Greenspan Admits He Is Clueless And Stupid

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Understanding the dynamics of today's FOREX markets is nearly impossible unless one can peer into the souls and the schemes of various parties who are playing games of varying levels of sophistication. The rules of this game as set down by economists and bankers, have been OVERTURNED and we now see a game whereby one half of the planet is playing one game and the other, a totally different and very dangerous and destabilizing game. At the heart of all this lies two very sick, very dangerous nations: the US which is the world's #1 economy and Japan, the world's #2 economy. Japan is in the midst of creating an epic depression longer than any in the history of the Industrial Revolution while the US is on a spending spree of equal size and duration. Time to talk about the currency flight/credit crunch once more.

From Bloomberg:

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said he ``didn't really get'' how the boom in subprime lending might hurt the economy, and endorsed his successor's handling of recent market turmoil, CBS television reported.

Current Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke ``is doing an excellent job,'' Greenspan said in an interview on the 60 Minutes program, according to excerpts e-mailed by CBS today. The show is scheduled to air on Sept. 16, a day before the publication of Greenspan's book, ``The Age of Turbulence.''

First, we visit the architect of this horrible mess we are falling into: Greenspan. This clown, this senile fool who blundered us all into a mess we can't escape, he now admits he had NO IDEA, dropping interest rates to 1% would cause an epic, giant, massive, world-record increase in debt in the USA, a country that was drowning in debt when he did this irresponsible act. Next, I expect him to muse, 'I never expected savings to collapse to below zero, too!' Why did so many people praise him to the point, one Congressman said he wanted to stuff Greenspan and keep him on as the head of the Federal Reserve (sic--no reserves) forever?

I want to stuff him down the toilet! I was aghast when Congress fawned over him and now, everyone runs to this incredible fool for advice! During Greenspan's reign, the US trade deficit shot up and up and up! And then up! More! MORE! Straight up! Our collective debts as well as our national debts did the exact same thing. This stupid monetarist Ayn Randoid just sat there, raising or dropping interest rates with no idea that all this was having a huge impact on our collective economic interests. He should have wiped off the muck on the windshield so he could see, he was driving us off a cliff. But he never, ever lifted a finger to change a thing.

The Federal Reserve should be VERY aware of financial flows: where money goes is their fucking business. No one on earth was accumulating huge FOREX reserves until Japan suddenly began doing this right about 1997. I was aware of them doing this at about 1999 and remarked, 'What the hell is going on? Japan's FOREX reserves are more than 3 times bigger than ours!' Then it, like the trade deficit, shot upwards in less than 4 years to nearly $1 trillion. Then the Japanse stopped it and began buying US bonds in 2001. Greenspan dropped rates to the floor, yet the Japanese bought more and more, half a trillion, in US bonds! This made NO SENSE AT ALL....except it was perfectly logical and obviously worked for it created a false crisis with the yen which lost so much value, when we had interest rates at 1%, Japan set it at nearly 0%! Amazing! Never in history, has any nation done this.

Because this never happens, the fact that it was happening should have alarmed everyone! When impossible things happen, we need to see if someone is plotting to set a trap or is insane. In this case, it was a trap being set and proof is, many more nations are imitating Japan than are imitating the US.

From the BBC:

The dollar has been weakening against the euro for over a week

The US dollar has fallen to new record lows against the euro as investors fret about a world credit crunch.
In European trading, the greenback dropped as low as $1.3927 against the euro, deepening Wednesday's losses.

The dollar has fallen in the past week, amid hopes that Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in a bid to reassure markets over current credit fears.

Analysts expect rates to fall by between a quarter and half a percentage point when the Fed meets next week.

However, as the dollar has weakened, the euro has gained momentum after recent comments from the European Central Bank (ECB) hinting at the possibility of future interest rate rises.

