The End Game - Greatest Ponzi Scheme in History

[Octafish]

Economic Hit Men toil for Empire.

Ask John-Perkins how things work.

The End Game - Greatest Ponzi Scheme in History

Part2

By: David_Chu
Oct 20, 2008 - 02:35 PM

Stop being so greedy, and so selfish. Realize that there is more to the world than your big houses and fancy stores. People are starving and you worry about oil for you cars. Babies are dying of thirst and you search the fashion pages for the latest styles. Nations like ours are drowning in poverty, but your people don't even hear our cries for help. You shut your ears to the voices of those who try to tell you these things. You label them radicals and Communists. You must open your hearts to the poor and downtrodden, instead of driving them further into poverty and servitude. There's not much time left. If you don't change, you are doomed.

So warned a young and observant English major from Indonesia in the early 1970s. The person on the receiving end of this clarion warning, almost 40 years ago, was John Perkins, a self-confessed ‘economic hit man,' who has since realized the evil and errors of his “profession.” Mr. Perkins has subsequently written two very important books detailing what he did in his small role in the greatest Ponzi scheme in the world and in history.

The greatest Ponzi scheme is very simple to grasp but to fully understand the mechanics and the real history behind this scheme requires much more than what my article, even as long as it is, can do justice to such a complicated subject. I would recommend the following four extremely important books, plus a fifth book, to read in order to begin to grasp what all this entails:

• Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
• A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order by F. William Engdahl
• The Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth about Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and How to Change the World by John Perkins
• The Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation by F. William Engdahl (this crucial book is much more than GMOs.)
• And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out): Wall Street, the IMF and the Bankrupting of Argentina by Paul Blustein (what the U.S. Ponzi scheme did to millions of Argentineans in 2001 and 2002.)

In its bare bone essence, the greatest Ponzi Scheme is the financial and economic hegemony (backed up by the military threat implied or real) perpetrated by the United States and her people, even if they are totally ignorant of this, under the the absurd pretense and propaganda (Madison Avenue PR) of “free trade,” “spreading democracy and freedom,” and it is also known as the “Washington Consensus” or “Neoliberalism.”

This American Ponzi scheme is perpetrated upon millions and millions of little people in foreign countries that the majority of Americans cannot located on a map, and, in most cases, it is perpetrated upon the poorest of the poor, in countries like Indonesia, China, Venezuela, and many other nations.

It is modern slavery with a twist: out of sight and out of mind for most if not all Americans, so it doesn't exist.

Millions of people in the so-called developing and third world toil day in and day out for the “non-negotiable American way of life” so that Americans can buy the Nike shoes that are promoted by “stars” like Michael Jordan, the Christmas toys enjoyed by millions of American children each year, and almost everything that the American people wear on their backs.

But before you roll your eyes and complain as to why U.S. hegemony has anything to do with Ponzi schemes, remember the two fundamental characteristics of all Ponzi schemes: the top 1% control and benefit from the criminal enterprise and it takes a continual influx of “raw materials” and “human resources” to keep the Ponzi scheme working.

CONTINUED...

http://marketoracle.co.uk/Article6883.html

Gee. That sounds a lot like Haiti. And Angola. And Nigeria. And Bolivia. And Columbia...



A child of Mozote, El Salvador.

[lonestarnot]

1. We are disgusting for not stopping this long ago!

[Soup Bean]

3. The game is HUGE. How do we stop it?

Ever see "Lord of War"? The game is big, and terrible. It's so big that most people would never believe it's happening. And it's happened since man began organizing himself. I always wondered if JFK was going to try to take it on....what would have happened if he made his speech in Dallas that day? Who watches the Watchmen indeed.

[lonestarnot]

9. Huge is not a good enough excuse. Sorry. We can't stop the prison industry either then. One on

every corner.

[Octafish]

4. America cannot survive as Amway.

These economic gangsters are traitors.

Iraq: Quicksand & Blood

By Robert Parry
Originally Posted November 13, 2003

Editor's Note: In the vice presidential debate on Oct. 5, 2004, Dick Cheney cited El Salvador as a precedent for the U.S. policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. In an article almost a year ago, Robert Parry noted the dangers of the Bush-Cheney administration transferring to the Middle East lessons supposedly learned from the Reagan-Bush intervention in Central America two decades ago. That article is reprinted below.

