Banking Meltdown Melts Even More

March 25, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

After everyone finished flapping their lips in support of the idea, again, that the financial crisis is over, we can plainly see, it continues onwards, barely pausing with each 'rescue.' The Federal Reserve LLP has yet again, handed out a huge sum of money to keep our banking system from total collapse. Only this was first reported in the Chinese news. We watch rioters in Tibet while they watch our bank account sink into the muck. Guess who gets the last bitter laugh? Sader! He has restarted the fighting in Iraq. Home prices continue to collapse and the worse in housing is yet to come. As I keep pointing out, housing bubbles take a minimum of 5 years to recover. Big ones cant take 20 years.

From Xinhau, the Chinese news service:

U.S. Fed auctions another $50 bln to banks

This was the central bank's eighth auction aimed at injecting more money into the U.S. banking system since mid-December 2007, when the Fed established its Term Auction Facility to deliver short-term funds to banks in need of liquidity.

The series of auctions so far have pumped 260 billion U.S. dollars into the banking system.

The latest auction produced an interest rate of 2.615 percent, lower than the 2.80 percent generated in the previous one, which was held on March 11 and also provided 50 billion U.S. dollars to banks.

There were 88 bidders for a slice of the latest 50 billion U.S. dollars in 28-day loans. Demand was high, with the Fed receiving bids for 88.9 billion U.S. dollars worth of loans.

Demand was high? Eh? What? This means the Central Bank is Grand Central Station. All trains terminate there, don't they? And of course, the Federal Reserve LLP has unlimited potential funds to draw on: the printing press, thanks to Guttenberg. Since the sky is the limit, the Fed isn't too worried yet. They have infinite faith in their godlike powers. Of course, they create global inflation with they use their powers and this is the only curb. One they drive over constantly, incidentally.

S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index Falls Record 10.7%

Home prices in 20 U.S. metropolitan areas fell in January by the most on record, a sign the housing recession is deepening, a private survey showed today.

The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index dropped 10.7 percent from January 2007, after a 9 percent decrease in December. The gauge has fallen for 13 consecutive months.

Price declines will continue as foreclosures add to a glut of unsold properties, and stricter lending rules make it harder to get financing. Declining values leave homeowners feeling less wealthy and with less home equity to borrow against, undermining consumer spending and pushing the economy closer to a recession.

Deflation hits the housing market like a wrecking ball. Of course, inflation is OK so long as assets move up faster than the Fed LLC can print money. When assets fall faster and faster as the Fed LLP prints faster, this is a problem. Some people call this a 'liquidity trap'. If you try to liquidate assets, they fall in value due to everyone trying to do this as fast as possible as prices drop. The panic to rid oneself of an asset as it falls in value feeds more falls and a death spiral results as Bear Stearns learned the hard way.

People are still buying houses. There is still some sort of banking going on right now. But all are bargain hunters, not house hunters. Some of the goofy stories I read about people earning less than $60,000 a year bidding up prices of hovels to $500,000 in California still abound. They often bid up the price not due to competition but to get more money for the brokers who then shared the excess with the buyers and sellers. This should be sending people to prison since it is fraud. And it fueled the raging asset fires. The value of most housing sold last year was fake, not a true market. Just as the bull market on Wall Street and the commodities market climb was fake. Being based on loans, not savings, it drove up the value of things far beyond their true value.

This is the problem: all the investment systems and nest eggs depend ultimately on savings, not debt. When debts accumulate in any investment system, they cause rapid rises in 'values' but also tremendous drops when they have to do margin calls! This force accentuates any falls, often, fatally. This is why, for a few decades, such deals were illegal. The SEC couldn't stop people from running up debts on the value of their homes to play the markets. My neighbors who were much richer than I on paper lost their shirts in the Dot Com collapse and ended up vanishing and being replaced by neighbors who are much more careful, so far!

I hope they don't fall for these lures. But when giant banking houses and financial organizations fell for this sort of scheme, we see a collapse of all our financial systems. And this came only after they maliciously and stupidly got Congress to get rid of laws forbidding this.

Bloomberg:

About $460 billion of adjustable-rate mortgages are scheduled to reset this year, according to analysts at Citigroup Inc.

