Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
No jobs, no home buying - comments from the web
55% unemployment exists for age group 18-29
Employment is what matters. Even with interest rates in the basement, one cannot pay a mortgage without a job. The U-6 for people under 30 is in the 25% range. Even if family formation was at ‘normal’ levels, these people will not be buying homes. Without first-time buyers, there’s no move-up buyers. The downward spiral continues on...
Employment is what matters. Even with interest rates in the basement, one cannot pay a mortgage without a job. The U-6 for people under 30 is in the 25% range. Even if family formation was at ‘normal’ levels, these people will not be buying homes. Without first-time buyers, there’s no move-up buyers. The downward spiral continues on...
children diagnosed with narcolepsy after receiving the swine flu vaccine
The Finnish government and major insurance companies announced Wednesday they will pay for lifetime medical care for children diagnosed with narcolepsy after receiving the swine flu vaccine. “The compensation will …
children diagnosed with narcolepsy after receiving the swine flu vaccine
The Finnish government and major insurance companies announced Wednesday they will pay for lifetime medical care for children diagnosed with narcolepsy after receiving the swine flu vaccine. “The compensation will …
children diagnosed with narcolepsy after receiving the swine flu vaccine
The Finnish government and major insurance companies announced Wednesday they will pay for lifetime medical care for children diagnosed with narcolepsy after receiving the swine flu vaccine. “The compensation will …
children diagnosed with narcolepsy after receiving the swine flu vaccine
The Finnish government and major insurance companies announced Wednesday they will pay for lifetime medical care for children diagnosed with narcolepsy after receiving the swine flu vaccine. “The compensation will …
Friday, October 7, 2011
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
In Calif, the police can search your cell phone at any traffic stop without a warrant and on demand.
http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2011/ca-phonesearch.pdf
The California Court of Appeal on September 26 approved a police officer's rifling through the cell phone belonging to someone who had just been pulled over for a traffic violation.
The California Court of Appeal on September 26 approved a police officer's rifling through the cell phone belonging to someone who had just been pulled over for a traffic violation.
In Calif, the police can search your cell phone at any traffic stop without a warrant and on demand.
http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2011/ca-phonesearch.pdf
The California Court of Appeal on September 26 approved a police officer's rifling through the cell phone belonging to someone who had just been pulled over for a traffic violation.
The California Court of Appeal on September 26 approved a police officer's rifling through the cell phone belonging to someone who had just been pulled over for a traffic violation.
In Calif, the police can search your cell phone at any traffic stop without a warrant and on demand.
http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2011/ca-phonesearch.pdf
The California Court of Appeal on September 26 approved a police officer's rifling through the cell phone belonging to someone who had just been pulled over for a traffic violation.
The California Court of Appeal on September 26 approved a police officer's rifling through the cell phone belonging to someone who had just been pulled over for a traffic violation.
In Calif, the police can search your cell phone at any traffic stop without a warrant and on demand.
http://www.thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2011/ca-phonesearch.pdf
The California Court of Appeal on September 26 approved a police officer's rifling through the cell phone belonging to someone who had just been pulled over for a traffic violation.
The California Court of Appeal on September 26 approved a police officer's rifling through the cell phone belonging to someone who had just been pulled over for a traffic violation.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Slavery and the eight veils : an oldy but goody
Slavery and the eight veils
by Don Harkins
Over the last several years I have evolved and discarded several theories in an attempt to explain why it is that most people cannot see truth -- even when it smacks them in the face. Those of us who can see “the conspiracy” have participated in countless conversations amongst ourselves that address the frustration of most peoples' inability to comprehend the extremely well-documented arguments which we use to describe the process of our collective enslavement and exploitation. The most common explanation to be arrived at is that most people just “don't want to see” what is really going on.
Extremely evil men and women who make up the world's power-elite have cleverly cultivated a virtual pasture so grass green that few people seldom, if ever, bother to look up from where they are grazing long enough to notice the brightly colored tags stapled to their ears.
The same people who cannot see their enslavement for the pasture grass have a tendency to view as insane “conspiracy theorists” those of us who can see the past the farm and into the parlor of his feudal lordship's castle.