Here it is: the US is now attempting to imitate Japan, China and Russia. One of my readers, Smith, has argued online with me for years now, the issue of the 'weak dollar.' I kept telling him, tariffs and barriers work just fine and bring in revenue but he contends, since Japan's weak yen has worked, the weak dollar should do the same. I warned him, every time we weaken the dollar against Asia, they retaliate by crashing Asia's currencies and banks and then resume the penetration of our markets based on their weaker exchange rates.

By now, this should be obvious to anyone, even right wingers who can't count to ten without confirmation from their leaders who can't count to five. So here we are again, the US is desperate to weaken the dollar. Dropping interest rates will do the trick, no? But Japan has decided today to keep their interest rates at 0.5%, a stupid, impossible, insane level. They won't budge. Even as inflation rears its head at home, they twist and turn and use the handy hammer of smashing the fingers of the consumers in Japan to destroy any ability to buy anything at all. Out, damn yen, out! Like Lady Macbethsama, the bankers and industrialists of Japan skulk about the palace, rubbing their hands. After slaying the yen, they have to pretend they had nothing to do with the murder, it was a natural death due to this mysterious depression that hovers over only Japan, the world's #1 export profit nation!

And this is the key: no nation can compete with Japan in this game for it involves destroying the people at home, a dangerous game that can cause riots and revolutions. This is the IMF form of bank reform, of currency values as set by the IMF which is run by right wing American neo-cons. They have been covertly imposing IMF rules on America: dropping wages, restrictions on access to schooling, health and welfare. Socialists killed or driven underground with the media held only by the rich and powerful, blasting propaganda day and night, telling everyone, 50 million people without health care is good for America and a weak dollar is strong and war is peace and welcome to 1984! Everything, backwards.

The rulers are very nervous which is why they go to excessive ends to prevent demonstrations against the IMF gang who have taken over our banking and financial systems. Right now, they are desperately jiggering things to keep it all from collapsing. These same people are in cahoots with Japan to impose a depression on us. Greenspan and Bernanke are supposed to DEPRESS things to ZERO. Like in Japan. But they can't because of contradictions within the system which forces them to pour in endless amounts of pretend money they make up out of thin air which causes....inflation. Then they wring their claw-like paws in agony. They are trying to stop inflation! But this is silly.

Japan has utterly stopped inflation! And they have created the world's biggest inflationary bubble, ever, by lending via the 'carry trade,' seemingly infinite sums to all and sundry who have higher interest rates than they!

From the Independent:

The long march back towards stability continues. It is impossible to be at all precise but it looks as though we are still in the early stages of the reaction to the excessively easy money conditions of the world during the past four or five years, and that markets will be bumpy for some months yet.

However, and this is the good news, disruptive markets do not continue forever. They never do. So it would be odd if, by the end of the autumn, things had not settled down. The usual signal for a return to calm is for a major financial institution somewhere in the world to need to be rescued, probably buy the central banks. When that happens (and I would be surprised if it were a British one) we can all relax. Until then things will be bumpy.

We are seeing some of those bumps in Britain. The UK financial system is fairly well insulated from the heat generated by global financial markets. There is a folk memory of the secondary banking crisis of the 1970s and the troubles of Third-World lending soon afterwards. We also have a more recent memory of the early 1990s housing slump. So our banks are both well capitalised and have been reasonably cautious in their lending criteria. Nevertheless, strains are evident.

Britain, bankrupt from WWI, clung to its tattered empire while mooching off the US for loans and the way this was done was for the US to loan money to Germany and then Germany would give it to England who then used it to invade...Iraq. Where they were defeated, by the way. Germany noticed this and so did Japan. Which is why they didn't fear England at all a mere 10 years later.

Back to the Great Depression: England wanted the pound to equal $2. But it was worthless fiat paper, hardly better than the Weimar Renten Mark. This fatal pretension of power collapsed when Germany, hit by rising interest rates from the...ahem....Federal Resesrve....asked for an extension on the loans and a reduction to boot.

