Interview with Max Keiser

Although I've often watched the shows hosted by the man Britain's Independent refers to as "the most widely watched news commentator on the planet," I've never been a guest...until now:

Comments

[Tom]

Thanks Michael for your insights and comments. i'm impressed that guys like you and Max (and a few others) are talking reality when so many others, including governments and central banks, are just going along with the fraud to make (fictitious) money regardless of the fact that it will lead to another financial crisis (probably worse than the last one - that we're still in)! Your observations on hedge funds like Black Rock are important too, because the poor renters that don't know better will come to harm when they want to divest themselves of their investments when the time is right. i don't see how the economy is going to improve with this kind of chicanery going on daily.

[Maestro Diablo]

Money For Nothing Exclusive Clip - "The Greenspan Put"

http://vimeo.com/53182212

[private fiat reporting for duty]

Welcome to the Nuthouse: How Private Financial Fiat Creates a Public Farce (guest post) (November 13, 2012)

Capitalism turned on its head

What happens to functioning capitalism when its core operating principles of value and money, risk, private property, profit, supply and demand, price discovery, transparency and accountability, productivity, and exchange of worth can selectively be erased on the whim of self-interested, politically connected players?

What happens when every standard of the game is turned upside-down by rule-rigging fat cats and then cravenly excused by international governments, prosecutors, and regulators? You get a leaky economic charade riding on a sea of debt bailed out with “expert” psycho-babble, high-level cheerleading, and government assurances that sound more each day like sick punch lines to bad jokes:

• “Deficits don’t matter.”
• “The recession has ended.”
• “The weak dollar is good for trade.”
• “Debt just needs to be ‘restructured.’”
• “We just need more government stimulus spending.”
• “Federal zero interest rate policies (ZIRP) help everyone.”
• “Unemployment is down.”

Enough of the minstrel show and its official nonsense.

Farce #1: “Market value” and “free markets” have become a joke.

In order for “value” to have financial value in the free market it, 1) must have real worth to someone else, and 2) must be freely chosen. The whole point of a market is that people choose according to their desires and needs, not yours. No one is entitled to a profit.

That’s what “market value” and “free market” mean. Other people, known as “the public,” interactively determine what your asset, good, or service is worth. You may think something is financially worth a lot. If others do not, it’s not worth squat.

If you can merely create private fiat by assigning your own value to your “assets” and products and then force others to buy them, there is no valid market value or free market. It is simply financial dictatorship.

http://www.oftwominds.com/blognov12/Zeus-private-fiat11-12.html

[roger]

6 years of GEAB summarized: Divided States of America Notes on the Decline of a Great Nation 13/11/2012
The United States is frittering away its role as a model for the rest of the world. The political system is plagued by an absurd level of hatred, the economy is stagnating and the infrastructure is falling into a miserable state of disrepair. On this election eve, many Americans are losing faith in their country's future...

Read
Der Spiegel

[tombstone mentality]

“There is no freedom without justice." Simon Wiesenthal

13 November 2012

Bart Chilton On Silver Manipulation - Gold and Silver Coiling For a Major Move - The Next Disaster

In discussing the government's lack of reaction in reforming the high frequency trading developments in the market, the CFTC's Bart Chilton remarks in the video below about the unfortunate tendency of regulators not to act until something unfortunate happens as being a:
"...tombstone mentality, when you wait for a disaster before you put something in place."
The CFTC is hampered and opposed at every step of the way by the financial powers and their exchanges, who unfortunately wield a powerful and well-funded lobbying effort that tends to lead the political element in Washington by the nose, or their wallets as you prefer.

I have come to believe that the US government will do nothing effective to reform the gold and silver markets and the equity exchanges until there is a MAJOR dislocation in the markets, and a virtual 'run on the exchange.'

Change will come after the US financial system is threatened by a major solvency or liquidity event.

Whether it comes from a failure to deliver in gold and silver markets that exposes them as a highly artificial and overleveraged house of cards, or another 'flash crash' that brings down a major exchange or trading house through counter party failures, I now believe that this is what it will take to bring meaningful reform to this highly unstable financial system.

Change will be not voluntary with these greedy, self-destructive jackals, especially after the moral hazard that was introduced by the unfortunate policy of no-strings bailouts from the last financial crisis. That was a policy error of the first order.