George W. Bush and his top advisers learned little from the Vietnam debacle of the 1960s, since most avoided service in the war. But many top Bush aides played key roles in the repression of leftist peasant uprisings in Central America in the 1980s, a set of lessons the Bush administration is now trying to apply to the violent resistance in Iraq.

The key counterinsurgency lesson from Central America was that the U.S. government can defeat guerrilla movements if it is willing to back a local power structure, no matter how repulsive, and if Washington is ready to tolerate gross human rights abuses. In Central America in the 1980s, those tactics included genocide against hundreds of Mayan villages in Guatemala’s highlands and the torture, rape and murder of thousands of young political activists throughout the region.

The body dumps that have been unearthed across Central America are thus little different from the mass graves blamed on Saddam Hussein in Iraq, except in Central America they represented the dark side of U.S. foreign policy and received far less U.S. press scrutiny. Another lesson learned from the 1980s was the importance of shielding the American people from the ugly realities of a U.S.-backed "dirty war" by using P.R. techniques, which became known inside the Reagan administration as "perception management."

CONTINUED...

http://consortiumnews.com/2004/100604.html

They not only enrich themselves, they endanger America -- We the People.

[lonestarnot]

8. Ackety Amway! Do they dump bodies? And wasn't there just another group grave found in Iraq this

week?

[Mr Rabble]

18. Thank you as always Octafish.

I should add to this-

For a great background on the military costs of empire, have a look at Chalmers Johnson's Blowback Trilogy. What Perkins does for the economic aspect, Johnson does for the military aspect.

Or I suppose one could simply read Chomsky and Parenti and get the cliffnotes. :)

[Stanchetalarooni]

25. GWB still has a couple of months to keep it going.

He is the representative of those at the top of the pyramid. So little time left for the "deceider" to act.

[seemslikeadream]

2. but since the Revolutionary War.

And if not 'terrorism' then something else. Two of the best minds on the planet, Nicholas Taleb and Benoit Mandelbrot told NPR this week that this is the toughest period in America's history not since the Depression, but since the American Revolutionary War.

[Octafish]

6. The Black Swan

Eisenhower, Diem and JF Dulles.

What is The Black Swan about?

Well, the subtitle is 'the impact of the highly improbable'. And Niall Ferguson, author of a review of the book which Taleb approves of, explains:

Before the discovery of Australia, people in the old world were convinced that all swans were white, an unassailable belief as it seemed completely confirmed by empirical evidence. The sighting of the first black swan might have been an interesting surprise for a few ornithologists (and others extremely concerned with the coloring of birds), but that is not where the significance of the story lies. It illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge. One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans. All you need is one single (and, I am told, quite ugly) black bird.

This logical problem has often been remarked upon. For example, William James, the brother of Henry, was interested in psychic research. He soon became aware, however, that no matter how many hoax mediums you exposed, you were always left in a position of doubt. You only had to find one genuine case, among 10,000 con artists, to prove that communication with the dead was possible.

Black swans, in Taleb's terms, are unexpected, and indeed unforeseeable, events which have enormous impact. Examples: the events of 9/11 (bad, negative); Harry Potter (good, positive, particularly if your name is J.K. Rowling); the rise of Christianity; the rise of Islam; the first and second world wars. But after a black swan has occurred, human nature is such that we concoct explanations for it, making it both explicable and, we feel, predictable.

In short, black swans are some of the most important and influential events in the history of the human race.

'A small number of Black Swans,' Taleb tells us, 'explain almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions, to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our own personal lives.' And their impact is increasing, given the nature of the world we now live in.

But hold on a minute, hold on, I hear you cry. Surely there were lots of people who saw, for instance, that the two world wars were inevitably going to happen. Yes indeed. Or so it appears, afterwards. Afterwards we can readily find evidence that such conflicts were 'inevitable'.

MORE:

http://www.jamesrpeterson.com/home/2008/08/there-was-a-recurring-theme-at-the-american-accounting-association-convention-last-week-on-the-challenged-condition-of-the-l.html

Thanks, seemslikeadream. Fascinating stuff there.

