Economic Issues Will Have A Significant Impacts On Your Life.

Why Your Savings And Retirement Will Soon Be Gone

April 14, 2014 by Bob Livingston 

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What’s left of the U.S. middle class is under economic assault like no time in American history.

Federal Reserve money printing is finally catching up to us. One hundred years of money printing is coming to a head. We are seeing the beginning phases of hyperinflation.

Never mind the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ phony inflationary measurement, where the consumer price index basket of goods is changed monthly to remove price-rising goods. Food prices are up 19 percent just since January. On an annualized basis, that is 76 percent. Rising food prices and rising gas prices are where the middle class see and feel inflation.

Remember that inflation is not rising prices. Rising prices are a symptom of inflation, which is an increase in the money supply through money creation or debt.

Printing money is a crime if you do it. But if the powerful government monopoly does it, it’s called “monetization.” Government is now desperately inflating because the more inflation, the more wealth is stolen.

Here are some truths:

• Governments steal as much as they can without collapsing the system (they hope).
• The more money they create for nothing, the richer and more powerful they get.
• The bigger the government gets and the more reckless it gets, the more it must suppress its people, because many begin to wake up.
• The bigger government crime, the greater the propaganda and deception.
• Fact: Every dollar the government creates means that a dollar is stolen from the people. Paper money confiscates wealth.

The act of money creation means that more and more of the national wealth flows to the Federal government. How in the name of Pete do people think that the U.S. government became so powerful and so wealthy in property?

The government produces nothing. It has to steal, and it does so on an unimaginable scale. The mind of man cannot deal with such a massive transfer of wealth, and few people even suspect it. Why do people not know about the biggest fraud in history?

In addition to $75 billion a month of quantitative easing, the Federal government is running multi-hundred-billion-dollar deficits. The U.S. now has at least $126 trillion in outstanding obligations (i.e., money it has stolen from the American people).

So what’s a government to do? Steal even more from the people.

The Federal government is eyeing the remaining savings and retirement accounts of the American people. This has been going on for years. In fact, individual retirement accounts were set up to fool Americans into investing in the stock market to prop it up, help consolidate retirement accounts and transfer it to the bankster mob. Think your money in IRAs, 401(k)s and pension funds belong to you? Ha! Try to take out your money and see what hoops you have to jump through and what penalties you have to pay.

There is now more than $21 trillion in U.S IRAs, 401(k)s and pension plans. That $21 trillion would more than offset the mythical $17.5 trillion U.S. “debt.” For more on the U.S. debt, readThe ‘National Debt’ Is Smoke And Mirrors.

Last year, the U.S. Consumer Protection Bureau, established by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, stated that it believes Americans are too stupid to prepare on their own for retirement and that it has proposed “managing” people’s retirement funds. What that means is another unConstitutional government agency will take your money and swap it for government funny money.

President Barack Obama’s MyRA “savings plan” is yet another scam to try and prop up the failing system. Announced at this year’s State of the Union address, Obama tried to huckster this boondoggle as a great way to “invest” in safe government securities and a starter savings account.

The term “government securities” is nothing more than typical government double-speak and an oxymoron. When the government goes bankrupt — and it will — those Treasuries will be worthless. And now the government is encouraging you to buy them.

MyRAs will earn the same interest as the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) Government Securities Investment Fund that is available to Federal employees. The TSP’s own paperwork says this about its interest rate: “The G Fund is subject to inflation risk, or the possibility that your G Fund investment will not grow enough to offset the reduction in purchasing power that results from inflation.”

If you want to “invest” in the U.S. government (not something I would recommend), there is currently a provision to do so. The MyRA plan mimics it. Just open an account with Treasuryto buy U.S. savings bonds. The difference is that MyRA will be run by a crony Wall Street firm.

All your savings will be visible to government and available for confiscation — the same government that is already eyeing your pension funds, individual retirement accounts and 401(k) plans, as I mentioned. Don’t think this will happen? Governments across the globehave already done so, and the U.S. government is on board in supporting what it is speciously calling “bail-ins” as occurred in Cyprus.

Under the scheme, when banks get in trouble or government needs more money, it swaps your bank savings for bank stock. You are in essence “buying” into the bank.

