Obama Fiddles, Congress Procrastinates and Rome Burns while Goldman, Morgan & the Rothschilds Reap Profits

It is early summer, one year since the oil price crisis nearly destroyed the world economy. Back then the Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC) disclosed a six month investigation of oil price manipulation was underway. A year later and the CFTC disclosed oil speculators controlled over 80% of all the oil derivatives contracts sold.

Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citibank and Bank of America control the world derivatives market for major commodities. JP Morgan also controls the world gold futures market, which true insiders long considered a subsidiary of the Rothschilds, both the gold market and Morgan. So once again the boys on Wall Street have decided to drive up the prices.

Who really controls these markets? Take oil futures as an example. Successful manipulation would require control of several elements of the complex financial manipulation. These elements include being the recognized market expert or maker, having the funds to speculate in the market, and having the will to gamble by buying into the market. Goldman Sachs has played all three roles.

The research center of Goldman Sachs, the energy analysts and darlings of the media used a series of predictions last year to drive up the price of oil futures, revising the price predictions continuously until Goldman said oil would reach $200 a barrel. In spite of negative market forces and no justification for oil price increases the price spiraled to $147 a barrel.

Funds managed by Goldman provided the fuel to spark market activity while a wholly owned subsidiary of Goldman, J. Aron & Company, was the vehicle to buy and resell the oil futures contracts. Add to this the fact Goldman, and Morgan are major owners of the very oil futures market in London that sets prices and one wonders what the hell our government is covering up by refusing to attack the financial giants.


We know special interest money can buy a lot of influence in our nation's capitol but Obama and Pelosi are creating a whole new standard for proving the buying of politicians can be a most profitable investment. Look what happened when Goldman was about to lose $30 billion in loans to AIG for derivative purchases made by Goldman for AIG. Congress and the President gave AIG the biggest bailout in history and Goldman recovered 100% of the money owed it from the federal bailout.

Now bondholders and stockholders in Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM, Chrysler and a host of other companies certainly didn't recover 100% of their money and most lost all of their money. Why did Goldman and Morgan recover 100%? Ask our new president who long ago was taken in by Goldman executives at secret meetings in 2006 and 2007, whose employees gave Obama more Wall Street money than any other candidate and whose former employees are strategically placed throughout the new administration.


Goldman Sachs is the only financial company whose stock nearly tripled in value since Obama got elected. Goldman stock reached a low of $53.31 a share last November, by the March crash it climbed to $73.95 a share and today is over $150.00 a share, an astounding 281% increase in value.

Not even JP Morgan of the big four derivative traders achieved the same although Morgan was far ahead of most banking and investment houses. Morgan went from $23.38 when Obama was elected to a low of $15.90 in the March madness to $35.00 today, an increase of 49%.

Bank of America was at $11.47 last November, $3.14 in March and today is $11.98, a 4% increase leaving it slightly above where they started. Citigroup Chase was $3.77 in November, $1.02 in March and $3.41 today, a loss of about 10%.

The Obama Factor (since his election in November):

Goldman Sachs - 281% increase in value
JP Morgan - 49% increase in value
Bank of America - 4% increase in value
Citigroup Chase - 10% loss in value


Dow Jones - 16% increase since election in November
Oil Prices - 138% increase since December low
Home Values - 21% loss of value from a year ago
Gold prices - 33% increase since Obama election

Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to master manipulating. There is the case of the 25-35 oil super tankers leased by oil producers and financial houses at a cost of about $63,000 a month each. These giant ships can carry up to 20 million barrels of oil per ship. If a ship was filled and parked in March the oil in that ship has already increased $700 million in value.

Then there is the potential for financial houses like Goldman and Morgan to use the information provided to them for due diligence by corporations seeking financing to call loans and options and virtually squeezing the distressed companies into bankruptcy. This gives them the opportunity to acquire the assets at fire sale prices like Morgan did with Bear Stearns and Goldman did with oil pipeline giant Semgroup.

