Financial Coup d’Etat 101, Bailout,Preceding Time,Explained

[Penguin]

And we should remember this in the light of the above:

http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/200 ... -DRUGS.php

"The United Nations' crime and drug watchdog has indications that money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis, its head was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Vienna-based UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in an interview released by Austrian weekly Profil that drug money often became the only available capital when the crisis spiralled out of control last year.

"In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital," Costa was quoted as saying by Profil. "In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor."

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime had found evidence that "interbank loans were funded by money that originated from drug trade and other illegal activities," Costa was quoted as saying. There were "signs that some banks were rescued in that way."

Profil said Costa declined to identify countries or banks which may have received drug money and gave no indication how much cash might be involved. He only said Austria was not on top of his list, Profil said."

Oh really...What country was that Wall Street in again, Berlin?


Edit: Ahh, now I know why this Costa dude refuses to point fingers...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/cr ... 41735.html

Ahhah.

"Amid all the libertarian talk about the right of individuals to engage in dangerous practices provided no one else gets hurt, certain key facts are easily forgotten. First, cannabis is a dangerous drug - not just to the individuals who use it. People who drive under the influence of cannabis put others at risk. Would even the most ardent supporter of legalisation want to fly in an aircraft whose pilot used cannabis?"

"Second, drug control works. More than a century of universally accepted restrictions on heroin and cocaine have prevented a pandemic. Global levels of drug addiction - think of the opium dens of the 19th century - have dropped dramatically in the past 100 years. In the past 10 years or so, they have remained stable. The drug problem is being contained and our societies are safer and healthier as a result."

No, the above isnt satire...I think. But it does explain a few things

[Perelandra]

Thank you for this, vigilant. I came across Fitts several years ago and was amazed, she is still amazing. I hope you'll continue tying some of this together (and I hope to find time to read all of it).

I'm glad you're laughing Penguin, cuz really what else can be done?

[Penguin]

What else? Stop buying crack and grow your own tobacco



Narco-dollars for beginners -

http://solari.com/articles/scoop_narco_dummies.htm
Originally from http://www.narconews.com/narcodollars1.html

And this veritable gem:

"Ok, so let's think about how much Sam and Dave have in accumulated profits in their bank and brokerage accounts.

Let's assume that the US narco national product in 1947 was $1 billion and it has grown to about $150 billion today. Assume a straight line of growth from $1 billion to $150 billion, so the business grows about $3 billion a year and then tops out at $150 billion as the Solari Index has bottomed out at or near 0 percent. America is about as stoned on illegal drugs as it can get, and growth in controlled "Schedule II" substances has moved to Ritalin and other cocaine-like drugs for kids that government programs and health insurance will now finance.

Let's take the BIG PERCENT margin that we estimated for Dave the drug man's net cash margin. Let's say that every year from 1947 through 2001, that the cash flow sales available for reinvestment from drug profits grew by $3 billion a year, throwing off that number times BIG PERCENT. Okay, assume that the reinvested profit grew at the compound growth rate of the Standard & Poor's 500 as it got reinvested along the way.

That amount is an estimate for the equity owned and controlled by those who have profited in the drug trade. Total narco dollars. How much money is that? I made an Excel spread-sheet once to estimate total narco capital in the economy.

My numbers showed` that Dave the drug man had bought up not only Sam's companies, but ---if you throw in other organized crime cash flows----a controlling position in about most everything on the New York Stock Exchange."

From here:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0202/S00061.htm

Recommend reading the whole article, its in several short pieces. Good stuff about stock market and drug money, and economic-political power.
Written so even I understand

In Defense of the American Drug Lords

It's 1947. You want to make sure that America wins in the great game of globalization. The winner will be the country that accumulates the largest pool of capital to finance its corporations and investment in new technology. That is a problem because Americans vote for leaders who help them spend, not save. No matter how hard Sam the sugar man works and no matter how much he saves, how much capital can be pooled at SLIM PERCENTAGE? It is fair to say it is not enough to beat the investment network that can pool capital at BIG PRECENTAGE growth rates. (See Part I for the story of Sam and Dave).

