The Big Squeeze - Predicting The Effects Of Savings Extortion And Abuse Of The Middle Class

Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds [1]

The Big Squeeze - Predicting The Effects Of Savings Extortion And Abuse Of The Middle Class
I am pleased to present a uniquely clear-sighted three-part series by frequent contributor Zeus Y. on the consequences of our corrupt financial-political Status Quo being exploited by a rapacious Financial Elite.

Part I: Oligarchy Becomes Anarchy Introduction

By now it should be clear even to the most optimistic observer that the global financial system has given itself over to systemic lawlessness. Once international banks were effectively allowed to print their own money in an unregulated “shadow” system and have it redeemed full value by national taxpayers, the charade was over. The only thing left, at this point, given the full cooperation of governments and an eerie world-wide non-enforcement of law, is for banks, like a cancer to savage and consume every concrete store of non-counterfeit productivity and asset value.

Not only have governments from China to the United States committed themselves to a chess game meant to eke out relative advantages on a sinking ship, but they have positively rewarded those who are speeding the collapse. A simple, cannibalistic economic rule now persists until a new system emerges: Economic manipulation, destruction, and extortion are simply more profitable, far more profitable, than good old fashion value creation. Disaster capitalism will be pursued full force.

Whether a country is communist or capitalist, authoritarian or marginally democratic, no longer matters. Citizens globally have been made to be the pawns and patsies of a universal financial Ponzi scheme that can only end in carnage. Who cares if this insures debt peonage for the world and likely mass austerity, suffering, and shortages. There’s a buck to be made! Who cares if my own children will be choking on the garbage I spewed into the financial air and water system. I’m rich!

When morality, reason, and sovereignty collapse together, we are left with outright anarchy, in everything but name. This is a reality so uncomfortable that hundreds of trillions dollars more of citizen retirement savings and other assets are likely to be tragically liquidated trying to regain stability and finance the “lean times” in the hopes of the promised upturn.
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Lawmaker Says Race Played Role In GOP's 2010 Wins

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia is saying his party's November election losses were partly due to voter antagonism toward a black president.

Moran, a 20-year House veteran, made the remarks Tuesday to the Arab television network Alhurra (ahl-HUR'-ruh) after President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.

Referring to widespread Republican wins in congressional and state contests, Moran said "a lot of people in this country, I believe, don't want to be governed by an African-American." He said that was particularly true of a liberal president
.
As some groups criticized the remarks, Moran's spokeswoman Anne Hughes issued a statement defending him, saying it's no secret the U.S. "continues to struggle with racial equality." She says Moran thinks it's better to discuss than to ignore such issues.

Source

30,000 Local Felony Warrants Have Not Been Issued

WASHINGTON - More than 30,000 wanted felons are allowed to walk the streets due to regional police departments' backlog in serving warrants, which in some cases are so old they can not longer be prosecuted.
 
There are more than 1,700 open felony warrants in Montgomery County, more than 2,200 in Fairfax County, almost 400 in D.C. and more than 26,000 in Prince George's County.
 
Many of these warrants are for felony murder, with about 100 open in Prince George's County and 30 in Montgomery County.
 
Prince George's County Sheriff Melvin High says it's important to put these numbers in perspective.
 
"If you look at the numbers alone, it's frightening," High says. "We probably have less than 200 people who pose a risk to public safety and those are our top priority."
 
High says he knows the location of a majority of the 100 people wanted for murder.

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The 8 Least Evil Banks In America

Banks that aren't evil? Really? CNN Money rounded up eight American banks that might not be consumer paradises, but offer free checking, no ATM fees, and comparatively high interest rates for savings accounts.

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Cancer Patient Loses Health Insurance Over $.02 Error

The wife of a Vietnam War vet with multiple myeloma accidentally typed a "7" instead a "9" when she made a payment to Ceridian, the company that administers his COBRA benefits, meaning the $328.69 payment was short by two cents. And as the couple learned, being .006% in arrears is enough to have one's health coverage canceled.

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Taco Bell Releases New Statement On Class Action: We're 88% Beef!

Earlier this week a class action lawsuit was filed against Taco Bell, alleging that their beef is actually only 36% meat and the rest is "extenders" and other non-meat substances. Taco Bell's President and Chief Concept Officer Greg Creed has released a new and more in-depth statement that goes into detail about the percentage of ingredients in the recipe, like how it contains 88% USDA-inspected quality beef.

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Mom Jailed For Falsifying Address To Send Kids To Better School District

An Ohio mom has been convicted and sent to jail for lying about her address so she could send her daughters to a better neighboring school district. School officials said she was cheating the system by having her daughters receive an education she hadn't paid the taxes for. "Those dollars need to stay home with our students," said school officials. To snare her, the school hired a private investigator, who videotaped her driving the children into the district.

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Congressman Dennis Kucinich Sues Capitol Cafeteria After Being Attacked By Rogue Olive Pit

It's not just ordinary citizens who file big-ticket lawsuits against eateries. Ohio congressman and occasional presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich is suing a cafeteria in the Capitol Complex for $150,000 after a particularly harrowing run-in with an olive pit.

