Homeless in Canada/ A Success in Singapore …
Posted: November 23, 2011 Filed under: 2011, 2012, Ahmed Sajjad Hashemy, America, American imperialism, banking crisis, bankruptcy, banks, Barack Obama, Brawl, California, chaos, China, currency war, dollar collapse Leave a commentI’ve been reading with interest your series on people who left North America for a better life elsewhere. I’m one of them.
In Canada, I graduated with a businessdegree from University of Toronto, saw guys who proudly wore their Masonic rings with only history degrees get jobs as bond analysts. Other guys who actually grappled with the math behind bond analysis were not even considered.
I knew the score when I saw the PhD candidate who used to mark my term papers putting prices on vitamin bottles at a health food store. He too was neither well connected, nor eligible for affirmative action.
After going through near homelessness two times in the first seven years after graduating, I started a new career as a writer and analyst, first in Taiwan, later Philippines, and finally Singapore, where I permanently settled.
Whereas before I got the ‘overqualified/underexperienced’ canard in Canada, suddenly my skills were in demand.
In Canada, I could send out 500 CVs without a response; in Asia, it rarely took more than a few weeks to aninterview. Sometimes, I was even cold called to come in. I heard even more examples of this from British, Danish, Australian and New Zealand friends of mine, some of whom actually endured homelessness before finding prosperity abroad.
Despite being a foreigner in Asia, I never endured the ironic oddity of being well educated, yet wondering how I would pay rent or the bills the way I did in Canada.
TAXATION AND SOCIAL SECURITY
My Ex-Pat friends from Britain, Australian, and New Zealand often talk about how we paid more taxes in a few months at home than we do in one of year of living here, yet Singapore somehow finds the money to constantly build new subways, new roads and pick up the garbage every day (in Toronto, they pick it up once a week).
This is also true throughout the region, not just Singapore. How we can pay so much more tax money to Canada and they can’t even afford to build a new subway line every 10 years or find money to keep the libraries open?
Like other expatriates in your articles, I accept that citizens born here get breaks in everything from subsidies to taxes and education costs not available to non-citizens. I do not consider this at all unfair; in fact, I don’t understand why Canada and the US find such a natural concept so hard to swallow.
In Singapore, so long as you work at any job, the system is set up so that everything from your mortgage to retirement funds to major health expenses can be financed out of your mandatory retirement savings, which equal approximately a third of your earnings.
This means that as long as you buy a home within your income band, the entire mortgage payment can be financed out of your retirement fund contribution – not your disposable income. Set it up right and after your mortgage payment, you will still have retirement fund cash to spare for your retirement and healthcare fund, should you get seriously ill.
It also means that if you lose your job tomorrow, provided, you’ve worked steadily, you can finance the monthly mortgage payments for years out of your accumulated retirement savings without ever having to open up your actual wallet.
The entire system is 100% self-financing and makes welfare and social support programs unnecessary. It is by no means a state secret so I have no idea why the west never touches this brilliant scheme, let alone speaks of it.
Crime exists but tends to be petty and low level. In Singapore, a foreigner is much more likely to be quoted an outrageous price for an apartment rental, electronic goods than to be mugged. Last year, a smart-ass, 30 year old Swiss punk was caught defacing a subway train with spray paint. He was given 4 and a half months in jail and caned four times.
And there are benefits to such strictness: When I was sick in Toronto, I would not let my girlfriend go out to the all-night drug store to get me medicine. Here, I’m really not worried about my wife walking out at night.
IMMIGRATION
Socially, my wife and I find ourselves part of a larger network of both locals and expatriates who have lived overseas.
That’s another thing about Singapore: Compared to Canada or the United States, it controls its immigration tightly. Now, here’s the strange part: Canada’s immigration form goes on for something like sixty pages, yet a lot of unskilled people get in, many illegally.
Singapore’s permanent residence application form is only four pages of double-sided paper, yet it is a lot stricter: You can’t even apply unless you are already working here (and therefore, an asset to the economy) have established a viable business here, or considerable wealth to contribute.
Singapore initially only gives you a work visa, not permanent residence. You only can apply for permanent residence after working here for a few years. Unless you are running your own business, the permanent residence application has to be signed by your employer and it is by no means guaranteed you will receive it.
Singapore is not perfect. In the last five years, they let in too many people too quickly, causing real estate prices to more than double in just seven years. Now the government is scrambling to build 3 transit lines and a new highway in ten years (though the traffic and immigration is well under control compared to say, Toronto). They are also making it harder to get permanent residency or a work visa, as they now understand that with its limited land space, Singapore can only hold so many people.
Singapore is not for everyone. If you’re here to be sleazy or have a decadent time on the cheap, you have better options in other parts of Asia. If you have an illegal drug habit, the customs form informs you that you could hang for it in this country, so you have been warned. Personally, I’m attracted to strong law and order but apparently, it is not for everyone.
Peoples’ manners are rougher than in the west. There are social tensions between educated and uneducated, rich and poor. If you tell an average Singaporean about the street beggars or unemployment in the west, he will not believe it: Many do not know how good they have it and still think that the streets are paved with gold in the West.
They have no idea that the average westerner in a condo of 1,000 square feet or less cannot afford to keep a maid the way Singaporeans typically do. But having said that, for us, the good has far outweighed the bad.
I thank my lucky stars for the day I left Canada. Everything from my income level to economic security, to the work opportunities I’ve enjoyed hinged on that fortunate decision to leave Canada.
