The Occupy Wall Movement:

Citizens United Backlash Picks Up Official Support From Occupy Wall Street,  New York Chapter from Huffington Post and Mike Sachs, 1-6-12

Efforts to amend the Constitution to declare that corporations are not people and money is not speech gained support in two notable New York forums this week. The New York City General Assembly of the Occupy Wall Street movement on Tuesday officially called for a constitutional amendment to overturn a controversial Supreme Court decision from 2010 . On Wednesday, a similar resolution passed the New York City Council.

Such an amendment would reverse not only the Supreme Court's 2010 opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which held that corporations have the constitutional right to spend unlimited sums of money to influence elections, but also its seminal 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo, which first established that money constituted speech for First Amendment purposes.

Beyond New York, the Los Angeles City Council almost a month ago and several other city governments across the nation have supported anti-Citizens United resolutions. MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan has launched a petition calling for an amendment that has pulled in nearly 300,000 signatures, and members of Congress have proposed various joint resolutions in the House and Senate to start the process from Washington.

The OWS NYC resolution states, "Be it resolved that the New York City General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street joins the millions of citizens, grassroots organizations and local governments across the country in calling for an Amendment to the Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights, and that the rights of human beings will never again be granted to fictitious entities or property."

On Dec. 30, the Montana Supreme Court added its authority to the Citizens United backlash by upholding the state's century-old ban on corporate cash in campaigns. The majority decision, written by Chief Justice Mike McGrath, described Montana's own history of corporate control over state government as sufficient justification for the ban's constitutionality. This fact-bound determination defied the U.S. Supreme Court's conclusion that independent electoral spending can never give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to reverse its Montana counterpart -- and any other court that chooses to follow Montana's lead. Unless and until the U.S. Supreme Court's composition changes in favor of those challenging Citizens United, the amendment process now gaining momentum remains a better option than litigation for those who want corporate money out of politics. 

From Dave Johnson at Huffington Post:  

What next in the Fight Over Who Our Economy Is for?

Who is our economy for, anyway? In the United States, We, the People are supposedly in charge, and our country and economy are supposed to be managed for the public good. But that isn't how things have been working out, is it?

Let's take a quick look at America over the last few decades.

We used to have a social contract. We invested in top-notch infrastructure (like the interstate highway system) and education (the best universities and research), and then tax the resulting gains at very high rates, to recirculate those gains for the benefit of all of us.

Broken Social Contract

Then the contract was broken. Starting in the 1970s a cabal of wealthy businessmen and conservative ideologues organized and funded an attack on We, the People government, manipulating public opinion and our political system, gutting the regulations and trade rules that protected us and our way of life, privatizing -- selling off things We, the People own -- and killing the tax-and-invest cycle so they could keep the gains from all of that prior investment for themselves.

Blanket Of Propaganda

To provide cover for the operation these agents of the 1% spread a thick blanket of propaganda, using every technique in the modern marketing book. They divided us by race, religion, gender, sexual preference, even pitting people who like quiche and lattes against those who like beer and sausage. To cripple potential opposition they infiltrated and fractured key institutions, and turned the public against the news media. They developed a professional career-path system that rewards those who play along with the corruption and destruction and punishes those who do not. To cripple dissent they used ridicule, shame and intimidation.

Destructive Choices Come Home To Roost

Since then things have steadily fallen apart. The infrastructure is crumbling. Unemployment is extreme. The country has very high debt. The trade deficit is extreme. Half of us are poor or nearly poor. Inequality is at the highest levels.

Bailouts For The 1%, Sell-Outs For The 99%

When things hit the fan it became clear that our country is no longer run for the good of We, the People. When it came down to it, a few got special treatment, the rest of us got... uh, less-than-special-treatment. (And weren't even kissed.)

When the financial crisis occurred Congress was told they literally had only hours to come up with hundreds of billions to bail out the too-big-to-fail banks, and they did -- with almost no conditions. We know now that the Federal Reserve also stepped up, providing trillions to the big banks, even hundreds of millions to bankers' spouses! State and local governments, institutions and smaller businesses? The unemployed and millions facing foreclosure? Not so much.

