Wait a minute! Before we 'discuss the consequences' let's consider; how is this LEGAL?

Did anybody notice this today?

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1444498020080914?virtualBrandChannel=10272

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - Major players in the $455 trillion global derivatives market rushed Sunday to scale back exposure to a potential bankruptcy filing by investment bank Lehman Brothers in a rare emergency trading session.

Trading took place as U.S. regulators and bankers were making last-ditch efforts to prevent toxic assets from ailing Lehman Brothers (LEH.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) spilling into global markets and rupturing investor faith in the international financial system."

Now I'm sure all these bankers and traders have only the most benign motivations, but doesn't this amount to a massive session of insider trading?

Doesn't the market being open on Sunday just screw other people out of billions of dollars? I mean, who exactly got to play on Sunday? Just the insiders?

The Reuters story continues:

"This is an extremely, and I stress extremely, rare event. It also speaks to the more general notion that, in today's highly disrupted financial markets, the unthinkable is thinkable," said Mohamed El-Erian, the chief executive of Pimco, the world's biggest bond fund, based in Newport Beach, California."

Yeah, the "unthinkable" being to open the market on a Sunday so you can frantically try to cover your ASSES?

Did I just slip into another dimension, but is this not just rare, but unprecedented?

Does anyone recall this EVER happening before?

Isn't this a rather extreme example of fox guarding the henhouse? Times a billion?

Who is in charge here? Who said this was okay? Isn't there any regulation in our financial markets any more?

Okay, well let's see, the article says this:

"Market sources said the special session was initiated by the Federal Reserve."

Oh, of course. No wonder.

Gee, I guess it's all okay then!

Back to our regular discussion!

(how do I get off this planet?)

Morning DK,

really, what is there to say? sad, frightening, disappointing, but not all together a surprise.

I can't remember exactly what year it was when I was starting to read articles pointing in the direction of Freddie and Fannie and there being questions as to the health of their books, maybe, it was 2001, 2002...so it is not like this crisis just happened "overnight."

Really, money is not all that complicated right, you either have it or you don't. Your checkbook balances or it doesn't, you bankstatements come, monthly, or quaterly, but they do come. These are the bigshots in the finance world, and they just went bellyup slowly, not overnight, for sure. Really, it is sad, and unnecessarily delinquent.

So, really, this weekend's "hurried meeting and moving of the monies" was really a trip to the emergency room to try and save a dying terminally ill financial system, with a few electric shocks to the heart..well, it is still breathing, but barely....how long, now, I think they need to let us know the dire truth of the matter...you can't hide the corpse indefinitely.

have a great day inspite of the apparent crash of the US financial system....ruth

As Paul Krugman writes:

"Will the U.S. financial system collapse today, or maybe over the next few days? I don’t think so — but I’m nowhere near certain. You see, Lehman Brothers, a major investment bank, is apparently about to go under. And nobody knows what will happen next."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/opinion/15krugman.html

It's anybody's guess, what the global "implications" are!

Anatole Kaletsky:

"Since the early 1990s, regulatory changes, inspired by an over-zealous belief in free-market economics, have intensified boom-bust cycles. These regulatory distortions have rested on the naive belief that "the market is always right". The greatest irony is that the last adherents of this free market dogma are the financial regulators whose raison d'être is to guard against situations when the markets are dangerously wrong, but who still insist, for example, that energy prices are never manipulated by speculation or that governments must draw black and white distinctions between shareholders and creditors of troubled banks."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article4753649.ece

Reuters:

"As Lehman Brothers Holdings stared failure in the face on Sunday, anxiety intensified about the health of several other big U.S. financial institutions.

"We will see other major financial firms fail," former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said.

"Indeed, we shouldn't try to protect every single institution. The ordinary course of financial change has winners and losers," he said on the ABC program "This Week."

http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSN1439250520080914

I guess, we wait and see if more firms fail, and if the "Govt." comes to rescue.

I am not a financial expert but as a physician I can see parallels here.

As such, this financial crisis was predictable - and predicted.

