An Economy of Illusions

Tim Kelly
Infowars.com
October 12, 2012

For the past four years, talking heads, pundits, and other regime apologists have been looking for “green shoots” and other signs of an economic recovery to vindicate the U.S. government’s fiscal and monetary shenanigans.
 
So when the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its report on October 5 showing the creation of 114,000 new jobs in September and a reduction in the unemployment rate from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent, it was hailed by many as a major victory for the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve. Indeed, it was cited as proof that all the deficit spending and “quantitative easing” (money printing) had finally paid off.

Well, maybe not.

It turns out the methodology the BLS used to produce their rosy jobs report is rather dubious. As Mark Twain said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

According to the BLS, “In September, 2.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force.” These people “wanted and were available for work,” but “they were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.”

So the BLS’s official unemployment rate simply ignores 2.5 million unemployed Americans. I suppose that is more humane than conscripting them into work brigades or “disappearing” them into FEMA camps, but it’s still dishonest.

Stock prices predictably soared in reaction to the phony good news, providing further evidence that Wall Street has become totally decoupled from the real economy.

For a more accurate rendering of economic conditions in the country, one should look at the statistics showing a dramatic increase in involuntary part-time workers (600,000) and a concentration in low-paid service jobs. Manufacturing also continued its demise, shedding some 16,000 jobs in September.

The United States is rapidly becoming a nation of the underemployed, barely scraping by and desperate for part-time work in order to make their ends meet. This is the face of the “new economy.”

And to make matters worse for the beleaguered American worker, inflation appears to be rearing its ugly head once again. The consumer price index (CPI) increased 0.6 percent in August, thus raising the specter of stagflation (simultaneous high unemployment and price inflation).

The Obama White House is certainly not the first administration to fudge numbers in order to paint a false picture of prosperity. Republican and Democratic administrations have been underreporting the unemployment and inflation rates for decades.

According to John Williams of Shadowstats, the current real unemployment rate is around 22 percent, while real annual inflation is above 10 percent. Those numbers are indicative of an inflationary depression; so it’s understandable that incumbent politicians would favor the BLS’s rosy report over grim reality.

Tens of millions of Americans recently tuned in to watch Barack Obama and Mitt Romney face off in a debate over the state of the US economy.

While the candidates exchanged accusations and talking points, neither mentioned the Federal Reserve, QE3, Uncle Sam’s $220 trillion in unfunded liabilities, the crisis in the eurozone, nor the impending collapse of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

All of those are critical economic issues, and how they are resolved will have an enormous impact on the lives of every American. But they received nary a mention during the hour-and-a-half debate about the economy.

The ugly truth is the system is busted, and voting for Romney or Obama isn’t going to make any difference at all. Neither man has the courage, understanding, or wisdom to implement the radical changes that are necessary to right the ship of state.

And then there are the recent exploits of the Federal Reserve.

The Fed has held interest rates at zero for four years and just recently announced that they will hold them there for at least another two.

This means that real inflation will continue being higher than interest rates. Such an easy-money policy is very hard on savers, who are now getting a negative return on their capital. With the Fed effectively telling people not to save and instead to consume as much as possible before their money suffers further devaluation, the nation is devouring its seed corn and thus ensuring an economic famine in the near future.

How can the middle class survive under such a monetary regime?

It cannot.

If the Fed continues with its money printing, the vast majority of Americans will be impoverished and made wards of the state. Indeed, with more than 45 million Americans already receiving food stamps, the country is well down this road to serfdom.

