MikeRiddeII's Blog

In 1910, seven men held a secret meeting on Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia. It's estimated that those seven men represented one-sixth of the world's wealth. Six were Americans representing J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and the U.S. government. One was a European representing the Rothschilds and Warburgs.



In 1913, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank was created as a direct result of that secret meeting. Interestingly, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank isn't federal, there are no reserves, and it's not a bank. Those seven men, some American and some European, created this new entity, commonly referred to as the Fed, to take control of the banking system and the money supply of the United States.



In 1944, a meeting in Bretton Woods, N.H., led to the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. While the stated purposes for the two new organizations initially sounded admirable, the IMF and the World Bank were created to do to the world what the Federal Reserve Bank does to the United States.



In 1971, President Richard Nixon signed an executive order declaring that the United States no longer had to redeem its paper dollars for gold. With that, the first phase of the takeover of the world banking system and money supply was complete.



In 2008, the world is in economic turmoil. The rich are getting richer, but most people are becoming poorer. Much of this turmoil is directly related to those meetings that took place decades ago. In other words, much of this turmoil is by design.



Power and Domination



Some people say these events are part of a grand conspiracy, and that might well be. Some people say they represent the struggle between capitalists, communists and socialists, and that might be, too.



I personally don't participate in the debate over a possible global conspiracy; it's a waste of time. To me, the wider struggle is for power and domination. And while this struggle has done a lot of good â and a lot of bad â I just want to know how to avoid becoming its victim. I see no reason to be a mouse trying to stop a herd of elephants from fighting.



Currently, many people are suffering due to high oil price, the slowdown in the economy, loss of jobs, declines in home values, increased bankruptcies and businesses closings, savings being wiped out, the plummeting stock market, and rising inflation. These realities are all direct results of this financial power struggle, and millions of people are its victims today.



An Extreme Example



I was in South Africa in July of this year. During my television and radio interviews there, I was often asked my opinion on the world economy. Speaking bluntly, I said that South Africans had a better opportunity of comprehending the global turmoil because they're neighbors to Zimbabwe, a country run by Robert Mugabe.



In my interviews, I said, "What Mugabe has done to Zimbabwe, the Federal Reserve Bank and the IMF are doing to the world." Obviously, my statements disturbed many of the journalists. I did my best to comfort them and assure them I was not an anarchist. I explained, as best I could, that Zimbabwe was an extreme example of an out of control power struggle.



After they were assured I was only using Zimbabwe to illustrate my point, I said, "If you want to understand the world economy, take a refugee from Zimbabwe to lunch." I advised them to ask the refugee these questions:



1. How fast did the economy turn?



2. When did you know that you were in financial trouble?



3. When did you finally decide to leave Zimbabwe?



4. If you could do things differently, what would you have done?



Three Approaches to a Crumbling Economy



I spoke to three young couples from Zimbabwe while I was in South Africa. Two couples were recent refugees now living in South Africa, and one couple still lives in Zimbabwe. All three couples had interesting stories to tell.



One couple said that they would have quit their jobs earlier. Instead, they hung on, hoping the economy would change. Then, virtually overnight, the value of the Zimbabwean dollar dropped and inflation went through the roof. Even though they received pay raises, the couple couldn't survive and soon depleted their savings. They left Zimbabwe by car with almost nothing. If they could've done something differently, they told me, they would have started a business in Zimbabwe and began exporting products to South Africa, so that they would have had South African currency and a bank account there before they fled.



The second couple that fled the country said they saved money and paid off their house and other debts even as the Zimbabwean dollar fell in value. Looking back, they say they would've saved nothing and gotten deeply in debt in Zimbabwe, allowing them to pay off their debt with the cheaper dollars. Instead, they fled after they lost their jobs, leaving behind their house and owning $200,000 in nearly worthless Zimbabwean dollars.



The third couple still lives in Zimbabwe. When they saw the writing on the wall, they set up a business in South Africa and, with the profits, began acquiring tangible assets in Zimbabwe. Often, they'll buy an asset in Zimbabwe and pay the seller in South African currency. They believe that once Mugabe is gone and order is restored, they'll be in a strong financial position.



Many Problems, Few Solutions



There are three major problems with the events of 1913, 1944, and 1971. The first is that the Fed, the World Bank, and the IMF are allowed to create money out of nothing. This is the primary cause of global inflation. Global inflation devalues our work and our savings by raising the prices of necessities.



