Russia has become the first major country to call for a partial restoration of the Gold Standard to uphold discipline in the world financial system.

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3 You will keep in perfect peace
him whose mind is steadfast,
because he trusts in you.

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The source of my pessimism is that in the last zillion years or so, Every Freaking Time (EFT) that a government acted so stupidly as to allow such a reckless expansion of the money supply, especially to finance out-of-control government deficit-spending and insane levels of private debt, everything was soon destroyed, and it seems that most of the time the country in question completely disappeared, too.

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BERLIN, March 25 -- The president of the European Union today ripped the Obama administration's economic policies, calling its massive deficit spending and bank bailouts 'a road to hell.'

U.S. officials have pressed European counterparts spend substantially more public money in an attempt to revive economic growth and global trade. Some countries, led by Germany, have strongly resisted, predicting that such a path could lead to unsustainable debts and runaway inflation.

Luxembourg's prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, who heads a coordinating body of countries that use the euro currency, said European countries had already spent enough to jump start their economies.

"The European stimulus plans are muscular, they are demanding, they are important in volume and in quality," Juncker said Wednesday in an interview with France's Europe 1 Radio. He said there was "no question" that the EU would reject requests from Obama to spend more.

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This 15-Fold Increase will be impossible to reverse

Next September, when the fed realizes it has gone too far and tries to reverse its balance sheet expansion, it will be unable to do so. The realities which will hinder the fed's control of the money supply are:

1) The toxic assets filling its balance sheet

Expanding the money supply is easy. All the fed has to do is print dollars and then use them to buy assets. There is no effective limit to how much the fed can print and spend.

Shrinking the money is much trickier. To shrink the base money supply, the fed sell assets and takes the dollars it receives for them out of circulation. The amount the fed can shrink the money supply is therefore effectively limited by the market value of assets on its balance sheets. Since the fed is in the process of loading up on toxic securities while trying to restore health to the financial sector, it is now sitting billions of unrealized losses. These unrealized losses means the fed has little ammunition available to bring the money supply under control.

Once September rolls around, If the fed wants to reverse the expansion of its balance sheet and shrink the monetary base back down from 3,818 billion to 262 billion, then it will need to sell 3,556 billion worth of assets. However, the market value of its assets will only be worth a fraction of that.

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ACT 1
SCENE 1

A stark dressing room in the underbelly of the White House, bathed in the dim yellow light of a 25-watt compact fluorescent bulb. The dingy walls are plastered with Shepard Fairey "HOPE" posters. Off stage is heard the cringing, muffled gasps of a stunned arena audience. Suddenly the door bursts open and enters BARACK "BAM BAM" OBAMA, former champion, unconscious on a stretcher carried by his handlers -- cut man TWINKLETOES EMANUEL, manager PAPPY AXELROD, SPITBUCKET BEGALA and SPINDOC GREENBURG. His nose is bleeding profusely, his eyes nearly swollen shut, and his forehead is embossed with a reverse "BRUNSWICK" from an errant bowling ball. They are trailed into the room by a pack of concerned sportswriters as they place the stretcher on a stark table.

TWINKLETOES EMANUEL: Alright, alright! Give 'em some air, you mugs!

PAPPY AXELROD: Can you hear me, Champ?

BAM BAM: We would save enough money... uhh... we would... money save... the ones we are looking for...

PAPPY AXELROD (gently slapping Bam Bam's face): Champ, Champ! Look at me! How many teleprompters am I holding up?

BAM BAM (giggling): Special Olympics... Heckuva job Timmy...

TWINKLETOES EMANUEL: Somebody get me the stimulus salts!

Twinkletoes opens a wallet under Bam Bam's nose and he groggily regains consciousness

BAM BAM: Whuh... huh... whuhappened?

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"If the asset values go below the purchase price, the Treasury is going to eat that loss. This plan is definitely going to work," Siegel said in a television interview.

