Monster's Music for Halloween

Thursday Is International Stock Broker, Hedge And Private Equity Fund Suicide Day.

Wouldn't it be loverly if all the stock brokers, hedge and private equity fund managers committed suicide on Thursday, the 80th anniversary of what we used to call "The" Depression. The "Big" Depression. Why do they call it a Depression? Why not call it a crime, theft, international con? Why Depression? It sounds so mysterious -- like some cloud that just appeared and hovered over the world for a decade. But that's not what happened. Instead, some people on Wall Street simply ran a big con, and stole so much money from so many people that they crashed the entire world's economy. October 29, 1929. Big day.

Bad boys, right?

And now they've done it again. There's probably some private club on Wall Street where they compete with prior generations to see who can steal the most money, who can cause the most wars. Did you see today that McDonald's has shut down in some country in Europe because their currency is so devalued, because Wall Street stole all their money, that their people can't even buy a cheap hamburger with a small fries. Now that's what I call poor. Are they Depressed? Or are they victims of crime? I guess they can join the One Billion other people in the world who the U.N. says are starving as I write, because Wall Street stole so much money from the rest of the world. One Billion starving human beings. I wonder if there's some prize for that?

There is a guy named Jeffrey Picower who was bff, a "special" friend to Bernie Madoff, allegedly an insider, who took $7 Billion of the money Bernie stole from all the people who trusted him. Anyway, this guy Picower decided to jump the gun (so to speak) on this Thursday's scheduled International Stock Broker And Hedge And Private Equity Fund Suicide Day. (Should I put "First Annual" as a prefix?) This guy Picower is dead, dead, dead, but not dead enough as far as I'm concerned. He was found in the swimming pool of one of his many homes purchased with the blood of Bernie's victims. So he either had a heart attack or drowned. Maybe he died of a guilty conscience. Naaaah, just kidding. Too bad he didn't wait until Thursday and join the rest of them.

If you know any stock brokers, or hedge fund managers, or private equity fund managers, be sure to send them a reminder of the big event. I'm hoping for a really big turn-out.

Flu - It Can Ruin Your Day.

Between 1918-1919 an influenza A virus (H1N1) killed between 50 and 100 million people in the world. Original estimates had the deaths at 20-30 million, but more recent studies establish the number of actual deaths from the Spanish flu as between 50 and 100 million. The flu was likely started in the U.S., but until recently it was believed that it started in Europe, and became commonly known as the Spanish flu.

(Grossly overcrowded hospitals were unable to treat the victims of the Spanish flu).


(Public Warnings Posted)

The Spanish flu was an influenza A virus from a swine or an avian host of a mutated H1N1 virus. Sound familiar? Sources of that flu have been kept in laboratories in the U.S., and taken out in recent years and used to conduct research. Could our labs have accidentally let something out of the lab and into the public? I think they made a movie about that.


(The Spanish Flu began during World War I, and was spread through the tents and barracks which housed young Americans who had been drafted for war. Then they were put on ships and sent to Europe, and spread the flu around the world).


(Tents for housing the sick)


(There was no effective treatment for the flu. People were advised to avoid coughing, sneezing, sharing glasses, to stay home if they got sick. But once they got sick, there was no real medical help available).

Lots of announcements in recent days about this current flu. Emergency declarations issued by the White House waiving all sorts of normal federal regulations for hospitals (in case of mass outbreaks). Only 12 million doses of the vaccine have been shipped (for a population of 300 million), so is panic setting in? Remember that originally they said everyone would need 2 doses, but suddenly they say one is okay. Is that just because they don't have enough, so they're hoping that one will provide some protection? As noted in an earlier post, the repeated claims by the government that young people are dying in disproportionate numbers is not borne out by the reporting by the CDC, at least in this country. Is that statement simply because they think this is the same as the 1918 flu, which did have a much higher death rate in younger people?

Stay tuned.

Wall Street Crash Of 1929: 80 Years Ago 10/24/29

(People outside Stock Exchange Building in NYC, 1929, witness the beginning of the crash).

