Japan Exports Drop Record 49% as Global Slump Deepens
- The stock market has rocketed 20+% so the economy must have improved a lot right? The way the stock market has charged higher you would think all our problems are over. Many say stock market price movement is a 6-12 months leading indicator of economic conditions. I don’t think so. World economy is getting much worse.
- Bloomberg reports :
Japan’s exports plunged a record 49.4 percent in February as deepening recessions in the U.S. and Europe sapped demand for the country’s cars and electronics.Shipments to the U.S., the country’s biggest market, tumbled an unprecedented 58.4 percent from a year earlier, the Finance Ministry said today in Tokyo. Automobile exports slid 70.9 percent.
The collapse signals gross domestic product may shrink this quarter at a similar pace to the annualized 12.1 percent contraction posted in the previous three months, the sharpest since 1974. Prime Minister Taro Aso is compiling his third stimulus package as companies from Toyota Motor Corp. to Panasonic Corp. fire thousands of workers.
“There’s a still of lot of weakness out there; that’s going to be a big drag on production and most people are looking for the first-quarter GDP to be as bad as the previous quarter,” said David Cohen, director of Asian economic forecasting at Action Economics in Singapore. “Japan is as dependent on exports as anybody.”
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Sharpest Since 1980
Last month’s drop in exports was the sharpest since at least 1980, when the government started to keep comparable data. Economists predicted a 47.6 percent decline.
Toyota, forecasting its first net loss in 59 years, yesterday said overseas shipments plunged 69 percent in February. Demand fell across all regions. Exports to Europe dropped a record 54.7 percent, shipments to Asia declined 46.3 percent and goods sent to China slumped 39.7 percent.
Imports fell a record 43 percent, helping Japan post its first trade surplus in five months. The 82.4 billion yen ($842 million) surplus was still 91.2 percent lower than the same month a year earlier.
Sentiment among Japan’s largest manufacturers probably fell to a 33-year low this month, economists predict the Bank of Japan’s Tankan survey will show next week.
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Worst Recession
Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano said on March 22 that a new stimulus package of as much as 20 trillion yen, double the amount pledged since October, is “not out of line” as the world’s second-biggest economy heads for its worst recession since 1945. The spending would add to public debt already estimated at 170 percent of gross domestic product.
“There’s been a structural shock to the manufacturing sector,” said Hiroshi Shiraishi, an economist at BNP Paribas in Tokyo. “Yes, the government can create demand temporarily, but that can’t fill the export gap forever.”
Japan has become more reliant on exports in the past decade, making it especially vulnerable to changes in global commerce, which the World Trade Organization forecasts will shrink 9 percent this year, the most since World War II. During Japan’s expansion of 2002 to 2007, exports as a portion of GDP rose to 15.6 percent from 10.4 percent.
Fared Worse
Asia’s largest economy fared worse last month than its neighbors. Exports from South Korea fell 17.1 percent, about half the pace of the decline in the previous month. Taiwan’s shipments slid 28.6 percent after dropping a record 44.1 percent in January.
“The fact that these other countries are doing a little better might give Japan some encouragement that world demand is bottoming out,” said Action Economics’ Cohen. “It should only be a matter of time before Japan shows the same stabilization.”
There are signs that China, Japan’s second-largest overseas market, is stabilizing. The World Bank said last week that government spending on roads, power grids and housing is “working” to take up the slack left by plunging exports.
“For some sectors like the chemical and raw-material industries, they’re seeing some rebound in demand coming from China,” said BNP’s Shiraishi. “Basically, demand for key industries — transportation machinery, electronics, general machinery — those aren’t recovering.”
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Porritt – UK Population Must Fall to 30M
- From 61 million people to 30 million. How exactly does this fella think UK is going to ‘remove’ half its population. There are a lot of strange people around with even stranger ideas. This certainly reminds me of the Illuminati’s de-population plan.
- The Sunday Times UK reports :
JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society. Porritt’s call will come at this week’s annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which he is patron.
The trust will release research suggesting UK population must be cut to 30m if the country wants to feed itself sustainably. Porritt said: “Population growth, plus economic growth, is putting the world under terrible pressure.
“Each person in Britain has far more impact on the environment than those in developing countries so cutting our population is one way to reduce that impact.”
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Population growth is one of the most politically sensitive environmental problems. The issues it raises, including religion, culture and immigration policy, have proved too toxic for most green groups.
Such views on population have split the green movement. George Monbiot, a prominent writer on green issues, has criticised population campaigners, arguing that “relentless” economic growth is a greater threat.
Many experts believe that, since Europeans and Americans have such a lopsided impact on the environment, the world would benefit more from reducing their populations than by making cuts in developing countries.
This is part of the thinking behind the OPT’s call for Britain to cut population to 30m — roughly what it was in late Victorian times. Britain’s population is expected to grow from 61m now to 71m by 2031. Some politicians support a reduction.
