Yesterday
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The Fed launched several securities-buying programs last year to help lift the economy out of recession. Its goal is to drive down rates on mortgages and other consumer debt.
Under one program that ended last year, the Fed snapped up $300 billion in government debt. Under another program, the Fed is on track to buy a total of $1.25 trillion in mortgage securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the end of March. It also will wrap up purchases of $175 billion in debt issued by the mortgage giants at that time. Those programs have boosted the value of securities held by the Fed.
The Fed faces a risk, however. It could lose money if it had to sell those securities after their prices had fallen. The Fed might need to sell the securities to sop up some of the money it pumped into the economy during the crisis.
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Besides the income from its securities, the Fed said it earned $5.5 billion from holdings related to the takeover of investment firm Bear Stearns and insurance company American International Group. The Fed also earned $2.9 billion from loans extended to banks, investment houses and others.
So here we have some totals of US debt....sitting around 1.7 trillion dollars. This would be why everyone has been looking for inflation but what I understand so far is that most of that, the 1.2 trillion that went to Fannie and Freddie likely has gone overseas to deal with the mortgage debt fraud that was perpetrated against countries that bought in on the CDOs and other instruments created from this false mortgage boom. This could explain why this 1.2 trillion hasn't showed up to save the economy like everyone expected it too.
I find it kind of funny myself to hear them refer to profits of 46.1 billion on that bad debt. I wonder how much profit it would of been if the debt had of been good? The part where they show concern over whether or not the FED would have to sell low....no one will buy the bad debt anyway. Interesting that the profit has been turned over to the treasury too. That is a process of cancellation in my opinion, a needed bad because the currency in circulation has to be reduced regardless of the bad economic situation they are in. Whether this is happening because they are going to introduce a new international currency in which case the US dollar in circulation would have to contract severely or because they are trying to asset back the US dollar to keep as an international currency in which case again, the contraction needs to happen. Couple either one of these scenarios with the amount of US dollars that are being appropriated from international fraud and canceled upon return. This contraction is no surprise. Here comes the double dip....it shouldn't be a surprise.
In recent months, the U.S. economy appears to have been lurching toward a double-dip recession in the eyes of many analysts.And such a scenario would spell trouble for Canada's largest trading partner.
In the U.S., slowing gross domestic product growth, stubbornly high unemployment and a sagging real estate sector have all combined to act as a millstone on recovery.
RBC Economics has tagged U.S. consumer spending to decline over 2009 by 1.2 per cent while the forecaster expects the unemployment rate to decline by only half-a-percentage point in the fourth quarter of 2010 compared to the same period one year earlier.
"The U.S. economy lost momentum during the summer months, causing the Fed to contemplate the prospects for further easing," said Michael Gregory, senior economist at BMO Economics.
More pump priming
Of course, with an interest rate basically at zero, the U.S. Federal Reserve has been eyeballing more exotic instruments, such as buying back more toxic debt assets from chartered banks, to help the overall economy.
In addition, U.S. President Barack Obama just announced a $50 billion US stimulus spending package in a bid to generate more private sector economic activity, heading into the Christmas quarter.
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Pliny: The rich are not getting richer. 2% of the worlds' population owns all the wealth in the world. Can they get any richer?Pliny:
We're human. It'll take time. But once chuck the crap we have now and learn some basics about behavior we will make some headway.
How true, how human we are. You what always fascinates me...the fact that the wealth that is referred to as belonging to that 2% only counts cause the rest of the world is willing to agree that what they hold is the wealth. In theory it should be as simple as deciding to consider something else as the true wealth which would in turn remove the so-called wealth of the 2%. If only eh?
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Hey Maple, have you ever read anything like Steven Pinker 'The Blank Slate', ' The Modern Denial of Human Nature'? Over the years I've read a bit about human nature and I think it is integral to understanding how we and why we developed socially and economically the way we did. Also in terms of coming up with ways to understand and perhaps initiate change a good understanding of human nature is invaluable. A big part of the infamous almost completely evasive reason why. Personally I really enjoyed the Steven Pinker book but even Carl Sagan produced and interesting read in 'Shadows of our Ancestors'. I have a few university texts too kicking around that made for a good read on the subject which I purchased from a recycling store for cheap. I have also found some good reading amongst astrology books, the better ones can give good insight to human capability in terms of personality types.
