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If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it. I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless… especially given my gross inability to gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head. Exactly what is therapeutic about that I’m not sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation”. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.

While very few working people would say they haven’t had their fair share of taxes (as can I), in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind. Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say.

Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.

And justice? You’ve got to be kidding!

How can any rational individual explain that white elephant conundrum in the middle of our tax system and, indeed, our entire legal system? Here we have a system that is, by far, too complicated for the brightest of the master scholars to understand. Yet, it mercilessly “holds accountable” its victims, claiming that they’re responsible for fully complying with laws not even the experts understand. The law “requires” a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that’s not “duress” than what is. If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is.

How did I get here?

My introduction to the real American nightmare starts back in the early ‘80s. Unfortunately after more than 16 years of school, somewhere along the line I picked up the absurd, pompous notion that I could read and understand plain English. Some friends introduced me to a group of people who were having ‘tax code’ readings and discussions. In particular, zeroed in on a section relating to the wonderful “exemptions” that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy. We carefully studied the law (with the help of some of the “best”, high-paid, experienced tax lawyers in the business), and then began to do exactly what the “big boys” were doing (except that we weren’t steeling from our congregation or lying to the government about our massive profits in the name of God). We took a great deal of care to make it all visible, following all of the rules, exactly the way the law said it was to be done.

The intent of this exercise and our efforts was to bring about a much-needed re-evaluation of the laws that allow the monsters of organized religion to make such a mockery of people who earn an honest living. However, this is where I learned that there are two “interpretations” for every law; one for the very rich, and one for the rest of us… Oh, and the monsters are the very ones making and enforcing the laws; the inquisition is still alive and well today in this country.

That little lesson in patriotism cost me $40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my retirement plans back to 0. It made me realize for the first time that I live in a country with an ideology that is based on a total and complete lie. It also made me realize, not only how naive I had been, but also the incredible stupidity of the American public; that they buy, hook, line, and sinker, the crap about their “freedom”… and that they continue to do so with eyes closed in the face of overwhelming evidence and all that keeps happening in front of them.

Before even having to make a shaky recovery from the sting of the first lesson on what justice really means in this country (around 1984 after making my way through engineering school and still another five years of “paying my dues”), I felt I finally had to take a chance of launching my dream of becoming an independent engineer.

On the subjects of engineers and dreams of independence, I should digress somewhat to say that I’m sure that I inherited the fascination for creative problem solving from my father. I realized this at a very young age.

The significance of independence, however, came much later during my early years of college; at the age of 18 or 19 when I was living on my own as student in an apartment in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. My neighbor was an elderly retired woman (80+ seemed ancient to me at that age) who was the widowed wife of a retired steel worker. Her husband had worked all his life in the steel mills of central Pennsylvania with promises from big business and the union that, for his 30 years of service, he would have a pension and medical care to look forward to in his retirement. Instead he was one of the thousands who got nothing because the incompetent mill management and corrupt union (not to mention the government) raided their pension funds and stole their retirement. All she had was social security to live on.

In retrospect, the situation was laughable because here I was living on peanut butter and bread (or Ritz crackers when I could afford to splurge) for months at a time. When I got to know this poor figure and heard her story I felt worse for her plight than for my own (I, after all, I thought I had everything to in front of me). I was genuinely appalled at one point, as we exchanged stories and commiserated with each other over our situations, when she in her grandmotherly fashion tried to convince me that I would be “healthier” eating cat food (like her) rather than trying to get all my substance from peanut butter and bread. I couldn’t quite go there, but the impression was made. I decided that I didn’t trust big business to take care of me, and that I would take responsibility for my own future and myself.

Return to the early ‘80s, and here I was off to a terrifying start as a ‘wet-behind-the-ears’ contract software engineer… and two years later, thanks to the fine backroom, midnight effort by the sleazy executives of Arthur Andersen (the very same folks who later brought us Enron and other such calamities) and an equally sleazy New York Senator (Patrick Moynihan), we saw the passage of 1986 tax reform act with its section 1706.

For you who are unfamiliar, here is the core text of the IRS Section 1706, defining the treatment of workers (such as contract engineers) for tax purposes. Visit this link for a conference committee report (http://www.synergistech.com/1706.shtml#ConferenceCommitteeReport) regarding the intended interpretation of Section 1706 and the relevant parts of Section 530, as amended. For information on how these laws affect technical services workers and their clients, read our discussion here (http://www.synergistech.com/ic-taxlaw.shtml).

SEC. 1706. TREATMENT OF CERTAIN TECHNICAL PERSONNEL.

(a) IN GENERAL – Section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978 is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new subsection:

(d) EXCEPTION. – This section shall not apply in the case of an individual who pursuant to an arrangement between the taxpayer and another person, provides services for such other person as an engineer, designer, drafter, computer programmer, systems analyst, or other similarly skilled worker engaged in a similar line of work.

(b) EFFECTIVE DATE. – The amendment made by this section shall apply to remuneration paid and services rendered after December 31, 1986.

Note:

* “another person” is the client in the traditional job-shop relationship.
* “taxpayer” is the recruiter, broker, agency, or job shop.
* “individual”, “employee”, or “worker” is you.

Admittedly, you need to read the treatment to understand what it is saying but it’s not very complicated. The bottom line is that they may as well have put my name right in the text of section (d). Moreover, they could only have been more blunt if they would have came out and directly declared me a criminal and non-citizen slave. Twenty years later, I still can’t believe my eyes.

During 1987, I spent close to $5000 of my ‘pocket change’, and at least 1000 hours of my time writing, printing, and mailing to any senator, congressman, governor, or slug that might listen; none did, and they universally treated me as if I was wasting their time. I spent countless hours on the L.A. freeways driving to meetings and any and all of the disorganized professional groups who were attempting to mount a campaign against this atrocity. This, only to discover that our efforts were being easily derailed by a few moles from the brokers who were just beginning to enjoy the windfall from the new declaration of their “freedom”. Oh, and don’t forget, for all of the time I was spending on this, I was loosing income that I couldn’t bill clients.

After months of struggling it had clearly gotten to be a futile exercise. The best we could get for all of our trouble is a pronouncement from an IRS mouthpiece that they weren’t going to enforce that provision (read harass engineers and scientists). This immediately proved to be a lie, and the mere existence of the regulation began to have its impact on my bottom line; this, of course, was the intended effect.

Again, rewind my retirement plans back to 0 and shift them into idle. If I had any sense, I clearly should have left abandoned engineering and never looked back.

Instead I got busy working 100-hour workweeks. Then came the L.A. depression of the early 1990s. Our leaders decided that they didn’t need the all of those extra Air Force bases they had in Southern California, so they were closed; just like that. The result was economic devastation in the region that rivaled the widely publicized Texas S&L fiasco. However, because the government caused it, no one gave a shit about all of the young families who lost their homes or street after street of boarded up houses abandoned to the wealthy loan companies who received government funds to “shore up” their windfall. Again, I lost my retirement.

Years later, after weathering a divorce and the constant struggle trying to build some momentum with my business, I find myself once again beginning to finally pick up some speed. Then came the .COM bust and the 911 nightmare. Our leaders decided that all aircraft were grounded for what seemed like an eternity; and long after that, ‘special’ facilities like San Francisco were on security alert for months. This made access to my customers prohibitively expensive. Ironically, after what they had done the Government came to the aid of the airlines with billions of our tax dollars … as usual they left me to rot and die while they bailed out their rich, incompetent cronies WITH MY MONEY! After these events, there went my business but not quite yet all of my retirement and savings.

