is interesting in two ways. First it claims to show where Cheney puts his money. I think Cheney has a pretty good idea of where the economy of the US and the world is going. He is betting that US is going down and Europe is not.
Other facts show how China is full steam ahead and other places are losing steam.
But the main interesting point in the article below is the concept that the US is not immune to the same economic rape that all other banana republic countries experience.
I had always presumed that the US was the home of the elite and thus they would not crap in their own home. But I see now that the elite have absolutely no national allegiance and the US is completely open to pillage. It has already been pillaged.
I might be naive but I am only just realizing this. I thought that the middle class in the US could stay safe, like little children under the protective glow of the elite wealthy.
But I am wrong. I see now that the middle class is leaning on the edge of a long downward hill and that the difference between the middle class and the lower class is very little once you do the book keeping: many middle class people come out poorer than the lower class once you call in all their debts (student loans, mortgage etc). The middle class owes a lot more money than the lower class (INHO) so realistically they are dirt poor if the house of economic cards should start to topple.
This might be a little 20 year economic blip we are experiencing right now and in a couple years we could again be on the mindless lala economic expansion we all love. But I am not sure.
If the facts are right, as of four years ago when we were still in the highs of economic happiness the middle and lower class were not any better off than 20 years ago. So a downturn now means we are getting worse off than 20 years ago even with the many years of supposed increase in wealth.
So I would have to conclude from this that the elite have been pillaging the US for years and only now are they actually leaving with their spoils. They no longer have to lie to us. We have been raped and they are moving on. Quick, somebody tell the Chinese middle class before it is too late…
Here is the article from Rense.com:
Wouldn’t you like to know where Dick Cheney puts his money? Then you’d know
whether his “deficits don’t matter” claim is just baloney or not.
Well, as it turns out, Kiplinger Magazine ran an article based on Cheney’s
financial disclosure statement and, sure enough, found out that the VP is
lying to the American people for the umpteenth time. Deficits do matter and
Cheney has invested his money accordingly.
The article is called “Cheney’s betting on bad news” and provides an account
of where Cheney has socked away more than $25 million. While the figures may
be estimates, the investments are not. According to Tom Blackburn of the
Palm Beach Post, Cheney has invested heavily in “a fund that specializes in
short-term municipal bonds, a tax-exempt money market fund and an inflation
protected securities fund. The first two hold up if interest rates rise with
inflation. The third is protected against inflation.”
Cheney has dumped another (estimated) $10 to $25 million in a European bond
fund which tells us that he is counting on a steadily weakening dollar. So,
while working class Americans are loosing ground to inflation and rising
energy costs, Darth Cheney will be enhancing his wealth in “Old Europe”. As
Blackburn sagely notes, “Not all ‘bad news’ is bad for everybody.”
This should put to rest once and for all the foolish notion that the “Bush
Economic Plan” is anything more than a scam aimed at looting the public
till. The whole deal is intended to shift the nation’s wealth from one class
to another. It’s also clear that Bush-Cheney couldn’t have carried this off
without the tacit approval of the thieves at the Federal Reserve who
engineered the low-interest rate boondoggle to put the American people to
sleep while they picked their pockets.
Reasonable people can dispute that Bush is “intentionally” skewering the
dollar with his lavish tax cuts, but how does that explain Cheney’s
portfolio?
It doesn’t. And, one thing we can say with metaphysical certainty is that
the miserly Cheney would never plunk his money into an investment that
wasn’t a sure thing. If Cheney is counting on the dollar tanking and
interest rates going up, then, by Gawd, that’s what’ll happen.
The Bush-Cheney team has racked up another $3 trillion in debt in just 6
years. The US national debt now stands at $8.4 trillion dollars while the
trade deficit has ballooned to $800 billion nearly 7% of GDP.
This is lunacy. No country, however powerful, can maintain these staggering
numbers. The country is in hock up to its neck and has to borrow $2.5
billion per day just to stay above water. Presently, the Fed is expanding
the money supply and buying back its own treasuries to hide the hemorrhaging
from the public. Its utter madness.