Finally, I understand why.
It's not that those who don't see that their freedom is vanishing under the leadership of the power-elite “don't want to see it” -- they simply can't see what is happening to them because of the unpierced veils that block their view.
All human endeavors are a filtration process. Sports is one of the best examples. We play specific sports until we get kicked off the playground. The pro athletes we pay big bucks to watch just never got kicked off the playground. Where millions of kids play little league each spring, they are filtered out until there are about 50 guys who go to the World Series in October.
Behind the first veil: There are over six billion people on the planet. Most of them live and die without having seriously contemplated anything other than what it takes to keep their lives together. Ninety percent of all humanity will live and die without having pierced the first veil.
The first veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the first veil and find the world of politics. We will vote, be active and have an opinion. Our opinions are shaped by the physical world around us; we have a tendency to accept that government officials, network media personalities and other “experts” are voices of authority. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the second veil.
The second veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the second veil to explore the world of history, the relationship between man and government and the meaning of self-government through constitutional and common law. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the third veil.
The third veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the third veil to find that the resources of the world, including people, are controlled by extremely wealthy and powerful families whose incorporated old world assets have, with modern extortion strategies, become the foundation upon which the world's economy is currently indebted. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fourth veil.
The fourth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fourth veil to discover the Illuminati, Freemasonry and the other secret societies. These societies use symbols and perform ceremonies that perpetuate the generational transfers of arcane knowledge that is used to keep the ordinary people in political, economic and spiritual bondage to the oldest bloodlines on earth. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fifth veil.
The fifth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fifth veil to learn that the secret societies are so far advanced technologically that time travel and interstellar communications have no boundaries and controlling the actions of people is what their members do as offhandedly as we tell our children when they must go to bed. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the sixth veil.
The sixth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the sixth veil where the dragons and lizards and aliens we thought were the fictional monsters of childhood literature are real and are the controlling forces behind the secret societies. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without piercing the seventh veil.
The seventh veil: I do not know what is behind the seventh veil. I think it is where your soul is evolved to the point you can exist on earth and be the man Ghandi was, or the woman Peace Pilgrim was-people so enlightened they brighten the world around them no matter what.
The eighth veil? Piercing the eighth veil probably reveals God and the pure energy that is the life force in all living things-which are, I think, one and the same.
If my math is accurate there are only about 60,000 people on the planet who have pierced the sixth veil. The irony here is too incredible: Those who are stuck behind veils one through five have little choice but to view the people who have pierced the veils beyond them as insane. With each veil pierced, exponentially shrinking numbers of increasingly enlightened people are deemed insane by exponentially increasing masses of decreasingly enlightened people.
Adding to the irony, the harder a “sixth or better veiler” tries to explain what he is able to see to those who can't, the more insane he appears to them.
Our enemy, the state
Behind the first two veils we find the great majority of people on the planet. They are tools of the state: Second veilers are the gullible voters whose ignorance justify the actions of politicians who send first veilers off to die in foreign lands as cannon fodder -- their combined stations in life are to believe that the self-serving machinations of the power-elite are matters of national security worth dying for.
Third, fourth, fifth and sixth veilers are of increasing liability to the state because of their decreasing ability to be used as tools to consolidate power and wealth of the many into the hands of the power-elite. It is common for these people to sacrifice more of their relationships with friends and family, their professional careers and personal freedom with each veil they pierce.
Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945), author of “Our Enemy, the State” (1935), explained what happens to those who find the seventh and eighth veils: “What was the best that the state could find to do with an actual Socrates and an actual Jesus when it had them? Merely to poison one and crucify the other, for no reason but that they were too intolerably embarrassing to be allowed to live any longer.”
Conclusions
And so now we know that it's not that our countrymen are so committed to their lives that, “they don't want to see,” the mechanisms of their enslavement and exploitation. They simply “can't see” it as surely as I cannot see what's on the other side of a closed curtain.
