The EU—Unstoppable!

Ron FraserColumnist

The EU—Unstoppable!

October 19, 2009 | From theTrumpet.com

The European Union is on a roll. Any resistance to its undemocratic methods is treated with impugnity.

Ron Fraser

“I will not sign Lisbon Treaty, says Czech President,” headlined the Times on October 13. “Germans seek to oust Czech President Vaclav Klaus over EU treaty,” declared the headline in the Sunday Times a week ago. Then on Saturday, the Telegraph ran an article under the headline, “Vaclav Klaus says it is ‘too late’ to stop Lisbon Treaty.”

Quite an about-face in just five days.

Whether the latter headline was a direct result of the threat from Germany is not a matter on which the popular press is reporting. Yet, given past results achieved by Teutonic political bullying within the European Union, one surely does not have to use much imagination to figure it out. As Klaus himself said, virtually declaring defeat in his one-man stand against the EU monolith, “I do not consider the Lisbon Treaty to be a good thing for Europe, for the freedom of Europe, or for the Czech Republic. However, the train has already traveled so fast and so far that I guess it will not be possible to stop it or turn it around, however much we would wish to” (Telegraph, October 17).

All that is now lacking, following the earlier capitulations by Ireland and Poland, is for Vaclav Klaus to allow his trembling hand to sign the document. Then once again it’s game, set and match to Berlin/Brussels on the most recent European imperial project, the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.

Click here for entire Trumpet article

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Foreign Policy: Oil, The Long Goodbye

It's Still the One

Oil's very future is now being seriously questioned, debated, and challenged. The author of an acclaimed history explains why, just as we need more oil than ever, it is changing faster than we can keep up with.

BY DANIEL YERGIN | SEPT. / OCT. 2009

It's Still the One

Oil's very future is being seriously questioned, debated, and challenged. The author of an acclaimed history explains why, just as we need more oil than ever, it is changing faster than we can keep up with.

By Daniel Yergin

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20 Minutes With The President - Charlie Sheen Asks Barack Hussein Obama

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9/11 - Eight Years Gone: The Bloody Legacy Of Dick Cheney's Failures

While Cheney warns of a "what if" future, many are forced to deal with the bloody wounds of his devastating past.

Eight Years After 9/11

The Bloody Legacy of Cheney's Failures

After 9/11, Dick Cheney took the reins in America. The 'war on terror' was his idea, and it led to real wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and to the torture he approved and defends. While Cheney is writing a memoir to influence how people see his role, the rest of the world would just prefer to get on with cleaning up his mess -- with him out of the picture.

Dick Cheney has bought a house in McLean, an upscale community in the largely rural state of Virginia. Although it's conveniently located near Washington, DC, it somehow seems far removed from America's bustling capital. Eight US presidents have been born in this state, and it just might be that Cheney sees himself as standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them since, after all, he has also served as president -- for three and a half years. Or perhaps it'd be more accurate to say that George W. Bush served as president under Cheney, looking after odds and ends, while Cheney took care of the big picture. Dick was responsible for America's strategy in the 21^st century.

Cheney is busy writing a memoir. Given the fact that he is a highly secretive man notorious for keeping a tight lid on things, this has raised some eyebrows in America. He is someone who asked questions or silently listened and took notes for his personal use after many meetings in the White House, at the Pentagon and at CIA offices. He is the ultimate insider -- and someone who places little value on recognition from the general public.


Click here for entire Spiegel article


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Boo!!!! World's Scariest Stock: Citigroup

Bat got your tongue?

What scares me about Citigroup (NYSE: C)?

Let's start with the obvious ... it's a bank.

I could probably stop there and gain the agreement of most investors, but I'll try to elaborate.

The beginning of the end

To understand the magnitude of Citi's woes, we have to go back to the late '90s. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall act -- a depression-era law designed to protect investors -- paved the way for Citicorp to merge with Travelers Group, forming what we now know as Citigroup ... the granddaddy of "supermarket" banks.

