But what of population control?  What of greenhouse gasses?  The Old Testament contains passages urging the ancient Israelites to bury their excrement outside of the camp to keep the place clean.  But what of the future generations?  Religious texts are supposed to be written for all generations.  Otherwise why should we at a later generation be compelled to abide by them?  So true, at the time of their writing, there was no concern for population control or emission of greenhouse gasses, but there would be for future generations.  Wouldn’t God know that?

Democracy:  Democracy isn’t the perfect solution; far from it.  Just the same it’s far better than any other system that’s come along so far.  Moreover democracies are largely peaceful compared to their predecessors.  So why then is there no mention of it in any of the religious texts?  Why is it a Hellenic invention?  Centuries of warfare might have been averted had democracy taken an earlier hold which it certainly would have if it were sanctioned by the big three religious texts.  Wouldn’t God know that?

Health:  The big three religious texts go to excruciating details into what can and cannot be eaten.  Restrictions of shellfish, rules for butchering methods and the like go on and on for pages and pages.  Yet on those pages we find narry a mention of things which are currently obvious.  How about a few words about high fat, high cholesterol diets?  How about a few words about not smoking?  Now this knowledge may not have been accessible to the people of the day but wouldn’t God know that?

Finance:  All religions have prohibitions against usury.  However, readers must be careful in that when they read these prohibitions they must realize that these prohibitions apply to lending with interest to someone of the same faith.  Lending to others, outside the faith is allowed.  So then what about financial disasters we’ve faced?  They were caused by manipulation of currency and powerful bankers taking control of our financial system.  How about some laws defining a fair monetary system?  How about laws preventing partial reserve banking ( a current system where banks lend money they don’t actually have on reserve )?  How about laws prohibiting the artificial contraction and expansion of the money supply which caused the Great Depression, the Great Inflation of the 70’s and now plays a major part in the current recession of 2008?  Now the people of the day may not have understood these concepts but wouldn’t God know that?

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Corruption and collusion are what is wrong with the economy.  The Federal Reserve (Central Banking) is a criminal organization which uses inflation to manufacture debt.  The tax you pay in income tax or retail tax is simply collateral for the vast sums of inflated money that is printed on behalf of the federal government, a willing accomplice in this scheme. 

A picture is worth a thousand words:

(click to see larger version)

What you’re looking at is a chart of inflation from 1800 on.  Notice the blips that correspond to the war of 1812 and the Civil War of 1863.  Note that aside from these blips, inflation was relatively flat for around 113 years.  Then in 1913 the Federal Reserve was created.  In 1933 FDR confiscated all public monetary gold and removed the gold standard.  In 1971 Nixon removed the last vestiges of the gold standard (the foreign currency gold standard) and the results of this are clear.

What does this mean to you?  It means that any money you save becomes devalued.  Money in the bank is no longer a sure thing.  Inflation makes the funds you hold an investment in the currency.  The Federal Reserve was invented to prevent self-financing and financial independence.  As you can see from the graph above it has been quite successful. 

Who let’s the Federal Reserve continue to operate?  You do.  Apathy and lack of education the keys to the success of the Federal Reserve.  They throw bits of cheese at you in the form of 401K’s and fancy beach houses and watch you scurry after them laughing all the while as they devalue the dollars you earn. 

Inflation is nothing other than a tax.  The ‘tax’ you think of as tax is only collateral on the huge reams of printed money that the Federal Reserve pumps out at the behest of Congress’ bloated budgets.  It siphons value out of all your assets and ensures you remain in debt for as long as possible.

Don’t believe me.  Good, you need to be skeptical to survive in this world.  Here are some starting points for more information:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8484911570371055528
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-594683847743189197

a fun calculator:
http://www.minneapolisfed.org/Research/data/us/calc/

bank · banking · cent · central bank · central banking · Congress · Economy · FDR · fed · federal government · federal reserve · Federal Reserve System · gold · gold standard · Google · html · http · income tax · inflation · king · Nixon · retail tax · the fed · US Federal Reserve · video

In the past few months we’ve witnessed remarkeable events in the market. First we have the Fed bail out of Bear Stearns. What wasn’t widely covered or discussed was that this was effectively a result of a run on a bank.

