Tuesday, February 23, 2010

MCR'S REPONSE TO CITIBANK; Harvard's Rogoff Sees "Bunch" of Sovereign Defaults

CITIGROUP MAY REQUIRE SEVEN DAY NOTICE TO WITHDRAW FUNDS FROM CHECKING ACCOUNTS

Feb. 23, 2010 -- The unbelievable arrogance and brutality of the current economic paradigm is getting clearer as collapse intensifies. It will only get worse. Over the years I devoted a lot of time to exposing the crimes of Citigroup, one of the biggest drug money laundering institutions in the world (along with AIG), which boasted of having former CIA Director John Deutsch and Mexican drug kingpin Roberto Hernandez on its board of directors. This arrogance is a declaration of war on Citigroup's customers. Anyone having a Citigroup account who does not close it immediately and get their money out deserves what they will get in terms of Darwinian deselection. In Minneapolis recently, while speaking to an audience which had just watched "Collapse" I said it clearly. "We have to kill this monetary paradigm before it kills us." If every Citigroup customer closed their accounts today it would send a message and eliminate one of the big hungry predators looking to feast on our carcasses. As the blog showed yesterday -- and as we have long predicted here -- the next and more severe phase of collapse is happening right now.

We will not quietly go into the long, dark night of poverty, starvation and death. We will fight. Not with guns or violence against banks, not by flying airplanes into them. But by disengaging from them, by starving them. Every vote may not always be counted. But every dollar always is... in this paradigm, sometimes two or three times.

Get your money out of Citigroup today. Get angry. And do it now.

http://digitaljournal.com/article/287902

MCR

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From Jenna Orkin

World
South Africa Intercepts North Korean Arms Shipment
Harvard's Rogoff Sees `Bunch' of Sovereign Defaults, U.S. Belt-Tightening
Ten days of BA strikes threaten travel chaos
Industrial disputes hit European airlines
UK and French unions ballot for action as Lufthansa crews hold back
Strike shuts down six Total oil refineries in France
China at risk of a home-grown financial crisis
15 Facts About China That Will Blow Your Mind
If the Chinese, one day, use as much oil per person as Americans, then the world will need seven more Saudi Arabias to meet their demand...

China experiences sporadic outbreaks of the plague, which is typically spread by rodents and fleas and can pass easily between people."
European banks face showdown over €1 trillion of debt from Vantage Point
Eastern Europe boosted as Greek woes spur bond switch

US
We're One Downgrade Away From The End Of American Empire
Consumer Confidence in U.S. Falls to 10-Month Low as Outlook for Jobs Dims
Consumer Confidence Collapses, Missing Expectations Big Time As Present Situation Index Hits 27-Year Low
FDIC Says Number of Problem Banks Jumped 27%
List of Troubled Banks at 16-Year Peak, F.D.I.C. Says
FDIC Said to Prepare Sales of Bonds Backed by Failed U.S. Lenders' Assets
NYT: Banks apply pressure to collect fees
Mass Layoffs Jump In January After Four Straight Months Of Decline
Recession Tightens Grip on State Tax Revenues
New York Sales Tax Receipts In Unprecedented Collapse
Secret AIG document shows Goldman Sachs minted most toxic CDOs
Goldman: Our Screwy Rebound Will Send Oil To $95

Intelligence/Terror
Destroying C.I.A. Tapes Wasn’t Opposed, Memos Say
Cyber Evil Will Thrive Without Global Rules — Good Luck With That
Data Show Rendition Planes Landed in Poland
Pentagon Quietly Explores De-Citizenship of US Citizen Terrorists - Rice Farmer
Arrests over Turkish coup plot
U.S. Asks Nigeria to Allow Sky Marshals on Flights After Dec. 25 Bomb Plot
Cyber attacks cost businesses 'average of £1.2m a year
UK 'spy' drone fears
Defence research aims at getting permission to fly drones 'anywhere'.
Jews leave Swedish city after sharp rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes
The students fighting for gun rights

Environment
Climate change could be accelerated by 'methane time bomb'

12 comments:

ecosutra said...

The reason why progressives cant muster energy is Celestine. It takes no energy for the Right to inject their message because its an energy heist. A robbery. We always have to find a collective energy to fight it.

This time however, I do not see people rising for anything that will create empowering community change. Other than this site, all information resources are in a state of delusion about green living. As of now the only traction in Permaculture is in aiding refugees. No where is the main stream populous focusing on transitions towards intact cultures, or installing green energy parks for each other.