The core economic problem is that the country has been borrowing and spending well beyond its means for decades. Now that the bill has come due, the Fed’s response is to create more money out of thin air. (READ MORE)

Lined with Ron Paul devotees, Occupy Dallas gathers outside Federal Reserve

By Patrick Michels | 10.07.11
americanindependent.com
On the street corner outside the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, crowds of Ron Paul supporters with megaphones shouting, “Audit the Fed!” are nothing new. They were there again Thursday, but they were joined this time by hundreds more demonstrators whose anger has turned not only on the fed, but on all the big banks and corporations that have avoided serious accountability for their role in the financial crisis.
On the street corner outside the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, crowds of Ron Paul supporters with megaphones shouting, “Audit the Fed!” are nothing new.
They were there again Thursday, but they were joined this time by hundreds more demonstrators whose anger has turned not only on the fed, but on all the big banks and corporations that have avoided serious accountability for their role in the financial crisis.
The protest began in the morning at nearby Pike Park, then marched a few blocks to the sidewalk and lawn beside the Federal Reserve. The crowd came and went from there a couple times during the day, first marching to the downtown landmark Chase Tower, then again to the John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza.
Full of signs and shirts bearing the Occupy Wall Street movement’s “99 percent” slogan, the crowd was also peppered with 9/11 Truth demonstrators and the Guy Fawkes masks of the hacker group Anonymous.
They chanted their thanks to the Dallas police lined up to monitor the crowd. One leader reminded the crowd that police and firefighters in Texas were facing serious job losses too, thanks to smaller state and local budgets.
Dallas AFL-CIO board member Gene Lantz read a statement of support for the crowd before the march began Thursday. “We’re just going as participants,” Texas AFL-CIO spokesman Ed Sills told the Texas Independent. “We haven’t organized it. We’re going to take part in it.”
McKenzie Wainwright, one of the protest’s leaders, announced that folks from the Transportation Workers Union and the Communications Workers Union were in the crowd as well, according to the Dallas Observer.
Though the crowd was mostly young, there was a wide range of ages — a shirtless middle-aged man showed up wearing a barrel, and another woman carried a two-sided sign reading, “Seriously pissed off grandma,” and “I can’t believe I’m still protesting this crap.
Bernard Kern, a retired Lutheran minister from North Richland Hills, came armed with a four-point call for change on the sign he carried: stop war, economic exploitation, hunger and global warming. “It’s pretty exciting,” he said, to see so many young people out marching for change.
“A diversity of issues is a good thing,” he said, because it shows how many different slices of the city are ready to stand up and complain about feeling disenfranchised. “We feel like we can’t influence our legislators to effect systemic change.” (CONTINUE READING)

OWS Needs toTarget Real Enemies Or Face Irrelevancy

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
October 6, 2011

Chris Burris, writing for Lew Rockwell’s website yesterday, makes a good point about the Occupy Wall Street movement – they are barking up the wrong tree.

Democracy? How about a constitutionally limited republic?
Instead of occupying a park outside of Wall Street, they should march en masse to 33 Liberty Street. That’s where the New York Fed is located. In addition, they should take their chants and drums to the Harold Pratt House on 58 E. 68th Street at Park Avenue. The Council On Foreign Relations does business at that address.
If the Occupiers had a clue, they would go after the power elite instead of their workers down on Wall Street.
“But they won’t be led to confront the gods on Mount Olympus by their Judas goats and media shills,” Burris writes with an appropriate degree of sarcasm. “David Rockefelle­r, Pete Peterson, Warren Buffett, David Koch and Henry Kissinger might be held up from lunch at 21.”
In addition to Rockefeller and the CFR, protesters in Washington, DC, should immediately march on the North American headquarters of the Trilateral Commission, situated at 1156 Fifteen Street, NW, and make their demands known.
It would also be helpful to protest the Bilderberg Group, the cabal of ultra-rich global elitists who plot our future in secret. Bilderberg does not have an office per se, but with a little footwork I am sure dedicated OWS activists could find the homes and offices of its core members. Here’s a list of the steering committee that arranges the elite organization’s annual meetings. Here is the 2012 list of Bilderberg attendees. (CONTINUE READING)

A Message to Occupy Wall Street

dollarvigilante.com 
Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Dear Occupy Wall Street,
I completely understand your anger and commend you for having the courage to do something about it.
Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company said nearly a century ago, "It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
And that was before the government financial system really got good at stealing from and impoverishing us.  Today, if we all really had any idea as to what has been done to us by the system there’d be 6.8 billion people involved in these protests.