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Despite these comments, however, government and Conservative spokesmen this weekend both distanced themselves from any population policy.
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Joseph Stiglitz – Geithner Plan will Rob American Taxpayers
- Stiglitz is absolutely right ! This is legalized theft. No better than daylight robbery. Reuters reports :
The U.S. government plan to rid banks of toxic assets will rob American taxpayers by exposing them to too much risk and is unlikely to work as long as the economy remains weak, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said on Tuesday.
“The Geithner plan is very badly flawed,” Stiglitz told Reuters in an interview during a Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference in Hong Kong.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s plan to wipe up to US$1 trillion in bad debt off banks’ balance sheets, unveiled on Monday, offered “perverse incentives,” Stiglitz said.
The U.S. government is basically using the taxpayer to guarantee against downside risk on the value of these assets, while giving the upside, or potential profits, to private investors, he said.
“Quite frankly, this amounts to robbery of the American people. I don’t think it’s going to work because I think there’ll be a lot of anger about putting the losses so much on the shoulder of the American taxpayer.”
Even if the plan clears banks of massive toxic debt, worries about the economic outlook mean banks could still be unwilling to make fresh loans, while the prospect of a higher tax burden to pay for various government stimulus plans could further undermine U.S. consumers, he said.
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Stiglitz welcomed China’s proposal on Monday for an overhaul of the world monetary system in which Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, said the IMF’s Special Drawing Right has the potential to become a super-sovereign reserve currency.
Stiglitz has long called for the U.S. dollar to be replaced as the only reserve currency. Basing a reserve system on a single currency whose strength depends on confidence its own economy is not a good basis for a global system, he says.
“We may be at the beginning of a loss of confidence (in the U.S. dollar reserve system),” he said. “I think there is support for some sort of global reserve system.”
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Ron Paul – They are going to Destroy the Dollar
- Senator Ron Paul on the US dollar. The US government is moving towards inflation in a big way to inflate away the national debt. ie devaluation of the US dollar.
- Political chaos, social unrest and fascism on the rise.
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London G20 Summit: Last Chance Before Global Geopolitical Dislocation – 1 World Central Bank & 1 World Currency
- The drive towards the centralization of control continues. This is the major push towards a 1 world ‘sovereign’ bank to issue a 1 world currency and undoubtedly ’666′ in the not too distant future.
- This crisis is engineered by the Illuminati banksters for the creation of this new global ‘sovereign’ bank entity to enable global government. What do these Satanists want? A dictatorial police state that micro-chips all its citizens with ’666′. This is just what the Bible predicted.
- In the past week, China, Russia and many emerging countries are calling for a new global currency to replace the USD. This is just what the Illuminati planned for, using their Hegelian dialectic: thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis. Or more easily understood: Action, Reaction and Solution.
- You first engineer a crisis (Action). The people respond to this engineered crisis (Reaction). You introduce your pre-planned Solution. Of course, the sheeple do not know that the crisis was manufactured in the first place to drive them to the Solution. The Solution will look like the most logical, well thought out answer and will totally resolve the problem. Any logical, rational person will think that this Solution is the answer. But of course there are a lot of hidden agendas to this Solution.
- I am an admirer of GEAB’s forecasts. They have been exceptionally accurate and lucid in pointing to the problems, trends and issues of the crisis. (Note: I am in no way implying that they are part of the Illuminati.) Franck Biancheri of GEAB comments :
Open letter to the G20 leaders
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Your next summit takes place in a few days in London; but are you aware that you have less than a semester to prevent the world from plunging into a crisis that will take at least a decade to resolve, accompanied by a whole series of tragedies and ferment? Therefore, this open letter by LEAP/E2020, who saw the arrival of a « global systemic crisis » as early as three years ago, intends to briefly explain why it happened and how to limit further damage.
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This crisis is getting more and more dangerous. Recently, in the 32nd edition of its Bulletin, LEAP/E2020 raised an alarm of direct concern to you, the leaders of the G20. If, when gathered in London next April 2nd, you are not able to adopt a number of bold and innovative decisions, focused on the essential issues and problems, and to initiate them by summer 2009, then the crisis will entail a « general geopolitical dislocation » by the end of the year, affecting the international system as well as the very structure of large political entities such as the United States, Russia, China or the EU. Any chance for you to control the fate of the 6 billion inhabitants of the world will then be over.
Your choice: a 3- to 5-year crisis or a decade-at-least long crisis?
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In the case of a major crisis, one must get to the heart of the matter. The only choice is between undertaking a number of radical changes, thus greatly shortening the duration of the crisis and diminishing its tragic outcome or, on the contrary, refusing to make any such changes in an attempt to save what is left of the present system, thus extending the crisis’ duration and increasing all the negative consequences. In London, next April 2nd, you can either pave the way for the crisis to be solved in an organised manner in 3 to 5 years, or drag the world through a terrible decade.
