Psychopaths flew financial weapons of mass destruction (derivatives) into the twin towers of our economy, the housing market and the stock market. Ten trillion dollars of wealth evaporated.
Ninety-nine percent of the economic experts—financial planners, economists, economic professors, brokers, and investors—missed the largest bubble in history as well as the systemic risk that the bubble posed.
The National Board of Economic Research (NBER) (who is responsible for declaring a recession) was 9 months late calling the worst recession since the Great Depression.
How Economics Got Hijacked
I advocate that the larger story here isn’t derivatives or the Financial Crisis of “2008,” but instead how economics has been secretly hijacked.
When I began researching for the book I’m writing I had a premise: “Corporatocracy” had replaced capitalism. That is true, but I realized the more important underlying fundamental was how corporatocracy came about. Corporatocracy grew out of souless corporations being given human status even though their sole purpose was creating wealth for the shareholders. Corporations themselves became uncaring individuals—many of them run by uncaring individuals. Psychopaths to be blunt.
Research I conducted revealed why and how psychopaths captured economics, how this catastrophe was missed and what the ramifications will be. For more on corporatocracy please read "Why We Are Totally Finished." There is also a super documentary called "The Corporation" which can be viewed off my blog Psychopathic Economics.
“Semiopaths” & Psychopaths
Psychopaths aren’t limited to seemingly nice people who invite you over for dinner, then cut you into pieces and serve your fresh innards on a plate. The World Health Organization has a “Personality Diagnostic Checklist” that is used in conjunction with this work. You’ll recognize it by the check marks.
Psychopaths used the following five weapons to take control of our global economy:
- Political Economic Capture.
- Scholarly Economic Capture.
- Statistical Economic Capture.
- Mainstream Media Economic Capture.
- Regulatory Economic Capture.
All but one of these, Regulatory Economic Capture, are new terms that I’ve identified.
Political Economic Capture
Both parties have been captured. Blaming each other's party or swapping parties isn’t a solution because there is only one party and that is the ultra elite party. If you can’t rob clients of 3 billion dollars or steal 10 trillion dollars (and counting) from taxpayers you aren’t in the party—you are instead their food.
"Give me control over a nation’s currency and I don’t care who makes the laws" ~Mayer Amschel Rothschild
This didn’t happen yesterday. Here Don Regan, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch tells President Reagan to “Speed it up", with Ronnie dutifully responding, “Oh, okay.”
JP Morgan Chase & Company have their former executive in Donald Regan’s old position now—Bill Daley runs the White House today.
Political Economic Capture isn’t “just” limited to controlling presidents. Brooksley Born headed up the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] and warned of derivatives posing a risk to our economy back in the 1990s. Greenspan, Summers, Rubin and Congress were dispatched to muzzle her as if she were a rabid dog. You can watch the movie "The Warning" here.
Our 535 flag-burning, constitution-shredding congressmen and women aren’t public representatives—they are psychopaths (Ron Paul, his kid and a handful of other good eggs excluded).
They have voted in a separate set of laws. Plutocracy allows them to do what you and I would be jailed for doing. Being a legislator today is a get out of jail and get rich card. Congress isn’t a place to serve the public, it isn’t where you go to honor your country—it is where you go to earn wealth 150% faster than the average American that you screw while serving your evil psychopath master.
(Please click on book cover to hear audio interview of the facts listed below.)
When Visa didn’t want its fees suppressed, Psychopath Pelosi was given a 5 million in IPOs “opportunity” for her dirty work.
The FBIs budget is regulated by the very people they won’t investigate rendering them useless.
Psychopath Kerry put off legislation that would adversely impact the price of his Frannie and Feddie’s stock, affording him time to dump his stock at a higher price to some schmuck who didn’t know what he knew.
Peter Schweizer wrote the book “Throw Them All Out” and in this super audio he and Jim Puplava list fact after fact how the “permanent political class enriches itself at the expense of the rest of us.”
In the United Banana Republic of America, if you’re a really powerful ex-senator and current elitist you can rob your clients of ,000,000,000 and not go to jail or even be investigated. All you have to do is bribe the president puppet with a ,000 plate fundraiser and the mega banksters' lawyers will take over the courtroom and argue with those trying to protect the clients who got screwed.