However, there is a very, very important piece of the puzzle that you have missed completely.
In order to understand why, you have to realize one thing.  You have been brainwashed.  Don’t feel too bad, we all have been

Thomas Pynchon said, "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."  And that is precisely what they have been doing for decades, using propaganda and indoctrination to confuse you as to the real source of the problems so that you never ask the right questions.

In a sound, honest world, you could do anything you want… you certainly would not have been forced into a minimum of 12 years of indoctrination (called public or private, state regulated schools) as a child.  As well, practically everything in mainstream media is meant to subtly, every day, push you in the direction of supporting the nation-state.

After 12-16 years of government controlled “education” and thousands of hours of television propaganda from mainstream media that is all but one-in-the-same with the government it can be very hard to see reality.
. (CONTINUE READING)

The Revolution Against the Federal Reserve Starts Now

Infowars Press Release
Infowars.com
October 6, 2011
Public sentiment has shifted– against the trends of Washington and Wall Street– and now, against the private Federal Reserve bank which controls or influences so much of the world’s finances. Where as only a few years ago many Americans were unaware of the true nature of the shadowy organization, recent polls confirm that the public overwhelmingly wants to audit and even abolish the Federal Reserve bank.
The momentum for a second American revolution is stirring, but the establishment is working overtime to steer the public’s anger into easy controlled avenues and big government solutions. Instead, by striking at the root of the true problems, we can attempt to reign in the predatory banking powers that plague our nation and begin to restore the Republic.


The Federal Reserve banking system is at the root of that problem and a perpetual impediment towards ending the global economic crisis that continues to grow. Join Alex Jones to “occupy” the Dallas Federal Reserve, or take the message to a Fed branch near you [see dates and times below]. We must start now by focusing media and political attention on this issue, and through our presence at these banks, start brushfires in the minds of men that will tip the momentum in favor of liberty and independence for all. (SEE MAP)

Why Ron Paul's Presidency Could Save America

Ron Paul's Proposals Are Exactly What America Needs to Prevent Downfall

By Brock Jerome Goldflies 
| Yahoo! Contributor Network

COMMENTARY | A recent article in The Huffington Post outlines 11 ideas that Ron Paul would carry out if elected president. Ron Paul's ideas are all sensible and very beneficial for this country. Much of his ideas are common sense, like bringing our troops home and save trillions of dollars as a result. Fighting multiple wars is not essential; rather, they are impairing our economy.

Fact: Ron Paul received the most military donations of anyone, even more than Obama, because the troops agree with Paul. The Federal Reserve, Paul believes, is not helping at all -- many people, including some of the candidates, are beginning to support his idea of auditing the Fed (and idea he's been preaching for decades). Common sense, by the way, is a major reason why Paul is so popular to the people. Everyone is sick of false politicians, and so Paul is just what the people want.

In a recent video interview, Paul mentions how he can balance the budget in one year. Currently, the divided Congress couldn't balance the budget, as we learned back in July when default was imminent. Basically, if Paul is going to be president, then common-sense Constitutionalism will be used to fix the major mess our idea of prosperity has created. He is turning to word of our founders to help us. This video is the source for many facts in the this article, even though facts about Paul were picked up from numerous places. That is because Paul is consistent, which is another reason why many people want him in office.(CONTINUE READING)

Occupy The Privately Owned Federal Reserve

Submitted by sgt150 
dailypaul.com
Tue, 10/04

The Wall Street occupation of New York City along with similar occupations in other cities have begun to sweep the nation. We must use this opportunity to occupy the real scourge of this country, the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is a private, independently controlled central bank that is in charge of the nation’s monetary supply. Since they seized control of the money supply 100 years ago, the value of the dollar has dropped over 95 percent. In addition, they are now counterfeiting American taxpayer dollars at an almost unimaginable rate. Thanks to Congressman Ron Paul‘s brave efforts to force Federal Reserve transparency for many decades, they were recently audited for the first time in their history. They gave out $16 trillion in ’emergency loans’ to foreign banks and corporations. Literally selling our economy and the value of our dollar to foreign interests without the approval and consent of the American people. This is treason. Wall Street, while unscrupulous, corrupt and clearly in need of reform, is only a symptom of the disease known as the Federal Reserve. This cancer must be removed from our economy peacefully, and this occupation rally intends to do just that. (READ MORE)

