Cry for Argentina: Fiscal Mismanagement, Odious Debt or Pillage?

Ellen Brown

Argentina has now taken the US to The Hague for blocking the country’s 2005 settlement with the bulk of its creditors. The issue underscores the need for an international mechanism for nations to go bankrupt. Better yet would be a sustainable global monetary scheme that avoids the need for sovereign bankruptcy.

Argentina was the richest country in Latin America before decades of neoliberal and IMF-imposed economic policies drowned it in debt. A severe crisis in 2001 plunged it into the largest sovereign debt default in history. In 2005, it renegotiated its debt with most of its creditors at a 70% “haircut.” But the opportunist “vulture funds,” which had bought Argentine debt at distressed prices, held out for 100 cents on the dollar.

Paul Singer’s Elliott Management has spent over a decade aggressively trying to force Argentina to pay down nearly $1.3 billion in sovereign debt. Elliott would get about $300 million for bonds that Argentina claims it picked up for $48 million. Where most creditors have accepted payment at a 70% loss, Elliott Management would thus get a 600% return.

On The 100th Anniversary Of The Federal Reserve Here Are 100 Reasons To Shut It Down Forever

Michael Snyder

December 23rd, 1913 is a date which will live in infamy.  That was the day when the Federal Reserve Act was pushed through Congress.  Many members of Congress were absent that day, and the general public was distracted with holiday preparations.  Now we have reached the 100th anniversary of the Federal Reserve, and most Americans still don't know what it actually is or how it functions.  But understanding the Federal Reserve is absolutely critical, because the Fed is at the very heart of our economic problems.  Since the Federal Reserve was created, there have been 18 recessions or depressions, the value of the U.S. dollar has declined by 98 percent, and the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.  This insidious debt-based financial system has literally made debt slaves out of all of us, and it is systematically destroying the bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.  If nothing is done, we are inevitably heading for a massive amount of economic pain as a nation.  So please share this article with as many people as you can.  The following are 100 reasons why the Federal Reserve should be shut down forever...

Collecting Donations For Wal-Mart Employees That Cannot Afford Thanksgiving Dinner?

Michael Snyder

You may find what is happening at one Wal-Mart in Ohio very hard to believe. At the Wal-mart on Atlantic Boulevard in Canton, Ohio employees are being asked to donate food items so that other employees that cannot afford to buy Thanksgiving dinner will be able to enjoy one too. You can see a photo of the donation bins that has been posted on Twitter right here.

On the one hand, it is commendable that someone at that Wal-Mart is deeply concerned about the employees that are so poor that they cannot afford to buy the food that they need for Thanksgiving. On the other hand, this is a perfect example that shows how the quality of the jobs in this country has gone down the toilet. Wal-Mart is the largest employer in the United States and it had operating income of 26.5 billion dollars last year.

Wal-Mart is not required to pay their employees a decent wage, and it is very unlikely that anyone will force them to. But they should. Because Wal-Mart does not pay decent wages to their employees, the rest of us end up with the bill. As you will see below, huge numbers of Wal-Mart employees end up on Medicaid and other government assistance programs. Meanwhile, those that control Wal-Mart continue to enjoy absolutely massive profits.

Debt Levels Are Skyrocketing To Extremely Dangerous Levels – How Long Can This Possibly Keep Going?

Michael Snyder

Never before has the world faced such a serious debt crisis.  Yes, in the past there have certainly been nations that have gotten into trouble with debt, but we have never had a situation where virtually all of the major powers around the globe were all drowning in debt at the same time.  And what makes this crisis even more unprecedented is that everyone on the planet is using fiat currency that is backed up by nothing.

It is all just a bunch of paper and data points that people have faith in.  Right now, confidence in this system is being shaken as debt levels skyrocket to extremely dangerous levels.  Many are openly wondering how much longer this can possibly go on.

Just consider what is going on over in Europe right now.  Even the countries that have supposedly "tried austerity" continue to rack up debt at a mind blowing pace.  New numbers that have just been released show that government debt to GDP ratios for some of the most financially troubled nations in Europe are absolutely soaring...

Share This Chart With Anyone Who Believes The U.S. Economy Is Not Going To Crash

Dees Illustration

Michael Snyder

Anyone who thinks that the U.S. economy can keep going along like this is absolutely crazy.  We are in the terminal phase of an unprecedented debt spiral which has allowed us to live far, far beyond our means for the last several decades.  Unfortunately, all debt spirals eventually end, and they usually do so in a very disorderly manner.

The chart that you are about to see is one of my favorite economic charts.  It compares the growth of U.S. GDP to the growth of total debt in the United States. Yes, U.S. GDP has certainly grown at a decent pace over the years, but our total debt has absolutely exploded.