And if this news isn’t bad enough, take these two factors into consideration. Last fall, the International Monetary Fund issued a report recommending a series of escalating income and consumption tax increases, culminating in the direct confiscation of assets. Then last week, Russia floated a balloon through its Voice of Russia propaganda arm that it intends to attack the petrodollar in retaliation for America’s meddling in Ukraine.

First, from the IMF, according to page 49 of its report:

The sharp deterioration of the public finances in many countries has revived interest in a “capital levy”— a one-off tax on private wealth—as an exceptional measure to restore debt sustainability. The appeal is that such a tax, if it is implemented before avoidance is possible and there is a belief that it will never be repeated, does not distort behavior (and may be seen by some as fair). … The conditions for success are strong, but also need to be weighed against the risks of the alternatives, which include repudiating public debt or inflating it away…

The tax rates needed to bring down public debt to precrisis levels, moreover, are sizable: reducing debt ratios to end-2007 levels would require (for a sample of 15 euro area countries) a tax rate of about 10 percent on households with positive net wealth.

Regarding Russia and the petrodollar, this is not the first time another nation has threatened to trade oil outside the dollar. Such a move would be disastrous for the American economy and likely crash it.

Because of an agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, in order to trade in oil, countries must first transfer their money into U.S. dollars. This happens no matter who is buying the oil or who they’re buying it from. The oil-buying country gives the oil-selling country U.S. dollars and receives oil in exchange.

The oil-selling country then has to sell those dollars to convert it back to its own currency. If Russia, China and a few other countries begin trading oil in some other currency, about 3 trillion U.S. dollars will suddenly flood the market. This will send hyperinflation into the stratosphere.

I have long sounded a warning to get your retirement funds out of the system and remove your money from banks (beyond what is necessary to pay bills) in order to protect yourself. I did so long ago. I gladly took the penalty and have long since recovered what was taken.

I also recommend you buy gold and silver and keep it in your possession, not in the bank or in a safe deposit box.

Another Illegal Activity By Your President.

Obama Signs Bill Barring Iranian Terrorist From Entering U.S., Then Says He Won’t Enforce It

April 18, 2014 by Ben Bullard 

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By now you probably know about Hamid Abutalebi. He’s the would-be diplomat whom Iran wanted to send to the United Nations – but whom Congress blocked, on a strongly bipartisan vote, because he was among the terrorists who helped take Americans into captivity in the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979.

Today, President Barack Obama signed Congress’ bill into law – and then immediately appended a signing statement informing the world he would not enforce the law he’d just signed.

“Acts of espionage and terrorism against the United States and our allies are unquestionably problems of the utmost gravity, and I share the Congress’s concern that individuals who have engaged in such activity may use the cover of diplomacy to gain access to our Nation,” Obama wrote.

“Nevertheless, as President [George H.W.] Bush also observed, ‘curtailing by statute my constitutional discretion to receive or reject ambassadors is neither a permissible nor a practical solution.’ I shall therefore continue to treat section 407, as originally enacted and as amended by S. 2195, as advisory in circumstances in which it would interfere with the exercise of this discretion.”

In other words, Obama is saying he intends to treat the bill, which bars Abutalebi from entering the U.S., as a piece of advice and nothing more, using as a pretense a Bush I precedent that emanated from a squabble with Congress over dictating to the President a job the Constitution already empowers him with carrying out.

The bill barring Abutalebi from setting foot on U.S. soil was authored by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and received strong support from both side of the aisle. Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) didn’t hesitate to use language so strongly condemning Abutalebi’s nomination that Cruz himself might as well have spoken the same words.

Iran’s foreign minister responded to the vote by calling Congress a pack of “radicals,” reaffirming in the process that Congress had made the right call from the start.

With Obama’s ambivalent action today, Abutalebi appears to be headed, illegally, to the U.S. as the Iranian ambassador to the UN. But it’s doubtful at this point that he’ll be deported.

Reid Goes Ballistic Against Bundy Supporters.