Eighty years ago, on October 24, 1929, a Thursday (later named Black Thursday) was the beginning of what would later be called the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The people in the U.S. had been encouraged to invest in the stock market, under the belief that by investing on Wall Street, they would get rich. The truth is that the people who ran Wall Street simply kept inflating the values of stock to defraud the public and get more people to give their money to Wall Street. It's like they had a race horse worth $100.00, but they kept selling shares to more people for $10 each, and pretty soon people all over the country claimed that they owned $10 worth of a certain race horse. Eventually there was $1.0 million invested in the horse, but the horse was only worth $100.00.

Finally, people caught on to the con and began to try to get their money out of Wall Street. The word spread, panic ensued, and the entire con collapsed, taking down with it the entire economy of the U.S. and eventually of the entire world.

There is certainly a good argument that the criminals on Wall Street who defrauded the public in 1929 created the conditions of widespread poverty, despair and conflict that eventually led to World War II, and the deaths of 100 million people. There are consequences to the organized crime and theft of Wall Street. Millions of people die because of what Wall Street does best: defraud people and steal money.

There were some laws passed after the 1929 crash, to control and regulate the banks (some people called them the Banksters, like the Gangsters), to control and regulate Wall Street, to try to stop them from pulling these cons again. But many of those laws were eliminated under the regime of Ronald Reagan, and many of them were eliminated under the regime of that great Republican Bill Clinton. And because the laws were eliminated, the criminals on Wall Street went back and did the exact same thing again: stole money from almost everyone in the entire world. So now we have widespread despair, suffering, conflict, hunger, war, unemployment, homelessness. Will we have another world war? Will 100 million more people have to die because of the criminals on Wall Street? Why won't our politicians, like the attorney general, stop these people, put them in prison, seize their assets, and stop this disaster.

(Fascism arose during the 1930s. Many argue it was the result of the conditions imposed after World War I. But there is a good argument that it arose because of the depression in Germany caused by the con men from the U.S. Wall Street stealing everyone's money. Would World War II Have Occurred If Wall Street Had Not Stolen The World's Money And Created An International Depression That Left Millions Homeless, Hungry, And Angry? Would Al Queda exist if the Western countries didn't keep stealing all the oil from, and oppressing and impoverishing the Muslim countries?)

Money doesn't disappear. Somebody takes it. The guy with the race horse, for example. He may declare bankruptcy and auction off the horse, all the investors get cents on the dollar. But that $1.0 million that he originally raised -- he put it into his own pocket. The money didn't disappear. It just was taken from average people and stolen by the con man. The same is true for the tech stock con in the late 1990s. Some guy opened a business which had sales of $100,000, but they did phony projections that they would have sales of $100 Million within 5 years, and sold stock based on those silly projections. Who sold the stock? Wall Street did. Who created the projections? Wall Street advisers. Who got the money? Wall Street takes a percentage, the business owner gets most of it. Then one day somebody realizes the business has no sales, or sales have not increased, people want their money back, business files for bankruptcy. Same result.

(Breadlines.)

Real estate: here's how it works. The higher the interest rate, the lower the sales price of homes. People's ability to buy a home is measured by the monthly payment. If interest is 5%/year, say $500 per $100,000 of loan, a person can borrow $300,000 and pay $1500/month. So if interest is dropped to 2.5%/year, they can borrow $600,000, and still just pay $1500/month. So Greenspan artificially held down the interest rates so the price of real estate skyrocketed. People who owned homes didn't notice so much that their paychecks were otherwise frozen, they were losing medical and pension and job security.

The banks loved it, the Wall Street banks, because they got to make jumbo loans to gas station attendants because everybody bought a half-million dollar home. Then Wall Street made phony packages of the loans and sold off fractional interests (like selling off a piece of a race horse), raised a ton more money than the loans were worth, and eventually the whole thing collapsed. Wall Street got all their money. The home buyers end up losing their homes, which drop in value by 40% as soon as the con ends. People who bought fractional interests of the loans lost. But Wall Street made a fortune. And kicked back a percentage to the politicians to avoid imprisonment.

Here we are again, 80 years later, and the same types of criminals are running Wall Street, running the same cons and pyramids and scams, with the same result. Most people have lost a bundle, the world is in a depression, the rich got away with stealing hundreds of billions of dollars, and everyone else suffers. 2% of the people in the world own 50% of the assets and wealth of the world. http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/01/352279.shtml Do you know why every decade fewer people own more of the wealth, and more and more people have nothing? Because the rich people steal everything, lie about it, kill anyone who gets in their way, and bribe the politicians to stay out of prison.