The only reason I think they were able to obtain that much wealth is threw the fractional reserve banking system that we use.I can't agree with this. History gives us the knowledge of the super elite and wealth hoarding as a trend/reality that is eternal to our species. The wealth was not always paper money, gold, silver, wheat, spices, hunting grounds, fishing grounds...and until just recently comparatively had nothing to do with fractional reserve.
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This is a very interesting article about the state of the US Federal Reserve as regards to ZIRP. I just had to post it.....
Of course, with an interest rate basically at zero, the U.S. Federal Reserve has been eyeballing more exotic instruments, such as buying back more toxic debt assets from chartered banks, to help the overall economy.Isn't it interesting that because of this interest rate they are 'cornered' (my word) into buying back the toxic debt it helped to create. The source of the force.
Interestingly, the most hawkish of the C.D. Howe's economists were all academics who argued for three per cent interest rates in 2011.This statement sounds like the schooling of the bottom line is still kicking loudly. They can kick all they want...
TD is forecasting the bank's rate at one per cent until at least the second quarter of 2011.The Bank of Montreal figures Canada's one per cent interest to last even longer, until the July-to-September period in 2011.
My question for this is what is so important about the second quarter or even the third quarter of next year. Just surmising....ZIRP is a part of an IMF orchestrated standstill for the US or a Global Settlement mandate (remember how many countries lost major money from the defaulting of so many bad loans hence the great possibility of there being a global settlement regarding the US banks and market that precipitated the disaster))and as so far scheduled for first quarter of 2011 the member standing revision which couldn't happen till after a lift in a standstill situation. Till that point and perhaps a bit beyond I don't think rates can raise much at all. A big thorn in the side of whiny bottom line academics here in Canada according to this article.
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I still don't understand this world.
Why do we let most of the worlds wealth be horded by a small percent of the population.
Why do we care more about celebrities then helping each other.
Nothing about how we live right now makes sense to me but apparently it is all justifiable.
We need a massive change in values.
We need to legalize things like prostitution and drugs, we have to stop labeling people who enjoy those things as bad people and accept them into society.
Just a random rant..
You understand it better than you think IMO. Don't confuse not being able to come up with a solution with not being able to understand why it is this way. What we see today in such grand proportions is a result of human nature. We are not all leaders nor all followers. It is natural in any group of people to find a need for structure, too many chiefs not enough Indians strike a bell? We have always struggled with authority/superiority. It was not so devastating at times in the past on such grand scales but our growing population exasperated this situation and shows us all to well the problems inherent in the way we developed our societies.
I think I can understand your reasoning in wanting to legalize prostitution. Is it that you think it might help to cut down on rapes and other abuses against the female body? The men who do this do it cause they want to, they already have access to sex when they want it, there are prostitutes everywhere. Personally I don't think it would make much difference in the long run but I do think it could go a long way to improving the general lot of prostitutes and the danger they face continually from pimps and the like. It could allow a face lift for the industry giving it a chance to be less offensive. Lets face it, brothels keep them off the street and labour legislation wouldn't hurt either. I wonder if it was a regulated (forgive me for using the 'r' word) industry how many girls would want to be prostitutes. I wonder if that is not an underlying factor to the general opinion of keeping it illegal. The whole concept of a woman being ok with and even wanting sex outside of marriage or its equivalent especially for money goes against most religions and also against a man's ego. To me, the inability to legalize this industry reeks of a double standard. This is one of many industries that could use some good standards and lets not kid ourselves, setting standards has gone a long way to improving the lot of most of the people in this world. I must say though that we have gone way overboard. Way, way overboard.
As for legalizing pot. I personally find it less obnoxious then boos. Not being a drinker I can honestly say that I would rather wile away a lazy afternoon with someone stoned on pot versus someone drunk on boos. Oh yes! I am of the mind that it should not be illegal but only pot. If it can be only boos, it can be only boos and pot. The rest of the drugs need to go away. Far away, going gone, IMO.