The idea seemed brilliant at the time: Slap every financial product you can think of together, forming a do-it-all behemoth where average Joes could deposit their paychecks, insure their car, and plan for retirement, while investment mavens could structure CDOs, form IPOs, peddle ARSs, and advise CEOs on mergers and acquisitions, all under one roof.

For about a decade, it worked beautifully. Shares tripled from 1997 to 2007, buoyed by juicy dividends. At one point, Citigroup even held the glamorous title of "world's largest company," a colossal giant home to trillions in assets and tens of billions in profits that could do no wrong.

And then the house of cards crumbled.

One heckuva Frankenstein


For entire article click here


Thanks Michael Ruppert for this lead - Johnny

Hoarding Opium/Heroin/Cocaine And Gold: A Testimony To Reality

THE HIDDEN GOLD PREMIUM

By: Michael Ruppert

-- Congratulations to Jamey Hecht

Last night a whole lot became clear about what's going on with gold prices. Not everything is explained but much more of the map has been filled in.

I was at the wedding of former FTW writer Jamey Hecht who also edited"Rubicon" for me. He and his new wife Sava were just beautiful together and the ceremony, at a time of great fear, was a welcome relief for all of us. It was probably the most beautiful wedding I've ever attended and I know we all send Jamey and Sava Hecht our best wishes. They are an amazing pair.

Seated at my table was an executive for a precious metals company. What he told me was something I have seen suggestions of, but nothing made it as clear as his explanation.

1. There's virtually no gold out there to ship, at any price.

2. Major dealers are paying some serious premiums to actually get physical gold. I was told that currently the major vendors are paying a $70 an ounce premium over spot price when they order lots of 5,000 or more ounces. Order fewer than 5,000 ounces and the premiums are much higher and even then there's no guarantee of delivery. So what's being charged small retail customers who just want an ounce or two? The best answer I could come up with is "whatever the markets will bear". So the so-called posted spot price is now meaningless and I smell a possible (I emphasize "possible") embryonic black market for gold emerging. That is something I hadn't expected for a couple of years yet.

3. Even with the premiums there is so little actual gold available to ship that half the big companies have stopped writing orders because they don't know if they'll ever be able to deliver. The other half are still writing orders on the hopes that they will get some gold --sometime.

4. The credit crash has made it difficult for large vendors to get float loans to finance purchases and expensive delivery and insurance costs. The only gold out there is dealer-to-dealer or whatever is being sold by private holders.

The problem appears to be global.

That means that I could take one of my Maple Leaves, add maybe $100 to the spot price, then add the standard Maple Leaf premium of say $10 anounce and then go out and demand an even higher price based on which dealer needed the coin the most. I can easily add $120 an ounce over spot to arrive at a reasonable market price. The executive's words were "Nobody is paying attention to the spot price anymore. It doesn't mean anything."

That means that gold is being hoarded and kept off the market. There's only one reason for that IMO. Sure, one could argue that the hoarding is intended to drive up prices. But is that happening? Nope. Prices are low. What this says to me is that some with insider access are holding gold off the market pending a large breakout. When I suggested this the executive agreed instantly. It would have been like selling Iraqi oil at $40 a barrel instead of leaving it in the ground to sell at $80 or $100. Of course, that brings us smack dab into collision with the fact that plummeting oil prices are doing nothing to increase demand. TPTB and the economy itself have no choice but to unwind completely now. The plug was pulled too hard when oil hit $147. Whether that was inadvertent or intended we have yet to see but anyone hoping that falling oil prices will stabilize things is drinking some real bad Kool Aid.

Gold's breakout will be much different than what's happening with oil.

So we have opium/heroin/cocaine and gold being withheld from the markets at a time when cash is in short supply and credit is virtually non-existent. That confirms my position -- a position shared by many economic experts -- that the worst economic news is yet to come. The executive agreed that a major breakout in gold prices is imminent.

