Archive for category Banking
THE GOVERNMENT WANTS YOUR RETIREMENT
Posted by Harley in Banking, The Economy on February 26, 2010
I will soon have another free report for you that will protect you from this power grab but right now it is imperative that you read the following. Do not be fooled by the government speak that they are looking for ways to help you. It’s all about deceiving you into believing they have your best interests in mind.
NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH!
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it.” ~ Frederic Bastiat
THE GOVERNMENT WANTS YOUR RETIREMENT
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Neal Boortz@ February 3, 2010 8:51 AM Permalink | Comments (105) | TrackBacks (0)
I’ve been telling you about this for a while now. This, to me, is one of the most dangerous schemes currently slithering through the crevices and dark spots of the Imperial Federal Government in Washington. What am I talking about? What I believe to be plans by the Obama administration to, in effect, seize your retirement funds and use them to finance their deficit spending. Remember … there are more than $3 trillion dollars sitting out there in individual retirement, IRA and 401K plans. Politicians just cant stand the idea of this much money sitting out there in private investments … out of the grasp of politicians. So …. Something needs to be done. And sure enough, something is going to be done. The Treasury Department and the Department of Labor were going to start taking comments on ways to promote the idea converting 401(k) savings and IRAs into annuities or other steady payment streams. Well you can finally take a look at this document for yourself:
Request for Information Regarding Lifetime Income Options for Participants and
Beneficiaries in Retirement Plans
Here, I’ll post a little to get you started:
The Department of Labor and the Department of the Treasury (the “Agencies”) are currently reviewing the rules under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and the plan qualification rules under the Internal Revenue Code (Code) to determine whether, and, if so, how, the Agencies could or should enhance, by regulation or otherwise, the retirement security of participants in employer-sponsored retirement plans and in individual retirement arrangements (IRAs) by facilitating access to, and use of, lifetime income or other arrangements designed to provide a lifetime stream of income after retirement. The purpose of this request for information is to solicit views, suggestions and comments from plan participants, employers and other plan sponsors, plan service providers, and members of the financial community, as well as the general public, on this important issue.
That’s a lot of government-speak. Can you read between the lines? What is the real plan here? Behind this nonsense about “lifetime stream of income after retirement” language is a lovely little plan to force you to finance the Democrat’s deficit spending. The plan is to play into the current economic fears. “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Remember the words of Rahm? The Democrats want you to question whether or not Wall Street is the right place to invest your money. Wouldn’t you be safer if the government kept it for you? The government wants you to believe that it can do a better job of investing and managing your retirement than you can. And for a lot of people who believe that government is the answer, they may fine with this. It’s not fine with me, and, I suspect, it’s not all that fine with you.
Don’t believe me? Here is how these agencies present their reasoning:
Accordingly, with the continuing trend away from traditional defined benefit plans to 401(k) defined contribution plans and hybrid plans … employees are not only increasingly responsible for the adequacy of their savings at the time of retirement, but also for ensuring that their savings last throughout their retirement years … In recognition of the foregoing, the Agencies are considering whether it would be appropriate for them to take future steps to facilitate access to, and use of, lifetime income or other arrangements designed to provide a stream of income after retirement.
Here is one of the questions asked in this document from the Treasury Department and the Department of Labor:
13. Should some form of lifetime income distribution option be required for defined contribution plans (in addition to money purchase pension plans)? If so, should that option be the default distribution option, and should it apply to the entire account balance? To what extent would such a requirement encourage or discourage plan sponsorship?
Okay, what is this question really asking? First, it wants to know if the government should FORCE you to contribute money to an income distribution option. Then the second part of the question wants to know if this should be the standard retirement option, unless you choose to also put your money elsewhere.
OK .. I’m a little disjointed here. Let me try to wrap up all of this up in one neat package.
Obama’s budget is setting records in deficit spending. Obama is proposing borrowing every close to the amount of money that the Republicans borrowed in a single year .. but Obama is proposing borrowing that sum EVERY SINGLE MONTH throughout his term of office and beyond.
Earlier this week I told you of a story from the investment press which stated that investors now look at blue chip stocks like Coca Cola as better and safer investments than U.S. Government treasury certificates. China has signaled that it is not in the mood to buy many more U.S. government securities. This is how we finance our debt! If investors and other nations won’t voluntary finance our debt, what does our government do? Well, our government does what governments always do. Fall back on its unique ability to use force to accomplish its goals. There’s a problem here. We aren’t going to force China to buy more Treasuries … so where is the force to be applied? YOU, that’s where.
