Gold and Silver

Sol Palha

From high to Low Silver has dropped over 24%. From high to low Gold has so far shed only roughly 12%. Silver also did not take out its 2008 highs when Gold went on to put in a series of new all time highs. This is another massive intra market negative divergence signal and yet another reason to suggest that Gold could correct/consolidate for several months. On a positive note gold has held up remarkably well in the face of a very strong rally from the dollar. If it continues to hold up like this, then when the dollar rally finally fizzles out, one can expect gold to literally explode upwards.

The breakdown in silver could be an early warning signal of what lies in store for Gold in the short term time frames. Taking the longer term perspective, this rapid move down in silver indicates that when the next buy signal is generated in the precious metal's sector, that Silver will most likely be the top performer. Remember all dogs have their day in the sun. Palladium the leading dog clearly illustrated this point as it took the number one spot in the precious metal's sector in terms of performance for the past 12 months; we were strongly pounding the table on this underdog from late 2008 to early 2009.

The above chart clearly illustrates Silver (poor man’s Gold) inability to trade to new highs in Dec and Jan of this year, while Gold surged to put in a series of all time new highs. This is a double negative for not only has silver not even come close to taking out its all time high, but it could not even test or take out the highs it put back in March 2008. Silver moves much faster on a percentage basis than Gold does so this action indicates that something is out of sync in the Gold markets at least in the short to intermediate time frames.

Silver has now become the dog of the precious metal pack and according to the dog theory it will have its day in the sun.. When the time is right we will issue a strong buy for this metal. In the short to intermediate time frames though, it would be wise to wait before deploying any new money as Silver is indicating that all is not well in this sector.

Note that Gold has issued multiple intra market negative divergence signals, if it had issued one only then we would not pay too much attention to this development. Gold, however, has flashed several very strong intra market negative divergence signals, the strongest one was flashed by the dollar; the dollar refused to trade to new lows when Gold went to put in a series of new highs. Instead the dollar was actually trading roughly 4% higher from its previous low, when Gold put in a new all time high.

Conclusion

In the short to intermediate time frames, the precious metal's sector is still expected to correct/consolidate. Gold, however has held up remarkably well in the face of a strong dollar. Given the strength of the dollar one would have expected Gold to have pulled back a lot more than it has done so far. If this pattern in Gold persists then it very strongly indicates that once this rally in the dollar comes to end, Gold is going to literally explode upwards. On a percentage basis though silver is expected to perform a lot better than Gold in the next leg up.

Random musings

SEC’s curbs on short selling a waste of time

The rule puts in a so-called circuit breaker for stock prices, restricting short-selling of a stock that has dropped 10 percent or more for the rest of a trading session and the next one. The new curbs take effect in about 60 days but stock exchanges have six months after that to implement them. Full story

The above rule will only serve to delay the inevitable and could actually worsen the situation. For example, let’s say a former high flyer disappoints the street with its earnings report. Normally, the stock is bid up in anticipation of blow out earnings, but now the earnings come in lower than expected, so say the stock drops 20% in one day, but short sellers are now cut out of the game. Like a dam, the pressure will build up and a day later when the short sellers can jump in, it might cause the stock to drop more than 10% and so forth. This effect could go for a longer period of time than if normal market forces were allowed to play out. When one is forbidden from doing something the desire to the opposite increases twice fold; the more one is prevented from doing something the more one wants to do it. Thus this rule is just a silly piece of legislation that will not really achieve much in the long run. In the short run, it might provide the illusion that it has the effect of stabilizing the markets.

I keep the telephone of my mind open to peace, harmony, health, love, and abundance. Then, whenever doubt, anxiety, or fear try to call me, they will keep getting a busy signal and soon they'll forget my number. Edith Armstrong

All charts were provided courtesy of www.prophet.net

Copyright © 2010 Sol Palha

Sol is a self-taught market guru, having read widely conventional and non-conventional texts on all aspects of technical analysis and market timing. He has been studying the markets for over 11 years and trading professionally for clients and his own account for over nine. He specializes in mass psychology, technical analysis and a new field of study that he has pioneered, Esoteric Cycle Analysis. In addition, he combines multiple time frame analysis with standard deviation analysis in a unique way to help determine market tops and bottoms.

Sol Palha | Tactical Investor | 38-11 Ditmars Blvd. Astoria, NY, 11105 | Email

www.tacticalinvestor.com

Disoccupazione record. Ecco la crescita promessa dal governo?

Economiadi Pietro Salvato

pubblicato il 1 marzo 2010 alle 13:42 dallo stesso autore - torna alla home

Numeri, freddi e glaciali come il clima invernale. Mentre l’Istat certifica il crollo nel 2009 del nostro Pil a -5%, nuove rilevazioni statistiche misurano come l’unica cosa in crescita nel nostro paese è la disoccupazione.

A gennaio il tasso “ufficiale” della disoccupazione nel nostro Paese è cresciuto ancora. Secondo l’Istat il numero dei disoccupati è salito di quasi un punto e mezzo, l’1,3% per la precisione, rispetto allo scorso gennaio 2009. Particolarmente colpiti dalla “crisi“, che c’è e continua a mietere le sue “vittime”, risultano essere i giovani con un tasso “medio” di disoccupazione par al 26,8%. Quest’ultimo dato rilevato in aumento sia rispetto al mese di dicembre (+0,3%) sia rispetto al gennaio del 2009 con un aumento, addirittura, del +2,6%.

I NUMERI DICONO CHE - In particolare, il numero dei cosiddetti “inattivi” con età compresa tra 15 e 64 anni è pari a quasi 15 milioni. L’Istat li certifica a 14 milioni 871mila unità, con un aumento di ben 28mila unità rispetto a dicembre 2009 e dell’1,2% ossia +172mila unità rispetto a gennaio 2009. Il tasso di inattività pari al 37,7% risulta invece in aumento di 0,3 punti percentuale rispetto a gennaio 2009. Il numero di occupati a gennaio 2010, considerando il dato destagionalizzato, è risultato invece di 22 milioni 904mila unità, con un calo dell’1,3%, vale a dire -307mila unità lavorative, rispetto a gennaio 2009. Il tasso di occupazione, pertanto, è fermo ormai da tempo ben sotto l’asticella del 60% (parametro minimo previsto nel trattato di Lisbona) e risulta inchiodato al 57%, un punto percentuale in meno rispetto a gennaio 2009. Sempre secondo l’Istituto Nazionale di Statistica, il numero delle persone in cerca di occupazione a gennaio scorso è risultato pari a 2 milioni 144mila unità, in crescita dello 0,2%, ovvero +5mila unità, rispetto al mese precedente e del 18,5%, che in valore assoluto significa +334mila unità, rispetto a gennaio 2009. Nelle grandi imprese il calo degli occupati è stato misurato nell’ordine dell’-1,5%. In termini di crescita, nel triennio 2008-2010 l’Italia segnerà il ben poco lusinghiero record di calo del suo prodotto interno lordo. Il nostro Paese, infatti, la crescita è calata più dei paesi dell’euro: -2,6%, e dei paesi Ocse: -2,2%. Nel suo complesso l’Europa ha fatto peggio, molto peggio, degli Stati Uniti, che pure sono stati l’epicentro della crisi: +0,4 rispetto a -2,6; indice del fatto che le politiche espansive e di contrasto della crisi poste in atto in America sono state molto più consistenti ed efficaci di quelle europee, non coordinate, insufficienti, o come nel caso italiano del tutto assenti.

