Public Intelligence Blog

Who? Mini-Me?

Is Germany About to Start a Run on Gold Held at the New York Fed?

Economic Policy Journal, 8 March 2012

German lawmakers are to review Bundesbank controls of and management of Germany’s gold reserves. Parliament’s Budget Committee will assess how the central bank manages its inventory of Germany’s gold bullion bars that are believed to be stored not only in Frankfurt, but at locations outside Germany, according to German newspaper Bild.

What’s most interesting about all this is that Germany may follow in Hugo Chavez’s footsteps and repatriate their gold to Germany so as to have direct possession of and ownership of their gold reserves. It’s really the only way to protect a central bank’s gold ownership, since by simply going in and asking the New York Fed to show Germany “their” gold, the Fed can walk them in and show them a pile of gold and tell them that it is theirs. The next day they can walk Chinese officials in and show the Chinese the exact same pile of gold and tell them that the gold is theirs.

Possession is the only sure protection.

Germany’s huge gold reserves – 3,396.3 tonnes of gold are some 73.7% of Germany’s national foreign exchange reserves, and are held not only in Germany but at the New York Fed, in London and in Paris. Dumb.

What kind of pressure will the U.S. put on Germany to prevent them from repatriating their gold? The banksters clearly have German Chancellor Merkel in their pocket, but this is unlikely to be influence that is deep into German political leaders. Thus, a run on gold, started by Germany, is not an impossibility.

In this scenario, the noise you would hear is the spike in gold as Bernanke prints more dollars for open market purchases of gold to fill demand for delivery by various central banks. Yikes.

(ViaJamesMiller)

Phi Beta Iota:  Germany is at least a year if not two behind China and Russia.  Furthermore, what is really needed, apart from physical repossession and testing of all gold, is a complete audit of the New York Bank and all — without exception — all gold transferred to others after possession by the New York Bank.  This should not be a political issue — this should be a stake in the heart of the Federal Reserve and central banking.  Community banks and asset-based loans are the near-term solution for all who wish to disconnect from endemic fraud across the US banking system.

Josh Kilbourn

This is interesting for two reasons: first, the blatant manner in which Congress is now violating the Constitution with impunity and regularity; second, that the World Socialist Web Site is the only source I could find of a full coherent explanation of this matter — the corporate media is silent.

US Congress passes authoritarian anti-protest law

By Tom Carter

World Socialist Web Site, 3 March 2012

A bill passed Monday in the US House of Representatives and Thursday in the Senate would make it a felony—a serious criminal offense punishable by lengthy terms of incarceration—to participate in many forms of protest associated with the Occupy Wall Street protests of last year. Several commentators have dubbed it the “anti-Occupy” law, but its implications are far broader.

. . . . . . .

Even more sinister is the provision regarding events of “national significance.” What circumstances constitute events of “national significance” is left to the unbridled discretion of the Department of Homeland Security. The occasion for virtually any large protest could be designated by the Department of Homeland Security as an event of “national significance,” making any demonstrations in the vicinity illegal.

Read full article.

John Robb

HR 341: One more step towards Neo-Feudalism

Posted: 02 Mar 2012 10:54 AM PST

In feudal times, you could be put to death if you didn’t kneel when the carriages of the nobility passed by.  This is a step in that direction (although very few people care).  ’

I’m not that excited to write about this type of things.  Seems like more of a chore than something I want to do.  Why do I write about it?  It’s another milestone on the decline of the US that is worth highlighting for future historians.

I can see these future historians now:  pouring over the output from software systems that cull trends out massive social media repositories.  Some will be shaking their heads, asking themselves: what were those numbskulls in the early 21st Century thinking about when their governments began to hollow out?  Why were they so passive as things began to fall apart?

___________

This new bill, about to be signed by the President, is called the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011.  It is not as innocent as its name.

Essentially, it makes it a federal offense to be anywhere near, from being in the area or in the same building, somebody protected by the secret service.  That’s from the President to candidates for political office (Romney or Santorum) to senior government officials to foreign dignitaries (G20).  In other words, lots and lots of people.

While being sold as a way to close a loophole in the current law regarding White House security, it is actually much more than that.  It changed one word that made a world of difference.  What’s the difference?

To be arrested and imprisoned, all you need to do is be the same building or area around a person that has secret service protection.  You don’t even need to know they are there to be arrested and imprisoned.  If you are merely walking by the area, you can be legally jailed for one year.  If you are carrying something that can be seen as a weapon (legally or not), that imprisonment can be extended to ten years.

In short, if you are within the same building or neighborhood as a political or foreign personage without their expressed permission, you can be imprisoned.