The purpose of this essay is threefold: To help the handful of people in the latter veils to understand why the masses have little choice but to interpret their clarity as insanity; 2. To help people behind the first two veils understand that living, breathing and thinking are just the beginning and; 3. Show people that the greatest adventure of our life is behind the next veil because that is just one less veil between ourselves and God.
by Don Harkins
Over the last several years I have evolved and discarded several theories in an attempt to explain why it is that most people cannot see truth -- even when it smacks them in the face. Those of us who can see “the conspiracy” have participated in countless conversations amongst ourselves that address the frustration of most peoples' inability to comprehend the extremely well-documented arguments which we use to describe the process of our collective enslavement and exploitation. The most common explanation to be arrived at is that most people just “don't want to see” what is really going on.
Extremely evil men and women who make up the world's power-elite have cleverly cultivated a virtual pasture so grass green that few people seldom, if ever, bother to look up from where they are grazing long enough to notice the brightly colored tags stapled to their ears.
The same people who cannot see their enslavement for the pasture grass have a tendency to view as insane “conspiracy theorists” those of us who can see the past the farm and into the parlor of his feudal lordship's castle.
Finally, I understand why.
It's not that those who don't see that their freedom is vanishing under the leadership of the power-elite “don't want to see it” -- they simply can't see what is happening to them because of the unpierced veils that block their view.
All human endeavors are a filtration process. Sports is one of the best examples. We play specific sports until we get kicked off the playground. The pro athletes we pay big bucks to watch just never got kicked off the playground. Where millions of kids play little league each spring, they are filtered out until there are about 50 guys who go to the World Series in October.
Behind the first veil: There are over six billion people on the planet. Most of them live and die without having seriously contemplated anything other than what it takes to keep their lives together. Ninety percent of all humanity will live and die without having pierced the first veil.
The first veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the first veil and find the world of politics. We will vote, be active and have an opinion. Our opinions are shaped by the physical world around us; we have a tendency to accept that government officials, network media personalities and other “experts” are voices of authority. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the second veil.
The second veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the second veil to explore the world of history, the relationship between man and government and the meaning of self-government through constitutional and common law. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the third veil.
The third veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the third veil to find that the resources of the world, including people, are controlled by extremely wealthy and powerful families whose incorporated old world assets have, with modern extortion strategies, become the foundation upon which the world's economy is currently indebted. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fourth veil.
The fourth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fourth veil to discover the Illuminati, Freemasonry and the other secret societies. These societies use symbols and perform ceremonies that perpetuate the generational transfers of arcane knowledge that is used to keep the ordinary people in political, economic and spiritual bondage to the oldest bloodlines on earth. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fifth veil.
The fifth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fifth veil to learn that the secret societies are so far advanced technologically that time travel and interstellar communications have no boundaries and controlling the actions of people is what their members do as offhandedly as we tell our children when they must go to bed. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the sixth veil.
The sixth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the sixth veil where the dragons and lizards and aliens we thought were the fictional monsters of childhood literature are real and are the controlling forces behind the secret societies. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without piercing the seventh veil.
The seventh veil: I do not know what is behind the seventh veil. I think it is where your soul is evolved to the point you can exist on earth and be the man Ghandi was, or the woman Peace Pilgrim was-people so enlightened they brighten the world around them no matter what.
The eighth veil? Piercing the eighth veil probably reveals God and the pure energy that is the life force in all living things-which are, I think, one and the same.
If my math is accurate there are only about 60,000 people on the planet who have pierced the sixth veil. The irony here is too incredible: Those who are stuck behind veils one through five have little choice but to view the people who have pierced the veils beyond them as insane. With each veil pierced, exponentially shrinking numbers of increasingly enlightened people are deemed insane by exponentially increasing masses of decreasingly enlightened people.
Adding to the irony, the harder a “sixth or better veiler” tries to explain what he is able to see to those who can't, the more insane he appears to them.
Our enemy, the state
Behind the first two veils we find the great majority of people on the planet. They are tools of the state: Second veilers are the gullible voters whose ignorance justify the actions of politicians who send first veilers off to die in foreign lands as cannon fodder -- their combined stations in life are to believe that the self-serving machinations of the power-elite are matters of national security worth dying for.