Plutocracy Not Democracy

They provided assistance for the giant financial institutions of the 1%. Instead of providing assistance to the 99% -- We, the People -- our government cut the things We, the People do for each other. It was made clear that this country is now a plutocracy, not a democracy.

System Of Control Breaking Down

It is clear where we are. But it is also clear that the system of control is breaking down. The elections of 2006 and 2008 shook the foundations. Democracy tried to reassert control. The behind-the-scenes system of lobbyists writing legislation that passes under cover of "studies" from corporate-front think tanks, telling us this is for our own good, propelled by a flurry of corporate-funded op-eds, stopped working. After the bailouts for banks / sell out for the rest of us, people started figuring things out. In response the 5-4 Supreme Court handed down the Citizens United decision, flooding the system with corporate money.

Instead of stealth takeover masked by propaganda we now see blatant grabs of wealth and raw power poorly disguised. Now the control is in our faces every day. Even constant filibusters of acts that might helpWe, the People were no longer enough to keep a lid on. So now it is shutdowns, hostage-taking, refusal to follow laws, refusal to prosecute, threats to take down the government and/or the economy. Now more visible methods of suppression are in use -- batons, tasers and pepper spray.

Waking Up

Everyone has been frustrated, discouraged, betrayed, scared and angry but without a focus for action. Then came the Occupy movement, people actually showing up and showing how! It resonated. People responded, and the conversation of the country was pulled out of the propaganda fog, at least for a while.

Stephen Lerner, interviewed by Sarah Jaffe for AlterNet, discusses where we go from here, saying, "[I]t's an exciting feeling to see something a lot of people spent a lifetime hoping for --this kind of dramatic increase in activity that targets financial capital, those who really control the country." On Occupy Wall Street, Lerner says,

Everybody knows they're getting zapped by banks, and what's so good about Occupy is that it's put that front and center. The fact that they were in Wall Street, I think everybody forgets. It was not Occupy a park somewhere, it was the fact that it was in the middle of the financial district. And I think on an intuitive level, people all over the political spectrum understand that those guys are at the center of how the economy is organized in a way that doesn't work for most people.

On Wall Street's position in our economy,

I don't think people are mad at somebody who invented a product or founded a company. It's that people see that Wall Street is not productive. Their wealth and their riches, they do not come through any normal means -- they come through cheating and gambling and ripping us off, which I think troubles us in a different kind of way.

On today,

I don't think anybody should view a sort of holiday or winter lull in activity as a sign of anything. As people have said, movements ebb and flow, and whenever we look back, spring is the time that things take off again. It's really important that people not say "Oh, everything was front page news and now it's not." People instead should be stepping back, saying, "In three months we did more than anybody imagined we could do, now it's time to step back and figure out the next stage."

What Next?

Now comes the long slog of organizing people into focused action to take back our country from the 1%. Van Jones has been laying the groundwork, joining with MoveOn.org and other organizations to organize the Rebuild the Dream movement, and its Contract for the American Dream. Please visit and get involved.

Organized labor is fighting, too, with new tactics and getting more people involved. They are focusing on labor's role in creating a middle class in America. The recent Take Back the Capitol demonstrations are a case in point. In conjunction with many local and national organizations SEIU brought unemployed people to the D.C. to occupy the offices of 99 legislators, asking for jobs programs and extensions of unemployment benefits. They also marched on "K Street" -- the symbolic center of lobbying activity.


Trumka told the audience that the right wing is "banking on an upside-down America for its path to political power." Trumka said that now is the time for "a mighty movement for jobs and a just economy," adding, "We won't stop fighting, shoving and kicking until everyone is back at work."

Up To Us

What happens next is up to us. Don't be discouraged. "The people, united, will never be defeated."

THIS is what democracy looks like. Here are Wisconsin protesters chanting: "Tell me what democracy looks like. THIS is what democracy looks like!"

Go the article and see all the videos here!!!!

From Seeking Alpha and Phil Davis. See Link Here.

'Twas The Friday Before Christmas

12-23-11

Really guys!

Don't we all have something better to do than watch the markets today?

