Looking Back on the Greatest Depression – Gerald Celente

If it was an economic Pearl Harbor, the enemies were Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, A.I.G., Countrywide, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Bear Stearns, and all the other banks, brokerages, speculators, insurance companies, hedge funds and leverage buyout specialists that had launched the sneak attack on the American economy.

China has ‘canceled US credit card’: lawmaker

China, wary of the troubled US economy, has already “canceled America’s credit card” by cutting down purchases of debt, a US congressman said Thursday.

Video: Jim Rogers – Abolish The IMF & World Bank

Veteran investor says Obama stimulus package only making economic crisis worse.

Roots of the Banking Crisis

Whenever you try to solve a problem you should look at what caused the problem in the first place. In early 2009, the banking system is wrestling with hundreds of billions (if not trillions) of dollars of bad assets, known as subprime loans, marginal loans, or other vague descriptors.

Acts Of Insanity Are What Destroyed The Economy

Just more Keynsianism in the works, health of banks getting worse despite injections, Why not just let them fail and prosecute their officers for fraud? no end to the bailouts, insane acts of economics, Davos a bust, the world will eventually move away from the dollar

More Economists Say Crisis Is Worse Than Great Depression

More prominent economists have declared that the U.S. is facing a depression that may be even worse than that of the 1930s.

Noting that current efforts to rescue the mortgage industry are less successful than those used during the 30s, Edward J. Pinto, former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae has warned that the current crisis could be worse.

Enemies of Capitalism

New Rule: neomercantilists, neoconservatives, and statists are no longer allowed to call themselves “free marketers.” People who call themselves free marketers such as Bush, Paulson, Greenspan, and Bernanke are the primary threat capitalism faces. These false prophets of capitalism are the greatest friends that proponents of socialism have.

MSM: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac suspend some foreclosures

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two biggest U.S. home loan finance companies, on Thursday said they would suspend foreclosures of occupied homes until early 2009, as the government moves to stem the tide of home losses plaguing the economy.

MSM: Fannie Mae Reports Record Loss After Asset Writedowns (Update3)

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) — Fannie Mae posted a record quarterly loss as new Chief Executive Officer Herbert Allison slashed the value of the mortgage-finance provider’s assets by at least $21.4 billion and said it may need to tap federal funds next year.

Conned Again – Paul Craig Roberts

November 09, 2008 – If the change President-elect Obama has promised includes a halt to America’s wars of aggression and an end to the rip-off of taxpayers by powerful financial interests, what explains Obama’s choice of foreign and economic policy advisors? Indeed, Obama’s selection of Rahm Israel Emanuel as White House chief of staff is a signal that change ended with Obama’s election. The only thing different about the new administration will be the faces.

MSM: The Bush gang’s parting gift – a final, frantic looting of public wealth

The US bail-out amounts to a strings-free, public-funded windfall for big business. Welcome to no-risk capitalism

In the final days of the election many Republicans seem to have given up the fight for power. But don’t be fooled: that doesn’t mean they are relaxing. If you want to see real Republican elbow grease, check out the energy going into chucking great chunks of the $700bn bail-out out the door.

The PRE-PLANNED Financial/Economic 911 of 2008

WHAT: A pre-planned collapse of the US (and global) financial and economic systems.

WHO: The same characters who perpetrated the original 911.

WHERE: New York City & DC, of course. Plus a sideshow in Washington state.

WHEN: The days surrounding September 11, naturally.

HOW: Instead of painted drones, missiles with wings & big fins, and fake airplanes, they used the much more stealthy short seller.

Will Wall Street’s Meltdown Turn America Into a Police State?

Failing banks? Endless war? Call Homeland Security.

“Raw capitalism is dead.” — Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary

“Can’t we just all go out and say things are OK?” — President Bush, to congressional leaders during bailout negotiations

I’m not much of an Army Times reader, but after reading that a brigade was shipping from Iraq in October to serve as “an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks” in the homeland right before the election, my antennae perked up. Same as they did when I read that an electoral college doomsday scenario exists in which Dick Cheney casts the deciding vote that gives McCain-Palin the White House.

Bank Borrowing From Fed Already Exceeded Bailout Total in Last Week $700 billion figure means nothing

U.S. banks borrowed $188 billion per day on average in the latest week from the Federal Reserve, meaning that the Fed loaned out more money than the Treasury’s proposed bailout in just one week, still barely managing to keep the economy afloat.