LA DISOCCUPAZIONE “REALE” È OLTRE IL 10% – Va ricordato poi come l’Istat considera “in cerca di occupazione” (ovvero disoccupato) chi ha compiuto almeno un’azione attiva di ricerca di lavoro nei trenta giorni precedenti l’intervista. E’ invece classificato come “inattivo” chi non fa parte delle forze di lavoro, ovvero chi non è occupato o in cerca di occupazione. Nel nostro Paese, con la crisi, una quota rilevante di lavoratori ha abbandonato la ricerca attiva di occupazione, gonfiando lo stock degli inattivi e non quello dei disoccupati. Senza l’effetto “scoraggiamento” la disoccupazione sarebbe aumentata molto di più. Infatti, tenendo conto di questi importanti valori, la Banca d’Italia ha dimostrato nel suo bollettino economico numero 59 dello scorso gennaio, come la disoccupazione “reale” nel nostro paese è superiore al 10%. Dato che, secondo gli esperti, continuerà a crescere nel 2010.

http://www.giornalettismo.com/archives/53673/disoccupazione-record-ecco-la-crescita-promessa-dal-governo/

The Case Against Bernanke and Greenspan... Why They Should be Indicted

Mike Whitney

Is there enough evidence to indict Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan on charges that they aided and abetted the banks and other financial institutions in the sale of fraudulent loans to investors?

That depends on whether there is sufficient proof to show whether the two men KNEW that the nation's lenders were engaged in large-scale predatory lending and chose to do nothing. As we'll see, both Greenspan and Bernanke were warned repeatedly about the mortgage/derivatives scam by credible professionals and industry regulators, but failed to act.

Here's a definition of "aided and abetted" from the 'Lectric Law Library:

"The guilt of a person in a criminal case may be proved without evidence that he personally did every act involved in the commission of the crime charged. ...if the acts or conduct of an agent, employee or other associate of the person are willfully directed or authorized by the person, or if the person aids and abets another person by willfully joining together with that person in the commission of a crime, then the law holds the person responsible for the conduct of that other person just as though the person had engaged in such conduct himself."

Bernanke denies culpability in the meltdown - but at the same time - eagerly points out that the Federal Reserve is the chief regulator responsible for overseeing the "large complex financial firms that pose a threat to the stability of the financial system." So, which is it? Does he accept responsibility or not? Here is a statement Bernanke made earlier in the week during an appearance before the Senate Banking Committee which may help to clarify the point.

"I think that stripping the Federal Reserve of supervisory authorities in the light of the recent crisis would be a grave mistake... we’ve learned from the crisis large complex financial firms that pose a threat to the stability of the financial system need strong consolidated supervision.... You need an institution that has a breadth of skills. It’s hard for me to understand why in the face of a crisis that was so complex and covered so many markets and institutions, you would want to take out of the regulatory system the one institution that has the full breadth and range of those skills to address those issues."

Bernanke admits that the Fed is the 'primary regulator' that is responsible for "strong consolidated supervision" over "large complex financial firms that pose a threat to the stability." If we accept his definition, than we must also accept that the Fed should be held accountable when it abuses its authority and puts the system at risk. The record will show that, at the very least, the Fed is guilty of criminal negligence in its role of facilitating the sale of fraudulent loans to homeowners and investors. The Fed consistently refused to use its authority to reign in the banks even when their activities pushed the system towards catastrophe.

I have put together a short list of the regulators and agencies that warned Bernanke and Greenspan prior to the Lehman meltdown. (There's bound to be many I have missed) But, first, here is a brief summary of what caused the crisis by economist and author James K. Galbraith in a recent interview on New deal 2.0:

"The principal cause of the crisis was the dismantling of the system of regulation and supervision in the financial sector which had for much of the post-war period kept the most dangerous elements of that sector in check. In the absence of an appropriate system of effective supervision and regulation, what happens is that the actors in the system, who are intent upon taking the greatest degree of risk — including actors who are intent upon using fraudulent methods to increase their returns — come to dominate parts of the system. As they do that, the general methods of assessing performance in the market, specifically stock-market valuations, become counter-productive. That is to say, they invariably reward the worst actors, while they force more traditional actors, who are still respecting the old norms of conduct, into a competitively disadvantaged position. Thus the bad actors, the fraudulent actors, and the speculative extremists quickly take over.

That is what happened specifically in the origination of mortgages in the United States in the middle part of the last decade. You had a transition from a traditional method of issuing mortgages to people who could be reasonably expected to service them, to a method of originating mortgages that were sold off immediately, that were rated in a way that permitted them to be bundled and sold to fiduciaries, and where the issuer had no interest in whether the borrowers could pay or not. In fact, in some ways the lenders actively preferred people who did not intend to pay, because they could then inflate the value of the loan and earn a larger fee upfront for doing it. And in this way, not only was there a large segment of the market that was explicitly corrupt, but the equity value of homes all across the country was compromised. When these practices collapsed, so too did the home values not only of people who had bad mortgages, but also those for many people who had good mortgages, good incomes and perfectly good credit.

The result of that was a general slump in activity. The wealth and financial security of much of the American middle class disappeared. So far about a quarter of the measured wealth of the American middle class has disappeared - about $15 trillion of $60 trillion. That’s bound to have a fantastically traumatic effect on people’s consumption behavior and on their ability to get new good credit. Even if they wish to continue to extend the past pattern of borrowing in order to finance activity, they can’t do it. So, this is a very big problem. It starts with a failure to supervise and regulate the financial system, and flows on to the reaction of the broader population, which is to protect their remaining assets, to become extremely adverse to taking ordinary business and consumer risks."

So, Galbraith believes that the main problem was "the dismantling of the system of regulation and supervision" over the last quarter century. This view is now widely shared by industry experts and economists. ( That means that deregulation was a more significant factor in the crisis than the Fed's low interest rates.) The problem with this theory is that it tends to obscure the fact that the Fed STILL had the authority to step in and prevent people from getting ripped-off. Thus, "deregulation" was not the problem as much as the "failure to regulate". (which Galbraith also notes) This is an important distinction. The financial crisis was not caused by a system malfunction; it was caused by men perpetrating a crime.

Bernanke and Greenspan had a birds-eye view of everything that was going on in the market, that is, mortgage origination, off-balance sheet operations and securitization. They knew that homes were being sold to applicants who had no way of servicing the debt. They knew that hybrid mortgages were developed with the clear intention of increasing the quantity of mortgages without regard for the creditworthiness of the borrower. They knew that the lenders didn't care whether the loans blew up or not since they made their profits on upfront fees. They knew everything, and refused to act.

As it happens, many other people knew what was going on, too, but either kept quiet or were ignored by the media. Even now, when we have a much better understanding of what really took place, the media still frames the crisis-narrative in terms of a natural disaster - like an earthquake - that no one could have anticipated or prevented. This is nonsense. The housing bubble was 100% man-made. The Fed could have taken action at any time to stop the bubble from getting bigger but, instead, became the biggest cheerleader for dodgy loans and garbage mortgage-backed securities.