Third, fourth, fifth and sixth veilers are of increasing liability to the state because of their decreasing ability to be used as tools to consolidate power and wealth of the many into the hands of the power-elite. It is common for these people to sacrifice more of their relationships with friends and family, their professional careers and personal freedom with each veil they pierce.
Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945), author of “Our Enemy, the State” (1935), explained what happens to those who find the seventh and eighth veils: “What was the best that the state could find to do with an actual Socrates and an actual Jesus when it had them? Merely to poison one and crucify the other, for no reason but that they were too intolerably embarrassing to be allowed to live any longer.”
Conclusions
And so now we know that it's not that our countrymen are so committed to their lives that, “they don't want to see,” the mechanisms of their enslavement and exploitation. They simply “can't see” it as surely as I cannot see what's on the other side of a closed curtain.
The purpose of this essay is threefold: To help the handful of people in the latter veils to understand why the masses have little choice but to interpret their clarity as insanity; 2. To help people behind the first two veils understand that living, breathing and thinking are just the beginning and; 3. Show people that the greatest adventure of our life is behind the next veil because that is just one less veil between ourselves and God.
Slavery and the eight veils : an oldy but goody
Slavery and the eight veils
by Don Harkins
Over the last several years I have evolved and discarded several theories in an attempt to explain why it is that most people cannot see truth -- even when it smacks them in the face. Those of us who can see “the conspiracy” have participated in countless conversations amongst ourselves that address the frustration of most peoples' inability to comprehend the extremely well-documented arguments which we use to describe the process of our collective enslavement and exploitation. The most common explanation to be arrived at is that most people just “don't want to see” what is really going on.
Extremely evil men and women who make up the world's power-elite have cleverly cultivated a virtual pasture so grass green that few people seldom, if ever, bother to look up from where they are grazing long enough to notice the brightly colored tags stapled to their ears.
The same people who cannot see their enslavement for the pasture grass have a tendency to view as insane “conspiracy theorists” those of us who can see the past the farm and into the parlor of his feudal lordship's castle.
Finally, I understand why.
It's not that those who don't see that their freedom is vanishing under the leadership of the power-elite “don't want to see it” -- they simply can't see what is happening to them because of the unpierced veils that block their view.
All human endeavors are a filtration process. Sports is one of the best examples. We play specific sports until we get kicked off the playground. The pro athletes we pay big bucks to watch just never got kicked off the playground. Where millions of kids play little league each spring, they are filtered out until there are about 50 guys who go to the World Series in October.
Behind the first veil: There are over six billion people on the planet. Most of them live and die without having seriously contemplated anything other than what it takes to keep their lives together. Ninety percent of all humanity will live and die without having pierced the first veil.
The first veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the first veil and find the world of politics. We will vote, be active and have an opinion. Our opinions are shaped by the physical world around us; we have a tendency to accept that government officials, network media personalities and other “experts” are voices of authority. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the second veil.
The second veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the second veil to explore the world of history, the relationship between man and government and the meaning of self-government through constitutional and common law. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the third veil.
The third veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the third veil to find that the resources of the world, including people, are controlled by extremely wealthy and powerful families whose incorporated old world assets have, with modern extortion strategies, become the foundation upon which the world's economy is currently indebted. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fourth veil.
The fourth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fourth veil to discover the Illuminati, Freemasonry and the other secret societies. These societies use symbols and perform ceremonies that perpetuate the generational transfers of arcane knowledge that is used to keep the ordinary people in political, economic and spiritual bondage to the oldest bloodlines on earth. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fifth veil.
The fifth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fifth veil to learn that the secret societies are so far advanced technologically that time travel and interstellar communications have no boundaries and controlling the actions of people is what their members do as offhandedly as we tell our children when they must go to bed. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the sixth veil.
The sixth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the sixth veil where the dragons and lizards and aliens we thought were the fictional monsters of childhood literature are real and are the controlling forces behind the secret societies. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without piercing the seventh veil.