The Coming European Superstate That Germany Plans To Cram Down The Throats Of The Rest Of Europe …
Posted: November 23, 2011 Filed under: 2012, Ahmed Sajjad Hashemy, America, American imperialism, banking crisis, bankruptcy, banks, Barack Obama, Brawl, California, chaos, China, currency war, dollar collapse Leave a commentA lot of people were puzzled about what German Chancellor Angela Merkel meant when she recently stated that the ultimate solution to the financial crisis in the EU would “mean more Europe, not less Europe”. Well, now we are finding out. A leaked internal German government memo entitled “The Future of the EU: Required Integration Policy Improvements for the Creation of a Stability Union” actually proposes the creation of a “European Monetary Fund” which would be given the power to run the economies of troubled European nations. This “stability union” would be quickly followed by the creation of a full-fledged “political union”. Essentially, this leaked memo proposes the creation of a “European Superstate” which will be crammed down the throats of the rest of Europe whether they like it or not. National sovereignty would be a thing of the past and European bureaucrats would run everything. Of course this will never be accepted by the people of Europe until they feel the bitter pain of the coming financial collapse, but we are starting to see that there is already a clear plan for what the Germans wish to implement in the aftermath of the coming crisis.
A lot of people have just assumed that if there is a massive financial collapse in Europe and the euro crashes that it will mean that end of the euro and potentially the breakup of the EU. But that is not what the Germans have planned at all.
An article in the Telegraph has posted details about the leaked internal German government memo mentioned above. It really is startling to see that a full-fledged “political union” in Europe is being discussed at the highest levels of the German government….
The six-page memo, by the German foreign office, argues that Europe’s economic powerhouses should be able to intervene in how beleaguered eurozone countries are run.The confidential blueprint sets out Germany’s plan to tackle the eurozone debt crisis by creating a “stability union” that will be “immediately followed by moves “on the way towards a political union”.It will prompt fears that Germany’s euro crisis plans could result in a European super-state with spending and tax plans set in Brussels.
Can you imagine what Europe would look like under such a plan?
National sovereignty would be a thing of the past.
Another article in the Telegraph says that the leaked memo proposes that immediately a “European Monetary Fund” should be set up that would have the power to take over and run the economies of European nations that get into too much debt. But according to the memo this would just be an intermediate step toward a full “political union”….
The six-page German foreign ministry paper sets out plans for the creation of a European Monetary Fund with a transfer of sovereignty away from member states.The fund will have the power to take ailing countries into receivership and run their economies. Even more controversially, the document, entitled The future of the EU: required integration policy improvements for the creation of a Stability Union, declares that the treaty changes are a first stage “in which the EU will develop into a political union”. “The debate on the way towards a political union must begin as soon as the course toward stability union is charted,” it concludes.
As the crisis in Europe has gotten worse, the Germans have become more aggressive about throwing their weight around. At this point, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the most important politician in Europe and she has been taking the lead in responding to this financial crisis.
As I have written about previously, there have been persistent rumors that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have been “secretly plotting” to create a “new eurozone” that will fundamentally change the way that Europe is run.
For example, the following is from an article that recently came out in the Telegraph….
France is drawing up plans to create a breakaway organisation of eurozone countries with its own treaty, parliament and headquarters – a move that could significantly undermine the existing European Union.
That same article also talked about the goals that France and Germany are hoping to achieve through all of this….
France and Germany are understood to want to strengthen the union between eurozone countries with new taxes and legal measures to stop nations borrowing and spending too much in future.
Of course it is important to note that there is no way that the people of Europe are going to go for any of this right now.
But after feeling the pain of a massive financial collapse for a while will they change their minds?
What is clear is that the status quo is not going to last much longer. Something has got to change. Unfortunately, Germany and France seem determined to push the rest of Europe in the direction of creating a European Superstate.
If you want to get a really good idea of what is happening in Europe right now, just check out this video of a recent speech by Nigel Farage on the floor of the European Parliament on November 16th, 2011. Trust me, it is worth the couple of minutes that it takes to watch it.
But before fundamental structural changes take place in Europe, we are going to see an absolutely crippling financial collapse first. With each passing day, there are more signs that things are rapidly unraveling. The following are just a few of the noteworthy news items from Europe that have come out over the past week….
*In Italy there were violent clashes between protesters and police after Mario Monti unveiled his new austerityprogram. To get an idea of how crazy things are getting over in Italy, just check out this video.
*Just like what happened when austerity was implemented in Greece, it looks like Italy is now headed down the road toward a major recession. Industrial orders in Italy for the month of September declined by 8.5 percent. That is really, really bad news.
*The EFSF has already been forced to buy up huge numbers of its own bonds. That essentially means that the EFSF is already a bad joke.
*Dozens of big banks all over Europe have been downgraded in recent weeks. Even German banks are getting downgraded now. The other day, Moody’s downgraded the ratings of 10 major German banks.
An increasing number of people that work in the financial world are starting to get really freaked out about everything that is going on.
The following is what Mark Mobius, head of the emerging markets desk at Templeton Asset Management,had to say recently….
“There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner, because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis.”
Willem Buiter, the chief economist of Citigroup, believes that if something is not done quickly, there will be a financial collapse in Europe in very short order….
“Time is running out fast. I think we have maybe a few months — it could be weeks, it could be days — before there is a material risk of a fundamentally unnecessary default by a country like Spain or Italy which would be a financial catastrophedragging the European banking system and North America with it. So they have to act now.”
Ann Barnhardt of Barnhardt Capital Management actually shut down her entire firm because she could no longer guarantee that the money her clients were putting into the futures and options markets would be safe. Posted below are extended excerpts from the open letter that she recently released to the public. Normally I would not post such extended excerpts, but in this case I believe that they are warranted. What Barnhardt has written should be a huge wake up call for all of us. It is refreshing (and a bit frightening) to get an honest assessment of the corruption in the financial world from someone that has made a good living in that world. The following is how she began her letter….
