Wall Of Worry Wednesday: Insurmountable Or Time To Climb?

4-18-12 From Seeking Alpha by Phil Davis  Read the comments on this article by going directly to the linked source.

This is an excellent piece about the theft of our economy by the top 10% as of now. The price we 90% are paying now and in the future is dangerous. Romney is all about making sure that the top 10% are kept comfy at the expense of everyone else. It is a major nanny state for the rich. The Fed continues to dole out free cash to the Bankstas even though they are failing to stimulate the real economy--only the financial economy for those playing at the financial market's crap tables.

Read an weep:

Isn't this fun?

On Monday we drew our 50% retracement lines for the Dow (13,000), S&P (1,395), Nasdaq (3,075) NYSE (8,050) and Russell (815) as well as the other global indices that we expected to be tested this week but I cautioned:

"How many times will the bulls be sucked in by the same empty promises? How many times will they reach into their pockets and BUYBUYBUY the snake oil valuations sold by the Reverend James Cramer?"

Now I don't mean to pick on Cramer but it is truly incredible how many times people begin a conversations with me by saying "Cramer says.."Yesterday Cramer said to ignore the experts and their annoying FACTS and just BUYBUYBUY: "No one from the Fed said anything today, yet the market roared, so I imagine these people are stumped beyond belief," Cramer said. "It must be so troubling for them to rationalize this rally."

See, Cramer is just a great summary of everything that is wrong with investing these days. What a ridiculous over-simplification to act as if the Fed has to say something every day to move the markets - the complete and utter ignorance/disregard of world events is truly stunning on Cramer's show, CNBC and pretty much all of the MSM who won't tell you anything that can't be reduced to a Twitable sound-byte.

On the right, we have the anti-Cramer - a thoughtful presentation by Morningstar's Fixed Asset Manager of the Decade, Jeff Gundlach, who is the only bond fund manager to win the Standard & Poor's/BusinessWeek Excellence in Fund Management five years in a row. I urge you to run through Jeff's presentation as it contains a fantastic series of charts that gives a well-balanced view of the global macros. One very notable chart was this one, showing the divergence between stocks and commodities as Operation Twist has had no stimulative effect on demand:

(Click to enlarge)

That's not a healthy-looking divergence, is it? While the bulls are betting that commodities will catch up to the hyper-inflated stock prices, we've been betting the hyper-inflated stock prices will eventually run into the demand reality that is already tanking the commodity markets.

As we noted in member chat this morning, the central banks are pumping free money into the banks (that will eventually become a burden on the bottom 99% taxpayers and their children and their children's children...), who are not lending it to boost the economies but are turning around (or "twisting") to buy Sovereign Bonds that the top 1% have been stuck with.

Aside from the feeding frenzy by our local Banksters at the expense of the Fed, Spanish and Italian banks have used LTRO and EFSF funds to load up on over $600Bn worth of government debt - debt that may well be defaulted on in the same way Greece just did. It's nothing more than a stealth bailout of the top 1% who are cashing in their bonds at top dollar and moving back to cash ahead of the next market collapse.

Even the bankers to Europe's top 1% in Germany and France are CUTTING their holdings in the same bonds by 50% as the bad-debt burden is transferred to the debtor nations, who will later be blamed for making these bad investments as the situation that is clearly visible now will, in the future, be used to justify even harsher austerity measures for their poor neighbors.

"The more banks stop cross-border lending, the more the ECB steps in to do the financing," said Guntram Wolff, deputy director of Bruegel, a Brussels-based research institute. "So the exposure of the core countries to the periphery is shifting from the private to the public sector."

What a scam! A great example of the Dooh Nibor Economy, where the Global Kleptocracycontinues to run policies in their puppet governments that rob from the poor and give to the rich. While French and German banks lost money on Greece's restructuring last month, a delay of more than a year allowed a similar shift of risk to the public sector. When the exchange took place, the debt relief was capped at 59 billion euros because fewer bonds were held by the private sector, including banks outside the country. If Greece had defaulted in 2010, the reduction could have been as much as 232 billion euros.

This amazing global Ponzi scheme is bound to end badly - the only question is when? The bull case (see Cramer) is that the Fed and other Central Baniksters are placing a floor under the market so you "can't lose" - no matter what idiotic valuation you pay for stocks (Gundlach believes 8-10 is the proper P/E for the S&P 500 - now 15). Essentially, people buying the market under this premise are no different than people who invested with Bernie Madoff, knowing it was a scam but not caring as long as they got their 20% returns - it works until it doesn't.