By this time, I’m thinking that it might be good for a change. Bye to California, I’ll try Austin for a while. So I moved, only to find out that this is a place with a highly inflated sense of self-importance and where damn little real engineering work is done. I’ve never experienced such a hard time finding work. The rates are 1/3 of what I was earning before the crash, because pay rates here are fixed by the three or four large companies in the area who are in collusion to drive down prices and wages… and this happens because the justice department is all on the take and doesn’t give a fuck about serving anyone or anything but themselves and their rich buddies.

To survive, I was forced to cannibalize my savings and retirement, the last of which was a small IRA. This came in a year with mammoth expenses and not a single dollar of income. I filed no return that year thinking that because I didn’t have any income there was no need. The sleazy government decided that they disagreed. But they didn’t notify me in time for me to launch a legal objection so when I attempted to get a protest filed with the court I was told I was no longer entitled to due process because the time to file ran out. Bend over for another $10,000 helping of justice.

So now we come to the present. After my experience with the CPA world, following the business crash I swore that I’d never enter another accountant’s office again. But here I am with a new marriage and a boatload of undocumented income, not to mention an expensive new business asset, a piano, which I had no idea how to handle. After considerable thought I decided that it would be irresponsible NOT to get professional help; a very big mistake.

When we received the forms back I was very optimistic that they were in order. I had taken all of the years information to Bill Ross, and he came back with results very similar to what I was expecting. Except that he had neglected to include the contents of Sheryl’s unreported income; $12,700 worth of it. To make matters worse, Ross knew all along this was missing and I didn’t have a clue until he pointed it out in the middle of the audit. By that time it had become brutally evident that he was representing himself and not me.

This left me stuck in the middle of this disaster trying to defend transactions that have no relationship to anything tax-related (at least the tax-related transactions were poorly documented). Things I never knew anything about and things my wife had no clue would ever matter to anyone. The end result is… well, just look around.

I remember reading about the stock market crash before the “great” depression and how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when they realized they screwed up and lost everything. Isn’t it ironic how far we’ve come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class (who doesn’t have any say in it, elections are a joke) to cover their asses and it’s “business-as-usual”. Now when the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes… isn’t that a clever, tidy solution.

As government agencies go, the FAA is often justifiably referred to as a tombstone agency, though they are hardly alone. The recent presidential puppet GW Bush and his cronies in their eight years certainly reinforced for all of us that this criticism rings equally true for all of the government. Nothing changes unless there is a body count (unless it is in the interest of the wealthy sows at the government trough). In a government full of hypocrites from top to bottom, life is as cheap as their lies and their self-serving laws.

I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough.

I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less. I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are. Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of shit at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.

I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

Joe Stack (1956-2010)

02/18/2010

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Jan
06

Dollar Crash Looms

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“A RUN ON THE DOLLAR,”

soberly predicts one Nobel Prize winning economist… “probably the kind of disorderly run that precipitates a global financial crisis…” while other monetary experts now warn, “We’re in the terminal stages of the world’s most gigantic pyramid scheme.”

WHAT WILL IT MEAN FOR YOU?

Heed the unmistakable warning signs in this URGENT ALERT, or risk missing your FINAL CHANCE to protect what’s left of your nest-egg, before the coming collapse of the once-mighty U.S. Dollar renders it…

…VIRTUALLY WORTHLESS!

ear Concerned American:

All signs point toward the U.S. dollar – already down one-third against other world currencies since 2002 – heading at breakneck speed for a precipitous and historic crash.

Anyone holding dollars or dollar-denominated assets is sitting on a ticking time bomb, and the fuse is burning short. There isn’t a moment to lose before we see a worldwide rush to the exits.

Your family’s security rests on you reviewing this Urgent Alert through to the end. I urge you – DO NOT put this letter aside to read “later,” because later may indeed be too late.

Unmistakable warning signs I’ll reveal here point to a monetary crisis on the verge of spinning wildly out of control, leading to massive INFLATION and quite possibly, a sudden and catastrophic dollar collapse that will change our nation forever.

Even as I write, government regulators are systematically destroying, seizing, and otherwise transferring to federal control trillions of dollars in private assets. The all-but-certain impact on our currency, your purchasing power and your standard of living could be both sudden and devastating.

With a newly minted administration frantically borrowing and spending in a manic effort to re-inflate the decimated stock and housing markets, the government itself is rapidly going broke.

Here it is, from the fellow whose desk is supposed to have that sign, “the buck stops here” –

Mr. Obama, in a recent cable news interview during which he tried to rationalize his multi-trillion dollar spending spree, conceded with a chuckle,”we are out of money now. We’re operating in deep deficits…”

This admission came only a few months into his term, and even before he committed upwards of $50 billion more in U.S. taxpayer funds to bailing General Motors out of the hole!

Major foreign investors such as China are quickly catching on to the hard reality of impending U.S. insolvency. They are coming to the inescapable conclusion that the only way Washington can keep its Ponzi finances going is by running the monetary printing presses non-stop. (More about what this means in a moment.).

As I mentioned, the dollar has already given up fully a third of its value relative to other world currencies in the last half-dozen years.

The trend is long, clear, and unmistakable, with all signs pointing steeply downhill. I checked FXmarket.com’s trend index on the dollar this morning. Two words – “Strongly Bearish.”

A massive, catastrophic dumping of the devaluing U.S. dollar looms large. The upshot is – if you don’t immediately begin taking the basic precautions I’ll outline for you right here, you stand a good chance of acting too late and getting caught with your britches down.

Even mega-investor (and high-profile Obama cheerleader) Warren Buffett recently admitted publicly that the frantic spending and money creation underway right now will trigger a currency-destroying inflation that will be much more severe than in the 1970s.

That’s why big-time investment gurus such as Jim Rogers seized on the temporary dollar rally in the past year to hustle their assets out of harm’s way – before, as he puts it, the dollar “goes the way of pound sterling” and “declines by 90% in the coming years.”

Rogers then dispatched a strongly worded email offering this sobering assessment –

“The world at large does seem to understand innately that govern-
ments are bankrupting themselves and destroying paper currency.”

“Bankrupting.” “Destroying.” Strong words indeed. And specifically which nation’s government and currency are on a fast-track to monetary doomsday? As Rogers recently told TIME magazine, “America is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world.”

Do I have your attention? I trust that I do, because this is but the tip of the iceberg…

The Dollar’s Coming “Reckoning Day”:
On a Par With Pearl Harbor and 9/11

The dollar’s coming reckoning day is going to be dramatic – correction, traumatic –marking a major milestone in our beloved nation’s decline as a financial powerhouse.

As I’ll explain in a moment, the sheer havoc unleashed by a dollar crisis will be nationally jolting on a par with Pearl Harbor, John F. Kennedy’s assassination and 9/11. And yes, the bottom could drop out in just a single harrowing day. Here’s just a glimpse of the likely fallout:

* A price explosion as Americans scramble over one another to buy tangible assets or simply hoard basic necessities, before the dollar’s purchasing power evaporates fully.

* Widespread shortages, sparse grocery store shelves and the return of long gas lines.

* Failed businesses and economic dislocations far eclipsing anything we’ve seen to date.

* A breakdown in commerce, as longer-term transactions become impossible to make.

* Rising crime and rampant unemployment.

* Government handouts drying up, with an angry dependent class taking to the streets.

I want to give you the inside skinny on the steps prudent citizens are quietly taking right now to gird themselves against the coming greenback collapse… and even prosper.

You can – in fact, you must – take key steps to protect your family’s way of life. And you must do it soon. “Waiting it out” is not a plan for anything short of a catastrophe. Let me explain.

