Wealth Protections Continue To Collapse

March 5, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

As all the biggest power houses on earth work day and night to move around their wealth, trying to protect it all from the collapse they, themselves caused, things continue to fall apart. More hedge funds are collapsing. The wealthy are trying to form a new association of pirates to protect themselves by bribing even more politicians. Obama is now going down in flames because of his talk about ending the Cayman Islands tax haven. And the grim game goes onwards. The NYT suggests we can weaken the dollar and increase exports and this will fix everything. Right. And the moon is green cheese.

Businesses plot strategy to protect wealth funds

Sovereign wealth funds are teaming up with the private equity industry, business trade associations and major financial institutions to strategize a defense against the growing political scrutiny of the $3 trillion funds.

Last week, about 30 lawyers and lobbyists — organized, according to one attendee, by a representative from private equity firm The Carlyle Group — conferred at JPMorgan’s New York offices to discuss their role in the growing political issue.
*snip*
According to an attendee of last week’s New York meeting, most in the group rejected the idea of starting a trade association. Many in the group worried that a formalized association would project the wrong image.

Obama's campaign took a sudden and 'unexpected' turn for the worse with the media hell hounds going after him when the news broke...IN EUROPE...that he was going after the Hell Hounds and Pirates of the Caribbean. When he denounced the 12,000 companies in one small building in the Cayman Islands, I knew he would be doomed to defeat as the media would suddenly find a thousand flaws in his character and past. What is very darkly amusing in a nightmarish way is how they found out he has had associations with corrupt business people in the past! This, in an election with the Keating 5 McCain and Cow Futures Hillary? HAHAHA. Right.

This secretive meeting of the lobbyists and lawyers is typical. They are setting up their systems to keep this mess going for as long as possible. They are drawing up battle plans to protect the rich and powerful. They are priming their cannons and unfurling their sails and raising the Jolly Roger.

They shouldn't form a trade association, they should form a treason association! A reader called me today to bring up the business of ELF and the burning of the unsellable McMansions out West this week. He said, 'The government wants to cut off even more of our civil liberties and note how they are blaming an ecoterrorist group rather than people wanting to collect fire insurance.'

And I said, 'In the seventies in NYC, we had many suspicious fires for the same reasons.' During bad economic times, the same things always happen. The government gets draconian while at the same time, reducing fire and police protections. Also, the people who created the financial messes make bigger and more powerful associations and then pool their funds to bribe our politicians even more. Note that donations from these people have soared in the last 7 years as our economic condition has deteriorated? These are connected.

This election is going to be even worse than the previous 4 elections. The final candidates will be in the pockets of these pirates who are organizing even bigger lobbying pushes. The corruption in DC is much worse each cycle. This cycle, it is tremendously worse. Every possible candidate who could stop this was ruthlessly eliminated. And not by the voters, they were simply responding to the tidal wave of media events. I knew Obama was in trouble before the voting began because the news stories on TV would show one minute of McCain, 5 minutes of Hillary and only about 5 SECONDS of Obama. He was vanishing right before our eyes. They were so naked about this with Ron Paul, he vanished even when he was on stage, yelling! I was 'vanished' by the media and I am very aware how this works.

Once, they showed only my hands while I was talking. My hands can be very eloquent but the fact that they had to do this amused me no end. Back to the pirate plans to protect their ill-gotten loot:

Fears that people might notice these creeps [That] hasn’t stopped others from trying to start a trade association. In the past few weeks, a small group of mostly Republican lobbyists founded the Sovereign Investment Council, a membership association for the sovereign wealth funds and their domestic financial institution partners. Membership fees range from $200,000 to $1 million.

The council has attracted no funds as members, according to lobbyists close to the issue. “It’s an entrepreneurial group of lobbyists just trying to raise money,” explained one business lobbyist.

The other day, a lawyer who wanted to see sharks up close, went to this place in Florida where they feed sharks. He went swimming with them and they ate him. HAHAHA. Um, duh. Seriously, they ate him. Cannibals!

The Chinese won't give them any money unless they prove they can produce. So I expect these lobbyists to ask their creatures in Congress to start proposing we have a day to honor all Chinese Communist leaders! How about a 'Mao Mao Day'? Right after Mother's Day. Or maybe switch 'Memorial Day' with that day? Who needs to remember things, anyway? Not us!