Last month the trade deficit climbed to $70 billion. More importantly,
foreign central banks only purchased a meager $47 billion in treasuries to
shore up our ravenous appetite for cheap junk from China.
Do the math! They’re not investing in America anymore. They are decreasing
their stockpiles of dollars. We’re sinking fast and Cheney and his pals are
manning the lifeboats while the public is diverted with gay marriage
amendments and “American Celebrity”.
The American manufacturing sector has been hollowed out by cutthroat
corporations who’ve abandoned their country to make a fast-buck in China or
Mexico. The $3 trillion housing (equity) bubble is quickly loosing air while
the anemic dollar continues to sag. All the signs indicate that the economy
is slowing at the same time that energy prices continue to rise.
This is the onset of stagflation; the dreaded combo of a slowing economy and
inflation.
Did Americans really think they’d be spared the same type of economic
colonization that has been applied throughout the developing world under the
rubric of “neoliberalism”?
Well, think again. The American economy is barrel-rolling towards earth and
there are only enough parachutes for Cheney and the gang.
The country has lost 3 million jobs from outsourcing since Bush took office;
more than 200,000 of those are the high-paying, high-tech jobs that are the
life’s-blood of every economy.
Consider this from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) June edition of
Foreign Affairs, the Bible of globalists and plutocrats:
“Between 2000 and 2003 alone, foreign firms built 60,000manufacturing plants
in China. European chemical companies, Japanese carmakers, and US industrial
conglomerates are all building factories in China to supply export markets
around the world. Similarly, banks, insurance companies,
professional-service firms, and IT companies are building R&D and service
centers in India to support employees, customers, and production worldwide.”
(”The Globally integrated Enterprise” Samuel Palmisano, Foreign Affairs page
130)
“60,000manufacturing plants” in 3 years?!?
“Banks, insurance companies, professional-service firms, and IT companies”?
No job is safe. American elites and corporate tycoons are loading the boats
and heading for foreign shores. The only thing they’re leaving behind is the
insurmountable debt that will be shackled to our children into perpetuity
and the carefully arranged levers of a modern police-surveillance state.
Welcome to Bush’s 21st Century gulag; third world luxury in a
Guantanamo-type setting.
Take another look at Cheney’s investment strategy; it tells the whole ugly
story. Interest rates are going up, the middle class is going down, and the
poor dollar is headed for the dumpster. The country is not simply teetering
on the brink of financial collapse; it is being thrust headfirst by the
blackguards in office and their satrapies at Federal Reserve.O.C. Babes and the Slasher of Zombietown download
I really thought Spitzer was a scumbag, buying whores on my tax tab on one hand and running a campaign based on family morals (including shutting down brothels) on the other side. He appeared to be a political hypocrite at its worst.
on February 14th 2008, just a month before his public derailment. You should check out the comments on the article on the Washington post web site. The article is printed below as well. He makes a lot of very good points in it and accuses the banks and Bush cronies of actively causing the mortgage crisis to make money for themselves. It is a harsh criticism of the Bush administration and shows that Spitzer has been at odds with them for quite some time.
Was Spitzer’s sexual issues put into the public eye to stop his criticism of a much more serious problem?????
where his speech is also read in its entirety (Brasschecktv.com is great BTW).
The article:
Washington Post
Predatory Lenders’ Partner in Crime
How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers
By Eliot Spitzer
Thursday, February 14, 2008; A25
Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers’ ability to repay, making loans with deceptive “teaser” rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets.
Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers.
Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York’s, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.
What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no.
Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.
Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.
In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government’s actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.
But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.
Throughout our battles with the OCC and the banks, the mantra of the banks and their defenders was that efforts to curb predatory lending would deny access to credit to the very consumers the states were trying to protect. But the curbs we sought on predatory and unfair lending would have in no way jeopardized access to the legitimate credit market for appropriately priced loans. Instead, they would have stopped the scourge of predatory lending practices that have resulted in countless thousands of consumers losing their homes and put our economy in a precarious position.
