We The Sheeplez- The Coming Economic Collapse.."A Nation Of Sheep Ruled By Wolves" Thomas Jefferson

"I Am Jim Rogers And I Support Ron Paul"

Ron Paul has another illustrious supporter - Jim Rogers. The Quantum fund co-founder, who has been spot on about pretty much everything for the past 3 years (see Roubini Versus Rogers Is Right Debate for 2010: Investor Jim Rogers thinks gold will double to at least $2,000 an ounce. Economist Nouriel Roubini says that’s “utter nonsense.” As these well-known market personalities duke it out, they’re doing us a favor by highlighting a critical debate: Which is the bigger threat -- inflation or deflation?), not to mention gold (to the amusement of such Keynesian soundbites recorded for posterity as the following: "Maybe it will reach $1,100 or so but $1,500 or $2,000 is nonsense"), and especially inflation (perhaps the only thing that will prompt a chuckle out of Gadaffi and Mubarak these days is someone telling them that their multi-decade reigns are over due to hyperdeflation and plunging food prices), was caught on tape voicing his endorsement of the only sane person who can possibly do something for this country. "In this election if Ron Paul gets anywhere near the nomination I would certainly support him. He is the only one that I've seen in American politics that seems to have a clue about what's going on." Zero Hedge agrees on all counts.

Word Cloud Of Trichet's Disappointing Jackson Hole Speech: "Inflation" Mentions: 10; "Deflation" And "Gold": Zero

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/27/2011 - 15:07 Ben Bernanke CDO Central Banks Collateralized Debt Obligations Demographics ETC European Central Bank European Union Florida Germany Global Economy Greece Gross Domestic Product Housing Prices Ireland Michigan Monetary Policy New York Stock Exchange Ohio Portugal Prudential Recession Trichet Unemployment

As Lagarde Throws Germany And European Banks Under The Bus, Did She Just Truncate Her IMF Career?

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/27/2011 - 14:46 Ben Bernanke Capital Markets CDS Eurozone France Germany Gross Domestic Product International Monetary Fund Italy Lehman Lehman Brothers Morgan Stanley Primary Market Reuters Unemployment Vigilantes

This year's biggest winner from the botched DSK affair has been France's Christine Lagarde, who despite the dropping of all charges against the former head, is now in charge of the IMF. We admit that the ascension of Lagarde to the throne of the world's most irrelevant global bailout organization (what the IMF "does" is of not importance: the only thing that matters is who Beijing, and Chinabot, feels like rescuing today) happened even though we previously predicted that Germany would be very much against it. Well, Germany let it slide, and endorsed Lagarde. That may soon change though, after the former finance minister essentially threw the entire European (read French, Swiss and German whose assets as a % of host GDP are ridiculous... yes, a technical term) financial system under the bus at Jackson Hole, a day after Bernanke said to wait until September 20 for QE3 clarity. Per Bloomberg: "Bolstering banks’ balance sheets “is key to cutting the chains of contagion,” Lagarde said today in the text of remarks at the Federal Reserve’s annual forum in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Without an “urgent” recapitalization, “we could easily see the further spread of economic weakness to core countries, or even a debilitating liquidity crisis." Lagarde, a former French finance minister who took the helm at the Washington-based IMF in July, said recapitalization should be “substantial.” Banks should look for funds in the markets first and seek public funds if necessary. One way to provide capital could be through the European bailout fund, she said." And now, one can see why Germany is fuming: not only will Germany soon have no choice but to fund the EFSF's sovereign bailout ration all on its own, which as we, and other have speculated, could be as large as €3.5 trillion (or about $5 trillion), but it will be Germany's duty to also fund the rescue of all banks on a parallel track. What is the additional tally? Why at least $230 billion in European alone. Then again, when you get to $5 trillion, what's a few hundred billions between friends?

QE 3 Will Only Come With Catastrophe

Posted by: Phoenix Capital...

Post date: 08/27/2011 - 11:50

The Fed’s tools (QE and otherwise) are now going to be implemented to “avert catastrophe,” NOT to “improve the economy.” The bulls don’t want to hear this but it’s true. The game has changed...

