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 By on November 12th, 2012 Mexico\’s Past, The World\’s Future Currency Devaluations
It seems the world is doomed to repeat the same mistakes, from wars to large economic shocks that could have been avoided. All this, without a doubt, is the responsibility of leaders, who are often blinded by today’s apparent prosperity, or by the desire to postpone the inevitable, leading entire nations to what will eventually end in tragedy.
The influential forces that these leaders possess, including political, economic, monetary, and even military, impede for actions to be taken against them, allowing them to act discreetly and individually.
Of course, this does not imply we should rise in opposition to faulty government and monetary policies. On the contrary, bear in mind that rulers often hide or suppress movements and initiatives for change until they prove unstoppable. By then it is too late for any preventive action and panic ensues.
In this sense, Mexico has been no exception experiencing several such episodes in its recent history. Mexico’s experiences from the past can serve as a model for other nations as an example of what to avoid.
It’s 2012, and Mexico is nearly thirty years past its period of devaluations, yet it is once again on a path toward recurring crises, which have coincided almost exactly with its changes in government every six years.
The famous crisis of 1982 was the unwinding of a global process, not only relevant to Mexico but to the world, as the first consequences of the break from the gold standard (Bretton Woods In 1971) became evident.
Follow link to read full article
By on November 12th, 2012
By on November 12th, 2012 In this episode, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss foul mouthed foreigners with banker tourettes in Singapore, while in America, traders at Barclays send each other expletive-filled emails admitting to manipulating energy prices down in order to have their big bets on declining prices pay off. They also discuss financial activists creating a rolling jubillee reverse vulture fund designed to liberate the population from unpayable debts. In the second half, Max Keiser talks to Teri Buhl about the investigation into fraud at Sun Trust Bank where whistleblowers allege the bank mis-sold mortgages to Fannie Mae, the government sponsored enterprise. Max and Teri also talk about recent developments in the case of residential mortgage back securities fraudulently sold to investors by JP Morgan’s Bear Stearns holding and Teri proposes a million man march on the SEC and the NY Fed.Clueless Bankers Know Nothing of Finance
By on December 23rd, 2011
Ron Paul Polling In Top Tier In Nevada
Desperate establishment now dismisses validity of caucuses and primaries as well as Congressman
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
December 22, 2011
A new poll out of Nevada shows that Ron Paul is holding his status as a top tier candidate with a solid support base that can only grow exponentially with likely successes in Iowa and New Hampshire.
The 8NewsNow/Las Vegas Review-Journal poll has Paul in third place with 12.7 percent of the votes. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney narrowly comes in first with 33.1 percent to Newt Gingrich’s 29.2 percent. All the other candidates polled 5% or less.
The Nevada Caucuses are scheduled for February 4th, meaning the state is the fifth to take to the polls, after Iowa, New Hampshire, Florida and South Carolina.
Ron Paul’s campaign has a strong base in Nevada, having established two campaign offices there back in October.
“Dr. Paul’s team will work hard to spread his message of liberty throughout the state,” Ron Paul 2012 Nevada Executive Director Steve Bierfeldt said in a press release at the time.
The media continues to dismiss Paul’s chances even as he is now shown to be leading in Iowa in every recent poll.
The fact that Paul now stands a real chance of winning outright in Iowa has caused establishment pundits and GOP insiders to resort to the desperate attempt to convince the public that the early caucuses and primaries are now meaningless.
To his credit, one mainstream media talking head who has given Paul the time of day is Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto, who told viewers yesterday “I’m not here as a supporter of Ron Paul, but as an opponent of anyone dismissing Ron Paul, or anyone else at this stage. They’re all due a fair hearing, not an unfair clearing.”
Cavuto also highlighted the fact that both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were declared “unelectable” and that “history is full of candidates who couldn’t make it but did.”
Cavuto added, “Now if Ron Paul does surprise, don’t blame it on average voters who didn’t see it coming. Blame it on haughty media pundits who continued dismissing him—even as he did.”
In the face of exponential growing support for Paul, various corporate media outlets, led by arch neocon Bill Kristol’s The Weekly Standard, are once again attempting to resurrect a long debunked and ridiculous racist smear against Paul.
Paul has consistently addressed the issue when asked about it, making it clear that he is and never was associated with newsletters from the early 1990s claiming to be written on his behalf by anonymous and unknown individuals.
When a CNN reporter again asked Paul about the issue yesterday, he provided the same answer. When the reporter pressed him on it over and over again, the Congressman simply ended the interview, making it clear that he had no interest in facilitating those who wish to destroy his campaign through lies and smear.
Instead of highlighting this, CNN chose to run with the childish headline “Ron Paul gets testy during interview”, with Wolf Blitzer doing his best to inflame the non-issue.
Meanwhile, the Ron Paul campaign is continuing its advertising blitz in Iowa and New Hampshire with another new ad spot.