Occupy the Federal Reserve Movement Launched

Infowars Press Release
Infowars.com
October 3, 2011
The Occupy Wall Street crowd has become predictably focused on issues like taxing the middle class and moderately “rich,” ending capitalism and even re-electing Obama to ‘fight’ the very elites who pushed him into power. Focus should instead be on the real source of power for the out-of-control bankster class- the private, unaccountable Federal Reserve bank that creates money out of thin air, issues secret loans to insiders and foreign governments and systematically institutes debt on the American people through their undue powers.
With this in mind, Alex Jones is calling on patriots to “occupy” branches of the Federal Reserve, with plans to appear at three locations in Texas this weekend in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. The times and locations appear below. Further, people everywhere should converge upon Fed locations in their area to raise awareness about the real culprit behind the economic crisis.
Well meaning protesters who have joined the Occupy Wall Street effort, including solidarity activities in cities everywhere, need to be educated about the power held by this insidious institution, as well as the false solutions that have been proposed by leading figures on the left and right that only further expand the scope of big government, all while avoiding the elephant in the room.
Join Alex at locations throughout Texas or begin to address the issues at the Federal Reserve branch in your location. Don’t wait for orders from headquarters– go to the sound of the guns in this information war to awaken minds and stop the massive transfer of wealth being manipulated by the very offshore interests who control the Fed and even steer the protests at Wall Street.



FEDERAL RESERVE LOCATIONS: (SEE THE MAP)

7 Core Demands from the Occupy Wall Street Movement

By Jason Hamlin,
October 3rd, 2011

goldstockbull.com
I am writing this article to express my full support and solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protests that have been building, both in numbers and locations. In typical fashion, the media first ignored the protests and have now been trying to marginalize the efforts by constantly stating that the protestors have no goals. To the contrary, there have been a number of General Assemblies and online polls where the people have been voting on which issues are most important and which specific demands rise to the top. This is a lesson in true Democracy, something that we haven’t seen on Capitol Hill in quite some time.
After all, the degree to which the politicians have been voting against the will of the people is insulting to the idea of a democracy or Republic. It is clear to most Americans, if not the full 99%, that the government has been corrupted, bought off and is no longer working in the interest of the people they are supposed to be representing. This is one of main underlying grievances and it is well-founded. But there are also specific demands that have been articulated, despite the insistence of the mainstream media to the contrary. I’ve pulled from the various sources and distilled the list to what I believe should be the 7 core demands from the Occupy Wall Street movement:
1) End the Collusion Between Government and Large Corporations/Banks, So That Our Elected Leaders Are Actually Representing the Interests of the People (the 99%) and Not Just Their Rich Donors (the 1%).
This will involve sweeping campaign finance reform that would limit the contributions that come in from for-profit corporations or provide equal public funding for campaign finance. It will also involve limiting the size and scope of corporations, in order to reduce the power of the 1%, reduce monopolies in critical industries and ensure no bank or other corporation is ever “too big to fail.”
We should reverse the effects of the Citizens United Supreme Court Decision which essentially said corporations can spend as much as they want on elections. The result is that corporations can pretty much buy elections. Corporations should be highly limited in ability to contribute to political campaigns no matter what the election and no matter what the form of media.
2) Investigate Wall Street and Hold Senior Executives Accountable for the Destruction in Wealth that has Devastated Millions of People.
Financial fraud was very likely committed and those behind the curtain have gotten away with nothing but a slap on the wrist. We must remove the moral hazard that persists in the system and completely restructure the regulatory agencies so that they are no so easily manipulated. One common sense step would be to end the revolving door phenomenon, whereby the regulators quit their government jobs early in order to take jobs with the companies they were supposed to be regulating, resulting in a huge payoff for not enforcing the rules. Likewise, the people tasked at enforcing regulations should not be coming from the industries they will be regulating. The conflict of interest is obvious.
We must also liquidate both the public and private debt that has been growing out of control. Most of this debt was created out of thin air and is owed to banks with interest. The problem is that there is not enough money in existence to every repay the debt. The system was designed this way and serves to concentrate wealth in the hands of the bankers, as the rest of us scramble to pay them back, plus interest. Since the debts can never really be repaid (other than with Ponzi-scheme printing), the loan contracts were never entered into with good faith and the banks offered no consideration, the loan contracts are no valid and the debt must be forgiven and canceled.
3) Return the Power of Coining Money to the U.S. Treasury and Return to Sound Money
The founders understood the dangers of giving a small group of private bankers the authority to print the nation’s currency. The Constitution explicitly states:
Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 5
[Congress shall have Power ... ] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, …;
Art. I Sec. 10 Cl. 1
[No State shall ...] make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; …
The bankers found a way to subvert this law as was meticulously detailed in the book “Creature from Jekyll Island” by Edward Griffin. The top bankers in that day were aware of the power they would acquire as evidenced in this quote from Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild: “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes it’s laws.”

