Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
The ECB - EUR22 Trillion Is Missing
“To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your facts is another.”
-John Burroughs
Yesterday I published the assets/liabilities of the European Central Bank as provided by them. I provided some analysis that I thought was relevant as I also asked all of you to look at the numbers yourself. To be quite open; I was stunned by the data they provided and shocked by the implications. I had not seen the data in any other source or commented about by anyone and the subject, while admittedly complex, and perhaps made more complex by design, is a huge wake-up call for anyone investing in Europe.
The ECB lists, as of the end of the 1st quarter of 2012, 16.304 trillion Euros ($ 21.032 trillion) in assets and 17.334 trillion Euros ($22.631 trillion) in liabilities. It is right there in black and white as I showed in the ECB provided data that I presented yesterday. However when you get to their consolidated balance sheet you find the numbers they bandy about in public to be a ledger of 3.240 trillion Euros ($4.00 trillion) and you catch your breath and pause. Utilizing normal American accounting practices this variance would be impossible and yet here it is; staring us all right in the face.
“Europe has put a ‘stop payment’ on our reality check!”
-The Wizard
I can report that I did hear from a number of large institutions yesterday that also looked at the numbers themselves and were stunned. Conversations were held, questions were asked and I think an accurate summation of the conversations was that everyone was in some state or another of astonishment. The numbers were not my numbers after all and while many good issues were raised in terms of how to properly analyze the data that was presented there was a clear sense that we were being duped by the European Central Bank and played for suckers.
“Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.”
-Jane Wagner
Forget that the liabilities are greater than the assets and forget that that both have increased rather appreciably in the last several years and just concentrate on the size of the numbers presented and then ask the central questions; who is responsible for these assets and liabilities and where are they counted? We know that they are not counted at the ECB as they are not a part of their consolidated balance sheet. You may ask how this is possible and I re-print, once again, the applicable note from the ECB:
“Recognition of assets and liabilities
An asset or liability is only recognized in the Balance Sheet when it is probable that any associated future economic benefit will flow to or from the ECB, substantially all of the associated risks and rewards have been transferred to the ECB, and the cost or value of the asset or the amount of the obligation can be measured reliably.”
So there is the rationale, like it or not, but then where are these assets/liabilities counted? We are talking about $21.032 trillion in assets here and $22.631 trillion in liabilities which are larger numbers that all of the GDP of Europe. We can surmise that the ECB does not count these loans, securitizations and collateral as they belong to a given nation or a bank guaranteed by the nation or the securitization is guaranteed by some country but the rub is the country doesn’t count them either. When a European nation reports out its debt to GDP ratio I knew that they did not count contingent liabilities and I knew that government backed bank bonds were not included and I knew that regional debt guaranteed by the government was not included but this, and the sheer size of it, had lain underneath everyone’s radar.
Think of it; twenty-two trillion dollars worth of assets and liabilities and accounted for nowhere. No need to worry anymore about Target2; a mere tuppence at one trillion dollars, a decimal point. Just exactly what these assets and liabilities might be is anyone’s guess. Just which nations generated them is also anyone’s guess as no data or explanation is provided. Just what any country’s real debt to GDP ratio might be if these assets/liabilities were included in the equation is also anyone’s guess but I think it is safe to assume that the numbers would be off the charts; far off the charts.
“Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.”
-Sigmund Freud
You know, these are not blue fairies or gnomes or elves that have gone missing. These are twenty-two trillion dollars ($22 trillion) of loans and securitizations and mortgages that are found and accountable for by no one. These are real assets and real liabilities that have been turned into cash by the ECB and it causes me to wonder just how accurate the Money Supply numbers are for Europe with this amount of cash being pumped into the system. I also wonder what anyone’s real balance sheet looks like and I wonder what kinds of losses are being incurred and by whom. To be quite forthright, and in my opinion, this seems to me not just the rigging of the game or the gaming of the system but something far past that; something out beyond the realm of the credible and of real world experiences.
This is what we are investing in when we buy European bonds? This is where we are putting our client’s money? I don’t know; they may have gone mad but I have not.
Have you?
“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.”
-Mahatma Gandhi
Monday, October 1, 2012
Monsanto’s Fading Grasp – Group Calls on South Africa to Ban GMO Corn
Following in the footsteps of nations like France and Russia, South Africa may soon be the latest nation to enact a ban on Monsanto’s GMO corn that was recently linked to tumor development and organ damage in rats. South Africa’s African Centre for Biosafety (ACB), a watchdog organization that was created to protect consumers from various biotechnology dangers, is now calling on South African authorities to enact a ban on Monsanto’s tumor-linked maize crop known as NK603.