To include Pliny's reference to needing a dictator to accomplish this...I have more faith in communities being able to accomplish decisions involving social issues like prostitution and pot themselves through town and community meetings. Mind you, even now the amount of people out there willing to play the God/finance card to win a debate regardless of the devastating consequences to other's is still so predominant in social decisions that arbitration would still be a dangerous norm.
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Well, I was hoping you would would call me on my source Pliny so we could both laugh over the tungsten issue. I put that out there to see if you were listening.
Just to clear up my position. The only bars that were legit IMO are the ones that showed up in Germany sent as good bars, not for melting. It was a mis-shipment that went bad and they found them because they were looking for them as part of an investigation into banks who were helping to supply Iran a few years ago with tungsten amongst other things for long range weapons. Good way to get it into the country perhaps...perhaps just one bank trying to pull the wool over the eyes of creditors? At any rate, IMO most of the articles that covered this supposed story are part of a greater agenda most likely funded by the banks to encourage gold fever and the use of electronic gold platforms and the like.
These are my 2 favorite articles about the tungsten.
http://news.coinupdate.com/what-about-the-counterfeit-gold-plated-tungsten-bar-stories-0189/
http://launderingmoney.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html
Some of the money went to fund terrorist groups like the Hamas and Hezbollah, and to help Iran get materials, including tungsten, for long-range missiles, sources said. -
We need to get rid of this system sooner then later. There is no equality in this system, threw it big corporations have sprung up and come to dominate nearly every aspect of our society. As George Carlin called them, the 'owners', they manipulate society to help benefit them at the expense of the rest. I don't believe they have an evil intent, they are just playing the game.
Democracy suffers under this system, the great majority of people on this planet suffer under this system yet many people claim what we have now is prosperity because we have paper thin televisions. The only things prospering is the arms industry, debt and poverty.
I still think a monetary based economy is a terrible system but everyone seems to loves it. If we choose to continue to use it, lets at least create a system that doesn't consolidate wealth and power.
I suggest as a start the Bank of Canada buys back all the privately owned national debt then we cancel the national debt. We would then need to implement some sort of debt free currency, not have a currency derived from debt.
Running a debt free currency has always seemed to me to be a rather easy concept as long as proper cancellation policies are in place ie: taxes. I find the fact that all paper dollars end up at a bank to be canceled from circulation to be an important part of the scenario. This allows for (amongst other things) the ability to somewhat control the amount of floating currency to prevent an over abundance. Trading currency and other goods over borders though causes not so simple problems in this scenario. We just simply can't print debt free asset backed/fiat money in enough volume to cover the current level of business we do. Even with the level of international trade that is done on a gold asset based credit(IMF). It would be mayhem.
Debt relief is definitely in my mind a major reality to ever establishing a new type of monetary system. With a debt, with contracts that extend so far into the future giving promise of returns seemingly forever....its an addiction akin to gambling in my mind. Debt relief is the only thing that would break this cycle. We should call it an intervention.
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I think it is the fractional reserve system that is the problem. The ability to create money out of nothing. Private banks hold the power of expanding and contracting the money supply. They control inflation and deflation, they create the bubbles. This whole economic slump is a result of them manipulating the economy.
This is a statement that is hard to find fault with. I can't. It is just that realistically we are stuck with fractional reserve at least for a long time to come. It is a very entrenched system. The key at this point in time to me, is focusing on how the fraud clean-up is going to affect how much currency is really floating around because until there is a good understanding of this figure there is no way to even begin to restructure to an asset backed system let alone reduce layers of fractionalization.
All kinds of things need to happen. Like the reduction of third world debt which happens to float around the globe in terms of an asset. This is being addressed through the G8 and the IMF. Billions and billions of debt being wiped off. This is just a start. All of, or most of, the things I have brought up here have to do with the clean up of currencies around the globe. Mostly in terms of IMF credits and the US dollar. This is a good start at addressing the issue.
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Most government fiscal and monetary policy is designed to increase or maintain velocity. In other words they increase people's desire for goods and services now as opposed to later. It is only when the perception is that the economy is overheating that they will invoke policies that are intended to decrease velocity, that is, decrease people's desire for goods and services now.
