Molten Steel

Molten STEEL Flowed Under Ground Zero for Months After 9/11
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
In response to the numerous reports of molten metal under ground zero, defenders of the official version of 9/11 have tried to argue that it was not steel, but some other kind of metal with a lower melting point.Well, here are what top experts who eyewitnessed the molten metal say:
The structural engineer responsible for the design of the WTC purportedly described fires still burning and molten steel still running 21 days after the attacks (page 3)
A retired professor of physics and atmospheric science said "in mid-October when they would pull out a steel beam, the lower part would be glowing dull red, which indicates a temperature on the order of 500 to 600 °C. And we know that people were turning over pieces of concrete in December that would flash into fire--which requires about 300 °C. So the surface of the pile cooled rather rapidly, but the bulk of the pile stayed hot all the way to December"
The head of a team of scientists studying the potential health effects of 9/11, reported, "Fires are still actively burning and the smoke is very intense. In some pockets now being uncovered, they are finding molten steel"
Hazardous materials experts also stated that, six weeks after 9/11, "There are pieces of steel being pulled out [from as far as six stories underground] that are still cherry red" and "the blaze is so 'far beyond a normal fire' that it is nearly impossible to draw conclusions about it based on other fires" (pay-per-view)
An expert stated about World Trade Center building 7, "A combination of an uncontrolled fire and the structural damage might have been able to bring the building down, some engineers said. But that would not explain steel members in the debris pile that appear to have been PARTLY EVAPORATED in extraordinarily high temperatures" (pay-per-view). Note that evaporation means conversion from a liquid to a gas; so the steel beams in building 7 were subjected to temperatures high enough to melt and evaporate them
According to reporter Christopher Bollyn, Mark Loizeaux, president the world's top demolition company, and Peter Tully, head of a large construction firm, said the following:

Tully told AFP that he had seen pools of “literally molten steel” in the rubble.Loizeaux confirmed this: “Yes, hot spots of molten steel in the basements,” he said, “at the bottom of the elevator shafts of the main towers, down seven levels.”The molten steel was found “three, four, and five weeks later, when the rubble was being removed,” he said. He confirmed that molten steel was also found at WTC 7, which mysteriously collapsed in the late afternoon.Here's what eyewitness firefighters say:
New York firefighters recalled in a documentary film, "heat so intense they encountered rivers of molten steel"
A NY firefighter described molten steel flowing at ground zero, and said it was like a "foundry" or like "lava"
According to a member of New York Air National Guard's 109th Air Wing, who was at Ground Zero from September 22 to October 6, "One fireman told us that there was still molten steel at the heart of the towers' remains. Firemen sprayed water to cool the debris down but the heat remained intense enough at the surface to melt their boots"
As late as five months after the attacks, in February 2002, firefighter Joe O'Toole saw a steel beam being lifted from deep underground at Ground Zero, which, he says, "was dripping from the molten steel" Here's what other eyewitnesses say:
A public health advisor who arrived at Ground Zero on September 12, said that "feeling the heat" and "seeing the molten steel" there reminded him of a volcano
An employee of New Jersey's Task Force One Urban Search and Rescue witnessed "Fires burn[ing and molten steel flow[ing] in the pile of ruins still settling beneath her feet"
A reporter with rare access to the debris at ground zero "descended deep below street level to areas where underground fires still burned and steel flowed in molten streams"
An Occupational Safety and Health Administration Officer at the Trade Center reported a fire truck 10 feet below the ground that was still burning two weeks after the Tower collapsed, "its metal so hot that it looked like a vat of molten steel"
A witness said “In the first few weeks, sometimes when a worker would pull a steel beam from the wreckage, the end of the beam would be dripping molten steel”
A NY Department of Sanitation spokeswoman said "for about two and a half months after the attacks, in addition to its regular duties, NYDS played a major role in debris removal - everything from molten steel beams to human remains..." The fact that there was molten steel under ground zero for months after 9/11 is very odd, especially since firefighters sprayed millions of gallons of water on the fires and applied high-tech fire retardants.

Food Shortages

Global famine? Blame the Fed
Mike WhitneyOnline Journal Tuesday, April 29, 2008
The stakes couldn't be higher for Ben Bernanke. If the Fed chief decides to lower rates at the end of April, he could be condemning millions of people to a death by starvation.
The situation is that serious. Food riots have broken out across the globe destabilizing large parts of the developing world. China is experiencing double-digit inflation. Indonesia, Vietnam and India have imposed controls over rice exports. Wheat, corn and soya are at record highs and threatening to go higher still. Commodities are up across the board. The World Food Program is warning of widespread famine if the West doesn't provide emergency humanitarian relief.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said it best: "It is a massacre of the world's poor. The problem is not the production of food. It is the economic, social and political model of the world. The capitalist model is in crisis."
Right on, Hugo. There is no shortage of food; it's just the prices that are making food unaffordable. Bernanke's "weak dollar" policy has ignited a wave of speculation in commodities which is pushing prices into the stratosphere. The UN is calling the global food crisis a "silent tsunami," but its more like a flood; the world is awash in increasingly worthless dollars that are making food and raw materials more expensive. Foreign central banks and investors presently hold $6 trillion in dollars and dollar-backed assets, so when the dollar starts to slide, the pain radiates through entire economies. This is especially true in countries where the currency is pegged to the dollar. That's why most of the Gulf States are experiencing runaway inflation. This doesn't mean that oil depletion, biofuel production, over-population, and giant agribusinesses don't add to the problem. They do. But the catalyst is the Fed's monetary policies; that's the domino that puts the others in motion.
Here's Otto Spengler's summary in his recent article in Asia Times, Rice, Death and the Dollar: "The global food crisis is a monetary phenomenon, an unintended consequence of America's attempt to inflate its way out of a market failure. There are long-term reasons for food prices to rise, but the unprecedented spike in grain prices during the past year stems from the weakness of the American dollar. Washington's economic misery now threatens to become a geopolitical catastrophe. . . . The link between the declining parity of the US unit and the rising price of commodities, including oil as well as rice and other wares, is indisputable.
"Never before in history has hunger become a global threat in a period of plentiful harvests. Global rice production will hit a record of 423 million tons in the 2007-2008 crop year, enough to satisfy global demand. The trouble is that only 7% of the world's rice supply is exported, because local demand is met by local production. Any significant increase in rice stockpiles cuts deeply into available supply for export, leading to a spike in prices. Because such a small proportion of the global rice supply trades, the monetary shock from the weak dollar was sufficient to more than double its price." ["Rice, death and the dollar", By Otto Spengler, Asia Times]
The US is exporting its inflation by cheapening its currency. Now a field worker in Haiti who earns $2 a day, and spends all of that to feed his family, has to earn twice that amount or eat half as much. No wonder that six people were killed in Port au Prince in the recent food riots. People go crazy when they can't feed their kids.
Food and energy prices are sucking the life out of the global economy. Foreign banks and pension funds are trying to protect their investments by diverting dollars into things that will retain their value. That's why oil is nudging $120 per barrel when it should be in the $70 to $80 range.
According to Tim Evans, energy analyst at Citigroup in New York, “There’s no supply-demand deficit." None. In fact suppliers are expecting an oil surplus by the end of this year.
"The case for lower oil prices is straightforward: The prospect of a deep U.S. recession or even a marked period of slower economic growth in the world’s top energy consumer making a dent in energy consumption. Year to date, oil demand in the U.S. is down 1.9% compared with the same period in 2007, and high prices and a weak economy should knock down U.S. oil consumption by 90,000 barrels a day this year, according to the federal Energy Information Administration." ["Bears Baffled by Oil Highs," Gregory Meyer, Wall Street Journal]
There's no oil shortage; that's another ruse. Speculators are simply driving up the price of oil to hedge their bets on the falling dollar. What else can they do, put them in the frozen bond market, or the sinking stock market, or the collapsing housing market? The Fed has gummed up the entire financial system with its low-interest credit scam, now it's on to commodities where the real pain is just beginning to be felt.
This is what happens when there's too many dollars sloshing around the system; they all need a place to rest, and when they do, they create equity bubbles. Sound familiar? Indeed. This is Greenspan's legacy in a nutshell; the dark specter of Maestro will continue to haunt the world until all the hyper-inflated asset-classes (real estate, bonds, stocks, commodities) return to earth and all the red ink is mopped up. That'll take time, but Bernanke could make things a lot easier if he accepted some responsibility for the current turmoil and raised rates by 25 basis points. That would show speculators that the Fed was serious about defending the currency, which would send the commodities bubble crashing to earth. Prices would go down overnight.
But Bernanke won't raise rates because he doesn't really give a hoot about the people in Cameroon who have to scavenge through garbage dumps for a few morsels to keep their families alive. Nor does he care about the average American working-stiff who goes into cardiac arrest every time he pulls up to the gas pump. What matters to Bernanke is making sure that his fat cat buddies in the banking establishment get a steady stream of low interest loot, so they can paper over their bad investments and ward off bankruptcy for another day or two. It's a joke; it was the investment banks that created this mess with their putrid mortgage-backed securities and other debt exotica. Still, in Bernanke's mind, they are the only ones who really count.
And don't expect Bush to step in and save the day either. The "Decider" still believes in the unrestricted activity of the free market, especially when his crooked friends can make a buck on the deal.
From the Washington Times: "Farmers and food executives appealed fruitlessly to federal officials yesterday for regulatory steps to limit speculative buying that is helping to drive food prices higher. Meanwhile, some Americans are stocking up on staples such as rice, flour and oil in anticipation of high prices and shortages spreading from overseas. Costco and other grocery stores in California reported a run on rice, which has forced them to set limits on how many sacks of rice each customer can buy. Filipinos in Canada are scooping up all the rice they can find and shipping it to relatives in the Philippines, which is suffering a severe shortage that is leaving many people hungry." [Patrice Hill, Washington Times]
The Bush administration knows there's hanky-panky going on, but they just look the other way. It's Enron all over again -- where Ken Lay & Co. scalped the public with utter impunity while regulators sat on the sidelines applauding. Great. Now it's the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) turn; they're taking a hands-off approach so Wall Street sharpies make a fortune jacking up the price of everything from soda crackers to toilet bowls.
"A hearing Tuesday in Washington before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission starts a new round of scrutiny into the popularity of agricultural futures, once a quieter arena that for years was dominated largely by big producers and consumers of crops and their banks trying to manage price risks. The commission's official stance and that of many of the exchanges, however, is likely to disappoint many consumer groups. The CFTC's economist plans to state at the hearing that the agency doesn't believe financial investors are driving up grain prices. Some grain buyers say speculators' big bets on relatively small grain exchanges, especially recently, are pushing up prices for ordinary consumers. ["Call Goes Out to Rein In Grain Speculators", Ann Davis]
"The agency doesn't believe financial investors are driving up grain prices"?
Prices have doubled, people are starving, and the Bush troop is still parroting the same worn party-mantra. It's maddening.
The US has been gaming the system for decades; sucking up two-thirds of the world's capital to expand its cache of Cadillac Escalades and flat-screen TVs; giving nothing back in return except mortgage-backed junk, cluster bombs, and crummy green paper. Nothing changes; it only gets worse. But this time its different. The world is now facing the very real prospect of famine on a massive scale because 12 doddering old banksters at the Federal Reserve would rather bail out their sketchy friends than save the lives of starving women and children. Bernanke, with one swipe of the pen, now has an opportunity to send more people to their eternal reward than Bush. If he cut rates, the dollar will fall, commodities will spike, and people will starve. It's as simple as that.

