Friday, December 30, 2011

The Thinly-Veiled Fed Bailout Of Europe

By Ilene

The ECB is borrowing U.S. Dollars from the Fed to bailout European banks. And that is in addition to the Long Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO).

However, the "borrowing" is not called "borrowing."  It's called a "temporary U.S. dollar liquidity swap arrangement."  Yet it is really borrowing because it's going massively in one direction for the purpose of giving the ECB Dollars to lend to European banks, so the ECB can avoid lending more Euros. The ECB doesn't want to tarnish its "inflation fighting" reputation and further devalue the Euro. Instead, the Fed is taking billions of Euros as collateral for the Dollar swap.

In exchange for Euros as collateral, the ECB gets non-technically loaned Dollars which it then lends to European banks. The additional Dollars flowing to the EU banks enable the ECB not to release more Euros to the EU banks and into circulation. According to O'Driscoll, this "Byzantine financial arrangement" was designed perfectly to confuse people.
"The Fed's support is in addition to the ECB's €489 billion ($638 billion) low-interest loans to 523 euro-zone banks last week. And if 2008 is any guide, the dollar swaps will again balloon to supplement the ECB's euro lending...
"The Fed had more than $600 billion of currency swaps on its books in the fall of 2008. Those draws were largely paid down by January 2010. As recently as a few weeks ago, the amount under the swap renewal agreement announced last summer was $2.4 billion. For the week ending Dec. 14, however, the amount jumped to $54 billion. For the week ending Dec. 21, the total went up by a little more than $8 billion. The aforementioned $33 billion three-month loan was not picked up because it was only booked by the ECB on Dec. 22, falling outside the Fed's reporting week. Notably, the Bank of Japan drew almost $5 billion in the most recent week. Could a bailout of Japanese banks be afoot? (All data come from the Federal Reserve Board H.4.1. release, the New York Fed's Swap Operations report, and the ECB website.)
"No matter the legalistic interpretation, the Fed is, working through the ECB, bailing out European banks and, indirectly, spendthrift European governments. It is difficult to count the number of things wrong with this arrangement." (The Federal Reserve's Covert Bailout of Europe)
Mr. O'Driscoll argued that the Fed has no authority to bailout Europe. (Although lack of authority has not stopped the Fed from acting in the past.) Ben Bernanke met with Republican senators on Dec. 14 to discuss the crisis in Europe. According to Sen. Lindsey Graham, Bernanke told reporters that the Fed did not have "the intention or the authority" to bailout Europe. Nevertheless, the week Bernanke claimed he was not going to conduct an EU bailout "the size of the swap lines to the ECB ballooned by around $52 billion."

O'Driscoll also argued that swap arrangements "foster the moral hazards and distortions" resulting from government intervention in the credit markets. "Allowing the ECB to do the initial credit allocation—to favored banks and then, some hope, through further lending to spendthrift EU governments—does not make the problem better." Moreover, this is another example of the Fed's lack of transparency. Non-transparency is a consistent theme of the Fed, in spite of Bernanke's promises to provide more openness. Bernanke's statement just two weeks ago that the Fed had no intention of bailing out Europe is consistent with a long history of secrecy and deceptive behavior.

Distinguishing between the swaps (camouflaged loans from the Fed to the ECB) and the LTRO (loans from the ECB to EU banks), Lee Adler explained,
"The USD swaps totaled almost 84 billion so far, while the ECB lent a net of $289 billion in the LTRO last week after rollovers.
"All central banks create money. That is their function. How they do it, whether by direct lending to government through direct purchase of government debt, or through lending to private institutions or purchasing private debt is a matter of a nuanced difference regarding the conduits through which the money flows into the financial system, the markets, and the economy. It’s a question of targeting.
"The biggest difference between the Fed and the ECB is that the ECB has always lent to all the European banks. Until 2007, the Fed only conducted operations with Primary Dealers. From 2007 to 2010 the Fed had direct operations with a variety of financial institutions. Since QE2, the Fed has gone back to dealing only with the PDs."
Apparently not anymore. The Fed is now using currency swaps to lend to the ECB which is taking the Dollars and lending them to European banks in exchange for a new, and more broadly defined types of collateral. As discussed in this week's Stock World Weekly, Money for Nothing and Your Debt for Free, the ECB's latest LTRO "is making it possible for eurozone member states to sell assets such as government buildings to banks, whereupon the banks turn the properties into asset-backed securities which are then pledged as collateral for borrowing from the ECB... WSE's Russ Winter observed, the ECB just was handed a gigantic can of worms. The ECB balance sheet is now up to $3.5 trillion USD...
“Illustrating the nature of this circular transaction, Bloomberg reports that Unicredit and Intesa, two insolvent Italian banks are using “state guaranteed bonds” as $52 billion collateral to throw at the ECB. So rather than even using actual Italian sovereigns, the ECB accepts something more nebulous down the food chain...”
Lee concluded, "The Fed has opened an unlimited credit line with the ECB and other central banks for which it has so far lent billions of Dollars, with Euros as collateral. The Fed is bailing out European banks; that's not in dispute. The ECB is the guarantor and the conduit, but the banks are the recipients of the bailout, and the Fed's balance sheet is expanding as a result of the loans to the ECB."
Stay tuned. Lee is going to describe how the US Government bond market collapses, and thus, the world ends, shortly.