40 years ago, the total amount of debt in our system (government debt + corporate debt + consumer debt, etc.) was about 2 trillion dollars.  Today it has grown to more than 56 trillion dollars.  Our debt has grown at a much, much faster rate than our economy has, and there is no way in the world that we will be able to continue to do that for long.

America's Student Loan Racket: Stiffer Debt Bondage Coming

Stephen Lendman

For growing numbers of American youths, higher education is increasingly out of reach. High tuition and fees make it unaffordable. So does a disturbing government/corporate partnership.

Millions of students need financial aid. They're exploited for profit. Providers are enriched. Higher education involves debt entrapment. 

Students graduate tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Some post-graduates face burdens up to $100,000. If unpaid after 30 years, it's multiples higher. If default or declare bankruptcy, it's unforgiven. Bondage is permanent until repaid. 

Loan providers thrive from defaults. Wages can be garnished. So can unemployment benefits, disability payments, tax refunds, as well as Social Security and other retirement benefits. 

A conspiratorial alliance of lenders, guarantors, servicers, and collection companies derive income from debt service and inflated collection fees. College marketing officers, state and federal legislators, and administration officials are complicit with them.

Principle, accrued interest, late payment and collection agency penalties create enormous burdens to repay. Private lenders are exempt from federal fair debt collection requirements. Federal loans have minimal safety net protection.

The economic consequences of cheap money

Ludwig Von Mises

[From a memorandum, dated April 24, 1946, prepared in English by Professor Mises for a committee of businessmen for whom he served as a consultant, this article appears in The Causes of the Economic Crisis, and Other Essays Before and After the Great Depression (2006) as chapter 5, "The Trade Cycle and Credit Expansion: The Economic Consequences of Cheap Money."]

The author of this paper is fully aware of its insufficiency. Yet, there is no means of dealing with the problem of the trade cycle in a more satisfactory way if one does not write a treatise embracing all aspects of the capitalist market economy. The author fully agrees with the dictum of Böhm-Bawerk: “A theory of the trade cycle, if it is not to be mere botching, can only be written as the last chapter or the last chapter but one of a treatise dealing with all economic problems.”

It is only with these reservations that the present writer presents this rough sketch to the members of the Committee.

I. The Unpopularity of Interest

Matt Taibbi: The Secret to Mitt Romney's Fortune? Greed, Debt and Forcing Others to Pay Bill

DemocracyNow.org - A new article by reporter Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone sheds new light on the origin of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's fortune, revealing how Romney's former firm, Bain Capital, used private equity to raise money to conduct corporate raids. Taibbi writes: "What most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: By borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth."

To watch the complete coverage of the Republican National Convention on this weekday independent news hour, read the transcript, download the podcast, search our vast archive, or to find more information about Democracy Now! and Amy Goodman, visit http://www.democracynow.org/


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Who Owns the World's Debt?

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Jim Rogers on Dylan Ratigan: Cut spending and write off the debt

YouTube -- SaveOurSovereignty3


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In Prison for Debt

YouTube -- RT


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Our Future in Chains: The For-Profit Debtors' Prison System

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Global Fraud: Global Hope

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Victory for the World

An Address to the International UFO Congress
Fort McDowell Resort, Scottsdale, Arizona
Saturday, February 26, 2011
by Hon. Paul Hellyer, P.C.
Former Canadian Minister of National Defence

The world financial system is a total fraud. It is one gargantuan Ponzi scheme, no better than the one Bernie Madoff used to swindle his friends and neighbors, and thousands of times worse if you add up the total number of victims it has ripped off over countless generations.

The principal difference between the two schemes is that Madoff was acting outside the law while the international banking cartel has persuaded generation after generation of monarchs, presidents and prime ministers to provide legislative protection for their larceny.

The banks Ponzi scheme is alarmingly simple. They lend the same money to several people or institutions at the same time and collect interest on it from each. What the banks really lend, however, is their credit, and what they take back in compensation for that privilege is a debt that must be repaid with interest. 

Japan shows how to defuse debt time-bomb

Ellen Brown
Asia Times

"Threatening to default should not be a partisan issue. In view of all the hazards it entails, one wonders why any responsible person would even flirt with the idea." -- Alan S Blinder, Princeton professor of economics, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve.

A game of Russian roulette is being played with the national debt ceiling. Fire the wrong chamber of the gun, and the result could be the second Great Depression.

Ron Paul EXPOSES the Real GDP and Unemployment Numbers

Related Article:
10 Ways You're Being Fleeced by Banks

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Wary Customers Cautious Of Increased Credit Card Offers

Amy Lee
Huffington Post

Though banks are again offering credit cards to risky borrowers, not everyone is biting.