Further Steps Towards A Police State

Police Forces Dressing In Black To "Instill Fear" In Citizens

Psychological influence of uniforms cited by authorities
Steve WatsonInfowars.netMonday, April 28, 2008
Recent news that police in Massachusetts are to switch to black, military-style uniforms in an effort to appear more authoritative and aggressive highlights a more general move to militarize police in America and affect a "post 9/11" psychology of fear.
Last week an AP report headlined Massachusetts Police Get Black Uniforms to Instill Sense of 'Fear' detailed the move:
Sgt. John Delaney told a city council hearing Wednesday that the stark uniforms send a message to criminals that officers are serious about making arrests.
Delaney said a sense of "fear" has been missing for the past few years.
In recent years police in cities all over America have been increasingly seen in all black attire.
The introduction of black police uniforms has an ominous precedent. In 1932 Hitler's propaganda chief Heinrich Himmler famously introduced black uniforms for SS police, tailored to project authority and foster fear and respect. The choice of color was not by chance.
It is believed that the Nazis took the idea from the "blackshirts" in Italy years before the creation of the SS.
A 2001 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin has summarized research on police uniforms and noted the psychological influence they have:
Research has suggested that clothing has a powerful impact on how people perceive each other. The police officer's uniform has a profound psychological impact on others, and even slight alterations to the style of the uniform may change how citizens perceive them.
The studies cited found that black uniforms elicit emotions of anger, hostility, dominance, and aggression:
Applying the results of these studies in color to the police uniform suggests that darker police uniforms may send negative subconscious signals to citizens. A dark police uniform may subconsciously encourage citizens to perceive officers as aggressive, evil, or corrupt and send a negative message to the community.
Even more interesting are further findings that suggest both police officers and citizens are more likely to engage each other violently when the authorities come dressed in black:
The experiment with the colored jerseys also suggests that police officers in dark uniforms subconsciously may act more aggressively; therefore, departments should consider modifying police uniform colors.
The police uniform also may influence the safety level of the officer who wears it. Dark colored uniforms may elicit subconscious negative feelings from citizens, who may perceive the officer as aggressive, and subsequently, encourage them to consider violent action when confronted by the police.
Research has also shown that police uniforms with a lighter half have been ranked by citizens as "good, honest, helpful, and competent, the lighter colored sheriff's uniform rated noticeably higher for warmth and friendliness".
It is telling that police have ditched these in favor of the all black approach.
The same black uniform tactics have been adopted by police forces in the UK, who have ditched traditional uniforms in favor of black roll-necks and black combat trousers.
MPs have spoken out against the move, with David Jones, Conservative MP for Clwyd West describing the uniforms as "sinister".
"I think that the connotations of black shirts are obvious to anybody. They've got a kind of fascist, militaristic appearance." Jones commented at the time.
When the role of the police in a supposedly free country is to admittedly appear dangerous and to instill fear, in tandem with enhanced powers and more draconian practices, history tells us that something is most definitely not right.

Vlad Doing It Right For Himself

Russia's richest man sees Putin in charge to 2020
Sun Apr 27, 2008 4:33pm EDT
By Dmitry Zhdannikov and Alexandras Budrys
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's richest man, Oleg Deripaska, has said he is convinced Vladimir Putin will remain fully in charge of Russia until 2020, even though he is stepping down as president on May 7.
The media-shy business mogul, with interests stretching from metals and oil to airports and cement, also said that the West should stop fearing Russia.
"I see no political risks (after May 7). Living in Russia makes me confident," he said in a rare chat with journalists in one of Moscow's top restaurants, the Cafe Pushkin. His comments on Friday were embargoed for publication on Sunday.
Dmitry Medvedev, Putin's chosen successor who won the March presidential election with a landslide, will be sworn in on May 7 but the hugely popular Putin has vowed to be prime minister.
Medvedev has pledged loyalty to his political mentor and promised to implement "the Putin plan", a set of goals to make Russia a developed country by 2020.
"His (Medvedev's) role is important. But you need to understand -- it's a big challenge to take responsibility. As I understand Putin accepted this responsibility to develop 2020 goals," said Deripaska, who spoke English for most of the interview.
Valued by Forbes magazine at $28.6 billion -- though he says that is exaggerated -- Deripaska was considered one of the oligarchs closest to Putin's forerunner as president, Boris Yeltsin, in the 1990s.
Now 40, he started his fortune in aluminum, a business known for violent battles in the 1990s. His former business partners have filed many suits against him alleging illegal business tactics but had no success.
EXPANDING EMPIRE
While other oligarchs fell from grace, like Boris Berezovsky who fled Russia or jailed oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky, he not only survived under Putin but has flourished, tripling the size of his empire since 2000.
"It is of course important to have good relations, to be nice with everyone," he said.
Relations with the United States are less cordial, however, after Washington revoked his visa over concerns about possible ties to organized crime.
"My competitors may have spread negative information about me and may have found attentive ears in the United States. They have their own policy towards Russia," he said.
"The United States is the last country I would invest now. If the government is unreasonably pushing us out, why should we stay there and solve their problems?"
Deripaska, whose main investment vehicle is a company called Basic Element, has expanded into other countries abroad and owns stakes in Austrian construction group Strabag and Canadian carmaker Magna.
He dismisses the widespread market perception that clearing deals with the Kremlin is a key precondition for doing business in Russia, despite the fact that all global majors had to first meet Putin before announcing bid partnerships in the country.
"It is a mistake (to think that)," he said a day after closing a deal in which RUSAL, the world's largest primary aluminum producer which he controls, bought 25 percent in the world's largest nickel producer, Norilsk Nickel.