Read more:  

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

More on Modern Christian Persecution


Three Ugly Truths Exposed by the Tebow Assault

First truth: the sec-progs have meatier game in sight than we used to think.  That is, when sec-progs start out declaring that they aim merely to set a plain whereupon all religions can fairly "coexist," they really contemplate an end-game where religions fade permanently out of view.  Have a look at the emergent history of the jurisprudence: "No federal religion" became "no state religions"; this became "no government entanglement with religion"; this became "no governmental support for religion"; this became "no governmental mention of religion"; this led to the phase that the Tebow debacle currently evinces: "no popular mention of religion in any public sphere, including private affairs which get viewed on TV."  One can easily imagine the last few steps in this phenomenology of disappearance.


Whose Country Is It, Anyway?

The lesson the fable teaches is that it is malicious and wicked to deny a fellow creature what you yourself do not want and cannot even enjoy.
What brings the fable to mind is this year's crop of Christmas-haters, whose numbers have grown since the days when it was only the village atheist or the ACLU pest who sought to kill Christmas.
The problem with these folks is not simply that they detest Christmas and what it represents, but that they must do their best, or worst, to ensure Christians do not enjoy the season and holy day they love.
As a Washington Times editorial relates, the number of anti-Christian bigots is growing, and their malevolence is out of the closet:

Monday, December 19, 2011

Martial Law Being Established in America

Presidential Frontrunner Warns Martial Law Being Established in America
By Aaron Dykes


Leading GOP candidate Ron Paul has warned in recent interviews that the amendments passed in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) are not only dangerous, but authorize the establishment of total martial law inside the United States. Not only does the bill, in sections 1031 and 1032, declare the unconstitutional right to detain Americans indefinitely without trial, but it authorizes an Internet offensive and online Pentagon takeover under the pretext of cybersecurity and stopping online piracy.

Yes, America has been declared a battlefield, and average Americans portrayed as potential enemies. One front of that battle continues to be the 2012 elections, where a real battle of ideas is underway.

National polls show the Texas Congressman is consistently in 1st or 2nd place in Iowa, where he threatens to win the caucus that leads the GOP primary. A victory there would represent a significant upset to the war-loving status quo. This is exactly why the lapdog media have already begun pre-scripting the justifications for ignoring the historical significance of the Iowa caucus if Ron Paul wins. This is more than just politics as usual — party lines are at stake, and Dr. Paul’s ideas represent a real change in the system. Those in power simply do not want to see him win.
It has happened before in history, and America is in no way immune from a descent into outright tyranny.

Once again, the Cassandra songs voiced here at Infowars.com and other alternative news outlets for years and years have only proven true, as tyranny predictably marches on. It was never about making predictions, but reading the writing on the wall. We have all been warned, and it’s all really happening. Real preparations for martial law and WWIII have taken place — including recent calls to staff emergency detention camps and make them ready for use in the event that a national emergency is signaled over civil unrest and a takeover goes red hot.

Among the many prescient films put out by Alex Jones is Police State 4: The Rise of FEMA, which accurately warned that various emergency provisions have long worked in conjunction to build a framework for a martial law takeover inside America. And again, it has all come to pass, incrementally ratcheting up assumed powers over the people — from TSA at the airports, to highway checkpoints and now the claimed power to indefinitely detain anyone the feds view as a threat to national security.



http://www.infowars.com/presidential-frontrunner-warns-martial-law-being-established-in-america/

The Shocking Truth of the Pending EU collapse

 
By Tyler Durden

The ESM is like a TARP... on steroids. It is a potentially unlimited liquidity conduit (only contingent on how much cash Germany wants to allocate to it - which in turn means how much cash Germany is willing to let the ECB print), with no supervisory checks and balances embedded, and even worse with no explicit or implicit liability clauses - in essence it is a carte blanche for its owners to do as they see fit without any form of regulation. As the following brief but must watch video explains, the ESM "is an organization that can sue us, but is immune from any forms of prosecution and whose managers enjoy the same immunity; there are no independent reviewers and no existing laws apply; governments can not take action against it? Europe's national budgets in the hands of one single unelected intergovernmental organization? Is that the future of Europe? Is that the new EU? A Europe devoid of sovereign democracies?" Ironically even America's feeble and corrupt Congress stopped a version of TARP that demanded far less from the taxpaying citizens. Yet somehow, Europe has completely let this one slip by. Is it simply to continue the illusion of the insolvent Walfare State for a continent habituated by zombifying socialism, or is Europe by now just too afraid and too tired to say anything against its eurocrat class?

