CNBC: Weisenthal Pushes $1 Trillion Dollar Coin
It's all politics aboard the U.S.S. Ponzi.
As a card-carrying Keynesian proselytizer, Joe Weisenthal is generally not willing to consider spending cuts, so Friday on CNBC he attempted to make the case for the $1 trillion platinum coin as a means for Obama to avoid a debt ceiling showdown with Republicans.
Joe makes his full case here...
Now, putting the sheer legal idiocy of the proposal aside, and CNBC's John Carney has written a good article about why it is indeed, legal idiocy, the simple reality is that for this retarded idea to work, there has to be some justifiability, or even remote credibility of the "legal tender" backing the value. Sadly as the chart above shows, there can't possibly be such justifiability. Unless...
So you want a trillion dollar platinum coin? Ok: here are some facts...
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Related links:
- Krugman Joins The $1 Trillion Coin IDIOT Brigade
- Paul Krugman's Blog - Get Ready to Mint That Coin!
- Krugman: We Could Do 'Moral Obligation Coupons Instead' (Say what?)
- White House Trillion Coin Petition Reaches 6,000 Signatures
Jan 8, 2013 at 11:30 PM
Reader Comments (13)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-04/putting-trillion-dollars-platinum-perspective
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-mint-the-coin-debate-could-be-the-most-important-fiscal-policy-debate-youll-ever-see-in-your-life-2013-1#ixzz2HRyQgDjB
This is Joe W.'s full story on the concept. I will give him credit it is thorough.
Along the same lines, let's stop bullshitting ourselves with media cartoons like fiscal cliffs and start talking about debt writedowns for unconstitutional banking entities. Then let's talk cuts in "defense" spending on unconstitutional wars (which were started based on lies at any rate), and then move on to breaking up the healthcare cartel that's in complete violation of the antitrust laws.
But first, let's start by criminally prosecuting about 100,000 banking executives. It's really hard to believe that record-smashing criminality and bonuses are some unrelated to unprecedented deficits.
Before we even entertain the notion that poor and middle class people are responsible for driving up the deficit, lthe good old U.S. of A. needs to have a frank discussion about the connection--2008--between bailouts and the deficit, which exploded over $1 trillion and has remained there ever since that foul year.
Over exactly the same time period, as it turns out, the Federal Reserve has massively expanded its balance sheet by transferring money to the banks that were bailed out and indeed continue to the be bailed out by that very expansion. Due to the Fed's extreme secrecy, of course, we don't know how much money the bailouts have actually sucked out of the system. I've seen figures ranging from $12.8 trillion to $29.6 trillion. Thus, the bailouts' margin of error BY ITSELF is larger than the entire national debt.
Now, the probability that the unprecedented deficits since 2008 have not been driven by the unprecedented bailouts since 2008 is zero. So before we talk about ANY cuts in services for people not lucky enough to work for TBTF banks, let's just take a look inside the Fed to see where the money went. Next to ongoing expenditures, a one-off audit wouldn't cost a dime.
Gee, I wonder why we're not having that conversation. Could it be any more apparent that the media is merely a P.R. arm of Wall Street? No, it couldn't. But once again Wall Street has distracted people from its unprecedented theft by packaging it a left-right issue, and once again the dupes, whose TV-addled brains are now completely filled with tuna fish, have fallen for it. 2-year olds eventually outgrow Elmo, but dupes never tire of the red-blue puppet show.
Pathetic.
See? The rot in the banking system isn't from fraud. Oh, no. It just happens to be coming from the next country where the U.S. wants a war in order to drive the nation deeper into debt: Iran.
And what evidence are we given that Iran is behind this cyber-nefariousness? Well....
"American officials have not offered any technical evidence to back up their claims"
It gets better. Later on in the story, we learn that this unsubstantiated cyber-attack is actually a counter-attack:
"They claim Iran is waging the attacks in retaliation for Western economic sanctions and for a SERIES OF CYBERATTACKS ON ITS OWN SYSTEMS."
So American officials admit to cyber-attacking Iran, then claim--with no supporting evidence whatsoever--that Iran is responding with counter-attacks.
A truthful headline would be: "U.S. Cyber Attacks on Iran Failing to Provoke Desired Response"
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Cheyenne
No one around here is blaming the poor and middle for the deficit, or the rich for that matter. Never have, never will. The deficit is a problem that politicians created with decades of war and over-promising to everyone. As for the effect of the financial crisis on deficits, Simon Johnson pegs that number at about $500 billion per year since it started in 2008. He does his calculations based on the drop in federal tax revenues caused by the recession, which he blames on Wall Street. So $500 billion X 5 years equals $2.5 trillion.
As for the Fed and their secret loan programs, if anything they slightly reduced the deficit as they boosted the stock market and therefore helped federal tax receipts.
I know you weren't launching your salvo against me, but I want to make sure readers understand where I'm coming from on the debt. End the wars, shrink the military, cut corporate tax loopholes, further means testing of entitlements, reduce the federal workforce by 1/3 -- all of these things can and should be done before cuts are made elsewhere.