They're Worried About Food In Canada

Food-buying panic hits Canadian stores
Tiffany Crawford, Canwest News Service

With food riots spreading from Haiti to Thailand and retail giants such as Wal-Mart implementing rice rationing in the United States because of shrinking supplies, analysts say Canadians will soon be paying a lot more at the grocery store.
Already, panic buying has hit some Canadian stores.
Bruce Cran, president of the Consumers Association of Canada said he was getting calls in British Columbia that store shelves were being emptied of rice by panicked buyers. "I was in one of the national chains and there was one packet of rice left on the shelf."
"It's a human trait to hoard, but there is only so much food to hoard," he said. "The world crisis is obviously going to have a ripple effect into Canada."
Eating habits will be forced to change, says Cran, and its likely in the near future consumers will no longer have the option of fresh pineapples and oranges in the winter.
"My advice is to go speak to your granny and get a canning recipe before she leaves this world."
Maple Leaf Foods Inc., one of Canada's largest food processors, reported a loss on Thursday due to soaring costs for grain used in its bakeries and hog barns.
"These are stunningly, stunningly challenging and unique times," Chief Executive Michael McCain told shareholders at the company's annual meeting on Thursday.
"The world is embroiled with absorbing the implications of the simple truth that food will be considerably more expensive, well into the future," he said.
Rice prices jumped 5% in Thailand as prices surged to $1,000 a tonne on Thursday. The country has been hit by an increased demand from developing countries and poor crop yields.
World rice stocks are the lowest in 20 years and riots have broken out in Africa and Haiti. Adding to the problem is that India, Vietnam and Thailand have restricted exports.
The shortage has already begun to have an impact on North America.
Sam's Club, the wholesale unit of Wal-Mart announced Wednesday it was capping sales of nine kilogram bags of rice at four bags per customer per visit to prevent hoarding. The curb affects "specialty rice" including jasmine, basmati and long grain rice.
A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Canada said there are no plans to cap sales in Canada.
"We do not have restrictions on rice at any of our Canadian stores," said Karin Campbell on Thursday. She would not comment on whether there had been a run on rice at any of their Canadian outlets.
Canada hasn't seen as large an increase in food prices as other areas in the world but changing patterns in food use are having an impact on prices.
For example, corn is being used for ethanol production and putting pressure on the food industry, said David Wilkes, a spokesperson for The Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors.
"Ten years ago we didn't have to compete with that," he said. "It's a perfect storm of a variety of factors. We're even seeing prices go up for fresh fruit and vegetables that have to be trucked in."
Although Wilkes couldn't say how much Canadians can expect to see prices jump on grain staples such as rice and flour, he said the prices will begin to steadily climb. "I do believe that these changes are with us to stay."
Wilkes said Canada's major grocery chains did not anticipate restrictions either. "We do not believe it is necessary to follow restrictions."
But across the country, Canadian suppliers of foreign foods were feeling the pinch Thursday.
The wholesale price of specialty rice has doubled or almost doubled in the last five months because of shortages overseas, said Kanti Shah, co-owner of Shah Trading Co. in Montreal.
"Right now, the scenario is "Where can I get my rice?'," said Shah, a Kenyan-born Indian immigrant whose firm supplies Loblaws, Wal-Mart, Costco and other chains.
"It's definitely a crisis. I don't think it will get so bad that rice won't be available here, but the price will be high. You know, the Asian crowd in North America are major consumers of rice -- breakfast, lunch and dinner -- so they've been stocking up."
And in Toronto, Pascal Ribreau, owner of Celestin Bakery said wholesale prices have forced him to raise prices by 15%.
A manager at Hua Sheng supermarket in Toronto's Chinatown said customers recently have been buying larger bags of rice while the store has seen an increase in rice sales.
Three weeks ago the supermarket raised the price of several brands of rice $1 to $5 depending on size of the bag.

Our Boy David Morgan On Silver

NOT ENOUGH SILVER

By David MorganApril 24, 2008
In my article “Silver is too bulky,” we examined a hypothetical look at the average baby boomer placing ten percent of their net worth into the precious metals, split 50/50 gold and silver. At the time, silver was trading over $15 per troy ounce. Since publishing that article silver has traded over $21 and is now trading between $17 and $18.
Many in the mainstream understand portfolio diversification, true diversification as outlined in the Ibbotson Study, which states that precious metals are the only asset class that truly moves opposite to stocks and bonds. Now let us look a little deeper into what a ten percent allocation to precious metals would mean. First, we examine just how many boomers exist in the United States. The statistics vary, and for our purposes we will use 75 million baby boomers in the U.S.A.
Is there enough silver if just ten percent of the baby boomer population were to allocate five percent of their net worth into silver, could it be accomplished? This might seem like a totally absurd question, yet the answer may begin to sink into the collective unconscious of today’s investor. When the Secretary of the Treasury uses the words “financial crisis” more than five times in a recent speech, the attraction to precious metals becomes more urgent.
In the “Silver Is Too Bulky” article, we found the medium net worth of the boomers was about $180,000. So ten percent of this would be $18,000, but remember, for the purposes of this discussion we are going to divide our ten percent allocation to both silver and gold on a fifty-fifty basis. This means $9,000 into gold, and $9,000 into silver!
If ten percent of the boomers allocated $9,000 to buy silver, we would have 7.5 million (ten percent of the boomer population) times $9,000. Pretty simple arithmetic; the product is $67.5 billion. But wait just a moment! Something must be erroneous—the amount of investment grade silver (bullion and coins)* is about one billion ounces.
At our $18 per ounce, that is obviously $18 billion to purchase the entire silver supply, including all .999 fine bullion and silver coins! Perhaps now you can appreciate why the most enlightened financial planners talk in gold terms only; either they know the silver market is pitifully small (unlikely), making it extremely attractive, or they feel safer with gold because gold has become mainstream.
Consider that boomers are defined as being born between 1946 and 1964. During that entire timeframe each and every boomer had a form of money that is far different from today. The United States of America was using dollars backed by silver.
Take a look at the Silver Certificate below.
Notice that this is a certificate and not a “note.” Many of you have recently asked about taking possession of your having your stock certificates mailed to you as a precaution to the possibility of further financial problems.
This certificate represents that there was a dollar* on deposit in the Treasury of the United States of America. Additionally this dollar was payable to the bearer of this certificate on demand. In 1964 the M1 money supply was 153 billion. This would represent a silver supply of 153 billion Dollars (371 4/16 grain (24.1 g)) pure silver. In familiar terms 371.25/480 = 0.7734 troy ounces. And in 1964, the United States held 1.2 billion ounces of silver, not counting the 139.5 million ounces held as a strategic stockpile. Source: The Silver Institute and Silver Bonanza, page 89.
What kind of silver wealth would that represent? Approximately sixteen ounces of silver for every boomer born. That’s correct—each boomer had 16 ounces of silver. However, that was then, and here we are today: the official silver holdings of the United States Treasury is gone, even the strategic stockpile is gone.

Along the road from silver-backed currency to today’s electronic miracle money, a funny thing happened. Nearly one hundred percent of these very same boomers believe with all their might that not only is silver not money, most don’t even know that at one time (during their birth and prior) the only lawful money was silver.
Silver Coins
Silver Coins can be broken down into several subsets, and for the purposes of this article some, not all, of the major broad categories will be examined.
One of the main subsets is bullion coins. These mainly comprise silver coins struck by government mints around the world and include Silver Liberties (U.S.), Silver Maples (Canada), Silver Pandas (China), and some other lesser-known bullion coins. Most of these coins are tightly held and many are dispersed so far and wide that bringing them back to the market is a fantasy. As an example, some percentage of these coins are held as single pieces, where a single coin was given as a gift of some type. In those instances it is very unlikely that these single unitholders are waiting for the day to cash in on their silver investments. The total amount of Silver “Eagles” minted since inception (1986) to present is approximately 160 million ounces. If we are generous and round up to 200 million we can account for Silver Maples, Pandas, and Australian Silver mintages.
Another subset is loosely defined as “coins.” These are known in the trade as medallions although they have all the characteristics of coins but are minted privately and often carry the name “silver rounds.” Many of these “rounds” are nothing more than a convenient way to invest in silver and sell for very close to the spot price of silver. However, there are also many that carry very large premiums as they are low mintage and used in many instances to signify a certain group, club, event, historic moment, or what have you; these are normally keepsakes and in most instances will not be coming back to the marketplace.
The junk silver market is another arena of silver coins. These are coins that were minted by various governments around the world that trade for their silver content. The amount of “junk” silver is small at this point because much of this silver has been melted down and refined into silver bullion for industrial purposes. However, there is an active market for this type of silver and it is usually the lowest premium form of silver available for investment. Almost all of this silver is marked as “investment” and willing to come back to the market at some price.
The last subset we will discuss is the numismatic market, which is the rare coin market. This is the collector market and is certainly part of the overall picture. These coins will not come back to the market for their silver content. They will continue to trade among silver coin collectors and investors, but this subset does not represent any significant amount of silver rushing back into the marketplace. In fact, the opposite is true: this silver (admittedly small) is not coming back to the market to fill industrial demand.

Nicely Said.....................