The piece is a 30 second christmas themed monologue from Paul’s son, the Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. The Senator talks of his father’s unfaltering values and sets him apart establishment politicians.
“My father taught me the value of commitment to faith, family and our Constitution.” the Senator states.
“He’s always stayed true to his principles and convictions. He won’t falter, he won’t bend, and he will restore what made America great,” he adds.
“Senator Paul is always there for his father and he will make a great First Son. Through this ad, the senator makes a strong argument for why citizen activists concerned with America’s future are ideal partners with Ron Paul in restoring America to prosperity and its founding principles,” said Ron Paul 2012 National Campaign Chairman Jesse Benton.
By on September 19th, 2011 By:http://www.cagop.org
Posted: Saturday, September 17, 2011
LOS ANGELES – Minutes ago in front of the California Republican Party convention delegation at the JW Marriott at L.A. Live, CRP Chairman Tom Del Beccaro announced Congressman Ron Paul as the winner of the 2011 California Straw Poll.
A full breakdown of the results is copied below. A total of 833 ballots were cast during the 2011 Straw Poll which included a write-in opportunity for the first time.
The 2011 California Straw Poll was held on Saturday, September 17th between 9:00AM – 5:00PM, where CRP members, associate members, and registered guests were allowed to choose their favorite from among the 11 official Republican presidential candidates.
2011 Straw Poll Full Results (Votes, %)
Congressman Ron Paul (374, 44.9%)
Governor Rick Perry (244, 29.3%)
Mitt Romney (74, 8.8%)
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (64, 7.7%)
Jon Huntsman (17, 2.0%)
Herman Cain (15, 1.8%)
Newt Gingrich (14, 1.7%)
Thad McCotter (7, 0.8%)
Rick Santorum (7, 0.8%)
Gary Johnson (2, 0.2%)
Fred Karger (1, 0.1%)
Write-ins (15, 1.8%)
By on September 13th, 2011 By Brett Arends, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — You want to fix this economic crisis? You want to put people back to work? You want to light a fire under the economy?
There’s a way to do it. Fast. And relatively simple.
But you’re not going to like it. You’re not going to like it at all.
Default. A national Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The fastest way to fix this mess is to see tens of millions of homeowners default on their mortgages and other debts, and millions more file for bankruptcy.
Roy Smith: Break up the banks, even Goldman
Fears of recession, tough trading conditions, an ocean of unresolved litigation and the worsening euro-zone mess have delivered a real pounding to bank stocks this summer. Former Goldman Sachs partner Roy Smith joins Mean Street to offer a solution: Break up the banks.
I told you that you wouldn’t like it.
I don’t like it much either. It sticks in the craw that people got to borrow all that money and won’t have to pay it back.
But you know what? The time to stop that was five or 10 years ago, when the money was being lent.
It’s gone.
And mass Chapter 11 is, by far, the least obnoxious solution to our problems.
That’s because the real cause of our economic slump isn’t too much government or too little government. It isn’t red tape, high taxes, low taxes, the growing divide between the rich and the poor, too much government debt, too little government debt, corporations, poor people, “greed,” “socialism,” China, Greece, or the legalization of gay marriage. It isn’t, in short, any of the things all the various nitwits say it is.
It’s the debt, stupid.
We’re hocked up to the eyeballs, and then some. We’re at the bottom of a lake of debt, lashed to an anchor. American households today owe $13.3 trillion. That has quadrupled in a generation. It has doubled just in the last 11 years. We owe more than any other nation, ever. And for all the yakking about how people are “repairing their balance sheets,” they’re not. From the peak, four years ago, they’ve cut their debts by a grand total of 4%.
And a lot of that was in write-offs.
More than a quarter of American mortgages are underwater. Many are deeply underwater. In states like Nevada and Florida the figures are astronomical.
The key thing to understand is that most of that money has gone to what a fund manager friend of mine calls “money heaven.” Most of these debts will never, ever be repaid in real money. Not gonna happen.
Think how corporations handle this kind of situation.
It happens all the time. Banks and bondholders find they have lent, say, $1 billion to a company whose assets and earning capacity will only repay, say, $300 million. What happens? Does the company soldier on with $1 billion in debt it can never repay? Do the stockholders send back their dividend checks? Do they sell their homes to pay off the bonds?
Not a chance. The company goes through Chapter 11. The creditors ‘fess up to their blunder, they face up to their losses, and they fix it. They write down the loans and take the equity instead. The balance sheet is cleaned up, and the company starts again.
Why not homeowners?
Most of the objections to this idea are well-meant, but misinformed.
A fund manager I asked raised the issue of “moral hazard.” Why should anyone pay their mortgage if some people were getting a pass, he asked?
The answer: For the same reason GE and Verizon kept paying the coupon on their bonds while Lehman Brothers defaulted. You want to keep your credit standing. And you want to keep your equity.
