NSA Whistleblower Speaks Live: "The Government Is Lying To You"

Just a month ago we raised more than a proverbial eyebrow when we noted the creation of the NSA's Utah Data Center (codename Stellar Wind) and William Binney's formidable statement that "we are this far from a turnkey totalitarian state". Democracy Now has the former National Security Agency technical director whistleblower's first TV interview in which he discusses the NSA's massive power to spy on Americans and why the FBI raided his home. Since retiring from the NSA in 2001, he has warned that the NSA’s data-mining program has become so vast that it could "create an Orwellian state." Today marks the first time Binney has spoken on national TV about NSA surveillance. Starting with his pre-9-11 identification of the world-wide-web as a voluminous problem since the NSA was 'falling behind the rate-of-change', his success in creating a system (codenamed Thin-Thread) for 'grabbing' all the data and the critical 'lawful' anonymization of that data (according to mandate at the time) which as soon as 9-11 occurred went out of the window as all domestic and foreign communications was now stored (starting with AT&T's forking over their data). This direct violation of the constitutional rights of everybody in the country was why Binney decided he could not stay (leaving one month after 9-11) along with the violation of almost every privacy and intelligence act as near-bottomless databases store all forms of communication collected by the agency, including private emails, cell phone calls, Google searches and other personal data.
There was a time when Americans still cared about matters such as personal privacy. Luckily, they now have iGadgets to keep them distracted as they hand over their last pieces of individuality to the Tzar of conformity as simply put "The NSA Is Lying - The government has copies of most of your emails".

Money As Debt

On a day when Lagarde happily trots out statement after statement that the IMF has another bucketful of promises to solve the world's excess debt problems with its own debtors providing more of the wealth-creating debt in ever-increasing circles of ridiculous indebtedness, we may have found the perfect antidote. Perhaps, given the weakness in European sovereign markets this week, bond market investors have already watched the following presentation. Explaining in simple terms and for the broadest audience Paul Grignon's 'Money As Debt' explores the baffling, fraudulent and destructive arithmetic of the money system that holds us hostage to a forever-growing debt - and how we might evolve it into a new era. Get your popcorn ready.

Harvey Organ: Get Physical Gold & Silver!

Harvey Organ has been analyzing the bullion markets closely for decades. The quality and accuracy of his work is respected enough to earn him an invitation to testify before the CFTC on position limits for precious metals back in 2010.
And he minces no words: gold and silver prices are suppressed. With extreme prejudice.
In this detailed interview, Harvey explains to Chris the mechanics how of he sees this manipulation occurring, why he predicts this fraudulent pricing scheme will collapse soon, and why it’s critical to be holding physical (vs paper) bullion when it does.

Currency Wars: Rickards On Gold, QE, and the Economy

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Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Winding Into the Apex, Slowly

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SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - A Lazy Wind into the Weekend

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'We're Freaking Doomed (WFD)'

Richard Daughty, a.k.a., 'The Mogambo Guru' at Mogambo Guru Report! - 11 hours ago

I was trying to, even if it kills me, have a pleasant breakfast with the whole family, all of us grudgingly participating in a freakishly stupid "family bonding" activity, when I heard, for the seemingly thousandth time, the boy saying to me, "If you loved me like you are supposed to love a son, then you would give me the money I need." He obviously wants to buy another useless geegaw, gimcrack or flimsy flapdoodle, like motorcycle mud flaps, or finally getting his stupid abscessed tooth taken care of, or something equally as boring, I forget exactly what, but the irritating part is... more »

 

 

Atlas Shrugs, Orwell Yawns

Dave in Denver at The Golden Truth - 11 hours ago

*The Obama Justice Department is the worst in the history of this country. It's an absolute joke. It makes the old Soviet Politburo look like a system based on rule of law. Eric Holder is one of the most corrupt Federal officials that I have witnessed in my lifetime, starting with the pardon letter that he drafted, to pardon infamous tax evader Marc Rich, for Clinton to sign as Clinton was walking out of the Oval Office for the final time.* - Dave in Denver The Orwellian cloud of Government deceit that is hanging over our system is now thicker than the 420 cloud that will hang ... more »

 

 

Comex Silver Inventory Watch - Heading Into May-July Delivery Period

 

 

Guest Post: How To Speculate Your Way To Success

So far, 2012 has been a banner year for the stock market, which recently closed the books on its best first quarter in 14 years. But Casey Research Chairman Doug Casey insists that time is running out on the ticking time bombs. Next week when Casey Research's spring summit gets underway, Casey will open the first general session addressing the question of whether the inevitable is now imminent. In another exclusive interview with The Gold Report, Casey tells us that he foresees extreme volatility "as the titanic forces of inflation and deflation fight with each other" and a forced shift to speculation to either protect or build wealth.

