Marc Faber sees big financial bust leading to war

BusinessIntelligence Middle East
November 25, 2009

Marc Faber, the Swiss fund manager and Gloom Boom & Doom editor, said eventually there will be a big bust and then the whole credit expansion will come to an end. Before that happens, governments will continue printing money which in time will lead to a very high inflation rate, and the economy will not respond to continued stimulus.

Speaking at a conference in Singapore on Wednesday, Faber said: “The crisis has not solved anything. On the contrary there is less transparency today than there was before. The government’s balance sheet is expanding, and the abuses that have led to the one cause of the crisis have continued”.

“I think eventually there will be a big bust and then the whole credit expansion will come to an end,” Faber added.

“Before that happens, governments will continue printing money which in time will lead to a very high inflation rate, and the economy will not respond to stimulus”.

In one of his Gloomiest predictions, Faber, referred to as Dr Doom, said “the average family will be hurt by that, and then in order to distract the attention of the people, the governments will go to war”.

“People ask me against whom? Well, they will invent an enemy,” Faber said.

Read entire article

Robert Fisk on the Gulf ‘Ditching the Dollar’

AlJazeera
October 6, 2009

Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization CRG), sits down with The Corbett Report to discuss the real meaning of the "bank bailouts"

"The stated objective of the bank bailout programs is to alleviate the banks' burden of bad debts and non-performing loans. In actuality what is happening is that these massive amounts of money are being used by a handful of institutions to consolidate their position in global banking.

The exposure of the banks, largely the result of derivative trade, is estimated in the tens of trillions of dollars, to the extent that the amounts and guarantees granted by the Treasury and the Fed will not resolve the crisis. Nor are they intended to resolve the crisis.

The mainstream media suggests that the banks are being nationalized as a result of TARP, In fact, it is exactly the opposite: the State is being taken over by the banks, the State is being privatized. The establishment of a Worldwide unipolar financial system is part of the broader project of the Wall Street financial elites to establish the contours of a world government.

In a bitter irony, the recipients of the bailout under TARP and Obama's proposed $750 billion aid to financial institutions are the creditors of the federal government. The Wall Street banks are the brokers and underwriters of the US public debt, although they hold only a portion of the debt, they transact and trade in US dollar denominated public debt instruments Worldwide.

They act as creditors of the US State. They evaluate the creditworthiness of the US government, they rank the public debt through Moody's and Standard and Poor. They control the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board and the US Congress. They oversee and dictate fiscal and monetary policy, ensuring that the State acts in their interest.

Since the Reagan era, Wall Street dominates most areas of economic and social policy. It sets the budgetary agenda, ensuring the curtailment of social expenditures. Wall Street preaches balanced budgets but the practice has been lobbying for the elimination of corporate taxes, the granting of handouts to corporations, tax write-offs in mergers and acquisitions etc, all of which lead to a spiralling public debt.

The Federal Reserve System: Circular and Contradictory Relationship

The Federal Reserve system is a privately owned central bank. While the Federal Reserve Board is a government body, the process of money creation is controlled by the 12 Federal Reserve Banks, which are privately owned.

The shareholders of the Federal Reserve banks (with the New York Federal Reserve Bank playing a dominant role) are among America's most powerful financial institutions.

While the Federal Reserve can create money "out of thin air", the multibillion outlays of the Treasury (including the Bush and Obama bank bailouts) will require the emission of public debt in the form of Treasury Bills and government bonds. Part of these T-Bills will of course also be held by the Fed.

US financial institutions oversee the US public debt. They are involved in the sale of treasury bills and government bonds on financial markets in the US and around the World. But they also hold part of the public debt. In this regard, they are the creditors of the US government. Part of this increased public debt required to rescue the banks will be financed or brokered by the same financial institutions which are the object of the bank rescue plan.

We are dealing with a pernicious circular relationship. When the banks pressured the Treasury to assist them in the form of a major bank rescue operation, it was understood from the outset that the banks would in turn assist the Treasury in financing the handouts of which they are the recipients.

To finance the bank bailout, the Treasury needs to run a massive budget deficit, which in turn requires a staggering increase of the US public debt.

Public opinion has been misled. The US government is in a sense financing its own indebtedness: the money granted to the banks is in part financed by borrowing from the banks.

The banks lend money to the government and with the money they lend to the government, the Treasury finances the bailout. In turn, the banks impose conditionalities on the management of the US public debt. They dictate how the money should be spent. They impose "fiscal responsibility"; they dictate massive cuts in social expenditures which result in the collapse and/or privatization of public services. They impose the privatization of urban infrastructure, roads, sewer and water systems, public recreational areas, everything is up for privatization.

The recipient banks are the beneficiaries as well as the creditors. As creditors, they will oblige the government a) to slash expenditures b) to run up the public debt through the issuing of treasury bills and government bonds.

This public debt crisis is all the more serious because the US federal government does not control monetary policy. All public debt operations go through the Federal reserve, which is in charge of monetary policy, acting on behalf of private financial interests. The government as such has no authority over money creation. This means that public debt operations essentially serve the interests of the banks." 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, Montreal, September 17, 2009

Obama Pushes Banker Takeover Plan at Federal Hall

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
September 14, 2009

A crowd outside Federal Hall where Obama gave his banker takeover speech.