I'm embarrassed for all of us. Even the crooks at the NYMEX are going home at 1:30 this afternoon, sacrificing an entire hour of losing money to us to be with their strippers. That's right ... we OWNED those people yesterday, hitting play after play after play on the oil futures, all based on our very simple premise that - If the crooks at the NYMEX want to pretend they want to buy a barrel of oil for $100 - we are very happy to promise to sell it to them.

Over and over they pretend to want to buy oil at or near $100 and over and over, as soon as we (real people) actually start accepting their offers - they quickly dry up and retreat - over and over and over again.

This is how you beat the scam artists: Call them at their game.

At 3 a.m. this morning, they jammed oil up to $100.23 and at 3:51, in member chat, we were able to jump in and short the oil futures (/CL) at $100 and by 5:30 we were out at $99.60. That may not seem like a lot but, at $10 per penny per contract - it buys a lot of Egg McMuffins.

As I'm writing this (7:35) we just caught another run up to $100 and already it's back to $99.66 on fake, Fake, FAKE trading. Yes, ALL THE TIME they are faking it. ALL THE TIME. It's a SCAM. Oil trading is a scam, a lie, a con - and it's played on the American people every single day and no one does a thing to stop them (except us).

Do they REALLY want to have 252M barrels of oil delivered to Cushing, OK, in February? No, of course not. Aside from the fact that Cushing can only physically handle, if it were empty (which it is not) 40M barrels a month - we are, in fact, EXPORTING oil products out of America as our usage of oil is down 10% from last year (see chart in yesterday's post). DESPITE a 10% reduction in refiner output, which helps to create an artificial shortage by the U.S. energy cartel so they can charge the American public much more for less - we still are at RECORD levels of oil and product storage in this country.

So why do the NYMEX traders pretend to want to buy February (front-month) oil for $100 a barrel when December 2014 barrels are trading at $91.37? Because the front-month pricing determines what U.S. consumers pay at the pump and even if the traders take a $10 loss on 250M barrels ($2.5Bn), that is just a drop in the bucket compared to the relentless price gouging at the pumps committed by the Evil Corporations that employ those traders.

Americans consume 11Bn gallons of gasoline a month along with 5Bn gallons of distillates and 7Bn gallons of other products. Last year (when we consumed 10% more), a gallon of gas was selling for $2.98 and now it's $3.23, up .25 - that may not seem like a big deal but multiply that by 23Bn gallons and you have $5.75Bn of excess profits (and that's giving them that $2.98 is "fair" in the first place) stolen from the American people EVERY MONTH. And don't worry about the oil cartel - they aren't losing $10 a barrel at the NYMEX, maybe a dollar or two on average but worth every penny of $500M to have an excuse to charge consumers an extra $5Bn each month, right?

The underlying problem in the oil market and in the broader market in this country is that ordinary Americans are now seen as a resource to be exploited by those who are in power – by the wealthy and by those with political influence. We’re seeing Washington and Wall Street working so closely together that you really can’t tell the difference between them anymore. The figureheads of each like to go back and forth between both locations, picking jobs, then switching and going back again. The government officials we are trusting and paying to look out for Americans are using those positions to get really nice, high-paying jobs in private-sector places, including Wall Street, that are effectively being used as bribes. - Leah Goodman, The Asylum

Last night, the White House finally forced Boehner and his Congressional posse to extend the payroll tax cuts (and Boehner's quote: "Why not do the right thing for the American People, even though it's not exactly what we want" is sure to be the official Republican slogan for 2012!) of $140Bn and NO ONE denied that $140Bn is a lot of money yet NO ONE does anything about the $400Bn PER YEAR that consumers are now paying for oil ABOVE what they paid just two years ago.

What's really sickening about being ripped off for $400Bn a year isn't just the 10,000,000 $40,000 jobs that $400Bn a year represents and it's not the $400Bn boost to consumer spending, not even counting the potential new wage earners - that would go to industries that actually do create jobs in this country - it's the fact that at least half of the $400Bn that the crooks at the NYMEX are stealing from us every year ($2,850 per tax-payer) is being sent overseas and tens of billions of those dollars go to fund the very people who are killing our troops overseas as well as forcing us to spend countless hundreds of billions of dollars more to defend ourselves against people who buy our own weapons with our money to use them against us. And then, THEN THEY USE THE WARS AS A REASON TO RAISE THE PRICE OF OIL - MADNESS!