Respected economist and forecaster George Whitehurst-Berry has offered this astute explanation of the financial gyrations rocking U.S. markets, as quoted in the opening of this letter:

“We are in the terminal stages of the world’s most gigantic pyramid scheme,” he explained, referring to the ultimate collapse of the U.S.-led monetary order that will permanently impoverish millions while making a handful of smart thinking, ahead-of-the-curve investors very rich.

Even the Pentagon is Secretly Planning for Dollar-Collapse
Scenarios that Dramatically Tilt the Geo-Political Balance

The looming dollar crisis is no idle theory. This threat is so real that top Pentagon intelligence experts are running live “planning scenarios” in which resource-rich nations like Russia and China exploit U.S. indebtedness to wreak sudden havoc in our financial system and basic economy.

In the 2009 Unrestricted Warfare Symposium at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, intelligence analyst James Richards unveiled a blueprint detailing exactly how U.S. enemies could drop the value of the dollar by a shocking 75%, crippling our economy overnight.

This report’s conclusions are nothing short of chilling. So vulnerable is the U.S. to this scenario, Richards urges U.S. intel agencies to pay close attention to global gold supplies and the financial maneuverings of rival powers (something I do myself for my valued subscribers).

Richards’ prescient paper came out days before Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of China’s central bank, challenged the U.S. to step aside to allow a new global currency to replace the dollar.

My friend, the handwriting is on the wall. In late April, the international news media reported a major development underscoring the coming doom of the dollar. The Financial Times of London, for one, recently noted: “China has quietly almost doubled its gold reserve to become the fifth biggest holder of the precious metal.” Yet as usual, the celebrity-obsessed U.S. media totally glossed over another harbinger of what is to come.

Or as the always-reliable Casey Report added: “On the bigger global screen, this revelation [about China's gold hoarding] stops the concept of gold as a ‘barbarous relic’ as bankers had hoped it would become in the past 50 years…” Translation: The day of the paper-backed dollar is coming to an ugly end, and soon.

You Must Plan for the Coming Dollar Collapse: NOW

This is the heart of why I am writing you today. It’s not good enough to know what’s going to happen. You have to know what to do.

Specifically, you must have a practical, doable plan to put yourself ahead of the 99% of Americans who are going to get caught completely off-guard when the terrible fundamentals of the U.S. dollar wipe out the purchasing power of their salaries and their retirement savings.

The coming dollar collapse will wreak economic and social havoc far beyond skyrocketing prices. Widespread fuel and food shortages, relentless crime waves and the government’s endless socialistic machinations will devastate the American way of life like a giant tornado.

My name is Lee Bellinger, publisher of the private monthly financial, health and taxation intelligence advisory Independent Living. In my two decades of publishing discreet inside information about government power-grabs and scams, never have we produced as important a document as my new mega work, the 155-page Dollar Destruction Defense Manual: Everything You Need to Protect Your Way of Life Against the Coming Inflationary Ruin.

I want to send it to you Free because I know for a fact you, as a think-outside the-box, self-sufficiency-seeking individual, are the kind of person who will profit mightily – while avoiding substantial financial pain – from its red-hot information on the coming collapse of the dollar.

I don’t like being lied to. And I don’t like being ripped off. That’s why I made it my business to understand the government’s shocking financial dilemma – how serious and unprecedented it is and how they are making “their” problem into “your” problem. (At least if you don’t act.)

Experts Deliver Dire Prognosis on the Future of the U.S. Dollar: Your Hard-Earned Money Will Be Debased to Alleviate Federal Insolvency

Nobel Prize winner Dr. Paul Samuelson, hardly an alarmist, has characterized U.S. financial imbalances as so severe and “irreversible that we must accept that at some future date there will be a run on the dollar. Probably the kind of disorderly run that precipitates a global financial crisis.” Or as Dr. Ron Paul, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, recently noted about the rampant, unprecedented money creation going on, “If we continue doing what we are doing right now, we will literally destroy the dollar.”

Here’s How a Worst-Case Scenario
is Likely to Play Out: Are You Ready?

The key to understanding the dollar’s vulnerability is the global nature of currency markets.

Our government’s standard operating procedure of manipulating, papering over, and otherwise tricking gullible U.S. voters about the greenback being “strong” is one thing.

Forever fooling sophisticated, objective foreign investors who are financing U.S. consumers and bureaucrats with debt they can’t ultimately pay back is quite another.

What’s important to understand is that global, around-the-clock electronic financial markets make it possible for the dollar to be dumped by millions of people literally at the speed of light. It only takes a nanosecond for pre-programmed computers to initiate waves of devastating trades.

Worse, such panic runs on the dollar are most likely to originate abroad, largely beyond the manipulative fingers of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets (a.k.a. the Plunge Protection Team) who would be called upon to prop up the dollar’s credibility when it is threatened, just as they have in times of stock market stress.

In 2005, a German video producer interviewed financial experts all over the globe on what could happen after the then housing bubble collapsed and U.S. consumers ultimately stopped buying foreign goods with debt (also provided by foreigners). The result is a 50-minute presentation titled Day of the Dollar, a realistically chilling video in which the dollar’s dismal fundamentals catch up with and overtake all efforts by the U.S. political class to prop it up.

A Single Triggering Event Could Collapse the Dollar Overnight as the Over-Indebted U.S. Finds Itself Isolated in a World of Angry Creditors

The Day of the Dollar scenario begins with an unexplained drop in the value of the dollar in Singapore, triggering a greenback sell-off in Hong Kong. As traders in Amsterdam wake up, the dollar is down significantly against the yen and dropping fast. The problem is worsened by the fact that big foreign institutional investors in U.S. government debt – who might otherwise come to the dollar’s rescue – are already over-weighted in dollars and more inclined to dump than accumulate more.

As the dollar continues to drop overseas (with Wall Street still closed), U.S. money wizards at the Fed and Treasury Department have no way to shut down markets for a “cooling off” period. As news spreads, lines form at European ATMs and foreign currency exchanges.

Even before Wall Street can open, the European Union suspends the acceptance of dollars for Euros, triggering an even bigger dumping of the dollar abroad. The U.S. retaliates by freezing all foreign transactions. By the time Wall Street rings the opening bell, trillions of dollars being hoarded by institutions and individuals are flooding onto the market, knocking the purchasing power of the greenback even lower.

Adding to the misery, OPEC no longer recognizes the dollar as a unit of trade. Oil producers will now accept payment only in gold, silver or other hard assets of equivalent value. U.S. oil companies wanting to buy crude must now pony up the funds in the form of a hard currency.

Americans have to start paying for cab service and food with cigarettes, liquor, and other tangible goods. Those stuck without barterable assets or real money (which is now understood to mean only gold and silver coins) are completely destitute.

Would you be surprised to learn such a scenario has already nearly occurred? Well, it has.

The Untold Story of How the Wheels Almost
Came Off the Cart on September 18, 2008

One Thursday morning in September 2008, the entire U.S. financial system nearly imploded, coming within hours of unprecedented panic withdrawals from U.S. banks and money market accounts totaling $5.5 trillion (well over a third of the nation’s entire annual economic output).

The respected chairman of the House capital markets subcommittee, 13-term Congressman Paul Kanjorski, recently spoke on the record about the little-publicized incident, noting it “would have collapsed the economy of the world… it would have been the end of our political system and economic system as we have known it.” Months after the fact, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke confirmed this terrifyingly close call in a recent 60 Minutes interview.

During the September 18 “episode,” the Treasury’s emergency pumping of $105 billion into the financial system was not enough. It was only after Treasury abruptly announced it would expand deposit insurance guarantees to $250,000 that the crisis abated – at least temporarily.