Modern banking practices partial reserve banking. That is to say that the bank relies on the fact that not every customer requires their funds in cash at any one time. As a result the bank invests your funds during the intervals where you don’t need the cash in your hands. Banks in the US are required to maintain only 10% reserves. A banker can then invest 90% of the banks funds to turn a profit. This is called banker’s reach.

A run on the bank occurs when customers or investors lose confidence in your banking facility and demand their cash back. If enough customers demand their cash, the bank exhausts its reserve and enters a liquidity crisis. This is exactly the fate that befell Bear Stearns. It is interesting to note that Bear Stearns was a financial institution which survived the Great Depression of the 30’s. Had the Fed not acted as it did to bail out Bear Stearns, we may well have been in a greater depression at this very moment.

Please don’t infer from the previous sentence that I agree with the Fed. I think they served to cure the disease by killing the patient. They’ve borrowed excessively from the taxpayers and the US currency to temporarily asuage the bleeding, but haven’t sutured the severed arteries. The Fed’s own actions of forever creating bubbles and taking hindsight corrective half-measures is the very cause of our current problems, not in any way a solution.

There is no doubt that we live in ‘interesting times’ intended in the confucian sense. Just this week we’ve witnessed a second run on the bank in as many months.  This time we’re witnessing a run on the food bank.  Reports are coming in of rationing at Costco stores of rice, flour and cooking oil.  We’re not talking about Costco stores in third world countries.  We’re talking about the continental United States.

What has happened is that large commercial bakeries and other such chains have panicked at the rapidly increasing price of these staples and snapped up local supply.  Yes, eventually this will all work itself out, but the question is, why is this happening in the first place.  There are a few answers:

• The price of oil.  The price of oil affects the food supply in two ways. First it increases the shipping costs which are passed on to the consumer.  Next, it creates a surplus of money in the Middle East which then funnels its way back into the US economy as speculation.  Hedge funds use this money to invest in grain futures which artificially drives up their price.
• Biofuels.  Biofuels are a useless ‘environmentally friendly’ measure which were put in place by politicians to placate the populace.  Corn and other staples are diverted to be converted into biofuels taking food out of the food supply and putting it into our gas tanks.  There has been worldwide rioting especially in regions where food constitutes a large percentage of the general publics’ expenditure.
• Loss of farmland.  Farmland is being lost to urban sprawl and to environmental measures whereby farmers are being subsidized not to plant crops.  Sure environmentalism is great, but it turns out that humans are animals too, and our suffering should figure into environmental equations.
• Malthus.  Malthus famously argued that populations grow geometrically (2,4,8,16, …) while the food supply grows arithmetically (1,2,3,4,5,..) .  We live in a world of approximately 6 billion which is expected to rise to 9 billion by 2050.  Further the billions of China and India are no longer content to eat simple rice and vegetables but also want cars, beef and the more excessive lifestyle of their North American Counterparts.  As a result, we can expect more shortages of gas and food until we learn to live within our means.

America · bank · Bank Run · banker · banking · Bear Stearns · biofuel · biofuels · biofuels taking food · bubble · cent · China · Coming · costco · Economy · Environment · equation · farmland · fed · federal reserve · Federal Reserve System · food · food bank · food supply · Foodbank · gas tanks · great depression · hedge funds · http · India · king · life · liquidity crisis · malthus · middle east · oil · partial reserve banking · rationing · Red · reserve banking · Run on the Bank · the fed · United States · US Federal Reserve

The State of The Union – As Seen on TV
Martin C. Winer

But first a word about how this article was written:  This article was the result of a ‘cluster’ or a free-word association.  This is an exercise which is meant to use the ‘right brain’ to spur creativity and generate writing topics.  You can create your own clusters or bubbles here: http://www.bubbl.us/ but it’s best to do them with pen and paper since one tends to self edit when typing.  Each word you see italicized below is from the cluster.  Usually, the idea is to take one theme from the cluster and write about it.  I thought it would be a challenge to include ALL the words and still have the article tell a cohesive story.   Read the article, taking note of the italicized words.  Then see the cluster below.