Yes, I think this is what everyone expected because this situation looks so much like so many others that have come before but it isn't. Hence the deflationary situation we are in. The government can't increase velocity at the moment regardless of the trillions of dollars that have been supposedly released into circulation. None of it went into circulation (bail-out money and such)or we would see it true?
Check this out, this gives another hint towards what is going with the price of gold and how the US is at the heart of it in a fraudulent way and also kind of gives a hint towards one of the reasons why the IMF revalued gold.
The tungsten deposits come in very high grade ore, located in shallow rectangular deposits dispersed widely across the world, segregated in unusual vault heap leach mineralizations. In October, the Hong Kong bankers discovered some gold bars shipped from the United States were actually tungsten with gold plating. This is the exact same Modus Operandi as the silver clad zinc dimes from 45 years ago. History repeats itself. The parallels to mortgage bond fraud with either subprime borrowers or multiple property titles used in bond securitization is easy to spot. A consistent theme runs through the American management of finance and dissemination of fraudulent assets on a global basis. Tungsten gold bars is a feat difficult to surpass. Credit must be given for not leaving any potential for fraud untapped. Refer to insider flash trading, naked shorting of bank stocks, commodity trading on behalf of the USGovt, and much more. No disrespect is intended for the trillion$ counterfeits of superstar grade. Refer defense appropriations, USTreasury Bond sales beyond issuance, and missing Fannie Mae funds. These are legacy crimes.The initial discovery was something like four gold bars, which the Hong Kong bankers drilled invasively to test the contents. Reminds me of drilling the earth and measuring how many grams of gold per tonne. The HK bankers hoped to have 99% gold yield in their drill program for the resident bars. They found something like 1% instead and 99% tungsten. By the way, tungsten sells for less than $70 per ton, which makes its swaps for gold to be 60x more profitable than silver bar swaps. Another handy usage for the Gold/Silver ratio in calculations. The hunt was on. Now not a single assayer on the planet is available, as all are tied up. They have been commissioned to test the gold bars shipped from the United States of Fraudulent Banker America in their own bullion vaults. They use basic methods of four drill holes with direct assay of shavings, but also less invasive methods like electro-magnetic waves to examine the metal lattice structure. When highest level methods are needed, they turn to mass spectrometry. NOW ALMOST NO GOLD BARS WILL LEAVE THE LONDON OR NEW YORK METALS EXCHANGES WITHOUT SOME AUTHENTICATION, AS DISTRUST IS WIDESPREAD.
How quickly the general public forgets....
This paper I found quite interesting because it paints a picture of how some governments have created a template to measure underground movement of currency to apply it to GDP. This seems to include counting this fictitious figure based on unobserved transactions in velocity calculations. So far, studying velocity is showing me how unreliable this can be for basing the possible value of the US dollar or the state of the economy in general. Aside from showing the possible level of outflow from the US. Which in itself speaks volumes as to the true state of the US economy right?
I suppose when you mention currency crossing borders to procure profit you are talking about currency traders? Volatile currency markets will indeed attract currency traders. I don't see why they wouldn't. If currencies are stable, that is, have confidence, currency trading becomes negligible. Most currency in a stable economy crosses borders as an investment.
No, not just currency traders. I actually meant it in a more fundamental way. I view international trade (the current version and level of trade) to be a fundamental problem as far as getting currency of any kind under control. It fuels an atmosphere where our level of growth far exceeds our needs.
An unsound dollar decreases velocity and increases saving. Governments, wishing to keep an economy moving, will in recessionary times vilify saving and call it hoarding among other pejoratives.In fact though saving is what makes real investments and future production possible. Credit will foster production but credit also means that that future production is created out of debt and the debt must be repaid.
Like what we are seeing in Australia?
If you mean international banking or governmental agencies shouldn't extend credit to governments and incur debt in those countries, I agree.Wholeheartedly!!!!
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No one buys gold to extend their credit.
What I meant was that I won't use the increase of wealth that I have on paper due to the increase in the value of my gold to extend my credit. I think it would be wrong on so many levels.