We will content ourselves with giving you three recommendations that we consider strategic ones in the sense that, according to LEAP/E2020, if they have not been initiated by this summer 2009, global geopolitical dislocation will become inevitable from the end of this year onward.
LEAP’S THREE STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS
1. The key to solving the crisis lies in creating a new international reserve currency!
The first recommendation is a very simple idea: reform the international monetary system inherited post-wwii and create a new international reserve currency. The US Dollar and economy are no longer capable of supporting the current global economic, financial and monetary order. As long as this strategic problem is not directly addressed and solved, the crisis will grow. Indeed it is at the heart of the crises of derivative financial products, banks, energy prices… and of their consequences in terms of mass unemployment and collapsing living standards.
It is therefore of vital importance that this issue should be the main subject of the G20 summit, and that the first steps towards a solution are initiated. In fact, the solution to this problem is well-known, it is about creating an international reserve currency (which could be called the « Global ») based on a basket of currencies corresponding to the world’s largest economies, i.e. US dollar, Euro, Yen, Yuan, Khaleeji(common currency of oil-producing Gulf states, to be launched in January 2010), Ruble, Real…, managed by a « World Monetary Institute » whose Board will reflect the respective weight of the economies whose currencies comprise the « Global ». You must ask the imf andconcerned central banks to prepare this plan for June 2009, with an implementation date of January 1st, 2010.
This is the only way for you to regain some control over currently unwinding events, and this is the only way for you to bring about shared global management, based on a shared currency located at the centre of economic and financial activity. According to LEAP/E2020, if this alternative to the currently collapsing system has not been initiated by this summer 2009, proving that there is another solution than the « every man for himself » approach, today’s international system will not survive this summer.
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2. Set up bank control schemes as soon as possible!
The second recommendation has already been mentioned many times in the preliminary debates to your upcoming summit. It should therefore be easy to adopt. It is about creating, before the end of this year, a scheme of bank control on a global scale, suppressing all the system’s « black holes ». A number of options have already been suggested by your experts. Make up your mind now: nationalize financial institutions as soon as is necessary! It is the only way to prevent a new episode of massive indebtment by them (the kind of episode which significantly contributed to the current crisis), and to show to the general public that you have some credibility to deal with bankers.
3. Get the IMF to assess the US, UK and Swiss financial systems!
The third recommendation relates to a politically sensitive issue, which cannot be ignored. It is essential that, no later than July 2009, the imf presents to the G20 an independent assessment of the three national financial systems at the heart of the current financial crisis: US, UK and Switzerland. No sustainable recommendation can be efficiently implemented as long as no one has any clear understanding of the damage caused by the crisis inside these three pillars of the global financial system. It is no longer time to be polite with the countries located at the centre of the current financial chaos.
- Will the G20 move towards a 1 world ‘sovereign’ bank and 1 world currency? I think so ! Is this the end of the USD? I think so! A planned and engineered end. It does not look good for Americans.
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Trillion Dollar Bailouts Will Lead To Destruction Of Western Currencies
- Associate Director of Tyche Martin Hennecke warned in a CNBC interview that Treasury’s announcement to buy $1 trillion more of toxic debt, together with last week’s announcement by the Fed to throw a further $1 trillion at the problem, is a continuation of what caused the crisis in the first place. Such measures will ultimately lead to the destruction of major western currencies and staggering hyperinflation.
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Corporatism – The Secret Government of the New World Order
- Jeffrey Grupp on Alex Jones TV. YouTube :
Jeffrey Grupp, the author of Corporatism: The Secret Government of the New World Order.Corporatism is the merger of big business with big government. It is a political and economic system where labor bosses and bankers are the government. Under corporatism, corporations control the economy. Through it, they control the social and psychological structure of a nation. Corporatism is a system where government is obsessed with corporate profit, in any way needed, regardless of human cost
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Why the End of America is Closer than You Think !
- Mike Adams has written an excellent piece :
I recently moved to Ecuador. Not for a vacation. Not for a month or two. I moved to Ecuador for good, as a permanent resident. Upon hearing my plans for living in South America, many people who knew me in the States asked things like, “Well what about the stability of Ecuador as a nation?” To which I would respond, “Oh, you mean the stability of banks that don’t make loans and don’t invest in derivatives? You mean the stability of a nation where the population still has the courage to march in the streets and throw corrupt officials out of its capitol?”
These questions make Americans pause. Most tend to think of public demonstrations as signs of a political instability. But in fact, public demonstrations are a sign of a healthy Democratic process. And Democracy is alive and well in Ecuador (with the usual level of corruption you find in any democracy).
It is in America, where the sheeple have been terrorized into staying inside the boundaries of their little “protest zones,” that you find a fragile, unstable nation.
