THE INSANITY THAT IS US

Einstein is said to have postulated that "insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".

Our economic models continue to repeat the mistakes that have been made again and again in history and when these efforts fail as they have recently, they are covered up by glib politicians , TV talking heads and falsified statistics.

Is it any wonder that we are a fractured, confused, angry, disappointed and disillusioned people. We voted to stop the illegal immigration and stop the wars,

what we got was more troops, more money spent and more criminal migration with a federal government suing a state for attempting to stop the inflow of illegals.

REF: "The Last Gasp bubble of Government.com " by Todd Harriison" posted on www. TheBurningPlatform.com as "Time is Growing Short" July 28, 2010

"Our Federal Reserve chairman is a student of history and well versed on the passion and plight of financial excess. We’ve witnessed extraordinary stimuli intended to shift the natural course of the business cycle, one that long ago lost its way. While policymakers conceivably “saved” the system, the resulting imbalances pose a fresh set of issues for the global socioeconomic spectrum.

I’ve repeatedly offered that the financial crisis hasn’t disappeared; it simply changed shape. It–for lack of a better analogy–has gone airborne, migrating from the tangible to the amorphous, from Wall Street to Main Street, from a distant coexistence to an emerging class war. It, like most viruses, will arrive in waves and infect those who haven’t been inoculated with a steady stream of financial consciousness.[emphasis added]

Gauge your internal reaction to every opinion you read or hear, multiply it by millions and you’ll begin to imagine the magnitude of the shifting social mood.[emphasis added] While the recent stock market rally reflects renewed optimism that can conceivably continue the chasm between perception and reality is widening; while the tape can run, we, the people are running out of places to hide."

"We’re talking potential anarchy here and I’m not prone to hyperbole.

The alternative scenario—the one the created a chasm of discord throughout the land—was the evolution of the last gasp bubble, that of Government.com. $800 billion here, $1 trillion there, numbers so enormous they seem silly; the reality is they’re anything but. (See: Will the EU Bailout Work?)

While we remain in the eye of the storm—the relative calm between the banking crisis and the cumulative comeuppance—a simple yet scary truth remains. We haven’t cured the disease; we’re simply masking the symptoms. (See: The Eye of the Financial Storm)

I will again remind you that the opposite of love isn’t hate, its apathy. We’ve noted the lower volume during rallies and the higher traffic during the declines—a sign of distribution—but a simpler truth may be emerging, that of burnout. After four—or five, or six—bubbles and bursts, folks are both bitten and shy by the gamesmanship in the marketplace."

REF:"Wall Street's Death Wish: Venus vs Alpha males" by Paul B. Farrell www.MarketWatch.com, July 29, 2010

Not really sure Mr. Farrell has captured the reality of the men of Wall Street, yet he makes a good point in that they are boys dressed up in men's clothes. The men and women of Wall Street and of Government Industrial Military Street, U.S. A are the same self absorbed Me, Me, Me people you meet everyday. They crowd queues at airports, try to pass you on the freeway ramps, won't let you in their lane of traffic when yours is blocked with construction or an accident.Totally inconsiderate lacking any grace or concern for others. These are the members of future mobs grabbing food and possessions of others when the bad times come. These generations must grow up and pass before America, or what is left of it after their ravages, can return to its' former greatness.

This referenced article is excerpted here to illustrate the separation of classes in this socio-economic breakdown of America. First with the inflation of our money, the credit/debt society and it's companion, lack of virtue and morality.

"Yes, Wall Street has a death wish, secretly trying to self-destruct. Can't stop. Don't get it. Wall Street's culture, mindset, brain, psyche -- whatever you call it -- has a saboteur locked deep in the unconscious. Not only are they hell-bent on self-destruction, they're taking America down with them.

Stephen Gandel:" "Of all the causes of the financial crisis, one of the biggest was a power shift on Wall Street that left the traders in charge," and "with a trader, the goal of every minute of every day is to make money ... So if running the economy off the cliff makes you money, you will do it, and you will do it every day of every week... . .

The Alpha-males running America are textbook examples of the Oedipus complex in action. Men? No, inside they're still little boys who secretly want to win mommy's favor by knocking off big daddy. Basic psychology, except they're overdosing the real world with too much edgy testosterone ... aggressive, arrogant, narcissistic ... bullies on the playground overcompensating for an inferiority complex ... they love games, fights, contests, winning, deals, risks, wars, anything to prove they're king-of-the-hill ... like owning truckloads of money, enough for several lifetimes ... think Liar's Poker, they play for bragging rights, to tell "the guys" how they beat "the other guys" on the playing field ... but psychologically they really are just little boys in big-boy costumes playing "grown-up" ... especially the new breed of Wall Street traders gambling in history's greatest casino, the $700 trillion global shadow banking system for derivatives. . .

little boys inhabiting the brains of Blankfein, Paulson, Summers, Bernanke, Geithner and all the other so-called leaders whose secret, collective deathwish is taking America down with their childish games: Beating daddy, winning mommy's favor. Yes, too much testosterone is killing our world."