Obama delivered one of his famous teleprompter speeches today at Federal Hall in New York on the one-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers scam. It was a cynical move, considering Obama spoke from the building where the country’s founders once argued over how much the government should control the national economy. Federal Hall also served as the first capitol of the United States of America.

“President Obama came to Wall Street to chastise executives and to urge Congress to pass tougher regulation of the bankers and brokers whom he blamed for the crisis in the financial markets a year ago,” reports the Christian Science Monitor. Obama said the United States needs “strong rules of the road to guard against the kind of systemic risks we have seen.”

It was a wink and a nod speech, considering the sort of people Obama supposedly lectured now run his administration. Geithner, Summers, Clinton, Mitchell, Holbrooke, Volcker, Rice, James, Haass — on and on, ad infinitum, these are Federal Reserve, CFR, Trilateral Commission, and Bilderberg members, bureaucratic minions of the private and international bankster cartel.

In fact, as Judge Napolitano notes in the video below, if the proposals Obama soft sold to the American people today are implemented, it will amount to a final coup d’état by the banksters and their technocrats and enforcers at the Federal Reserve, the unconstitutional and privately held bankster Mafia operation that masquerades as a government agency. It will install a dictatorial regulatory power by the international bankers over entire U.S. economy — right down to the local grocer and the hot dog vendor on the corner. It will require you to ask permission for the most mundane and routine of financial transactions. It will control your life down to the smallest detail.

“President Obama’s plan to give the privately-owned and unaccountable Federal Reserve complete regulatory oversight across the entire U.S. economy, which is likely to be enacted before the end of the year, will officially herald the beginning of a new form of government in the United States – an ultra-powerful banking dictatorship controlled by a small gaggle of shadowy and corrupt elitists,” Paul Joseph and Steve Watson wrote for Prison Planet on June 18 of this year.

As the Watson brothers and Judge Napolitano note, the new rules will give the Fed the unchallenged authority to “regulate” any company activity it believes may threaten the economy and the markets — that is to say, all who would threaten the monopoly men with independent an unregulated financial activity. Even the Los Angeles Times admitted the Obama Federal Reserve takeover bill would effectively grant the clout required to seize and take over any company.

Professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin Robert Auerbach pointed out the obvious earlier this year: “The Federal Reserve has massive conflicts of interest that make it ill suited for its present regulatory functions and certainly for an expanded regulatory reach. The officials leading the Fed today preside over an organization that is run in substantial part by the bankers they regulate. Bank regulation begins at its 12 district Federal Reserve Banks, each governed by a nine-member board of directors, two-thirds of whom are elected by the bankers in the district.”

“The government is ready to hand over everything to a monolithic private corporation and a gaggle of bastard banker offspring, that have gobbled up an amount close to the entire GDP of the country in taxpayers’ money and figuratively stuck the middle finger up regarding questions over where that money has gone,” the Watsons conclude. “It can be no more apparent than at this time that legislation to audit, repeal and eventually end the Federal Reserve, must be supported by Americans if they want to see their children and their grandchildren grow up without indentured debt and entrenched servitude to a fascistic marriage of private banks and hugely inflated government.”

It remains to be seen if Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed legislation will be enacted. It has powerful foes arrayed against it – and a growing number of people steadfastly behind it. Enemies of the audit will attempt to push Obama’s plan through Congress and establish a complete private banker dictatorship over the economy and sideline the legislation.

Obama’s appearance at Federal Hall — the site of George Washington’s inauguration and where nine of the 13 colonies met to draft a message to King George III, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons, claiming entitlement to the same rights as the residents of Britain and protesting the colonies’ “taxation without representation” — is particularly obscene and criminal.

Germany’s Hyperinflation Was Nothing Compared to Other Countries

Washington’s Blog
August 20, 2009

You’ve heard how bad things were in the Weimar Republic, when people would rush straight to stores to buy food after receiving a pay check because their money would buy much less the next day.

But it turns out that Germany’s hyperinflation in 1923 was nothing compared to that experienced by Hungary, Zimbabwe and Yugoslavia.

In a new paper published by the Cato Institute, economics professor Steve Hanke lists the all-time worst episodes of hyperinflation:

Note that Hungary’s daily inflation rate was ten times greater than that in Weimar Germany, and prices doubled almost six times faster in Hungary than in the Weimar Republic.

Life in Weimar Germany was extremely difficult. But Hungary in 1946 was a lot worse.

Note: While the commonly accepted explanation for hyperinflation is government printing too much money, Ellen Brown argues that the real explanation is a concerted attack on a country’s currency by foreign speculators and/or foreign governments.

 Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, July 20, 2009

According to the watchdog overseeing the federal government’s financial bailout program, the full exposure since 2007 amounts to a whopping $23.7 trillion dollars, or $80,000 for every American citizen.The last time we were able to get a measure of the total cost of the bailout, it stood at around $8.5 trillion dollars. Eight months down the line and that figure has almost tripled.

