Did The Fed Just (Surreptitiously) Bail Out Europe?

By Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker
No, not just Greece - all of Europe. Without Congressional authorization or notice, of course.
"Hattip to a nice emailer...." -KD



That nice little vertical line is a gain of $421.8 billion dollars of outstanding loans and leases in one week's time.

WHERE THE HELL DID THAT MONEY GO AND WHAT COLLATERAL WAS TAKEN AGAINST A FOUR HUNDRED BILLION DOLLAR INCREASE IN OUTSTANDING LOANS?

You won't find anything like that in the records - because it's never happened before. That's beyond unprecedented, it's ridiculous, and assuming it's also accurate, someone has some 'splaining to do on what clearly appears to be some sort of back-door game being run.

Update: It has been suggested that this may be related to the FASB changes and securitized loans coming back on the balance sheet. If so, where's the alleged memorandum items on the other side and the footnote on FRED? The latter is missing, but the necessary data on FRED to confirm that is not yet updated.

Nonetheless, if this is the case, it's still bad (just not catastrophic) as this will directly hit capital ratios. Or, put another way, where's the additional capital that "should" be there to support what is now on balance sheet and was previously off (never mind that it was crooked as hell to have it off in the first place!)

Club of Rome Behind Eco-Fascist Purge to Criminalize Climate Skepticism

by Paul Joseph Watson at Prison Planet
April 13, 2010

The British lawyer who last week called for introducing international laws through the United Nations which would make it a crime against humanity to question the reality of man-made global warming has close ties with the Club of Rome – the ultra elitist organization which openly bragged of how it invented the climate change scare as a means of manipulating the global population to accept world government.

British lawyer-turned-campaigner Polly Higgins (pictured top) recently launched an initiative to have the UN put pressure on national governments to pass laws that would declare the mass destruction of ecosystems a crime against peace, punishable by the International Criminal Court.

Under the guise of going after big corporations and polluters for the war crime of emitting the gas that humans exhale and plants breathe, the proposal would actually target individuals and people who merely express skepticism towards man-made global warming.
Read the Rest of Article

If you needed any further proof regarding Climate Hoax

If you required any further proof regarding the sheer totalitarianism lurking behind the climate hoax – here ya go. UN may add “Ecocide” to international crimes against humanity.
Point of clarification:

I believe the climate changes – it ALWAYS has, what I doubt is human impact and more specifically C02. I will not believe that regulating and removing of the four life giving elements on the planet is sound idea.

In liberty - c2084

British Campaigner urges UN to accept ‘Ecocide’ as International Crime crimeby Juliette Jowit at SPPI

A campaign to declare the mass destruction of ecosystems an international crime against peace – alongside genocide and crimes against humanity – is being launched in the UK.

The proposal for the United Nations to accept “ecocide” as a fifth “crime against peace”, which could be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC), is the brainchild of British lawyer-turned-campaigner Polly Higgins.

The radical idea would have a profound effect on industries blamed for widespread damage to the environment like fossil fuels, mining, agriculture, chemicals and forestry.

Supporters of a new ecocide law also believe it could be used to prosecute “climate deniers” who distort science and facts to discourage voters and politicians from taking action to tackle global warming and climate change.

“Ecocide is in essence the very antithesis of life,” says Higgins. “It leads to resource depletion, and where there is escalation of resource depletion, war comes chasing behind. Where such destruction arises out of the actions of mankind, ecocide can be regarded as a crime against peace.”
Read the Rest of Article

Leaked U.S. Document Calls For “Global Regime” To Tackle Climate Change

by Steve Watson at Prison Planet
April 12, 2010

Says “critics must be disarmed, all elements of Copenhagen Accord must be operationalised”

A confidential U.S. government document obtained by the London Guardian highlights the ongoing agenda to create a structure of global governance in the name of combating climate change.

“Titled Strategic communications objectives and dated 11 March 2010, it outlines the key messages that the Obama administration wants to convey to its critics and to the world media in the run-up to the vital UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico in November.” The Guardian Reports

The newspaper says that the document (full text below) was “accidentally left on a European hotel computer” before it was passed to their editors.

