UKRAINE CRISIS: Russian financial and economic warfare against the West?

"An attempt to announce sanctions would end in a crash for the financial system of the United States, which would cause the end of the domination of the United States in the global financial system." - Sergei Glazyev, Kremlin aide, 3/4/14

(NSA Official) Plunkett told CBS: “Don’t be fooled. There are absolutely nation states who have the capability and the intention to do just that,” ie “literally take down the U.S. economy.” If this revelation is widely discussed tomorrow morning, it could very well have a serious negative effect on stock prices. - Forbes, Some Foreign Nations Have The Cyberwar Capability To Destroy Our Financial System, NSA Admits, 12/15/13

Last Tuesday, the U.S. and E.U. announced new economic sanctions against Russia in response to ongoing Russian military involvement with separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine.  These new stringent sanctions that are geared to impact Moscow's access to Western capital and the Russian oil industry came in the wake of the downing of Flight MH17 over the Donetsk region of Ukraine on July 17th.

Right after this new round of sanctions was announced, a sharp sell-off in stocks began on Wall Street with dramatic reversals from the psychologically important 17000, 11000 and 6000 marks in the DJIA, NYSE and DJ Composite indices, respectively:

The drubbing on Wall Street was spearheaded by a pronounced decline in financial stocks:

The five big American investment banks, J.P. Morgan (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C), Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS), all fell sharply.  These key financial institutions "control 95 percent of cash and derivatives trading for U.S. bank holding companies", a $700 trillion (with a "T") market.  Thus, the more they go down, the greater the danger of a collapse in the global financial system.

The sell-off in stocks last week was attributed to a bond default by Argentina and the newest round of economic sanctions on Russia, and this is the most likely and plausible explanation.

However, the lack of really pertinent news to cause such a sharp drop, including a 300+ point plunge in the DJIA on Thursday, prompted me to wonder about how Russia might retaliate against the West for new economic sanctions.  Beyond banning the import of some European fruit, Moscow has done little.

Such an impotent response from the Kremlin thus far seems a little odd to me given my supposition that Russia's emergent war on Ukraine is part of a large-scale plan to draw the West into World War Three.  Surely more aggressive retaliation must be in the works.

Indeed, keep in mind here my Global Bipolar Hypothesis.  According to this hypothesis, Western beliefs and expectations have been misled to irrational heights, represented by the DJIA peaking above the 17000 benchmark in July, for the sole purpose of a strategic upset by the powers of the East in the form of a surprise third world war.

While I've long emphasized that the form of that war will ultimately involve a thermonuclear attack on the U.S. and its allies, what I've failed to highlight is how the Kremlin's war plan involves using all fronts to overtake "world capitalism" including psychological, ideological, diplomatic, economic and political forms of struggle.

Nuclear war is a complex and many-sided process, which in addition to the operation of the armed forces will involve economic, diplomatic and ideological forms of struggle.  They will all serve the political aims of the war and be guided by them. [Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War (1979)]

In this regard, Russia has already been achieving great successes such as global misinformation campaigns to vilify America using media outlets like RT and al Jazeera and the election of Barack Obama as U.S. president.

But what of economic warfare?  After all, if I'm right, the worldwide struggle between the forces of Communism and Capitalism never ended but rather took a dangerously deceptive new form with the purported 'end of the Cold War'.

It would make sense that part of the Kremlin's strategy is to effect the failure of the capitalist system to prove the need for a authoritarian 'socialist' new world order in place of Capitalism before nuking America to assuredly gain global dominance.

How might this be achieved?

As made clear in my "Manic-Depressive Man" thesis, I'm aware of the inherently cyclical, self-destructive dynamics of market economies. The question here is whether or not these tendencies might be strategically manipulated by Moscow to achieve the end of world Capitalism.  Certainly the last major cyclical downturn into 2009 was a close call and little has been done to correct the failings within the system since then to prevent a far graver collapse:

But what if the Kremlin plans to give the global capitalist system a 'little push'?

In this light, please read TheBlaze.com article, ‘Jaw-Dropping’: Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Makes Bombshell Claim About Russia and 2008 Financial Crisis (and Why It May Sound Familiar).

Also see the Washington Times article, Financial terrorism suspected in 2008 economic crash. Here's an excerpt:

Mr. Freeman wrote the report (“Economic Warfare: Risks and Responses”) for the Pentagon’s Irregular Warfare Support Program, part of the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office, which examines unconventional warfare scenarios. 