Labels: The Failed Obama Presidency

The US government lit the fuse to the $683 trillion dollar derivative's debt bomb on Wednesday March 18, 2009 with the announcement the Fed would purchase $300 billion dollars worth of US Treasury used toilet paper and an additional $750 billion dollars worth of mortgage backed used toilet paper. In total the commitment to counterfeit over a trillion dollars leaves only $682 trillion dollars worth of derivatives to sort out.<

This is the end of the dollar. Everyone with any sense on earth will be unloading both their treasuries and mortgage-backed crap on the Fed. The Fed has just pissed $1 trillion of counterfeit money into a $683 trillion dollar cesspit. It can't possibly fix the problem. When the world realizes the impact of the Fed monetizing all debt, there will be a total default. And then what happens?

The Mother of All Depressions.

The ability to publicly fund its debt has been what has kept the US government spending. Once that ability is dead, so is the government.

The meeting of the G20 in London on April 2, 2009 will be the most important financial meeting in history. If the delegates do not adopt a new gold standard of honest money, the dollar will totally default within a few months. The fuse has been lit. There is nothing the government can do beyond what they have already done. Nothing has worked. Nothing can work.

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The MIAC report specifically describes supporters of presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr as “militia” influenced terrorists and instructs the Missouri police to be on the lookout for supporters displaying bumper stickers and other paraphernalia associated with the Constitutional, Campaign for Liberty, and Libertarian parties.

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...the Fed will spend up to $300 billion to buy long-term government bonds and an additional $750 billion in mortgage-backed securities...

The European Union on Sunday warned incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that if he doesn't work toward the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state, ties between Europe and the Jewish state are likely to turn hostile.

The warning came from EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who told reporters, 'Let me say very clearly that the way the European Union will relate to a government that is not committed to a two-state solution will be very, very different.'

Netanyahu ran for prime minister on a platform of freezing the current land-for-peace process because the Palestinians had demonstrated that any land surrendered to them would be used to further threaten Israelis.

Instead, Netanyahu wants to focus on boosting the Palestinian economy and bettering those parts of the Palestinians' lives that they use as an excuse for their terrorist behavior.

That approach has also riled the Obama Administration in Washington, which recently made clear that it will accept no other outcome to the Middle East peace process than the birth of 'Palestine.'

Javier Solana was the first name I saw listed on the Barcelona Declaration. This document was adopted by the Council of the European Union on November 1995 at a conference held in Madrid, Spain. The agreement created the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership for Peace. It established a large area of cooperation – including a free trade area – between the member states of the EU and twelve Mediterranean nations, including Israel. What interested me about the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership for Peace was that this kind of agreement was used to create the EU. It first began as a free-trade area known for a time as the Common Market. Gradually these nations began to integrate more deeply. Today, these European nations are hip-deep in a mire of confusing treaties binding them together in what has become known as the modern European Union.

In November 1995, Javier Solana successfully negotiated the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership for Peace (Euromed). The agreement was between the then 15 EU member states and 12 Mediterranean states — including Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In fact, some believe that it may have been Solana’s skill in negotiating this agreement that caused then Secretary of State Warren Christopher to recommend Solana as head of NATO to President Clinton.

The goal of the Euromed project is to create a region of peace and stability across Europe and the Mediterranean. That being the case, it’s no wonder looking at Euromed maps is like looking at maps of the old Roman Empire. The Mediterranean was once considered a Roman lake. Soon, if the Euromed project works, it will become the EU’s lake.

The Euromed, however, failed to deliver. So, Solana introduced his European Neighborhood Policy (ENP). The purpose of the ENP was to strengthen, or make strong, his faltering Euromed scheme. The ENP is a huge package of financial deals for each participating Euromed nation. These deals include Action Plans that are custom tailored for each participating nation. The idea is, by monitoring each nation’s progress to their Action Plan, the Euromed project can be strengthened and made to work.

The ENP was implemented under existing funding instruments. However, the existing instruments were not sufficient to meet the ENP’s goals. So, Solana was tasked with creating a new funding instrument — the European Neighborhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI). When the new funding instrument takes over, the ENP will become the “New” ENP. This will happen (happened) on January 1, 2007. What’s prophetically significant is that the ENPI is a seven-year funding instrument. In other words, the New ENP is designed to strengthen, or make strong, the 1995 Euromed for a period of seven years.