Text of the leaked document:

Strategic communications objectives

1) Reinforce the perception that the US is constructively engaged in UN negotiations in an effort to produce a global regime to combat climate change. This includes support for a symmetrical and legally binding treaty.

2) Manage expectations for Cancun – Without owning the message, advance the narrative that while a symmetrical legally binding treaty in Mexico is unlikely, solid progress can be made on the six or so main elements.

3) Create a clear understanding of the CA’s standing and the importance of operationalising ALL elements.

4) Build and maintain outside support for the administration’s commitment to meeting the climate and clean energy challenge despite an increasingly difficult political environment to pass legislation.

5) Deepen support and understanding from the developing world that advanced developing countries must be part of any meaningful solution to climate change including taking responsibilities under a legally binding treaty.

Media outreach

• Continue to conduct interviews with print, TV and radio outlets driving the climate change story.

• Increase use of off-the-record conversations.

• Strengthen presence in international media markets during trips abroad. Focus efforts on radio and television markets.

• Take greater advantage of new media opportunities such as podcasts to advance US position in the field bypassing traditional media outlets.

• Consider a series of policy speeches/public forums during trips abroad to make our case directly to the developing world.

Key outreach efforts

• Comprehensive and early outreach to policy makers, key stakeholders and validators is critical to broadening support for our positions in the coming year.

• Prior to the 9-11 April meeting in Bonn it would be good for Todd to meet with leading NGOs. This should come in the form of 1:1s and small group sessions.

• Larger group sessions, similar to the one held at CAP prior to Copenhagen, will be useful down the line, but more intimate meetings in the spring are essential to building the foundation of support. Or at the very least, disarming some of the harsher critics.
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Bonn or Bust

The UN’s Last, Desperate Bid for Unelected World Government
Source : From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in Bonn
Published at the SPPI Blog

There are not many empty seats in the dismal, echoing conference chamber in the ghastly concrete box that is the Hotel Maritim here in Bonn, where the UN’s latest attempt to maneuver the 194 States Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change gets underway today.

The “international community”, as it is now called, is here in full force, in the shape of expensively-suited, shiny-shod bureaucrats with an urbane manner and absolutely no knowledge of climate science whatsoever.

However, one empty chair is a pointer of things to come. The Holy See – a tiny nation in its own right, with a billion citizens around the world – has left its chair empty. And that is significant. If “global warming” still mattered, the Vatican would make sure that its representatives were present throughout this gloomy gathering of world-government wannabes.

This emergency conference, called by the UN’s bureaucrats because they were terrified that Cancun this December might fail as spectacularly as Copenhagen did last year, is a much quieter affair than Copenhagen. Not only has the air of triumphalism gone, after the scandals of Climategate, Himalayagate, Amazongate and so forth, but the belief that “global warming” is a global crisis has largely gone too.

There are a few true-believers left among the national delegates, but more of them than before are open to discussion of the previously-forbidden question – what if the climate extremists have made the whole thing up?

The Chinese Xinhua News Agency, for instance, came up to the table manned by the environmental campaigners of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which takes a hard-boiled, cynical view of the notion that a tiny increase in the atmospheric concentration of a trace gas is likely to cause a thousand international disasters.

The reporters were genuinely interested to hear that there is another side to the story. Huan Gongdi, the Agency’s senior correspondent in Germany, asked me what I thought of the Copenhagen accord (a waste of time), what was happening in Bonn (a desperate attempt to ram through a binding Treaty that can be put in front of the US Senate before the mid-term elections make Senate acceptance of any such treaty unthinkable), and whether or not there was a climate crisis anyway (there isn’t).

I explained to Mr. Huan that even if the UN had not exaggerated the warming effect of CO2 many times over there was still nothing we could do about the supposed “crisis”, because we were emitting so little of the stuff in the first place.