Federal Reserve data showed on Thursday the total amount banks borrowed nearly quadrupled the previous record of $47.97 billion per day notched just the week before, Reuters reports.

$188 billion per day on average over the course of five days means that the total amount borrowed from the Fed in the week ending the 24th September stood at $940 billion – a figure that easily eclipses the proposed $700 billion bailout.

Financial Meltdown: The Financial Edifice of U.S. Imperialism is in Danger of Crumbling

The events of the last ten days on Wall Street represent a new and more destabilizing phase of the turmoil gripping financial institutions and markets in the U.S. A financial crisis has been unfolding for more than a year. It is now the most serious financial crisis of U.S. capitalism since the Great Depression of the 1930s. And it is by no means contained or under control.

Letter From Ron Paul, September 24, 2008

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Dear Friends,

Whenever a Great Bipartisan Consensus is announced, and a compliant media assures everyone that the wondrous actions of our wise leaders are being taken for our own good, you can know with absolute certainty that disaster is about to strike.

The events of the past week are no exception.

Video: This is a Financial Controlled Demolition – Like 9/11

Afshin Rattansi in Tehran talks to Max Keiser in Paris about the end of Wall Street, dollars and toilet paper – and Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs no longer being investment banks.

Paulson’s former firm to be among largest beneficiaries of bailout: bank

It certainly pays to be Treasury Secretary if your former firm is a brokerage house, a new study says.

Goldman Sachs Group — formerly run by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and Morgan Stanley, stand to be among the biggest beneficiaries of a $700 billion US bailout.

Henry Paulson, American Oligarch

Back in June, I wrote: “First, they [the power elite] always take advantage of crisis to make a [power and money]grab…Taking advantage of crisis and making things complex is how the elite play. The current crisis is the mortgage crisis. They are taking advantage of the crisis to sweep up and buy into banks on the cheap, and they are sitting in a conference room with the Fed to create regulations so onerous that only the elite will be able to play.”

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Goldman Sachs, this weekend, have gone overboard in proving my point.

Does Goldman Sachs Run the World? – October 7, 2007

Not completely, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t trying. It seems that, literally, only flesh eating bacteria can stop these guys.

The Canadian dollar breaks above parity and, lo and behold, last Thursday, a Goldman managing director, Mark Carney is named governor of the Bank of Canada.

Mario Draghi, governor of the Bank of Italy, is also a former Goldman managing director.

Then, of course, there is U.S. Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, who was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman.

The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

What nobody in the corporate media is mentioning amid all the blather about the $700-billion Paulson bailout proposal is the impact it will have on the US dollar.

We are told that this huge gift to the financial sector—the assumption, at top dollar, of all the bad debt they’ve piled up–will be at taxpayer expense, but that’s only the half of it. (Really only the quarter of it because since the US government is technically bankrupt already, spending more than it takes in each year, all that money will be borrowed, and will be added to the national debt, meaning that just as the real cost of the $500-billion Iraq War is closer to $2 trillion, the real cost of the $700 billion bailout will be more like $1.5-2.5 trillion.)

Deceitful Transfer Of Bank Assets To Buyer Without Recourse

‘Paulson’ Scheme Tears Up The U.S. Constitution, Legitimising Financial Fraud

It’s As Though The Organized Crime Control Act Of 1970 Doesn’t Exist

A U.S. ‘Coup D’Etat By Installments’, Like Germany In 1933

Greenspan’s $14 Trillion Reported Lie To CNBC’S Leesman On 22nd September:
US sources inform the Editor that the CNBC’s financial reporter Steve Leesman stated that Greenspan told him that on Thursday 18th September 2008, the United States ‘almost went bankrupt because there was NO CASH available’.

What Greenspan did NOT tell the CNBC’s Leesman is that Citibank currently holds $14 trillion which Greenspan, ‘Paulson’, Cheney, Bush Sr., Bush Jr., Clinton 42, Hillary Clinton, Robert Rubin and other organised crime operatives posturing as responsible holders of high office, have hijacked and systematically prevented from being mobilised for the Settlements.

Video: MSM – The Greatest Crisis Since the 14th Century

Analysts say the turmoil in the Russian markets was caused by the global financial crisis. “This is the greatest crisis in history since the 14th century, though it’s not yet realised,” said Lyndon Larouche, an economist and political activist from the US.