Indeed, what a history of narcotics trafficking and piracy and various other forms of organized crime over the last five hundred years show is that our leaders have been in a double bind for centuries. The only thing more dangerous than getting caught doing organized crime, is not being in control of the reinvested cash flows from it. This is why monarchs played footsie with pirates in Elizabethan times and no doubt have been doing so ever since.

After taxation, organized crime is a society's way of forming lots of pools of low cost cash capital. Organized crime is a banking and venture capital business.

So the reality is that if you want to control the cash flow and capital that controls the overworld, you've got to control the cash flows getting generated by the underworld. Indeed, you've got to have an underworld. If it does not exist, you need to outlaw some things to get one going.

Here is the bottom line on how the money works on narco dollars. Unless Sam switches to dope, Dave will win his wife, his mistress, his banker, buy his company, buy his Congressman and be the star at the local charities. Everyone will admire and pay attention to Dave.

It's the power of compound interest.

[Penguin]

One last paste now, for this is very important in my not always humble opinion....

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0203/S00004.htm

The Pogo Problem: We Have Met the Enemy and It is Us

The Sam and Dave dilemma of "to deal or not to deal" is made worse by the power of popular opinion.

Last summer, I made a presentation called "How the Money Works on Organized Crime" to a wonderful group of about 100 people at an annual conference for a spiritually focused foundation in Philadelphia. This is a group of people who are committed to contributing to the spiritual evolution of our culture.

After walking through the various Sam and Dave dilemmas with Sam's SLIM PERCENTAGE profits sugar business and Dave's BIG PERCENTAGE profits drug business, as well as the intersection between the stock market and campaign fundraising and narco dollars for about an hour, I asked the group what would happen to the stock market if we decriminalized or legalized drugs?

The stock market would crash, they said.

What would happen to financing the government deficit if we enforced all money-laundering laws? Since most of the bank wire transfers are batched and run through the New York Federal Reserve Bank, this should not really be that hard, right?

Their taxes might go up. Worse, yet, their government checks might stop, they said.

I then asked them to imagine a big red button at the front of the lectern. By the power of our imaginations, if they pushed that button they could decriminalize narcotics trafficking and stop all money laundering in the United States.

Who would push the button?

It turns out that in an audience of approximately 100 people committed to spiritually evolve our society that only one person would push the button. Upon reflection, 99 would not. I asked why.

They said that if they pushed the button, their mutual funds would go down and their government checks might stop.

I commented that what they were proposing is that an entire infrastructure of people continue to market narcotics to their children and grandchildren to ensure that their mutual and pension funds stay high in value.

They said, yes, that's right.

Which is why I say that America is not addicted to narcotics as much as it is addicted to narco dollars.

The National Security Council's

Double Bind in 1996

Here is the acid test.

It's August 1996. Gary Webb has just broken the story in the San Jose Mercury News about the CIA helping to deal drugs into South Central LA. He has put the legal documents up on their website. The proof is hard. The government is dealing drugs.

Catherine Austin Fitts's company is publishing a tool on the web called Community Wizard that shows maps with Geographic Information Systems software that include patterns of defaults on HUD mortgages in the areas of LA with the heaviest concentration of CIA supported Iran Contra drug trafficking.

The patterns between HUD defaulted mortgages and narco dollars are much too close for comfort.

What would you do if you were Bob Rubin (Secretary of Treasury, now Co-Chairman of Citicorp), Larry Summers (Deputy Secretary of Treasury, now President of Harvard), John Hawke (Undersecretary of the Treasury; now Comptroller of the Currency), Al Gore (Vice President, now teaching) and John Deutch (Director of the CIA, now teaching) sitting on the national security council or the related narco dollars task force?

Would you target Webb and get him fired and the story discredited or would you let the story grow and flourish?

Would you target Fitts and have her business and her software tools and databases destroyed or would you let her business flourish, allowing every community to see and track the narco dollars that were helping to drive their Solari Index to 0% while driving the Dow Jones Index higher?

Which will it be in an election year? Will you do everything you can do to attract the reinvestment of the narco dollars into your campaign and into the stock market or will you let Fitts and Webb continue to illuminate "how the money works" on narco dollars in a way that might crash the stock market and make it harder and more expensive for the government to finance the deficit?