“The preponderance of evidence that cannot be easily dismissed demands a thorough and immediate study be commenced,” the report says. “Ignoring the likelihood of this very real threat ensures a catastrophic event.” 

The report concluded that the evidence of an attack is strong enough that “financial terrorism may have cost the global economy as much as $50 trillion.” 

Because of secrecy surrounding global banking and finance, finding the exact identities of the attackers will be difficult. 

But U.S. opponents in Russia who could wage economic warfare include elements of the former KGB intelligence and political police who regard the economy as a “logical extension of the Cold War,” the report says.

Finally, check out Kevin Freeman's web site, GlobalEconomicWarfare.com.

This is a little something to think about as the stock market reverses, along with misled global beliefs and expectations, from the "peak of Western Civilization" most likely reached last month...

"These financial wars are inevitable, and they’re coming sooner than we think. We can hear their rumblings already. This is the beginning of World War III, and—God help us—we are not ready." - Kevin Freeman, World War III: The Coming Cyber-Financial Attack that will Shock America, 2/20/14

"In 2014, we face the imminent danger of a cyber-economic market crash that could wipe out $8 trillion or more of American wealth with a keystroke. It will make 1987’s Black Monday look like a picnic." - Kevin Freeman, THE STOCK MARKET WILL CRASH AND IT WILL HAPPEN IN MINUTES, 1/20/14 

Keiser Report: Goldman Sachs, Undeclared Enemy of the State

Note that this aired on RussiaToday


(particularly watch the interview in the second half at 13:00)

Do not exploit the poor because they are poor
and do not crush the needy in court,
for the LORD will take up their case
and will plunder those who plunder them.
[Proverbs 22:22-23]

God's Work?

Last November, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein claimed: "I'm doing 'God's Work.'"



Well, Lloyd, I think God disagrees.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL | William K. Black on Fraud | PBS


IMHO, God is sick and tired of this world serving money (Mammon) instead of Him, and this misconduct is about to be brought to a prophetic End:



Self-government without moral responsibility misleads to self-destruction.

Figure it out...

Goldman Sucks on 60 Minutes

Sometimes it takes popular comedians to inform Americans of the twisted reality:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
In Dodd We Trust
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

Goldman Sucks and the banking elite are at the heart of the greatest Ponzi scheme fraud and theft in human history: the private banking industry.

Now the government has sacrificed the full faith and credit of the United States of America to perpetuate the con while the American people, i.e., the taxpayers responsible for the impossible tab to come, have sat idly by, too busy entertaining themselves to death.

This will not last IMHO, but I imagine the Evil One will get to us before the evildoers on Wall Street are brought to justice under American law. Of course, some might conclude the coming war on world capitalism by the forces of world communism is the historical form justice is taking based upon God's law. The West, knee-deep in sin, avarice and material excess, opted not to see the conflict coming (as so "incentivised") and thereby made it happen.

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. - Thomas Jefferson

"Goldman Raped The Taxpayer, And Raped Their Clients"

The saga of the giant vampire squid on the face of humanity continues.

Read HERE...

Goldman Sucks: the saga continues...

Check THIS OUT and THIS.

I recommend this site, GoldmanSachs666.com.

As for Goldman Sachs lawyers that might see this blog and seek silence, piss off you unscrupulous scum of the earth.

Goldman Sucks

Does it get any more disgusting?

UPDATE: The video is now set as "private" on YouTube. (Goldman Sachs is usually pretty aggressive, armed with a formidable team of lawyers, to squelch those who attempt to expose their criminality.) YOU CAN STILL WATCH THE VIDEO HERE (but mention of Goldman Sachs' connection has been scrubbed). Also, here's an article about the FDIC's response to the video.

Then there's the recent PBS Newshour expose on Goldman Sachs:

Part I

Part II

Also see the Rolling Stone piece, Inside The Great American Bubble Machine.

The beauty of free enterprise is that most often money accrues to those who create value for others thus enriching all. Clearly this is not the case with Goldman Sachs which seems best described by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone magazine as follows:

The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

The bottom line is that the company has no redeeming value for society-at-large and is basically a giant, overly-influential hedge fund holding the world hostage to feed it unearned money "or else". Ultimately, this is criminal theft by the rich of the poor. Put 'em in jail.

Go directly to jail...