Half a trillion mortgages must reset? This is why the Fed LLC is dropping rates like a rock! They have to rescue everyone with totally fake interest rates. Basically, the Fed said, 'We must throw the baby out with the bath water'. They will swamp our nation with the exact same stupid low-interest rate loans we just had back in 2005. All, in the hopes that $40,000 a year workers can buy more $500,000 hovels! The idea that these low-quality homes in bad neighborhoods that should be for workers should even be more than $50,000 is the question we should be asking.

Even if rates go to 1%, most of the people who got these loans can't afford them due to one simple fact: raging inflation in energy and food! What could be squeezed into back in 2005 is hopeless today! The fact of inflation has hammered the purchasing power of the working class. Yesterday, while in town, I read a sad story about a factory worker in the Deep South where the Japanese, Korean, German and Chinese are building factories. These pathetic non-union 'right to be slaves' states provide cheap labor.

The man working for Hyundai earned a pathetic $7 an hour. This is barely better than minimum wage. The cars, by the way, sell for about the same price as union-made cars here. And the profits are pure candy for the Korean owners who haul it out to their homeland. It does NOT stay here. Anyway, this poor man was using nearly all his extra income to buy gas! Since all the foreign colonizing powers build in cities, they always build in farmlands far from cities, people working there must commute up to 50 miles to work. And this is killing them.

The unionized jobs are vanishing rapidly and being replaced by $7 an hour workers who can't buy squat. So who will buy things? This is the classic headache of all capitalists. They try to fix this with cheap loans only they can't do this so they give out expensive loans. Credit for $7 an hour workers is around 15-30% per year which kills purchasing power relentlessly. After 20 years of adding more and more backlog debt, they end up broke and dead. And so does the economy.

Junk Bond Losses Top $35 Billion, JPMorgan Sees More

High-yield, high-risk bonds are off to their worst start ever, and the biggest investors say there's no recovery in sight.

Junk bonds have fallen an average 3.9 percent this year, losing about $35 billion, according to data from Merrill Lynch & Co. indexes. Some funds managed by John Hancock Advisers LLC, OppenheimerFunds Inc. and Fidelity Investments are down more than 7 percent, showing that even the largest investors were caught off guard by the collapse.

While the Federal Reserve has slashed benchmark interest rates by 3 percentage points since September, it has been unable to get investors to increase their purchases of the riskiest assets. The declines are choking off financing for speculative- grade companies, boosting defaults. The debt is likely to ``struggle'' for months as the economy enters a recession, according to JPMorgan Securities Inc., the top high-yield research firm in Institutional Investor magazine's annual poll.

And how shall this be fixed? Why, pass all this to the new hedge fund from hell: the Federal Reserve LLP! Now, on to a speech made 2 weeks ago by one of the partners of this limited liability organization, Mr. Kroszner:

Governor Randall S. Kroszner

At the American Bankers Association Spring Summit Meeting, Washington, D.C

March 11, 2008

The Importance of Fundamentals in Risk Management

One of the most basic risk management challenges relates to concentration of risks. From the beginnings of banking, bankers always have had to be cautious to guard against, as the old adage says, "putting all their eggs in one basket." For example, Renaissance bankers learned the lesson--some of them the hard way--that they did better by lending not just to a few merchants active in one trade, but to a range of merchants active in a variety of trades. As risk management techniques grew over the centuries, bankers became more adept at identifying, measuring, and managing risk concentrations, but that does not mean the original problem presented by concentrations--that losses could occur all at the same time--has vanished. Indeed, some bankers occasionally forget that this challenge still exists, usually with unfavorable consequences.

It is also important to note that concentrations in banking include not just basic lending, but also holding securities, trading complex instruments, providing liquidity facilities, engaging in off-balance sheet transactions, and conducting other financial activities. As banks have extended their range of activities and involvement in new markets, they must be particularly mindful of potential for concentrations of risk to arise for a number of reasons. First, any new activity will be less familiar and involve less data and experience for evaluating risk compared with long-standing activities or markets. Second, risk concentrations can be hidden during normal times and may only manifest themselves during times of stress when activities or instruments that might in normal times have little or negative correlation suddenly become correlated, such as with a market-wide increase in the demand for liquidity as we have seen recently. In other words, bankers may have far more eggs jostling around in the same basket, and each of those eggs may be more fragile than originally thought.