This is a discussion I have with our conservative friends all the time - it DOES matter where you get your money from. We (the top 1%) are currently extracting our wealth and income from the bottom 99% at a record pace.

The gap between the rich and the poor in America has never been wider and AMERICA can't, CANNOT, recover if our survival plan is to get what we can and put it into our 3M lifeboats while letting the other 297M people go down with the ship. The austerity actions being taken now are essentially a justification of theft along the logical lines of "well, those 297M people are going to die anyway so robbing them isn't REALLY a crime, is it?"

According to Romney and the rest of the GOP, it is MUCH more important that we preserve his comfort and his lifestyle than to waste our time helping those who are unable to help themselves. This is the same attitude the Germans are developing regarding their poor European cousins - why should we save you from collapse if it might cause us discomfort?

The more the corporate media manages to convince the top 10% (no one else matters) that the bottom 90% are unsaveable or "not worth" saving - the more they are able to justify greater and greater abuses heaped upon those down below. Dehumanization of the enemy is an essential part of a propaganda war and make no mistake about it - class warfare is a war and it's not a war that the poor are waging against the rich (despite what their PR machine would have you believe) - it's a war that the rich have been waging against the poor for 40 years now.

This is the way things work people - I apologize for the Michael Moore clip, I know that he is considered to be the great Satan and most of you have been brain-washed to feel sick at the mere mention of his name or the sound of his voice because he ... er ... well, because he did whatever horrible things that you think you know have maybe been insinuated about him by the MSM, right? That's good enough for us because WE'RE REAL AMERICANS, right?

Real Americans don't put up with agitators, unless those agitators are from the Tea Party or unless they are anti-tax agitators or unless they want to reduce (not COMPLETELY destroy) our government because, as we all know, government is the problem and private enterprise is the solution!

Of course, in this upcoming election we have 242 House Republicans that should be re-elected - it's the 190 Democratic bums that need to be thrown out and THEN you'll see some real action. The Republicans have been hamstrung so far by their 32% advantage in Congressional seats and now we have an historic opportunity to extend the reign of a Congress that only managed to pass 80 laws out of 945 votes taken (with 5,970 resolutions killed on the floor) in 2011 - a record that may only be broken by the same team in 2012 as they are 0 for 89 votes with 627 bills killed in committee in the first quarter of this year - go team!

These people are destroying our country folks. Do you really believe the world's largest economy can afford to do NOTHING for two years? Is this going to be the winning strategy we reward - hamstring a sitting president, let the country run straight downhill and then run for re-election on the premise that, as long as you approve of the guy the people elect to be in charge - you might be willing to play ball. This is not politics - it's extortion!

(Click to enlarge)

Let's contemplate that while we wait PATIENTLY for the markets to correct. The point in going over these global and political macros is to get you to step back from the day to day BS that the MSM likes to keep you focused on and contemplate the bigger picture. We discussed many of our recent short plays in yesterday's post and there was no change in yesterday's member chat as we took advantage of that very silly move up to add back some short positions after Monday's profit taking.

Now that we've completed our 50% retrace of the month's drop, we'll be happy to take quick bear losses and go longer if we can accomplish three of five of our 50% lines (see above) but clearly we'll be exercising a HEALTHY degree of skepticism against any short-term market moves.

Early this morning, we took advantage of the morning pop to short the oil futures (/CL) at $104.50 and we're just testing $104 now at 9 a.m. - so the Egg McMuffins are paid for and we're ready to start our trading day!

Kleptocracy by WilliamBanzi7.

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

Rubicon-They hide in plain sight.

 “They hide in plain sight.” That deciphered code came from the new AMC program called Rubicon. It is all about conspiracy, government, and the deeply embedded corporate elite who seem to be behind the military industrialized complex as it moves about the globe influencing who stays in power and who does not.

David Michael Green wrote on his Regressiveantidote.com site this week why this country is going down the tubes and away from a representative government and democracy. He offers three options, and one being all about oligarchy. He speaks about the moderate Republicans: Eisenhower/Ford as opposed to the destructive Reagan/Bush regimes, and the warnings from the former and what the latter would bring to us all.