Bankrupt Britain refused. Demanded payment in full. Germany said, 'Yah....you lost in Iraq and you think you can force me?' France invaded the Ruhr to enforce payment and this caused Herr Hitler to rise vastly in power as he said to the Germans, 'Look, they are going bankrupt. We can shove them out and not pay anything!' So, no one paid anyone and everyone went bankrupt and we had the Great Depression as the world banking system, run by mostly Britain which was the world's biggest empire. And Britain could not get out of that mess, not even slightly. They clung to the empire and went broke. Big time.

So see some Brits today smugly saying they are insulated from the present mess even as Britain has the identical asset balloon we had here and as Britain's tatty remains of the Industrial Revolution vanish, industry nearly totally gone for good, as Britain smugly says, they were simply do paperwork and finances...OFF SHORE....of course, courtesy of Her Majesty's tax havens. Well, this is childish. Britain is totally in hock to its former colonies. Who are all, like their Mother Ship, raising interest rates higher and higher as Japan keeps its own rock bottom low. And all are addicted and trapped within this carry trade business with Japan which is causing all of them to deinudustrialize or to be colonized, like the US by Toyota, by Japanese export powers.

The recent banking crisis was triggered by a rise in the value of the yen, something the Japanese didn't want and are working hard to prevent and reverse. By next month, it was supposed to be 130 to the dollar. Right now, they can't get it down below 118 to the dollar.

From Bloomberg:

Investment trusts are selling more than 2.4 trillion yen ($21 billion) of mutual funds this month that aim to buy foreign assets, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The odds the central bank will lift the overnight lending rate from 0.5 percent Sept. 19 fell to zero percent this week, based on calculations by Credit Suisse Group using overnight interest-rate swaps.

``Sales of investment trust funds are not so bad,'' said Kei Katayama, who helps oversee the equivalent of about $1 billion at Daiwa SB Investments Ltd. in Tokyo. ``Japanese retail investors are still sending money abroad constantly, stemming an appreciation of the yen.''

This 'sending money abroad' is what is stemming the appreciation of the yen. Namely, the same exporting industrialists are all sending their profits OUT of Japan and THIS is killing the yen! And of course, there is no point in keeping it home because the yen returns only 0.5%. DUH. This is simple: if a country wants to kill their currency, all they have to do is drop interest rates to near zero and then sit tight. This, incidentally, works only if there is no inflation at home. And to do this, one has a system whereby price rises are crushed by the government via taxes, restrictions on loans and crushing wages. In Japan, are there armies of happy Japanese getting 1.5% mortgages and auto loans? No? HAHA! Key here is preventing them from accessing the cheap money! Any ganjin from any British or US colony can get these loans but NO JAPANESE except the exporters. They have unlimited access to this free money, of course.

From Reuters:

Even so, Japan and other ageing countries will need to boost productivity to maintain living standards, economists agree.

"It is vital to boost productivity per capita," said Hideki Matsumura, a senior economist at the Japan Research Institute. "Concretely, this is very difficult. There is no simple solution.

"One way is to improve education. Another is to increase capital investment, to rely not just on people but on the capability of machines, including computerization and robots."

Reforming collusive business practices that undercut productivity and improving corporate governance would also help boost productivity levels that are now about 70 percent of those in the United States, economists say.

Japan's government has set a productivity growth target of 2.4 percent by 2011/12, up from an average of 1.6 percent in the 10 fiscal years to 2005/06.

Eventually, either the Chinese will invade and take over or Japan will be just like so much of its anime, a nation run by teenagers in mechas armed to the teeth. Robot rule.

From Wharton School Economics, U. Penn:

Currency Conundrum: Is the Strong Rupee Good or Bad for India?
Published: July 26, 2007 in India [email protected]

Is the rising rupee good or bad for India? What impact will it have on the global competitiveness of Indian firms? Should the RBI or the Finance ministry intervene? Responding to these questions and more, experts at Wharton and elsewhere say that the rupee's rise is the result of India's growing ability to attract global capital. While this creates problems for some companies that earn most of their revenues in dollars -- including IT giants such as Wipro, Infosys and TCS -- it also creates opportunities for Indian firms by making it less expensive for them to acquire overseas assets. In addition, a strong rupee is good for the Indian consumer. It would be unwise for the government to intervene to force down the rupee's value, they note.

