UPDATE AND DISCLAIMER:
I was unaware until this evening that the video I included in this diary, with Nigel Farage apparently is considered a racist by many on this website. As of 7:27 pm PST, my time, I asked several times, to provide me with proof of that fact. I looked this up myself and could not find anything on this. I received on notification on this justification at the same time: 7: 27 PST. I deeply apologize to this community for not knowing that this man is apparently a racist, but I would like to again state, that this does not change the basic theme of my diary.
The Irish people just got sold out, by the EU, and on the line are their pensions, and this is going on all over the world. I compare this to the upcoming Cat Food Commission and who is going to held liable for the Toxic Debt, that the Banks, worldwide, are still hiding off the books.
More below on my apology:
http://
I hope that you all have enough compassion and humanity to understand this about me: I care about all of you, and I hope you care about me. That is all in the end we can ask of each other in this life, and that is all I was taught by my dad. The minute that law, morality and ethics are divided, then we are all lost in deep chose, because we cannot divide those three elements, ever.
Even in the deepest darkest jungles of this world, the animal kingdom knows this true dictum: in order for all to survive, we must learn to share the bounty of what life has given us, to respect all is to respect life, to respect none of that, means we are less than human, we are less than the animals that understand, and respect how to survive.
I always appreciate when I can learn something new in my life, and I was unaware of this man's background. Perhaps I am not astute as others, as to knowing every single politician's background in the world, but I am not beyond ever, apologizing...ever. I was apparently wrong about this man, and I am sorry. Again, my issue in this diary was not about this man, it was about the people who are going to suffer the most, who paid the greatest price, and who will pay until we all decide we have paid enough.
Thank you for your understanding, and kindness, as always:
Ms. B.
My original diary is below:
Europe is now in a state of panic and rightfully so. The Dominoes that have been falling are now picking up speed, dropping one by one pushed by those that stole from all of us, The Banks, and Wall St., the Robber Barons of the World, who are now putting their boots on the very heads of the working poor and taxpayers to bail them out again and worse: to go after even more.
I was watching an amazing video (below) of Nigel Farage enraged and yelling at the European Union Parliament: "The Euro Game Is Up... Just Who The Hell Do You Think You Are? You Are Very Dangerous People"
The game is up indeed, Mr. Farage, and first and foremost we can thank our own United States Savvy Wall St/Banks for beginning this vicious catastrophic plague, this now, run-a-way train with no brakes, and no light at the end of the tunnel. The result will be world wide misery and despair unequal in many of our life times.
Famous euroskeptic Nigel Farage in just under 4 brief minutes tells more truth about the entire European experiment than all European bankers, commissioners, and politicians have done in the past decade. As we have already said pretty much all of this before, we present it without commentary:
"Good morning Mr. van Rompuy, you've been in office for one year, and in that time the whole edifice is beginning to crumble, there's chaos, the money's running out, I should thank you - you should perhaps be the pinup boy of the euroskeptic movement. But just look around this chamber this morning, look at these faces, look at the fear, look at the anger. Poor Barroso here looks like he's seen a ghost. They're beginning to understand that the game is up. And yet in their desperation to preserve their dream, they want to remove any remaining traces of democracy from the system. And it's pretty clear that none of you have learned anything. When you yourself Mr. van Rompuy say that the euro has brought us stability, I supposed I could applaud you for having a sense of humor, but isn't this really just the bunker [or banker?] mentality. Your fanaticism is out in the open. You talk about the fact that it was a lie to believe that the nation state could exist in the 21st century globalized world. Well, that may be true in the case of Belgium who haven't had a government for 6 months, but for the rest of us, right across every member state in this union, increasingly people are saying, "We don't want that flag, we don't want the anthem, we don't want this political class, we want the whole thing consigned to the dustbin of history." We had the Greek tragedy earlier on this year, and now we have the situation in Ireland. I know that the stupidity and greed of Irish politicians has a lot to do with this: they should never, ever have joined the euro. They suffered with low interest rates, a false boom and a massive bust. But look at your response to them: what they are being told as their government is collapsing is that it would be inappropriate for them to have a general election. In fact commissioner Rehn here said they had to agree to a budget first before they are allowed to have a general election. Just who the hell do you think you people are. You are very, very dangerous people indeed: your obsession with creating this European state means that you are happy to destroy democracy, you appear to be happy with millions and millions of people to be unemployed and to be poor. Untold millions will suffer so that your euro dream can continue. Well it won't work, cause its Portugal next with their debt levels of 325% of GDP they are the next ones on the list, and after that I suspect it will be Spain, and the bailout for Spain will be 7 times the size of Ireland, and at that moment all the bailout money will is gone - there won't be any more. But it's even more serious than economics, because if you rob people of their identity, if you rob them of their democracy, then all they are left with is nationalism and violence. I can only hope and pray that the euro project is destroyed by the markets before that really happens."
http://www.zerohedge.com/...