[seemslikeadream]

21. When villainy wore a sash and waved a cutlass....!

;)

[HCE SuiGeneris]

5. I sense a great need for change.

Will its price tag necessitate great social upheaval? It would seem so, as the status quo continues along mostly undaunted...

Recommended.

[Octafish]

10. Death of the American Empire - USA is self-destructing, bringing the rest of the world down with it.

Thanks, BushDespiser12. It is my most sincere wish that we uncover and find the way to solve the problems that lie ahead.



Wishing it weren't so, but the direction we're going in is immoral, illegal and unsustainable. It's the result of concentrated wealth and power in the hands of the few -- something most un-democratic and Un-American.

Death of the American Empire

America is self-destructing & bringing the rest of the world down with it

by Tanya Cariina Hsu
Global Research, October 23, 2008

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. (Thomas Jefferson, US President; 1743 - 1826)

America is dying. It is self-destructing and bringing the rest of the world down with it.

Often referred to as a sub-prime mortgage collapse, this obfuscates the real reason. By associating tangible useless failed mortgages, at least something 'real' can be blamed for the carnage. The problem is, this is myth. The magnitude of this fiscal collapse happened because it was all based on hot air.

The banking industry renamed insurance betting guarantees as 'credit default swaps' and risky gambling wagers were called 'derivatives'. Financial managers and banking executives were selling the ultimate con to the entire world, akin to the snake-oil salesmen from the 18th century but this time in suits and ties. And by October 2009 it was a quadrillion-dollar (that's $1,000 trillion) industry that few could understand.

Propped up by false hope, America is now falling like a house of cards.

It all began in the early part of the 20th century. In 1907 J.P. Morgan, a private New York banker, published a rumour that a competing unnamed large bank was about to fail. It was a false charge but customers nonetheless raced to their banks to withdraw their money, in case it was their bank. As they pulled out their funds the banks lost their cash deposits and were forced to call in their loans. People now therefore had to pay back their mortgages to fill the banks with income, going bankrupt in the process. The 1907 panic resulted in a crash that prompted the creation of the Federal Reserve, a private banking cartel with the veneer of an independent government organisation. Effectively, it was a coup by elite bankers in order to control the industry.

When signed into law in 1913, the Federal Reserve would loan and supply the nation's money, but with interest. The more money it was able to print, the more 'income' for itself it generated. By its very nature the Federal Reserve would forever keep producing debt to stay alive. It was able to print America's monetary supply at will, regulating its value. To control valuation however, inflation had to be kept in check.

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10651

So, there they are and here we are. They're happy, moving our money into their numbered Swiss bank accounts. We the People are near-penured, and "shocked" as Alan Greenspan said today.

And yet, We can still DO. Perhaps we can yet pull off a global financial jiu-jitsu move and turn the negative momentum into a positive position, er, end-state.

For inspiration, we could start living what we hope in our heart of hearts.

Thanks to Ms. Hu and people like you, who care, we have a fighting good chance. Our best tool, the truth.

[G_j]

14. I quite admire your optimism

or at least the recognition that we have power to move the world ourselves.

[Octafish]

19. Thank you, my Friend. I love my Country.

What I've found drives the wheel:

The Truth.

Needed to Think.
Neeeded to Do.
Needed to Accomplish.
Needed for Change.

And Change can be Good.



Infinite thanks for understanding, G_j.

[Irish Girl]

7. This article is a definite must read

k&r

:kick:

[Octafish]

11. The World of MLM’s - Greatest Ponzi Scheme in History

Multi Level Marketing. Selling the same nothing to a bunch of people at the same time. Can you hear that cash register ring?

The World of MLM’s - Greatest Ponzi Scheme in History

Part 1

By: David_Chu
Oct 20, 2008 - 02:09 PM

“You are the greatest Italian of them all!” cried out one of his fervent supporters in his defense.

Charles Ponzi, the greatest and most infamous swindler in his time, demurred and suggested instead Columbus and Marconi for the discovery of the Americas and the invention of the radio, respectively.

Mr. Ponzi sure discovered money all right: millions of U.S. dollars for himself that is.

