Bolitics The New Condem Government

[PauloBarnesi]

Is it the role of the government to have the “power of money creation” or is it there to control that power (not that they have been doing it). Which all begs the question what really is the role of government and what is the role of companies, and what is the role of individuals?

[PauloBarnesi]

The concern for the US is partly about the fears of Israel, which wants to be the only nuclear power in the region, and its consequent manipulation of US domestic politics via its extensive lobbying operation.

I understand the power of the Israeli lobby, and how no one ever seriously tried to stop them. The question is why would Israel want nuclear weapons? Does it feel threatened as a nation? And do the other nations want to threaten it? And will Iran gaining nuclear weapons help the situation on a local and international level?

[peterms]

Is it the role of the government to have the “power of money creation” or is it there to control that power (not that they have been doing it). Which all begs the question what really is the role of government and what is the role of companies, and what is the role of individuals?

I would say yes, it absolutely is the role of government to be the ones who create money. At least governments have an explicit responsibility for acting in the benefit of society as a whole, even if they don't always do so very well.

To leave the power of creating money in the hands of wholly unaccountable private companies, as now, is utter madness. The creation of a massive and unsustainable pile of private debt is the consequence.

The strange thing is that most people think that governments currently have that role, and don't understand that almost all new money is in fact created by banks.

The role of companies in the kind of economy we have now, ie banks in this case, should be to do business by borrowing from the government at interest and lending that money on, seeking out prospective borrowers, risk-assessing them, and making a profit if they have managed to make sensible loans at an adequate margin. Their role, and it would be a useful one, would be to manage the process of lending and collecting debts, a role which government can't realistically do. Instead of which, they print money at no cost to themselves, charge for it, and pass off the bad debts from their atrocious decision-making to others to cover. It is quite literally a licence to print money.

[peterms]

The question is why would Israel want nuclear weapons?

In order to maintain its position of supremacy over other countries, same as everyone else. Cloaked in the language of self-defence, same as everyone else.

Iran gaining nuclear weapons would not be helpful. But the present situation of a region being dominated by one nuclear power under the wing of the US in unsustainable. The better answer would be to disarm Israel of its nuclear capacity. But nuclear weaponry is something which once given is hard to take away.

[JulieB]

the saying is "Goldman Sachs rules the World"

it was said by one man ( maybe two if you count Mel Gibson) who may or may not have been part of the "yesmen " hoax group

that hardly makes it a "saying" and hardly makes it true

Well it might not be a saying to you. But I can assure you I'm hearing it more and more.

Not only is the word on the street that Hank Paulson US Tresurer tipped off his mates in GS that Fannie May & Freddie Mac were in trouble to make sure they knew which way to bet....... but the latest is that GS & JPMC helped Greece cook it's books in order to get into the Eurozone a few years ago. In return of course for buying toxic CDOs, which made the brokers at GS massive fees. Insider trading and tips offs are rife in the City and in Wall Street these days.

Toxic assets that are partly to blame for bringing down the Greek and Cypriot economy, Wall Street would have found an immense synergy with Greece and Cyprus! Even the Russians are shocked at how corrupt the Greeks are!

That hasn't stopped them showing NO mercy to the Greeks ( and the French banks for that matter) in their hour of need. Wall St predatory traders are as we speak going in for the kill! Mostly by trades carried out in London, because we have much laxer regulation regarding derivatives than in the US.

Wall Street and the City have built a multi trillion dollar betting shop built on Debt - and NOW they are turning their evil talons on Soverign debt. (Government Debt).That's not happened before to my knowledge.

The Greek government are so desperate that they are making their great ancient sites of immeasurable value to the antiquity of mankind - available for rent!

The more research I've done on all this, the more shocked I've been at what's been going on and what's more - what's being allowed to go on.

Of course people can dismiss it all as over reaction but we live in an "age of dishonesty". Front page of today's Telegraph. How can we expect the commercial and political sectors to be any different?

IMHO....We don't live in a democratic society anymore - it's turning into an Oligarchy.

[JulieB]

The role of companies in the kind of economy we have now, ie banks in this case, should be to do business by borrowing from the government at interest and lending that money on, seeking out prospective borrowers, risk-assessing them, and making a profit if they have managed to make sensible loans at an adequate margin. Their role, and it would be a useful one, would be to manage the process of lending and collecting debts, a role which government can't realistically do. Instead of which, they print money at no cost to themselves, charge for it, and pass off the bad debts from their atrocious decision-making to others to cover. It is quite literally a licence to print money.