Through complacency and fear-mongering, most Americans have become cowards when it comes to political activism. They think emailing their Senator a few times a year is all that’s required to defend freedom and preserve a nation. Marching in the streets is seen as uncivilized… or even unpatriotic! The government agrees with this, too, now labeling anyone who protests in public a “potential terrorist” and targeting them for FBI investigations. (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2C29…)
The multi-trillion-dollar theft scheme
In the mean time, while the sheeple of America are caught up in their hypnotic dreams of world domination, white-collar hoodlums in Washington D.C. and Wall Street are stealing everything!
The oft-repeated creation of $1 trillion in new money out of thin air by the Federal Reserve has made the U.S. dollar the laughing stock of the world. The leaders of the G20 nations have already decided to ditch the dollar and shift to other world reserve currencies, and China is now blatantly and publicly asking the U.S. put up some kind of collateral to back up future debt purchases, to which the U.S. says “Don’t worry about the debt. We’re good for it!”
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The Fed’s plan to increase the money supply 15-fold
But the real story starts to unfold when you realize the Federal Reserve is now hell bent on multiplying the U.S. money supply by a whopping fifteen times in 2009! This excellent article explains how this number is derived: http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/…
Now think about this: If the Federal Reserve increases the U.S. money supply by a factor of fifteen, that means your dollars will be worth only 1/15th the value they represent right now. So a loaf of bread that costs a dollar right now could cost $15 when all this extra money ripples through the system. (Which will obviously take a couple of years, but 2009 will be the beginning of it.)
This is called “hyperinflation.” We’re talking about a loss of over 93% of the purchasing power of the dollar. That, my friends, is called a collapse of the currency.
And once it starts, the floodgates will be opened and the tsunami of investors and nations offloading dollars will be catastrophic and irreversible. By the time it’s all done, the dollar might end up losing 99.9% of its value, and you can use greenbacks to light a fire or wipe your back side, as they will be useless for anything else.
Why America’s currency — and government — is headed for total collapse
That’s why I say America’s days are numbered. The America as we know it, at least. This repeated creation of trillions of dollars in new money by the Federal Reserve is the last great looting of the U.S. economy by the wealthy elite. The Titanic is sinking, and high officials have monopolized the life rafts, leaving everyone else to drown with the ship. And while they’re rowing away from the doomed vessel that’s taking on water, they shout back to the low-income workers clinging to the rails, “Don’t worry! The ship isn’t really sinking. It’s just ‘correcting!’”
The truth is that America IS sinking — and it’s not just the currency I’m talking about here: America’s criminal health care system has sickened the population and outlawed any real healing practices, too. Meanwhile, the FDA and FTC have attempted to destroy all knowledge of natural remedies that can prevent and cure disease, further compromising the future of the American People.
On the dollars-and-cents side, America’s economy is a fictitious mish-mash of corporations selling poisons to the people, and people buying junk they don’t need, and everybody paying through the nose for disease care services that ultimately provide no net benefit to the population.
America’s infrastructure is crumbling, its industries are already gutted, and its exports resemble third-world agricultural nations more than first-world developed nations. Its political leadership is, with very few exceptions, a band of diseased, ignorant influence peddlers who sell out their constituents at every opportunity.
Perhaps more importantly, America has abandoned the principle of law. Laws no longer matter in America because they are selectively enforced only against those who threaten powerful institutions or corporations. America is no longer a nation of freedom and justice for all. Rather, it is a nation of greed and profit for the few, followed by oppression and bankruptcy for everybody else.
What’s coming soon for America
Given these circumstances, it is not difficult to predict the demise of America as we know it. The U.S. dollar will eventually collapse or be abandoned. This could happen literally overnight, or it could take years, but make no mistake: The American people will not be forewarned of the collapse of the dollar. It will be a sudden, surprise announcement, and all the politicians and banking elitists who engineered the whole thing will pronounce their “shock” that such a thing could happen! “We could never have predicted this,” they will insist, even while the whole thing was actually engineered by the very same people.
One day, Americans will wake up and discover that all banks are on “bank holidays” (which means that someone in Washington is taking a holiday with your money while YOU can’t access it).
Within hours, the National Guard will roll into the cities of the United States, and Americans will find themselves penniless prisoners in their own country. Anyone who protests will be arrested or shot. Law will be dispensed at the end of military rifles, and the President will get on television and explain how this is all being done for YOUR benefit! It’s for your own safety and protection, didn’t you know?
From here, it’s difficult to say exactly what will unfold. We could see UN troops on U.S. soil, the IMF taking over the U.S. banking system, and the forced transition to a global currency. Other possibilities include the Balkanizationof the formerly-united States of America, with regional nation-states declaring their own independence from Washington.
