Sad World

Before his first term Bush promised to cut exessive government spending and bring the troops home. Obama talked about fiscal responsabilities and bringing the troops home. When will anyone learn.
I recently reviewed a survey sent out by the Republican Party to its member accompaingned by a donation slip for membership renewal. The entire survey was about getting Republicans pissed at democrats. They only wanted to provoked the republicans into hating the Dems so that you would make a donation to their lame party. I am 99% sure that no one will ever review those survey, simply because they didn't ask any would be helpfull questions. 

How can you have a sound political and economical country when it's leaders are only interested in dividing it, or who's right and who's wrong. Could somone please focus on our problems instead of our diferences?

Andrew Jackson's Veto

"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society-the farmers, mechanics, and laborers-who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing."

-Andrew Jackson, 7th President of the United State of America, in his veto to renew the national bank (ferderal reserve)'s charter.

Here is the complete message

The Never Ending Financial Crisis

The Federal Reseve was sold to the American public as a way to prevent further financial crisis, after the 1907 panic.In light of recent events this statement alone should be proof we were conned, and that the conspiracy against the American people is real. 

Back then, the Money Trust had manipulated market derivatives and the banks lost big and turned illiquid, which created a confidence crisis, and a series of "runs" on the banks. Sounds familliar? That's because in 2000, a law allowed all kinds of market derivaties, which were outlaw after 1907, to be traded again. Look at that! 100 years later and the resaons for the crisis are still the same! 

How could no one predict that reintroducing these instruments could be very dangerous to the banking industry? The banks, and hedge funds, and mutual funds hire the brightest of the bright, send them to work as lobbyiest, so that they can write legislations which favors their industry (If you don't beleive me ask your representative what a credit swap is), and they come up with something that destroys everything in it's path...on accident?!

I will not believe that for one secound, and the media can blame the poor for taking on mortages they could not afford, or the Democrats for Freddie and Fannie, there is only one place to lay the blame and that's on the Banks themselves.

What could the banks have to win by destroying themselves? It left the door wide open for the Federal Reserve to swoop in and take whatever power they deemed necessary to solve the problem. That included printing over a Billion dollars on which they will collect interests.

So, why are things not going back to normal? Why is the real estate, and stock market still going down? Why are half a million job being lost in the banking and auto sector? Isn't the Fed powerfull enough to stop this? And if not, why do we need the Fed at all?

We are permenatly attached by the invisible shackles of money, to labor. Such is our fate, if you're not part of the top 1% of the world population who never had to work for a living. Imagine how those people must look down on us who have to go to work every day.  When they, on the other hand, choose to go to work. Now, that's freedom.

Modern Man's Point of View

I have had a few friends come down from France to visit me here in Naples, Florida. I must say, most young people (below 40 years old) are much more open minded to conflicting and controversial ideas than I thought they would be. Now, my parents have had friends visit (50+ years old) and their narrow point of view have shocked me. More recently I have heard them complain about the lack of coverage of other countries during the Beijing Olympic games by NBC (GE), and they blamed it on American Imperialism.
I'm not denying that American Imperialism exists, I just wished people, especially French people would realize why it exists: the American way of life was hijacked by a few international bankers and are transforming it into old Europe. And it is because Europeans let themselves being duped into believing they live in a free country when they are more middle age peasants (50% income tax) than hopefully Americans ever will be. If Europeans ever had a clue, and would have stopped the international bankers, and issued their own money instead of borrowing from them, there would not be a modern American Imperialism.
The modern man takes a look over the fence at his neighbour's house and sees the paint peeling off the wall, the grass dying in the corners of the lawn, the gutters hanging. He then turns around looks at his house which is in the EXACT same state, and thinks it's perfect.

Should YOU Care About Naked Shorts?