It is with regret and unflinching moral certainty that I announce that Barnhardt Capital Management has ceased operations. After six years of operating as an independent introducing brokerage, and eight years of employment as a broker before that, I found myself, this morning, for the first time since I was 20 years old, watching the futures and options markets open not as a participant, but as a mere spectator.The reason for my decision to pull the plug was excruciatingly simple: I could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were safe in the futures and options markets – because they are not.And this goes not just for my clients, but for every futures and options account in the United States. The entire system has been utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse. Given this sad reality, I could not in good conscience take one more step as a commodity broker, soliciting trades that I knew were unsafe or holding funds that I knew to be in jeopardy.
So how did the MF Global collapse wreck the system? Barnhardt went on to explain this….
The futures markets are very highly-leveraged and thus require an exceptionally firm base upon which to function. That base was the sacrosanct segregation of customer funds from clearing firm capital, with additional emergency financial backing provided by the exchanges themselves. Up until a few weeks ago, that base existed, and had worked flawlessly. Firms came and went, with some imploding in spectacular fashion. Whenever a firm failure happened, the customer funds were intact and the exchanges would step in to backstop everything and keep customers 100% liquid – even as their clearing firm collapsed and was quickly replaced by another firm within the system.Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise. What was a surprise was the reaction of the exchanges and regulators. Their reaction has been to take a bad situation and make it orders of magnitude worse. Specifically, they froze customers out of their accounts WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO TRADE, refusing to even allow them to liquidate. This is unfathomable. The risk exposure precedent that has been set is completely intolerable and has destroyed the entire industry paradigm. No informed person can continue to engage these markets, and no moral person can continue to broker or facilitate customer engagement in what is now a massive game of Russian Roulette.
Even more frightening, Barnhardt says that the MF Global collapse is just the “tip of the iceberg” and that more collapses like this are about to happen….
I have learned over the last week that MF Global is almost certainly the mere tip of the iceberg. There is massive industry-wide exposure to European sovereign junk debt. While other firms may not be as heavily leveraged as Corzine had MFG leveraged, and it is now thought that MFG’s leverage may have been in excess of 100:1, they are still suicidally leveraged and will likely stand massive, unmeetable collateral calls in the coming days and weeks as Europe inevitably collapses. I now suspect that the reason the Chicago Mercantile Exchange did not immediately step in to backstop the MFG implosion was because they knew and know that if they backstopped MFG, they would then be expected to backstop all of the other firms in the system when the failures began to cascade – and there simply isn’t that much money in the entire system. In short, the problem is a SYSTEMIC problem, not merely isolated to one firm.
So what does Barnhardt say that we should all do? She is actually recommending that everyone should completely abandon the futures and options markets….
And so, to the very unpleasant crux of the matter. The futures and options markets are no longer viable. It is my recommendation that ALL customers withdraw from all of the markets as soon as possible so that they have the best chance of protecting themselves and their equity. The system is no longer functioning with integrity and is suicidally risk-laden. The rule of law is non-existent, instead replaced with godless, criminal political cronyism.
Remember, a few weeks ago I warned you all that a massive derivatives crisis is coming. Anyone that plays around with derivatives at this point is playing with fire. Barnhardt says that she will never reopen her firm untilBarack Obama is removed from office and fundamental reforms to the financial system have been implemented….
Finally, I will not, under any circumstance, consider reforming and re-opening Barnhardt Capital Management, or any other iteration of a brokerage business, until Barack Obama has been removed from office AND the government of the United States has been sufficiently reformed and repopulated so as to engender my total and complete confidence in the government, its adherence to and enforcement of the rule of law, and in its competent and just regulatory oversight of any commodities markets that may reform. So long as the government remains criminal, it would serve no purpose whatsoever to attempt to rebuild the futures industry or my firm, because in a lawless environment, the same thievery and fraud would simply happen again, and the criminals would go unpunished, sheltered by the criminal oligarchy.
We are on the verge of a financial crisis that could potentially be just as bad (or even worse) than the financial crisis of 2008.
Right now, 2012 is shaping up as a very, very bad year.
As I have written about previously, when European leaders proposed that private Greek bondholders should take a “50% haircut”, they massively undermined faith in the European financial system.
Now panic and fear are in the air and it is unlikely that financial markets will be calmed any time soon.
Already, there are early signs of the kind of massive credit crunch that almost brought about “the end of the world” in financial markets back in 2008.
For example, a CNBC article that was posted on Friday reported that the flow of credit in Europe is seriously drying up….
Fear over European banks’ exposure to risky government debt stalked markets and harried bank executives on Friday, as unsecured lending between banks evaporated and the cost of secured loans rose.
And as a recent article posted on Zero Hedge discussed, a similar thing is starting to happen in the United States….
The entire dollar funding market is now at levels not seen since the Lehman collapse and is effectively frozen. Only this time it is much, much worse as never before has the global central bank cadre been assumed and implied to be backstopping the global liquidity cascade. Ex-out the implied backstop by the monetary authorities, and liquidity is now locked up more than ever in the history of capital markets.
So what should we do about this?
We should take action and get prepared for what is coming.
Unfortunately, an increasing number of Americans seem to be “checking out” instead. According to a recent Gallup poll, alcohol consumption in the United States has hit a 25 year high. More than one out of every ten Americans over the age of 12 is on prescription antidepressants, and most American families spend endless hours staring at the television in an attempt to escape the pain and the frustration that they constantly feel.
