Courtesy of Elaine Meinel Supkis’s Culture of Life News
US And UK Encouraged To Spend Even More!
Lots of economic news about national sovereign debts. The sovereign debt bubble is similar if not identical in size to the international trade balloon and both fed the credit bubble which was the largest in history, even bigger than the WWI-Roaring 20’s credit bubble. What is interesting is the way the US, UK and Japan are treated compared to say, Greece, Turkey or Spain: the first three are supposed to continue spending way beyond their budgets while the latter are supposed to impose cruel spending cuts on social services.
First, we visit England which has seen its entire peasant population (the Queen and her ilk don’t pay taxes) harnessed to the international offshore pirate bankers and forced to bankroll all losses while the international dealers get bonuses EVEN while running losses in whole!
RBS posts a loss of £3.6bn but defends £1.3bn bonus payout | Business | guardian.co.uk
Stephen Hester, the chief executive who has waived his £1.6m bonus, warned that “2010 will be a year of hard slog” as he battles to restore the bank, which is supported by up to £54bn of taxpayers’ money, to profitability.
The losses, an improvement on the record £24bn lost in 2008, were caused by impairment charges on loans which have turned sour to the tune of £13.8bn, although Hester said it now appeared that these may have peaked.
The underlying core business posted operating profits of £8.3bn, up 89% on 2008, but £5.7bn of these came from the investment banking arm, known as global banking and markets.
And how did they make these damn profits? HAHAHA…ask Greece! They didn’t make profits from servicing businesses or running capitalist systems, they played the derivatives markets.
…”We have just got to look at the whole banking sector and try to bring this pay down. It has got to ridiculous levels,” he told BBC Breakfast. Osborne, though, gave no clues how a Conservative government would have tackled the problem….
Simple solution: tax them and outlaw their profits from playing derivatives games that are crooked since the losses are all subsidized by US/UK taxpayers via the AIG rescue. And arrest all the bankers and dealers who created the credit bubble.
…”We need to bring down pay across the sector – not just in one bank, across the sector – and things like a bank tax, internationally agreed, might help do that.”
The entire banking system has to be reformed. After the previous international banking credit collapse in 1930, many rules and regulations were passed that were designed to prevent a similar international credit balloon from forming. But of course, these same rules made it harder for traders and dealers to make lots of money. And lending fees meant no credit bubble=no bonuses.
After insuring that the tax revolts, caused by taxes not being indexed to inflation, reduced taxes on the rich, the rich then began undoing all the previous banking laws so they could get very rich, very fast, playing banking lending games. To enable themselves to hand out loans like candy on Halloween, they had to dump all the risk on third parties.
Thus, the alphabet soup named instruments were created and then insured by AIG. Once these lenders no longer held their own loans, they could merrily write contracts with willful glee and they did this, big time. No loan was too dangerous to give! For all the losses were covered, supposedly.
Since this proved to be a total fraud, it was time to restore order and constrict lending severely. Instead, lending is restarted using sovereign nations as the guarantor of all loans. This is pure insanity since the top nations being used as public collateral for private loans happen to be the very same countries very deep into debt…not just private debt but public debt!
This is an impossible situation. Libra frowns as she looks at Her scales. They are balanced in one regard: China and some OPEC nations plus Germany keeps the other side of the scales from falling straight to hell but they no longer balance overspending on the deficit side. Someone has to stop spending. Eventually, the US and UK will be forced to stop spending just as other countries but the time isn’t ripe…yet. Let’s look at those unfortunate countries who are being forced to tax their own people while cutting social services:
At US Behest, Pakistan Raises Taxes — News from Antiwar.com
Just days after Deputy US Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin issued a public call for Pakistan to dramatically raise taxes, the nation did just that, announcing both a new Value-Added Tax and a significant increase in the Capital Gains Tax…. will be doubled over the next five years. Officials denied that the tax increase was a result of international pressure, though it is widely believed that this is actually the case.