Hedge fund Focus collapses

The fund, which had produced strong returns by investing in Swiss mid-cap stocks since starting in 2005, is now expected to shut down after losing about 80 per cent of its value.

Hedge funds are falling like trees in a forest as a tornado rips through. The loss of savings would cause a global slow down all in itself if this were all. But it isn't all. These funds nearly all used 'leverage'. I got in a big argument with a commentator at Market Watch once over this issue. He set out to prove to me that going into debt, especially when one gets a super-cheap loan [from Japan, of course] one can make much more profit than trying to save money and then investing it. I said, if there is a turn down and things shrink, there is no margin call and one doesn't lose one's shirt if there is no need to pay back anyone.

This is the problem here: I have lost more than $100,000 in profit in the past. But it didn't matter. I still came out ahead and intact because the growth in profit wasn't backed by debts. I could eat the losses and go onwards. But if one does this with loans, bankruptcy results. This fund didn't 'shut down'. It went bankrupt. And unlike a business filling for relief, this is pure loss that can't be 'fixed' in any way. Like many of the Dot Com businesses that went bankrupt, the facilities are mostly a few computers and office chairs and maybe a potted plant in the lobby! They come and go, virtually no overhead but also virtually nothing for investors to salvage when things go wrong. The money that has vanished isn't merely gone, either.

IT IS DISAPPEARING IN OTHER ACCOUNTS. This vanishing act means that the people who loaned money to these guys who used it to buy other loans that are not being repaid, will not be repaid. See how this gathers steam as it goes onwards? Like a snow ball rolling down a snowy mountainside, it will rapidly turn into an avalanche. And this can flatten whole cities, whole countries!

Worse than all this, turning on snow machines to make more snow makes this worse, not better. Someone ought to tell Bernanke. And someone sort of tries this as we see in the NYT article below:

Double Bubble Trouble

Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley head in Hong Kong:
The central question for the economy is this: Will this medicine work? The same question was asked repeatedly in Japan during its “lost decade” of the 1990s. Unfortunately, as was the case in Japan, the answer may be no.

If the American economy were entering a standard cyclical downturn, there would be good reason to believe that a timely countercyclical stimulus like that devised by Washington would be effective. But this is not a standard cyclical downturn. It is a post-bubble recession.

The United States is now going through its second post-bubble downturn in seven years. Yet this one stands in sharp contrast to the post-bubble shakeout in the stock market during 2000 and 2001. Back then, there was a collapse in business capital spending, a sector that peaked at only 13 percent of real gross domestic product.

The current recession has been set off by the simultaneous bursting of property and credit bubbles. The unwinding of these excesses is likely to exact a lasting toll on both homebuilders and American consumers. Those two economic sectors collectively peaked at 78 percent of gross domestic product, or fully six times the share of the sector that pushed the country into recession seven years ago.

Roach as often been right about all this. And yes, the collapse in consumerism will take down the US. Consumers don't save. We built the present economic system on the notion that we can spend and never bother with savings. The banking system, since the Medici opened their first bank in Florence, Italy, has been based on someone depositing savings in banks which then lend. Basing banking on buying loans using loans to buy the loans it grossly unstable and is part of the basic problems we face.

Next, Roach talks about solutions. Alas, he is very naive.

A more effective strategy would be to try to tilt the economy away from consumption and toward exports and long-needed investments in infrastructure.

That won’t be easy to achieve. Such a shift in the mix of the economy will require export-friendly measures like a weaker dollar and increased consumption by the rest of the world, which would strengthen demand for American-made goods. Fiscal initiatives should be directed at laying the groundwork for future growth, especially by upgrading the nation’s antiquated highways, bridges and ports.

Here is what I wrote at the NYT:

March 5th, 2008 9:90 am
At Culture of Life News, I correctly called the housing bubble peak at the end of 2005. Since then, the tragic mess was allowed to get worse and worse via all sorts of schemes to extend credit to people who were unable to pay any traditional mortgages or loans. This process was launched even as interest rates rose in order to keep the debt bubble growing.

It popped when it finally ended up handing out loans to the least credit worthy customers on earth. I wrote, back in 2006, 'If any lender boasts, "Four out of five applicants are approved," this means they are lending recklessly and at least half of these people will default on these loans.'