The media has succeeded in concealing the facts and deflecting the blame from the real perpetrators. As former bank regulator Bill Black said in a recent interview with Paul Solman on PBS News Hour, what is most shocking about this particular crisis is the appalling lack of accountability.

ZERO INDICTMENTS, ZERO CONVICTIONS

William Black:

"In the savings and loan crisis... we had over 1,000 convictions of senior insiders.... At this stage among the subprime lending specialists, we have zero convictions. We have zero indictments."..."In September 2004, the FBI began publicly warning that there was an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud, and it predicted that it would produce an economic crisis, if it were not dealt with. The FBI has also said that 80 percent of the mortgage fraud losses occur when lender personnel are involved. So, Fitch looks at a small sample of these loans, finally, in November 2007....And what did they find? They said...that there was the appearance of fraud in nearly every file we examined. And they said that normal underwriting would have detected all of those frauds.

So, this is coming from the lenders overwhelmingly. They created incentive systems for the loan brokers and the loan officers that were based overwhelmingly on volume, and nothing on quality. We know that they gutted their underwriting standards. We know that you got in trouble if you were moral and tried to be a good officer and protect the organization from loss." (PBS News Hour)

Repeat: The FBI KNEW there was an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud as early as 2004. Ergo: The Fed knew. Greenspan knew. Bernanke knew. And both chose not to perform their regulatory duties to stop the swindle from continuing.

And the FBI wasn't the only one who knew either. In testimony just last month before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (Jan 14, 2010) FDIC chairman Sheila Bair confirmed that she not only warned the Fed of what was going on, but cited particular regulations under which the Fed could stop the "unfair, abusive and deceptive practices" by the banks. Here is a excerpt from her damning testimony:

"PROBLEMS IN THE SUBPRIME MORTGAGE MARKET WERE IDENTIFIED WELL BEFORE MANY OF THE ABUSIVE MORTGAGE LOANS WERE MADE. A joint report issued in 2000 by HUD and the Department of the Treasury entitled Curbing Predatory Home Mortgage Lending noted that a very limited number of borrowers benefit from HOEPA's protections because of the high thresholds that a loan must exceed in order for the protections to apply. THE REPORT ALSO FOUND THAT CERTAIN TYPES OF SUBPRIME LOANS APPEAR TO BE HARMFUL OR ABUSIVE IN PRACTICALLY ALL CASES. To address these issues, THE REPORT MADE A NUMBER OF RECOMMENDATIONS INCLUDING THAT THE FEDERAL RESERVE USE ITS HOEPA AUTHORITY TO PROHIBIT CERTAIN UNFAIR DECEPTIVE AND ABUSIVE PRACTICES BY LENDERS AND THIRD PARTIES. During hearings held in 2000, consumer groups urged the Federal Reserve to use its HOEPA rulemaking authority to address concerns about predatory lending. Both the House and Senate held hearings on predatory abuses in the subprime market in May 2000 and July 2001, respectively...."

Naturally, Bair's testimony was ignored by the media.

So, the FBI knew, the FDIC knew, Fitch ratings knew, the Fed and Treasury knew. Was their anyone else who warned Greenspan and Bernanke about what was going on?

Yes, ex-Fed chairman Alan Greenspan's good friend Ed Gramlich cautioned him on the surge in predatory lending that was apparent as early as 2000. Here's an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:

"Edward Gramlich, who was Fed governor from 1997 to 2005, said he proposed to Mr. Greenspan in or around 2000, when predatory lending was a growing concern, that the Fed use its discretionary authority to send examiners into the offices of consumer-finance lenders that were units of Fed-regulated bank holding companies.

"I would have liked the Fed to be a leader" in cracking down on predatory lending, Mr. Gramlich, now a scholar at the Urban Institute, said in an interview this past week. Knowing it would be controversial with Mr. Greenspan, whose deregulatory philosophy is well known, Mr. Gramlich broached it to him personally rather than take it to the full board.

"He was opposed to it, so I didn't really pursue it," says Mr. Gramlich. (Wall Street Journal)

So, Greenspan was even warned by a close friend and fellow Fed governor and STILL refused to act? And Congress still hasn't launched an investigation?

And, then there is this from Elizabeth MacDonald at Fox News in an article titled "Housing Red flags Ignored":

"One of the nation’s biggest mortgage industry players repeatedly warned the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and other bank regulators during the housing bubble that the U.S. faced an imminent housing crash....But bank regulators not only ignored the group's warnings, top Fed officials also went on the airwaves to say the economy was "building on a sturdy foundation" and a housing crash was "unlikely."

The letters, obtained by Fox Business, were sent in 2005 and 2006 before the housing bubble burst.

As it pleaded with bank regulators to stop subprime lending abuses, the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America [MICA] pointed out the red flags in analysis from the bank regulators' own staffers as well as the likes of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, three years before these two Wall Street giants collapsed under the weight of bad mortgage bets.

Mortgage insurers are "deeply concerned about increased mortgage market fragility, which, combined with growing bank portfolios in high-risk products, pose serious potential problems that could occur with dramatic suddenness," warned Suzanne Hutchinson, top executive at the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America, in 2005. Failure to adjust bank underwriting, reserves and capital to account for this growing risk "means that downturns from credit and/or interest rate events–let alone shocks–will be far more severe than" if precautions are taken, Hutchinson noted, adding that what is "disturbing to us is the fact that recent trends could lead to sudden increases in foreclosures." ( Elizabeth MacDonald, "Housing Red flags Ignored", FOX Business News)

Even the mortgage insurance companies knew what was going on. Everyone knew. The biggest mortgage-looting operation in history, and no one even bothered to cover their tracks. What incredible arrogance.

Finally, there's this tidbit from an op-ed published in the Washington Post in 2008 by former New York governor Eliot Spitzer who accused the Bush Administration of being a ‘partner in crime’ in the subprime mortgage fiasco. Spitzer avers that the OCC launched "an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers." Here's a clip from Spitzer's article:

"In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government’s actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules. But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation." (Washington Post)

Is there any doubt that the Fed knew exactly what the Bush administration was up to? Is there any doubt that the OCC's actions resulted in tens of thousands - if not millions - of homeowners losing their homes to foreclosure?

There's no doubt at all. People were getting fleeced in broad daylight. As the primary regulator responsible for overseeing the financial system an preventing "unfair, abusive and deceptive practices", the Fed could have intervened at any time and stopped the predatory lending and exploitation. Instead, they sat on their hands and let the larceny continue uninterrupted, which proves that Greenspan and Bernanke are either criminally negligent in executing their regulatory duties or complicit in aiding and abetting the banks and other financial institutions in the sale of fraudulent loans to investors and homeowners. Which is it? There needs to be an investigation to find out.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

counterpunch.org

Usa, asta della Fdic da 610 milioni di dollari per i prestiti della banche fallite

A riferirlo è l’agenzia Bloomberg, che ha spiegato come si tratti di crediti in buona parte legati a terreni e progetti edili

La Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., l’organismo americano creato con il Glass-Steagall Act del 1933 che garantisce una copertura assicurativa sui depositi delle banche fallite, sta cercando offerte per i 610,5 milioni di dollari di prestiti non pagati che sono finiti in suo possesso a seguito dei default degli istituti finanziari che li avevano concessi. A riferirlo è l’agenzia Bloomberg, che ha spiegato come si tratti di crediti in buona parte legati a terreni e progetti edili, ha spiegato Peter Tobin direttore di Mission Capital Advisor, società di consulenza di cui si serve la Fdic. Erano in possesso, tra gli altri, di istituti come IndyMac Bank, Silverton Bank e New Frontier Bank, e la maggior parte delle proprietà ad essi collegate sono situate in Colorado, California, Utah e Idaho.