Starting out in Boston, he used his amazing “white shoe salesman” ability to inspire confidence and to charm his potential prospects in a pyramid scheme that took off like a Santa Ana wildfire and covered 28 northeastern U.S. cities in 1920. Mr. Ponzi claimed that he made huge sums of money by sending a type of postal money order from country to country and by taking advantage of the difference in the exchange rates: what some would call “arbitrage” today. And he promised to repay the principal of anyone who invested in his scheme plus 50 percent in 90 days. That's 200 percent per year!

Boy, were tens of thousands of little people sold! That is until August 1920 when the ugly truth and reality caught up with this master swindler. News reporters discovered that Mr. Ponzi had previously gone to jail for forgery in Montreal and that he only had $1.6 million for about $15 million he received from his investors (this debt-to-asset ratio of over 9 to 1 is not so bad considering by today's standards: one former derivatives company, LTCM, was leveraged 300 to 1!). He was subsequently sent to prison and later deported from the U.S. (by contrast, today's greatest swindlers on Wall Street are rewarded with government appointments on Pennsylvania Avenue or lucrative book deals in New York, or both).

The “greatest Italian of them all” is best know for a financial pyramid scheme that “is a fraudulent investment operation that involves promising or paying abnormally high returns or ‘profits' to investors out of the money paid in by subsequent investors, rather than from net revenues generated by any real business.”

Wikipedia.org ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme ) further explains:

A Ponzi scheme usually offers abnormally high short-term returns in order to entice new investors. The high returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises (and pays) require an ever-increasing flow of money from investors in order to keep the scheme going.

The system is doomed to collapse because there are little or no underlying earnings from the money received by the promoter. However, the scheme is often interrupted by legal authorities before it collapses, because a Ponzi scheme is suspected and/or because the promoter is selling unregistered securities. As more investors become involved, the likelihood of the scheme coming to the attention of authorities increases.

The scheme is named after Charles Ponzi, who became notorious for using the technique after emigrating from Italy to the United States in 1903. Ponzi was not the first to invent such a scheme, but his operation took in so much money that it was the first to become known throughout the United States. Ponzi's original scheme was in theory based on arbitraging international reply coupons for postage stamps, but soon diverted later investors' money to support payments to earlier investors and Ponzi's personal wealth. Today's schemes are often considerably more sophisticated than Ponzi's, although the underlying formula is quite similar and the principle behind every Ponzi scheme is to exploit investor naïveté.

If he would be alive today, Mr. Ponzi would be amazed at and extremely proud of the greatest Ponzi scheme on the planet and in the history of the world: the ability of the United States to create money and credit from nothing and, here is the kicker, its ability to exchange that monopoly money and fake credit for real goods and real services produced by the little people from the rest of the world, and its ability to rape and pillage the natural and human resources of the developing world in broad daylight under the guise of spreading democracy and freedom !

CONTINUED...

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article6881.html

I wasn't kidding when I said America won't suvive becoming Amway. Dick DeVos's wife is Blackwater founder Eric Prince's sister. Thanks, coincidenceor... for giving a damn.

[Pastiche423]

12. Everyone Please

read Confessions of an Economic Hitman!

It filled in many blanks about what our country has done to peoples of other lands, lands that had the resouces We (our government) wanted.

Many years ago, I used to hang out w/a group of people much older than me. They spoke of what "spreading democracy" really means and has meant for many decades. This book filled in the details and rounded out the story in an easy, but terrifying manner.


Recommend.

[Octafish]

20. Perkins: Third World Governments are victims of global chess game

The West has put into place a whole set of rules and regulations to ensure that African economies remain in the primary sector and they have created a host of international organisations to implement their strategies.

African gov`ts victims of global chess game

Posted: 2008/10/13
From: Mathaba News Network
by Junious Ricardo Stanton
(The Herald)

EXCERPT...

These advisors and consultants were intentionally placed there so that African leaders would not make any decisions that would change the racial composition of the economic system.

One magazine says that consultants and advisers are known for "deliberately holding back or producing part of a solution to a problem" in the hope of getting called in by the client again.

Is it surprising therefore that western advisors work against Africa’s best interests?