These eggs have all turned to scrambled eggs. And was this accidental? Or did the bankers deliberately break these eggs so they could never be unscrambled? Of course, we all know the answer to that: this was deliberate. The rotten eggs can't be separated from the fresh, wholesome eggs if they are all churned together into one big souffle! Alas, the souffle fell when the bankers took it out of the oven.

Now, if I were addressing these bankers, this would have made the news because of all the screaming, hair-tearing, me yelling, 'You are all UNDER ARREST for FRAUD!' And they would throw things at me and I would fling the podium at them in a fit of rage. I would grab one and scream, 'Do you realize, inflation is eating my income AND my savings gets NO VALUE thanks to you clowns?'

Yes, it would be amusing and newsworthy. This partner in the Fed LLP pretends the craven, evil bankers who stupidly destroyed our entire banking system don't know perfectly well, their crimes and their contributions to this disaster. He feels they didn't know what the hell these brilliant brains were doing. YEAH, RIGHT! They didn't understand the 'complex' instruments of monetary torture they devised?

Blame it all on the computer nerds! Yeah, that's the ticket! The ignorant fools running the banks were too stupid to understand the lower level nerds who are their dwarves. With little reward or pay, these dwarves live in deep caves and hammer away at the gold stolen from the Rhinemaiden strumpets. Yes, and the dwarves worked with the giants to make the Derivatives Beast, not the bankers! Like a room full of Wotans sitting in Valhalla, they shovel blame everywhere but where they sit. I want to spank all of them. Smack.

The Fed tries to explain to its reckless, idiot partners, how 'risk' works:

Effective risk management remains sturdy and durable only if supported by strong and independent risk functions that produce unbiased information. [Elaine: HAHAHAHAHA] Empowering independent risk managers results in clear, dispassionate thinking about the entire firm's risk profile, with no favoritism toward any business unit. [Elaine: HAHAHAHA...the plan to kill me via laughter still operative!] Senior managers should encourage risk managers to dig deep to uncover not only risks within each business unit, but also risk concentrations that can arise from the set of activities undertaken by the firm as a whole as well as latent risks--such as hidden risk concentrations that can arise from correlation of risk in times of stress. [Elaine: ARREST THEM!] Such risk management assessments should lead risk managers to point out cases in which certain business lines are assuming too much risk. [Elaine: isn't he a cute stand-up comedian?]

In other words, it is good to have a few people within the institution who--to paraphrase a former Federal Reserve Chairman--know when to take away the punch bowl. [Elaine: ROLL OUT THE BARREL, WE'LL HAVE A BARREL OF FUN!!!] Being the party pooper, however, can be very difficult in any organization,[Elaine: they are FIRED!] and that is why it is crucial for the risk manager to be known as an independent voice who is influential with top management and for top executives, of large or small firms, to set the appropriate "tone at the top" [Elaine: tossing the bosses out of the window without opening it may work here] with respect to the importance of independent and unbiased risk evaluation.

Wheew. Reading this section was a trial. My sides hurt. I wish I was there. My screams of laughter would have disconcerted these stone-faced creeps. So far, the US has been kept in the dark about the noisome activities of these greedy little monsters. People think these sharks are out to save them not strip our nation of everything. People seldom hear about offshore tax havens and offshore banking nor do they hear political speeches about this. Ron Paul has given some good speeches this last month. Crickets are louder at night. And even when Obama decided to commit suicide by suggesting we stop the pirates, note how his star has fallen rapidly from that point onwards.

I once told a boss, his company was going bankrupt. He said, 'We must have an emergency meeting!' Then, as I prepared a program to deal with cost overruns and misspending, he called me and said, 'Something important came up. The meeting in cancelled.' Then, a person much lower in the main office in Chicago slipped me a message, 'The boss and his son decided to go buy a new yacht.' They want off to play with toys! And they got rid of me. And I said, 'Everyone, look for new jobs, you aren't going to get your last month's pay.'

Three months later, boom. Gone! Some former co-workers called to thank me for warning them. The main thing is, they never give warning even if the top people know what is wrong. They either are insane or they don't care. Or they are criminals. This company's biggest selling point was their 'guarantee' which went down the river with them. Zero.