We are a divided republic. Anger, hopelessness and fear are pervasive in America We are frustrated with our non-responsive government. We wonder who is really in charge?

RE: "The Rot from Within:Character Disorders of the Republic" by Robert Logan,

www. Antiwar .com July16, 2010

The destructive manipulative behavior of people with personality disorders seem to describe our politicians.

Since the 1960's "anything goes" and" if it feels good do it" social mores seem to have allowed or produced leaders with character flaws or personality disorders.

Underhanded and deceitfulness are presently used by the powers that be to serve

selfish and evil objectives.

These character failings seem to be manifested in empire grasping foreign policy

and power building domestic issues. So far as covert manipulation goes both political parties can claim credit--no one is sin free!

Lies, denials,selective attention/inattention, rationalization,minimization, diversion,

evasion,villification, false anger and anguish characterize this disorder.

It seems that half of the people want to kill all of the Muslims and invade any and all countries who could become our enemies without remorse or regret. Where is our national conscience? Did Christ die in vain? Is forgiveness too old fashioned for modern America?

REF: "National Insecurity Complex" by Dave Lindorff, www.Counterpunch.com,

July 29, 2010

America’s foreign policy, and particularly its policy of war without end, is critically dependent upon the government’s ability to lie with impunity. Most of the time, it gets away with this. The corporate media, for the most part, plays along, only questioning things on the margin, if at all. The basis premise, that the war is necessary, doesn’t get challenged.

WikiLeaks, with this well-planned and orchestrated dump of incriminating documents, broke through the careful web of lies by providing the material not just to that prime information gatekeeper, the New York Times, which almost certainly would have ignored or minimized the story had it been the sole recipient of the material, but to the British Guardian newspaper, and to the German magazine Der Spiegel, both of which have shown much more of a willingness to expose the harsh realities of the Afghan War to their readers. The Times had no alternative but to report more or less honestly on the documents and their significance -- though it still tended to focus less on the war’s impact on innocent civilians than on the reaction of the government and the military to the documents’ release than did the Guardian and Der Spiegel.

Secrecy has no place in a democracy. That once again is the lesson here, as it was with the Pentagon Papers.

America, much more so than in 1971, is run by a secret government. Almost anything that could embarrass the government, or that could anger the public, is kept secret on the broad grounds of “national security,” a term that has become broadened to such an extent that it can cover almost anything. Even information about the BP well disaster in the Gulf, because it has been put under the jurisdiction of the US Coast Guard, a military organization, instead of the Department of Energy or the Department of Interior, is kept secret from the public by a kind of unmentioned notion of “national security,” since the Coast Guard adopts the same approach to public disclosure as the Pentaton: zip.

We Americans have become so used to being lied to and to having information withheld from us, that even when we hear a reporter say the government isn’t answering a question because it involves “national security,” we just accept it, as in: “Oh, yeah. National Security. Well, that makes sense.”"

That America has been on the wrong path for some decades is a given; where are the leaders who will take us out of this morass is not a given. Certainly not the Sarah Airheads and Nazi NeoCons, nor the Obamas and Pelosis nor the Financiers, nor the Pat Robertsons or Kenneth Copelands and the so called Christians of the far right?

We are a fractured people living in a doomed state.

With Love and Kindness,

THE HATMAN

LESS FOR MORE

REF: "Americans are Getting a lot Less but it's Costing Them More" by Richard Benson, July 27, 2010 www. 321gold.com

It has been going on for awhile now, most have noticed it, some just sub-conciously. Amounts in packages have been decreasing. Some packages are getting smaller, and maybe quality is not quite what it used to be. The reason: Price Inflation--Less for More.

Those who use statistics and numbers instead of their common sense , eyes and ears may not be aware of the inflationary trend. If you rely on the bureau of Labor Statistics or CNBC news for your information, you will soon be overwhelmed by the change in reality. As the Russian living under communism said: "my eyes don't agree with what I keep hearing".

Mr.Benson writes: "Inflation is defined as the rate at which the general level of prices for goods and services is rising, and, subsequently, the purchasing power is falling. I’ve always thought of inflation in terms of what we get and what we pay, but quality and service are as important as quantity, for the price. . .

Cereal boxes are only half full; yogurt has shrunk to six ounces from eight; tuna cans are now five ounces from six; candy bars are half their size, and newspapers are shrinking and may totally disappear. (Reporters are expensive, so picking up and printing government and corporate news releases is now considered serious reporting.) A meal at a local restaurant tasted like yesterday’s leftovers and the portion size dwindled, but the price was higher.