Dispute Over Bundy Ranch Clearly Shows Who Represents Americans And Who Wants Them Punished By Government Overlords

April 18, 2014 by Sam Rolley 

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Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) went out of his way to insult Americans who sympathize with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy on Thursday, labeling supporters as “nothing more than domestic terrorists.” Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) condemned the Nevada Democrat’s words, saying that Reid’s language could potentially increase tensions to the point of violence. It’s beginning to seem like that may be Reid’s goal.

“I don’t think calling people names is going to calm this down,” Paul said on Fox News. “I think it’s liable to stir it up. So I think all parties, including Senator Reid, should calm the rhetoric a little bit. Let’s try to have a peaceful resolution to this.”

Reid, whose obsession with the Bundy ranch dispute has raised questions about his motives (more on that from Wayne Allyn Root), remains adamant in calling for the government to punish the Nevada rancher for failing to pay grazing fees or to recognize Federal authority.

“Clive Bundy does not recognize the United States,” Reid said Thursday. “The United States, he says, is a foreign government. He doesn’t pay his taxes. He doesn’t pay his fees. And he doesn’t follow the law. He continues to thumb his nose at authority.”

He added, “It is an issue we cannot let go, just walk away from.”

But Paul, who said he has legislation “in the hopper” that would help to resolve issues like the Bundy dispute, has taken a more pragmatic view. Paul’s legislation would reportedly give States more control over Federal lands within their borders and more authority over the Endangered Species Act.

“This is a real, I think, intellectual and constitutional and legal debate, but it shouldn’t be about violence of arms, and I hope that the government will not be there in full arms and provoke a showdown and something terrible will happen,” he said. “I hope that doesn’t happen.”

In other words: There are Americans willing to support Bundy while exercising their Constitutionally-protected right to bear arms— government should respect that. If it doesn’t, the potential for violence is real.

Compare that to what Reid said of Bundy’s supporters Thursday.

“There were hundreds, hundreds of people from around the country that came there,” Reid said. “They had sniper rifles in the freeway. They had weapons, automatic weapons. They had children lined up. They wanted to make sure they got hurt first … What if others tried the same thing?”

Translation: Guns! They have guns! Automatic weapons! Terrorists! They won’t listen to us! What if other Americans don’t listen to us! What about the kids? We have to make an example here.

The only guns that Paul has expressed concerns about since the Bundy dispute began making headlines are those carried by agents of the U.S.’s 48 Federal agencies.

“I think there’s an opposite thing to what Harry Reid said, and that’s the federal government shouldn’t violate the law, nor should we have 48 Federal agencies carrying weapons and having SWAT teams,” Paul said Tuesday in a radio interview with the Kentucky-based WHAS.

Update:

Asked on “What’s Your Point?” about his attempts to classify Bundy’s supporters “domestic terrorists,” Reid again attacked the citizens:

Bundy doesn’t believe that the American government is valid, he believes that the United States is a foreign government.

He doesn’t pay his taxes. He doesn’t follow the law. He doesn’t pay his fees.

And if anyone thinks by any figment of their imagination what happened up there last week was just people rallying to somebody that was oppressed — 600 people came in, armed. They had practiced, they had maneuvered, they knew what they were doing. They set up snipers in strategic locations with sniper rifles. They had assault weapons. They had automatic weapons. And they boasted about the fact that they put women in children — in fact one retired sheriff from Arizona boasted that he put women and children so that they would get hit first.

So, 600 people. If there were ever an example of people who were domestic, violent terrorist wannabes, these are the guys. And I think that we should call it that way.

IRS Views Conservatives As Guilty.

A Majority Of Americans Fear The Government. It's Not For Wackos Any More!

Not Just For Conspiracy Theorists Anymore: Fear Of Federal Government Goes Mainstream

April 18, 2014 by Sam Rolley 

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More than half of Americans view the Federal government as a major threat to individual liberty and a growing number express outright fear of the Nation’s governing apparatus.

According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 37 percent of likely U.S. voters say that they are afraid of the Federal government and 54 percent say that it is a threat to individual liberty. That’s compared to 47 percent who don’t fear the government, 17 percent who aren’t sure and 22 percent who feel government protects their liberty.

