Fairfield Weekly
December 31, 2009

Do you believe everything the government tells you? Economist and statistician John Williams sure doesn’t. Williams, who has consulted for individuals and Fortune 500 companies, now uncovers the truth behind the U.S. government’s economic numbers on his Web site at ShadowStats.com. Williams says, over the last several decades, the feds have been infusing their data with optimistic biases to make the economy seem far rosier than it really is. His site reruns the numbers using the original methodology. What he found was not good.

Maymin: So we are technically bankrupt?

Williams: Yes, and when countries are in that state, what they usually do is rev up the printing presses and print the money they need to meet their obligations. And that creates inflation, hyperinflation, and makes the currency worthless.

Obama says America will go bankrupt if Congress doesn’t pass the health care bill.

Well, it’s going to go bankrupt if they do pass the health care bill, too, but at least he’s thinking about it. He talks about it publicly, which is one thing prior administrations refused to do. Give him credit for that. But what he’s setting up with this health care system will just accelerate the process.

Where are we right now?

In terms of the GDP, we are about halfway to depression level. If you look at retail sales, industrial production, we are already well into depressionary. If you look at things such as the housing industry, the new orders for durable goods we are in Great Depression territory. If we have hyperinflation, which I see coming not too far down the road, that would be so disruptive to our system that it would result in the cessation of many levels of normal economic commerce, and that would throw us into a great depression, and one worse than was seen in the 1930s.

What kind of hyperinflation are we talking about?

I am talking something like you saw with the Weimar Republic of the 1930s. There the currency became worthless enough that people used it actually as toilet paper or wallpaper. You could go to a fine restaurant and have an expensive dinner and order an expensive bottle of wine. The next morning that empty bottle of wine is worth more as scrap glass than it had been the night before filled with expensive wine.

We just saw an extreme example in Zimbabwe. … Probably the most extreme hyperinflation that anyone has ever seen. At the same time, you still had a functioning, albeit troubled, Zimbabwe economy. How could that be? They had a workable backup system of a black market in U.S. dollars. We don’t have a backup system of anything. Our system, with its heavy dependence on electronic currency, in a hyperinflation would not do well. It would probably cease to function very quickly. You could have disruptions in supply chains to food stores. The economy would devolve into something like a barter system until they came up with a replacement global currency.

Barack Obama has been president for just under 10 months but he’s added two trillion to the national debt and will double it by the end of the decade. CBS’ Mark Knoller:

This latest milestone in the ever-rising journey of the National Debt comes less than eight months after it hit $11 trillion for the first time. The latest high-point is not unexpected, considering the federal deficit for the just-ended 2009 fiscal year hit an all-time high at $1.42-trillion – more than triple the previous year’s record high.

Much of the increase in the deficit and debt is attributed to government spending outpacing revenue – both exacerbated by the recession and the government response to it – including hundreds of billions in bailouts and stimulus spending and tax cuts along with decreased tax revenues due to rising unemployment.

[...]

The National Debt has increased about $1.6 trillion on Mr. Obama’s watch, though less than $4.9 trillion run up during the presidency of George W. Bush.

But the White House budget review issued in August projects that by the end of the current fiscal year on Sept 30th, the National Debt could top $14 trillion. It gets worse. The same document projects that by the end of the decade, the National Debt will hit $24.5 trillion — exceeding the Gross Domestic Product projected for 2019 of $22.8 trillion.

According to the Treasury Department, the debt stood at $5.727 trillion on January 19, 2001, Bill Clinton’s last day in office, and $10.627 trillion when Bush left office eight years later. That’s $612.5 billion (or $0.6125 trillion) a year, during which we fought two major wars, had the 9/11 attacks, and at least two major bailouts to deal with a global financial crisis.

We’re thus far averaging $1.92 trillion a year under Obama, or a factor of 3.146 more. And the government is projecting that we’ll continue spending at this crisis rate for the next decade, more than doubling the current record level?

That ain’t good.

Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
December 16, 2009

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has been named TIME person of the year for 2009 and hailed as a saviour when in the real world he has overseen the worsening of the financial crisis, the looting of the American economy by foreign offshore banks and the destruction of the Dollar.

