And by the way, where the hell is my pony?!?!?
Leahy To Maddow: Bush Officials Could Be Prosecuted
Where Did All the Money Go?
By gottlieb in Politics
A funny thing happened on the way to peace and prosperity – we was robbed.
Seriously, where did the money go? I'm not talking about the few hundred billion in bank bailouts which was poured down the toilet without oversight or accountability; I'm talking about all the money in the world. Where did it go?
Okay, not ALL the money. China, India and Japan still have lots of dollars in the old proverbial sock drawer. And you know every politician, economist and armchair expert prays those countries keep the damn sock drawer closed because if our creditors dump a trillion dollars into the market place, the value of the dollar will be lower than a hyper-inflated peso.
Everything being done now by the Obama team – made up of financial insiders, cronies and smug technocrats – is meant to stabilize the current situation. To stop the breech in the hull. It's after the leak is plugged when the actual damage can be assessed and a plan of action can begin to fix what is broke. But before things can be fixed, the world's financial system has to be patched to the point where folks aren't freaking out the sky is falling.
But the question remains, what happened to send the world into a tailspin frenzy of massive government intervention into the private sector, hysterical panic by the "professional investment class" and deer-in-the-headlights paralysis by the lowly consumer. What happened to the trillions of dollars which make up the world's financial system which seemed to disappear overnight? It's like a reverse Santa Claus. Some dude came on a sleigh with a big bag and scooped up the world's assets overnight. And in the morning as the world's banksters went to work the call went out: It's Gone!
But where did it go? It did not just disappear like a Hollywood cops and robbers caper. These are banks right? The money sits in a vault. The vault has alarms and locks and 24 hour surveillance. No one gets in or out without a signature and thumbprint. After all, money is valuable. You just don't leave money lying around the street. Found money is free money. Money has to be locked up and protected. That's what banks are for. To keep your wealth safe until such time as needed. Then you go to the bank and make a withdrawal.
Who could possibly have raided the worlds' vaults overnight and absconded with all the loot? This heist makes the terrorist act of 911 look like j-walking. There are millions of banks in the world. This conspiracy makes al Qaeda look like Our Gang. Osama "Spanky" bin Ladin and Ayman "Alfalfa" Zawahiri have nothing on the masked men who stealthily robbed the world's banking system in the wink of an eye. And got away with it.
These nefarious crooks simultaneously broke into millions of bank vaults, undetected, swooped up all the cash and made off, Italian Job style, to soak up Caribbean rays, rum-punch and the admiration of crooks all over the known universe. The coordination, effort, balls and results of this escapade make 911 look like a snipe hunt. Trillions and trillions of dollars, representing millions and millions and millions of folks's dreams, aspirations and reality-based needs. Gone. Poof.
Shouldn't the number one priority of the Obama Administration, the FBI, the MI5, the ATF, Interpol and Mossad be to track these culprits down and bring them to justice just like we did with those pesky terrorists? Forget about the hinterlands of Afghanistan and the shale-beds of Mesopotamia? Don't you people get it? We've been robbed and no one is doing anything about it!!!
Huh? What? You're kidding. There was no money in those vaults? They're just for show? That can't be right. How come people rob banks if there's no money there?
Cash isn't money? What do you mean cash isn't money? Try buying a Big Mac with Cheese without it. All cash makes up less than 1% of the money supply? Are you kidding? So 99% of the money supply is what? Furs? Beads?
Accounting entries? You mean like Quicken? You mean it's all on paper? It's all just accounting procedures and we trade our chits for services and meat but there is no mountain of gold which supports the legitimacy of "value"?
Then what's everyone so upset about? If it's not real then why the crocodile tears? Why the gnashing of teeth? Why the Henny-Penny-sky-is-falling bluster? Why the urgency to refill a hole which was never anything but a hole? Why not just say "Mulligan!"
Because it's the law? It's the law to believe in Fairy Tales? Well, that explains a lot. A whole lot. It's the law to repay debts which don't exist? If there was no money, then it didn't disappear. And if it didn't disappear then it is still there, just waiting to be acknowledged as real. It's like that great old Donovan song: "First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is." Sing along everyone!
First there was a few trillion dollars on the books and then there wasn't and then the people freaked out and then there was. But all of it – past, present and future – was never there in reality, only in make believe. Our entire economic cosmology is based upon the Fairy Tale principle. All you have to do is believe.