The $23.7 trillion figure comprises “about 50 initiatives and programs set up by the Bush and Obama administrations as well as by the Federal Reserve,” according to the Associated Press.In testimony which will be delivered to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee tomorrow, Neil Barofsky, the inspector general for the TARP, will tell Congress that “the Treasury Department has repeatedly failed to adopt recommendations aimed at making the TARP program more accountable and transparent.”

According to Barofsky, taxpayers are in the dark as to who has received the money and what they are doing with it.

As we have repeatedly highlighted, the destination of some $2 trillion in TARP funds was the subject of a lawsuit filed by Bloomberg late last year after the Fed refused to disclose the recipients. The suit is still ongoing as Bloomberg attempts to discover names of private financial institutions that received the money.

 The American people will ultimately pick up the tab as their dollar is devalued because the Fed lends the money from its own balance sheet or essentially just prints more money, as a San Francisco Chronicle article explained last year.

Wages will not keep pace with inflation and if we add to the equation the raft of new taxes being introduced by the Obama administration, the consequences are clear – another lowering of the living standard for millions of middle class Americans.

Meanwhile, Henry Paulson, one of the chief architects of the bailout and the man who committed financial terrorism by threatening the Congress with martial law and food riots if they didn’t pass the initial TARP package, brazenly pockets $200,000 in Goldman Sachs profits tax free while handing out billions in ill-gotten gains to his bankster buddies, all this after he pulled a bait and switch by changing the entire focus of the bailout from buying up toxic debt to giving money directly to financial institutions.

We dread to think what the bailout figure will be in another eight months. Will it triple again to $70 trillion dollars? How about $100 trillion dollars?

The only thing that can bring an end to the wanton looting is Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Fed, which has received overwhelming support in the House but is being blocked by the bought and paid for traitors in the Senate who would rather see a continuation of the grand larceny rather than real accountability and transparency.

Max Keiser: Goldman Sachs gang are ’scum’ who have co-opted U.S. gov’t

You Tube
July 16, 2009

Max Keiser calls the Goldman Sachs gang what they are– scum.

"Goldman Sachs are scum– that’s the bottom line. They have basically co-opted the government; they’ve co-opted the Treasury Department; the Federal Reserve functionality; they’ve co-opted the Obama administration. Barack Obama dances to Goldman Sachs tune. And they are really crooked and abominable in what they’ve done. Just remember, Hank Paulson took Congress hostage– took them in the backroom and said ‘give us $700 Billion or we’re going to crash this market. He’s an arsonist; he’s an outlaw– and yet he’s praised."

Max Keiser didn’t stop there. He continues, naming only SOME of the names from Goldman Sachs now dominating the political-economic sphere in government. Keiser continued:

"If you go down the list, they’re all Goldman Sachs scum: whether it’s Hank Paulson, Geithner has very close ties to Goldman Sachs, and all these banking bonuses are paid out to their cronies, who are Goldman Sachs scum. And America for some reason has allowed this coup d’etat to take place– this silent coup d’etat where Goldman Sachs and their friends now control the U.S. Government and manipulate prices…"

Strong words for strong villains. Fair enough, as far as I can see.

Ron Paul On Fed Audit: We Will Not Be Stopped

Congressman Ron Paul has vowed that he will not be stopped in his effort to audit the Federal Reserve, as he slammed Senate authorities for blocking the bill earlier this week.

Appearing on Fox News’ Freedom Watch with Judge Napolitano Paul referred to Senate authorities blocking Jim DeMint’s attempt to attach the legislation, which already has 250 co-sponsors in the House, as a provision to a spending bill as a “facade”.

The amendment was blocked by Senate authorities on Monday after they claimed that it violated rules for provisions attached to spending bills.

“Technicalities are always ignored for things they want – this means they don’t want it and this is their organized effort now to stop us, but we’re not going to be stopped, it’s just going to energize everybody at the grass roots,” said the Congressman.

Paul said that it made no sense to give the Fed more power when they had already created the bubble that led to the economic collapse in the first place. The Obama administration’s new regulatory reform plan, which will officially hand the Federal Reserve complete dictatorial control over the U.S. economy, will give the Fed the authority to “regulate” and shut down any company whose activity it believes could threaten the economy and the markets.

Asked what the powers that be were afraid of should the Fed be audited, Paul listed a number of issues that would be brought to light with increased transparency.

“I think the biggest thing is the cronyism, who got the benefits, who really got some of these Federal Reserve funds as well as TARP funds, and I don’t think they want people to know about it,” said Paul, adding, “I’d like to know what they’re doing internationally, what kind of agreements they have with international banks, with other governments, and also what they do in the gold market – how they manipulate the value of the dollar by manipulating gold prices.”

As we have previously highlighted, the Fed has refused to disclose where trillions in bailout funds have gone despite a lawsuit filed by Bloomberg.

Paul explained that nobody knows exactly what would be uncovered but that was the whole point of having an audit in the first place.

The Congressman concluded that the Washington elite would do everything in their power to dig their heels in and prevent the bill from passing, because it represents the first major step in abolishing the Federal Reserve altogether.

“When we discover what’s really going on, I think the American people are going to demand the next step, they’re going to demand honest money – it’s happened many times in history,” added Paul.

Watch the clip below.