The banksters don't need to lend money out to me & thee anymore. - They suck up Quantative Easing from Central banks, which is given out freely like a baby clinging to a breast.... then sell it back to the same government by buying their Gilts and Bonds over a longer period of time for a higher return. It's like one big quantative easing recycling centre!

[tonyh29]

Well it might not be a saying to you. But I can assure you I'm hearing it more and more.

maybe you need to stop visiting websites run by nutjobs then :winkold:

It's only ever been accredited to one person who isn't even a trader ( though he does buy and sell shares on his own behalf) ... Google the quote and his is pretty much the only name to appear and in relation to it .. stick with it and eventually you will come across someone else who also believes it to be true .. David Icke

I think I can rest my case at that point

[JulieB]

Well lets go back to what I said, which prompted your original comment.

Is buying gold and silver going to lead to the reintroduction of grammar schools?

No. What's more As a former King Edwards Grammar School attendee I don't think they will. It suits governments ruled by the commercial system to have a financially illiterate public. They can be ripped off more easily.

Buying Gold or Silver is a good way of suppressing the investment banks - because it is a physical tangible asset that belongs to you and they can't rent out to trade on like shares etc. The Chinese cottoned on years ago - have been buying up Gold & Silver jewellery for decades. Some ATM machines in the Middle East now issue Gold bars instead of currency.

No wonder the US and Israel are itching for a War with Iran. Both Iraq, Libya (and we all know what happened to them) and now Iran are trying to move away from a Dollar Standard Oil price to a Gold Standard.

So the US and Israel (or most of Western Europe) aren’t threatened by the possibility of nuclear proliferation? And in fact they are scared of something else. The Jewish state isn’t really fearful of the most prominent anti-semitic state getting nuclear weapons? All these hits on nuclear scientists are in fact to do with the economy? I am confused? Do you know something I don’t? And are you suggesting that the US was behind the collapse of Gadaffi and that the Libyan people weren’t really involved?

Well you tell me - It's a bit of a co-incidence that both Gadaffi and Saddam Hussein had both publically stated that they wanted to change from using the Dollar as the reserve currency of the world before they were overturned. Now Iran are ALSO starting to trade Oil for Gold. Oh lookie - we can't have that - we need a war on Iran.

America & Britain supposedly went to war with Iraq because of Saddam's store of Weapons of Mass Destruction. We're still waiting to find any!

NATO might not have gone to war with Libya but they openly supported the revolt against Gaddaffi and made sure he was ousted. Why haven't they done this in Syria? ...but then again Syria doesn't export oil does it?

Who are these analysts? Do they work outside of the system? Do they work for the credit agencies?

..

No they don't work for the rating agencies. They are part of the problem because they are employed by the very financial sector THEY are supposed to rate. The analysts I'm referring to include some of the people I've posted interviews with on VT. People like Gonzalis Lira and those from Zerohedge.com. Max Keiser might be a bit OTT and I can't say I agree with some of what he says, but he does make some good points.

"On the Edge" with Max Keiser has now been banned by the BBC and Murdoch's Sky News apparently. You can only watch it online. So someone didn't want that interview with Gonzalis Lira shown on network TV.

[JulieB]

Well it might not be a saying to you. But I can assure you I'm hearing it more and more.

maybe you need to stop visiting websites run by nutjobs then :winkold:

It's only ever been accredited to one person who isn't even a trader ( though he does buy and sell shares on his own behalf) ... Google the quote and his is pretty much the only name to appear and in relation to it .. stick with it and eventually you will come across someone else who also believes it to be true .. David Icke

I think I can rest my case at that point

I didn't even know that David Icke even said it!

I speak to allsorts of people in the City. Some who are as horrified as me at what is being allowed to go on.

It's my job to know what's going on and besides, I present on the radio and have been asked to write articles for other blogs on these matters - to try and help people on the street understand how the global financial crisis came about.

If you wish to bury your head in the sand and pretend it's just all going to go away no matter how long matters muddle on like they have been since Lehman's crashed, then so be it.

[tonyh29]

If you wish to bury your head in the sand and pretend it's just all going to go away no matter how long matters muddle on like they have been since Lehman's crashed, then so be it.

so because I don't subscribe to this Goldman Sachs rule the world theory advocated by David Icke and one trader I'm burying my head in the sand .. that's quite a leap you've made there !!!

I speak to allsorts of people in the City. Some who are as horrified as me at what is being allowed to go on.

I worked in Canary Wharf for 5 years for an investment bank , I can assure you all they think about * is how big their next bonus will be and if they have a better computer , car , watch , wife than the bloke sitting next to them ...

* may be a slight exaggeration

[JulieB]

Sorry I didn't mean you personally. I was just generalising on people's tendency to just glaze over many of these matters - because they percieve it to be too complicated. It's actually not. Just think fraudulent mortgage lending corruption, betting shops, dodgy insurance and financial terrorists.