And this is exactly what happened. Anyone could see it coming, it was painfully obvious 2 years ago. The banking regulators were asleep at the wheel and everyone on Wall Street celebrated each hike in consumer spending and our trade deficit grew worse, not better.

Also, concerning that issue: back when it was only $10 billion a year, our nation went into a huge panic and tried to devalue the currency via the Bretton Woods II Accords and the Plaza and Louver Accords. THESE FAILED. The trade deficit grew and grew. NAFTA and all the free trade deals, all supported by the New York Times, by the way, made this worse and worse and worse until our deficit in trade approached a trillion dollars a year, an unsustainable amount.

Now we want to reverse that by selling to others? Changing the flow of trade is very difficult. All our trade partners consider this to be pure poison. No one more so than the Japanese who are today discussing how they can weaken the yen again so they can resume flooding us with their high value-added exports. This requires tariffs and barriers on the part of the US or we are doomed.

This is the ONE THING no one is allowed to suggest. The candidates suggesting this and pulling out of Iraq were eliminated in the election process via the easy method of the media mostly ignoring them except when there was a dirty story that could be dug up. So we get to choose between pro-NAFTA, free trade people who will change nothing. And none of them want us out of Iraq, either.

This means we will learn history's harsh lessons the hard way. Reading about the decline of empires comes to play here. They all go bankrupt. The same way we we are going bankrupt.
— Elaine Meinel Supkis, Berlin NY

Even skeptics are unable to look hard at this reality. Our 'allies' will be united just as all the pirates are united in keeping the OLD status quo going. Not ONE of these entities want things to change. Nay, even Roach is crazy about this export market business. The US needs to manufacture here for US consumption! How easy is that? Japan's export market BOOMED for the last 7 years, it shot through the roof. Their profits soared. They took over more and more world markets. Toyota rivals GM and dwarfs Ford! Think they will let this reverse? We export to Japan virtually NO vehicles at all! And Japan will strip its gears rather than let that happen. Ever. The US cannot export its way out of this mess. Not if we are simultaneously importing like mad.

Japan Capital Spending Falls 7.3%; GDP May Be Lowered

Japanese corporate investment fell at the fastest pace in five years last quarter, signaling the government will trim its economic growth estimate next week.

Capital spending excluding software declined 7.3 percent in the three months ended Dec. 31 from a year earlier, the Ministry of Finance said today in Tokyo. The government will use today's data to revise its estimate of gross domestic product March 12. Preliminary fourth-quarter GDP grew an annualized 3.7 percent.

Profits, eroded by a stronger yen and higher costs of oil and raw materials, slid the most since the economy emerged from a recession more than five years ago. Slower growth could prompt the Bank of Japan to cut interest rates, the lowest among major economies, this year.

``This is a confirmation that companies remain very pessimistic about the outlook for the economy,'' said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute in Tokyo. ``Japan is losing its growth driver and the possibility that the Bank of Japan will cut rates is gradually increasing.''

I do love Bloomberg. Unlike the stupid New York Times, Bloomberg will utter the truth. They admit that 'depressed Japan' had emerged from its depression 5 years ago! Wow! Who would have guessed after reading papers like the New York Times? GDP grew there by 3.5%. Wow. And inflation is raging there now, of course. But the Bank of Japan ignores this. And will drop rates! To BOOST EXPORTS. And where to?

The United States. And to increase this, they will give us carry trade loans via dropping the value of the yen. Time to review my extensive past postings about all this:

Here is a cartoon I did last May, 2007:

Here is another cartoon from March, 2007:

June 28, 2007, I drew this cartoon which was prescient. The money managers were all in hysterics over the carry trade window slamming shut in Japan and the Japanese were in hysterics trying to open it again. This required killing the yen. This led directly to the China/Japan confrontation no one seems eager to talk about:

Yesterday, Japan made it perfectly clear they will use every trick in the book to drop the value of the yen. I predicted they would have a lot of trouble because they can't eat an extra trillion more in excess dollars all by themselves this time around.

Unlike Consumers, Companies Are Piling Up Cash

Unlike most American consumers, whose failure to save has exasperated economists for years, the typical American corporation has increased its savings so sharply that it probably has enough cash on hand to completely pay off its debts.

