And the Cheat Goes On

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

For the last week or so we have been regaled with claims from the Bushwa Barry administration that the taxpayer will turn a profit on AIG, TARP money has been paid back and the economy was fixed over a year ago even though nobody seemed to notice at the time.  Perhaps it’s an attempt by the shyster in chief to get his demoralized base – the ones he’s been crapping on for the last couple years – to “stop whining” and perhaps they would it it weren’t so obvious that all these claims are complete and utter bullshit.

Meanwhile, the bankers who made scads of cash pushing fraudulent mortgages they knew couldn’t be repaid and then made even more when their mortgage schemes blew up and the government decided to bail them out are now looking to hit the trifecta by using fraudulent documents to foreclose on the specious mortgages they pushed in the first place.  Because who could have foreseen that a bunch of criminals who were rewarded for their duplicity rather than punished would take that as a pass to keep running the scam?   Of course none of the myriad regulatory agencies ostensibly created to prevent this sort of thing could be bothered to do much about it ahead of time, so now that the latest round of fraud is coming to light JP Morgan, GMAC and others are suspending their foreclosure proceedings until they can get things sorted out.  Translation – now that they’ve been caught red handed they’re going to try to pretend it was all an innocent mistake that they will fix with all due diligence and haste.  And they’ll probably get away with it too, just like they have with the rest of their criminal practices.

Nobody seems to know what the hell is going on with the stock markets as average investors stay away in droves and prices no longer move due to any underlying fundamentals.  Instead the majority of market volume these days comes from High Frequency Trading computer algorithms while the Fed and other oligarchs use who knows what secretive means to keep stock prices propped up.

…no one seems to ask themselves why a big money manager might come on CNBC and tell everyone stocks can’t go down.  Perhaps in a market with little to no liquidity someone needs liquidity to dump their garbage on some unsuspecting sucker.  Based on the volumes in the market I shudder to think what happens if someone actually tries to sell positions in size.

Apple, one of the most widely held companies, saw its stock price take a nosedive for no apparent reason a few days ago with no one wanting to buy at the lower price before miraculously recovering.

Seriously, as widely held as Apple is, just suppose the machines get a whiff of weakness from a report of the inevitable margin compression and go to town. There goes the markets for a day, or two, or seven hundred and twenty, or however long it will take for rational and sane investors to trust these markets, ever again.

We did learn one thing about the Fed recently which hasn’t received much notice, namely that it’s releasing financial data to its preferred clients long before the public gets a chance to see it.

To the outside world, the Federal Reserve is an impenetrable fortress. But former employees and big investors are privy to some of its secrets — and that access can be lucrative.

On August 19, just nine days after the U.S. central bank surprised financial markets by deciding to buy more bonds to support a flagging economy, former Fed governor Larry Meyer sent a note to clients of his consulting firm with a breakdown of the policy-setting meeting.

The minutes from that same gathering of the powerful Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC, are made available to the public — but only after a three-week lag. So Meyer’s clients were provided with a glimpse into what the Fed was thinking well ahead of other investors.

As Zerohedge opines the crooks are trying to get away with as much loot as they can before the whole crumbling financial edifice comes crashing down.

It is now obvious that the Fed realizes all too well that all is lost and just feeding its wealthy clients (that’s right, these people are the Fed’s CLIENTS) the last remaining scraps before it pulls the hyperinflation switch.

Don’t know if the inflation will be of the hyper variety, but anyone who’s been to the grocery store lately can tell you that inflation is already here.  That’s because the only tool the government has in its chest that it’s willing to use is called “quantitative easing”, also known as printing money.  Lots of it.  And when lots of new money floods the economy that makes the money people have already accumulated worth a lot less, leading to higher prices.  In and of itself that might not be so bad if workers actually got a raise to go along with rising prices, but with the “official” unemployment level hovering at 9-10% and the real figure being much higher, good luck with that.  Reading the tea leaves for what’s in store next, it sure looks like the Powers That Be are getting ready for another round of easing us all into the poorhouse.

And the response to all this chicanery?  Well regarding the mortgage fraud, Al Franken wrote a letter and on the subject of market manipulation Ted Kaufman gave a speech.  Well meaning to be sure but likely to be ignored just as so many other similar pleas have been over the last few years.

And that means that unless you happen to be a CEO of one of the banks that run this country these days, that Ace of Spades is never ever going to wind up in front of you.