During this chaos, just-in-time delivery of food and products will grind to a halt. Store shelves will be emptied. A healthy economy of barter will immediately spring up to fill the void. Those who have things to trade (toilet paper, butter, salt, sugar, matches, gold, silver, food, fuel, etc.) will eat. Those who don’t will starve. Health will plummet and infectious disease will become a very real threat in many cities. The conventional medical system will, of course, be utterly useless and will run out of medicine within days or weeks.
This economic transition chaos will be short-lived, however, and from the ashes of economic turmoil will spring a new nation (or nations) of People who have finally awakened from their complacency. New governments will be forged, and the fields of economic ruin will be ripe for the planting and sprouting of new ideas from a new generation of visionary leaders.
- His cataclysmic view about America is the same as mine. Unfortunately, the sheeple still prefer to be ignorant. Ignorance is bliss right? I suppose if their house is on fire, some people will happily be ignorant of the fire and continue watching their soap, sitcoms and what not…. Until their children dies and they suffocate in the smoke. Finally, the sheeple ask : “Why me God? Why me? Why are you so cruel?”. The answer is: Why not you? Many warnings are given but sheeple just want to live in their dreamland. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
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China calls for New Reserve Currency – 1 World Currency ’666′ Just Around the Corner
- The USD is on life support. Not much longer to live IMO. Financial Times reports :
China’s central bank on Monday proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund.
In an essay posted on the People’s Bank of China’s website, Zhou Xiaochuan, the central bank’s governor, said the goal would be to create a reserve currency “that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies”.
Obama Economic Program: Increased Bondage to Wall Street Billionaires
- Will all these new economic programs by the Obama administration work? It is the legalized ‘stealing’ of taxpayer funds to support the banksters. American taxpayers, Main Street, need to wake up to this reality. Why can’t we just let the banks go bust? America has more than 8000 banks. So what if these big ones collapse. Taxpayers foot the bill for AIG’s incompetence. AIG uses the bailout money to pay off banksters. Why can’t these bankster counter parties take a loss. Why should it be borne by taxpayers? See The Real AIG Conspiracy .
- Richard C. Cook op-eds :
The Obama administration is spending hundreds of billions of dollars trying to persuade the banking system to restart lending. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke plans to create hundreds of billions more of new bank reserves by purchasing mortgage-related debt. With Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner working together, “the initiative will seek to entice private investors, including big hedge funds, to participate by offering billions of dollars in low-interest loans to finance the purchases. The government will share the risks if the assets fall further in price.” (Martin Crutsinger, AP) Finally, President Obamais taking over the distinction of being the biggest Keynesian in history with a fiscal year 2009 deficit of $1.75 trillion.
The cancer of debt grows by the day. According to Michael Hodges’ famed “Grandfather Economic Report”: “America has become more a debt ‘junkie’ than ever before, with total debt of $57 trillion, and the highest debt ratio in history. That’s $186, 717 per man, woman and child.”
With the federal bailouts of the financial system and the recession, the debt load has increased by $4 trillion in the last six months. What are we going to do with even more debt coming?
The growth in debt will be impossible for households to deal with when more then half a million jobs are still being lost per month. Impossible too for U.S. businesses when the drop-off of consumer spending reflects not only job loss but also a new propensity to actually save a portion of our earnings after the mortgage-based spending spree of the last decade.
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The Obama economic program, which so-called progressives call “revolutionary,” will take us further away from, not closer to, real solutions. The massive new debt it creates can only be enforced by the courts, the police, and ultimately military power. Within the U.S., the authorities are preparing for civil unrest. Overseas, “dollar hegemony,” the system by which nations like China continue to enable our massive debt, is increasingly unstable as the world bails on the dollar as its reserve currency.
- What is the history behind these banksters ? How did they take control of America to enslave everyone? Richard C. Cook again :
We live and work under a debt-based monetary system that has been in force since Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. It’s how the system works. The government goes into debt, and the banking system then uses it as a reserve base for lending to the public.
It wasn’t always this way. In the 19th century, until the Civil War, the government lived within its means. President Thomas Jefferson balanced the federal budget for eight consecutive years, and President Andrew Jackson paid off the national debt.
Back then the government issued currency based on gold and silver, and the U.S. mint stamped precious metals into coinage for anyone who brought it through the door. Local commerce was fueled by a system of state and local banks operating on the “real bills” doctrine. Inflation was virtually unknown, and unpaid debt led swiftly to bankruptcy and a sheriff’s sale.
When the Civil War began, President Lincoln needed money fast. The New York bankers offered outrageous terms: interest at 24-34 percent. So Lincoln was authorized by Congress to print and spend Greenback money directly into circulation. Contrary to later propaganda, the Greenbacks were not inflationary. They were upheld by the Supreme Court as constitutional and remained in circulation until the early 20th century. They even spawned the Greenback Party that elected members of Congress and ran candidates for president.
