Regrets Anyone ?

I’m a bit bleary-eyed this morning, having played two LATE soccer games last night, and frankly having a hard time getting inspired. I have my daily litany of “horrible headlines” staring me in the face, but no single, cohesive theme has emanated…YET. The title of this RANT relates to a topic I will discuss later on, after I get through “cleaning up this morning’s garbage.”

To start, I wanted to harp once more on just how important it is for the government to manipulate financial markets, in my view the ONLY remaining weapon in their “official” arsenal, other than to PRINT MONEY, of course. But then again, the only way to manipulate markets is to PRINT MONEY to inject into them; in other words, one and the same.

I have long written about the fact the public is OUT of the stock market, and OUT FOR GOOD, in other words, for the remainder of AT LEAST this generation. As a whole, the public is BROKE, just as are nearly all municipalities and sovereigns. The stock market crash of 2000-02, which was coupled with a vicious recession (albeit minor compared to what we are experiencing today), wiped out a tremendous amount of retail wealth, and would have led to a traumatic, perhaps decade-long recession if the Fed hadn’t turned up the monetary spigots and initiated the “Greenspan Put”, an implicit guarantee the Fed would prevent large stock market declines via essentially unlimited MONEY PRINTING.

Unfortunately, the Greenspan Put did nothing for the retail investing public, which as I just noted had ALREADY lost its shirt when Pets.com, Webvan, and other internet and telecom garbage pushed onto them by Wall Street crashed into oblivion.

In 1999 alone, $25 billion of internet IPOs alone were priced, most of which AT LEAST doubled on their opening trade, in other words the price the PUBLIC paid. I reckon that AT LEAST 95% of that $50+ billion of market value was destroyed in the ensuing two years, wiping out AT LEAST HALF of ALL U.S. retail investors.

WALL STREET INVESTMENT BANKS forced this crap into retail portfolios, generating $65 billion of FEES in 1999 alone that they channeled into their bonus pools. I had to search long and hard for the below list of top 1999 IPO underwriters, but wanted you (and hopefully “OWS” protestors) to know EXACTLY who screwed you the most during the internet era.

Can you imagine? Right at the top of the list is Goldman Sachs!

To give you a rare “inside look” at what went down at this time, I want to describe my experience as an oilfield service analyst at Salomon Smith Barney in 1999 (as an aside, via this job I toured R&B Falcon’s Deepwater Horizon drillship at its christening in 2001, the one BP later used to permanently destroy the Gulf of Mexico).

As you can see by the above list, Salomon Smith Barney, a branch of Citigroup, lagged in the IPO business in 1999, and clearly made a policy decision to force its traditional “verticals” to solicit internet IPOs, no matter how silly the concept. I remember the day in February 2000 when my oilfield service team was summoned by management to be notified of the firm’s plan to “get in on the action.” We were mandated to write a report on the prospects for oilfield service internet IPOs, and then hand it to the bankers to scour the nation looking for IPO fees.

The report, titled “Bubba 2 Bubba” (a play on the archaic term B2B), was easily the most read report I ever wrote, and on multiple occasions I was actually asked to give SPEECHES about it, in some cases with PRESS taking notes. We were FORCED to do this by SSB’s management, and thank god the internet bubble popped in April 2000, as we were ONE WEEK away from pricing our first oilfield service internet IPO, an “online property trader” called Petroleum Place that was to garner a $2 billion market cap, but today is probably worth 99% less if it still exists.

I wanted you to get this insider’s look at the destruction caused by Wall Street, which frankly PALES in comparison to later FRAUDS in the mortgage-backed security business and, obviously, today’s HFT trading theft. And as a special bonus, I even attached a copy of “Bubba 2 Bubba”, so you can see first-hand the lengths Wall Street went to steal from the public. I can still remember meeting with the bankers, having them INSTRUCT me as to what they wanted in THEIR REPORT.

To sum up how the game works, Wall Street lobbied Washington for the deregulation allowing them to steal BILLIONS from the public in the 1998-1999 internet bubble. When it crashed in 2000-2002, the Wall Street-OWNED Federal Reserve overexpanded the money supply, deferring the INEVITABLE recession and creating a LARGER BUBBLE in real estate, generating LARGER fees for Wall Street bankers than even the internet bubble. The public was initially brought along for the 2002-2006 ride, only this time it was required to BORROW TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS from Wall Street to receive a few years of fleeting, PAPER real estate gains, which they of course were encouraged (by the Fed itself!) to extract via their “housing ATMs.”

Once that bubble popped in 2007-2011 (still popping, by the way), the Wall Street-OWNED Fed, which by now had dozens of its own people RUNNING the government (think Hank Paulson), lobbied for BAILOUTS and fraudulent accounting rule changes, which they used to pay themselves record bonuses while the average person went bankrupt. Regarding the latter, take a look at the below commentary about JP Morgan’s earnings TODAY, “better than expected” due to NON-CASH GAINS based on government-sanctioned fraudulent accounting assumptions. But don’t worry, JPM employees, the 0% interest rate at which you are allowed to borrow from the Fed (which you OWN, by the way) will allow you to pay RECORD BONUSES this year, despite the global banking collapse (which YOU played a major part in), not to mention your OWN STOCK PRICE!

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/jpmorgan-uses-s...-and-net-income

On the topic of banking woes, it looks like they are all of a sudden front-and-center AGAIN, despite the 1,100 point Dow rally over the past week based on NOTHING. As I have been writing during this period, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING positive has occurred regarding the imploding Western banking/sovereign debt collapse. NOTHING, NADA, ZIPPO, just a bunch of vacuous rhetoric from European “leaders” about POTENTIALLY PRINTING MORE MONEY to BAILOUT MORE BANKS (such as Dexia, which was nationalized on Tuesday).