I worked in Canary Wharf for 5 years for an investment bank , I can assure you all they think about * is how big their next bonus will be and if they have a better computer , car , watch , wife than the bloke sitting next to them ...

And that's the problem - These investment banks since 2008 have now consolidated. There's even less competition than there used to be and ALL they care about is themselves and their bonuses. As Inside Job says "They are run by A type Personalities" who can't exist without the thrill of the risk and they are EXACTLY what you describe. ALL they care about is making money. They are incapable of seeing a long term greater good for the most part.

There ARE people who work in the City now and formerly who I know who are not like that though, I can assure you.

I made my mind up a long time ago that the financial services industry in the UK was made up of Crooks, Mercaneries and a few Good Guys.

I refuse to work with 2 out of those three and if I smell them I walk away. Funnily enough in the long run it tends to be the good guys who stay the course.

One would hope that at some point some politicians will be strong enough and have the moral conviction and integrity to take them on and sort this mess out once and for all. Ron Paul in the US has vowed to take on Wall Street but he's been largely ignored by the mainstream media over the pond and it will be interesting to see how he fairs....if the powerbrokers don't see sense and act soon - then things could get very messy!

[PauloBarnesi]

The question is why would Israel want nuclear weapons?

In order to maintain its position of supremacy over other countries, same as everyone else. Cloaked in the language of self-defence, same as everyone else.

Iran gaining nuclear weapons would not be helpful. But the present situation of a region being dominated by one nuclear power under the wing of the US in unsustainable. The better answer would be to disarm Israel of its nuclear capacity. But nuclear weaponry is something which once given is hard to take away.

How would one disarm the Israelis?

To be fair in a competition of mad states, I think I would fear Iran more than Israel, though its a tough one...

[JulieB]

Excellent Guest Post Today from Zerohedge.com

What Have We Learned In the Past 13 Years?

We have learned nothing since 1999 except the Central State and Central Bank will intervene in the market to bend price and risk to serve the Status Quo.

If we learn nothing, then we deserve to lose. This is not a popular concept in America at this point in its history, when monumental errors are denied, excused, rationalized or quickly absolved by those who committed them.

As a small-fry investor, when I veer away from my discipline and system, I predictably lose money. As I sift the ashes of the trade, I always remind myself: if I learn nothing from my studies and experience, then I deserve to lose.

What exactly has America learned since January 1, 1999, 13 years that included two stupendous financial/credit bubbles, two hot wars and an explosion in public and private debt? If we examine the policy changes and institutional changes since the 2008 global financial meltdown, then we have to conclude that we've learned a very few things:

1. We've learned that the way to "repair" the catastrophic damage of a financial bubble bursting is to inflate another financial bubble in another asset class.

2. Systemic incentives will be put in place for everyone to speculate in the new bubble, with two important caveats: the Financial and Political Elites will get to play the game with moral hazard, i.e. their gains will be private and their losses socialized, and second, these Elites will not be governed by the rule of law; blatant systemic fraud and embezzlement will be ignored or forgiven.

In other words, some are more equal than others when it comes to the founding precept "everyone is equal before the law."

3. The Central Bank (the private Federal Reserve in the U.S.) will sacrifice purchasing power to lower interest rates and flood the economy with liquidity, i.e. nearly-free money for Power Elite speculation and leverage to inflate the new asset/credit bubble.

4. The Central State will address all post-bubble problems by borrowing and squandering trillions of dollars to prop up the Status Quo and transfer Financial Elite losses to the public/taxpayers.

5. These "solutions" are part of a broader strategy of "problem-solving" that can be summarized as "doing more of the same." If doing more of the same doesn't work, then do even more of the same until you resolve the "problem" by bending the market to your will.

6. To create the perception that the Power Elites have actually solved the structural issues rather than just paper them over, then minor "reforms" will be passed that tweak the parameters of the Status Quo without actually changing the power structure: who owns most of the national wealth and income stream, and who controls the political process that diverts an increasing share of the national income stream to State fiefdoms and corporate cartels.

We can find an analogy to these "lessons learned" in a spoiled teenager who refuses to study and is failing but discovers that cheating can "save the day" with much less effort than actually learning.We as a nation have learned how to cheat, and now we think that learning how to cheat and create the perception that we've actually learned something can be substituted for making the necessary sacrifices to actually learn something.

When the cheating controls the marketplace to prop up asset prices and mask systemic risk, then we are in effect giving ourselves "straight As" even though we have torn up the test, i.e. how our policies work in a transparent, open marketplace.