This is particularly important when it comes to South Africa as white corn is a large staple food, making up for 80% of the harvest just last year. In the event that the maize were to be banned, it would be a major hit for Monsanto and an even larger victory for the 50,586,757 people who live in South Africa. If authorities take the advice of ACB, then it would not only ban the cultivation of the GMO corn, but the import and export as well. In a letter to the South African minister of agriculture, the ACB said:
We urge the South African government to take the necessary steps to protect its citizens.Nations around the world are currently passing or requesting bans on Monsanto’s crops following the study, which is one of hundreds of studies to identify the dangers of both Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup and GMOs. Coinciding with previous pieces of research that have linked Roundup with conditions such as cancer and infertility, the French GMO study found that around 50% of the males and 70% of the females fed 100% GMO corn died prematurely.
It was also dubbed the most thorough research on the prolonged effects of GMOs and Roundup on rats.
As expected, Monsanto has not taken this news lightly. Previously being busted for paying United States diplomats to extend its campaign for global seed domination and killing over 500,000 innocents with its ‘safe’ Agent Orange weapon, Monsanto’s corruption has been repeatedly exposed by whistleblowers and alternative news media. Each time, however, Monsanto continues to assert that its creations are perfectly safe. Just as it did with Agent Orange, Monsanto is now on the defensive of GMOs despite having only been tested for 90 days before unleashed on the public.
More nations around the globe will continue to call for and enact GMO crop bans around the globe until Monsanto is either banned or labeled (via California’s GMO labeling bill Prop 37) out of existence. It is important that we support and highlight the countries who are making efforts on this front such as South Africa’s ACB.
Source: Activist Post
Sunday, September 30, 2012
NSA Whistleblower Reveals How To Beat a Polygraph Test
Russell Tice, the National Security Agency whistleblower who blew the lid open on warrantless wiretapping conducted by the federal government on U.S. citizens post-9/11, says that he took between 12 and 15 polygraph tests during his nearly 20-year-long government career.
The tests mellowed over time, Tice says, and they may have also gotten easier to beat.
Tice, who is no longer at the NSA, says he, along with those still in contact with at the agency, marvel at how easy it is to beat the lie detector.
The federal government currently administers polygraphs to government employees in a number of agencies, including the NSA and CIA. The polygraphs work by measuring and recording a person's physiological responses—changes in a person's pulse, breathing and blood pressure—to lying versus telling the truth.
Tice, who is now working on a Ph.D. in global security studies, says the NSA "routinely uses polygraphs to terrorize the rank and file of NSA employees" and to "gather very personal information on them that they can use to blackmail them into participating in illegal and unethical conduct."
The whistleblower's view is supported by AntiPolygraph.org, a nonprofit that seeks to abolish polygraphs from the workplace. George Maschke, a U.S. army reserve captain who was rejected from the FBI for failing a polygraph and now runs AntiPolygraph.org, tells Whispers he believes the NSA's polygraph is intended to be a "psychological tool of coercion."
"Polygraphs are detrimental to individuals and to national security," says Maschke, "because federal agencies are relying on technology that is unreliable... that is junk science." A number of studies from the scientific community have also said polygraphs rely on pseudoscience.
AntiPolygraph.org has a number of tips on how to manipulate physiological responses to beat the test. Tice shared some of his own tips on Monday with Whispers.
First, Tice says, a person can trick the tester on "probable-lie" questions. During a polygraph's pre-test interview, the tester usually asks a person to answer questions they are likely to lie about. These include questions like: 'Have you ever stolen money?,' 'Have you ever lied to your parents?,' or 'Have you ever cheated on a test?'. Most people have done these at least once, but lie about it. So the tester uses a person's response to a likely lie as a way to establish how a person physically reacts while lying.
Tice says to trick the tester, a person should lie in response to these questions like most other people would, but also bite their tongue hard while doing so, which will set off other physiological reactions in the body. The tester's "needles will fly everywhere," says Tice, "and he will think, 'This guy is a nervous nelly. He has a strong physical reaction when he's lying.'"
"And you're skewing the test," he says.
Tice says it's also easy to beat a polygraph while telling a real lie by daydreaming to calm the nerves.
"Think of a warm summer night... or drinking a beer, whatever calms you. You're throwing them off," he says. "The needle might nip a little [because you're lying], but not off the charts." And since the person has already convinced the tester that they have off-the-charts physiological reactions while lying, Tice says, a small reaction likely won't tip the tester off.
The tests have also simply gotten easier, with the questions being less likely to shock an individual. "They use to say things like 'I bet you have sex with dogs,' just to initiate a reaction to see how that needle jumps if you've been insulted," Tice says. "[But they] have mellowed down a lot... Polygraphs are easy to beat."
Update, 3:20 p.m.:
NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines says that the polygraph "is one of the vetting tools" used by the NSA and other federal agencies "to assess an individual's eligibility for access, and continued eligibility access, to highly sensitive intelligence information."
"In making these eligibility determinations, NSA complies with the personnel security investigative standards and procedures as outlined in various Intelligence Community directives and policy guidance memoranda."