Yet, the Dow miraculously rose 1,100 points in five days on this news, while the retail investing public CONTINUES to SELL, SELL, SELL. If retail is selling, and hedge funds as well, then who exactly is buying?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/retail-stock...nsecutive-weeks

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/...E79B00Q20111012

Yep, you guessed it, the PPT, and they will continue PRINTING MONEY to buy Dow futures until the dollar COLLAPSES, which is coming MUCH SOONER than most people can imagine. How else can a stock chart look this ridiculous? Can you say PPT PROTECTING Dow 11,000…

…as compared to a market in which a Cartel is SUPPRESSING the market, in which case it looks like this…

Back to the banks – you know, the ones that rocketed skyward this week for NO REASON other than a PPT-induced short squeeze.

Here’s yesterday’s news…

http://www.adnkronos.com/IGN/Aki/Eng...2530633974.html

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2...-spanish-banks/

…and here’s today’s…

http://www.investmentweek.co.u...fitch-downgrade

http://intelwars.com/2011/1...alted-down-7-8/

…I particularly love the two below stories, for those IDIOTS that still believe Greece will NOT default in the next few months, or perhaps even weeks…

http://www.zerohedge.com...hind-greek-myth

…whoops, this one is two days old. Nice to see that French banks, the most exposed to Greek debt, and Morgan Stanley, the single bank most exposed to French banks, were SOARING over the two days since this story emerged…

http://www.zerohedge....first-time-ever

…so you see, readers, the recent stock rally was based on NOTHING but an orchestrated PPT attack on financial stock short-sellers, in the same manner as the recent, orchestrated Cartel attack on PM longs with ILLEGALLY shorted, unbacked, PAPER, PAPER, PAPER!

As for PHYSICAL gold and silver, the EXPANDED PREMIUMS AND DELIVERY TIMES I’ve spoken of in the PM market, particularly silver, have not receded ONE BIT in the past week. And as for the banks, take a look at the stock of AMERICA’S LARGEST BANK, Bank of America, which despite the 1,100 point Dow rise attributed to “hope for a banking sector recovery”, its stock this morning is BARELY HIGHER than the lows registered last week. And take a look at its chart below – amazing how the 50 DMA, which coincidentally approximates the $7.14/share price of Warren Buffett’s warrants, is serving as seemingly unbreakable upside resistance.

This company is a “goner of the first kind”, and WILL reach its crisis point in the VERY near future, IMO.

As for PMs, I cannot POUND THE TABLE more about how important it is to PROTECT YOURSELF by trading as many of your collapsing FIAT CURRENCY UNITS as possible for REAL, PHYSICAL gold and silver.

THIS is what is happening to the GLOBAL money supply (8%-9% annual growth for the past 11 years, not including COVERT money printing)….

< target="_blank"span lang=EN>http://dzswc0o8s13...t2_13-10-11.png

….and THIS is what is occurring in the REAL world, a misery of expanding unemployment, foreclosure, and bankruptcy (ignore his SHORT-TERM chart analysis about “potential bearish signals”, it is WORTHLESS).

http://kingworl...s_For_Gold.html

As for the topic of this RANT, I considered changing it as obviously the length, and intensity, of this RANT shows you I actually had quite a few other things to say. However, I decided to keep it because 1) it is compelling and mysterious, and 2) I cannot let the opportunity pass to dump on a bunch of disingenuous, or better-termed LYING Federal Reserve flunkies.

The first article depicts how, at The Heritage Foundation’s Conference on a Stable Dollar last week, former Bush economic adviser and Federal Reserve Governor Larry Lindsey said “the weight of history leans toward gold.” Gee, it’s amazing how Federal Reserve governors are Keynesian monetarists until they leave office, when all of a sudden (the few that have brains to start with) they start to yap about the virtues of a gold standard.

Too bad his “words” can’t affect America, only his actions, which were to dramatically increase the money supply and, as Bush’s lead economic advisor in 2001-02, foster in an era of maniacal fiscal spending policy.

http://www.p...1011/65655.html

Of course, no discussion of “sellout” can ignore the biggest traitor in American history, the man MOST RESPONSIBLE for the financial crisis which is about to bankrupt hundreds of millions of people around the world. And that man, of course, is Alan Greenspan, the most despicable person on earth.

The former anti-statist disciple of Ayn Rand was an EMPHATIC defender of the gold standard before joining the Fed, and EQUALLY EMPHATIC about the destructive tendencies of bankers, as espoused in his famous 1966 treatise, “Gold and Economic Freedom.”

http://bl...knew-all-along/

I know I have written about this topic ad nauseum, but NOTHING makes me angrier than thinking of the havoc this SINGLE MAN has wreaked on the planet (a havoc that has JUST STARTED), all due to his quest for POWER.

Actually, I know what makes me angrier – the fact that, since ceding his post at the Fed to “Helicopter Ben”, he has quietly tried to rewrite history by pretending he is a gold advocate. Greenspan knows the public is too STUPID to associate his failures with the current financial collapse, and is thus surreptitiously trying to pin the whole mess on Bernanke.

BOTH are atop the list of MOST DESTRUCTIVE MEN IN WORLD HISTORY, but Greenspan is far more at fault because he LED America, and the world for that matter, past the monetary “point of no return.”

Readers, the GLOBAL FINANCIAL MELTDOWN IS JUST STARTING, and as soon as gold and silver regain their footing later this Fall, or early next year at the latest, you will see what a REAL gold mania looks like. And I assure you, it will be driven 100% by FEAR, contrasting the internet and real estate bubbles which were driven 100% by GREED.

PROTECT YOURSELF, with GOLD, SILVER, and NECESSARY LIVING ITEMS, while you still can!