Who is pouring money into India? How about...JAPAN! I have detailed how Japan is pouring money in right now. They also want the rupee to be stronger then the yen, the world's crappiest currency. So...Japan has tons and tons of money pouring in and it doesn't stay in Japanese banks, it instantly leaves and goes elsewhere, colonizing the economies of other nations. They build factories and lend money...anywhere but Japan! And the Japanese goverenment loves this and encourages this.

India is attractive to Japanese moguls because it is helpless. It needs them. Just as the US/UK empire has fallen so badly, it needs cheap Japanese loans and Japanese re-investment as Japan wrenches control of our industrial base out of our hands and into their own...I hope everyone can see a pattern here. The sly Japanese whisper, 'A strong (fill in the blank) is good because you can buy more...JAPANESE CRAP!!!' Hahaha. Yes. So why isn't the yen strong, eh?

U Penn:

Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel notes (in his podcast) that a rising currency can cause distress. "This is painful. It's been the strongest appreciation of the rupee in over 30 years as I look back at some of the data," he says. CEOs of IT companies would agree with that assessment. Speaking at a press conference at Wipro's Bangalore headquarters on July 19, chairman Azim Premji complained about the "strong headwinds faced by us in the form of the appreciating rupee." Wipro reckons that its operating margins were lower by 2.4% in the first quarter because of the currency appreciation. Most IT companies -- the poster-boys of India's economic liberalization -- are in the same boat; they have been unable to meet their forecasted quarterly earnings. Their shares have been beaten down on the bourses, even as the markets are hitting new peaks.

And congratulations, U Penn, for figuring this out! Pre-Bretton Woods II, a strong currency was what everyone wanted above all else. Weak currencies were like the lira of Italy or the Mexican peso: constantly adding zeros, collapsing and starting over again and again. The Germans, burned earlier, grimly controlled the value of the DM. But it rose greatly when the dollar destabilized and collapsed due to the Vietnam War and the Hubbert Oil Peak. Suddenly, the German trade with the US collapsed. Everyone let the US weaken the dollar and we boasted how this made us stronger so after a short flush of inflation, the US claimed it was now stronger than anyone in the world thanks to Bretton Woods II! This caused our allies to begin weakening their own currencies but it wasn't until Japan figured out the dual high FOREX reserves coupled with high US Bonds, did the new system that allows a weak dollar but only for the most audacious countries. Namely, anyone brutal enough to enforce NO BUYING at home while accumulating a US trade surplus FOREX reserve.

For example, Canada has a huge trade surplus with the US. But the Canadian people are not forced to live in small closets and rinky-dink apartments with 2 rooms and the washingmachine out on the balcony or in the hallways. The Canadians CONSUME stuff. So the loonie is rising against the dollar. In Japan, the yen drops because there is no consumption going on, realistically speaking. Since the consumer market in Canada is 1/3rd the size of the US market, we can't exploit the stronger loonie versus the weak dollar because the market doesn't give us an advantage. Canada sells us energy and manufactured goods and we have little to sell back to them since we are NOT out to destroy their industrial base. The desire to destroy or conquer an industrial base has to be part of this picture. The US wants to OUTSOURCE which is a tad different.

Such as Mattel: they want other countries to do the work but hold them at arm's length so no one is responsible. Note how Mattel pretends they have no control over things and are helpless babies? The Japanese are control freaks. They won't let that happen. And they build businesses all over the planet but NOT so they can bring anything home to Japan. What Japanese companies make in China or India or the US stays over there, it doesn't come galoomphing back to Tokyo like Godzilla.

From Go Currency:

By Richard Lee, Currency Analyst
Published: February 22, 2007
Stronger Dollar – Good or Bad For the US?