“Trust us” or “they are good people” isn’t a valid answer to this critique. If a new power can be abused legally, it will eventually be abused.  Very simple tautology.

Who? Who?

Some very strong and strange signals coming out of sources that have a track-record of being accurate.

1)  Banks have created an economic doomsday scenario.  Greece is going to default on 20 March, and will eventually get to renounce 80% if not more of the debt that its government very unwisely took on (never mind Goldman Sachs high crimes, governments are supposed to have a modicum of intelligence and integrity).

2)  This is going to lead to two consequences, not one:

First, the banks have huge amounts of “insurance” obligations, an entire underworld of banking in which these obligations to cover one another’s bad debts are not counted as liabilities — when these all come due, banks crash and no amount of government bail-outs with printed or digital counterfeit money is going to save them.

Second, the combination of riots and economic collapse among hundreds of millions of previously “rich” Europeans with the collapse of the banks is going to present some governments with “internal control” issues.  In the USA, the plan under Bush-Cheney was the Civilian Inmate Labor Facilities (CILF), incarcerating the unemployed on agriculturally-productive land.  That plan has now been abandoned as unscaleable and unenforceable — the number of pissed off citizens with guns may have something to do with the realization.

And now for the scary part: how do you handle a population of what Henry Kissinger likes to call “useless eaters” who are also armed?  Enter the Forced Population Reduction Program (FPRP).  Originally to be implemented with neutron weapons (allegedly killing people without destroying infrastructure), the new new thing is VX gas that is heavier than air and make an entire city die with even less environmental damage.  How the deaths are “sold” is no doubt being worked on.  Testing this in South Africa or the Congo first (they are a party to the program), then simulating a “black plague meets SARS” transfer to Detroit or a couple of southern states, can be anticipated.

Below are a few links.  On the edge, no question about it.

Circling the Drain: Euro Default Preppers (2012)

Credit Default Swaps: Evolving Financial Meltdown and Derivative Disaster Du Jour (2008)

Europe’s ticking time bomb: Credit default swaps (2012)

Bill Gates, Monsanto, and eugenics: How one of the world’s wealthiest men is actively promoting a corporate takeover of global agriculture (2012)

The Population Reduction Agenda For Dummies (2009)

The Ruling Elite’s Agenda for Global Population Reduction! (2009)

Obama Science Advisor Called For “Planetary Regime” To Enforce Totalitarian Population Control Measures (2009)

See Also:

Vaccinate the World: Gates, Rockefeller Seek Global Population Reduction

Bill Gates: Use vaccines to lower population

Law, ethics and medicine: After-brith abortion: why should the baby live?

Last item is a scholarly paper (it just came out) which argues for making “permissible” the killing of babies after birth.  Abstract: Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus’ health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call “after-birth abortion” (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.

See Also:

Owl: Medical Ethics Extend Abortion Okay to Adults

Josh Kilbourn

Only 54% Of Young Adults In America Have A Job

Tyler Durden

ZeroHedge, 29 February 2012

A month ago, Zero Hedge readers were stunned to learn that unemployment among Europe’s young adults has exploded as a result of the European financial crisis, and peaking anywhere between 46% in the case of Greece all they way to 51% for Spain. Which makes us wonder what the reaction will be to the discovery that when it comes to young adults (18-24) in the US, the employment rate is just barely above half, or 54%, which just happens to be the lowest in 64 years, and 7% worse than when Obama took office promising a whole lot of change 3 years ago.

Click on Image to Expand

And while technically this means 46% are unemployed, or the same percentage as in Greece, the US ratio, which comes from Pew, shows the ratio as a % of the total population: a very sensitive topic now that every month we see another 250,000 drop off mysteriously from the total labor force. However, unlike those on the trailing age end, young adults by definition are the labor force in their age group demographic, so it would be difficult to explain away this horrendous number by claiming that ever more 24 year olds are retiring. Although, yes, we agree that some may be dropping out of the labor force in order to go to college, incidentally the locus of the latest credit bubble, where they meet a fate worse even than secular unemployment: they become debt slaves of the Federal System, with non-dischargable debt at that, which even assuming they can get a job would take ages to pay back!

But wait: there’s more – of all age groups, this is the one that has actually seen its wages drop the most under the Obama administration.

So not only are they unemployed, young adults are at least poor.

Net result: double the change, zero the hope.