Very, very dangerous people indeed, and this is just the beginning of the end. As Mr. Farage states perhaps the most stark truth of all:
But it's even more serious than economics, because if you rob people of their identity, if you rob them of their democracy, then all they are left with is nationalism and violence.
To understand more about the so called 'deal' that was made on behalf of the Irish people to pay off the Bankers:
BRUSSELS — European Union nations agreed to give euro67.5 billion ($89.4 billion) in bailout loans to Ireland on Sunday to help it weather the cost of its massive banking crisis, and sketched out new rules for future emergencies in an effort to restore faith in the euro currency.
The rescue deal, approved by finance ministers at an emergency meeting in Brussels, means two of the eurozone's 16 nations have now come to depend on foreign help and underscores Europe's struggle to contain its spreading debt crisis. The fear is that with Greece and now Ireland shored up, speculative traders will target the bloc's other weak fiscal links, particularly Portugal. In Dublin, Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen said his country will take euro10 billion immediately to boost the capital reserves of its state-backed banks, whose bad loans were picked up by the Irish government but have become too much to handle. Another euro25 billion will remain in reserve, earmarked for the banks.
snip..(and this is the part of the deal you need to pay attention to folks):
However, in a surprise accounting move, European and IMF experts decided that Ireland first must run down its own cash stockpile and deploy its previously off-limits pension reserves in the bailout. Until now Irish and EU law had made it illegal for Ireland to use its pension fund to cover current expenditures. This move means Ireland will contribute euro17.5 billion to its own salvation.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Got that? The previously off-limits pensions reserves are coming off the top. Wow, why does this remind me of our current Cat Food Commissioner 'Can't Wait for the Bloodbath in April,' Alan Simpson? Food for thought, and all that. I mean, someone has to pay off all the toxic debt and speculation that the Robber Barons of the World made a killing off of, don't they?
The Weapons of Mass Destruction, as Warren Buffet calls them, created by our 'Genius Evil Wizards of Wall St/the Banks,' are now blowing up worldwide, and of course, it had to come to this because the this world wide Ponzi scheme to keep the toxic debts hidden and off the books, while the housing market continues to crash after the 'great Greenspan Bubble,' repeatedly ignored by the Revolving Door regulators, the Great Patsy, Ben Bernanke and the lap dog of them all, Timothy Geithner, (along with their European counterparts) are circling the wagons to fight the final Battle at the Alamo in order to keep sucking what little money is left from the working poor, the elderly, the disabled, the millions who have lost their pensions and jobs and their homes and the equity in their homes for one reason an one reason only:
The Oligarchy is terrified. They know they've been caught in their own web of deceit, lies, criminal behavior and instead of admitting to Fraud, these despicable excuses for human beings are more than willing to take the entire world down with them, rather than face the consequences of their own actions.
Guest Post: Greece → Ireland → Portugal → Spain → Italy → UK → ?
→ Washington’s Blog
It is now common knowledge that there is a potential domino effect of European sovereign debt contagion in roughly the following order:
Greece → Ireland → Portugal → Spain → Italy → UK
While some people have been writing about this for well over a year, many others have joined the party late (there are now over 600,000 hits from a Google search discussing this topic.) It is also now common knowledge that while Greece and Ireland have relatively small economies, there will be real trouble if the Spanish domino falls.
As Nouriel Roubini wrote in February:
But the real nightmare domino is Spain. Roubini refers to the Spanish debt problems as "the elephant in the room". "You can try to ring fence Spain. And you can essentially try to provide financing officially to Ireland, Portugal, and Greece for three years. Leave them out of the market. Maybe restructure their debt down the line." "But if Spain falls off the cliff, there is not enough official money in this envelope of European resources to bail out Spain. Spain is too big to fail on one side—and also too big to be bailed out."
With Spain, the first problem is the size of its public debt: €1 trillion. (Greece, by contrast, has €300 of public debt.) Spain also has €1 trillion in private foreign liabilities. And for problems of that magnitude, there simply are not enough resources—governmental or super-sovereign—to go around. And as I’ve previously pointed out, Germany and France – the world’s 4th and 5th largest economies – have the greatest exposure to Portuguese and Spanish debt. For more on the interconnections between Euro economies adding to the risk of contagion, see this. While it is tempting to assume that the Eurozone bailouts mean that creditor nations which have managed their economies well and saved huge amounts of excess reserves which they lend out, Sean Corrigon points out that the European bailouts are a Ponzi scheme: Under the rules of this multi-trillion shell game, the sovereigns guarantee the ECB which funds the banks which buy the government debt which provides for everyone else’s guarantees.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/...