I have been worried about the state of the world as of late.  Being recently unemployed with no meaningful job on the horizon, I was wondering when I’d be returning to the 9-5 lifestyle.  It’s not that I ravish 9-5, as Dolly Parton’s famous song correctly puts it, 9-5 is all “takin and no giving” but it beats aimlessly strolling on sidewalks waiting for a direction to unfold.  Up until recently I was a member of the over 30 and unmarried class.  Fortune changes quickly and I now find myself suddenly being married with children.  The responsibilities are understandably far different.  Curious as to what direction my life would take over the next months and years, I turned on the familiar glowing oracle fitted in every living room, the television.

While I waited for my big screen TV, a vestige of my former employed self, to come to life, I recalled that a comic had mentioned that Dolly Parton had insured her breasts.  I wondered if the comic was putting us on, as he was apt to do.  Would an insurance company take premiums for such a ridiculous item?  What was the counterparty risk?  Were her breasts in good hands with Allstate (TM)?  The TV came to life with the evening news reporting of another hemorrhage on Wall Street of 213 ethereal points, with AIG requesting more bailout money.  Evidently, indeed, insurance companies would take premiums on just about anything and the only boobs in the interaction were the policy holders who actually thought the policy was worth something.  Bored with the evening news I changed the channel.

Dick Cheney was on “State of the Union” with John King on CNN.  Cheney, a bastion of the old guard was set to be ‘grilled’ by King as to the sins of his administration.  I flipped right past the interview because I knew it could not yield the satisfaction I was seeking.  Waterboarding and assassination squads would be second nature to a man like Cheney who shot his hunting partner in the face.  Waterboarding I imagined was just his technique for cleaning his felled game, human or otherwise.  I wasn’t interested in the past, I was curious to know what my future held.

There was an infomercial on with 90 year old Jack Lalanne sporting his leisure suit and his juicer.  I am a late night TV watcher and infomercials plague the airwaves from dusk ‘til dawn.  Jack Lalanne was born in 1914 and looked to be in better health than myself all thanks to his 1/2 horsepower juicer.  In went an orange, apple, and every other healthy fruit your mother tried to get you to eat as a child.  Out poured a fountain of youth which had purportedly kept Lalanne in such great shape over these many years, yet somehow, it hadn’t managed to save his fashion sense.  The leisure suit was last popular when the juice on everyone’s lips was Juice Newton, “Grease” was the new movie and disco was still in style.  I was intrigued with the notion of extended life and wondered if indeed Lalanne’s juicer could provide it.  Even if it could, what would my life be like, aged 90+ years drinking fruit and vegetables all day?  Would my life be fulfilling?  I changed the channel seeking an answer from the glowing oracle of TV.

The next infomercial was for Extenz tablets; an all natural ‘Male Enhancement’.  Well this held some promise now didn’t it?  At least my latter years could be herbally augmented with extra length and girth.  But just what were these pills I thought to myself?  “An all natural male enhancement?” I wondered to myself.  Didn’t we already have such a thing in Dolly Parton?  What were these herbs and how were they discovered?  Did someone eat a salad with wild herbs one night with shocking results in the bedroom?  How did they then suspect the salad and not anything else?  My mind was awash with questions and I wasn’t much in the thinking mood.  I wanted answers, not questions.  Come on oracle of television, what would my life be like?  The only effort I was willing to exert was in flipping channels.