Ron Paul: Obama’s ‘goal’ is economic collapse

David Edwards and Stephen Webster
Raw Story
June 23, 2009

Ron Paul, the popular Republican Congressman from Texas, is ripping into the president and Congress for what he sees as their “goal” with round after round of stimulus: complete economic collapse.

“From their spending habits, an economic collapse seems to be the goal of Congress and this administration,” he said in his June 22, 2009, weekly address.

He added that Democrats who voted for the president’s war funding request, which gave an additional $106 billion to military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq — among other, unrelated items — were actually voting in favor of the wars, not just authorization of the president’s agenda.

He called it an affront to everyone who believed a vote for Obama was a vote for a peace candidate.

 The president’s insistence on including an additional $108 billion in asset exchange with the International Monetary Fund is merely “buying global oppression,” he said.

Paul added that, “this [bill sent] $660 million to Gaza, $555 million to Israel, $310 million to Egypt, $300 million to Jordan and $420 million to Mexico; and some $889 million will be sent to the United Nations for so-called peace keeping missions.”

In other words, the latest U.S. war funding was an “International bailout,” he said.

The legislation’s provisions for the IMF included 100 billion dollars for the New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB), a credit instrument providing the multilateral institution with additional resources to deal with exceptional risks to the stability of the international monetary system.

They also include an expansion of the nation’s special drawing rights by five billion SDRs, adding roughly eight billion dollars to the IMF’s financial firepower.

The 100 billion dollars for the NAB acts as a credit line for the IMF in case member countries need emergency loans that exceed the institution’s resources. As such, the money is not considered an immediate budget expense.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) had proposed to strip out the IMF funds, but his measure was defeated in May by a vote of 64-30.

“Not only does sending money to the IMF hurt citizens here, evidence shows that it even hurts those it pretends to help,” Paul said. “Along with IMF loans come IMF required policy changes called ’structural adjustment programs,’ which amount to forced Keynesianism. This is the very fantasy-infused economic model that brought our own country to its knees.”

This audio is from Congressman Ron Paul’s weekly address, released June 22, 2009.

Russia May Swap Some U.S. Treasuries for IMF Debt (Update1)

June 10 (Bloomberg) -- Russia may switch some of its reserves from U.S. Treasuries to International Monetary Fund bonds, the central bank said today. The comment drove Treasuries and the dollar lower.

Alexei Ulyukayev, first deputy chairman of Russia’s central bank, said some reserves may be moved from Treasuries into IMF debt, reiterating comments made last month by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. Ulyukayev’s remarks were confirmed by a Bank Rossii official who declined to be named, citing bank policy.

Treasuries fell, pushing 10-year yields toward the highest level in seven months, in response to Ulyukayev’s statement. The dollar fell against the euro on speculation that Russia will reduce its holdings of U.S. debt.

About 30 percent of Russia’s international reserves, which stood at $401.1 billion on May 29, are currently held in Treasuries, Ulyukayev said. Kudrin said on May 26 that Russia planned to buy $10 billion of IMF bonds using money from its foreign reserves.

The IMF securities would give countries a different way to contribute to the fund and are unlike traditional bonds because they pay an interest rate pegged to the IMF’s basket of currencies, known as Special Drawing Rights.

China is expected to buy as much as $50 billion of the bonds, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said yesterday.

The IMF, which has rescued economies from Pakistan to Iceland in the past year, has never issued bonds before and is seeking more cash to finance loans and aid to member countries during the worst economic slump in the fund’s 64-year history.

To contact the reporters on this story: Alexander Nicholson in Moscow at anicholson6@bloomberg.net; Dakin Campbell in New York at dcampbell27@bloombger.net

Russia May Swap Some U.S. Treasuries for IMF Debt (Update2)

By Alex Nicholson

June 10 (Bloomberg) -- Russia may switch some of its reserves from U.S. Treasuries to International Monetary Fund bonds, the central bank said today, driving Treasuries and the dollar lower.

Alexei Ulyukayev, first deputy chairman of Russia’s central bank, said some reserves may be moved from Treasuries into IMF debt, reiterating comments made last month by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin.

“We plan to reduce the share of U.S. Treasuries, because a window of opportunity for working with other instruments is opening,” Ulyukayev said. As well as the IMF bonds, Russia could place more of its currency reserves on deposits with foreign banks, he said. His remarks were confirmed by a Bank Rossii official who declined to be named, citing bank policy.

Treasuries fell, pushing 10-year yields to the highest level since November, on the Bank Rossii statement and as the U.S. government prepared to sell $19 billion of the securities. The dollar declined versus most of its major counterparts as speculation the global recession is easing reduced demand for safety and after Ulyukayev’s remarks.

About 30 percent of Russia’s international reserves, which stood at $401.1 billion on May 29, are currently held in U.S. Treasuries, Ulyukayev said. Kudrin said on May 26 that Russia planned to buy $10 billion of IMF bonds using money from its foreign reserves. That investment would most likely be made in the fourth quarter, Ulyukayev said.

‘Face Value’

“As usual the market takes everything at face value and thinks everything will be implemented tomorrow,” Luis Costa, emerging-market debt strategist at Commerzbank AG in London, said by telephone. “I don’t believe this will be done on a significant magnitude over the next six to twelve months. It’s something they have in mind in the long term.”