The government is talking about some form of “lifetime income distribution” and “lifetime stream of income.” (Isn’t this what Social Security was supposed to do?) But just HOW does the government provide this “lifetime” income? Simple … by FORCING you to take all or a portion of your retirement funds and invest them where China won’t go; invest them where private international investors no longer want to go; invest them in Treasury Certificates. Oh yeah … they’ll probably come up with some fancy new name for some fancy new type of T-bill … but the goal and the effect will be the same. You’ll see your money seized by government and used to finance the insane spending plans of politicians .. Democrat and Republican.
Stay alert folks. The government has wonderful ways to couch this in language that seams harmless and innocuous. It’s a money-grab. Nothing less.
“The Devil Of Wall Street” ~ Part II
More on Goldman Sachs. It gained notoriety for its speculative practices in the 1920s. In 1928, it launched the Goldman Sachs Trading Corp., a closed-end fund similar to a Ponzi scheme. The fund failed in the stock market crash of 1929, marring the firm’s reputation for years afterwards. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers all came from Goldman, prompting one commentator to call the U.S. Treasury “Goldman Sachs South.”
Goldman’s arrogance comes from more than just access to the money faucets of the banking system. It manipulates markets. Prior to 2008, it was just an investment bank. In 2008 Goldman was transformed into a bank holding company which gave it access to the Federal Reserve’s faucet; but it remained an investment bank, aggressively speculating in the markets. Now it can borrow incredible amounts of money at close to 0% interest use this money to speculate for its own account and bend markets to its will.
Only now are the powers to be finally recognizing that this must be stopped not only by Goldman but other “BIG” banks as well. The Glass-Steagall Act should be reintroduced into the system and lobbying and campaign contributions should end. No more politics in lending!
“The Devil of Wall Street”
Remember that in the past I’ve told you that Goldman Sachs is the devil of Wall Street, well here more proof. Corruption at its finest. Papers and other blogs have been filled with efforts of the NY Fed and Goldman Sachs to hide the details of the criminal conspiracy of the AIG bailout. Looks like Treasury Secretary Geithner has a golden parachute waiting for him at Goldman Sachs as payoff for his bailout of AIG. One of the chief recipients of this payout was Goldman who got $13 billion, roughly equivalent to its bonus pool for the first 9 months of 2009.
You see the bailout was engineered by the New York Fed while Geithner headed it, to buy out about $30 billion in credit default swaps that AIG sold on toxic debt securities. The New York Fed isn’t subject to citizen intrusions such as freedom of information requests, unlike the Federal Reserve. This impenetrability comes in handy since the bank is the preferred vehicle for many of the Fed’s bailout programs. It’s as though the New York Fed was a black-ops outfit for the nation’s central bank.
Even after the GM autoworkers, bondholders and vendors all received a government-enforced discount (talk about gov’t intrusion), Geithner had the audacity to claim the “sanctity of contracts” in the dealings with these companies like AIG. $170 billion of federal funds went to AIG and the banks feeding at its trough. A little side note, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that state governments face a collective $168 billion budget shortfall for fiscal 2010. If the money used to bail out AIG and the banks had been used to bail out the states instead, the states would not be facing insolvency today.
Cold Turkey Thanksgiving 2009
11/24/09
The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled.
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908- ), former professor of economics at Harvard, writing in Money: Whence it came, where it went (1975).
JK Galbraith’s statement that complexity is used by modern economics to confuse the truth about money is a fact. Simply put, bankers replaced money with credit and debt in order to profit by the indebting of others. It’s why bankers are now so rich. It is also why others are now so poor.
Understanding money is not rocket science. Modern currencies are a fraud, a fraud that has escaped detection much as did Bernard Madoff’s ponzi-scheme. Bernard Madoff’s scheme was based on the fraud that investor’s money was, in fact, invested. The fraud of modern economics, however, is that money isn’t actually money—and they don’t want you to know it.
MERRY OLD ENGLAND
THE MOTHER OF MODERN MONETARY FRAUD
From the time of Charlemagne until the 12th century, the silver currency of England was made from the highest purity silver available. Unfortunately there were drawbacks to minting currency of fine silver, notably the level of wear it suffered, and the ease with which coins could be “clipped”, or trimmed, by those dealing in the currency.
In the 12th century a new standard for English coinage was established by Henry II — the Sterling Silver standard of 92.5% silver and 7.5% copper. This was a harder-wearing alloy, yet it was still a rather high grade of silver.
It went some way towards discouraging the practice of “clipping”, though this practice was further discouraged and largely eliminated with the introduction of the milled edge we see on coins today.
