nourishing obscurity

Just some snippets.  Karl first:

Fannie and Freddie had their losses transferred “in entirety” to the taxpayer on Christmas Eve – after the market closed and while nobody (they hoped) was watching.

… and:

But things are changing.  It has been reported that Wall Street bonuses will total some $145 billion.  That’s 1% of GDP – and is absolutely obscene.  The people have figured out that this is really nothing more than Wall Street firms sucking the blood of the citizens, and while it would be ridiculous in a good year where everyone is flush with lots of spendable income coming on the back of a year where millions of Americans have lost their jobs, taxes are going up, cities and states are going bankrupt and the economy has been and is for crap it is the sort of thing that stirs thoughts of boiled rope, lampposts and resurrection of the guillotine among citizens.

Worldwide feeling, it seems, Karl.  Jesse has:

[I]t does sound like someone has tapped into the Fed’s buying plans to monetize the public debt and is front running those buys, essentially ‘stealing’ money from the public. Its what they call ‘a sure thing.’

To try and figure out who might be doing it, I would look for some big player who is showing extraordinary returns on their trading, with consistent profit that is not statistically ‘normal,’ too consistently good. The problem with cheaters is that they sometimes get greedy and call attention to themselves.

In Las Vegas the bigger cheats were often taken out into the desert for further inquiry and final disposition. On Wall Street they are somewhat more arrogant and persistent, defying resolution with that ultimate defiance, “We’ll just find other ways to cheat again.”

This is all so flagrant, thumbing their noses at the public they’re ripping off, that the JPMs and GSs would seem to have their place assured in the new order when the public finally go ballistic and agree to the dismantling of the capitalist system which will not occur in any revolution but by tightening Fed and BofE controls to the point where there is no free trading of any form any more.

As it’s a near monopoly at the top anyway, it will make little difference – hence the megaprofits and bonuses being paid out right now.  What is going to happen bears an uncanny resemblance to 1907. Ron Chernow wrote that the Morgan munificence was reprised in the 1907 panic:

“In the following days, acting like a one-man Federal Reserve system, [J. Pierpont] Morgan decided which firms would fail and which survive. Through a non stop flurry of meetings, he organized rescues of banks and trust companies, averted a shutdown of the New York Stock Exchange, and engineered a financial bailout of New York City.”

The essential thing is to understand that the government and the oligarchical firms at the top are not separate entities – they are interwoven, have inside information and they wish to crowd out any but nominal competition. From seizures of liberty dollars through to control of the gold and silver markets, an absolute obscenity exists which has zero to do with the free market economy and has all to do with oligarchy and rampant usury.

Filed under: Politics & economics