The diamond mines of Africa, for example, are "owned" by a few white Europeans whose ancestors murdered the Africans and stole the mine claims. Don't buy diamonds, don't wear diamonds, and if you own any diamonds, get rid of them. The simple answer, of course, is to take the assets and wealth away from those few people who stole it in the first place, and redistribute it to the people of the world.

It's not as bad today in the U.S. as it was in 1929. Yet. But we don't know whether we'll get there. And it seems that conditions are worse in the rest of the world. Or at least the reports of One Billion People starving because of this economic depression seems dire.

The question is this: why even allow an organization like Wall Street to exist? Who benefits from an international gambling casino, other than the racketeers who run the tables? Who benefits from having a slick mob that can put together packages of financing and sell them to the public based on usually fraudulent representations?

How about this for an idea: if somebody wants to buy stock in a business, let them buy into a local business. End Wall Street. Shut it down. No more national lenders, no more international lenders, no more chopping up packages of mortgages and deeds of trust and re-selling fractional interests. End it all.

There is nothing good that has come out of Wall Street. A very few people use their insider position to steal from everyone else. For the rest of us, we get nothing.

For example, did you read that the credit card companies are going to start charging a fee for anyone who pays on time? How can they possibly get away with fining people for paying their bills? Here's how: Wall Street. Wall Street, where all the money is under the control of a few people, has put most banks out of business, and left only a few financial institutions that have credit cards. If there are only 2 credit card companies in the country, a monopoly control, they can do whatever they want. They can charge $100/month as a "billing" fee if they want, and nobody can stop them because there are no other options available. And most people need to borrow money, which is all a credit card is, because they aren't making enough to get by.

So I would suggest we shut down Wall Street, break up every financial institution, institute a tax of 90% for all income or gain over $250,000 (the Disney CEO was paid $51 Million in 2008 -- let's tax it and put an end to this obscenity - http://concentrationofwealth.blogspot.com/ ), and put these criminal cartels out of business.

Either that or let them continue to make suckers out of us, steal our money, loot our treasury, and set up the conditions for neverending suffering and war throughout the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1930

17% Real Unemployment As Of End Of September, 2009. The Democrats in D.C. Are Balloon Boys And Girls: All Hot Air And Fraud.

The U.S. Department of Labor has various reports showing the unemployment on a weekly and monthly basis. It's probably important to occasionally take a look at those charts so our heads don't inflate, and we don't rush out to book expensive European cruises based on the TV economic reporting, which tells us that Happy Days Are Here Again. Not so for the unemployed and marginally employed in this country. Not so for the long-term unemployed. Not so for those looking forward with anxiety to becoming part of the nation's unemployed.

The official reports were that as of the end of September, 2009, the nation's unemployment was "about" 10% with some states, like California, showing the worse statistics.

But you always have to look at the tables, the back-up data to the official reports.

Table A-12 of the unemployment report at the U.S. Department of Labor shows that the actual unemployment as of the end of September, 2009, was 17%. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm

Table A-12, Note U-6: "U-6 Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers (as of September, 2009): 17.0 %."

"NOTE: Marginally attached workers are persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not looking currently for a job. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule."

The University of Rhode Island has a report and discussion on-line about unemployment through the mid-1990s, which includes two historical charts.

One of the charts shows the historical unemployment rates. The highest reported rate ever was in the mid 1930s, at 25%. We're at 17% now. Isn't it time to panic? Isn't it time for the Balloon Boys and Girls in Congress to start creating and funding serious jobs programs for the unemployed people in this country, instead of just giving billions more to Wall Street?

The other chart shows the historical difference between unemployment in black Americans vs. white Americans (black Americans historically suffer twice the unemployment of white Americans). Assuming that is still true, the unemployment rate among black Americans could be as high as 34%.


http://www.uri.edu/artsci/newecn/Classes/Art/INT1/Mac/Measure/Lab/LM1.U.html

We all know the millions of immigrants from Mexico and Central America who have been lured into this country during the past decade by businesses who wanted cheap, desperate labor instead of hiring Americans. The immigrants took many of the jobs across the country in construction, factories, manufacturing, and other types of labor, and they are suffering very high unemployment as those fields have all laid off workers. Of course the Americans who used to hold those jobs were also forced out of work, and replaced by the immigrants at lower wages.

