Mass Layoffs To Return With A Vengeance

Remember the mass layoffs of 2008-2009? The US economy shed millions of jobs quickly and relentlessly, as companies died and the rest fought for survival.

Then the Fed and the US government flooded the banks and the corporate sector with bailouts and handouts. With those giga-tons of liquidity sloshing around, as well as taking on massive amounts of new cheap debt, companies were able to finance their working capital needs, hire workers back, and even buy-back their shares en mass to make themselves look deceptively profitable. The nightmare of 2008 soon became a golden era of ‘recovery’.

Well, 2016 is showing us that that era is over. And as stock prices cease to rise, and in fact fall within many industries, layoffs are beginning to make a return as companies jettison costs in attempt to reduce losses.

IMF warns of new financial crisis if interest rates rise

Fund says governments in emerging markets should prepare now for a new credit crunch because of a 10-year corporate borrowing binge

Rising global interest rates could prompt a new credit crunch in emerging markets, as businesses that have ridden the wave of cheap money to load up on debt are pushed into crisis, the International Monetary Fund has warned.

The debts of non-financial firms in emerging market economies quadrupled, from $4tn (£2.6tn) in 2004 to well over $18tn in 2014, according to the IMF’s twice-yearly Global Financial Stability Report.

J.P. Morgan’s Dimon warns next crisis will bring even more volatility

It’s not a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when’… and here’s your latest confirmation.

 

LONDON (MarketWatch) — You ain’t seen nothing yet, when it comes to market wreckage from a financial crisis, according to J.P. Morgan boss Jamie Dimon.

In his annual letter to shareholders, the bank’s chief executive warned “there will be another crisis” — and the market reaction could be even more volatile, because regulations are now tougher.

NOAA Employee Charged With Computer Breach Met Senior Chinese Official in Beijing

This is a new development in what was previously posted, showing the level of access and its official state support.

 

A federal weather service employee charged with stealing sensitive infrastructure data from an Army Corps of Engineers database met a Chinese government official in Beijing, according to court documents that reveal the case to be part of an FBI probe of Chinese economic espionage.

Xiafen “Sherry” Chen, an employee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) office in Ohio, was arrested in October and charged in a federal grand jury indictment with illegally accessing the Army’s National Inventory of Dams (NID).

The NID is a sensitive database containing information on all U.S. dams. U.S. intelligence officials have said the database was compromised by Chinese hackers in 2013 as part of covert efforts by Beijing to gather sensitive information on critical U.S. infrastructure for possible use in a future conflict.

Occupy prepares nationwide may day mayhem – ‘Direct action’ to shut down economy, block bridges, tunnels

Occupy’s plans for nationwide May Day chaos are going full-speed ahead, with the movement boasting of “direct action” schemes that include protest marches, shutting down the financial sector, and blocking bridges and tunnels.

The group’s official websites announce plans to “occupy” Manhattan-bound bridges and tunnels as well as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Tuesday

Besides street protests, sympathizers are asked to engage in a U.S. general strike to “shut it down,” referring to the country’s economy.

…

In the San Francisco Bay Area, protests are slated to kick off with Occupy activists congregating at 6 a.m. Pacific Time to “Occupy the Golden Gate Bridge.”

The Bay Area schedule is replete with “anti-capitalist” events such as an “anti-patriarchy” protest and actions to protest “gentrification.”

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The plan to shut down the U.S. economy is reminiscent of plans first hatched in March 2010 by Stephen Lerner, a controversial anti-capitalist SEIU organizer. Lerner visited the Obama White House at least four times.

WND was first to report Lerner was the brain behind some of the economic protest templates being used by the Occupy Wall Street campaign.

Lerner last year laid out a mass economic protest plan intended to bring down the stock market. He boasted it could be used to cause a new financial crisis. His ideology prompted some conservative critics to go so far as to label him an economic terrorist.

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Lerner outlined his campaign to “stoke simmering discontent into concrete, concerted direct action to challenge corporate extremism.”

Lerner’s campaign was intended to sow “the seeds of a movement that turns the tables on [Wall Street].”

Full article: Occupy prepares nationwide may day mayhem – ‘Direct action’ to shut down economy, block bridges, tunnels (WND)

Counterfeit Money, Counterfeit Policy

What is the difference between printing money and counterfeiting? There is none.

Counterfeiting is illegal because it is the false creation of value. The counterfeiter takes low-value paper and turns it into high-value money, which is fundamentally a claim on the real productive value of the economy that issues the currency and recognizes it as a proxy means of exchanging that productive value.

Counterfeiting is illegal because the counterfeiter creates no additional value–he creates only the proxy for value. Creating real value–adding meaningful goods or services to the economy–is tedious, hard work. How much easier to simply transform near-worthless paper into a claim on actual goods and services.

If this is illegal, then would somebody please arrest the Board of the Federal Reserve for counterfeiting? The Fed has blatantly printed money without creating any real value to back up their added claims on productive value. Hence they are counterfeiting, pure and simple. A government based on rule of law would arrest these fraudsters and cons at the earliest possible convenience.

And while you’re drawing up the indictment, can you also charge them with counterfeiting competence and policy, as they have demonstrated the Peter Principle par excellence: the Board has risen to its highest level of incompetence. Their counterfeit policies have wreaked incomparable damage on the real productive economy.

The essence of counterfeit policy–a fake policy that claims to be something it is not–is “extend and pretend.” And the sole goal of “extend and pretend” is self-preservation and the preservation of the Financial Elite which has tightened its grip on the nation’s throat as a direct consequence of Federal Reserve policies–notably “extend and pretend.”

Full article: Counterfeit Money, Counterfeit Policy (Financial Sense)