For the record, I did the sum in front of him. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 today is about 388 parts per million by volume. However, we are adding just 2 ppmv a year to the air. So the warming we cause each year, even if one believes the UN’s wild exaggerations of CO2’s warming effect, is just 4.7 times the natural logarithm of the proportionate increase in CO2 concentration from 388 to 390 ppmv.

Thus, 4.7 ln(390/388) = 0.043 Fahrenheit degrees – less than a twentieth of a Fahrenheit degree of “global warming” every year. That is all. Putting it another way, it would take almost a quarter of a century with no carbon-emitting activity at all – not a single train, plane, automobile, or fossil-fueled power station – to forestall just 1 Fahrenheit degree of “global warming”.

That is why no Treaty based on controlling the amount of carbon dioxide the world emits can possibly work. And that is why there is no hurry anyway. The only reason for the UN’s sense of urgency – a panic no longer felt by the majority of the delegates here – is that the bureaucrats know the game is up. Opinion polls throughout the free world show that no one now believes a word of the climate extremists’ nonsense any more. If they can’t get a binding treaty this year, they won’t get one at all, and they know it.

I shall be reporting frequently from the conference as events unfold. Check back often at the SPPI Blog .

The Accomodationists: Memo to Liberals on the White House Death Warrants

By Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque

Let us hear no more excuses for Barack Obama. Let us hear no more defenses, no more special pleading, no more extenuation. Let us have no more reciting of the "pressures" he is under, of the "many obstacles" that balk him in his quest to do us good, of the "bad advisers" who are swaying him to unworthy acts against his will. Let us be done at last with all these wretched lies, these complicitous self-deceptions that are facilitating atrocity and tyranny on a monstrous scale.

Barack Obama has ordered the murder of an American Citizen
, without trial, without due process, without the production of any evidence . All it takes to kill any American citizen in this way is Barack Obama's signature on a piece of paper, his arbitrary designation of the target as a "suspected terrorist." In precisely the same way -- precisely the same way -- Josef Stalin would place a mark by a name in a list of "suspected terrorists" or "counterrevolutionaries," and the bearer of that name would die. This is the system we have now, the same as the Soviets had then: a leader with the unchallengeable power to kill citizens without due process.

(C2084- the last two sentences from the previous paragraph need to be read again) In precisely the same way -- precisely the same way -- Josef Stalin would place a mark by a name in a list of "suspected terrorists" or "counterrevolutionaries," and the bearer of that name would die. This is the system we have now, the same as the Soviets had then: a leader with the unchallengeable power to kill citizens without due process.

That this power has not been used on the same scale in the American system as in the Stalinist state -- yet -- does not alter the equivalence of this governing principle. In both cases, the leader signs arbitrary death warrants; the security services carry out the task; and the 'great and good' of society accept this draconian power as necessary and right.

This is what you support when you support Barack Obama. It does not matter if you think his opponents in the factional infighting to control a bloodsoaked empire and its war machine are "worse" than he is in some measure. When you support him, when you defend him, when you excuse him, it is arbitrary murder that you are supporting. It is the absolute negation of every single principle of enlightenment and human rights professed by liberals, progressives -- indeed, by honorable people of every political stripe -- for centuries.
Read the Rest at Empire Burlesque

Quotes From 1929-1930: Buy, Buy, Buy

By Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge.com

Courtesy of David Rosenberg, here is how the media propaganda scene looked like the last time the US stock market was about to enter a 10 year bear market culminating with world war. Hopefully all who threw their money in the market back then managed to sell at the very peak and avoided the upcoming 10+ sequential plunges in the stock market. Of course, selling at the peak is exactly what all the computers, algos, momentum chasers, primary dealers, and naive daytraders hope to do, just ahead of the flush. As usual, we wish them all the best. ~ T. Durden at ZH

A good friend of ours at UBS, Robert Procaccianti, periodically emails us his pithy market thoughts, and yesterday he sent us the following. Great digging into some now infamous quotes after the 1929-30 bear market and the widespread view at the time that the worst was over because, of course, Mr. Market said so … erroneously as it turned out. ~David Rosenberg

From the leading economic minds of the day and the POTUS:

• “[1930 will be] a splendid employment year.” — U.S. Department of Labor, New Year’s Forecast, December 1929

• “I am convinced that through these measures, we have reestablished confidence.” — Herbert Hoover, U.S. President, December 1929.

