The Federal Reserve Cartel: A Financial Parasite

by Dean Henderson
June 20, 2011

Final Part

United World Federalists founder James Warburg’s father was Paul Warburg, who financed Hitler with help from Brown Brothers Harriman partner Prescott Bush. [1]

Colonel Ely Garrison was a close friend of both President Teddy Roosevelt and President Woodrow Wilson.  Garrison wrote in Roosevelt, Wilson and the Federal Reserve, “Paul Warburg was the man who got the Federal Reserve Act together after the Aldrich Plan aroused such nationwide resentment and opposition.  The mastermind of both plans was Baron Alfred Rothschild of London.”

The Aldrich Plan was hatched at a secret 1910 meeting at JP Morgan’s private resort on Jekyl Island, SC between Rockefeller lieutenant Nelson Aldrich and Paul Warburg of the German Warburg banking dynasty.  Aldrich, a New York congressman, later married into the Rockefeller family.  His son Winthrop Aldrich chaired Chase Manhattan Bank.  While the bankers met, Colonel Edward House, another Rockefeller stooge and close confidant of President Woodrow Wilson, was busy convincing Wilson of the importance of a private central bank and the introduction of a national income tax. A member of House’s staff was British MI6 Permindex insider General Julius Klein. [2]

Wilson didn’t need much convincing, since he was beholden to copper magnate Cleveland Dodge, whose namesake Phelps Dodge became one of the biggest mining companies in the world.  Dodge bankrolled Wilson’s political career. Wilson even wrote his inaugural speech on Dodge’s yacht. [3]

Wilson was a classmate of both Dodge and Cyrus McCormick at Princeton.  Both were directors at Rockefeller’s National City Bank (now Citigroup).  Wilson’s main focus was on overcoming public distrust of the bankers, which New York City Mayor John Hylan echoed in 1911 when he argued, “The real menace to our republic is the invisible government which, like a giant octopus, sprawls its slimy length over our city, state and nation.  At the head is a small group of banking houses, generally referred to as the international bankers”. [4]

But the Eight Families prevailed.  In 1913 the Federal Reserve Bank was born, with Paul Warburg its first Governor.  Four years later the US entered World War I, after a secret society known as the Black Hand assassinated Archduke Ferdinand and his Hapsburg wife.  The Archduke’s friend Count Czerin later said, “A year before the war he informed me that the Masons had resolved upon his death.”[5]

That same year, Bolsheviks overthrew the Hohehzollern monarchy in Russia with help from Max Warburg and Jacob Schiff, while the Balfour Declaration leading to the creation of Israel was penned to Zionist Second Lord Rothschild.

In the 1920’s Baron Edmund de Rothschild founded the Palestine Economics Commission, while Kuhn Loeb’s Manhattan offices helped Rothschild form a network to smuggle weapons to Zionist death squads bent on seizing Palestinian lands.  General Julius Klein oversaw the operation and headed the US Army Counterintelligence Corps, which later produced Henry Kissinger.  Klein diverted Marshall Plan aid to Europe to Zionist terror cells in Palestine after WWII, channeling the funds through the Sonneborn Institute, which was controlled by Baltimore chemical magnate Rudolph Sonneborn.  His wife Dorothy Schiff is related to the Warburgs. [6]

The Kuhn Loebs came to Manhattan with the Warburgs. At the same time the Bronfmans came to Canada as part of the Moses Montefiore Jewish Colonization Committee.  The Montefiores have carried out the dirty work of Genoese nobility since the 13th Century.  The di Spadaforas served that function for the Italian House of Savoy, which was bankrolled by the Israel Moses Seif family for which Israel is named.  Lord Harold Sebag Montefiore is current head of the Jerusalem Foundation, the Zionist wing of the Knights of St. John’s Jerusalem.  The Bronfmans (the name means “liquorman” in Yiddish) tied up with Arnold Rothstein, a product of the Rothschild’s dry goods empire, to found organized crime in New York City.  Rothstein was succeeded by Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Robert Vesco and Santos Trafficante.  The Bronfmans are intermarried with the Rothschilds, Loebs and Lamberts. [7]

The year 1917 also saw the 16th Amendment added to the US Constitution, levying a national income tax, though it was ratified by only two of the required 36 states.  The IRS is a private corporation registered in Delaware. [8]  Four years earlier the Rockefeller Foundation was launched, to shield family wealth from the new income tax provisions, while steering public opinion through social engineering.  One of its tentacles was the General Education Board.

In Occasional Letter #1 the Board states, “In our dreams we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions fade from their minds and, unhampered by tradition, we will work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk.  We shall try not to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science…of whom we have ample supply.”[9]

Though most Americans think of the Federal Reserve as a government institution, it is privately held by the Eight Families.  The Secret Service is employed, not by the Executive Branch, but by the Federal Reserve. [10]

An exchange between Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Fed Chairman Paul Volcker at Senate hearings in 1982 is instructive.  Kennedy must have thought of his older brother John when he told Volcker that if he were before the committee as a member of US Treasury things would be much different.  Volcker, puffing on a cigar, responded cavalierly, “That’s probably true. But I believe it was intentionally designed this way”. [11]  Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-IN) put it to Volcker that, “People realize that what that board of yours does has a very profound impact on their pocketbooks, and yet it is a group of people basically inaccessible to them and unaccountable to them.”