Is a strong US dollar good or bad for the US economy? Typically the word strong is perceived as a positive reference but when it comes to a country's economy, a strong currency may not be in their best interest. In fact, many countries like China and Japan take an active effort to weaken their currency because their countries are export dependent. Being the most actively traded currency in the world, it is very important to understand whether a strong dollar actually helps or hurts the US economy, especially given the currency's recent movements.
*snip*
When growth is strong, we typically see an increase in the value of the US dollar because at that time, the stock market is most likely performing well and attracting foreign investment. As the stock market rallies and the economy continues to boom, the Federal Reserve becomes worried that this euphoria may get out of hand by boosting inflationary pressures and creating a speculative bubble. Therefore towards the middle boom, they begin to consider raising interest rates to tame growth and to prevent a damaging crash that may occur later on.

I show this article to show how the conventional wisdom is so off-base. The Fed never is interested in stopping a bubble. This is politically unpopular. If a Democrat is President, the Fed is very miserly. When a Republican comes in, the Fed is very festive and lets rates drop rapidly so everyone can have tax cuts and fun. This is why the GOP has had control of the White House much of my life. It is wearisomely obvious. To this day, most Republican voters still want tax cuts and lower interest rates. The Fed can't do this all the time because of hyper-inflation which we had under Nixon and Reagan. Carter had to endure high interest rates but these were dropped when Reagan hoved into view.

The bubbles created by the Fed collapse because they are unstable. The Japanese know that stock markets have nearly zero to do with the real economy and have pretty much chucked the whole business which is why their stocks have done badly for the lst 15 years. They don't care at all what they are doing!

The numbers they watch are the trade surplus numbers. They don't care if all the money leaves Japan so long as the trade surplus numbers are huge. So the Federal Reserve responds to Wall Street bubbles while the Japanese ignore their stocks nearly totally. And the Fed ignores our trade deficits while the Japanese obsess over these same. Obviously, we are on the wrong track, yes?

Although the appreciation in the dollar does give consumers more purchasing power, odds are that most of the increased spending will take place outside of the US. The demand by Americans who known for their penchant for foreign luxury goods, will increase the import balance and the US trade deficit. This increase has its detriments as it erodes overall growth, hurts GDP and weakens the economic expansion. There is essentially a self-correcting mechanism in the foreign exchange market. A stronger dollar basically leads to a weaker dollar while a weaker dollar eventually leads to a stronger one through the implications of growth.

Read that last sentence twice! It is so stupid. So, currencies vacillate? Well, so what? This never corrects the basic problem which is our trade deficit: it goes up and up and up and up. It might go up a tad slower if the dollar is weak but it still goes up. Why is that?

Wellllllll........(clearing my throat)....if the dollar is weak and say, the yen is strong, Japan puts up barriers to trade or RAISES TAXES. And kills any urge to buy American goods or anyone's manufactured goods! When we forced the yen to be stronger after the Plaza Accords, Japan flipped into a depression and has been there ever since as they conquer world trade and destroy us. I suppose we might have no trade deficit if we drop the value of the dollar to one penny! But then, we would have to live on 25% less of the earth's resources than we use today.

Paper about the bad effects of capital flight from Russia before Putin took over and stopped it finally.

In the news, the Japanese are shoving all their money out of Japan because of the super-low interest rates. I keep thinking of the Great Asian Currency Crisis which was started by 'speculators' (speaking Japanese, I would bet). Once again, I found new stories about that time period. Here is a classic:

From Professor Krugman, circa 1997:

On July 2 of this year, after months of asserting that it would do no such thing, the government of Thailand abandoned its efforts to maintain a fixed exchange rate for the baht. The currency quickly depreciated by more than 20 percent; within a few days most neighboring countries had been forced to emulate the Thai example.

What forced Thailand to devalue its currency was massive speculation against the baht, speculation that over a few months had consumed most of what initially seemed an awesomely large warchest of foreign exchange. And why were speculators betting against Thailand? Because they expected the baht to be devalued, of course.