Yes, and while the big worry is Spain, investors are already in a huge panic since last Friday over Spain and Portugal:
By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 27, 2010; 12:11 AM
LONDON -- The debt crisis in Europe escalated sharply Friday as investors dumped Spanish and Portuguese bonds in panicked selling, substantially heightening the prospect that one or both countries may need to join troubled Ireland and Greece in soliciting international bailouts.
The draining confidence in Western Europe's weakest economies threatened to upend bond markets, destabilize the euro and drag out the global economic recovery if it is not quickly contained. It also underscored the mounting problems facing countries that during the past decade have both over-borrowed and overspent, and are now in danger of losing investor faith in their ability to make good on their massive piles of debt.
The perceived risk of debt defaults in Portugal and Spain drove their borrowing costs to near-record highs Friday, with the interest rate demanded on Portuguese bonds at a point where it could effectively cut the Lisbon government off from raising fresh cash to run the country.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
I read today that a 'Bailout is in the making for Ireland.' despite the fact that the Irish people are not even being allowed to form a new government or take place in this 'under the table deal' being brokered by the EU, and the Irish people are livid about this deal that is coming down.
I wish to hell that from now on, the entire World Main Stream Media would be required to use the term: TAXPAYER FUNDED BAILOUT COMING. This would at the very least preface what is really going on world wide, and why at least, would put a hell of at lost less 'spin' on the furious rage and anger that is spreading throughout Europe and the United States as their jobs, homes, wages, safety nets and retirements are being literally stole under their noses to continue to fund and payoff the same criminal elements who were directly responsible for this worldwide economic calamity and catastrophe.
50,000 Turn Out To Protest Against Government Handling Of Irish Bailout
"What hurts me the most is why is the taxpayer paying for the IMF. Why are we bailing out the banks. These are the people who took the risk, let them take the hurt, let them feel the hurt." That is the common refrain of the tens of thousands of people who took to the streets today in Dublin, protesting against the government's rescue of various European banks (and Goldman Sachs) investment losses. More from RTE: "Gardaí said that around 10,000 people started the march, however the crowd swelled to around 50,000 people as it moved down the quays. Speakers at the march had estimated that the crowd was between 100,000 and 150,000. A small group of around 400 protestors are currently at the front gates of Leinster House. Some 60 gardaí are lining the footpath in front of the building, with crash barriers erected in front of them."
People are very unhappy, and this is their last chance to protest before the budget," said Pat Kenny, a 45-year-old postal worker and labour union official, distributing bright blue banners as the march began.
"But today is just the start of a campaign against the plan. This government doesn't have a mandate to govern, they should allow for a general election and let the public say if they are in favour of the four-year plan."
Thousands of marchers — led by a traditional pipe band — crowded along the banks of Dublin's River Liffey, banging drums and blowing whistles.
Banners carried slogans including "It's not out fault, we must default," and "No country for young men," a reference to the squeeze on jobs.
http://www.zerohedge.com/...
Meanwhile here in the good old US of A:
In an 11th-floor federal courtroom in Manhattan on a gray September afternoon, a banker stood with a somber face and admitted to rigging bids for contracts to invest bond proceeds and then lying about it -- as part of the biggest criminal conspiracy in the history of the 198-year-old municipal finance market. In the room with cherry-wood-colored paneling, Douglas Campbell, who was once one of Bank of America Corp.’s most successful derivatives salesmen, described in spare language how he had violated the law, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue. "I had conversations prior to the bid with the broker about who the bidders were going to be and who was going to win or lose," Campbell, slim with sandy-blond hair, told U.S. District Judge William Pauley. Taxpayers were the victims because, by fixing the bids, Bank of America, the largest U.S. bank by assets, paid municipalities less than it would have had there been honest auctions. In his Sept. 9 court confession, Campbell, 45, repeatedly told the judge that his illegal actions came at the expense of the public. "Kind of a common theme here," the banker said.