But the bankers, by now centered on Wall Street, gained a foothold with the National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864, where the banks were allowed to purchase Treasury bonds as a lending reserve. Currency issued by the state and local banks with their hard money reserves were taxed out of existence.
In 1913 the bankers’ trap snapped shut when the Federal Reserve System came into existence. After World War I, the currency inflated so much that the value of both the Greenbacks and coinage were destroyed.
A monetary system based on bank lending means constant cycles of inflation and deflation. The banks create these financial bubbles then destroy them, always to their profit. In the 19thcentury, the deflations were called “panics.” The Great Depression was a bank-created panic on an unprecedented scale. The collapse of 2008-2009 is the panic we’re in now, but with plenty of assets on the market at fire-sale prices for those rich enough to cash in. For instance, there was a lot of hand-wringing when Citigroup’s stock dropped to $1 a share. But those who could still buy-in saw their holdings triple in value when the stock rose to $3 a share a few days later.
- The banksters own the government. They are stealing from Main Street to enrich themselves. See also :
Ron Paul – I See No Purpose for the Federal Reserve!
Banksters Rule America !
The Federal Reserve: Secretive And Incompetent Organization ! The Creature From Jekyll Island.
History of Money & Fractional Reserve Banking System
How International Bankers Gained Control of America!
Federal Reserve is a Private Company.
Ron Paul – Federal Reserve is the Culprit!
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Eliminating Symptoms of Parkinson Through Electrical Stimulation
- Great news for people with Parkinson’s disease. The Guardian UK reports :
Symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in mice disappeared when their brains were stimulated via spinal electrodes
A ground-breaking medical device that eliminates the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease by electrically stimulating the brain could be tested in humans as early as next year, according to scientists working on the project.
The device has produced dramatic improvements in mice with a Parkinson’s-like disease, raising hopes that it could transform the lives of the four million people worldwide who have the devastating condition.
In tests, mice that suffered constant tremors and were barely able to walk because of the disease started moving around, groomed themselves and began eating and drinking normally when the device was switched on.
“If we see the same effect in people as we see in rodents, then Parkinson’s patients will be able to walk and move around the way they could before the disease came on. This could lead to a very dramatic improvement in their quality of life,” said Miguel Nicolelis, the neuroscientist who led the study at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
Nicolelis is one of the world’s leading researchers on “brain-machine interfaces”. In recent years, he has developed brain implants that can read people’s thoughts, allowing them to move cursors on a screen and even use artificial limbs. Such devices are expected to lead to a new generation of mind-controlled prosthetics for the severely disabled.
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Nicolelis’s research suggests it may be possible to control the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease more easily, and with less drastic surgery, by sending electrical pulses along spinal cord nerves and into the brain. The stimulation would cause a tingling sensation, Nicolelis told the Guardian, but the brain would soon adapt to this, in the same way we become used to having clothes rubbing against our skin.
The team is now testing the technique at a lab in Brazil to see if it works in primates. If the experiments are successful, the device could be cleared for clinical trials in humans next year.
“If we can demonstrate that the device is safe and effective over the long term in primates and then humans, virtually every patient could be eligible for this treatment in the near future,” Nicolelis said.
Dr Kieran Breen, director of research and development at the Parkinson’s Disease Society, said: “Deep brain stimulation can be very effective in the treatment of some people with Parkinson’s, but it is very invasive to the brain and can cause side effects. This new study suggests that it may be possible to stimulate the nerves in the spine to send an electrical signal up into the brain with a similar effect to that seen in DBS, without being as invasive.”
“These initial studies have been carried out in animals,” he added, “but if they become possible for people with Parkinson’s, it could greatly increase the range of treatment options available for the condition. An operation of this kind would cost significantly less than DBS, so is likely to be more widely available.”
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Zimbabwe Chooses South African Rand as Reference Currency
- The Zimbabwean government is a ‘positive’ model of how to hyper-inflate the economy and engineer a successful monetary collapse. Not that they are a bunch of geniuses, any idiot with half a functioning brain should be able to destroy the economy. Makes you wonder what kind of idiots we have in government. Soon we will have United States of ZimbAmerica.
- XinHua reports :
The Zimbabwean government has chosen the rand as the country’s reference currency but will not randify the economy, local media said.
Speaking at the launch of the Short-Term Economic Recovery Program (STERP) on Thursday, Finance Minister Tendai Biti said the government had chosen the rand because South Africa was Zimbabwe’s biggest trading partner and the most competitive country for assessing prices and wages.
“Given the United States dollar price structure we are starting with, and the impossibility of restoring competitiveness through currency devaluation when we are using foreign currencies, it is important that we link ourselves to a currency that is more proximate to us,” said the minister.