Before you answer, let me tell you one more story.

In 1999, I was at a revival for Christian women. One of the presidential candidates made a guest appearance. A friend of mine, an Afro-American minister, who used to work for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), leapt to her feet to applaud him with tremendous enthusiasm. I was surprised at her response given that she understood his success in attracting narco dollars - not to mention his and his colleague's silence on Gary Webb's Dark Alliance reports and the subsequent CIA admission of drug dealing by the government.

She looked at me and said, "He is going to be the winner." So I said, "You mean, I am a loser because I tried to stop the corruption and he is a winner because he profited from it and helped it grow. So you will clap for him and not for me." She replied, "That's right. You are a loser. He is a winner"

Not such an easy decision to vote for the "rule of law" is it?

Indeed, Webb got fired and Fitts' was targeted and, after spending $6 million on legal and related expenses, my fortune sank down to the same 0% as the Solari Index.

But whatever I do, I can't blame it just on the top guys. Whatever they did, whoever it was, they were doing what it took to please and win the crowd.

I would say that this holds true for many other things besides ...

[Perelandra]

What else? Stop buying crack and grow your own tobacco

Ah yes. Were you the one growing your own? I love that.
Thanks to you also, for the articles.

[vigilant]

Flamboyant Audacity...

"oh man, what is it that you will not believe"....


Supposedly the reason the nation needs to be fleeced is because predatory lenders wanted to loan money so badly that they were "even willing to loan to people with no ability to pay" because they ran out of people with sound credit ratings and excellent ability to pay.


It was also supposedly the fault of "the people who borrowed money without adequate means and ability to pay.


It typical mirror world fashion, the truth is always just at the end of your own chain of logic, instead of on the television. Of course, its the reverse....


Punctual Payers Rewarded by Card Companies With Higher Rates Email | Print | A A A

By Alexis Leondis

Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Mel Brandt said he got a Citibank Home Depot MasterCard for its rewards program. His reward for paying on time was an interest rate increase to 19 percent from 12 percent.

“If I didn’t opt out and close the account, I’m afraid the interest payments would snowball and I would default,” said Brandt, 52, a self-employed house painter in St. Louis, who relies on credit cards to fund his painting business.

(if we can't strangle you into enough debt that you never free yourself then we will strangle your business until you can't get out. We are looking for slaves, not business partners.)


Lenders came under fire yesterday in a U.S. Senate Banking Committee hearing for raising interest rates, adding fees and cutting credit lines even for consumers perceived to be low- risk with high credit scores, practices that Connecticut Democrat Christopher Dodd, the chairman, called “gouging.”

(Love the use of the word "even". It implies that they were cutting lines of credit for people with lesser ability to pay, but its the reverse. Its not true. Those sorts of terms are put in to imply that things are so tough that even the good payers have to suffer.)

Consumers are paying more as the federal funds rate, or the interest rate banks charge each other for overnight loans, is as low as zero and U.S. lawmakers have agreed to a $789 billion economic stimulus plan funded by taxpayers.

Rates for consumers should be falling faster than they are, yet banks, facing an increase in defaults and a decline in consumer spending, are “still very reluctant to pass lower rates or increased credit access to consumers,” said Ben Woolsey, director of marketing and consumer research at CreditCards.com, an online resource for credit-card users.

(no kidding. if they cut you a loan right now, especially a long term one, they would have to carry the loan at very low rates. Not gonna happen. they pulled the "don't buy a falling house" scam when long term rates were at the bottom of a normal cycle.)


The average interest rate charged on existing credit-card balances was 13.4 percent, down from 14.4 percent a year earlier, according to the Federal Reserve’s December G19 report, which tracks rates for credit-card accounts. The prime rate, which most variable credit-card rates are linked to and follows the federal funds rate, has decreased to 3.25 percent from 6 percent last February.