With markets down by about 5% overall right now in Europe (and the financial sector by about 10%), and similar movements likely in NY as markets open up, it's time to remind everybody that this ongoing crisis was inevitable and was the logical result of the policies that have been promoted, and followed, for the past 30 years by the ideologues who have taken over the right and infected, to a much too large extent, the centrist left.

I see the situation of the economy, when the ailments were still latent rather than in full fever as a disease.

Jerome Guillet calls it "Anglo Disease." See the article below. The author, an investment banker along with John Evans, a writer argue that this ideology was brought to us by US and UK politicians, and funded for by US billionaires, and given that its main syndrome is that the financial sector - primarily based in the City of London and Wall Street in New York - unhealthily dominates the economy:

Anglo Disease at Fever Point?

Mon Sep 15th, 2008
by Jerome Guillet
With John Evans

The Anglo Disease is a syndrome, typically displayed by the US and UK (hence the name), in which the financial sector unhealthily dominates the economy.

In view of today's considerably dark Monday, does the following describe the ailment and predict the outcome adequately? Or should we have spoken of the Black Death?

""Dutch Disease" was a term coined in the 1970s by the magazine The Economist to describe the syndrome suffered by the Netherlands after the discovery of the massive Groningen field propelled natural gas into the driving seat of the economy. The extractive sector became so profitable that it attracted the lion's share of new investment, and the resulting gas export boom altered the trade balance and boosted the currency, causing difficulties for the rest of an export-oriented economy. And, as with the "oil curse" that has struck other countries, depletion of the resource has since proved to be extremely painful.
On a larger scale, but of similar nature, is the high-profitability disorder that has, until recently, characterised the financial sector. The biggest single sector in the 2007 S&P 500 market capitalisation index, weighing 7%-8% of US GDP, its share in total corporate profits stood last year at over 40% from below 20% in the 1970s. Net total income growth in recent years has predominantly benefited a relatively small number of people either working directly in the sector or owners of financial assets."

[...]

Read on...

By John Evans, a writer, and Jérôme Guillet, an investment banker in the energy sector, are editors of the European Tribune, a current affairs website.

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2008/9/15/7620/66240

Do they know?

Does the American voter know that the US national debt has risen to $9687 thousand billion dollars or $9.698 trillion?

Do they know that by bailing out Fannie and Freddie the US added another $5 Trillion to its national debt and that the US is now one the most indebted nations in the western world?

Do they know that China is buying huge amounts of US debt? China, the same nation that is manufacturing most goods sold in the US, making some of the US corporations very rich and helping the US middleclass slowly disappear?

Do they know that US children and grandchildren will have to deal with the accumulated debt of this once great nation?

Do they know that the man who choked and fainted on a pretzel, and his deputy who shot a friend in the face, mistaking it for a quail, are largely responsible for the financial mess the US is in?

Do they know that McCain and Pa(l)in want to keep on doing all these wonderful things to us (the world)?

It even rhymes: MaCain and Pain for more of the same.

Well said, Skep.

McCane and Pain, Clear and Plain

for the Sane?

Skep
Most Americans do not know.

They are so busy being busy that the state of our country is not a priority. Most of America is much more interested in American Idol or Dancing With the Stars to be bothered with such things.
I bet more people here could tell the judges names on American Idol but not the judges on the Supreme Court.

There are people out there who would just as soon vote for Tina Fey as Palin cause she's just as cute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PxJfaNgDoE

priceless

derek

Let those chumps eat cake!

Soon all the financial and other cobwebs created by the ego/intellect/mind will crack and Man will be left to live in the Ever Present and as or as naturally a part of the Nature as all other beings/species. The air to breathe will be free, the water to drink will be free, the greenary - rice, wheat etc - to eat will be free, and the ground to lie upon and the sky to cover your head will be free.

DarkSyde at Daily Kos writes:

"Looking back at the vast economic wreckage brought on by conservative policies provides a chilling picture for a future under the thumb of John McCain and his merry band of industry lobbyists. It's frightening to contemplate where we'd be, right now, if these bozos had succeeded in 'privatizing' social security, as in throwing it and the future of millions of retiring Americans who rely on it into the same snapping jaws that brought us this latest financial shitpile."

...