"All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting."-George Orwell

The Consumer Is Changing His Ways

Silver Is Still Your Best Bet

Spotlight falls on silver's poor fundamentals
Reuters, Monday April 28 2008
By Pratima Desai
LONDON, April 28 (Reuters) - Investment money flooding into silver has overwhelmed poor fundamentals and helped it to outperform gold, but the tide could be turning for precious metals and the probability of large losses is rising.Silver has outstanding fundamentals, and silver's downside is minimal, and, in fact, it probably just bottomed, as I will show.
Silver's price falls in percentage terms are likely to dwarf those seen in gold, which some fund managers say has stronger supply/demand fundamentals.Again, the opposite is true, silver's supply/demand fundamentals are much better than for gold, as all the smart money knows, and as I will show.
"History shows that when you get a substantial correction in precious metals, silver falls more than gold ... It's a more volatile market and smaller in value terms," said Stephen Briggs, analyst at Societe Generale.That's true, silver is more volatile, and in a bull market for silver, which we are in, silver will clearly outperform gold, as it has outperformed gold, as the silver to gold ratio is narrowing, from 80:1 to 50:1, and we have a long way to go to get to the historic 15:1 ratio, or we will likely exceed it, with silver moving even higher.
One big reason behind surging prices has been the tumbling dollar, making commodities priced in dollars cheaper for holders of other currencies. The weak dollar also prompts producers to raise prices to protect profit margins.Silver producers do not have the luxury of raising prices. No commodity producer does. All commodities in the world are either sold at the spot price, or under long term contracts that have already been agreed upon, which, in this bull market, are usually at lower prices than today.
Last week the dollar fell to record lows against the Euro, to beyond $1.60, an event which has caused many to question whether further losses can be sustained and whether it has bottomed.While the excess creation of paper money is one of the best factors for higher silver prices, the dollar's relation to the yen and Euro has almost nothing to do with it's relation to silver and gold prices. All paper money, the yen, Euro, and the dollar, are all falling against silver and gold, generally, since 2001 and that trend will continue.
"The dollar is not going to keep on depreciating forever," Briggs said. He expects gold prices to average around $900 an ounce next year from $1,025 this year and silver to average $15.50 compared with $19.20.Well, actually, the dollar could keep on depreciating forever, as all paper currencies in all of human history have eventually done just that. It's silver and gold that cannot depreciate forever. Furthermore, these spokesmen from the large banks and brokers are always revising upwards their estimates of silver's future prices, and it's always behind where silver ends up going; I've seen this pattern for the last eight years now. Since when have the large banks or brokers called silver right? When did they advise you to ever get into this market to make several hundred percent since 2001? They never did. And now they want you to sell? They always want you to sell.Financial uncertainty, which has underpinned precious metals since last August is to some extent becoming less important to investors seeking the higher returns stocks and bonds offer.Stocks and bonds offering higher returns? Since when? Only if you go back 30 years, but not the last 8. The Dow/Gold ratio topped out in 2001 at about 56 and has narrowed down to about 14 now that gold has hit about $900.
With a weakened case for holding precious metals, prices have started to slip. Spot gold is now around $893 an ounce compared with a record high of $1,030.80 on March 17 and silver at $17 from a 27-year high of $21.24.Weakened case for holding precious metals? What weakened case? They made no case. They didn't even get the facts right. The current dip in silver is probably the bottom, and now is probably the best time to buy!
Goldman Sachs recently said it expects to see gold prices at $835 an ounce in 12 months and silver at around $15.50.Here's another investment bank revising their estimates upwards again, but making bearish calls. Hilarious. Pathetic. Bullish!
RECYCLING
From the end of last year to March 17, silver prices surged by more than 40 percent, while gold was up more than 20 percent. Silver's heftier gains were built on investor flows.Absolutely. Investment demand for silver surged from 5% of annual mine supply to maybe about 8-10% of annual mine supply, we'll see soon.
Barclays iShares silver trust, the biggest silver exchange traded fund listed in the United States, now holds more than 5,770 tonnes of silver, a rise of about 10 percent since the end of last year.
Gold holdings by New York-listed StreetTracks Gold Shares, the world's biggest gold ETF, stand at 591 tonnes, down about 5 percent since end-December.I agree with those stats, but look at what they mean. With gold trading at about 50 times the price of silver, and the gold ETF holding more than 1/10th of the tonnes of the silver ETF, it means that about 5 times as many investment dollars went into the gold ETF.
"Silver is probably going to fall more than gold in percentage terms," said Wolfgang Wrzesniok-Rossbach, head of sales at German metals trading group Heraeus.
"From an industrial and jewellery point of view, there has clearly been a decline in demand. There has been a lot of additional material coming to the market in the form of scrap."This "German metals trading group Heraeus" is not said to be either long or short. They could very well have short positions, and just inventing things. They appear to be a silver user, at first glance here: http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001zKLJRlv_mRi9_ED-vyA2YzLEWrKxv6ljpMBQRbKYjPRRHeT_YUVQkdOBN8t69UUWkrgaZzg4zdLPo6bZO2mSFc57MTEjeu7zVQ7q__sJ7bgjH83BjEaQfc99dhvYM66WV4YnKvXelRY=
More than 20,000 tonnes of silver were produced globally last year compared with around 2,500 tonnes of gold.I agree with those stats. What is not said is that 160% of gold mine supply is purchased by investors each year or about 4000 tonnes of gold. In stark contrast, about .07% of silver mine supply is purchased by investors each year, about 1555 tonnes, or about 50 million ounces.
The surplus in the physical silver market is expected by some analysts to rise to around 2,500 tonnes from a surplus of around 900 tonnes in 2007. The physical gold market could see a surplus this year of 600 tonnes from 500 tonnes last year.There is no such thing as a "surplus" of precious metal. This is an accounting term, used to designate demand by investors.
"Fundamentals come into play when prices are coming down," said John Reade, analyst at UBS. "Silver doesn't have gold's fundamentals."Exactly. Silver does not have gold's fundamentals, silver's are much better. With industry consuming more silver than is mined each year, any slight increase in investor demand for silver will continue to drive silver's prices upwards, and make a mockery of all of wall street and all they do and all they have to offer. This is why they must band together, to write lying foolishness against silver as they do. This can only be an indication of them feeling pain in the silver market, not being able to coax out any supply from investors after having bombed the price in the last few weeks. The silver shortage is continuing with many coin shops still very low on silver supplies, as investor selling by the public, which was a large part of recycling supply, has changed since gold hit $1000/oz., and now must be putting the squeeze on all of wall street, who are probably carrying a collective short position in silver.
ONE SOURCE OF DEMAND
Silver is often a byproduct of other metals such as lead, zinc and copper, where miners are trying to ramp up production with some success. Funny theory. True, about 70% of silver production is as a by-product of the base metals. I just read that Chile, who produces 40% of the world's copper, is ramping down copper production due to a power crisis. And several more trusted analysts in our industry have finally turned bullish on copper recently.
That means more silver on the market and together with scrap recycling, supplies are set to jump this year, while overall demand, including that from ETFs is expected to fall.Why would they project demand from silver ETFs to fall? That would be quite a change. It's rather hard to predict such changes; it's usually more likely that things will stay the same, with ever increased demand from the silver ETFs.
"Silver is very dependent on one source of demand -- ETFs.That's not true. Silver prices will go up even without new investor demand, due to the overwhelming fundamentals that there is so little investment demand at all. You can't get excited about silver in the same way as gold. Silver doesn't really have the same cachet," Briggs said.Now that's true. Silver has absolutely no cachet. As I wrote above: 160% of gold mine supply is purchased by investors each year or about 4000 tonnes of gold. In stark contrast, about .07% of silver mine supply is purchased by investors each year, about 1555 tonnes, or about 50 million ounces. So, how much money is spent on gold vs. silver each year? Silver: 50 million oz. x $17/oz. = $850 million.Gold: 4000 tonnes x 32,151oz/tonne = 128.6 million oz. x $900/oz. = $115,743 million, or $115 billion.Thus, 136 times as much money is spent on gold, than silver, by investors each year. Silver has absolutely no cachet, true, so true. And yet, the fundamentals are so much better, precisely due to that lower investor demand. When investors get educated about silver, they buy hand over fist, and create shortages at major coin shops around the world.
"Demand from the photographic sector has been falling fast ... It's no longer an important source of demand." For gold, the picture is somewhat different. Mine production is expected to hold steady this year, but analysts expect output in South Africa, a major producer, to fall over coming years because the ore that remains is deep and expensive to access.Wow. What a totally biased statement, telling half truths that are totally irrelevant to silver vs. gold. These guys must either know nothing, or be intentionally trying to hammer silver prices. Silver's declining photography demand is being offset by rising industrial demand and the tiny increase in the tiny investor demand.
Fabrication demand -- jewellery and coins -- is expected to continue unabated as rising incomes in emerging market countries such as China and India allow people to choose gold over silver. More hatchet jobs against silver are expected, while they continue to say that silver prices will be expected to fall, while silver prices actually rise. The reason that the establishment will not tell you to buy silver is because they don't have any. The investment demand is so tiny, they hardly have any silver at all, and have never been able to enter the market in any size. How can wall street establishments, who receive bail outs by the Fed, to the tune of $20 billion dollars at a time, buy any silver when the silver market is swamped by less than $1 billion of investor demand annually? Be fruitful and multiply and you can see through the lies. Buy silver. They lie.

Nicely Said.............................

“[Nature] is rich, she is generous, she refuses to no one who will ask his share of her treasure of which she has inexhaustible reserves in the trees, in the mountains, in the sea. But one must know how to climb the tall trees, how to go into the mountains… One must know how to catch fish, and how to dive to tear loose the shellfish so firmly attached to stones at the bottom of the sea. One must know, one must be able to do things.”
— Paul Gauguin, Noa Noa

The Food Shortage

They're Blaming Hedge Funds, but What's Really Behind this Global Food Shortage?
At last count, the United Nations has cited food riots and shortages in 33 different countries. Supplies are growing scarce for everything from wheat to rice. World inventories are sitting at 30-year lows. And governments are getting more aggressive with speculators and the exchanges that trade coarse grains. In Washington last week, lawmakers grilled the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). They're trying to understand why rice and other grain prices continue to trade at record highs. One lobby group, the American Bakers Association, blames hedge funds, index funds and other speculators for the growing supply shortages. For the record, grain prices have indeed more than tripled off their lows in 2006. But if you adjust for inflation, grain prices remain 60% to 150% below their highs. Still, that is no comfort for countries and consumers struggling to gain access to dwindling supplies. Many emerging market nations, including the Philippines and Haiti, now impose rice rations. Other countries have begun hoarding rice and other grains to counter bulging price increases this year.The argument among the agricultural bears is that grain prices are too hot right now. These sky-high grain prices are widely publicized in the popular press and eventually will draw some sort of government response to control prices. That might be true, if only temporarily. High oil and gas prices have already made headlines for the last several years, yet prices remain at record highs amid a shortage of about two million barrels of crude daily. But when it comes to food, investors should probably take notice because voters have to eat. They don't necessarily have to drive.I have been long and strong the grains in my Commodity Trend Alert (CTA) service since late 2006 and I am still very bullish. We bought DBA over 15 months ago and I'm still bullish on this multi-grain and sugar index fund. Hedge funds, index funds and other traders certainly play a part driving prices higher. But that's not the bullish case for the grains.The facts are that global supplies are shrinking. The rapid industrialization of the emerging markets in Asia this decade has resulted in more than two billion consumers vying for healthier diets, including rice, corn, soybeans and wheat. Combined with chronic shortages caused by plunging harvests in several grain belts since 2006 - namely Argentina, Australia and the Ukraine - prices have skyrocketed. Also, the biofuel boom has diverted food supplies to alternative energy sources like ethanol and biodiesel. I do not expect that trend to change, either.Global governments will try to coerce prices lower to pander for their electorates. I expect the grains to correct this summer - wheat prices have already plunged from their highs. But longer term, I have no doubt that prices are heading much higher as more people join the food chain in Asia and other emerging markets. Quite simply, we are outgrowing the Earth's resources. Unfortunately, food is becoming scarce and nothing will change that for the foreseeable future.