For example, when gas prices soared, many people said that the price of oil was going up. In reality, the main cause of the high price of oil is the decreasing value of the dollar. The Fed, the World Bank, and the IMF, like Zimbabwe, are mass-producing funny money, thereby increasing prices and devaluing our quality of life.



The second problem is that our economic crises are getting bigger. In the 1970s, the Fed faced and solved million-dollar crises. In the 1980s, it was billion-dollar crises. Today, we have trillion-dollar crises. Unfortunately, these bigger crises mean more funny money entering the system.



Apocalypse Soon



The third problem is that in 1913, the Fed only protected the large commercial banks such as Bank of America. After 1944, the Fed, the World Bank, and the IMF began bailing out Third World nations such as Tanzania and Mexico. Then, in 2008, the Fed began bailing out investment banks such as Bear Sterns, and its role in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debacle is well known. By 2020, the biggest of bailout of all will probably occur: Social Security and Medicare, which will cost at least a $100 trillion.



Even if we find more oil and produce more food, prices will continue to rise because the value of the dollar will continue to decline. The dollar has lost over 90 percent of its value since the Fed was created. The U.S. dollar will continue to decline because of those seven men on Jekyll Island in 1910.



Granted, the funny-money system has done a lot of good â it has improved the world and made a lot of people rich. But it's also done a lot of bad. I believe somewhere between today and 2020, the system will break. We're on the eve of financial destruction, and that's why it's in gold I trust. I'd rather be a victor than a victim.



Posted on Monday, November 24, 2008, 12:00AM



http://finance.yahoo.com/print/expert/article/richricher/124339

The IMF's chief economist has warned that the global financial crisis is set to worsen and that the situation will not improve until 2010, a report said Saturday.



Olivier Blanchard also warned that the institution does not have the funds to solve every economic problem.



"The worst is yet to come," Blanchard said in an interview with the Finanz und Wirtschaft newspaper, adding that "a lot of time is needed before the situation becomes normal."



He said economic growth would not kick in until 2010 and it will take another year before the global financial situation became normal again.



The International Monetary Fund on Friday promised to help Latvia deal with its economic crisis after it assisted Iceland, Hungary, Ukraine, Serbia and Pakistan.



But Blanchard said the IMF was not able to solve all financial issues, in particular problems of liquidity.



Withdrawals of capital leading to problems of liquidity "can be so significant that the IMF alone cannot counter them," he said, adding that massive withdrawals of investments from emerging countries could represent "hundreds of billions of dollars.



"We do not have this money. We never had it," he said.



The IMF had spent a fifth of its 250 billion dollar (200 billion euro) fund in the last two weeks, Blanchard added.



He also urged central banks around the world to cut interest rates, after the Swiss National Bank made a surprise one percentage point rate cut Thursday.



The central banks "should lower interest rates to as close to zero as possible," he said.



Nov 22 07:04 PM US/Eastern



http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081122230427.xqkurulg&show_article=1

Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Pope Benedict XVI was the first to predict the crisis in the global financial system, a prophecy dating to a paper he wrote when he was a cardinal, Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti said.



The prediction that an undisciplined economy would collapse by its own rules can be found'' in an article written by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became pope in April 2005, Tremonti said yesterday at Milan's Cattolica University.



German-born Ratzinger in 1985 presented a paper entitled Market Economy and Ethics at a Rome event dedicated to the Church and the economy. The future pope said a decline in ethics can actually cause the laws of the market to collapse.



Pope Benedict in an Oct. 7 speech reflected on crashing markets and concluded that money vanishes, it is nothing and warned that the only solid reality is the word of God.



The Vatican's official newspaper, l'Osservatore Romano, on the same day criticized the free-market model for having grown too much and badly in the past two decades.