Yet as I flipped there were a plethora of Viagra and its new copy Cialis ads.  Was the television intimating that my future would need these?  A Viagra ad promised that at age 50 I could trade in my sedan for a Harley Davidson and with one pill have the vigor of a 20 year old.  A Cialis ad promised 36 hour or daily dosing options to make sure I would be able to respond when the mood was right.  If I was as old as Jack Lalanne, would my wife still be ready for me?  I’d be worried about breaking bones at that age.  Another flip would quell that fear.

Once a month Boniva would rebuild my wife’s bones without the need to remember a weekly pill.  There would be no need to take those chalky calcium pills once a day.  Of course memory at that age will be compromised so the once a month dosing is ideal.  Side effects could include liver and kidney disease but at least you would only have to endure them once a month.  God bless Big Pharma.  I could have a once a day boner and my wife could have healthy bones all month.  I was comforted that the future would be bright.  My comfort was not long lasting, at least not as long lasting as 36 hour Cialis promised to be, when it occurred to me that Big Pharma was suffering from a horrible case of misplaced priorities.  With all of their attention focused on bones and boners, they had dropped the two big balls of cancer and heart disease.  I curiously imagined a big Pharma strategizing kick off meeting with people brainstorming on new drug targets and somehow bones and boners getting to the top of the list over cancer and heart disease.  I only hoped that Jack Lalanne’s fountain of youth Juice could get my wife and I past those two roadblocks.

I calmed myself thinking that my 90th year was well off, I being only 35 now.  Big Pharma had time to readjust their priorities.  I continued my flipping to discover yet another Big Pharma commercial for Requip, a medication for Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS).  My legs were perfectly atrophied into their TV watching position.  I didn’t believe that such a condition could occur.  “My doctor said ‘Requip’” said the announcer as a television doctor mouthed “Requip”.  I imagined that the doctor mouthed “bullsh*t” in response to the patients complaint.  [0u92R90U R ‘ jixz-]0039;ffaS980059-09ATRE MT3.  Oops, I’m ever so sorry about that previous mess, you see my arms tend to spontaneously move uncontrollably every so often…  Oh my, could it be I have Restless Arms Syndrome (RAS)?  Well at least I know that Big Pharma is on the case.  Perhaps if I ingest Requip while standing on my head, the medication will settle in the appropriate appendages?  Parenthetically I wonder if all Requip contains is a bottle of gel caps filled with Brandy?  All it seemed Big Pharma could do for me in my latter years was give calm legs and arms and a rock hard erection.  The Viagra commercial warned that any erection lasting over 4 hours constituted a medical risk and thus I knew my fulfillment from Big Pharma would leave me with 20 remaining hours in the day to fill with what?  What would I do?  I looked to the financial stations to see if I had any prospect of finding a job.

CNBC was heralding the success of the latest Apple Computer quarterly results.  The IPhone and the IPod were unrelenting successes.  The host discussed the failing health of Steve Jobs as a concern for the future of the company and since we now know all that Big Pharma is good for, the concern is justified.  I myself am not a gadget freak.  I often mockingly eye people walking down the street sweaty palmed typing at lunatic speeds on their Palm, Blackberry or blueberry or whatever the latest berry is.  I have no need to be so totally connected, but evidently there is a huge market for these devices.  Just the same I was delighted to see the success of Apple whose Macintosh computer was, in my mind, the superior computer in 1985.  Bill Gates was the smarter CEO, not the better innovator.  Steve Jobs didn’t allow clones of Macintosh’s while Gates allowed clones of the PC.  As a result Apple’s market share fell like Newton’s apple under newly discovered gravity.  With all the discussion of executive compensation these days, I think Steve Jobs deserves the lion’s share of the reward when it comes to innovation.  The IPod is simple to use media device which takes advantage of the recent wave of music piracy and MP3’s that puts the tale of the Maersk Alabama to shame.  Now don’t get me wrong, copyright infringement was not created by Jobs, he only capitalized on it.  The IPhone is the next logical extension of a handheld computing device incorporating maps, navigation and a whole host of other useful features we come to expect from Apple.  The Macintosh, the IMac as it’s now called, is gaining market share in leaps and bounds.  I guessed that I had attained some inspiration from the glowing oracle;  perseverance, like that of Steve Jobs in the face of constant opposition and I too could one day go on to innovate a pile of handheld devices – or something like that.  Of course this special was being aired on CNBC the so called financial news network that managed to complete miss any predictions of the financial collapse which had claimed my job.  I wasn’t about to take any advice from them.  No, the Corruption National Broadcasting System as I had renamed them would have to find another mark. I dismissed them with a flip of the channel.