If a company defaults, the stockholders get wiped out. If a homeowner defaults, the bank takes the home. I like keeping my home, as well as my savings, and my credit rating. Most people are the same.
Some will say the financial impact would be terrible. But the banks would just be facing up to reality. And a lot of these mortgages are already trading at distressed levels.
Some will say, “why should people get away with borrowing imprudently?” The response: Why should the banks get away with lending imprudently?
There’s no point telling people not to borrow money. They always will. I have yet to see a Wall Street executive turn down free money. I have yet to see a company in an IPO say, “Don’t give us so much money!” People like money. They will take as much as they are offered.
In a free economy, the people who are supposed to ration the loans are the lenders. Banks are supposed to lend carefully and responsibly. What else are they paid for? Accepting deposits? You could hire people on minimum wage to do that.
Some will say, “it’s immoral” for borrowers to default. Alas, most of these people are being inconsistent. They are usually the first ones to defend a company when it closes down a factory and ships the jobs to China, or pays the CEO $50 million for doing a bad job, on the grounds that “this ain’t morality, pal, this is business!”
But when Main Street wants to do the same thing, they start screaming “Morality! Morality!”
We don’t live in an economy based on morals and fairness.
T Mobile doesn’t charge me what’s “fair” each month. They charge me what’s on the contract. Your employer doesn’t pay you more if you need more. He pays you your economic value. Did Dick Grasso give back his bonus? Bob Nardelli? Dick Fuld? We operate in an economy based very firmly on contracts, and nothing else. Companies, and the wealthy, live by the letter of the law.
American mortgage contracts allow for default. Half of the states in this country are “non-recourse,” which broadly speaking means you can send in the keys and walk away from a bad loan. The other half are sort of “semi-recourse.” The bank can come after you for any shortfall, but only in a limited way. Broadly speaking they can’t touch retirement accounts and basic assets. You can typically keep your car, personal effects, often things like life insurance.
Most of the people who are deeply underwater don’t have that much anyway.
And the banks knew this. When they were lending $500,000 to a bus driver with $1,000 in his checking account, they knew that their loan was only guaranteed by the value of the home.
If they didn’t know it, they should have. Their incompetence is not our problem.
It’s tempting to say, “if someone borrows money, they should repay it.” Generally speaking, I agree. I pay all my debts. But while that makes sense when applied to any individual, it doesn’t work so well when it’s applied to everyone.
We have tens of millions who cannot repay their debts. But they are all trying to. That sucks huge amounts of money out of the economy. And that means these people cannot function properly as consumers or workers. That’s the reason people aren’t coming into your restaurant. It’s the reason people aren’t taking your yoga class. It’s the reason they haven’t hired you to redo the kitchen.
And so tens or hundreds of millions of perfectly responsible business owners and employees are also suffering from this slump. That’s the reason we have a shortage of demand. That’s the reason no one is hiring.
Even worse: People who are underwater on their mortgage, but who do not want to default, cannot move to where the jobs are either. They are stuck with their home.
You want to break this logjam? Try Chapter 11 for the nation. Massive defaults. Clear the decks, clean the books.
What are the alternatives?
Government cutbacks, higher taxes, and a balanced budget? In a normal economy, fine. But in this situation, when the private sector is also slashing its spending, that could lead to absolute catastrophe. That’s what happened in the Great Depression. And our debt levels are worse than in the Great Depression.
Government borrowing? That’s the Keynesian solution. “The consumer can no longer borrow like a crazy person,” says the Keynesian, “so Uncle Sam has to do so instead.” It’s just transferring private madness to public madness.
Inflation? That’s probably the least bad alternative. But it’s just default by another name. And instead of taking money from the imprudent banks that caused the problem, it robs grandma’s savings.
Twice before, advanced economies have gone through what we are going through now — namely a massive hangover after a massive debt binge.
The first was the U.S. in the 1930s, the second was Japan in the 1990s.
The U.S. didn’t get out of it until the 1940s unleashed inflation and reduced the debt’s value in real terms.
Japan still hasn’t gotten out of it. They have deflation, while government debt has skyrocketed.
The correct moral hazard is to punish the banks who lent imprudently by making them eat their own losses.
I told you that you wouldn’t like it. I don’t either. But the alternatives are worse.
Brett Arends is a senior columnist for MarketWatch and a personal-finance columnist for the Wall Street Journal.
By on September 6th, 2011 Jay Root-Huffington Post
AUSTIN, Texas — With the state facing a budget shortfall of at least $11 billion, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has spent almost $600,000 in public money during the past two years to live in a sprawling rental home in the hills above the capital, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.
It costs more than $10,000 a month in rent, utilities and upkeep to house Perry in a five-bedroom, seven-bath mansion that has pecan-wood floors, a gourmet kitchen and three dining rooms. Perry has also spent $130,000 in campaign donations to throw parties, buy food and drink, and pay for cable TV and a host of other services since he moved in, the records show.