President Wilson spoke of, “a power so organized, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breaths when they speak in condemnation of it.” Rep. Charles Lindberg (D-NY) was more blunt, railing against Wilson’s Federal Reserve Act, which had cleverly been dubbed the “People’s Bill”.  Lindberg declared that the Act would, “…establish the most gigantic trust on earth…When the president signs this act, the invisible government by the money power will be legitimized.  The law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation.  From now on, depressions will be scientifically created.  The invisible government by the money power, proven to exist by the Money Trust Investigation, will be legalized.  The whole central bank concept was engineered by the very group it was supposed to strip of power”. [12]

The Fed is made up of most every bank in the US, but the New York Federal Reserve Bank controls the Fed by virtue of its enormous capital resources.  The true center of power within the Fed is the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), on which only the NY Fed President holds a permanent voting seat.  The FOMC issues directives on monetary policy which are implemented from the 8th Floor of the NY Fed, a fortress modeled after the Bank of England. [13]

In the fifth sub-basement of the 14-story stone hulk lie 10,300 tons of mostly non-US gold, 1/3 of the world’s gold reserves and by far the largest gold stock in the world. [14]

The world of money is increasingly computerized.  With the introduction by the Eight Families of complicated financial instruments like derivatives, options, puts and futures; the volume of inter-bank transactions took a quantum leap.  To handle this the fed built a superhighway eerily known as CHIPS (Clearing Interbank Payment System), which is based in New York and modeled after Morgan’s Belgium-based Euro-Clear – also known as The Beast.

When the Fed was created five New York banks- Citibank, Chase, Chemical Bank, Manufacturers Hanover and Bankers Trust- held a 43% stake in the New York Fed.  By 1983 these same five banks owned 53% of the NY Fed.  By year 2000, the newly merged Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank combines owned even bigger chunks, as did the European faction of the Eight Families. Collectively they own majority stock in every Fortune 500 corporation and do the bulk of stock and bond trading.  In 1955 the above five banks accounted for 15% of all stock trades.  By 1985 they were involved in 85% of all stock transactions. [15]

Still more powerful are the investment banks which bear the names of many of the Eight Families. In 1982, while Morgan bankers presided over negotiations between Britain and Argentina after the Falklands War, President Reagan pushed through SEC Rule 415, which helped consolidate securities underwriting in the hands of six large investment houses owned by the Eight Families: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Salomon Brothers, First Boston and Lehman Brothers.  These banks further consolidated their power via the merger mania of 1980s and 1990s.

American Express swallowed up both Lehman Brothers-Kuhn Loeb – which had merged in 1977 – and Shearson Lehman-Rhoades.  The Israel Moses Seif’s Banca de la Svizzera Italiana bought a 7% stake in Lehman Brothers. [16]  Salomon Brothers nabbed Philbro from the South African Oppenheimer family, then bought Smith Barney. All three then became part of Traveler’s Group, headed by Sandy Weill of the David-Weill family, which controls Lazard Freres through senior partner Michel David-Weill.  Citibank then bought Travelers to form Citigroup. S.G. Warburg, of which Oppenheimer’s Chartered Consolidated owns a 9% stake, joined the old money Banque Paribas- which merged into Merrill Lynch in 1984.  Union Bank of Switzerland acquired Paine Webber, while Morgan Stanley ate up Dean Witter and purchased Discover credit card operations from Sears.

Kuhn Loeb-controlled First Boston merged with Credit Suisse, which had already absorbed White-Weld, to become CS First Boston- the major player in the dirty London Eurobond market.  Merrill Lynch – merged into Bank of America in 2008 – is the major player on the US side of this trade.  Swiss Banking Corporation merged with London’s biggest investment house S.G. Warburg to create SBC Warburg, while Warburg became more intertwined with Merrill Lynch through their 1998 Mercury Assets tie up.  The Warburg’s formed another venture with Union Bank of Switzerland, creating powerhouse UBS Warburg.  Deutsche Bank bought Banker’s Trust and Alex Brown to briefly become the world’s largest bank with $882 billion in assets.  With repeal of Glass-Steagal, the line between investment, commercial and private banking disappeared.

This handful of investment banks exerts an enormous amount of control over the global economy.  Their activities include advising Third World debt negotiations, handling mergers and breakups, creating companies to fill a perceived economic void through the launching of initial public stock offerings (IPOs), underwriting all stocks, underwriting all corporate and government bond issuance, and pulling the bandwagon down the road of privatization and globalization of the world economy.

A recent president of the World Bank was James Wolfensohn of Salomon Smith Barney.  Merrill Lynch had $435 billion in assets in 1994, before the merger frenzy had really even gotten under way.  The biggest commercial bank at the time, Citibank, could claim only $249 billion in assets.

