Wednesday, October 31, 2012

It Begins: Ecuador Demands Repatriation Of One Third Of Its Gold Holdings




One week ago, when we reported the news that the Bundesbank had secretly pulled two thirds of its gold from London years ago, we said the following:
... Germany has done nothing wrong! It simply demanded a reclamation of what is rightfully Germany's to demand.

And here is the crux of the issue: in a globalized system, in which every sovereign is increasingly subjugated to the credit-creating power of the globalized "whole", one must leave all thoughts of sovereign independence at the door and embrace the "new world order." After all this is the only way that the globalized system can create the shadow cloud of infinite repoable liabilities, in which we currently all float light as a binary feather, which permits instantaeous capital flows and monetary fungibility, and which guarantees that there will be no sovereign bond issue failure as long as nobody dares to defect from the system in which all collateral is cross pledge and ultra-rehypothecated... for the greater good. Until the Buba secretly defected that is.

And this is the whole story. Because by doing what it has every right to do, the German Central Bank implicitly broke the cardinal rule of true modern monetary system (never to be confused with that socialist acronym fad MMT, MMR or some such comparable mumbo-jumbo). And the rule is that a sovereign can never put its own people above the global corporatist-cum-banking oligarchy, which needs to have access to all hard (and otherwise) assets at any given moment, on a moment's notice, as the system's explicit leverage at last check inclusive of the nearly $1 quadrillion in derivatives, is about 20 times greater than global GDP. This also happens to be the reason why the entire world is always at most a few keystrokes away from a complete monetary (and trade) paralysis, as the Lehman aftermath and the Reserve Fund breaking the buck so aptly showed.

We are confident that little if anything will be made of the Buba's action, because dwelling on it too much may expose just who the first country will be (or  already has been) when the tide finally breaks, and when it will be every sovereign for themselves. Because at that point, which will come eventually, not only Buba, but every other bank, corporation, and individual will scramble to recover their own gold located in some vault in London, New York, or Paris, or at your friendly bank vault down the street, and instead will merely find a recently emptied storage room with humorously written I.O.U. letters in the place of 1 kilo gold bricks.
It appears that the story, which has refused to go away, was not covered sufficiently fast, and precisely the worst case scenario - at least for the "asset-lite" status quo - is slowly but surely starting to materialize. From Bloomberg:
Ecuador’s government wants the nation’s banks to repatriate about one third of their foreign holdings to support national growth, the head of the country’s tax agency said.

Carlos Carrasco, director of the tax agency known as the SRI, said today that Ecuador’s lenders could repatriate about $1.7 billion and still fulfill obligations to international clients. Carrasco spoke at a congressional hearing in Quito on a government proposal to raise taxes on banks to finance cash subsidies to the South American nation’s poor.
So yesterday: Germany... today: Ecuador...
tomorrow: the World?


Because while Ecuador, with its 26.3 tonnes of gold, may be small in the grand scheme of gold things, all it takes is for more and more banks to join the bandwagon and demand delivery in kind from official repositories (i.e., New York and London), and the myth that is the overcollateralization of hard money by central banks will promptly come to an abrupt, bitter and, likely, quite violent end.

More to the German Gold Story

By Dan Denning
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/399863/20121031/more-german-gold-story.htm

















Last week we mentioned that Germany's audit office wanted the Bundesbank to make sure German gold held in foreign vaults is...you know...actually there...and has not been leased into oblivion, never to back sound money again. Well the story gets better.


Germany reduced its London gold holdings from 1,440 tonnes to just 500 tonnes all the way back in 2000 and 2001, according to Ambrose Evans Pritchard in the Telegraph. If true it makes the whole story even more intriguing. Why did the Germans repatriate their gold when the euro was at its weakest?

Back then it took only 84 US cents to buy a euro. Those were the good old days when travelling to Europe didn't cause you heartburn because of the cost. Today it costs 129 US cents to buy a euro. That's actually worth thinking about, given how poorly the last few years have gone for the common currency. Of course Ben Bernanke has something to do with keeping the dollar weak, too.

But in any event, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown was selling Britain's gold around the same time the German's were taking theirs home. Other than making completely opposite decisions, the biggest difference between the two is that Brown told everyone he was selling before he sold and the Germans told no one.

Did the Germans believe the euro would need physical gold backing to prove its mettle in a crisis? Or were they just being prudent in their mistrust of the Anglo-Saxon crooks and thieves in the City? And where is the rest of the gold overseas? Is it still there? Or has it been leased into oblivion?

These are intriguing questions. But in a normal financial world, they'd be trivial curiosities. Civilised people would be engaged in the hard work of valuing and buying and selling productive enterprises. Keeping track of gold - the corpse of value as it's called by Japanese engineer Goto Dengo in Neal Stephenson's book Cryptonomicon - is the sort of thing you do when all other wealth has been/is being destroyed.

The Global Banking ‘Super-Entity’ Drug Cartel: The “Free Market” of Finance Capital

By: Andrew Gavin Marshall

HSBC bankers testifying before U.S. Senate on laundering billions in drug money
(photo courtesy of The Economist, 21 July 2012)






















I would like to introduce you, the reader, to some realities of our global banking system, resting on the rhetoric of free markets, but functioning, in actuality, as a global cartel, a “super-entity” in which the world’s major banks all own each other and own the controlling shares in the world’s largest multinational corporations, influence governments and policy with politicians in their back pockets, routinely engaging in fraud and bribery, and launder hundreds of billions of dollars in drug money, not to mention arms dealing and terrorist financing. These are the “too big to fail” and “too big to jail” banks, the centre of our global economy, what we call a “free market,” implying that the global banks – and corporations – have “free reign” to do anything they please, engage in blatantly criminal activities, steal trillions in wealth which is hidden offshore, and never get more than a slap on the wrist. This is the real “free market,” a highly profitable global banking cartel, functioning as a worldwide financial Mafia.

Read entire essay here: http://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2012/10/28/the-global-banking-super-entity-drug-cartel-the-free-market-of-finance-capital/


Where’s The Gold?: German Politicians Demand to See Gold in US Federal Reserve

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann wanted to personally convince Peter Gauweiler that the German gold was still where it should be. Early this summer, the head of Germany’s central bank took the obstinate politician from the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), a party that is a member of the government coalition in Berlin, and a number of his colleagues into the Bundesbank’s inner sanctum: the gold vault.

There, 6,000 gold bars are stacked on industrial-strength shelves in a purpose-built building in Frankfurt. An additional 76,000 bars of bullion are stored in four safe boxes, in sealed containers.

But even this personal inspection wasn’t enough to reassure the visiting member of parliament — on the contrary: “The Bundesbank monitors its domestic gold in an exemplary fashion,” Gauweiler says, “and this makes it all the more incomprehensible that the bank doesn’t look after its reserves abroad.”
For quite some time now, Gauweiler has been pestering the government and the Bundesbank with questions concerning where and how the country’s reserves are stored, and how often they are checked. He has submitted requests and commissioned reports on the topic.

Last week, Gauweiler celebrated his greatest triumph to date in his gold campaign, which has been a source of some amusement for many fellow German politicians: A secret report by the Federal Audit Office had been made public — and it contained stern criticism of the German central bank in Frankfurt. The Bonn-based auditors urged a better inventory system, including quality checks.

This demand, which even the bank’s inspectors saw as nothing more than routine, alarmed the Berlin political establishment. Indeed, the partially blacked-out report read like the prologue to an espionage thriller in which the stunned central bankers could end up standing in front of empty vaults in the US.