(so what does that say? It says that the average person is getting a better rate why? Because they are in so far over their head that they cannot get out, just like the bankers want them. Now that they are a slave, the bank lowered the rate a bit to keep the slaves in the fields instead of going bankrupt. its called staying just under the point of diminishing returns)

Rate Changes

Rate changes announced by New York-based Citigroup Inc., the biggest U.S. credit-card lender, American Express Co. and Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp. are intended to reduce risk and raise revenue, said Woolsey, who is based in Austin, Texas.

Citigroup’s charge-off rates of loans increased by 88 percent, climbing to 7.81 percent in December, up from 4.16 percent a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. American Express’s charge-off rates rose 118 percent, from 3.32 percent to 7.23 percent while Bank of America’s rates increased from 5.24 percent to 8.45 percent, a 61 percent jump. Charge- offs are loans the banks don’t expect to be repaid.

Costs Fluctuate

The cost of funding for credit cards fluctuates with economic cycles, said Peter Garuccio, a spokesman for the Washington-based American Bankers Association. The cost of funding for issuers has increased as one of their sources of capital, credit-card income streams sold to investors, has dried up, Garuccio said.

“In order to keep credit flowing in a responsible way, we had to change rates on these cards,” said Citigroup’s chief executive officer, Vikram S. Pandit, at a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington on Feb. 11. Citigroup and Bank of America have each received $45 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Citigroup is changing rates for consumers who haven’t been reset in at least two years and is offering its customers the option to cancel their cards and pay off existing balances at the original rate, according to Samuel Wang, a spokesman for Citigroup.

Kenneth Lewis, Bank of America’s CEO, said during the hearing that nine percent of the bank’s customers had their interest rates increased in 2008. The figure includes customers who had a rate increase because of a default or change in credit profile, which may include external credit risk, said Betty Riess, a spokeswoman for the bank.

Rate Hikes

The majority of American Express cardholders saw interest rates increase by 2 to 3 percentage points in December, said Desiree Fish, a spokeswoman for the bank.

“I felt like my credibility was in doubt, despite my 20- plus years of on-time payments,” said Donald Neville, a 54- year-old regional sales manager for industrial machineries. Neville, who lives in Swedesboro, New Jersey, said he no longer uses the card for purchases and is just paying down the balance.

There is the risk that increasing rates on borrowers who are already struggling with payments may result in more defaults, said Linda Sherry, director of national priorities at Consumer Action, a Washington-based advocacy group. “Sudden rate hikes across a broad swath of cardholders can bust family budgets,” Sherry said.

Risk-Modeling

The banks use risk-modeling systems to predict the likelihood of default, said Garuccio of the ABA.

Michael Megeath, a Treasury analyst in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has five credit cards and has accumulated more than $40,000 in debt. He said he has tried to negotiate with American Express to decrease the 13 percent interest rate on his Amex Blue Card.

“If a bank raises the interest rate on a person with a lower credit score, even though he’s current on all of his payments, it will cause the financial collapse of the cardholder,” said Megeath, 61. “Who’s going to bail me out?”

The Federal Reserve approved provisions in December that include 45-days’ notice for rate increases, instead of 15 days, and 21 days to pay a bill. The rules are effective July 1, 2010.

The Fed’s measures dovetail with legislation introduced by Dodd. The bill would prevent “any time, any reason” rate increases, according to a summary of the bill.

“At a time when our economy is in a crisis and consumers are struggling financially, credit-card companies in too many cases are gouging them, hiking interest rates on customers who pay on time and consistently meet the terms of their credit-card agreements,” Dodd said at the hearing yesterday.

“Winter sets in and jobs evaporate,” said Brandt, the painter. “This month may be the last that I can or am willing to make these card payments.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Alexis Leondis in New York aleondis@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 13, 2009 00:01 EST

[vigilant]

Can you believe they took God's money too?
$$$



Madoff Scandal Ensnares Order of Patron Saint for Moralists Email | Print | A A A

By Vernon Silver and David Glovin



Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Bernard Madoff may be testing the faith of followers of the patron saint of moralists and confessors, who sank money into the investment funds of the alleged mastermind of the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

Roman Catholic priests and institutions linked to the Redemptorist society in the U.S. and Italy appear on a 162-page client list of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan on Feb. 4. The religious order follows the teachings of Saint Alphonsus Liguori who preached about ethical behavior.