That should be good news in an economy unsettled by rising energy prices, tightening credit, gyrating stock prices and declining values for the dollar and the family homestead. Indeed, the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, cited strong corporate balance sheets as a bright spot in the darkening forecast he presented to Congress last week.

Corporations built up savings because they exploit Asian labor and crush US labor to reduce overhead. They love the present system and will lobby and hassle everyone to keep it going. It made them very, very flush. This is one of many sources of our flood of money that is destroying our economic system. This flood of wealth was kept as 'cash' which didn't mean these rich corporations parked this under mattresses. I don't think they were like the Princess and the Pea with a mountain of money holding up the easily annoyed rich princess.

This money was parked in the offshore banking system. I have a story I am writing about all this which will probably appear later here. How much of this cash has vanished? Remember, these numbers are OLD. Ie: pre-7/17/7 numbers. How many corporations are now sweating blood over the vanishing of this cash? Remember: money is evaporating rapidly in nearly all systems now. Except for gold and oil and other basic old-fashioned commodity markets which are still inflating. Is this money flowing from these older accounts to commodities? Is this flood of money seeking shelter, money held by corporations, now flooding into all commodities causing global inflation?

I have my own suspicions here.

Fed chief says mortgage crisis set to continue

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called Tuesday for additional action to prevent more distressed homeowners from falling into foreclosure.

“This situation calls for a vigorous response,” Bernanke said in a speech to a banking group meeting in Orlando, Fla.

Even with some relief efforts under way by industry and government, foreclosures and late payments on home mortgages are likely to rise “for a while longer,” Bernanke warned.
*snip*
“Reducing the rate of preventable foreclosures would promote economic stability for households, neighborhoods and the nation as a whole,” Bernanke said. “Although lenders and servicers have scaled up their efforts and adopted a wider variety of loss-mitigation techniques, more can, and should, be done,” the Fed chief said.

Will they finally get rid of Bernanke? My god, he is out to collapse our markets. Hey, why not rewrite these crummy loans that should have never been made in the first place? How about 0% interest on loans pegged to the markets? So if housing falls by 50%, the loan collapses by the same amount?

Now, how long will it be before all wealth vanishes? Eh? Banking collapse, here we go! I have lived in a truck. I once lived in a shack. I once bought a mansion, paying cash. I lived in a tent for ten years. I now live in a really neat house I built. One can live in all sorts of places and things! I enjoyed all my life, living where ever I lived, for the point is to love life not matter what. I can live in a ditch and love life.

To keep FAKE, INFLATED housing values up they now are proposing to slash the loan's PRINCIPAL? My god. Why bother with sales? Contracts? Interest rates? Why even have banks? Evidently the government will simply make homes appear with the wave of a wand and we can live in them for free????

WHAT THE FUCKING HELL IS THIS???

When housing rises in value, the owners get the benefits! When it falls, they EAT THE LOSSES. I have done this all my life. If people screw up and lose this game, they have an easy out: bankruptcy. But if we let people buy houses and ONE YEAR LATER, get the money they owe cut by 20% and their loans re-written at a much lower rate courtesy of Uncle Bernanke playing Santa, out the window goes any sort of 'risk'. There is no risk! There is also no incentive to be careful, truthful or honest! Already, much of this housing collapse is due to people wanting something for nothing. Moral hazard dies. And capitalism collapses. You can't have capitalism without risk.

Next: the Five Year Plan!

Bernanke acknowledged this idea might be a tough sell to lenders. Lenders, he said, are reluctant to write down principal. “They say that if they were to write down the principal and house prices were to fall further, they could feel pressured to write down principal again,” Bernanke said.

No shit, Sherlock. It can and will go to zero. And why should anyone pay off any mortgages? If everyone refuses, then the banking system will zero out. Zero like in NO MONEY. Why should honest people save and pay if their neighbors get a free ride? Why have housing markets at all? Why, we can just have the government own all the houses which takes me back to the first Chinese official to come to my house in New Jersey when I assented to host them for the Chinese government. I was to teach them about habits and manners of Americans as well as capitalism.

'The government gave you a beautiful house,' said Zheng. 'No, they did not. I bought this with my own money I earned doing capitalist things,' I said.