‘Grotesque Debate’

For decades, German central bankers have contented themselves with written affirmations from their American colleagues that the gold still remains where it is said to be stored. According to the report, the bar list from New York stems from “1979/1980.” The report also noted that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York refuses to allow the gold’s owners to view their own reserves.

Not surprisingly, this prompted strong reactions in Berlin: The relevant Bundesbank board member Carl-Ludwig Thiele was summoned to Berlin to provide an explanation to the parliamentary budget committee. Heinz-Peter Haustein of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) was even quoted by Germany’s mass-circulation Bild newspaper as saying that “all the gold has to be shipped back.”

The Bundesbank’s otherwise reserved Thiele said that he found at least “part of the debate” to be “rather grotesque.” His financial institution currently has more pressing problems. Bundesbank head Weidmann, for example, is desperately fighting the European Central Bank (ECB) decision to buy unlimited quantities of sovereign bonds from crisis-ridden countries as a way of lowering their borrowing costs. In addition, the Bundesbank has already pumped nearly €700 billion ($906 billion) into primarily southern European countries as part of the euro-zone central bank transfers known as Target II.

Germany’s gold reserves are currently worth some €144 billion and are not stored “with dubious business partners,” as Thiele stresses, but rather with “highly respected central bankers.”

Special Connection

There is in fact nothing unusual about how Germany deals with the precious metal. Many other central banks store a portion of their gold reserves abroad. The Netherlands, for example, places its trust in its colleagues in Ottawa, New York and London.

But the relationship Germans have with their gold is a special one. Germany hoards nearly 3,600 metric tons of the precious metal — only the US has more. Much of this gold treasure was amassed under the Bretton Woods international monetary system, in which the dollar served as the world’s key currency and was directly convertible to fixed quantities of gold.

Before the gold standard was terminated in 1971, the current account surpluses generated by Germany’s “economic miracle” were partially balanced out in gold. Thousands of US bars of gold alone were transferred to German ownership.

But since the euro is not backed by gold, such vast reserves are actually no longer necessary. Nevertheless, the Germans continue to resolutely defend them — and every attempt to use this treasure has been met with dismay.

There has been no lack of proposals: Former German President Roman Herzog wanted to sell the gold to form the basis for a capital-based nursing care insurance scheme. In 2002, FDP parliamentary floor leader Rainer BrĂ¼derle proposed a fund for natural disasters. Former Bundesbank head Ernst Welteke added to the debate by suggesting the foundation of a national educational fund. But none of these ideas were ever taken seriously.

Most recently, German Chancellor Angela Merkel of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) shot down an idea by the euro partners to use the reserves as collateral for euro bonds.

Strict Security

As a result, in addition to safeguarding the reserves of over 60 countries, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York continues to hold 1,536 metric tons of German gold — or nearly half of Berlin’s reserves. This enormous hoard of gold is stored in the fifth subfloor of the bank’s building on Liberty Street, 25 meters (80 feet) below street level, and 15 meters below sea level. According to the bank’s website, the vault rests on the bedrock of Manhattan Island.

Tourists are allowed to venture below street level to see the vault. After descending in an elevator, they stand in front of an enormous steel cylinder that pivots like a door in a 140-ton steel-and-concrete frame. But not even the owners are allowed to view their own gold. According to the Federal Audit Office report, the Fed explained that “in the interest of security and of the control process” no “viewings” are possible.

Finally, in 2007, “following numerous enquiries,” Bundesbank staff members were allowed to see the facility, but they reportedly only made it to the anteroom of the German reserves.

In fact, auditors from the Bundesbank made a second visit in May 2011. This time one of the nine compartments was also opened, in which the German gold bars are densely stacked. A few were pulled out and weighed. But this part of the report has been blacked out — out of consideration for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

“I would like more transparency on the issue,” says Bundesbank board member Thiele. The Americans are very sensitive, though, when it comes to security procedures in their gold storage facilities. In their second major depository, the legendary Fort Knox, practically no one in recent decades has been allowed to view the gold reserves.

Fuelling Legends

Such intense secrecy fuels legends. Many conspiracy theorists have suspected for decades that the German gold has long since disappeared. Others believe that it has been lent out. They contend that there are only promissory notes of little worth stored in the bank’s vaults.

Another myth that has been making the rounds in nationalist-oriented German circles is that the US refused to hand over the treasure and threatened during the Cold War to withdraw its troops from Germany if the Germans demanded their gold back. Former Bundesbank head Karl Blessing, according to the theory, had to provide the US written confirmation that he would never do such a thing.

This letter, as it happens, actually exists, as Blessing confirmed in his last interview with SPIEGEL in 1971 — except it doesn’t concern the German gold, but rather US gold reserves. Until 1971, every dollar could be exchanged for the precious metal. Blessing thus promised the US Federal Reserve that he would no longer convert the colossal German dollar reserves to gold because this would have caused the currency’s value to plummet.

Today, this historic document is even available online. But that hasn’t silenced those who oppose stockpiling German gold abroad. Instead, the debate over a collapse of strictly paper-based currency is experiencing a renaissance — as is the dispute over the gold reserves. Even Green Party financial expert Gerhard Schick has joined the fray: “I think the question of how much gold is available in an emergency is a valid concern.”

Outlandish Idea

From a purely logistical perspective, though, returning the reserves seems outlandish. One cannot simply pack 1,500 tons of gold into an Airbus A380 super-jumbo jet and fly it back to Germany.
The Bundesbank also objects to this notion for another reason. It says the gold is supposed to act as an emergency buffer. In the extreme situation of a currency collapse, the bankers say that the gold bars could easily and quickly be exchanged on location for pounds or dollars to pay urgent bills.
In a bid to calm the debate, the Bundesbank has pledged to bring back and inspect 150 tons of gold from abroad over the next three years. Furthermore, there are plans to count and weigh the gold bars stored in one of the nine chambers at the Fed in New York — although no date has been set for this.
Bundesbank board member Thiele was also recently in New York where he took a look behind one of the vault doors. He had good news for the members of the parliamentary budget committee: “There was no paper in there, just gold.”

But that’s not enough for CSU politician Gauweiler. He’s only prepared to put the matter to rest when the central bank has thoroughly inspected all the German reserves throughout the entire world. His credo: “The Bundesbank is independent, but it can’t do what it wants.”

Source: http://stratrisks.com/geostrat/9043

Russian Ship Carrying 700 Tons Of Gold Ore Missing

MOSCOW –  A vessel with a nine-person crew and 700 tons of gold ore onboard has disappeared in stormy seas off Russia's Pacific Coast.

The Russian vessel carrying 700 tons of gold ore disappeared in the stormy seas off Russia's Pacific Coast.
(Photo courtesy Russian Television)



The ship sent a distress call on Sunday as it was sailing from the coastal town of Neran to Feklistov Island in the Sea of Okhotsk.

The vessel, hired by mining company Polymetal, was carrying 700 tons of gold ore from one deposit to another where it was to be processed. Gold ore is the material from which gold is extracted and contains only a small percentage of the precious metal.

Polymetal's spokesman on Monday would not estimate the value of the cargo.