President Eisenhower warned of an all-powerful military industrialized complex centered at the Pentagon. Today we learn that the US Navy is headed toward South America. Columbia and Venezuela might be headed toward a US military coup d’etat. An attack on Iran is the talk of the town, too. The Obama administration is being told from behind the scenes, no doubt, that this is what is meant by Change We Can Believe In, and the “We” meaning the deep, dark and all-powerful corporate mobsters. Will this be the direction the writers of Rubicon are going? We will have to watch and see!

Now, let us decipher the word Republican. We will morph this word into what many have been calling this political party---Republicon. Let us remove the letters e, p, l, and we get the word rubicon—a show about conspiracy, and deception; and, I will add the deeply embedded corporate elite mobsters running that party. Here is the definition of rubicon: A limit that when passed or exceeded permits no return, and typically results in irrevocable commitment.

“They hide in plain sight.” In the first episode (not the sneak preview), Will, the main Hitchcock-like character, deciphers a letter-number combination code into that sentence.

The United States is going down the rabbit hole, as it appears today. “Consumer borrowing has now dropped 16 out of the last 17 months. Credit card debt has fallen 21 months in a row. The personal savings rate in June rose to 6.4% from 2.1% before the recession began. Wages and salaries are down 3.6% in the last two and half years. Despite decreased credit and income and increased savings, all three of which are negatives for consumer spending, GDP figures claim American consumers are buying more.” That comes from Daryl Montgomery, Less Credit and Income-More Consumer Spending”.

He went on to say, “According to the BEA (Bureau of Economic Analysis), wages and salaries of US workers have declined only 3.6% since the first quarter of 2008…..More government jobs and government subsidized jobs prevented this number from being worse. Even more amazing, total personal income actually increased by 1.5% during this time.” What he also said was that there was a 27% increase in government supporting working people in the last 9 quarters.

Yes. That was because the corporate mobster elite stole the working people’s savings and retirement investments to BUBBLE the economy with a housing mortgage give-away program (Bush’s Ownership Society program), and selling around the globe garbage derivatives mounting into the hundreds of trillions of dollars, many of which has not yet to be unwound; and, the corporate financial mobster elite stood in line at the Federal Reserve to trade cash for collateral trash at near 0% interest in order to manipulate all markets for the purpose of continuing the transfer of wealth to the top 10% of the income earners. David Stockman, and Reagan’s Trickle Down economics turned all around on it’s head.

Since the private sector has not created real jobs in the real economy, government continues to hire and move the GDP numbers along. The military industrial complex, including the intelligence divisions, continue to get government cash as they hire private sector contractors.

Watch Rubicon!

The Republicons continue to want more tax cuts. Free Bush’s Tax Cut Willie! But the outcry against it is beginning to shake-da’-base.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspam, or is it Greenspan, recently said the following:

“Our problem, basically, is that we have a very distorted economy in the sense that there has been a significant recovery in a limited area of the economy amongst high-income individuals who have just had $800 billion added to their 401(k)s and are spending it and are carrying what consumption there is. Large banks, who are doing much better, and large corporations, whom you point out and the–and everyone’s pointing out, are in excellent shape.

The rest of the economy, small business, small banks, and a very significant amount of the labor force, which is in tragic unemployment, long-term unemployment, that is pulling the economy apart. The average of those two is what we are looking at, but they are fundamentally two separate types of economy.”

He has come forward to say that the shit has begun to hit the fan, the economy is heading toward the rabbit hole, again, so don’t renew the Bush tax cuts.

David Michael Green wrote in another piece about “another conservative darling who turned on his masters this weekend [being] Reagan’s OMB Director David Stockman, who eviscerated current Republican fiscal policies in a NY Times Op-Ed this weekend, summing it up neatly with the title: "How the GOP Destroyed the US Economy," which is a must-read but here’s a few juicy tidbits:

“IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase…

…This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one.

…The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector. Here, Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation. As a result, the combined assets of conventional banks and the so-called shadow banking system (including investment banks and finance companies) grew from a mere $500 billion in 1970 to $30 trillion by September 2008.