And so it is: the Fed banking authority should be yelling at these clowns. He shouldn't pretend they were clueless. They were most emphatically not. They were RISKY. They thought the scam would run forever.

More Fed LLP foppery:

Limits and controls can be useful tools for creating the right incentives and sending appropriate signals, but they of course need to be tailored individually to each firm. Problems can arise when incentives are not properly structured and appropriate "risk discipline" is not exercised--for example, when limits and controls are not set or, if they are set, when adherence to them is not monitored or enforced. Such controls provide incentives for business-line leaders to assume only the risks that the firm can absorb because they penalize those who try to take on excessive risk or inadequate mitigation in the name of maximizing short-term profit. This is just as true at large international firms as it is at community banks.

They REWARD excessive risk! This is where the profits lie! They don't want low-risk deals, they want the BBB deals that make lots and lots of extra money! Anyone practicing old fashioned banking cautious rules was FIRED! They were emphatically shown the door. And the people listening to this speech are the same clowns who ordered everyone to be as risky as possible.

How did they deal with the gigantic mountain of risk they created? Well, they turned to the Derivative Beast and parked it all there. And then said, 'There is no risk! Let's make even more money with even greater risks!' It is that simple. How on earth can anyone 'self-regulate' when the rewards for doing the worst things are greater than the rewards for being sober and careful?

Fed forges forwards:

Now I wish to consider the third fundamental. Liquidity risk management. Banks, of course, have been managing expected liquidity demands since the beginning of banking itself. Because of its central role in the business of banking, liquidity risk requires rigorous and effective management. Naturally, financial institutions both large and small must pay careful attention to liquidity risks, even if they manifest themselves in different ways.

Regarding recent events, a number of financial firms were surprised by the extent of market disruptions and were forced to take funding actions not anticipated in their contingency funding plans, including some decisions to support affiliates [Elaine: the hedges that all failed] that were based on reputational concerns rather than contractual obligations. At the same time, some institutions were able to avoid more serious problems from these events by aligning treasury functions more closely with risk-management processes and incorporating information from all businesses into global liquidity planning, including actual and contingent liquidity risk. They also made attempts to embed market liquidity premia or apply market liquidity haircuts in pricing models and valuations.
*snip*
As supervisors, we strive to achieve the appropriate balance, recognizing that supervision and regulation has costs and benefits that need to be weighed against one another. For instance, we need to be careful that lending is conducted on a prudent basis, and at the same time, take care not to stifle the provision of credit when it is done properly.

The costs of not regulating: the utter collapse of the entire banking system? Look, we know already, this is costing us over a trillion dollars. And it has barely begun. The toxic leadership failure/noxious banking failure mix is going to cost us not only many trillions of dollars, it will possibly destroy the entire world's economic systems. Now, that is a tremendous price to pay for lack of supervision! So what, if laws and regulations slowed things down?

We saw things speed uphill and now it is roaring downhill! This is unacceptable, to put it mildly. The utter failure of ANY of the banking/investment houses to supervise themselves proves that they need stark, harsh controls! If they don't have this, they end up raiding the bank, wrecking the economy and destroying all our systems. They can't help it! They are drunkards and greedy bastards!

The fact that the Fed still coddles them on this issue sickens me and we should disband the Fed since they are USELESS and let the Security and Exchange Commission run the joint instead.

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[rockpaperscizzors]

FDIC Plans Staff Boost for Bank Failures
Tuesday March 25, 2008 10:15 am
Source: Associated Press
Author: ALAN ZIBEL
Published: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ho8bL9jY4UuRi8qJ4uDwDfpRkzOAD8VKI4100

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal bank regulators plan to increase staffing 60 percent in its bank failure division in coming months to handle an anticipated surge in troubled financial institutions.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. wants to add 140 workers to bring staff levels to 360 workers in the division that handles bank failures, John Bovenzi, the agency's chief operating officer, said Tuesday.

"We want to make sure that we're prepared," Bovenzi said, adding that most of the hires will be temporary and based in Dallas.

There have been five bank failures since February 2007 following an uneventful two-year stretch. The last time the agency was hit hard with failures was during the 1990-1991 recession, when 502 banks failed in three years.