The US and the IMF have been pressuring Pakistan for higher taxes as a way to get the government’s spiraling debt under control. The government’s military expenses have soared since the US invasion of neighboring Afghanistan and the US-backed Zardari government has dramatically increased social spending.
Not only are we flying Predator assassin killing robot machines all over Pakistan, we are now demanding the government increase their taxes while being immensely unpopular with the peasants? Wow. As the US spends $100 billion+ a year on fixing Afghanistan and Iraq so we can dominate the Muslims, we want Pakistan to disintegrate? The military expenses of the government are against its own citizens who are not citizens but rather, are captive populations.
The US thinks captive populations are an evil in China but are most excellent in Palestine or Pakistan. The US Bomb Bomb Bomb Presidents demanded the Pakistanis have a powerful military to prevent the populace from disputing things with their dictators. The US loves dictators, of course. The only thing is, these dictators have to either have all social services be bankrolled by the US (such as in Egypt) to keep the populace at bay or they have to kill lots and lots of peasants all the time which makes them very unpopular with their own enslaved people.
he birthrate in Muslim countries insures a massive population of irritated young people who cause great headaches for these governments. The only way to fix this is to kill enough of them to keep them out of various palaces. In the long run, a futile if bloody effort. The IMF often is the banker and the US has been the military enforcer of all IMF loans. In turn, the IMF never utters a word when the US behaves worse than others who are put into IMF straight jackets.
Pound faces a ’savage’ reaction if deficit cut too aggressively, UBS warns – Telegraph
With the economy barely crawling out of recession, a rapid fiscal retrenchment would be treated to a “savage” reaction in foreign exchange markets, according to a new report by strategists at Swiss bank UBS.
UBS is one of the biggest derivative beast owners. They are directly responsible for the credit bubble. So of course, they warn Britain, deep in debt, that they can’t stop being deep in debt or the pound will be pounded. Now, Japan loves having a cheap yen. They export to Britain! But if the pound is pounded, the yen will get stronger and Japanese exports to Britain will suffer.
Ditto, all of Britain’s trade partners who love the strong pound as much as they adore the strong dollar.
Taking too sharp an axe to the deficit – projected to reach £178bn this year – would “endanger tax revenues, Britain’s sovereign rating, the recovery of the banking sector and the UK labour market,” the strongly-worded report argues.
HAHAHA….Pakistan must do this but Britain can’t? HAHAHA. The Empire still thrives! The bankers can’t recover unless more debt is created by the British! As for the pound: the floating currency regime created this monster! That is, bankers make oodles of bonus money simply moving from one currency to another and playing the odious currency derivatives markets, placing bets as if the banks were gambling dens.
Since there is no hard, cold center of power that regulates ALL other currencies vis a vis an international imperial gold standard, the vapid fluxes of various paper credits takes on a life of its own and it is now a major form of money creation in itself, flooding the markets with faux money not created via capitalist processes.
And free trade is based on this floating currency regime which allows many nations to hold immense trade funds in their FOREX accounts in order to keep one or another (right now, it is the US dollar and British pound) captive to higher valuations, thus enabling a flood of imports into the countries who stupidly allow this to happen.
For example, if the US were running a trade deficit, all we have to do is have a gold standard. After losing all our gold in Fort Knox, we shut the trade doors and it ceases. Bang. But of course, the entire reason Nixon took us off the gold standard was to allow a flood of imports! This is the entire reason! There is no other reason, none what so ever. Period. End of story.
And he succeeded. We got flooded ever since then. It is like we have this basement to our economy and to fix a leak, the White House Plumbers (HAHAHA) chopped off the pipe going to the main and over time, the entire basement has flooded and water is filling the first floor, too and water is pouring out all of the windows and doors and no one is turning off the main to stop this.
Too soon to cut public spending, IMF warns | Business | guardian.co.uk
The International Monetary Fund today gave strong backing to the government’s “wait-and-see” approach to cutting Britain’s record peacetime budget deficit, warning that the weakness of growth required tax increases and spending cuts to be delayed until next year.
