International Forecaster Weekly

Four Years Past The Point Of No Return

Four years past the point of no return... The rape of social security... Gonzales, torture, and indefinite detention... Gov Swarzenegger pumping up Cal. state debt by 50%... The Cato Institude, an elitist propaganda machine... why isn't Bob Novak going to jail? RFID getting under our skin... and more

Bob Chapman | February 26, 2005

Four years ago we passed the point of no return financially for the United States and the remainder of the world. Our situation today is far worse than it was in the 1930s. Our government and our banking system were bankrupt in the 1930s and they are bankrupt today. We are being forced to adopt a fascist system led by elitist corporatists and our government, something we were able to avoid during the depression. This time it is all going under.

Between 1945 and 1960, we created real wealth. Then we began with GATT, which eventually evolved into WTO. For the last 20 years, we have eliminated tariffs, shipped entire industries overseas and have outsourced many of our best jobs to the third world.

Most of the people we elected to Congress are either paid off or too dumb for words. The latest example of jumping from the frying pan into the fire is in California’s choice of trading socialist Grey Davis for fascist Arnold Schwarzenegger, a creature captured and harnessed by the elitists. When the real estate bubble is broken and decimates the wealth of California again, we can promise you California will end up with martial law and many other states will immediately follow.

Anyone who cannot recognize that we have an economic, fiscal, monetary and financial crisis is just plain dumb. We have a decadent country that no longer wishes to produce, just spend. Our technology is being shipped out, over 50% of our factories are gone, we now import agricultural products and our great skills are being lost. Our country is rotting and dumb Americans stand by and watch. As we said last week, we are not alone; Europe is in the same predicament.

Most of us stand by and watch as our President prepares to rape Social Security and ultimately destroy it. Socialism is bad, fascism is worse. Social Security is the only bulwark left for the disabled and retiree. Let us suppose you put your money in the stock market and it collapses, like we believe it will, you will be out of your only backup. Private pension plans are already in jeopardy. If the market goes down, many of them will fail, so you do not want to lose your Social Security.

We were against the Afghanistan and Iraq wars three years before they started. We must immediately get out, and if we do not we are not going to have a US military. The volunteer system will be dead. Few want to join the National Guard or Reserves and recruitment is difficult in all service branches. The military knows what is going on and they do not like it. We know Cheney and Rumsfeld want to use mini-nukes and they plan to use perpetual warfare to establish a one-world government. We cannot allow this to happen.

Alberto Gonzales, Bush’s Nazi lawyer, has been confirmed as Attorney General. We can now look forward to the promotion of indefinite detentions not only in foreign locations but in the US as well. The torture of detainees (prisoners) held without charges will expand under the legal rationalization for the untrammeled exercise for executive powers and the egregious abuse and misuse of those powers. You might recall that Hitler used the same strategy and justification in relations with the Soviet Union based on the excuse that Russia had not participated in the Hague Convention and therefore, had no rights under it. This is what led to German barbarity on the eastern front that was, of course, answered in return by Russian atrocities.

Our new Himmler, Mr. Gonzales, like his master George W. Bush, calls the war against terrorism “a new kind of war.” Mr. Gonzales said, “In my judgment, this new Paradigm renders obsolete and quaint" various provisions of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war.” He also said the Geneva Convention did not apply to the war against the Taliban and al Qaida in Afghanistan. The neocons are operating under the assumption that there are no limitations, which either the courts or Congress and its laws can impose on the President in the conduct of war. Events will be staged and wars will happen. Gonzales argues as well that the President could launch a military attack “pre-emptively” against alleged terrorist organizations, or countries claimed to be harboring terrorists, whether or not such organizations or countries were even linked to 9/11 or terrorism. These arguments may well have been the basis for an executive order authorizing inhumane treatment of interrogation techniques in Iraq, which our President may not disclose to the public. The military has been using torture and although authorized to also do so the FBI has refused to follow the military’s sordid example. The FBI knows all about this because military and CIA torturers were masquerading as FBI agents. This Gonzales is a very evil man and we will all suffer by his acts.

Last year under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger the state’s total debt load grew by more than 55% and the state budget has a budget deficit of more than $8.1 billion for 2005-06. Fifteen billion dollars in additional debt was incurred, which has only postponed California’s plunge into bankruptcy.

Arnold’s answer is to sidestep the legislature and use referendums. His answer is major budget cuts; structural reform that would give him as Governor, more powers then the legislators and a decimation of the state pension system. That would entail turning the program into 401(k’s) and serving the funds up to Wall Street on an individual basis. This cuts back on the state’s contributions and enriches the elitists on Wall Street.