By 1696 the currency had been seriously weakened by an increase in clipping during the Nine Years’ War to the extent that it was decided to recall and replace all hammered silver coinage in circulation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coins_of_the_pound_sterling
CLIPPING CURRENCY BIG TIME
THE INTRODUCTION OF PAPER BANKNOTES
The real clipping of money began in 1694 when the Bank of England was allowed to issue its paper banknotes to circulate alongside silver coins. Over the next three hundred years, the bankers’ debt-based notes would replace gold and silver; and, as a consequence, the entire world would eventually become in debt to the bankers.
The triumph of private bankers in replacing money with banknotes was to be universal as all nations would eventually succumb to the banker’s easy credit and inevitable debt. Today, the central ingredient of money is not gold or silver but confidence, confidence in banknotes no longer backed or convertible to anything of value.
Modern economics is a highly successful confidence game run by bankers. The following is from the Bank of England’s own website emphasizing its considerable efforts to maintain the necessary confidence in its on-going con game:
The Bank of England has been issuing banknotes for over 300 years…Gaining and maintaining public confidence in the currency is a key role of the Bank of England and one which is essential to the proper functioning of the economy. [bold mine]
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/
THE BANKERS CON GAME
The long-running and lucrative confidence game, however, is about to end. Its breakdown is now underway as constantly compounding consumer, business and government debt can no longer be carried and/or paid for by existing or future productivity, especially as economies are contracting, not expanding, and collective debt levels are skyrocketing to levels which can never be repaid.
We borrowed against tomorrow and tomorrow is here
The collapse of economies such as the US, the UK, and Japan etc, will eventually render the bankers’ IOUs and government currencies worthless; and when this happens, the three hundred year stranglehold of bankers over human endeavor will be over.
BANKERS REPENT
You who hold the scales
Of justice in the land
You who hold the power
That determines if a man
Will earn his daily bread
Or fall victim to your schemes
Broken and indebted
By the triumph of your dreams
Repent, repent, repent my friends
Repent if you would please
Repent, repent, repent my friends
From your selfishness disease
Your doors can’t hold forever
The storm now at the gate
You’ve chosen what will happen
You’ve chosen your own fate
Already we can hear
The changes coming near
Already we can smell
Your anger and your fear
Just when you thought you had it all
That fate would be your friend
It turned on you did it not
Perhaps this is your end
What’s happening to your power?
What happened to your greed?
What’s happening to your minions?
Who served your every need
History has turned on you
After being so kind
The public now is on to you
After being so blind
Repent, repent, repent my friends
Repent if you would please
Repent, repent, repent my friends
From your selfishness disease
Gold makes a run
Two powerful forces, paper money and gold, are now locked in mortal combat. The combatants, however, are proxies for far more fundamental forces. Paper money is a proxy for private banking and government power—and gold is a proxy for freedom.
Moving Through The Maelstrom Monthly Commentary November 2009
The complete breakdown of the global economy was necessary for people to understand what is happening. Economic elites had banished all inquiry into monetary issues that did not conform to their special interests. Keynes and Friedman were popularized not because they were right, but because their theories suited those in power. Truth was ignored. Today, its revenge is here. Popular theories supporting paper money will soon give way to economic realities exposing their failings.

Against the formidable opposition of central banks and Western governments, the price of gold has more than quadrupled in ten years. The forward selling of unmined gold by large gold mining companies in collusion with central bank gold leasing did much to constrain gold’s advance but the power of its intractable rise should be seen in the light of that opposition.
Currently, the fall of the US dollar is currently pushing gold to new highs. Tomorrow it will be the fall of the pound, the euro or the yen that will do so. The fraud of paper money is being exposed and it is only a matter of time until the global edifice of credit and debt it supports will collapse.
In The Great Wave (Oxford University Press 1996), Professor David Hackett Fisher, an economic historian, tells of the great waves that periodically destroy existing epochs to make way for the new and better eras that follow.
Such waves, Professor Fisher found, always culminate in total economic collapse. We are nearing the end of what Fisher believes is perhaps history’s greatest wave; and yet, the economy is still standing (though currently quite wobbly). Since great waves last from 80 to 120 years and this wave began in 1896, it means an economic collapse is imminent.
It does seem to be a possibility, doesn’t it?
THANKSGIVING AND THANKFULNESS
For those invested in gold and silver, their recent rise is cause for thanksgiving. But our thanksgiving for gold and silver’s rise must be tempered with what the rise of gold and silver signifies. Gold and silver are barometers of monetary turmoil and economic distress; and the higher they rise, the more severe and closer the collapse will be.
For the few who saw the collapse coming, it will be a vindication that the truth can and will triumph, that monetary fraud no matter how ubiquitous or long-standing cannot last forever, that gold and silver are money and that paper currencies are not.
