The US National Debt Clock (NBC) displayed in a screen close to Times Square, New York, has run out of digits to measure the US Government debt (that doesn't take into account State and Municipal debt, nor health care, retirement funds, even less, that of private companies and personal accounts). The NBC screen was installed in 1989 to make evident to the public the 2.7 trillion dollars of debt that the country had at that time, but now is insufficient when the debt has passed 10 trillion, making the clock run out of digits -link-.
Linda Sandler -link- revealed shockingly that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s brokerage unit retired from the US more than $400 billion in assets months before its parent filed for bankruptcy. What is perturbing is that the bankruptcy was reported with four-month-old data. The bizarre disappearance (reminding that we are in the 21st century), according to Hughes Hubbard & Reed, law firm representing the bank during bankruptcy hearings in a Manhattan court, attributed it to "changes in the market". Right!
In what Ali Baba cave could the $400 billion been hidden?
The polemic The Voice of the White House -link- -alternate link- has caused controversy after accusing that the mysterious $400 billion were transferred to Israel before Lehman Brothers Holding Inc.'s bankruptcy, when "American business [is] frantically sending, electronically, huge amounts of money to banks in Israel." more specifically to Hapoalim Group, Bank Leumi and Discount Bank. Could be?
Hapoalim bank was the first bank to be acquired by the late Ted Arison, specialist in Caribbean and transatlantic "love boats" based in Miami and notable tax evader in the US.
Bank Leumi had $85 billion dollars in assets (now it must be more after the alleged miraculous mana in New York) and counts with presence in 21 countries. The bank is linked to the hedge funds global company Cerberus-Gabriel (Cerberus Capital Management) involved in a stinky contract scandal with the Pentagon and the CIA, where Dick Cheney and the former vice president Dan Quayle and the former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, just as part of the Republican congress as well as oil company Halliburton were the beneficiaries. -link-
Discount Bank is the third biggest in Israel and was controlled until last year by Matthew Bronfman, who quited to the administration council, because of conflict of interest. The dark history of the Bronfman dynasty deserves an encyclopedia on its own.
The banker bandits, despite the tautology, have shown that they are still, because they have not stopped being, the true masters of the neoliberal world, as seen by the beneficiaries of the Paulson-Bernanke-Bush rescue. Any resemblance to Mexico's Fobaproa/IPAB is pure coincidence.
Gone is the "market" -that, in reality, never existed because it was controlled by the klepto-plutocracy of Wall Street and City- and its place has been taken by a fight for global power through financial weapons.
The massive rescues on both sides of the Atlantic try to avoid the financial crush and save to its minimal proportions the broken banks, and while they were at it, they take the chance to keep their currencies a float. (v. gr. the artificial dollar rise) and hit hardly to the G-7's enemies' goods (particularly the petroleum) and Russian finances.
The colossal British rescue for a trillion dollars, constitutes a de facto nationalization of the whole banking system that was in the seventh circle of Dante's hell (that of the usurers).
The recent "rescues" by the G-7, that, without looking back, have affected third party interests and have retaliated against their geopolitical and geoeconomic adversaries ("The Samson syndrome" [previous Under Magnifier article] -link in spanish-) making the OPEP call for an emergency meeting (from now on everything will be urgent) and try to stop the black gold from plummeting below permissible levels, which makes a big productor like Russia vulnerable. Is this a "financial global war" that the US has declared and doesn't dare to call it for what it is?
Very weird is Ireland's attitude [-previous Under Magnifier link in spanish-] [-related link-] that has destabilized Europe, most specifically Germany, after its strategic alliance with Russia [-previous Under Magnifier link in spanish-] [-related link-]. In a similar manner, Ireland had sabotaged the EU constitution, deed where many analysts detected the "invisible had", pretty obvious, of Bush's torturing regime to get off-its-rails the old continent and the euro.
Once again, with audacity for a small economy with a GDP of $258.6 billion dollars (compared to Germany's GDP of $3.32 trillion dollars, almost 13 times Ireland's GDP), Ireland "extended its controversial bank deposit guarantee to include foreign banks" that operate at its core, primordially Ulster Bank, First Active, HBOS, IIB Bank and Postbank, according to Tony Bonsignore -link-. Where will Ireland get that much money, suffering of a recession? Does Wall Street operates with its "invisible hand" evident behind the incredible measures taken by Ireland that have destabilized the euro, that has benefited artificially the anti-gravitational rise of the dollar condemned to execution?
As Russia and Germany, the two most powerful countries in Europe (integrally), are not handicapped; they have adopted defensive measures and even counteroffensive, effectively.
Stratfor -link-, headquarters for the texan-isreali mind, linked to the Pentagon, highlights Russia's move, of geostrategic proportions, to rescue Iceland, with $5.43 billion dollars that are worth pure gold in this debacle of Iceland: member of NATO and intimate US ally, but officially bankrupt. Whatever it was, Russia is now closer to the Atlantic coast of US.
We assist to a redistribution of world's wealth and to a new geopolitcal global rearrangement.
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Alfredo Jalife-Rahme
La Jornada 10/12/08
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