So Merry Christmas to all the corporate crooks and their pet politicians who are selling this nation and its once-proud people down the river to line their own pockets. Forcing people to overpay for necessities like food, fuel, housing and healthcare has created the largest wealth gap in recorded history for a developed nation. Our Gini Score (income inequality) of 41 is certainly better than Botswana's 60 but a far cry from Canada or Japan's 25. Even Bangladesh scores a 31 while our neighbors in the low 40s include China, Congo, Cambodia, Ghana, Morocco, Nigeria, Qatar and Mother Russia.

Even Pakistan manages to score in the low 30s because, they may be poor, but the top 1% don't have all the money. Our top 1% have 40% of the money - that's pretty bad - that IS NOT SHARING! Isn't Christmas supposed to be all about sharing? Unfortunately, as sickening as these statistics are, they are getting worse. Our score of 41 was last officially measured in 2000 but the estimates are that things in the US have gotten 10% worse (or better if you are in the top 1%) since then and our score is now 45 - one of the 10 worst on Planet Earth.

Or, if you are in the top 1% - one of the 10 best, right?

Go ahead, ask any warlord in Zimbabwe (rank 50) or Congo (47) and they will tell you that NOTHING needs to change. It's the greatest country in the world when you are the one at the top - just like America!

Princeton political scientistLarry Bartels studied the voting behavior of U.S. senators in the early '90s and discovered that they respond far more to the desires of high-income groups than to anyone else. By itself, that's not a surprise. He also found that Republicans don't respondat all to the desires of voters with modest incomes. Maybe that's not a surprise, either. But this should be: Bartels found that Democraticsenators don't respond to the desires of these voters, either. At all!

It doesn't take a multivariate correlation to conclude that these two things are tightly related: If politicians care almost exclusively about the concerns of the rich, it makes sense that over the past decades they've enacted policies that have ended up benefiting the rich. And if you're not rich yourself, this is a problem. First and foremost, it's an economic problem because it's siphoned vast sums of money from the pockets of most Americans into those of the ultra-wealthy. At the same time, relentless concentration of wealth and power among the rich is deeply corrosive in a democracy, and this makes it a profoundly political problem as well.

Just something to think about as you get together with your family for the holidays. Perhaps you are all rich and successful and this is all very funny to you but perhaps, just maybe - if you look around the family table - you might realize that people who have the same background as you, with the same opportunities as you, through no fault of their own other than slightly different circumstances - are not as successful as you are. Maybe, just maybe, if you can see that - you can see how our society as a whole may be skewing a bit too far to the right and perhaps, just maybe - you may see it fit to resolve to help change that in the new year.

Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless. -Ecclesiastes 5:10

Have a very happy holiday.

The Great American Swindle Is Obama's Big Mistake!

There were 116,011,000 households in the United States, in 2006. Of this figure, 2% exceeded $250,000. 12.3% fell below the poverty line. 20% were living at the bottom of the income ladder with $19,178. Median income was $50,233. No doubt, these figures have worsened. The top 6.37% earned 1/3 of all income. Median income per household member was $26,036, in 2006.

The top 2 quintiles of income earners earned over $91,000, which was 77%, in 2006. The 2 mid-quintiles earned between $36,000 to $57,000. The lowest quintile earners earned $19,000 or lower. A quintile equals 20% of a given amount.

The Chinese middle class population has 100 million to 247 million people. There exports dropped 25.7% in February YoY, for the fourth straight month as the world demand began to shrink. The Chinese imported less, as well. They bought 24.1% less stuff. Professor Michael Pettis reported on his blog, an article printed in the Financial Times quoting the Commerce Minister Chen Deming that “China will reduce export taxes to zero and give more financial support to exporters as it tries to increase its share of global trade in the current crisis.” It went on to say that China would “use all possible measures to ensure the stable growth of our exports and prevent a large drop in external demand.” Chen Deming went on to say, “We should increase our share of the global market…We must transform ourselves from a big export nation to a strong export nation.” So, how come President Obama is not saying the same thing? Oh, I forgot, he is saying that about zombie banks.

