Do you really think someone is going to watch something an hour and thirteen minutes long?

Can't you give us the abridged version?

The Shock Doctrine
It introduces the concept of remaking society in the face of,
or in the immediate aftermath of a disaster - natural or otherwise.

The disaster puts members of society into a collective state of shock
in which citizens are too dumbfounded to by what is happening -
the terrible changes, the world suddenly turned upside down -
that they are taken by surprise.

The ruling elite can take advantage of this situation by railroading new rules
and laws into place quickly, before the collective shock wears off
and people come to their senses.

An excellent recent example in our country is the passing of the 342 page long "Patriot" Act.
It was introduced about a month after the 9/11 disaster, and passed the next day.
Congress wasn't given time to read the bill, let alone study it or ponder its effects.
It was passed in a state of shock and fear at the urging of an impatient administration.

And here we are again, this time with the "financial crisis."
The doomed financial system is on the verge of failure, and the ruling elite,
from the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, to the head of the Treasury,
right up to the President himself, are urging immediate action.

The Administration has drawn up a plan and they want it passed NOW!
It is the same game plan that they used with the Patriot Act: PASS IT NOW!
THERE IS NO TIME FOR ARGUMENT. PASS IT NOW!!!
CERTAIN DISASTER AND THE END OF THE WORLD AWAITS!

[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link.

is there no cure?

Is there no cure?

Another "Emergency" Plan..... "Written in Advance"


September 23, 2008, 10:42 a.m.
By Keith Koffler
[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link.

The White House today is drumming up extraordinary pressure on Congress (hurry! hurry!)
to approve its plan to enact a $700 billion mortgage bailout fund, suggesting the markets cannot wait much longer
and dispatching Vice President Cheney and other top officials up Pennsylvania Avenue to jawbone lawmakers.

Cheney, White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and presidential adviser Ed Gillespie are meeting this morning
with House Republican conservatives, where a rebellion is brewing (there's a little ray of hope)
against the size and questionable free market credentials of the administration proposal.

Cheney will later gather with GOP Senators at the regular Tuesday lunch.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who collaborated in drawing up the proposal,
are testifying this morning on Capitol Hill in an effort to defend their handiwork.

But Bush himself continues to do little to explain his plan,
and he has refused to be questioned about it. (he just reads the teleprompters)
Asked during a telephone briefing for reporters today whether Bush was speaking with lawmakers,
White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto said the president is aware of their concerns
but that Paulson is the salesman.
Paulson said Congress and the administration must move rapidly.(sigh)
(threats begin here :

“We must do so in order to avoid a continuing series of financial institution failures
and frozen credit markets that threaten American families' financial well-being,
the viability of businesses both small and large, and the very health of our economy,”
Paulson said in remarks as prepared for delivery. “The market turmoil we are experiencing today poses great risk
to U.S. taxpayers.”

(guilt begins here :
Fratto said it would be “unthinkable” for Congress not to pass legislation this week,
asserting the result would be a “very, very serious situation” for the U.S. economy.
“It shouldn’t take much analysis to remember what happened last week, which
was a very serious freeze-up in our credit markets,” Fratto said.
“Our financial markets right now do not need uncertainty, they need increased certainty as to how this rescue plan
is going to go forward — and that they can be sure that there is a plan to go forward —
and that will begin the correction in our financial markets.”

Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks (bingo!) by administration officials.

We were "suprised".... Congress was in "shock"..McCain was..(nevermind) Obama's going to make sure everything "changes" (right!)


but SOME clever mind was hard at work on this for MONTHS folks....
This is a brutal document in both language, intent and scope... read it.

it would almost be more excusable if it were to have been drafted in haste....
but it wasn't, was it?
Nope.
These are thugs... in silk robes and fine hats planning your grandchildren's future.

double post deleted

Bernanke: Not Only Should Taxpayers Buy the Toxic Waste, They Should Pay Premium Prices for It


September 24th, 2008

Via: [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. :

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress Tuesday the government should pay more than “fire-sale” prices
for the toxic assets it would acquire under a proposed $700 billion (line-of-credit!) bailout plan. That could mean both higher initial costs
for taxpayers and reduced returns when the assets are later resold.

The Fed chairman said he favors buying the assets based on their “hold-to-maturity” value, which would require
an estimate to be made of what each security will eventually be worth as payments come in over the years.
(and if not.... taxpayers are STUCK with them... but the one's who DID this will ride the coming collapse of our dollar in style...
with today's money in their Pockets..... reading about the "tent cities" with croissants and espresso.)

“If the Treasury bids for and then buys assets at a price close to the hold-to-maturity price, there will be substantial benefits,”
Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee. “First, banks will have a basis for valuing those assets and will not have to use fire-sale prices.
Their capital will not be unreasonably marked down.”
(why is it unreasonable they suffer loss from their greed in gambling derivatives and lying about AAA bond valuation?
Is somebody going to pay YOU more than what your house or stocks are worth today? because you say "someday
this may be worth a lot of money?)