Throw Off Your Tax Slave Chains!

How to Escape Financial Slavery

When The Daily Show's witty host Jon Stewart interviewed Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill), Stewart asked:
"Sir, we are concerned that ultimately at the end of the day, if you are fortunate enough to get the Democratic nomination, fortunate to become President of the United States, will you pull a bait-and-switch, sir, and enslave the white race? Is that your plan? And, if it is your plan, be honest. Tell us now."
Laughing, Sen. Obama replied: "That is not our plan Jon, but I think your paranoia might make you suitable as a debate moderator."
Okay, so Stewart's question was a joke. But if you look deeper at the situation, the underlying assumptions become less than amusing. If you examine the Senator's initiatives, you'll notice he's proposing what amounts to future enslavement - and that observation goes for all potential presidents - the Senators Three, Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain.
What Does a "Slave" Mean Nowadays?
Enslavement (not a word you hear much about these days), is the act of making slaves of other human beings. Maybe you never thought about it, but a slave is a person who is the property of and wholly subject to control of another. There was a time in the United States when slavery was not only legal, but it required a five-year long Civil War - the deadliest war in American history - and 620,000 deaths to settle the issue.
In March of 1857, in the infamous Dred Scott decision, seven out of nine Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court (with my fellow Marylander, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney writing the opinion), declared no slave or descendant of a slave could be or ever had been a U.S. citizen. As a non-citizen, the court said Dred Scott had no rights, could not sue in a Federal Court and must remain a slave.
It took the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, to officially abolish and prohibit slavery with limited exceptions, such as those convicted of a crime.
A History of White Slavery
Largely ignored in American history books (and probably unknown to Jon Stewart when he asked his question), there was an early class in America that could be called "white slaves."
Mainstream histories refer to these laborers as "indentured servants" not slaves. This is because many indentured servants agreed to work for a set period of time in exchange for land and rights.
In a new book, White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America (N.Y.U. Press), authors Don Jordan and Michael Walsh argue, however, that slavery applies to any person who is bought and sold, chained and abused, whether for a decade or a lifetime. Many early American settlers died long before their indentured servitude ended. Either that or they found that no court would back them when their owners failed to deliver on promises. And many never achieved freedom or the American dream they were seeking.
So what are we to make of the true status of those of us who are privileged to live in what we often refer to as "the land of the free" - the United States of America?
Each year every dollar the average American earns up until the third week of April goes to the government in taxes!
So in reality there is another, more subtle form of slavery in America that's growing exponentially. Realize it or not, we live and labor under tax and regulatory control in nearly every aspect of our lives. This control ranges from a complete sacrifice of personal and financial privacy (i.e. the PATRIOT Act and illegal surveillance of all kinds), to burdensome taxation that confiscates our fortunes to finance the ever growing welfare state, either by massive deficit spending or political robbery of our currency's value.
And what has fate so cruelly handed Americans for leadership in this time of troubles?
Not a Trillion's Worth of Difference
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both propose major changes to the tax code that would make it even more complex and increase taxes. His plan emphasizes income redistribution, while her "nanny" approach seeks to force changes in Americans' behavior.
Obama's proposal would shift the tax burden further onto "the rich" that already pay almost all taxes. Clinton proposes targeted tax breaks designed to change the way Americans use energy, save money and care for elders.
Both candidates would allow President George W. Bush's tax cuts to expire. Up until now, these tax cuts have helped workers in the top two tax brackets and set the estate-tax rate at 45% with a US$7 million exemption.
Obama wants tax rates on capital gains and dividends to rise from the current 15% rate to perhaps as high as 28%. Clinton would also raise the rate on investment income. The centerpiece of Obama's tax plan is a US$1,000 tax cut for workers that would cost more than US$80 billion annually and effectively eliminate all taxes for about 10 million low income Americans.
Meanwhile John McCain, who calls himself a "conservative," panders to supply side Republicans. He's proposing to extend and expand tax cuts that can only increase the annual national deficit and the US$9.4 trillion national debt. By the time President Bush leaves office, he will have added nearly US$3 trillion to that national debt. Thank you, George! No thank you, John!
As an article in The New York Times observed Sunday: "The Republican and Democratic presidential candidates differ strikingly in their approaches to taxes and spending, but their fiscal plans have at least one thing in common: Each could significantly swell the budget deficit and increase the national debt by trillions of dollars, according to tax and budget experts."
Not to Sound Like a Broken Record...
Now I know I'm beginning to sound like a broken record (or a skipping CD). But honestly, there are only so many ways to protect yourself from government-imposed indentured servitude and financial slavery - regardless of your race, color or ethnic background.
The first step is to open your eyes and recognize the dire situation as it is -- then to take proactive action to defend and expand your diminished freedoms.
With the dollar shrinking in value daily, with American freedoms and civil liberties curtailed, with bipartisan deficit government spending continuing unchecked, you need to take action right now to protect yourself.
The best way to do that is design your own offshore plan that can successfully (and legally) minimize your taxes. Investing your wealth for greater profits abroad can also help offset these high taxes.
Why would any reasonable person choose slavery over freedom? As I have said before: "Wherever real freedom can be found, that's where freedom lovers should be."

Idiot Schumer Just Doesn't Get It; Sociopaths Rarely Do

“What's truly galling about Sen. Chuck Schumer's remarks ,” writes another, “about rebate checks going ultimately to the Mideast oil barons is his own gall: Why aren't we drilling offshore like Brazil did and discovering oil reserves larger than the Mideast fields? Why are other countries like China drilling off the American continents, not us? Where are the refineries we need to process more fuel? Where are the nuclear plants we need? “Why? Because leaders in Congress like Chuck Schumer have listened to the environmentalists over the years and legislated America into the pecuniary position we are in today. But he's not alone. I blame all of those in Congress since the 1973 oil crisis for not doing the right thing for the American citizens. Instead, both sides have engaged in bitter partisan politics, the public be damned. There's no real leadership, no real statesmanship in Congress -- only petty politics engaged in by petty people who should know and do better. “Look at the present ethanol debacle. Ethanol, we've discovered, is energy negative and is causing a vertical spike in food costs. Our elected leaders seem to be a bunch of know-it-all idiots who truly deserve to be booted out on their asses as soon as possible. What good have they done for us since the oil crisis?”
Yeah! And what about that mound of debt they’re leaving with us?!