"After eight years of being told the next tax cut for billionaires would unleash the long promised economic Mecca, after two straight Presidential terms where critics of Bush's trickle-down mythology were soundly ridiculed as ignorant socialists, after being told We the People don't understand complicated money stuff and we should just shut up, work harder, shop our brains out, and trust conservative economic philosophy, the best case scenario our millionaire conservative cheerleaders can make in the end is 'it's not as bad' as the Great Depression?

"Vote Republican and it won't be as bad as the Great Depression!"'

http://darksyde.dailykos.com/

Dear DK, nice to hear from you.

As I have articulated here on Intent Blog and elsewhere, since 2005 this was projected, instigated and is part of the plan, and part of natural systems evolution. Everyone was made aware of the system flaws the false perceptions surrounding the system gave way to reality. The current system design creates imbalance and therefore could not continue indefinitely using artificial corrections. We also have to take into account the new dynamics of the world economy which involves rapid change. The current system design will does not support the requirements for a functional system stipulated by reality.

Since it is part of a plan that one created the impetus for the current situation there is a solution that I have worked out to solve the problem, in other words one created the situation that would create the demand for the new system approach to be implemented. I have spent a decade working out the requirements and design and have the real world diversified working experience to be able to conceive it.

If we ask ourselves what are the design requirements for a balanced value exchange system with integrity, we see the current system is missing many of these elements. This reality indicates that the current systems will not work and we can now see and feel the evidence for that.

We must quickly implement the new system which involves changes or enhancements to business and supply chain information systems and their fundamental architecture. It is simply not a change of accounting standards that is going to do it. There are many additional things like the missing system elements that would allow for proper controls and summary information for all the participants.

There will probably be resistance to the new system because of the level of transparency it will create, those that benefited from a lack of transparency allowing them to game the system rather than creating genuine value for a living will not be partial to it. They can resist but that will create a reality of Anarchy and Chaos and all their millions and billions will mean nothing. There is no rational choice other than to reengineer the systems from a holistic and global perspective taking full advantage of infinite possibility and the new technology.

There are a lot of illusions surrounding the worlds financial and monetary systems, many people in finance and accounting actually do not understand the current system as a whole and only understand parts of it. Much of the world, including the media which still think we print money to create it.

I am going to do a New Economics 101 educational bit to establish the fundamentals of a balanced economic system so that it is clear as day how it is supposed to work. Not like the current system that gives some a disproportionate advantage and allows for fudging and unscientific methods of management.

I suspect that there may be some others out there with a plan as well; they probably have in mind some single currency for the world that they will maintain and therefore have control giving them disproportionate advantage and power. This will not work and I will work to prevent it and expose it’s flaws.

We can have a single unified global financial system but the new systems must be collectively controlled, mostly autonomous, and provide a fair and equal to all playing field.

One of the fundamental flaws I have pointed out repeatedly is gambling (think day trader) which does not provide value to other economic system participants and value extracted by gambling creates a system wide imbalance. It also creates market wide volatility which hampers proper management of the financial system.

This is why I propose a heavy short term capital gains tax with tax free dividends as an immediate remedy to the situation until we can get the new systems and controls in place.

More to come, I have a half dozen web sites that will be going up soon that are elements of and will provide insight into the new global economic system that will be a balanced value exchange system with integrity.

In conjunction with this world management needs to take into account the death of the old consciousness revenue streams and the birth of the new consciousness revenue streams.

Best,
Richard

“Monetary system imbalance is the root of all evil.”
~me

Money (the intent of making more than the other person, and the concomitant "power" that accrues with it) is the root of many evils!

Darnit they are eating the cake too; that is not what I meant!!!!!!

Beautiful sentiment harb!

pax vobiscum

If we look back to October 2005 in a response to a thread by Deepak (click my name) I wrote:

"The truth is the money in the world currently only has value because of perception."

"All the people with accumulated wealth only have pieces of paper, or rather bits and bytes, an entry in the general ledger."

"Therefore we are going to erase all the worlds’ incumbent monetary wealth with words."

"I have devised a way without need of legislation or government action to destroy the Illusion of this incumbent wealth and balance the system."