It doesn't make sense that "holders of gold" want to rake in huge volumes of cash.True, seller's are happy though.
Essentially, you are saying the IMF and the US know exactly what they are doing and are in control of the situation.
I don't know about controlling anything those are your words but I do believe it is the IMF and US debt that have jacked the price of gold and true to form we didn't miss the boat and hence the seller's market.
Every time the market develops a reasonable working concept the government steps in and promising it will maintain it. It never does. It debases the money, and eventually replaces it with worthless paper.I can't be so pessimistic myself, things are very different now as compared to almost any time in the past as far as general public scrutiny. I see potential as is my nature.
The financial obligations of domestic long term entitlements are more pressing. It is not entirely a government responsibility to secure and develop resources on foreign soil. They contribute to aid and credit extensions.
You should look again at how much money is both owed to the IMF and what is owed by them. All of the money loaned from this group is for development and to date it has raped countries through making them increase their exports and sell their resources more often then not to foreign entities. I am not 100% sure but pretty sure that part of the refunding program that involves many things like the new production taxes (Tobin and others), the wiping out of billions of debt off third world countries is at the root some how of this(there is more), 'The Dollar Refunding Program'. It's a hard thing to track down. You are right it is not entirely government but the debt that has paved the way for such large amounts of foreign ownership belongs to the US government and the IMF. This debt is larger than most people realize.
I have to go but I want to post this first, this what I wonder when I think of accurate readings of velocity...from this group of articles it is shown that there is more than 12 trillion US not accounted for. It doesn't matter if the printing press ever got turned on, this amount of US currency is out there messing with the numbers.
More later I have to go.
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Hi Maple, I didn't mean to sound rude. That was not my intention at all and I am glad we have been having this conversation. Mostly the way I see it is that these financial structures that we see today are built off of a blueprint that until just the last say 25 years or so worked well for them. Most of the people, at too many different times when these things were either being formed or restructured couldn't read, didn't have access to media (poor as it was/is), didn't know number's....it is all different now. The majority of people have all the ability needed to understand and the desire to understand is growing. It is not the same now as it was even 5 years ago.
I've been giving some thought lately to usury. This IMO is the culprit and wonder how fractionalization would read without it. I have gotten some good ideas out of a Sharia Finance paper awhile ago.
Oh well, type in the words 'CMKM gold standard' as a search title and see what comes up. While I myself am not a proponent of gold standard/exchange type systems I have to admire greatly the movement and the heart behind it because it is a very large group of people who are fighting exactly what we have been talking about.
For myself I would prefer some kind of fiat system without usury.
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Who are "us" and "they" in this scenario?
Us meaning Maple and I, them meaning governments/banks. You could be included in us as well I'm sure you're looking.
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And nobody seems to notice, no one even blinks.
Maple you have to stop saying this. Everyone is looking including us. I can honestly tell you that there is no conspiracy. I've shown you how it is possible to know what they are doing. If I was educated in finance itself I could explain it more in depth instead of just showing the policies behind whats going on. The conspiracy agenda is a brainchild of Nixon's disinformation platform. If you really want to have a good idea of how the fraudulent use of fiat money is being handled follow the SEC. There is a web page on their site that shows thousands of court cases and charges, the US dollar alone contracted by unprecedented numbers, the US is in a standstill and gold is just streaming out of the country to fix it's debt issues and international fines for the involvement with the derivative market. This is a good start. This is from paying attention, from enough people saying no more to this silliness.
I kind of think of the war crime trials of the second world war. It took many, many years to prosecute those involved. Even if it looks like some people are getting away with major fraud including the banks right now this is far from over. Some might walk once but they don't usually walk twice. Give it some more time. I wouldn't myself ever expect to find fiat money crashed and replaced but I think we will find the rewrites get better and better.
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There was good news yesterday for all those who mistakenly think inflation is worth worrying about: The U.S. money supply experienced its sharpest contraction in modern history. For the rest of us, this can only spell one thing: ruinous D-E-F-L-A-T-I-O-N. The money supply story was reported yesterday by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the London Telegraph’s man-on-the-scene in America. The news is likely to have been reported by the U.S. media as well, although we couldn’t find it anywhere else, even on Google’s business page.Velocity Holds Key
Now, with the news that M3, the “broad” money supply, collapsed by $50 billion in July, we predict that the inflation story is about to go out of style.