Maxim Oreshkin, head of research at OAO Rosbank in Moscow, agreed that the shift into IMF debt won’t happen immediately.

“The central bank has never stood out for making fast moves with its reserves,” Oreshkin said. “If it changes certain groups it will happen smoothly.”

Oreshkin said investing in the IMF could bring “political dividends” for Russia, as it “raises the role of Russia in the IMF.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev questioned the U.S. dollar’s future as a global reserve currency last week and said that using a mix of regional currencies would make the world economy more stable. He renewed his call for consideration of a supranational currency to challenge the dollar.

Dollar Concerns

The dollar “is not in a spectacular position, let’s be frank, and its prospects cause various questions as do the prospects for the global currency system,” Medvedev said in an interview published in the Kommersant newspaper.

The IMF securities would give countries a different way to contribute to the fund and are unlike traditional bonds because they pay an interest rate pegged to the IMF’s basket of currencies, known as Special Drawing Rights.

China is expected to buy as much as $50 billion of the bonds, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said yesterday.

The IMF, which has rescued economies from Pakistan to Iceland in the past year, has never issued bonds before and is seeking more cash to finance loans and aid to member countries during the worst economic slump in the fund’s 64-year history.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alexander Nicholson in Moscow at anicholson6@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 10, 2009 09:37 EDT

Rogers Echoes Warning Of “Sucker’s

Rally”

Veteran financial guru Jim Rogers warned CNBC viewers today that the stock market has yet to hit a bottom despite people ploughing their money back into a sucker’s rally, as the Bilderberg Group’s plan to pull the rug out from under euphoric investors draws closer.

Rogers said that central banks “flooding the world with money” only attempts to solve the problem of too much debt with more debt and “defies belief,” adding that the method will not work because governments have failed to address the underlying problems that caused the crisis in the first place.

“I mean … you give me 5 or 6 trillion dollars, I’ll show you a very good time, there’s no question about that,” Rogers said.

“I’m not buying shares if that’s what you mean. Not at all,” Rogers told Squawk Box Asia.”The bottom will probably come later this year, next year, who knows when,” he added.

Rogers’ sentiment is given weight when one considers the noises coming out of the secretive Bilderberg cabal during this year’s conference in Greece.

As we reported last week based on investigative journalist Daniel Estulin’s inside sources, investors, whipped up into a false state of euphoria by the belief that the economy is recovering, are being suckered into ploughing their money back into the system as a set up for “massive losses and searing financial pain in the months ahead” as the stock market reverses its uptrend and plummets to new lows.

Rogers told CNBC he was still favorable towards commodities and precious metals because they were the only sector where fundamentals were getting better.

Leaked Agenda: Bilderberg Group Plans Economic Depression

 Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, May 6, 2009

On the eve of the 2009 Bilderberg Group conference, which is due to be held May 14-17 at the 5 star Nafsika Astir Palace Hotel in Vouliagmeni, Greece, investigative reporter Daniel Estulin has uncovered shocking details of what the elitists plan to do with the economy over the course of the next year.

The Bilderberg Group meeting is an annual confab of around 150 of the world’s most influential powerbrokers in government, industry, banking, media, academia and the military-industrial complex. The secretive group operates under “Chatham House rules,” meaning that no details of what is discussed can ever be leaked to the media, despite editors of the world’s biggest newspapers, the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Financial Times, being present at the meeting.

According to Estulin’s sources, which have been proven highly accurate in the past, Bilderberg is divided on whether to put into motion, “Either a prolonged, agonizing depression that dooms the world to decades of stagnation, decline and poverty … or an intense-but-shorter depression that paves the way for a new sustainable economic world order, with less sovereignty but more efficiency.”

The information takes on added weight when one considers the fact that Estulin’s previous economic forecasts, which were based on leaks from the same sources, have proven deadly accurate. Estulin correctly predicted the housing crash and the 2008 financial meltdown as a result of what his sources inside Bilderberg told him the elite were planning based on what was said at their 2006 meeting in Canada and the 2007 conference in Turkey.

Details of the economic agenda were contained in a pre-meeting booklet being handed out to Bilderberg members. On a more specific note, Estulin warns that Bilderberg are fostering a false picture of economic recovery, suckering investors into ploughing their money back into the stock market again only to later unleash another massive downturn which will create “massive losses and searing financial pain in the months ahead,” according to a Canada Free Press report.

According to Estulin, Bilderberg is assuming that U.S. unemployment figures will reach around 14% by the end of the year, almost doubling the current official figure of 8.1 per cent.

Estulin’s sources also tell him that Bilderberg will again attempt to push for the enactment of the Lisbon Treaty, a key centerpiece of the agenda to fully entrench a federal EU superstate, by forcing the Irish to vote again on the document in September/October despite having rejected it already, along with other European nations, in national referendums.

“One of their concerns is addressing and neutralizing the anti-Lisbon treaty movement called “Libertas” led by Declan Ganley. One of the Bilderberger planned moves is to use a whispering campaign in the US media suggested that Ganley is being funded by arms dealers in the US linked to the US military,” reports CFP.

Daniel Estulin, Jim Tucker, and other sources who have infiltrated Bilderberg meetings in the past have routinely provided information about the Bilderberg agenda that later plays out on the world stage, proving that the organization is not merely a “talking shop” as debunkers claim, but an integral planning forum for the new world order agenda.