'You are lying. The government gave this to you,' he said looking at me funny. It was hard to persuade him otherwise at first. Well, we are seeing the collapse of the modern banking system and Bernanke's 'solutions' are all pure poison. But then, we are in an election. Time for Santa Claus to haul out his sack of goodies.

Auction-Rate Bond Failures Approach 70%, Show No Sign of Easing

Auction-rate bond failures show no sign of abating after investors abandoned the market for variable-rate municipal securities.

Almost 70 percent of the periodic auctions in the $330 billion market failed this week as investment banks stopped buying the securities investors didn't want. Yields on the debt averaged 6.52 percent as of Feb. 28, up from 3.63 percent before demand evaporated in January.

With the sort of looney thinking at the top, losses all over the place, markets are collapsing. $330+ billion is a lot of loot. The is about what the Bank of Europe injected into the system back, last October. Heh. The central banks dare not do this too often, already, the inflationary forces they unleashed are hammering markets today. This is directly tied into the surge in gold prices. When securities are insecure, people run off to gold.

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[mad mike]

sears,the big consumer store, sed they are doing so bad they will let other stores, i.e. rivals, sell it's brand names. such as die hard (with a vengeance) kraftsman, etc.
while the prime rate is in the single digits, from wacky brenanke injecting liquity in the market, sears credit cards are 30%.
i suppose sears could sell more by giving better terms. unless they are trying to ignite the cash only soceity. which would be a good thing.
but the point i make is that all the liquidity that is injected into the marketplace is for the big boyz to jack up (that is inflate) gold, oil and food stuffs.
which us shlubs have to buy.
anything folks in a civilized society need will be inflated. housing was just one facet of this plan. certain folks get rich and many many more stay poor. which is the way capitalism works.
first the pirates suck up all the money in the market place. then the same pirates buy themselves elected offices. then they announce that there is no money left and jack up taxes while privatizing gov-ment services, if any.
that's the scam, sam. this is what is happening in the usa today (and yesterday and tomorrow). it's so simple even a little child could do it. too bad i am all grown up.
food for thought, no one honest runs for president. honest people stay poor.

[mad mike]

here's an interesting article which displays the rigged market and mentions the usual suspects.

Russian Mafia in bed with Wall Street, CEO says
By: Dan Treasure
Issue date: 3/5/08 Section: News

Patrick Byrne, the founder of Overstock.com, discusses the shady underpinnings of
Media Credit: Aaron Schwendiman
Patrick Byrne, the founder of Overstock.com, discusses the shady underpinnings of "naked short selling."

Every day, thousands of Americans look to invest their money in stocks, and many of them go through brokers and traders to simplify the process.

Unfortunately, according to Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, a majority of those purchasers will be victims of Wall Street's criminal tactics and will help line the pockets of corrupt brokers and lawyers. Byrne, a Utahn who founded Overstock.com, talked to a crowd in the Union on Monday about how New York financial media and law firms have teamed up with big-wig business elites to create massive amounts of profit at the cost of American consumers.

Byrne said when someone purchases a stock, there is a three-day stock settlement period during which a broker or a trader must provide a purchaser with that stock. However, through loopholes in the system, brokers and traders can legally not provide you with that stock almost indefinitely, giving the purchaser an IOU instead, Byrne said.

"It's my thesis that certain people have figured out how they can abuse that loophole, and flood the market...often in connivance with a broker dealer," he said.

Through this "flooding," the brokers can essentially issue the same stock to hundreds of people at no penalty. By increasing the supply of stocks, these dealers can dramatically drop the price according to the laws of supply and demand.

Byrne showed how the "cheating parties" make money off of a stock price dropping through a process called "naked short selling."

In brief, Byrne showed that "naked short selling" is a three-step process. First, certain people (in this case journalists and lawyers in the New York financial industry) receive word from brokers that a specific corporation's stock prices are about to fall and are given a certain number of shares for that company. Next, these reporters or lawyers immediately sell those stocks at the high price. The brokerage dealers then flood the market with IOUs, tanking the price. The lawyer or journalist then buys back the same number of stocks sold, only this time at a fraction of the cost. They then cut the brokers a percentage of the profits gained.

These methods are used to create huge profits, often killing the victimized corporation in the process, and leaving the purchaser high and dry, Byrne said.