Professor Pettis wrote the following, “It’s probably not a good idea to announce a drive to increase China’s share of the global market, especially since for the last several months, while the world has suffered a collapse in demand, China’s share of exports has risen dramatically, but this may have been said primarily for domestic consumption.” Mr. Chen realizes that China is facing tough times ahead with their foreign trade business. This will mean that China may likely find their trade surplus falling quickly to a reported amount of $4.8B. We haven’t seen a trade surplus for a very long time. Professor Pettis stated that there are many who feel that the days of massive monthly trade surpluses are over.

President Obama and you Knights of the Roundtable, if massive trade surpluses are likely to come to an end, then which countries will continue to fund our budget deficits? Professor Pettis sends out a warning. “There is a real need for an adjustment consumption in the U.S, and I don’t think it makes sense for the U.S. to attempt to replace excess household consumption with excess government consumption. One way or the other the U.S, along with China and most other countries that have contributed to one side or the other of the global imbalances, is going to have to accept a demand contraction….Trade friction is an issue that will not easily go away.” He concludes his intelligent and insightful writing with this, “…China would be able to keep its growth at about 8 percent this year, a growth rate long believed to be minimum to create enough jobs and maintain social stability….China’s economy accounted for only five percent of the world’s total.” China alone cannot revive the world.”

U.S. manufacturing has declined over the last 12 consecutive months. And, these top ten red state hypocrites received the most per dollar spent in federal spending:

New Mexico=$2.03, Mississippi=$2.02; Alaska=$1.84; Louisiana=$1.78, West Virginia=$1.76, North Dakota=$1.68, Alabama=$1.53; South Dakota=$1.53, Kentucky=$1.51, Virginia=$1.51. So much for rejecting socialism!

President Obama and Team, what amount of growth does the U.S. need to create enough jobs and maintain social stability? It seems you are more concerned in stabilizing the balance sheets of the uber-richest people, and banksta thieves. Is the People’s Republic of China on to something we are missing in the home of the brave and land of the free?

One in five homeowners are underwater, which means that the value of the home is more than what the home actually is. This means that the home is not as valuable as the mortgage and the house is not worth what the owner is paying for the mortgage. This is when the owner might actually consider walking away from what might be considered a lost cause. Such homeowners are typically those who are able to pay on their overpriced mortgage, but instead, might think of packing up and walking away from it. If an unfortunate life situation occurs that would cause economic pressures to bear down on their expenses creating undue financial stresses, the owner might just give the keys over to the bank.

If your house is worth more than your mortgage, you can often refinance, but it won’t work the other way around. When the mortgage is worth more than the current value and the payments, the payments are not paying the house off. This is called negative equity. Often the homeowner is paying on a mortgage in excess of the value of the house and is not paying anything on the house and not getting closer to any ownership of the house.

When the mortgage is bigger than the house value no bank will refinance. It locks the owners into their own home without ever getting a chance to sell at a break-even or profit price.

1 in 10 homeowners are in default or in foreclosure. 10,000 Americans enter foreclosure everyday. 2.3 million homeowners were in foreclosure in 2008.

42,000 companies closed in 2008, up 45% from 2007. It is predicted that 62,000 companies will close in 2009. So what happens? Workers lose their jobs. Then they realize they can no longer keep paying on their mortgages, credit cards, cars, or whatever else, and walk away from those specific debt burdens, since the government is not helping them, but only the mega-banks with $11T in commitments. For example, Citi, which is only worth $5.4B has been given $75B in taxpayer bailouts. AIG, which has a total market value of only $1B, has been given $180B in taxpayer bailout funds. Yet the taxpayer is left hanging to blow in the wind!

The FDIC placed 20 banks into receivership in 2009.

When one looks at unemployment, underemployment, those no longer looking for work, no longer in the data bases, and working a part-time job instead of a full-time job, or a part-time job that pays less than the last one they lost, the figure is 15-19% un/underemployed. This number rises to over 22 million people. During the Great Depression, at its peak we had 20-25% unemployment.