All Around The World, The Headlines Are The Same

Dire warnings of an economic collapse plague the US economy
Gerard JacksonBrookesNews.Com Monday 28 April 2008
The cause of the current economic problems is very simple: Bad economics. Instead of closely examining the monetary theory that got us into this mess economists have started playing the blame game. Alan Greenspan blamed Wall Street irrational for making irrational economic decisions the appear to have brought the US economy to the brink of disaster.
On the other hand, Morgan Stanley’s Stephen Roach blames "Greenspan’s blend of politics and ideology" for the current financial mess, arguing that it "led to bad economics and a succession of policy blunders whose severity is only now becoming clear". All that Roach made clear is his ignorance of economic history and sound economic theory.
Yale University economist Robert Shiller also feels the need to throw pearls of wisdom among the economic illiterati asserting that their exists the possibility that house prices will plummet by more than 30 per cent, exceeding the dramatic 1929-1933 plunge in prices. Determined not to be left out Paul Volcker stated in a speech to the Economic Club of New York that the sub-prime mortgage debacle has become "the mother of all crises". (These blokes cannot even update their vocabulary).
Not only is there no economic theory here, there is also no economic perspective. A financial crisis that would be even worse than the Great Depression? Through 1930 and 1933 something like 10,000 banks went under. Now that is what I call a banking crisis. Shiller warns of a collapse in prices. How about this: Starting with July 1929=100 we find that wholesale prices dived by 38 per cent. It was no coincidence that money supply contracted by about 35 per cent. And no wonder considering the following account:
The number of bank failures in the single year 1931, on the other hand, was greater than the total for all the years from 1900 to 1929, and more banks failed in the single month of October, 1931, than in the two years 1920-1921. A very large part of the annihilation of bank credit after 1929 came about in this way. (C. A. Phillips, T. F. McManus, R. W. Nelson, Banking and the Business Cycle: A Study of the Great Depression in the United States, The Macmillan Company, 1937 pp. 168-9).
So severe was the monetary contraction that "all of the bank credit inflation of 1922 to 1929 was wiped out in the short space of the three years following 1929". (Ibid. 168). Yet it is always being overlooked by our economic commentariat is the 1920-21 financial crisis. Wholesale price peaked in May 1920 and they plummeted by 48 per cent, levelling out roundabout July 1921. How is it that within a period of some 15 months an amazing drop in wholesale prices of 48 per cent only raised unemployment by 11 per cent? How is it that despite the severity of this crisis the economy was well on the road to recovery by the beginning of 1922? So what was the main difference between this crisis and the crisis of 1929? Answer: Hoover and Roosevelt.
It is still being preached that the Great Depression was caused by market failure and that President Hoover deepened the depression by implementing 'orthodox' economic policies. This is pure baloney The Great Engineer, as Hoover was sometimes called, had never accepted what ignorant commentators and academics call the "economic orthodoxy of the day" or what the informed correctly call laissez-faire policies. It is indeed ironic that the man who laid the foundations for Roosevelt's New Deal is still labelled by the lumpen intelligentsia as an advocate of failed free-market policies. It is also a bitter commentary on those who are paid to know better, including certain economists who pretend to be knowledgeable about the US economy of the 1920s and 1930s.
The "orthodox" economic prescription for depressions was to allow the market to liquidate the malinvestments that the preceding boom had created — what the classical economists called "disproportionalities" — and allow prices and costs to adjust to proper market conditions. This policy was based on the vital insight that supporting unsound investments and trying to hold prices, especially wages, at boom-time levels would deepen and prolong a depression. The 1920-21 depression was the last time in American history that the wisdom of this policy was largely allowed to do its work.
On his return from Europe shortly after WW I, Hoover touted his "Reconstruction Program" that was based on government planning euphemistically called "voluntary" but which relied on "central direction". From the moment he was appointed Secretary of Commerce in March 1921 he set about trying to intervene in the economy, designing several policies that he thought would help end the depression. Fortunately for America the depression ended before Hoover's interventionist schemes could do any damage. That the laisezz-fair policy of "leave it alone" swiftly ended the depression. Yet Hoover — a highly intelligent man — completely failed to learn the lesson.
Economics taught that during deflationary periods it was vital that prices, especially money wages, be allowed to adjust to the new monetary conditions. Only by this means could market clearing prices be established. It was clearly absurd to believe that boom-time money wage rates could be maintained during a deflation without causing lasting widespread unemployment. Hoover, however, detested “orthodox” thinking on wage rates, believing instead that living standards were a product of high real wages. He made his rejection of the "old economics" clear in a speech on 12 May 1926:
There a marked change.. . not so many years ago — the employer considered it was in his interest to use the opportunities of unemployment and immigration to lower wages irrespective of other considerations. The lowest wages and longest hours were then conceived as the means to obtain lowest production costs and largest profits. . . . But we are a long way on the road to conceptions. The very essence of production is high wages and low prices, because it depends upon a widening range of consumption, only to be obtained from the purchasing-power of high real wages and increased standard of living. . . (Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, New York: Macmillan, 1952, p. 108).
This was the "new economics" that Hoover and others now preached and which became the prevailing theory of the time. One could easily be forgiven for thinking that Hoover was a Keynesian before Keynes was. When depression struck in 1929, Hoover, as president, was now free to implement his interventionist (or should I say Keynesian) schemes that gave the world the Great Depression. He reacted swiftly to the crisis, persuading the country’s industrialists to maintain money wage rates at pre-depression levels.
Alarmed by Hoover's interventionist policies, Secretary of Treasury Mellon urged him to allow the depression to follow its natural course as had all previous administrations. No way. He continued with his destructive economic policies which, after his electoral defeat, Roosevelt co-opted with a vengeance. It was not the market that failed America, but a badly flawed monetary policy that fuelled the "Roaring Twenties" and resulting in a bust that was aggravated and prolonged by two economic illiterates.
The loose monetary policies that helped fuel America's booms — including Clinton's — are what lie at the root of the current crisis. Unfortunately, Shiller, Roach, Volcker, Greenspan, etc., just don't get it. No wonder the world is in such a financial mess. This brings me to the world's financial sages. Some of them have noted that U.S. stocks underperformed other investments during both the 1930s and the 1970s. Of course they did. This always happens during recessions and periods of stagflation.
Nevertheless, some bright sparks now believe they have uncovered a pattern behind the trends and they are now marketing it. And guess what the pattern reveals? That boom years are followed by 'underperforming' stocks which eventually return to their "normal rate of return". So the time to buy is when stocks are low and then wait for the upturn.
Shiller, however, is warning that a housing bust could savage consumption and thus delay any recovery. The warning is based on the belief the economy is driven by consumer spending. It is not. Business is what counts and this is about twice the level of consumer spending. In short. Consumption spending accounts for a bout one-third of total spending.

All Around The World The Headlines Are The Same

Dire warnings of an economic collapse plague the US economy
Gerard JacksonBrookesNews.Com Monday 28 April 2008
The cause of the current economic problems is very simple: Bad economics. Instead of closely examining the monetary theory that got us into this mess economists have started playing the blame game. Alan Greenspan blamed Wall Street irrational for making irrational economic decisions the appear to have brought the US economy to the brink of disaster.
On the other hand, Morgan Stanley’s Stephen Roach blames "Greenspan’s blend of politics and ideology" for the current financial mess, arguing that it "led to bad economics and a succession of policy blunders whose severity is only now becoming clear". All that Roach made clear is his ignorance of economic history and sound economic theory.
Yale University economist Robert Shiller also feels the need to throw pearls of wisdom among the economic illiterati asserting that their exists the possibility that house prices will plummet by more than 30 per cent, exceeding the dramatic 1929-1933 plunge in prices. Determined not to be left out Paul Volcker stated in a speech to the Economic Club of New York that the sub-prime mortgage debacle has become "the mother of all crises". (These blokes cannot even update their vocabulary).
Not only is there no economic theory here, there is also no economic perspective. A financial crisis that would be even worse than the Great Depression? Through 1930 and 1933 something like 10,000 banks went under. Now that is what I call a banking crisis. Shiller warns of a collapse in prices. How about this: Starting with July 1929=100 we find that wholesale prices dived by 38 per cent. It was no coincidence that money supply contracted by about 35 per cent. And no wonder considering the following account:
The number of bank failures in the single year 1931, on the other hand, was greater than the total for all the years from 1900 to 1929, and more banks failed in the single month of October, 1931, than in the two years 1920-1921. A very large part of the annihilation of bank credit after 1929 came about in this way. (C. A. Phillips, T. F. McManus, R. W. Nelson, Banking and the Business Cycle: A Study of the Great Depression in the United States, The Macmillan Company, 1937 pp. 168-9).
So severe was the monetary contraction that "all of the bank credit inflation of 1922 to 1929 was wiped out in the short space of the three years following 1929". (Ibid. 168). Yet it is always being overlooked by our economic commentariat is the 1920-21 financial crisis. Wholesale price peaked in May 1920 and they plummeted by 48 per cent, levelling out roundabout July 1921. How is it that within a period of some 15 months an amazing drop in wholesale prices of 48 per cent only raised unemployment by 11 per cent? How is it that despite the severity of this crisis the economy was well on the road to recovery by the beginning of 1922? So what was the main difference between this crisis and the crisis of 1929? Answer: Hoover and Roosevelt.
It is still being preached that the Great Depression was caused by market failure and that President Hoover deepened the depression by implementing 'orthodox' economic policies. This is pure baloney The Great Engineer, as Hoover was sometimes called, had never accepted what ignorant commentators and academics call the "economic orthodoxy of the day" or what the informed correctly call laissez-faire policies. It is indeed ironic that the man who laid the foundations for Roosevelt's New Deal is still labelled by the lumpen intelligentsia as an advocate of failed free-market policies. It is also a bitter commentary on those who are paid to know better, including certain economists who pretend to be knowledgeable about the US economy of the 1920s and 1930s.
The "orthodox" economic prescription for depressions was to allow the market to liquidate the malinvestments that the preceding boom had created — what the classical economists called "disproportionalities" — and allow prices and costs to adjust to proper market conditions. This policy was based on the vital insight that supporting unsound investments and trying to hold prices, especially wages, at boom-time levels would deepen and prolong a depression. The 1920-21 depression was the last time in American history that the wisdom of this policy was largely allowed to do its work.
On his return from Europe shortly after WW I, Hoover touted his "Reconstruction Program" that was based on government planning euphemistically called "voluntary" but which relied on "central direction". From the moment he was appointed Secretary of Commerce in March 1921 he set about trying to intervene in the economy, designing several policies that he thought would help end the depression. Fortunately for America the depression ended before Hoover's interventionist schemes could do any damage. That the laisezz-fair policy of "leave it alone" swiftly ended the depression. Yet Hoover — a highly intelligent man — completely failed to learn the lesson.
Economics taught that during deflationary periods it was vital that prices, especially money wages, be allowed to adjust to the new monetary conditions. Only by this means could market clearing prices be established. It was clearly absurd to believe that boom-time money wage rates could be maintained during a deflation without causing lasting widespread unemployment. Hoover, however, detested “orthodox” thinking on wage rates, believing instead that living standards were a product of high real wages. He made his rejection of the "old economics" clear in a speech on 12 May 1926:
There a marked change.. . not so many years ago — the employer considered it was in his interest to use the opportunities of unemployment and immigration to lower wages irrespective of other considerations. The lowest wages and longest hours were then conceived as the means to obtain lowest production costs and largest profits. . . . But we are a long way on the road to conceptions. The very essence of production is high wages and low prices, because it depends upon a widening range of consumption, only to be obtained from the purchasing-power of high real wages and increased standard of living. . . (Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, New York: Macmillan, 1952, p. 108).
This was the "new economics" that Hoover and others now preached and which became the prevailing theory of the time. One could easily be forgiven for thinking that Hoover was a Keynesian before Keynes was. When depression struck in 1929, Hoover, as president, was now free to implement his interventionist (or should I say Keynesian) schemes that gave the world the Great Depression. He reacted swiftly to the crisis, persuading the country’s industrialists to maintain money wage rates at pre-depression levels.
Alarmed by Hoover's interventionist policies, Secretary of Treasury Mellon urged him to allow the depression to follow its natural course as had all previous administrations. No way. He continued with his destructive economic policies which, after his electoral defeat, Roosevelt co-opted with a vengeance. It was not the market that failed America, but a badly flawed monetary policy that fuelled the "Roaring Twenties" and resulting in a bust that was aggravated and prolonged by two economic illiterates.
The loose monetary policies that helped fuel America's booms — including Clinton's — are what lie at the root of the current crisis. Unfortunately, Shiller, Roach, Volcker, Greenspan, etc., just don't get it. No wonder the world is in such a financial mess. This brings me to the world's financial sages. Some of them have noted that U.S. stocks underperformed other investments during both the 1930s and the 1970s. Of course they did. This always happens during recessions and periods of stagflation.
Nevertheless, some bright sparks now believe they have uncovered a pattern behind the trends and they are now marketing it. And guess what the pattern reveals? That boom years are followed by 'underperforming' stocks which eventually return to their "normal rate of return". So the time to buy is when stocks are low and then wait for the upturn.
Shiller, however, is warning that a housing bust could savage consumption and thus delay any recovery. The warning is based on the belief the economy is driven by consumer spending. It is not. Business is what counts and this is about twice the level of consumer spending. In short. Consumption spending accounts for a bout one-third of total spending.

