Excellent points Ben, one thing though, you say "at the expense of the very people that a year ago they were forcing out of their homes.".....

I think if you check, those banks are STILL forcing people out of their homes, because in the words of the illustrious presiden Bush, those people bought more house than they could afford......

From how I see it... All these bankers were leveraged by as little as 1% of their own assets on the line and so were gambling like drunken sailors all sharing in the upside, because they were running a ponzi scheme that made easy money for all... as the markets were flooded with real and manufactured liquidity.

In the 1990's the banks pumped the tech bubble with promises of a new world where huge profits are made at the stroke of a key on the keyboard. Everyone pumped their capital into the IPO's, and in 2000-01 the banks broke the artificial bubble they were managing from their investment side of the so-called chinese wall, and through a corrupt bankruptcy process consolidated the industry under their secured creditor ownership... while covering for this massive multi-billion dollar theft of assets by creating another bubble (the housing bubble) to create the illusion of wealth through capital appreciation that allowed the economy to absorb what they did in the tech melt down.

This whole process was all premeditated and planned by a small group of greedy individuals that sit atop the financial system. So they created the housing bubble injecting huge amounts of their monetary inflation into the economy through higher mortgages knowing full well it wasn't sustainable, but also knowing they would make out like bandits claiming ignorance of what they had done by the time things crashed. They make money both ways.... on the boom as well as the bust... both ways they consolidate control and capital. Thats what the great depression was all about... getting rid of the fed reserve competition.

An American commentator in favor of the bailout for the bank gamblers said the other day that hedge funds must make a minimum of 14% return in order to give the pension holders 10% return... and in order to sustain these returns the hedge funds at times have to bend the rules, and as a result of their bending the rules the tax payer should bail them out so that the pension holder can sustain a 10% return on investment.

First of all a 10% return on investment is a number pulled out of a persons ass and means nothing when we have monetary inflation that makes that an actual real return negative once the effects of the corruption are cost'd into the economy paid for by devaluing what a dollar will buy. The bankster apologists are using fear and blackmail to justify a system that allows their hedge funds to defile our economy with criminally leveraged investments perverting the real value of commodities, assets, and entire corporations through the capital they raise for industry consolidation (bankrupting good companies through efficiencies to shareholders). The bankster apologists want the profits to remain private, but the losses to be socialized to the tax payer under the guise of protecting peoples pensions.

So here we are now in 2008 and they (US Federal Reserve shareholders) have done just about everything and gotten away with it. The great depression, WW2, JFK, 9/11, Iraq, Savings and Loans, the war on drugs, Al-Yamamah and its little brother Iran-Contra, the tech bubble, and now the housing bubble, but thats all nothing and doesn't even cause the banksters to sweat. They own everyone... so why should they.

What makes the banksters nervous is their ponzi scheme getting out of control before they have total control. The heart of their ponzi scheme is the derivatives markets estimated in the hundreds of trillions of dollars dwarfing the real economy by many magnitudes. When you read about the bail out and they are talking about 'mortgage backed assets' and 'mortgage related assets' be sure to know they are not in any way talking about actual mortgages, but what is essentially bets that are based on mortgages for paper on paper transaction and in reality are a form of derivative that is traded by greedy hedge funds bending the rules to get their 14% returns.

The bankster fears more than anything the derivative-death-star-supernova that they always knew this was their sand in a time bottle making every day that they get closer to the death star supernova that much more imperative for them to bend the rules and even create them if need be to accelerate the consolidation of wealth process. This is why you will see them going on all out attacks through the futures markets in places like Canada (we are wide open to attack) where they can manipulate a boom and bust cycle for profits to subsidize them long enough for the bailout to get approved. Once the bailout is approved the fine print reads 'total value of assets not to exceed $700 billion' meaning if you as a Secretary of Treasury have no accountability you can buy assets of no value and over pay for them say 40cents on the dollar... and then realize later that they have no value in a write down (banks have already been bailed out)... but now since the assets have been written down to zero, they have freed up room on the line of credit from the tax payer to spend more tax payer dollars exceeding the $700 billion... because essentially a bunch of worthless is worthless, therefor the 'total value not to exceed $700 billion' is in fact... an open ended check with no limitation of liability for the tax payer for the many different and not always legal packages of booki-bets made by the banks in the derivative markets.