In his efforts to stop this charade, Byrne filed a $3.5 billion lawsuit against Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and nine other well-known brokers. Byrne said numerous publications, including the New York Post and Forbes magazine, have protested his "crusade," painting him as a crazed lunatic who is angry about Overstock.com's own stock price drop. Byrne said the Mafia has become a silent player in the Wall Street game.

"You don't have to dig very far into this before you get to organized crime," he said.

As an example of its involvement, Byrne told a story from a trip to the East Coast.

"About 15 months ago I was invited by a stranger into a greasy bar in Long Island," he said.

Claiming that he was Russian, the informant told him, "We have a message from Russia. We are about to kill you. We are about to kill if you if don't back down."

Additionally, Byrne remarked on how his business partner, Mark Mitchell, was assaulted in New York and told to stay away from author Gary Weiss, a critic of Byrne's theory on "naked short selling." Weiss published the book Born to Steal, which is about the Mafia's infiltration of Wall Street since the 1990s.

"I've been looking at this for two years, and I'm pretty much convinced this is the single biggest scandal in the history of American journalism," said Mitchell, a former financial writer for Time magazine who is involved in the lawsuit.

Byrne posted the presentation to his website, www.deepcapture.com, along with a blog to document his "crusade" against Wall Street.

d.treasure@chronicle.utah.edu
http://media.www.dailyutahchronicle.com/media/storage/paper244/news/2008/03/05/News/Russian.Mafia.In.Bed.With.Wall.Street.Ceo.Says-3252089.shtml

[rockpaperscizzors]

Elaine, I was wondering if you have heard anything about Capital One ready to implode from mortgages, home equity loans, derivatives, and hedgefunds? An excerpt from the 29-Feb-2008 Annual Report: "The Company actively engages in off-balance sheet securitization transactions of loans for funding purposes."
Why I'm asking is that I called them inquiring why I hadn't received my credit card statement that I should've rec'd mid-February. First no live customer service on the phone menu--none. Had to choose the loss card function to speak to someone. Next, I was advised that hey, lucky you, no March statement sent(btw, I have a balance). Anyone else hear the fire engine sirens? I'm an observant active consumer and knew a month prior about Starbucks. Has anyone noticed Walgreens is over-building just like Starbucks? I can walk to five of them in a mile radius.

[Elaine Supkis]

That is interesting, rockpapersizzors [shall I call you 'Junken'?].

Yes, Walgreen is everywhere now. And Capital One is behind in billing? I would worry about them using this as a tool to raise fees on everyone. Let me know if they try this.

[rockpaperscizzors]

I'm a step ahead of Capital One and sent a payment anyway, I dont trust those bastards. As for you columns on the pirate coves I thought you'd find this article from Bloomberg hilarious. The Pirates are running scared.
Europe's Tiny Tax Havens Should Be Left in Peace: Matthew Lynn
http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=agDj5Nv3Z1TA&refer=home

Here's my favorite line from this sniveling boot licker "Naturally, tax havens should make sure they aren't harboring assets for criminals or terrorists." Ah, the terrorist card. Must be terrorist, not politicians running for prezinet, bank presidents, carlyle group, nawhhhh, must be them other terrarists. Here's another excerpt that's ROFLMAO "Should the Germans shut down their luxury-car industry because it makes life difficult for auto workers in the rest of Europe? Of course not. So why should Liechtenstein close its financial-services industry?" Liechtenstein isn't a pirate cove, but a legit financial business, see how that works!

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Yes, they are endlessly amusing.

[Chris]

Re: new US export industry.

What happens when the falling dollar crashes the economies of the export oriented economies? Who on earth is the US planning to export to if Europe and Asia are deeply mired in depressions?

A couple of years ago there was talk that the € and Euroland would not be able to survive a super weak dollar. Just the other day Trichet again called for a strong dollar policy. (Obviously as Elaine says becasue that is part of the Status Quo).

But since it is the stated objective for the US to be the unchallenged number one on all fronts, as per the New US Century dogma, I wonder if part of the reason for the strangling of the dollar isn't to break the back of the €. That would give the dollar some grace as the world reserve currency as a rival would bite the dust. But probably the € is being buffered by other nations simply because there is a need for an alternative to the dollar as reserve currency. The dollar has been too much abused by the US. Dollar holders are looking to diversify and get out of the dollar noose.