It's simple..... want to find out what something's worth? Hold an auction in the "open" market.
They are doing BACKFLIPS and squirming trying to avoid that.

Do you understand economics?

Doesn't seem like it.

The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar







Tuesday, September 23, 2008

COUNTERPUNCH


What nobody in the corporate media is mentioning amid all the blather about the $700-billion Paulson bailout proposal
is the impact it will have on the US dollar.


We are told that this huge gift to the financial sector—the assumption, at top dollar, of all the bad debt
they’ve piled up–will be at taxpayer expense, but that’s only the half of it.
(Really only the quarter of it because since the US government is technically bankrupt already, spending
more than it takes in each year, all that money will be PRINTED, and will be added to the national debt,
meaning that just as the real cost of the $500-billion Iraq War is closer to $2 trillion, the real cost
of the $700 billion bailout will be more like $1.5-2.5 trillion.)

But besides the direct bill handed to taxpayers for this gigantic con, there is the fact that adding that much
to the national debt is also going to drive the dollar down precipitously against foreign currencies.

We’re already seeing that happen, even while they’re just talking about the bailout.
The dollar is falling against all major currencies—the Euro, the Yen, the Renminbi and the British pound
for the better part of a year.

This will add to already powerful pressures in countries like Saudi Arabia and China,
which hold huge quantities of US dollars and US dollar-denominated debt, to shift out of dollars
and into other currencies—particularly the Euro and the Yen.

Last week, an article in China’s People’s Daily, which like Pravda in the old Soviet Union,
is the official voice of the leadership in China, called for just such a move.
Russia is also calling for an end to the dollar as the underpinning of the global economy.

For some years now, many economists have been predicting an end to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency,
but this latest plan by the US Treasury will push such a shift forward from “some day” closer to “now.”

As long as the dollar has been the reserve currency—the currency in which key commodities like gold or oil were priced,
and the currency that exporting nations stocked in their treasuries as a store of value – it was protected against collapse.
(We created the "illusion" that we could "print" gold.... and the world went along with it.... NOT any more.)

Once it loses that status, there will be nothing to prop it up any longer,
and it will quickly slide to the (actual) value that it deserves.

As oil producers and traders simply realize that the dollar is going poof,
they will radically jack up the cost of oil in dollars.

This might not matter much if we had a functioning domestic economy,
where people could find the goods and services they needed without turning to sources from abroad.
A big country like the US could simply turn inward and function on by its own domestic economic standards.

(here's the reality of a crashed currency.... and what it would "feel" like)

"I remember back when the former Soviet Union was in a state of economic and political
free fall in the early and mid 1990s, the currencies of the constituent countries,
like Russia, Ukraine and Belarus had had collapsed to virtual worthlessness on the international market.

A Byelorussian friend, an engineering professor from Minsk, living and working near me in China at the time,
explained that although when he traveled the world, he felt like a pauper, things weren’t so bad back home Belarus,
where he and his family would go in the summer. “My apartment only costs a few dollars a month to rent,”
he explained, “and our food is bought on the local market using rubles, so it is very affordable.”
The same was true for other needs, like clothing and books for school, he explained.
The only problem was buying gas for his Russian Volga.
“Gas,” he explained, “is priced as an international commodity,
so it takes me one month’s wages in Belarus to buy the gas to drive once to and from our country dacha.”

You can start to see the problem........the cost of transporting food from California to places like New York
or Pennsylvania will be prohibitive once the dollar collapses, since oil is priced internationally.

Goods like TV sets, computers, phones, cars (or at least the key components of cars), clothing, etc.,
are no longer even made in the US, and will thus be very expensive.

As for the service jobs that are supposed to have replaced our old manufacturing sector,
people will be less interested in buying what they’re offering, because they’ll be scrimping to buy the staples.

Eventually, of course, entrepreneurially minded people will begin reestablishing these connections again,
where they once flourished generations ago, and small factories will be built to provide key essentials,
but all this will take time, and will have to cater to a market of people operating at a much lower standard of living.

The banking sector, meanwhile, which is the proximate cause of this monumental disaster,
won’t mind any of this, for it will continue operating on the international stage, shifting its focus
to lending money (no longer dollars, though), to growing economies in Asia and Latin America and eastern Europe.

And this is what, in truth, the “rescue” of Wall Street is all about.

It’s not about saving Main Street, as Paulson claims.

It’s about helping the banks and investment banks and insurance companies that brought on this crisis
to ride it out in style, their astronomical losses bankrolled or absorbed by the American public,
so that they can shift their operations overseas and continue with their rape and pillage of the global economy.



There is an answer to all this.... America must allow this debt to liquidate,
take the pain NOW rather than a much worse LATER, stop debasing our own currency by printing money out of thin air,
ALLOW prices to come down, Interest rates to go UP.... AND start, once again, living within our means
and rebuild our own bridges and factories..... instead of the ones we blow up in distant lands.

Great idea, liquidate the homeownership of all Americans who can't pay cash for a home.

Brilliant!!!!

/sarcasm