somedays you're the pigeon and somedays you're the statue

[ecojeanne]

this is an interesting article i came across....what do you think.................

World Narrowly Avoided "Financial Armageddon" Last Week

According to insider traders speaking to the New York Post, the global financial system was only 500 trades away from experiencing a global meltdown -- "Financial Armageddon" -- which was narrowly halted by a last-minute capital infusion by the Fed. In other words, the financial house of cards we've been warning readers about very nearly collapsed last week. Had the Fed been one hour later in its rescue, huge sectors of the global economy would have collapsed and the riots would already be under way.

But we've all been handed a temporary reprieve by the Fed. Through its emergency (and artificial) intervention in financial markets, we now have extra time before reality unravels our global system of multi-trillion-dollar debt. Remarkably, the Fed has just handed you more time to protect yourself and avoid a total loss of all investments and bank deposits.

They haven't altered the laws of economics, however. Bad debt must still be paid. It can't be swept under the rug, nor swept into a giant "debt rescue fund" and simply forgotten. Ultimately, it will all come back to you and me -- the taxpayers.


Socializing losses, privatizing gains
In bailing out these financial institutions and preventing a global financial meltdown, the U.S. government has done something truly bewildering: They've socialized the losses and privatized the gains from financial institutions.

In other words, they've allowed the wealthy elite criminals who created these problems to walk away with their pockets stuffed full of profits. All the losses, however, are being distributed among taxpayers, who are now burdened with a multi-generational debt bill that's thrown on top of the existing $9 trillion in debt the U.S. already owes to world investors.

How's that for smart economic planning? We the taxpayers get ALL the losses, NONE of the gains, and NONE of the ownership if the company is sold in the future. It's such a bad business decision to invest in this way that you'd have to be smoking crack, shooting up heroin or sitting in the White House to even propose such a system.

It also appears that our financial decision makers have snorted up one too many kilos of smack, because -- get this -- they are now proposing that U.S. taxpayers bail our FOREIGN banks, too!

Yes, friends, it's not just wealthy elite American bankers who deserve to walk home with all their gains while scattering their hundreds of billions of dollars in losses among American taxpayers; now our federal government is proposing that American taxpayers pay for all the losses of British banks, French banks, German banks, Japanese banks, Chinese banks and any other bank that suffered lending losses operating in the United States. See: [url]http://www.politico.com/news/stories/09[/url]...


It just keeps getting more bizarre by the day...
Before last week, I was already concerned about the financial future of America. During last week, I was astonished. Today I'm flabbergasted. I've never seen any government pull so many debt tricks out of their magician's hat and sell it to the People using such blatant misdirection.

As Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on ABC's This Week: "That's a distinction without a difference to the American people. ...Remember, this is about protecting the American people and protecting the taxpayers, and the American people don't care who owns the financial institution. If the financial institution in this country has problems, it'll have the same impact whether it's the U.S. or foreign."

That's funny, I actually DO care who owns the financial institutions. And I don't know about you, but I say that if the American people have to pay for the losses of these institutions, they should at least be issued common stock in those companies! Let's send home those financial crooks with their pockets empty, and then let's send all their stock shares out to the people actually footing the bill, shall we?

Oh, and by the way, just in case you thought it all wasn't crazy enough already, a U.K. newspaper ([url]http://www.independent.co.uk/news/busin[/url]...) is now reporting that the top people at the now-failed Lehman Brothers will share a $2.5 billion bonus that was set aside before the investment house filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

How do you like that? A few billion in bonuses for the people who created a mountain of bad debt for the taxpayers! Think about that the next time you're punching the clock at your nine-to-five.

Friends, we almost witnessed the financial demise of the global banking system. But thanks to timely intervention, what we witnessed instead was a global financial swindle so grand, it's one for the history books. That giant sucking sound you heard was a financial vacuum pulling dollars out of YOUR bank accounts, and depositing them directly into the accounts of the very people who caused this problem: Rich bankers, greedy derivatives traders and economically-illiterate politicians who think debt doesn't matter and money is free.

This was all orchestrated by the greatest money thieves of all time: The Federal Reserve and your own government. No con artist in human history has even approached the scope of the swindle that just happened right before our eyes, in full view of the press, the public and the politicians.

"Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws."
-- Mayer Amschel Rothschild


Where do things go from here?
Lucky for you! You now have the "privilege" of participating in paying back nearly $1 trillion to rich fat cats who conspired with the U.S. government to steal it from the People. And oh, by the way, if you're late on your house payment, they'll still repossess your house, by the way. Just because you're paying for all this debt doesn't mean you actually get to live in it. You still have to pay all your bills, even if the financial institutions don't.

With this historical, yet bizarre, financial move, the federal government has doubled its resolve to destroy the U.S. dollar and guarantee a gargantuan future implosion of unequalled magnitude. The more they artificially intervene and try to delay the inevitable, the longer the problem festers and grows. In time, it will devastate the global financial system, bringing it all tumbling down to reality.

Financial reality can be delayed by deliberate (and expensive) intervention for a while longer, but certainly not forever. The future of the U.S. dollar -- and perhaps even the U.S. government itself -- is no longer in doubt.

What can you do to protect your retirement accounts, savings accounts and dollar investments? I've got some resources to help you:

subscribe to the Daily Reckoning at [url]www.DailyReckoning.com[/url] - it's written by Bill Bonner, who is without question the brightest and best-informed financial writer living today.

subscribe to Stephen Leeb's The Complete Investor, which is my #1 top recommend newsletter for smart financial advice. Leeb is on top of the situation with oil, energy and the U.S. dollar, and he'll help you avoid the financial pitfalls now threatening us all.

[misombra]

it's true and pretty distressing.

[Lipp]

You can't expect anything less with Bush still around.

[boobaa]

I don't get this financical stuff. I see food everywhere. Its armageddon when people are out of food. Damn, set fire on those finance houses, I would actually like to live in the acopalypse, it would be interesting experience.