The economic situation for the majority of working people in this country is very bad. We start with this historically almost unparallelled level of unemployment. We then have a loansharking industry, called credit cards, that charge 25% interest per year to working people for short-term loans that they need to take out in order to survive. Foreclosures are forcing many people out of their homes, real estate values continue to drop, and the banks pay 0% interest to people who have a little money in a savings account. People who still have jobs don't have medical or pensions.

Most people cannot afford dental or medical, and Congress's idea of health care "reform" is to order 40 million Americans to give money to the health insurance industry so they will pay kick-backs to the politicians. There is no affordable housing, and no plans from Congress to build affordable housing units, which would provide immediate relief by creating jobs and creating housing for people losing their homes to foreclosures.

What are the Democrats doing? The Democrats who now control the national government. What are they doing to help American working people?

Not a thing. No jobs program. The six-month debate over health care "reform" is just a phony scheme to force another 40 million Americans to buy unaffordable health insurance to pay obscene rates charged by doctors, drug dealers, and hospitals. Oh yeah -- the old people on social security won't get a cost of living this year. Screw the old people, right, isn't that the Democrat's Party Motto?

There's been massive media coverage this week about Balloon Boy. Some family reported that one of their kids had been swept away into the air by a home-made balloon. Turns out to have been a bunch of hot air. Just to get publicity. That's what the Democrats are: Balloon Boys and Girls. Lots of hot air. Lots of pompous bombast. But there's nothing really there.

Where are the jobs programs? There are none. Instead, what we get from the Democrats is a lot of hot air.

Michael Moore sent out an e-mail listing 15 things people should do to try to save the world, and the first five are certainly relevant to this blog post, so I'll quote them below:

FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:

1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people's homes are now truly worth -- and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.

2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery. The bill to make this happen is called H.R. 3200. You must call AND write your members of Congress and demand its passage, no compromises allowed.

3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a prohibition on elected officials leaving office and becoming lobbyists. Yes, those very members of Congress who solicit and receive millions of dollars from wealthy interests must vote to remove ALL money from our electoral and legislative process. Tell your members of Congress they must support campaign finance bill H.R.1826.

4. Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies -- and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies -- you name it. If a company's primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by -- and the first rule is "Do no harm." The second rule: The question must always be asked -- "Is this for the common good?" (Click here for some info about the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.)

5. Save this fragile planet and declare that all the energy resources above and beneath the ground are owned collectively by all of us. Just like they do it in Sarah Palin's socialist Alaska. We only have a few decades of oil left. The public must be the owners and landlords of the natural resources and energy that exists within our borders or we will descend further into corporate anarchy. And when it comes to burning fossil fuels to transport ourselves, we must cease using the internal combustion engine and instruct our auto/transportation companies to rehire our skilled workforce and build mass transit (clean buses, light rail, subways, bullet trains, etc.) and new cars that don't contribute to climate change. (For more on this, here's a proposal I wrote in December.) Demand that General Motors' de facto chairman, Barack Obama, issue a JFK man-on-the-moon-style challenge to turn our country into a nation of trains and buses and subways. For Pete's sake, people, we were the ones who invented (or perfected) these damn things in the first place!!

Handel's Passacaglia

Swine Flu Update - October 21, 2009

The government keeps telling us that only the children need to get the swine flu vaccine, because that flu is mostly deadly to the children. But when you look at the reported death rates at the CDC, and the census information for age groups, it shows that children are no more likely to die from swine flu than are the people in any other age group. So it appears that the reason they are rationing the swine flu vaccine is because they just don't have enough. And they don't want the rest of us to panic.

(From the Center for Disease Control website):


"What percentage of deaths for 2009 H1N1 flu occur in different age groups in the United States?"