Mogambo Rants

Fried in the Financial Sun
"By how much is the Libor lending rate understated? Maybe as much as 0.3%, which doesn't sound like that much, but when you are talking about trillions and trillions of pounds and euros of debt, it adds up to a lot of money!"
by The Mogambo Guru
There is a new report from the Comptroller of the Currency titled "OCC's Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivative Activities, Fourth Quarter 2007", which shows that total bank holdings of derivatives is estimated to be "only" $164.2 trillion, whereas I seem to remember that the global glut of derivatives is upward of $700 trillion, which are both numbers so big that I cannot even begin to comprehend the enormity of them.
The report shows that the notional value of derivatives held by U.S. commercial banks has suddenly plunged by a whopping $8 trillion, which is (unbelievably) still only 5% of the total, and which merely takes the total down to the aforementioned-yet-still-staggering $164.2 trillion.
When I realized that $8 trillion is more than half of America's GDP, that is when I realized that "Houston, we seem to have a problem, as we are on fire, and we are tumbling out of control into the sun where we will soon be fried to a cinder."
And let's not forget that even this baleful news is the best that the banks can come up with, as the whole report is based on banks volunteering to tell stories about themselves, which is unbelievably the same as with, according to an article in the Financial Times, Libor rates, which are the agreed-upon interest rates that London bankers agree to charge on short term loans to each other.
The upshot of asking lying, greedy bankers (the villains of history) to tell the truth and let everyone know what disreputable, untrustworthy scum they are has now proved to be an unreliable system of self-regulation, and thus the Libor rate may be understated because the rate is based on self-reports of people who are bankers, which means that they are lying scumbags who falsely report that their short-term borrowing costs are lower than they are, because they know it looks bad that they are getting charged a high interest rate, which proves that the people who are loaning the money to them know what kind of lying, scumbag bankers (as redundant as that is) they are.
But it is these self-reports, like the American O.C.C reports, that are the backbone of the Libor rate, which affects lots and lots and lots of other rates.
By how much is the Libor lending rate understated? Maybe as much as 0.3%, which doesn't sound like that much, but when you are talking about trillions and trillions of pounds and euros of debt, it adds up to a lot of money! Now you see why they are so interested in lying!
And the last thing we need is higher interest rates, as Bloomberg.com reports that "U.S. corporate bankruptcies are accelerating as the economic slowdown compounds the end of easy credit", which is being made manifest by noting that a Merrill Lynch index showed that "The amount of distressed corporate bonds jumped to $206 billion April 11 from $4.4 billion in March 2007." Wow! What's that, an increase of 5,000% or something?
And another scary Bloomberg item was that loans are becoming harder to get, regardless of the interest rates, and "Banks worldwide are demanding 60% more in collateral from investors such as hedge funds to cut the risk of derivative trades going bad, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association said."
And another horror is that the stock market went up, which is Pretty Freaking Strange (PFS) since Barron's reports that the earnings of the Dow Jones Industrials went down, dropping to $225.53 from $234.49. This has produced the unbelievable price-to-earnings ratio of 57! Earnings are going down, but the stocks are going up! To a P/E of 57! Un-freaking-believable!
And not only that, but DJ Transportation index saw its earning drop, too, to $218.60 from $230.91, taking this index's P/E to 23!
And while the venerable S&P500 has not yet shown any more deterioration in its earnings, the fact that the market went up made the P/E of this index go to a lofty 21! All of this in the face of deteriorating conditions and economic collapse! This is beyond incredible!
How can you NOT run to gold in such crazy times? Ponder this question well, as a lot depends on your answering it correctly, much like when the minister asked you, "Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?", and you know how well that turned out. So, like I said, ponder it well!
The Mogambo Sez: The nice thing about owning exclusively gold, silver and oil is that you make a lot of money when inflation is roaring like this, and you are sure to make a lot more in the future, too, which is even nicer!
There is a valuable lesson in there for you if you will look for it and then act on it. If not, then you are not as smart as you look! Hahaha!

Why Stop At $200/Barrel?

Opec chief warns of $200 a barrel oil price
David Robertson

The president of Opec, the cartel of oil-producing countries, has given warning that the price of crude could hit $200 a barrel, sparking fears that rising fuel costs will force more businesses into bankruptcy.
Chakib Khelil, the Algerian Energy Minister and president of Opec, said that the falling value of the US dollar would continue to drive up oil prices as investors sought to store their wealth in other assets.
Lehman Brothers, the bank, has said that high prices are being sustained by an influx of money into the oil market from investment funds.
It estimates that "hot money" accounts for between $20 to $30 of the recent increase in oil prices and about $40 billion (£20 billion) has been invested in the sector so far this year — equal to all the money pumped into oil last year.
The price of oil hit an all-time high of nearly $120 a barrel today after North Sea production was shut down yesterday because of a strike at the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland.
In early trading the price of US light crude rose $1 to $119.93 amid concern about the impact of industrial action at Grangemouth.
This came on top of a $2.50 gain on Friday and leaves the price of oil up more than 25 per cent since the start of the year.
The price of Brent oil rose 83 cents to $117.17 and oil analysts have predicted that further price rises are likely in the coming months.
Supply shortages are expected to get worse over summer, which is hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico.
In addition, demand usually rises in hot months when air-conditioning units are operating at full blast. If financial investors continue to pour money into oil funds, as the president of Opec has suggested, this could cause prices to spike even higher.
Today's price rises came as workers at Grangemouth, which is operated by Ineos, a chemical company, began a two-day walkout yesterday over pension benefits.
This forced the closure of the 700,000 barrel-a-day Forties pipeline and sparked fears that Scotland and the North of England could face petrol shortages.
Grangemouth supplies 10 per cent of the UK's petrol but also produces power for BP's Kinneil plant, which processes the oil from the Forties pipeline.
The oil price was also supported by concern over a surge in violence in oil-rich southern Nigeria, which led to five policemen being shot dead on Sunday.
Attacks by militia forces forced Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobile to shut down oil production temporarily two days ago.
Traders were also spooked by continued tensions between the United States and Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil producer.
A cargo ship hired by the US Navy fired on Iranian forces on Friday.
The rise in oil prices comes despite a 400,000 barrel-a-day reduction in physical demand from the United States, which is consuming less because of its economic slowdown. This has been more than offset by rising financial demand as funds seek alternative investments to the falling US dollar.
Analysts fear that the price will rise even higher as supply shortages get worse in the coming months while both physical and financial demand increase.
On the supply side, shortages may occur if there is a bad hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico and because the oil industry typically saves maintenance work at fields such as the North Sea for good weather.
Summer usually brings a rise in demand as air-conditioning use rises, particularly in the Middle East.
Rapid economic growth in the region has led to a large increase in energy consumption, which is diverting oil and gas away from export markets to feed domestic needs.
This has exacerbated the effect of rising energy demand in the region.
The high price of oil is already having an impact on the global economy, with airlines going bust and drivers paying more to fill their cars.
Eos, the business-class-only airline, went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday and joins at least six other carriers that have also been grounded in the past two weeks by high costs.

Nicely Said...................................

"The kind of people who survive in the game of politics long enough to become president are, almost necessarily, pathological liars." -Doug Casey

Fox News Is Good For Something!

Really Good Rant ~ But His Politics Are A Bit Off

Surviving Winter -Ethanol And Starvation

By Dick Eastman4-27-8

"Ethanol part of the starvation program -- grow a garden this year -- put potatoes in the ground you can dig up this winter -- and devote a lot of time to getting someone who knows what is going on, is not afraid to name it, confront it and defeat it in the White House ( not Clinton, Paul, McCain, or Obama) and getting likeminded people in Congress (not Pelosi etc.)"

This is not time for panic. It is time for focus. The economic structure has been deliberately sabotaged by an enemy that has gained control of our government and our system of supply to work us harm. The attack on Pearl Harbor was nothing to what this attack on us is (and false-flag 9-11 was just an opening gun of the attack by which the enemy hopes to finish us off as obstacles in their way to world control.)

Let me just talk to you about the problem and the solution.

Rice will soon be off the shelf or outside your price range

Americans should store oats at this late date -- I thought of buying some before telling you this - but only for a second.

Total war has been declared on you -- on the middle class -- and the communists and social-democrats and (in the US) the leadership of the Democrats and Republicans are mere soldiers in this war to rob and kill you.