27 Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week;
But in the middle of the week
He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.
And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate,
Even until the consummation, which is determined,
Is poured out on the desolate.

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Remember when the present crisis broke in 2007, the reassurances that it would not spread beyond the confines of subprime; when it did spread, the forecasts that Wall Street banks' losses would amount only to a total of about US$200 billion. Remember when 'experts' insisted no widespread credit crunch would result. Remember when they insisted that the crisis was unlikely to spread from Wall Street to the real economy on Main Street?

Remember when they said the hundreds of billions of dollars of liquidity thrown into the system would free up the credit seizure. Remember when they said the October 3, 2008, $700 billion stimulus package and the many more hundreds of billions of dollars in bank and corporate bailouts would move the system out of crisis. Where are all these pseudo-intellectual ideas, beliefs, ideologies, assessments and assurances now? On the trash heap, precisely where they belonged in the first place.

The record inspires little confidence in the ongoing efforts of governments to resolve the crisis, or even that they know how to resolve it. The damage and outright destruction inflicted on vital components of the present global investment, finance and economic orders just keeps piling up while governments keep trying their various "solutions".

As for the newly passed $787 billion stimulus package, and its accompanying sketchy bank rescue plan, economists and the markets widely doubt whether the two measures are potent enough and targeted accurately enough to come anywhere near accomplishing their stated aims.

The truth is that the potential for a global dollar panic is becoming greatly heightened, in spite of (and in part, actually because of) the dollar's recent significant gains as a refuge for investors, the bulk of whom continue to be distinctly risk-averse. Ironically, this massive piling onto the dollar opens yawning new vulnerabilities and risks that either did not exist before, or were at most very minimal.

For example, a number of experts warn that US Treasuries are increasingly taking on the characteristics of a bubble, and they remind us that bubbles inevitably deflate, and they rarely, if ever, do so in an orderly fashion. When this one deflates there could be uncontrolled, perhaps even chaotic, repercussions for the dollar.

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As the growing world-wide economic crisis deepens, military forces from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom are preparing to meet angry citizens on the street. The economic crisis - and the public outrage it is causing - is at the forefront of intelligence agencies and military forces in the western world.

Prominent trends forecaster Gerald Celente has been sounding the alarm for years, warning that riots and tax revolts are coming to America. The Pentagon, U. K. Ministry of Defense, and Canadian military apparently agree. In November of 2008 the United States Army War College released the report Known Unknowns: Unconventional "Strategic Shocks" in Defense Strategy Development. The report identifies economic collapse as a reason for the defense establishment to conduct domestic operations. The report states,

"Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security. Deliberate employment of weapons of mass destruction or other catastrophic capabilities, unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency..."

...
The United Kingdom's own Ministry of Defense foresaw middle class revolution two years ago in the 2007 The DCDC Global Strategic Trends report. "The middle classes could become a revolutionary class...," the report states. "The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite."

Ominously, legislation was recently introduced to Congress that would authorize “national emergency centers” on military installations that will provide “temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster."

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Klayman said the reports of the partying at the White House, "with the likes of Steve Wonder and other high priced entertainment stars," will be the focus of document requests being submitted to the General Services Administration. The requests will seek to determine how much taxpayer money is being used.

"Barack and Michelle Obama have been throwing taxpayer funded parties nearly every night with their 'friends' and supporters, with Michelle Obama even exhorting them not to 'break' White House property," Klayman's announcement said.

"This party atmosphere sends the wrong message to the American people. As the Obama-Clinton crowd party on, the American people are suffering greatly," Klayman said.

"It was right to criticize corporate execs for using taxpayer bailout money on bonuses and corporate junkets. In the face of this criticism, it is an outrage for Barack and Michelle Obama to party on, as Rome burns. It's like throwing a party at a funeral," he said.