Giving the ability to print unlimited amounts of money out of thin air to private bankers has been the main underlying cause of the boom bust cycles, inflation that has led to the U.S. dollar losing 95% of its value since the Federal Reserve was created, the control the banks now command over government and increasing concentration of the world’s wealth and resources in the hands of fewer and fewer people. When the protests point out the gross imbalances, such as the top 1 percent of Americans possessing a greater collective net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent, their outrage ought to be directed at the head of the banking beast, the Federal Reserve. Accordingly, we should bring the FED under total control of the people, with absolute transparency of all of its actions. Furthermore, we need to return to sound money, whether it is gold or a basket of other finite commodities. This serves to restrain out of control government spending and reduce the hidden tax of inflation on the people. This “hidden tax” affects the poor and middle class the most. (CONTINUE READING)

The Federal Reserve Prepares To Eavesdrop On Everything Mentioning The Fed

It looks like the Federal Reserve must have its share of social media in order to keep watch over the world.And I thought net neutrality was bad. This has not been a good day for freedom in the Divided States of America.

David DeGerolamo
From Zerohedge.com:

[The Federal Reserve] is requesting the creation of a “Social Listening Platform” whose function is to “gather data from various social media outlets and news sources.” It will “monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria.” The Fed’s desired product should be able to “determine the sentiment [ED:LOL] of a speaker or writer with respect to some topic or document”… “The solution must be able to gather data from the primary social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums and YouTube. It should also be able to aggregate data from various media outlets such as: CNN, WSJ, Factiva etc.” Most importantly, the “Listening Platform” should be able to “Handle crisis situations, Continuously monitor conversations, and Identify and reach out to key bloggers and influencers.” Said otherwise, the Fed has just entered the counterespionage era and will be monitoring everything written about it anywhere in the world. After all, why ask others to snitch for you and anger everyone as Obama found out the hard way, when you can pay others to create the supreme FIATtack Watch^TM using money you yourself can print in unlimited amounts. And once the Internet is completely “transparent”, the Fed will next focus on telephone conversations, and finally will simply bug each and every otherwise “private” location in the world. Because very soon saying that “printing money is treason” will be treason, and such terrorist thoughts must be pre-crimed before they even occur.