“The world is very hard, particularly in the manner of money,” said Stan Wrobel, a priest and treasurer at the Redemptorist headquarters in Rome. “We can only pray for the people who have been damaged and for the family of Madoff because they may need spiritual help, too.”

The 70-year-old investment adviser was arrested Dec. 11, 2008, on charges of defrauding investors of $50 billion. Madoff’s firm also worked with Jewish charities, universities and nonprofit groups including the Boston-based Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family Foundation; Yeshiva University in Manhattan; and the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles

The Redemptorists, whose 5,400 priests and brothers work in 78 countries, haven’t disclosed how much they may have lost and are still tallying the sum, according to Treasurer Edmund Faliskie at the group’s Northeast U.S. office in Brooklyn, New York.

‘Significant’ Investment

A “significant” amount of money was invested starting in 1992, said Marion Lunt, a spokeswoman for the Redemptorist fathers in the U.S. The money was used to fund scholarships for inner-city children, care for elderly priests and other charitable causes, she said. Lunt declined to provide further financial details.

“We’re working with legal counsel and our accountant and trying to figure out how to go forward,” said Faliskie, a priest who became treasurer in August.

The Madoff scandal and its implications for business ethics would be fodder for the Redemptorists’ meditation, even if they hadn’t been a victim, said Martin McKeever, president of the Alphonsian Academy, an institute of moral theology in Rome.

Business ethics are “an important question for moral theology,” said McKeever, a Redemptorist priest who specializes in political theory. The topic has been studied for decades, “apart from this particular episode.”

The society’s headquarters invested with Madoff through the group’s U.S. members, according to a faxed statement from the Rome office. Returns on the investment helped fund tsunami relief in Asia in 2004, and hurricane aid to Haiti and Cuba in 2008, the statement said.

Saint Thomas Diocese

Other investors linked to the society include a pension fund at the Redemptorist Fathers’ regional headquarters in Brooklyn; the Saint Thomas diocese in the U.S. Virgin Islands and priests in Baltimore; New Smyrna Beach, Florida; and San Juan, Puerto Rico, according to the client list, which covered the year before Madoff’s arrest and was submitted by the trustee liquidating the investment adviser’s assets.

“It would appear that much of the savings of the diocese and the endowment funds of St. Mary and St. Patrick schools have apparently been lost,” Bishop Herbert Bevard, who leads the Saint Thomas diocese, told parishioners in a Dec. 19 letter.

Investments with Madoff date back “several decades” and began with the Caribbean diocese’s Saint Patrick Church on the island of Saint Croix, the bishop said. Redemptorist priests have served the diocese since 1856.

No ‘Warning Flags’

“The returns that Mr. Madoff’s firm provided were consistently good over the years -- but not so good that they raised warning flags,” Bevard wrote.

The Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, known as the Redemptorists, was founded by Alphonsus Liguori, who was born in 1696 to a noble family in Marianella, near Naples. He began his career as a lawyer. To his father’s disappointment, he abandoned his civil practice to become a priest at the age of 30, according to a biography published by the group.

In 1950, Pope Pius XII named Saint Alphonsus the patron saint of moralists and confessors.

Madoff was charged by federal prosecutors with securities fraud for an alleged ruse that paid off early investors with money from later participants. He hasn’t formally responded to the charge and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

At our Lady of Perpetual Help, a Brooklyn, New York, church that dominates a block of two-family houses, Father Joseph Tizio, 59, says the Redemptorists, like all Catholic faiths, believe forgiveness is possible, even for Madoff.

Tizio says it’s not his place to grant it.

“Only God can forgive,” said Tizio in an interview inside a church that caters to Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants. “I can’t forgive Bernie Madoff anything. I would never presume to read his heart.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Vernon Silver in Rome at vtsilver@bloomberg.netDavid Glovin in Manhattan federal court at dglovin@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 13, 2009 00:01 EST

[marmot]

Here's a twelve minute clip of Harry Markopolos leveling his charges against the SEC:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw_Tgu0txS0&feature=related

There's a lot of other interesting footage grouped with this video too.

[vigilant]

Shakedown?