La Fdic si ritrova infatti a gestire numerosi asset rilevati dalle oltre 160 banche fallite a partire dall’inizio del 2009, e probabilmente la loro quantità è destinata ad aumentare nel corso di quest’anno, dal momento che la stessa agenzia governativa ha stimato in 702 il numero di istituti di credito giudicati, ad oggi, “in condizioni di difficoltà”. Per questo si cercheranno acquirenti sul mercato - ha spiegato Tobin - che potranno scegliere di acquisire, tramite asta, gli asset in partnership con la stessa Fdic.

La fetta più allettante proposta è quella legata al portafoglio da 220,2 milioni di dollari che fu di New Frontier, con 187 prestiti, il cui 91% è scaduto da più di 90 giorni.

http://www.valori.it/italian/mondo.php?idnews=2092

Le settimane nere delle banche spagnole

In Spagna le grandi banche si stanno domandando, ormai da settimane, quando (o se) i mercati porranno fine al crollo dei loro titoli in Borsa

In Spagna le grandi banche si stanno domandando, ormai da settimane, quando (o se) i mercati porranno fine al crollo dei loro titoli in Borsa. Il loro declino, infatti, è cominciato nel mese di gennaio, e da allora non si è ancora arrestato, trainato soprattutto dalle preoccupazioni sullo stato delle finanze pubbliche del Paese. Il tasso di disoccupazione vicino al 20%, con il potenziale pericolo legato alle conseguenti difficoltà nel mercato immobiliare, hanno poi aggravato la situazione.

Il risultato è che il titolo di Banco Santander, ad esempio, ha perso dall’inizio dell’anno il 20% del suo valore, mentre quello di Banco Bilbao Vizcava Argentaria ha ceduto il 26%. E si tratta di due istituti che hanno un importante peso sull’indice spagnolo IBEX-35. Inoltre, nei giorni scorsi Barclays Capital ha reso noto un downgrade nel rating di entrambe le banche, abbassando contemporaneamente i target price a 9 euro (era 15 euro per Santander e 12 euro per BBVA).

Ciò che ora i mercati si aspettano - riferisce il Wall Street Journal - è una risposta da parte della banca centrale di Madrid. Ma sarà sufficiente a contrastare le ombre che si allungano sulla penisola?

http://www.valori.it/italian/finanza-globale.php?idnews=2096

SOROS DOCET: I VERI PIGS STANNO A LONDRA

Data: Lunedì, 01 marzo @ 06:50:00 CST Argomento: Economia DI MORENO PASQUINELLI sollevazione.blogspot.com Molti si ostinano a non crederci quando affermiamo che siamo dentro ad una crisi storico-sistemica destinata a sconvolgere gli equilibri sociali gli assetti politici e istituzionali, che entriamo in un periodo che sarà contraddistinto da profondissime turbolenze e conflitti. Sarà quindi utile metterli al corrente delle recentissime dichiarazioni “catastrofiste” fatte dal numero uno dei pescecani della finanza globale, nonché guru, George Soros (che i media italiani hanno censurato). Venerdì 20 febbraio egli era a New York ad un conferenza organizzata dalla Columbia University.Al cospetto di noti economisti americani, Soros ha affermato che il fallimento di Lehman Brothers ha segnato una svolta storica nel funzionamento del sistema finanziario mondiale, col risultato che questo si è praticamente disintegrato, proprio come accadde all’URSS dopo l’89. Ha poi aggiunto che egli non intravede alcuna prospettiva di uscita a breve termine dalla crisi, che per lui è più grave che la Grande Depressione. Presente alla conferenza, gli ha fatto eco Paul Volcker, ex presidente della Federal Reserve, attualmente alto consulente del presidente Barack Obama.

Il PIL inglese

Volcker ha dichiarato che la produzione industriale in tutto il mondo declina ancor più rapidamente che negli Stati Uniti, a sua volta a dura prova. "Non mi ricordo di nessun altro momento, neanche durante la Grande depressione, una caduta dei mercati così veloce e così uniforme in tutto il mondo”. (uk.reuters.com, 21 febbraio).

L'indice di produttività

Uno dei più eclatanti risultati di quella che Soros definisce “la disintegrazione del sistema finanzraio mondiale” è l’allarmante crisi del capitalismo britannico, su cui grandi think tank deliberatamente tacciono, preferendo esorcizzarla deviando l’attenzione sui cosiddetti “PIIGS”. Gli analisti anglosassoni sanno bene che il capitalismo inglese non sta messo molto meglio della Spagna o dell’Italia. Basta analizzare i dati appena diffusi dal “Office for National Statistics” (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/). Tutti i cosiddetti “fondamentali” traballano. Per quanto riguarda il commercio con l’estero il Regno Unito è deficitario sia verso i paesi dell’Unione europea che, soprattutto, verso il resto del mondo. Ma la cosa che preoccupa Downing Street è la tendenza alla sua veloce crescita: a novembre era di 6,8 miliardi di sterline, a dicembre, in un solo mese, è passato a 7,3 miliardi. Il tasso di investimenti (un metro di misura decisivo per misurare la profondità della recessione e quanto fondate siano le speranze di inversione del ciclo) registrato nel quarto trimestre del 2009 è crollato del 24,1% rispetto allo stesso periodo del 2008. Il settore dei servizi (che data la deindustrializzazione che il Regno Unito ha conosciuto negli ultimi trent’anni è quello traainante) è continuato a scendere per tutto il 2009. Particolarmente accentuata la decrescita del comparto finanziario (la City). Durissima la discesa del settore turistico (Hotel e ristoranti), e dei trasporti. Per quanto riguarda il Pil, che era crollato al -6% a metà del 2009, la sua ripresa, nel quarto trimestre del 2009, è stata del modesto 0,3%. Indicativo il dato riguardante il Capitale fisso (macchinari ecc) che il mercato continua a rottamare: -14,2% rispetto al 2008. Opachi sono i dati sui profitti, ma si può intuire il calo se si considera che il surplus lordo delle aziende è sceso del 5,9% rispetto ad un anno fa, che fu già nefasto. Abbiamo così la disoccupazione al 7,8% e la produttività complessiva che non sta solo al di sotto di quella americana o francese, ma pure di quella italiana.