There has been a lot of talks about speculators shorting stocks and creating havoc among financial stocks. But shorting a stock is absolutely legal and essential to keeping markets priced at real value (stops stocks prices from running incredibly high before crashing, like the China market did this year). So, what are those naked shorts they are talking about and why are they being demonized?
Well, naked shorts have been illegal since the 1934 Securities Act, and the SEC is supposed to be monitoring Broker/Dealers to make sure that they play by the rules. So, how are Fannie May and Freddie Mac's stocks being obliterated by naked shorts? Thanks to the SEC of course. Instead of borrowing stocks before shorting them, Broker/Dealers (the JP Morgan, Lehman, and Goldman Sachs of the world) have run into an usual amount of "Failure to Deliver" stocks. These are basically IOUs issued by BDs when a party involved in a stock transaction is unable to physically deliver the paper stocks. Or, about 99% of stocks are electric, therefore physical delivery is pretty much a thing of the past, no one owns paper stock anymore, except maybe your great-grandmother, because she inherited them from her grandmother.
So now you have a hedge fund who decides they want to reduce to rumble a bank stock because thats their proprietary trading strategy. What do they need to do in order to manipulate the stock price? Simply issues a whole bunch of IOUs, then sell them to individuals (you and me), occasionally spread a rumor about the bank (like say Bear Stearn or Indymac) and then sit back, watch the stock crash, and have a few laughs while toasting champagne (the supply overwhelms the demand and prices go down hard).
I'm sure you understand the impact on the thousands of lives who loose their job, and the loss of future job creation.
This is why the SEC is pretending to make all naked shorts illegal even though they already are. The SEC is NOT doing it's job. Why? Surely because the extra cost from such methods are spread out to many customers and the profits are focused to a few organized entities with which they can corrupt SEC officials some more.
So why should you care? Well the practice of issuing IOUs is not a new one, and is not limited to the financials. In fact some estimates (official and real) puts the amount of "Failure to Deliver" or "Fake stock" to be anywhere from 1.5% (highly unlikely) to up to 50% (a little more accurate) of daily traded stock volume.
So you have a 50/50 percent chance that when you buy a stock, you are actually buying some hedge fund's IOU of a stock. What's the big deal? Well, if that hedge fund fails you are left with an IOU from someone who isn't around anymore and how are you going be compensated? You're not going to take stock from someone else who owns it. And you're not going to get your money back from the hedge fund (that money is already spent Ferraris, Porsches, or mansions).

It seems the general population is bound to surrenders their savings to wall street firms, and Wall Street is not sharing the profits.
This Washington Post article says it all if you know a little about securities regulations and how to read between the lines http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/21/AR2008072102455.html

Energy Crisis-Common Sense Anyone?

To drill or not to drill? That is not the right question! When is anyone going to understand that a finite energy resource can not be the energy of the future?
I personally could care less if Big Oil starts drilling in the only natural wildlife habitat left on the planet, I just know it won't solve our problems in the long term.
So why not just stop wasting capital and liquidity (a rare commodity) on a technology which is on the brink of extinction. Why not just invest in a long term solution to our energy problem? Why not take the budget for the Iraq War, invest it into new energy tech, pull out of Iraq (we won't need the oil anymore anyway), and watch what happens? Why not become the leader in the energy of the future? Isn't that something the leader of the "Free World" should be up to?
This is the answer you don't want to hear: There are trillions of Dollars (or Euros) of oil left in the earth, and since that is worth more than any amount of lives to a few people who control the energy market, we're not getting any new and revolutionary energy technology until we extract every single drop of oil out of the earth. And our future, the future of our children, has absolutely no impact on those few people's judgment, or maybe just the opposite. What would they want to do with us once all of our capital is exhausted and the burden of our debt insurmountable due to astronomical food and energy cost?
If we all start thinking outside the TV, pick up a book, read some Greek philosophical ideas about knowledge, maybe the cave and shadow allegory, all of us would see the true light, and not a man made light. Then maybe, we'd discuss some realistic solutions to all of our problems.

Wealth Confiscation Through Inflation

I am sure most of us have heard this phrase, and marveled at it's meaning, then felt depressed , and eventually went on with your life trying not to think about it. I found a fantastic website last night which goes over, in much better detail than I could ever provide, the whole story of the Federal Reserve, before and after, indicating who were the major players, why and how the Federal Reserve Act (originally the Aldrich Act) came to be. Click here to read the full story.
Once you get to the bottom of it you will realize that wealth confiscation is on going in this country in the most stealthy way. The Dollar bill has lost 95% of it's value since the creation of the FED and it keeps going lower faster. There is only one possible outcome for a FIAT money system in the long run, and that is total devaluation(1 Dollar bill= 0 anything).
How do you protect yourself from it? There isn't much you can do. Conventional wisdom would tell you to buy gold and silver bullions, the problem with that is that the central banks of Europe are selling gold certificates to each other to keep the price of gold down artificially (inflation adjusted gold should be about $2,500 an once right now). Silver might be a better option as the supply of silver is vast and difficult to corner or manipulate. The best solution I can think of, in this day and age, would be to buy oil, but you might want to wait for a large pullback or correction. While prices can easily be manipulated, the finite reserve and the exponentially growing demand from China and India is guaranteeing prices to keep going up over the next 30 years, and 30 years is about the time it would take to find an alternative energy source IF we start investing heavily in those technologies now.