In a rebuff to David Cameron’s avowed intention to start repairing the public finances as soon as this spring’s election is over, the Washington-based IMF said the fragility of the global economy meant stimulus packages should be left in place well into 2010.
Damn the peasants of Pakistan! They can eat dirt and die. Besides, we are killing them, anyway. They don’t need no stinking social services since we want them all dead. Remember my stuff about the Irish Potato Famine?
This was allowed because the pesky Irish irritated the British invaders! So they let them die! But Britain is part of the US/UK empire and is a handy destination for global trade so the trade and budget deficits must continue or the entire free trade universe will implode. How long will the Brits and Americans be allowed this boon?
Well, I place my bets still on 2020-2025. It will certainly be terminated by then. It may move up in time depending on how stupid and treasonous our leaders behave. The US is kicking China in the shins right now in the hopes China will do this prematurely while we still have a military. On the other hand, this can backfire. If we can kill Pakistanis at will, China can do this to us someday. This is why it is stupid to do what we are doing and making it internationally acceptable just like the Jews in Israel should beware of legalizing Mossad crimes.
“But much of the analysis (about Spain’s deficits) is backward looking. What the markets fear has already happened. A rerun of the Greek debt crisis is not inevitable, Spanish bonds are cheap relative to Bunds and many of the cyclical imbalances are on the mend. Spain has already undergone 18 months of painful economic adjustment. The current account deficit in relation to GDP has more than halved to 4.6% from its peak in 2008, when in absolute terms it was the second highest in the world after the US.
“The budget shortfall is beginning to roll over, a reduction plan is in place and the public debt-to-GDP ratio is 60%, barely more than half the Greek ratio. Most importantly, the inflation rate has converged with the euro zone average, one of many indicators confirming the decade-long adjustment to membership of the currency club is complete.
Spain has to cut funds. But not the UK. Many UK retirees moved to Spain because it is balmy and cheap. There was a row in the government over sending fuel benefits to expatriate retirees who are no longer paying taxes or spending money within Britain but rather, bleeding it out. Eventually, they will all be left high and dry when the UK goes bankrupt. Perhaps then, Britain will have a real revolution, too.
Speaking before lawmakers BOJ governor Masaaki Shirakawa, who recently said Japan was powerless to fight deflation on its own, has changed his tune, and today said that Japan will print the kitchen sink if it has to to beat “stubborn deflation.”
That is, the Japanese will spend, spend, spend and this weakens the yen….YEAH! Whoopee! This is exactly what they want! And if the US must overspend and ditto the UK, so will Japan. Only Japan runs a trade surplus. Big difference. The Japanese are in a very queer situation: an industrial giant that is seeing a shrinking population but this doesn’t matter much since robots have been replacing humans in production systems at a rapid pace. Excess population is a burden.
Robots don’t consume very much and the only manufacturing they are interested in is the systems needed to expand the robot population. This dynamic has been explored in many Japanese anime shows. The Japanese think about this a great deal. As should we.
Eventually, the robots will think humans are bad for the environment and to fix the planet and prevent CO2 warming, they will use assassin robots to kill ALL humans. Trust me on this one. Right now, humans sit at computers ordering assassinations but eventually this control will be removed by higher up humans seeking total spectrum dominance and control of all humans (via killing everyone).
BBC News – Greece angers Germany in gold row
Mr Pangalos made the remarks during a wide-ranging BBC interview about Greece’s financial difficulties. “They [the Nazis] took away the Greek gold that was in the Bank of Greece, they took away the Greek money and they never gave it back,” he said.
Germany has rejected the allegations, describing them as “not helpful”….
….In 1960, Germany paid Athens 115m German marks in compensation for the four year long occupation, in which 300,000 Greeks died. Mr Peschke added: “I’d like to mention that parallel to this, since 1960 Germany has paid around 33bn Deutsche marks in aid to Greece both bilaterally and in the context of the EU.”