The company said it has shipped ore via that route before, and there was nothing unusual in shipping it by the sea.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

The First Hurricane Sandy

Sandy has happened before, sort of.
By Steve Huff

The Hurricane was named Sandy. It struck in October and took a path that brought it through northern New Jersey and New York State before the storm petered out over Canada.
This Hurricane Sandy happened in the minds of members of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) in Westchester County, New York, 15 years ago this month.
The webpages created at the time to war game this imaginary Hurricane Sandy are still online. The main page reads in part:

Hurricane Sandy is a fictitious hurricane based on a real one: the Hurricane of 1938. The following National Weather Service advisories and storm tracks are based on data from that storm and are being used as stimuli for an Amateur Radio emergency communications drill. They were produced at a training seminar at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, FL.


The first, fake Hurricane Sandy was an exercise for ham radio enthusiasts to practice relaying vital information should a situation identical to the real Hurricane Sandy ever occur, destroying more conventional lines of communication.

The mock-ups they created of National Weather Service bulletins about the storm make for eerie reading now, as the budding superstorm forces evacuations around Long Island Sound and closes the stock exchange:


…LARGE AND POWERFUL HURRICANE SANDY MENACING THE ATLANTIC
SEABOARD…AT 5 AM EDT…0900Z…THE HURRICANE WARNING IS EXTENDED NORTHWARD TO ROCKLAND MAINE. A HURRICANE WARNING IS NOW IN EFFECT FROM CAPE LOOKOUT NORTH CAROLINA TO ROCKLAND MAINE.
The ARRL drill involving Hurricane Sandy certainly seems strange now, but similar coincidences have occurred in the past. After the Titanic plummeted to the bottom of the North Atlantic in 1912, someone remembered that a little known author named Morgan Robertson had written a novel many years before that was eerily similar to the tragedy.

The Observer checked Internet Archive versions of the pages related to the fictional Hurricane Sandy to ensure this was not a hoax.

They have been online and unchanged for a decade and a half.

Awakening Our Indigenous Mind: Hopi Prophecy on the Coming Great Purification

There is a river flowing very fast, it is so swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore, they will feel like they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly.

Know that the river has a destination. The elders say, we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river and I say see who is in there with you and celebrate.

At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves. For the moment we do, our spiritual growth comes to a halt. The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves together, banish the word 'struggle' from your attitude and vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we have been waiting for.


- Hopi Ancestors


Many who still practice traditional Hopi culture feel that the world's axis is wobbling out of control, as the end of the current Fourth World approaches.
 
This essay is excerpted from Robert Tindall and Susana Bustos, Ph.D.'s forthcoming book, Awakening Our Indigenous Mind, available from Inner Traditions. 
 
Between the underground kivas of the Hopi and the astronomical temples of the Maya where prophecy of world shaking events were received in ancient times, and contemporary apocalyptic fantasies such as the film 2012, lies a vast distance. Yet somehow those indigenous visions have migrated through the time depths to ignite our contemporary imagination, poised as we appear to be on the edge of their fulfillment.

Perhaps this is because, like other beings of myth, prophecy roams from mind to mind. One of the further flung components of a culture's cosmovision (or what we call, from a safe distance, a mythological system), prophecy arises from a confluence of visions, dreams, trance-states, and artistic inspiration. It is also, like a dream, curiously elusive to pin down - official, priestly versions may eventually be engraved upon calendrical stones at the feet of pyramids and jungle astronomical observatories, but only after the prophecy has simmered among the people, in many local variations, for many passing moons.

In addition, I suspect prophecy only becomes truly relevant when heard. Prophecy is not a fact. Rather, it is a thing received, taken to heart so it catalyzes change in one's life. Like cosmovision, prophecy may lose its savor when written down. It becomes an official version, an object of critique, something true or false in a factual sense, or an object of veneration. Yet prophecy is not a fact - it is a living current, like the sap that flows through the veins of leaves. In constant evolution, there is no orthodox version. The stream continues to flow through Hopi kivas and other sacred sites.

I therefore never paid serious attention to the buzz generated around 2012. After all, documents are always open to interpretation, facts shift their meaning according to methodology, and like the children's game of telephone, transmission over distance is fraught with error. We have the earth under our feet, its plants and animals and waters, and the stars above us to show us the way. What subtler prophecy could we be privy too?

Then one day, like music, I heard the Hopi prophecy. It came one voice removed from its source, in the person of Bob Boyll, a 75 year old roadman, or peyote shaman, in the Native American Church who has passed many years among the indigenous communities of the U.S. and Mexico.

I first met Boyll, whose ancestry is Scots-Irish and Native American, upon stepping through the flap of a tipi where a peyote meeting was about to commence. A stocky man with grey hair held back in a ponytail, he greeted me with an abstracted, kindly air. Thinking, "Ah, he's a cool old hippy," I went to occupy my seat. This was my first tipi meeting, and that evening I had the privilege of beholding the keeping of a sacred fireplace, which it turned out Boyll, in the office of fireman, was assisting the roadman (as the leaders in Native American Church ceremonies are called), in keeping.

At some point as my visions and dreams danced in the fireplace, I became aware that the old man wading through the coals was working a kind of alchemy. Boyll's hands seemed to commune with the fire, to transmute it, like an ancient Celtic god of blacksmithry, into something magical. In the morning, when he talked about the various intelligences - beings, actually - perceivable within the flames of the fire, I realized that Boyll had, as they say, seriously done his homework.

As part of Boyll's long apprenticeship in the indigenous ways of medicine work, he had sought instruction from the Hopi who live in the village of Hotevilla on Arizona's First Mesa. The year was 1978, a time in his life when he was seeking answers to questions his graduate program in philosophy at Colombia had not addressed, among which were the visionary abilities of the Hopi.

Boyll was given an immediate demonstration. He relates how upon his unannounced arrival at one of the stone mortar houses of the village, he was greeted by a sharp-eyed woman in her nineties, who upon opening the door declared, "Oh, you're finally here! He's been waiting for you all morning!"

Astonished, Boyll was shown into the main room, where a hale and very old blind man sat, who embraced him, saying, "Oh grandson, you finally here!" The Hopi was named David Mononge, and his age was then estimated at 107. Mononge immediately inquired if Boyll had brought one of those recording machines, and being told yes, sent him back out to the car to retrieve it. Mononge had something to transmit, and wanted to make sure it got recorded accurately.

That afternoon the elder Hopi sang for Boyll the butterfly Kachina song. "When you're in ceremony I want you to sing this," he explained, stating he was giving it to Boyll because as a song of unification it contained all the colors of the rainbow. "The time has come," he said, "for a regathering of everyone, not just the Hopi, into unity." Boyll now sings it in sweat lodges he leads throughout the U.S. and Europe.

One afternoon during the week that Boyll passed with Mononge, the old man took him out to the Second Mesa, where one of the prophecy rocks of the Hopi, part of a sandstone cliff formation, rises 20 feet high covered with ancient carvings.

The main petroglyph shows a figure representing the Earth guardian, Maasau'u, who welcomed the original humans, who for the Hopi emerged from under the earth and lived unified for many years under the covenant they made with him. In the hand of Maasau'u is a staff, from which emerges a square representing an original condition of wholeness. Eventually, however, discord arose and migrations took place away from the mesas.* From this square, therefore, embark two lines, which set off across the face of the stone as roads. Upon the upper line are human figures whose bodies progressively disintegrate, first with the loss of the solar plexus, and then with their heads drifting away from their bodies. These figures are known as the people of "two hearts," signifying a state of spiritual disunity, and their road grows progressively jagged and then breaks, indicating disintegration, chaos.