• “While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed through the worst — and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There has been no significant bank or industrial failure. That danger, too, is safely behind us.” — Herbert Hoover, U.S. President, May 1930.

• “This is the time to buy stocks. This is the time to recall the words of the late J. P. Morgan ... that any man who is bearish on America will go broke. Within a few days there is likely to be a bear panic rather than a bull panic. Many of the low prices as a result of this hysterical selling are not likely to be reached again in many years.” — R. W. McNeel, market analyst, as quoted in the New York Herald Tribune, October 30, 1929

• “The Wall Street crash doesn't mean that there will be any general or serious business depression ... For six years American business has been diverting a substantial part of its attention, its energies and its resources on the speculative game ... Now that irrelevant, alien and hazardous adventure is over. Business has come home again, back to its job, providentially unscathed, sound in wind and limb, financially stronger than ever before.” — BusinessWeek, November 2, 1929

• “...despite its severity, we believe that the slump in stock prices will prove an intermediate movement and not the precursor of a business depression such as would entail prolonged further liquidation...” — Harvard Economic Society (HES), November 2, 1929

• “The end of the decline of the Stock Market will probably not be long, only a few more days at most.” — Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics at Yale University, November 14, 1929

• “For the immediate future, at least, the outlook (stocks) is bright.” — Irving Fisher, Ph.D. in Economics, in early 1930

• “... the outlook continues favorable...” - Harvard Economic Society Mar 29, 1930

Does any of this sound familiar??
Visit Zero Hedge often, daily, for insights of economic realty. ~c2084

Enemy of the State Prognostication by Citizen2084 – The Results

My first prognostication was last August and contained thoughts on events in of the coming year which covering 2009 and 2010. Although we are not done with the first half of 2010 it should still be interesting to review their accuracy.

The upcoming 12-18 months should be eventful.I will offer my insight on what we can expect maybe it will be helpful somehow to someone. Depending on the first prediction results you can decide how much credence to place on my thoughts, if any. Look for those predictions to follow this post.

C2084’s Prognostication for the End of 2009 into 2010 posted on August 31, 2010

1) 2009/2010 NFL season will be interrupted due to a national emergency / disaster.
Result – MISSED.
It is great to be wrong sometimes. Multiple events surfaced in 2009 with the potential impact; thank goodness they materialize. Here are a few:
• The Swine Flu Scare/Hoax
• Reports of an Israeli attack on Iran , had weather been cooperative
• X-Mas Pantie Bomber


2) Commercial real estate continues its decline and as severe as it is, the second wave of ALT –A and ARM resets will be even more dramatic then the first wave that set the housing market downward. The bottom line is national average housing prices drop an additional 30%
Result – HIT.
It isn’t a perfect hit however the reality is prices fell significantly further, and will continue. The hardest markets did meet the 30% drop and others will join in the party.

Excerpts from stories by Tyler Durden at ZERO HEDGE.com

…Fannie Mae reported
its January total serious delinquency rate for single-family houses: the rate hit a new record of 5.54%, a jump from the December's 5.38%, and double the 2.77% in January 2009.

…Real Pointe has just released its March CMBS delinquency data, according to which delinquencies hit an all time high 6%. Not to be ignored, according to TREPP this number is even worse, at nearly 8%, after the single biggest monthly spike in 30 day + delinquencies.

The housing market and CRE will see no improvement anytime soon.

3) Baking holiday declared immediately after the end of 2009 that period of time we used to describe as holiday shopping. Used to. In 2009 holiday shopping will represent less than 50% of 2007 volume. Do not measure dollars spent, the inflation will hide the real impact, measure total units, items per sale.
Result-HIT.
The holiday didn’t happen but all the policy changes have been put into place. It was in the news and just like so many other “Market Signals”, joe public ignore the flashing neon warnings.