Arnold is led by George Schultz, one of the guiding lights of the conspiracy. A creature of Becthel Corp., a devotee of the Chicago School led by Milton Friedman and the creator of economic restructuring of Chile under dictator General Augusto Pinochet. Arnold and George Bush are in the process of trying to replicate the failed privatization of Social Security that Chile adopted.

Schwarzenegger wants to cut health and human services in a state that already has six million uninsured. Due to massive illegal immigration, most emergency trauma centers have already been cut. The tax base does not reflect the real economy because the illegals work in the black economy paying no taxes and sending more than $4 billion out of the state every year. Arnold says drug companies will get voluntary discounts, which we doubt. In his campaign, Arnold received more than $360,000 in contributions from drug companies. He also wants to cut $2.2 billion from education in a system that has been one of the worst in the country since 1928. When we lived there, we were forced to send our children to private schools.

Probably the most damaging item for change is the privatization of CALPERS, the California Public Employees Retirement System. He would pour the money into Wall Street, just as George Bush wants to do with Social Security, in small accounts to keep the stock market from collapsing and to provide Wall Street with billions of dollars in fees. He wants to abandon the system, so that the state no longer has to fund it. Incidentally, CALPERS returns average 8.89%, which is excellent, whereas 401(k’s) on average have returned 6.86%. Voters in California had best remove Arnold before he does permanent damage.

As of 9/30/04, JP Morgan Chase had $43 trillion in derivatives, which is about four times US GDP; Citigroup has $17.5 trillion and Bank of America $17.1 trillion. Other trillion dollar players are Wachovia and HSBC, Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corp. Twenty-five banks held $86.9 trillion in derivatives. The collateralization for these derivatives was only $804 billion. For those unfamiliar with derivatives, they are a form of insurance. Eighty-seven percent of all derivatives were interest rate bets, followed by foreign exchange bets of 9%. In the past three years, banks’ derivatives holding increased by 25% and they have doubled since 2000. Since the end of 2000 derivatives have soared $44 trillion or 108%, while assets have grown only $2 trillion or 32% to $8.2 trillion, loans have grown $1.1 trillion, or 28%, to $4.8 trillion and equity capital has grown $292 billion, or 55% to $821 billion. Thus, derivatives are now ten times assets, 17 times loans, and 103 times equity capital. The real danger of this massive bookmaking operation is that it is entirely unregulated. It is a Ponzi scheme. When the economy heads down and the stock, bond and real estate markets follow, the derivative house of cards will collapse. An additional danger for banks is that they are setting aside less and less capital for loan loss reserves and as the economy comes unglued their losses will mount more quickly. At the big banks, charge-offs for bad loans have exceeded provisions for the seventh quarter in a row and the overall level of loan-loss reserves declined for the fourth time in five quarters. The big banks only covered 93% of their write-offs, pocketing the difference as profits, which they were not. Fifty-eight percent of recent growth in equity capital was in good will, which is worthless. As you can see, any sharp correction in the economy could easily take the banking system down. It is purely a scam built on derivatives that could very well become worthless in a crisis. We have been decrying the use of derivatives since the early 1990s, but we have been only one of a few voices in the wilderness. Derivatives pose an enormous risk to the welfare of the world financial system, because of the unscrupulous quest for banking profits at all costs. Even the investment community is clueless to what is going on in derivatives because the system remains totally secret and unregulated. Derivatives are a terrible risk to the financial system and almost everyone outside the banking and brokerage industry do not know what they are or that they even exist. Not only banks sell derivatives, they are sold by brokerage houses, investment banks, and insurance companies. You have not heard about them and derivatives are the world’s biggest industry, worth more than $200 trillion. It is a vast betting and bookmaking network for corporate gamblers used as a means to exponentially increase profits. Once markets begin their decent, these derivatives will come unraveled causing a paralysis of the entire banking system. Derivatives will be the icing on the cake. They will exacerbate financial turmoil, unemployment increases will be compounded and pensions will evaporate. Of course, Bush and Blair will try to blame a terrorist, someone who caused it all with an Arabic name who is involved in New York or London. Derivatives are truly financial weapons of mass destruction. Our message is clear; we are in terrible financial danger. The only way you can protect your financial assets is to be in gold and silver related assets. If you are not, you will be financially doomed.

In Mid-December, the National Guard began to pay a bounty of $15,000 a head for every six-year reenlistment due to the poor reenlistment rate. If the trooper goes to Iraq, his or her bonuses are free from taxes. Three-year enlistments get you a $7,500 bounty. Last year the Guard’s reenlistments were 7,000 short. Unfortunately, the guard is looking for an economic solution to a socio-political problem. Poor areas of the country draw the biggest enlistments and reenlistments.

