Awesome US Debt Ceiling Video a Must see!!!
By: James Burge
January 9th, 2012
Love it!
Here are the real US Federal Government numbers:
Total Federal Debt: $14,000,000,000,000 (14 Trillion)
Federal Income: $2,170,000,000,000 (2.17 Trilion)
Federal Spending: $3,820,000,000,000 (3.82 Trilion)
New Debt: $1,650,000,000,000 (1.65 Trilion)
Amount Cut: $38,500,000,000 (38.5 Bilion) (less than 1% (0.75%) of the total budget)
I love how they have the guy bring in his young daughter to approve the debt limit increase, well done.
And now for a bit of levity…
By: James Burge
January 9th, 2012
An interesting hypothetical to ponder…
By: James Burge
December 1st, 2011
Was just reading an really good article (which I totally recommend reading if you are still a bit fuzzy on the banking crisis) about how the banks got away with the secret bailouts to the tune of about $13 trillion dollars, how those involved told their buddies of the plan to centralize the banks, even before congress, so they could make billions on shorts while keeping the details of these secret bailouts from congress, and the American People, who have now been stuck with the bill.
I mean it really seams like you and a few friends are at a party and the table beside you is really partying it up, hooting, hollering, having quite the time, buying everyone drinks, they seems like okay dudes, and by the end of the night you think they are your new friends. But after they leave the waitress comes around with your bill and it’s about a ten times what you expect your bill to be, the waitress notices your shock and says “those guys you were partying with, before they left they said you were going to take care of the bill.” But just wait, it gets worse, in this scenario you realize that the waitress has to tip out to the guys who left you stuck holding the bill, so any tip you can afford give to the waitress, half or more goes to those guys. Then you find out these guys bet on the fact that you probably wouldn’t be able to pay the bill and they then use either the tip out or the money made on the bet against you, to give themselves and their buddies huge bonuses. Then they are back in the pub trying the same scam the next evening because heaven forbid they use those bonuses to pay for their own drinks.
That story would begin to express what has happened in the states only if you imagine the bill was for $14 Trillion dollars.
Just to get you interested, here are a few items he lists before giving the “6 Shocking revelations about Wall Street’s secret government”.
? The secret Wall Street bailouts totalled $7.77 trillion, 10 times more than the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) passed by Congress in 2008.
? Knowledge of the secret bailout funds was not shared with Congress even while it was drafting and debating legislation to break up the big banks.
? The secret funding, provided at below-market rates, gave Wall Street banks an additional $13 billion in profits. (That’s enough money to hire more than 325,000 entry level teachers.)
? The secret loans financed bank mergers so that the largest banks could grow even larger. The money also allowed banks to step up their lobbying efforts.
? While Henry Paulson (Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury) was informing Congress and the public that only minor reforms were needed to protect Fannie and Freddie from collapse, he met secretly with leading Wall Street hedge fund managers — among them his former colleagues at Goldman Sachs — to alert them that he was about to nationalize the giant mortgage companies – a move that would eradicate nearly all the stock value of the companies. This information was enormously valuable because it allowed these hedge funds to short Fannie and Freddie and thereby make a fortune.
? While Timothy Geithner was head of the NY Federal Reserve, he argued against legislative efforts by Senator Ted Kaufman, D-Delaware, to limit the size of banks because the issue was “too complex for Congress and that people who know the markets should handle these decisions,” Kaufman recalls. Meanwhile, Geithner was fully aware of the enormous secret loans while Senator Kaufman was kept in the dark. Barney Frank, who was authoring key bank reform legislation, was also not informed of the secret loans. No one in Congress was told.
So what does this all mean?
What If??
By: James Burge
November 28th, 2011
Why Dollar Collapse is Garanteed
By: James Burge
November 10th, 2011
Ratigan seems to have it right…
By: James Burge
November 9th, 2011
Mother Should I Trust The Government???