In a world where those vastly escalating war are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, it makes perfect sense to award the Federal Reserve chairman with person of the year.

“His creative leadership helped ensure that 2009 was a period of weak recovery rather than catastrophic depression, and he still wields unrivaled power over our money, our jobs, our savings and our national future.” writes TIME.

The magazine also bizarrely states that Bernanke launched “a groundbreaking public relations campaign to demystify the Fed”, despite the fact that the chairman has consistently lobbied Congress for protection of the Fed’s “independence” (read secrecy), while categorically refusing to answer questions regarding the Fed’s decision making.

Bernanke has overseen the handing over of trillions of dollars to foreign banks and has defied lawsuits to keep secret the destination of the money from the American people.

The timing of the announcement couldn’t be more perfect. As NBC’s Matt Laur pointed out, Bernanke can go to Capitol Hill tomorrow, hold up TIME magazine and ask to be reappointed as Fed chairman.

Of course, if TIME’s person of the year award was really judged on toil in the best interests of the American people, the clear winner would be Congressman Ron Paul, who has railed against the Fed and Bernanke with great success this year.

Paul’s tireless effort to wrestle power away from the Federal Reserve and put it back into the hands of the American people has seen a major victory with the progression of legislation slated to audit the Fed and put it’s activities under public scrutiny.

Paul has consistently exposed how the Fed has delivered the financial crisis to America and the world via excessive spending, debt expansion and monetary inflation.

Instead TIME’s article on Bernanke refers to Ron Paul in the context of “Bleeding-heart liberals and tea-party reactionaries”.

Paul gave his opinion on the announcement regarding Bernanke on MSNBC’s Morning Joe earlier today, commenting:

“He is the most powerful man in the world, I believe a case can be made for that.”

“Because he controls the supply of money, the Dollar which is the reserve currency of the world. He can create a trillion dollars in secret without any monitoring of the Congress. So there is no transparency and I think he is more powerful than the president.” the Congressman added.

“The big question is, has he used that power for good or for evil? And of course, my side of the argument is that the system is evil, and the chairman, whether it’s Greenspan or Bernanke, they can do no good.”

“They cause our troubles, they cause inflation, they cause the bubbles, and therefore the bust, the correction is always their fault.” Paul stated.

“I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.

I called Goldman Sachs spokesman Lucas van Praag to ask whether it’s true that Goldman partners feel they need handguns to protect themselves from the angry proletariat. He didn’t call me back. The New York Police Department has told me that “as a preliminary matter” it believes some of the bankers I inquired about do have pistol permits. The NYPD also said it will be a while before it can name names.

While we wait, Goldman has wrapped itself in the flag of Warren Buffett, with whom it will jointly donate $500 million, part of an effort to burnish its image — and gain new Goldman clients. Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein also reversed himself after having previously called Goldman’s greed “God’s work” and apologized earlier this month for having participated in things that were “clearly wrong.”

Has it really come to this? Imagine what emotions must be billowing through the halls of Goldman Sachs to provoke the firm into an apology. Talk that Goldman bankers might have armed themselves in self-defense would sound ludicrous, were it not so apt a metaphor for the way that the most successful people on Wall Street have become a target for public rage.

Pistol Ready

Common sense tells you a handgun is probably not even all that useful. Suppose an intruder sneaks past the doorman or jumps the security fence at night. By the time you pull the pistol out of your wife’s jewelry safe, find the ammunition, and load your weapon, Fifi the Pomeranian has already been taken hostage and the gun won’t do you any good. As for carrying a loaded pistol when you venture outside, dream on. Concealed gun permits are almost impossible for ordinary citizens to obtain in New York or nearby states.

In other words, a little humility and contrition are probably the better route.

Until a couple of weeks ago, that was obvious to everyone but Goldman, a firm famous for both prescience and arrogance. In a display of both, Blankfein began to raise his personal- security threat level early in the financial crisis. He keeps a summer home near the Hamptons, where unrestricted public access would put him at risk if the angry mobs rose up and marched to the East End of Long Island.