Whom ever makes this task is irrelevant, its the outcome of that task that matters, in any soscialty since time immemorial, there have always been a part of that selfsustaiable selforganicing system, a organisatoric organ, call it what ever you like, but someone must or have to been in that possition, and helpt to stay in that porition, by Tax/subsidicings given to the persons involved.
Simply, because they dont have the time and or effort to be in that position if they dint have the opertunety to be subsidiced.
You see, this is not comunism/soscialism/konfusianism/what ever, its a living organism, a flexible entety, and goverments where in essens payed to make anything, at selfcost, it was never in its original intentions, to make Money, to runn by Corporate mantras. They are the real enemy, not soscialty or its inhabitants, no matter what level of rpoductivity they maut be in or at.
As mentioned before, since the real issue, the military ind. complex and all the wars, is not mentioned at all, even thoe it sucks half of your gov/state income, you are doomed.
That, is as tides, the moons revelations, and our sun rise and fall, the only few sertatis I know of, the one thing that always garangtees a downfall of any sosciety, is this, issue.
There will be a rude awakening, not now, or to morrow, but I gess, the implications and consequencess will rise this winter exponentialy as the sosciety starts to collaps into powert and despair, and wait for the Food wars, that will come to.
And non of this, whats been done and whats happening right now, was even mentioned just a couple of years ago, and look where we stand now.
At the brink of an abyss.
God help us all.
peace
Another cyber-attack article came out this week (from Reuters), and when I came here to jot it down I noticed that I hadn't linked the NYT article in my comment above. Here it is...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/technology/online-banking-attacks-were-work-of-iran-us-officials-say.html?_r=0
When I looked at the article again, I noticed a feature on the NYT webpage that I'd never seen before on any articles, namely, the ability to sort reader comments by the number of thumbs-up votes they get, which I did. The top vote getters among the 332 reader comments surprised me, pleasantly:
--155 votes: "The USA seems to invent most of the dirty tricks, and then expresses indignation when some of them are turned in our direction. This includes hacking into computer networks in sovereign countries, but also cluster bombs, depleted uranium shells, phosphorus bombs and drones. How would we feel if foreign unmanned planes cruised the skies over North America, killing civilians and/or 'legitimate targets' at will? At times our conduct is more reprehensible than that of our so-called enemies."
--155 votes: "This couldn't have happened to a nicer group of corrupt American banks. With all the parasitic profit and government welfare the major banks extort from America, these banks - like most corporations - have failed to invest any of their ill-gotten profits in adequate IT infrastructure to ensure customer security. I noticed my credit union was not one of the entities attacked; that's where Americans need to take their banking business - away from the bloated corporate banks and back to local/regional credit unions. We gave the bankers their chances; they robbed America and the entire globe and showed their true nature the last ten years. Say no to the robber baron banking industry."
--116 votes: "I've come to think that just because some country has been declared an enemy by our government, that doesn't necessarily make it so. Enemy of whom? Perhaps the enemy is really the banks. Perhaps, we are just as exploited by them, as Iran is. Who is 'western' anyway? Am I against the people of Iran? NO. I want peace. I want both of our countries to do well. I don't care if they are Muslims, Christian, Jews, or pink with purple poka dots!"
--111 votes: "Tit for tat. Maybe Chuck Hagel is right and we should engage in talks with Iran instead of exchanging cyber attacks? It might be tough to get the "Israel Lobby" to agree though."
--101 votes: "'There is no doubt within the U.S. government that Iran is behind these attacks....' I'll believe this statement the day I believe that North Vietnam was responsible for the Gulf of Tonkin attack leading us into the Vietnam war, that the U.S. does not torture, and drone strikes don't kill and injure innocent bystanders."
If the popularity of these comments is any indication, it would seem that people are rather skeptical of baseless allegations of cyber-attacks made by anonymous officials. But that certainly doesn't stop the propaganda efforts by the government, as we shall see in the article I link in the next comment.
For now, I wanted to make a note of the NYT's comment-sorting functionality. Irrationally, I feel like doing so is a form of insurance.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/24/us-usa-cyber-threat-idUSBRE90N1A320130124?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtechnologyNews+%28Reuters+Technology+News%29
The first sentence really says it all:
"Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned on Thursday that a major cyber attack is a looming threat and could have the same sort of impact as last year's Superstorm Sandy, which knocked out electricity in a large swathe of the Northeast."
Once again, there is no evidence whatsoever to back up the allegation of any cyber attack. No, in this case the article rushes straight ahead to Janet Napolitano's proposal for elminating the non-existent threat: "She urged Congress to pass legislation governing cyber security so the government could share information with the private sector to prevent an attack on infrastructure, much of which is privately owned."
What would such legislation entail, you have the audacity to ask? "The measure would have increased information-sharing between private companies and U.S. intelligence agencies and established voluntary standards for businesses that control power grids or water treatment plants."
Well, there you have it, kids. To ward off the 100 mph winds and rain that this still-unsourced cyber attack will bring, we need Congress to step in allow JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America to give all your financial data to the NSA, CIA, FBI, NORAD, TSA, etc. Yep, sounds like a plan.
A cyber hurricane! Isn't that scary, children?! U.S. public policy is brought to you by Count Floyd's Monster Chiller Horror Theater...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knEOourigcw