Why should we be surprised that the wrong decisions have been made on Africa’s behalf since independence? Would you make the right decisions if you knew that you would be out of a job tomorrow?

In his book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man", John Perkins describes how as a highly paid professional, he helped the US cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then taking over their economies.

Let him explain how they did: "So, let’s say we give this third-world country a loan of US$1 billion. One of the conditions of that loan is that the majority of it, roughly 90 (percent), comes back to the United States to one of our big corporations, the ones we’ve all heard of recently, the Bechtels, the Halliburtons.

"And those corporations build in this third-world country large power plants, highways, ports, or industrial parks — big infrastructure projects that basically serve the very rich in those countries.

"The poor people in those countries and the middle class suffer; they don’t benefit from these loans, they don’t benefit from the projects. In fact, often their social services have to be severely curtailed in the process of paying off the debt…

"This third-world country then is saddled with a huge debt that it can’t possibly repay. For example, today, Ecuador… So, now we go back to those countries and say, look, you borrowed all this money from us, and you owe us this money, you can’t repay your debts, so give our oil companies your oil at very cheap costs… it began shortly after the end of World War II.

"It has been building up over time until today where it’s really reached mammoth proportions where we control most of the resources of the world."

Now that you understand the rationale behind Africa’s huge debt and structural adjustment programmes, are you still surprised that the IMF and the World Bank are unable to find any viable solutions for Africa?

According to John Perkins, when leaders in developing countries won an election, they received a visit from him and he gave them two choices.

They were shown a bullet (the stick) or a wad of money (the carrot.)

Many African leaders found themselves caught in the trap.

They had to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea and having signed a pact, they could no longer turn back.

Those who changed their minds ended up like Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein and this is what Perkins says happened to those who refused to comply with the demands of the West.

CONTINUED..

http://mathaba.net/news/?x=608720

Smedley Butler caught on to the Game early on, too, Pastiche423.

[Karenina]

23. A darkness hangs over the U.S.A.

How long until her citizens look up and realize it's the shadow of a jackboot descending onto their heads?

[Swamp Rat]

13. k&r

:hi: amigo

[Canuckistanian]

15. I've been meaning to read "Confessions of an Economics Hitman"

Perkins is a credible, thoughtful man from the interviews I've heard with him.

Ponzi only WISHED he could make a scam this big.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

29. It certainly helped me accept the validity of others' loathing of this nation.

Democracy PROTECTS people from such gross oppression.

Of course, we've been living in an illusion of democracy for decades, at least, and spreading tyranny for profit.

If only the tables were turned on those who refuse to acknowledge just how immoral, even evil, such economic barbarianism really is. It seems to me that, the only way some people acquire understanding is to have direct experience with no ambiguity about the "bad" guys' identity.

[RagAss]

16. Mark My Words.....

Since home mortgages worked out so well, I'm thinking the next "lure" will be Prevention Drugs.
"Miracle Drugs", aimed at boomers and designed to prevent the onset of prostate and colon cancer and maybe even Alzheimer's.

Of course it will take at least 5 years to realize the drugs don't work, but by then everyone will be fleeced and/or dead!


Oh wait....my bad...The FDA won't let that happen.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[unkachuck]

17. K&R....

....I guess this means I shouldn't start my chain-letter....

....thanks, Octafish

[DrDebug]

22. Gee. That sound a lot like Chile as well

"The model for Iraq is Pinochet's Chile"
- Grover Norquist

Birth Pangs
excerpted from the book
The Shock Doctrine
The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
by Naomi Klein

p96
For the first year and a half, Pinochet faithfully followed the Chicago rules: he privatized some, though not all, state-owned companies (including several banks); he allowed cutting-edge new forms of speculative finance; he flung open the borders to foreign imports, tearing down the barriers that had long protected Chilean manufacturers; and he cut government spending by 10 percent-except the military, which received a significant increase. He also eliminated price controls -a radical move in a country that had been regulating the cost of necessities such as bread and cooking oil for decades.