Who will rally, herd, and sort these new communities before the energy entropy in sunlight's fossil fuels kills the synthetic world?

These developing permacuture demonstrations should be sanctuaries, treated as a national security apparatus?

Meanwhile, the lack of regenerative resources to sustain you diminish from synthetic processing. Mono cropping a oneness so lacking in diversity, its a wonder why Earth hasn't started killing us already. Seedless you are.

I don't know what it is going to take to get the green American philosophy to change. Society is way off track, as are every other media outlet and its population.

Who will have the courage to tell America. a completely synthetic lifeline society. Either get into an intact culture eco village or you are going to die? That is the only courage I see.

Steve said...

I will say that I saw the writing on the wall and closed my Citi account about a year ago. No regrets there.

Unknown said...

It is a sign of our times that if a citizen expresses dismay with our government, then one is likely to be labeled a Tea Partier, Tenther, Truther or a Militia Member. These labels are meant to carry derogatory connotations. Recently, someone I know, responded to me in that manner. Although I guess I shouldn't have been all that surprised, since it has been the central theme of the news media for several years now. They have been conditioning people to think in this manner. I won't go too far down this "rabbit hole", in the interest of time, but the psychology of predictive programming is well known and the freedom of information act long ago exposed the intelligence program called "Operation Mockingbird", in which the American news media was thoroughly infiltrated to coordinate the government message. In short, the elites have put a great deal of effort into categorizing the ideal of questioning authority, as some sort of fringe movement. Witness the recent rants of Glenn Beck or Chris Matthews' about the 911 Truthers or even former VP Dick Cheney's recent ominous warning that terrorism is imminent. I have come to understand that whenever there is a spike in these type of media communications, it always appears to be laying the groundwork for a cataclysmic event, which soon follows. They are in fact following the same script that they once stated Bin Laden did when he released his videos or audio tapes preceding a terrorist event. Don't you find that strange?
A citizen used to be known as patriotic if he engaged in critical analysis of government and questioned authority. This was and is necessary, in order to provide a cross check against excesses and the corrupting influences of government. Sadly, in present day, dissent is marginalized and those that dare to question authority are looked upon as potential terror suspects themselves. This represents a fatal departure from the core values of our country. Is this what terrorism has done to the USA? Apparently, this is exactly what Benjamin Franklin warned us about in the following quote, "Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither".
I have news for you. I'm not wearing a label. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. I'm not a Tea Party person and I'm not exactly Libertarian. I'm certainly not a militia member. I don't believe in violence and I strive to believe in the inherent goodness of people. I belong to no clubs - Period. I am simply a husband and a father who DEEPLY cares about the world we are leaving for our children. That's it. That's all that I am. I'm a guy who has noticed that I personally dropped the ball and that we as a people have dropped the ball. We got too comfortable with our freedom. I'm a guy who now believes we have a responsibility to fix the problem, by voting, protesting, waking up our friends and family to do the very same thing and to throw our bodies upon the gears of corruption, to stop their progress through non-violent passive resistance.

It is time for people to step up to the plate. To get up off our knees and to stop allowing our freedoms to be carted away in the name of security. Its' time to speak up, speak out and notice what's going on in the world. To take a giant step back from the television monitor in your living room and to question authority. It is American - to question authority. Never forget that. Do not let it be taken away. It is American to seek out alternative views and balance the corporate-government message that is being balanced for us through the left-right paradigm of Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC.
If we fail to realize our responsibility, I fear that the world will one day look upon the people of the United States, as the world previously looked upon the people of Germany, following the end of World War Two. The haunting question will be, "how did they let this happen?"

Steven Langbroek said...

I wish to convey two messages MCR:

Apologies: I've promised to help you make your payments (around Christmas, I hope you remember my message about you deserving more love then you've gotten in life), but as we speak I'm taking my last steps out of debt. In several weeks I'll be a free man, with an income that will not be subject to the whims of our economy, and I'll truly be able to help you.

Thanks: by keeping up to date I've managed to prepare. I'm stockpiled for a year, have a contract with a local smalltime farmer for biological vegetables, now know how to defend myself and my loved ones and am working hard to spread the message. Your speeches are yet to fail in convincing anyone I show it to in the urgency of the current situation, and should the SHTF I'm fully prepared. I owe you more then you can imagine, and will help you find the 100th monkey. Not in the way I love my nearest ones, but I love you (hehe, don't get it the wrong way, i assume you're not going to ;) ).

Smiley said...