I can't even touch THIS:

Goldman Sachs, the world’s richest investment bank, could be about to pay its chief executive a bumper bonus of up to $100 million in defiance of moves by President Obama to take action against such payouts.

Bankers in Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF) told The Times yesterday they understood that Lloyd Blankfein and other top Goldman bankers outside Britain were set to receive some of the bank’s biggest-ever payouts. “This is Lloyd thumbing his nose at Obama,” said a banker at one of Goldman’s rivals.

Goldman Sachs is becoming the focus of an increasingly acrimonious political and financial showdown over the payment of multimillion-pound bonuses.Last week the US President described bonuses paid out by some banks as “the height of irresponsibility” and “shameful”.

“The American people understand that we have a big hole to dig ourselves out of, but they do not like the idea that people are digging a bigger hole, even as they are being asked to fill it up,” he said last week.

It get's even more obnoxious:

Investment bankers in the U.S. have begun using equity derivatives to convert restricted shares paid as bonuses into cash, side-stepping new guidelines on remuneration which were designed to prevent bankers cashing out for at least three years, according to a headhunter.

The bankers are using over-the-counter equity derivatives strategies such as call options, put options and collars to monetise their shares now, albeit at a discount to what they would receive if they waited for the restrictions to lift.

Here's your bonus check:

Them's fightin' words!

President Obama effectively declared war on Wall Street's reckless greed this morning:



This sent the stock market into a tailspin, particularly the share prices of big banks and Goldman Sachs in particularly:



As it has been, Wall Street has been raking in record earnings and fat bonuses by effectively gambling with the money of depositors and taxpayers. When their risky bets went sour after the housing market turned down, the big banks were too big to fail, so taxpayers had to bail them out to the tune of $2.5 trillion. In the wake of that bailout, and after accounting standards were twisted to keep the banking system technically solvent, Wall Street had a banner year in 2009 for which they are now rewarding themselves around $150 billion in bonuses. That this whole Ponzi scheme is one of the most unprecedented crimes in American history is a profound understatement.

Well, President Obama, to his credit, has decided to put his foot down by invoking, rather aptly, what he dubbed the "Volcker Rule". Consequently, the robber barons on Wall Street are bound to chop off the President's foot and tank the stock market thereby harming the effective savings of millions of Americans who have placed blind trust in the most untrustworthy sorts. The President's announcement today was like declaring an end to the largest Ponzi scheme in human history.

A New Way Forward

I went to a protest today organized by a new movement called "A New Way Forward" :



Inspired by Bill Moyers of PBS, apparently these protests were the Left's version of the Tea Party protests slated for Tax Day on April 15th.

Quite frankly, I didn't care who was organizing the protest as the objective was the same as what is being called for on both sides of the aisle OUTSIDE OF WASHINGTON: the prosecution of the financial and political elites whose fraud has decimated the world economy. On this topic, the following Bill Moyer's interview is of the utmost importance:



Maybe there's finally an issue where the American Right and Left can come together for the common good?! This truly constitutes a 'new way forward'!

Coincidentally, at the end of the rallyI attended, I spoke with a gentleman name Donny who apparently kicked off the whole "A New Way Forward" movement just a few weeks ago by creating the related web site. I briefed him on my personal background in the study of economics and found that we were in essential agreement regarding the current financial crisis, its causes and its solutions. In this regard, the following email correspondence occurred this evening:

---

Hi Donny,

Just got home from the protest.

I'm truly amazed by what you have started. What's more, it seems synchronicity that we met in that your proposed solution is precisely what I and others like myself have been calling for. Remarkably, I did not even read 'the idea' of your movement until now:

http://www.anewwayforward.org/the_idea/

This is right on the mark!

I especially appreciate this:

People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system. It is irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess. Instead, find the smart people whose hands are clean.

"Economic science" is a contradiction in terms. Having studied economics through the PhD level, I assure you these pontificating academicians are clueless to market realities. Their institutional gains became rooted in forging a false religion of the rationality and social benefit of greed. Nevertheless, their's is nothing but a false religion and they've unwittingly destroyed the world economy ASSuming what they believe is true even though it has been increasingly contrary to historical realities.

You should link to Moyer's interview with William Black on your site if you've not already done so. Here's the link:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html

Here's a related link:

http://real.jour.missouri.edu:8080/ramgen/kbia/billblack.rm

Keep up the good work and please stay in touch!