"Monthly data for July show that the broad money growth has almost collapsed," said Gabriel Stein, the group's leading monetary economist.On a three-month basis, the M3 growth rate has fallen from almost 19pc earlier this year to just 2.1pc (annualised) for the period from May to July. This is below the rate of inflation, implying a shrinkage in real terms.
This is the contraction/velocity issue as I understand it so far.
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A live ticker of the national debt.
Not too sure how much we owe in liabilities.
But really, what was the logic people used to justify privatizing our national debt.
The government is being robbed hundreds of millions of dollars everyday. I know some citizens own Canadian bonds and they may benefit. I don't think the government losing that money is a fair trade off.
Somewhere I've got the info about how much is really owed, I think the ticker deals with the yearly deficit more than the overall federal debt but I need to clarify this. I do know in total our debt is at least 2 trillion as compared to the US 5-6 trillion in comparable debt.
I like this quote from Andrew JacksonHe killed the Second Bank of the United States but he didn't realize that fractional reserve banking was the real problem.
This is a good quote from Andrew Jackson. Reading through all the literature I have it does almost seem as if the governments at times, at least in the beginning, seemed to understand the threat banks held. Personally, I think we are dealing the biggest bunch of gambling addicted people ever created. Addiction breeds no logic. Bankers and government people alike, the world is their casino and our earned money is their poker chips.
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Thanks for the book reference Nicky10013
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I am really curious about the ability of the IMF to call a standstill. The ability to stop creditors from pulling credit on a country while it restructures itself to handle the crunch. I really have to wonder if this is not what we are looking at in the US.
Things like the trillion dollar callable payment owed to the IMF by the US give the IMF a vested interest in US finance and it should be impossible to guarantee the US member standing in the face of such a huge balance of back payments owed to them.
In my opinion, watch the IMF for signs of resolution before you think we are headed to safer waters. It would surprise me, a pleasant surprise, to see much change till we see the member standing revision that is supposed to happen next year.
I find it an interesting scenario that banks in both the US and here in Canada are calling for more bail-out money. To me that is a big sign that the standstill is still in place.
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As far as books go,and if you want to know how the rise of the NAZI party began,rose, and fell,Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is the best source,IMHO...
I would also read Mein Kampf just to try to get your head around what Adolph Hitler was trying to say...
As far as the mass executions go,I would say that their are some schools of thought that say that the NAZI's tried to kill the Jews to cover up their horrendous treatment of them,vis avis things like the Warsaw Ghetto.Others suggest that it was always part of the plan,but only gained real favour after Adolph Eichmann proposed the infamous "Final solution to the Jewish question" and the military failings in Russia,such as Stalingrad...
Bloodyminded: One of the elemental classics (which, fair warning, I've never read...but it's more or less universally acclaimed) is Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews.This is the book that really started the whole field we are here talking about.
Thanks you two...
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Well there is a lot of bad credit out their right now, I think there will be a lot of defaults coming up which will shrink the money supply causing deflation. Then again if the US government keeps bailing out companies and stimulating the economy, I could see inflation happening.
What I am concentrating on is the discrepancy involving the inflow/outflow sheets for the US last year coupled with the 9% reduction in currency velocity (contraction?). Put that together with the fact that the outflow sheets are not showing true a true balance due to the fact that inflow sheets are showing enough movement due to private investment to offset the real outflow balance which if the paper I listed on the Boom thread is correct a massive outflow would cause a major velocity disruption. I think it might be, which would explain the government push to hide and/or discount the velocity measurement of M3 at present. I don't know though if I understand this correctly or not. This outflow issue would in my opinion be a bigger factor in the true shape of the US dollar than anything. To see this reduction in velocity in the face of so much government spending. Makes me wonder why. I wonder if all the gold/asset (non-debt) backed currency the banks can procure for lending to the government is tied up in backing up US federal international debt and all the fiat money being used in the bail-outs is having an effect in part on the inflow sheets as banks (private)use it to purchase good assets off the fed balance sheet to show movement and to use for loans to keep some semblance of currency movement across the country. I have a good imagination...