The Cheney Interview was over on CNN and now Anderson Cooper on A.C. 360 was sporting a pie chart showing the distributions of the American reinvestment Plan.  There were huge allotments for infrastructure building projects.  A clip revealed workers building bridges all over the country.  Wasn’t it another Democratic president who wanted to build a bridge to the 21st century?  Now are we building bridges out of Chapter 11?  There was discussion of incentives to homeowners to renovate and rejuvenate their properties.  I thought of stopping in at Home Depot but immediately balked because the 27 minute hand waving discussion with 17 year old ‘Skippy’ who works there never seems to get me the results I want.  For all the talk of hope and economic plans CNN was pushing out, I knew that the recession was receding faster than Dick Cheney’s hairline.

Rembrant - Raising of Lazarus

Then they aired a clip of the master of hope: President Obama.  “America has been great and shall rise to be great again” he prophesized.  I thought this had a familiar tone.  I quickly switched to the Catholic Television Service and the pastor proudly boomed “and the phoenix shall rise out of the ashes just as Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.”  The pastor went on to solicit donations for a new building project.  This also had familiar overtones and I flipped back quickly to CNN.  “It will take considerable investment from us all but we shall rebuild and come back stronger” proudly acclaimed Obama.  It then occurred to me that Obama was more than just a President, he was our primary minister.  He then intimated at his plan to remove toxic assets from the books of the banks without providing the necessary details I was looking for; undoubtedly he would turn water into wine.  The rhetoric of hope was overflowing my ears and I needed a counter position to ground myself again.  Luckily there was the FOX network who was lambasting Obama as the bane of humanity whose short stint in office had already thrown the economy into apocalypse from which only a miracle could now save us.

Putin and other former Soviet interviewees were quoted as saying that the end of capitalism has finally come.  A commentator remarked: “the American dream of picket fences has been replaced by picket lines” as the video showed protesting auto workers.  Am auto worker protested: “The companies are trying to divide and conquer us, taking advantage of this downturn to cut our benefits and pay.  I say enough taxing the middle class!”  Cheers and hurrahs followed.  My brain was like a pair of Levi’s jeans iconically being pulled by these two polarized stations in opposite directions, at the risk of ripping.  There had to be some truth on the glowing oracle of television.  PBS I thought to myself quickly.  That will save me.

Jim Lehrer

(Ed. Note: Actually it’s IOWA that is ok with Gay Rights, not Oklahoma.  In my cluster, I confused the two, but I went with it because the challenge was to write an article using all the clustered words.  I was only off by a 10 hour drive anyways.    )

Public Broadcasting, publicly funded and publicly ignored in favour of watching MTV to hear if Britney Spears of Lindsay Lohan were wearing underwear today.  Today Jim Lehrer was discussing the state of Gay Rights.  Evidently in Ahnold’s (sic) California the rights of gays have been ‘terminated’.   Ironically, Oklahoma seems “Ok” with gay marriage.  Is that what the song “Oklahoma, OK” is about from the musical Oklahoma?  The world seemed upside down.  Had I inverted myself such that Requip went to my arms and forgot about it?  Oklahoma was a place where I expected politicians to spout the bible about ‘being Fruitful and multiplying’ and how homosexuality was unnatural.  In liberal California, I expect them to say anything goes, from Gay Rights to cloning dolly the sheep.  After all doesn’t Hotel California by the Eagles promise “Plenty of room at the Hotel California / Any time of year, you can find it here”?  I couldn’t make sense of my world.  I was about as comfortable as a man swimming in itchy wool trunks.  I needed to flip the channel quickly.