Fears for IMF’s Ability to Raise Rescue Funds
February 24th, 2009

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/b ... 793004.ece



Fears are growing that the International Monetary Fund will struggle to raise enough cash to help all the countries that need emergency aid as the global financial crisis unfolds.

The leaders of Europe’s wealthiest countries pledged on Sunday to help the IMF to raise at least a further $200 billion for crisis loans, but there was little sign on Monday that EU members will be able to find such sums while facing their own pressures.

Treasury sources said that Gordon Brown, as chairman of the G20 group of leading economies, would hold a series of bilateral meetings in the run-up to the London summit on April 2. These meetings will tackle the issue of reforming regulation and global financial institutions, as well as the more delicate task of raising funds for the IMF, the international lender of last resort, which is based in Washington.

The IMF has said that, after Japan agreed last week to loan it $100 billion, it has about $300 billion available to lend, short of its target of $500 billion. The key to finding the rest will be those countries with large sovereign resources, according to Treasury sources. China and states with oil reserves are thought to head that list.

[vigilant]

This makes me wonder if they are planning to start taking more of the smaller regional banks. They have already taken the top tier so I can't imagine what else they would be referring to. In essence, by taking the top tier banks, and considering that they already own the major Federal Reserve banks they already own, or at least definitely control, the smaller regional banks by proxy. The small regional banks have to order their money from the Federal Reserve anyway. Maybe they have decided they want to own them lot stock n barrel.



‘Black Swan’ Author Sees Trouble Exceeding 1930s
February 24th, 2009

Via: New York Times:

The author of “The Black Swan,” Nassim Nicholas Taleb, predicts that the global financial crisis will be harder to end than the Great Depression and it may force the United States government to nationalize some banks.

The world has a much more complex financial system than in the 1930s, Mr. Taleb told Bloomberg Television, and that makes the current problems worse. Bonuses paid on Wall Street encouraged risk-taking with no regard for losses, he added.

Rare and unforeseen events are known as “black swans,” after Mr. Taleb’s 2007 book, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.” Mr. Taleb said the current financial crisis isn’t one.

“The black swan for me would be for us to emerge out of this unscathed and return to normalcy,” Mr. Taleb told Bloomberg. Compared to the Great Depression, he said, this crisis is “very different, and it requires much more drastic action.”

Taleb’s book was published in May 2007, about three months before the credit crisis exploded.

Mr. Taleb’s severe pessimism follows a similar warning by the billionaire investor George Soros last week that the world financial system had effectively disintegrated and that there was no prospect yet of a near-term resolution to the crisis. Mr. Soros said at Columbia University that the turmoil was actually more severe than during the Depression.

[vigilant]

This is getting a little bit spooky. These guys are just taking things left and right. By changing the valuation rules with the new sham "Fair Value Pricing Rules" they forced the banks into technical, but not at all realistic insolvency.

Added to that, they are simply sitting on the loan strings, pretending not to have anything to loan, and as these businesses go bankrupt "somebody" is sitting on the other end waiting grab some very large business at bargain basement prices.

If these jokers don't turn loose of some money sometime pretty soon, this could become really serious. Many businesses float loans a great deal of the time to make payroll and buy supplies.



Defaults by Franchisees Soar as the Recession Deepens
February 24th, 2009

Via: Wall Street Journal: (through cryptogon.com)

The recession is bruising businesses across the franchising industry.

From ice-cream parlors to tanning salons, franchisees’ defaults on loans guaranteed by the U.S. Small Business Administration are piling up in amounts unseen in years. A list of loans at 500 franchises shows the number of defaults by franchisees increased 52% in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2008, from fiscal 2007. Loan losses totaled $93.3 million, a 167% jump from $35 million just 12 months earlier.

The figures, a stark barometer of the downturn’s severity and scope, could give pause to banks that have loan money about where to lend next. Banks that make SBA-guaranteed loans say they use the annual list as guidance in assessing future commitments.

SBA-guaranteed loans are aimed at providing capital to small businesses that often can’t qualify for conventional credit. Those loans, made through commercial banks and other lenders, can total as much as $2 million for as long as 10 years. The SBA essentially insures a significant portion of the loan to encourage lending and small-business entrepreneurship. The recently passed stimulus package raises that guarantee amount to 90% from 75%.

