From the very beginning of QE2, it was no secret the Federal Reserve wanted the stock market to rise. The Fed got its wish. Many people see the stock market increase of nearly 20% in a few short months as a sign things are turning around. The turnaround is really a mirage of the printing press. Even so, some pundits think the economy is on the mend. Maritime News reported last week, “It has been successful,” Peter Hooper, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in New York, said of Bernanke’s policy of pumping money into the financial system, dubbed QE2. “It’s contributed to the rally in the stock market” and has “been important in reducing substantially the downside risk of deflation.” (Click here for the complete story.) Pumping money into the stock market to get stocks to go up is not the same as hiring people and making products so share prices grow. With the stubbornly high unemployment rate of 9.8% (or more than 22% according to Shadowstats.com), this is just one of the dismal facts of this economy. Other gloomy indicators are the million plus foreclosures this year and next. The auto industry just had its fourth month of decline in new orders. The FDIC has shut down 157 banks so far this year, and all the banks look solvent only because of rule changes that amount to government sanctioned accounting fraud. You cannot have the banks, housing and auto sales all tanking at the same time and expect the party to last.
For the life of me, I cannot see how share prices going up are going to get businesses hiring again. This stock market rally is good for one group of people—insiders. They are selling at a rate of more than 80 to 1 over buyers. It is obvious this market is not growing organically but is simply being pumped. Now, people should look out for the dump. Will the market continue to rise? Will there be QE 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or to infinity? Is printing money the true road to wealth and prosperity? I think you know where I’m going.
Robin Harding, Bernard Simon and Christian Oliver Financial Times
December 29, 2010
Some of the world’s strongest banks have profited from an emergency credit facility set up by the US Federal Reserve to shore up confidence in the global financial system, according to a Financial Times analysis of data released by the Fed.
More than half of lending under the Fed’s term auction facility – the largest of its crisis programmes – went to foreign banks. Details of the varied uses to which they put it may add to political criticism of the Fed.
The Taf was set up in December 2007 to provide one-month loans to creditworthy banks as markets dried up for lending longer than overnight. In August 2008, it began offering three-month loans as well.
KINGSTON, NY, 28 December 2010 — After the tumultuous years of the Great Recession, a battered people may wish that 2011 will bring a return to kinder, gentler times. But that is not what we are predicting:
1. Wake-Up Call The people of all nations, having become convinced of the inability of leaders and know-it-all “arbiters of everything” to fulfill their promises, will do more than just question authority, they will defy it. The seeds of revolution will be sown….
2. Crack-Up 2011 In 2011, with the bailout funds and arsenal of other schemes to prop up the economy depleted, teetering economies will collapse, currency wars will ensue, trade barriers will be erected, economic unions will splinter, and the onset of the “Greatest Depression” (a trend we forecasted before the massive bailouts existed) will be recognized by everyone….
3. Screw the People As times get even tougher and people get even poorer, the “authorities” will intensify their efforts to extract the funds needed to meet fiscal obligations. While there will be variations on the theme, the governments’ song will be the same: cut what you give, raise what you take….
4. Crime Waves No job + no money + compounding debt = high stress, strained relations, short fuses. In 2011, with the fuse lit, it will be prime time for Crime Time. As Gerald Celente says, “When people lose everything and they have nothing left to lose, they lose it.” And “lose it” they will….
5. Crackdown on Liberty As crime rates rise, so will the voices demanding a crackdown. A national crusade to “Get Tough on Crime” will be waged against the citizenry. And just as in the “War on Terror,” where “suspected terrorists” are killed before proven guilty or jailed without trial, in the “War on Crime” everyone is a suspect until proven innocent….
6. Alternative Energy In laboratories and workshops unnoticed by mainstream analysts, scientific visionaries and entrepreneurs are forging a new physics incorporating principles once thought impossible, working to create devices that liberate more energy than they consume. What are they, and how long will it be before they can be brought to market?
7. Journalism 2.0 2011 will mark the year that new methods of news and information distribution will render the 20th century model obsolete. With its unparalleled reach across borders and language barriers, “Journalism 2.0″ has the potential to influence and educate citizens in a way that governments and corporate media moguls would never permit….
8. Cyberwars In 2010, every major government acknowledged that Cyberwar was a clear and present danger and, in fact, had already begun. The demonstrable effects of Cyberwar and its companion, Cybercrime, are already significant – and will come of age in 2011. Equally disruptive will be the harsh measures taken by global governments to control free access to the web, identify its users, and literally shut down computers that it considers a threat to national security….
9. Youth of the World Unite University degrees in hand yet out of work, in debt and with no prospects on the horizon, feeling betrayed and angry, young adults and 20-somethings are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. Not mature enough to control their impulses, the confrontations they engage in will escalate disproportionately….
10. End of The World! The closer we get to 2012, the louder the calls will be that “The End is near!” Among Armageddonites the actual end of the world, and annihilation of the Earth in 2012, is a matter of certainty. Even the rational and informed may sometimes feel the world is in a perilous state. Both streams of thought are leading many to reevaluate their chances for personal survival, be it in heaven or on earth….
