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

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Former IMF Employee And Greek Statistics Head Faces Life In Prison If Found Guilty Of Making Greece Look Uglier

A few months ago we reported that unlike in any other Banana Republic, where the natural bias is to fudge one's numbers higher to make the economy look better and get the stock market to rise, in Greece even the traditional banana metrics are upside down. To wit: "Greek newspaper Eleftherotypia reports that according to a just terminated member of the Greek Statistical Authority, Greece artificially misrepresented its 2009 15.4% deficit number to Eurostat in order to obtain aid from the EU and IMF." Sure enough, two months later even this absolutely bizarre story has been confirmed. The FT reports that "The head of Elstat, Greece’s new independent statistics agency, faces an official criminal investigation for allegedly inflating the scale of the country’s fiscal crisis and acting against the Greek national interest." Not surprisingly, the man who allegedly cooked the books is none other than a 20 year former IMF employee: precisely the kind of guy who knows just what buttons to push to get the US-funded organization to dole out capital. "Andreas Georgiou, who worked at the International Monetary Fund for 20 years, was appointed in 2010 by agreement with the fund and the European Commission to clean up Greek statistics after years of official fudging by the finance ministry." And just because someone needs to be made a scapegoat, if convicted Georgiou may face the same sentence as Madoff: "Mr Georgiou is due to appear before Greece’s prosecutor for financial crime on December 12 to answer the charges. If convicted of “betraying the country’s interests”, he could face life imprisonment." Well, that's fine: the man should rot in hell for not learning that "minus" is not really "plus" - surely no greater ex-capital punishment crime exists. Yet we wonder - will the same life sentence follow all those others who are found to have betrayed their countries interest and inflated numbers higher thus not getting US taxpayer-funded bailouts? Because when it comes to Europe, it is now every many for himself (as the soon to be faded rumor du jour of a €600 billion IMF-funded bailout of Italy confirms)... all the way to Joe Sixpack's wallet.

Bill Buckler Presents The Four Horsemen Of The (Financial) Apocalypse

"There are four indicators today which show as clearly as anything can be shown the state of our global debt-based monetary and financial system. Any one of them alone should be all the evidence one needs that the system is unsustainable. Put them together and much more than the canary is singing."

Black Friday Shopping Like There Is No Tomorrow?

By now the broader population has been inundated with reports of what a stunning retail experience Black Friday was. And for those who haven't just head over to CNBC: "Sales rose an estimated 6.6 percent to a record $11.4 billion on Black Friday, typically the busiest shopping day of the year for Americans, while the traffic at stores rose 5.1 percent, according to ShopperTrak. The day's sales growth was the strongest percentage gain since 2007, when sales rose 8.3 percent on the day after Thanksgiving, said Ed Marcheselli, chief marketing officer at ShopperTrak, which monitors retail traffic." This is happening despite the savings rate recently dropping to pre-Depressionary level, and despite revolving consumer credit (as in not cars and colleges), continuing to contract. That there is more than enough fine print will be largely irrelevant for the mainstream media which will naturally trumpet this as the next best thing to the S&P actually rising for once: "More than 120 stores at the Mall of America opened at midnight. The crowd at that point was about 15,000 people. Mall operators estimated that it was the largest crowd ever at the mall, which is big enough to hold seven Yankee Stadiums. While eager shoppers emerged from stores around the country lugging big-screen TVs and bags full of video games and toys, it was far from certain that people will pull out their wallets for much more than the best deals this year. Shoppers with limited budgets started using layaway at chains such as Walmart as early as October. Retail shares fell more than the overall market on Friday. "Americans are still worried about jobs, still worried about the economy," said Mike Thielmann, group executive vice president at J.C. Penney, who noted that shoppers were buying gifts and for themselves, and said jewelry was selling well." Yet what really caught our attention was the Retail Group comparison of this "record" black Friday Weekend. From Bloomberg: 'RETAIL GROUP SAYS SECOND-BEST BLACK FRIDAY WEEKEND WAS IN 2008." As a reminder, Thanksgiving 2008 happened just after a nearly 400 point plunge in the S&P in two months as can be seen in the chart below. Which begs the question: with the world on the verge every single day once again, is it a coincidence that people spent more than they did only compared to 2008 when the world was once again ending. In other words, did Americans really spend "like there is no tomorrow" (more so than ever that is)... and what happens when the bill (because there is no doubt the purchasing was entirely on credit) is in the mailbox?

Italy next week

Posted by : Bruce Krasting

Post date: 11/27/2011 - 13:12

Something big has to happen soon, or else...

EURUSD Up Modest +30 Pips Despite Latest Weekend Rumormill

Our guess is they were hoping for a little more than a 30pip lift out of the gate...Have no fear though...
*SCHAEUBLE SAYS HE'S `CONFIDENT' 'EURO CAN BE SAVED
*SCHAEUBLE SAYS EURO WILL BE `THE STABLE WORLD CURRENCY'

Is the Sovereign Debt Crisis a Replay of the Versailles Treaty?

Saturday, November 26, 2011 – by Anthony Wile

Anthony Wile Here at The Daily Bell we track dominant social themes of the Anglosphere power elite (the only elite that matters) and recently we've been pointing out that much of what is going on in the (Western) world is a repeat of the early 20th century
In an article entitled "Parallels Between Early 20th Century and Present Are Scary," we pointed out that history is indeed seemingly repeating itself. You can see the link here, and some previously created charts below.
We've pointed out these parallels in order to make the argument that much of what's going on now is intended to speed up the process of creating one-world government. We regularly try to explain that there is likely a power elite behind this state of affairs – a small group wielding enormous Money Power via its control of central banking.
It is this "cabal" that seeks formal world government and – then – control of it behind the scenes. In order to implement world government, this impossibly rich cabal or mafia uses dominant social themes (fear-based promotions) to frighten middles classes into giving up power and authority to specially prepared globalist institutions.
But it is not enough to use themes. These themes have to be reinforced by ACTIONS. That is, if one wants to scare people about, say, an oil crisis, one has to implement measures to raise prices by creating an oil shortage. This has been done (even in the recent past) by restricting oil exploration, creating wars in sensitive oil-producing areas, etc.
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