Bloomberg Video 1:16

David Swanson

Virginia Says No to Lawless Imprisonment

Good things do come out of the Virginia state legislature.  That normally reprehensible body has just stood up to the federal outrage that has come to be known as the NDAA.  The letters stand for the National Defense Authorization Act, but at issue here is not the bulk of that bill.  Virginia’s state government has no objection to dumping our grandchildren’s unearned pay into the pockets of war profiteers while our schools lack funding.  At issue is the presidential power to lock people up without a trial, which was slipped into the latest military funding bill late last year and signed into law by President Barack Obama on New Year’s Eve.  In fact, Virginia’s legislature does not object to that abuse except in one particular circumstance, namely when the victim of it is a U.S. citizen.  But in that circumstance, Virginia says Hell No.

Locally in Charlottesville, we rallied at Republican Congressman Robert Hurt’s office.
http://charlottesvillepeace.org/node/2629

We urged him to vote No, and he did so, saying:

“After studying the controversial provisions and after hearing from many in the Fifth District, I concluded that the detainee provisions in the bill did not provide clear and unambiguous protection of the constitutional rights of American citizens. For this reason, I opposed the bill on final passage.”
http://charlottesvillepeace.org/node/2635

Groups from across the political spectrum, including the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, urged passage of a bill in Virginia’s state legislature to nullify the new provisions.
http://charlottesvillepeace.org/node/2692

Both houses have now passed the bill by veto-proof margins.
http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?121+sum+HB1160

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  Nullification is the softer gentler preamble to secession.  The states, many of them over-invested in Federal bonds and many of them facing their own financial crises, are now starting to plan for the collapse of the US Goverment or economy, and becoming more alert to opportunities of state nullification of federal mandates.  During this transition period resilience and sustainability will be “bottom-up” in nature, and those states that “assume” a loss of all federal funding after 2013, and plan for it, will do better than those states that assume federal (borrowed) largesse will continue.  This will impact heavily on universities that rely on federal funding for most of their research.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Water Infrastructure Cost Report

Source

Phi Beta Iota:  The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has never really “managed” anything.  They blew off the “M” forever in the 1970′s and became a budget chop shop unable to render intelligence with integrity to the Executive.  At the same time, the Cabinet departments are focused on protecting budget share for their stakeholders (the recipients of the taxpayer’s revenue, not the taxpayer’s themselves), and neither they, nor the US Intelligence Community now costing us $80 billion a year, are capable of doing responsible analytics in the national interest.  The lack of intelligence (decision-support) with (holistic) integrity across all organizations is the central challenge of our time.

See Also:

Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both

Journal: Reflections on Integrity UPDATED + Integrity RECAP

Marcus Aurelius

What does it say about a country when a) half of its defense and intelligence program is arguably fraud, waste, and abuse; and b) the only people charged with espionage are the whistle-blowers that are invariably truthful about this same fraud, waste, and abuse?

Blurred Line Between Espionage and Truth

David Carr

New York Times, 26 February 2012

EXTRACT:

The Espionage Act, enacted back in 1917 to punish those who gave aid to our enemies, was used three times in all the prior administrations to bring cases against government officials accused of providing classified information to the media. It has been used six times since the current president took office.

Setting aside the case of Pfc. Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst who is accused of stealing thousands of secret documents, the majority of the recent prosecutions seem to have everything to do with administrative secrecy and very little to do with national security.

Read full article.

See Also:

Read the rest of this entry »

Who? Mini-Me?

Below is Iranian slant from a Canadian journalist.  What they are not saying is that the oil companies make money regardless, and the financial speculators that bet on high futures really need the sanctions and the shortages to cover their bets.  At the same time, the US incumbent administration seem to feel that more war is good for the election cycle.  Nobody cares about the consumer.

Anti-Iranian Sanctions Backfire on Western Imperialist Countries

When Western Nations Begin To Believe Their Own Propaganda Elementary Principles of Supply and Demand Get Overlooked

Press TV has interviewed writer and journalist, Joshua Blakeney, on his view on the recent hike in fuel prices.

Read full article.

300 Million Talons...

Shiksa: a disparaging and offensive term applied to a non-Jewish girl or woman.  As in “Shiksas don’t count.”

2013 Budget: ‘Difficult Cuts’ for Americans, Jackpot for Israel

EXTRACT:

Yet, instead of reducing or even just freezing levels of U.S. military aid to Israel, President Obama wants to provide Israel with $3.1 billion of U.S. taxpayer-funded weapons next year, an increase from $3.075 billion in 2012, making the State Department’s claim that this budget request “maintains last year’s record funding levels” for Israel both immodest and inaccurate. By comparison, of the nine other Near Eastern countries receiving U.S. military aid, the budget request for eight of them is unchanged from last year’s budget while the request for Tunisia declined.

Read full article.

See Also:

Read the rest of this entry »