11. The Mystery Trend … will be revealed upon publication of the Trends Journal in mid-January.
According to a recent Rasmussen’s poll, most Americans understand the FCC’s internet regulations will be used by the government to push a political agenda.
54% of respondents oppose the FCC effort to regulate the internet while 21% support it. 25% are not sure. By a 52% to 27% margin, Rasmussen reported on December 28, voters believe that more free market competition is better than more regulation for protecting internet users. Most Democrats see an unbiased regulatory approach, while most Republicans and unaffiliated voters fear a political agenda.
In April, a Rasmussen poll revealed that just 27% of Americans believed the Federal Communications Commission should regulate the internet like it does television and radio.
Internet regulation was the hallmark of Obama in 2008 as he ran for president. After installing Genachowski as FCC chairman, the Obama administration started to move on its promise to regulate the internet. The FCC began to act like a fiefdom and told a federal appeals court it had the power to impose regulation on broadband rates, even though Congress had not given the agency the power to do so.
In fact, 300 members of Congress, including a large number of Democrats, told the FCC in no uncertain terms to stop its attempt to grab power over the internet. The FCC temporarily changed tack and convened negotiations over the summer with a select group of industry representatives and proponents of internet regulation.
In August, the FCC worked with House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman on a draft bill codifying network management rules.
The FCC decided before Christmas to make its move. Obama said the new government regulation will “help preserve the free and open nature of the Internet.” In fact, it would do just the opposite.
Genachowski and the FCC naturally try to make this unwarranted move look like a white knight government protecting consumers against greedy telecommunications companies and ISPs. Beyond the rhetoric about “net neutrality,” however, lies the real purpose of the FCC regulations – government control and censorship.
“What governments around the world are suddenly beginning to realize is that a free internet is ultimately incompatible with government secrets, and secrets are essential to any government that wants to remain in power,” writes Mike Adams of Natural News. “As part of a long-term plan to control content on the internet, the FCC is now attempting to assert authority over the internet in the same way it has long exercised content censorship authority over broadcast television and radio.”
Adams argues that the FCC is attempting to assert its authority over the internet. “By asserting its authority with net neutrality, the FCC will establish a beachhead of implied authority from which it can begin to control and censor the internet,” he writes.
Obama’s FCC commissariat is not losing sleep over the First Amendment. It was the FCC’s Chief Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd who said that “blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies,” namely converting the internet into the same government regulated medium as television and radio.
Prior to the FCC vote, the United Nations announced its plan to regulate the internet.
“The United Nations is also aiming to run the Internet for you,” warns Joseph A. Klein. “With the backing of governments around the world who don’t mind free-riding on American investment and know-how in the Internet while seeking as many ways as possible to usurp control over its governance, the UN establishment has been trying for years to move control of the Internet’s day-to-day management to some sort of global governance forum.”
Efforts by the FCC and the United Nations at the behest of the globalists are contrary to the model that has emerged since the technology was invented in 1973 and became public in the early 1990s.
“The beauty of the Internet is that it’s not controlled by any one group. Its governance is bottoms-up – with academics, non-profits, companies and governments all working to improve this technological wonder of the modern world. This model has not only made the Internet very open – a testbed for innovation by anyone, anywhere – it’s also prevented vested interests from taking control,” wrote Vint Cerf, who is often called the father of the internet, in response to the UN proposal to regulate the internet.
A free and open internet is anathema to government as it moves to control nations, populations, and telecommunications. In order to succeed and build world government and its accompanying control grid, the internet must be tamed and folded into the established propaganda apparatus.
The machinations of the FCC and the United Nations reveal once again how worried the establishment is about a free and open internet. The internet cannot be allowed to be a primary and growing source of alternative information that challenges daily the corporate media propaganda system that acts like a megaphone for a control freak government.
The Rasmussen poll reveals that while many Americans may not fully understand the underlying reasons for government control of the internet – to stifle opposition to the government in the same way the Chinese have – they are steadfastly opposed to more regulation.
THOSE INCITING MURDER UPON JULIAN ASSANGE AND/OR MEMBERS OF HIS FAMILY.
We, among many law abiding citizens of the world deplore and condemn, as applicable, your utterances and writings calling for the extra judicial ie unlawful: kidnapping/assassination/murder/physical harm of Julian Assange, his supporters, Wikileaks workers or members of Assange’s family.
We remind you of the laws in your country and others against incitement, inter alia:
We remind you that while such prima facie incitement by way of utterances and writings may go unpunished in your country, they will not necessarily go unpunished in others, and especially so should you have the courage of your convictions to repeat them in those other jurisdictions.
We ask you respectfully, to contemplate this writing of Mahatma Ghandi:
And that truth is that Julian Assange is no terrorist; he is not a war defined “belligerent” acting against the United States; he cannot ever be a “traitor”to the USA since by definition he is not a citizen of the United States.