Campbell -- who former co-workers describe as an upbeat family man with two children -- is cooperating with prosecutors. He pleaded guilty to antitrust, conspiracy and wire fraud charges. He admitted paying kickbacks to win deals to CDR Financial Products Inc., a Los Angeles-based firm that had been hired by municipalities to run auctions for investment contracts. He’s one of seven bankers and brokers who have pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud charges. Six others, including three CDR executives, have been indicted and have pleaded not guilty. The investigation is still under way, according to the Justice Department. The bankers routinely rigged bids and lied about their crimes between 1998 and 2005, documents filed in court say. Following every transaction, the bankers fraudulently signed a pledge certifying that they had adhered to U.S. Treasury Department rules barring them from seeing other bids. "When I participated in this scheme, I knew it was illegal," Mark Zaino, a former banker with UBS AG, told a U.S. District Court judge in New York in May, when he pleaded guilty. These bankers took other steps to hide their tracks. Campbell used a personal identification number to reach a bidding agent with Piper Jaffray Cos. directly on his BlackBerry, according to court-filed documents. That allowed his e-mails to stay beyond Bank of America’s view. Bankers routinely used mobile phones instead of the bank’s tape-recorded telephone lines, according to the documents. Campbell left Bank of America in 2002 to work for the municipal derivatives unit of Piper Jaffray, which he left in 2007.
snip..
"There were hundreds of these deals, and taxpayers across the country are losing out because of it," says Christopher Taylor, who was executive director of the Municipal Securities Rule making Board, the national regulator of the bond market, from 1978 to 2007. "It was see no evil and hear no evil by everybody involved," he says. "It was a conspiracy of silence." Municipalities have lost more than $1 billion because of bid rigging, estimates Steven Feinstein, a finance professor at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. "That money, instead of going to citizens, goes to Wall Street banks," he says. Some of the top derivatives traders at the world’s largest banks stood to gain because their bonuses grew larger as they won more bids.After each rigged deal, a banker would sign a false statement saying the transaction was conducted properly, Campbell told the federal judge when he pleaded guilty in September. "That bidding certificate in these circumstances was signed either by myself or by somebody else with my knowledge that it was a fraudulent certificate,"Even as the Justice Department builds up guilty pleas and continues its probe, the banks haven’t settled their debt to the public. "The conspiracy was outrageous," former municipal finance regulator Taylor says. "There were hundreds of deals and that means losses for taxpayers."
for the full story go here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/...
Yes, there a million stories like the above in the naked cities of America, where there now stands full neighborhoods abandoned like ghost towns of foreclosed homes, where previously thriving businesses in strip malls are being boarded up, where the most basic services for Police, Firemen and Schools have been cut to the bone. The landscape is harrowing and stark, as the unemployment benefits for the 99ers are about to be cut off, and the food stamps are running on empty.
Someone has to pay for the toxic debt that is still being hidden, don't they?
I was reading a diary on the from the front page by Kos the other day in which he talked again (like I think many of us have over and over again) that it was high time for President Obama to decide who he stands with and for: The Middle and Main St./or the Banks and Wall Street.
My own feeling on this, is that I believe our Nation, along with most of the top World Banks Leaders (the people REALLY in charge) decided that a very long time ago. They decided to above all protect the status quo, and to not only figure out a way to make the taxpayers and working poor of their nations pay for the criminal behavior of the Wizards of the Banking Sectors, but also to double down, and relentlessly go after what was left in the safety nets of all of these nations, to ensue that the fraud and corruption, would not be addressed, and that therefore, these leaders could maintain the facade of Democracies do exist, when in fact that is doubtful at best and, to perpetuate the endless Ponzi schemes and houses of cards no matter what the cost to the people of their nations, because I believe these Oligarchy's know without a doubt is what they fear most, is if 'one of them get caught' then they all go down.
Again, I remind you of this:
These world wide leaders who continue to make the taxpayers of their nations pay until there is nothing left of their pensions, are as Mr. Farage says: Very, very dangerous people indeed, and this is just the beginning of the end. As Mr. Farage states perhaps the most stark truth of all:
But it's even more serious than economics, because if you rob people of their identity, if you rob them of their democracy, then all they are left with is nationalism and violence.
I do not believe in violence in any form. I am a great believer in the lifetimes works of MLK and other great leaders like him.
Finally, I just wanted to tell you about a new book that is coming out, and there are some excerpts from it here, hope you enjoy that last bit of information:
The following is an excerpt from Michael W. Hudson’s The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America–and Spawned a Global Crisis
http://www.ritholtz.com/...
I also wanted to thank mediafreeze for putting up his diary on that amazing movie Inside Job, which I've been talking about for a very very long time. Go see the movie. The truth is out there, and nothing can hold it back any longer.
When the public trust is lost, the basis for our system as a whole is destroyed. Without trust in a lawful and valid financial system, the public will not take the necessary step of investing.
http://www.fiscalstrength.com/
Thanks as always,
Ms. B.