I tassi di disoccupazione di occupazione. Entrambi riferiti al Regno Unito. (Dati del “Office for National Statistics”)

Ad aggravare il contesto c’è infine il deficit di bilancio, che veleggia alla cifra del 10% (livello greco) e che secondo stime attendibili (Istituto degli Studi Fiscali, Ifs, un centro di ricerca e consulenza che fra i sui clienti annovera il Ministero del Tesoro britannico e la Banca d'Inghilterra) potrebbe toccare 150 miliardi di sterline nei prossimi tre anni. Il solo fiore all’occhiello di Sua Maestà sarebbe il debito pubblico, il 43,60% del Pil, fatto che collocherebbe appunto il Regno Unito tra i paesi virtuosi. Bugia! Gli inglesi, come si sa, sono isolani, e calcolano a modo loro. O per dirla altrimenti non si devono certo far insegnare dai greci come manipolare e truccare i parametri e i dati. E’ infatti risaputo (come è stato fatto notare da diversi analisti, vedi il Corriere della Sera del 9 dicembre), che il debito pubblico del Regno Unito supererebbe il 170%, bel oltre quello greco e prossimo a quello giapponese, se il Tesoro di Sua Maestà contasse, come dovrebbe in base al Trattato di Maastricht e ancora non fa, anche il costo dei salvataggi bancari e i passivi delle banche nazionalizzate dopo il crollo del settembre 2008. I “maiali” mediterranei e gli irlandesi sono quindi in buona, si fa per dire, compagnia. Si capisce dunque il dibattito sul futuro del paese che imperversa sui giornali britannici. Non deve ingannare l’aplomb e i toni compassati. Nemmeno i più ottimisti tra i gentlemen inglesi si sentono di escludere la catastrofe. Ecco quindi gli amari ripensamenti sugli “anni gloriosi” del thatcherismo e del neoliberismo blairiano, oggi considerati disastrosi, non fosse che per lo smantellamento dell’industria manifatturiera, la cui rinascita è invocata a destra come a sinistra come sola possibile exit strategy alla depressione. Che comunque, anche senza un crollo improvviso, è destinata a durare a lungo. Moreno Pasquinelli Fonte: http://sollevazione.blogspot.com Link: http://sollevazione.blogspot.com/2010/02/e-se-venisse-giu-il-paese-che-ha-fatto.html#more 28.02.2010 Questo Articolo proviene da ComeDonChisciotte http://www.comedonchisciotte.org/site L'URL per questa storia è: http://www.comedonchisciotte.org/site/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6810

Jim Rogers Predicts Pound Ruin

The Daily Bell

Billionaire financier Jim Rogers has predicted that the British Pound could completely collapse within weeks, sending shockwaves throughout the global economy and heralding the beginning of a downturn that would make the recent economic crisis look tame in comparison. "Other currencies aren't strong and the Euro has real problems, with cracks much wider than Greece beginning to show," Rogers said. "But it's the Pound that's most vulnerable. In real terms, it's already devalued against virtually every currency barring the Zimbabwean dollar and it's especially exposed over the weeks running up to the UK election. In a basket of currencies, the Pound is potentially a basket case. And that will put Britain in an extremely bad position for the shakedown." "The last few months have seen a 'false bounce', shorn up by massive short-term injections of government underwriting," Rogers, the former business partner of George Soros, said. "But it can't last. We've been applying temporary sticking plasters, not long-term cures. Later this year we'll see the start of the real recession, with more Lehman-scale disasters and a fallout which won't stop until the underlying malaise is genuinely cured." he added. - InfoWars

Dominant Social Theme:

Mama, it's cold out there. But the sun will shine tomorrow.

Free-Market Analysis:

Jim Rogers, who has given the Bell a terrific interview to appear this Sunday, made news again yesterday with the above excerpted prediction about the British pound. It's no secret that Britain has been inordinately profligate even during the financial crisis, with the Labour government refusing to rein in spending programs. Health care and various welfare and social services programs, alongside of a failing public education system, are breaking Britain, but neither major political party seems prepared to provide lasting solutions. Crises are looming, as Rogers suggests.

When outlays continually outstrip income, the world's currency trading community begins to grow uncomfortable - or hyper-active anyway. The offending country is forced to offer higher rates on its paper to tempt buyers. In extreme cases, as Rogers is suggesting, bonds may not sell at any cost and the currency gradually sinks toward zero compared to other "more solid" international currencies.

Will Rogers predictions come to pass? See other article in today's Bell for a general discussion on the unraveling of the current economic system - EU Unraveling - Greece Vs. Germany - one that depends on central banking, fiat money and the confidence of its citizens. If people ever begin to seriously question the validity of the world economy - as it has been developed - bad things could happen. If the international financial system really began to unravel, there would certainly come a time when a new economic order would start to evolve, spontaneously or not.

Now some of the savvier cynics among us will claim that this is just what has been "planned." That those who are driving the world toward an ever-more perfect union, want to create this sort of crisis, with an eye toward implementing an ever-more centralized solution. We can believe this may have been the plan, but if so, we also believe it's spinning out of control. We don't believe, for instance, the elite wants to lose the European Union or the euro anymore than it wants its painstakingly created global warming promotion to go belly up. We think events are driving the elite for once, rather than the other way round. The combination of bad economic times and the socio-political education available on the Internet itself is proving lethal to many elite promotions, including central banking and fiat money.

It all comes down to what you believe, dear reader. If you believe that the EU and global warming were just way-stations on the road to world government, then you will likely believe that the current chaotic climate is purposeful and that what emerges hews to a long-term plan. If you believe as the Bell does, then you will likely take the position that what is occurring today is out of anyone's control, and that it is a kind of perfect storm, or as Anthony Wile wrote in High Alert in 2003, a financial hurricane - one the power elite never expected. It is, in fact, a confluence of a ruinous global economy and the educative effects of the Internet. The former the elite may have foreseen and advanced. The latter, we believe, was something the elite never imagined.

When we began to write about the Internet as a modern day Gutenberg press some 8-9 years ago, we had no idea what would be the trigger mechanism. We couldn't imagine how events would shake and we figured whatever was going to happen would take another 25-50 years. So we are surprised as you are, dear reader, over the speed with which elite promotions seem to be deflating. What has happened, of course, is that people are upset and angry over the economy and the loss of the jobs - not only in the West but around the world. In the past, the elite has easily been able to take advantage of such anger by directing it in certain populist directions that eventually result in even MORE control. But today, the elite may have lost some of that ability. The elite controls the mainstream news, but the mainstream is not what it was in this Internet era. In fact, the alternative 'Net press, much of which is free-market thinking oriented, is increasingly credible.

What would happen if the pound crashed? It would probably set off a real economic realignment globally. But we have a hard time believing that what would emerge would be a kind of economic global governance. Oh, perhaps that's what the powers-that-be had in mind. But we don't think, at this point, that there would be much of a buy in. Let the power elite emerge from a "crisis meeting" and announce the formation of a comprehensive IMF currency to take the place of the dollar and see what happens. It wouldn't be greeted with the kind of respectful awe that Bretton Woods inspired.