CITI Group tells customers that they can ask for 7 day notice to withdraw funds. Not a money market account, or contract deposit, but 7 day wait on demand deposits.

Suspending Money Market Redemption now Legal as SEC votes 4-1.

Everbank Notifies Customers that they now have the right to close their account to protect the bank form losses. Here are some of the more concerning quotes:

“We may close your Metals Select Account at anytime upon reasonable notice to you. If we believe that it is necessary to close your account immediately in order to limit losses by you or us…we may close your account prior to providing notice to you.”

“…Notice from us to one of you is notice to all of you.”

A Bank Holiday becomes unnecessary with these changes to regulation and policies. A bank holiday is used to prevent the public from taking their money out of Banks. Now that they can just say “no” we may not ever see another bank holiday. Thank goodness our government is there to assist these banking institutions from the kind of extremists that would stoop to actually asking for their money. Only an Al Qaeda terrorist would think of taking their money out of a bank.

4) By the summer of 2010 we will announce the resumption of the military draft, whether it is for a civilian duty or traditional service, it will be compulsory.
Result-MISS.
Although Obama signed a National Service bill in 2009, the spirit of this was more military. This bill does include MANDATORY service, however this is not what I had in mind and it would be dishonest to say this was accurate. It is a horrible bill none the less as community service should always be voluntary, as all aspects of life in a free society. Most do not remember that America was once a free society and you could choose how to live your live.

5) By the end of 2010 capital controls and/or price controls will be implemented in US.
Result. HIT.
Unfortunately this happened much sooner than I expected. March 18, 2010 without a mention in US propaganda outlets Obama signed into law the H.I.R.E. act. Cute freaking acronym, f or the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment, a $17.5 billion increase in government payroll largess, on page 27:

(a) IN GENERAL.—The Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended by inserting after chapter 3 the following new chapter:
‘‘CHAPTER 4—TAXES TO ENFORCE REPORTING ON CERTAIN FOREIGN ACCOUNTS
‘‘Sec. 1471. Withholdable payments to foreign financial institutions.
‘‘Sec. 1472. Withholdable payments to other foreign entities.
‘‘Sec. 1473. Definitions.
‘‘Sec. 1474. Special rules.
‘‘SEC. 1471. WITHHOLDABLE PAYMENTS TO FOREIGN FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS.
‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—In the case of any withholdable payment to a foreign financial institution which does not meet the requirements of subsection (b), the withholding agent with respect to such payment shall deduct and withhold from such payment a tax equal to 30 percent of the amount of such payment

You can read it all HERE.

In summary, I think 60% accuracy is a passing grade the first Enemy of the State predictions. I will post my next prognostications shortly and welcome any thoughts/suggestions.

In liberty,
c2084

Hoax of the Century

By Patrick J. Buchanan posted at LRC.com

With publication of “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, the hunt was on for the "missing link." Fame and fortune awaited the scientist who found the link proving Darwin right: that man evolved from a monkey.

In 1912, success! In a gravel pit near Piltdown in East Sussex, there was found the cranium of a man with the jaw of an ape.

"Darwin Theory Proved True," ran the banner headline.
Evolution skeptics were pilloried, and three English scientists were knighted for validating Piltdown Man.

It wasn't until 1953, after generations of biology students had been taught about Piltdown Man, that closer inspection discovered that the cranium belonged to a medieval Englishman, the bones had been dyed to look older and the jaw belonged to an orangutan whose teeth had been filed down to look human.

The scientific discovery of the century became the hoax of the century. But Piltdown Man was not alone. There was Nebraska Man.

In 1922, Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History, identified a tooth fossil found in Nebraska to be that of an "anthropoid ape." He used his discovery to mock William Jennings Bryan, newly elected to Congress, as "the most distinguished primate which the State of Nebraska has yet produced."

Invited to testify at the Scopes trial, however, Osborn begged off. For, by 1925, Nebraska Man's tooth had been traced to a wild pig, and Creationist Duane Gish, a biochemist, had remarked of Osborn's Nebraska Man, "I believe this is a case in which a scientist made a man out of a pig, and the pig made a monkey out of the scientist."