The choice of the currency was determined by economic factors as well as the future intention of SADC to adopt a common currency, which inevitably will have to be based on the rand given the dominance of the South African economy in the region.
Opting for the rand as the reference currency should in no way reduce Government’s commitment to multiple currency use, the minister said.
”It is, however, the first step in anticipating an epoch when we can resume use of the Zimbabwe dollar,” he said. It was, nonetheless, necessary to first restore the multi-currency economy to a reasonable and sustainable level of activity.
“STERP, responding to the hyper-inflationary environment, will permit use of multiple currencies for all business transactions, including stock exchange trading, sale of agricultural commodities and payment of salaries.
”All taxes will, therefore, be paid in foreign currency,” the minister said. The government adopted a multiple currency trading system last month where the rand, the U.S. dollar and Botswana pula operate as legal tender alongside the Zimbabwean dollar.
The US dollar and the rand have, however, been the two major currencies in use in the country. The move was part of efforts to achieve economic liberalisation to pull the economy out of the present challenges.
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Two Million March Across France
Protesters denounce M. Sarkozy's economic strategy in Paris - Reuters
- More turmoil in the world. Now a major country of the EU, France is protesting. Sarkozy definitely has his work cut out for him. The Independent reports :
Sarkozy fears revolt as two million march across France
President Nicolas Sarkozy was facing the prospect of a deepening social and political revolt yesterday after more than two million people took to the streets to protest against his handling of the global recession.
French trades unions succeeded in mobilising even more protesters than for their previous, impressive show of strength in late January. A day of strikes in the public and private sectors did not bring the country to a halt but disrupted transport, schools and government offices, newspapers and radio stations and some factories.
M. Sarkozy is known to be worried that a lingering and hot-tempered dispute over university reforms could merge with the anger generated by the recession to create the kind of April-May street revolt that France has known in the past, notably in 1968.
Yesterday’s protests in 200 towns and cities, including a raucous march by about 350,000 people in Paris, passed off peacefully apart from the usual end-of-demo vandalism and missile-throwing by a minority. Police made 300 arrests last night after running battles with hooded youths.
Judging by the faces and voices in the Paris march, the challenge to M. Sarkozy is coming not just from a hot-headed fringe, or from the usual suspects of the left, but from a groundswell of anger and fear among ordinary people. Nathalie Brisac, 48, a teacher training instructor, said: “I have never attended a demonstration before. There is no point in protesting against the recession, but we can demand fairness in the way the government responds to it: less money for bankers and more for ordinary people.”
A poll suggested the protests were supported by 74 per cent of French voters. With unemployment over two million, the unions want M. Sarkozy to protect jobs, boost wages and scrap his 50 per cent tax “ceiling”.
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The Real AIG Conspiracy
- Everyone and their dog is talking about the outrageous US$135M AIG bonuses. What they don’t understand is something called: switch and bait. The MSM seems awfully righteous, blaring away about these bonuses.
- But what is the real problem? What is the major con job that is under way? This ‘bonus’ issue is just a distraction to hide what is really going on. Where are the US$ 183B disappearing to? Get it?
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Prof. Michael Hudson opines :
It may seem odd, but the public outrage against $135 million in AIG bonuses is a godsend to Wall Street, AID scoundrels included. How can the media be so preoccupied with the discovery that there is self-serving greed to be found in the financial sector? Every TV channel and every newspaper in the country, from right to left, have made these bonuses the lead story over the past two days.
What is wrong with this picture? Is there not something over-inflated about the outrage led most vociferously by Senator Charles Schumer and Rep. Barney Frank, the two leading shills for the bank giveaways over the past year? And does Pres. Obama perhaps find it convenient that finally, at long last, he has been able to criticize something that he believes Wall Street has done wrong? Even the Wall Street Journal has gotten into the act. The government’s takeover of AIG, it pointed out, “uses the firm as a conduit to bail out other institutions.” So much more greed is involved than just that of AIG employees. The firm owed much more to other players – abroad as well as on Wall Street – than the assets it had. That is what drove it to insolvency. And popular opposition has been rising to how Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain could have banded together to support the bailout that, in retrospect, amounts to trillions and trillions of dollars thrown “down the drain.” Not really down the drain at all, of course – but given to financial speculators on the winning “smart” side of AIG’s bad financial gambles.
The Washington crowd wants to focus on bonuses because it aims public anger on private actors,” it accused in a March 17 editorial. But instead of explaining that the shift is away from Wall Street grabbers of a thousand times the amount of bonuses being contested, it blames its usual all-purpose bete noire: Congress. Where the right and left differ is just whom the public should be directing its anger at!Here’s the problem with all the hoopla over the $135 million in AIG bonuses: This sum is only less than 0.1% – one thousandth – of the $183 BILLION that the U.S. Treasury gave to AIG as a “pass-through” to its counterparties. This sum, over a thousand times the magnitude of the bonuses on which public attention is conveniently being focused by Wall Street promoters, did not stay with AIG. For over six months, the public media and Congressmen have been trying to find out just where this money DID go. Bloomberg brought a lawsuit to find out. Only to be met with a wall of silence.