If the tax payer through lofty words with duel meanings can be signed up to take full liability for the banks paper on paper transactions (bets), then essentially the bankers have taken all the profits and left the derivative-death-star-supernova for the public to pay for. This essentially will mean either a form of debt slavery for the tax payer, or a complete collapse of the monetary and financial system. Everything will be worthless because the liability for the corruption in the financial markets will be endless.

The solution is to provide liquidity (through preferred share ownership stipulating...) to the banks that were conservative to fill the void of the banks that were not and insure the actual mortgage holders so that banks holding mortgages have a limited exposure and the ones holding paper on paper of a bet on a mortgage grouping will all go bankrupt and have their activities sorted out in a bankruptcy court of law where they are fully accountable to the legal system. (long sentence no time to fix)

This is why the Treasury Secretary drafted up a 3-page demand letter calling for unprecedented unaccountable powers within days or everyone will lose all their money.

Well thats my rant I could go on all day unless I stop....

Okay... so where did the money go ???... or did it not exist in the first place... just a mirage called "value" ... ???


V.

Was it not Bush or someone in his administration talking about the terrorists striking at the heart of the county's economic district on 911?

Was the false fictitious war on terror in Iraq that was one factor in the collapse of the US economy? Seems to me that when you spend $12 Billion/month fighting for oil, it just possibly might have an effect on your economy at home. Well, except for Halliburton and Locheed Martin.

I think if you haven't placed your faith in the almighty dollar, then you'll do ok through this economic storm. Yes, money makes the world go round, but it doesn't make the world.

ohhh good one Howard! Cheers!

Here is my theory about money.. Money is never made nor lost it just changes hands..Having said that i ask who is benifiting and when will they will benifit. All you can do is follow it manage the information and protect your assets or profit. There is great oppertunity on the horizon the middle class people with a bit of money stored away. They will be able to profit greatly and aquire asssets that the wealty will liquidate to protect themselves.

Best quote I've seen on the bailout... "It is more a paper seal to Wall Street corruption than to ANY solution."

Northman it shows what you know. A lot of 'money' is actually just numbers that are based on perceived values of an investment or speculation. Values supported by 99% leveraged debt. If buyers do not show up that mirage of wealth disappears as quick as it appeared. It does not go elsewhere it just disappears until other buyers can be found if any. If the 'money' value was based on paper of paper speculation, and the paper is now recognized as worthless by a growing amount of buyers... then that money is no longer money and disappears from existence.

To put it in easier terms. When you were a kid and traded marbles... you have a really nice and shiny marble and feel it is worth at least a big steely or a few cats eyes or what ever... then big brother comes along and smashes your shinny marble with a sledge hammer and all that is left is dust... finding it hard to trade that pile of dust for the same you could have got before it was smashed... represents an elimination of your wealth that is not just displaced changing hands in a transaction. The assumption can not be made that with all these loses there is still value that just traded hands. In the paper of paper (derivative) markets that is rarely if ever the case.

BTW I hear King County in Washington State has now said they have a $200 billion dollar exposure to this worthless paper and are having to make emergency budget decisions to plan for their loses. It makes one wonder if the City of PG has any of these kinds of investments? We seem to have a creative bunch of finance people with our tax dollars at city hall so it wouldn't surprise me.

Northman that sounds like good sense to me. Folks in the middle class like me who have been prudent and lived within my means (Aside from an impulse buy of lotto tickets from time to time), I do have some assets that could be turned into more. However, always within my means and not wanting to be an instant billionaire.

Ironically enough as I type this, Merle Haggard's song, "Rainbow Stew" is playing.

ha ha ha!

Have a good weekend folks

Eagleone, I do not understand most of what you said. You mention periods in history does that mean this house of cards has gone on so long that there is no one left alive to prosecute? Or was the U.S. banking system flawed from the beginning? If this sub-prime mortgage thing is a recent developement, surely someone should be held accountable?

And I thought the problem started with this Housing Bubble that burst, and then caused a credit crisis. Silly me. How little I must of understood. Kind of similiar to Toronto, Calgary and now Edmonton, only on a smaller scale. Expensive homes & condos. Build until the market is saturated and no buyers left. Then it begins to respond to the reality of the market. Buyers dry up, prices come down, market is flush with too many houses for sale. Prices come down. Owners walk because the new value is less than what they owe. And on and on it goes. This is not new and it will happen again. Over and over. Different day, different sector.