"It is an Illusion that they have this wealth, they really don’t. Much of it was stolen and extracted through manipulation of the symbol. There are those that did earn it and we will take care of them because they will know something the others do not."

"The people with the real wealth are the producers that are actually going to go out tomorrow and provide a product or service."

"I have devised a way without need of legislation or government action to destroy the Illusion of this incumbent wealth and balance the system."

Craig,

I would point to these as the contributing factors,

The extraction of value without the creation of equal genuine value. (GREED)

Disproportionate advantage, privileged positions, and monopoly.

The creation of artificial economy and needs.

Forced consumer or citizen patronage of a vendor which eliminates natural quality control and maximized return on investment or purchase.

Excessive interest charged on the creation of money and exorbitant fees and charges for the maintenance of the system.

There is nothing wrong with creating more value than another and therefore acquiring greater wealth than others.

What is important is equal opportunity and a fair and balanced playing field.

If greater wealth is achieved by other unscrupulous, artificial or deceptive means then it is ill gotten. If some enjoy a contrived advantage over others then this is also an issue.

I hear you Richard.

I just got a "payment due" letter from the Spokane County Clerk for past wrongdoings, and like the three months in jail was not bad enough (which it was!), my payemnts to the court, not restitution to the offended party/person, but payments to government employed judges, lawyers, and jailers, is this: 1,098.90 fine, 20.00 monthly payment, with an interest amount of 19.90.

Justice?!? Please . . .

I say hey, just send it to collections along with my 50,000+ school debt, my nigh unto 30,000 medical debt, and another 10,000 child-support lien against my person and property; and they just say "no we will send you back to jail though."

Well, since I have not a dime to my name do what you gotta do!

Shaking the string here boss, still shaking it . . .

Hello Harb,
It is beautiful, it seems to me,
for a being
to be a part of everyday life,
and to be FREE to run, dance, laugh,
feel the breeze,
share a smile...
and truly LOVE life
~ Kate

dear Harb,
I confess to you,
sometimes I cry deeply ...
for all the injustices of
this world,
so much so,
my heart breaks

Message to CS + DDHPZ,

In your Posting No.6 you said that McCain and Palin want to duplicate the actions of Bush and Cheney.

Bush and Cheney have been motivated by entirely different agendas than those of McCain and Palin.

I believe that you are dead wrong is saying that McCain and Palin want to pursue the policies of Bush and Cheney. You are making the mistake that many others do by thinking that all people within a particular party are guided by the same values.

If you'd like to take the time to listen to David Icke-Big Brother, the Bigger Picture on Youtube.com, I believe you might reconsider the statement that you have made. David Icke makes it quite clear just what the agenda of Bush and Cheney has been.

Best Wishes,

"Betsy" S.

Does the US citizen know that they had to will pay this year in interest?

2008 Fiscal Year Total $431,270,863,309.37

This plus war is probably the leading cause of inflation.

Interest does not represent payment for a product or service by the way, so it devalues the currency.

Interest with some exception is a tax on participation in the economic system especially when it is tied directly with the creation of money through the creation of debt.

Government which is just a label doesn't actually pay the citizens do, the government does not acquire debt, the citizens do, even those not born yet

Generally the way it works is congress forces the citizens to borrow money, which is paid back through taxation; this public sector money is then piped back into the private sector with a 55% loss on the return to the citizens. Quite often some members of congress have an interest or are rewarded by the private sector entities that get the contracts to provide products and services. Proper value exchange mechanisms and controls are deflected and a number of individuals take a portion of the 45% for themselves without creating genuine value for their extraction.

This results in the death and suffering of millions of workers and children by creating a system wide imbalance.

Imagine 10 people each put $10.00 of value into the system. Which would be $100.00 total. Another entity that did not create any genuine value extracts $45.00 from the system. When the producers go to extract the value they created in another form they can only retrieve $55.00 worth of value or $5.50 each. They are shorted and there is scarcity.

This creates disparity in the system and the producers then must compete, fight amongst themselves to try and get enough to survive on.

We see that Republicans and Democrats spend 100 of millions of dollars to get the members of their party placed in positions of power. How do they get a return on this investment? Is it the good feelings they get serving the people of the country? I imagine the return on this investment would need to be in the billions to justify it. True some of the contribution comes from citizens but a lot of it comes from special interests and citizens duped by each party claiming they will be serving the interests of the people.