The Chicago Boys had confidently assured Pinochet that if he suddenly withdrew government involvement from these areas all at once, the "natural" laws of economics would rediscover their equilibrium, and inflation-which they viewed as a kind of economic fever indicating the presence of unhealthy organisms in the market would magically go down. They were mistaken. In 1974, inflation reached 375 percent-the highest rate in the world and almost twice the top level under Allende. The cost of basics such as bread went through the roof. At the same time, Chileans were being thrown out of work because Pinochet's experiment with "free trade" was flooding the country with cheap imports. Local businesses were closing, unable to compete, unemployment hit record levels and hunger became rampant. The Chicago School's first laboratory was a debacle.

Sergio de Castro and the other Chicago Boys argued (in true Chicago fashion) that the problem didn't lie with their theory but with the fact that it wasn't being applied with sufficient strictness. The economy had failed to correct itself and return to harmonious balance because there were still "distortions" left over from nearly half a century of government interference. For the experiment to work, Pinochet had to strip these distortions away-more cuts, more privatization, more speed.

... Pinochet and de Castro got to work stripping away the welfare state to arrive at their pure capitalist utopia. In 1975, they cut public spending by 27 percent in one blow-and they kept cutting until, by 1980, it was half of what it had been under Allende. Health and education took the heaviest hits. Even The Economist, a free-market cheerleader, called it "an orgy of self-mutilation .1128 De Castro privatized almost five hundred state-owned companies and banks, practically giving many of them away, since the point was to get them as quickly as possible into their rightful place in the economic order. He took no pity on local companies and removed even more trade barriers; the result was the loss of 177,000 industrial jobs between 1973 and 1983.° By the mid-eighties, manufacturing as a percentage of the economy dropped to levels last seen during the Second World War.

p104
Pinochet held power for seventeen years, and during that time he changed political direction several times. The country's period of steady growth that is held up as proof of its miraculous success did not begin until the mid-eighties-a full decade after the Chicago Boys implemented shock therapy and well after Pinochet was forced to make a radical course correction. That's because in 1982, despite its strict adherence to Chicago doctrine, Chile's economy crashed: its debt exploded, it faced hyperinflation once again and unemployment hit 30 percent-ten times higher than it was under Allende. The main cause was that the piranhas, the Enron-style financial houses that the Chicago Boys had freed from all regulation, had bought up the country's assets on borrowed money and run up an enormous debt of $14 billion.

(...)

http://thirdworldtraveler.com/Naomi_Klein/Birth_Pangs_SD.html

Gee, that sounds a lot like George W. Bush's United States as well

[seemslikeadream]

30. PNC is buying National

PNC bought Riggs


:hug:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3afUrkx_VwM">Will the circle be unbroken?

[DrDebug]

36. The circles never stop: Treasury is taking a stake in PNC

PNC to buy National City; Treasury is taking a stake
Government injects $7.7 billion into buyer's takeover of troubled regional bank
By Greg Morcroft, MarketWatch
Last update: 3:06 p.m. EDT Oct. 24, 2008

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- In the government's latest step to rescue the U.S. financial system and restart credit flows, the Treasury on Friday agreed to put $7.7 billion into PNC Financial Services Group Inc.'s buyout of regional rival National City Corp.

The deal to acquire Cleveland-based National City (NCC:2.07, -0.68, -24.7%) , valued at roughly $5.5 billion in stock and cash, confirms recent market speculation that banks receiving Treasury investments might use those funds to finance acquisitions rather than for direct lending.
Pittsburgh-based PNC (PNC:58.88, +2.00, +3.5%) said it's buying the troubled regional bank and selling roughly the government an equity stake, a move that would allow the company to maintain strong capital-level ratios.

(...)

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/treasury-take-stake-pnc-agrees/story.aspx?guid=26695581-ADD3-40B6-A7B2-9A183056C8F2&dist=SecEditorsPicks

I guess that the favorite bank of Bush, Pinochet and Thatcher needed to be saved and nationalized...

I keep wondering whether your picture is the Eiffel Tower, however I'm not sure...

[DangerDave921]

Ponzi Schemes

One could argue that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme too. The dollars that you invest are not invested in any account for you, nor are they saved for you. Any payments to you down the road will come from new "investors" whose money is taken and given to you. And the cycle repeats until it runs out of money.