Rep. Kanjorski’s nightmare scenario almost became reality. AND THIS KIND OF SUDDEN FINANCIAL CALAMITY CAN EASILY HAPPEN – FOR REAL.

Suddenly “out-of-service” ATMs. Frozen bank accounts, retirement funds and savings accounts. Locked down small business payroll accounts.

This near collapse of the U.S. banking system happened right under the nose of the media. Yet almost none of them mentioned that anything out of the ordinary was going on – the point being you can’t let your future ride on the media to give you early warning of things to come.

To this day, no one can pinpoint exactly what (or who) triggered the September 18 run on the banks. All officials know is that gigantic withdrawals came upon the system from abroad, without warning or notice, and only extreme measures stemmed the crisis – and just in the nick of time.

The string of unprecedented bailouts may have saved the “too big to fail” banksters from getting their full comeuppance, at least this time. But the bailouts did nothing to resolve the underlying insolvency. They simply changed the time and manner in which the default will occur.

Instead of the country’s largest financial institutions all falling like dominos, it will be the currency itself that takes the hit. The trillions in newly created bailout dollars courtesy of the White House, the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve will help precipitate an inflation tsunami.

U.S. Finances Are an Even Bigger Mess
Than is Generally Understood

Even before Obama was sworn in, unfunded federal liabilities had blown past half-a-million dollars per U.S. family of four. In fact, federal finances are in such shambles David Walker, Comptroller of the Currency, resigned in disgust at the tail-end of the Bush administration.

Worse is what’s happened since Walker resigned. As Rep. Ron Paul recently wrote, the trillions of dollars created to bail out banks in just the past six months have added the equivalent of a whole new federal establishment to Uncle Sam’s bloated obligations.

Obama’s new spending obligations stagger the imagination, amounting to…

* More spending than the socialistic New Deal…
* More spending than the entire Iraq War…
* More spending than the 1980s savings and loan bailout…
* More spending than the Korean War… COMBINED!

COMBINED!

And a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows that rising unemployment and falling tax revenue will likely force the Social Security “Trust Fund” into annual deficits as soon as 2010 – a full decade before the Comptroller General’s office had been warning it would happen.

The Next Financial Train Wreck Could Be the
“Fail-Safe” Bond Market– Are You Properly Hedged?

Recently Bloomberg tabulated the continuously-growing U.S. government takeover of the private-sector (in the form of loans, guarantees and other commitments). So far, taxpayers have been saddled with an ADDITIONAL $12.8 trillion in unpayable debt.

These federal bailouts now amount to 90.14% of America’s annual gross domestic product – nearly our entire output for a year! Imagine that, for every $1.00 you make, brand new federal bailouts now have a claim to more than 90% of your hard-earned money.

What’s especially infuriating to me is that the Federal Reserve refuses to disclose to the public who has been on the receiving end of all its bailout dough, or exactly what’s now on its ballooning balance sheet. The Fed’s own Inspector General in recent Congressional testimony admitted after much waffling and obfuscating that she cannot account for trillions of dollars in off-balance-sheet transactions and has absolutely no idea how much the secretive central bank is losing on its “investments.”

As scandalous as the massive corporate bailouts are, they pale in comparison to those that will be required for Social Security and Medicare. A recent editorial in Barron’s states flatly – “Medicare, Medicaid, pensions, indeed the full freight of the federal government constitutes a Ponzi scheme in plain sight. Income is recycled to pay benefits; no new wealth is created.”

How ironic that the feds locked up Bernie Madoff and threw away the key (and rightly so) over his Ponzi swindle, when the U.S. government itself is the operator and tireless defender of the most gigantic Ponzi scheme ever, with you and me and millions of Americans holding the bag!

U.S. public and private debt now amounts to nearly four times the gross domestic product. In the midst of the Great Depression, total debt topped out at three times GDP. That suggests the current financial crisis could be even more severe in magnitude and length.

No wonder Standard & Poor’s quietly reported that Treasury bonds are poised to lose their AAA-rating because of the way Washington is indulging in emergency cash creation and massive spending programs.

MarketWatch recently reported another disturbing and telling warning sign: The cost to buy insurance against U.S. sovereign debt has surged by a factor of seven as compared to two years ago and is 60% higher than at the end of 2008.

A collapsing U.S. bond market will spell disaster for the pension funds, mutual funds, and insurance companies that hold bonds by the billions. Of greater concern to me, when the bond market ruptures, millions of retirees on fixed income could find themselves destitute.

I don’t want you to be among the tragic victims of this looming meltdown. Fortunately, you can take effective steps right now to hedge any exposure you have to the bond market (if you have a retirement plan or a life insurance policy, then you are almost certainly at risk). You can even position yourself to profit from the coming decline and fall of U.S. Treasuries.

The Dollar Destruction Defense Manual shows you exactly how!

Enter the Chinese, Who Are Increasingly Unwilling
to Bail Out Uncle Sam

At this point the U.S. government must borrow some $5 billion per day just to keep its head above water. And most holders of Uncle Sam’s debt – foreign powers – are openly speaking out that they are getting closer and closer to cutting our government off or severely reducing its limit.

The desperate money printing now underway is unprecedented in its scope – an attempt to reinflate the deflating credit bubble, which is driving rightly-skittish foreign financiers to make increasingly significant moves to evacuate their holdings out of the U.S. dollar.

The biggest candidates for dollar-dumping are the nominally-communist Chinese, who already hold some $2 trillion in U.S. debt.

The “core” of the Obama “financial recovery” plan is to goose the already-reluctant Chinese to escalate their exposure to U.S. bonds which finance Congressional stimulus pork-barrel spending, subsidize failed unionized industries, and soon, bail out many insolvent state governments.

Worry About the Dollar is Seriously Eroding
the Greenback’s Global Credibility

The New York Times notes “In the last two months, President Wen Jiabo and other Chinese officials have expressed nervousness about their country’s huge exposure to America’s financial well-being.”

Nobu Su, head of Taiwan’s TMT Group (which ships commodities to China), told the London Telegraph that Beijing is trying to extricate itself from its vulnerability to the dollar. He notes of major Chinese purchases of hard commodities around the globe: “China has woken up. The West is a black hole with all this money being printed.” Jim Lennon, the head of commodities at Macquarie bank, added: “They [the Chinese] are definitely buying metals to diversify out of U.S. Treasuries and dollar holdings.”

Make no mistake – the Chinese (among others) are scouring the globe right now – snapping up copper, oil, gold, silver and anything else tangible they can get their hands on to position themselves outside of a U.S. dollar hanging by a thread.

Financially, the U.S. is on a Road With No Turns

Chinese worries about the debasement of the dollar are quite VALID. The U.S. money supply expanded by a jaw dropping 271% in early 2009. Then in mid-March the Fed announced plans to expand the money supply by another 50-60%! Unfortunately, these inflationary policies come on the heels of a staggering 990% annual money supply expansion in the last four months of ‘08 – as reported by the St. Louis Federal Reserve Board office.

Financial Sense analyst Brian Pretti just produced a remarkably well-documented report demonstrating why the Fed has had no option but to begin directly funding U.S. government debt (nearly $2 trillion worth of new IOUs were issued in 2009 alone) through the creation of printing press money because of flagging demand from China, Japan, and private investors.

We are witness to the end of a 39-year experiment – in which global currencies linked to the dollar (and with no gold backing anywhere) are reaching the final inevitable stages of all fiat money. When the Weimar Republic, and more recently, Zimbabwe, began to monetize their debt, the countries plunged into hyperinflationn.