Now, to be honest, there is one small problem with an economic "do-over." Namely, the aforementioned China, India and Japan who have been dutifully buying up America's dollars which America has printed irresponsibly flooding the marketplace. But China etc. scoops these bucks off the market and holds them in reserve. (Chiefly because the world's OIL currency is still the dollar.) But as the dollar decreases in value as America credits itself more and more debt into the marketplace to prop up the :"American Way of Life" the investment in the dollar by China et al becomes junk. They have a choice to wait for the dollar to rebound in value or to dump dollars and take a loss but not the kind of loss they'd take if America were to default or the dollar to collapse in the open market.
The fundamentals of a dollar rebound to previous levels are not sound. The dollar is extended beyond any reasonable model. Only its value as a "Petro-dollar" keeps the house-of-cards American currency relatively stable, but the Treasury of the United States of America, spent into dust by the War Machine of the criminal George W. Bush, is an abyss of debt owed to private banking interests. The People owe more than $10,000,000,000,000 to private banks. The reason we owe this debt to private banks is because the Congress of the United States gave over its own Constitutionally-granted authority to control and value the monetary supply. America's Central Bank – the Federal Reserve – was created and the rest is history. The Fed, as everyone knows, is a banking cartel.
There is not enough citizen-generated revenue to ever re-pay the debt we owe supposedly to ourselves but in actuality to private corporations. If the nation's creditors come calling, America, the largest debtor nation – thanks to fat-cat Reaganomics – unable to pay, would have no choice but to default on the payment. This would necessitate a New World Order without the USA as 'first among equals'. Indeed, the Union would splinter and decay. America would Balkanize.
So if we may have to default on our fairy-tale debts then why not just forgive them and negotiate some type of non-aggression accommodation with China and the rest of the world? America will morph into an equal among equals, decease its empire and work for the benefit of all humankind which the phrase "new world order" is supposed to embody as the "old world order" was 10,000 years of acute monarchy, oligarchy and caste-building. We've had enough of that. So, something new would indicate something different and something different would lean toward something more based upon egalitarian justice and a deep understanding all human beings are born with dignity, grace and deserve respect. As does the planet and all its inhabitants except cockroaches, rats and Dick Cheney.
The Lord's Prayer beseeches God to forgive us our trespasses, sins and debts as we are asked to forgive others. But in the American System there is no god. We must beseech ourselves. In the American System it is not the System which is sacrosanct but the right of the People to form, reform and create anew the system. When the system or the people running it fail to meet the people's needs, it is the duty of the people to organize and set in motion a process to serve the common good. Why have inalienable rights if you're not going to use them?
The road ahead is not fun. It's a big mess. We'll have to eat crow. We'll have to grovel and beg forgiveness. We'll have to ask others to forgive us our debts and trespasses and rely upon the kindness of strangers when those strangers would rather spit in our eye.
The road ahead is not fun because the road we're on is not the right one. We're heading down the road of hitting bottom. Massive Debt without Debt Relief is a major flaw in the current system. We didn't have to head down this road, we could have made an intervention, but unfortunately the folks in the cabal can't put the crackpipe down. So we're gonna go through some motions and allow things to get even worse until such time as the people say "enough" and we give the old girl a makeover or the world says "enough" and we go up in a clusterfuck of sound and fury signifying nothing except wasted opportunity and another failed human society.
Where did the money go? Well as more and more fall, fewer and fewer will be left standing. And then, you'll know.
depression, Economics, recession
Shaharazade on February 11, 2009 at 7:58 pm
and a question I keeping asking my self daily. It went to the same place that boatload of shinkwraped money that went missing at the beginning of the illegal war, went. Yesterday I watched Tim Geithner being questioned by the assholes who are going to fork over a whole boatload more to 'save' the system. Delusional and crooked. No one in the government is willing to stand up and say the R word, Regulation. They still worship the GNP and the freakin' Free Market" which were not allowed to touch, either ideologically or legally. The holes cannot be plugged as the ship is sunk. What good is the market when even the money they steal is worthless?
k9disc on February 11, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Sorry to say I agree with you.
Lasthorseman on February 11, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Is under "rennovations".
http://www.detailshere.com/tun…
serendipity on February 12, 2009 at 12:27 am
Some that never seem to be mentioned: Markopolos: Madoff's Mob Ties Made Me Fear for My Life.
"…For a while now, there have been suggestions that Bernard Madoff had ties to organized crime. And Harry Markopolos just told Congress that those alleged connections made him fear for his life as a whistleblower working to expose Madoff's scheme.
When a committee member referred to Markopolos' "paranoia" about his safety, he responded by referring to Madoff's "dirty money…"
OPOL on February 12, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Edger on February 12, 2009 at 9:50 pm
I was nowhere near the place.
I was on the other side of town.
I have an alibi.