And the EU is no stranger to tariffs and trade barriers to prevent unwanted imports. They just did that to South American meat eg.

Ever since Bush became President the dollar has been sliding at an ever increasing rate. Bernanke is just speeding up the process now.

E: "Bernanke is out to collapse the markets." I think he is only doing his job as told to him by his bosses. Looks like they are out to collapse, or destroy, a lot of things so they can reshape things to their liking. They are not capitalists anymore.

Funny thing heh: a lot of nations would be sending their excess dollars to the US demanding a gold return from the US Treasury, if the dollar was still tied to gold. So, what do you do if you sit on a hoard of dollars? Invest in crummy US companies so you can earn more dying dollars?

Every day as the dollar dies and oil becomes more expensive in dollar terms, the oil hoard in Iraq is gaining in value. No wonder the Pentagon planted it's armoured butt right on top of it. No oil, no modern military.

Just read today that the US is trying to attach parasitic tentacles into Iraq. Here is the offer the Iraqi government 'cannot refuse': "In addition to a status of forces agreement, we [the US]intend to establish a framework for a strong relationship with Iraq, reflecting our shared political, economic, cultural and security interests..." [US State Department official]

Poor Iraq will never be free, independent and sovereign unless the US goes bankrupt. But the US needs the Iraqi oil to prevent that very bankruptcy. The new dollar standard is bullets and bombs.

And to think we are still only at the beginning of this thing. What will things look like in 2010. $ 200 dollar oil?

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Our grip on the world is failing. And spending more dollars will speed this up.

[Richard]

Elaine, one of the biggest wealth protection schemes ever, has been the announcement of the Security and Prosperity Partnership Of North, the SPP, by Bush, Fox and Martin on March 23, 2005 at Baylor University.

And this year's North American Leaders Summit schedule for April, in New Orleans is a wealth protection schemers convention
extraordinaire.

For insight into this event, simply click on my name.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Ah yes, your link takes us to information about the creature with many heads: the New World Order. They intend to slay inflation the old fashioned way: destroy the currency and launch a new one. Without warning, of course.

[larry, dfh]

Pacifica radio (iirc) had a piece on the tax havens and the suite by Germany over Lichtenstein;s refusal to grant "transparency". In the case of Switzerland, the banks claim compliance with transparency requests in cases involving alleged lawbreaking, it's just that tax violations are not considered illegal in Switzerland, so the banks are not compelled to comply with such investigations. Now that's some clever lawyerin'.

[Cato]

This election cycle is indeed odd and beyond just totally out-in-the-open corruption. Something needs to be decided quickly and early. Hillary's talk of a shared ticket is bizarre, but typical of her penchant for managed expectations. The financial system is imploding now. What could see is an early election under emergency circumstances with Bill, Hill, Geo and Dick doing the sharing.

Starbucks and Walgreen’s are both sale/lease-back real estate scams. Yeah, they sell coffee and miscellaneous junk on the side, but the building expansion can’t ever end or the shark dies.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Correct, Cato.

[JohnSmart]

PLULEEEESE. Obama is going down because he is a candidate who is all smoke and no fire. We have never seen a more vapid man get so far - except W -
Frankly, i don't care how Obama is defeated. I just pray he is.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

And the rock solid people went down in flames. Leaving us with the two goof balls who want eternal war, eternal debt, free trade and piracy. What wonderful things this is.

Note that even though Ron Paul is still in the race, he has moved from being ignored to being totally ignored. And he will stay there.

[Gary W]

the postwar (that's WW2 for the young'uns) world is falling apart at an accelerating pace, and as Dmitry Orlov says, "The old normal is that life will go on just like before. The new normal is that nothing will ever be the same".

And it's all unfolding, blow by blow and crash by crash, right here on Elaine's blog. I really appreciate you taking the time and trouble to write up all this trauma; you have a better understanding and a bigger commitment to honest journalism than the entire morass of established media.

[ridhimma gupta]

ITS EXTREMELY AWESOME AND VERY ININTERESTING TO WATCH PLUS INFORMATIVE TOO.
SO ITS EXCELLENT IN ALL WAYS.
A+ FROM ME.