This sort of circular logic - in which investors flee a currency because they expect it to be devalued, and much (though usually not all) of the pressure on the currency comes precisely because of this investor lack of confidence - is the defining feature of a currency crisis. We need not seek a more formal or careful definition; almost always we know a currency crisis when we see one. And we have been seeing a lot of them lately. The 1990s have, in fact, offered the spectacle of three distinct regional waves of currency crises: Europe in 1992-3, Latin America in 1994-5, and the Asian crises still unfolding at the time of writing.

Currency crises have been the subject of an extensive economic literature, both theoretical and empirical. Yet there remain some important unresolved issues, and each new set of crises presents new puzzles. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview both of what we know and of what we do not know about currency crises, illustrated by reference to recent experience.

The European crisis was simple: Germany reunited suddenly and without telling any allies they were going to do this. Germany also gave Russia a lot of money to stay out of East Germany and this caused problems in Russia due to criminal graft and cronyism in the dying communist regime there. And Chernoybl destabilized both currency and energy markets. The Latin American messes coincided with Japan beginning to furiously move money around the planet, trying to undo the Plaza Accords which was hammering them big time even as their bubble at home burst with a loud pop. The Bank of Japan stomped on the currency brakes by raising rates quickly and then suddenly dropping them. The bubble was garrotted brutally. Each year after 1994, Japan dropped rates until they reached 0%. Which was right when the Asian Currency Crisis happened. The yen has been weak ever since. All the other currencies hit in that little mess 'recovered'. But not the yen. And this is a clue as to who wanted what. Japan openly wanted a weak yen and by golly, it came about! Talk about coincidence.

The US has had a need for most world financing to come here. The more we demanded world financing in the form of buying up our government debts and our private debts, the worse our trade deficit. Since these are both one and the same or rather, one causes the other, the Federal Reserve and our goofy government should have taken measures to stop this.

Instead, they opened up more and more trade. The worse it got, the more they ordered trade to be opened and this went along, escalating the trade deficit. Can't anyone see the obvious here? Even as people rioted against this trade scheme, it was upheld and imposed more and more. The people doing this told us, 'This will make things cheap!' And we all want cheap stuff, don't we? And Walmart grew huge and this was all on deficit trade. The Japanese tore into our auto industries and now dominates America.

Krugman:

Given a motive to depreciate, why would a government choose instead to defend a fixed rate? One answer might be that it believes that a fixed rate is important in facilitating international trade and investment. Another might be that it has a history of inflation, and regards a fixed rate as a guarantor of credibility. Finally, the exchange rate often takes on an important role as a symbol of national pride and/or commitment to international cooperation(as in the European Monetary System).

The Japanese have lots of pride. They point to their domination of world trade and their key role in the present banking system as the Lender of all Lenders and laugh. They stand on the neck of the yen, crushing it and laugh scornfully. They love to have a trashy yen, it symbolizes nothing. And international cooperation?

HAHAHA. We cooperate with no one and everyone is a rival, this is the essence of capitalism. Even as Europe took over the planet, they remained rivals at home and even though the king of England, the kaiser of Germany and the Romanov Russians were all cousins, they even looked alike, they were all intermarried to the point of genetic weakness, and yet, they tried to kill each other and fought ferociously, killing millions of innocent soldiers and civilians! Evolution is all about seeking small or large advantages. How did we ever fall for this 'cooperation' business? When we want to commit crimes or steal olive trees in Palestine, we don't care what the Japanese or Europeans think, 'Either you are with us or against us or anti-Semites!' we yell.

And they wink at us and let us rage and run about while they plan to esvicerate us via trade and weak currency values. Time to attack the Chinese! We all hate them, don't we? Oh, by the way, the yuan has risen against the dollar all year long. Unlike the yen.

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Comments

[tom]

"This stupid monetarist Ayn Randoid just sat there..."