Yes, as one poster observed on the blog, things are happening very quickly. This next week is likely to be very tough. When I saw the Wells Fargo chairman suggesting no bottom for six months I wondered how it could possibly take that long at the rate things are going."What'll be left in six months?", I asked myself. It's hard to say. I shared my analogy with the exec about how it seemed like the markets had dysentery and were on the verge of evacuating and he loved it."That's exactly it", he responded. "Very little is making sense anywhere and almost no one understands where they really stand. People are trying to redefine their positions at a time when there's nothing solid to stand on."

By definition then, we're a long way from the bottom. Because when the bottom is reached, everyone knows exactly where they stand... on the floor.

Right now all I'm focused on is getting through an election and an inauguration. I don't see any possible chance that anything remotely looking like a bottom -- with capitulation -- will happen before Bush and Cheney leave office. That's at least three months. It will be interesting to see if a strong psychological rally begins on November 5th. It will be a hollow rally and another round of folks going back to the bar after the Titanic has already been hit by the iceberg. In the meantime, those who get it are busy building lifeboats.

Stay low and stay dry. Make yourselves economically "small" in terms of exposure. I really believe the scariest part of this ride is yet tocome.

Oh, and for the person who yelled out that they wanted me to talk about ROOT CAUSES... That's all I have ever talked about. I wrote one book on them and published a newsletter that did nothing but talk about them for eight and a half years. You'll have a new book that talks more about them early next year. It will also more fully address the infinite growth paradigm.

Until you change the way money works, you change nothing. Money is still trying to work the way it has for more than a century -- but it's finding the resistance to that increasing as one paradigm ends and a new one begins. Let's pray that Alan Greenspan has an epiphany and suddenly remembers and understands what he did to help create this. I wonder if it will make him sleep better. Somehow I think he's sleeping pretty soundly. He did what he intended to do.

******************

JO wrote:

Some bullion now comes (if it comes at all) with a delivery period of up to three months and a hefty disclaimer: If they can't get a hold of the gold, you have the option of waiting another month or getting your money back; either the current price of the gold you'd contracted for or the price at which you bought it, whichever is higher.

What this means, of course, is that the dealers expect the price to remain suppressed for at least another three months, til the inauguration.

The schizoid disconnect between the suppressed price and the scarcity, even the unavailability of gold has been covered by GATA, the Gold Anti-Trust Association whose websites, for those who might be new to this game, are http://www.gata.org/ and http://www.lemetropolecafe.com/

Congratulations, Jamey and Sava!

MCR: I Love Tom Whipple

MCR wrote:

I LOVE TOM WHIPPLE!

For years now he has demonstrated the clearest grasp and most articulate voice on understanding what Peak means and how it plays out. He makes me feel like I'm playing in the best infield in baseball.

This is what I wrote about today. He wrote about it too because we can feel how many just haven't gotten it yet and we both knew what your laments would be. I think I can speak for Tom when I say that our biggest fears are that not enough people will get it in time.

Inside joke for Tom: I love ya babe! [Spoken like a true case officer,which makes me worry that I may have met one too many in the last thirty years.]

The CIA is Wall Street. And we know from declassified documents that the CIA understood and was following Peak Oil way back in the 1970s.

So, here's my team: Whipple at third, Ruppert at short stop, Heinberg at second, Simmons at first, and Campbell at the plate. Robinowitz is in left field (no pun), Darley in center, and Quinn-Bachman in right. Kane is third base coach. Rice Farmer is first base coach.

Stan Goff is the umpire.

Jenna sweetheart, you're the one sitting in the dugout spitting all the time. (Oh, am I going to hear about that. Pray for me fans.)

Now everyone go read Whipple before I get cranky.

http://www.fcnp.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3670:the-peak-oil-crisis-in-the-eye-of-the-storm&catid=17:national-commentary&Itemid=79

JO wrote:

You forgot Kunstler as pitcher, sweetheart.

Act 2: Citigroup Getting Ready To Go Down, My Brothers!

CITIGROUP UPDATE

CITI CAPITULATES


Their pledge that although they are not seeking an injunction they intend to sue Wells Fargo and Wachovia "on behalf of shareholders"means the shareholders are going to take the fall. If you thought today -- when short selling came back -- was bad...