So when Ann Barnhardt says, “You have to get your heads around this. You have to get your heads around the fact that there are truly evil people in the world who do not give a crap about anyone or anything except themselves, their own personal wealth and their own personal power. They would sell their grandmother to the Nazis for a nickel without hesitation if they thought they could get away with it.”
Watch James Koutoulas Co-Founder of the Commodity Customer Coalition for MF Global explain how JP Morgan's lawyers run the show.
Scholarly Economic Capture
About 70% of American families owned homes. Two additional things needed to be done in order to sell junk mortgages as investments. This wasn’t just junk, it was junk with a ticking time bomb rate reset sold to people with anything but stellar credit. One, the criminals had to hijack scholars to get them to say good things about these financial WMDs. Two, they needed to have their crony rating agencies falsely rate them Triple A.
Not only were the mortgages pure crap, but they had names like NINJA (No Income No Job or Asset), No Docs (No Documentation) and Liar Loans. With 30% of loans during a given year of the boom being subprime these psychopaths destroyed your home's value.
So scholars of the once finest business schools were hired for chump change. In return for 4,000 they wrote papers praising derivatives. Perfume on horse manure.
Psychopath Diagnostic Checklist:
✔ Callous unconcern for the feelings of others.
✔ Incapacity for maintaining enduring relationships.
✔ Reckless disregard for the safety of others.
✔ Deceitfulness, repeated lying and conning others for profit.
✔ Incapacity to experience guilt.
Later, when things didn’t work out for derivatives, one of the “scholars” —a former board member of the Federal Reserve —hoped no one would notice and changed the name of his report from “Financial Stability in Iceland” to “Financial Instabilityin Iceland.” Someone asked him about this in the must-see documentary Inside Job.
When caught on camera the psychopath just lies again to your face. “Typo” he says. Nice.
As Ann Barnhardt says in this amazing audio interview with Jim Puplava: “You have to start acknowledging these people for what they are, and that is: Moral degenerates, basically sociopaths and psychopaths. Meaning they don’t feel any sympathy or empathy for other human beings.”
“They will lie to your face, they’ll look in the camera with this tremendous earnestness and lie with fork tongues through their teeth in order to advance their wealth and power.”
This is the school where I was born. The school where kids go into massive debt to be educated by psychopaths. The school where parents unload massive amounts of their wealth to send their children to, for what they think, is higher education. No wonder we have #Occupy Wall Street.
✔ Deceitfulness, repeated lying and conning others for profit.
✔ Incapacity to experience guilt.
By far, Scholarly Economic Capture is the most dangerous economic capture, because future economists are being taught a lie —by liars. Current economists read the lies these “scholars” spew and perpetuate them by not thinking for themselves.
Just because someone teaches at an Ivy League school doesn’t make them a scholar. Psychopath Ben S. Bernanke is proof of that.
Listen to him here and then read the 2005 FOMC minutes below. They knew housing was in a bubble and were laughing at it.
If our military is going to capture Americans without trial and off them for being terrorists, one could only wish that this would be their starting point. But it wont be.
"–I offer one more piece of evidence that I think almost surely suggests that the end is near in this sector. While channel surfing the other night, to the annoyance of my otherwise very patient wife, I came across a new television series on the Discovery Channel entitled “Flip That House.” [Laughter] As far as I could tell, the gist of the show was that with some spackling, a few strategically placed azaleas, and access to a bank, you too could tap into the great real estate wealth machine. It was enough to put even the most ardent believer in market efficiency into existential crisis. [Laughter]" ~David Stockton, Dec. 13, 2005, economist and Fed comedian. (source, page 12)
Statistical Economic Capture
Our statistics are a joke. Sadly we’re the brunt of it. Our government budget and statistics make Enron look like choir boys. The statistics have been tweaked by "semiopath" politicians many times over decades to make them look good. The current result is that unemployment is reported at 8.x% or 9.x% when in fact it is at a depressionary level of 23.9%. GDP is baked — off by trillions. Inflation is over 10% and reported at 2-3%.
These politicians didn’t just lie to us about stains on blue dresses or office burglaries. No, they ingrained their lies into our current economic statistics and we have few economic professors who catch this.
Our current politicians gain from 40 year old lies.