Meltdown and Bailout: Why Our Economic System Is on the Verge of Collapse

The immediate cause of our financial meltdown is unchecked, unbridled greed. Mainstream newspapers and the business press are doing a fairly good job of explaining how the lack of regulatory oversight led us into this nightmare.

But you have to dig down one layer to find the cause of that situation. Under cover of the ideological euphemism known as the “free market” and with enormous cash investments over the past four decades, business elites have captured the regulatory organs of powerful democratic states — nowhere more so than the United States — and promoted their own narrow economic agendas for short-term gain.

There’s an enormous amount of discussion about that in the independent media. But to drill down a layer deeper, to the bedrock of the crisis, you have to go to some deep thinkers who don’t get much play in our mainstream economic discourse.

A $1.8 Trillion Bailout: Where the Money’s Going

The U.S. Treasury Department is working through the weekend with Congress to craft a plan to spend as much as $700 billion to absorb bad mortgages and other assets from bank or other institution balance sheets to keep the financial system from collapsing.

Full-Spectrum Breakdown

On Friday morning, Senator Christopher Dodd, the head of the Senate Banking Committee, was interviewed on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Dodd revealed that just hours earlier at an emergency meeting convened by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, lawmakers were told that “We’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system.” Dodd added somberly, that in his three decades of serving in public office, he had “never heard language like this.”

Financial Bailout: America’s Own Kleptocracy

The largest transformation of America’s Financial System since the Great Depression

Nobody expected industrial capitalism to end up like this. Nobody even saw it evolving in this direction. I’m afraid this failing is not unusual among futurists: The natural tendency is to think about how economies can best grow and evolve, not how it can be untracked. But an unforeseen road always seems to appear, and there goes society off on a tangent.

What a two weeks!

Economy – Sen. Reid Says Congress Won’t Act Because `No One Knows What to Do’

Congress is unlikely to pass new legislation to overhaul financial regulations this year “because no one knows what to do,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters today.

The Crash of Western Capitalist Civilization?

“Train-wreck” doesn’t even begin to describe what is starting to happen to the U.S. today with the financial crisis, an onrushing depression, and the failure of George W. Bush’s war policy as he is faced down by Iran and the Russian bear.

Video: From Trap to Crunch to Assimilation – The Great American Power Lunch

Before I start with anything about the banks and the financial markets and this whole mess, I should start at the beginning of all this. On the news the words are flashed, subprime, subprime, mortgage, housing crisis. Crisis crisis crisis! Well just what the hell is the subprime mortgage crisis?

Rogers: U.S. More Commie than China

For a Soros protégé, Jim Rogers has something interesting things to say. He hits the nail right on the head, if only for his own benefit. For instance, from CNBC this morning:

The nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shows that the U.S. is “more communist than China right now” but its brand of socialism is meant only for the rich, investor Jim Rogers, CEO of Rogers Holdings, told CNBC Europe on Monday.

Government to wipe out Fannie/Freddie shareholders by Sunday

And now what could become history’s biggest transfer of tax dollars to bail out bad lending begins. Last month Congress passed a bill that gave the Treasury Department $800 billion to bail out Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE). And while it is unclear how much money will be used to bail them out, the general outlines of the soon-to-be-announced terms are becoming clearer than they were last night.

Freddie, Fannie Failure Could Be World `Catastrophe’

A failure of U.S. mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be a catastrophe for the global financial system, said Yu Yongding, a former adviser to China’s central bank.

Wag the Dog: How to Conceal Massive Economic Collapse

Last week, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had just announced record losses, and so had most reporting corporations. Unemployment was mounting, the foreclosure crisis was deepening, state budgets were in shambles, and massive bailouts were everywhere.

Financial Collapse Edges Closer

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two huge US home-loan institutions, began what appears to be a “death spiral” similar to that which claimed Bear Stearns four months ago.

Trend Alert – Economic 911 – CODE RED

In 2008, Americans will wake up to the worst economic times that anyone alive has ever seen. And they won’t know what hit them. Gerald Celente, 17 December 2007

Fannie and Freddie Shares Crash

Freddie Mac plunged 48 % 4.10 dollars at the Wall Street open following a 22% slide on Thursday and Fannie Mae lost 46% to 7.07 dollars after a 14% drop in the prior session.