To the Barricades

He tried to buy a house elsewhere without attracting attention as the financial crisis unfolded in 2007, a move that was foiled by the New York Post. Then, Blankfein got permission from the local authorities to install a security gate at his house two months before Bear Stearns Cos. collapsed.

This is the kind of foresight that Goldman Sachs is justly famous for. Blankfein somehow anticipated the persecution complex his fellow bankers would soon suffer. Surely, though, this man who can afford to surround himself with a private army of security guards isn’t sleeping with the key to a gun safe under his pillow. The thought is just too bizarre to be true.

So maybe other senior people at Goldman Sachs have gone out and bought guns, and they know something. But what?

Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary during the bailout and a former Goldman Sachs CEO, let it slip during testimony to Congress last summer when he explained why it was so critical to bail out Goldman Sachs, and — oh yes — the other banks. People “were unhappy with the big discrepancies in wealth, but they at least believed in the system and in some form of market-driven capitalism. But if we had a complete meltdown, it could lead to people questioning the basis of the system.”

Torn Curtain

There you have it. The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money, not from the free market, but from the lack of one. Goldman Sachs blew its cover when the firm’s revenue from trading reached a record $27 billion in the first nine months of this year, and a public that was writhing in financial agony caught on that the profits earned on taxpayer capital were going to pay employee bonuses.

This slip-up let the other bailed-out banks happily hand off public blame to Goldman, which is unpopular among its peers because it always seems to win at everyone’s expense.

Plenty of Wall Streeters worry about the big discrepancies in wealth, and think the rise of a financial industry-led plutocracy is unjust. That doesn’t mean any of them plan to move into a double-wide mobile home as a show of solidarity with the little people, though.

Cool Hand Lloyd

No, talk of Goldman and guns plays right into the way Wall- Streeters like to think of themselves. Even those who were bailed out believe they are tough, macho Clint Eastwoods of the financial frontier, protecting the fistful of dollars in one hand with the Glock in the other. The last thing they want is to be so reasonably paid that the peasants have no interest in lynching them.

American consumers shopped more for bargains at the start of the U.S. holiday season and spent significantly less than a year ago, according to early data released on Sunday.

Consumers said they will have spent nearly 8 percent less on average, or about $343 per person, over the weekend that includes U.S. Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and runs through Sunday, according to the National Retail Federation.

While traffic to stores and retail websites rose to 195 million people from 172 million in 2008, the early data this weekend represents a worrisome sign for retailers, who had braced for weak sales and sought ways to protect margins.

Data released by ShopperTrak on Saturday showed that sales rose a scant 0.5 percent on Black Friday, which is often the single busiest day of the holiday shopping season.

The rally in gold prices has driven several bullion analysts to frenzied forecasts. Some say gold prices will reach $2,000 per ounce soon. Others are predicting big boom for the yellow metal, saying gold prices will zoom to $5,000 and eventually to even $15,000 per ounce in the years to come.

What is happening in bullion market these days? Yes, agreed that weakening dollar, global economic meltdown, shrinking gold supply and increasing cost of mining gold from the earth are all making gold the most-sought after investment these days. That is also driving the yellow metal prices to record highs.

These days, the biggest gold buyers are not individual customers or families, but global central bankers that are vying with each other to accumulate gold reserves in an attempt to get out of their decades-old dependence on the US dollar as the best asset class. India jumped into the bullion fray to buy 200 tonnes of gold from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) early this month. Other countries like China, Russia, Brazil and Sri Lanka are frantically trying to accumulate gold reserves.

The U.S. Mint said Wednesday it will suspend sales of the popular American Eagle 1-ounce bullion coins as rising demand depleted its inventory.

“The United States Mint has depleted its current inventory of 2009 American Eagle 1-ounce gold bullion coins due to the continued strong demand for this product,” the Mint told its authorized dealers in a memorandum on Wednesday.

November sales to date were at 124,000 ounces, higher than the 115,500 ounces sold in each month of September and October, the Mint said.

The Mint said it expects to resume sales in early December.