Also, if you can afford to go on vacation, you’ll become an unpaid travel agent working for the airlines, car-rental companies, and hotel. That’s right. I recently had to spend my valuable time on the internet doing the research then booking and paying for a trip. Then, to top it off, I had to use my computer, printer, and paper at my own expense. When I got to the airport, I was strip-searched and forced to pay extra for an exit row, to check a bag, get a pillow, blanket, and a meal. Then, I had to waste an hour of my life in a long line while being forced to take off my shoes in honor of the shoe bomber and pay my respects to the TSA, who added a fee to my airline ticket. When I picked up the rental car, airport fees and taxes pushed the cost up by a third for an older car that wasn’t well-maintained. (The major rental companies are hanging on to their cars until they are close to breaking down.) When I finally arrived at the hotel, I was hit with a resort fee, internet fee, and daily telephone charge each time I looked at the receiver. I was careful, too, when approaching the mini-bar in the room because the motion detectors inside would bill me for food and beverage items that were examined and put back but not consumed (a bottle of coke was $5). The taxes were horrendous and I wonder if the maid service and extra towels or pillows were bundled in the final bill.

Every time I turn around, it seems like we’re getting less but paying more. Believe me, none of this “less for more” is appearing in the Consumer Price Index. I even heard the other day that postage was going up another two cents for a First Class letter, and Saturday delivery may be eliminated altogether. If you’re dealing with the government, there is no such thing as First Class. State and local governments have closed parks, cut back on trash collection, road repairs, library hours, and laid off teachers. Meanwhile, taxes are going up and property values are going down. In New York City, they announced a major cut in bus and subway service along with a fair increase. When it comes to public services, the collapse in services – especially in cities - will be monumental and nowhere is it reflected as a major price increase for services actually rendered.

When examining my recent cable bill, I thought back to the old days when TV was free before you had to pump your own gas and wash your own windshield. The electric bill was up again, too. (In Florida, we get a special assessment to help pay for new solar plants and the summer has had record heat.) Lastly, my health insurance will go up the usual 20% next year yet I’m told by our elected officials to have a nice summer on our beautiful beaches that are threatened by the oil spill."

Benson goes on to complain about the hedonic adjustments made in the CPI where if the product is better, faster or more serviceable, that counts for a lower price in the index.

Dream on beautiful dreamer. You are in for the ride of a lifetime-- there is much more of this to come Mordeci.

With Love and Kindness,

THE HATMAN

BUTTON BUTTON WHO'S GOT THE BUTTON/3 CARD MONTE

REF:" Mysterious BIS gold swaps are likely a bullion bank bailout" by Adrian Douglas 7/8/22010 www.GATA.com

The gold watching world a/k/a Gold Bugs were called to attention this month with the revelation hidden in the the financial statement notes of the BIS [Bank of International Settlements], Basel Switzerland about the swap of 306 tons of gold for cash. questions were quickly asked where did the gold come from and why swap with a central bank. Analysts figured the gold came from Portugal and was transferred through the auspices of one or more central banks to an unnamed bullion bank. Maybe yes, maybe no, but we will never know for sure because these transactions are kept secret from the true owners of the monies involved: we, the populace.

REF:www.Jesse's Cafe American .com July 19.2010

"The Federal Reserve and its friends in the European central banks, the IMF, and BIS are running a bluff against the developing nations and the rest of the world, and to their shame, the majority of their own people.
They will have to engage in wider scale monetization and 'quantitative easing,' which is a polite euphemism for the debasement of the currency, to cover the collapse of their expansion of the money supply, the misprision of felony, and the subornation of perjury, to facilitate the mass transfer of wealth from the public to their friends. This is why they must operate in the dark. Ponzi schemes must always expand, and always in secret.[emphasis added]
The increasing manipulation of gold, silver and the currency markets, and the monetization of the public debt, is a sign of the endgame for the sorcerer’s apprentices. These are the signs for our times.

In the short run things will be confusing, and difficult. In the longer term the outcome is as it has always been. You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
Bernanke and his ilk will fail, not with a bang but a faltering failure, and a final whimper. But this will take time, and in the short term they will act with a con man's bravado, for con men they are, wielding power and using public funds unjustly, in secret, in an unconstitutional collaboration of financial institutions, the corporations that have risen around them, and the government."

Bill Buckler in "the Privateer", July 26, 2010 reports that from the end of the 1980's until the end of 2009, the world's holdings of U.S. debt grew from $1.9 Trillion to 15 Trillion an increase of 705%. an increase of the wold's holding to 108% of the U.S. GDP. The appetite of the world for U.S. debt seems to be waning except maybe from the mysterious off shore buyers perhaps in the Cayman Islands.

How, pray tell, are we to pay for these $Trillions which exceed our tax revenues? through the magic of Quantitative Easing a euphemism for money printing or creating from thin air. Our Federal Reserve stands ready ( and now is) to create money without end to satisfy not only our deficits, but European needs as well.

Where does the IMF and BIS get all of their bailout money? Uncle Sugar is providing with swaps, just as they provide the various central banks. Under the cloak of secrecy who knows who is lending who what. The idea is to keep everyone (deadbeat countries) afloat until "growth" solves the problem--or inflation and currency debasement makes the whole exercise academic.

