Finally, a conspiracy explanation I can accept on the surface. At least, something I can use as a jumping point for further research if I'm interested.

I'd add that a great percentage of those people do know the game is fixed, but wouldn't be trying to fix it even if they knew exactly how it was rigged - they'd be trying to find ways to take advantage of it and exploit it for their own gain.

Very well articulated.

I think even fewer people realize it's rigged, or maybe better said, the EXTENT to which it's rigged, but that's a great overview.

So have they found the money yet?

That seems to be the point people quoting the date miss.

The kicker is... The FED never had the money in the first place. :winkwink:

This is the real problem. People are too apathetic today to do anything. So long as they can go the the shops, fill up trolley and post on boards/twitter/Facebook. They do little else.

How many here were gambling on shares when they thought it was a dead cert investment.

True, look at all the people who thought that all it needed was cutting their taxes to make it all better. They could never tell us how other than the slogans they had been fed.

Well put Bill.

Even if that article is 3.5 years old. what was done about it?

I suspect people don't understand what we are talking about here. I'm leaving out details, but this is kind of a cartoon sketch of what the deal is all about.

The 9 trillion was mostly loan guarantees and the buying of risky paper to get it off the market, it wasn't "real money". Nothing is missing. It's "money" invoked out of nothing by the magic power of the fed to create dollars for the american economy.

And as it turned out further calculations have put the figure on all the "money" at risk at 29+ trillion.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/12...llion-dollars/

What the fed did was make guarantees to other members of the 5000, so they had time to "work out" the crap on their books and had the money to do daily business. And buy their bad paper.

When the fed does that, it's basically betting with the collective economy, and putting all of our money supply at risk.

The fed argues that it was a necessary risk, says nearly all of the guarantees were not called, so there was very little, if any, loss - but, they refuse to be audited, so nobody really knows, it's a black box.

It's kinda like the town boss coming into your house, taking your money temporarily, betting with it, winning, then letting you have your money back. We had no say in it, but ultimately we were at risk.

The fed would say, "yeah. but you also benefited too, because the economy didn't crash, so suck it bitches. Besides, nobody fucking asked you, shut yer fuckin yaps.".

But - it's not exactly clear where all the bad paper is right now. Probably, america technically owns it. yay. if its ACTUALLY bad, we definitely own it, but if it turns out to not be unsaleable, it will turn out that somebody in the 5000 owns it. They are very skilled in setting things up that way. We wont actually know for years, maybe decades.

true, it's the other way around: they have the government in their pocket. Control the money, have the power. And to think they dare to sell this system as a democracy to the gullible people.

i guess someone is having a good time

The video the OP posted was from a hearing in 2009 ...... js

Yeah, he's not the sharpest tool in the box. :)

= We live far beyond our means.

This economy has been run like a bookmakers shop for too long. See Greece for what happens when the shit hits the fan.

LOL! :thumbsup

Very nice post :pimp

It was becoming apparent that most people hadn't seen the video, that's why I posted it up regardless of the date. I expected someone to point out the date sooner, but it took a while, which fully justifies me having posted this. I guessed that those who support the Fed would use the date as a stick to hit me with

I think I left it in my other pants.

...because any video that's over 1 year old Must have been posted by mistake and Can Not Possibly be relevant to anything that's going on now?

That makes so much sense :upsidedow

As far as I'm concerned Barry Ritholtz is probably to best source for commentary about the bailouts that the fed orchestrated, but this is kind of a funny perspective...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/45674390/The_...ut_29_Trillion

Basically, what happened, besides the buying of the bad paper (which was kinda rolled into the 'quantitative easing' - with quantitative easing the fed bought LOTS of paper, and the bad paper was mixed in with the good, as a way of pumping liquid dollars back to the banks, and get people to worry less about the bad paper, because it just kind of 'went away" in the flood of billions spent in the quantitive easing) was a three year plus period of daily guarantees for overnight loans.

So, on any given day, probably only a hundred billion or so was at risk, but, added up over time, the risk was 29 trillion, because they had tto keep doing this every day for years in order to keep the banks liquid enough to block the thing everyone dreaded - principal writedowns.

The thing is, the principal writedowns are still waiting somewhere. The bad paper didn't just go away, somebody still holds it. What the fed needs to do now, is let the writedowns happen piece by piece, slowly, and hopefully quietly, so that the 5000 are protected from their mismanagement.

This is why Ron Paul wants to audit the fed - and why he will never get that audit, the 5000 can't allow it. If the republicans knew they had the votes in the senate, paul would never have been allowed to bring the audit call out of committee, but they know they are safe, because the senate will block it, so they engaged in a bit of teabag theatre.