But the trillion-dollar conglomerates that inhabit this new financial world are not free enterprises. They are rather wards of the state, extracting billions from the economy with a lot of pointless speculation in stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives. They could never have survived, much less thrived, if their deposits had not been government-guaranteed and if they hadn’t been able to obtain virtually free money from the Fed’s discount window to cover their bad bets.”  (From “A Bottomless Well of Greed”.)

These two creators of economic doom: Greenspan and Stockman, are no longer useable for the deeply embedded corporate mobster elite, so now they are squealing.

From Karl Denninger’s site-Market-ticker.com, he writes about jobless and unemployment claims. “In the week ending July 31, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 479,000, an increase of 19,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 460,000. The 4-week moving average was 458,500, an increase of 5,250 from the previous week's revised average of 453,250.

The problem with the claim is that it's a lie, and if you read the entire report, it becomes obvious - they simply ignore the roll-down into "not counted" buckets for the long-term unemployed.

The truth is that the unemployment situation is 17% worse now than it was a year ago, from July 10th to July 17th it deteriorated, and that understates the case, as those who have exhausted the 99 weeks of "benefits" (all but 26 of which are a handout) don't show up in the EUC 2008 line any more either! In June, marginally attached, there were 1.2 million discouraged workers in June, up by 414,000 from a year earlier.”

Jobs are disappearing. The corporate mobster elite believes they don’t need the United States anymore. As GM takes its new battery technology jobs to China after the taxpayers ended up owning 60% of the company via a bailout-loan granted them by the Obama administration. Jobs keep growing for GM in China as they shrink in the country of taxpayer issued bailouts and protection from bankruptcy loans.

The Rubicon is beginning to be played out in the open. “They hide in plain sight.”

“Republicans used to stand for balanced budgets, sound monetary policy and fiscal discipline and, as Stockman points out, the Neocons and the Follow-the-Con-Democrats, have jammed our military budget up to $1Tn a year (1/2 of the entire planet’s military spending) while Republican Congressmen have never met an earmark they didn’t like - until Obama took office, of course.”

“The mood of the country is clearly shifting and old-guard Republicans are circling the wagons to attempt to salvage what they can of their legacy; that leaves the Bush Republican’ts out on an increasingly unpopular limb as they call for a completely unrealistic policy of tax cuts for the rich and austerity for everyone else.”

“Art, Gold, oil and other speculative investments not only take money out of circulation but cause TRILLIONS of dollars of damage by inflating what the bottom 99% have to pay for what’s left after the hoarders get their fill. This is also true of land to some extent as it trades around from wealth to wealth and drags up the cost of land for the poor (same land for more money = NEGATIVE benefits). Cash is another place money is hoarded - when the top 0.01% skim their profits off the bottom 99.99% and pay their 17% taxes (the actual average paid by the top 0.01%) and then put the other 83% in a bank that refuses to lend money - that money is OUT OF CIRCULATION! It’s been taken from the American people after they slaved to create it and then the opportunity to re-use what they have created is taken away from them.”

“Money is only an asset to the top 1%; for the rest of the country, it’s a disposable item, more like a work chit that enables them to buy consumables but nothing more. Most of the top 1% can’t see it because they live near the top and only think of money as an asset - which it is when you have more than you need. Unfortunately, 99% of the people in this country have less than they need and even 99% of the top 1% are simply delusional in their belief that they are on an even playing field with the top 0.01%, who are 100x wealthier than the average person in the top 1% (and that INCLUDES their wealth, which brings the average way up).”

“What the Republicans are positioning as a tax hike but is really the end of a tax holiday that was put in place under Bush II is now looking more likely, and the rest of the World is seeing this as a very positive sign that America is finally waking up and will begin putting its economic house in order the way all responsible governments do - by raising an appropriate amount of taxes to meet their financial obligations. It’s fine if we want to add more stimulus to the economy - as long as we are willing to pay for it. What has been objectionable to the rest of the World is our current policy of spending more and earning less - something that hasn’t worked out too well on our National balance sheet for the past decade.

Yes, Democrats are the "tax and spend" party but the choice has been between the tax and spend party and the "no tax and spend anyway" party and it’s only just now that that argument is coming into its proper focus. On the whole, this is a good thing for America - a possible sign that we are growing up.” (Phil Davis, “Another Manic Monday: Greenspan Finally Agrees With Me”, 8-2-10, Seekingalpha.com.)

