Executives from Glen Beck’s favorite gold company, Goldline, testified in front Congress yesterday. Rep. Anthony Weiner showed no mercy.

 “We’re talking about a classic consumer issue,” Weiner said at a House subcommittee hearing. “The television gold industry, led by [Goldline], is built on lies, fear and rip-offs.”

 While Weiner has a point, at least when it comes to Goldline being a predator, one has to wonder why Congress doesn’t share that level of outrage for the infinitely larger problem of payday loan predators? Is it because Goldline doesn’t have the lobbying power of the entire banking industry? Or because Beck endorses Goldline, thus making it a partisan hearing?

 On the very same day of the hearings there was another headline in the markets.

 Gold prices traded in record territory again Thursday as inflation-wary investors bid prices up near the psychologically important threshold of $1,300 an ounce.

  Gold prices gained $4.20 to settle a record $1,296.30 an ounce, building on gains it made after the Federal Reserve announced Tuesday it might take further steps to stimulate the economy. …

  Gold prices have nearly doubled since 2008, when an economic panic shook global credit markets and central banks responded by flooding currency markets. Since then, global economic uncertainty and inflation fears have spurred investors to shift money from stocks and cash into gold.

 The simple fact is that while Goldline might be stoking the hype and fear, people would be rushing into gold even if Goldline didn’t exist. The reason isn’t because of lies and rip-offs. The reasons are based on sound historical facts.

  Executives from Glen Beck’s favorite gold company, Goldline, testified in front Congress yesterday. Rep. Anthony Weiner showed no mercy.

 “We’re talking about a classic consumer issue,” Weiner said at a House subcommittee hearing. “The television gold industry, led by [Goldline], is built on lies, fear and rip-offs.”

 While Weiner has a point, at least when it comes to Goldline being a predator, one has to wonder why Congress doesn’t share that level of outrage for the infinitely larger problem of payday loan predators? Is it because Goldline doesn’t have the lobbying power of the entire banking industry? Or because Beck endorses Goldline, thus making it a partisan hearing?

 On the very same day of the hearings there was another headline in the markets.

 Gold prices traded in record territory again Thursday as inflation-wary investors bid prices up near the psychologically important threshold of $1,300 an ounce.

  Gold prices gained $4.20 to settle a record $1,296.30 an ounce, building on gains it made after the Federal Reserve announced Tuesday it might take further steps to stimulate the economy. …

  Gold prices have nearly doubled since 2008, when an economic panic shook global credit markets and central banks responded by flooding currency markets. Since then, global economic uncertainty and inflation fears have spurred investors to shift money from stocks and cash into gold.

 The simple fact is that while Goldline might be stoking the hype and fear, people would be rushing into gold even if Goldline didn’t exist. The reason isn’t because of lies and rip-offs. The reasons are based on sound historical facts.

  The National Bureau of Economic Research declared this week that the Great Recession ended over a year ago. Yet, for some reason, the average American isn’t ready to break out the champagne.

 “Every single one of the individuals who wrote the report needs a serious reality check,” said Bob Johnson of the Queens borough of New York, who is 46, had worked in communications and has been looking for a job for more than three years.

 The American working class is hurting. The unemployment rate is only marginally down from the peak and the economy has been losing jobs over the last three months. Households were $1.5 Trillion poorer last quarter, and $12.3 Trillion poorer than three years ago. Most of this is reflected in the crushed dreams of retirement. The poverty rate is at a 15-year high.

 Nevertheless, the economy is improving, right? That depends on who you ask.

The summer of 2002 was a drought year in the Klamath Basin.

An estimated 70,000 salmon died that year after the Bush administration “ignored its own federal biologists and divert more water from the Klamath River for farm irrigation”. According to documents, the decision was made because the farmers generally voted Republican. The Bush Administration then went on to order that water continue to be diverted for another eight years.

Only 24,000 fall chinook spawned naturally in the Klamath in 2004, followed by 27,000 last year.

The analysis from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service identified low water flows as a prime culprit in a major salmon kill on the Klamath River in 2002.

Because it takes several years for salmon to reach peak reproducing age, the effects of this huge fish-kill only started in 2005 when the National Marine Fisheries Service abbreviated the commercial salmon season. It cut the income of west coast fishermen “by 50 percent”.

California and Oregon indian tribes, that have depended on salmon fishing for thousands of years, also had their fishing quotas cut back by as much as half.

It’s easy to look at this example as an exception based on petty politics, but that would require you to overlook five centuries of political and economic policy.

  I met up with a good friend of mine this past weekend at a local dive bar. As the liquor loosened his tongue, he took a moment to complain about the wealthy elites he works for. Or as he put it, “those rich f*cks”.

 My friend works for a non-profit, environmental group. The major contributors, all of the board of directors, and most of his coworkers are all wealthy. His new boss wants to focus on gifts for donations, such as tote bags that you can bring to the grocery store, rather than specific environmental causes.

 This non-profit environmental group is a microcosm of what is wrong with the environmental movement today. Environmentalism is following down the same path to irrelevancy that labor unions traveled when they made the decision that 2% raises mattered and political movements didn’t.

  On the morning of July 13, 1854, the American sloop-of-war USS Cyane fired nearly 200 cannonballs at the defenseless and unarmed town of San Juan del Norte, Nicaragua. When their supply of cannonballs neared exhaustion, Captain George N. Hollins dispatched a group of sailors to burn anything in the town that was still standing.