Hopefully by working together we can help more Americans (and more Europeans as well) to wake up, to get off their couches, and to take action in a positive way.
Time is running out and the economic crisis is rapidly getting worse.
We don’t have any time to waste.
The next financial crisis will be hellish, and it’s on its way …
Posted: November 19, 2011 Filed under: 2012, Ahmed Sajjad Hashemy, America, American imperialism, banking crisis, bankruptcy, banks, Barack Obama, Brawl, California, chaos, China, currency war, dollar collapse Leave a comment“There is definitely going to be anotherfinancial crisis around the corner,” says hedge fund legend Mark Mobius, “because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis.”
We’re raising our alert status for the nextfinancial crisis. We already raised it last week after spreads on U.S. credit default swaps started blowing out. We raised it again after seeing the remarks of Mr. Mobius, chief of the $50 billion emerging markets desk at Templeton Asset Management.
Speaking in Tokyo, he pointed to derivatives, the financial hairball of futures, options, and swaps in which nearly all the world’s major banks are tangled up.
Estimates on the amount of derivatives out there worldwide vary. An oft-heard estimate is $600 trillion. That squares with Mobius’ guess of 10 times the world’s annual GDP. “Are the derivatives regulated?” asks Mobius. “No. Are you still getting growth in derivatives? Yes.”
In other words, something along the lines of securitized mortgages is lurking out there, ready to trigger another crisis as in 2007-08.
What could it be? We’ll offer up a good guess, one the market is discounting.
Seldom does a stock index rise so much, for so little reason, as the Dow did on the open Tuesday morning: 115 Dow points on a rumor that Greece is going to get a second bailout.Let’s step back for a moment: The Greek crisis is first and foremost about the German and French banks that were foolish enough to lend money to Greece in the first place. What sort of derivative contracts tied to Greek debt are they sitting on? What worldwide mayhem would ensue if Greece didn’t pay back 100 centimes on the euro?
That’s a rhetorical question, since the balance sheets of European banks are even more opaque than American ones. Whatever the actual answer, it’s scary enough that the European Central Bankhas refused to entertain any talk about the holders of Greek sovereign debt taking a haircut, even in the form of Greece stretching out its payments.
That was the preferred solution amongGerman leaders. But it seems the ECB is about to get its way. Greece will likely get another bailout — 30 billion euros on top of the 110 billion euro bailout it got a year ago.
It will accomplish nothing. Going deeper into hock is never a good way to get out of debt. And at some point, this exercise in kicking the can has to stop. When it does, you get your next financial crisis.
And what of the derivatives sitting on the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve? Here’s another factor behind our heightened state of alert.
“Through quantitative easing efforts alone,” says Euro Pacific Capital’s Michael Pento, “Ben Bernanke has added $1.8 trillion of longer-term GSE debt and mortgage-backed securities (MBS).”
Think about that for a moment. The Fed’s entire balance sheet totaled around $800 billion before the 2008 crash, nearly all of it Treasuries. Now the Fed holds more than double that amount in mortgage derivatives alone, junk that the banks needed to clear off their own balance sheets.
“As the size of the Fed’s balance sheet ballooned,” continues Mr. Pento, “the dollar amount of capital held at the Fed has remained fairly constant. Today, the Fed has $52.5 billion of capital backing a $2.7 trillion balance sheet.
“Prior to the bursting of the credit bubble, the public was shocked to learn that our biggest investment banks were levered 30-to-1. When asset values fell, those banks were quickly wiped out. But now the Fed is holding many of the same types of assets and is levered 51-to-1! If the value of their portfolio were to fall by just 2%, the Fed itself would be wiped out.”
Mr. Pento’s and Mr. Mobius’ views line up with our own, which we laid out during interviews on our trip to China this month.
The Entire System Has Been Utterly Destroyed By The MF Global Collapse …
Posted: November 19, 2011 Filed under: 2012, Ahmed Sajjad Hashemy, America, American imperialism, banking crisis, bankruptcy, banks, Barack Obama, Brawl, California, chaos, China, currency war, dollar collapse 1 CommentPresenting The First MF Global Casualty
Presented without comment, merely to confirm that the market as we know it, no longer exists.
BCM Has Ceased Operations (source)
Posted by Ann Barnhardt – November 17, AD 2011 10:27 AM MST
Dear Clients, Industry Colleagues and Friends of Barnhardt Capital Management,
It is with regret and unflinching moral certainty that I announce that Barnhardt Capital Management has ceased operations. After six years of operating as an independent introducing brokerage, and eight years of employment as a broker before that, I found myself, this morning, for the first time since I was 20 years old, watching the futures and options markets open not as a participant, but as a mere spectator.
The reason for my decision to pull the plug was excruciatingly simple: I could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were safe in the futures and options markets – because they are not. And this goes not just for my clients, but for every futures and options account in the United States. The entire system has been utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse. Given this sad reality, I could not in good conscience take one more step as a commodity broker, soliciting trades that I knew were unsafe or holding funds that I knew to be in jeopardy.
The futures markets are very highly-leveraged and thus require an exceptionally firm base upon which to function. That base was the sacrosanct segregation of customer funds from clearing firm capital, with additional emergency financial backing provided by the exchanges themselves. Up until a few weeks ago, that base existed, and had worked flawlessly. Firms came and went, with some imploding in spectacular fashion. Whenever a firm failure happened, the customer funds were intact and the exchanges would step in to backstop everything and keep customers 100% liquid – even as their clearing firm collapsed and was quickly replaced by another firm within the system.Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise. What was a surprise was the reaction of the exchanges and regulators. Their reaction has been to take a bad situation and make it orders of magnitude worse. Specifically, they froze customers out of their accounts WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO TRADE, refusing to even allow them to liquidate. This is unfathomable. The risk exposure precedent that has been set is completely intolerable and has destroyed the entire industry paradigm. No informed person can continue to engage these markets, and no moral person can continue to broker or facilitate customer engagement in what is now a massive game of Russian Roulette.