The FDIC provides insurance for deposits up to $100,000. While depositors typically have quick access to their bank accounts on the next business day after a bank closure, winding down a failed bank's operations can take years to finish. That process can include selling off real estate, investments and dealing with lawsuits.

There are 76 banks on the FDIC's "problem institutions" list — which would equate to about 10 expected bank failures this year, though FDIC officials declined to make projections. Historically, about six banks fail per year on average, FDIC officials said.

[mad mike]

the fed just injected another 61 billion dollars of liquidity into the market. any readers see extra zeros to left of decimal place in your accounts?
nope. only the big boyz did. expect to see commodities to go up again and your purchasing power to go down.
i am amazed how the masses of uhmerikans fail to react to this raping.

[Jim B]

Yawn, Fed Reserve, Bear Stearns, Fed Reserve, Bernanke, on and on. Can't you say anything else? We get it.

More pertinent is that Income Taxes go to paying INTEREST on our money that the private banking cartel loans us. Ah-ha-ha-ha.....

To sad. To be. Believed.

[Blunt Force Trauma]

Well, you know, Mike; there is 'Uh-merikan Idol', 'The Hills' and NASCAR on TV. Why would any of them be aware that they were being forcibly violated in any cavity of their body with all those offerings?

[Elaine Supkis]

You are correct about that, Jim. The taxes cover only INTEREST. The entire US is on a stupid program of INTEREST ONLY LOANS. These are TOXIC AS HELL. This is why I am angry about rich people going to tax havens.

[Blunt Force Trauma]

So sad that Jim is bored of all this...

But he did say something of interest;

"More pertinent is that Income Taxes go to paying INTEREST on our money that the private banking cartel loans us."

You forgot to end that sentence with, "...that we lend to them."

Around, around we go....

[Gary Oppewall]

I work in a large manufacturing concern that
is slowly moving its machining offshore and
to southern plantations--ie Alabama,S.Carolina.

Whats utterly amazing is how high a percentage of my fellow union members still
to this day mouth right wing party lines and blame problems on the non-existant liberals.

There is absolutely no fight left in Americans. We are just cattle lowing in front of the gate to Ballpark Franks.

[Daliwood]

Gary, I've seen the same thing here in the South. The union workers seem to suffer from a kind of political Stockholm Syndrome, becoming devoted to those who hold them hostage. Even as they are losing their jobs, they blame liberals. (I say, "What liberals? There are only about 2 left in gov't.")

My company is expanding, although I have no idea where the investment capital will come from. In one of the bids for the job, a contractor put "All work will be performed by non-union laborers." The "non-union" was in bold type and underlined. I wonder why he didn't just put "wink, wink" in parentheses after that to signal that the workers will get substandard wages so that my company can save money and his company can make more money for the execs. I don't have much say in awarding the contract, but I took the bid to my superiors and said, "Don't do business with companies that use non-union labor for vital work."

My company makes a medical device, and the construction involves clean rooms. If you're in the hospital, do you want a product that came out of a pharmaceutical clean room built by skilled union labor or one built by the cheapest labor available?

[Elaine Supkis]

The need for cheap labor is manifest. It can't just be cheap, it has to be good. This is why the super-hardworking Chinese and other Orientals are sucking down much of world industries.

And yes, 'petty politics' is used to divide workers. They are told, they must focus on hair cuts, flubs and skin color. Then they will be 'safe.' Since so many working families are collapsing, they are told, it is the fault of civil rights, not economic collapse.

Wives have to work and this kills families, for example. I had to work all my life even when bearing children. This is very stressful, of course.

Seeing no reasonable solution and with TV yelling all sorts of goofy things, the average worker imagines a fascist might save them.

This is a troubling thing. Israel is very fascist now. The disease of fascism is being transmitted here along with the idea of ethnic cleansing. America has a very ugly history when it comes to ethnic cleansing.

This is a melting pot that can and has gone full melt-down. This toxic substance is pulled out of the closet whenever the rulers are worried about the masses noticing them. Like now, with the banking collapse which is 100% the responsibility of the ruling elites in DC and Wall Street.

[AF]

Gary, Daliwood,

Don't forget small business owners. They are another consistently crapped on group who have completely swallowed the propaganda of the right-wing elites.