Finally there is the potential conflict of interest I raised nearly three years ago of Goldman and Morgan being founders and major investors in ICE, the international company that now owns the London oil futures market.

One thing none of our illustrious politicians seem to be talking about is the long promised campaign reform to close all the loopholes in financing political campaigns. Nearly $1 million was poured into Obama's campaign by Goldman employees. Special interest money flowed at a record rate into all campaigns although some was disguised as individual contributions.


Obama shattered all records spending about $750 million while political parties and special interest groups spent a couple of hundred more million for his campaign, making him the first billion dollar candidate in our history. Apparently he raised so much money that the source of over $88.6 million cannot even be identified. To date and in spite of his promises, there has been no effort to introduce legislation to limit federal fund raising or to expose such massive unidentified contributions in future races.


Posted by Jim Putnam, Publisher at 1:52 PM
Labels: Barack Obama, economy, financial institutions, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, lobbyists, Nancy Pelosi, oil prices
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Goldman May Get $321 Million on Missed Trade Center Deadlines

By David M. Levitt

June 12 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the Wall Street firm that earned $2.3 billion last year, stands to get up to $321 million if the state and city fail to meet construction and security deadlines at the World Trade Center site.

Goldman Sachs is entitled to as much as $160 million if the state doesn’t fulfill obligations on eight projects, including a transit hub and the Trade Center memorial, by Dec. 31, according to the 2005 lease. The firm also can recover another $161 million in rent on the headquarters it’s building downtown under the terms of the lease.

The 16-acre Trade Center parcel remains a construction pit almost eight years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and is the focus of a financial dispute between developer Larry Silverstein and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey over development of three office buildings. Goldman Sachs would get the money in addition to an estimated $390 million state and city incentive package that the New York-based company received to build the $2.4 billion skyscraper adjacent to the site.

“While we were aggressive, I think everybody who was involved in the discussions with Goldman Sachs downtown at that point firmly believed that 2009 was a realistic time frame to achieve those deadlines,” John Cahill, who was former Governor George Pataki’s chief of staff and chief negotiator with Goldman Sachs, said in an interview.

Almost none of the projects named in the 392-page ground lease will be done by Dec. 31, according to projections by the Port Authority. The lease allows an extension to March 31, 2010. Goldman Sachs’s rent deferral will only be awarded if a security plan for the area isn’t in place by year-end, according to the lease.

Security Deadline

Andrea Raphael, a Goldman Sachs spokeswoman, and Marissa Shorenstein, a spokesman for Governor David Paterson, declined to comment.

The city is confident it will meet the lease’s security provisions by Dec. 31 and avoid the loss of $161 million, said David Lombino, a spokesman for the New York City Economic Development Corp.

Last year the city opened a Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center on Broadway to screen for potential terrorist threats. The center uses closed circuit street monitoring, license plate readers, and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear detectors.

“Goldman Sachs made a monumental investment in lower Manhattan at a critical juncture,” Lombino said. “Obviously everybody’s frustrated with the pace of progress. I don’t think it’s the city’s place to comment at this stage on projects that are not in our control.”

More Talks

The city is in discussions with Goldman Sachs over the terms of the lease, Lombino said. He declined to be more specific.

Goldman Sachs is entitled to receive up to $160 million of sales tax exemptions for qualified headquarters expenses until June 30, 2028, under the terms of its lease with the state- controlled Battery Park City Authority, said Leticia Remauro, an authority spokeswoman. The firm can claim the exemption on materials acquired for the “core and shell of the building and the fit-out of the building,” according to the lease. Those items include room dividers and flooring.

“The language in the lease is written in mandatory terms,” said Shelby Green, director of the real estate law program at Pace University School of Law in White Plains, New York, who examined the documents. “It says the tenants will have no further obligations to make any sales tax escrow payments after” Dec. 31, she said.

Deutsche Building Fire

The city and state can avoid paying Goldman Sachs by claiming “force majeure,” a legal concept that means unexpected events prevented them from meeting their obligations.