Conclusion:

For the first time in hundreds of years from what we can tell, there is no feasible preordained outcome to what's taking place. Those in charge have little credibility and those who have the money are having difficulty wielding it because the Internet has so thoroughly explained the mechanism. It is perfectly possible that the EU comes under very heavy attack in the near future along with Britain. It is perfectly possible that the central banking regime of the past 100 years becomes increasingly non-credible - and eventually fails in pieces or all at once. In that case, we would anticipate the resurgence, to begin with anyway, of Brownian state-run central banks and perhaps even parochial fiat money. We would hope that free-banking would make a comeback as well, along with a market-based gold and silver standard. Of course, Rogers and others may believe the world in its current incarnation may simply muddle through. But nothing is as certain as it was. The 21st century is not the 20th.

www.thedailybell.com

The Road to Armageddon

Paul Craig Roberts

The Washington Times is a newspaper that looks with favor upon the Bush/Cheney/Obama/neocon wars of aggression in the Middle East and favors making terrorists pay for 9/11. Therefore, I was surprised to learn on February 24 that the most popular story on the paper's website for the past three days was the "Inside the Beltway" report, "Explosive News," [By Jennifer Harper, February 22, 2010]about the 31 press conferences in cities in the US and abroad on February 19 held by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization of professionals which now has 1,000 members.

I was even more surprised that the news report treated the press conference seriously.

How did three World Trade Center skyscrapers suddenly disintegrate into fine dust? How did massive steel beams in three skyscrapers suddenly fail as a result of short-lived, isolated, and low temperature fires?

"A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7," reports the Washington Times.

The paper reports that the architects and engineers have concluded that the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology provided "insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers' destruction" and are "calling for a grand jury investigation of NIST officials."

The newspaper reports that Richard Gage, the spokesperson for the architects and engineers said:

"Government officials will be notified that 'Misprision of Treason,' U.S. Code 18 (Sec. 2382) is a serious federal offense, which requires those with evidence of treason to act. The implications are enormous and may have profound impact on the forthcoming Khalid Sheik Mohammed trial."

There is now an organization, Firefighters for 9/11 Truth. At the main press conference in San Francisco, Erik Lawyer, the head of that organization, announced the firefighters' support for the architects and engineers' demands. He reported that no forensic investigation was made of the fires that are alleged to have destroyed the three buildings and that this failure constitutes a crime.

Mandated procedures were not followed, and instead of being preserved and investigated, the crime scene was destroyed. He also reported that there are more than one hundred first responders who heard and experienced explosions and that there is radio, audio and video evidence of explosions.

Also at the press conference, physicist Steven Jones presented the evidence of nano-thermite in the residue of the WTC buildings found by an international panel of scientists led by University of Copenhagen nano-chemist Professor Niels Harrit. Nano-thermite is a high-tech explosive/pyrotechnic capable of instantly melting steel girders.

Before we yell "conspiracy theory," we should be aware that the architects, engineers, firefighters, and scientists offer no theory. They provide evidence that challenges the official theory. This evidence is not going to go away.

If expressing doubts or reservations about the official story in the 9/11 Commission Report makes a person a conspiracy theory kook, then we have to include both co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission and the Commission's legal counsel, all of whom have written books in which they clearly state that they were lied to by government officials when they conducted their investigation, or, rather, when they presided over the investigation conducted by executive director Philip Zelikow, a member of President George W. Bush's transition team and Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and a co-author of Bush Secretary of State Condi "Mushroom Cloud" Rice.

There will always be Americans who will believe whatever the government tells them no matter how many times they know the government has lied to them. Despite expensive wars that threaten Social Security and Medicare, wars based on non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, non-existent Saddam Hussein connections to al Qaida, non-existent Afghan participation in the 9/11 attacks, and the non-existent Iranian nukes that are being hyped as the reason for the next American war of aggression in the Middle East, more than half of the U.S. population still believes the fantastic story that the government has told them about 9/11, a Muslim conspiracy that outwitted the entire Western world.

Moreover, it doesn't matter to these Americans how often the government changes its story. For example, Americans first heard of Osama bin Laden because the Bush regime pinned the 9/11 attacks on him. Over the years video after video was served up to the gullible American public of bin Laden's pronouncements. Experts dismissed the videos as fakes, but Americans remained their gullible selves. Then suddenly last year a new 9/11 "mastermind" emerged to take bin Laden's place, the captive Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the detainee waterboarded 183 times until he confessed to masterminding the 9/11 attack.

In the Middle Ages confessions extracted by torture constituted evidence, but self-incrimination has been a no-no in the U.S. legal system since our founding. But with the Bush regime and the Republican federal judges, whom we were assured would defend the U.S. Constitution, the self-incrimination of Sheik Mohammed stands today as the only evidence the U.S. government has that Muslim terrorists pulled off 9/11.

If a person considers the feats attributed to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, they are simply unbelievable. Sheik Mohammed is a more brilliant, capable superhero than V in the fantasy movie, "V for Vendetta." Sheik Mohammed outwitted all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies along with those of all U.S. allies or puppets, including Israel's Mossad. No intelligence service on earth or all of them combined was a match for Sheik Mohammed.

Sheik Mohammed outwitted the U.S. National Security Council, Dick Cheney, the Pentagon, the State Department, NORAD, the U.S. Air Force, and Air Traffic Control.

He caused Airport Security to fail four times in one morning. He caused the state-of-the-art air defenses of the Pentagon to fail, allowing a hijacked airliner, which was off course all morning while the U.S. Air Force, for the first time in history, was unable to get aloft interceptor aircraft, to crash into the Pentagon.

Sheik Mohammed was able to perform these feats with unqualified pilots.

Sheik Mohammed, even as a waterboarded detainee, has managed to prevent the FBI from releasing the many confiscated videos that would show, according to the official story, the hijacked airliner hitting the Pentagon.

How naive do you have to be to believe that any human, or for that matter Hollywood fantasy character, is this powerful and capable?

If Sheik Mohammed has these superhuman capabilities, how did the incompetent Americans catch him? This guy is a patsy tortured into confession in order to keep the American naifs believing the government's conspiracy theory.

What is going on here is that the U.S. government has to bring the 9/11 mystery to an end. The government must put on trial and convict a culprit so that it can close the case before it explodes. Anyone waterboarded 183 times would confess to anything.

The U.S. government has responded to the evidence being arrayed against its outlandish 9/11 conspiracy theory by redefining the war on terror from external to internal enemies. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on February 21 that American extremists are now as big a concern as international terrorists. Extremists, of course, are people who get in the way of the government's agenda, such as the 1,000 Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. The group used to be 100, now it is 1,000. What if it becomes 10,000?

Cass Sunstein, an Obama regime official, has a solution for the 9/11 skeptics: Infiltrate them and provoke them into statements and actions that can be used to discredit or to arrest them. But get rid of them at all cost.

Why employ such extreme measures against alleged kooks if they only provide entertainment and laughs? Is the government worried that they are on to something?

Instead, why doesn't the U.S. government simply confront the evidence that is presented and answer it?

If the architects, engineers, firefighters, and scientists are merely kooks, it would be a simple matter to acknowledge their evidence and refute it. Why is it necessary to infiltrate them with police agents and to set them up?

Many Americans would reply that "their" government would never even dream of killing Americans by hijacking airliners and destroying buildings in order to advance a government agenda. But on February 3, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that the U.S. government can assassinate its own citizens when they are overseas. No arrest, trial, or conviction of a capital crime is necessary. Just straight out murder.

Obviously, if the U.S. government can murder its citizens abroad it can murder them at home, and has done so. For example, 100 Branch Davidians were murdered in Waco, Texas, by the Clinton administration for no legitimate reason. The government just decided to use its power knowing that it could get away with it, which it did.