For a detailed description of what each letter represents, visit: http://www.viewzone.com/hopi.prophecy.html

As has gripped the popular imagination, this is a period of geological upheaval and societal discord and collapse, but this emerging chaos is also called by the Hopi the "Great Purification," pointing towards its spiritual significance. According to Mononge, whatever is not essential to our being, anything that draws the heart away from unity, will be consumed, and there will be an opportunity to return to the lower road of the petroglyph, the way of "one heart." In fact, a "bridge" can be seen connecting the two roads during the time of Great Purification, during which a moment of opportunity will occur in each individual's life when the passage will open to go from two-hearted to one-hearted, or vice-versa. Once the bridge is traversed, however, there is no return.

This lower road Mononge described as the way of those who know where they belong on Earth, and that they belong to the Earth. It is the way of those who have returned to their clans. The Hopi vision, it is worth noting, is the opposite of the Garden of Eden myth, which depicts our ancestors as cast out of the clan's origin to wander in exile, unable to return to the original connection to the Garden because an angel with a flaming sword stands guard at the entrance to the sacred land.

In the petroglyph, the road appears lined with stalks of corn and mounds and the leader of the path of the one heart is there, the figure of a man, holding a prayer stick in his hand, planting corn. It is a humble, yet very inviting image.

If wisdom arises from such simple communion with the Earth, then the Hopi may be able to remind us of it. The prayer stick held in this figure's hand was, and still is, used to plant corn in the desert. One might smile and say, it's good to pray if you're going to plant in such conditions.

The Hopi would agree. So prayerful are they, they don't irrigate their corn. They summon the rain instead. Boyll witnessed the Hopi's intimate connection with their ecological system one day when he attended a dance to the Kachina spirits who govern the rainfall.

"The sky went from arid, deep blue from one horizon to the next to pouring rain by the dance's conclusion," he reported. "The rain literally came out of the blue."

According to Mononge, one of the signs of the approach of the Great Purification, and there are many, would be the desire of people to reform their clans. To Boyll, he said, "You're still looking for your original home, but after all the migrations the time has come when your people can find where they belong." Mononge, whose language has no verb to express the concept "to be," meant something bigger than just physical locale. He meant belonging to the cosmos, which is expressed by a clan's spiritual communion with its ancestors, sacred topography, medicines, animal allies, songs, origin myths, dreams and sacred art. even ways of growing food, treating water, or raising children, all those cultural practices that express a vital, living participation in a sentient world.

When Boyll asked Mononge, "Grandfather, how did you know I was going to appear at your doorstep on the day I did?," the old man explained to him that for the Hopi, transmigration occurs not individually but in clans, much as birds migrate not solo but in flocks. These soul groups come in and out of existence, and are attracted to one another, consciously or not, each time they come back into incarnation.

"You are my grandson. We know this, and it cannot be changed," Mononge said. "In kiva ceremony I saw you were about to arrive."

Mononge also said that every sacred fire, kiva ceremony, or peyote meeting, that is to say, every time of collective transformation and evolution among the people, has an attendant spirit. This living being exists long before the event, containing and directing it, and is precognizant of what specific work needs to be done in each participating individual's life.

In a similar vein, these soul groups are pre-existing clans, who especially in the time of the Great Purification are called to find one another. This spiritually-directed regathering strongly suggests that the bridge between the roads of the two-hearted and one-hearted is the way from our collective identity with nation states and corporations (and their fascistic, suicidal tendencies) to individuated kinship within clans, clans who follow the leader of the path of one heart.

Mononge also expressed his belief in the need for renewal among the native peoples of the Americas, many of whom now live caught between two worlds, "It is late for us," he said. "Our cultures have become hardened into systems without connection to their source."

"Essentially, then," I asked Boyll, "Mononge was saying we need to go native again."

"Yes," Boyll responded. "That's it."

This is, according to Mononge's transmission to Boyll, the prophetic summons within the Hopi prophecy for us - to reawaken the indigenous mind, to rediscover our clans as the path of one heart through the coming Great Purification. 

* Among those who migrated were the ancestors of the European whites, who the Hopis say traveled until they came to a wall, upon which they knocked their foreheads four times and then turned around and headed back. "I've seen that wall!" Monongnoe declared, "It's in Jerusalem," evidently referring to the Wailing Wall.

Source: http://www.realitysandwich.com/awakening_our_indigenous_mind_hopi_prophecy_2012_great_purification

Monday, October 29, 2012

Occupy protesters were right, says Bank of England official

The anti-capitalist protesters who occupied St Paul’s Cathedral were both morally and intellectually right, a senior Bank of England official said last night. 
 
Occupiers chain themselves to the pulpit on the anniversary of the now-dismantled protest camp outside the cathedral.  Photo: OCCUPY LONDON
  
By , Deputy Political Editor

Andrew Haldane, a member of the Bank’s financial policy committee, said the Occupy movement was correct in its attack on the international financial system.

The Occupy movement sprang up last year and staged significant demonstrations in both the City of London and New York, protesting about the unequal distribution of wealth and the influence of the financial services industry. Members of the movement occupied the grounds of St Paul’s and remained camped there for more than three months until police evicted them in February last year.

“Occupy has been successful in its efforts to popularise the problems of the global financial system for one very simple reason; they are right,” Mr Haldane said last night. Mr Haldane, the Bank’s executive director for financial stability, was speaking to Occupy Economics, an offshoot of the Occupy movement, at an event in central London.

In a speech entitled Socially Useful Banking, he said the protesters had helped bring about a “reformation” in financial services and the way they are regulated. Partly because of the protests, he suggested, both bank executives and policymakers were persuaded that banks must behave in a more moral way, and take greater account of inequality in wider society.

“Occupy’s voice has been both loud and persuasive and policymakers have listened and are acting,” he said. “In fact, I want to argue that we are in the early stages of a reformation of finance, a reformation which Occupy has helped stir.” 

The protesters had been right about bankers’ behaviour and the consequences of extremely high salaries and bonuses in the financial sector and other industries, he said. “I do not just mean right in a moral sense,” he added. “It is the analytical, every bit as much as the moral, ground that Occupy has taken. For the hard-headed facts suggest that, at the heart of the global financial crisis, were — and are — problems of deep and rising inequality.”

Mr Haldane concluded by telling the activists that they had helped bring about nothing less than a new financial order. “If I am right and a new leaf is being turned, then Occupy will have played a key role in this fledgling financial reformation,” he said. “You have put the arguments. You have helped win the debate.”

In the text of his speech distributed by the Bank last night, Mr Haldane made no reference to the techniques employed by the Occupy protesters. The occupation of St Paul’s last year was controversial, and led to claims that the protesters were despoiling the cathedral’s grounds.

The protest ended after the Corporation of London won a legal order allowing the activists to be evicted.

Earlier this month, members of the group marked the first anniversary of the St Paul’s protest by entering the cathedral during a service and chaining themselves to the pulpit.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9641806/Occupy-protesters-were-right-says-Bank-of-England-official.html
 

Libor: Judge forces Barclays to reveal names of staff involved in rate rigging

Barclays will be forced to disclose the names of staff involved in Libor rigging, following a damning court judgment over claims it mis-sold interest rate swaps to a care home operator. 
 