I have learned over the last week that MF Global is almost certainly the mere tip of the iceberg. There is massive industry-wide exposure to European sovereign junk debt. While other firms may not be as heavily leveraged as Corzine had MFG leveraged, and it is now thought that MFG’s leverage may have been in excess of 100:1, they are still suicidally leveraged and will likely stand massive, unmeetable collateral calls in the coming days and weeks as Europeinevitably collapses. I now suspect that the reason the Chicago Mercantile Exchange did not immediately step in to backstop the MFG implosion was because they knew and know that if they backstopped MFG, they would then be expected to backstop all of the other firms in the system when the failures began to cascade – and there simply isn’t that much money in the entire system. In short, the problem is a SYSTEMIC problem, not merely isolated to one firm.
Perhaps the most ominous dynamic that I have yet heard of in regards to this mess is that of the risk of potential CLAWBACK actions. For those who do not know, “clawback” is the process by which a bankruptcytrustee is legally permitted to re-seize assets that left a bankrupt entity in the time period immediately preceding the entity’s collapse. So, using the MF Global customers as an example, any funds that were withdrawn from MFG accounts in the run-up to the collapse, either because of suspicions the customer may have had about MFG from, say, watching the company’s bond yields rise sharply, or from purely organic day-to-day withdrawls, the bankruptcy trustee COULD initiate action to “clawback” those funds. As a hedge broker, this makes my blood run cold. Generally, as the markets move in favor of a hedge position and equity builds in a client’s account, that excess equity is sent back to the customer who then uses that equity to offset cash market transactions OR to pay down a revolving line of credit. Even the possibility that a customer could be penalized and additionally raped AGAIN via a clawback action after already having their customer funds stolen is simply villainous. While there has been no open indication of clawback actions being initiated by the MF Global trustee, I have been told that it is a possibility.
And so, to the very unpleasant crux of the matter. The futures and options markets are no longer viable. It is my recommendation that ALL customers withdraw from all of the markets as soon as possible so that they have the best chance of protecting themselves and their equity. The system is no longer functioning with integrity and is suicidally risk-laden. The rule of law is non-existent, instead replaced with godless, criminal political cronyism.
Remember, derivatives contracts are NOT NECESSARY in the commodities markets. The cash commodity itself is the underlying reality and is not dependent on the futures or options markets. Many people seem to have gotten that backwards over the past decades. From Abel the animal husbandman up until the year 1964, there were no cattle futures contracts at all, and no options contracts until 1984, and yet the cash cattle markets got along just fine.
Finally, I will not, under any circumstance, consider reforming and re-opening Barnhardt Capital Management, or any other iteration of a brokerage business, until Barack Obama has been removed from office AND the government of the United States has been sufficiently reformed and repopulated so as to engender my total and complete confidence in the government, its adherence to and enforcement of the rule of law, and in its competent and just regulatory oversight of any commodities markets that may reform. So long as the government remains criminal, it would serve no purpose whatsoever to attempt to rebuild the futures industry or my firm, because in a lawless environment, the same thievery and fraud would simply happen again, and the criminals would go unpunished, sheltered by the criminal oligarchy.
To my clients, who literally TO THE MAN agreed with my assessment of the situation, and were relieved to be exiting the markets, and many whom I now suspect stayed in the markets as long as they did only out of personal loyalty to me, I can only say thank you for the honor and pleasure of serving you over these last years, with some of my clients having been with me for over twelve years. I will continue to blog at Barnhardt.biz, which will be subtly re-skinned soon, and will continue my cattle marketing consultation business. I will still be here in the office, answering my phones, with the same phone numbers. Alas, my retirement came a few years earlier than I had anticipated, but there was no possible way to continue given the inevitability of the collapse of the global financial markets, the overthrow of our government, and the resulting collapse in the rule of law.
New Obama Law Warned Will Jail 500,000 Americans …
Posted: November 19, 2011 Filed under: 2012, 9/11, Afghanistan, Ahmed Sajjad Hashemy, al-Qaeda, Alex Jones, America, Apocalypse 2012, Barack Obama, Central Asia, China, civil war, Crotch Bomber, Cyber attacks, DEMOCRACY Leave a commentForeign Ministry reports circulating in the Kremlin today are warning that an already explosive situation in the United States is about to get a whole lot worse as a new law put forth byPresident Obama is said capable of seeing up to 500,000 American citizens jailed for the crime of opposing their government.
Sparking the concern of Russian diplomats over the growing totalitarian bent of the Obama government is the planned reintroduction of what these reports call one of the most draconian laws ever introduced in a free society that is titled “The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act”.
First introduced in the US Congress in 2007 by Democratic Representative Jane Harmon, this new law passed the US House of Representatives by a secretive voice vote, but failed to pass the US Senate, after which it was believed dead until this past week when it was embraced by Obama who became the first American President to name his own citizens as a threat to his Nations security.
In what is called the National Security Strategy document, that is required of US Presidents by their Congress, that embraces the dictatorial ideals of the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act”, Obama has ordered his Federal police and intelligence forces to begin targeting Americans opposed to him and his radical socialist polices.