May just be done!

I have written a number of times how the economy was like a barrel of apples. The barrel has a false bottom that has been continuously raised for decades giving the impression that the barrel was full. The false bottom has now reached the top of the barrel and the illusion can no longer be sustained.

What we do not want to see is a massive transfer of the worlds tangible assets to those that control the intangible symbol which is created from nothing and is worthless except for it’s perceived value.

There will be no more illusionary artificial fixes the fundamental framework of the worlds financial and economic systems must be changed.

I suggest the planet establish a penal colony on an island and send all the planets perpetrators of the system imbalance to live out the rest of their lives and get back to nature and split up their assets amongst us as a part of damage recovery. Then again most share some of the blame even at the lowest ranks. So perhaps under full scrutiny we could allow them to admit their wrongs, make amends and corrections.

I have a plan.

Dear Richard,

Thank you for your Postings Nos. 20 and 22. Your insights on the problems behind the financial disasters and about the operations of the financial networks are amazing.

If only we could find some persons of influence in possession of some semblance of sanity and integrity to implement your suggestions.

Best Wishes,

"Betsy" S.

I prayed and still pray to God that justice be brought upon those financial institutions. They are the reason my company is laying off people and that's one of the players! Praise the Lord for justice!!!!! A prayer answered. I will kept praying! It's the financial institutions that are steeling from innocent people with trickery, etc. I had one bad month that took me 6 months or more to overcome and 3 financial groups are still charging me 28 to 30% interest! And now the one that is still up there bought one of these groups and I am still going to continue my prayer for justice! They are evil and we wonder why the world trade center was brought down. God bless those innocent souls who died. There are homeless people on the street here in my city, here in the USA and no one is helping then, as they keep getting the run around from government. However, there are some good groups helping, but when someone is down and that low, they cannot pull themselves up on their own as everyone who is high cannot conceive of the oppression of the poor. JUSTICE will be done!

It's all about money, the illusion that blinds us, and not about what is real and of value which is eternal - Spirit. We cannot take the money with us, but the lessons of Spirit will following us nonetheless - be it sparkling jewels or ashes and coals. What is of value never dies and we are crippling our growth with all these illusions.

You can take your precious heart with you, but you cannot take your physical money!

KARMA?

Yes, Betsy it would be nice if some of the more influential got on board and supported the endeavor. I wonder if they can overcome their ego impediments, if they do it would be a pleasant surprise.

Our Collective needs did not change, and our ability to produce did not change. So how could there be an economic problem? There is no natural reason for economic down turns or slowdowns. There are only unnatural reasons mostly the result of flawed systems and policy guided by greed, and blinded by profit.

We can see most of congress is out of touch with reality, because they live in a different world then most shielded from the pain signals and the aftermath of their decisions. The only time they are subject to pain signals is at election time.

But like I said before we cannot be dependant on congress or the president for change, which means the people need to exert their natural authority in unity. We can only depend on ourselves for change because it is not just the president and congress that needs to be changed it is all of us that need to change, and although we may not have the power to change the others we have the power to change ourselves, and often the change in ourselves triggers change in the others.

It looks like one is going to need to destroy all confidence in the current financial systems and then restore confidence with a new system which will be adopted out of necessity.

The question is how do we migrate to a new financial systems platform without bringing the world economy to a complete halt or sliding into irreversible chaos and anarchy? The answer is we need to run both systems in parallel so the other option is in reach, then one kills the old system by revealing the reality behind the illusion and everyone naturally embraces the new one. There would be a conversion of old money to new but with a cap of a million dollars which would effectively erase excessive illegitimate wealth and the power it provides those that control it.

Game Plan: destroy confidence and restore confidence with new system and architecture.

Kate, your world is your own creation. All the problems and the solutions are within you and only you.

Reading your lines of the second message I felt a wish of meeting with you.

Harb

http://coinage.me speaks of intelligent tangible intangibles; currency with a brain.

The new New Global Value Exchange Accounting System

click my name.