The public spending on Perry’s rental comes as the state grapples with a budget shortfall forecast to reach at least $11 billion over the next two years. Perry has asked state agencies to cut their budgets by 5 percent and the Republican House speaker has begun to consider furloughs and shortened workweeks for state employees.
Ethics watchdogs, meanwhile, say Perry’s campaign may have violated state disclosure laws because of the vague way he’s reported what his staff calls “incidental” spending at the mansion.
“Anybody who is not offended probably doesn’t know what’s going on,” said Rep. Jim Dunnam of Waco, the Texas House Democratic leader. To spend so much while asking state agencies to spend less, Dunnam said, is “just rank hypocrisy.”
Perry dismissed such criticism with a laugh when asked by the AP about the costs of living in the exclusive Barton Creek Estates neighborhood in West Austin: “If that’s the best cut anybody’s got of leadership in the state of Texas, then bring it on.”
Texas’ longest-serving governor moved into his temporary home in the fall of 2007, leaving the white columned, two-story governor’s mansion so it could undergo repairs. A still-unsolved arson wrecked the 1856 residence less than a year later, and officials say it will take another two years to finish its reconstruction.
His 6,386-square-foot rental sits on more than three acres and was advertised in 2007 for sale at $1.85 million. Perry’s state-paid expenses at the home include $18,000 for “consumables” such as household supplies and cleaning products, $1,001.46 in window coverings from upscale retailer Neiman Marcus, a $1,000 “emergency repair” of the governor’s filtered ice machine, a $700 clothes rack, and a little over $70 for a two year subscription to Food & Wine Magazine.
Maintenance on the heated pool has cost taxpayers at least $8,400, and the tab for grounds and lawn maintenance has topped $44,000, the records show. All told, taxpayers have spent at least $592,000 for rent, utilities, repairs, furnishings and supplies since Perry moved in.
By comparison, the Texas governor’s mansion is wholly owned by the state – there is no rent or mortgage to pay. As currently configured, it has about 9,900 total square feet, but most is public space packed with historic artifacts. Only 2,750 square feet is dedicated to the governor’s residence.
Democratic critics have said Perry and his wife, Anita, could live in a downtown apartment while the mansion is under repair. Should he win in November, Democrat Bill White, the former Houston mayor and multimillionaire lawyer challenging Perry’s bid for a third full term, told the AP he would rent his own home until the mansion is repaired.
The records detailing the amount of public money spent on Perry’s temporary home came from the governor’s office, the State Preservation Board and the Texas Facilities Commission, and were obtained by the AP through the Texas Public Information Act. Perry’s office is still fighting the release of at least 10 e-mails about his temporary residence.
The governor’s staff said Perry, who earns $150,000 a year as governor, has cut back on some luxuries in response to the state’s tight finances. Spokeswoman Allison Castle said he has just one housekeeper, one full-time chef – although a second chef works part time – and a mansion administrator who left and was not replaced. Along with a steward, the salaries for the five mansion employees cost taxpayers $195,770 a year, records show. The governor’s security detail occupies the guest house.
Castle also said Perry and his wife lessen the burden on taxpayers by using campaign funds to pay for their expenses and reimburse the fund for their own food. For the 28 months from September 2007 through the end of 2009, the campaign-funded “Mansion Fund” has incurred costs of over $130,000, including more than $56,000 for food and beverages. Thousands more were spent on flowers, tent set-ups and other rentals, the cable bill, invitations and unspecified “services.”
That spending tops more than $810,000 in all since Perry took office in 2001.
“These are non-taxpayer dollars that go for entertaining and various costs that a governor’s residence would have,” said Perry campaign spokesman Mark Miner. “These are the same policies that were implemented for numerous governors before Rick Perry.”
Perry’s aides add the governor, who has made officeholder transparency a signature issue of his 2010 campaign, has fully complied with ethics and transparency laws that govern such spending.
But Perry’s state disclosure reports describe the $810,000 directed to the “Mansion Fund” generically as “Mansion Expenditures,” despite state requirements that recipients of political dollars be listed by name along with a description of the goods or services they provide.
“It’s a fact question on a case by case basis to determine whether the actual payee has been disclosed,” said Tim Sorrells, the deputy general counsel at the Texas Ethics Commission.
Sorrells stressed that he could not specifically speak about Perry’s report. But ethics watchdog Fred Lewis, an Austin lawyer and activist who for years has urged the Legislature to tighten political disclosure rules, said Perry’s reports may not comply with the law.
“When you do not describe who the payee is, and do not describe what the services or goods are, it’s impossible for anybody to know whether the expenditures comply with the law or whether it is an expenditure for something that the public would like or dislike,” Lewis said.
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