In short, the United States is attempting to print its way out of debt. And that means the value of the dollars you hold is destined to go down significantly.

Fortunately, you still have time to prepare – and I will eagerly help you.

The Smart Money Stampede Out of the Dollar Has Already Begun

If you’ve already heard a little voice in your head warning you that Wall Street paper assets are highly-manipulated certificates of financial folly, you got this letter just in time. While rampant money creation may force the DOW upward in nominal terms, the DOW index itself has been collapsing against the value of hard assets for some time.

For example, it currently takes about 9 ounces of gold to buy a share of the DOW industrials. Yet as recently as 1999, it took 44.8 ounces of gold to buy a DOW share – that’s a whopping 80% crash in the real value of the DOW.

The money magicians in Washington can fool millions of investors in the short-term, true. But they can’t fool those who measure their wealth in terms of precious metals, which retain their value over time. Gold is the mortal enemy of big government borrow-and-spenders. When the gold price shoots up, it signals to the world that the currency upon which government Ponzi finances operate is losing value.

For more than four years now, my Independent Living newsletter has discretely advised my subscribers to accumulate physical precious metals. The investor flight to precious metals I predicted would occur (back when gold was quietly trading in the $400s) has, since the onset of the financial crash of 2008, been global in scope and has resulted in physical gold and silver flying off the shelves everywhere.

.S. and Foreign Mints Are Being Slammed With
Physical Precious Metals Sales

The Richmond, Virginia-based Brinks Security corporation reports record silver and gold deliveries to private U.S. citizens. Tony Klancic of the Chicago-based Lind-Waldock commodities brokerage says he is inundated by calls from individual investors to obtain delivery of physical gold bullion. Scott Thomas, CEO of the American Precious Metals Exchange, says of physical gold and silver sales: “We’re having some of our strongest months ever… the bottom line is our numbers are probably double what they were last year, and last year was very busy.”

The Wall Street Journal recently noted, “Investors are flocking to gold coins. At the U.S. Mint, a total of 147,500 American Eagle gold bullion coins were sold in the first two months of this year, a surge of 176% from the same period last year.”

Peter Monk, Chairman of Barrick Gold Corporation (the world’s largest gold producer), recently indicated he has received a significant number of calls from wealthy investors seeking to buy large amounts of physical bullion. Getting physical gold has become so difficult that Wachovia Securities is no longer purchasing physical precious metals for its clients – opting instead for selling paper “shares” in exchange-traded funds.

In 2008, the Perth Mint actually had to stop accepting orders for physical gold and silver – the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee notes that the Perth Mint is working seven-days a week, 24-hours a days just to catch up on back orders. Perth Mint treasurer and manager Nigel Moffatt told Bloomberg, “We’re seeing a continuing, but heavy bias toward investors out of the U.S.” And The Financial Times reported in February that retail investors in France have become net buyers of gold for the first time in 25 years. Such examples are almost endless!

So now that I’ve explained the problem, let me tell you about YOUR PERSONAL SOLUTION.

For over two years, my research staff and I have been busily preparing a brand-new, blockbuster manual with a practical, easy-to-implement game plan appropriate to inflationary times, The Dollar Destruction Defense Manual.
ALERT! Why You MUST NOT Fall for
the Illusion of “Sector Diversification”

What really motivated me to do this project is one of the biggest myths that, even now, they continue to perpetuate on Wall Street: The false security of “diversification.” Your broker and the Wall Street media tout the value of diversification – and in theory, they are right! BUT mostly their diversification is limited to dollar-denominated stocks and bonds. Never forget – anything denominated in dollars loses its purchasing power with each passing month.

What YOU need to know about and engage in is true diversification – among currencies, stock markets, financial instruments, commodities, and precious metals which are not tied directly to the sinking dollar. Yes, most brokers recommend investment in many sectors of the U.S. economy but this is of little value if ALL your investments are tied to a declining dollar.

Sadly, millions of Americans will be impoverished by the coming dollar devaluation. But you can be one of a few select who survive and even prosper in these wildly unpredictable times.
Yes, You Should Own Some Gold – But Gold Alone Won’t Be Enough

You absolutely need my latest blockbuster, The Dollar Destruction Defense Manual: Everything You Need to Protect Your Way of Life Against the Coming Inflationary Ruin.

To develop this must-read work, we began by systematically researching what far-sighted individuals did to prosper during the inflation-ravaged 1970s. But we added an important feature: Today there are many MORE options, financial instruments and tactics that can help you preserve the value of your assets.

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Jan
06

Charter Richard Branson’s Yacht

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While the entrepreneur has his eye on space, his 105-foot catamaran, named Necker Belle, will be available to charter in the Caribbean next month for $88,000 a week.

Owners — even billionaires — often charter their yachts to offset running costs and to keep their yachts in peak condition, according to Clemmie Proctor of Burgess brokerage firm. However, Proctor would not speculate as to why Branson is letting the hoi polloi on his boat.

Branson’s spokesperson did not return calls.

richard-bransons-yacht

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In my emails to you over the past couple of weeks, I’ve shown you why Washington has no choice but to devalue the dollar — and how global leaders and even the United Nations have joined the attack on the greenback by demanding it be replaced as the world’s reserve currency.

Now, just this week, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have begun adding their voices to the international choir calling for a new global reserve currency:

* Last week, World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned that the dollar’s status will be challenged and shouldn’t be taken for granted.

* According to Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, it’s likely that the role of special drawing rights (SDRs) based on a basket of currencies will be discussed as an alternative to the dollar during meetings of the World Bank and IMF in Istanbul next week.

* Meanwhile, global governments, central banks, companies and investors continue to slash their dollar holdings. According to the IMF, in April through June of this year, the greenback’s share of global currency reserves fell to the lowest level in a decade. Holdings of euros, in contrast, rose to a new all-time record high.

To complete this article by Larry Edelson visit Money and Markets.

- DCGW Staff

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Here is an excellent article by our friend Sean Brodrick from Uncommon Wisdom.

He is essentially telling us that the US government’s numbers on who is buying the bulk of  US treasury bonds (i.e. American Debt) are lies:

The “housing sector” is supposed to be buying the debt that foreign governments are no longer buying from us.

Where are the average consumers getting the money to this?

Is Warren Buffet buying all the debt on behalf of the American people? (Not!)

We are being gamed.

The size of the game is unfathomable to the person on the street.

Just know that you are playing a game that has been rigged, and you will live a happy healthy life while the world falls down around you.

The Deb Collectors Gone Wild Team

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Dec
05

We Need New Banks. Black Swan My Ass!

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Seal of the United States Federal Deposit Insu...
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Special thanks to Don’t Pay Credit Cards for the following article:

If our crummy government is not willing to nationalize the banks in the way Bill Seidman wanted, then we need new banks. The new banks could be capitalized to the max by the government, and they could provide lending and then with good underwriting, keep the loans. They can bypass the entire securitization market which is frozen.

The government could just let the old banks wither or succeed (unlikely) on their own. The government could just let the banks die for their evil plans of easy money without sound underwriting cooked up at Basel 2.

And while I am at it, I want you to know that the concept of this bank scam and toxic bubble in real estate was not a Black Swan. Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote a book called “The Black Swan” which attempted to explain all this financial turbulence as being a random unforseen event. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have explained at www.dontpaycreditcards.com/NWO.html that this was a preplanned scam, and that it was established in the western world as an override of the sovereignty of the nations.

So folks, don’t be fooled, the financial bubble that tripled your house price was a scam. It ended up doing major damage and the banks are not lending properly because of it. That is why we need a new banking system. We need to start over.