In 1991 Merrill Lynch handled 26.8% of all global bank mergers.  Morgan Stanley did 16.8%, Goldman Sachs 16.3%, Lehman Brothers 16.1% and Credit Suisse First Boston 14.5%.  Morgan Stanley did $60 billion in corporate mergers in 1989.  By 2007, reflecting the repeal of Glass-Steagel, the top ten NMA advisers in order were: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, UBS Warburg, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Lazard. In the IPO stock underwriting field for 1991 the top four were Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and CS First Boston.  In the arena of global privatization for years 1985-1995, Goldman Sachs led the way doing $13.3 billion worth of deals.  UBS Warburg did $8.2 billion, BNP Paribas $6.8 billion, CS First Boston $4.9 billion and Paribas-owner Merrill Lynch $4.4 billion. [17]

In 2006 BNP Paribas bought the notorious Banca Nacionale de Lavoro (BNL), which led the charge in arming Saddam Hussein. According to Global Finance, it is now the world’s largest bank with nearly $3 trillion in assets.

The leading US debt underwriters for the first nine months of 1995 bore the same familiar names.  Merrill Lynch underwrote $74.2 billion in the US debt markets, or 15.3% of the total.  Lehman Brothers handled $52.5 billion, Morgan Stanley $47.4 billion, Salomon Smith Barney $45.6 billion.  CS First Boston, Chase Manhattan and Goldman Sachs rounded out the top seven.  The top three municipal debt underwriters that year were Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and UBS Paine Webber.  In the euro-market the top four underwriters in 1995 were UBS Warburg, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. [18]  Deutsche Bank’s Morgan Grenfell branch engineered the corporate takeover binge in Europe.

The dominant players in the oil futures markets at both the New York Mercantile Exchange and the London Petroleum Exchange are Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Goldman Sachs (through its J. Aron & Company subsidiary), Citigroup (through its Philbro unit) and Deutsche Bank (through its Banker’s Trust acquisition).  In 2002 Enron Online was auctioned off by a bankruptcy court to UBS Warburg for $0.  UBS was to share monopoly Enron Online profits with Lehman Brothers after the first two years of the deal. [19] With Lehman’s 2008 demise, its new owner Barclays will get their cut.

Following the Lehman Brothers fiasco and the ensuing financial meltdown of 2008, the Four Horsemen of Banking got even bigger. For pennies on the dollar, JP Morgan Chase was handed Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual. Bank of America commandeered Merrill Lynch and Countrywide. And Wells Fargo seized control over the reeling #5 US bank Wachovia. Barclays got a sweetheart deal for the remains of Lehman Brothers.

Former House Banking Committee Chairman Wright Patman (D-TX), declared of Federal Reserve Eight Families owners, “The United States today has in effect two governments.  We are the duly constituted government.  Then we have an independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government in the Federal Reserve System, operating the money powers which are reserved to Congress by the Constitution”. [20]

Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, US debt (mostly owed to the Eight Families) has skyrocketed from $1 billion to nearly $14 trillion today.  This far surpasses the total of all Third World country debt combined, debt which is mostly owed to these same Eight Families, who own most all the world’s central banks.

As Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) pointed out, “International bankers make money by extending credit to governments.  The greater the debt of the political state, the larger the interest returned to lenders.  The national banks of Europe are (also) owned and controlled by private interests.  We recognize in a hazy sort of way that the Rothschilds and the Warburgs of Europe and the houses of JP Morgan, Kuhn Loeb & Co., Schiff, Lehman and Rockefeller possess and control vast wealth.  How they acquire this vast financial power and employ it is a mystery to most of us.”[21]

[1] Behold a Pale Horse. William Cooper. Light Technology Press. Sedona, AZ. 1991. p.81

[2] Dope Inc.: The Book that Drove Kissinger Crazy. The Editors of Executive Intelligence Review. Washington, DC. 1992.

[3] Democracy for the Few. Michael Parenti. St. Martin’s Press. New York. 1977. p.67

[4] Descent into Slavery. Des Griffin. Emissary Publications. Pasadena 1991

[5] The Robot’s Rebellion: The Story of the Spiritual Renaissance. David Icke. Gateway Books. Bath, UK. 1994. p.158

[6] The Editors of Executive Intelligence Review. p.504

[7] Ibid

[8] Ibid

[9] Ibid. p.77

[10] “Secrets of the Federal Reserve”. Discovery Channel. January 2002

[11] The Confidence Game: How Un-Elected Central Bankers are Governing the Changed World Economy. Steven Solomon. Simon & Schuster. New York. 1995. p.26

[12] Icke. p.178

[13] Solomon. p.63

[14] Ibid. p.27

[15] The Corporate Reapers: The Book of Agribusiness. A.V. Krebs. Essential Books. Washington, DC. 1992. p.166

[16] The Editors of Executive Intelligence Review. p.79

[17] “Playing the Middle”. Anita Raghavan and Bridget O’Brian. Wall Street Journal. 10-2-95

[18] Securities Data Corporation. 1995

[19] CNN Headline News. 1-11-02

[20] The Rockefeller File. Gary Allen. ’76 Press. Seal Beach, CA. 1977. p.156

[21] Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History that Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons and the Great Pyramids. Jim Marrs. HarperCollins Publishers. New York. 2000. p.77

“Markets Like Totalitarian Governments”

Zero Hedge
March 4, 2011

Wall Street’s shadow king, Blackrock’s Larry Fink who manages over $3 trillion, and is the world’s biggest asset manager, appeared on Bloomberg TV in an interview with Erik Schatzker, and the first thing he said is that the “market likes totalitarian governments.