Barclays was accused of 'shadow boxing' over Libor-rigging claims in a court case involving allegations it mis-sold interest rate derivatives to a care home operato


By , Banking Correspondent

The bank was chastised on Monday at the High Court in London by Lord Justice Flaux, who claimed Barclays was intentionally trying to hide the true scale of the Libor scandal, which has already seen the lender fined £290m.

The criticisms came as Barclays faced a preliminary hearing, ahead of a trial, over allegations it mis-sold to a care home group complex interest rate derivatives that were in turn based on false Libor rates.

Issuing a damning judgment, Lord Justice Flaux said Barclays’ objections to the Libor-rigging claims brought against it by Guardian Care Homes were “wholly without merit” and accused the bank of “misleading” customers.

Allowing the case to continue to trial, the judge described the bank’s attempts to dismiss the Libor aspects of the care home operator’s claim as “shadow boxing” and said they were “doomed to fail”.
Guardian Care Homes’ lawsuit is seen as a test case for Libor-rigging claims and the court decision to allow the case to go to trial potentially opens the door to billions of pounds of legal actions against other banks involved in the rate-setting scandal.

Over a day-long hearing, Lord Justice Flaux repeatedly struck down Barclays’ objections and said the bank would be forced to disclose potentially embarrassing details, such as the identities of staff implicated in Libor manipulation.

“[It] just seems perfectly obvious... that the people responsible for giving those instructions [manipulate Libor] must have known customers were being misled,” he said.

Tim Lord QC, representing Guardian Care Homes, which has more than 30 care homes around the country, told the hearing that disclosures so far from the bank were “likely to be the tip of the iceberg” and that the case went to “the heart of the management of Barclays”.

“Barclays seeks to serve up its own version of the facts, a santised version,” said Mr Lord.
Representing Barclays, Adrian Beltrami QC said the information asked for by Guardian Care Homes would have “signficant ramifications” and make the case “unmanageable”.

However, Lord Justice Flaux rejected the arguments and said Barclays would from next month have to begin providing the names of staff involved in Libor-rigging to Guardian Care Homes’ legal team.

“This is all shadow boxing. The real issue is they [Barclays] are trying to shut it down because they don’t like it,” he said.

The Guardian Care Homes’ claims against Barclays over mis-sold swaps, designed to protect the company against rises in interest rates, amount to about £38m. It is alleged that Libor-rigging at Barclays inflated the cost of the swaps to the company. The care home group has already settled a similar swaps claim against Lloyds Banking Group for an undisclosed sum.

In a statment Barclays said: "The judge’s decision means these issues will need to be determined at a full trial in due course. This business had a suite of advisors and a lot of financial experience and skill in-house. We understand that Graiseley entered into their swaps with sufficient understanding to exercise their own judgment as to whether the products would meet its business objectives. They are a significant business, which owes Barclays £70m. We do not believe the case has merit and will defend it.”

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/rate-swap-scandal/9641721/Libor-Judge-forces-Barclays-to-reveal-names-of-staff-involved-in-rate-rigging.html

Join Natural News in offering prayers to all those about to be impacted by the 'Frankenstorm' Hurricane Sandy


by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)


(NaturalNews) The time for preparedness is over. Now those who are in the path of Hurricane Sandy and the converging "superstorm" must hunker down, ride out the storm and stay focused on safety and survival. They need the blessings of all of us who are not in harm's way, so today Natural News urges all our readers to say a prayer for those who are about to find themselves at ground zero.

The National Weather Service has issued a public warning describing the storm as "...AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS STORM TO IMPACT THE AREA..."

It goes on to urge residents to heed evacuation warnings, adding, "THINK ABOUT THE RESCUE/RECOVERY TEAMS WHO WILL RESCUE YOU IF YOU ARE INJURED OR RECOVER YOUR REMAINS IF YOU DO NOT SURVIVE."

This is unusually blunt language from the National Weather Service. In fact, I don't recall ever seeing NWS warnings with this kind of urgent language.

Immediately after this story was published, the NWS pulled its online warning, but we captured a screen shot of the full alert before it was pulled. Here it is:












































Before you pray, don't forget to prepare 

 

My motto is: Prepare, then pray. Prayer cannot take the place of preparedness, of course. To sit around praying while doing nothing to take responsibility for your own preparedness is foolish. But prayer can help lend strength and courage to those who need it most. The scientific literature reveals many rigorously tested clinical trials showing that patients recover from surgery more quickly when others pray for them, even in a so-called "double-blind" test where those doing the praying have never met the person they're praying for.

The reason prayer works is because we are more than just physical beings. We are spiritual beings experiencing life through physical bodies, but our consciousness is non-physical and exists above and beyond our physical brain. This understanding, if fully embraced, would revolutionize our world and our civilization, because so much of the evil in this world today is based on the "materialism" view of science which says that humans are mere biological machines with no minds, no free will and no consciousness.

The higher truth of the matter is that material things are only the beginning. We may at first appear to be made of matter, but our consciousness interfaces with our brains and bodies through a non-material pathway which has not yet been identified. When we pray, we broadcast a desirable outcome to the cosmos, and while we are not Gods and do not have the power to reshape worlds by merely wishing, we do have the power to subtly influence apparently "random" events, nudging them toward the direction of our desired outcome.

This, too, has been well demonstrated in the scientific research. An outstanding book summarizing some of the non-material phenomena of which the mind is capable is Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics by Chris Carter and Rupert Sheldrake. I also highly recommend Science Set Free by Sheldrake, an impressive thinker, writer and philosopher.

Prayer is, after all, an appeal to a non-material consciousness to aid in achieving a more positive outcome. Even those who have been lifelong skeptics of prayer are instantly transformed into true believers the moment they experience it themselves. Read the astonishing book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander, M.D. You will be absolutely enthralled by the journey of this brain surgeon from hard-core skeptic to passionate believer.

The simple truth is that the power of prayer is real. It works because there's more to us than just our physical bodies and brains. We are beings of immense energy and light, capable of achieving great things not just with our hands but also with our minds. Our entire universe, I believe, is but one of an infinite number of other realms brought into existence by our Creator -- a highly advanced consciousness which has been given a thousand different names throughout human history but which ultimately stands for the same unified concept: LOVE is the fabric of the cosmos, and through prayer, or meditation, or even just practicing gratitude, we can broadcast love to those who need it most.

Today, the people in the path of Hurricane Sandy are in need for our prayers and our support. May they find safety and comfort during this difficult time, and may they emerge from this test with a greater appreciation for life and all that it offers. While hurricanes may destroy material things, the experience of surviving one can only strengthen that part of us which is not material: our souls.


 

Benjamin Fulford 10-29-12…”Bush the boogey man plays the HAARP as Halloween approaches”

by Benjamin Fulford 10-29-12

High level pentagon sources contacted the White Dragon Society this week to warn that the massive storm hitting the US North-East this week was a HAARP attack by the Nazi faction of the Western oligarchy. At the same time, the deep sea drilling ship Chikyu has been spotted off the coast of Aichi, Prefecture near the Nagoya headquarters of Toyota Motors. Nazi representative Richard Armitage and US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian affairs are in Tokyo now warning a massive new earthquake attack on Japan will take place as soon as they leave, unless they get their way, according to Japanese security police affiliated with the WDS.

Lord James Sassoon has also been making astronomical bribe offers to a variety of Japanese politicians, right wing power brokers and gangsters as he tries to keep the Sassoon Asian empire afloat.

A top source at the Bank for International Settlements also contacted with WDS with a combination threat/bribe.