An August 2007 fire at the former Deutsche Bank AG building, south of the trade center site, may qualify as such an event, Green said.

The fire, which occurred amid demolition of the building, has slowed construction at Ground Zero, said George Sweeting, deputy director of city’s Independent Budget Office, who has analyzed the lease.

The Port Authority plans to open the Sept. 11 Memorial on the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. The memorial museum, which has to be constructed up to at least the sidewalk under the Goldman Sachs lease, is scheduled to be completed by 2013. The memorial plaza will be completed to grade by the second quarter of next year, the Port Authority said in an October 2008 report.

The Santiago Calatrava-designed transit hub is scheduled to be done by mid-2014. The authority oversees both projects as well as the construction of Greenwich Street and the vehicle security center. Those projects may be completed by the second half of 2012, according to the report.

New Tower

Goldman Sachs plans to move from its current headquarters at 85 Broad St. and other downtown locations into the new 43- story headquarters on West Street by next year.

The sales tax agreement was one of several the company negotiated to assure that the neighborhood would be safe and secure when it moves in.

Goldman Sachs withdrew from an agreement in April 2005 to build on the Battery Park City site because of uncertainty about the development of the area. City and state leaders worked to get Goldman Sachs to change its mind. The state agreed four months later to raise the company’s Liberty Bond entitlement to $1.65 billion from $1 billion, and included up to $115 million of city and state tax breaks and energy savings.

“Goldman got the largest retention package in the history of New York City, as far as I know,” said Jonathan Bowles, director of the Center of an Urban Future, a New York-based policy group funded by foundations and labor organizations. “I’m not ruling out the idea that maybe some incentive package was worth considering for Goldman Sachs, but it seemed like we gave away the store.”

To contact the reporter on this story: David M. Levitt in New York at dlevitt@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 12, 2009 00:01 EDT


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aPG_fQm0Go98

Kentucky Blue Bloods Take the Beach

Auditors question TVA shoreline deals with wealthy

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Wealthy and influential people seeking private lakeshore access to the Tennessee Valley Authority's 11,000 miles of Tennessee River system shoreline appeared to receive preferential treatment, according to an audit released Monday.

TVA Inspector General Richard Moore's 85-page report found no evidence that rules were deliberately broken, but said TVA managed the program "selectively and arbitrarily" often to the benefit of "the wealthy, the influential, or both."

Among those receiving approval for boat docks or waterfront access was U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., who until recently served on a House subcommittee with oversight of TVA, the nation's largest public utility.

The audit, pushed by publicity over Shuler's influence on a residential lake development near Knoxville in which he is an investor, focused on TVA's "maintain and grow" program under which it grants water-access rights to one piece of land in exchange for rights on another piece of land. The goal is to produce no net loss of public shoreline.

Moore worried the program, as it was run, may undermine TVA lakeshore management reforms adopted in 2006. The reforms for the first time set residential development limits on TVA lakes and rivers, ensuring the public could use at least 68 percent of its managed shoreline.

Others who were approved for private docks or water access were former TVA Chairman Bill Sansom of Knoxville and Charles Perry, the general manager of the Paris (Ky.) Board of Public Utilities — a TVA power distributor.

___

Treasury Department Set to Announce Compensation Guidelines for Banks

Peter Barnes, Senior Washington Correspondent

The Treasury Department is expected to announce as early as Wednesday new guidelines on compensation for bank executives, people in the financial industry said.
The guidelines were mandated by Congress as part of the economic stimulus package it approved earlier this year, after a public backlash over big pay packages doled out even at troubled firms that received government bailout money.

Under the legislation, the guidelines will cover pay and certain bonuses of top managers at banks that received funding from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, though two people familiar with the matter said the guidelines may cover more financial firms.

One financial industry person said Treasury could issue specific regulations for compensation or, at a minimum, release principles, leaving bank regulators to write their own rules. Most national banks are regulated by the Treasury itself, however, through its Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Weigh In: What do you think of Treasury issuing comepensation guidelines? Comment below with your thoughts

Despite the legislation, which called for tough new pay rules on firms, the law gives the Treasury leeway in setting them. As a result, sources said they expect the rules will be flexible to allow firms to still offer large compensation packages that attract and retain key executives and employees.

But to meet Congress's goal of creating pay plans that don't encourage short-term risk taking -- which many lawmakers blame in part for the recent financial crisis and, they believe, allowed some fired executives to walk away with multimillion-dollar severance packages -- the guidelines will generally require companies to tie pay and bonuses to a firm's long-term performance and risk-taking strategies.

See our Executive Compensation page for the latest videos and stories on the topic.

For example, a firm may grant stock options that vest over many years, rather than just in a few years.

The guidelines will also include "clawback" provisions that would repeal stock and option grants for an executive if a company's performance later falters.

A Treasury official is expected to outline the department's guidelines at a Congressional hearing scheduled for Thursday.

The Treasury is also expected to appoint a compensation "czar" to oversee implementation of the new guidelines, but the czar is likely to be named at a later date.

The Federal Reserve, which regulates bank holding companies -- the larger parents of banks -- is separately developing its own set of compensation rules. But the Fed's guidelines are not expected to be released for several months.

A Treasury spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.


http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/government/treasury-department-set-announce-compensation-guidelines-banks/

Fail, Fail, Fail: The War on Recession is a Flop

Fail, Fail, Fail, Fail
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.


How about a bit of reality? Not the ridiculous promises from Washington, the absurd talk of "green shoots" while unemployment soars and investment falls, the silly guarantees that GM has a bright future even as its stock price falls to less than the price of a Snickers bar, the nonsense about how if we spend more and inflate more, recovery will come tomorrow morning.

The war on recession is a flop. Fail, fail, fail.

The full-scale war on recession began in January 2008. Unemployment was climbing and house prices were falling, and George Bush, whose entire persona was the war mode since 2001, decided he wouldn't tolerate declining economic conditions.

That's when the Fed started pushing down interest rates to ridiculous lows and started gunning the money supply as much as possible. Bush put on his solemn/determined face and started talking to the American people about how he was going to destroy this recession monster in its crib.

Now, there are things politicians can do in the face of trends they don't like. If kids aren't learning to read, bureaucrats can cobble together carrots and sticks and gin up the scores a bit for a while. They can have their hirelings shoot consumers of illegal substances and bomb foreigners who don't love America. They can pass out goodies to friends and take them away from enemies. From time to time, they can experience moderate success in these actions.

But the economy? Now, here is a force too big even for the biggest government in the history of the world, which is the U.S. government. That's because economic trends are embedded in the structure of the material world and operate according to laws akin to gravity. They are social laws, if you will, features of the world that operate in all times and all places, and they are generated by the implacable fact of scarcity and the need for a system of production and allocation.

In other words, economic trends are finally beyond the control of the political class. This is the great lesson that economics has been teaching for some 700 years, generation after generation.

As Bastiat wrote, economic laws "act on the same principle whether we take the case of a numerous agglomeration of men or of only two individuals, or even of a single individual condemned by circumstances to live in a state of isolation."

They are unavoidable features of the world, ones which the political class is forever attempting to override. The economy had been on a false foundation for some years, and the housing sector in particular had become wildly overbuilt and rested on bad debt. What can politicians do about this? Absolutely nothing. Economic foundations are built by private investment. Government has no resources of its own to build a foundation. It can only rob people of their property and thereby divert resources from where they belong to where they ought not to be.

When prices of houses started falling, we began to see only the most conspicuous sign of the rot underneath it all. But the political class blamed the symptom instead of the disease, and started trying to prop up prices, which is probably the stupidest thing these birds could ever attempt. It is utterly futile to attempt to change the direction of prices. It is about as successful as attempting to replace the water in one ocean with another or rearranging the order of the planets. It is beyond their capacity.

Bastiat said of the attempts of his time: "Modern reformers! when I see you desiring to replace this admirable natural order by an arrangement of your own invention, there are two things (although they are in reality one and the same) that confound me – namely, your want of faith in Providence, and your faith in yourselves – your ignorance, and your presumption."

It's not just that the attempt to undo economic law doesn't work. It ends up mucking up the system even more, and prolonging the suffering. That is precisely what has happened. There can be no question that we would have been out of this recession by now had the politicians not intervened. But an election was coming and Bush tried to rig the system. Not only that, but after seven years of ridiculous marauding around like King of the Universe, he was flush with power and arrogance.


$29 $25

Bush attempted to reverse the economic river by waging a war on recession, about which I was writing back in March 2008: "All this nonsense about digging ourselves out of recession through government intervention began with the New Deal. But here is the amazing fact: not once has this strategy worked."

By the fall and winter, it became clear that the War on Recession was not working and the economy was sinking further. Rather than give up, Bush pushed so hard that he managed to throw us all in the arms of a socialist who knows nothing about economics and has surrounded himself with big shots who affirm him in his ignorance – people like Paul Krugman, who are wedded to antique mythologies about the glories of government power.

And so we live through it again. We see the fools trying this and that with our lives and liberty, promising glorious results around the corner. Well, by now, we've been around the corner, the next one and the next one, and it gets worse with each turn. These people are driving us right into the abyss, and let's be clear that this is not the fault of private investors or savers or foreigners or stock jobbers. It is the fault of the managers of this recession: the government, whoever is or has been in charge, and the Fed that operates on government authority.

They are strangling free enterprise just as surely as a mugger chokes his victim, and with it the capacity for the American worker and producer to do the hard work of restoring prosperity.

We are a generation that proudly shows off its accomplishments in all areas of science, and we preen about our love of facts and our detachment from mythology. Yet our culture is imbued with the most ridiculous faith in government to turn stones into bread, to accomplish miracles with a printing press before our very eyes. This is the age of folly.


http://lewrockwell.com/rockwell/fail-fail-fail.1.2.1.html

"Americans Giving Gold Project"

Americans!

If you have heard the news about Germany demanding we pay our debt to them immediatey and pay it in Gold (Click on title above to see article) surely you must know that America will soon be in desperate need of all the gold it can get its hands on.

It is time for every citizen to make the second ultimate sacrifice for their country and give to it our precious gold - do not send it to those jerks on TV! They are just robbers taking advantage of the economic crisis to steal your gold away. They pay only a fraction of what your gold is worth on the "fair market" today (brother, if that aint a misnomer, what is?!) Anyways, where wuz i? Oh yeah.

Dont be taken advantage of by these unscrupulous greedy usurers. Rather to suffer the personal loss and do "the patriotic thing." Give to your government instead.

Americans have always pulled togther in troubled times, and now is not the time to quit. Now is the time for all good men (& women & children also included) to come to the aid of their country. We can all do that now by giving our gold to the government and giving until it hurts. Got a family heirloom, a grandmothers watch or wedding ring? Give it. Got an old or an extra Rollex of your ex-husbands layng around? Give it. Wealthy and porr alike, all should give generously. No one is immune from this crisis, not even the filthy rich. The working class have lost their homes and jobs. The rich are losing profits. We all suffer together in these tough economic times.

Americans have known for a long long time that a little suffering is good for the soul. We have learned from living through difficult times in the past that "want" and economic suffering makes us stronger and more able to survive, and all the more determined to endure.

So give til it hurts to our government. Send them all of your gold. It is The New Patriotic Thing to Do. By giving in this way to our government, it will help us survive as a Nation through these tough economic times. If we do this for our government, we can rest assured that when it is all over, our government will give back to us in the end,"....and you know it will. Without any vaseline..

God Bless America

Thank you American Patriots for Giving Your Gold to Our County!

To make your personal contribution to the war against the economic crisis,
send all your gold to:

Americans Giving Gold Project
c.o.
Secretary of the U.S. Treasury
1600 Pennsylvania Av.
Washington, DC
IOUSA

Germany Demands Gold from US

fROM the wings of "fREEDOMS pHOENIX";
June 5, 2009

Road to Roota XIV By Bix Weir

I was watching the NBC special called "Inside the White House" last night and was struck by a meeting with Larry Summers and the President.



It was touted as an "all access" day in the life of the President but at 7:15 minutes into Part 1 Larry Summers and a man who I believe is Austan Goolsbee come into the Oval Office for a call with "the Germans". Summers is obviously on edge and shuts down the cameras when he begins to discuss the problem.

Summers: "Life has changed..ahh..since the briefing…ahh”

Obama: "For the better or for the worse?"

Goolsbee: "Net-net for the better…wouldn’t you say Larry?" (Goolsbee speaks loudly and unconvincingly for the cameras.)

Summers: “(nervous laugh)..there’s elements of both. The Germans...actually we should stop (the cameras) here."

The cameras and staff are quickly “ushered out” of the Oval Office.

For those who don’t know, Austan Goolsbee is on the Presidents Council of Economic Advisers and is touted as Larry Summers’ “Economic Internet Guru”. In that capacity there is no doubt in my mind that he monitors all the gold internet sites as well as being in charge of coordinating all the “gold disinformation” articles. Like Summers, Goolsbee believes in a kind of “Psychological Tendencies Economic Model” touting that it is perception that steers the worlds economic markets not necessarily fact. Having fought the gold manipulation battles for so long we all know perception can be managed and manipulated as I discussed in my articles “Operation Confidence Con” and “Geithner Plan=Sustained Manipulation”.

On May 28th, the night before the White House taping, Jim Willie of Goldenjackass.com posted an article called “The Hitman Cometh” where he claimed the Germans are trying to withdraw all their physical gold from US control and several “hit men” have been hired to take down the COMEX and the LME:

"The Germans have demanded that gold bullion held in US custodial accounts be returned to their owners, with physical gold shipped back to Germany ."

I'll bet my last gold Kruggie that the Oval Office phone call was a desperate plea to buy more time before the Germans destroy the physical gold manipulation scheme.

This together with rumblings of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Dubai scrambling to get their hands on physical gold has put the Obama Manipulation Team in major gold panic mode.

It's amazing to see these few people in the White House scrambling to prolong a failed policy of trying to manipulate the gold markets of the world.

What a sad state we find ourselves in.

---------------
Americans!

As you have learned if you have read the article above, America will soon be needing our gold. It is time for every citizen to make the second ultimate sacrifice for their country and give to it our precious gold - dont send it to those jerks on TV! They are just robbers taking advantage of the economic crisis to steal your gold away. They pay only a fraction of what your gold is worth on the "fair market" today (brother, if that aint a misnomer!) Anyways, where wuz i? Oh yeah.

Dont be taken advantage of by these unscrupulous greedy usurers. Rather to suffer the personal losses and do "the patriotic thing." Give to your government instead.

Americans have always pulled togther in troubled times, and now is not the time to quit. Now is the time for all good men (& women & children also included) to come to the aid of their country. We can all do that by giving and giving until it hurts. Americans have always known that a little suffering is good for the soul. We have learned that iving through difficult times makes us stronger and all the more determined to endure.

Give til it hurts to our government. Send them your gold. It is only the right thing to do. If we give to our country to help see it through these tough economic times, it will take care of us "in the end." ...You know it will.

God Bless America

Thank you American Patriots!

To make your contribution to the war against the economic crisis,
send your gold to:

Americans Giving Gold Project
c.o.
Secretary of the U.S. Treasury
1600 Pennsylvania Av.
Washington, DC
IOUSA


Article; http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30892505/#31073805