Citigroup's demise may not happen tomorrow but here's a clue. I tried to acess this story at the Reuters news site one minute after it was published at 6:06 PM EDT. The story was getting so much traffic that it took me two minutes to get a download and another two minutes to save it. The sell orders, shorts and puts must be flying off the screens at breathtaking numbers. Make money on the way up; make money on the way down.


All spotlights are turning to Citigroup. The perception that it may fail is already out there like fresh blood in the water. How much time they have is unknown but I'm convinced they're going down.


Like I said, this will remove all traces of hope. A real, global capaitulation in the Dow 5000s is now possible. I don't know anymore whether it would be better in the five or six thousands. But if we don't get down there, the capitulation hasn't happened yet.


Look, if you haven't got the nerve or skill to talk about Rubicon orFTW, then at least just go out and tell people that there's a guy, backed up by many wonderful people including the magnificent Jenna Orkin, who is predicting things with scary accuracy. He's been doing it for years. Citigroup is easy, quick proof. Go back and look at when I predicted this. You will be helping people and the more we help, the sooner -- the better prepared we are to start building a new post-petroleum/post industrial economy.


Just send them to the blog. They can find FTW and Rubicon from there.


MCR

Citi ends talks with Wells Fargo on Wachovia

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TODAY 9-29-08 By Michael Ruppert

Sept. 29, 2008

Act II From The Wilderness' Peak Oil Blog


by Michael C. Ruppert



For years I have told you exactly what was going to happen and it has. Today's economic meltdown, with the Dow dropping 777 points and $1.2 trillion in equity lost is no exception. In our second FTW Economic Alert back in 2002 I predicted a market crash that saw $1 trillion in shareholder equity lost in the following three months. -- $1.2 trillion was destroyed just today. That and much more.


In FTW's fourth and last Economic Alert(http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/061406_abyss_awaits.shtml)-- just 11 days before our offices were burglarized on June 25, 2006-- I specifically warned that this day (metaphorically speaking) would come. What prompted that alert was an unprecedented move by President George W. Bush to give the National Director of Intelligence, John Negroponte, the authority to exempt "certain" Wall Street firms and banking giants from reporting their financial records to the Securities and Exchange Commission. It was this move which permitted everything that has happened over the last month. That move allowed smaller banks and investors to continue buying pigs (without lipstick) in a poke while average Americans were led to believe that everything was OK. If you don't believe me, go read the Economic Alert for yourself. It's all right there -- everything.


And if you had followed every piece of advice I gave in that warning-- two years ago -- today's events would have made you money. They would have strengthened your family. They would have made you immune to the panic that today touched American public consciousness.


Gold is likely to explode in price in short order. $2,000 an ounce is possible within six months.


Since 2003 I have told my readers that the destruction of the U.S.economy was planned, essential and a foregone conclusion. It has to do with Peak Oil. There is no economy without energy. The world is running out of oil faster than almost anyone had predicted. Even previously optimistic opponents of Peak Oil have acknowledged that global decline is now between 5.8% and 9% per year. That means that if the world produces 85 million barrels per day this year, it will possibly produce less than 80 Mbpd next year. Demand destruction is conserving a resource for which there is no replacement and this is what has always been intended. An $8 drop in price today has done nothing to reignite demand. The United States, with 5% of the world's population using a quarter of the world's oil, was/is the ONLY point of demand destruction available that will save human industrialized civilization. I have said that consistently for many years. I told you that the real Powers That Be had gotten or would get their money out and safe before they crashed everything. They did... It was your money. It was our money.


Those who read FTW for years know that time after time, and year after year my predictions have been proven correct. The United States economy is being deliberately destroyed. The fact that it was Republican House members who blocked the bailout today confirms that they are helping the Bush Administration complete its last mission before leaving office: the complete destruction of the American economy and the financial crippling of the American people. I believe the intent is, and has been, to leave a newcomer African-American president with an economy on life support which will expire early in his watch. Every Obama campaign ad that now promises to "turn the economy around" only tightens the noose around his neck. The subconscious "Jerome Corsi" message is, "Blame the blacks" next year when you get it that the Great Depression was a picnic compared to what is coming.