By: James Burge
November 8th, 2011
Amazingly Inhumane, US soldiers torturing animals, for fun…
By: James Burge
November 8th, 2011
Okay well if you needed any more proof of the lack of humanity in US soldiers there is a video I just watched and didn’t want to post but felt I should. Watch as US soldiers seem to have nothing better to do then sadistically murder a sheep with a metal baseball bat. And of course the saddest part is that it takes 10 hits with the bat before the sheep stops trying to get away, which is of course natural when you feel your life is in danger. This is of course on par with videos of the US soldier throwing a puppy off a clif.
It is amazing to see this behavior but there is a dichotomy that arises, is it that people who seem to enjoy torturing young animals more commonly look to the military for a sort of justification for this hatred they’ve felt, or are these normal everyday human beings who have been pushed past humanity into insanity due to the conditions they deal with on a daily basis. It isn’t hard to understand that soldiers are coming back from war broken (PTSD) because if this is what they are doing in their free time, for sport, it makes one wonder what they will get up to once they are back at home and the normal rules apply once more.
Mischigan passes ‘License to Bully,’ No, Really…
By: James Burge
November 7th, 2011
In what can only be described as theology gone amuck, Michigan has passed a new law called ‘Matt’s Safe School Law’ (so named for Matt Epling, a Michigan teen who tragically took his own life as a result of threats, hazing and bullying) although, as you will see in the video below, of comments by Minority Leader in the Senate Gretchen Whitmer, it would not have done a single thing to save those individuals where bullying played a crucial role in their eventual suicide. What it does do, is further cement bullying as a systemic issue that, however unfortunate and deadly, is encouraged by teachers and now justified by lawmakers. It allows for a bully to provide a “religious or moral reason for their actions” meaning, as the GOP lawmakers seem to have intended it, a child who is taught homosexuality is wrong as justified by the Bible, apparently has the right to bully any child who they perceive to be homosexual using the Bible as religious justification for their bigotry. Of course weather or not this child is gay, lesbian, bisexual or possibly born intersex, is of no issue to the case, all this does is provide bullies with a backdoor so that certain types of bullying are not only acceptable, but are encouraged by such legislation.
There can be no moral reason justifying bullying, period. The fact that lawmakers have allowed for such justification provides that they do not understand the stigma and systemic ridicule that usually accompanies bullying, and how this poisoned environment effects the vary people they are tasked with trying to protect. This seems to be a last ditch effort to revive archaic beliefs that they see as loosing favour, and to give children raised in religious environments a licence to bully.
Could you envision this law being used by Muslims ridiculing young girls for not wearing head scarves, or Satanists even? How does one define a “religious or moral reason?” Is it only religions recognized by the government? Does scientology apply? can I use portions of LDS teachings to justify making fun of people who only have one mother??
It is a slippery slope to bigotry no matter how one looks at this law. This kind of reminds me of this idea that killing one person is murder, killing thousands is diplomacy. The US is falling all over itself to show that certain wrongs are in fact right, and certain rights, like the right to feel safe are apparently reserved for religious bigots.
Shame on you Michigan, Shame….
Bill Black Discusses Banker Fraud…
By: James Burge
November 7th, 2011
Bill Black, who was involved in the Savings and Loan Scandal investigation of the 1980s says the current Wall Street fraud crisis is 70 times bigger than the fraud he investigated more than 30 years ago. However, in a telling fact, with over 2 million fraudulent loans totalling around 11 trillion dollars the current crisis has only 120 FBI agents working nation wide dealing with around 4 million frauds where as they had over 1,000 FBI agents resulting in over 10,000 criminal referrals on savings loan scandal which was for losses around 150 billion dollars, again, only 1/70th the size of the current frauds. How many criminal referrals on the current fraud, Zero. Watch the video to see who Bill would fire. Not to spoil it but he accuses some of being the most abject failures as regulators in the history of regulation. Ouch. Go Bill.
Just to make sure you have those numbers:
Savings & Loan Scandal for frauds totalling over 150 billion dollars resulted in over 1,000 FBI agents giving 10,000+ criminal referrals for fraud.
Mortgage backed securities fraud which accounts for over 11 Trillion dollars, that’s 11,000 billion or again 73 Times larger than the savings & loan fraud, with only 120 FBI agents, only 12% of the savings & loan scandal, and not a single criminal referral.
Someone is laughing all the way to the bank, and it isn’t the 99%.