-J

---

Hi J,

Great to meet you. So glad you came out today in the rain. I guess things were much better on the West Coast... 300 in LA, 400 in Portland, 300 in SF. Not bad for pushing wonkinsh financial policy. Glad you like the idea page. I wrote that in basically one sitting on an airplane and every time I've reread it, I still am able to stand by it.

Thank you for all these links. I will be checking them out. William Black's interview is great. I have been thinking of this as deliberate systemic fraud all along.

Best,

-Donny

---

It's not deliberate persay a conspiracy to reap havoc on America's financial future by those with our worst interests in mind. However, it is deliberate in the sense that people in a position to know better opted for quick profits and fat bonuses in the short-run when this was clearly at the expense of their companies and the world economy in the long-run.

Either which way, what has occurred is fraud on a vast scale of which the perpetrators are still running the show and seeking to cover up and unwind their crimes at taxpayers expense. The key issue is whether or not taxpayers will simply stand idly by as trillions of their tax dollars are misspent, or will their be a popular uprising to put an end to this nonsense and put the wrongdoers in jail or at least in the unemployment lines they helped to create.

You are currently aligning yourself and your movement with those in economics that actually understand economics, the crimes of greed that have occurred and the hard solutions to the problem.

I must highlight again William Black, and place high emphasis on James Galbraith, son of the famous author of The Great Crash, 1929, John Kenneth Galbraith. These professors are key to the solution.

Now, how do you bring sufficient popular pressure to bear on the political elite that have long been lackies of the financial elite to replace the Timothy Geithners from the system with regulation-minded outsiders like William Black and James Galbraith?

I think the solution is a protest movement needs to focus in on the actual costs that American taxpayers are incurring for these bailouts. For the most part, these costs are unrecognized by the masses although there is some sense the costs are signficant and not necessarily serving the people's best interests. As the truth of what's going on and how much it is actually costing taxpayers is revealed, I believe the people will rise up in angry rebellion to the fleecing underway.

In this light....below is the key, recent Bloomberg article to consider.

If the $4.2 trillion spent thus far had simply been given to the American people, a check for $14,000 could have been cut to every man, woman and child in the nation....or a check of around $50K could have been cut to every U.S. household. The major drag on the economy is the excessive debt burden on U.S. households and businesses. Imagine what $50K per household would have done to alleviate that distressing burden? Instead, most of the money has been wasted on bailing out insolvent financial institutions that, while on the government dole, continue to register profits and pay themselves exorbitant bonuses and salaries at our expense. Meanwhile, $14K per American has been spent by the government for which taxpayers are ultimately responsible .This is a crime against America and the wrongdoers and the political elite acting on their behalf need to be brought to justice before our nation is completely bankrupted IMHO.

I believe the insanity of this situation is best described by the following question I have posed elsewhere: Why are taxpayers loaning money to banks so that banks might make loans to taxpayers? In effect, this is what's happening. Trillions of tax dollars are being spent to bailout insolvent financial institutions in the hope that these financial instutions will become solvent again and start providing credit (loans) to the American people who are bailing them out in the first place! If you want to stimulate the economy, then insolvent banks should be closed down and the American consumer should be bailed out of their exorbitant debt burdens. It's that simple. The circuitous route being taken is preferred by the financial and political elite simply because those now running the show were running it before and they are TRYING DESPERATELY TO COVER UP THEIR CRIMES. Should we pay for this? I don't think so.


Financial Rescue Nears GDP as Pledges Top $12.8 Trillion (Update1)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...CA4&refer=home

By Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry

March 31 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s.

New pledges from the Fed, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. include $1 trillion for the Public-Private Investment Program, designed to help investors buy distressed loans and other assets from U.S. banks. The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008.

President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with the chief executives of the nation’s 12 biggest banks on March 27 at the White House to enlist their support to thaw a 20-month freeze in bank lending.

“The president and Treasury Secretary Geithner have said they will do what it takes,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein said after the meeting. “If it is enough, that will be great. If it is not enough, they will have to do more.”

Commitments include a $500 billion line of credit to the FDIC from the government’s coffers that will enable the agency to guarantee as much as $2 trillion worth of debt for participants in the Term Asset-Backed Lending Facility and the Public-Private Investment Program. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair warned that the insurance fund to protect customer deposits at U.S. banks could dry up because of bank failures.

‘Within an Eyelash’

The combined commitment has increased by 73 percent since November, when Bloomberg first estimated the funding, loans and guarantees at $7.4 trillion.