I hope the stock market doesn’t go to 1000 in the Dow before we realize that the international banks must be terminated in some way by the FDIC.

We are either facing a winter of deflation, lasting many years or a massive inflation due to the spending on the bank and insurance company bailouts. If the dollar tanks, if assets like gasoline rise through the roof and if interest rates rise, there will be a steep decline in economic activity, only topped by absolute deflation. I for one will be very upset if I have to pay terrible prices for this inflation effort by the fed.

The treasury has to issue 2 trillion dollars in treasury bond debt in two years, at over 30 billion per every ten days. That is at least twice the normal level. I don’t see how the world can swallow the demand. Then if the fed buys the bonds to try to lower interest rates, there will be massive inflation as a result. The “Black Swan” which was really a scam will hurt the average Joe unnecessarily. This scam never had to happen. It never had to go this far. I would like to see those involved prosecuted to the fullest, but don’t hold your breath. You won’t see any Goldman Sachs guys or alums going to jail.

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home-page

Many people have asked for a simple explanation as to the intent behind the CAFR and what happened over the decades?

Well, in a nut shell here is the foundation block that allowed government to take it all over by investment.

It started in the mid 40’s and grew into what we have in government now seventy years latter come 2009.

Government started out as a “pay as you go” structure. By transforming into a corporate liability company over the decades, this gave them the ability to use “advance projections” to strip annual operating funds and create advance forward liability accounts whereby in doing so they were able to by stealth build numerous “wealth bases” of equity in many designated fund balances separate from the budget reports that were exclusively presented for public viewing.

When looking at the “whole picture” through the CAFR and sub investment fund reports noted per gross income, only 1/3rd is tax income whereas when you look at a budget report for the year it gives the impression per gross income that nearly 100% is tax income. Very deceptive when only one side of the coin is presented.

Budget reports are presented giving the false impression that it “is” the true financial picture and it is far from it. What is shown is primarily tax income for a “selective grouping” of accounts where tax income is collected and expended.

Review a few CAFR surplus reviews – http://cafr1.com/ShowMeTheMoney.html

The takeover by government was primarily orchestrated by attorneys, both private and acting from within the Judiciary on the city, county, and state level. Many private associations were created since the 40’s to push government along into becoming an administrative clearing house for revenue collection and control with many of these private associations calling the shots and firmly entrenched in the ever expanding cash flow from the trough. Laws were “created” as each and every push was moved forward to consolidate and expand the takeover by government as the public was masterfully entertained with distraction, misdirection, and misinformation due to the money involved.

Where has all this brought us today? I strongly recommend that all look at their local “County” CAFR. I have noticed a disturbing trend being forcefully implemented by the attorney complex in control today. (65% of Governors, Senators, and Congressmen are now attorneys) The place to look in your County CAFR is the Statistical Section at the end of the report. Currently most counties will give a ten year or a six year showing of the growth.

Many County CAFRs that I have looked at from the eastern side of the country show that over the last six to ten years:

1. There was a 100% increase in property taxes collected.

2. There was a 100% to 135% increase in the money pouring into the judiciary.

3. There was a 100% to 115% increase in the money pouring in to the prisons run by the county.

One thing I found particularly interesting was that even though their was over a 100% increase in cash flowing into the prisons, the prison average daily population had decreased in many a cases. Also I took note that the personnel working for the prisons was the largest employee base working for the county.

Now there were modest increases in social services programs for the youth, adults, and elderly, but nothing in comparison to the take being facilitated by the attorney complex for Judiciary and Prisons. It appears the trend is gearing up to “process” more people through the courts and prisons based on the money being applied.

Has the increase in processing the people started yet? By the numbers as of 2007 it appears not yet. I have a feeling though by 2010, they will be in full swing and who knows, the reader of this post may just be the lucky recipient of this expanding government service..

The middle class natives are getting restless with massive increases in forced taxation, home confiscations, job loss, and a weakened economy from the last and massive wealth transfer of trillions taken from one hand and transferred to the other hand through international market derivative manipulation. I still would like to know how many trillions of dollars ended up in those off-shore government accounts for a clear showing of profit held in “the other hand”.

I will give you an example County CAFR to look at here from 2007. It is from York, PA. – http://cafr1.com/STATES/PA/COUNTY/York2007CAFR.pdf

I am not picking on York but the showing in their statistical section is a clear example of what is brought forward in this article. Look at theirs and then look at your own county CAFR to see if the same findings are evident in your own.

We all are the end target of our government’s intent. Where they apply the money and the showing of their own growth establishes their intent.

Look and comprehend. It is your asses that are on the line in the end. Either by paying the bill or as a forced beneficiary of the structure created, or in some cases both.

When the people realize the true end result of allowing attorneys to takeover and run the show and when the people take true action to stop it, then maybe the tide will change. Until then, the stench of death will grow nearer and in most probability ever present in the air as the ever-expanding made “legal” plunder and theft out of opportunity continues unabated..

TREASON: “Treason doth never prosper; what’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.” Sir John Harrington, 1561-1612

Sent FYI from and truly yours,

Walter J. Burien, Jr.
P. O. Box 2112
Saint Johns, AZ 85936

email: WalterBurien@CAFR1.com

Tel. (928) 445-3532

Please Help CAFR1 With Operating Funds

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bern-in-grief

“These measures are very much out of step with the global consensus on the appropriate role of central banks, and they would seriously impair the prospects for economic and financial stability in the United States,” Bernanke wrote in the CIA’s favorite newspaper, The Washington Post.

Maybe Bernanke is worried he will be obliged to wear an orange jumpsuit in the wake of an audit.

To read more about this visit:

Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve mob boss, is running scared.

The DCGW Team

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Nov
28

Jim Sinclair’s Commentary November 25th

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23% of all US mortgage holders are underwater as the sale value of their property falls below the cost of settling their mortgage. That means Negative Equity.

Strategic Walk Away is becoming common.

Drain what? Are you kidding?

One in Four Borrowers Is Underwater
By RUTH SIMON and JAMES R. HAGERTY

The proportion of U.S. homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than the properties are worth has swelled to about 23%, threatening prospects for a sustained housing recovery.

Nearly 10.7 million households had negative equity in their homes in the third quarter, according to First American CoreLogic, a real-estate information company based in Santa Ana, Calif.

To read more of Jim Sinclair’s work, visit JMMineset.

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Nov
24

The Day the Dollar Died

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Debt Collectors Gone Wild would like to offer special thanks to John Galt who wrote this scenario.

The following story in italics is a potential fictional time line for the day the dollar died. I hope not to instill fear or loathing but to give everyone some perspective on a POSSIBLE outcome which does not really take much of a reach to come to any conclusion. Despite popular belief and promises from those who wish to rob you of your savings and investments, the collapse of the dollar might just be an event measured in hours, not days as their control is not what it seems…..

Mike was less than an hour from home in Minnesota after dropping his load off in Fargo but knew he needed to top his tank off this Sunday evening to insure his rig would make it home. He pulled into the Petro Truck Stop just outside of Fargo and hopped out of the cab into the bitter twenty below temperatures which he could not believe had already hit at ten o’clock at night. He slid his fuel card into the pump waiting for the next prompt when the “SEE ATTENDANT” message flashed in the screen. He blustered, figured it was another card problem and whipped out his Master Card and slid it in after the pump reset and again the “SEE ATTENDANT” message flashed up. “What the hell is going on?” he thought to himself as he wandered into the long line of drivers boisterously yelling at managers and clerks alike.

