Mr. Incompetent Himself-Alan Greenspan Is The Heart Of The Fix The Debt Jihad

Whaddya Know? Professional Economy Wrecker Alan Greenspan Is at the Heart of the Insidious 'Fix the Debt Campaign, by Dean Baker, Alternet.org

Alan Greenspan will go down in history as the person who has done more damage to the U.S. economy and society that anyone who was not a foreign enemy. In fact the destruction he wreaked through his incompetence would also exceed the damage caused by almost all would-be enemies as well.

Greenspan accomplished the remarkable feat as Fed chair of ignoring the growth of the $8 trillion housing bubble. This bubble could not have been easier to see if it had been 500 feet high and lit up with huge neon signs saying "Huge Housing Bubble." But Greenspan insisted the bubble was not there.

And Greenspan somehow didn't recognize that the collapse of this massive bubble would devastate the economy....

If we had a political debate that was driven by evidence, where the accuracy of one's past judgements played any role in the credibility granted their current opinion, then Greenspan would be relegated to the role of ranting fool. His opinions on the economy would be given slightly less credibility than the mumblings of a street drunk...

"The Campaign to Fix the Debt started to come together at a salon dinner held in the backyard of Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, in the fall of 2011. An influential group of economic, political and business leaders — including the former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and Mark Bertolini, the chief executive of the Aetna insurance company — huddled in a too-small tent in the pouring rain."

Click the link to read the complete article.

These predators, or I should say sociopaths, really want to convert the United States into a total kleptocracy ruled by the corporate royalists who feed their underlings consulting fees and duty-free jobs after doing their corporate bidding while serving in government or in mindless think tanks funded by the corporate royalists.

The latest to receive a duty-free job is PA Congressman Jason Altmire, who now has a job with Florida Blue, since his Blue Dog role in the Congress was ousted by a Teabagging nutbag from his district. The revolving door of do-nothing jobs with benefits continues.

Their desires are to keep wages and salaries low or stagnated, jobs at a premium, and the consumer indebted to them via credit cards, and mortgages.

When will the working class voters wake up to their manipulation by the GOPsychopathetics they elect?

(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)

The World's Biggest Ponzi Scheme

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” may be a film-remake from the past grabbing the imagination of viewers by telling a story of an alien space craft landing on Earth, starring a human looking outer space man and his loyal robotic companion, but the fact is the Earth has begun to stand still because of the world’s biggest Ponzi Scheme, which began 30 years ago, and now, has come to an overwhelmingly loud screeching halt.

The nation has fixed their eyes on the economic vampire, Bernie Madoff, who ripped off his richest-of-the-rich investors out of $50 billion, as well as others managing funds of funds and closely similar concoctions. The media has clamped on him the ball and chain label of Number 1 Ponzi Scheme Con Artist. I have to disagree. The Number 1 Ponzi Schemer, the world’s honorary economic predator, goes to President Bush and his 2 heister-shyster racketeer side-kick vampires: Hank “The Paulie” Paulson, and “Bada Bing” Bernanke. The grandmaster Ponzi Schemer award goes to Alan Greenspan, who began the entire plan under Ronald Reagan.

This 30 year in the making, American government-endorsed, and president-presided-over Ponzi Scheme is what has severely damaged our economy, as well as other economies around the world. China has played a big role in the downfall by becoming the world’s assembly line using low paid, unprotected workers. Millions of drone assembly line recuits paid for by multi-national corporate greedsters killing jobs in our country while enriching themselves through low paid, with no-to-minimal benefits exploitable workers. By doing so, these corporate predators have increased the GDP of China, which has funded our debt oriented lifestyles, while, at the same time, kept their currency artificially as low as the dollar so their “stuff” could be readily available and real cheap to the maxed-out, over-spent American consumer.

Greenspan claiming he had no idea that our financial institutions were not capable of policing themselves is like saying that a vampire has no idea that their victims would end up completely drained of their life-sustaining blood after having drunk their dinner. In Japan, such a widespread and devastating failure would find the prominent authority figure responsible for the grand theft swindle taking hold of the honored Samurai sword for their final admission of guilt. Mr. Greenspan, we are still waiting for this very final apology!!

Bush has allowed Bernanke and Paulson to further the government’s Ponzi Scheme role by dumping more burdensome, unsustainable debt onto the shoulders of taxpayers, their children, and children’s children. Bush never took on the blame for the economic meltdown. He has always been compelled to deflect the finger-pointing away from himself and toward Congress, as well as Wall-Street, yet it was HE who put the Ponziites into the SEC, the Congress, and embedding them throughout the government, while encouraging lenders to loan to anyone who was breathing when they were walked in to sign for a home mortgage loan.

