Tuesday
Aug212012
RAW VIDEO - Paul Volcker Confronted on Bilderberg Says: "I'm A Member Of The Federal Reserve Which Is The Most Insidious Group Of All (Laughter All Around)"
Volcker v. Luke Rudkowski of We Are Change - Aug. 8, 2012
Both bizarre and strangely entertaining as former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker complains about not having been invited to Bilderberg for at least 15 years, and then to confuse and perhaps amuse Rudkowski further, he mentions his membership in the Tri-Lateral Commission and the Federal Reserve, just before disappearing into the elevator.
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We put a lot of time into creating this:
Bilderberg Slideshow - There's A Lot In Here
Reader Comments (15)
“I wish someone would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth — one shred of evidence.”
"All I know is that the economy was rising very nicely in the 1950s and 1960s without all of these innovations. Indeed, it was quite good in the 1980s without credit-default swaps and without securitization and without CDOs."
The best financial innovation of the last 25 years. "The ATM. It really helps people, it's useful."
--Paul Volcker, Federal Reserve Chairman, 1979-87
http://dailybail.com/home/the-2008-financial-crisis-was-not-caused-by-terrorists-unles.html
http://www.sonyclassics.com/awards-information/insidejob_screenplay.pdf (p. 13)
The topic of Tall Paul presents a study in contrasts, one of which is between American culture now versus 30 years ago.
Back then, people actually knew not only who Volcker was, but held strong opinions on how the Fed affected the economy. Volcker, who'd raised borrowing rates to fight inflation and presided over the 1981 downturn, actually weathered physical threats as the Fed Chair.
"Volcker even received death threats written on bricks and 2 by 4's from unemployed carpenters and out of work car salesmen."
http://wiki.dickinson.edu/index.php/Paul_Volcker_Slays_the_Inflationary_Dragon
Today, Bernanke has all but destroyed the economy, and yet even the most educated people are clueless about his role as the single-largest middle class destroyer in U.S. history.
Just compare the 1981 downturn to the one that started (but is by no means finished) in 2008:
http://panzner.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451591e69e201761745318a970c-pi
Keep in mind that the dead cat bounce you see in the graph starting late '09 - early '10 follows on the heels of a $700 billion bailout from Treasury in late 2008, an $800 billion stimulus plan in early 2009, $3-4 trillion giveaways from the Federal Reserve starting in 2008, $8 trillion in concealed loans from the Fed, not to mention $200 billion in loans from the FDIC.
Ben Bernanke has been in favor of every penny of it--and the party is over, as the tail end of the graph makes clear. And yet people obsess over the very electoral puppet show that will inject synthetic growth hormones into the metastasizing cancer called the U.S. economy under which they suffer. They have tuna fish where their brains used to be.
Here's how I answered your excellent questions a day or two ago. Short answer: there is no publicly available evidence to answer you, and Kanjorski's story was just the beginning of the weirdness that was 2009:
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Those are great questions that no one ever answered. But you are right that there would definitely be a footprint if this story was true.
This fabled story originated with Rep. Kanjorski in Feb. 2009, the Year of the Crazy Story. Let's recap just some of the epic weirdness that began in the first month of the new Obama Adminstration:
2/6: Kanjorski, responding to an irate caller on C-Span, busts out of left field with the heretofore untold story of the Federal Reserve "noticing" a $550 billion drawdown on money market accounts in the U.S.
3/3: Obama states: “What you’re now seeing is profit and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal if you’ve got a long-term perspective on it.” http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/7771/does-president-know-what-p-e-ratio-stands
3/6: Dow Jones bottoms at 6627, then rises 60% by year end. http://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX:.DJI
3/10: Bernanke comes out against mark-to-market accounting. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ae28zU9ATxmk
3/12: Kanjorki and other members of Congress rail against mark-to-market accounting. http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/13306816
3/16-4/2: FASB proposes and then adopts mark-to-fantasy accounting. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=agfrKseJ94jc
3/30: The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. Treasury has $134.5 billion left in TARP funds. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123828522318566241.html
6/3: Two Japanese businessmen are apprehended in Chiasso, Italy attempting to head into Switzerland with... $134.5 billion in U.S. bonds stashed in secret compartments inside their luggage. How could that much money fit inside of luggage? "The securities were divided among 249 certificates of 500 million each, along with ten other certificates each worth $1 billion respectively." http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/420590-marli/8420-did-the-japanese-try-to-dump-135-billion-in-us-bonds-on-the-black-market
Conclusion: Lots of crazy shit shit involving unprecedented shitloads of money was going on in the first half of 2009, and no one has ever given an explanation worth a shit for any of it.
Good luck. But keep in mind that Kanjorski's story might be badly confused bullshit.
First, he had no compunction in advancing Paulson's doomsday yarns to ram TARP through Congress; he's a bankter's wet dream of a poltician. Second, why did he wait four months to come out with this? Third, and most compelling, there were already documented accounts of a money market run taking place at the very same time as the money market run that Kanjorski supposedly heard about.
According to Kanjorski, he heard on 9/18/08 about the alleged $550 billion draw-down, which supposedly had occurred the previous week. On 9/19/08, however, the New York Times reported the following about money market activity in the previous week:
"Money funds held more than $3.4 trillion in investor funds, as of the most recent industry tally released Thursday, DOWN ALMOST $170 BILLION FROM THE PREVIOUS WEEK."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/business/20moneys.html?_r=1
Which ya gonna believe? (1) The NYT contemporaneous account that $170 billion net had left MM accounts, or (2) Kanjorski's 4-months-stale and off-the-cuff account of $550 billion was drawn down in a couple of hours?
Methinks Kanjorski's memory may have been a little faulty, to put it charitably.
http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-world-almost-came-to-end-at-2pm-on.html
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I was trading in the markets that week and remember the day well. There was a run on money market funds after that 1 fund broke the buck. The stock markets started to crash on the news (down about 800 pts. on the Dow), and a new money market guarantee was announced intra-day. Then they shut down money market training altogether a few hours early.
Here's what I always thought happened. There was a run. None of us know how much left the markets. Paulson used the panic to exagerate the outflows in private meetings a few days later with members of Congress in order to get them to pass TARP. It was just another Paulson tactic like all the others, utilizing fear to cajole a financially-illiterate Congress.
I covered in great detail here:
http://dailybail.com/home/kanjorski-reveals-paulsons-closed-door-tarp-threats.html
And here:
http://dailybail.com/home/kanjorski-asks-paulson-to-describe-his-greatest-fears-from-t.html
As for exactly how much left that day during the panic, who knows. But it made for nice motivation from the Treasury Secretary. I assume he tossed around the $550 billion figure to anyone who would listen.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-20/how-volcker-launched-his-attack-on-inflation.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-21/how-volcker-created-a-gold-standard-without-gold.html
Unfortunately for its author, the book has been nominated for the Goldman Sachs Book of the Year Award. Last year's winner, "Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty," was selected by a panel that included two of the world's leading impoverishers, Mario Monti and Arthur Levitt.
Lloyd Blankfein, carrying out God's work, offered this completely insipid praise of last year's winner: "Poor Economics is an important and thoughtful book. It provides real insight into many of the fundamental issues that can help alleviate poverty. [It] is a deserving winner." http://www.goldmansachs.com/citizenship/business-book-award/2011/index.html
Jesus Christ, Lloyd, that's fucking pathetic, you shitheel. You steal that from a 3rd grader's book report?