Hi:
In fairness to history for what a heel Greenspan became post-1966.

http://www.safehaven.com/showarticle.cfm?id=2155&pv=1

[blues]

Carter had to endure high interest rates but these were dropped when Reagan hoved into view. -- Elaine

Every now and then, I have seen this play out. When someone like Carter, who vaguely wanted to take care of the people and nation, was elected, the so-called "market" would shrivel, and when some elitish (they aren't "elected" in any sense, so I kill the word with the "ish" suffix) friendly type like Reagan gets in power, they open the spigots. What this really means is the Federal [sic] Reserve is merely a vast extortion racket. They even love Bush, and when we get some fake Democrat in office, we will instantly get whacked. Sounds like an evil conspiracy to me. The stupid USA masses have allowed themselves to fall victim to global loan sharks. What cowards. The wars just pretend to "prove" that the masses are not cowards, but even that has disintegrated.

Every now and then I have sat by the roadside watching the idiots squander the last of the dinosaur juice. I knew they weren't making dinosaurs anymore all my life. These lifestyle addicts are not one bit different than heroin junkies. In fact, many of them will now descend into junkiedom, which they richly deserve.

I'm not even a hypocrite in this regard. I have alway curtailed my driving. And I never, ever, waste food. I must be a saint. (Except, of course, I have my own vast circus of decidedly unsaintly proclivities.)

[Canuck]

Canada is only 10% the economic mass of the US. By way of example your tire retailer Les Schwab buys more tires for it’s organization than all Canadian retailers combined. US retail corporations generally only move into Canada after they’ve satisfied market penetration in the US as a bit of cream on top so to speak. US energy, mines and mineral exploiters have been players since the beginning but are coming under increasing international competition for access to resources.

Total, the French based energy conglomerate is currently playing an interesting game. Having recently bought into the oilsands in a big way, they’re spending big bucks within Canada and particularly around here on name recognition. Full page color ads in the newspaper and a recently observed transit bus fully decaled out with the tag line “our energy is your energy” (this always results in a derisive snort and or muttering from myself). Total has zero retail presence in Canada. The only possible rational to spend on this advertising venture is to weigh in for future regulatory consideration. To my knowledge no other upstream energy player has taken this tack before, most are content to make application to the Energy and Utilities Board for projects and participate in activities/forums well away from public perception.

[Kurt]

"Why did so many people praise him to the point, one Congressman said he wanted to stuff Greenspan and keep him on as the head of the Federal Reserve (sic--no reserves) forever?"

By the way, I beleive it was Senator McCain
who stated that.

Kurt

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Thanks, Kurt! We should stuff McCain, another fossil.

[teddy]

Elaine, have you seen the NAFTA superhighway which will soon start sending unregulated Mexican trucks across the US border up to Canada? It starts in Mexico's booming Pacific ports and goes all the way up to Winnipeg and across to Vancouver. The strong Canadian dollar and NAFTA will destroy Canada's industrial base. How can it compete against unregulated third world markets like China?

[Canuck]

Canada’s industrial base will not be dissolved conversely neither will it prosper save energy production. Ontario heavy industry won’t be allowed to be a major influence on the global stage. You see a certain level of production must be maintained by Ontario heavy industry and mineral refinement processes in order to facilitate development of energy projects within Canada. The resulting energy products are destined for the United States. Once the North American Union is established and Canadian energy extraction is un-economical then the US will finally attend to development of their “off-limits” energy areas such as ANWR and offshore areas around Florida. There won’t be any sharing of these energy resources with the rest of the NAU, be sure of that. In the event of energy supply disruptions from the gulf and Venezuela you’ll see an great intensifying of development in Canada, US protected areas will be retained. Once Canada is ostensibly drained and there are no other international sources, then you’ll see the “politically sensitive” areas of development opened up in the US.

[teddy]

Canuck, you and I had nothing to do with the signing of NAFTA, but rest assured, it was signed, sealed, and delivered. What do you think Bush, Harper, and Calderon were talking about at their meeting a few weeks ago? The SPP is the further advancement of NAFTA, and there are rumors it is now set to be put in place. I believed Clinton when he was first elected and couldn't believe it when he signed NAFTA into law.