"I will never, ever have another credit card," Carole Carroll, a New Yorker in her fifties working in finance, said. "It's either I have the cash in my hand or I'm moving back in with my mother."

Carole, and her husband Don, were $88,000 in debt before they entered a debt management program and managed to climb clear. But like millions of Americans with less than stellar borrowing history, the Carrolls are still being targeted by credit card companies.



Credit card offers to risky borrowers are surging, according to a report by the New York Times, which found that HSBC, Citigroup, and Discover all mailed out about ten times as many credit card offers this year compared to last year, while Capital One's rate rose to 22 million, a fiftyfold increase.

Approximately 17% of those offers will arrive in the mailboxes of people with damaged credit, up from the 2009 low of 7%, according to the New York Times. And consumers are responding: 4% of this group have sent in applications, 10 times the typical response rate.

Even when Carrolls were struggling with debt, the credit card offers never ceased. "It was funny because I'd walk in the door with credit offers in the mail from downstairs and there'd be a message on the machine saying, 'Where's our money?'"

The Carrolls took a familiar route to financial hardship. Gastric bypass surgeries for both of them, double hip replacement for Carole, job loss on both of their parts, and other ordinary misfortunes led them into over-reliance on credit. Instead of languishing under their debt, they went to Greenpath Debt Solutions and embarked on a budget plan that shaved off their outstanding balance over the next three and a half years.

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RELATED ARTICLE:
5 Reasons NOT to Pay Your Credit Cards

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5 Signs the End is Near for the Criminal Banks

When will we get justice from the banksters?  HINT: As soon as we demand justice and not a moment sooner.

Activist Post

Could it be any more clear?  The international banks are proven criminal entities -- everyone knows it, and everyone is beginning to openly say it. Yet they are still apparently considered "Too-Big-to-Jail" by our public legislators. 

Politicians from around the world continue to bow to the will of the banksters, whether they be in the private sector, privately-owned central banks, or global private banks, while the people continue to be brazenly looted to fund their criminal enterprise. 

Our leaders are being forced by the international banks to give them public pensions and demand higher taxes without the consent of the voting public. So much for sovereign countries making their own laws.  This, after these very bankers brought the nations of the world to their knees in the first place.  The emperor is nearly naked for all to see; however, the final curtain to be pulled will thrust the angry populace well over the tipping point when they realize their servitude was purchased with fraudulent money. 



It's all an illusion to enslave us. This insanity is about to end. We have the power to change our reality, but only if we have the collective awareness, courage and will to take it.  The time for liberty and justice is here for free humans to live in a lawful society.  We must immediately demand justice: seize the criminals' assets, release all debt prisoners, and reform our monetary system.

Here are 5 signs that the end is near for the criminal banks:

1.  Global Awareness is growing among the peasants:  Bloomberg recently reported that more than half of Americans polled want the Fed reined in or abolished.  This poll indicates tremendous expansion of the public's knowledge of the Fed in America. This tipping point of awareness has already turned to rage in Europe.

2.  Wikileaks to release Banking file:  Regardless of what these new cables actually reveal, the WikiLeaks saga has hit center stage and will undoubtedly reveal a further wealth of criminal activity.  This soap-opera-like, headline-grabbing story is guaranteed to penetrate even the laziest of mainstream news viewers.  

3.  Defaulting on Debt as a form of protest:  The global awareness of the Greatest Bank Robbery of both individuals and governments already has led to a major shift in mentality regarding debt and one's obligation to pay it back.  People are refusing to pay their credit cards (or not using them); walking away from mortgages; and are suing banks in the fraudulent mortgage scam.  This is a movement that is beginning to recognize the system itself as an immoral one, so there is no moral obligation to further support criminality by participating.  This is a massive paradigm shift which will have a "trickle-up" effect, as this mentality eventually asserts itself on governments to stop cooperating with the proven thieves of the banking industry.  Governments will have to make the choice either to throw the banksters under the bus, or face their own possible collapse.  

4.  Ron Paul to chair Fed oversight: Author of End The Fed, Ron Paul, was named chairman of the House subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy that oversees the Fed.  He openly and repeatedly refers to the bankers as criminals in nearly every interview.  This is clearly a sign that the Fed's days of running the plantation are coming to an end.  Over 25 years in the making, Ron Paul finally will have his platform.

5.  After-the-Fed debate heats up:  The focus until this point has been to End The Fed.  Now the focus has shifted to the assumption that the Fed's days are truly numbered.  The time has arrived for groups advocating a new monetary policy to fiercely debate what type of system should replace the current private central bank.  This preparation and debate indicates that a collapse of the current banking structure is a foregone conclusion.