Hmm...Eagleone has taken my oomph! lol
Finally had the time to pop in to comment, *sigh*

:0 )

Eagleone, you have said everything I was going to post! Thanks :)

We need to make our government come up with a creative solution to protect our RRSPs. My advice, if you are in debt now, get out fast!!! The USA needs to reimplement the safeguards that were in place. (sorry, cant remember what year their legislation on this was quietly changed...PUT IT BACK!)

lost it all, I understand its all very hard to follow for most people that don't watch this stuff closely, so I try to make it simple so people can do their own research where it interests them.

This is a house of cards IMO that has been building since the battle of the Waterloo when the Rothschilds took full control of the English banking system. From that point on the 'City' had full sovereignty from government control and in effect became the powers behind the British Empire and the rape of Asia was on. These British bankers tried a number of times to get a foot hold into America... cumulating in the American Civil war in which Lincoln told the British no thanks to their 36% loan offers and printed his own money the greenback that transformed American from a broken nation manipulated by the British Bankers to the most powerful and sovereign economy in the world. It took the banksters 50 years to recover their influence until 1913 when they finally got the Federal Reserve Act passed with only 13 legislatures voting on the day before Christmas (while the rest of the congress was away on holidays). For the Rothschilds... he who controls the money supply controls the power, and they now controlled the American money supply from 1913 onwards through the US Federal Reserve.

Since the US Federal Reserve came in to being under the shareholder ownership of the European bankers mostly operating under the Rothschilds dynasty from the 'City' located in the heart of London... the ponzi scheme and market manipulations have increased in their size and audacity. JFK signed a bill to replace the US Fed with an American greenback and was assassinated 2-weeks later, and Johnston never followed up on the executive order. Ever since then they have had full control and no accountability in their efforts to pick winners and losers and print money as needed to buy out or remove otherwise anyone that gets in their way for total control. Its only since the 1970's that they have really been able to get away with the ponzi scheme growing out of control into a deck of cards that threatens all future generations with debt slavery. Every piece of legislation or regulation since then has been twisted to serve their greed interests at the expense of the American, and now the worlds middle class investors. Legislation like the Glass Stegal (spl) Act (Chinese wall between investment bankers and brokers), and such that were designed to protect us from the banksters of the 19th century were repealed in the mid 90's... and home lending rules have been relaxed since the late 70's... and the derivative schemes first came into practice in the early 90's growing to over $100 trillion in bets today outstanding... and then the complete walking away of government from oversight of the financial sector in the last 8-years was almost essential to maintain the corruption that had been building for a long time prior to that leading to what we are seeing today.

Now we have a system in place where these same bankers will not only control the money supply, but they also now have the control to pick the market winners and losers directly with public dollars and private profits ensuring future generations will live in a thoroughly corrupted financial system. Anyone that invests in the markets must now know that the markets will be fixed and the external threats to your investment profile will no longer just be the threats of predictable hard facts of market movements, but rather shady dark room deals that have no oversight or legal regulations controlling the deals and bribes that will determine market values from this day forward. The result being people are not going to want their money threatened like that and will find other places to put it and the disruptions will do far more damage long term then not bailing out the bankers would have been in the short term....

If we wanted to prosecute we wouldn't have enough lawyers and jail cells to bring them all to justice. Ideally the market would have done that for us, but with this bailout there will be no justice and it about the only thing we can all be sure of. This bill is not so much a financial bailout as it is a bailout from criminal accountability for the bankers that were involved in their fraudulent practices.

The only safe investment IMO now is to own a farm.

Eagleone, don't you go to bed? What are you doing up at 3 a.m.?

I think there are lots of good investments out there. Better than a farm, too.

When prices are low, that's the time to buy. Sure they can go lower, but there's good value in lots of the companies listed on the different exchanges. Its just panic now, that is driving the stock prices down.

Old adage: "When people are greedy, be fearful; when people are fearful, be greedy".

Of course, that's easier to say when you have lost a pi*spot full of money. Lets all hope that these markets turn around, mostly for the benefit of those who have their RRSP money tied to the markets, and are within a year or so of retirement.