I've proven that 9-11-- the attack on the Pentagon -- was a false flag attack conducted by the Zionist-Jew money power through the states they own and control -- Israel (Mossad etc. with an Army of infiltrators in the US) , the communist-druglord-slave-power-selling China princelings, the infiltrated cancer controlling the the political and economic neve-centers of the USA (long under the control the CFR, Trilateral Commission, the owned bosses of the political parties, the owned monopoly mass media, and the owned Congressional staffs and think tanks that tell your elected puppets of theirs how to vote.

I've said this for six years.

I think we have passed the point of no return.

As always the organized ruling minority who rule by deception and brute power are winning -- and those of the organized minority who through some accident in the ruling enemy's plan to smother us under our pillow have managed to get a grasp of what is being done have, nevertheless failed to educate and organize the victim. We failed because of scientific means used by the enemy in discrediting what informed people like Bob Bowman had to say -- the infiltrated the 9-11 movement, they used their money and pre-existing organization to make themselves the organizers and gatekeepers of every 9-11 truth effort. They deployed armies of hecklers to mock and slander those with the truth. They put in their army of fifth-column fake activists to vote in or otherwise promote false-opposition leaders of the "truth movement" so that the real and conclusive evidence (and Honegger's, and Dewdney's and Pilots' for 9-11, and "Pentacon") was drowned out by "holograms" and "no-planes hitting the wtc" and "spaced based EMP weapons causing the collapse of the WTC" and "holgorams" and "the Vatican did it" -- along with the usual means of discrediting anyone who points out that Jewish Money power is at war with the AMerican middle class and seeks to dispossess everyone of their land and wealth and make some slaves and kill off the rest -- by accusing us of being racist -- when it is THEY who are racist -- of being full of hate -- when we believe in universal brotherhood of man and that every man and woman is responsible to every other man and woman, not to stab them in the back but to make society something in which everyone has opportunity and a future and an economy in which they can receive and contribute with fulfillment, with ample lesiure, with a full-time parent at home with the children -- and when it is they who my the Mishna and the Gemara teach their children and believe it themselves that the goyim are less than human, that God forgives lying to them and cheating them, that God has promised that everything they own shall be owned by the Jews who will rule the nations (gentiles means nations) and the goyim (the word is pejorative and means cattle and is applied only to the gentiles) and God is the one in times old who again and again has led Jews to either kill everyone and take the land or else to end up with all of the wealth of the former managerial classes of the civilization that hosts them (Egyptians in Genisis, see realistically also what happens to Haman's people in the book of Esther etc.) Our civilization is being destroyed to make way for the new order in which the Jews will rule the world with China the new slave military power enforcing this rule by international Zio-organized crime. The US is spent. They are done with us and have other plans for this real estate. These banker Jews moved from Venice (where they monopolized trade routes between China and Europe) -- later when sea trade became the means of this trade the relocated to the strategic island of Britain and became the British Empire (City of London, center of global merchant banking) -- then to the US (New York) as Bernard Baruch engineered our transfromation through World War One, the Great Depression, World War Two and the Cold War each of which he had a hand in bringing about. (see footnote, to link to audio interview with Rense on this subject -- which should have made clear the game to everyone -- except that I know of only four people who bothered to listen and have never seen anyone refer to it.)

So that is the story -- the cards are on the table for you to see who has been cheating and now has possession of your farm, your horse and you children's minds' body and soul (which they are killing).

I have proposed one way out -- to rally around Bob Bowman -- the only candidate who grasps the full picture as I have presented it -- reached independently by himself -- I have spoken to him only once on the phone and have received no more than 5 notes from him -- although I have followed his career very closely and know what he has done and what he has tried to do on your behalf. Only Bob Bowman has gone around the country with the REAL Truth of 9-11 and with a real understanding of the network of finance and the corporations and what must be done from the White House and Congress to get the country back and what do do when it is gotten back.

But just as the militarized social science in the employ of the money power knew how to smother the truth known by 9-11 investigators, just as they knew how to undercut the militia movement that rose up after Waco -- their solution was to blow up the Murrah building in Oaklahoma City and blame it on the militia movement, planting the concept of "homegrown terrorism" -- which later would feed the demand for "Homeland Security" police state after the 9-11 false-flag attack, just as they have silenced everyone in education or city and state government who spoke up against their capture and sabotage of our living systems so they have drowned out the truth with Ron Paul and his anarcho-capitalist plan for a gold standard and more privatization and diminishing the power of our government -- with Hillary Clinton and her totally disingenous "populism" when her backers are 100% power-loving political prostitutes as she is -- who know they would be just as poor and hopeless and miserable as we are if they did not sell out the the money power "You can't make money as a lawyer unless you work for the banks" as she said when she worked for the Rose Law firm -- where she was rewarded with rigged commodity market profits -- a million to one shot -- because of her favors for the New York money power -- how do you think she suddenly became Senator from New York without monstrously close connections to the money power???

But I always get off on the mountain of details of their crimes -- and I lose you. So let me summarize.

You have an enemy out to kill you. This enemy has arranged death by starvation to disrupt society enabling them to take over in a more ruthless way than every before and arrange the world the way they want it. It is essentially a global slave plantation -- global communism -- the dream of Zionist Communism and Communist Zionism -- but of course this is not a classless society, of course this is not dictatorship of the proletariat (is the Chinese wage slave working for nothing in super factories made with the robbed wealth of American debt slaves and American drug addicts are they the "dictators" of China -- of course not) -- it will be regimented communism with the total crushing of the human spirit for the world's population and master racehood for Zionists -- for Jews -- (not all Jews are mass murderers like the ROthschilds, Rockefellers and their henchmen (Kissinger, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Zakheim and all the rest at various levels in government, media, finance, education etc. -- but most Jews are waiting to see if the Zionists win because, to them who don't mind the idea of human slavery as long as they are not the slaves, it might be kind of nice for them if Zio-Imperialism-Communism does win. It will be communism for the masses -- a regimented society where the human spirit that existed in the 19th century (let Jefferson or Thomas Paine represent this spirit) is crushed -- an existence more like that visualized in Firtz Lang's 1926 movie Metropolis, or described in H.G. Wells novel When the Sleeper Wakes but also as in C. M. Kornbluth's 1954 story "The Syndic" in which organized crime rules (the most prophetic science fiction story of them all). But this is not litarary essay -- this is a warning. You have got to break the barrier and talk about why gas prices are so high (because of deliberate consolidation and exercise of monopoly power following 9-11 which was deliberate); why food prices are so high (because diversion of food stock to ethanol was a trick, it was unnecessary -- there is plenty of oil for human use -- because the super rich have used their credit monopoly to capture enough of the farmland of the world for their giant agribusiness corporations that they can now charge monopoly prices just as they do with oil and they can control and cut off the food supply to ruthlessly destroy an center of human organization and liberal civilization remaining that could become a threat to them (that would be us).

I have one solution -- the only one at this late date -- that solution is a national unity drive to Bob Bowman for president. To be for Bob Bowman is your declaration to the world that you understand the class warfare that is really being waged against us all. Ron Paul says that Arab terrorists did 9-11 and he has never considered that 9-11 was a false-flag attack -- and he believes that less government is the solution, more power to corporations, for privatization, more unregulated economic power in private hands -- privat police forces, private prison systems, priviate media, and monopoly corporations in a world with no-anti-trust and no regulation except by the money power itself. Ron Paul does not recognize the existence of the money power. All he sees is the advantages of free competition and laissez faire and a gold system -- even when all the gold is in the hands of the super rich and that in order to get money to pay our debts in gold the government and the people will have to go deeper into debt etc.

And Obama -- he is a good person -- but he certainly is unaware of the system -- or he would sound a lot more like his pastor (whose analysis is closer to Bob Bowman's by the way) -- if Obama knows more but is afraid to say it -- Bob Bowman is never afraid to say exactly what our economic system is -- if Obama can't rally us around the truth of the 9-11 false-flag attack -- then he is simply not the man to lead us. The man who leads us has to say exactly what is happening even knowing that it can end in a bullet or with sudden contracting of fast-acting cancer or "an accident" or "suicide" -- just as in warfare someone has to get out of the trench and charge the enemy line even though the odds of their first man out of the trench making it across enemy lines are next to zero -- still you do it because it has to be done and you ar e the one equipped to do it -- only wars like World War One and Iraq did not have to be done - this war -- the war of the money power against you -- is the REAL war that threatens our existence and way of life -- not only threatens, but is mercilessly tearing away our flesh and muscle off our bones right now.

I don't know how you are going to get behind Bob Bowman -- but you must -- you must start talking against Hillary Clinton and McCain (two nightmares, two cyanide tablets for the body politic, two terror bombs planted by the money power) and against Obama and Paul (in the race to lose -- each was put in to draw off disaffected democrats and disaffected Republicans from looking for a real non-partisan independent candidate -- to keep you from backing Bob Bowman. I admit that Obama may not understand what his role is, I think Ron Paul dimly does so -- I know Ron Paul is consciously "anti-populist" in his libertarianism (which is actually anarcho-capitalism and no classical liberalism). Bob Bowman tells you the truth about the 9-11 evidence and about the international economy and the criminal nature of our power elite. The other candidates are like the "no-planers" giving you phony economics and phony geopolitics -- as if the Rothschilds stand for "free competition" , as if Abrab fanatics with box cutters got through our air defenses and hit the Pentagon after the two tallest skyscrapers in New York City had already been hit --- that is what Ron Paul believes. That is not what you and I believe and only Bob Bowman is saying what you and I believe.