Blackrock's Larry Fink

 

” That one statement explains everything one needs to know about the market performance over the past two years: there has hardly been a time in the past century when all the globalized regimes supporting stock markets and asset prices have been more “totalitarian” by Fink’s, or any other definition, than they are now. And while the plutocracy may welcome the advent of the Communist States of Iosif Vissarionovich Bernankestein, the common folk, as they always do, ultimately revolt violently against any such attempt at supreme government.

Zero Hedge regular Mike Krieger was quick to proclaim his condemnation: “This is how these elites think.  Even if markets did like totalitarian governments HUMANS DON’T.  This guy is pure scum and is exactly what is wrong with America and its policy today. This is also the guy that told us to buy dollars and treasuries yesterday…” But such are the ways of a dying ponzi regime. Everyone knows the end is coming and is inevitable. And while Wall Street’s self-anointed masters of the universe believe they will be able to avoid the ultimate unwind, they are wrong. Just like Gaddafi is finding out first hand right about now.

Larry Fink on the markets today:

“I believe the market has shifted from euphoria, from August through late January and now we are at a moment of reflection. I think this period of reflection will be sustained for some time.”

Larry Fink on whether he is a buyer or seller:

“If you believe that markets are efficient, some of that uncertainty has been priced in already. We’ve had an increase in oil; there has been no increase in demand in oil. It is that risk premium that has been priced into the marketplace. We’ve had a reduction in equity prices worldwide, especially in the emerging world, where everyone was so bullish one year ago and now money is being poured out of it. “

“If you believe that all this noise, uncertainty will produce a better outcome, it is probably a buying opportunity. If you think the noise will create a more troublesome world, it may cause some developed economies to revert back into a recession, then we will have rough going for the next year.”

“I am more in the camp that this uncertainty will create a great amount of volatility, the marketplace is pricing this in, and if the market has a setback in terms of prices, I would be a long-term buyer.”

On Treasuries:

“I don’t think an 80 basis point increase in interest rates is a bear market. We have a possibility of rising rates. The outer limits could be 4.40%, on the ten-year. The market knows that the Federal Reserve will be completing its QE2 program by June. The markets are efficient. A lot of this is priced in.”

“We believe rates will creep up. We’re not calling that a bear market. The other issue we need to focus on…We all spend time focusing on the Treasury market but in the United States, we’ve had a collapse in the outstanding of debt.  Corporations, individuals have really pared down their debt. The amount of outstanding debt in America has shrunk…You cannot look at just the Treasury market alone. If you encompass all the cash sitting on the side and you look at how much debt reduction we have seen in the credit markets, I believe there will be a ceiling of how high rates can go. What can throw that out is if we start experiencing a persistence in inflation…If you believe we will have creeping, rising inflation over the next two years, of course interest rates will have to go higher.”

“Inflation will be more moderate. Until I see a labor market that is more robust and until I see factory utilization to be larger, I think inflation in this country will be more muted than what we see other countries.”

Larry Fink on whether he is a buyer of Treasuries:

“If rates creep up over 4%, I would be incrementally buying interest rates.”

“I would definitely be lengthening [duration]. I believe inflation may be a problem in the short run but in the long run, not. You would want to buy if the yield curve shifts upward on the longer end and take advantage of that. If your views of inflation is short, the long end will do the best.”

On European sovereign debt crisis:

“I don’t think [the European debt crisis is over].  I think we will have more volatility there. We still have not addressed the Greek problem. We are in the midst of reviewing what is happening in Ireland. We still have the banking system in Europe which is undercapitalized. You had the governor in Italy saying his banks need more capital. Spain and other countries are saying their banks may need more capital. You put this idea in, the need for more capital to the financial system plus the sovereign credit difficulties, which would probably cause a reduction in capital. We will still have more volatility out of Europe. It will probably be a negative trend.”

“I’m a big buyer of the U.S. dollar here.”

On reports that BlackRock is teaming up with KKR, Warburg Pincus, and others to buy Citi Financial from Citigroup:

“I don’t comment about market rumors…I will say, we do a lot of things for clients….Yes, we are not getting into the consumer-lending business. One should assume that if we are involved in this, it would be on behalf of clients, not for our balance sheet.”