Indeed, just last month Belgian viscount and current Bilderberg-chairman Étienne Davignon bragged that Bilderberg helped create the Euro by first introducing the policy agenda for a single currency in the early 1990’s. Bilderberg’s agenda for a European federal superstate and a single currency likely goes back even further.  A BBC investigation uncovered documents from the early Bilderberg meetings which confirmed that the European Union was a brainchild of Bilderberg.

In spring 2002, when war hawks in the Bush administration were pushing for a summer invasion of Iraq, Bilderbergers expressed their desire for a delay and the attack was not launched until March the following year.

In 2006,  Estulin predicted that the U.S. housing market would be allowed to soar before the bubble was cruelly popped, which is exactly what transpired.

In 2008, Estulin predicted that Bilderberg were creating the conditions for a financial calamity, which is exactly what began a few months later with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Bilderberg has routinely flexed its muscles in establishing its role as kingmaker. The organization routinely selects presidential candidates as well as running mates and prime ministers.

Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were both groomed by the secretive organization in the early 1990’s before rising to prominence.

Barack Obama’s running mate Joe Biden was selected by Bilderberg luminary James A. Johnson, and John Kerry’s 2004 running mate John Edwards was also anointed by the group after he gave a glowing speech at the conference in 2004. Bilderberg attendees even broke house rules to applaud Edwards at the end of a speech he gave to the elitists about American politics. The choice of Edwards was shocking to media pundits who had fully expected Dick Gephardt to secure the position. The New York Post even reported that Gephardt had been chosen and “Kerry-Gephardt” stickers were being placed on campaign vehicles before being removed when Edwards was announced as Kerry’s number two.

A 2008 Portuguese newspaper report highlighted the fact that Pedro Santana Lopes and Jose Socrates attended the 2004 meeting in Stresa, Italy before both going on to become Prime Minster of Portugal.

Several key geopolitical decisions were made at last year’s Bilderberg meeting in Washington DC, again emphasizing the fact that the confab is far more than an informal get-together.

As we reported at the time, Bilderberg were concerned that the price of oil was accelerating too fast after it hit $150 a barrel and wanted to ensure that “oil prices would probably begin to decline”. This is exactly what happened in the latter half of 2008 as oil again sunk below $50 a barrel. We were initially able to predict the rapid rise in oil prices in 2005 when oil was at $40, because Bilderberg had called for prices to rise during that year’s meeting in Munich. During the conference in Germany, Henry Kissinger told his fellow attendees that the elite had resolved to ensure that oil prices would double over the course of the next 12-24 months, which is exactly what happened.

Also at last year’s meeting, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice formalized plans to sign a treaty on installing a U.S. radar base in the Czech Republic with Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg.

Rice was joined at the meeting by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who reportedly encouraged EU globalists to get behind an attack on Iran. Low and behold, days later the EU threatened Iran with sanctions if it did not suspend its nuclear enrichment program.

There was also widespread speculation that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s “secret meeting,” which was accomplished with the aid of cloak and dagger tactics like locking journalists on an airplane to keep them from tracking the two down, took place at the Bilderberg meeting in DC.

It remains to be seen what kind of mainstream media press coverage Bilderberg 2009 will be afforded because, despite the proven track record of Bilderberg having a central role in influencing subsequent geopolitical and financial world events, and despite last year’s meeting being held in Washington DC, the U.S. corporate media oversaw an almost universal blackout of reporting on the conference, its attendees, and what was discussed.

Once again, it will be left to the alternative media to fill the vacuum and educate the people on exactly what the globalists have planned for us over the coming year.

Leaked 1955 Bilderberg Docs Outline Plan For Single European Currency

Leaked documents from the 1955 Bilderberg Group conference held in Germany discuss the agenda to create a European Union and a single EU currency, decades before they were introduced, disproving once again debunkers who claim that Bilderberg has no influence over world events.

	The full document can be read by clicking the above image (the password is ‘dynbase’).

Leaked papers from the meeting which took place from September 23-25 1955 at the Grand Hotel Sonnenbichl in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, West Germany, were released by the Wikileaks website yesterday.

As we first reported in 2003,  a BBC investigative team were allowed to access Bilderberg files which confirmed that the EU and the Euro were the brainchild of Bilderberg. They were probably reading from the same documents that were released by Wikileaks.

It was only last month that Belgian viscount and current Bilderberg-chairman Étienne Davignon bragged that Bilderberg helped create the Euro by first introducing the policy agenda for a single currency in the early 1990’s.

However, the documents show that the agenda to create a European common market and a single currency go back decades earlier.

The summary report of the 1955 meeting talks of the “Pressing need to bring the German people, together with the other peoples of Europe, into a common market.”

The document also outlines the plan, “To arrive in the shortest possible time at the highest degree of integration, beginning with a common European market.”

Just two years later, in 1957, the first incarnation of the European Economic Community (EEC) was born, which comprised of a single market between Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The EEC gradually enlarged over the next few decades until it became the European Community, one of the three pillars of the European Union, which was officially created in 1993.