RE: 15 Facts About China That Will Blow Your Mind

What I love about statements like these is how disconnected from reality they are. For example if 700 million are drinking contaminated water, how many of those are going to die prematurely? And if it will require 7 Saudi Arabias to supply oil to China if per capita consumption reaches Americas, then how likely is it that consumption will ever approach that rate?

But maybe that's the point... to show how unrealistic the Chinese regime has become and how inconsequential life is in China.

Peter J. Nickitas said...

MCR and Jenna:

Another link from James H. Kunstler:

http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/02/rehearsals-for-a-civil-war.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+clusterfucknation+%28Clusterfuck+Nation%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

I see common ground between Tea Partyers and progressive liberals in their blindness to their respective biases and investments in the materialist status quo that arrogance and violence make possible.

And I see awareness of bias and investment in the status quo as the first steps out of any "Matrix" -- most especially the present crisis.

An FBI agent I know in these parts appreciates the importance of the drop from 7 to 3.7 patrol cars per division in L.A., when I shared that stat with him. He expects similar statistics to show up in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

MCR and Kunstler have two things in common that I deeply admire -- clear writing style and language that sailors, soldiers, cops, and warriors understand.

Peter J. of Minneapolis

Unknown said...

Smiley -

Good observation. Perhaps the author's intention was more to show that China's in deep trouble, in order to alay fears that China's thingie is bigger than America's thingie. With everyone head over heals hailing China's emergence as a world power, there are both voices of (very reasonable) caution and voices of jealousy.

The reference for the first two blow-your-mind China facts is

this McKinsey & Co. (March, 2008) study
, which begins:” The scale and pace of China's urbanization promises to continue at an unprecedented rate. If current trends hold, …”
Of course that aint gonna happen.
Dianna Farrell, now Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, was Director of McKinsey Global Institute, for which she authored a 2003 report called “Offshoring: Is It a Win-Win Game?”. In it, her team predicted that America’s loss of jobs would be no problem, since the good ol’ USofA could easily create new ones. Just like that! (see pp. 8-10). Problem solved.
While economic “experts” still maintain “nobody saw fall, 2008, coming”, that’s a lie. Everyone hoped that the bubble would get bigger, and that they could scoop out more profit from a doomed adventure. But everybody knew the housing bubble would burst. Everyone knew jobs were going to be permanently lost when China joined the WTO, and everybody on the McKinsey team knew in March, 2008, that China would not casually add an extra billion humans, with all the infrastructure that entails, by 2030. McKinsey’s great talent is to produce what is needed for their clients, to spin the excuses necessary for cell phone penetration, China infrastructure investment, intervention in Africa, or whatever. And they’re hot. These are some of the smartest people in America, working the Wall Street pump to gush money into the vaults of the already-wealthy.

For me, the scary parts were the descriptions of existing facts, such as more Christians in China than in Italy. Probably more hackers, too. More of everything, both good and bad.

I read somewhere else that there are more _honor students_ in China than there are _students_ in America. There are more piano virtuosos in China than there are pianos in America… stuff like that. If you just took the population of college graduates they would probably equal the entire population of Germany or the US or something. There are probably enough real geniuses there to people a large city.

And another thing: of all the world’s people who really know how to farm a small parcel of land, I bet a hefty chunk of them live in China, probably more than the total in North America and Western Europe combined.

Anonymous said...

In November 2008 Citibank received the largest of the bailouts, 306 billion.

Now they can refuse to give you your money, but it was your money that bailed them out.

What a topsy turvy world..

Ruhh said...

RE: Citi

Would you say that the same warnings apply to the Canadian counterparts of Citibank?

Thanks for everything you do here.

Weaseldog said...

Of course China can't continue their insane growth pattern. Growth is over.

The world is in an estimated 6% per annum oil decline. Which likely translates to a net BTU decline.

With oil prices inching higher, we should see another economic dislocation soon. Citigroup seems to agree.

I'm calling it in May. We'll see another round of small bank failures that will make nice tidbits for the Intergalactic Black Hole Banks to munch on.

Oh, and after that, bailouts for the too big to exist banks.

alejandro said...

@sosheyack: your words truly resonate with me. we have the responsibility to pick the ball back up, restore this nation and to pass it on to the next generation better than it has been for us. keep doing what you're doing, and avoid them trying to label you.

Eddie Willers said...

Well said, MCR - Rubicon (among other FTW articles) opened my eyes to fractional reserve banking...and your lampooning of Citibank was/is excellent.

Unbelievable arrogance, indeed. How long until other banks follow suit?