The annual list, which shows the number of loan failures for the year and failure rates over eight years, is compiled by the SBA and published by the Coleman Report, a lending-industry trade publication based in La Canada, Calif.

The franchise brands where at least 11 franchisees defaulted on loans during the 2008 fiscal year were: Aamco Transmissions, Carvel Ice Cream, CiCi’s Pizza, Cold Stone Creamery, Curves for Women, Domino’s Pizza, Dream Dinners, Planet Beach tanning salons, Quiznos, Subway and Taco Del Mar.

[vigilant]

"Too much flexibility in 401K plan permits cashing out"....damn...yeah that is what it is there for. I didn't realize they sucked 2 trillion dollars out of the 401k programs. I knew they ripped a hole in it but didn't know it was that bad. Oh, I forgot, the bankers didn't take it, market losses got it. Yeah the "market" got it. That dirty market. It shouldn't feed money like that to the market owners. Doesn't it know better?

As if raping the fund wasn't enough, looks like they are getting ready to screw with them pretty bad. The stuff I put in bold doesn't sound like it bodes well for the poor people who have a ton in one, or plan to invest in one in the future.

These thugs are shameless.


Miller Says 401(k) Plans Are High-Stakes ‘Crap Shoot’ (Update3)
Email | Print | A A A

By Alexis Leondis

Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) -- House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller said 401(k) retirement plans do not provide sufficient retirement security for many Americans and must be revamped.

Miller, a California Democrat, recommended better disclosure of 401(k) fees and more objective marketing of retirement products to investors at a Washington hearing today on the effectiveness of existing retirement savings plans.

Investors had $2.7 trillion in 401(k) accounts as of Sept. 30, according to the Washington-based Investment Company Institute, which represents mutual funds. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that workers lost $2 trillion over a span of 15 months from declining stock markets at an October hearing of the House Education and Labor Committee.

“For too many Americans, 401(k) plans have become little more than a high-stakes crap shoot,” said Miller. “We are realizing that Wall Street’s guarantees of predictable benefits and peace of mind throughout retirement was nothing more than a hollow promise.”

The panel of witnesses is “divided on whether we can have 401(k)s as the only supplement,” to Social Security, said Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

‘Preserve and Strengthen’

“We must preserve and strengthen 401(k)s,” Miller said. About 55 million private-sector employees have defined- contribution retirement plans, in which workers are responsible for managing their own funds, according to the Center for Retirement Research. The 401(k) plans, which generally are tax- deferred savings accounts, are one of the most common retirement plans.

John Bogle, founder of fund manager Vanguard Group, echoed Miller in his testimony before the committee, saying, “the 401(k) plan is an idea whose time has come” yet “our existing defined contribution system is failing investors” because of high fees, low levels of saving, excess flexibility that permits cashing out and too much borrowing and inappropriate asset allocation. Bogle recommended a single defined contribution plan with annuities from low-cost providers. The single system would be overseen by an independent Federal Retirement Board to protect the interests of plan participants, Bogle said.

Too Exposed

Retirement savings are too exposed to market risk, according to Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington and another witness at today’s hearing. Baker proposed a government-managed system that would provide a modest rate of return for employees. He said it would build on Social Security and allow workers a voluntary default contribution of at least 3 percent of their salaries.

Employees must work longer to extend retirement savings and Social Security, which “has shined during this crisis,” could be stabilized and supplemented by target-date funds, said Munnell. Target-date funds shift money into more conservative investments as an investor approaches retirement.

“Just Social Security and 401(k) plans won’t give people enough money -- we need something more,” Munnell said.

The stock market decline is the reason for 401(k) accounts’ low balances, not a fundamental flaw in the plans, Paul Schott Stevens, ICI president, told the committee. He said defined contribution plans could be improved by comprehensive disclosure and automatic enrollment for employees, among other fixes.