NASDAPPL Crumbles Amid Sideways Volatile Week

Take your pick of how to describe this week's action. The Dow was green, S&P 500 unch (ES closed right at its 50DMA), and NASDAQ down for its biggest 2-week loss since the rally began. Heavy volume and incessant selling pressure pushed AAPL to its biggest 10-day loss in over 8 months as it closed at 5-week lows just shy of filling the gap from 3/13 and very close to testing its 50DMA for the first time in 4 months. Credit and equity markets generally did a round-trip today closing near their lows after opening the day-session near their highs off the ubiquitous overnight ramp. HY is practically unchanged on the week as IG saw up-in-quality rotation and outperformed while the S&P ended in between the two as they all traded in a broad range for the second week in a row - even though volatility remains intraday. Treasuries slid to their lowest yields of the day into the close today (though off the week's best and unch today) once again somewhat range-bound but with a notable falling-yield momentum down a few bps on the week with the long-end outperforming and 10Y closing under 1.96%. Copper and Oil rallied solidly today but aside from a little volatility Gold and Silver trod water ending the week with Gold -1% and Silver +0.55% as WTI ended back over $104. The EUR kept rallying all week (more repatriation flows?) dragging the USD lower as JPY underperformed on the week (flat today as the rest of the majors tracked USD weakness) and GBP outperformed. Broadly, the Treasury strength balanced the Oil and FX market risk-on-sentiment but risk-assets proxied higher into the US day-session open only to give it all back and drag stocks back down. It feels like there is still hope for some re-liquification but the weakness in AAPL and the financials suggest at best rotation and at worst steady risk-off while earnings beats (of drastically lowered expectations) keep the dream alive.

The Other Side Of The Gold And Silver Coin

UPDATE: Added COMEX Silver Inventory Watch shenanigans from Jesse's Cafe Americain
We have long-discussed the currency debasement, fiat-fiasco thesis for owning hard assets and only last night noted the discussion between Biderman and Sprott on the practicalities of this plan. What we found interesting was this week we have seen a number of quite bearish articles on the precious metals - most notably Bloomberg's chart-of-the-day has had two notes citing inventory build for Silver's imminent demise and lagging futures open interest as a sign of investor's losing conviction in gold. Given that we are fair-and-balanced we thought it worth sharing these technical insights and perhaps reflecting on what Eric Sprott noted as the only thing that could break his 'hard asset' thesis - that the political and banker elite "come to their financial senses" and Dylan Grice poignantly described "eventually, there will be a crisis of such magnitude that the political winds change direction, and become blustering gales forcing us onto the course of fiscal sustainability."

Presenting The US Government’s Infographic Of Its Own Insolvency

The Congressional Budget Office has just released three very telling infographics which, unintentionally, spell out a pretty dreary picture of US government finances. At the very bottom corner is a most disingenuous statement that says ”Net Interest not included.”  In other words, they didn’t bother to include the $454,393,280,417.03 (nearly half a trillion dollars) that the US government spent on interest last year. To put this number in perspective, the US paid more in interest last year than the entire GDP of Saudi Arabia, or the combined GDPs of the smallest 82 economies in the world. Not exactly a trivial number… unless you’re Tim Geithner. A few days ago, Geithner quipped on NBC’s Meet the Press that there is ”no risk” of the US turning into Greece over the next few years due to such extraordinary fiscal imbalances. This is the same guy who said there was no risk of the US losing its AAA credit rating, and that inflation on a global level is “not high on the list of concerns…” Whether it’s lies, ignorance, or arrogance is irrelevant at this point. The situation is what it is. It’s not going to go away just because the political leadership denies it. Each one of us has a choice. We can either bury our heads in the sand, just like they’re doing… or embrace reality and take control of our own financial futures.