More statistics in answer to the President’s partial privatization of Social Security: In 1994, 65-year-old retirees who derived their retirement income from Social Security enjoyed roughly the same monthly payments as those who derived their retirement income from a private stock fund. If both spouses survive, Social Security actually paid nearly $100 more every month than a stock fund. We believe that young people now entering the workforce or those under 40 would accrue larger benefits than in Social Security, but there is a great element of risk. If we borrowed $2 trillion and popped it into the market now the interest would be very burdensome and if the Dow fell from 10,700 to 4,500, the picture would change dramatically. If that did not occur the payout might be up to 40% higher, but we do not know that. The government result is safer. If the system is to be changed, the funds should be taken out of Social Security revenues for those in the system under 40 years old. That would, of course, deprive the political spenders in Washington of $200 billion or so a year. We believe that is the way it has to be. Due to increasing taxes and declining benefits, a phased in stock and bond portfolio could work, but you are still dealing with money managers with varying records and the vicissitudes of the market.

Congressional investigators warned federal agencies that the promotion of government policies, propaganda, through video news releases meant to look like TV news stories may violate federal rules. The presentations are made to look like news segments broadcast to the public by independent television new organizations. Our government is just a bunch of cheap hucksters.

Political globalism began in 1948. Commercial globalism got underway in the 1950s. You can remember the book and the movie “The Ugly American.” It was not called regime change in those days but the CIA was busy at its work via AID and other organizations. The European Common Market and EFTA were evolving and then GATT followed by WTO, the European Union and NAFTA. Many nations did not like the ultimate goal of world government. They protested and were either liquidated or their governments were overthrown. In the early 1970s, the IMF and the World Bank used loans to nations that they knew they could never pay back to entrap them and push them to the edge of bankruptcy, so that these two agencies could drag these nations into the new world order. London and New York also took aim at the currencies of these nations to bring them into line. The most vulnerable countries were in Africa, some in Asia and many in Central and South America and Mexico. These nations lost in many ways their ability to develop their own economies. The way out was to use slave labor to allow transnational corporations to loot their natural resources and their people. How it works is the bankers go into the country first and if that did not work the CIA would follow. In recent years, we have had the slave labor countries competing with each other bringing even cheaper goods to the US and Europe and a lower standard of living for the cheap labor. At the same time this cheap labor and that of illegal aliens have brought wages and purchasing power down in the US and Europe. This process over the past 20 years, and particularly over the past ten years, has closed factories and service companies and caused them to move overseas to the sites of cheap labor. Americans and Europeans did not realize it yet, but their countries are in a state of collapse and that is being done by design. The US and Germany, the engines of the Western World, are bankrupt; they just do not know it yet. No matter the quality of your products and your productivity growth, you cannot compete with slave labor. That means in the not too far distant future they will officially be bankrupt. They can no longer compete. Either third world wages have to rise to their levels or tariffs have to be imposed. It is as simple as that.

We envision the bankruptcy of many nations. In Europe and the US, we see debt repudiation, which will affect every nation in the world, as they hold 70% of our debt. We see worldwide currency controls instituted by the US. The dollars and debt outside the US will be frozen. The currency inside the US will be changed. Interest rates will rise to 20%, and as the system is purged unemployment will rise to 35%, but will be somewhat offside by a Selective Service draft of some five million young Americans, who will fight our foreign wars as our volunteers have for the past four years, as our elitist leadership engages in seizing control, financial control and ownership of raw materials assets commodities. This is a race for power. The EU, UK and Japan will be forced to join in this endeavor to meet the challenge from Russia, China and others.

The elitists are not interested in the human race, only themselves and the exercise of total power. They want to manage the earth’s resources to their ends. The US and Europe have squandered their technological superiority. They must retrieve that leadership if they want to stand any chance of financial survival. The bill for our future, which we have mortgaged, has finally come due. Once the public finally perceives that the system is coming down hopefully there will be a commonality of interests. If that does not occur, the whole world will be in revolution. The price will be stupendous and the elitist power will be eliminated.