Tom finished up his shift on the docks at the Nestle warehouse in Hampton, Georgia at exactly 11 o’clock at night and decided that because of the scuttlebutt he had been reading on the message boards, it may not be a bad idea to pick up a few cans of food and some toilet paper at the local WalMart Super center. Even though it was a Sunday night, they were always stocked and it was just five minutes out of the way to his home. As he walked inside the store, his mouth dropped. It looked like the day after Thanksgiving sale with every register open and ten plus people deep at 11:30 p.m. “Oh my God!” he gasped as he walked in grabbing the last shopping cart with the wheel that was half locked up.  As he walked as fast as he could to the aisle with the paper goods, he looked at all the shelves then noticed the clerk who looked stunned himself. “How in the SAM HELL does WalMart sell out of Toilet Paper son?” he screamed at the eighteen year old kid. “Sir, I don’t know what is going on. Is the world ending? I’m a little freaked out!” the clerk stammered. Tom realized that he was not to blame and as he calmed down said to the kid “Son, I don’t know what is going on either. It must be an ice storm on the way. Are you folks getting another truck soon?” The clerk said in a very low voice “Sir, I think there are two coming at 2 a.m. I would wait here if I were  you.” With that information Tom slinked outside to his car and called his wife at home just before midnight to tell her he would be staying to wait on the WalMart trucks.

1730 ET…February 21, 2010

It was a typical Sunday night in my household, a tremendous dinner, nice weather in Florida and of course a chance to chat with my friends online about the events of the world. The big news was that on Friday, February 19, 2010 the US Dollar Index closed at 69.07 far below any level in history and of course shattering all known technical support. As I grabbed a glass of Port and settled in front of my computer at 5 p.m. Eastern to watch the Asian fireworks and watch Bloomberg and CNBC-Asia on my computer, I noticed the Middle Eastern markets closed in horrid shape. The Israeli market closed three hours after the open and down 22% for the session. The Saudi markets closed after one hour and down 41%.  Other regional markets did not open or were shut down due to national emergency declarations. As I tuned in expecting the usual repeat on Bloomberg, it was live with a somewhat excited news babe reading information from a blog reporting “rumors” that the CEO’s of Citigroup and Bank of America were in meetings since 11 a.m. with the New York Fed. At that point, it was time to put the port up and break out the hard stuff.

Gold had closed at a record high again, up some $37 to finish Friday’s session up at $1289 and change so I figured it would be jumping again with all of this worldly instability on display. I searched the boards and feeds like mad, looking for anything on an Iranian attack or outbreak of war elsewhere in the world but nothing was found at all. As 6 p.m. Eastern flipped up on my watch, CNBC interrupted their programming with a live update from New York instead of Australia or Tokyo about the meeting at the NY Fed. Bloomberg also broke from their Asian coverage with a brief story but no details as to why there was a meeting today or who else was there.  As the New Zealand markets opened, the prices went nuts but shockingly to the upside. Their markets shot up 11% on the open to break over the 3900 price level but that was not the story. As the futures opened in Chicago for the evening session, no matter where you were in the world that day or night, you printed that screen at 6:04 p.m. Eastern time as the prints were staggering:

Gold UP $212.15 to $1501.15

Silver UP $39.13 to $81.06

US DOLLAR INDEX DOWN 9.5869 or just over 14% to 59.4830

US S&P FUTURES DOWN 49.13

US DOW FUTURES DOWN 472

NASDAQ FUTURES DOWN 135

Holy Smokes!  This was an absurd way to start the night and my phone started ringing along with text messages and emails out my wazoo. The sense of panic was evident on Bernie Lo’s face as he came on to the air discussing what was happening in the futures market and fortunately he announced that Jim Rogers would be joining him after the next break. As the commercial started at 6:09 p.m. Eastern the scroll at the bottom of the screen was bright red with the headline:

ALL U.S. EQUITY FUTURES ARE LOCK LIMIT DOWN…..TRADING SUSPENDED UNTIL 0900 ET MONDAY FEB 22….US DOLLAR BEING SOLD ACROSS THE BOARD

By 6:15 the Euro was trading at $1.92, the Kiwi (New Zealand Dollar) at $1.26, the Aussie Dollar well beyond par at $1.39 and the Canadian Loonie rocketing past par to $1.33. The U.S. Dollar was in a full fledged collapse and the world was putting money anywhere they could to escape the carnage. As the New Zealand equity markets struggled to handle the order flow an announcement emerged at 6:27 p.m. Eastern time that they would no longer accept U.S. dollars within their nation for the next 72 hours until the United States Federal Reserve Bank introduced stability measures.  That instantly turned a huge move to the upside to down 17% in less than three minutes and soon thereafter, trading was suspended by 7 p.m. Eastern time.  Instead of waiting to see what was next, I left at 6:51 p.m. to run down the street and take $500 from the local grocery store ATM,  returning just in time for the top of the hour news.

1900 ET

The Australian markets attempted to open but due to order imbalances they were delayed twenty-seven minutes. It was a buying frenzy in Australia also as the Aussie Dollar was skyrocketing higher and gold continued to gain, now up $273.20 per ounce in less than two hours of trading. The Chicago board was going to make a statement at 8 p.m. ET and the world was holding its collective breath because something bad was happening again in the United States and everyone wanted to buy into foreign markets to escape the American disaster on the horizon. After a brief opening, the Australian government followed suit with the New Zealand announcement and suspended acceptance of the U.S. Dollar for commerce until further notice. The Japanese were very quiet in the mean time as they announced at 7 p.m. they would keep their markets closed but the huge move in the Yen caused massive concerns as noted by the central bank. The yen appreciated from a close of 79.8213 on Friday the 19th to an opening of 48.7326 in less than an hour of trading. Nobody wanted dollars and even fewer people it was discovered wanted the British Pound.  The Pound for the first time in its history was worth less than 100 yen and it was well on its way to joining the US Dollar in a death spiral.

2000 ET

The internet is crawling. Message boards were lit up with record numbers of participants. Rumors swirled about declarations of martial law, bank holidays, secret wars and other crazy things. Yet my phone messages, conversations, texts and emails told me there was something very very wrong. Two of my friends called me to tell me the consequences of the failed 30 year bond auction last Thursday came home to roost over the weekend. Citi and BoA were rumored to have a huge CDS obligation due to the interest rates being blown outside of the norm and the 6.05% yield from the auction cost the banks an estimated $400 billion each if  they were forced to settle open swap contracts and derivative issues by Monday or the end of the month. The swaps and derivatives which were to prevent the collapse may actually have finally started it but nobody could verify anything that was happening as the NY Fed looked like a war zone with hundreds of cameras around the building and reporters speculating endlessly on every cable channel.

2100 ET

I did not know who to believe but when Bloomberg played the excerpt from Jim Rogers’ interview just after the top of the hour where he said “this is what a currency collapse looks like and if you were not prepared, you were wiped out” really resonated with everyone on the Bloomberg set and throughout the news worldwide. The Chicago Futures were closed by order of the CFTC and SEC and that was the big announcement but it was assumed anyways because there was no way the COMEX or anyone else could possibly have kept up with the demand for precious metals as the last print had gold over $1579 per ounce and worse, the base metals closing at obscene prices like $6.79 per lb. for copper! The Shanghai markets were ordered open for domestic participants only and no overseas selling was allowed nor trading in US Dollars thus allowing the communists to manage their banking situation without outside influence. Unfortunately a rumor was confirmed on FNC later in the hour that Chinese troops were deployed to all U.S. and British bank branches inside their nation. That only permeated the panic already felt on the internet and in the air. The news at the top of the hour was even more shocking.