The 1955 Bilderberg summary outlines a consensus that, “It might be better to proceed through the development of a common market by treaty rather than by the creation of new high authorities.” The EEC was duly created via the Treaty of Rome, which was signed on 25 March 1957.

The same process is still being followed to this day with the Lisbon Treaty, which hands over vast swathes of national sovereignty to the EU by means of the consent of Presidents and Prime Ministers of European countries, rather than by the arbitrary creation of new authorities, a method that would more obviously lay bare the fact that the creation of a federal EU superstate is totalitarian by its very nature.

Even so, debunkers will probably still try and claim that the idea of a common European market was floating around in the early 1950’s and that Bilderberg were merely debating contemporary political ideas.

However, the same cannot be said for the single European currency, which wasn’t even introduced in the form of notes and coins until January 2002, having been first codified in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. The documents prove that Bilderberg members were pushing for its introduction nearly 40 years earlier.

“A European speaker expressed concern about the need to achieve a common currency, and indicated that in his view this necessarily implied the creation of a central political authority,” states the summary document.

True to form, the single European currency, the Euro, was not introduced until after the creation of a central political authority - the EU itself.

The document also stresses, “The necessity to bring the German people into a common European market as quickly as possible,” adding that the future was in danger without a “United Europe”.

We also learn that, “A United States participant confirmed that the United States had not weakened in its enthusiastic support for the idea of integration, although there was considerable diffidence in America as to how this enthusiasm should be manifested. Another United States participant urged his European friends to go ahead with the unification of Europe with less emphasis on ideological considerations and, above all, to be practical and work fast.”

Despite the plethora of manifestly provable examples of where Bilderberg’s agenda has later played out in actual policies and geopolitical developments on the world stage, establishment media debunkers still scoff and sneer at independent researchers who dare claim that 150 of the world’s most influential powerbrokers meeting in secret to discuss the future of the planet might equate to something more than an informal talking shop, calling such assertions “conspiracy theories”.

Indeed, the sheer stupidity of debunkers to suggest that an event that attracts the titans of government, industry, banking, business and academia, at which the most pressing global issues of the day are vigorously discussed under the cloak of a mutually agreed media blackout, has no bearing on future world events, is the most laughable “conspiracy theory” ever uttered.

Bilderberg’s 2009 agenda has already been leaked before their May 14-17 meeting in Vouliagmeni, Greece. According to investigative journalist Daniel Estulin, one of Bilderberg’s aims is to smear anti-Lisbon Treaty activists and politicians by planting derogatory stories in the media, enabling them to silence opposition to an EU federal superstate that Bilderberg has been carefully cultivating since their very first meetings in the 1950’s - a fact, not a conspiracy theory, proven by Bilderberg’s own internal documents.

 Brown: ‘New world order is emerging’

Tent Cities, Unemployment, Homelessness Growing

YouTube
March 13, 2009

Global Financial Assets Lost $50 Trillion Last Year

Shamim Adam
Bloomberg
March 9, 2009

The value of global financial assets including stocks, bonds and currencies probably fell by more than $50 trillion in 2008, equivalent to a year of world gross domestic product, according to an Asian Development Bank report.

Asia excluding Japan probably lost about $9.6 trillion, while the Latin American region saw the value of financial assets drop by about $2.1 trillion, said Claudio Loser, a former International Monetary Fund director and the author of the report that was commissioned by the ADB. The report didn’t give a breakdown of asset declines in other regions.

 “The loss of financial wealth is enormous, and the consequences for the economies of the world will unfortunately commensurate,” said Loser, now the Latin American president of strategic advisory firm Centennial Group Inc.. “There are serious economic and political stumbling blocks that may well cause the recovery to be costly and slow to consolidate.”

Some of the world’s biggest financial companies including Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. have collapsed as banks and other financial institutions reported almost $1.2 trillion of losses and writedowns since the start of 2007. Global stock markets lost about $28.7 trillion in 2008, and another $6.6 trillion has been wiped from the value of world equities in 2009.

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Rep. Kanjorski: $550 Billion Disappeared in “Electronic Run On the Banks”

Infowars
February 6, 2009

 At 2 minutes, 20 seconds into this C-Span video clip, Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania explains how the Federal Reserve told Congress members about a “tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars.” According to Kanjorski, this electronic transfer occured over the period of an hour or two.

Here is a transcript of what Kanjorski says in the video:

On Thursday Sept 15, 2008 at roughly 11 AM The Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw down of money market accounts in the USA to the tune of $550 Billion dollars in a matter of an hour or two.Money was being removed electronically.The treasury tried to help with $105 Billion.But could not stem the tide.It was an electronic run on the banksThe treasury intervened but had they not closed down the accounts they estimated that by 2 PM that afternoon. Within 3 hours. $5.5 Trillion would have been withdrawled and collapsed and within 24 hours the world economy.Kanjorski does not provide further details. A Google search to verify this produces zero results.

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Bank bailout could cost $4 trillion

Colin Barr
Fortune
January 27, 2009

The cost of the bank bailout is likely to be much higher than $700 billion.While the Obama administration hasn’t asked Congress for more money yet, some experts warn that government spending on support for struggling financial services companies will ultimately reach into the trillions of dollars.