Unknown reference:

"This type of human interaction works well for a time, as the last 100 years or so proves. But, it is highly unstable to say the least. It has it's own self distruct code written inside each mind. One day ( it has already started ) a type of nuclear chain reaction will occur in the currency markets as people start "unvalueing" the thoughts of others. Little by little all debts owed will be marked down"

With Love and Kindness,

THE HATMAN

LEAVE THE MIDDLE EAST

REF:"America Should End Occupation of the Middle East" by Gordon Duff 7/17/2010

www. OpinionMaker.com

[Gordon Duff, spark plug of Veterans Today web site is a Marine Vietnam veteran, grunt and 100% disabled vet. He has been a featured commentator on TV and radio including Al Jazeera and his articles have been carried by news services around the world. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. His banking experience includes trade and monetary policy roles in over 80 countries. Gordon Duff acts as political and economic advisor to a number of governments in Africa and the Middle East. Gordon Duff is currently working on economic development projects in Pakistan and Afghanistan to counter the effects of poverty and global extremism.], spark plug of Veterans Today web site]

"For the last decade, America has been shuffling its entire military, including hundreds of thousands of private contractors, in and out of the Middle East on little more than a “snipe hunt.” Time for a reality check. ", according to Mr. Duff.

"Reports say Al Qaeda may have fewer than 30 men in Afghanistan. The Taliban has been asking for a cease fire for months. Turkey and Brazil negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran ending any possible threat, one we strangely, very strangely ignored. “Thermo-nuclear Israel’s” continual whining and manipulation is wearing thin. America’s economy, her Army and her suffering veterans demand an end to our Bush era phony war."

AMERICA’S TARNISHED MILITARY PARTNERSHIP WITH ISRAEL

an article on Veterans Today by Gordon Duff 7/19/2010

"9/11 was like Pearl Harbor to America, uniting many, awakening bitter skepticism in a few. Where Pearl Harbor began America’s official role in crushing the Fascist juggernaut that threatened to dominate the world, 9/11 had quite the opposite effect. America’s response to 9/11 was oppression at home and a tirade of frenzied phobic reactions around the world. No American institution suffered more than the military. The team of Cheney and Rumsfeld, together since the disastrous Nixon years, began a process of purging America’s military of talent and leadership, instead building a force to serve a sinister agenda of religious heresy and extremist politics.

Nearly a decade later, it isn’t the economic collapse or the discredited military adventures that have now embittered a military leadership infrastructure that now sees itself as duped, dishonored and discarded. A number of factors can be attributed, the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back” as it were but it is 9/11 where things begin to fall apart. The cover story, a group of Muslims with box cutters and a few remarkably unproductive hours of pilot training, simply hasn’t held up. America has had many airline hijackings, starting with the 1960s and was under strict terror alert on 9/11, despite the obfuscations of Donald Rumsfeld. Top military pilots, among themselves and their fellow officers, voiced doubts about the “twin towers” scenario, doubts that began reaching a quiet crescendo pointing to 9/11 as an “inside job.”

"Few Americans know that a team of Israeli intelligence agents were arrested on 9/11 after being observed using “video” equipment to record the planes crashing into the towers. After the disaster, the Mossad agents, soon to be arrested and released by the FBI, began celebrating as though they had completed a successful operation. This enraged New Yorkers who mistook them for terrorists. In fact, New Yorkers weren’t wrong.

Only top members of America’s military knew the truth, the “dancing Israelis” had remotely guided the two planes into the World Trade Center, not simply videoing, itself proof of guilt. Military pilots, in particular, knew the planes were nearly impossible to maneuver at those speeds without Israeli designed auto-pilot systems, not unlike those used on Tomahawk/Cruise missiles. Behind a flurry of “conspiracy theories,” many totally implausible, some obvious to military leaders as part of an elaborate deception plan requiring widespread control of media assets, more subtext came to light.

Though warned of “career suicide” for speaking up, members of the military and, in particular, the intelligence community began putting the pieces together. 9/11 was an intelligence operation involving the United States, Great Britain, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Everything was there, finance, private “black ops” contractors, but mostly, a pre-staged media frenzy on the front end, counterfeit intelligence on Iraq in the middle and a rigged investigation, the “9/11 Commission coverup” on the backside. It didn’t take FBI and intelligence agency officials long to track 9/11 planning back to 1999, not in Afghanistan but much closer to home.

Not a word of this would ever hit the press and any “conspiracy” group that got close to the truth would be shut down or infiltrated quickly. By 2007, undeniable and overwhelming evidence of 9/11 wrongdoing, massive corruption in every aspect of defense and security and the attrition of America’s readiness response capabilities began turning the tide. What had been only “grumbling” about incompetence, political interference with the military and Washington’s “blind eye” to Israeli abuses became a quiet revolt.