2200 ET

CNN led the hour off with coverage of the “FINANCIAL CRISIS OF 2010″ with breaking news about two hedge fund managers committing suicide in their offices in New York. That did not help the confidence level nor did the statement from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at 10:09 p.m. Eastern that the “government was in full control of the situation and that the panic world wide was unwarranted.”  When he finished the statement assuring that the financial markets would probably open on time in the morning, the snicker from CNBC’s team of Gasparino and Griffith spoke volumes about what was really occurring.

2300 ET

Somehow a picture of Goldman Sachs CEO Blankfein and JP Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon entering the New York Federal Reserve building was leaked out and broadcast on cable news and financial news outlets causing more discussions and a genuine sense of panic to grip everyone. Reports about credit cards not working for the last two hours nationwide were swamping the newsrooms but no comments from VISA, Master Charge or anyone else was forthcoming.

0000 ET February 22, 2010

It was officially a panic. Reports on local news stations about grocery store shelves being cleaned out and ATM machines running out of money hours ago and not being refilled were broadcast nationwide. Even my local station had a story about accessing the reporter’s bank account online and all they got was a very scary message as they attempted to reach his bank’s web page:

404-NOT FOUND

0100 ET

WWOR and WCBS started reporting that gas stations in the New York City and northern New Jersey areas were running out of gas even though credit cards did not work. The cable news stations and financial news networks just recycled earlier news with updates at the top of the hour. The world markets were closed and everyone was holding their breath to see what happened the next morning.

0200 ET

As I struggled to stay awake, NY Federal Reserve President Denis Hughes came to the microphones with Dimon, Blankfein and shockingly Ben Bernanke. Hughes immediately deferred to Bernanke who said that the President would address the nation at 7 a.m. Eastern Time and that he felt the crisis was averted for the moment and that everyone should have faith in the United State’s policy of a strong currency and banking system. After that statement was concluded, Bloomberg switched to a banking analyst from Singapore who said that the U.S. was now a hulking smoking black hole in the ground and the only thing it was good for was to return those worthless dollars back to “THAT” nation so “THEY” could burn them to stay warm this winter.

0300 ET

Someone on the message board posted a story from WTOP that military police were seen setting up roadblocks throughout Washington, D.C.  There was no video or other confirmation within that hour. I had to make double strength coffee at that point in time but instead set my alarm for 0500 to try to grab a nap. I was not about to miss what was going to be a day to remember in American history.

0509 ET

So sue me! I hit my snooze button then realized I fell asleep with the computer and television on and the news was flying. In big bold red at the top of CNBC’s screen was the announcement COUNTDOWN TO SPEECH and a counter moving towards 0700 Eastern. As I flipped the channels half awake, I noticed a BREAKING NEWS announcement on CNN and there was a feed from WSB in Atlanta, GA with their helicopter video of the Georgia State Patrol closing off all streets within three blocks of the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta and also around the Federal Home Loan Bank. That sent a chill down my spine as I flipped back on to the computer to see over two hundred unread emails and message upon message about shortages, internet outages, credit card problems and worst of all, gas stations running out of fuel. The other shocker was the suspension of international flights in many U.S. cities as the suppliers put every airline on C.O.D. effective immediately at 2:30 a.m. Eastern Time and that suspended a ton of flights inside the United States and worldwide. The cascading effects were stunning, even to those of us who were warning about it.

0530 ET

Several European markets attempted to open in coordination with Middle Eastern markets but the declines were so severe that within ten minutes of trading the authorities shut them all down within a half hour:

Russia -35%

Saudi Arabia -43%

Israel -22%

Switzerland -17%

Germany’s DAX -41%

CAC 40 – 29%

FTSE 100 – 32%

The Euro was up another 10% against the dollar and the Swiss Franc was now worth over $1.40 U.S. As the discussions about the problems with the U.S. dollar accelerated, banks were being shut down in Europe in nation after nation to prevent runs. Sadly for the Brits, the Sterling was now trading so poorly in Europe that it was worth just 1/3 of a Euro at some trading desks. By the top of the hour, video of riots in front of banks in Frankfurt and Glasgow were broadcast nationwide.  At 5:55 a.m. Eastern the news took a dark turn with this BREAKING NEWS headline:

OBAMA AND BERNANKE TO SPEAK TO THE NATION AT 6 A.M. EST

0600 ET

The speech was low key, solemn and to the point. Obama announced a one week bank holiday. All credit card transactions and all collection actions of any sort were hereby suspended for seven days.  All financial markets were closed until further notice.  All mortgage and bill payment due dates were suspended for thirty days and no past due notices nor penalties were to be allowed by Federal Law. All schools were closed for seventy-two hours be they public or private.  The city of Washington, D.C. was hereby declared to be under a state of martial law and all citizens were ordered to observe a curfew from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. daily. Just as that sunk in, Ben Bernanke stepped up to the microphone to announce that President Obama, Treasury Secretary Geithner and all of the Federal Reserve Presidents along with himself were going to depart for Geneva for an emergency meeting of the G-20, IMF, World Bank and United Nations Financial Stability Working Group.  Bernanke also announced that Citigroup, N.A. and Bank of America were hereby nationalized and placed under control of the United States Treasury under the auspices of the FDIC and that Sheila Bair would have an announcement at 8 a.m. Eastern. As he finished the announcement, an obviously exhausted Federal Reserve Chairman concluded by assuring the citizens of the nation that a stable currency was their only goal from this meeting of world financial leaders. I noted he did not say what currency though he was referring to.

0800 ET

By now, CNBC, Fox Business and Bloomberg were knee deep in wall to wall coverage but so were the broadcast and cable networks. America was on the brink was the preaching and screaming and the “bulls” were being gored by the permabears every time they uttered any statements about “how we’ve been through worse” etc., etc.

The announcement of the seizure by the FDIC of two of the largest banks in the world was pretty standard and short. The follow up statement by Ms. Barr though is what caused every newsroom to take pause when she stated that “further consolidations will be announced in the next seventy-two hours.”

The Bubblemedia was stunned and even shocked when Canada announced that they would attempt to open their financial markets for two hours of trading and that their banks would be open for normal domestic customers and business from 10 a.m. until noon Eastern time.  Everyone on television looked at each other and just asked “How?”

0900 ET

I had forgotten to call in sick to work but then again the phone call from the company owner was pretty much a “well now what” as we laughed in a gallows humor discussion. He understood why I was home and he had already told the employees that he was closing at noon and would reopen when we could actually collect real money on what we sold and leased out. I told him I would call him at home later or meet him with a bottle on the golf course in the morning, weather permitting.

The chilling video of the Federal Reserve heads, Geithner and Obama boarding Air Force One to leave for Geneva from Washington, D.C. really had an impact on me.

1000 ET

The Canadian markets opened up 10% in ten minutes then rolled over down 31% by 10:30. The scary part was that the Canadian dollar kept on rising even though commodity trading was suspended and everyone was wondering just what gold would be priced at if the markets were allowed to trade.

As the day wore on, it was a blur of shocking story after shocking story. The President and his entourage arrived in Switzerland along with other world leaders but little was discussed or disclosed. The reports of banks being fire bombed by nuts throughout parts of the U.S. made the international news and caused all of us to feel somewhat uncomfortable as to what was next. The 8 p.m. interruption of normal prime time programming with a FEMA NEWS ALERT which lasted ten minutes and was repeated at the top of every hour with little if any information caused even more panic in the masses. Today I watched our dollar die in a matter of hours even though I knew how it was killed months if not years ago. I just wondered how bad the announcement out of Geneva was going to be as our bankers and politicians sold our souls out to save their rear ends.

I also wondered if I would ever sleep again.

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