One thing is certain: when the people voluntarily give up on democracy, out of sheer laziness or any other reason, the historical outcomes are always all too tragic.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/video-explanation-how-esm-europes-uber-tarp-steroids

Friday, December 16, 2011

People like this is is why we're in this mess


Notable falsehoods emphatically asserted by Robert Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords, is Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University.  (emphasis added):
 “But Merkel’s analysis is utterly wrong. It was not deficit spending by governments that fueled the economic collapse of 2007-2008, but excessive lending by banks. Government’s mounting debts have been a response to the economic downturn, not its cause. What ought to have been hard-wired into the EU’s institutional structure was not permanent fiscal austerity, but tough financial regulation. Of this there is little sign.”
LOL!  Riiigghhtt – not endless spending in excess of GDP, but tricky banksters.  Got it.
“When an economy shrinks, government debt grows automatically, because its revenues decline and its expenses rise. When it cuts spending, its debt grows even more, because its cuts cause the economy to shrink further. This makes the government more, not less, likely to default.”

So this so-called intelectual’s “analysis” is when your economy shrinks, spend more or else you’ll default! If these kinds of fiscal geniuses ran real corporations, they'd need bailouts too!
“So, will the single currency survive? Two policies that might, in combination, save it are off the agenda. The first is quantitative easing (printing money) on a heroic scale.”
“That is why quantitative easing should be run in conjunction with a eurozone-wide investment program designed to modernize the creaking infrastructure of eastern and southern Europe.”
Yep, that’s right – spend gazillions of euros of Other People’s Money.  Pure Keynesian Drivel.  ASTONISHING that people still cling to that nonsense – and claim to be our intellectual superiors!!



Thursday, December 15, 2011

This slump won’t end until 2031

History repeats itself?
This slump won’t end until 2031
Commentary: Our predicament parallels Long Depression of 1870s

By Matthew Lynn



In retrospect, it wasn’t hard to see that the markets were becoming dangerously unstable. Germany had just adopted a new monetary system, and Europe was being flooded with cheap German money. Greece had signed up to a monetary union with Italy and France but was struggling to hold it together

Financial markets had been deregulated. New technologies were transforming production and communications, allowing money to move across borders at lightening speed.
And a massive new industrial power was flooding the world with cheap manufactured goods, blowing apart old industries. 

When it all fell apart in an almighty crash, it was only to be expected.

 A prophesy for London, New York or Berlin in 2012? Not exactly. It is a description of Vienna in 1873. In that year, in one of the great crashes of all time, the Austrian markets triggered collapses across Europe, swiftly followed by an equally spectacular collapse in New York. It was the start of what economic historians call the Long Depression, a prolonged period of volatility, unemployment and slumps that lasted an epic 23 years, only coming to an end in 1896. 

READ MORE:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-slump-wont-end-until-2031-2011-12-14?link=MW_popular

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

The the 2012 Voter Fraud Begin!


For anyone who remembers the ACORN voter fraud scandals of 2008, here comes round two:

Documents Reveal Coordination Between ACORN Affiliate and Justice Department Voting Section
by J. Christian Adams


Judicial Watch has done it again. It has produced–following a Freedom of Information Act request filed with the United States Department of Justice (DOJ)–documents that suggest extensive coordination and communications between the DOJ Voting Section and former ACORN affiliate Project Vote.

Project Vote appears to be directing DOJ resources toward particular states; is having meetings with DOJ staff; and is even recommending lawyers to work in the Justice Department Voting Section that will oversee the 2012 presidential election.
The documents reveal how left-wing civil rights groups work against Republican or conservative candidates by attempting to leverage law enforcement against them. These groups have a cozy relationship with the Obama Justice Department.

http://biggovernment.com/jcadams/2011/12/14/documents-reveal-coordination-between-acorn-affiliate-and-justice-department-voting-section/

Mexican Gangs Impersonating US Police Officers on US Soil

By  PoliceOne Senior Editor Doug Wyllie




The news out of Houston that a group of criminals is staging armed raids on illegal gaming rooms in that city contains a very important wrinkle for our consideration — these violators are also police impersonators, and by all indications in the video these thugs have stepped things up quite considerably in their tactics — and tactical training. We’ve reported extensively here on PoliceOne in recent months on the variety of issues related to police impersonators, but today’s news presents us with an array of additional considerations to contemplate — not the least of which is the idea that HPD investigators are considering the possibility that these perpetrators are Zetas.

