... this is how the banking mafia operates. It isn't difficult to see, nor is it difficult to understand. If you play ball with them then you'll do just fine.
Five years ago in the pages of this very column I examined "The Ratings Game: Rating agencies as weapons of economic warfare." In that article, I explained how the major credit ratings agencies—Standard & Poor's (S&P), Moody's, and Fitch Ratings—act as adjuncts of the US State Department, targeting Uncle Sam's enemies with strategic credit downgrades at times that best serve Washington's interest.
As I pointed out at the time, the credit ratings agencies are the oft-overlooked tools of economic (let alone geopolitical) power. With a wave of their hand they can declare a tranche of toxic Mortgage-Backed Securities sludge to be a AAA prime investment opportunity—thus helping to blow a housing bubble and wreak havoc in the economy—or downgrade the credit of a foreign treasury, hindering their ability to raise funds for key programs that could interfere with US plans for world hegemony.
It's time to return to the topic. But this time, we need to examine how these supposedly "independent" agencies are kept in line by their Washington swamp-dwelling masters. By doing so, we will learn some important lessons about how political (and, ultimately, economic) power is wielded by the global banking mafia.
If you caught my recent conversation with Catherine Austin Fitts about the Financial Coup D’état, you might have noted my remark that "if there was some sort of problem with the 'full faith and credit of the US government,' one of the ratings agencies (like S&P) would step in and downgrade the federal government, right?" Of course, that was sarcasm, and Fitts rightly responded with the story of the time that a ratings agency tried to do precisely that . . . and suffered the consequences.
It was 2011, while the economy was still in the early part of the <sarc>miraculous jobless recovery</sarc> from the Lehman crisis. You might recall that at that time the political wrangling over the debt ceiling and the threat of default and/or government shutdown was the big talk in...
...names and faces may change. Far-right governance remains the same, dirty business as usual continuing as always.
It is utterly remarkable that the 9/11 Commission and its final report are still held up as the final word on the events of September 11, 2001.
The horror of 9/11 wasn’t that Muslim terrorists attacked us. The horror was/is that people in our own nation, supposed “citizens” of the US, knew, helped and even profited from this.
One important lesson investors can learn from the market action over the past decade is that the government plays a very important role.
Learn some skills. Better yet teach the newer generations the skills you have. They’ll be better off people, more able to stand on their own two feet,
Long live the King! And long live all the royal superhumans remaining on this planet who are so evidently better than us mere commoners!
I have had no reason up until now to explore the alternatives. No one in my immediate family has had cancer. My dad made it to 86. My mom’s still chugging at 90. But now, my vision is expanded.
One thing is for certain: the fight for the future of Hong Kong is raging as we speak. But the real question is: who is fighting that fight? The people of Hong Kong, or Beijing and Washington?
Out of all this mess, one thing is for certain: Whatever comes of these moves by India, the Kashmirs themselves will be the first to face the consequences of those actions and the last to reap any dividends.
We know that the world is slowing. We know that everything from the ISM’s, to PMI’s , to large truck sales, to rail shipping to you name it, is fading.
The future is an uncertain place, however one thing is absolutely certain. The current economic system can’t function as it is, for a lot longer.
The history of eugenics is as barely known as it is barbaric. It connects some of the wealthiest and most prominent figures of modern times to an atrocious ideology that promotes policies and practices both contemptible and condemnable.
We are on the cusp of one of the fastest, deepest, most consequential disruptions of transportation in history.
These are not rhetorical questions. They are very real questions with answers that have very real consequences for our lives. And I'm not posing these questions from up in the clouds.
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