A group of young Chinese generals and industrialists too have come forward with offers of heavy support during the past week.

All of these moves are…(Please support the WDS by subscribing or, if you cannot afford to, get yourself on the free e-mailing list, thank you)…signs of intensified power jockeying in the run up to planned government changes this fall in the US, China, South Korea, Japan and elsewhere.

The Nazis under Bush are insisting that their man Romney be put in power during the November 6 (not 8 as erroneously reported by this newsletter on previous occasions) “election” or else they will wreak steadily intensifying havoc. Other threats believed to be connected to the Nazis include a warning to hit Geneva with a tsunami caused by a landslide and to hit the US West coast with a mega-earthquake.

They have targeted the North East of the US with a storm as a show of power and as a sign of their opposition to the Eastern establishment and their man Obama, the Pentagon source says.

Of course neither Obama nor Romney has more than 15% support in the real world (as opposed to the Stalinist “polls”), making it a perfect time for an independent candidate like Ron Paul to kick both bums out.

Some of the Nazi demands were hand delivered to this writer in a letter written by a person believed to have been close to post-war Nazi Fuehrer Admiral Canaris. The main demand of the letter is to allow the free energy technology to be released to the people of the planet.

Free energy, if used for constructive purposes, would allow for an era of unprecedented growth and prosperity for the planet and the WDS has always supported it. The problem is in that years of research on this subject, nobody has been able to show this writer personally an actual working free energy device. If the Nazis have free energy technology they should just go ahead and release it.
Of course the existing energy industry accounts for a huge percentage (some estimate as high as 70%) of global economic activity and a smooth transition to the new technology (if it really exists) is recommended to prevent chaos and major possible social disruption.

The BIS source, for his part, said the Western elite still wanted a World War in order to rid the world of two-thirds of its population prior to setting up a world government according to a 1973 Club of Rome plan.

http://www2.ministries-online.org/biometrics/rome.html

The map in the link above shows the end game of the BIS led group, this source said. The titular head of the BIS is Ben Bernanke. This BIS source also said the US Federal Reserve Board was already being shut down and that all its powers and staff were being transferred to the US Treasury Department. There was also a hint that vast funds would start to flow towards the WDS if it went along with the program.

Of course since the US is no longer a democracy, transferring Fed powers to the Treasury at this point is a bit like changing the titles on the name cards but leaving the usual suspects in charge.
The Asian power brokers who approached the WDS representative in Indonesia last week were more of the mind to replace the entire top management of the planet and bring in new blood with new ideas.

Certainly a lot of us wonder why a bunch of 80 and 90 year olds who seem to have secret access to life prolonging medicine (denied to the rest of us), should be allowed to remain in charge.
The general impression from the flurry of contacts and threats last week is that there are now three main factions battling for control of the future of this planet. One is the committee of 300 with the Pope and Queen Elizabeth pushing for Obama, the other is the Nazis under Bush et al pushing for Romney and the third is us peasants who just want these murderous power games to be replaced with love and friendship.

We also need to remember that this week is Halloween. Halloween has traditionally been the time, when the harvest is just in, when the poor go to the rich and ask for their fair share so that they can survive the winter. If the 99% do not get their “treat,” you can be sure they will follow with a “trick.”
If the elite try to again use mass murder and terror to control the poor, they and their extended families will be systematically hunted down and slaughtered. The average person does everything possible to avoid violent confrontation but when you try to kill their families and loved ones, their righteous fury is unstoppable.

The general understanding of the WDS and its allies, though, is that we have a clear choice between a win-win solution for everybody and a lose-lose solution for everybody. War and terror is a two-way street, so is love and friendship.
 
[A subscription to Ben's full articles is only $8 per month ("Payments can... be made with a ‘PayPal’ [account]“), but Ben will allow anyone who can not pay this to subscribe for less (or free). On one page of his site he says, “All subscribers will agree to pay whatever monthly subscription price they can afford. Those who are really poor can get it for free.” In my mind, if you like the articles, and want to support Ben and his work, consider subscribing to his blog.

Ben may be contacted at any of the emails below which he provides on his websites:
benjaminfulford@hotmail.com, benjaminfulford@gmail.com, postmaster@benjaminfulford.com, benjaminoffice88@gmail.com]

Mayans protest government sponsored apocalypse party and slam “doomsday myth”

The world will not end. It will be transformed. -- Mayan elders.

JG Vibes Activist Post

For years the Mayans have been fighting against the doomsday myth surrounding the incorrect reading of their ancient calendar. As the date of December 21, 2012 approaches the hype has caused an increasing amount of distress for the indigenous Mayan people, especially with their homeland in Guatemala being turned into a cheap tourist attraction for the coming “apocalypse”.

Just this week, Guatemala’s Mayan people accused the government and state sponsored tour groups of perpetuating the myth that their calendar predicts the end of the world, so they can benefit financially from tourist revenue.

The Culture Ministry of Guatemala is hosting a massive event in Guatemala City, which as many as 90,000 people are expected to attend, all being promoted under the pretext of a “doomsday" celebration.

Felipe Gomez, leader of the Maya alliance Oxlaljuj Ajpop protested this week with other Mayans, urging the Tourism Institute to rethink the doomsday celebration, which he criticized as a “show” that was disrespectful to Mayan culture.


“We are speaking out against deceit, lies and twisting of the truth, and turning us into folklore-for-profit. They are not telling the truth about time cycles” Gomez told the AFP news agency.

In a statement released by Oxlaljuj Ajpop, the end of the Mayan calendar simply means that “there will be big changes on the personal, family and community level, so that there is harmony and balance between mankind and nature.”

Last year, a Mayan elder named Carlos Barrios interviewed over 600 other senior Mayan elders to get the clearest possible understanding of the situation. In an online interview representing the Organization for Mayan and Indigenous Spiritual Studies, Carlos made the following statement:

“Anthropologists visit the temple sites and read the inscriptions and make up stories about the Maya, but they do not read the signs correctly. It’s just their imagination. Other people write about prophecy in the name of the Maya. They say that the world will end in December 2012. The Mayan elders are angry with this. The world will not end. It will be transformed. We are no longer in the World of the Fourth Sun, but we are not yet in the World of the Fifth Sun. This is the time in-between, the time of transition. As we pass through transition there is a colossal, global convergence of environmental destruction, social chaos, war, and ongoing Earth Changes. Humanity will continue, but in a different way. Material structures will change. From this we will have the opportunity to be more human.”

As the Mayans believe, and as many modern researchers also believe, the human species has already went through many different changes during their history on the planet earth. Those changes have many times been difficult, but have also been followed by rapid leaps in understanding, compassion and social advancement.

As I discussed in my book Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance “The doomsday theory is unlikely and overused by power hungry governments that wish to keep their populations in fear. As we have seen quite recently in the past decade in the United States, the establishment constantly uses fear to manipulate the minds of US citizens. This technique is not new either, it has been used for centuries whether it be the fear of economic collapse, natural disaster, the enemy, or the fear of god, fear has been used by the few to dominate the many for ages.

