The Dark Heart of Corporatism

A few seem to be waking up to the irony. A drumbeat of corporate persuasion that is noticeable to those outside the culture, and those who have switched off the propaganda feeds on the internet and in the mainstream media.  But the illusion is unnoticed by those seeking an escape from complexity and the uncomfortable in simple solutions and slogans, quickly mouthed as a subtitute for thought.

"If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it."

Edward Bernays

If a 'reformer' does not speak to the need to reform the financial system, the huge advantages and subsidies being given to the corporations and the ultra rich who control them, it is a fairly good indication of what sort of a reformer they really are, and who is pulling their strings.

There is a massive tax avoidance scheme being conducted, for example, by multinational corporations that use accounting methods to accrue income to tax havens overseas, and shelter their cash from income taxes.  With the occasional tax holiday for which they fund large lobbying efforts, they can bring that cash home for tax rates much lower than you might pay, and then give the proceeds to their executives and shareholders as tax-lite dividends and capital gains. It does not take much of a presence or actual sales in any tax haven to do it. A mailbox, an attorney, and an accountant are enough.

As an individual, try shifting your wealth capital overseas, and avoid paying taxes on the capital gains and the interest. They don't make it easy to say the least. But corporations can establish branch offices in tax havens and use loopholes to avoid paying most of their taxes from operations across the US and around the world.

The problem is that corporations have become much more powerful and important than individuals, favored by the politicians on their payrolls.

You are responsible for what you watch, and what you put into your mind, even when it feels comfortable to be part of a mob. The mob will take you to places that you do not wish to go.

As for those who wish to use it, the madness serves only itself.  People will kill their neighbor and poison their children, before they will admit that they were wrong.  They have no love in their hearts, only lust, greed, and hatred which they call love, because they serve only themselves and dark powers.

And at the end they will say, 'we did not know.'

Salon
America's unique hatred of finance reform
By David Sirota

"Despite the moment's anti-union/anti-government sloganeering, the American employees who are paid the highest publicly financed salaries are not state and municipal workers -- nor even our $400,000-a-year president. That distinction goes to the bank executives who are now being paid record salaries -- salaries that continue to be financed by ongoing taxpayer-sponsored bailouts (and yes, huge bailouts are still happening).

We don't hear much about this because the United States government still promotes the fallacy that our banks are not publicly subsidized institutions subject to requisite public control like, say, a utility company might be. Instead, despite all evidence to the contrary, Washington pretends that these are corporations operating in a free market, ignoring the fact that an actual free market would have destroyed many of these very same entities back in 2008. Nonetheless, the nonsensical free-market apocrypha lives on because it serves such an important a purpose for banks and the U.S. politicians they own -- namely, to successfully thwart the push not just for full-on bank nationalization, but for even minimal financial regulation.

So astonishingly successful has this farce been that our domestic debate about spending and deficits today is somehow primarily about demonizing the publicly financed five-figure salaries of teachers, police officers and firefighters, rather than about reducing the publicly financed seven- and eight-figure salaries of Wall Streeters. In Fox News parlance, the former are simply tarred and feathered as the takers in an "Entitlement Nation," while the latter are celebrated as the earnest John Galts who are keeping America afloat.

Against the backdrop of international politics, the unchallenged dominance of such a narrative in this country has become the most powerful American exceptionalism of all -- it now literally separates us from most of the rest of the industrialized world. Indeed, while our pro-corporate ruling class tells us to fear the shrugs of Wall Street's supposed Atlases, the same fears are being outright rejected by many other industrialized nations in the post-meltdown years -- even those with relatively conservative governments..."

Read the rest here.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Le Douleur - Option Expiration

With the dollar down, stocks up, and gold and silver down one might suspect today was an option expiration day in a delivery month on the Comex.

And so it was.

Greek vote on their bailout plan may move the markets later this week.

I put the long gold/silver and short stock indices trade back on today at an opportune moment in honor of the anomalies provided by an option expiry.

SP 500 and NDX September Futures Daily Charts - VIX

Eyes are on the Greek bailout vote.

Light summer volumes.

The US equity markets are coiling within obvious symmetrical triangles. They will break up or down, and that break *should* mark the next leg once confirmed by a daily close or two.

The SP 500 cash market has been finding support around its 200 DMA the past week. Traders are watching this carefully, as well as VIX, for the signs of an impending break lower.

I did add some index shorts intraday.

The Credit Default Swaps That Underlie the Greek Crisis

This interview will help you to understand the problems surrounding the Greek crisis, the intended looting of their public resources, and the model that is being repeated by the banks around world.

Rickards on Regulatory Capture, Corrupt Banks, and the Credit Default Swaps on Sovereign Defaults

Around 2000 I came to roughly the same conclusions that he does. I had the opportunity to study the European money system while it was forming in graduate business school, and it just did not make sense.

The euro was probably going to fail unless the union became a unified federal government with one set of laws and taxation policy, with the kind of revenue distribution that exists amongst states in the US, for example. 

A single currency cannot span independent fiscal authorities because it removes the ability of the currency to flucuate in value based on their independent economic health, acts of God, and social policy choices of the different social organizations. This is basic monetary theory.  I was surprised that it lasted as long as it did, but it was to the advantage of the financial world to tolerate the attendant deceptions because they were growing fat on it.

And a similar thing can be said for the global currency trading regime based on the dollar and arbitrary valuations subject to national manipulation.  It has allowed multinational corporations and banks to achieve tremendous power and advantage over local governments.

In other words, the currency regime and financial deregulation are the setup, and the credit default swaps are the trigger.  Why the politicians permit the naked selling and buying of such instruments by banks handling public money is beyond my understanding, save pure, blind greed.

I always thought that a crisis would be put forward as an opportunity for the 'one-worlders' to once again promote their idea of a one world government, and a universal order of central financial authority that eventually and inevitably evolves into a single political system. And that is still very much in the cards.

For this to happen, national governments must be undermined and absorbed, their people brought down to their knees financially. And then their saviors can begin the work of ordering their lives.