On BlackRock making deals:

“It is not our intention to do another large deal. I don’t see a need for it. Whether regulators are inhibiting us or not, we have said publicly we are happy with our business model as it is today. We made to fill-in acquisitions in different countries or may do an acquisition for the BlackRock technology business, BlackRock Solutions. But it is not my intention to be doing anything large-scale.”

“I remind people and regulators that 100% of our business is a client-serviing business. We are in agent in all our businesses. This is not our capital. This is not our balance sheet. We don’t have leverage. What caused the credit crisis was leverage. We are a different animal. We are only an agent.”

On the Middle East:

“Saudi Arabia is probably the most troublesome country to answer. I think the government will manage the situation properly. They have offered a big infusion into the economy. It is a very wealthy economy with huge oil reserves and huge reserves. It is a very large population in the Gulf region. It is the largest population in the entire Gulf region. That is what produces the uncertainty. The world is dependent on their 8-9 billion barrels per day.”

“That is an uncertainty we have to factor in. If there is uncertainty around Saudi Arabia that produces a slowdown of oil production, then we will have severe issues in this world. That is probably one of the most difficult issues that we are facing today.

“In the short run, you could see oil prices going north of $150 if you had that type of oil shock. It could be $200 at any one moment. My view would be that this would be managed over a course of a period of time.”

On China:

“They are more uncertain. They are the biggest producer of products in the world today. We’re very much dependent on China. It is a similar way we are dependent on Saudi Arabia for oil.”

“I am very concerned about China. China has done a magnificent job about engineering its economy…They have 300-400 million people living at substandard levels. They are in the outer regions outside the river delta valley. They are in many ways minorities and Muslims. They want change…China, because of the size of its population and because the imbalances of standard of living in the country, is an issue. They have done a good job of navigating this but we should put that in as a factor of risk going forward.

“I am more worried about equities today because of this uncertainty. Five-six months ago, I said our economy is better than we thought it would be. I would argue today that we think the economy is better today than it actually is. The enthusiasm has increased dramatically. I think the market is pausing. We need to see how this all plays out. I am quite constructive on Northern Africa, that this will be played out in a positive way. In the short run, democracies are dirty and messy and we could see moments of time in which that uncertainty is a negative uncertainty.”

The Fed Distorts The Economy With Inflation

by Bob Chapman
International Forecaster
March 5, 2011

The Federal Reserve tells us we need inflation to overcome the overhang created by debt and its inflationary aspects. The inflation does not create jobs – it just distorts prices upward. We are told by the head of the Fed, Mr. Bernanke, that he can end inflation when he thinks it is necessary. That is not true, because if inflation ends deflation takes command and the economy collapses. There is no finely honed instrument for turning these two opposite effects on and off; thus, inflationary instruments have to be blunt and overused. That means more often than not that inflation is over implemented. This is the opposite of the Fed’s mandate of promoting price stability, full employment and in fact is used to prop up the banking system. Over the past three plus years the Fed has been attempting to assist the banks in getting rid of bad assets and these efforts may last for another fifty years. These banks hold more bad assets then they have ever held before. These problem assets are the result of excessive lending and speculation between 2003 and 2008, and low interest rates that lasted far too long.

The quality and existence were recognized in the credit crisis that began in 2007. Most of these impaired assets are still on bank books, but the Bank of International Settlements, the FASB, the accounting agency and the government say it’s perfectly fine to keep two sets of books. If you did that in your business you’d end up in jail, but it is perfectly fine for the financial sector and transnational banks to do so. That is what QE1 was all about – bailing out the financial sector and other elitist corporations. These bad assets, that haven’t been sold to the Fed, are frozen on the balance sheets of these institutions, perhaps in perpetuity.

Fed created inflation raises the real value of assets artificially, so that these bad assets appear to be appreciating when in fact they are not. Toxic securities that are being held by banks, brokerage houses and others, that were worth $0.30 on the dollar, are now worth even less. All the inflation in the world won’t change the value of these assets. It may help interim earnings, but it won’t help in the long run. These policies won’t work long term. The interest on debt now and in the immediate future will be greater than revenues generated. At the same time $900 billion is a nonsense figure. When all is said and done the figure will be almost double that at $1.7 billion. QE1 will provide for 14% real inflation in 2011 and QE2 will provide 25% to 30% inflation in 2012. QE3 will give us hyperinflation. Monetization will be king.

The die has been cast and it is disturbing to see Mr. Bernanke lying to Congress. What will he tell them when he has to admit he created $1.7 trillion, which has been monetized into inflation and that he still holds official interest rates at just above zero, but real rates on the 10-year T-note went to 4-1/4 then 5-1/4? The American public is going to be stunned.