Obama’s top counter-terrorism advisor, John Brennan, in speaking to reporters about this new “strategy” says it makes the problem of home-grown terrorists a top priority because an increasing number of individuals in the US have become “captivated by extremist ideology or causes.”
The Times of London is further reporting that Obama’s new National Security Strategy “officially” endsAmerica’s “War on Terror” in what they call “a sweeping repudiation of the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military strikes.”
And as Obama begins re-focusing his forces from fighting America’s foreign enemies, to those opposed to him in his own country, it is important to remember the warning about this new law given by the former CIA official, Philip Giraldi, who had previously warned of the Bush-Cheney plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons, and who said:
As an example of those American’s Obama will be targeting, Giraldi further writes that The Simon Wiesenthal Center, in testifying before the US Congress in support of this new law, swore that an organization called “Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth” was an example of a homegrown terrorist organization, leading one Russian diplomat in this report to state “If 1,200 of America’s top architectural and engineering professionals are deemed terrorists simply because they question their governments propaganda than truly no one is safe in the United States anymore”.
As another example of how dictatorial the Obama regime has become, and as the Gulf of Mexico oil debacle has now become the worst ecological disaster our World has ever seen, the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, this past week slammed American reporters for “asking too many questions about BP”. Leading one to ask that if Obama’s regime can’t be asked about this disaster, what can they be asked about?
The answer is apparently none, as Obama himself, just this past week, in announcing his signing of a new law called the Press Freedom Act refused to answer any reporters questions and abruptly left them standing in stupefaction over the irony an ordeal that shows how far America has fallen.
Another irony apparently lost upon the American people is that their President Obama, who has been dubbed“The Great Communicator”, now holds the dubious distinction of having held less press conferences than any American President in modern history. And if yesterday’s press conference, his first in nearly a year, was any example one can see why as incredulous press corps was left astounded that Obama had no knowledge of the firing/resignation of one of his top officials.
In all of these events one fact, beyond all others, stands out….in what was once called “The Land of the Free, And the Home of the Brave”…..the United States today has become “The Land Of Slave, And the Home of the Coward”….and these Americans have only themselves to blame.
Harry Dent : The Great Crash Ahead …
Posted: November 17, 2011 Filed under: 2012, Ahmed Sajjad Hashemy, America, American imperialism, banking crisis, bankruptcy, banks, Barack Obama, Brawl, California, chaos, China, currency war, dollar collapse Leave a commentHarry Dent is an American economist who predicted the Global Financial Crisis presents his new book “The Great Crash Ahead” (co-authored with HS Dent President Rodney Johnson) .He is the Founder and Presidentof the H. S. Dent Foundation, whose mission is “Helping People Understand Change”. Using exciting new research developed from years of hands-onbusiness experience, Mr. Dent offers a refreshingly positive and understandable view of the future.
Harry S. Dent Jr. is one of the smartest, savviest economic researchers around, and his track record for being RIGHT when conventional wisdom has been wrong cannot be ignored.Harry Dent shares his view on which asset classes you should invest in and which you should avoid. If you want to make sure you have all your financial bases covered in the months and years ahead, you owe it to yourself to hear what he has to say.
Earth Sized UFOs Using Our Sun As Stargate : Nassim Haramein …
Posted: November 17, 2011 Filed under: 2012, 2012 and Islam, 9/11, Abraham, Afghanistan, Ahmed Sajjad Hashemy, Ali Adams, America, Americas, Anti-Christ, Antichrist, Armageddon, Arunachal Pradesh, Asia-Pacific, Astrology Leave a commentNow in latest development TV series Weird or What? (hosted by William Shatner) in their 14th episode showed how Nassim Haramein has spotted Earth Sized UFOS and he think they are using our sun as a “Stargate” portal to other systems.
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Nassim Haramein Earth Sized UFOs Using Our Sun As Stargate Lecture
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The Coming Pandemic: Expect All Protective Systems to Fail …
Posted: November 17, 2011 Filed under: 2010, 2012, 9/11, A-H1N1, Afghanistan, agriculture, Ahmed Sajjad Hashemy, AIDS, al-Qaeda, America, Anti-Christ, Apocalypse 2012, Arctic, Arctic Ocean, Armageddon Leave a commentThe attacks of September 11 were quickly followed by a biological weapons attack in which government-grade weaponized anthrax killed five people and sickened numerous others.
This attack, the genesis of which remains unsolved ten years later, was used to justify the United States Congress pumping over $60 billion dollars into a “biodefense “ program which has failed in every parameter that can be measured.
In fact, it appears that all purportedly protective measures, developed nationally and internationally, have fatal flaws in their design which may function to ensure the likelihood and success of a biological weapons attack.
Even the commission created by Congress in 2007 to evaluate all defenses for chemical, biological,radiological and nuclear threats gave our biodefense program a failing grade.
Ten years after the anthrax mailings (which went to Congressmen who might have voted against the USA Patriot Act, as well as to certain media outlets), the US has not even developed a second generation anthrax vaccine. Over 100 million dollars has been allocated to develop this vaccine, but ten years after the biological weapons attack on our country our vaccine stockpiles consist of smallpox vaccines as well as the original anthrax vaccine (reputed to cause Gulf War syndrome) and little else. (Source)
Authorized under the Bush administration, Project BioWatch has developed and placed sensors in a number of large cities to serve as an advance detection system for an airborne biological attack, but this program has come under scrutiny and critics have alleged that this may be useless due to prior knowledge of the sensor locations by terror groups.