The above points are being addressed simultaneously as discussion is increasing about the fact that it is mathematically impossible ever to pay off the fraudulent debt that has been created.  Once this is realized by the majority, the end of the criminal banks will be seen not only as a near-term possibility; it will be seen as a self-evident necessity.  It is, in fact, The Bankers or Us:

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Is the College Debt Bubble Ready to Explode?

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Laura Rowley
Yahoo! Finance

Kelli Space, 23, graduated from Northeastern University in 2009 with a bachelor's in sociology — and a whopping $200,000 in student loan debt. Space, who lives with her parents and works full-time, put up a Web site calledTwoHundredThou.com soliciting donations to help meet her debt obligation, which is $891 a month. That number jumps to $1,600 next November.

In creating the site, Space, of course is hoping to ease her financial burden, but it's "mainly to inform others on the dangers of how quickly student loans add up," she said. So far she's raised $6,671.56, according to her site.

Space is just one example — albeit an extreme one — of a student loan bubble that may be about to burst. Over the last decade, private lenders, abetted by college financial aid offices, eagerly handed young people hundreds of thousands of dollars to earn bachelor's degrees. As a result of easy credit, declining grants and soaring tuitions, more than two-thirds of students graduated with debt in 2008 — up from 45 percent in 1993. The average debt load is $24,000, according to the Project on Student Debt.

In some respects, the student loan crisis looks remarkably like the subprime mortgage crisis. First, outstanding student loan debt has ballooned: It grew roughly four-fold in the last decade to $833 billion as of June — surpassing outstanding credit-card debt for the first time.


Secondly, defaults have soared amid a difficult job market. In 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, nearly 3.4 million borrowers began repayment, and more than 238,000 defaulted on their loans. The number of loans that went into forbearance or deferment (when borrowers receive temporary relief from payments) rose to 22 percent in 2007, from 10 percent a decade earlier, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Over a 15-year period, default rates range from 20 percent for federal loans to 40 percent on loans to students who attend for-profit schools, The Chronicle found.

Just as lenders offered easy no-money-down mortgages to unqualified borrowers during the housing boom, private student loan firms offered instant online approval for up to 100 percent of college costs to students, in some cases for four consecutive years. In early 2007, half of loans made by Sallie Mae, one of the industry's biggest players, were to students with no co-signers, according to Mark Kantrowitz, founder of informational Web site finaid.org.

As tuition costs have outpaced the caps on federal loans, more families have turned to private loans, which carry higher interest rates and stricter repayment rules. Last year private lenders supplied about $10 billion in loans (compared with $100 billion in federal loans). A study by the College Board found about a third of graduates in 2007-2008 had private loans. About two dozen private lenders offer student loans, and their business is growing at 25 percent annually, after a temporary decline amid the recent credit crisis, according to finaid.org.

Space, for instance, took out $12,000 in federal loans and borrowed $189,000 from private lender Sallie Mae. In an email interview, Space said she spent the money on tuition and room and board for four years; two summer semesters; a three-month study abroad program in Ireland; and books for three semesters. Some $20,000 of her debt is accrued interest. (Interest rates on her loans range from 3 percent to 9 percent.)

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4 Reasons to Change the Way We View Education





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Rand Paul: Thought Crime USA

Infowars.com
November 16, 2010



In this exclusive never-before-seen interview with new United States Senator for Kentucky Rand Paul, the son of Congressman Ron Paul warns that Americans are being politically profiled for thought crimes, while the Obama administration, in particular people like Rahm Emanuel, is seeking to exploit crises in order to advance the big government agenda.

Paul pledges to support or introduce legislation that forces lawmakers to read legislation before it can be passed, flying in the face of ludicrous statements from the likes of Nancy Pelosi, who once stated, “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.” Paul also outlines his mission to reduce the national deficit and balance the budget, reduce the size of big government, and put a halt to the insane money-printing policies of the Federal Reserve, which have recently sparked a global backlash and a new currency war.

Senator Paul says that there is a growing unease across America, not just in the liberty movement, but amongst ordinary people he speaks with everyday, that America is in terminal decline, with its manufacturing and monetary foundations being rapidly eroded as our leaders tell us glibly that the answer is to go shopping and get in more debt. Auditing the Fed is a primary concern that Rand shares with his father Ron, along with abolishing many of its powers if not jettisoning the private institution altogether.

Paul also warns that political profiling is also in full swing, with Americans being profiled not for the color of their skin, but for the “color of their thoughts,” with those who believe in the Constitution being smeared as dangerous extremists. Paul makes reference to the infamous MIAC report out of Missouri that implied Ron Paul and Bob Barr supporters were potential terrorists.

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