The experts with whom I’ve spoken on this matter don’t feel that these men in the Houston incident were, in fact, Zetas. Regardless, this is a very significant episode, whether or not it is found out that Zetas are conducting these types of operations here in the Untied States. At best, these offenders are ‘frequent fliers’ who have witnessed firsthand the movements and procedures of a tactical team taking down a room. At worst, well, we’re seeing a watershed event indeed.

Lest we forget, the Zetas did not start out as an independent cartel — they began as hired guns for the OTHER cartels. Many of those who self-identified as Zetas were retired from various branches of the Mexican military — most notably the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE) special forces soldiers who had received excellent tactical training and conducted extensive operations in which their combat experience refined their skills to very high levels of effectiveness.

Spillover in Tactics.

This afternoon I connected via phone with my friend Fred Burton, who has written a number of outstanding columns for PoliceOne, and has a wealth of knowledge related to the Mexican drug cartels as well as major trends and issues affecting American cops.

“We have a lot of problems in Texas in general — with gang violence and spillover crime. When you look at that kind of event — much like we had with the three-car ambush of the undercover informant the week before last in Houston — this is just indicative of the kind of criminal enterprise that we’re seeing,” Burton told me. “I don’t think this is actually Zetas, but what you do have is a lot of copycat activity with street gangs claiming to be Zetas because of that ‘street cred’ if you know what I mean.”

Think about that for just a moment. You have one group, pretending to be another group, pretending to be another — an American street gang, claiming to be Mexican Zetas, dressing up and presenting themselves as United States law enforcers.

“In reality, that kind of scenario as you saw [in the above video] we’ve seen in Mexico in the past. What you’re seeing is a lot of spillover in tactics. If you rewind a couple of weeks before this incident, you’ve got the ambush of the undercover informant, and now you have this MO where they look like cops — we see that fairly regularly in Mexico. ...No city is immune to this as we all know, but the closer you get to the border, I think you have more likelihood that you’ll have similar modus operandi coming across, bleeding across, because of the drug supply chain.”

Not Just Zetas

While there is a very real possibility that the individuals in that video are Zetas — their tactical acumen and their location near to the Mexican border do increase such a possibility — we must also be mindful of the fact that a variety of groups have been working hard on their training.

Let’s remember that street gangs in the United States generally — and in the American-Mexican border specifically — are frequently just one (or none!) degree of separation from those Cartels proper. Even the street gangs not directly affiliated with the Cartels are dealing the drugs those Cartels have sent across the border. Furthermore, these criminal enterprises — both American gangs and Mexican Cartels — do not limit themselves to drug trafficking. They’re into extortion, kidnapping, prostitution, stolen vehicles, you name it.

“What you’re seeing here is just a spillover in tactics” from Mexico to the United States, Burton reiterated. “This is an emerging threat that 2012 law enforcement needs to be cognizant of — and on top of — not only tactically but also in terms of firepower as well. When you think about it in context, it’s not just Zetas or Zeta wannabes, you also have a tremendous number of potential US military, combat-trained soldiers that are rotating back into the Unites States.”

It’s not news that a number of individuals now known to be affiliated with criminal gangs have joined the United States military so they can be trained and sent overseas to get battlefield experience which can subsequently be brought back to the streets. We know there are “training camps” all over the country in which “Militias” of Sovereign Citizens are working on their tactics and throwing thousands of rounds downrange to sharpen their skills. And we know that through the broad availability of surplus police vehicles, look-alike and actual police uniforms and equipment, as well as unscrupulous or unwitting trainers providing bad guys with training, we have a serious problem looming ahead.

SWAT Versus SWAT

Imagine the scene in which you have a legitimate law enforcement SWAT team called out to that incident in Houston. The TV news reporters viewing the footage would be tempted to report that sort of an event as a SWAT team versus a SWAT team.

“Due to the fact that our tactics and uniforms are known to everyone, copying us is quite easy,” said my friend and colleague Marty Katz. “Anyone can buy whatever they need to look just like a police office. To make matters worse, some police academies will teach people not hired already by an agency. Change is needed with limited ability to copy uniforms. Movies and television have become reality and reality looks just like film. We gave away our secrets and until we enhance what we do, we are in trouble.”

“This makes police work on the border so much more dangerous on so many levels,” added my good friend Dan Marcou in an email to me late in the day. “We need to find out if this is a U.S. Criminal gang. If not is it a cross border incursion by, Mexican criminals, a Cartel, or rogue Mexican authorities? If it is, this is ‘Pancho Villa-like’ — which you may remember triggered not law enforcement response, but a military one. In the meantime, local law enforcement needs to get together and work out a response and communication protocol to determine friendly from unfriendly at these scenes. Wow! Be careful out there!”

“This is going to be one of those emerging issues that nobody really likes to talk about, but the street cops in 2012 are going to have to be ready to deal with,” Burton concluded.

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/12/are-zetas-operating-as-police.html