Since 9/11, there has also been a proliferation of what are called “biosafety labs” (BSL’s) level threes and fours. The 3’s and 4’s, so designated because of the enhanced safety protocols at use in the advanced level labs, handle the most dangerous bugs known to man. There are at least 17 such BSL-4’s now in the US and, according to documents released by the DOJ and DOE, over 1350 BSL-3’s. These numbers are dramatically up since the events of September 2001.
The US government maintains a list of pathogens and toxins which have the potential of causing grave harm to human or plant life. The Center for Disease Control is mandated to keep track of labs handling select agents, but is very cagey in terms of releasing the information about the numbers and locations of these facilities, preferring instead to tender denials and offer false information when confronted with the proliferation of these labs.
There is evidence that the US has developed an aggressive biological weapons program, despite our government’s insistence that we abandoned our bioweapons program forty years ago, under President Nixon. The evidence may be found at Sierra Army Depot (and other military bases) where these weapons appear to be stockpiled.
Locking in on the Threat
There is growing alarm among certain sectors that the US may be planning another “event” using biological weapons, and may attempt to either blame this on terrorists or on some sort of “natural” epidemic. It therefore becomes imperative to determine what sort of attack we may be facing and what we can do to protect ourselves.
According to Dr. Kenneth Alibek, a Russian scientist who came over to this side of the fence and is now working on biological weapons issues at Battelle, there are essentially three ways in which a biological attackcould be launched. Writes Alibek:
Biological weapons can deployed in three ways:
- contamination of food or water supplies, which are then ingested by the victims
- release of infected vectors, such as mosquitoes or fleas, which then bite the victims
- creation of an aerosol cloud, which is then inhaled by the victims (or if the targets are plants, the cloud then settles on and infects the plants). [Source]
The probability of a general airborne attack is unlikely. An airborne attack could not be easily controlled and carries the strong likelihood of affecting unintended targets. One must therefore look at other delivery systems that carry an ability to lock onto the desired targets and pass over those who have been predesignated to survive.
Work on reconfiguring the water system, countrywide, began right about the same time as the US signed onto the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) in the early 1970s. This reconfigured “double line” water system provides the opportunity for a nearly “surgical” attack on predetermined targets.
Possibly advancing to the top of the list in terms of all-time government deception was President Nixon’s public announcement in 1969 that the US was ending its biological weapons program. It is now apparent that at the same time that President Nixon disavowed our bioweapons program and the US ratified the BWC, plans were being developed and executed to lay down a second main line in cities and towns throughout America, and plans to use the water system as a delivery system were cemented.
A chemist in Eastern Washington State, Dave Duncan, had volunteered in 2006 to run chemical analyses on samples of water which had ostensibly come from the mixture of the two water mains. His initial tests revealed that the specific gravity of the sample was significantly skewed when compared to normal tap water. Duncan, a fundamentalist Christian, became concerned about the implications of his work, declaring that “if people were going to be killed off, it must be God’s will.” Shortly after vacating his work on analyzing the water sample, Duncan succumbed to an aggressive form of colon cancer.
Another delivery system has been uncovered, which may dovetail with the double line water system, for the delivery of a lethal dose of toxins or chemicals. For numerous medications being manufactured by Big Pharma, there are now imposter “death drugs” being quietly manufactured, as well. These look-alike doppelgangers, which appear identical to the antibiotic, analgesic, hormonal, cardiac or other common medication, will produce a heart attack and/or stroke and — most likely — subsequent death.
Both water as a delivery system and the imposter pharmaceuticals bear the necessary targeting capability. The double line water system provides the ability to selectively target households and the pharmaceuticaldelivery system provides the ability to selectively target individuals.
None of the 60 billion dollars pumped into biodefense in the last ten years appears to be designated to address waterborne attacks. A recent announcement from DHS Chief Janet Napolitano declared that “dangerous terrorists” had infiltrated the utility companies and were planning an attack. The Department ofHomeland Security was subsequently contacted and details were turned over to that agency as to how this could very well occur via water utilities, given the vulnerability inherent in the double line water system. There has been no response from Napolitano or the DHS.
On the International Scene
It appears the wagons have also circled around the involvement of the pharmaceutical companies in biological weapons work. As there are no weapons inspectors or any other implementation vehicle for the BWC, the pharmaceutical companies can carry on their death work without the intrusion of any Peeping Tom inspection team. The glaring failure of the BWC to provide a means of implementing the treaty has resulted in a complete lack of oversight as to what is going on in pharmaceutical labs. In the past, attempts to set up an inspection capability for the BWC have been vigorously opposed by the United States and also by . . . you guessed it — the pharmaceutical companies. (Source PDF)
The development and production of biological weapons would necessitate, of course, a laboratory to produce them. Certain industries maintain such labs, such as pharmaceutical companies and some food production companies. Big Pharma has consistently objected to the spectre of weapons inspectors coming into their labs, stating that such weapons inspectors could, in fact, be industrial spies bent on stealing proprietary drug information. Bending to the stated necessity of keeping the profits of the pharmaceutical companies secure along with their proprietary formulas, the BWC has so far accommodated the pharmaceutical companies in their insistence on the priority of maintaining their privacy and profit margins, granting this imperative more weight than the need to keep the world safe from biological weapons.
However, given the revelation of the “death drug” imposter pill program, we can see why the pharmaceutical industry would balk at weapons inspectors peering over its shoulders.
This December, the BWC will be meeting again in Geneva, as it does only every five years. On the table will be strengthening the “confidence building measures,” (CBM’s) which have taken the place of inspection teams as a means to ensure treaty compliance. The problem is that the CBM’s rely on the integrity of each nation to accurately report on its own programs. In plain language, that means that we must “trust” the word of countries such as the United States, Russia, Great Britain, Iran, Pakistan and South Africa to accurately report what is going on in their labs.
