Courtesy of Jesse's Cafe Americain
The MF Global story is being largely ignored by the mainstream media in the US, with a few notable exceptions like Forbes. Most of the stories that are carried merely parrot the cover story that the money just 'vaporized' and no one is to blame.
"I have been told by multiple members of the media that JPMorgan Chase has called them and stated that if their media outlet has me on television again, that JPMorgan Chase will pull their advertising from the offending network."
James Koutoulas
This soft censorship of the financial news by the visual and print media in the States is nothing new. I have spoken to a number of people who find themselves and their viewpoints shut out of the discussions on financial and economic issues in the US. I have seen this happen repeatedly in the area of stock and metals market abuses and their reforms.
And far too many of the financial network programs have become little more than propaganda outlets and slickly produced infomercials for the monied interests in this climate of 'advocacy journalism.'
'The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.'
Lord Macaulay
When the mainstream media went corporate and consolidated, the important role of the Fourth Estate in balancing the power structure was silenced or converted into a perverse pantomime, a largely stage managed discussion and investigation of the news and issues of the day.
Here is an interview conducted by Mark Melin of Uncorrelated Investments, who represents a particular financial firm, Opalesque Investments. These days one must take the facts where one may find them.
In the first half he interviews Stanley Haar who discusses MF Global, and also the commodity markets in which he trades. He says that there was a concerted effort, a 'conspiracy if you will,' by JPM and Goldman Sachs to use their power and influence to structure the bankruptcy in an unusual way, twisting justice to favor their financial interests. If they are successful it will set a dangerous precedent in undermining the integrity of customer accounts and the entire US financial system.
In the second half he interviews James Koutoulas who formed the Commodity Customer Coalition which informally represents the interests of most of the 8000+ customers whose money was stolen.
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
Edmund Burke
"Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music, and books, raising kids—all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through.
Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. Lacking any other purpose in life, it would be good enough to live for their sake."
Garrison Keillor, A Prairie Home Companion
And some of us are just ausrufer und moritatensänger, the street and café singers, telling the stories to the people that the well-connected do not wish to be heard. We remember the abused and the fallen, and warn of dangers yet to come.
People come to Le Café looking for a good time, and a way to save their money and make some more. These are all worthy efforts and practical considerations within their place. But your money is not the prize which is finally at stake, little brother. Money does not last. You are a soul with a body, and only the you which you possess has lasting value, a value that remains unless we debase it, or God forbid, surrender it to something unworthy.
"The France of 1939 was on the whole democratic, and almost every Frenchman sincerely called himself anti-Nazi, and believed himself proof against this kind of temptation. He had his good conscience as a democrat.
Hitler came, France capitulated, and today the 'anti-fascist intellectuals' of Paris suddenly discover that at bottom Nazism is not so bad as all that, that, on the whole, they had always desired something passably resembling it, and that after all, 'the Nazis are men like us, so let us work together.'
That is the danger that American democracy is exposed to, as were the others. She too believed and still believes that the Nazis are animals of an altogether different race from Americans. She too risks discovering some day that 'after all, they are men like us.' And it is quite true that they are men like us, in the sense that their sin is also in us, secretly."
Denis de Rougement, On the Devil and Politics
"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Eph 6:12
"He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."
John Henry Newman, The Times of Antichrist