Until finally, on Sunday night, March 15, the government finally released the details. They were indeed highly embarrassing. The largest recipient turned out to be just what earlier financial reporters had said was rumored: Mr. Paulson’s own firm, Goldman Sachs, headed the list. It was owed $13 billion in counterparty claims. So here’s the picture that’s emerging. Last September, Treasury Secretary Paulson, from Goldman Sachs, drew up a terse 3-page memo outlining his bailout proposal. The plan specified that whatever he and other Treasury officials did (thus including his subordinates, also from Goldman Sachs), could not be challenged legally or undone, much less prosecuted. This condition enraged Congress, which rejected the bailout in its first incarnation.
It now looks as if Mr. Paulson had good reason to put in a fatal legal clause blocking any clawback of funds given by the Treasury to AIG’s counterparties. This is where public outrage should be focused.
Instead, the leading Congressional shepherds of the bailout legislation – along with Mr. Obama, who came out in his final, Friday night presidential debate with Sen. McCain strongly in favor of the bailout in Mr. Paulson’s awful “short” version – have been posing as conspicuously as possible for the media to cover a deflected target – the AIG executives receiving bonuses, not the company’s counterparties.
There are two questions that one always must ask when a political operation is being launched. First, qui bono? Who benefits? And second, why now? In my experience, timing almost always is the key to figuring out the dynamics at work.
Regarding qui bono, what does Sen. Schumer, Rep. Frank, Pres. Obama and other Wall Street sponsors gain from this public outcry? For starters, it depicts them as hard taskmasters of the banking and financial sector, not its lobbyists carrying water for one giveaway after another. So the AIG kafuffle has muddied the water about where their political loyalties really lie. It enables them to strike a misleading pose – and hence to pose as “honest brokers” next time they dishonestly give away the next few trillion dollars to their major sponsors and campaign contributors.
Regarding the timing, I think I have answered that above. Talking about AIG bonuses has effectively distracted attention from the AIG counterparties who received the $183 billion in Treasury giveaways. The “final” sum to be given to its counterparties has been rumored to be $250 billion, do Sen. Schumer, Rep. Frank and Pres. Obama still have a lot more work to do for Wall Street in the coming year or so.
To succeed in this work – while mitigating the public outrage already rising against the bad bailouts – they need to strike precisely the pose that they’re striking now. It is an exercise in deception.
The moral should be: The wetter the crocodile tears shed over giving bonuses to AIG individuals (who seem to be largely on the healthy, bona fide insurance side of AIG’s business, not its hedge-fund Ponzi-scheme racket), the more they will distract public attention from the $180 billion giveaway, and the better they can position themselves to give away yet more government money (Treasury bonds and Federal Reserve deposits) to their favorite financial charities.
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Debbie Morgan writes in AIG is a Legal Money-laundering Ring :
It was reported by several outlets that AIG, after receiving $170 billion-plus in taxpayer-funded bailout money, is paying “bills.” Some of those “bills” were in the form of bonuses…$168 million in bonuses, to be exact. But, the most disgusting “bills” paid by AIG, in my opinion, were the ones they paid to Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, CitiGroup, and a few others. Yes the very same companies to which our government (from here on out, I will use the term lightly, as it doesn’t seem able to “govern” anything!) took the liberty of bailing out, along WITH AIG…
That is, AIG paid, according to a report meant for transparency, Goldman Sachs $12.9 billion, Merrill Lynch $6.8 billion, Bank of America $5.2 billion, Wachovia $1.5 billion, Morgan Stanley $1.2 billion, JP Morgan $400 million, among others. The funny thing about this is that ALL these institutions also received bailout money from the “government,” as well, so they have now received a double dose!Please tell me I am not the only one to find this utterly appalling!Enough is enough!
On top of that, AIG paid several foreign banks, as well. France’s Societe Generale received a whopping $11.9 billion, Deutsche Bank in Germany received nearly that at $11.8 billion. Barclays of England faired well at $7.9 billion and the Swiss UBS received $5 billion, among others…so, our much-needed money is going overseas! Now, granted, it was the dim-witted US financial institutions that caused the global meltdown, but come on!
Add to that, AIG paid itself $2.5 billion, and it paid AIG International $600 million. Now, before we go too much farther, technically speaking Maiden Lane III paid AIG the $2.5 billion, as well as portions of the other payouts, but Maiden Lane III was set up for AIG by the New York Federal Reserve office to handle AIG business…so…the way I see it, they are the same company!
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Societal and economics observer and commentator with an endtimes, future history perspective. Follow me at Twitter: socioecohistory