When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners, the Bush administration will not be judged favorably. The tale is still unfolding, but when the dust settles, it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for profits. So willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers.
Friday
02.1.2008
FORTUNE MAGAZINE
FAST FORWARD
Author Paulo Coelho’s profitable Net obsession
Forget Radiohead. Brazilian author Paulo Coelho has been an apostle of free Internet distribution for years. He figures they sell more books this way.
By David Kirkpatrick, senior editor
NEW YORK (Fortune) — In 1999, best-selling author Paulo Coelho, who wrote “The Alchemist,” was failing in Russia. That year he sold only about 1,000 books, and his Russian publisher dropped him. But after he found another, Coelho took a radical step. On his own Web site, launched in 1996, he posted a digital Russian copy of “The Alchemist.”
With no additional promotion, print sales picked up immediately. Within a year he sold 10,000 copies; the next year around 100,000. By 2002 he was selling a total of a million copies of multiple titles. Today, Coelho’s sales in Russian are over 10 million and growing. “I’m convinced it was putting it up for free on the Internet that made the difference,” he said in an interview at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos.
Coelho, whose fiction explores universal themes of spiritual aspiration and brotherhood in unpretentious language, has been a star of the Forum for 11 years. (For an account of Davos 2008 see this column.) Before this year’s Davos, both Coelho and I attended a wonderful conference in Munich called Digital, Life, Design. Onstage there he told the surprising story of his embrace of free Internet distribution. In Davos I sat down with him to learn more.
Coelho explained why he thinks giving books away online leads to selling more copies in print: “It’s very difficult to read a book on your computer. People start printing out their own copies. But if they like the book, after reading 30-40 pages they just go out and buy it.”
Intrigued by his growing sales in Russia, Coelho used the Bittorrent site - a favorite for illicit distribution of media - to seek out and download online translations of his books as well as audio versions. By 2006 he was hosting an entire sub-site he called The Pirate Coelho, with links to books in many languages. While he did not play up his own role, he did quietly include a link on his official site.
“So you gather together all the stolen digital versions?” I asked him. “You say steal?” he replied. “No. I think it’s a way of sharing.” His agent, Monica Antunes, who joined in the interview, chimed in unashamedly, “We don’t own the translation rights to all those editions.”
By last year Coelho’s total print sales worldwide surpassed 100 million books. “Once we did the Pirate Coelho there was a significant boost,” he says.
For all this, he kept quiet with his many publishers in countries around the world. “Sharing” is typically not the word they use to describe such activities. Coelho says the publishers have periodically taken action to remove books from the Pirate Coelho. “They think it is against me. They don’t know it is in my favor. They will know it after your article,” he says.
“Publishing is in a kind of Jurassic age,” Coelho continues. “Publishers see free downloads as threatening the sales of the book. But this should make them rethink their entire business model.”
Now Coelho is a convert to the Internet way of doing things. His online e-mail newsletter, published since 2000, has 200,000 subscribers. In 2006 he started blogging. Last year he joined MySpace and Facebook to interact more actively with readers. “MySpace is an addiction,” he says ruefully. He also makes available an extensive archive of rights-free photos on the Flickr photo-sharing site.
None of Coelho’s books has ever been made into a movie. But now he is using the Internet to let his readers make one for him, based on his latest book, The “Witch of Portobello.” It tells the story of its protagonist from the point of view of multiple people who knew her at various times in her peripatetic life. Now Coelho and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500) have created a competition, inviting anyone worldwide to submit a segment as they envision it. Coelho plans to knit together 15 winners and release the film.
He spends about three hours online every day, interacting with readers who send him over 1,000 e-mails and messages daily. A fulltime staff of six helps manage his manifold Net activities, and the entire operation costs him $15,000 each month, which he pays out of his own pocket.
“I don’t understand why publishers don’t understand that this new medium is not killing books,” Coelho says. “I’m doing it mostly because the joy of a writer is to be read. But at the end of the day, you will sell more books.”