These stories are wonderfully told in Eugene Windchy's 2009 The End of Darwinism . But if Piltdown Man and his American cousin Nebraska Man were the hoaxes of the 20th century, global warming is the great hoax of the 21st. In a matter of months, what have we learned:

• In its 2007 report claiming that the Himalayan glaciers are melting, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change relied on a 1999 news story in a popular science journal, based on one interview with a little-known Indian scientist who said this was pure "speculation," not supported by any research. The IPCC also misreported the supposed date of the glaciers' meltdown as 2035. The Indian had suggested 2350.

• The IPCC report that global warming is going to kill 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest and cut African crop yields 50 percent has been found to be alarmist propaganda.

• The IPCC 2007 report declared 55 percent of Holland to be below sea level, an exaggeration of over 100 percent.

• While endless keening is heard over the Arctic ice cap, we hear almost nothing of the 2009 report of the British Antarctica Survey that the sea ice cap of Antarctica has been expanding by 100,000 square kilometers a decade for 30 years. That translates into 3,800 square miles of new Antarctic ice every year.

• Though America endured one of the worst winters ever, while the 2009 hurricane season was among the mildest, the warmers say this proves nothing. But when our winters were mild and the 2005 hurricane season brought four major storms to the U.S. coast, Katrina among them, the warmers said this validated their theory.

You can't have it both ways.

• The Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University, which provides the scientific backup for the IPCC, apparently threw out the basic data on which it based claims of a rise in global temperatures for the century. And a hacker into its e-mail files found CRU "scientists" had squelched the publication of dissenting views.

What we learned in a year's time: Polar bears are not vanishing. Sea levels are not rising at anything like the 20-foot surge this century was to bring. Cities are not sinking. Beaches are not disappearing. Temperatures have not been rising since the late 1990s. And, in historic terms, our global warming is not at all unprecedented.

Dennis Avery of Hudson Institute wrote a decade ago that from A.D. 900 to 1300, the Earth warmed by 4 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit, a period known as the Little Climate Optimum.

How horrible was it?

"The Vikings discovered and settled Greenland around A.D. 950. Greenland was then so warm that thousands of colonists supported themselves by pasturing cattle on what is now frozen tundra. During this great global warming, Europe built the looming castles and soaring cathedrals that even today stun tourists with their size, beauty and engineering excellence. These colossal buildings required the investment of millions of man-hours – which could be spared from farming because of higher crop yields."

Today's global warming hysteria is the hoax of the 21st century. H.L. Mencken had it right:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

By Patrick J. Buchanan March 2, 2010

Truth Has Fallen and Has Taken Liberty with It

Media Death
By Paul Craig Roberts March 31st at Tak Mag.com

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

—George Orwell

There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.
Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”

Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.

Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.

Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.

Today many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. “Free market economists” are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by “the New Economy,” a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this “new economy” are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.

Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of “the New Economy.”

And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted “studies” that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the “studies.”

The Council of Europe is investigating big pharma’s role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.
The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.

And there is the global warming scandal, in which climate scientists, financed by Wall Street and corporations anxious to get their mitts on “cap and trade” and by a U.N. agency anxious to redistribute income from rich to poor countries, concocted a doomsday scenario in order to create profit in pollution.

Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.

Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.

I remember when, following CIA director William Colby’s testimony before the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan issued executive orders preventing the CIA and U.S. black-op groups from assassinating foreign leaders. In 2010 the US Congress was told by Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, that the US now assassinates its own citizens in addition to foreign leaders.

“The American media does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.”

When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion alone of being a “threat,” he wasn’t impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee. In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don’t carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.

As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the offshoring of U.S. GDP to overseas countries. U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO “performance bonuses,” have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe offshoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.

Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money. The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these “performance awards” by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about “the Muslim threat,” Wall Street, U.S. corporations and “free market” shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.

Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state.
Americans have bought into the government’s claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government. Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect “terrorists,” and not themselves. Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.

Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.

I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week’s first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American “mainstream media.”
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