The military and intelligence community had, for some time, stopped looking on Israel as an asset or even a benign liability. As early as the 1950s, Israel had organized terror campaigns against Americans in Egypt in order to establish the myth of a worldwide anti-American Islamic terrorist movement. The “Lavon Affair” is suppressed in America’s news, torn out of the history books as is the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967. Israeli warplanes, initially disguised to appear as Egyptian, tried to sink an American warship in the Eastern Mediterranean in an attempt to force the United States to invade Syria and Egypt. When the ship failed to sink, all hands aboard, as planned, more planes, these with Israeli markings, were called in followed by torpedo boats. After hours of attack, with 201 of 296 crew members dead or wounded, the ship was still afloat, tattered American flag flying proud. Except for the actions of President Johnson and Admiral Sidney McCain, America might well have gone to war against Israel in 1967.

In 2008, President Bush signed the Naval Vessel Transfer Act, insuring that Israel have a more advanced navy than any country in the region, guaranteed by US law. Israel has only had two naval engagements in its history, one against an American ship and the other against the unarmed Mavi Marmara. Both attacks, causing the deaths of American citizens, were performed using American weapons.

In 1987, Israeli spy, Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in prison for the single most devastating assault on America’s security in her history. 110 CIA agents behind the Iron Curtain were captured, tortured and executed, destroying America’s intelligence network at the height of the Cold War. Military experts from the former Soviet Union claim that information they received from Israel, information stolen by Pollard, nearly pushed Russia to starting a nuclear war against the United States, a war Russia knew they could easily win using information supplied by Israel.

Then, in 2009, something utterly unforgivable happened. On May 25, 2009, North Korea tested its first successful nuclear weapon. It was confirmed to be one of the three missing nukes believed held by Israel, built in South Africa. Did Israel, third largest arms exporter in the world, sell a nuclear weapon to North Korea? Israel, known for peddling military technology to rogue nations, technology begged, borrowed or stolen from the United States, had crossed a line.

The military had long been resentful of Israel’s habit of selling off munitions the United States ”stored” in Israel for “safe keeping.” Several billion dollars worth of munitions stores had been shipped to Israel under a loose agreement allowing Israel to replenish her stocks from US supplies. This “off the books” military aid to Israel, was supposed to make Israel more secure. In fact, however, Israel has been selling these American owned munitions around the world, some to America’s potential adversaries including Venezuela.

Military contracts themselves have been a bone of contention. With US unemployment levels at their highest since the Great Depression, billions in defense and ”Homeland Security” contracts are going to Israel, a country importing labor from Africa and Asia to keep its arms factories manned. American companies that complain about being “run over” by Israeli lobbyists are quickly silenced. Not only is the American economy being negatively impacted but America’s defense industries as well. American companies, some involved in our most secret projects, are being forced by the Israeli lobby in Congress to take on partners in Israel, sharing technologies that soon end up in China, Singapore or India.

Currently, Israel has received a $1.8 billion stockpile of munitions for a war on Iran they will never fight or, perhaps a new assault on Gaza, weapons from the depleted stockpiles of the American military. Even more American munitions have been offloaded in Georgia and, perhaps shipped to forward bases in Azerbaijan to support an Israeli sneak attack on Iran. At risk, of course, are American troops in Iraq and American ships in the Persian Gulf. There are no Israeli forces within striking distance of Iran."

There is much more t0 write about this unholy alliance with an outlaw state who ignores all of the edicts from the world of nations and common decency, but it will have to wait for further articles on this blog site.

With Love and Kindness,

THE HATMAN

THE PERFECT CON OF THE DECADE

Obama: the [financial regulation bill] would make sure that “Main Street is never again held responsible for Wall Street’s mistakes.”

REF: "Say What?" by James Howard Kunstler 6/28/2010

"Whoosh….

That was the sound of something going over America’s head. Something about the size of Rodan the Flying Reptile. And frankly I don’t think the president even meant to be coy or deceptive. It just means he doesn’t get it either. . . .

Why even this time? Why isn’t there an army of federal attorneys out there, their teeth bristling with subpoenas, beating the bushes in every lane and skyscraper floor of lower Manhattan (and Fairfield County, Connecticut, not to mention a thousand office parks around the USA) to roust out the grifters and swindlers who took Main Street to the cleaners this time.

The audacity of cluelessness! And the hilarity of “next time.”

Earth to President Obama: there isn’t going to be a next time. This time was enough to git ‘er done. Wall Street – in particular the biggest “banks” – packaged up and sold enough swindles to unwind 2500 years of western civilization. You simply cannot imagine the amount of bad financial paper out there right now in every vault and portfolio on the planet. Enough, really, to sink any company even pretending to trade in things more abstract than a mud brick or an hour of labor. What’s more, the cross-collateralized obligations between them are so vast and intricate that all the standing timber in North America could not be fashioned into enough pick-up sticks to represent the hideous death-dealing tangle of frauds waiting for the wing-beat of a single black swan to come crashing down.