Paul Brodsky On The State of Play: Statists At Play

On April 16, Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner announced that her Argentine government would expropriate and re-nationalize YPF, an energy company operating mostly in Argentina founded by its government in the 1920s and de-nationalized in the 1990s. Repsol, a Spanish company that owns (owned) 57% of YPF called the act “illegal and unjustified” and vowed to sue. As Paul Brodsky and Lee Quaintance of QBAMCO note, in times past such expropriation would surely be an act of war. FdeK’s timing was brilliant, to re-nationalize the Spanish-controlled energy company when Spain’s economy and funding are teetering means the Spanish government and businesses domiciled there lack the clout to make demands of Euro confederates. The political calculus among leaders of sovereign governments reduces to short-term domestic political benefits vs. threats of economic or military retaliation but with regard to natural resources, the QBAMCO pair critically note, the bigger implication that it is sovereign vs sovereign as the paper bets representing global production and resources that we call “capital markets” is in jeopardy of becoming a sideshow. Baseless paper money, fractional banking, revenue shuffling, financial returns, ever-increasing debts, unwarranted confidence building, nominal output growth and politicians posing as policy makers cannot sustain the most basic needs of societies.

Does The I In IMF Stand For Idiot?

All morning we have been blasted with 2011 deja vu stories how the IMF panhandling effort has finally succeeded, and how Lagarde's Louis Vuitton bag is now full to the brim with $400 billion in fresh crisp US Dollars bills courtesy of BRIC nations, and other countries such as South Korea, Australia, Singapore, Japan (adding $60 billion to its total debt of Y1 quadrillion - at that point who counts) and, uhh, Poland. From Reuters: "The Group of 20 nations on Friday were poised to commit at least $400 billion to bulk up the International Monetary Fund's war chest to fight any widening of Europe's debt crisis." We say deja vu because it is a carbon copy of headlines from EcoFin meetings from the fall of 2011 in which we were "assured", "guaranteed" and presented other lies that the EFSF would surpass $1 trillion, even $1.5 trillion on occasion, any minute now. Alas, that never happened, and while we are eagerly waiting to find out just what the contribution of Argentina will be to bail out Spanish banks (just so it can expropriate even more assets from the country that rhymes with Pain), we have one simple question: does the I in the IMF stand for Idiots? Why? Because this is merely yet another example of forced capital misallocation, only this time at a global scale. 

FoodStamp Nation

The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service released a new report on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, commonly known as Food Stamps) earlier this week with some fresh data on the program. Given our earlier note on Mr.EBT, we thought the following brief clip from Bloomberg TV on the $82bn-per-year program would provide some rather shockingly sad insights and then Nic Colas' recent focus on the SNAP report provides some much more in depth color.  First and foremost, there are 46.5 million Americans in the program as of the most recent information available (January 2012), comprising 22.2 million households.  That’s 15% of the entire population, and just over 20% of all households.  Moreover, despite the end of the official “Great Recession” in June 2009, over 10 million more Americans have been accepted into the program since that month, and the year-over-year growth rate for the program is still +5%.  The USDA’s report is, not surprisingly, very upbeat on the utility of the program.  Fair enough.  But what does it mean when 20% of all households cannot afford to buy the food they need for their families?  To our thinking, it highlights an underappreciated new facet of American economic life – one that will be felt everywhere from the ballot box to the upcoming Federal Deficit debates.

Why The Left Misunderstands Income Inequality

The political left misunderstands the causes of income inequality —confused by the belief that government can somehow challenge the corporate and financial power it created in the first place — and thus proposes politically unrealistic (non-) solutions, particularly campaign finance reform, and raising taxes on the rich and corporations. Yes, the left are well-intentioned. Yes, they identify many of the right problems.  But how can government effectively regulate or challenge the power of the financial sector, megabanks and large corporations, when government is almost invariably composed of the favourite sons of those organisations? How can anyone seriously expect a beneficiary of the oligopolies — whether it’s Obama, McCain, Romney, Bush, Gore, Kerry, or any of the establishment Washingtonian crowd — to not favour their donors, and their personal and familial interests? How can we not expect them to favour the system that they emerged through, and which favoured them?  In reality, the system of corporatism that created the income inequality will inevitably degenerate of its own accord. The only question is when…

 

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