From the key section of the RFP, presented in its entirety HERE

The Awakening of a Generation: Ron Paul 2012

Corporate Media Switches Tactics, Attacks Ron Paul

Strategy of completely ignoring Congressman was a miserable failure
Steve Watson
Infowars.com
Aug 17, 2011

The establishment effort to keep Presidential candidate Ron Paul out of the public conscience has failed and desperation tactics have set in.
Politico has taken it upon itself to dredge up an old and thoroughly debunked story in an attempted attack on the Congressman’s character.
“…there are reasons why Paul, and his fan base, might be grateful for the minimalist coverage that he’s received,” writes Maggie Haberman.
“… a more thorough vetting of the kind that mainstream candidates generally receive would invariably lead to some of the newsletters that bore his name (if not his byline or direct authorship) decades earlier.”
Haberman links to a three year old New Republic report which suggests that Ron Paul was responsible for racist and bigoted newsletters that were written in his name in the 1990s.
This is the exact same desperate tactic that was employed when Paul ran for president in 2008.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t
• 
  

Amongst the ludicrous smears directed toward Paul at the time by The New Republic was the claim that Paul had referred to Martin Luther King as a “gay pedophile”.
In reality Paul has noted King as one of his heroes on many occasions. Indeed, the only time that the Congressman has ever voted for something that is not explicitly authorized in the Constitution, it was for America to recognize Martin Luther King day as a public holiday.
“Once again, the establishment is trying to flog a lame, tired 20 year old story that has been explained ad naseum in campaign after campaign.” writes Paul’s campaign adviser Jesse Benton.
“These items were not written by Dr. Paul and they are anathema to belief in human liberty.” Benton added.
Similar tactics were employed by the establishment last year, in a last ditch effort to reverse Rand Paul’s exponential popularity surge. It failed miserably as Congressman Ron Paul’s son comfortably won his Kentucky Senate seat.
The fact that the media has dredged up this rotting corpse of a non-story AGAIN in an attempt to smear Paul indicates complete desperation and only serves to highlight that unlike most of his political opponents, Ron Paul’s record and his character remain clean as a whistle.
The Congressman appeared on Fox News yesterday to discuss the media attempts to derail his campaign. Paul also conducted a longer sit down interview on the subject with KTRK-TV in Houston. Watch both these interviews below.
——————————————————————
Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England

Claim: Youths Offered Money To Start Riots

Violence in Leicester after “journalists” tried to pay off kids, according to Tweets
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
As massive unrest plaguing the United Kingdom spread from London to other cities last night, claims emerged that individuals calling themselves journalists were offering to pay youths to start riots, suggesting an effort to provocateur some of the violence.
According to Tweets sent by people who were in the city of Leicester last night trying to secure their communities, kids were being told to cause mayhem in return for cash. Leicester was hit by violence later that night, as youths attacked buildings in the city center.
“There were swarms of hooded Asian, black and white youths in their 20s, and some as young as 12, being hounded out of Leicester city centre at around midnight,” nightclub owner James Cockerill told the BBC.

In a message that was forwarded to Leicestershire police, a Twitter user called “leicestertalk” wrote, “AadamSparkzz & his mates just offered money by these journos to start a riot in #Leicester.”  (CONTINUE READING)

A Thousand Pictures Is Worth One Word

Jeff Clark
BIG GOLD
July 22, 2011
In spite of constant headlines about debts and deficits, most Americans don’t really believe the U.S. dollar will collapse. From knowledgeable investors who study the markets to those seemingly too busy to worry about such things, most dismiss the idea of the dollar actually going to zero.
History has a message for us: No fiat currency has lasted forever. Eventually, they all fail.
BMG BullionBars recently published a poster featuring pictures of numerous currencies that have gone bust. Some got there quickly, while others took a century or more. Regardless of how long it took, though, the seductive temptations allowed under a fiat monetary system eventually caught up with these governments, and their currencies went po, federal reserveof!
You might suspect this happened only to third world countries. You’d be wrong. There was no discrimination as to the size or perceived stability of a nation’s economy; if the leaders abused their currency, the country paid the price.
As you scroll through the currencies below, you’ll see some long-ago casualties. What’s shocking, though, is how many have occurred in our lifetime. You might count how many currencies have failed since you’ve been born.
So what’s the one word for the “thousand pictures” below? Worthless.

Yugoslavia – 10 billion dinar, 1993  (CONTINUE READING)