Again, the Fed and the US banking system are in a box and they cannot get out. If they were to officially raise interest rates it would lead to financial collapse. If they do not want to raise rates they could curtail QE2 and as a result the economy would collapse, just like Japan did so in 1992 and they have been in depression ever since. Either choice would send unemployment to a U6 level of 37.6% matching that of 1933. Worse yet, if the Fed’s commitments were marked to market you would find the Fed to be insolvent, a condition that has existed for some time. It is not surprising that the Fed and its banker owners don’t want the Fed audited and investigated. Any sale of bonds by the Fed would drive bonds lower and yields higher putting downward pressure on the economy. Much of what the Fed is holding is MBS and CDO’s from QE1, when they bailed out lenders and select transnational conglomerates and insurance companies.

Such actions would render the Fed officially insolvent, which in fact they are already. Just to show you how terse the situation is their capital is about $60 billion and they have about $3 trillion on the balance sheet. Now you can understand why real interest rates have to be held low. The stock and bond markets have to be held up artificially so that the Fed’s balance sheet won’t collapse. What many do not understand is that almost all of what is on the Fed balance sheet has been created out of thin air and monetized. Part of that hot money and credit has offset the deflationary undertow; part is exported in dollar foreign balances and the rest of the inflation pass into the economy. This is the beginning of out of control inflation and the Fed is well aware of it. They quite frankly are not concerned that people lose their life savings. They only care about saving the financial sector, which owns the Fed, the government and transnational conglomerates.

Inflation will not stimulate the economy. It will hinder it and not create jobs, which is already evident. It is all lies, smoke and mirrors and psywar.

QE1 and QE2 have spread across the world exporting part of US inflation. This inflation gets stronger daily enveloping the financial world. Food prices have gone ballistic and in countries where food makes up 75% of income the result has been the overthrow of one government after another. Even the price of your clothes is going to triple. The cause of these problems lies with central banks and banks that control them in Europe and the US. It is just one giant fraud like too big to fail. There will be no recovery only continual efforts to sustain the criminal enterprise.

As inflation climbs, unemployment will grow and wages will remain stagnant so that the anointed can continue to accumulate wealth. The beneficiaries will as usual be the elitist connected corporations, all those crooks who do not go to jail. Soon profits for smaller and medium sized companies will diminish as they are forced to absorb part of price inflation. Needless to say, there will be no hiring.

People worldwide see the dilemma of the US, UK and Europe and that in part is why you are seeing turmoil that has had its beginnings in North Africa and the Middle East, not that the US, UK and Europe were involved in the uprisings, but the catalyst had been in place as well. The reason for change is higher food prices. The world public is tired of tyrants and governments that refuse to answer the needs of the people. Again, part of the reason for change is the discovery that these dictators and those who control governments have to be dispensed with. You might say, as Saudi Arabia goes, so goes the Middle East and North Africa. If the so-called monarchy falls in Saudi Arabia the entire region is up for grabs. That would spell the end of the petro dollar, which would signal the demise of the dollar. That is something to be aware of and to contemplate.

As you know, historically when you have bad episodes such as those we are seeing in North Africa and the Middle East that the dollar has rallied strongly. Not this time. The dollar is falling not only against the six major currencies, but also versus gold and silver. We could be headed toward a test of 71.18 soon on the USDX. That makes US imports more expensive and exports cheaper, which would cause a balance of payments surplus. The downward dollar pressure would continue though, because the $1.6 trillion deficits would continue. We believe as history is evaluated Ben Bernanke as well as Alan Greenspan will be found to be totally incompetent. Today we have price and monetary inflation that are terrible. Eventually as the economy and coming hyperinflation becomes manifest we will then see a fall we have all been anticipating for years into deflationary depression.

After three attempts to rally past 82 the dollar in the USDX has faltered again, this time to 76.48. There is technical support at 76 and fundamental support at 74 and 71.18. Current weakness is systemic, but it is being aided by QE2 and stimulus 2.

Read Full Article…

Quantitative Easing Explained

QE and QE2 have absolutely nothing to do with “saving” the economy. However, QE3 has already been announced.

By Eric Woodell

The massive “quantitative easing” by the Federal Reserve, sounds somewhat noble, even gentle, in its approach to helping restore the American economy.  Such terms almost sound like you suddenly can refinance your house for an absurdly low rate, it’s that easy.

But the reality is quite different.

The Federal Reserve has the ability to create money.  In the old days, that meant using printing-presses, to put ink on paper, which are then called “dollars.”  Nowadays, however, they do it with literally the click of a computer keyboard, and the money is created instantly!  Pretty cool, don’t you think?

But what does this really mean?

Why would the Federal Reserve do this, and devalue the dollar?  After all, if there are only a certain number of goods available, and everyone suddenly has twice as much money, won’t the prices of everything double, and the net result will be that nothing has effectively changed?  Won’t the only real change be that each unit of currency being worth exactly half of what it was?

The answer to both questions, of course, is “yes.”  But what matters, is who gets the money first.  In the academic study of economics, this could be termed the “first-mover” advantage.