[John]

Elaine wrote: "...every time we weaken the dollar against Asia, they retaliate by crashing Asia's currencies and banks and then resume the penetration of our markets based on their weaker exchange rates."

Yep. Precisely. It's high time we tariffed the living shit out of ALL of Asia. "Business is War," they smugly proclaim. It's time we actually fought back in this business war.

In the comments, Teddy wrote: "I believed Clinton when he was first elected and couldn't believe it when he signed NAFTA into law."

Believe it, and understand this: I utterly disagree with Elaine on the Democrat party, and here's why: Carter recognized Bejing, gave away the Panama Canal and helped bring Khomeni back to power in Iran. And when you consider his intelligence, he's not cluelss or stupid. This leaves EVIL. Like all world-order socialists (cough-cough-Hillary-cough-cough), he believes that somehow politically-elected rulers are better than those who "elect" themselves via success in the capitalist system. News Flash: The current struggle is between the commies and the fascists, both of whom want to grind the masses under their bootheels; they merely have differing skill-sets and therefore naturally take different paths to world dominion. The real truth lies in exactly the hated ideals of Ayn Rand: personal freedom, personal accountability, and swift executions for meglomaniacal vermin. Read the writings of one Robert A. Heinlein, if you'd like to glimspe a future where the vermin are given short shrift and freedom = honor/accountability.

Clinton merely continued what Carter and the Dems have been about for so long: selling us out to the very same New World Order the Bushies are striving to engineer. Do we think it's really a coincidence that "Poppy" and "Bubba" became such big buddies?! I mean, come on. The leftists have every bit as much duty to recognize the failures, lies and corruptions of their preferred rulers as do the conservatives. Failure on the Left to do this results in you winding up the mirror image of JSmith. And nobody really wants that, now do they?! :o)

[Neuro Artist]

"Why did so many people praise him to the point, one Congressman said he wanted to stuff Greenspan and keep him on as the head of the Federal Reserve (sic--no reserves) forever?"

Chop off his head and put it on the Federal Reserve Museum forever, the rest of him can be used as fossile fuel, the federal reserve notes won't buy any (soon).

Sir Alan knew perfectly well what he was doing, he is responsible for the coming crash of the worldwide economy, and its results...

[DeVaul]

Well, it's official:

Lying is the real American pastime, surpassing all others.

Greenspan is actually on record as explaining how gold protects one's wealth/money/purchasing power/whatever from the insidious force of inflation (money printing/credit creation/currency manipulations). Now he claims he had no idea inflation through credit creation would result in harm to the economy.

I can remember the time when these sorts of lies were suddenly tolerated by the entire nation as a whole. It started with Reagan claiming he had no idea about Iran/contra and proceeded through "out-of-the-loop Bush I and onwards until today when every word that comes forth out of Washington is a rank lie easily exposed as such.

Few bother to do so and even fewer care. This is the state of the union now and also why Ron Paul's campaign is doomed to failure.

He is barking up a tree that no longer exists.

[John]

"Sir Alan knew perfectly well what he was doing..."

Agreed.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

I have a very strange history of not supporting the Democratic party 100%. Indeed, I even sent a Democratic Congressman to prison.

Both parties are corrupt. I even said when the Dems picked up both houses, they would simply turn it into the Knesset and guess what? They did.

I was kicked off of every lefty website in the past for metioning AIPAC and its influence on Democrats. And the Republicans are totally insane. They hang out with the End of Times lunatics. People itching for WWIII. I am totally against WWIII. Only the cockroaches will benefit from that.

[Neuro Artist]

Certainly WWIII will wipe most of us off the board, however the current system is beyond repair, it will have to run its course, and the ones remaining will have the opportunity to create something better.

[Al]

John,
I agree with almost all of what you have posted here, but in the interests of accuracy -Carter did NOT give away the canal-it was never ours to lose or give away. in some respects it's like the way we "lost China". The Carter/Torrijos treaty was the first treaty concerning the canal that Panamanians ever signed. And Operation "just because" essentially abrogated the treaty and restored our hegemony over the canal.