50 million jobs have been lost worldwide just in 2009. We are shedding jobs at a rate of 23,000 jobs everyday! 4.4 million jobs have been lost since the crisis began last year, and 6.8 million underemployed. The recession began in 2007, and already has stolen over 4.4 million jobs away from the real economy and sent 12.5 million in search of work. The economy contracted at 6.2% in the final three months of 2008, and the worst we have seen in the last 25 years. The economy will see further contraction throughout this year, possibly at the same rate.

In the world of banking, and found in the article by Bill Dedman, 3-17-09, MSNBC.com, U.S. Banks Suffer 149% Rise In Bad Loans, “Out of 8,198 banks for which we have two years of data, 5,784—or 71%--had a higher troubled asset ratio at the end of 2008 than a year earlier”. “The picture was worse for the largest 100 banks: 90 showed declining strength. Only seven improved, and one maintained the same ratio.” Data taken by the American University group that had created the website, Bank Tracker.

On March 23, 2009, the DOW climbed back up to its January 2009 level—7775, which was the lowest it had ever been prior to that same all-time 5-year low back in October-November 2008. Prior to that it was 2002-03, then prior to that was 1997-98, which was the all-time high up to that point in time.

U.S. bank’s toxic assets, the ugly stuff that needed to be removed from the bank balance sheets before the economy can recover, amounts to between 5 and 30 cents on the dollar. To remain solvent, however, the banks say they need a valuation of 50-60 cents on the dollar. Translation: as much as another $2T taxpayer bailout, was written by Mike Whitney, Counterpunch.org, “Time for Geithner and Bernanke to Go”. Mr. Whitney also quoted from the Financial Times, “The U.S. firms include investment giants Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, with each receiving 100 cents on the dollar for their collateral debt obligations, although market value was only 47 cents on the dollar.” He went on to report that around March 3, 2009, “Within days after Obama announced plans to slightly reduce tax rates on deductions for the wealthiest 1.2% of taxpayers (from $35 to $28 for every $100 of deductions), Geithner quickly suggested that the Obama administration would be willing to drop or reduce the tax hike.” So much for helping the struggling working American.

$314 billion has been handed out to foreign central banks, while $600 billion was transferred to those same banks in December 2008. Bernanke and Geithner are printing up $2T for the latest scam called TALF, or Term Asset-Backed Loan Facility, in order to create more loans from auto, student, credit card loans, and business and corporate loans.

Since Reagan, US growth has only been 3% or less per year! Once the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation was put into play, in 2000, $62T in derivative trading grew by 2008.

It is said, with all the government obligations and debts, it is $60T in debt. Zbignew Brzezinski, former national security advisor under President Carter, told Joe Scarborough (Economic Crisis=USA Riots, 3-10-09, Ampedstatus.com) that there is the possibility of class warfare in the United States. “I was worrying about it because we’re going to have millions and millions of unemployed people in dire straits. And at the same time there is public awareness of this extraordinary wealth that was transferred to a few individuals at levels without historical precedent in America…”

One in 50 children are homeless! California, the 10th largest population in the United States had nearly 300,000 two years before the last stock market high in 2007. Sacramento leadership is now talking about government controlled and legal tent cities where the homeless can be taken and held. It is estimated that there are 1.5 million homeless children across the country. California ranked 40 out of 50 states with Texas being number 50, The State That Breeds Presidents. They don’t call it Lone Star for nothin’!!!!!! Is this the type of nation we want to pass on to future generations?

Yet we continue to spend $500B in the Middle East wars, and more billions in maintaining military domination with our 1000 worldwide bases in 200 countries. This military budget is more than the world’s entire military budgets put together! Yet, we have watched 23,000 jobs disappear everyday, and homelessness gather momentum. Is this the kind of nation YOU want? Is the type of country YOU want to pass on to others? Are YOU proud of this?

U.S. air cargo declined 21.3% in January 2009. In the March 6, 2009 online version of The Journal of Commerce, it was written that cargo traffic for U.S. airlines fell at the steepest rate since 9-01, in January. Carriers saw their worst month for cargo in nearly seven years. Domestic business tumbled 16.6% in January 2009 compared to a year ago. “The 838.3 million cargo ton miles the airlines reported was the lightest monthly domestic traffic measure since September 2001, and before that since February 1995.”