“Corporate America has a responsibility to make America a compassionate place”, said Bush. His code word for Ponzi was compassionate. He also said, “Wall-Street got drunk”, and corporate greed, along with market excesses, and the flow of foreign cash were to blame, yet he has yet to identify himself as the bartender for those drunken Wall-Streeters. Bush himself a proponent of greed and excess, and the recipient of his own personal foreign cash bailouts resulting from his failed oil businesses, has embraced the failed Ponzi framework disguised as free market economics. Such trickle-down, laissez-faire, free-market policies were actually the propellant used for this blazing bonfire of the economic “vanitees”.

President Bush and many congressional cons and hacks were recipients of generous campaign contributions from the financial banking industry indebting themselves to the richest of the financially rich allowing their Ponzi Scheme to go unregulated and unsupervised, and without question or transparency, while escorting Bernie Madoff into the arena of fraud with top hat in hand, as one bows gracefully before the Man. Bush’s con-artist advisor was his senior Ponzi promoter—Karl Rove.

Bush began his own presidential phase of the 30-year Ponzi Scheme with his effort to use his position as president to push his government into enticing and encouraging middle class Americans to use their credit worthiness to borrow and buy bigger, heavier, and even, thirstier vehicles, fancier washer and dryer machines, stainless steel stoves, vacations and much, much more pleasing the Ponzi bankers.

The Ponzi bankers wanted to squeeze more and more from the shrinking budgets of middle class Americans by convincing them to take equity out of their homes and increase their mortgage debt, while raising their debt burden, but softening their blow with lower rate re-financing packages. The economic Ponzi Parasites delighted in more available credit-driven debt formed into more non-transparent derivative obligations, which were insured against failure through credit default swaps.

Next came the “Go-Shopping” bugle call following the 9-11 tragedy. Polish up your credit cards and do your civic duty. Add to your debt, again, for the sake of the nationalized Ponzi Scheme!!!

All of this increased middle class debt giving the Ponzi Predators more debt to sell, while grabbing more fees, commissions and bonuses for themselves. This process turned into more non-productive wealth increasing the GDP, and fewer non-exportable products sold in order to help lower the trade deficit, which actually added to it.

They used the incomes of middle class consumers to fuel their Ponzi Scheme. All forms of consumer-driven debt was packaged and sold from bank to bank from hedge fund to wealth fund to broker-dealer, everywhere in the world, excessively leveraging their manufactured debt-driven derivative toxic hot potatoes turning one toxic hot potato into 100 of them; and then, taking those 100 toxic potatoes and making thousands more from them to the tune of 1000 trillion hot potatoes spreading worldwide in scope. Today, many have vaporized and all that is left is around $62 trillion.

Much of this exploding debt asset bubble inflated home and commercial real estate values increasing the opportunities to further speculate, which pushed prices artificially upward. What began as mortgage debt selling morphed into a serial re-financing Ponzi Scheme eventually collapsing for most of the investors down the Ponzi Line, except for those close to the top who profited immensely as they tried to stash their bootie into more secure locations.

Just in the last couple weeks, The Ponzi Aristocracy are considering adding more to the smoke and mirror illusion by bailing out hedge fund vampire predators, since they have gone to Bernanke, Paulson, and Bush crying for help. They want the taxpayers to permit the bundling of auto, student and credit card loans to create securitized debt obligations in hopes there would be investors awakening from a deep, deep decade’s long sleep willing to buy these non-transparent loans, many of which might actually go into default, as a way to add more debt to America’s balance sheet. This Fed Window is called TALF, which means Term Asset-backed Securities Loan Facility.

These hedge funds want to borrow $200 billion from the Fed’s TALF window at virtually a zero interest rate to sell pools of credit card receivables, auto loans, and student loans. Their drooling desire is to find suckers who might be brainwashed into buying them up. I wonder if there are any Rip Van Winkle-types, now waking up, who are looking for investments?

As America falls further into its economic abyss, the Ponzi Aristocracy want to further their riches, while the United States enters, what maybe viewed as, bankruptcy, in 2008-09. The projected cost of the bailout is $8 trillion. Fannie and Freddie Mac are guaranteed $5-6 trillion. In 2007, the public debt, what the U.S. owes foreigners for funding our economy—the two wars, etc.- amounts to $10.6 trillion. Yet, our GDP, all that the U.S. brings in to the Treasury and the nation’s net worth comes to $13.8 trillion.

Our debt is, at least, $23 trillion, but our GDP is $13 trillion. America’s private debt is considered a bit more than 100% of the GDP. Our debts exceed our revenues. So, what we are left with is our current government willing to create more Ponzi Scheme debt, but not invest a penny into the real economy—the economy that produces things, hard goods, that are created, crafted, and sold worldwide. This is what is called the industrial and manufacturing economy, and not the financial-debt-paper asset-class economy that has miserably failed us.