Earlier this month, an article in Germany’s Stern magazine outraged Greece. The author accused Greeks of frittering away German taxpayers’ savings.
ΩΩI keep reminding people, WWII is not forgotten nor ignored. When things go badly, all the scars, pains and horrors of that epic attempt at eliminating mass populations rises to the surface again. There is a lot of this lurking right below the surface.
BBC News – Goldman defends Greece debt swaps
A Goldman Sachs boss has defended the bank’s 2001 debt-swap deal with Greece that may have allowed the country to mask the extent of its debt woes. Gerald Corrigan, chairman of Goldman Sachs Bank USA, the bank’s holding company, said it was “consistent” with the regulations of the time.
However, speaking in the UK, he admitted that “with hindsight” it should have been more transparent. The debt-swap deal was legal at the time, but has since been prohibited.
All past traders and leaders of Goldman Sachs should be forced to return all profits from these illicit trades. Even if ‘legal’….this was the result of them using financial corruption tools to take over the law system so they could legalize obviously nasty stuff that was previously illegal. Instead, they campaigned to do more of this junk and boasted that it made us wealthier. The international chaos these deals are causing is grounds for our own sovereign government to seize these guys and their money and use it to fix these messes they created.
BBC News – Why Greece’s problems matter
It is not yet clear what leaders of eurozone nations have agreed to do, but one thing is certain: any assistance will come at a cost that will ultimately have to be borne by taxpayers in the nations that contribute.
European citizens, both those within and those outside the eurozone, would even have have to contribute indirectly if the International Monetery Fund was to get involved, since it is funded by a charge – known as a “quota” – paid by member nations.
Since the mass public tax payers are being held hostage by these deals made by Goldman Sachs, we have a RIGHT to confiscate ALL the wealth accumulated by these same bankers! Period! This is life and death. Passively sitting by while these robbers get rich is stupid. And of course, these robbers are Bilderberg and Davos stars and should be hauled out by their toupees and hair extensions and punished severely. As severely as Pakistani peasants. Maybe send robot assassins or agents on fake passports to deal with them.
FDIC Readies Sales of Bonds of Failed Banks Assets (Update1) – Bloomberg.com
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. may start selling bonds tied to the assets of failed banks as soon as next month.
Initial offerings may include about $2 billion of the FDIC’s remaining stakes in loans from Corus Bank and Franklin Bank, according to people familiar with the discussions who declined to be identified because the talks aren’t public. The debt would be guaranteed by the agency, they said.
JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs will snap up these! Now that all the LOSSES are ours and all the PROFITS are theirs! Why bother selling them in the first place if we are guaranteeing no losses??? Why not just hold them? Oh, I forgot who owns the Fed and Treasury—these same gnomes run both.
US Companies Required to move Research Centers to China – Howard Richman — Seeking Alpha
On January 29, nineteen trade groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers sent a letter to U.S. Government officials about China’s new requirement that they move their research and development centers to China as a condition for doing business with the Chinese government. Here is a selection:
Of most immediate concern are new rules issued by the Chinese government in November to establish a national catalogue of products to receive significant preferences for government procurement. Among the criteria for eligibility for the catalogue is that the products contain intellectual property that is developed and owned in China and that any associated trademarks are originally registered in China. This represents an unprecedented use of domestic intellectual property as a market-access condition and makes it nearly impossible for the products of American companies to qualify unless they are prepared to establish Chinese brands and transfer their research and development of new products to China.
And so the Chinese move to protect their own sovereignty and to force everyone hoping to milk them to pony up and transfer not just factories but all the technologies to China. This is because China’s leaders are smart as hell while we vote in dumbbells who are appealing to our desire to have our cake and eat it too.
We want tax cuts, social spending, wars against Muslims and lots of consumer goods from cheap Chinese labor! End of story. Oh, and cheap oil that gushes out of the ground and is delivered to our doorsteps, no questions asked about pollution or how many people died in providing us with all this.