The Journal of Commerce-online continued to indicate that KLM air cargo business fell 18% from a year ago. British Air’s air cargo fell 20.7%. Asia/Pacific shipments dropped 17.7%. U.S. air traffic dropped 13.9% in February 2009.

Asian air cargo slumped 23.6% in January, and passenger numbers fell 7.8% as was reported in the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines, said on 3-6-09.

Container port traffic for February, found on bomlat.blogspot.com, stated that the traffic was down for another month. The February Chinese trade surplus was only $4.84B, which was 25% lower than the same period in 2008, and even lower than January, 2009 surplus. “The containerized exports in February were down 27.6% in Los Angeles, and 37% in Long Beach. The decline in imports was even greater, 35.3% in L.A. and 43.3% in Long Beach.” “The First Container Terminal in St. Petersburg, Russia’s biggest box terminal, reported traffic in February plunged 27.3 percent from a year ago as imports collapsed.” “Dutch foreign trade was hit hard in the global economic crisis with exports tumbling 21 percent in January from a year earlier, the biggest drop since the records were kept in 1990, the Dutch central statistics bureau (CBS) said on Friday. The value of goods exports fell to 24.4 billion euros (31.5 billion U.S. dollars), the CBS said. The volume of exports fell 14percent, according to figures corrected for working days. Imports also plummeted 22 percent to 21.6 billion euros, while the volume of imports decreased 14 percent.”

From what I have read the Truck Mileage Index of the U.S., in January 2009, has declined by more than 10%, as well as the truck inventory by 50%, which means that the investment in trucks has dropped.

73,000 retail enterprises have closed in 2009. 237,000 are projected to fail.

These numbers indicate that there is a worldwide consumer slowdown, so why are stock market numbers going up? It is all a head-fake!!!

Professor Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics, wrote in the Nation magazine, in his piece titled “A Bank Bailout That Works”, said that the banks are $2-3 trillion or more undercapitalized!

The IMF stated in a BBC report “there is now $2.2 trillion of toxic bank debt worldwide, and $500 billion more than it was estimated a few months ago.”

When workers lose their jobs, they cannot repay their debts, or afford to borrow, and when underemployed, their debts may exceed their income and/or assets. Also, the debt interest rates or borrowing costs on the debts could be too high making the payment process non-payable.

The vicious downward spiral begins. When workers lose jobs, businesses downsize and might have trouble paying their own debts. When workers lose jobs, they stop being consumers, then more businesses close and Pink Slip workers. Strip malls lose tenants, and close up. Developers seek bankruptcy protection. The economy slips further into its black hole toward depression. It ends up that all the money thrown at the mega-monopoly financial institutions, which are already insolvent, cannot issue credit. Credit becomes a moot point because there are fewer borrowers, yet these banks are filled with taxpayer dollars jacking up their “liquided-up” balance sheets. Yet these insolvent institutions continue to look the other way at their toxic debt-assets burning up all that we taxpayers have given them. Yet Citi claimed a profit, while not factoring in all their toxic debt into the supposed profit, as well as the fact that the taxpayer owns 80% of their stock. It is all a bad joke played on Americans!!! And, the administration is not calling them out.

Matt Taibbi, wrote in Rollingstone.com, in “The Big Takeover”, “In the final three months of last year, the company [AIG] lost more than $27 million every hour. That's $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG's 2008 losses).
So it's time to admit it: We're fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it is that we're still in denial — we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street…” (This article will explain the financial Ponzi scheme.)

The “Big Mistake” ends up glaring in the face of President Obama and the angry Americans that the bailout went to the wrong places, and the wrong people. Instead of rescuing mortgages, retirement funds, and jobs stabilizing the economy and easing troubled minds, we got a failed top down bailout plan. Does this look to you a little bit like Reagan’s failed trickle down economics theory, which delivered us into this economic tsunami?

thanks for reading, jerry

Postscript: This article can also be read at Economicrot, as well, thanks to Randy posting there!

Bill Moyers speaks with William Black, economist and former regulator about the banking fraud beginning back to Reagan. Mr. Black speaks about the current fraud, the cover-up, and that Geithner and Summers are deep within the fraud and cover-up. Watch it.