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What To Do When An Employer Goofs Up Your Tax Form

Although it's tempting to duck and cover to protect yourself from the onslaught of tax forms filling up your mailbox these days, it's a good idea to examine the numbers on your W2s and 1099s to ensure they're accurate. If an employer or bank screws up and reports it gave you more money than it really did and you don't notice, you're on the hook for the extra taxes.

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Guess What? Letting Corps. Make Anonymous Unfettered Political Donations Quadrupled Contributions!

A year ago, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations could not be banned from political spending during elections through either independent expenditures from corporations' general funds or "electioneering communications," i.e. political ads. Detractors cried out that it would let loose a flood of corporate cash into elections, and they were right. A new Public Citizen report shows that outside groups quadrupled their contributions during the last mid-term election from the previous, and we will never know exactly where a good deal of the money came from.

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Synthetic Hydrogen Fuel For $1.50 a Gallon?

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

The latest innovation is a synthetic hydrogen fuel from a British company which promises to produce it in mass for just $1.50 a gallon.

Radio Interview Fuels Obama Birth Certificate Fire

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

Journalist Mike Evans claims he misspoke during a radio interview, in which he claimed there were no records of President Obama's birth certificate.

New Documents Show Hedge Fund Magnetar Influenced Deal, Despite Denials

A Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission document shows the hedge fund Magnetar selected hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of assets that went into a billion dollar Merrill Lynch mortgage securities deal, despite having long asserted otherwise.

As we reported last year, Magnetar helped Wall Street investment banks create at least $40 billion worth of mortgage securities deals known as collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs. The hedge fund also bet against many of those CDOs as part of an investment strategy that paid off handsomely when the housing market crashed and those CDOs collapsed. (Our story was done in collaboration with NPR's Planet Money and Chicago Public Radio's This American Life.)

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Govt's Loan Mod Program Crippled By Lax Oversight And Deference To Banks

The Obama administration’s $75 billion foreclosure prevention program has been weakened, perhaps fatally, by a posture of cooperation—rather than enforcement—with the nation’s biggest banks.

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Texas Bank Robber

A hooded robber burst into a Texas bank and forced the tellers to load a sack full of cash. On his way out the door, a brave Texas customer grabbed the hood and pulled it off revealing the robber's face. The robber shot the customer without a moment's hesitation.
 

He then looked around the bank and noticed one of the tellers looking straight at him. The robber instantly shot him also. Everyone else, by now very scared, looked intently down at the floor in silence.

The robber yelled, 'Well, did anyone else see my face?'

There are a few moments of utter silence in which everyone was plainly afraid to speak. Then, one old cowboy tentatively raised his hand, and while keeping his head down said, 'My wife got a pretty good look at you.'

Australia's Katrina Moment

When you fly over the earth's oldest land mass, Australia, the view can be shocking. Scars as long as European countries are the result of erosion. Salt pans shimmer where native vegetation once grew. This change is almost impossible to reverse. The first species to die are those that are most vulnerable.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, Australia's devastation of its natural environment has caused more mammal extinction than in any other country. The iconic koala is used to attract tourists; the queen and Oprah Winfrey are photographed cuddling one, unaware that this unique creature has enriched the state of Queensland for decades with its industrial slaughter and the sale of its skin to Britain and America. Today, the belatedly "protected" koala is not threatened by flood or drought, but by rapacious land clearing, of which Queensland is the national champion. Each year, according to the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, the state effectively destroys 100 million birds, mammals and reptiles.

The land is "cleared" by fire or machinery, often with a heavy chain tied between two bulldozers. The technique was developed by Queensland's most notorious land-clearer, the late Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, the conservative state premier for 19 years, whose self-awarded knighthood was given for "services to parliamentary democracy" such as winning gerrymandered elections with 20 percent of the votes. In 1992, a defamation jury found that Bjelke-Petersen had been bribed "on a large scale and on many occasions." Two of his ministers and his police commissioner were jailed for corruption. Lucrative land became a prize for cronies known as the "white shoe brigade." Brown envelopes of cash were handed over at a five-star hotel recently lapped by floodwaters in the centre of Brisbane.

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Chase Bank Overcharged Troops For Mortgages