The Royal Scam that none of the Republicons or Democons are telling their people back home is that the Federal Reserve has stuffed the corporate elite bankstas, who are deeply tied to the corporate mobsters, with $1.7 trillion in reserves, while lending is nowhere in sight. Consumer credit is diving down the rabbit hole at a rate of 5% per year. And, the total circulation of money, or M3-the broadest category- has dropped to -6%. The amount of money circulating inside the economy has dropped into negative territory.

We are very likely headed toward a Japanese style of a generation of deflation. Bada Bing Bernanke has loaded up the richest bankstas with taxpayer cash, and very little of it is leaving their tight grip; therefore, any hope he had of creating inflation, or another BUBBLE, has been broken. He thought he was in tight with the deep, dark elite mobster crowd, but I guess he isn’t. He ain’t included on da’ inside. They got their $1.7 trillion, and they are happy. They robbed the Treasury. The largest bank heist in US history!

In a brilliant piece written by the economist Richard C. Koo, “U.S. Economy in Balance Sheet Recession: What the U.S. Can Learn From Japan’s Experience in 1990-2005”, he writes how we are headed in this direction. It seems that Bernanke fell asleep while driving the bus and is now headed toward deflation—a generation of it.

Professor Koo says, “The biggest casualty here has been monetary policy. Businesses and consumers suffering from a debt overhang are not interested in increasing their borrowings at any interest rate, and few banks want to lend money to borrowers with impaired balance sheets.” “But in a balance sheet recession, demand for funds can remain far less than the supply even with interest rates at zero because there are so few borrowers. As a result, unborrowed funds remain trapped in the financial system, constituting a leakage from the income stream and a deflationary gap in the economy. If unchecked, this gap will throw the economy into a deflationary spiral as the economy loses demand equivalent to the saved but unborrowed fund each year. And, that is exactly what happened during the Great Depression, the last great balance sheet recession, where U.S. GDP was cut in half in just four years.”

Dr. Koo closed by speaking about needing a fiscal policy that works. “…capital injection…which requires substantial and seamless government borrowing and spending to offset the deflationary impact of private sector deleveraging. Although government deficit spending should be avoided when the private sector is healthy and forward looking, once…when the private sector gets carried away in a bubble and damages its financial health, a prompt and sustaining fiscal policy medicine from the government is essential in minimizing both the length of the recession and the eventual bill to the taxpayers.”

But in this “Rubicon”, those inside the economic conspiracy had other plans. They decided to rob the working class people blind, and cry wolf about the sky getting ready to fall, and continue to rob the cash reserves inside the Federal Reserve dry.

Will this administration, and Congress, turn this around? It appears if the American people vote against their own self interests and bring in the Tea Party candidates, or career politicians who are not on the side of working people, then we will likely see no action steering us away from a Japanese style deflation: lower wages, longer hours for less pay, further falling of home price values, more foreclosures, less consumer spending, fewer jobs, more unemployment, and the dollar buying less when spent.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country”.

James Madison also said, “The growing wealth acquired by [corporations] never fails to be a source of abuses”.

And then there was Grover Cleveland, who said:  “As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel.  Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters.”

Or, how about Teddy Roosevelt,  “Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.  To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.”

And, of course, there was Dwight D. Eisenhower Dwight (career military man, five-star general, commander of the Normandy invasion, Supreme Commander of NATO, conservative Republican President of the United States) who famously invocated against the all-consuming power of the military-industrial complex. (Quotes taken from the excellent article by David Michael Green, “A Bottomless Well of Greed”, 8-2-10).

There is a Rubicon, and we swirl inside of it!

Thanks for reading, jerry

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

Fed Chairman Bernanke's November 2009 Speech at the Economic Club of New York

Watch Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's damning and dire economic forecast for our economy.


                                                       Watch here:



He is trying to put lipstick on our economic pig through his careful manipulation of facts. Here are a few quotes written by Mike Whitney in his article "The Great Stimulus Debate of '09: Crybabies need not apply", 11-20-09, Counterpunch.org.

"The flow of credit remains constrained,economic activity weak, and unemployment much too big. Future setbacks are possible...How the economy will evolve in 2010 and beyond is less certain...Access to credit remains strained for borrowers who are particularly dependent on banks and businesses. Bank lending has contracted sharply in year, and the Federal Reserve's Senior Loan Officers Opinion Survey sows that banks continue to tighten the terms on which they extend credit for most kinds of loans...Household debt has declined in crecent quarters of the first time since 1951. For their part, most small businesses have seen their bank credit lines reduced or eliminated, or they have been able to obtain credit only on significantly many of these businesses expected conditions to tighten further."