Guest Post: Bernanke In A Box

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/26/2011 - 23:38 Bank of America Bank of America Ben Bernanke Dollar Destruction EuroDollar Federal Reserve Guest Post Monetary Policy Repo Market Reverse Repo Unemployment Bernanke said QE 3.0, without really saying it. The markets, seeing the enlarged schedule for the September meeting and interpreting the likelihood of heavy discussions, have gotten the message. Stocks threw off the daily mortal struggle that is life as Bank of America and bid for the QE future that is now September (good riddance to August apparently). Gold prices followed on those expectations of a resumption to the willful and wanton dollar destruction that QE purely represents. If the Chairman can influence a major market rally without ever having to face the growing dissent within the FOMC ranks, then his speech has proven to be a stroke of genius. That is the essence of rational expectations, making others believe you have magical powers so that they do your bidding without any actual work or direct engagement on your part. But there is a huge downside to waiting, and Bernanke knows it. The financial crisis grows while the economy is sliding further into contraction. Time is not on his side. So why does he wait? Simple, Bernanke and QE is in a box – conditions currently in the wholesale money markets, especially the repo market, will not suffer more QE. As the unsecured Fed funds and eurodollar markets have effectively frozen for banks outside the primary dealer network, wholesale funding has been left to repos. However, there is already a shortage of treasury bills, the prime, vital collateral of nearly all post-2008 repo funding arrangements.

Hurricane Irene Interactive Update

Some perspectives on the one event that has consumed everyone on the East Coast from CNN: "Hurricane Irene continues to crawl north after making landfall Saturday morning in North Carolina. The storm is expected to head up the East Coast from Virginia to Maine, bringing hurricane-force winds, heavy rain, flooding and widespread power outages. President Barack Obama warned that Irene could be a "hurricane of historic proportions."

Bernanke, a Wise Man, Creates Order Out of Chaos...

Saturday, August 27, 2011 – by Anthony Wile

Anthony Wile The meme of his ineffable wisdom is established yet again. What the free markets have undone, government can ravel.
This is the value of Ben Bernanke, a shill for Money Power. He is trotted out like the proverbial potted plant to make right statist noises, to verbalize the statist nostrums that will then be elaborated on by the manipulated media of the mainstream. The goal is to keep people believing in the system until world government is established.
It is harder and harder, of course. The Internet Reformation carries on apace, informing people of the futility of government solutions to private problems. This is a tremendous problem for the power elite that is deathly afraid of losing its grip over central banking – the ability to print money from nothing to fund its various depredations, anything from "green growth" to serial wars and scarcity promotions (food, water, etc.)
This is the war in which Ben Bernanke has enlisted. It is his job to make people believe in government. Of course, it is never enunciated in this fashion. Bernanke is supposed to be a prime exponent of free markets and private sector competition. As usual when it comes to the mainstream, Bernanke's actual function is entirely opposite to his REAL task.
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The Many Collapses of Keynesianism

Saturday, August 27, 2011 – by Lew Rockwell

Lew Rockwell It should be obvious to everyone but the most dedicated adherent of Keynesianism that the stimulus did not accomplish its end. The combination of outright spending by Congress, the desperate schemes to reflate the housing market, the attempt to transfuse bleeding firms with other people's money, and the creation of trillions in artificial money, has not done a thing to lift the US economy.
Actually, the reverse has been true. All these efforts have prevented the adjustment of economic forces to the post-boom world. And all the resources that the stimulus consumed were extracted from the private sector, for we must always remember that government has no resources of its own. Everything it does must come from the hides of private producers and the citizenry in general, in the future if not immediately.
It's tedious that we had to learn this lesson yet again, for it was only 38 years ago that we experienced yet another collapse of the Keynesian paradigm. The color of the theory was a bit different in those days. The fine-tuning operations of the government were supposed to operate according to a fixed model in which there was a tradeoff between inflation and recessionary unemployment. If unemployment got too high due to slow economic growth, their solution was said to be simple: reflate and deal with the costs. If unemployment then became too low in recovery – leading to an "overheating," as the parlance of the time put it, the answer was to deflate.
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