The required minimum distribution from retirement accounts for people aged 70 and a half was suspended for 2009 only and Stevens proposed relaxing rules to “help retirees manage their assets more effectively.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Alexis Leondis in New York aleondis@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 24, 2009 13:55 EST

[vigilant]

This is a pretty interesting video. Years ago I caught on to the fact that games were being played with the terms "citizen, people, nation, country, united states, us, we, you, your, etc"...

I never could quite put my finger on it at first but eventually I stumbled on to it. Incidentally that was also one of the ways I got acquainted with the mason because of that word "free" in their name.

We live in slavery for 77 years at a time. I've been saying that in this forum. Last night I stumbled on to this video and it has a lot of good information about bibical law, wage slavery, admiralty law, commercial redemption, tenant agreements, property laws, etc...

The constitution says "we the people". Then we have lawyer politicians using we, us, you, your in combination with country, nation, citizens, people, etc....

if you want to jump in exactly where he starts talking about U.S. Law it is at 32:30. Preceeding that it a different speaker teaching Canadian Law and how the Queen strong armed herself in to the deal. This describes hou Europe bankrupted the U.S. so they could put the Federal Reserve in here. Antiaristo is more right by the day...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=265327596563796191
WinstonshroutKelowna_BCdisc4.mp4

[Pazdispenser]

I could only read this article with 'vigilant' glasses!

The Great Solvent North
By THERESA TEDESCO
Published: February 27, 2009

Canadians found inspiration in Hamilton’s model, but not all Americans did. In the 1830s, President Andrew Jackson opposed extending the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, perceiving it as monopolistic. Money-lending functions were then assumed by local and state-chartered banks, eventually giving rise to the free-market, decentralized system that America has today.

Today, Canada’s system remains truer to Hamilton’s ideal. The five major chartered banks, the few regional banks and handful of large insurance companies are all regulated by the federal government.

Since Mr. Obama seems to admire the Canadian banking system, his administration might want to take a page out of its playbook.

This would entail building a national banking system based on a small number of large, broadly held, centrally and rigorously regulated firms. Imitating the Canadian model would require sweeping consolidation of American banks. This would be a very good thing. Washington had difficulty figuring out the magnitude of the financial crisis because there are so many thousands of banks that it was impossible for regulators to get into all of them.

Washington is already on the path to achieving consolidation. Eventually, some of the larger banks into which the government is injecting taxpayer money will probably be deemed beyond help, and will either be allowed to die or be partnered with other banks. The market will take its cues from this stress-testing, and make its own bets on which banks will survive. It’s hard to predict how many will have survived when the dust settles, but the new landscape might consist of only 50 or 60 banking institutions. More radically, Washington could take over the licensing of banks from the states, or, at the very least, consider more stringent regulation of global and super-regional banks. After all, the Canadian system is considered successful not only because it has fewer banks to regulate, but because regulation is based on the tenets of safety and soundness.

Much more chalkboard screeching at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/opini ... desco.html

[vigilant]

I could only read this article with 'vigilant' glasses!


Why in the world would you want to do something like that? You're screwed now. You will have to look at everything upside down and backwards to find the true level ground, which is of course a reverse of that last.

The opposite, of the opposite, is the original. Just remember that when you get 'turned around'...

Wonder why the triangle is such a strong symbol? Simple. Know the past, see the future. What is a "plot"? A plot is a scheme yes? A plot is also a known point on the grid. What is a grid? A grid is a checkered surface or surface of squares made for plotting points, which is sometimes composed of black and white squares. Ya seen it right?

If you were known to plot your points on a checkered surface, to calculate your schemes, some people might say that you have checkered past. If you already know two points on the grid, the third is easily known by "triangulation".

Just suppose you "plotted" two points yourself, on this checkered grid of squares and these plot points dealt with money and humans. The third and final point on the grid would not come into reality for a while. It would take the humans a while to spend that money between the two plots or interest rates to make the third triangulated point in the whole checked plot a reality.

You, being the plotter of the points, would of course know by triangulation, where and when the third plotted point would come into fruition. Being the plotter that you are, you would have your money bet on that third point.

In so doing, some people might say that you have somewhat of a "checkered past"......

Now you know....."the rest of the story".........

Paul Harvey never told ya that shit did he?