Let’s use an analogy:  Let’s assume the economy had $3 trillion floating around in it.  Now, suppose the Fed gave you $1 trillion dollars, in your own personal checking account.  With that much money, what would you do?  Pay off all your debts, buy a nice car and new house, and so on…  In other words, you could spend that money, at the value it currently is at.  Of course, as you bought more stuff, more money will make it into the general economy, increasing the money circulating around, and eventually the dollar will have a lower value.  In this case, after you’ve spent all the money acquiring everything worth buying, there would now be $4 trillion in the economy, instead of $3 trillion.  If you spent all of that money in one year, the inflation rate would be 4/3, or 33%.  The dollar would be worth only ¾ of what it had, just the previous year.

The effect to everyone else in the economy, is that their money is worth less than the previous year, and if you had your money tied up in a savings account paying 3% interest, it would mean you actually lost 30% in one year, because the dollars you have in your bank purchase that much less.  This has the net effect of being a government tax, while at the same time, allowing the cronies and suck-ups of the Fed to gain power, by taking it from you.

This is why the Fed constantly wants inflation; it gives them power over you, invisibly taxes you, and allows them to maintain power over you.

When they talk about more “quantitative easing,” like QE2 or even QE3, it means that the Fed is robbing you of your ability to purchase things like food, fuel or shelter.  Instead, the money is sent to the favorite banks of the Fed (remember, the Federal Reserve is a private corporation, made up of…  banks).  Which really means, they give it to themselves.

As you can now see, QE and QE2 have absolutely nothing to do with “saving” the economy.  Indeed, the opposite is the truth.  The actions by the Fed make the continued degradation of economic situation of the USA a certainty.

When more Americans finally wake up, and understand the rampant theft that’s being committed by the Federal Reserve and their cronies, there will be Hell to pay.

$1.2 Quadrillion Derivatives Market Dwarfs World GDP

AOL Finance

One of the biggest risks to the world’s financial health is the $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market. It’s complex, it’s unregulated, and it ought to be of concern to world leaders that its notional value is 20 times the size of the world economy. But traders rule the roost — and as much as risk managers and regulators might want to limit that risk, they lack the power or knowledge to do so.

A quadrillion is a big number: 1,000 times a trillion. Yet according to one of the world’s leading derivatives experts, Paul Wilmott, who holds a doctorate in applied mathematics from Oxford University (and whose speaking voice sounds eerily like John Lennon’s), $1.2 quadrillion is the so-called notional value of the worldwide derivatives market. To put that in perspective, the world’s annual gross domestic product is between $50 trillion and $60 trillion.

To understand the concept of “notional value,” it’s useful to have an example. Let’s say you borrow $1 million to buy an apartment and the interest rate on that loan gets reset every six months. Meanwhile, you turn around and rent that apartment out at a monthly fixed rate. If all your expenses including interest are less than the rent, you make money. But if the interest and expenses get bigger than the rent, you lose.

You might be able to hedge this risk of a spike in interest rates by swapping that variable rate of interest for a fixed one. To do that you’d need to find a counter party who has an asset with a fixed rate of return who believed that interest rates were going to fall and was willing to swap his fixed rate for your variable one.

The actual cash amount of the interest rates swaps might be 1% of the $1 million debt, while that $1 million is the “notional” amount. Applying that same 1% to the $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market would leave a cash amount of the derivatives market of $12 trillion — far smaller, but still 20% of the world economy.

Getting a Handle on Derivatives Risk

How big is the risk to the world economy from these derivatives? According to Wilmott, it’s impossible to know unless you understand the details of the derivatives contracts. But since they’re unregulated and likely to remain so, it is hard to gauge the risk.

But Wilmott gives an example of an over-the-counter “customized” derivative that could be very risky indeed, and could also put its practitioners in a position of what he called “moral hazard.” Suppose Bank 1 (B1) and Bank 2 (B2) decide to hedge against the risk that Bank 3 (B3) and Bank 4 (B4) might fail to repay their debt to B1 and B2. To guard against that, B1 and B2 might hedge the risk through derivatives.

In so doing, B1 and B2 might buy a credit default swap (CDS) on B3 and B4 debt. The CDS would pay B1 and B2 if B3 and B4 failed to repay their loan. B1 and B2 might also bet on the decline in shares of B3 and B4 through a short sale.

At that point, any action that B1 and B2 might take to boost the odds that B3 and B4 might default would increase the value of their derivatives. That possibility might tempt B1 and B2 to take actions that would boost the odds of failure for B3 and B4. As I wrote back in September 2008 on DailyFinance’s sister site, BloggingStocks, this kind of behavior — in which hedge funds pulled their money out of banks whose stock they were shorting — may have contributed to the failures of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.

It’s also the sort of conduct that makes it extremely difficult to estimate the risk of the derivatives market.

How Positive Feedback Loops Crash Markets

Another kind of market conduct that makes markets volatile is what Wilmott calls positive and negative feedback loops. These relatively bland-sounding terms mask some really scary behavior for investors who are not clued into it. Wilmott argues that a positive feedback loop contributed to the 22.6% crash in the Dow back in October 1987.

In the 1980s, a firm run by some former academics came up with the idea of portfolio insurance.