Rasmussen reports that America’s decline in comfort with government has been rapid:

As recently as December 2012, voters were evenly divided on this question: 45% said the federal government was a protector of individual rights, while 46% described it as a threat to those rights.

According to the poll results, men and all Americans over the age of 40 are more likely to fear the Federal government than young voters and women.

Support for the 2^nd Amendment may have some bearing on how Americans feel about the Nation’s political leaders, as 42 percent of gun owners expressed fear of the government compared to 30 percent of people who do not own guns.

Among union members, whose labor leaders often encourage government expansion, trust in government is also not particularly high. Fifty-two percent of unionized workers said that they fear the government versus just 30 percent of non-union workers.

Rasmussen relays that political affiliation plays a significant role in Americans’ comfort with the Federal government. Democrats are, unsurprisingly, less likely to worry about government overreach.

From the polling agency:

Democrats, as they do in most instances, have a less critical view of the federal government than Republicans and voters not affiliated with either of the major parties. Most GOP voters (53%) and 43% of unaffiliateds fear the federal government. Just 18% of voters in President Obama’s party agree.

Seventy-three percent (73%) of Republicans and 59% of unaffiliated voters view the government as a threat to individual liberty, a view shared by only 34% of Democrats. GOP and unaffiliated voters are twice as likely as Democrats to believe that the federal government rarely or never does the right thing.

The majority of Americans with any of the aforementioned political affiliations, however, agree that the Federal government has become “a special interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests.”

According to the opinions recorded in the survey, 71 percent of Americans believe that the Nation’s Founders would be disgusted by the current size of the Federal government, 21 percent believe they would think it is about right.

The results of the Rasmussen poll tie in with the findings of a Fox News poll released earlier in the week which found that around 60 percent of Americans think that President Barack Obama routinely lies to the public.

Only 15 percent of respondents to that poll feel that Obama is truthful at all times, while 37 percent said that the President lies about important matters “most of the time.” Twenty percent felt that Obama lies “some of the time.”

Where Is The Debris? MH370 Still Missing.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 update: Submarine drone completes fourth mission on sea floor

The first two missions were cut short, but three and four have successfully combed the bottom of the Indian Ocean

SARAH GRAY

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TOPICS: MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT MH370, BLUEFIN-21, SUBMARINE, SEARCH TEAM, MISSING PLANE,INNOVATION NEWS, NEWS

Crew move the U.S. Navy's Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle into position for deployment in the southern Indian Ocean, April 14, 2014. (Credit: Reuters/Peter D. Blair)

The good news is that robotic submarine Bluefin-21 completed another successful deep-sea mission. Unfortunately, it found no “contacts of interest” in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. According to Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Center, which is coordinating the search, the autonomous underwater vehicle has covered 42.5 square miles of the search area thus far.

The underwater drone uses side sonar to create high-resolution 3-D images of the seafloor.  The search area is located on the not previously mapped Zenith Plateau. According to Reuters, it is likely covered in a sludge called “foraminiferal ooze” made of microscopic organisms. Each of Bluefin’s missions is around 24 hours long — 16 of those hours are spent scanning the bottom of the Indian Ocean for any debris. If it finds anything of note, the submarine can swap into camera mode and take images of the debris.

Bluefin’s first two missions were cut short; one was due to depths below the AUV’s programmed 2.8 mile limit, the other was due to technical issues. Problems were eventually resolved and according to the Joint Agency Coordination Center, Bluefin-21 is currently on mission five.

The AUV deep-ocean search began earlier this week; previously searchers were using a U.S. Navy black box detector towed by the Australian ship Ocean Shield. The Ocean Shield was able to pick up four “pings” that were consistent with black box signals. Planes’ black boxes are equipped with two recorders, one for voices in the cockpit and the other for data. If found, these recorders could give investigators insight into what caused the plane to veer off course and end in the Indian Ocean. Each recorder is also furnished with a beacon that goes off when it makes contact with water. Unfortunately, these beacons only have a battery life of 30 days.

Investigators were hoping to pick up more “pings,” but after a week it was suspected that the black box beacons’ batteries had died.  With the four signals, however, investigators were able to further narrow the search area, which is located around 1,400 miles northwest of Perth, Australia.