Go out and get a copy of Michael Lewis’s recent book The Big Short for a close-up view on one micro-corner of the investment world. You will discover that the people fabricating things like synthetic collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) had no idea what the [deleted] they were doing – besides deliberately creating documents that nobody would ever understand, that would never be unraveled by teams of law clerks or secret words or magic incantations or prayers to some dark hirsute deity, and were guaranteed to place in jeopardy every operation of the world economy above the barter level. Sorry to invoke the hoary old metaphor about the horse being out of the barn – but the larger problem is what the horse left behind in a great steaming mound clear up to the rafters. There was nothing to understand in all this [deleted], except that betting against it was a good idea, and then only for those who placed the earliest bets – because everybody else is going to get just as screwed as those who stuffed their vaults and portfolios with Triple-A rated [deleted]."

REF: "The Perfect Con" (The Con of the Decade) by Charles Hugh Smith, www.TheBurningPlatform.com July 8, 2010(Part 1)

"I've laid out the Con of the Decade (Part I) in outline form:

1. Enable trillions of dollars in mortgages guaranteed to default by packaging unlimited quantities of them into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), creating umlimited demand for fraudulently originated loans.

2. Sell these MBS as "safe" to credulous investors, institutions, town councils in Norway, etc., i.e. "the bezzle" on a global scale.

3. Make huge "side bets" against these doomed mortgages so when they default then the short-side bets generate billions in profits.

4. Leverage each $1 of actual capital into $100 of high-risk bets.

5. Hide the utterly fraudulent bets offshore and/or off-balance sheet (not that the regulators you had muzzled would have noticed anyway).

6. When the longside bets go bad, transfer hundreds of billions of dollars in Federal guarantees, bailouts and backstops into the private hands which made the risky bets, either via direct payments or via proxies like AIG. Enable these private Power Elites to borrow hundreds of billions more from the Treasury/Fed at zero interest.

7. Deposit these funds at the Federal Reserve, where they earn 3-4%. Reap billions in guaranteed income by borrowing Federal money for free and getting paid interest by the Fed.

8. As profits pile up, start buying boatloads of short-term U.S. Treasuries. Now the taxpayers who absorbed the trillions in private losses and who transferred trillions in subsidies, backstops, guarantees, bailouts and loans to private banks and corporations, are now paying interest on the Treasuries their own money purchased for the banks/corporations.

9. Slowly acquire trillions of dollars in Treasuries--not difficult to do as the Federal government is borrowing $1.5 trillion a year.

10. Stop buying Treasuries and dump a boatload onto the market, forcing interest rates to rise as supply of new T-Bills exceeds demand (at least temporarily). Repeat as necessary to double and then triple interest rates paid on Treasuries.

11. Buy hundreds of billions in long-term Treasuries at high rates of interest. As interest rates rise, interest payments dwarf all other Federal spending, forcing extreme cuts in all other government spending.

12. Enjoy the hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments being paid by taxpayers on Treasuries that were purchased with their money but which are safely in private hands.

Since the Federal government could potentially inflate away these trillions in Treasuries, buy enough elected officials to force austerity so inflation remains tame. In essence, these private banks and corporations now own the revenue stream of the Federal government and its taxpayers. Neat con, and the marks will never understand how "saving our financial system" led to their servitude to the very interests they bailed out.

The circle is now complete: in "saving our financial system," the public borrowed trillions and transferred the money to private Power Elites, who then buy the public debt with the money swindled out of the taxpayer. Then the taxpayers transfer more wealth every year to the Power Elites/Plutocracy in the form of interest on the Treasury debt. The Power Elites will own the debt that was taken on to bail them out of bad private bets: this is the culmination of privatized gains, socialized risk.

In effect, it's a Third World/colonial scam on a gigantic scale: plunder the public treasury, then buy the debt which was borrowed and transferred to your pockets. You are buying the country with money you borrowed from its taxpayers. No despot could do better."

Mr Kunstler went on to say: "What banks and governments have been doing for the past eighteen months is a dumbshow meant to distract the public from the fact that the world financial system has been effectively destroyed. There isn’t enough money left in the known reaches of the universe to pay off the outstanding claims. In fact, not even close. Everything that proceeds from this fiasco will be in service of impoverishing most of the population and, incidentally, probably bringing down governments and, with them, convenient social usufructs such as due process of law and civil order. What remains – what you’re watching right now on CNN or Fox – is just a representation of the former structures of civilized life, what Joe Bageant refers to as “the hologram,” a kind of 3-D picture you can see around, that looks like reality, but is actually immaterial, a collective hallucination. It’s comfortable living in a hologram – until you discover that you’re in one."

We will see who survives this 'Empire of Debt' apocalypse. Bet on the bankers.They like other pestilence of the world seem to be immune to the evil they bring to others. A huge outcry against the Wall Street tycoons followed the panic and depression of 1897. As an answer, the money changers got together secretly on Jeckyll Island to scheme the Federal Reserve system, which is not Federal, it is a privately owned bank cartel.