As we pointed out previously, Wall Street expects to make more than $1 trillion on the investment of Social Security funds. This infusion of cash would provide 25% of all cash flows into Wall Street stock and bond funds in the foreseeable future. Needless to say, Wall Street is directly financing the anti-Social Security campaign. Part of that effort is channeled through the free trade think-tank Cato Institute. In antiquity, Cato was known as Cato the Carthage hater. In response to his propaganda, Rome invaded Carthage and totally destroyed it. Republicans under the direction of Bush, Cheney and Rove, House Speaker Hestert and Senate minority leader Frist have launched a nine-month campaign to bring about Social Security partial Privatization Legislation. One hundred million dollars will be spent on TV-AD propaganda against Social Security and for corporatist privatization. The message will be, particularly to the young, that Social Security is broke. The privatization plan is based on massive benefit cuts while adding as much as $2 trillion to federal debt. You would think Congress could spend the effort more effectively by helping to find a solution for the more than $450 billion shortfall in under-funded private pensions. Cato is an arm of the Mont Pelerin Society formed in 1947 in Vevey, in France, across Lake Geneva, in Switzerland at the Hotel du Parc. Attending were Friedrich A. Von Hayek, founder of the Austrian School of Economics, Ludwig Von Mises, monetarist Milton Friedman, philosopher Karl Popper and journalist Walter Lippman. The most powerful elitist oligarchical families were in attendance as well. Sir John Clapham of the Bank of England who was president of the Royal Society, which was the model for the Council on Foreign Relations, Otto Von Hapsburg, Max Von Turn und Taxis the second most powerful and rich family in Europe, and bankers from the City of London and Wall Street. In forming this group they controlled both sides of the debate. The boards and commissions were staffed by who’s who at the CFR and Trilateral Commission. The funding comes from JPMorgan Chase, Citicorp/Solomon Brothers, American International Insurance, that is AIG run by the Maurice Greenberg crime family, the Chicago-Mercantile Exchange, the Bond Market Association, the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation, the Harry and Lynde Bradley Foundation, Olin Foundation, the Koch Foundations, Charles G. and David H. Koch Foundations and the Claude Lamb Foundation. The group has recommended a change in indexing of initial Social Security benefits from the wage-based system that would hedonically slash retiree benefits over several decades down to about 20% of the average wage. This would be done to offset the money being poured into Wall Street. The conspiracy desperately needs this Social Security change to keep the stock market from collapsing. The vote on this issue will be the most important legislative vote in the last 100 years. If Bush and the elitists are defeated, it will permanently damage their effort to soon bring about world government.

Social Security gives workers no binding rights to their payments so those benefits can be cut or changed, or even taken away at any time. The government could at anytime default on the $1.5 trillion Treasury bonds held by the Social Security Trust Fund. This argument will be used to try to arrange for the diversion of the entire 6.2% of a worker’s payroll tax into Individual Accounts. Cato has organized fake fronts to attack the system and make it look like popular support. Now, as well Congress is being “educated” (paid-off and threatened) about how the changes will benefit the country, that is elitist money and power interests.

Thus, Cato is a propaganda mechanism. One of its offshoots is “For Our Grandchildren.” This is supposed to be a grassroots organization of grandparents who are concerned that their grandchildren will not get Social Security and targets propaganda at young people. One of the members of FOG’s National Advisory Council is Jose Pinera, the elitist who gave Chile their disastrous privatization plan. Another agitprop is United Seniors Association, Cato’s main elderly “constituency group for privatization.” Cato’s senior Social Security analyst, Andrew Biggs, is running a covert operation inside the Social Security Administration. He dispatched a “policy brief” internal document that mandates that all Social Security managers are required to present the idea “that Social Security faces dire financial problems requiring immediate action.” These same groups also want to decriminalize drugs and have espoused that position since 1947.

The privatization of Social Security is a vast looting operation for the benefit of Wall Street and others. Mont Pelerin-Cato oligarchs directing the looting are former Secretaries of State George Schultz and Henry Kissinger, as well as William F. Buckley. As you can see the entire program is another elitist charade. It also spotlights how the elitists infiltrate and/ or create opposition how people such as in Von Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises and Milton Friedmanget sucked or sucked us in.

The Department of Defense is deliberately not reporting a significant number of dead in Iraq, manifests show that far more bodies have been shipped into Dover AFB then have been officially reported. The educated rumor is that the actual death toll is in excess of 7,000 with 15,000 plus seriously wounded. As you know, our government never tells the truth.

Former UNSCOM weapons inspector, Scott Ritter says George W. Bush has signed off on plans to bomb Iran in June 2005. He also said the US manipulated the results of the recent Iraq election. Orders are for an aerial attack on Iran and its purported goal is the destruction of Iran’s alleged program to develop nuclear weapons, but in fact, it is to overthrow the Iranian government.