"The demand for credit also has fallen significantly...Because of weakened balance sheets, fewer potential borrowers are creditworthy, even if they are willing to take on more more debt. Also, write-downs of bad debt show up on bank balance sheets as reductions in credit outstanding. Nevertheless, it appears that, since the outbreak of the financial crisis, banks have tightened lending standards by more than would have been predicted by the decline in economic activity alone...Unfortunately, reduced bank lending may well slow the recovery by damping consumer spending, especially, on durable goods, and by restricting the ability of some firms to finance their operations."

"The best thing we can say about the labor market right now is that it may be getting worse more slowly."(End)

Bernanke says how 9 of 10 of the mega-banks have been able to fully meet their capital buffers, and recapitalize without the help from the treasury. Their equity has increased by $77B. But he failed to say it has been at the expense of the real economy, and accomplished by taking taxpayer funds to gamble on Wall Street at zero percent interest and, thus, are now able to hand out billions in bonuses.

He said decreases in bank lending will reduce consumer spending and business cash flows. In other words, as a result of the Fed's policies, businesses are dying because the banks that were recapitalized by the taxpayer cannot obtain credit lines in order to make payroll, and buy material. And, as workers lose their jobs, or find their hours cut back, they must be very careful how they spend their precious dollars.

Stress tests will lead the 19 banks to become fully capitalized for future lending. What crap. They are not lending to make any real difference in the economy.

He encourages banks to work with borrowers to restructure failing loans. So when do you think this will happen--Bennie?

He went on to say that over 8 million jobs have been lost in the private sector. He foresees declining work hours. He stated that the labor market will be getting worse, but more slowly. He went on to say that the "economic pain" among male workers between the ages of 25-54 are seeing their unemployment rate rise to 10.3%, and women in that age group to over 20.6%; Young people between the ages of 16-24 to be over 19%; and African-American youth to be 30%.

He said that weak income growth will decrease spending. Employers will shorten work weeks, and transition part-time workers to full-time workers before bringing on new hires. 100,000 new hires per month are needed in order to absorb new entrants into the labor force. Yet he failed to convey what has been predicted as a million and a half more workers finding themselves unemployed over the next 18 or so months.

He said that productivity growth is defined as output per hour of work and that productivity growth per hour has risen at around 5% annual rate this year. This is such crap!!! He failed to say that this growth rate has been mostly due to his Fed fund rates of zero percent interest to the top 10 bankstas so they could increase profits through their speculation and manipulation of Wall Street trades. Lipstick on a Pig, Bennie-the beard--Bernanke, Mr. Bank Crime Syndicate Field Marshall!

He careened against workers by saying that increasing productivity is what is left to improve business. So Bada Bing Bernanke, how will this be done without having to squeeze more juice from the already squeezed out worker? I guess, your double speak, between-the-lines gobbligook talk infers that more outsourcing, more cheap labor from China, Vietnam or Philippines is the way to increase business productivity.

It was truly clear from listening to this weapon of mass destruction that he MUST be fired, and the Fed MUST be nationalized and made transparent. This one man has killed America through his policies authorized by the board of the Federal Reserve.

As he concluded, he had the balls to say that he did not see any major misalignments in the economy. Whaddayathinkindude? The real economy is in shambles. Jobs are disappearing. China is coming over here to build manufacturing facilities. The US is becoming a third world country in many ways. The quality of life is diminishing for tens of millions of Americans. You, Mr. Field Marshall for the Financial Crime Syndicate have recapitalized your pals to such a degree that they can pass out $23 billion in bonus Happy Cash Meals. People are living in tents, in storm sewers, in their vehicles. Food banks and soup kitchens don't have enough food to go around. China continues to show a rising budget surplus, while they keep their currency pegged to collapsing dollar allowing them to sell their stuff cheap in the US.

And you, you bearded wildebeest from the Greenspan School of Failed Policy Studies, don't see a misalignment. Are just f**king stupid or the world's most evil, lying economist on the planet?

thanks for reading, jerry