When the credit markets got sticky in 1945, The bankers came up with Breton Woods Agreement where U.S. dollars, soon to become Federal Reserve notes were as good as gold. When we lost most of our gold, the "gold window" was closed and the golden dream of the bankers: a world system of fantasy wealth known as fiat money, based upon 'faith and good will' was realized.

The world may soon wallow in misery, but count on the Wall Street elite to suffer the least.

With Love and Kindness,

THE HATMAN

GOING, GOING, G. . . .

REF:" From Hope to Barely hanging on"by Gary North, www. LouRockwell.com

"The recession that began in December 2007 produced a change in Americans' perception of their economic future. They moved from the tradition of hope to one of just barely hanging on.[emphasis added] I have never seen this before. Only someone born around 1910 can recall anything like it, assuming that he recalls anything at all."

The Hatman and Mrs. Hatman have seen this several times in their careers. like a George Burns bouncing ball; way up and then way down . they were not born in 1910, but long enough to witness the Great Depression and do without hardships of WWII on the homefront.

"By 1932, that euphoria was a thing of the distant past. Unemployment was at 20%. Prices were down at least 25%. Over 6,000 banks had failed. There was no sector of the economy that was flourishing except gold mining, which had the benefit of a price floor set by law. Then things got worse. Another 3,000 banks failed. Prices continued to decline. Unemployment rose. . .By 1932, that euphoria was a thing of the distant past. Unemployment was at 20%. Prices were down at least 25%. Over 6,000 banks had failed. There was no sector of the economy that was flourishing except gold mining, which had the benefit of a price floor set by law. Then things got worse. Another 3,000 banks failed. Prices continued to decline. Unemployment rose. . ..My mother still talks about it. She remembers men in Portland, Oregon, begging for food, willing to do odd jobs just to eat. Those years scarred her. They scarred her generation, who never fully bought into the idea that prosperity is created by personal debt. They did not fully participate in the debt-driven post–World War II boom, which relied on an extension of consumer credit. Credit worked because people saved. The end of the wartime price controls, coupled with the return of the troops to civilian life, extended the opportunities for capital. Money went into new industries. It went into housing, which was revolutionized by new techniques of mass production."

Oh my. the 50's were glorious times--we thought they would ever end.. but the 60's were an awakening . The first of the post war recessions. John Kennedy saying" I want to get this country going again" after the steady hand of Eisenhower. Then the upheaval at Berkley and National Guard firing on the students at Kent State. The boomers were starting to feel their oats.

But,"All of our lives, we have seen economic progress. Television replaced radio as the technology of the future in 1949–53. Energy was cheap. Cars were everywhere. Teenagers had their own used cars, their own records, their own subculture. We stayed in school until we graduated from high school. That was something new. A lot of us went to college – also new."

Education was seen as the ticket to success and middle-class comfort. And it was for a great many young Americans, who in spite of the turbulent times managed to pull themselves up with the GI bill and their own bootstraps to capture part of the American dream. Their incomes and lifestyles exceeded that of their parents.

Somewhere along the way, we lost our direction. Ethics and morality lost out to laws and court decisions. A mans word was his bond, and you could count on him to honor his word if at all humanly possible. Million dollar Deals were struck on merely a handshake. Yes there were laws, contracts and lawyers. but who sued doctors, hospitals and their neighbors?

We went from comparative money stability to inflation, to roaring inflation after the "gold window"was discontinued; yet credit increased along with usurious interest rates and we began using credit cards to buy what we had not the cash to get. Later as real estate kept pace with inflation, second mortgages, house collateralized lines of credit became the norm.

"The American stock market peaked in early 2000. It has taken constant intervention by the Federal Reserve to prop up the economy. It is becoming apparent to people on Main Street that the people on Wall Street have been able to survive only because of bailouts. The idea that the economy is in a recovery phase is accompanied by assurances from most economists and most Congressmen that the economy would slide back into depression were it not for the courageous intervention of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve System.

This has been the argument of every textbook in U.S. history regarding the New Deal. "Roosevelt saved capitalism from itself!" But here we are, almost eight decades removed from Roosevelt's famous first inaugural, in which he excoriated bankers. This inaugural address is one of only three that the textbooks cite, along with Lincoln's second and Kennedy's famous "Ask not." Here was the rhetoric of class warfare. Here was imagery of Jesus driving out the moneychangers.

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men."

It is said that the American century has been one of wars. Actually it has been

the distinguishing feature of the USA since it's inception with the Revolutionary War. Americans apparently just don't feel like they are Americans unless blood is spilled somewhere, preferably not in our homeland. WWI was "a war to end all wars" that didn't live up to its' billling. Then WWII against the Japs and Hun who

wanted to take over the whole world. Korea a war that President Truman called

a "Police Action". Vietnam to stop the "march of communism", Iraq I and II, "Aggression", and "Weapons of mass destruction" and the beat goes on and on.