This is now the fast crash scenario. It is further complicated by two things.


First; today's failure coincidentally occurred at the beginning of Rash Hashana. I am not suggesting that Jewish members of congress had any part of this. It would not be, however, the first time that great crimes have been committed and subsequently blamed on Jews. The subconscious "Jerome Corsi" message is "Blame the Jews". Congress will now not reconvene until Thursday, October 7. Seeing the meltdown and collapse of the U.S. financial system, and the failure of the U.S. government, a two-day congressional stand down will give other nations time to realign and adjust their finances before it is possible to see another House vote. In my opinion foreign economies will been energetically disengaging from the U.S. economy and the dollar in tranches as big as possible without totally destroying the value of their holdings. During that time, with the markets open, giants like Citigroup (not the only one) will be exposed. They have been counting on the bailout. Citigroup may survive but others will not. The ones who do survive will ultimately be corporations that have been in on this plan. Goldman Sachs will most certainly survive. Berkshire Hathaway will undoubtedly survive.


Just a few days ago China ordered its banks to stop lending to U.S. banks.


Second; Venezuela, North Korea, Russia, rebels in Nigeria, and pirates off Somalia are becoming increasingly more aggressive. They do this not with the intent of physically attacking the United States itself, but with breaking its credibility and economic back. The U.S. has been humiliated in Georgia and North Korea is firing up its nuclear plants again. I have predicted this for years also and it is totally understandable given the belligerent, hostile and bullying foreign policy of the United States over the last eight years. I predict tha ton the geopolitical scene we are going to see (or not) some very serious realignments beginning over the next two weeks. They will be irreversible. The world is fragmenting along purely geographical lines. Yes, I predicted that too.


I AM IN PERSONAL DANGER NOW


But it doesn't matter. I have broken an unspoken deal with the government to remain retired and not speak out. The legal harassments against me continue and I have just now crossed my own Rubicon. I am now preparing for physical attacks in the hopes that they do no toccur. You who know how right I have been can help protect me by speaking my name in public, by writing to media outlets, to Congress and telling them about "Crossing the Rubicon" and our incredible record at FTW.


Given that we predicted all of this, is it not reasonable to expect that someone might look to us and our work forsolutions? Isn't it reasonable to point others to the map we made? Isn't that the right thing to do? Given that everything I have predicted is coming true; given that we are witnessing the planned destruction of the U.S. economy; given that it was Republican members of congress who delayed the bailout bill...is it still so impossible to believe that Dick Cheney orchestrated and executed 9-11? They have almost handed off the carcass and evidence to a doomed Obama presidency. Oh yes, he'll win in a landslide... while the Bushes and their "base" will be laughing all the way to the bank. Please help protect me. Speak my name. Please help others. Point them to "Rubicon" and the FTW archives and teach them the map so they canfind their own paths through this.


It is a good day to die.


Michael C. Ruppert



"Fascism ought more properly be called corporatism because it is theperfect merger of power between the corporation and the state." --Benito Mussolini



Here is another piece of anecdotal evidence that the US government has no money, and the crash is here.


Medical professionals across the country have always had difficulty getting paid by Medicare for their services. Medicare is famous for creatively denying medical claims.


This year, Medicare has pulled a new one. Claiming that they are updating their computer systems (which they are---they are trying to electronically centralize medical information from across the country), they have forced medical practices to "re-register". Pending the processing of these new registrations, Medicare has frozen all payments. Medicare has offered no promises on how long "processing" takes.


Some practices have received NO PAYMENTS for almost one year, and 1. have not heard back from Medicare 2. have had their applications denied for no reason, or returned to them for new rounds of "processing", or 3. Medicare has "lost" the paperwork altogether.


Larry Chin (from Online Journal)