The Iraqi elections were not free said Ritter and they were manipulated in order to reduce the percentage of votes received by the United Iraqi Alliance from 56% to 48%. Dahr Jamiall a journalist said mainstream media sources are complicit in the war and help sustain support for it by deliberately downplaying the truth about the devastation and death it is causing.

Why haven’t video journalist Robert Novak been thrown into jail in the Valerie Plame affair? Judith Miller, NY Times reporter and Mathew Cooper of Time, are now facing jail time. Yet, Novak has miraculously escaped. Novak was the only columnist in the country who actually published Plame’s name in violation of federal law. We believe Novak is being protected by George and the neocons, because he knows who leaked the information to Miller and Cooper and he willingly became a conduit for that information. This was part of a conspiracy to punish her husband Ambassador Joseph Wilson, due to his opinion piece for the NY Times contradicting President Bush’s claim that in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had sought to acquire uranium from Niger. The Niger documents were so crudely forged that only an idiot would believe they incriminated anyone. Novak ended Plame’s CIA career, shut down a very valuable pipeline and caused the deaths of hundreds of operatives. Of course, there was disgust and outrage in the intelligence agencies, most of which were purged by Bush in Stalinistic style. American is a country of double standards. As we have said repeatedly, it has a system of selective justice. This is another excellent example. How else could this self appointed messenger of death skate so blithely through this firestorm without getting singed?

This persecution and prosecution of reporters is taking place at a time when the White House has perfected the art of manipulating the Fourth Estate. This preceded the recent revelations that three prominent columnists were well-paid consultants for administration lies and propaganda, so it is easy to see why the First Amendment is not taken particularly seriously these days. Then there is Jeff Gannon of the White House press corp, who actuality is James Guckert, a Republican dirty trickster and homosexual prostitute, who fit very nicely with an administration whose contempt for journalists knows no bounds. This is the slimmest most depraved administration in history hiding under the cover of Christianity. We ask again, why isn’t Bob Novak going to jail?

On Tuesday morning, the Fed added $11.5 billion in repurchase agreements raising the repo pool to $77.841 billion, but it was to no avail the Dow fell 174 points to 10,611. Gold ended the day at $435.80 up $6.90 and silver, which has been very strong and was up $0.14 at $7.51. The euro was very strong at 1.3260 up just under $0.02. As we have said many times, it will be some small-unexpected event that will start the ball rolling in our direction. This time it was the South Korean announcement on diversifying out of the dollar, and the discovery that 52% of central banks were reducing US dollar holdings. Every professional now knows the markets are all rigged by the “Plunge Protection Team” and the Fed and they lie about most everything. Their credibility in this venue is stone cold dead. It will not be long before the investing public realizes as well what is going on. Even to the less educated, after Sir Alan Greenspan’s performance before the House and Senate Committees last week, it is becoming obvious that he is only doing what he is being told to do. His performance was dreadful. He knows that as interest rates rise gold rises or vise versa. If either spike, it will collapse the derivative market and that will spell the beginning of the end. The Fed has tremendous resources at its disposal and in spite of that, they will lose. In today’s world of instant communication it is not easy to fool thinking people.

We all hear about RFID tracking the supply chain and retail items, but its use is starting to expand. SAMSys Technologies has an agreement to supply passive radio frequency identification RFID as a family locater system. It will be used at resorts using bracelets to identify family members at various locations round the venue as well as to facilitate cashless transactions for the purchase of food, drinks and merchandise on premises.

More than half of UK companies predict that RFID will be an accepted part of the business landscape in just five years, if for no other reason than shrinking of equipment and lower costs. The key feature of the technology is the ability for an RFID object to be tracked instantly anywhere in the world, provided that a reader is in range. It is expected RFID will replace bar codes.

What we are most concerned with is our government tracking us and our fellow citizens in violation of our rights and freedoms under our Constitution. We will see them in auto tires and jeans, so the question is will they try to chip us? Sub-dermal chips are already offered commercially. It is only a matter of time when they will try to force us to accept RFID chips, so they can totally control our lives.

When Jacques Chirac spoke at dinner with President Bush and others he spoke in French, which Mr. Bush does not understand. The irony is that President Chirac speaks perfect English, another snub to go along with France and Germany’s desire to leave NATO.

George and the neocons have spent millions illegally on reports on the President’s Medicare, education and drug policies. Not content to buy retail press coverage, they are producing and distributing their own news network - the Pentagon Channel, which we mentioned previously. We have Time Warner and Dish distributing the Pentagon Channel through which it will reach 11 million viewers. Prepare yourself for more pure propaganda.