I have a theory .... put a small computer chip in everyone's hand to where each of us would need to have our hand scanned in order to buy food or anything that is necessary. In this way, everyone would have enough and no one would have more than another and the program would be called SCAN.

We should let these corrupt greedy firms (individuals) collapse, with the entire corrupt system, they tell you everything will collapse if they do and this is not true. What it means is the incumbent wealthy will lose all their wealth the corrupt industries will collapse. The producers will do just fine because the genuine economy does not go away. The artificial economy should be dissolved because it is how the wealth which is created by the producers is stolen by the managers of the system. If the systems do collapse it could be a very good thing because it will result in localization destroying centralized power and control over the people.

Government bailout is a bogus illusion.

Reality is the taxpayers; the producers are doing the bail out. Which leads us to ask why don’t we simply assign ownership to the taxpayers?

Why should some group of people that created a system imbalance keep ownership at the expense of the producers that they will later charge for services that the producers already in reality paid for?

The US citizens will go into debt at a price to create the money for the bail out. The citizens are forced to borrow money from the central bankers who simply control the symbol and the accounting system. The money is loaned based on the forced commitment of the US taxpayers to produce future value. The money loaned is at a price, it is called interest. Those monetary system managers charge trillions for the use of their accounting system.

Amazing isn’t it, a group of people make trillions because they control and maintain an accounting system. Not only that it has given this small group of people that have deceived the producers, power over the producers. Pure genius on their part isn’t it, who could blame them?

The masters that control the symbol then feed the producers monetary units as they labor to produce. The natural supply of monetary units is restricted forcing the producers to

They are not to blame it is the producers that allow it that are to blame. The only reason the producers are powerless to stop it is they are divided by fictions and labels rendering them impotent.

This is what is meant by the indentured servitude, those that extract their wealth from the system not by producing genuine value for other economic system participants but simply because they control and manipulate the system and the producers are just pawns and servants in the game. The natural systems have been perverted so that money is required to live and obtain sustenance.

What was once free to all direct from the source now has a middle man the controllers of the symbol?

The citizens must unite, see the reality behind the illusions and take collective control of the symbol of value exchange.

Is anybody out there getting this? Let me guess the slaves that sold out to the masters to gain privilege understand but they don’t want to give up the blood money.

Those monetary system managers charge trillions for the use of their accounting system.

Those monetary system managers charge trillions for the use of their accounting system.

Those monetary system managers charge trillions for the use of their accounting system.

Those monetary system managers charge trillions for the use of their accounting system.

I have a new one and I will only charge a few million actually it would be an economic system participant owned and maintained system.

Why pay trillions when you can pay a paltry few million?

dearest Harb,
One day I feel certain I will meet you and your family.
I imagine the moment now ...

How I spy you in the crowd at the train station,
I will search for your face
a smile will appear,
and I reaching my hand - both my hands,
out to warmly
clasp yours
- in mine!

my love,
~ Kate

dear Richard,
just remember in any collapse of the magnitude you suggest ...
children will be hurt.
SO,
everything short of that,
must be possible to draw upon
in order to
resolve these sticky thickets
of greenery knarled bills stuck inside a million digital monitors.

have a great night.
.love KATE

Kate,

how many children have been hurt by being expointed by western capitalists?

Far more than any of us could imagine I suppose, considering we are not that interested in doing body counts.

As a 20 year old soldier enters Fallujah, after our air force has slaughtered countless thousands, and genuinely feels like he is liberating people.

Once peoples have been "turned" after boot camp, they adopt a worldview that is

frightening.

peace sis

I guess sis I have a "unique" perspective on (ex)soldiers by being in jail.

These dudes, and dudettes, while sometimes acting like cool people, at other times belittle, mock, and obviously feel morally superior to us "criminals."

And it is just really weird! This one older guard who I even developed a limited rapport with, would not shake my hand on the day I got out, because he had some code of (guard) ethos,

and all I can say is,

fu**ing pig!

peace

Ref. 34 "exploited by western capitalists"

sorry

Dear Kate, why not visit India? I will be happy to play host to you.

empyrius, thank you. Only a special soul - a soul either already free or yearning for freedom - could have appreciated such a sentiment.

Harb