Professor Antal Fekete said the day gold and silver explode upwards will be a sad day for humanity. He is right. The explosive ascent of gold and silver will be caused by the global collapse of paper assets and paper money. Suffering and loss will be the experience of most.
Although that day will be one of tragedy, it will also make way for the new and better world that is to come. Give thanks for that. Life is a miracle and we are a part of it. It is not done with us yet. That much is obvious.
Buy gold, buy silver, have faith.
The Best Trader in the World Is Wildly Bullish on Gold
Posted by Harley in Banking, The Economy on November 5, 2009
From Harley – Article worth your reading from one of the best, if not the best, traders in the world. Hope it helps you…
Taipan Daily: The Best Trader in the World Is Wildly Bullish on Gold
By: Justice Litle, Editorial Director, Taipan Publishing Group
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
The “Michael Jordan of trading” is now table-poundingly bullish on gold. And the Reserve Bank of India may have just made him look like a prophet…
John Paulson (no relation to Hank) is widely viewed as the most successful money manager of our times. Paulson made billions of dollars for himself and his investors by finding an obscure, non-public way to bet against the housing bubble. In terms of absolute dollar profit, his subprime crisis score is the largest ever.
Given his success, it is notable that Paulson is now quite bullish on gold. The Paulson Funds have heavy exposure to gold and gold stocks, and even offer an investment vehicle with payouts denominated in gold.
But, for all that, John Paulson is more of an investor than a trader. A trader, in the purist sense of the word, is an opportunistic mercenary type… someone who can raid most any asset class – stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies – and walk away with armloads of cash.
A Trader’s Trader
That is what it makes it even more notable for Paul Tudor Jones – the ultimate trader’s trader, and arguably the most successful pure trader alive today – to be wildly bullish on gold.
Your editor has long been a fan of PTJ (Jones’ initials), seeing him as a sort of market mentor from afar. In the 80s and 90s, PTJ was known as the “Michael Jordan of trading.” After cutting his teeth in the commodity pits, Jones went on to trade most every asset class under the sun in his futures trading fund.
The track record is legendary. PTJ started out with multiple consecutive years of triple-digit returns in the 1980s. He then reputedly made $80 million to $100 million in the 1987 stock market crash… nearly doubled investors’ money again in the 1990 Nikkei crash… and went 20+ years overall with no losing years.
While some fund managers are happy to chat with the press, PTJ prefers to avoid the spotlight as a rule of thumb. After a documentary came out in the 1980s (appropriately called Trader), PTJ decided he didn’t want it out there and bought up all the copies. (You will never see him embracing the public eye.)
A Strong Vote for Gold
Hence the surprise when PTJ came out in his recent quarterly letter pounding the table for gold.
“I have never been a gold bug,” Jones writes to his investors. “It is just an asset that, like everything else in life, has its time and place. And now is that time. The economic and political comparisons to the late 1970’s are too numerous to ignore.”
The argument is backed up with chart comparisons like the one below:

The top chart shows the dollar value of international reserve assets – that is to say, the total worth of central bank holdings around the world – in billions of dollars since 1970.
Over the past 39 years, international reserve holdings have skyrocketed from practically nothing to more than $8 trillion. Meanwhile, the percentage of those holdings counted as gold went from a whopping 70% or so in the late 1970s to near single digits today.
India Lights a Fire
Perhaps fitting, then, that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) lit a fire under gold and gold stocks yesterday, sending the yellow metal to nominal record highs. (To break the inflation-adjusted high, gold will have to crack $2,000 per ounce.)
“Gold jumped to a record,” Bloomberg reports, “after India’s central bank bought 200 metric tons of the metal from the International Monetary Fund, heightening speculation that there may be more official purchases.”
The RBI’s actions call to mind a Taipan Daily missive written back in February, “Why the IMF and Fort Knox Won’t Put the Hurt on Gold.”
You can reference the data table in that piece to get a sense of just how much buying the likes of India, China and other major players have left to do if they hope to bring their gold holdings up to snuff.
When asked to describe his competitive edge as a trader, Jones described it this way:
The secret to being successful from a trading perspective is to have an indefatigable and an undying and unquenchable thirst for information and knowledge. Because I think there are certain situations where you can absolutely understand what motivates every buyer and seller and have a pretty good picture of what’s going to happen…
With the yellow metal storming the barricades as I write, it appears PTJ’s instincts have set him in good stead once again.
Warm Regards,
Justice Litle,
Editorial Director, Taipan Publishing Group
****
Justice Litle is the Editorial Director for Taipan Publishing Group and the e-letter, Taipan Daily, the free financial e-letter that introduces readers to breaking global trends and investment strategies.
Link to original article: http://www.taipanpublishinggroup.com/taipan-daily-110409.html