A Marine who refused to roll over when mortgage giant JP Morgan-Chase imposed too high an interest rate on his loan and repeatedly pressed him for payments he'd already made has won a victory for thousands of military families including his own.
Chase says it will pay more than $2 million to about 4,000 servicemember mortgage holders that were overcharged in interest while they were on active duty. The bank's decision is linked to a five-year legal battle with Marine Capt. Jonathan Rowles, an F/A-18D weapons system officer who sued after the institution continued to charge him 9 or 10 percent interest on his mortgage -- a violation of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act -- and threatened to take his home. Under the SCRA, troops may have their mortgage rates lowered to 6 percent and are protected from foreclosure.
Rowles sought those legal protections beginning in 2006 after he went on active duty and found the bank was charging him the original, higher interest rate. He thought it was resolved, but later the bank continued to calculate Rowles' mortgage payment on the higher rate, according to various media reports.
Then Chase began hounding him for what it said was unpaid balances, according to an NBC report.
"Saturday, Sundays, middle of the night. It did not matter if it was a holiday," Julia Rowles told the network. "Collection calls at 3 in the morning. He would state, ‘I'm in California. I'm stationed here in Miramar. It's 3 in the morning. What are you doing calling me?' ‘Well, sir, this is an attempt to collect a debt.'"
The bank told the family it would foreclose on the house if the payments were not made. At that point Rowles got a lawyer and filed suit against JP Morgan-Chase on behalf of himself and other military families.
Rowles' attorney, Dick Harpootlian, told NBC: "They ought to only have to worry about fighting the fight and keeping alive, not about whether their wives and children and going to be put out on the street.
Chase now acknowledges that it was wrong. Not only on the Rowles' mortgage but on thousands more, including those of about 14 families it did foreclose on. The bank says it is now putting those families back in their homes.
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Man Breaks Into Bank, Tries To Steal Fake Money

PRINCESS ANNE, Md. (AP) -- Princess Anne police have arrested a man they say broke into a bank and tried to steal fake money.

Police Chief Scott Keller says a motion detector alarm went off in the PNC Bank on Somerset Avenue Tuesday about 11 p.m. Officers saw broken glass at the drive-up window.

Keller says officers found a man inside the bank, taking fake bills that are used for bank training. Keller says the suspect though the bills were real money.

Twenty-five-year-old George Ballard of Princess Anne has been charged with burglary.

Source

Westminster Man, 32, Suffers Cardiac Arrest, Dies After Shoveling Snow

Sheriff's Office says passersby, and deputy, attempted CPR

The Carroll County Sheriff's Office is reporting that just after 10 a.m. Thursday morning, a Westminster man suffered cardiac arrest and died, reportedly after shoveling snow.

The Sheriff's Office said that Deputy First Class John Iannone was notified by a citizen that a person had collapsed in the 1200 block of Cherrytown Road, Westminster, and was not breathing. 

Iannone responded and noted two passing motorists had stopped and were performing CPR on the man, who was lying in a driveway. 

The man, later identified as Michael Harmony, 32, of the 1200 block Cherrytown Road, was in cardiac and respiratory arrest, according to the Sheriff's Office report.  He was observed an hour earlier by his father in the driveway of their residence shoveling snow, officers said..

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You Can Leave The Military, But It Never Really Leaves You

By Ken Burger, The Charlestown Post and Courier, Thurs, March 4, 2010

Occasionally, I venture back out to the air base where I'm greeted by an imposing security guard who looks carefully at my identification card, hands it back and says, "Have a good day, tech sergeant." Every time I go back onto Charleston Air Force Base it feels good to be called by my previous rank, but odd to be in civilian clothes, walking among the servicemen and servicewomen going about their duties as I once did, years ago.

The military, for all its flaws, is a comfort zone for anyone who has ever worn the uniform. It's a place where you know the rules and know they are enforced; a place where everybody is busy but not too busy to take care of business. Because there exists behind the gates of every military facility an institutional understanding of respect, order, uniformity, accountability and dedication that becomes part of your marrow and never, ever leaves you.

Personally, I miss the fact that you always knew where you stood in the military, and who you were dealing with. That's because you could read somebody's uniform from 20 feet away and know the score. Service personnel wear their careers on their sleeves, so to speak. When you approach each other, you can read their name tag, examine their rank and, if they are in dress uniform, read their ribbons and know where they've served.

I miss all those little things you take for granted when you're in the ranks, like breaking starch on a set of fatigues fresh from the laundry and standing in a perfectly straight line that looks like a mirror as it stretches to the endless horizon. I miss the sight of troops marching in the early morning mist, the sound of boot heels thumping in unison on the sidewalks, the bark of sergeants and the sing-song answers from the squads as they pass by in review.

To romanticize military service is to be far removed from its reality, because it's very serious business, especially in times of war. But I miss the salutes I'd throw at officers and the crisp returns as we crisscrossed on the flight line. I miss the smell of jet fuel hanging heavily on the night air and the sound of engines roaring down runways and disappearing into the clouds. I even miss the hurry-up-and- wait mentality that enlisted men gripe about constantly, a masterful invention that bonded people more than they'll ever know or admit.

I miss people taking off their hats when they enter a building, speaking directly and clearly to others and never showing disrespect for rank, race, religion or gender. Mostly I miss being a small cog in a machine so complex it constantly circumnavigates the Earth and so simple it feeds everyone on time, three times a day, on the ground, in the air or at sea. Mostly, I don't know anyone who has served who regrets it, and doesn't feel a sense of pride when they pass through those gates and re-enter the world they left behind with their youth.

Face it guys [and gals], we all miss it. Whether you had one tour or a career, it shaped your life.

One Nation Under GOD.