When the Spaniards were conquering the Mayan empire they learned through missionaries that 1698 was the end of the Mayan time cycle. So the Spanish waited until 1698 to invade and the Mayans took it as a sign and fled without resistance. One of the most celebrated of all doomsday predictions was made by astrologers who predicted a great flood that would end the world on February 20 1524 based on the conjunction of all the planets in the heavens mercury, Venus, Mars Jupiter and Saturn. We have also seen quite recently with the media hoax Y2K, which threatened us with a “cyber Armageddon” at the turn of the millennium. In both cases obviously, the world continued to turn. “

The end of the world has been predicted many times and has yet to come, the last time that this kind of hysteria swept the world was just over a decade ago, around the change of the millennium with the y2k scare. The world didn’t end last time, and it is not going to end next time. However, there may be some truth that we are on the verge of some sort of societal transition, looking around the world all of the signs are certainly there.

Oxlajuj Ajpop is holding events it considers sacred in five cities to mark the event and Gomez said the Culture Ministry would be wise to throw its support behind their real celebrations. However, there it is not likely that the government tourist agency and the ministry will change their course.

J.G. Vibes
is the author of an 87 chapter counter culture textbook called Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance, a staff writer and reporter for The Intel Hub and host of a show called Voluntary Hippie Radio. He is also an artist with an established record label and event promotion company that hosts politically charged music events. You can keep up with his work, which includes free podcasts, free e-books & free audiobooks at his website www.aotmr.com .

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Sixty million at risk as deadly 'Frankenstorm' Sandy triggers mass evacuations

People stand on the Ocean City Music Pier watching heavy
surf caused by Hurricane Sandy, on October 28, 2012 in
Ocean City, New Jersey (Mark Wilson / Getty Images / AFP)
The ‘Frankenstorm’ Sandy is set to be unprecedented in size once it hits the US mainland Monday night. Tens of millions of people could be affected as the hybrid hurricane wreaks havoc from the East Coast to the Great Lakes on Halloween week.

­Increasingly dire warnings of powerful winds, power outages, widespread flooding, torrential downpours and even snow are being sounded in New York and other major population centers as Hurricane Sandy continues its trek up from the Caribbean.

President Obama signed an emergency declaration for the states of New York and Massachusetts on Sunday evening.

Forecasters said Sandy is set to transform into "super storm," as the tropical storm merges with a winter storm and a cold front, threatening up to 12 inches of rainfall in some areas and heavy snow inland.

"We're looking at impact of greater than 50 to 60 million people," says Louis Uccellini, head of environmental prediction for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Set to approach the coasts of the mid-Atlantic states by Monday, Sandy is likely to make landfall in the New York metropolitan area, home to about 22 million people, on Monday night.

The Category 1 storm’s sustained winds of 75 mile per hour are nothing extraordinary, but with hurricane force winds reaching out 105 miles from its center and weaker tropical storm-force winds extending 700 miles, forecasters are on edge about its potential impact.

The powerful gusts are expected to stretch as far inland as Pennsylvania.

“These winds are just amazing in terms of their high speed. I cannot recall ever seeing model forecasts of such an expansive areal wind field with values so high for so long a time. We are breaking new ground here,” a National Weather Service meteorologist in the agency’s Washington, DC/Baltimore office said on Saturday night.

"The size of this [Sandy] alone, affecting a heavily populated area, is going to be history making," said Jeff Masters, a hurricane specialist who writes a blog for Weather Underground.

This image obtained on October 28, 2012 from the University of Wisconsin'd Space Science and Engineering Center, shows Hurricane Sandy off the US East coast (AFP PHOTO / UW-SSEC)

Those far away from costal areas still have cause for alarm, as forecasters predict that inland flooding from the storm surge could pose a much greater risk than the winds.
 
Utilities officials have also warned that rain-saturated grounds could send trees plummeting into power lines, leaving residents at home without electricity for days.

Officials have urged residents to stock up on food, water and batteries, with grocery stores being swamped in anticipation of the potential power outages.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered a mandatory evacuation of Gotham's low-lying areas, home to some 375,000 people in total.

"If you don't evacuate, you are not only endangering your life, you are also endangering the lives of the first responders who are going in to rescue you," Bloomberg said at a news conference Sunday.
The city's school system will also be closed on Monday, the mayor continued.

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) had previously noted that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo had directed "an orderly shutdown and suspension of all subway, bus and commuter railroad service" beginning at  7 pm Sunday.

Cuomo also said the decision to shut down the state's bridges and tunnels would be made on a case-by-case basis.

The city closed the subways before Hurricane Irene last year, with a Columbia University study predicting that an Irene surge just one foot higher could have shut down lower Manhattan.
Bloomberg's stark warning to residents regarding evacuation might have been spurred by fears that complacency had set in once Hurricane Irene turned out to be far weaker than initially predicted.
Irene, which struck the eastern US in August 2011, was responsible for 56 deaths and $15.6 billion dollars in damage, making it the fifth costliest storm in the country's history.

"The National Weather service believes there is increasing potential for high winds, coastal flooding and heavy rains across a broad area for a lengthy period of time Sunday through Tuesday," said Howard Glaser, director of New York State Operations.

Next door in New Jersey, hundreds of coastal residents started moving inland after Governor Chris Christie declared a state of emergency on Saturday. A dozen Atlantic City casinos were closed following the declaration, as the gambling hub is located on a barrier island. The town’s nearly 40,000 residents will be evacuated Sunday, city officials said.

Atlantic City is likely to flood, as National Weather Service Forecasters in New Jersey predicted “larger mainstream flooding for Tuesday through much of the week.”

A sign reads "Danger Ocean Closed" at the entrance to the beach, due to approaching Hurricane Sandy, on October 28, 2012 in Ocean City, New Jersey (Mark Wilson / Getty Images / AFP)
A man surfs as Hurrican Sandy approaches on October 28, 2012 in Long Beach, New York (Mike Stobe / Getty Images / AFP)

As of 8:00 am EST, Hurricane Sandy was located roughly 395 miles south of New York City and is moving over the Atlantic parallel to the coast at a clip of 14 mph. It is expected to make a sharp westerly turn towards the coast on Sunday night.

Sandy is expected to transform into “a large and intense post-tropical cyclone as it turns toward the northwest," Environment Canada said early Sunday morning.

"It is possible that this transition could intensify the storm slightly further prior to moving inland somewhere along the New Jersey coast late Monday night or Tuesday morning," the agency continued.

"As many as 23 million Canadians stand to be affected by this storm. That's 70% of the country," meteorologist Mark Robinson at The Weather Network warned on Saturday.

Sandy has already been felt on the campaign trail, as President Barack Obama was forced to cancel campaign stops in Virginia on Monday and Colorado on Tuesday, while Republican contender Mitt Romney canceled all his scheduled events in Virginia and moved to the crucial swing state of Ohio instead, where he is currently neck and neck with the president.

Obama said he was working with state and local officials to make sure they had ample resources to prepare for the potential disaster, which could leave millions of Americans in its wake.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is readying water, meals, blankets and other resources at support bases, the White house announced on Saturday.

A sign announces "Danger Rip Current" as Hurricane Sandy approaches on October 28, 2012 in Atlantic City, New Jersey (Mark Wilson / Getty Images / AFP)
A loader makes a sand barrier on the beach to help stop storm surge from approaching Hurricane Sandy on October 28, 2012 in Atlantic City, New Jersey (Mark Wilson / Getty Images / AFP)
Carpenters Frank Jiacopello (L) and Ron Skinner put plywood over the doors at the Bally's Casino on the boardwalk as Hurricane Sandy approaches on October 28, 2012 in Atlantic City, New Jersey (Mark Wilson / Getty Images / AFP)


Source: http://rt.com/usa/news/hurricane-sandy-us-storm-432/

Why Greg Smith left Goldman Sachs

Former VP's essay earned cheers, jeers


Christina Rexrode - Associated Press

Greg Smith wrote the essay that echoed across Wall Street like a thunderclap.