 By nightfall, the town of San Juan del Norte, also known as Greytown, ceased to exist. The inhabitants, who had mostly fled before the bombardment, were homeless.

 There was no declaration of war before, and no apology after. The official reason was given by President Pierce as such:

 The president concluded that while it would have been more satisfactory if the Cyane’s mission could have been consummated without the use of force, “the arrogant contumacy of the offenders rendered it impossible to avoid the alternative either to break up their establishment or to leave them impressed with the idea that they might persevere with impunity in a career or insolence and plunder.”

 The truth behind why this criminal act occurred had a lot more to do with greed and racism, than with “arrogant contumacy”.

 Wall Street’s troubles are compounding. It appears that small investors have waken up to the fact that the game is rigged. They are fleeing from casino capitalism in droves.

 In a speech Tuesday, Mary Schapiro, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said the SEC  was informed by retail brokers that the Main Street investors they cater to “have pulled back” from the stock market since the flash crash.

  To buttress her point, Schapiro noted that stock funds have suffered net outflows every week since the flash crash.

 

 When I wrote this well-received essay a week ago, the net outflows were beginning to gain attention from the media. In the past week, things have gotten much worse for Wall Street.

  Because the lack of new “dumb money” flowing into Wall Street, as many as 80,000 banksters will lose their jobs.

 Since Washington refuses to enact serious reforms of Wall Street, and the regulators refuse to do their jobs, it has come down to mom and pop investors to starve Wall Street into submission.

  Europe is in trouble again.

Back in May the European Central Bank created a massive $1 Trillion bailout package for the countries on the fringe of Europe that were struggling with rising interest rates on their debts.

 Despite the enormous bailout package, interest rates for the PIIGS countries just hit new records today.

Irish and Portuguese government bonds fell, pushing the yields on 10-year securities to records versus benchmark German bunds, on concern European banks are vulnerable to losses on their holdings of so-called peripheral euro-region debt.

Spain’s debt isn’t doing much better.  

 This is particularly depressing for Ireland since it has already enacted the draconian austerity measures that the financial markets demanded. In fact, all of the European nations in question have implemented austerity measures, and yet the financial markets continue to punish them.

Ireland and Portugal are the big losers for today, but Greece is still leading the pack towards self-destruction.

 “Greece is insolvent,” Bosomworth, Munich-based head of portfolio management at Pimco, which oversees the world’s largest bond fund, said in a telephone interview today. “I see it as being quite a substantial risk that Greece eventually defaults or restructures.”

 One Trillion dollars in bailouts and we are back where we started four months ago. Why is that?

  The answer is surprisingly simple.

  After nine years of work, $330 Billion in treasure, and nearly 1,300 American fatalities, bankers might ultimately do to Afghanistan what the Taliban could never accomplish.

 Even as it battles a resurgent and spreading Taliban, the beleaguered government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai is facing a more immediate threat: a run on the country’s largest banks.

  This week, droves of depositors rushed offices of Afghanistan’s Kabul Bank, pulling out their money amid concerns that bank has lost millions of dollars. BBC News broadcast images of Hummers and SUV’s racing to the bank, a troubling sign of growing mistrust for Mr. Karzai’s already heavily criticized government.

Something in the neighborhood of $200 to $300 million in deposits have been withdrawn in just a couple days, about half of all the bank’s assets. If the stampede continues for just a few more days the bank will fail.

 So why is this important? Because the Kabul Bank is what the government uses to pay its teachers, police, and soldiers.

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

– Abraham Lincoln

 Wall Street has a problem.

 You see Wall Street functions much like Las Vegas. Their immense wealth depends on the continuing myth that their games aren’t rigged, and the willful denial of reality by the suckers.

  Just like Vegas, no one wants to talk about the money they lost playing the stock market. Instead, all you here about is how everyone is getting rich at the blackjack table. If you aren’t getting obscenely wealthy betting on interest rate spreads then there must be something wrong with you.

 In reality, the reason why you lost money is because the game is rigged. The House always wins in the end. The suckers are the ones who think there are rules. Like Wall Street, Vegas exists to separate you from your money.

 Wall Street may seem all powerful, but like Vegas it has an Achilles Heel – if the people don’t feed the beast it will starve.

 If the greed of The House gets to extreme, and the rigging of the games becomes too obvious to ignore, people will stop gambling at the casinos and in the stock market. The House goes broke.

 That tipping point, where the willful denial of Main Street starts to break down because the game rigging is so blatant, may have finally been reached.

  When Sue Lowden suggested Chickens for Checkups we all laughed. It was good fun.

 However, the front-runner for the Republican nomination in the Colorado governor’s race has taken this to a whole ‘nuther level.

 Wikileaks has provided us with a question worthy of an answer.

 This CIA “Red Cell” report from February 2, 2010, looks at what will happen if it is internationally understood that the United States is an exporter of terrorism; ‘Contrary to common belief, the American export of terrorism or terrorists is not a recent phenomenon, nor has it been associated only with Islamic radicals or people of Middle Eastern, African or South Asian ethnic origin. This dynamic belies the American belief that our free, open and integrated multicultural society lessens the allure of radicalism and terrorism for US citizens.’

 While an interesting question, I think an even better one would be ‘what would happen if it was domestically understood that the United States is an exporter of terrorism?’