Nevermind that local governments all over the place are giving large corporations "incentives" that are basically welfare that helps force the little guys out that much faster.

"It's a Wonderful Life" is a bigger fairy-tale than "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"!

[Elaine Supkis]

Mr. Potter runs the Federal Reserve, LLP.

[Hark the Dawn]

One of the under told stories of the Nazis during WWII was the general goal of reducing labor costs for most of the Third Reich and German industry to ZERO using slave labor.

Slavic slave labor first and foremost. German farmers were to 'colonize' the lands of the Eastern Front first, using the native population to produce cheap and abundant food, and of course it would be facilitated with lots of cheap and abundant oil to wash it all down with.

Didn't work out that way, the slavic 'slaves' kicked Germany's ass pretty throughly.

There were several hundred thousand German 'colonist' in Czechoslovakia at the end of WWII. The Czech interim government, set with the Soviet troops blessing, issued an eviction notice in the fall of 1945 (the war had ended in May) for all Germans to leave the country. They only gave the Germans a couple of weeks to pack up and leave. Alot of these Germans, mostly women and children (the men were in the German army) didn't make it to the border in time and were massacred by Czech partisans by the Tens of thousands, some even within site of the German border. This 'pay back time' was not reported widely for a number of reasons, least of which was many thought the Germans deserved what they got.

[Jim B]

Elaine,

Trying to catch up. Must not be overwhelmed...Would thou make mention of The Bankers' Manifesto of 1892? Big mention, please.

[OC]

The Nazis wanted the easy way out - enslave others 'cos they have bigger guns and better technology.

They expanded too far and fast leading to final collapse.

Same thing could happen to US - once the economic collapse comes; temptation to raid or enslave South America...leading to over extension of empire and final collapse!!

[hans blink]

Maestra, while you write such good economic sense, you keep forgetting that most Americans will never believe you, in fact they plan to elect an even more evil in McCain. The success to our banking failures is to further develop Sharia banking. The current Jew dominated banking industry has failed it's test of time time to look for alternatives.

[Elaine Supkis]

The Jewish cultural contribution for banking has been SPLENDID. They were forced to survive by their wits and this made them stronger, intellectually.

And they figured the good side of interest rates which is why we have a banking system in the first place! A 'Sharia' system means perpetual depression. Many of the 'reforms' sought by people today are actually terrible.

Simple changes in SUPERVISION prevents the abuses of the system. The Fed is NOT supervising at all which is the problem.

The desire for 0% loans with 0% down is a temptation for all cultures, all religions. We end up with a feudal system whereby the 'banker' is the leader or ruler. Everyone owes him or her and ends up serfs.

Then, petty taxes and fines are piled on and loans at 20-30% a year are the only ones available as we see increasingly in the lower classes here.

And a warning to all posters here: do not use derogatory language to refer to any religion. 'current Jew dominated' is racist because the comment is deliberately cutting off the proper designation. 'JewISH' is the right term.

Right wingers in America have picked up some very bad linguistic habits from their leaders. Bush and all his minions say or write, 'Democrat party' as an insult. By leaving out the proper wording, 'Democratic' they presume to destroy the legitimacy of the opposing party. I have noticed over time, this abusive sort of writing being used all over the place now.

This is ridiculous and childish.

[Chris]

It's more than ridiculous and childish. The twisting of language is very deliberate and very very dangerous. They use it as a tool to destroy any possibility of real adult discussions about problems and as a tool to brainwash people.

For example Bush never ever connected Saddam Hussein directly with 9/11, yet 90 % of the US military believed Saddam was directly involved in the attack and the US invaded Iraq to punish him for 9/11.

Complete bullshit of course but Bush had the troops exactly where he wanted them. And the majority of the US population with them.

Language is the primary tool for propaganda and the Bush administration is extremely good at it.

And it is used in the MSM too. Code words for this and that to frame thinking and to frame debates and issues. That is why it is so important with a free press that doesn't buy the bullshit but can think and argue for itself. But if you let the politicians and think tanks 'brand' the issues they have won half the battle before it has even started.

[Chris]

Link to the Zogby poll where almost 90 % of the troops say the invasion was to punish Saddam for his role in 9/11.

http://tinyurl.com/qrgsh

Link to one of the speeches Bush made before the invasion (Oct 2002). Note how cleverly Bush *conflates* Saddam and Iraq with 9/11 and Al Qaida without ever saying they were together in attacking the US on 9/11.