We, who are now the 'Old folks' have seen more war than peace; particularly if you throw in the Cold War against the Soviets, the war against inflation, the war on drugs and the war on terrorism.

So, what we have known is going, going, almost all gone. Is it time for a real change?

With Love and Kindness,

THE HATMAN

THE DAY THAT TRUTH DIED

The first casualty of any war is truth. so says Butler Shaffer in his article: "Making it McCrystal Clear" in www. LewRockwell.com. 6/2/2010

All wars are grounded in lies. Any threat to the war machine must be silenced through censorship, top secret classifications, media sound bites and outright lies and misdirection. Witness the "weapons of mass destruction", "the search for Osama Bin Laden"," to destroy the Taliban

and Al Qaeda threat to our democracy", and "Operation Freedom Iraq".

Lies and deceptions.

Shaffer writes: "The uncertainties and contradictions that attend the "fog of war" are more easily overlooked – or ignored – when the fallen soldiers, themselves, can be enshrouded in the cloak of being "unknown." If the soldiers who die are unfamiliar to us – fungible nonbeings who, like ourselves, have been conditioned to serve the state – how can the rest of us be expected to cut our ways through the cloudiness? As long as we are prepared to insist upon the protection of our ignorance; to wave our flags when the cheerleaders so direct us; and to regard war as but the expression of some imagined sense of "human nature," this evil, institutionally-profitable racket will continue unabated. The entire mess can then be synthesized into such an incoherent hodgepodge of confusing complexity that no one can be expected to make any sense of it."

. . "Gen. McChrystal has discovered what so many others before him learned – from Socrates to Thomas More to Gen. Smedley Butler to Sophie Scholl to Daniel Ellsberg to Seymour Hersh to untold governmental "whistleblowers" – even, more recently to Helen Thomas – that it is dangerous to speak truth not to power, but to ordinary people. The owners of the political establishment know the truth; they are fully aware of the lies they have fabricated; the deceptions they – along with their obliging media and academic supporters – have carefully manipulated into a perception of "truth." The owners don’t want you to know what they know. Those who would dare to so inform you get labeled as "paranoid conspiracy theorists," "disgruntled former employees," "racists," or "anti-Semitic." When I am asked if I believe in "conspiracy theories" of history, I respond – in the words of the late Chris Tame – "I am not interested in conspiracy theories, but in the facts of conspiracies."

"The institutionalized order cannot tolerate any deviation from the mindset it has worked so hard to maintain. At least since the time of Gutenberg, it has been at war with any expressions that undermine the status quo. Because life is a constant process of response to changing environments, practices that inhibit such resiliency can only diminish life. This is why there is nothing so liberating as the free flow of information which, coupled with respect for the inviolability of property, allows people to engage in self-interested adaptations to their world."

"There is one voice the establishment owners have been reluctant to silence, even years after his death. Former President Eisenhower – who personified the "hero" of World War II to such a degree that both the Republican and Democratic parties wanted to nominate him – declared, in his farewell address that "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." Perhaps it was his hands-on familiarity with war – unlike so many war-loving lounge-generals who never heard a shot fired in anger – that left within him such a distaste for the system.[emphasis added ] But you and I are not to think such thoughts, nor to listen to those who do. We are to believe the great lie that our family members and friends died to protect us, rather than to profit the corporate-state interests who create and manage the institutionalized carnage."

"As the political establishment continues to collapse, its war against the transformative nature of information becomes intensified. Efforts are currently being made by some politicians and governmental agencies to control the Internet; to give to the president a "kill switch" that would allow him to shut down, on his dictatorial whim, this decentralized and unrestrained engine of communication whenever he considers it necessary for the interests of national security. That Sen. Lieberman – the sponsor of such a bill – justifies the measure on the grounds that the Chinese government has such power, is indicative of just how strongly the established order feels threatened by free minds!"

"It is not that the existing power structure is concerned that "false" ideas, or "untrue" statements might be loosed upon society – it has long thrived on such practices – but that speakers and writers might step outside the permitted circle of opinion certified as "safe" by and for the guardians of our minds. It was not that Helen Thomas’s comments were objectionable – I, for one, criticized them on the grounds of the collectivist premise underlying them – but that she crossed the line about what free men and women are allowed to think about and discuss. In this, as in all other matters, I remain an anarchist: people should be free to control their own lives and property – including the content of their minds – as they find useful to their own ends.

Perhaps former President Eisenhower can once again be called upon to advise the Liebermans, the Hillary Clintons, the Sen. Jay Rockefellers, and others who have predilections for tyrannizing the minds of their neighbors: "Don’t join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed."

These deniers of truth will continue from engagement to engagement from war to war until and unless those who fight and die in the hostilities and are brought home in a body bag or a gurney are not glorified, praised for their valor and self sacrifice, honor and false patriotism. When the war mongers are the first to go into combat rather than cheer from behind the lines. When war a creation of satan is identified as that which comes out of hell to "rob, kill and destroy"truth will be absent.

With Love and Kindness,

THE HATMAN