In the meantime, the search for floating debris has now entered its 42nd day — with no physical evidence found. According to CBS News retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who is heading up the multinational search, the visual search will be ending within days.

Malaysia’s Minister of Defense Hishamuddin Hussein said the visual search would extend through Easter weekend, but after that investigators would need to regroup. ”There will come a time when we need to regroup and reconsider,” he told reporters. “But in any event, the search will always continue. It’s just a matter of approach.”

Flight MH370 has been missing since March 8. The plane and 239 people on board never made it to its Beijing destination. Much mystery (and even some far-flung conspiracy theories) have surrounded the plane’s disappearance. Early into the flight the plane’s communication transponders went out and the plane dramatically diverted from its flight plan, heading west. Investigators are still unsure why the plane flew off course and ended in the Indian Ocean.

h/t CBS News, Joint Agency Coordination Center

When Comparing Bottles, Even A Half Full One Looks Superior To One That Is Empty.

by David P. Goldman

Putin Isn’t a Genius — We Are Complete Idiots

April 17th, 2014 - 9:34 pm           David P. Goldman

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Vladimir Putin happily allowed the Kiev authorities to shoot a few pro-Russian demonstrators while keeping his military forces on ice across the border. I predicted (and am sticking to my story) that Russia will not seize more territory in Eastern Ukraine–not for the time being, in any case. Russia will stand back and watch Ukraine implode, the way Egypt did during the two years following the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. Before the Maidan coup, Putin was willing to sit on $15 billion in arrears to Gazprom and put up $18 billion in new money. Now he wants $35 billion in back gas bills, on top of Ukraine’s $15 billion a year current account deficit. The IMF wants massive cuts in subsidies, which will make the Kiev government an object of hatred without putting  a dent into the problem. Western taxpayers won’t cough up $50 billion for Ukraine, not even a small fraction of it.

Yankee Doodle went to Maidan, stuck a feather in his hat and called it democracy. Our foreign policy ideologues are like UFO cultists who are so convinced that space aliens are invading the earth that they see moon men in every glare of swamp gas. In this case, it isn’t moon men, but aspiring republicans. First Tahrir Square, then Maidan, were glorious proof of the Manifest Destiny of Western democracy.

A Google search with the terms “Putin” and “genius” yields over 10 million hits. If I hear another pundit’s panegyric to Putin’s great intellect, I’ll lose my lunch. Putin is not that smart; the trouble is that we are complete idiots. When Ukraine imploded, our leaders–from Victoria Nuland at the State Department to the neo-conservatives–rather assumed that we would reverse Ukraine’s polarity to the West, and humiliate Russia with the loss of Crimea. Putin called our bluff, and we had no viable military options.

Putin doesn’t need to send the Red Army into Ukraine. Every Ukrainian officer above the rank of major came up through the ranks in the Red Army. Ukrainian commanders won’t fight the Russians. They are the Russians. Yesterday we watchedUkrainian paratroopers turn their armored vehicles over to Russian separatists. Maybe John McCain can send them more weapons to hand over to Moscow.

Americans play Monopoly, Russians chess: We landed on Park Place fair and square, and that gave us the right to put down a hotel. Never mind that Ukraine is a basket case with a per capital income a tenth that of the European Community, whose best young people (along with some of its worst) have left the country, with a ruined economy and a declining population. Putin isn’t playing by the rules printed on the inside top cover of the board game. He’s another Hitler! Where is our Churchill? It’s a Monty Python remake of Dr. Strangelove. A few provocateurs holding a Russian flag pass out handbills demanding that Jews in Eastern Ukraine register with the authorities, and the whole of the media as well as the Obama administration hyperventilates, until the affair is exposed as a hoax.

The threat, as the great chess theorist Aron Nimzowitsch wrote, is mightier than the execution. Putin will let the West take ownership of the Ukrainian disaster until it festers, and then he will pick and choose what he wants. We will huff and puff and bloviate about Putin, the new Hitler, while Ukraine’s economy disintegrates. Bismarck’s aphorism applies: die ganze Ukraine ist nicht die gesunden knochen eines pommerschen Grenadiers wert.