Yet that is exactly the impression the majority of the US citizens and troops had at the time of the invasion. Most probably still do I guess.

http://tinyurl.com/1wid

[Ed-M]

Actually the "Jew dominated banking industry," though created by Jewish people, is now dominated by White Anglo Saxon Protestants. Like Bernanke.

[Elaine Supkis]

As only 2% of the population, the Jewish contribution within the banking industry is much, much, much higher. But of course, the REAL RULERS are NOT JEWISH. They are like me: tracing roots back to the Normans. And we are absolute snakes. We use everyone ruthlessly.

We can be very nasty. Very. I am a black sheep so I keep pointing this out. The Bushes are like me. Come from the same social/genetic group.

Our tribe has a lot of insanity in it, too. A lot. Inbreeding, of course. Every bit as bad as the inbreeding of small religious groups.

[blues]

My "feelers" have been telling me for a long time that, while the financial systems provide niches for a relatively large number of Jewish folks, the biggest power rests with, well, probably the WASPS, or maybe the British (they still seem to run this place!). One thing all Money Barons seem to have in common is, like dark age royals, they love risk. Perhaps they are bored. If they can't crash markets, they want wars. The only way the commoners can keep the money barons out of market crashes and wars is by starting revolutions.

But Nature has just changed all the rules. First she gave us Apocalyptic technology. Then she started withdrawing our line of OIL credit. Close on the heels of that, she will pull an abrupt climatological changeroo! But we are way too busy fighting for the last crumbs to notice that she is poised to stomp us out like ants.

[PW]

WTF are "feelers"? Scientology creeps the shit out of me.

[Paul S]

I have to dispute the 'risk taking' explanation for this scandal (Bear Stearns rep is of being Cowboys, etc, etc.). Nope. They ALL knew ALL along they were playing with Daddy's credit card. These guys knew from the get-go the good ol' Uncle Sam would bail them out if/when the gravy train ended. You have to admit; the "bankers" called this one, right on the money (pun intended). History taught them; LTCM, the S&L scandal, to name the more recent examples. How many here have read, "When Genius Failed." the story of LTCM? Maybe worth re-reading...

[Cato]

The notion of Bear Stearns being a risk taking cowboy or playing with daddy's credit card is beside the point. Perhaps it's JPMorgan Chase that's the one in serious jeopardy of collapse. One wonders whether potentially catastrophic derivative contracts were created that pertain directly to Bear Stearns "fainting spells" that began last summer. Bear's failure could have set off a chain reaction of CDS defaults. JP Morgan went to the Fed and they smothered the patient in bed. Wonder if some of JP's toxic waste doesn't end up on Bear's balance sheet. "See we told you they were very sick indeed."

[Bear of Little Brain]

Love the image. Caligula had his horse, President Bush has his bunny. My guess is that it's Karl in the rabbit.

[Phil]

Bernanke is a neurastheniac, common to our Shadow Government, Shadow MSM, and Shadow Banking System. Their self-destructive behavior is often corrupted to imply intellectual superiority.

[Bear of Little Brain]

Ed-M:
Ben Shalom Bernanke is not a WASP, he is Jewish. Check Wiki. Doesn't "Shalom" mean "peace"? That's nice. Anyway, just want to keep things factual. Also, I think that you will find that the WASP's were eclipsed in the financial world some time ago. It probably started with the Rothschilds around the time of the Battle of Waterloo.
And so it goes. And so it goes.

[Phil]

May we expand on the 'no jew' rule to include Wasp, Brit, Mic, and Black.

Fair is fair.

[Bear of Little Brain]

Phil:

Hey, I'm a WASP (unfortunately, not one of the wealthy ones). And a Brit. Neither insults me. By "Mic", I suppose you mean "Mick", which I believe is derogatory to the Irish (Well, in England - I'm open to being corrected on that, if someone Irish knows better). I thought "Black" was the correct way to refer to someone of, say, African origin. I can think of one or two other terms which are regarded as offensive.

Oh, maybe I've blundered. I think I was I supposed to read this as sarcasm. Doh! Peace, bro'.