Americans who think "their" government is some kind of morally pure operation would do well to familiarize themselves with Operation Northwoods. Operation Northwoods was a plot drawn up by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff for the CIA to commit acts of terrorism in American cities and fabricate evidence blaming Castro so that the U.S. could gain domestic and international support for regime change in Cuba. The secret plan was nixed by President John F. Kennedy and was declassified by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. It is available online in the National Security Archive. There are numerous online accounts available, including Wikipedia. James Bamford's book, Body of Secrets, also summarizes the plot:

"Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman [Gen. Lemnitzer] and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war."

Prior to 9/11 the American neoconservatives were explicit that the wars of aggression that they intended to launch in the Middle East required "a new Pearl Harbor."

For their own good and that of the wider world, Americans need to pay attention to the growing body of experts who are telling them that the government's account of 9/11 fails their investigation. 9/11 launched the neoconservative plan for U.S. world hegemony. As I write the U.S. government is purchasing the agreement of foreign governments that border Russia to accept U.S. missile interceptor bases. The U.S. intends to ring Russia with U.S. missile bases from Poland through central Europe and Kosovo to Georgia, Azerbaijan and central Asia. [See Impending Explosion: U.S. Intensifies Threats To Russia And Iran, by Rick Rozoff, Global Research, February 19, 2010] U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke declared on February 20 that al Qaida is moving into former central Asian constituent parts of the Soviet Union, such as Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. Holbrooke is soliciting U.S. bases in these former Soviet republics under the guise of the ever-expanding "war on terror."

The U.S. has already encircled Iran with military bases. The U.S. government intends to neutralize China by seizing control over the Middle East and cutting China off from oil.

This plan assumes that Russia and China, nuclear armed states, will be intimidated by U.S. anti-missile defenses and acquiesce to U.S. hegemony and that China will lack oil for its industries and military.

The U.S. government is delusional. Russian military and political leaders have responded to the obvious threat by declaring NATO a direct threat to the security of Russia and by announcing a change in Russian war doctrine to the pre-emptive launch of nuclear weapons. The Chinese are too confident to be bullied by a washed up American "superpower."

The morons in Washington are pushing the envelope of nuclear war. The insane drive for American hegemony threatens life on earth. The American people, by accepting the lies and deceptions of "their" government, are facilitating this outcome.

Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan's first term. He has been credited with being the "Father of Reganomics". He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow's Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct. His latest book, How The Economy Was Lost, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press.

Tyrants, Torturers, and Taxmen: Pillars of 'Civilization'

William Norman Grigg

(Editor's Note: Central banking is perhaps the most brilliant scam ever perpetrated, and the U.S. Federal Reserve stands as the most successful of all central banks in history. The Fed (1913) was created to transfer wealth away from the people who earned it, and into the hands of the Federal Government and the unconstitutional criminals working for the organized criminal banks of Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan, who, along with some Eastern European Banks, owned the Federal Reserve. This was to go on relentlessly, stealthily, year after year, and all the while maintaining the preposterous claim of social benefit in the form of "managing the economy." The method of this theft is sophisticated and disguised enough as to escape the attention of most, and when combined with propaganda, leads most people to the conclusion that we'd be in trouble without it. It was simply a way to have the tax payers pay interest on their own money. The IRS was created in 1918, to function as the collection agency (read in "muscle") for the Fed. Picture the enforcers, Guido, Bubba & Fats. You know; "pay up or we will beat the hell out of you with baseball bats. Legislated thugs. - JSB)

Maxwell Smart (referring to various implements of torture): Are you sure KAOS has all these devices?

CONTROL scientist Carlson: Oh, yes - it's standard equipment for terrorist organizations.

Max: Well, where did you get these?

Carlson: From the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

"More tax is collected by fear and intimidation than by the law. People are afraid of the IRS."

Given its source - former IRS District Chief David Patnoe - that indictment of the Regime's most notorious secret police organ could be considered a confession. What he describes can only be called state terrorism.

The IRS is an agency that uses the threat of lethal violence to terrorize people into surrendering their legitimately earned wealth. In their unguarded moments, officials of that dreaded terror syndicate admit that they are at war with the public they supposedly serve.

"The language of war and the culture of conflict are the only means to prepare us for what is expected of us," recalled former IRS revenue officer Richard Yancey in his invaluable memoir Confessions of a Tax Collector. "How else could they [the commissars whom Yancey and his fellow cadres in the agency] demand what was expected of us? You can't take [the] life savings [of income tax victims], their car, their paycheck, the roof over their head and the heads of their children, without dehumanizing them, without casting yourself in a role that by necessity makes them the enemy."

One of Yancey's supervisors considered taxpayers to be, at best, fodder for the firing squad. That official, Yancey recalls, ended a profanity-infused tirade by describing taxpayers unable to surrender every dime demanded by agents of federal extortion as "Deadbeats ... if it were up to me, I'd line 'em all up against a wall and shoot them."

Yancey's supervisor obviously shared the late Joseph Stack's view that "violence is the only answer" - whether that violence is implicit or overt.

Perhaps that official will receive one of the sixty Remington Model 870 pump-action shotguns ordered by the Treasury Department for the IRS's Criminal Investigation Division (in this case, the name refers to investigations conducted by, rather than of, criminals).

Interestingly, each of those shotguns has a barrel fourteen inches long, much shorter than the "illegally" modified shotguns sold by Randy Weaver to an undercover ATF agent who carefully entrapped Weaver in the hope of forcing him to become an informant for that detestable outfit.

When Weaver - displaying admirable character - refused to become a stukach, the same Regime that entrapped him laid siege to his family, murdering his wife and only son. Weaver had never had any trouble with the "law" prior to his encounter with a street-level thug employed by the ATF - an agency that could be considered the clumsier, more overtly thuggish sibling of the IRS. Despite the fact that he had done no harm to anybody, Randy Weaver and his family like the "deadbeats" denigrated by Yancey's IRS supervisor, were seen as suitable targets for extermination.

The term "deadbeats," of course, is properly applied to people who refuse to carry out legitimate contractual obligations by making timely payments. Since nobody has the moral right to claim the property of another through force, there is nothing legitimate about the supposed "obligations" the IRS enforces through terrorism.

Those who cannot or will not pay what the IRS demands are not deadbeats in any sense. They are "criminals" in exactly the same sense that the term could be applied to escaped slaves in the antebellum South, or those who abetted their escape in defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act.

Those who refuse to pay taxes are making a prudential calculation with which I do not agree, but one that neither harms nor threatens me in any way. The same cannot be said of the means used by the IRS to enforce the spurious enactments its functionaries call the "law" - a usage that illustrates that not even the language is safe from the violence employed by that abhorrent agency.

The outpouring of statist sanctimony following Joseph Stack's despairing murder-suicide attack against the IRS was predictable - and as malodorous - as the consequences of drinking untreated water in Mexico. The effects of that onslaught are most unpleasant in the immediate vicinity of the main emunctory orifice, which in the present case is the fraudulent outfit called the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"This morning's attack by Joseph Andrew Stack against an IRS building in Austin, Tex., is a reminder again of how extreme hatred of government can morph into violence," oozed SPLC commissarina Heidi Berich.