According to a report by the news and commentary website Politico, many of the parties have been just that – parties, not political and government meetings.
...
"You would have felt like a fool talking about politics at this party," said Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., said after one major event. "I was surprised how much of a social event it was and how little of a political occasion it was."
...
"Since moving into their new digs, the first couple has hosted a half-dozen gatherings – from bipartisan cocktail receptions to a public open house to the more intimate Super Bowl party ... ending many of their days past midnight," the report said. bipartisan cocktail receptions to a public open house to the more intimate Super Bowl party ... ending many of their days past midnight," the report said.
...
Insiders said in the report that the Obama social schedule is busier than any other previous occupants of the White House.

"We haven't seen this kind of entertaining in a really long time," Dee Dee Myers, former White House press secretary to Bill Clinton, said in the report.

"Sources close to the White House say Mr. Obama and his staff have been "overwhelmed" by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest."

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New York hedge fund manager Ralph DellaCamera Jr. says he’d purchased the mortgage for 60 cents on the dollar and forced the originator, MLSG Home Loans of Reno, Nevada, to eat the loss. Protecting his investment, DellaCamera lowered Greenberg’s debt to keep her in the home. She now pays $2,400 a month instead of $3,800 and plows some of her savings into upgrading the Cape Cod-style residence.

Labels: financial ponderings

This paper presents the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres. We develop and justify our ratings and aggregation procedure on explicitly normative criteria, defining individual freedom as the ability to dispose of one’s own life, liberty, and justly acquired property however one sees fit, so long as one does not coercively infringe on other individuals’ ability to do the same.

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They may need a support group before the month is out. They could gather in New York or Washington where many victims reside. The meetings would start: “I’m Maureen [or David]. I’m a duped Barack voter. And I’m mad.”

The ranks indeed are filling with the disaffected and the disappointed — Chris Buckley, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, David Gergen, and even that gynecological sleuth and blogger Andrew Sullivan. And then there is the very angry Marty Peretz. Their complaints are varied but expressed with equal amounts of remorse and bitterness. They all have been done wrong by Barack.

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This is smart diplomacy? This is a debacle. The Russians dismissed it contemptuously.

Look, if we could get the Iranian nuclear program stopped with Russian's helping us in return for selling out the Poles and the Czechs on missile defense, I'm enough of a cynic and a realist to say we would do it the same way that Kissinger agreed to delegitimize and de-recognize Taiwan in return for a large strategic opening with China.

But Kissinger had it done. He had it wired. What happened here is it was leaked. The Russians have dismissed it. We end up being humiliated. We look weak in front of the Iranians, and we have left the Poles and Czechs out to dry in return for nothing.

The Czechs and the Poles went out on a limb, exposed themselves to Russian pressure, and we have shown that Eastern Europe is not as sovereign as it appears if the Russian influence is there, and we will acquiesce in what they consider their own sphere of influence.

This administration has prided itself, flattered itself on deploying smart diplomacy. 'Smart diplomacy' is a meaningless idea, but if it has any meaning at all, it is not ever doing something as humiliating, amateurish, and stupid as this.

Labels: The Failed Obama Presidency

"We're still going to eat, probably; we're still going to wear clothes, probably. Farmers cannot get loans for fertilizers right now. So the supplies of everything are going to continue to be under pressure," Rogers said.

He is the director of two funds which are buying greenfield land in Brazil and existing farms in Canada and starting to farm it. The funds are clearing the land, fertilizing it, irrigating it and hiring farmers and, Rogers said, some day will probably sell the land but that is a remote prospect.

"If I'm right, agriculture is going to be one of the greatest industries in the next 20 years, 30 years."

Food inventories are at their lowest in 50 years, Rogers said, while the oil and mining sectors are also good bets.

"Even if demand goes flat or down, as it did in the 30s, as it did in the 70s, you can still have a nice market," he told CNBC.

The best bet for investors may be to buy a farm and escape from the cities, as a prolonged recession could lead to war, as the Great Depression did, said the Swiss national, who now lives in Thailand.

“Buy a farm and let your girlfriend work on the farm,” he said, to the applause of investors. “If the global economy doesn’t recover, usually people go to war.”"

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A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks.

“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report.

The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S.

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