“The comparison to GDP serves the useful purpose of underscoring how extraordinary the efforts have been to stabilize the credit markets,” said Dana Johnson, chief economist for Comerica Bank in Dallas.

“Everything the Fed, the FDIC and the Treasury do doesn’t always work out right but back in October we came within an eyelash of having a truly horrible collapse of our financial system, said Johnson, a former Fed senior economist. “They used their creativity to help the worst-case scenario from unfolding and I’m awfully glad they did it.”

Federal Reserve officials project the economy will keep shrinking until at least mid-year, which would mark the longest U.S. recession since the Great Depression.

The following table details how the Fed and the government have committed the money on behalf of American taxpayers over the past 20 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Has The Grand Supercycle Crash Begun?

A historic weekend has passed that witnessed a tectonic shift on Wall Street. Lehman Brothers has gone bankrupt, Merrill Lynch....to prevent its own failure....has been bought by Bank of America for ~$50 billion and AIG, the nation's largest insurer, is planning to sell off parts of its business in a scramble to raise capital before it too sinks. Of the five investment banks on Wall Street last year, only two now remain: Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, all seminal features on Wall Street, are gone.

Global markets are now in a fit of fear as the financial future of America seems dubious. Asian and European stock bources are down sharply, around three percent on average, as are futures on U.S. stock indices. As the catastrophic implications of Lehman's counterparty risk become clear, there's a chance that the worst financial panic in human history will occur as some quadrillion dollars in higly-unregulated derivatives cause a global meltdown.

Is the Grand Supercycle Crash beginning that I've long been warning about?

It is possible. If so, there are important implications to the timing.

According to the Elliott Wave Principle of stock price movements, a Grand Supercycle top occurred last October at Dow 14,000. Since that time, the DJIA suffered an intermediate wave-(1) into the collapse of Bear Stearns in March, a wave(2) rebound into May and then the decisive wave-(3) down....the potential crash wave....got underway. Being a fractal pattern, the intermediate third wave down also consists of the five-wave Elliott Wave pattern that started with a minor wave-1 to Dow 11,000 in July and then a wave-2 bounce into August since which wave-3 of wave-(3) apparently started. A decisive drop in the DJIA below the psychologically important 11,000 mark will confirm this wave count.


Thus, we are apparently now at the point where there is the highest likelihood for a crash and, given the top last October was likely of Grand Supercycle scale, any approaching crash should be of like proportion. As I've been warning, this likely implies the crash of Western Civilization is at hand.

Notably, today is a full moon that comes six weeks after the August 1st total solar eclipse that marked the start of the Georgian crisis. Market analyst Steve Puetz discovered that there is a connection between eclipses and financial panics. As Peter Eliades, author of the Stock Market Cycles investment letter points out regarding Puetz' discovery: "a full moon in general and a lunar (eclipse) full moon close to solar eclipses, in particular, seem to be the triggering device that allows for the rapid transformation of investor psychology from manic greed to paranoia." Thus, the full moon today might be a trigger for mass panic. If so, then the further discovery of Chris Carolan regarding Autumn panics becomes relevant.

Chris Carolan discovered that the 1929 and 1987 stock market crashes climaxed into the 28th day of the 7th lunar month in those respective lunar years.



He notes that other market panics have likewise occurred into this specific point on the lunar calendar or into the 28th day of the 6th lunar month. We are currently in the 6th lunar month of which the 28th day is September 26th. This means that a global panic, starting with the current full moon, might climax into September 26th. The next window for a mass panic to unfold would be from around the time of the October full moon on 10/14 to the 28th day of the 7th lunar month which is 10/25. Conceivably, therefore, we could be in the midst of a worldwide panic until late-October. As I have been warning about for more than 17 years, this "Grand Supercycle Crash" could ultimately take the form of global war.

The implications of what the world is experiencing are profound.

Elliott waves in stock price movements and the seasonality of collective panics, shaped by solar and lunar cycles, reflects seemingly deterministic patterns in human behavior. Man's nature, in other words, is predictably insane to a certain degree. This is an important point since world history is apparently shaped by these patterns of human behavior.

The bottom line is that the species of man is literally insane and a danger to itself and the world it inhabits. As long as human behavior is driven by selfishness rather than agape, I'm afraid history will continue to repeat itself in a predictably insane manner. I believe the only cure for mankind can come from accepting The Truth. We must all deny our selfish nature and turn to God, lest our species end up destroying itself.