D. Stewart Armstrong

Financial terrorism is created when an elite group of people (oligarchs) are controlling enormous power and wealth via government, financial and business institutions, courts, securities agencies, and the Federal Reserve. These entities are at liberty to steal and confiscate the wealth of average citizens in any and all possible manners; most of them surreptitious and illegal. This, in turn, places the average citizen at a loss to respond reasonably and sensibly, especially since there is no one who will represent their interests. Fear and anger become the dominant theme of the tax-paying segment of society because they are the middle class and they fully understand the ramifications of the constant attack upon their persons and their property and upon their very lives by the government and the above named accomplices. These relentless attacks from without and from within in order to confiscate their savings, their homes, their lives, liberties and the pursuit of happiness are what cause the state of constant fear. This is financial terrorism and it is every bit as lethal to Americans as the unexpected car bomb that causes appalling and wanton destruction in the Middle East.

America is a target of financial terrorism and by the time it is over there will be many more deaths than suffered on 9-11. The financial, emotional, and productive drain on American citizens and the world population is immeasurable but trillions of dollars have been stolen by the Central banks from the American people and there will be trillions more to follow. The enemy is just as much within—as without.

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Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle

Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren’t just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy – they’re re-creating the conditions for another crash

MATT TAIBBI

Posted Feb 17, 2010 5:57 AM

On January 21st, Lloyd Blankfein left a peculiar voicemail message on the work phones of his employees at Goldman Sachs. Fast becoming America’s pre-eminent Marvel Comics supervillain, the CEO used the call to deploy his secret weapon: a pair of giant, nuclear-powered testicles. In his message, Blankfein addressed his plan to pay out gigantic year-end bonuses amid widespread controversy over Goldman’s role in precipitating the global financial crisis.

The bank had already set aside a tidy $16.2 billion for salaries and bonuses — meaning that Goldman employees were each set to take home an average of $498,246, a number roughly commensurate with what they received during the bubble years. Still, the troops were worried: There were rumors that Dr. Ballsachs, bowing to political pressure, might be forced to scale the number back. After all, the country was broke, 14.8 million Americans were stranded on the unemployment line, and Barack Obama and the Democrats were trying to recover the populist high ground after their bitch-whipping in Massachusetts by calling for a “bailout tax” on banks. Maybe this wasn’t the right time for Goldman to be throwing its annual Roman bonus orgy.

Not to worry, Blankfein reassured employees. “In a year that proved to have no shortage of story lines,” he said, “I believe very strongly that performance is the ultimate narrative.”

Translation: We made a shitload of money last year because we’re so amazing at our jobs, so #&^$ all those people who want us to reduce our bonuses.

Goldman wasn’t alone. The nation’s six largest banks — all committed to this balls-out, I drink your milkshake! strategy of flagrantly gorging themselves as America goes hungry — set aside a whopping $140 billion for executive compensation last year, a sum only slightly less than the $164 billion they paid themselves in the pre-crash year of 2007. In a gesture of self-sacrifice, Blankfein himself took a humiliatingly low bonus of $9 million, less than the 2009 pay of elephantine New York Knicks washout Eddy Curry. But in reality, not much had changed. “What is the state of our moral being when Lloyd Blankfein taking a $9 million bonus is viewed as this great act of contrition, when every penny of it was a direct transfer from the taxpayer?” asks Eliot Spitzer, who tried to hold Wall Street accountable during his own ill-fated stint as governor of New York.

Beyond a few such bleats of outrage, however, the huge payout was met, by and large, with a collective sigh of resignation. Because beneath America’s populist veneer, on a more subtle strata of the national psyche, there remains a strong temptation to not really give a shit. The rich, after all, have always made way too much money; what’s the difference if some fat cat in New York pockets $20 million instead of $10 million?

The only reason such apathy exists, however, is because there’s still a widespread misunderstanding of how exactly Wall Street “earns” its money, with emphasis on the quotation marks around “earns.” The question everyone should be asking, as one bailout recipient after another posts massive profits — Goldman reported $13.4 billion in profits last year, after paying out that $16.2 billion in bonuses and compensation — is this: In an economy as horrible as ours, with every factory town between New York and Los Angeles looking like those hollowed-out ghost ships we see on History Channel documentaries like Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes, where in the hell did Wall Street’s eye-popping profits come from, exactly? Did Goldman go from bailout city to $13.4 billion in the black because, as Blankfein suggests, its “performance” was just that awesome? A year and a half after they were minutes away from bankruptcy, how are these ###holes not only back on their feet again, but hauling in bonuses at the same rate they were during the bubble?

The answer to that question is basically twofold: They raped the taxpayer, and they raped their clients.

The bottom line is that banks like Goldman have learned absolutely nothing from the global economic meltdown. In fact, they’re back conniving and playing speculative long shots in force — only this time with the full financial support of the U.S. government. In the process, they’re rapidly re-creating the conditions for another crash, with the same actors once again playing the same crazy games of financial chicken with the same toxic assets as before.

That’s why this bonus business isn’t merely a matter of getting upset about whether or not Lloyd Blankfein buys himself one tropical island or two on his next birthday. The reality is that the post-bailout era in which Goldman thrived has turned out to be a chaotic frenzy of high-stakes con-artistry, with taxpayers and clients bilked out of billions using a dizzying array of old-school hustles that, but for their ponderous complexity, would have fit well in slick grifter movies like The Sting and Matchstick Men. There’s even a term in con-man lingo for what some of the banks are doing right now, with all their cosmetic gestures of scaling back bonuses and giving to charities. In the grifter world, calming down a mark so he doesn’t call the cops is known as the “Cool Off.”

To appreciate how all of these (sometimes brilliant) schemes work is to understand the difference between earning money and taking scores, and to realize that the profits these banks are posting don’t so much represent national growth and recovery, but something closer to the losses one would report after a theft or a car crash. Many Americans instinctively understand this to be true — but, much like when your wife does it with your 300-pound plumber in the kids’ playroom, knowing it and actually watching the whole scene from start to finish are two very different things. In that spirit, a brief history of the best 18 months of grifting this country has ever seen:

CON #1 THE SWOOP AND SQUAT

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 By Howard S. Katz

2-1-10

In the short term, gold bugs are in pain. The last 3 weeks have seen a pull back to the Dec. 22 low of $1,075 and have created a lot of short term anxiety. We have two possibilities. Either gold will continue down to the $1,000 support level, or it has already made its turn, will leave a gap above $1,000 and then break out above $1,229, April contract (the Dec. 3 high).

When the short term is a puzzle, I take refuge by studying the long term, and so I thought that this week might be a good time to review the long term situation. Above is the 15 year, monthly basis chart of the CRB index, which gives us a good handle on the (second upswing of the) commodity pendulum. The horizontal line in the middle of the chart is at 337, and this was the top of the (first upswing of the) commodity pendulum in 1980. Note that this level, which was then resistance, was penetrated in 2005, and this was followed by the blow-off of 2008.

 As is normal in technical formations, a resistance level, when penetrated, turns into support. Therefore, in Dec. 2008, when the CRB once again came down to 337, this level provided massive support, and the commodity markets turned on a dime. Also note the double bottom of 1999-2001, which is serving as the bottom pattern for commodities and is similar to the 4½ year saucer pattern in gold (1998-2002).

 The key to the CRB chart is the sudden collapse in the 2^nd half of 2008 (from just over 600 to a little under 337). This period stands out on the chart, and the normal chart interpretation would be that some important (bearish) news item had occurred at that time and caused the decline.

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