To contact the reporters on this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson in Rome at fjackson@bloomberg.net; Lorenzo Totaro at in London or ltotaro@bloomberg.net



Last Updated: November 20, 2008 05:54 EST



By Flavia Krause-Jackson and Lorenzo Totaro



http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aGSJzqaJm_b0&refer=europe

Fears of a severe global recession gripped financial markets on Thursday, sending interest rates to record lows and driving down US stock prices to their worst close in more than a decade.<br />

<br />

Economic news across the world was almost uniformly bad. US jobless claims soared while slumping Japanese exports threatened to push the economy further into recession and the Swiss central bank unexpectedly slashed interest rates by a full percentage point. In China, officials warned that the employment outlook was becoming grim, as the global financial crisis led to more factory closures in the export sector.<br />

<br />

Two-year US interest rates slid below 1 per cent to their lowest levels yet amid a gathering conviction that the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates again next month. UK bond yields dropped to their lowest levels since the second world war.<br />

The S&P 500 equity index fell 6.7 per cent to 752.44 - its lowest close since 1997 - as financial stocks plunged. Earlier in Europe, the FTSE 100 fell 3.3 per cent and Germanys Dax lost 3.1 per cent.<br />

<br />

This is all about disinflation and deflation, said Alan Ruskin, a strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital. Rates can go low and stay low for a protracted period.<br /><br />

<br />

On top of Wednesdays announcement of a record one-month fall in the US consumer price index, the rising risk of a damaging deflationary crunch also pushed oil prices below $50 a barrel for the first time since 2005, amid signs of fracture in the Opec oil cartel.<br /><br />

<br />

For some time it has not been a question of whether we will see deflation but if it will be the benign kind, where lower commodity prices boost consumption, or a malign spiral of falling prices pushing up the value of debt, said Julian Jessop, chief international economist at the consultancy Capital Economics. Todays figures all point to the malign variety.<br />

<br />

Official figures showed 542,000 US workers filing new claims for jobless benefits last week, the highest number since the early 1990s recession. The figures were well above economists forecasts of just over 500,000, and are likely to mean another sharp drop in employment in November.<br />

<br />

The White House said US president George W. Bush would sign a bill pending in Congress to extend unemployment benefits to workers by at least seven weeks, and longer for states with higher unemployment rates.<br /><br />

<br />

On Thursday some short-term US Treasury bills were quoted near or below zero per cent. Two-year bond yields fell as low as 0.96 per cent, the lowest since the two-year note was created in 1976, before edging up later in the day. Yields on the 30-year bond fell to a record low of 3.58 per cent.<br />

<br />

Market analysts said panic had set in among traders. Markets are utterly unhinged, said Bill ODonnell, strategist at UBS.<br />

<br />

Additional reporting by Javier Blas in London and Geoff Dyer in Beijing<br />

<br />

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008<br /><br />

<br />

By Alan Beattie in London and Michael Mackenzie in New York<br />

<br />

Published: November 20 2008 20:48 | Last updated: November 20 2008 21:16<br />

<br />

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8b5f0d60-b743-11dd-8e01-0000779fd18c.html

Reuters

Merrill CEO says economic environment recalls 1929

Tuesday November 11, 9:38 am ET



NEW YORK (Reuters) - Merrill Lynch & Co (NYSE:MER - News) Chief Executive John Thain said he did not expect the global economy to recover quickly from the credit crisis and that the environment more closely resembled 1929, the advent of the Great Depression, than recent slowdowns.



Speaking Tuesday at a financial services conference sponsored by his bank, Thain said credit remained constricted and asset prices generally were still falling, following the housing market collapse and a crisis of confidence.



These led to market-shaking events, including the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc (Other OTC:LEHMQ.PK - News), and Merrill's own decision to quickly sell itself to Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC - News) for $50 billion.



"We are going to be in a very difficult economic environment for a significant period of time," Thain said. He said the U.S. economy "is contracting very rapidly," creating uncertainty "at least over the next few quarters."



Thain nevertheless said market conditions for financial services companies were improving.



As an example, he said Merrill recently issued some three-month commercial paper, which companies typically use to fund day-to-day operations, when for a time it had been able only to issue overnight paper.



Commercial paper markets had seized up following Lehman's September 15 bankruptcy, which led to a run on some money market funds that buy the short-term debt.



"I'm cautiously optimistic that things are starting to get better in financial services," Thain said.



"Although things are starting to improve, this is going to be a long process, and this is not going to get better quickly," he added. "It is not like '87, it is not like '98, it is not like 2001."



For Merrill, he said, the outlook is not all bleak as its merger combines Bank of America's strengths in retail banking, corporate lending and Treasury services with Merrill's strengths in wealth management, investment banking, and sales and trading.



"We're in a good space to weather this economic storm," he said.



The merger is expected to close by year-end. Bank of America and Merrill shareholders are scheduled to vote on the transaction on December 5.



(Reporting by Elinor Comlay and Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)



http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/081111/business_us_merrill_thain.html?printer=1