Mainstream Media Economic Capture
If you want any decent economic news cancel your cable and turn off your TV. My blog Psychopathic Economics lists the best sources for real economic news that anyone could ever wish for. The media outlets are owned by the mega corporations, their reporters are, at best, repeaters.
Here we have my favorite reporter—just because I love the way she says “Dawler” talking about our dollar being superior to gold.
Video after the jump (scroll to the 13:50 point).
In any event, don’t bank on CNBS to bring you economic news, they didn’t in 2008, they won’t in 2011 or 2012. They don’t even bother to correct gross lies spewed by Psychopath Ben Bernanke—housing prices have declined on a nationwide basis during the first Great Depression.
“I guess I am a Great Depression buff, the way some people are Civil War buffs. I don’t know why there aren’t more Depression buffs." ~Ben S. Bernanke
✔ Callous unconcern for the feelings of others.
✔ Incapacity for maintaining enduring relationships.
✔ Reckless disregard for the safety of others.
✔ Deceitfulness, repeated lying and conning others for profit.
✔ Incapacity to experience guilt.
Regulatory Economic Capture
Ann’s words of incompetence ring loud and clear when we consider Regulatory Economic Capture. The SEC is the poster child for ineptness. Many senior level employees earning between ,356 and 0,000 a year had amassed collections of pornography on our dollar. So much porn that some filled up their computer hard drives and resorted to filling boxes of DVDs and CDs to store their troves of porn.
The CFTC head isn’t of the Brooksley Born fiber. No, he is a derivative of the gang of those whose CEO proclaims to be "doing God’s work".
✔ Callous unconcern for the feelings of others.
✔ Incapacity for maintaining enduring relationships.
✔ Reckless disregard for the safety of others.
✔ Deceitfulness, repeated lying and conning others for profit.
✔ Incapacity to experience guilt.
Is anyone really surprised 7,000 clients were robbed blind by MF Global?
Regulatory Capture isn’t limited to just economics. Our inept Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] is allowing toxic carcinogens to pollute our world and create earthquakes with “fracking”. Watch Gasland. If you live on the east coast you might want to consider earthquake insurance.
And we have regulatory capture in our food supply chain. Amazing how a country built on farming can be taken over by Regulatory Economic Capture. Listen to this interview by the filmmaker of Farmageddon to know what I mean.
Reifications & Hapless Policy Makers
The greatest irony and tragicomedy isn’t found in fiction books, plays or movies, it’s written by hapless policy makers and read later in current events or in history books.
A relevant, illustrative example: “I guess I am a Great Depression buff, the way some people are Civil War buffs. I don’t know why there aren’t more Depression buffs. The Depression was an incredibly dramatic episode-an era of stock market crashes, bread lines, bank runs, and wild currency speculation, with the storm clouds of war gathering ominously in the background all the while. Fascinating, and often tragic, characters abound during this period, from hapless policy makers trying to make sense of events for which their experience had not prepared them to ordinary people coping heroically with the effects of the economic catastrophe.” (emphasis mine)
That quote was authored by Ben S. Bernanke, the current chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. It is from the preface of his book, “Essays on the Great Depression.”
Unemployment levels are another depressionary indicator. Some 207 pages later in the book Bernanke lists the unemployment level during the first Great Depression at 20.9%.
There will be more depression buffs. The only caveat being: They’ll be Second Great Depression buffs. Everything Bernanke mentions in his preface we have going on today. Ben S. Bernanke will go down in history as the biggest psychopathic hapless policy maker ever.
Irony.
Tragicomedy.
Welcome to the Second Great Depression. Reality awaits.
My faith in the 5G’s remains strong: G(*religious edit for my agnostic friends)d, Gold, Guns, Grub & the Government will screw it up.
Or as Ann colorfully says: “Your going to have to get away from paper and into physical commodities, the real deal...and the rule of thumb is: If you can stand in front of it with an assault rifle and physically protect it, then it's real, it’s a real commodity. That includes food, that includes water, that includes long guns and ammunition...gold and silver...”
Her audio is by far the best interview I’ve ever heard. I highly encourage you to listen to it! When it comes to not mincing words, calling a psychopath a psychopath and a crook a crook, she’s got the biggest guns.
In a world where evil is sold as good, wrong is sold as right and injustice is sold as justice (to paraphrase John G. Hartung) we need more Barnhardt’s and journalists like Puplava.