I kind of wonder if in part the price of gold is reflecting this outflow volume, in order for the US to handle the outflow requirement they are trying so hard to hide, the price had to skyrocket. Sort of like the IMF situation?
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Still, the Nazi concentration camp and mass murder system still seems very different to me. You couldn't write it off as bungling or mad paranoia by top officials. The Holocaust was literally a part of the German bureaucracy. It wasn't just SS types, it was civil servants. It was bizarre in the ordinariness of how this branch of the Nazi regime worked. It functioned rather like how, say, you would set up a government Liquor Board or a Ministry.
I must agree, it was bizarre. The middle east is bizarre too. All the different situations going on over there are almost to much to grasp. It's scary that it's the norm in so many places, in so many times past and present, this ethnic genocidal mentality. I wish I could snap my fingers and have it all go away. Have it fix itself. I know that's a naive little statement...
Yes. Raul Hilberg, the man usually credited with inventing the field of Holocaust studies itself, says that not only did anti-Jewish policy intensify through the war, but that it lacked a clear focus that could tie it in clearly with earlier anti-Jewish policies. The anti-Jewishness became increasingly unhinged and murderous as time went by.Did it start becoming unhinged at a time when he was winning in the war or at a time when he was losing. I would imagine arrogance and or anger would have had a good degree of effect on his mentality and actions. I'll look up Raul Hilberg and Mein Kampf. I have watched the Docs about it but would really like to know the title of a good book. Something that will help me to understand everything you are all saying about why. Something intellectual as opposed to shocking like most shows about it. I don't need the pictures and often can't get past them to get the history behind them. Got any suggestions?
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"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." - Oscar Wilde
Please forgive me Shady...I know we don't know each other well but my goodness I had to laugh. You are the first person I thought of when I read this.
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I don't think you could envision such a Germany under Hitler. Long before he made his way to the top, his plans were hardly secret. Mein Kampf makes that pretty clear.
Without a massive arms build-up there would have been no "economic miracle" in Germany in the mid and late 1930s. The entire economic situation was built on a house of cards, and even if Hitler and all his mad lunatic cohorts had been killed, the old Prussian military machine could not have stood by and let it all go to waste. Maybe the Holocaust wasn't inevitable, but I think WWII was.
I think I understand what you mean. I would prefer to think the Holocaust wouldn't of happened without the war and there is definitely a major difference in the fact that a major economic movement was intrinsic to the development of the war with Hitler as compared to the genocide going on in Darfur and other regions.
Did the war though push his maniacal vision to the extreme of genocide with the Jews? Would he of been satisfied to merely subjectify them in the absence of the actual war and would we have been lenient as with Stalin?
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This came out of an email I received...too amusing.
These glorious insults are from an era before the English language got boiled down to4-letter words.
The exchange between Churchill & Lady Astor:
She said, "If you were my husband I'd give you poison."
He said, "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."
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A member of Parliament to Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease."
"That depends, Sir," said Disraeli, "whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."
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"He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr
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"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
- Winston Churchill
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"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."
- Clarence Darrow
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"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).
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"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... If there is one."
- Winston Churchill, in response.
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Fed makes windfall off economic revival programs
in Business and Economy
Posted · Edited by Yesterday
Hi Maple, congrats on going to university!!! In this post I was just looking at one small part of the debt, commenting on the discrepancy in regards to Bernake mentioning fears earlier of inflation. No inflation worries here...like you say, the concern is deflation this time(like last time in the 90s) and it could be worse than the nineties due to the sluggish growth of M2. Once again bailing out the banks with enough currency to sink a ship with no positive effect on overall velocity. Just like the last time it seems, all that currency is going over seas and it is up to the consumer and its level of M2 here in the US to save the economy. What a joke. I wonder how hiding the M1 velocity as per an article printed in the US awhile ago is going to help them fudge the reality of things to the regular people ( consumers/M2) to get them, us, spending again....?
M2 velocity link...
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article16759.html