The first half of the controversial $700 billion program to help banks has already been spent — mostly on buying up preferred shares of troubled banks.Part of the remaining $350 billion may be used to purchase troubled assets from bank balance sheets and place them in what Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chief Sheila Bair has dubbed an “aggregator bank.”

And while taxpayers will surely recover some of that sum eventually, more money is likely to be needed in order for the bank rescue to work.“The amount of working capital you’d expect the government to take into this would be around $3 trillion to $4 trillion,” said Simon Johnson, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and author of its Baseline Scenario financial crisis blog.

Read article

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Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, September 18, 2008

Mark Patterson, chairman of private equity fund MattlinPatterson, told an audience of financial experts at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria this week that the U.S. could suffer up to 500 bank closures and that the chances of a new great depression are now as high as 25 per cent.

	Following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Patterson warned that 300 to 500 U.S. banks are set to fail over the next three years and as a result absorb all of the FDIC’s pool of funds.

Financial conditions are “probably more challenging than at any time since 1929,” Patterson said, speaking at Dow Jones’ Private Equity Analyst Conference this week.

 We’re not in normal times. If you don’t accept that there is at least a 20 to 25 percent chance of a financial markets led depression you’re fooling yourself,” he cautioned, adding that “Saharan-like” credit markets are overwhelming companies.Following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Patterson warned that 300 to 500 U.S. banks are set to fail over the next three years and as a result absorb all of the FDIC’s pool of funds.

As we reported on Monday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which guarantees individual accounts up to $100,000, only has about $50 billion to “insure” about $1 trillion in assets across the nation’s financial institutions.This has led top economists like Nouriel Roubini, of NYU’s Stern School and RGE Monitor, to openly warn that a “slow motion run on the banks” is already occurring nationwide as individuals move their deposits to safer havens.

Patterson put the figure at 300-500 bank failures presuming that other well known investment banks survive, something he said “was not such a good assumption.”“Who could blame him for such a negative outlook?” writes Marc Raybin of HedgeFund.net. “The markets are still reeling from the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeting more than 500 points on Monday on the one-two-three punch of Lehman Bros. declaring bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch being acquired by Bank of America and American International Group, the world’s largest insurer with $1 trillion on its balance sheet,on the verge of filing for bankruptcy protection  itself .”  

Heather Burke
Bloomberg
December 30, 2008

U.S. retailers face a wave of store closings, bankruptcies and takeovers starting next month as holiday sales are shaping up to be the worst in 40 years.

 Retailers may close 73,000 stores in the first half of 2009, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. Talbots Inc. and Sears Holdings Corp. are among chains shuttering underperforming locations.

More than a dozen retailers, including Circuit City Stores Inc., Linens ‘n Things Inc., Sharper Image Corp. and Steve & Barry’s LLC, have sought bankruptcy protection this year as the credit squeeze and recession drained sales. Investors will start seeing a wide variety of chains seeking bankruptcy protection in February when they file financial reports, said Burt Flickinger.

“You’ll see department stores, specialty stores, discount stores, grocery stores, drugstores, major chains either multi- regionally or nationally go out,” Flickinger, managing director of Strategic Resource Group, a retail-industry consulting firm in New York, said today in a Bloomberg Radio interview. “There are a number that are real causes for concern.”

Steve Watson / Infowars.net | December 19, 2008

Texas Congressman Ron Paul has hit out at US monetary policy, warning that fear based politics are being used to promote the bailout culture in the same way they were used to sell the Iraq war.

"Governments that want to take over, undermine our liberties and gain more power always use the fear factor. They did this leading up to the war in Iraq, they do it on foreign policy, now they're doing it on monetary, economic and financial problems." Paul told the nationally syndicated Alex Jones show Wednesday.

"They do that all the time, that is their technique, always to build a tremendous fear in the hearts of the people. Terrorize the people and say that 'we are your saviors and we're the only ones that can take care of it'." The Congressman stated.

Paul pointed out that the use of the fear factor was never more evident than in the run up to the passage of the $750 billion bailout bill earlier this year when it emerged that representatives had been threatened with an economic crash and physical martial law in America.

When asked if this constituted economic terrorism, Paul replied "Of course it is, and those responsible should be held accountable."

The Congressman also warned that the bailout of the auto industry could have dire consequences.

"It is extremely dangerous because although we have been creeping in that direction, this is an endorsement of nationalization. If they keep token ownership with the corporations, which they probably will, then it's called fascism." Paul said.

"I think everybody knows we're in a crisis now and they have now gotten to the point where they don't trust the government, which is healthy." The Congressman told listeners.

"A lot of people are begging and pleading and they're lining up. But the average guy outside of Washington, especially so many of the young people are realizing that this has all been a hoax and this is the time to really expose that hoax."

"We have a real opportunity to direct attention to the real culprit and that is those who control the monetary system. Those who counterfeit our money and cause the financial bubbles and then recessions, and now are working real hard on a depression." Paul continued.

"The only thing that can counteract this is a different philosophy. A convincing argument that free markets, sound money and no Federal Reserve and limited taxes, the things that made America great."

"The system that they are trying to patch together right now will not work. We don't need more regulatory agencies, all we need is the enforcement of fraud laws." Paul concluded.

Listen to the full interview below: