9 Shocking Examples Of Black Friday Violence – Is This A Foretaste Of The Economic Riots We Can Expect When The Financial System Collapses?

It seems with each passing year the madness on Black Friday gets even worse.  This year, there were reports of fights and rioting from coast to coast.  It was estimated that over 180 million U.S. shoppers headed for the stores on Friday, and whenever you get that many people together there are going to be problems.  But just how crazed ordinary Americans are getting over saving a little bit of money is deeply disturbing when you really start thinking about it.  If people will go this wild just to save 40 percent on a television set, then what in the world are they going to do when they have been without food for a couple of days?  If Americans will act like psychotic animals just to save 50 bucks, then what in the world will they do when they have lost everything and are desperate to survive?

All of us had better hope and pray that an economic collapse does not happen any time soon, because it is becoming increasingly apparent that the American people are not morally equipped to be able to handle one.  Greed and selfishness have become so rampant in America that large segments of the population have totally forgotten how to be any other way.

If the United States ever experiences a really, really bad economic downturn, this nation could very quickly start looking like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina from coast to coast.  Most Americans would simply not know how to handle it.

The following are 9 shocking examples of Black Friday violence that should make all of us wonder what is happening to America....

#1 At a Target store in Buffalo, New York the crowds waiting impatiently outside suddenly became a chaotic mob once the doors opened at 4 AM on Friday morning.
One man that was lying on the ground remembers thinking "I don't want to die here" while he was being trampled by crazed shoppers....

#2 Crowds were becoming so violent at a Wal-Mart in Sacramento, California that the police actually evacuated the store early Friday morning.
#3 Three women from West Palm Beach, Florida said that $1,000 in presents that they had just purchased at Best Buy were stolen from their vehicle on Friday morning within minutes of being purchased.
#4 One U.S. Marine reservist that was collecting toys for children was stabbed with a knife when he attempted to stop a shoplifter in eastern Georgia on Friday.
#5 Blogger Lynne Elder-Blau has posted about overhearing police officers describe a huge brawl that erupted this year at one well-known store on Black Friday....

Well, the girls and I were in a popular convenience store in Garden City last night while a store employee and a Garden City Police Department Officer were visiting. They were conversing about a large group of customers who got into a knock-down brawl at a nationally-known variety store in Garden City yesterday morning. Several police officers were brought in to break up the ball of adults who were pulling and tugging at products and actually punching other customers in their faces and stomach areas! We're not just talking about a few people who were involved in this violent non-sense. The officer said that there was a large amount of people involved in this particular altercation. Ridiculous!!!

#6 A 21-year-old woman from Middleton, Wisconsin was arrested when she threatened to shoot other shoppers while waiting to get into a Toys R Us store for Black Friday.  The other shoppers had objected when she attempted to move to the front of the line.
#7 The following is video of customers literally tearing apart a store display at a Wal-Mart in Douglasville, Georgia as they pushed and shoved each other in an attempt to grab the best deals....
#8 The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department actually "locked down" a section of a Cerritos, California shopping mall after a wild fight broke out in the food court.  There were even reports that some people were  flinging chairs at other customers.
#9 At one Wal-Mart in Texas, a near-riot broke out right in the middle of the store as a huge crowd of customers pushed and shoved each other to get a handful of Black Friday deals that were being wheeled out to the floor....

If you want to see even more videos of Black Friday craziness, check out this and this.

Remember, the products that these Americans are fighting over are not free.  This is how crazy people are willing to go just to get a deep discount on an item.

So what is going to happen someday when people are desperate for food or shelter?
If this is how people act when the sun is shining, how are they going to behave once a really bad storm arrives?

In America today, fewer and fewer people are treating others the way that they would like to be treated themselves.

Instead of showing others kindness and respect, in 2010 most Americans would seemingly rather trample anyone who is in the way of getting what they want.

So what do you think?  Are Americans becoming more greedy and more selfish or are they basically "good" and "decent" people most of the time?  Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion....

Silver Prices Surging on Near-Record Demand

The price of silver is surging and so is business at many coin dealers across the country. At Plaza Collectibles, an appraisals shop in Manhattan, owner Lee Rosenbloom says he’s seeing a tremendous demand both in new and older silver coins. “This is probably the strongest demand there’s been in the last 25 years,” he says. 

Silver prices have soared 60 percent in 2010, driven in large part by a strong investment demand, particularly strong buying of exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, backed by the physical metal.  

“ETF demand has been an important driver of prices because investors have prepositioned themselves for this central bank buying by emerging markets” says Francisco Blanch, Head of Global Commodity Research at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch [BAC  11.31  ---  UNCH  (0)   ]. 

Other leading gold analysts agree this buying frenzy will continue. Philip Klapwijk, executive chairman of the consulting firm GFMS, says he expects to see $4 billion on a net basis flurrying into silver and gold investment this year. Holdings in the largest silver exchange-traded fund, iShares Silver Trust, are near a record high, trading up 62 percent year to date (as of closing on November 23). 

According to Blanch, the increase in silver prices has also been spurred by a rise in industrial demand, which is up 18 percent year over year. A hike in demand for silver from solar panels and pent up demand from the industrial sector is helping to push up prices. He expects to see further growth next year but at a slower pace.

For many investors, silver is a more affordable alternative to gold. Gold coins are traded based on a spot price that is currently almost $1,400 an ounce. 

Silver coins are based on futures prices that are under $30 an ounce. “Silver coins are a relatively cheap gift and way for people to accumulate wealth,” says Blanch.  

The strong interest in silver has created a record month for sales of the 2010 Silver American Eagle bullion coin, according to the U.S. Mint.  Silver coin sales are up 22 percent compared to this period last year and 30 percent since 2007.

Yet, analysts say investors who want to get in on the action and are deciding between holding the actual silver metal or an ETF should weigh their options carefully, since coins ultimatley may cost a higher premium. 

But if you're a collector, now is the time to buy, says Scott Travers, author of"The Coin Collectors Survival Manual." He says, "it's probably a better opportunity now than we've ever seen historically for collectors of silver coins.”  

Source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/40415761

Why Poverty Spreads Across America

Pockets of poverty, like the sores of some malignant disease, are spreading across America, as its states and cities go broke and bankrupt.

"Camden, New Jersey, stands as a warning of what huge pockets of America could turn into," The Nation magazine reports in its Nov. 22nd issue. In fact, it has already happened, it is happening all over, and there is no signal on the horizon that poverty and blight will not continue to spread. It is not that Americans are lazy and shiftless; rather, they are reeling from betrayal---for they have been betrayed both by their employers, who have shown not an ounce of loyalty to their work forces, and they have been betrayed by their Federal government, which has lied the nation into costly criminal wars.

"Camden is the poster child of postindustrial decay," writes Chris Hedges, the former foreign correspondent for The New York Times. "It stands as a warning of what huge pockets of the United States could turn into as we cement into place a permanent underclass of the unemployed, slash state and federal services in a desperate bid to cut massive deficits, watch cities and states go bankrupt and struggle to adjust to a stark neofeudalism in which the working and middle classes are decimated." In an article titled "City of Ruins," Hedges reports that 70 percent of Camden's high school students drop out, that the city's unemployment rate is probably 30 to 40 percent, and that its dangerous streets "are filled with the unemployed."

What is thriving in Camden is prostitution, the drug trade and crime. "There are perhaps a hundred open-air drug markets, most run by gangs like the Bloods, the Latin Kings, Los Nietos and MS-13," Hedges writes. "Knots of young men in black leather jackets and baggy sweatshirts sell weed and crack to clients, many of whom drive in from the suburbs. The drug trade is one of the city's few thriving businesses...Camden is awash in guns..." (and) in 2009 had the highest crime rate in the nation with 2,333 violent crimes per 1,000 population vs. a national average of just 455, Wikipedia reported.

Camden is no isolated example. More than half of its residents, 52 percent, live in poverty. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2006 ranked it fourth highest among cities with under 250,00 residents as 35.6 percent of its population lived in poverty. It followed Brownsville, Tex., 40.6%; and College Station, Tex., 37.3%. Other poverty-struck cities were Edinburg, Tex., 35.4%; Bloomington,Ind., 34.7%; Flint, Mich., 34.1%; Kalamazoo, Mich., 33.4; Florence-Graham, Ca. (in Los Angeles County), 33.0%; Gary, Ind., 32.8%; and Muncie, Ind., 32.6%

The poverty rates of major cities show similar patterns of despair. The ten having the worst poverty rates are Detroit, 32.5%; Buffalo, 29.9%; Cincinnati, 27.8%; Cleveland, 27.0%; Miami, 26.9%; St. Louis, 26.8%; El Paso, 26.4%; Milwaukee, 26.2%; Philadelphia, 25.1%; and Newark, 24.2%.

High poverty rates, of course, stem largely from persistent, structural unemployment. As the Washington Post reported last January 15th, "Blacks, Hispanics and men have suffered the most mainly because they have been disproportionately employed in sectors hardest hit in the recession -- manufacturing and construction. For instance, the unemployment rate for blacks is expected to reach 27 percent in Michigan, which has been shedding auto industry jobs. Other states with jobless rates above 20 percent for blacks are Alabama, Illinois, Ohio and South Carolina."

Where the New Deal's Work Projects Administration(WPA) alone in the Great Depression created 8-million new jobs, nothing of that scope exists today. The same Post article notes, "The Congressional Black Caucus wants the government to create training programs and jobs in low-income communities with the highest unemployment rates." "It's like triage in an emergency room -- you take care of people who need the most help first and you help the others later," said Kai Filion, research analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. Economic losses, the analyst said, could result in a 50 percent poverty rate for black children, up from 34 percent in 2008. While statistics defining the plight of African-Americans make for grim reading, it should be remembered that the majority of America's unemployed are Caucasian and that the real unemployment figure according to some authorities is 20 percent, not the 10 percent reported by Washington.

It is hardly accidental that cities with high unemployment rates also have high crime rates. In terms of violent crime, as FBI statistics for calendar year 2009 show, Detroit, noted above to have the highest poverty rate, also has the most violent crime per 1,000 citizens, with 19.67 cases. Other major cities are (2) Memphis, 18.06; (3)Oakland, 16.79; (4) Baltimore, 15.13; (5) Buffalo, 14.59; (6) Cleveland, 13.95; (7)Kansas City, 13.00; (8) Stockton, 12.67; (9) Washington, D.C., 12.65; and (10), Philadelphia, 12.38. As Sir Thomas More wrote in his classic Utopia, published in 1516: "You allow these people to be brought up in the worst possible way, and systematically corrupted from their earliest years. Finally, when they grow up and commit the crimes that they were obviously destined to commit, ever since they were children, you start punishing them. In other words, you create thieves, and then punish them for stealing," Could he have better explained America's 2.3-million prison population today?

In Camden, there isn't a single inner city supermarket that can put ghetto kids to work at an honest job after school and weekends but reporter Hedges says there are plenty of drug markets. Often, the only job a teenager can land is one on the staff of the local drug lord. The other employment choice for ghettoized youth is the military. While Pentagon recruiters strongly deny they target low-income neighborhoods, a careful reading of the home towns of those reported killed in the Middle East may well cast doubt upon this contention. Camden once was a significant manufacturing hub but those days are long gone. In many communities, major employers abandoned their workers with no compunction (and often without deserved pensions), automating employees out of their jobs. Other employers, as in Detroit, simply relocated their plants overseas entirely. The idea of a prosperous work force based on a vibrant local economy to underpin "the American Dream" got lost in the race to maximize corporate profits. In Trenton, N.J., the sign on a bridge across the Delaware River, "Trenton Makes, The World Takes," is the boast of a bygone era. Reduced employment means reduced purchasing power and reduced tax take for local governments. This year, according to The Christian Science Monitor, California faces a $20 billion budget gap. It has already resorted to "mandatory furloughs for all state workers, teacher layoffs, (and reduced) aid to the university system 20 percent, (and made) massive cuts to education, corrections, and social services." This grim picture is mirrored everywhere. The rising unemployment in New York City's workforce, for example, has worsened its budget crisis, Financial Times reported Nov. 22nd.

At the same time, U.S. corporations continue their race to the bottom for cheap labor. Cable News Network's "Exporting America" broadcast listed hundreds of "U.S. companies either sending American jobs overseas or choosing to employ cheap overseas labor instead of American workers." A very small fraction of the companies on CNN's list are reprinted in the following three paragraphs to convey some idea of the enormity of the indifference of employers for their workers:

Aetna, AIG, Alamo Rent a Car, Alcoa, Allstate, Anheuser-Bush, AT&T, Bank of America, Bechtel, BellSouth, Best Buy, Borden Chemical, Boeing, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Caterpillar, ChevronTexaco, Citigrouup, Continental airlines, Delta Air Lines, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Eastman Kodak, Eli Lilly, ExxonMobil, Fedders Corp., Fluor, Ford Motor, General Electric, General Motors, and Goldman Sachs.

Also, Halliburton, Hershey, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, IBM, Illinois Tool Works, ITT Industries, John Deere, Johns Manville, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg, Kerr-McGhee Chemicals, Kimberly-Clark, Kraft Foods, Lear Corp., Levi Strauss, Lockheed Martin, Mattel, Maytag, Merrill Lynch, MetLife, Microsoft, Monsanto, Motorola, Nabisco, Northrop Grumman, Northwest Airlines, Office Depot, Orbitz, Oracle, Otis Elevator, Owens Corning, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Polaroid, Pratt & Whitney, Procter & Gamble, and Prudential Insurance.

Also, Quaker Oats, Radio Shack, Rayovac, Rohm & Haas, Safeway, Sara Lee, Seco Manufacturing, Square D, State Farm Insurance, Target, Tenneco Automotive, Texas Instruments, Time Warner, Tropical Sportswear, TRW Automotive, Tupperware, Tyco Electronics, Union Pacific, UNISYS, United Plastics Group, United Technologies, Verizon, Wachovia Bank, Weyerhaeuser, Xerox, and Zenith.

Why hasn't the Obama administration taken swift and forceful action to relieve the situation, perhaps even to launch the Domestic Marshall Plan for the cities the Urban League's Whitney Young called for as far back as 1962? Perhaps it's because like President Bush before him Mr. Obama is more focused on waging war. Here, again, Sir Thomas More speaks to us: "To start with, most kings are more interested in the science of war...than in useful peacetime techniques. They're far more anxious, by hook or by crook, to acquire new kingdoms than to govern their existing ones properly."

This, of course, applies perfectly to America's kings, for not only have our presidents assumed the powers and prerogatives of kings but they have, in fact, acted no better than medieval kings, waging wars with armies raised from the poorest strata of society and spending lavishly to conquer while ignoring their own citizenry's cries for bread and opportunity. Put another way, the Pentagon is spending more money for war (52 cents of every tax dollar) than all 50 states combined spend for all purposes to improve the lot of 300 million Americans. In their book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War"(W.W. Norton), Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes write, "A $3 trillion figure for the total cost strikes us as judicious, and probably errs on the low side. Needless to say, this number represents the cost only to the United States. It does not reflect the enormous cost to the rest of the world, or to Iraq." (Stiglitz is former chief economist at the World Bank and a Nobel Prize laureate and Bilmes is a public policy authority at Harvard.) Given the wars' colossal and criminal waste of human life and treasure, it is little wonder states and cities the nation over are starved for income, record numbers of homes are being foreclosed, and soup kitchens are reporting a rising influx of patrons, many of them bewildered former members of the shrinking middle class.

This situation has pertained in America now for several generations. Before Iraq and Afghanistan there was the Viet Nam aggression. Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern attempted to make the connection between war abroad and hard times at home when he said, "For every bomb that falls in Viet Nam a house somewhere in America collapses from neglect." McGovern was defeated by incumbent Richard Nixon in a landslide. It is apparent from the recent elections that Americans today, just as in the national election of 1972, do not grasp the reality of the terminal disease that is war. They do not recognize how it is driving them relentlessly into poverty while sacrificing their children like some primitive culture on the altar of the military-industrial complex to ensure a profitable harvest from their blood.

Source: http://uruknet.com/?p=m72297&hd=&size=1&l=e

Guess Who's Paying For The Greece Bailout? That's Right -- YOU

The bailout outrages never stop. 

Of the 110-billion Euro Greece bailout, 30-billion (approx $40 billion) will be paid for by the IMF.

The US supplies almost 20% of the IMF's funding (per quotas).  So that means US taxpayers are providing ~$8 billion of the $145 billion going to kick the Greek can down the road.

That's the first outrage.  (Why is this our problem?)

The second outrage is that, as in some of the US bailouts, our bailout money is JUNIOR to Greece's existing debt. That means that, over the next couple of years, the idiot banks that loaned bankrupt Greece money will get their money back. And then, when Greece runs out of cash again, we'll be left holding the bag (along with Germany and the rest of the folks who bailed Greece out).

In any normal financing, the lender of last resort would be SENIOR to all existing debt. It would get its money back first, before the other idiots got a penny.

In the Greece bailout, however, the new money we're putting in will be going right out the door to pay off existing lenders who would have lost their shirts.  And if the Greece austerity measures don't work and there's nothing left for us?  Tough.

(Why don't the existing creditors have to lose a penny?  Same reason the AIG creditors didn't lose a penny.  Because it would apparently be too traumatic to ask them to do that.  The idea that the existing creditors might have to lose money was apparently so unthinkable that it was never even on the table).

It's nice of us to bail out Greece, isn't it?  Can't we at least get the Parthenon as collateral or something?

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-guess-whos-paying-for-that-greece-bailout-thats-right-you-2010-5#ixzz16m4wmGIa

The Big Lie: Governments Have to Save the Big Banks

Many of the world's top economists and financial experts have said that the too big to fail banks are destroying the world economy, that they must be broken up in order to restore stability, and that small banks can easily pick up the slack and make all of the loans which are needed needs. See this, this and this.
And yet many people still believe the myth that the giant banks have to be saved at all costs.
How could that be?
Well, as Adolph Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf:

All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true in itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

Similarly, Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, wrote:

That is of course rather painful for those involved. One should not as a rule reveal one's secrets, since one does not know if and when one may need them again. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.

Science has now helped to explain why the big lie is effective.
As I've previously pointed out in another context:

Psychologists and sociologists show us that people will rationalize what their leaders are doing, even when it makes no sense ....

Sociologists from four major research institutions investigated why so many Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, years after it became obvious that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

The researchers found, as described in an article in the journal Sociological Inquiry (and re-printed by Newsweek):

• Many Americans felt an urgent need to seek justification for a war already in progress

• Rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe.

• "For the most part people completely ignore contrary information."

• "The study demonstrates voters' ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information"

• People get deeply attached to their beliefs, and form emotional attachments that get wrapped up in their personal identity and sense of morality, irrespective of the facts of the matter.

• "We refer to this as 'inferred justification, because for these voters, the sheer fact that we were engaged in war led to a post-hoc search for a justification for that war.

• "People were basically making up justifications for the fact that we were at war"

• "They wanted to believe in the link [between 9/11 and Iraq] because it helped them make sense of a current reality. So voters' ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information, whether we think that is good or bad for democratic practice, does at least demonstrate an impressive form of creativity.

An article yesterday in Alternet discussing the Sociological Inquiry article helps us to understand that the key to people's active participation in searching for excuses for actions by the big boys is fear:

Subjects were presented during one-on-one interviews with a newspaper clip of this Bush quote: "This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al-Qaeda." The Sept. 11 Commission, too, found no such link, the subjects were told.
"Well, I bet they say that the commission didn't have any proof of it," one subject responded, "but I guess we still can have our opinions and feel that way even though they say that."
Reasoned another: "Saddam, I can't judge if he did what he's being accused of, but if Bush thinks he did it, then he did it."
Others declined to engage the information at all. Most curious to the researchers were the respondents who reasoned that Saddam must have been connected to Sept. 11, because why else would the Bush Administration have gone to war in Iraq?
The desire to believe this was more powerful, according to the researchers, than any active campaign to plant the idea.
Such a campaign did exist in the run-up to the war...
He won't credit [politicians spouting misinformation] alone for the phenomenon, though.
"That kind of puts the idea out there, but what people then do with the idea ... " he said. "Our argument is that people aren't just empty vessels. You don't just sort of open up their brains and dump false information in and they regurgitate it. They're actually active processing cognitive agents"...
The alternate explanation raises queasy questions for the rest of society.
"I think we'd all like to believe that when people come across disconfirming evidence, what they tend to do is to update their opinions," said Andrew Perrin, an associate professor at UNC and another author of the study...
"The implications for how democracy works are quite profound, there's no question in my mind about that," Perrin said. "What it means is that we have to think about the emotional states in which citizens find themselves that then lead them to reason and deliberate in particular ways."
Evidence suggests people are more likely to pay attention to facts within certain emotional states and social situations. Some may never change their minds. For others, policy-makers could better identify those states, for example minimizing the fear that often clouds a person's ability to assess facts ...

The Alternet article links to a must-read interview with psychology professor Sheldon Solomon, who explains:

A large body of evidence shows that momentarily [raising fear of death], typically by asking people to think about themselves dying, intensifies people's strivings to protect and bolster aspects of their worldviews, and to bolster their self-esteem. The most common finding is that [fear of death] increases positive reactions to those who share cherished aspects of one's cultural worldview, and negative reactions toward those who violate cherished cultural values or are merely different.

I would arguably that the fact that the governments of the world have given trillions to the giant banks has invoked the same mental process - and susceptibility to propaganda - as the war in Iraq.

Specifically, many people assume that because the government has launched a war to prop up the giant banks, it must have a good reason for doing so.

Why else would trillions in taxpayer dollars be thrown at the giant banks? Why else would the government say that saving the big boys is vital?

And I would argue that the fear of another Great Depression (an economic death, if you will) is analogous to the fear of death triggered in many Americans by 9/11.

This creates a regression towards old-fashioned thinking about such things as banks and the financial system, even though the giant banks actually do very little traditional banking these days.

In other words, the big lie appears to be as effective in financial as in military warfare.

Source: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/11/big-lie-governments-have-to-save-big.html

‘Bank Run 2010′ aims to end ‘criminal, corrupt’ financial system

In what may be the most subversive reaction yet to global outrage over the financial crisis, a European soccer star has inspired an international "bank run" protest aiming to collapse the global financial system.

The organizers of "Bank Run 2010" have chosen December 7 as the day when protesters are meant to withdraw their money from the banks, which they hope will cause a run on the banks that could collapse financial institutions.

But critics of the move say it's futile: If the protest is successful, they say, it will only result in another taxpayer bailout of the banks.

But that hasn't stopped the protest's organizers from dreaming of a bloodless revolution that puts to an end the Western financial system that many say has been transformed into a "casino" benefiting only the financial institutions themselves.

"We're not anarchists, nor linked to any political party or trade union," Yann Safarti, a French actor and one of the founders of the Bank Run 2010 protest, told the Guardian. "We're not even an organization. We just thought this was another way of protesting."

"We do not seek to harm anyone in particular," the Bank Run 2010 Web site states. "It is this corrupt, criminal and deadly system that we are opposing to the best of our ability and determination, and within the bounds of the law."

The move was inspired by an interview given to French TV by Eric Cantona, a retired soccer star who played for numerous teams in France and the UK before ending his career with a stint at Manchester United.

In an interview with Presse Ocean, Cantona argued against the protests over government cuts that crippled France this fall, saying they achieve little. Instead, he suggested that people withdraw their money from banks all at once, forcing the banks to shut their doors for lack of reserve funds.

"We don't pick up weapons to kill people to start the revolution. A revolution is really easy to do these days. What is the system? The system is built on the power of the banks. So it must be destroyed through the banks," he said.

"Three million, 10 million people, and the banks collapse," he continued. "It's not complicated; instead of going on the streets and driving kilometers by car you simply go to the bank in your country and withdraw your money, and if there are a lot of people withdrawing their money the system collapses. No weapons, no blood, or anything like that."

The group has reportedly claimed that 14,000 people have already committed to participating in the protest. Numerous Facebook groups have been set up to promote the event, and organizers say the protest has spread to 24 countries, including the United States.

But critics of the protest say it's bound to fail, partly because tellers and bank machines would run out of cash long before the banks were forced to close, and partly because even if the bank run was successful, the banks would end up being bailed out again by governments, meaning taxpayers would end up footing the bill.

Andrew Clark at the Guardian writes:

Cantona's campaign will probably flop. Let's hope so, because it's not very wise. There are plenty of reasons to be angry at the way in which banks are run: they took reckless risks in the run-up to the financial crisis, developed ever more opaque derivatives, and senior executives paid themselves far too much. The people of Ireland went on the march yesterday to protest at an economic crisis sparked, to a large extent, by banks feasting on an unsustainable property binge.

But destroying these institutions in one fell swoop would serve nobody. It's impossible for everybody to withdraw their savings on the same day, because bank branches and cash machines would quickly run out of cash and close. Even if such a campaign were to succeed, it would simply prompt governments to spend billions more bailing out the banks, forcing them to implement even tighter austerity measures. If they didn't, then anybody who hadn't heeded Cantona's call to withdraw their savings would lose all their money.

The following video was broadcast by Presse Ocean.

Putin proposes EU become reserve currency

Greece → Ireland → Portugal → Spain → Italy → UK → ?

It is now common knowledge that there is a potential domino effect of European sovereign debt contagion in roughly the following order:

Greece → Ireland → Portugal → Spain → Italy → UK

While some people have been writing about this for well over a year, many others have joined the party late (there are now over 600,000 hits from a Google search discussing this topic.)
It is also now common knowledge that while Greece and Ireland have relatively small economies, there will be real trouble if the Spanish domino falls.
Iceland has the world's 112th biggest economy, Ireland the 38th, and Portugal the 36th. In contrast, Spain has the world's 9th biggest economy, Italy the 7th and the UK the 6th. A failure by one of the latter 3 would be devastating for the world economy.

As Nouriel Roubini wrote in February:

But the real nightmare domino is Spain. Roubini refers to the Spanish debt problems as "the elephant in the room".

"You can try to ring fence Spain. And you can essentially try to provide financing officially to Ireland, Portugal, and Greece for three years. Leave them out of the market. Maybe restructure their debt down the line."

"But if Spain falls off the cliff, there is not enough official money in this envelope of European resources to bail out Spain. Spain is too big to fail on one side—and also too big to be bailed out."

With Spain, the first problem is the size of its public debt: €1 trillion. (Greece, by contrast, has €300 of public debt.) Spain also has €1 trillion in private foreign liabilities.

And for problems of that magnitude, there simply are not enough resources—governmental or super-sovereign—to go around.

And as I've previously pointed out, Germany and France - the world's 4th and 5th largest economies - have the greatest exposure to Portuguese and Spanish debt. For more on the interconnections between Euro economies adding to the risk of contagion, see this.
While it is tempting to assume that the Eurozone bailouts mean that creditor nations which have managed their economies well and saved huge amounts of excess reserves which they lend out, Sean Corrigon points out that the European bailouts are a Ponzi scheme:

Under the rules of this multi-trillion shell game, the sovereigns guarantee the ECB which funds the banks which buy the government debt which provides for everyone else's guarantees.

(America is no different: Bill Gross, Nouriel Roubini, Laurence Kotlikoff, Steve Keen, Michel Chossudovsky and the Wall Street Journal all say that America is running a giant Ponzi scheme as well. And both America and Europe are trying to cover up the insolvency of their banks by running faux stress tests.)
It didn't have to be like this. The European nations did not have to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their big banks.
As Roubini wrote in February:

"We have decided to socialize the private losses of the banking system.

***

Roubini believes that further attempts at intervention have only increased the magnitude of the problems with sovereign debt. He says, "Now you have a bunch of super sovereigns— the IMF, the EU, the eurozone—bailing out these sovereigns."

Essentially, the super-sovereigns underwrite sovereign debt—increasing the scale and concentrating the problems.

Roubini characterizes super-sovereign intervention as merely kicking the can down the road.

He says wryly: "There's not going to be anyone coming from Mars or the moon to bail out the IMF or the Eurozone."

But, despite the paper shuffling of debt at the national level—and at the level of supranational entities—reality ultimately intervenes: "So at some point you need restructuring. At some point you need the creditors of the banks to take a hit —otherwise you put all this debt on the balance sheet of government. And then you break the back of government—and then government is insolvent."

And here's my take from April:

As I pointed out in December 2008:

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is often called the "central banks' central bank", as it coordinates transactions between central banks.
BIS points out in a new report that the bank rescue packages have transferred significant risks onto government balance sheets, which is reflected in the corresponding widening of sovereign credit default swaps:

The scope and magnitude of the bank rescue packages also meant that significant risks had been transferred onto government balance sheets. This was particularly apparent in the market for CDS referencing sovereigns involved either in large individual bank rescues or in broad-based support packages for the financial sector, including the United States. While such CDS were thinly traded prior to the announced rescue packages, spreads widened suddenly on increased demand for credit protection, while corresponding financial sector spreads tightened.

In other words, by assuming huge portions of the risk from banks trading in toxic derivatives, and by spending trillions that they don't have, central banks have put their countries at risk from default.

***

But They Had No Choice ... Did They?

But nations had no choice but to bail out their banks, did they?

Well, actually, they did.

The leading monetary economist told the Wall Street Journal that this was not a liquidity crisis, but an insolvency crisis. She said that Bernanke is fighting the last war, and is taking the wrong approach (as are other central bankers).

Nobel economist Paul Krugman and leading economist James Galbraith agree. They say that the government's attempts to prop up the price of toxic assets no one wants is not helpful.

BIS slammed the easy credit policy of the Fed and other central banks, the failure to regulate the shadow banking system, "the use of gimmicks and palliatives", and said that anything other than (1) letting asset prices fall to their true market value, (2) increasing savings rates, and (3) forcing companies to write off bad debts "will only make things worse".

Remember, America wasn't the only country with a housing bubble. The world's central bankers let a global housing bubble development. As I noted in December 2008:

... The bubble was not confined to the U.S. There was a worldwide bubble in real estate.
Indeed, the Economist magazine wrote in 2005 that the worldwide boom in residential real estate prices in this decade was "the biggest bubble in history". The Economist noted that - at that time - the total value of residential property in developed countries rose by more than $30 trillion, to $70 trillion, over the past five years – an increase equal to the combined GDPs of those nations.
Housing bubbles are now bursting in China, France, Spain, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe, and many other regions.
And the bubble in commercial real estate is also bursting world-wide. See this.

***

BIS also cautioned that bailouts could harm the economy (as did the former head of the Fed's open market operations). Indeed, the bailouts create a climate of moral hazard which encourages more risky behavior. Nobel prize winning economist George Akerlof predicted in 1993 that credit default swaps would lead to a major crash, and that future crashes were guaranteed unless the government stopped letting big financial players loot by placing bets they could never pay off when things started to go wrong, and by continuing to bail out the gamblers.

These truths are as applicable in Europe as in America. The central bankers have done the wrong things. They haven't fixed anything, but simply transferred the cancerous toxic derivatives and other financial bombs from the giant banks to the nations themselves.

Source: http://www.georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/11/greece-ireland-portugal-spain-italy-uk.html

Europe Tries to Contain Debt Crisis

European finance officials set the stage for an Irish aid package they hope to complete Sunday, betting that billions of euros for the country's beleaguered banks and strained public finances will restore calm to the euro zone.

But they struggled to rise above broad fears that the debt crisis has already trampled Ireland on its way to Portugal and even Spain—the euro-zone's fourth-largest economy, representing about 10% of the currency bloc's economic activity.

"It's absolutely, completely false," European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said, echoing assurances from Berlin, Lisbon and Madrid that officials hadn't already moved on to Portugal or its much larger neighbor. "It has neither been asked for and neither have we suggested it," he said.

A Spanish government spokesman said, "The EU isn't asking Portugal to take money, and Spain of course is not either."

Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero added there is "absolutely" no chance Spain will seek a bailout.

Spain's Finance Minister Elena Salgado, with the country's first Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, in Madrid on Friday.

Portugal's parliament on Friday passed a budget for 2011 that aims to reduce the country's deficit from 9.3% of gross domestic product in 2009 to below 3% by 2013, and Prime Minister Jose Socrates said he hoped it would help calm markets.

"We must put Portugal out of the focus of the crisis. This budget will defend the country against the euro-zone crisis," Mr. Socrates said.

That wasn't enough to reassure investors. The euro tumbled against the dollar to $1.3248 in New York Friday. The yield premium that investors demand to hold 10-year Spanish sovereign bonds rather than German bunds widened to a fresh euro-era record of 2.67 percentage points. The spread later recovered to 2.59 percentage points, still 0.07 percentage points higher than Thursday.

The spread between Portugal's 10-year bonds and bunds was 4.33 percentage points, compared with 4.53 on Wednesday, according to Thomson Reuters, and 3.71 as November began.

Another concern, stoked this week by Bundesbank President Axel Weber, is that the cost of bailing out Ireland, Portugal and Spain could exceed the lending power European leaders built into the €750-billion ($1 trillion), three-year plan they laid out after organizing a separate package of aid to keep Greece from defaulting in the spring.

In comments over two days in Paris and Berlin, Mr. Weber speculated about Portugal and Spain following Ireland into an EU aid package, saying that the euro zone would readily provide the funds to bridge any gap. The day before Mr. Weber spoke, the European Commission was floating a plan to double the portion of the three-year plan supplied by euro-zone governments, currently €440 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

Germany is strictly opposed to any increase to the existing package. "We have an instrument to deal with crisis in the euro zone and we are working intensively on Ireland," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said in an interview Friday on German radio.

"I hope by the start of next week we have the necessary decisions in Europe so that we can have calm in the markets again so that we can put an end to this completely over-the-top speculation," Mr. Schäuble said.
The details of Ireland's aid package—which will come from the EU and the International Monetary Fund, as did Greece's €110 billion package in the spring—are uncertain, but it is likely to total around €85 billion. European finance ministers are to discuss details in a conference call Sunday, Spanish Finance Minister Elena Salgado said.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704693104575638132375883318.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

So What Happens If The Dollar And The Euro Both Collapse?

Some analysts are warning that the U.S. dollar is in danger of collapse because of the exploding U.S. government debt, the horrific U.S. trade deficit and the new round of quantitative easing recently announced by the Federal Reserve. Other analysts are warning the the euro is in danger of collapse because of the very serious sovereign debt crisis that is affecting nations such as Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Belgium and Spain. So what happens if the dollar and the euro both collapse? Well, it would certainly throw the current world financial order into a state of chaos, but what would emerge from the ashes? Would the nations of the world go back to using dozens of different national currencies or would we see a truly global currency emerge for the very first time?

Up until recently, the idea of a world currency was absolutely unthinkable for most people. In fact, the notion that all of the major nations around the globe would agree to a single currency still seems far-fetched to most analysts. However, if enough "chaos" is produced by a concurrent collapse of the U.S. dollar and the euro, would that be enough to get the major powers around the world to agree to a new financial world order?

Let's hope not, but it is getting hard to deny that we are heading for a major currency crisis, and if the U.S. dollar and/or the euro collapse, the world will certainly never be the same afterwards.

In case you missed it, China and Russia made a very big announcement the other day.

They told the world that instead of using the U.S. dollar to trade with each other, they will now be using their own national currencies.

Most Americans don't realize it, but that is a very, very big deal.

The fact that the U.S. dollar has been the primary reserve currency of the world for decades has given the United States a tremendous amount of economic power.

But now nations are beginning to lose confidence in the U.S. dollar and they are slowly starting to move away from it.

When the Federal Reserve announced a new round of quantitative easing in early November, it created a huge backlash from other nations. For decades, many other countries have been heavily investing in dollar-denominated assets, and now they are quite upset that those assets are going to be devalued.

Chinese Finance Vice Minister Zhu Guangyao used very strong language in denouncing the Fed's new quantitative easing scheme earlier this month....

"As a major reserve currency issuer, for the United States to launch a second round of quantitative easing at this time, we feel that it did not recognize its responsibility to stabilize global markets and did not think about the impact of excessive liquidity on emerging markets."

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble was even more blunt. He has called current Federal Reserve policy "clueless", and he says that he is absolutely disgusted with the Federal Reserve at this point....

"They have already pumped an endless amount of money into the economy via taking on extremely high public debt and through a Fed policy that has already pumped a lot of money into the economy. The results are horrendous."

So where is all of this going?

If the Federal Reserve keeps flooding the system with new dollars, the rest of the world could eventually totally reject the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasuries.

If that day ever arrives, the results would be beyond catastrophic as the following short video from the National Inflation Association demonstrates....

But it is not just the U.S. dollar that is in trouble.

The euro is in danger as well.

Just consider the financial problems that some major European nations are experiencing right now....

*Standard & Poor's has slashed Ireland's credit rating two notches to "A", and is warning that there could be further downgrades. The Irish budget deficit is projected to reach 32 percent of national output this year. Ireland's finances are being called "just one big pyramid scheme", and they recently accepted a huge European bailout. Unfortunately for Ireland, this bailout comes with strings. The Irish government is now being forced to implement an austerity program that is being referred to as "draconian".

*Analysts are projecting that Portugal is going to need a bailout of at least 50 billion euros. The government of Portugal has implemented some harsh austerity measures in an attempt to get the red ink under control, and the people are not pleased. On Wednesday, a massive national strike shut down travel and basic services across the country.

*Things are so bleak in Portugal right now that Foreign Affairs Minister Luis Amado recently stated that his nation "faces a scenario of exit from the euro zone" if a solution is not found for this financial crisis.

*Greece was the first nation to need a European bailout, and now there are rumors that they may need even more assistance. The statistics agency for the EU, Eurostat, recently revealed that Greece's budget deficit for 2009 was actually 15.4% of GDP rather than 13.6% of GDP as originally thought. The Greek national debt is now well over 120 percent of GDP. The financial problems in Greece never seem to stop.

*Belgium's debt has reached 100 percent of annual national income, and the cost of insuring that country's debt has now hit record levels.

*Even Spain is in trouble. Rates on Spanish 10-year government bonds have risen to frightening heights in recent days, and the official unemployment rate in Spain is hovering around 20 percent.

*In a recent article entitled "A Spanish Bailout Would Test Europe’s Strained Finances", the New York Times quoted Jordi Galí, the director of the Center for Research in International Economics at Barcelona’s Pompeu Fabra University as saying that rumors that Spain is in financial trouble could end up making it a self-fulfilling prophecy....

"If investors expect Spain to have trouble refinancing its debt, now or somewhere down the road, then Spain will have trouble,” he added. “This is only aggravated by the fact that the reluctance of investors to purchase the country’s public debt leads to an increase in the interest rate it has to pay and thus in the budget deficit and the amount of debt it has to issue."

So could this sovereign debt crisis actually cause the euro to collapse?

Well, it depends who you ask.

European Financial Stability Fund chief Klaus Regling says that there is "zero" chance that the euro will collapse....

"There is zero danger. It's inconceivable that the euro would collapse."

Other European leaders are not so sure about that.

EU President Herman Van Rompuy recently warned that if some of the weaker countries in Europe are forced to abandon the euro it will likely cause a total meltdown of the European Union....

"We’re in a survival crisis. We all have to work together in order to survive with the euro zone, because if we don’t survive with the euro zone we will not survive with the European Union."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is also warning that a failure of the euro could bring down the entire European Union....

"If the euro fails, then Europe fails."

But is this likely to happen any time soon?

No, probably not, but in 2010 top European officials are actually acknowledging the possibility, and that shows just how serious things have gotten.

So if the U.S. dollar and the euro do collapse, what would happen?

Well, already many world leaders are openly speaking of the need for a true global currency.

After all, they argue, there won't be any "currency wars" if we are all using the same currency.

In fact, the Institute of International Finance, an organization that represents 420 of the biggest banks and financial institutions on the globe, recently declared that the time has come to adopt a one world currency.

In fact, as I wrote in an article entitled "Bancor: The Name Of The Global Currency That A Shocking IMF Report Is Proposing", a recent IMF policy paper actually proposed a name for the "global currency" that they believe could be coming....

A paper entitled "Reserve Accumulation and International Monetary Stability" by the Strategy, Policy and Review Department of the IMF recommends that the world adopt a global currency called the "Bancor" and that a global central bank be established to administer that currency. The report is dated April 13, 2010 and a full copy can be read here. Unfortunately this is not hype and it is not a rumor. This is a very serious proposal in an official document from one of the mega-powerful institutions that is actually running the world economy. Anyone who follows the IMF knows that what the IMF wants, the IMF usually gets. So could a global currency known as the "Bancor" be on the horizon? That is now a legitimate question.

So will any of this ever come to fruition?

Well, it would likely take one whale of a crisis to get the countries of the world to agree to such a thing.

However, we do live at a time when the world financial system seems to be perpetually on the edge of chaos. If at some point the U.S. dollar and the euro totally fall apart perhaps we will see a "new order" arise out of all of that chaos.

But let's hope not. Once we give any organization the power to issue a global currency the odds of us ever getting our economic sovereignty back will be greatly reduced. The internationalists are going to use any crisis as an opportunity to argue for greater centralization of the world financial system, and it will be very important for the American people not to fall for those arguments.

Hopefully the U.S. dollar and the euro can remain stable currencies for at least a little while longer. Because once they collapse things will never, ever be the same again.

Source: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/currency-crisis-so-what-happens-if-the-dollar-and-the-euro-both-collapse

The Day the Dollar Died

China, Russia quit dollar on bilateral trade

China and Russia have decided to renounce the US dollar and resort to using their own currencies for bilateral trade, Premier Wen Jiabao and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin announced late on Tuesday in St. Petersburg.

Chinese experts said the move reflected closer relations between Beijing and Moscow and is not aimed at challenging the dollar, but to protect their domestic economies.

"About trade settlement, we have decided to use our own currencies," Putin said at a joint news conference with Wen in St. Petersburg.

The two countries were accustomed to using other currencies, especially the dollar, for bilateral trade. Since the financial crisis, however, high-ranking officials on both sides began to explore other possibilities.

The yuan has now started trading against the Russian rouble in the Chinese interbank market, while the renminbi will soon be allowed to trade against the rouble in Russia, Putin said.

"That has forged an important step in bilateral trade and it is a result of the consolidated financial systems of world countries," he said.

Putin made his remarks after a meeting with Wen. They also officiated at a signing ceremony for 12 documents, including energy cooperation.

The documents covered cooperation on aviation, railroad construction, customs, protecting intellectual property, culture and a joint communiqu. Details of the documents have yet to be released.

Putin said one of the pacts between the two countries is about the purchase of two nuclear reactors from Russia by China's Tianwan nuclear power plant, the most advanced nuclear power complex in China.

Putin has called for boosting sales of natural resources - Russia's main export - to China, but price has proven to be a sticking point.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who holds sway over Russia's energy sector, said following a meeting with Chinese representatives that Moscow and Beijing are unlikely to agree on the price of Russian gas supplies to China before the middle of next year.

Russia is looking for China to pay prices similar to those Russian gas giant Gazprom charges its European customers, but Beijing wants a discount. The two sides were about $100 per 1,000 cubic meters apart, according to Chinese officials last week.

Wen's trip follows Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's three-day visit to China in September, during which he and President Hu Jintao launched a cross-border pipeline linking the world's biggest energy producer with the largest energy consumer.

Wen said at the press conference that the partnership between Beijing and Moscow has "reached an unprecedented level" and pledged the two countries will "never become each other's enemy".

Over the past year, "our strategic cooperative partnership endured strenuous tests and reached an unprecedented level," Wen said, adding the two nations are now more confident and determined to defend their mutual interests.

"China will firmly follow the path of peaceful development and support the renaissance of Russia as a great power," he said.

"The modernization of China will not affect other countries' interests, while a solid and strong Sino-Russian relationship is in line with the fundamental interests of both countries."

Wen said Beijing is willing to boost cooperation with Moscow in Northeast Asia, Central Asia and the Asia-Pacific region, as well as in major international organizations and on mechanisms in pursuit of a "fair and reasonable new order" in international politics and the economy.

Sun Zhuangzhi, a senior researcher in Central Asian studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the new mode of trade settlement between China and Russia follows a global trend after the financial crisis exposed the faults of a dollar-dominated world financial system.

Pang Zhongying, who specializes in international politics at Renmin University of China, said the proposal is not challenging the dollar, but aimed at avoiding the risks the dollar represents.

Wen arrived in the northern Russian city on Monday evening for a regular meeting between Chinese and Russian heads of government.

He left St. Petersburg for Moscow late on Tuesday and is set to meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday.

Source: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90778/90859/7208907.html

Pentagon, Military Actively War Gaming ‘Large Scale Economic Breakdown’ and ‘Civil Unrest’

The majority of Americans believe that recent government intervention into financial markets, the economy and corporate insolvency has reversed the economic downturn which was described by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson as being “on the brink” in 2008. The stimulus, bailouts and unrelenting quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve have thus far been perceived as having averted the further erosion of the U.S. real estate and equities markets. And though the Federal Reserve and economic analysts have recently readjusted their economic growth forecasts downward for the next six months, Americans no longer have to worry about, as Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) said on the house floor in October of 2008, the sky falling, multi-thousand point drops in stock markets and martial law in America.
The recovery - if our government, the Federal Reserve and mainstream media are to be believed - is on the road to recovery - albeit slowly and with some more pain ahead.
If we’ve “prevented economic collapse” and “avoided the depression many feared,” according to President Obama, inquiring minds are asking why the Pentagon and US Military are actively and aggressively engaged in planning responsive action to large scale economic breakdown and civil unrest scenarios:

Ever since the crash of 2008 the defense intelligence establishment has really been paying a lot of attention to global markets and how they can serve as a threat to U.S. national security interests. At one upcoming seminar next month they’re taking a look at a lot of the issues.
source: see CNBC video report below

According to the report, the Army has spent time on financial market trading floors with JP Morgan and others, in the hopes that they can learn more about how a financial and economic attack may occur, and what the ramifications of such attacks on US stocks and bonds may be.
The Army, in a year-long war games series called Unified Quest 2011, is looking at a variety of possibilities and how to deal with them, including:

• the implications of “large scale economic breakdown” inside of the United States
• how to maintain “domestic order amid civil unrest”
• and ways to deal with fragmented global power and drastically lower budgets

Clearly, the U.S. government is making contingency plans to deal with a worst-case, all-out-collapse scenario of not only the economy, but our social and political systems.

The war gaming, according to reports, began in 2008 at the onset of the economic crisis, but planners from not just the United States, but around the globe, may have been aware of the dire possibility of economic collapse even earlier. It’s well known that the U.S. government as well as foreign counterparts have been preparing bunkers and continuity of government for decades, but recent preparedness activities suggest that the planning in some aspects has been expedited. Anecdotal evidence indicates that the US government has been the leading buyer of freeze died foods for the last couple of years, and private emergency shelter contractors have reported a shortage in equipment and supplies for building personal-sized bunkers.

In a previous report titled Homeland Security To “Regionalize” Emergency Supplies Over Next 90 Days, we pointed out that FEMA, headed by Department of Homeland Security, is decentralizing emergency supplies from one main distribution facility in Washington D.C. to fifteen regional facilities around the country.

Even the Russians and the EU are in high gear. Russia has reportedly begun planning and development of 5,000 new underground bunkers for the city of Moscow scheduled for completion no later than 2012. The EU, in 2006, commissioned the building of a “Doomsday Seed Vault” in a mountainside several hundred feet above sea level. The facility was built and fully stocked with millions of seeds from around the world within 18 months.

Though the activities of global governments in recent years could potentially be chalked up to standard national security preparedness and contingency planning, the most alarming indicator that the U.S. government is not just looking at one-in-a-million possibilities in terms of economic collapse is the training of several thousand U.S. Army soldiers to respond to domestic policing and enforcement issues that may include evacuation, detainment and riot response. The real possibility of the need to deploy U.S. military under martial law exists, and the U.S. government is spending millions of dollars training and equipping soldiers to do so if necessary.

For those who may have their doubts about some of the scenarios these soldiers are training for, we point out the sign being held by one of the riot role players below.

(Photo taken by U.S. Airforce Tech. Sgt. Brian E. Christiansen, North Carolina National Guard at Vigilant Guard training exercise Ft. Richardson, Alaska - April 2010)

 

More military training exercise pictures and descriptions

It is hard to imagine an America under an economic attack so serious that the U.S. economy could suffer a collapse that would essentially put an end to the world as we have come to know it. But for those who think rationally, especially given the current malaise in financial markets and the U.S. dollar, the possibility cannot be ruled out.

As such, any government acting in the interests of national security would take steps to deal with and respond to such an event(s).

For the average populace prole, however, there may not be any real assistance should something like this occur. First and foremost, any government response to an attack on our financial and economic systems will have the primary goal of maintaining order and the rule of law, as well as continuity of government. This is a given.

This means that if, for whatever reason, be it a collapse of the US dollar that leads to disruptions in the flow of U.S. food supplies or an economic war that goes “hot” leading to worst-case scenarios like cyber attacks on U.S. infrastructure elements like electric and water utility plants or an EMP attack, the government’s mandate will not be to provide food and security for your family, but rather, for those who are deemed essential to accomplishing the primary goals.

This means that when and/or if it hits the fan, you’re going to be on your own.

If you haven’t yet, we recommend taking the advice of FEMA (pdf), who suggest that every family have emergency preparedness supplies on hand, including food and water, for at least a couple of weeks.

For the hard core “preppers” amongst us, you may have already considered this possibility and the chance that the fallout from an economic collapse may lead to an inability to perform daily transactions with the U.S. dollar,  food supply disruptions, violence and looting, and even a completely ‘down-grid’ where utilities are completely out of service. If you haven’t, what would you do if you awoke to news of a total meltdown in the US dollar - one that led to rejection of the US dollar as a currency for international settlement?

Will you be the one facing off against highly trained U.S. military personnel holding a “Food Now” sign at an inner city riot?

The U.S. government and many of their counterparts around the world are getting ready - just in case - maybe you should be too.

Source: http://www.shtfplan.com/marc-faber/pentagon-military-actively-war-gaming-large-scale-economic-breakdown-and-civil-unrest_11222010

Asian Stocks Pare Decline as Shares Rebound After Rout on Korea

Asian stocks pared declines as markets across the region rebounded following falls in the wake of North Korea’s attack on South Korea yesterday. Japanese shares fell as they resumed trade after a holiday.

Korean Airlines Co. declined 2 percent in Seoul. Tokyo Electron Ltd., a Japanese semiconductor equipment that gets 16 percent of its revenue from South Korea, sank 2.1 percent. Mitsubishi Corp., which gets more than half of sales from commodities, slipped 1.4 percent after oil and copper futures dropped. Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd., the world’s biggest developer, gained 1.5 percent, rebounding from losses after Hong Kong announced stepped up measures to curb speculative activity in the city’s housing market.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index declined 0.8 percent to 130.09 as of 7:36 p.m. in Tokyo, after falling as much as 1.3 percent earlier. The MSCI Asia Pacific excluding Japan Index fell 0.4 after rising earlier as markets in China, Hong Kong and Singapore rebounded.

“The market seems to be bouncing back after overreacting a bit to the Korean tensions yesterday,” said Matt Riordan, who helps manage about $6.6 billion at Paradice Investment Management Pty. in Sydney. “Come tomorrow, we should be back to the fundamentals and trying to interpret what’s been going on out there. Suddenly the European debt issues are back to the forefront.”

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index has fallen 3.5 percent from a two-year high set on Nov. 8 amid speculation China will intensify efforts to tame inflation and on concern Ireland’s debt crisis will spread in Europe. Ireland’s debt rating was lowered two steps by Standard & Poor’s today, with a negative outlook, as a bailout of the country’s banking system is set to escalate the government’s borrowing needs.

Korean Skirmish

Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average dropped 0.8 percent after a holiday yesterday. South Korea’s Kospi Index declined 0.2 percent. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index lost 0.1 percent. Markets in South Korea, Australia and New Zealand had closed for trading when news of the clash between North and South Korea broke.

China’s Shanghai Composite Index climbed 1.1 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rose 0.6 percent. Singapore’s Straits Times Index gained 0.5 percent. Declines on those markets deepened yesterday as news of the Korean skirmish broke.

North Korea fired artillery shells yesterday at the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong near the disputed border between the two countries, killing two soldiers and setting houses ablaze in the worst attack on its neighbor in at least eight months.

South Korea returned fire and scrambled fighter jets as President Lee Myung Bak vowed to respond “sternly.” The clash came 11 days after North Korea showed a uranium-enrichment plant to visiting U.S. scientists.

‘Escalation of Violence’

The U.S. and South Korea will hold joint military drills off the Asian country’s west coast from Nov. 28 to Dec. 1, U.S. forces in South Korea said today in an e-mailed statement. The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington will join the drills, which are “defensive in nature,” according to the statement said.

“There’s been a lot of big headlines crossing the wires in the last couple of weeks that are shaking investors,” Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Chicago-based Harris Private Bank, which oversees $55 billion, said on Bloomberg Television. “Anytime there’s escalation of violence, it creates a concern. That combined with the timing of the disclosure of North Korea’s nuclear facilities makes it much more disturbing.”

Korean Air slid 2 percent to 72,100 won and Asiana Airlines slipped 1.6 percent to 9,720 won. LG Corp., the holding company of South Korea’s fourth-largest family-run industrial group, dropped 1.2 percent to 84,500 won.

Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 0.1 percent today. The index slid 1.4 percent yesterday, its biggest decrease in a week, and more than 15 times as many stocks declined as advanced amid concern Europe’s debt crisis is intensifying and growing speculation China will boost interest rates.

Copper, Oil

Tokyo Electron fell 2.1 percent to 5,150 yen in Tokyo. Advantest Corp., the world’s biggest maker of memory-chip testers that gets more than 25 percent of its revenue from South Korea, dropped 1 percent to 1,700 yen.

Mitsubishi Corp. fell 1.4 percent to 2,115 yen. Inpex Corp., Japan’s biggest energy explorer, declined 2.1 percent to 438,000 yen. Rio Tinto Group, the world’s third-biggest mining company, dropped 1.3 percent to A$82.49.

Crude oil for January delivery lost 0.6 percent yesterday in New York to settle at $81.25 a barrel, and copper futures dropped 1.1 percent. The London Metal Exchange Index of prices for six industrial metals including copper and aluminum fell 1.6 percent yesterday. Gold futures jumped 1.5 percent, the biggest gain for a most-active contract since Nov. 4.

China Dongxiang Group Co., owner of rights to the Kappa sportswear brand in China, slumped 13 percent to HK$3.60 in Hong Kong, the biggest drop on the MSCI Asia Pacific Index. JPMorgan Chase & Co., Deutsche Bank AG and Royal bank of Scotland Plc cut their ratings on the stock after the clothier reported slower growth in orders for the second quarter of next year.

Among stocks that advanced, Sun Hung Kai climbed 1.5 percent to HK$125.90 in Hong Kong. Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd., Hong Kong’s second-biggest developer, increased 2.2 percent to HK$113.90. A gauge of property stocks in Hong Kong tumbled this week after Financial Secretary John Tsang on Nov. 19 imposed additional stamp duties to reign in home values in the city.

Hana Financial Group Inc., South Korea’s fourth-largest financial company, surged 7.3 percent to 39,700 won. The company offered as much as 4.8 trillion won ($4.2 billion) for Lone Star Funds’ stake in Korea Exchange Bank in what would be South Korea’s biggest domestic acquisition in four years.

Lynas Corp., an Australian mining company, jumped 10 percent to A$1.53. The company agreed with Japan’s Sojitz Corp. to supply about 25 percent of Japanese demand for rare earth metals, Executive Chairman Nick Curtis said on a media conference call. Sojitz advanced 9.1 percent to 168 yen.

--With assistance from Akiko Ikeda and Kotaro Tsunetomi in Tokyo. Editors: Nick Gentle, Nicolas Johnson.

Source: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-11-24/asian-stocks-pare-decline-as-shares-rebound-after-rout-on-korea.html