This Ponzi Scheme was known, supported, facilitated, promoted, and advanced by those given permission inside the government and from those contributing to it. This was all a massive predatory vampire-like scheme to suck the personal assets out of working America in order to enrich the richest of people; and now, once it has collapsed around them, they want to be bailed out!!! This has been nothing more than the biggest economic heist ever planned or schemed.

Two real burning questions to ask about the world’s biggest Ponzi Scheme are: where is the outrage, and, where are the indictments?

Happy New Year, jerry

Toxic Banking Bailout- The September Surprise!

The political system is once again, creating a new quandary for our nation due to its failure to build a transparent government. Without appropriate supervision of its operations, and a necessary level of regulation to make sure the system responds to its own best interests and practices, and not for a select few, our democracy cannot work effectively.

This is how the derailment occurred under the direction of Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, our nation's central bank dating back to 1913. Along with a capitulating series of presidents, who followed the prescribed philosophy of unbridled and secretive capitalism under a trickle-down theory through a pyramid-style economic methodology. Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Phil Gramm, and many within the Republican and Democratic Parties have presented us with the unbelievable meltdown we are all witnessing.

The late John Kenneth Galbreith, claimed that the trickle-down theory was responsible for the Panic of 1896. It was called by the elites of the time "The Horse and Sparrow Theory", meaning that if you fed the horse enough oats, the horse would pass on its good fortune to the sparrows hanging out along the road. No Sh*t! There is absolutely no example of trickle-down theory working anywhere in the world, as far as I have found, that would justify continuing it, beyond this point in time. It is only an idealistic, pie-in-the-sky theory.

I am no economist, but only a lay person intrigued by the crime story that has surrounded the privileged elite controlling the credit markets starting with the most powerful on top and moving on down to those who wanted to buy a piece of the wealth-accumulating dessert. 

This 30-year run has led us to where we are today. 30 years ago this crime story began establishing its foothold, building its operations and soldiers creating a cyber-wealth empire, which has amounted to somewhere between $450-500 trillion in worldwide toxic derivatives now woven throughout the fabric of foreign central banks, financial institutions, private equity funds, hedge funds, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. Now this cyber-wealth is on the verge of melting down exposing deceptive, secretive, greedy, and extremely under-capitalized practices. 

What has been uncovered is that President Reagan's free market, trickle-down economic express-train policy, driven by his senior engineer Alan Greenspan, has finally hit the inevitable wall. Its theory was to let those at the top of the pyramid acquire all the wealth they could, and through its basic fundamentals trickle-down as a stimulus to those "sparrows" hanging along the roads of Main and Side Street. We just saw that it failed. Those 10% at the top have acquired massive amounts of wealth, while the economy has failed leaving the middle class to suffer with foreclosures and the shrinking of real wages. What we also witnessed was the top of the pyramid collapse, and and the top-tier wealth accumulators seeing their lending financial institutions fall into conservership, insolvency or bankruptcy because of their trickle-down principles. These institutions have ended up holding toxic debt that was virtually worth-less requiring them to activate their distress calls to congress and the White House. "Help, help. Save our wealth."

Now the Treasury, Fed, and President have decided to create a new Pyramid Scheme but not molded out of private free market theory, but from a socialistic, unitary executive model, which would allow the Federal Reserve, a private entity, to use taxpayer funds to buy private corporations, as they consolidate power over the private economy. 

By infusing the largest failing financial institutions with the previous recipients of the Fed's 2% open window, we will witness over one trillion dollars of taxpayer-treasury funds being given out to the Bush "Haves and Have-Mores". In addition, the Fed has provided foreign sovereign wealth funds, and foreign central banks with taxpayer-treasury funds because they're angry over their losses resulting from the Pyramid Scheme, since they ended up buying leveraged-out, AIG insured (through credit default swaps that are worth-less), and collateralized debt obligations made mostly out of mortgage debt. YIKES! Those countries took a major wealth-loss hit and want the U.S. government to bail them out, too. They seem to have forgotten that such investments are NOT safe, nor guaranteed by the U.S.  government, but risky. This has been the Great Unwinding for those at the top, or close to the top of the Pyramid Scheme. If you were not such a big player, you ended up drowning. As with the Titanic, only the elite and privileged got to the lifeboats in time leaving those in steerage to meet their fate. Remember, they all were told that the Titanic was unsinkable. That was what Greenspan and the financial institutions told their trickle-down investors, as well. SOL, as they say.

The new trickle-down fundamental is to privatize the earnings and socialize the losses. This is what McCain means when he says the fundamentals are good. They are good for the wealthiest 10% of Americans, not the many who have seen a $300 per year loss in real wages.