[DangerDave921]

24. Ponzi Schemes

One could argue that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme too. The dollars that you invest are not invested in any account for you, nor are they saved for you. Any payments to you down the road will come from new "investors" whose money is taken and given to you. And the cycle repeats until it runs out of money.

[bluesmail]

26. delete sorry How did that happen?

[earth mom]

27. K & R!

:kick:

[bluesmail]

28. Seeing Scalia's mug reminded me of a story I read

Cindy McCain's father got busted for illegal alcohol sales AND went to prison. His lawyer was non other than Justice (sic) Scalia. When the father got out of prison he got his own beer distribution company. My head is jammed with important facts, so if anyone can straighten this out I'd be appreciative...and we all know Cindy McCain's penchant for painkillers. :evilgrin:

[Leopolds Ghost]

31. Or just Read Thucydides. Sadly, most Americans (DUers?) don't give a shit

They only care about ensuring gas stays cheap.

[seemslikeadream]

32. Robert Fisk's World: From the fourth century BC, words our leaders should heed

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisks-world-from-the-fourth-century-bc-words-our-leaders-should-heed-965479.html

Let us now praise famous men. And after yet another US presidential candidates' debate of awesome sterility – not to mention their shameless refusal to tackle the real, bloody issues that confront America – I'm referring principally to one of the first journalists to understand war and, so far as he could, to check his sources: Thucydides.


If only our masters would turn to his account of the Peloponnesian conflict they might even see their own faces – and their hideous mistakes – in the mirror of his prose.

I have to admit that I was inspired to reread the great man's fourth-century BC tract by Professor David Rovie of the Auckland University of Technology, who startled a weary Fisk in New Zealand a few weeks ago by pointing out that Thucydides' work contained all the lessons we need to learn about war, human rights, the treatment of prisoners, the cowardice of politicians, and the cold-hearted decisions of nation states.

Thucydides himself said – it is, of course, his most famous quotation – that it was enough for him that his words "be judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future".

His work, Thucydides wrote – and I am using Rex Warner's translation – was "not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public but was done to last for ever". Well, he can say that again. How many of our historians or journalists or novelists or playwrights work for those who will (despite the internet) still read them in 2,000 years' time? Tolstoy maybe, Shakespeare, I imagine. But will the historians of our latter-day wars – the Beavors and the Barnetts and the Bullocks, even the Churchills – be read in 4008? Certainly Thucydides would have had no time for newspaper reporters: "prose chroniclers", he sneers, are "less interested in telling the truth than in catching the attention of their public, whose authorities cannot be checked". Ouch.

At school, I found the 27-year war between Athens and Sparta, which began in 431BC, a very tiresome affair. Indeed, its miniature battles, in which a modern-day "surge" might involve only 200 men, are pretty boring. But Thucydides was also a soldier; by failing to save an Athenian colony from the Spartans, he was sent off to 20 years of exile. And his account of this ancient conflict contains a dark and chilling relevance today.

[G_j]

33. Howard Zinn

Video- Howard Zinn, Truth About The Bailout and more

World-renowned historian and activist Howard Zinn, author of the classic "A People's History Of The United States," discusses the truth about the bailout with The Real News. Zinn looks at how the bailout is nothing but a gift to rich, capitalist institutions while the people simply pay and get barely anything in return. Zinn also discusses the failure of the "free market" doctrine and other key issues.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQxYPsIA_ZY

[HughBeaumont]

38. We more or less paid for our own firings.

Ask the soon-to-be-unemployed NCC white-collar workers downtown how hyper-capitalism/"Greed is Good"/Reaganomics/Laissez-fail capitalism is working for them now.

[tjwash]

34. Yes we know our system is a dysfunctional top heavy textbook study in corruption.

The question is how do we fix it?

[Greyhound]

35. Unfortunately, the solution is "unthinkable" to those that both benefit from this Ponzi scheme

and who rule over us. The fractional reserve central banking system is a privately held consortium that is within a hair's breadth of controlling the world. If the US withdrew from that system, it and all of it's control structure, would necessarily collapse.

If we continue to do nothing about it, the opportunity to lead the world to a better currency system will be lost forever as the US devolves into national poverty, forced to apply our entire GDP to their "repayment plan".