Their idea was that if investors are worried about their assets losing value, they can buy puts — the option to sell their investments at pre-determined prices. They can sell everything — which would be embarrassing if the market then started to rise — or they could sell a fixed proportion of their portfolio depending on the percentage decline in a particular stock market index.

This latter idea is portfolio insurance. If the Dow, for example, fell 3%; it might suggest that investors should sell 20% of their portfolio. And if the Dow fell 20%, it would indicate that investors should sell 100% of their portfolio.

That positive feedback loop — in which a stock price decline leads to more selling — boosts market volatility. Portfolio insurance causes more investors to sell as the market declines by, say 3%, which causes an even deeper plunge in the value of investors’ holdings. And that deeper decline leads to more selling. Before you know it, many investors are selling everything.

The portfolio insurance firm started off with $5 billion, but as its reputation spread, it ended up managing $50 billion. In 1987, that was a lot of money. So when that positive feedback loop got going, it took the Dow down 22.6% in a day.

The big problem back then was the absence of a sufficient number of traders using a negative feedback loop strategy. With a negative feedback loop, a trader would sell stocks as they rose and buy them as they declined. With a negative feedback loop strategy, volatility would be far lower.

Unfortunately, data on how much money has been going into negative and positive feedback loop strategies is not available. Therefore, it’s hard to know how the positive feedback loops have gained such a hold on the market.

But it is not hard to imagine that if a particular investor made huge amounts of money following a positive feedback loop strategy, other investors would hear about it and copy it. Moreover, the way traders get compensated suggests that it’s better for them to take more and more risk to replicate what their peers are doing.

Traders Make More Money By Following the Pack

There is a clear economic incentive for traders to follow what their peers are doing. According to Wilmott, to understand why, it helps to imagine a simplified example of a trading floor. Picture yourself as a new college graduate joining a bank’s trading floor with 100 traders. Those 100 traders each trade $10 million: They “win” if a coin toss lands on heads and “lose” if it lands on tails. But now imagine you’ve come up with a magic coin that has a 75% chance of landing on heads — you can make a better bet than the other 100 traders with their 50-50 coin.

You might think that the best strategy for you would be to bet your $10 million on that magic coin. But you’d be wrong. According to Wilmott, if the magic coin lands on a head but the other 100 traders flip tails, the bank loses $1 billion while you get a relatively paltry $10 million.

The best possible outcome for you is a 37.5% chance that everyone makes money (the 75% chance of you tossing heads multiplied by the 50% chance of the other traders getting a head). If instead, you use the same coin as everyone else on the floor, the probability of everyone getting a bonus rises to 50%.

When Traders Say ‘Jump,’ Risk Managers Ask ‘How High?’

Traders are a huge source of profit on Wall Street these days and they have an incentive to bet together and to bet big. According to Wilmott, traders get a bonus based on the one-year profits of those on their trading floor. If the trading floor makes big money, all the traders get a big bonus. And if it loses money, they get no bonus — but at least they don’t have to repay their capital providers for the losses.

Given that bonus structure, a trader is always better off risking $1 billion than $1 million. So if the trader, who is the king of the hill at the bank, asks a lowly risk manager to analyze how much risk the trader is taking, that risk manager is on the spot. If the risk manager comes back with a risk level that limits how big a bet the trader can take, the trader will demand that the risk manager recalculate the risk level lower so the trader can take the bigger bet.

Traders also manipulate their bonuses by assuming the existence of trading profits before they are actually realized. This happens when traders get involved with derivatives that will not unwind for 20 years.

Although the profits or losses on that trade have not been realized at the end of the first year, the bank will make an assumption about whether that trade made or lost money each year. Given the power traders wield, they can make the number come out positive so they can receive a hefty bonus — even though it is too early to tell what the real outcome of the trade will be.

How Trader Incentives Caused the CDO Bubble

Wilmott imagines that this greater incentive to follow the pack is what happened when many traders were piling into collateralized debt obligations. In Wilmott’s view, CDO risk managers who had analyzed a future scenario in which housing prices fell and interest rates rose would have concluded that the CDOs would become worthless under that scenario. He imagines that when notified of that possible outcome, CDO traders would have demanded that the risk managers shred that nasty scenario so they could keep trading more CDOs.

Incidentally, the traders who profited by going against the CDO crowd were lone wolves whose compensation did not depend on following the trading floor pack. This reinforces the idea that big bank compensation policies drive dangerous behavior that boosts market volatility.

What You Don’t Understand, You Can’t Properly Regulate

Wilmott believes that derivatives represent a risk of unknown proportions. But unless there is a change to trader compensation policies — one which would force traders to put their compensation at risk for the life of the derivative — then this risk could remain difficult to manage.

Unfortunately, he thinks that regulators aren’t in a good position to assess the risks of derivatives because they don’t understand them. Wilmott offers training in risk management. While traders and risk managers at banks and hedge funds have taken his course, regulators so far have not.

And if regulators don’t understand the risks in derivatives, chances are great that Congress does not understand them either.

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