So how will it all unwrap over the next month, three months, 12 months? If I knew, I would be a rich guy, too. I'd be on Letterman, Oprah, Leno, and Larry King. O'Reilly would be begging me to go on his show, but I would refuse and call him a jerk on the phone. I'd be on a big-time tour, with Bono, and Krugman, and Roubini, giving out advice and selling my book and Internet newsletter. I'd have a cottage by the lake, and a loft in the city. I'd be sitting pretty during the Great Unwinding. There would be groupies wanting me to analyze their investment portfolios. You know the schtick.

But based upon my gut intuition, the Bush Bailout Plan is unsustainable. The Bush Crime Family Conspiratorial Mothership has one goal in mind, and that is to retain power for their constituents at the top of the Pyramid. The only way to do this is to get McCon elected. If and once elected, the Bush/Cheney crime bosses will hop off the White House grand cruise ship and onto their exiting water craft for safer ground. McCon and McPalin will be left to drift in the dangerous economic waters for 4 years as they so desperately campaigned for.

What the McCons don't realize is that the U.S. does not have any money of its own left to spend, therefore, they must print more for the Grand Infusion. They rely on foreigners to supply us with funds to shore up and patch up a leaking dyke. Will there be a time they will curtail their generosity toward a nation who has squandered it for "more wars, my friends", or the Halliburton/Blackwater/etc war machine, or the huge spying enterprise, or the aggression and hostility directed toward others? There is a strong possibility of it ended up backfiring into their faces affecting their own self-interests. Can the dollar improve under this new socialized economy? Or will we see that these emperors, in fact, have no clothes, as the credit market fails to loosen up out fear as cash-strapped consumers put up the duct tape and plastic around their lives waiting for the economic fallout to pass further freezing up the economy. Does this sound like 1931?

Deflation is not to be disregarded. Nor is inflation, for that matter, as it impacts upon many life-sustaining essentials. A value-less dollar is a possibility. Can banks go under while holding on to their government/taxpayer-paid-for and issued treasury life preservers? Yes! How can the U.S. repair and rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan while we, too, crumble under the tribulations of war right here at home? I don't see much time left.

The top-tier banksta gangstas wanted a guarantee that no "economic insurgents" would fire upon their financial institution's value, which remains weak, rotten, and vulnerable. Plus, these CEO administrators want to make a ton more money by wagering on themselves without the threat of the big, bad "economic insurgents" betting against them. This is how neo-fascism works. The government protects its own and, in this case, it's the big political party supporters and holders of the oligarchy's wealth. It all comes at a price! The Republicon Party and those making up the Demo-Con sub-party capitulators, such as Lieberman, will see bigger and fatter contributions fill their purses unless congress stands up to the Paulson/Bernanke/Bush/Banksta criminals.

The Bush administration responded to those he refers to as "my base" who wanted to protect themselves form the "economic insurgents", who are also known as "short sellers". These are investor/traders who bet that the stock price would fall because the company's fundamentals are not strong. Short selling has now been declared illegal for 800 chosen stocks, including G.E., allowing the "haves" to bet on themselves without the fear of the "insurgents" coming after their unbridled speculation.

Bush once said, "we fight them there, so we don't have to fight them here." But the war is right here in America and most people don't realize it, although it has been very clear to many more of us this week. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan was partly created as a distraction from the economic war right here in America brought to us by the Wall-Street Gangstas, and their crime bosses. There is a war between Wall-Street, and those living on Main and Side Street. Protect Wall-Street first. They get the U.S. backed Protection Service. March forward and manipulate the heck out of the markets. Give protection money to foreign central banks and sovereign wealth funds to keep them from dumping their U.S. Treasury bills and bonds, or dollars on the open market. By showering them with bailout funds, Hank "The Paulie" Paulson, and "Bada Bing" Bernanke, along with the White House crime bosses, have encouraged those international bankers to continue to fund our debt, USING OUR GOVERNMENT ISSUED BAILOUT MONEY. WOW! What a deal!

I believe if the government wants to socialize these financial institutions, then take them over. Cut the investors out. Let them take their hits. Replace the greedy CEOs. Remove their golden parachutes, bonuses, salaries, stock options and send them home. Raise taxes on the top-tier wage earners. Carve up these mega-financial institutions into smaller, more controllable, transparent and regulated entities. These corporate thieves, foot soldiers and "benefactors" must feel the pain and not the middle class who were victimized by their rise and fall.

In addition, we need to realize our hegemonic failure in the Middle East and shut the wars down. Leave the bases and stop the human and economic losses. Orchestrate a massive industrial rebuilding movement that would focus on alternative energy and re-engineer an alternative energy grid. And finally, provide single-payer health care allowing workers to move between employers, or start their own businesses without the fear of losing coverage,  and remove the heavy health care burden experienced by businesses, which drains valuable capital needed for expansion. 

You have just read my views from only one set of eyes and one mind.