On the other hand, I think it is important to try to be careful in the use of the word "Jew", since it seems to be such a "trigger" word. There are good and bad, and honest and manipulative, in all peoples, and it is perhaps better to avoid being offensive. On the other hand, being factual is not the same thing and only offensive to the guilty mind (Discuss - or maybe not!).

Maybe we could generalise here and simply refer to the Money Power instead.

Of course, if one wants to focus on Extremist Judaism or Zionism, toddle over to WhatReallyHappened, or Rense or find an appropriate "discussion" group. There's little point in being offensive here and it will only cause Elaine unnecessary grief from the likes of Abnaki.

Bloody Hell! Just went back to the Forbes post to check I'd spelt Abnaki's name correctly. Looks like WWIII had broken out since my last visit. So much wasted effort, so much incoming hatred. And Abnaki has found a friend, Doc Martin. (Which is how the skinheads over here used to spell - incorrectly - the name of the boots they used "to give you a f*****g good kickin'", incidentally - especially if you were Asian. What an appropriate pseudonym.)

It's your blog, Elaine. and your right to speak freely. I don't have to read it. Here's a neat little quote for your rabid fascist trolls:

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all". Noam Chomsky.

And here's a nice one:

"The test of democracy is freedom of criticism". David Ben-Gurion

Hope they see the irony.

Upon reflection, it looks like you've gone "high profile". As per a previous comment of mine, maybe you need to investigate some means of being independent of a blog and its TOS. It looks like they're out to get you. Unfortunately, it was just this kind of chutzpah that brought Hitler to power, BTW.
"Beware the fury of the quiet man." (No idea who said it. Well, I just did!)

Is it me, or is the whole world coming to the boil? Maybe it's the sunspots.

[K]

Speaking of laughter Elaine, did you seem McCains comments that what we need to fix the economy is "less regulation"? Real side splitter...

[Phil]

Jeebus, you multiculturalists make creationists look intellectual.

Enjoyed your post.

[Phil]

Yo, Bear Of Little Brains,

Your mention of Abnaki is startling.

Abnaki Indians did for my great x-grandfather Lovering in the Sheepscot Maine Massacre in 1688. Tough way to go.

[Elaine Supkis]

A true story of my family's past: During the French/Indian Wars [William and Mary Wars] an ancestress was kidnapped by the Hurons and carried off to beyond Fort Pitt [Pittsburgh]. Her father, a Bard, [family famous on East Coast, one of the 600 Families] put out a bounty for her return.

My other ancestor, a Pettit, grandson of the infamous Pirate, set out with three Indians to rescue her. He succeeded.

On the way home, they both decided, at Fort Pitt, to get married.

Their family founded a number of cities out West starting with Pennsylvania. They never came back to 'civilization'.

And Pettit, by the way, was half-Mohican on his mother's side [pirates were not racists when it came to sex].

[PLovering]

Perhaps, the Pirates of Palestine are racists.

[Bear of Little Brain]

Phil:
"Abnaki" was one of the pseudonyms that appeared here recently. I had no idea that there was/is (?) an Abnaki tribe.
Just googled it. Potted history here
http://www.essortment.com/all/abenakinewengl_rmru.htm

Looks like European diseases did for most of them.

I think I'm going to have to research my family history. I'm beginning to feel outgunned here! :-)

All the best everyone

[Elaine Supkis]

It is a sad day when a bunch of anonymous posters ashamed of their true identity call me, a person who had never been anonymous, 'sock puppets.'

And this is the funny side of the web: people become rather naughty when they can't be traced.

Bear of Little Brain: call on the gloomy donkey for help here! We need him.

[PLovering]

Ahoy, Bear of Little Brain,

Abnaki were a PITA. They lived in many, small scattered villages, but could gather quickly for a raid. They could vanish just as quickly. The Abnakis never did surrender or admit of a defeat.

Three of my ancestors fought in the American Revolution War. One was the 2nd youngest participant in the Boston Tea Party. Another fought in multiple battles over five years: Brandywine, Paoli, Germantown, Amboy, Princeton, Valley Forge, and others. Genealogy research is great fun.

[Bear of Little Brain]

Phil:

Now you're showing off! :-)
But that's OK
Take care