Kim Kardashian

Chicks Who Love Guns

Up next was a documentary “American Justice” revisiting the O.J. Simpson trial.  It brought back names like Mezza Luna, Nicole Brown, Robert Kardashian, Kim Kardashian… whoops my mind wandered.  Robert Kardashian had helped set a murderer free but brought us Kim Kardashian.  Now they say justice should be blind, but have you seen Kim Kardashian?  He was off the hook in my books but the rest of the characters who let O.J. go were open to attack in my imagination.  I recast the events of that fateful night as a Quentin Tarantino movie.  I’d have my justice, if only in my imagination.  Nicole Brown would now be Jackie Brown.  She would seductively seduce O.J. by dancing for him like Salma Hayek in Tarantino’s “From Dusk ‘Til Dawn”.  She’d then immediately turn into a vampire and eat him alive.  Next, Travolta and Samuel Jackson from Pulp Fiction would show up and after quoting Ezekiel 25:17 would lace into the O.J. lawyers.  Finally the women from “Chicks who love Guns” as seen in Jackie Brown, armed with the AK-47 and they would deal with every “mother [t]ucker” in the jury room.  Returning from my daydream I realized that 10 years had passed and there was no justice to be spoken of.  The only thing I had learned from the episode was that justice is a function of wealth and that O.J. stood for Orenthall James, not Orange Juice.  I’m not admitting I was that stupid however, I’m about to write another article: “If I was that stupid, here’s how I’d admit it.”

I knew how the O.J. saga ended so I flipped again to see what else was on the glowing oracle.  John Sebastian crooned “Welcome Back, to the same old place where you started from…”  It was a rerun of Welcome Back Kotter.  Truly, I was basically back where I had started from, only an hour of flipping elapsed.  I knew nothing more of the future than when I started.  Sure I knew that my bones and boners would be safe, boobs could be insured, and that if I worked very hard, I might find a job.  But I was looking for important answers to important questions like, what would justice be like in the future?  What would the economy be like?  I was sure that Kotter’s Vinni Barbarino wasn’t going to be able to answer my questions.  With that, I turned off the glowing oracle for the night.

‘Apple’ cluster which generated the article.

This is the free word association (or cluster, or bubble) which generated the article.  Again, each italicized above came from the cluster below.

9 to 5 · 9/11 · AID · aig · AK-47 · ale · allstate · America · american justic · Announcer · apple · arnold schwarzenegger · auto workers · bailout · bank · bankruptcy · bible · bill gates · blog · boniva · bubble · california · cancer · capitalism · Case · cent · chapter 11 · chicks who love guns · cialis · cluster · dca · dick cheney · dolly parton · eagles · Economy · Executive · extenze · Ezekiel 25:17 · free word association · gay rights · God · grease · head · Health · heart disease · home depot · homosexuality · hotel california · http · ibm · ILS · insurance · Internet · iphone · ipod · jack lalanne · Jackie Brown · jim lehrer · John Sebastian · John Travolta · juice newton · kim kardashian · king · lawyer · lazarus · levis · life · logic · maersk · maersk alabama · marriage · Martin C. Winer · MIT · mp3 · Music · nature · O. J. Simpson · obama · OJ · oklahoma · palm blackberry · piracy · pirates · President · Pulp Fiction · quentin tarantino · quote · Red · requip · rls · Robert Kardashian · Rome · Salma Hayek · sex · steve jobs · Tarantino · viagra · video · Vinni Barbarino · waterboarding · wealth · Welcome Back Kotter · writing