Thirteen years of cheating have created a dangerous confidence that we can keep cheating by controlling the market forever. the problem for the Central State and Central Bank is that socializing the market via cloaked intervention is qualitatively no different than direct command-economy control as practiced by the former Soviet Union: the real market cannot be destroyed, it can only be pushed underground.

This is why the black market flourishes in command economies.

In the U.S., the market has been manipulated and suppressed but there is no black-market outlet for reality. As a result, the market will reassert itself in the one market that is allowed, overpowering the State and Central Bank manipulation.

What we have learned in the past 13 years is the market can be suppressed and controlled forever by a dominant State and Central Bank. But markets cannot be suppressed forever, any more than risk can be eradicated, and so that lesson will have to be unlearned.

The spoiled teen can get through high school by cheating, but eventually he/she will have to navigate reality without the benefit of having learned anything except how to cheat.

He's spot on ALL we have seen across the Western economies over the past decade is the privatisation of gains whilst at the same time a socialising of losses!

History will look back on these times with disbelief!

[VILLAFC2000]

Who will probably have to work a lot longer for a lot less of a penison.

To be honest which ever party gets in, will have to deal with this. How can we pay for pensions if we live longer and are pensionable for a longer time? Who is going to pay for it?

You just dont get it do you - These people entered into a contract you cant just come along and change it because it suits your political agenda.

If there is 32 billion to spend on a railway network there is money to sort this out.

[tonyh29]

You just dont get it do you - These people entered into a contract you cant just come along and change it because it suits your political agenda.

thats exactly what they did when the previous government came along and changed them all so which political agenda are we playing to in this instance ?

[VILLAFC2000]

We are buggered whatever way we look at it. We are crippled by mass unemployment. We are crippled by people’s expectations and notion that they have a right to something. We are buggered by our debts. We are buggered by our fighting two world wars. We are buggered by lack of investment and short sightedness, etc, etc. The list goes on and on.

Oh and getting rid of grammar schools.

Agreed on all points.

Glad I got to go to one though, it helps me pay for those who can't be arsed to work.

How are the millionaires, bankers and the very riches in society paying for this as I dont see them suffering. Scameron was in Italy in the summer scoffing the finest truffles and champagne while georgie porgie was in one of his 4 holiday homes in LA. Tough life for them though. After all were all in it together.

oh yes you mean the people who are claiming 60 pounds per week on job seekers allowance - living the life of riley...!

Dont worry about the billionaires who get away with out paying million and billions of tax.

Do a quick calculation

100 000 000 / 60

The question should be who gets away with more...?!

Scameron and his pals or the poorest in society.

hmmm..?

The economy is being made worse by this government due to their ideological political agendas.

LiKE I have mentioned you stand a higher the chance of unemployment, inflation, tutuion fees, poverty, tax credit reduction under a Torie goverment. History tells us this. So if thats what you really want..!

[blandy]

You just dont get it do you - These people entered into a contract you cant just come along and change it because it suits your political agenda.

thats exactly what they did when the previous government came along and changed them all so which political agenda are we playing to in this instance ?

The last Gov't negotiated and agreed a change with the people affected. Not sure that this Gov't has done that.

[Risso]

You just dont get it do you - These people entered into a contract you cant just come along and change it because it suits your political agenda.

thats exactly what they did when the previous government came along and changed them all so which political agenda are we playing to in this instance ?

The last Gov't negotiated and agreed a change with the people affected. Not sure that this Gov't has done that.

There was a public sector strike over pensions under the last government, let's not forget. At a time when finances weren't quite so stretched.

[PauloBarnesi]

Who will probably have to work a lot longer for a lot less of a penison.

To be honest which ever party gets in, will have to deal with this. How can we pay for pensions if we live longer and are pensionable for a longer time? Who is going to pay for it?

You just dont get it do you - These people entered into a contract you cant just come along and change it because it suits your political agenda.

If there is 32 billion to spend on a railway network there is money to sort this out.

What don’t I get? I am talking about the whole population, of private and public pensions. Its unsustainable if we kept to previous promises. We can bury our head in the sand and say lets stay as it is, but frankly then we are causing further promises along the line to future generations. It doesn’t matter which party you belong to; these issues are going to have to be dealt with the Tories, Labour, SNP, Lib Dems

And I am not sure what the railway has to do with it. You could say that about anything; how much are we paying on building aircraft carriers? or what would replace Trident? or on road construction? on Crossrail? We can’t just spend money on pensions...

[PauloBarnesi]

We have learned nothing since 1999 except the Central State and Central Bank will intervene in the market to bend price and risk to serve the Status Quo.

By capitalisation one has only this vision