[Raksha]

37. K & R, and bookmarked to give this thread the attention it deserves.

[Hidden Stillness]

39. So Many Angles to This Thing, as it Spreads....

Another name given to the horror that corporate-capitalism has become, besides Ponzi, pyramid scheme, etc., is "predatory capitalism," and that one really fits. It makes you think over many of the trends that have been happening over the past 30 years or so, and realize they went together.

The downsizing and union-busting of the 1970s and 1980s, became the deregulation, merger, takeover, further downsizing and merger of the 1980s, then finally the consolidation and outsourcing of the 1990s to today. Media gets more and more consolidated, and suddenly kills its news/documentary/public affairs departments, and presents more and more vulgar and brain-dead programming, and more advertising; and the people fall asleep, and turn more and more to commercial products, and less to education. Corporations are allowed to take over the actual curriculum of public schools, after taxes are cut and their budgets starved, with further advertising, and corporate, anti-Government propaganda. The amount of Federal money given to infrastructure projects is cut to its lowest level during all of modern times, while corporate ties, including subsidies, bailouts, tax scams and other deals, increase to most of the Government's activity now. Corporations, by way of lobbyists and teams of lawyers, now write bills and run Federal departments; only their interests are accomplished.

Our entire National eceonomy has been whittled down and transformed to the purported "boardroom offices" of global corporate cartels, and the population that made up the actual employed workforce is more and more cut completely out of the picture, with no Government programs to make up for it, as all Government is transformed from public-good to "corporate markets." The wealth is consolidated, increasingly vast amounts now held by a miniscule percentage of the population, and whatever jobs there are created by this economy are almost all poverty-wage level sales-clerk type jobs. A recent Senate hearing held by Sen. Tom Harkin, one of the best in Congress, found that the industries that make up the economy itself, have changed, from the productive and good-paying manufacturing jobs of the past, to now a majority of all Gross Domestic Product coming from the "financial services" industry! Profits from the 1948 U.S. economy were 58% from manufacturing--we made, built, and bought things--and 19% from finance. This has completely flipped, so that now, some 20% of G.D.P. is from manufacturing, and some 60% is finance. This alone tells you many things: first, since some 70% of the G.D.P., and an economy's health, is from consumer spending, this shows that actually, the economy is much worse than "they" are pretending, jobs and profits are not good, most profit is corporate/CEO-level anyway, not employees, and it shows that the entire economy is consolidating among the oligarchy/corporatocracy, and is not being shared by the general public anymore. More and more, it is not even an "economy," but merely the profits of a very few individual corporate investment cartels. Then what?

A very sad, and instructive, example of the way they like to do business, was recently shown on CBC television, a documentary titled "The Dolphin Dealer." This involved a Canadian with American partners, real bastards, who go to areas of the world where the Government there is small and corrupt, where animals are treated badly, and where therefore there will be little or no resistance to what they want to do, especially after a prolonged pre-planning period of bribes to local and National officials, contacts, and extensive study of business and import-export law there. These people chose the Solomon Islands, where police enforcement against animal rights and environmental activists can be violent and even deadly--the perfect environment for this "new" kind of global capitalist--and poor local people are hired, at pitiful rates, to do all the work (feeding, etc.) before the global deals start. This group studied for the documentary, caught and imprisoned in a cage area just offshore, one large group of dolphins after another, and they all eventually died. The sickening plan was to capture them, ship them around the world for these horrible "swim with the dolphins" vacation spots--stressful and abusive to the animals--and arrange for the related Government officials to use extremely threatening measures to fight off any and all resistance by those who would try to help the animals--as they do in any part of the world where the people also have rights. Things are deliberately moved to very particular, purposely-chosen areas of the world--after much global research on laws, corrupt, bribe-able Governmet, etc., is done, and then all the most criminal, cruel operations can proceed unimpeded, with no one daring to oppose it. This is global capitalism today, and all are abused slaves. With their operations now consolidated to larger and larger scales, if they don't like something, anything--the fact that there is any particular law or protection somewhere, for example--poof!--they move, bribe, call in their global contacts, bust groups, "remove" people, and etc., and God help us all.

[Quantess]

40. I'm going to read this when I have more time.

Glad I found it.