False Hopes And Wishful Thinking

“Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time, and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits among yourselves, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out and by the Eternal God, I will rout you out."
(Spoken to a delegation of bankers requesting the extension of the 1832 Bank Renewal Act).
-Andrew Jackson, 7th US President

Savoring win, Obama celebrates `major milestone'
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Savoring his first big victory in Congress, President Barack Obama on Saturday celebrated the newly passed $787 billion economic stimulus bill as a "major milestone on our road to recovery."

Speaking in his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama said, "I will sign this legislation into law shortly, and we'll begin making the immediate investments necessary to put people back to work doing the work America needs done."

The bill passed Congress on Friday on party-line votes, allowing Democratic leaders to deliver on their promise of clearing the legislation by mid-February. Obama could sign the measure as early as Monday.

Obama "now has a bill to sign that will create millions of good-paying jobs and help families and businesses stay afloat financially," said Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat who was a leading architect of the measure.

"It will shore up our schools and roads and bridges, and infuse cash into new sectors like green energy and technology that will sustain our economy for the long term," he added in a statement.

Hours earlier, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell offered a different prediction for a bill he said was loaded with wasteful spending.

"A stimulus bill that was supposed to be timely, targeted and temporary is none of the above," he said in remarks on the Senate floor. "And this means Congress is about to approve a stimulus that's unlikely to have much stimulative effect."

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, in the GOP radio address Saturday, contended Democrats settled "on a random dollar amount in the neighborhood of $1 trillion and then set out to fill the bucket."
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/090214/congress_stimulus.html

The celebration would seem a bit premature, don't you think? I can't help but remember a President, standing for a photo op on an American Warship off the coast of California declaring "victory" in Iraq. This "stimulus bill", much like the one last Spring, and all the bailouts doled out to date, are intended for one sole purpose, PROPAGANDA. This stimulus bill won't stimulate anything, ...well, maybe the loins of lobbyists whose clients will benefit most from all it's pork. It is one more band-aid, one more finger in a failing [failed?] dike. It is being "sold" to the American public as some jobs creating panacea in the misplaced "hope" that it will give the public the "confidence" to resume "spending their way to prosperity" by taking on more debt. Debt the banking system desperately needs to create more debt securities to sell so the banks can perpetuate their scam. The President has very little to celebrate, he has accomplished little if anything to help his nation, or it's people, towards economic recovery. He has done plenty to give them false hopes, and prolong their agony.

Individual Income Tax Credit Is Biggest Chunk of Stimulus Plan
Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The costliest item in the economic stimulus plan passed by Congress is a tax credit of up to $400 for individuals earning less than $75,000 year.

Married couples earning less than $150,000 could claim a benefit of up to $800 under the provision, which has a price tag of $116 billion over 10 years, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

The bill authorizes a one-time $250 payment for senior citizens, disabled veterans and disabled people living on Social Security benefits.

The earned income tax credit, a benefit for the working poor, would be expanded. And families who don’t earn enough to pay income tax would be eligible to claim the $1,000 child credit.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aMwkEUADJWsM&refer=home

Oh, there's plenty more handouts in this "stimulus" package...though little of it creates any lasting benefits to the economy. A $400 tax credit? $250 a piece for old folks? A $1000 "tax credit" for people that don't even pay taxes? Let's see now, checking my math on the back of this envelope and I see a tax "credit" of $7.69 cents a week coming my way.

"OH THANK YOU MR. PRESIDENT!"

Man that is going to go a loooooooooong way towards keeping my head above water if the ship keeps sinking. But hey, it makes good headlines, nice sound bites, instills "confidence". Has anybody else noticed how often the phrase "restoring confidence" is being tossed about by our bankers and fearless leaders?

G-7 Says 'Severe' Downturn to Persist, Vows to Reverse Slump
Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Group of Seven finance chiefs vowed to tackle a “severe” economic downturn that will persist for most of 2009 without spelling out new steps to do so.

The G-7’s finance ministers and central bankers said in a statement released after talks in Rome yesterday that they were working to restore confidence in markets and revive the world economy. They predicted the full effect of individual rescue packages will “build over time.”

“We reaffirm our commitment to act together using the full range of policy tools to support growth and employment and strengthen the financial sector,” the statement said. “The stabilization of the global economy and financial markets remains our highest priority.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&refer=home&sid=aOHcjLpyTIIw

The G7 is not only clueless as to how to halt the downward spiral of the global economy, they are powerless to stop it. They offer no concrete plan, and merely once again offer just words in the hopes of...restoring confidence. No confidence can be restored until banks come clean about the bad assets on their books. Treasury Secretary Geithner has made it clear that he has little intention of seeing that happen. He believes if there was just more money around, investors would be happy to buy the worthless assets the banks own. Good luck with that plan Timmy. You should acknowledge that the REAL problem is banks are living in denial. Investors are willing to bid for bad assets. But the banks don’t want to accept those bids because doing so might push them into insolvency. Pretending asset prices are "temporarily distressed" is foolish. Hanging on and hoping for improvement in these bad assets prices is even more foolish. The bad assets these banks are sitting on are trash! Write them off and move on. If it causes some banks to fail we can all applaud the "system" for working. Timmy, "Only the strong survive."

"I think the only way the United States will not default physically on their debt is to inflate," said Dr.Marc Faber – private-client fund manager and publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report – to CNBC earlier this week, "and in the long run you will get much higher inflation rates."

In the US we have a totally new school of economic thought," Faber went on, "and it's called the Zimbabwe School of Economics.

"If something goes wrong, print. If it doesn't get fixed, print more. If it then goes even worse, print more."

Federal obligations exceed world GDP
As the Obama administration pushes through Congress its $800 billion deficit-spending economic stimulus plan, the American public is largely unaware that the true deficit of the federal government already is measured in trillions of dollars, and in fact its $65.5 trillion in total obligations exceeds the gross domestic product of the world.

The total U.S. obligations, including Social Security

and Medicare benefits to be paid in the future, effectively have placed the U.S. government in bankruptcy, even before new continuing social welfare obligation embedded in the massive spending plan are taken into account.

The real 2008 federal budget deficit was $5.1 trillion, not the $455 billion previously reported by the Congressional Budget Office, according to the "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" as released by the U.S. Department of Treasury.

The difference between the $455 billion "official" budget deficit numbers and the $5.1 trillion budget deficit cited by "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" is that the official budget deficit is calculated on a cash basis, where all tax receipts, including Social Security tax receipts, are used to pay government liabilities as they occur.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=88851

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.”
- Thomas Jefferson

The US markets will be closed on Monday in honor of our past Presidents. Many of them are sure to be rolling in their graves as this country slips further down the abyss. It will be a good exercise to observe the global markets Monday. It will be interesting to see what "scams" the G& may have hatched to attack the currency markets and the Precious Metals. Their "full range of policy tools", whatever they may be, often have a negative effect on the Truth bearer, Gold. The metals are ripe for a takedown on technicals alone. It will be interesting to see if investors have really turned to the Precious Metals as an alternative to the Monopoly Money rolling off the global central banks printing presses.

Pay attention, and buy the dips.

Gold support is at 928 / 921 / 914 and 890.

Silver Support is at 13.37 / 13.25 / 13.13 and 12.75