“This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, talk about the Sarkozy-Merkel dog and pony show announcing the plan without a plan and about when an asset isn’t really an asset. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser interviews Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt, about the German Landesbanks and a Swiss community currency.”
May 1, 2011
Offshore Banking and Tax Havens Have Become Heart of Global Economy
Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales conducted this interview w/author Nicholas Shaxson, Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens, prior to tax day here in Uncle Sam’s US of A. Shaxson talks in detail about this hidden financial system stashing away trillions of trillions of corporate and personal wealth purposely evading their share of taxes. Great interview and very enlightening while explaining why the people of the world are carrying the load for basic services while that “rich” guy, well, just laughs all the way to the bank.
“Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens”
“An absolute gem that deserves to be read by anyone interested in the way contemporary globalization is undermining social justice. Give it to your sons, daughters, families, favorite legislators and anyone else needing stimulation of their thought buds. This masterpiece illuminates the dark places and shows the visible hand of governments, corporations, banks, accountants, lawyers and other pirates in creating fictitious offshore transactions and structures and picking our pockets. This financial engineering has enabled companies and the wealthy elites to dodge taxes. The result is poverty, erosion of social infrastructure and hard won welfare rights and higher taxes for ordinary people. Tax will be the decisive battleground of the twenty-first century as no democracy can function without it, or provide people with adequate educations, healthcare, security, housing, transport or pensions. Nicholas Shaxson has done a wonderful job in lifting the lid off the inbuilt corruption that has become so naturalized in the western world.”–Prem Sikka, Professor of Accounting, University of Essex, UK
March 24, 2011
Banksters & Government Exposed. IMF Prepares for Threat to Monetary System. Plosser on Fed's Exit
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppkniGDDSV4
BELOW ARE TWO MUST READ ARTICLES BY ZEROHEDGE
IMF Prepares For “Threat To International Monetary System”
Back in April 2010, before Waddell and Reed sold a few shares of ES, effectively destroying the market on news that Europe was insolvent, we made the following observation: “The IMF has just announced that it is expanding its New Arrangement to Borrow (NAB) multilateral facility from its existing $50 billion by a whopping $500 billion (SDR333.5 billion), to $550 billion.” Little did we know that our conclusion “something big must be coming” would prove spot on just a month later after Greece, then Ireland, then Portgual, and soon Spain, Italy, Belgium, and pretty much all other European countries would topple like dominoes tethered together by a flawed monetary regime. Well, based on news from Dow Jones we can now safely predict the following: “something bigger must be coming.” As if the IMF’s trillions in open lending facilities (many of which have recently been adjusted to uncapped) were not enough, we now learn that the world lender of last resort (which in theory is the Fed, but apparently Bernanke has been getting a little shy lately so is offsetting his direct lending directives to secondary organizations like the IMF, leaving the Fed with only USD liquidity swaps) is about to activate a “Special Funding Pool” – Dow Jones explains: “The International Monetary Fund is expected to soon activate a special funding pool that will boost the fund’s ability to prevent or resolve economic crises, two people familiar with the situation said Thursday. One of the people said the activation of the funding–which can only be made by a special request from the IMF managing director to the board–was in anticipation of an expected wave of new IMF programs, including the possible expansion of the Greek bailout package.” Wonderful. Global financial cataclysm rinse repeat all over again…
More from Dow Jones:
Read the rest of the post and comments by clicking HERE
Charles Plosser Speaks On The Fed’s “Exit”
Highlights from the just released speech by Philly Fed hawk Charles Plosser:
- Fed’s Plosser says would want to make explicit the Fed’s commitment to a numerical inflation objective
- Says important to communicate a systemic plan that describes where Fed is going, how it will get there
- Says his proposed strategy would tie pace of asset sales to size of interest rate increases
- Says his preferred exit strategy would raise rates, shrink balance sheet concurrently
- Says failure to exit in timely manner will have serious consequences on inflation, economic stability in future
- Says monetary policy will have to reverse course in the not too distant future
- Says consumer spending continues to expand at reasonably robust rate
- Says US economy seems to be on much firmer foundation
- Says labor market conditions are improving
In other words, an attempt to return confusion over the fate of QE3. As for the Fed existing anything…. good luck. As part of his exit proposals, Plosser proposes two exit plans (12 and 18 months) both of which sees a dramatic reduction in reserves, a hike in IOER, and asset sell offs. Should the Fed indeed proceed to do this, the market will prolapse.
Read Posser’s full statement and comments by clicking HERE