Neither she nor anyone else at the SPLC deigned to prescribe the proper attitude toward a government that can ruin a man's career and financial prospects through a small change in the vast and all-but-inscrutable tax code. Nor has the SPLC or other self-anointed arbiters of acceptable political attitudes evinced concern over the hatred toward tax victims that can be found suppurating from the IRS, or the violence that frequently results from it.

In 1997 congressional testimony, Houston IRS agent Jennifer Long explained that the agency teaches its agents to use "tactics - which appear nowhere in the IRS manual ... to extract unfairly assessed taxes from taxpayers, literally ruining families, lives, and businesses - all unnecessarily and sometimes illegally."

"The IRS will often pursue a taxpayer who is viewed to be vulnerable," testified Long. "To the IRS, vulnerability can be based on a perception that the taxpayer has limited formal education, has suffered a personal tragedy, is having a financial crisis, or may not necessarily have a solid grasp of their legal rights. Please understand, many agents are encouraged by management to pursue tax assessments that have no basis in tax law from individuals who simply can't fight back. However, if that taxpayer does object or complain, every effort will be made by the IRS to run up their tax assessment, despite their financial resources and force them to capitulate to IRS demands."

In many cases, Long continued, "IRS Management can determine that a particular taxpayer is simply someone `to get.'... Management will go about fabricating evidence against that taxpayer to demonstrate that he, or she, owes [sic] more taxes than was originally claimed."

"In certain instances, the IRS Management has even employed its authority [sic - the IRS exercises power, not authority] to intimidate the actual taxpayers into fabricating evidence against its own IRS employees," Long disclosed. This is done to retaliate against any IRS agent who objects to the agency's illegal and immoral tactics. Sometimes the threats are mingled with offers of reduced or vacated tax judgments or even cash awards to those willing to perjure themselves.

Those disclosures, remember, were made by an active duty employee of the IRS. To her considerable credit, Long eschewed the long-established practice of other defectors from crime syndicates by declining to concealing her identity. Not surprisingly, Long's genuinely patriotic act of public truth-telling provoked severe and undisguised retaliation from the agency's ruling oligarchy.

A year prior to Long's testimony, a videotaped training lecture by an IRS agent for the Arkansas-Oklahoma district was leaked to the public. In that record (described and documented in James Bovard's 2000 book Feeling Your Pain) the instructor is seen catechizing the trainees about the supposed virtues of arrogant, sadistic cruelty:

"Make them cry. We don't give points around here for being good scouts. The word is `enforced.' If that's not tattooed on your forehead, or somewhere else, then you need to get it. Enforcement. Seizure and sales. That's our mind-set.... You're not out there to take any prisoners. Prisoners are like an installment agreement. They [prisoners] have to be fed and clothed and housed. All that stuff. They're expensive. We're not here to do that. If you've got an assessment, enforce collection until they come to their knees."

The SPLC and its allies, who play to prurient interests by diligently documenting and publicizing vituperative utterances by repulsive but obscure and powerless Klansmen and neo-Nazis, have never bestirred themselves to object to violent rhetoric of this kind issuing from the tax-devouring pie-hole of someone who actually carries out such terroristic threats against helpless people. (It's worth remembering that many of those professional racists are federal assets paid with funds extorted from the taxpayers by the IRS.)

In his memoir, Yancey recalls a similar training session in which he and other future revenue agents were told by the instructor that the IRS had no use for "those who anguished over each closure, as if their decisions meant life or death for the taxpayer."

One trainee, in whom the light of human decency had yet to be extinguished, objected that decisions to confiscate a tax victim's money and property very often are matters of life and death.

Oh, pish, retorted the supervisor: The IRS's mission has nothing at all to do with "doing the right thing for the taxpayer"; your mission is that of "protecting the government's interest."

"But what if the government's interest is wrong?" persisted the trainee.

"Our interest is never wrong or right," rejoined the supervisor in a reply worthy of his kindred spirits in the service of other totalitarian enforcement organs. "It just is."

From that perspective, the State - like Jehovah Himself - is a self-existing, morally autonomous entity, and its consecrated agents are likewise above accountability to any power under heaven.

Former IRS Revenue Officer David Patnoe offers a parallel account to that of Yancey. In his congressional testimony, Patnoe - who became a representative of tax victims before the IRS's Collection Division in California - described, in detail, the "outright illegal and highly unethical behavior of IRS officials he encountered in his new profession.

In one case, an IRS functionary placed an illegal levy on $21,000 on an account belonging to one of his customers, a small businessman who owed no taxes but paid $7,000 in what can only be described as ransom in the hope of appeasing the IRS.

"I informed the Revenue Officer that ... her actions were not just abusive, but blatantly illegal," Patnoe recalled. "The Revenue Officer responded with one word: `AND?'"

That single, contemptuous syllable - like so many other lawless actions undertaken by IRS functionaries - offers an echo of Vladimir Lenin's 1920 definition of "scientific dictatorship": "Power without limit, resting directly on force, restrained by no laws, absolutely unrestricted by rules." (Emphasis added.)

In the days that have passed since Joseph Stack made the tragic and unsupportable decision to end his life in an act of aggressive violence (taking the life of another man, a father and grandfather, in the process), the organs of approved opinion have barraged the public with potted platitudes denouncing Stack's lawless behavior.

During that same period, the Regime served by the IRS killed at least dozens - more likely scores, or even hundreds - of innocent people in an illegal war of aggression against a distant, impoverished land.

The branch of the central government wittily called the department of "Justice" announced that its lengthy investigation of the Bush Regime's torture policies would result in no criminal, civil, or professional penalties against the apparatchiks who had devised "legal" rationales for those crimes.

The official report of that investigation revealed that one of the architects of the torture state, John C. Yoo, was committed to the principle that it is a suitable and proper use of presidential "authority" to order the wanton slaughter of civilians, if mass murder comports with his "tactical" judgment.

All of this provided the coda to a week that began - as if by way of depraved overture - with former Vice President Dick Cheney smugly confessing to the crime of abetting torture during his reign.

Yet we are ordered to believe, or at least pretend to believe, that all of this was eclipsed by Joseph Stack's self-destructive act of criminal violence.

The unduly revered Oliver Wendell Holmes, a belligerent statist (albeit one more akin to Maistre and Mussolini, rather than Marx and Lenin), memorably described taxes as the price we're compelled to pay for "civilization."

After all, absent the key confiscatory role played by the tax collector, how could torturers and other agents of state-sanctified violence perform their vital civilizing functions?

Civilization is built on the foundation of peaceful cooperation, rather than official coercion. It won't be restored through cathartic but morally unsound and strategically counter-productive acts of retaliatory aggressive violence.

The least we can do - perhaps all we can do - is exercise the liberty to call things by their proper names (e.g., "taxpayers" are more properly called "tax victims"; one doesn't "owe" taxes, but has them "extorted" from him), and use whatever peaceful means are at our disposal to cultivate contemptuous disrespect for anyone employed by the Regime's apparatus of wealth confiscation.

Each gesture of this sort, taken individually, seems as evanescent as a snowflake. But an avalanche begins as nothing more than a particularly large gathering of individual snowflakes that somehow found their way to the high ground.

February 26, 2010

William Norman Grigg [send him mail] publishes the Pro Libertate blog and hosts the Pro Libertate radio program.

Copyright © 2010 William Norman Grigg