Reform will be accomplished, but only under the duress of the next financial disaster.

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/11/bart-chilton-on-silver-manipulation.html

[They found a buyer]

It’s Called “Grand” Bargain For Good Reason

Posted on November 15, 2012 by tradewithdave| Leave a comment
You get one GRAND per month (approximately $1,100) to retire on with your Social Security benefit. Only one question remains. What’s left over for the cat in this Fancy Feast? PETA will never stand for such treatment of household pets. There ought to be a law. Cats have rights too you know.

On herding cats – it’s no wonder the cats have been so much more difficult to herd over the cliff than the sheep. In the Homer Simpson Bowles empty bowl plan the government pits pensioners against cats on competition for their food supply. Cats unite! Don’t fall for the cliff. It’s a trap.

http://tradewithdave.com/?p=13369

Dave’s got a sneaking suspicion that there’s a connection between the Geithner plan to break the buck on money market funds and the privatization of Social Security.

If Erskine can manage to keep a president from being impeached for proclaiming just what ”I did not have” with that woman, then who better to address millions of retiring baby boomer’s proclamation of just exactly what they did have invested with Lady Liberty in their social security accounts pre-vaporization. It’s not Mr. Bowles fault that his bowling partner is on the official JP Morgan bowling team as a member of the board of directors. If Erskine actually makes SecTreas post Geithner, then someone who is probably a genuinely good guy will end up like the Lee Majors equivalent of the Unknown Stuntman in the 1980′s TV series The Fall Guy. Erskine explains Magic Moments as sung by The Drifters to the same CNN journalist who explained to the world just how much we made on those bailouts.

http://www.globelifeinsurance.com/article/Could-You-Live-On-Social-Security

http://maxkeiser.com/2012/11/15/its-called-grand-bargain-for-good-reason/

[Where has all the Risk gone?]

Where has all the Risk gone?

But first that other component of the banks’ plans, ‘RWA reductions’. They are always a worry. RWA is Risk Weighted Assets – and reducing them means fiddling about with the assumptions and variables in the bank’s own computer model until it spits out the desired answer, which in this case is to show how an asset (loan) is less risky than a regulator thought. Being less risky means less capital has to be held against it. Holding less capital means the bank can claim to have reduced its risk without either selling anything or having to rise any more money. You just have to have your computer find that you weren’t as risky as everyone thought you were. Like magic but with added ‘science’.

And this is has been a growth industry inside the banks for the last two years at least. Don’t take my word for it, from an FT article from Oct. 2011 called “Banks turn to financial alchemy…”

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive, said last week that he intended to “manage the hell out of RWA” to reach the higher levels.

But even this has its limits. According to the same article, the regulator told JPMorgan it was ‘managing’ a little too aggressively and must stop, when it did, the bank’s RWAs suddenly ballooned by $44 billion.

So what is a bank to do? Well the answer is as simple as it is worrying – just sell the risk. Get rid of it. You don’t have to sell any actual assets. You don’t have to raise capital. You don’t even have to argue with regulators about risk levels. You just sell the stuff to someone. Like having barrels of waste that are leaking and costing you a fortune. You just get a bloke to take it off your hands. And this option, which so far has been small, is now a growth industry. It is called Regulatory Capital Relief trading.

http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2012/11/where-has-all-the-risk-gone/

[Global Scandal]

New Twists In MF Global Scandal Focus On the CFTC

Mark Melin has been doing an excellent job of covering the MF Global scandal and cover up.

This is an excellent example of the credibility trap. That blatant theft occurred and no indictments and prosecutions have resulted seems so unbelievable that most tend to ignore it. You don't understand, it takes time, it takes time. Yes, to cover things up, to kick the can down the road, and hope that the people lose interest.

And yet this is just one instance of the distortions that are plaguing the global commodity and financial assets markets. The long delayed investigation into the silver market is most likely another.

The most urgent problem facing the US and the Western nations is not a 'fiscal cliff.' It is the pernicious corruption in the financial system that has captured the politicians, and distorted the public conversation through influence in the media and directing the opinions and buying the research of 'experts' through the power of big money.

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/11/new-twists-in-mf-global-scandal-focus.html

[William]

"Hyper-Inflation requires Hyper-Deflation"
"Hyper-Inflation is a political choice"

Hugh Hendry