The very term “confidence building measures” is possibly one of the most offensive and misleading parts of the staged drama that is the BWC. Forty years after the BWC treaty originally came into existence, we still have no means of ensuring any kind of compliance with the mandates of the treaty, other than the “word” of a possible offender. In a recent interview with a former CIA contractor, who has asked his name not be used here, this top-level scientist who worked for years as a CIA asset admitted that it was known in intelligence circles that the old Soviet Union under Yeltsin was violating the BWC. This was never brought to the attention of the international community through the BWC.
The three nations which serve as depositories of the BWC are Russia, Great Britain and the United States. Great Britain may have recently ducked an international scandal when a South African physician, Dr. Wouter Basson, was exonerated of war crimes charges for his work developing biological weapons with Project Coast during the apartheid years. Basson was purportedly involved in developing a “blacks-only” bioweapon, which would only kill native Africans and leave white people unscathed. Sources in the US government have contacted this reporter alleging that such a weapon is now at play and has been leaked into processed foods. The substance allegedly bonds with melanin (which is present in darker skinned peoples) producing hypertension and diabetes. Indeed, the present epidemic of these two “silent killers” is nearly unknown in Africa, where the native population does not eat such a preponderance of processed foods, relying instead on more natural food sources. Africa, as we know, is being emptied out by the AIDS epidemic.
Dr. Basson, it appears, was chummy with Dr. David Kelly, the British biological weapons inspector whose sudden “suicide” may well have been an effort to obscure the evidence of a cooperative effort between the South African bioweapons program and England ().
Come December, the Big Three — Russia, Great Britain and the US — will meet with other nations to convene their deadly serious effort of making the world safe from biological weapons. Or, that is what they want us to believe, anyway.
The reality is that, through its failure to enact implementation protocols, the BWC is enabling the development of precisely the type of weaponry that it is mandated to curtail.
We Are Now Looking Straight Into The Face Of A Great Depression …
Posted: November 10, 2011 Filed under: 2012, Ahmed Sajjad Hashemy, America, American imperialism, banking crisis, bankruptcy, banks, Barack Obama, Brawl, California, chaos, China, currency war, dollar collapse Leave a commentSimon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, said that “we are now looking straight into the face of a great depression”.
Greece faces the threat of bankruptcy within weeks after the EU said Wednesday night it would not provide any more funding to the beleaguered country unless it agreed to support the euro bail-out.
The Greek government is expected to be unable to pay wages for state workers and pensions next month without a planned injection of pounds 8?billion of EU cash.
George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, met his French and German counterparts ahead of today’s G20 summit of world leaders.
Mr Papandreou has called a referendum on whether the Greek public supports the bail-out. The decision has plunged the rescue into turmoil.
David Cameron said that the world was facing a “financial storm” as Greece may now be forced out of the single currency.
Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, said that “we are now looking straight into the face of a great depression”. Source (1) The Telegraph
Well, imagine that. There’s a recession and nobody knew aside from the unemployed, the newly unemployed, the world stock markets, the major jump in everything from soup to gold with more jumps on the way.
Everyone is announcing increases to something, somewhere but it has nothing to do with blue collar workers or their wages. Does anyone stop and consider that these increases and idiotic spending sprees have to come to an end as the Great Wall of Non Sustainability is fast approaching. This isn’t a guess, it’s coming a lot faster than our political boy wonders have assumed but yet they continue to throw money around without so much as a care as to who is going to pay the bill when it comes due. Interest rates are held ridiculously low; want to know why ?
The American, Canadian and most any other country you want to look at couldn’t afford a normal interest rate of 8 percent. Everyone wants everything but the credit cards are maxed out and it’s time to figure out how to get our financial houses in order before the house of cards folds in on us.
Why do analysts always talk about our economy like we’re just a bunch of pin-balls in a game with absolutely no control over which way we bounce?
Maybe it’s all just an illusion. Read this quote from the 1928 book Propaganda.
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible governmentwhich is the true ruling power of our country.” ~ Edward Bernays
I think our economic recovery will hinge on one of two things. Either the financial news starts instilling a bit of confidence in our economy, or people “take to the streets” and corporate America starts thinking for themselves.
The “better than expected” jobs and sales reports coming in lately, despite all the fear and pessimism being propagated in the markets, seem to indicate a lead to the the later.
We’re now into contraction of our world economy – however you want to define it with economist approved terms – due to resource scarcity. Most likely scenario predicted is extreme volatility resulting in short periods of growth followed by contraction, but resulting in net contraction. To extend the use the recent terminology: multiple dip recessions followed by depression.
The US economy is dead in the water for at least 10 if not 15 years.The rest of the world will wean itself away from dependence on their economy.There will be some pain globally but not as much as the pendingrevolution and possible splitting up of the US OF A
References:
Global Uprising : Protests spread all over the world – Video …
Posted: October 19, 2011 Filed under: 2012, 9/11, Afghanistan, Ahmed Sajjad Hashemy, al-Qaeda, Alex Jones, America, Apocalypse 2012, Barack Obama, Central Asia, China, civil war, Crotch Bomber, Cyber attacks, DEMOCRACY Leave a commentThe politicians can NEVER stop this. People around the world are totally fed up. It is just a matter of time before we see several hundred thousands, or even millions, on the streets of Washington, New York, London, Berlin,Madrid, Rome, Brusells… Expect one thing though: When the biggest banksters realize they have lost, they will pull the plug and create total economic and financial chaosin the world. They will “revenge” no matter what.
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