Smith was a vice president at Goldman Sachs until March. He announced his departure from the investment bank with a blistering essay inThe New York Times, accusing Goldman of routinely deceiving clients and relentlessly pursuing profit at the expense of morality.

And he struck a nerve. The essay, on the Op-Ed page of The Times, went viral in the financial world and beyond. Smith was praised for uncloaking corruption that was crying out to be addressed, and also derided as a disgruntled employee.

Goldman Sachs denies Smith’s allegations about deceiving clients. The bank says it took his concerns seriously, thoroughly investigated them, and found no evidence to support them.

Smith’s book, “Why I Left Goldman Sachs,” is being released Monday. It’s a window into a company that is notoriously tight-lipped, with stories about a swaggering place where interns arise for 5 a.m. meetings and business trips mean slapping down $150 for one person’s dinner.

What Smith hopes to do, he says, is educate people about how Wall Street works, and fuel a public conversation about what went wrong ethically, and how to fix it. The practices that caused the financial crisis, he says, were never really resolved; they’re just lying dormant.

Smith, 33, gave his first text interview to The Associated Press. Excerpts have been edited for clarity and length.

Illustration by Daniel Horowit - http://www.businessweek.com/



Question: Tell us about March 14, the day you left Goldman. You were working in the London office, and you say you had already cleaned out your desk and had been told the essay would go online at 7 a.m. your time.  

Answer: I get up at 6 a.m., and I type a very heartfelt email to nine people in Europe, including the CEO of Goldman Europe, and express in very personal terms why I’m leaving. I talk about exactly what I thought was wrong with the place, this obvious deceit of clients.

Within five minutes I get an email back from someone on the management committee in Europe who says, “I’m really surprised to hear this. I’m in London today. I’d love to meet with you.” I get two voice mails from two other people. And then at 6:57 or 6:58, the piece comes online. 

Question: What did the bank do? 

Answer: My work BlackBerry stayed on for about three more hours, and I started getting emails from clients who were saying, “We completely agree with you, we don’t trust Goldman Sachs, we do business with you guys with a ‘buyer beware’ attitude.” I started getting text messages from Goldman managing directors who were supportive as well. And Goldman reached out to me in formal fashion and said, “We’re sorry to hear you resigned; we’d like to air these concerns out.”  

Question: The bank denies everything you’ve charged about its ripping off clients.   

Answer: The thing that disappoints me most is that management is denying there’s a problem. Why not try to repair the trust instead? Clients are telling you they don’t trust you. There’s been an SEC fraud suit that was settled for half a billion dollars.

(The Securities and Exchange Commission accused the bank of selling investments to clients when the bank believed the investments were going to fail. Goldman paid $550 million. It remains the largest SEC penalty paid by a Wall Street firm.)   

I’m not some lone voice who thought there was a problem, a change from a client fiduciary model (doing what’s best for the client) to use-the-client-to-extract-wealth model. It’s a problem that many, many of my colleagues felt and that the public feels as well, borne out in SEC suits and congressional testimonies and clients saying publicly that they don’t trust us.

Question: Were you just disgruntled? Maybe you didn’t get the bonus or the promotion you wanted?

Answer:I was actually doing well in my career at Goldman. My bonus, I was told I outperformed my peers by 10 percent. I’m a competitive person, and my goal was to get promoted, and I was told by multiple partners that I was two years away from getting promoted. So it certainly was a goal of mine. And on the compensation side, I was earning a lot of money and had a very good living, so I was grateful for what I was earning.

Question: But you were at Goldman for almost 12 years, if you start with your summer internship in 2000. Weren’t there times when you should have stood up, should have said something about what you thought was morally wrong?

Answer:I actually made a conscious decision not to sell toxic deals to clients. I didn’t think it was the right thing to do, but I also saw the idea that if clients’ trust is being burned and they’re getting blown up, you’re not going to have a career for very long.

Now that does not mean I was not part of a system that was doing things that were unethical. In the book, I try to show some of the conflicts I noticed that gave me pause. For many years, I gave the firm the benefit of the doubt. It absolutely could have happened quicker. But one can always see things earlier and sooner.    

Question: OK, but isn’t the purpose of any capitalist company to make money? You certainly made a lot of money at Goldman.

Answer: Capitalism should be where everyone competes hard and makes money, in an environment where there is fair play and competitiveness. Right now the system is stacked against everyone else in favor of the banks.

It’s a little like a casino. A real casino is regulated and there are cameras everywhere and the casino cannot see your cards. With Wall Street today, the bank can see what every government, every pension fund, every hedge fund in the world is doing. They can effectively see everyone’s cards. Then, instead of facilitating the client’s will, they’re trying to get the client to facilitate their will.

Source:
http://www.floridatoday.com/viewart/20121028/BUSINESS/310280133/Why-Greg-Smith-left-Goldman-Sachs 


Poofness – The Drama of It All



Greetings and Salutations;


We’ve hit the end of the wait so, of course we had bankers throwing themselves on their swords from switzerland, to austria, even denver fed boys. Arrested and locked up. One of the problems these clowns have is, they just can’t grasp the technology of the matrix. It’s as alien as any et stuff, comparable to ‘sentient’ computers. Watch the movie again if you don’t get it. It’s more real than you imagine, that’s why these guys get busted so quick. The bad guys have also enlisted more sci fi stuff to try and get control of the white house…Haarp and that’s what’s charging up the east coast right now.

http://www.haarpstatus.com/status.html



These are desperate times for the bad guys so, they are subject to try anything, like a bunch of cornered rats. Now, what would you do if the sewer rats where trying to take over your house? In this case, they’ve been running it so, extermination is afoot. D con works or like my dad used to use, phosphorous spread on a piece of bread…keep some water close, it sucks the water right out of their body. And it leaves no stink of decaying flesh. They become ‘frisbees’, furry one’s. That’s why you don’t let children chew on match tops. In the art of war, you use all measures to win the war and preserve as much life as you can.

I’m sure you seen the blurbs out here about wall st bankers finally being taken down. Took a while but, the time has come and diarrhea is everywhere. Malox and pepto bismol is selling off the shelves. What’s with the boys jumping off of high places in london? Can’t handle not running stuff anymore. Can’t defeat. What happened to the ‘stiff upper lip’? Reminds me of Shaka Zulu, the movie. Get a little pride about yourselves. All is in order and there’s no reason for panic, just a changing of the guard. It’s Life and life is not a static state. That’s one thing you can bet on, no matter who’s in charge. That’s why all the freaking is going on, people losing their ever lovin’ minds, change is afoot and they are losing their sense of control, thus the abdominal issues.

Be prepared to be surprised and well off, steady as she goes. If you’re reading the internet to get a sense of things, I’ll just say a lot of smoke and mirrors are being fed to the talkers and ‘magic card tricks’ to keep folks off balance. Even Trump is about to have his sense of who he thinks he is, is about to be challenged in the money dept. I bet he doesn’t even see it coming, his ego is too big…goes along with his comb over hair. Freedom is coming shortly, now, be patient (as if you haven’t already) but, they’ve hit a deep drive center field. It’s a confirmed home run for all of humanity across the planet.

If you are looking for a consultation, email…. 2goforth@safe-mail.net

Love and Kisses,
Poofness