"The percentage of deaths for 2009 H1N1 flu in the United States varies by age group. From August 30, 2009 through October 10, 2009, states reported 292 laboratory-confirmed 2009 H1N1 deaths to CDC. The percentage of 2009 H1N1 related deaths that occurred among people 0 years to 4 years was 3%; among those 5 years to 18 years was 14%; among people 19 to 24 years was 7%; among people 25 to 49 years was 33%; among people 50-64 years was 32%; and among people 65 years and older was 12%. For a graphical representation of this data, please see the chart below. "

[NOTE: I READ THAT LABS STOPPED TESTING TO CONFIRM WHETHER IT WAS SWINE FLU OR NOT, BECAUSE AS THE FLU HAS BECOME PANDEMIC, IT WAS DETERMINED TO BE SOMEWHAT A WASTE OF RESOURCES. THEREFORE, THE REPORTED DEATHS, LIMITED AS ONLY THOSE CONFIRMED BY LAB TESTS, COULD BE GROSSLY UNDERSTATED]
http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/qa.htm

As of 2007, the Census reported 6.9% of the population was under the age of 5 (3% of the swine flu deaths). About 18% of the population is reported as being between the age of 5 and 18 (14% of the swine flu deaths). So both groups are actually showing a lower percentage of the deaths than they represent in our population as a percentage. In other words, if swine flu deaths were as likely among all age groups, then the under 5 years of age, 6.9% of our population, would have 6.9% of the swine flu deaths. Instead, they are reported as half that -- 3% of the swine flu deaths). The census reports that about 75% of the population was 18 or older in 2007, yet they represent 83% of the swine flu deaths reported by the CDC, slightly more than their actual percentage of the population. 12% of our population is over the age of 65, and that group represents 12% of the deaths.

The point being that the story being circulated, that the swine flu is more deadly to children so the vaccine must be given to them, and older people don't die from the swine flu so don't need the vaccine, appears to be untrue using the government's own numbers. Now I don't believe much of anything that the government says, but nonetheless. I'm just wondering why the information from the CDC about swine flu deaths does not support their contention that it is mostly deadly to the young.

http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/STTable?_bm=y&-qr_name=ACS_2007_1YR_G00_S0101&-geo_id=01000US&-ds_name=ACS_2007_1YR_G00_&-state=st&-_lang=en&-redoLog=false

The official story from the government is that swine flu is only a danger to children, so only the children (and health care providers) will receive the vaccination when it becomes available. Then if there is enough vaccine later on (we are told), other people can get it too. (Want to bet everyone in Congress gets the vaccine before the children do).

The fact is that 76% of the deaths from swine flu in the most recent reporting period were of people 25 years of age and older. Yet that group, 76% of the deaths, is not on the list to receive the vaccination when it becomes available.

The CDC has released a priority list for who should receive the vaccination. First are the children (which most of us would support -- except for the anti-vaccine people), then the health care providers (also makes sense). Pregnant women. But not the teachers of the children, who will most likely be exposed from the germy little kids? No. After those first few groups, only the people with serious medical conditions will get vaccinated. Anyone over 65 is at the back of the line -- forget about it. And everyone over 25 who does not have a serious medical condition, the group that represents 76% of the recent deaths from the swine flu -- no vaccinations for them.

(From the CDC website):
"2009 H1N1 Recommendations: Who will be recommended to receive the 2009 H1N1 vaccine?"

"CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has recommended that certain groups of the population receive the 2009 H1N1 vaccine when it first becomes available. These target groups include pregnant women, people who live with or care for children younger than 6 months of age, healthcare and emergency medical services personnel, persons between the ages of 6 months and 24 years old, and people ages of 25 through 64 years of age who are at higher risk for 2009 H1N1 because of chronic health disorders or compromised immune systems."

"We do not expect that there will be a shortage of 2009 H1N1 vaccine, but availability and demand can be unpredictable. There is some possibility that initially the vaccine will be available in limited quantities. In this setting, the committee recommended that the following groups receive the vaccine before others: pregnant women, people who live with or care for children younger than 6 months of age, health care and emergency medical services personnel with direct patient contact, children 6 months through 4 years of age, and children 5 through 18 years of age who have chronic medical conditions. "

"The committee recognized the need to assess supply and demand issues at the local level. The committee further recommended that once the demand for vaccine for these target groups has been met at the local level, programs and providers should begin vaccinating everyone from ages 25 through 64 years. Current studies indicate the risk for infection among persons age 65 or older is less than the risk for younger age groups. Therefore, as vaccine supply and demand for vaccine among younger age groups is being met, programs and providers should offer vaccination to people over the age of 65."