The seventh veil: I do not know what is behind the seventh veil. I think it is where your soul is evolved to the point you can exist on earth and be the man Ghandi was, or the woman Peace Pilgrim was-people so enlightened they brighten the world around them no matter what.
The eighth veil? Piercing the eighth veil probably reveals God and the pure energy that is the life force in all living things-which are, I think, one and the same.
If my math is accurate there are only about 60,000 people on the planet who have pierced the sixth veil. The irony here is too incredible: Those who are stuck behind veils one through five have little choice but to view the people who have pierced the veils beyond them as insane. With each veil pierced, exponentially shrinking numbers of increasingly enlightened people are deemed insane by exponentially increasing masses of decreasingly enlightened people.
Adding to the irony, the harder a “sixth or better veiler” tries to explain what he is able to see to those who can't, the more insane he appears to them.
Our enemy, the state
Behind the first two veils we find the great majority of people on the planet. They are tools of the state: Second veilers are the gullible voters whose ignorance justify the actions of politicians who send first veilers off to die in foreign lands as cannon fodder -- their combined stations in life are to believe that the self-serving machinations of the power-elite are matters of national security worth dying for.
Third, fourth, fifth and sixth veilers are of increasing liability to the state because of their decreasing ability to be used as tools to consolidate power and wealth of the many into the hands of the power-elite. It is common for these people to sacrifice more of their relationships with friends and family, their professional careers and personal freedom with each veil they pierce.
Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945), author of “Our Enemy, the State” (1935), explained what happens to those who find the seventh and eighth veils: “What was the best that the state could find to do with an actual Socrates and an actual Jesus when it had them? Merely to poison one and crucify the other, for no reason but that they were too intolerably embarrassing to be allowed to live any longer.”
Conclusions
And so now we know that it's not that our countrymen are so committed to their lives that, “they don't want to see,” the mechanisms of their enslavement and exploitation. They simply “can't see” it as surely as I cannot see what's on the other side of a closed curtain.
The purpose of this essay is threefold: To help the handful of people in the latter veils to understand why the masses have little choice but to interpret their clarity as insanity; 2. To help people behind the first two veils understand that living, breathing and thinking are just the beginning and; 3. Show people that the greatest adventure of our life is behind the next veil because that is just one less veil between ourselves and God.
by Don Harkins
Over the last several years I have evolved and discarded several theories in an attempt to explain why it is that most people cannot see truth -- even when it smacks them in the face. Those of us who can see “the conspiracy” have participated in countless conversations amongst ourselves that address the frustration of most peoples' inability to comprehend the extremely well-documented arguments which we use to describe the process of our collective enslavement and exploitation. The most common explanation to be arrived at is that most people just “don't want to see” what is really going on.
Extremely evil men and women who make up the world's power-elite have cleverly cultivated a virtual pasture so grass green that few people seldom, if ever, bother to look up from where they are grazing long enough to notice the brightly colored tags stapled to their ears.
The same people who cannot see their enslavement for the pasture grass have a tendency to view as insane “conspiracy theorists” those of us who can see the past the farm and into the parlor of his feudal lordship's castle.
Finally, I understand why.
It's not that those who don't see that their freedom is vanishing under the leadership of the power-elite “don't want to see it” -- they simply can't see what is happening to them because of the unpierced veils that block their view.
All human endeavors are a filtration process. Sports is one of the best examples. We play specific sports until we get kicked off the playground. The pro athletes we pay big bucks to watch just never got kicked off the playground. Where millions of kids play little league each spring, they are filtered out until there are about 50 guys who go to the World Series in October.
Behind the first veil: There are over six billion people on the planet. Most of them live and die without having seriously contemplated anything other than what it takes to keep their lives together. Ninety percent of all humanity will live and die without having pierced the first veil.
The first veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the first veil and find the world of politics. We will vote, be active and have an opinion. Our opinions are shaped by the physical world around us; we have a tendency to accept that government officials, network media personalities and other “experts” are voices of authority. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the second veil.
The second veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the second veil to explore the world of history, the relationship between man and government and the meaning of self-government through constitutional and common law. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the third veil.
The third veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the third veil to find that the resources of the world, including people, are controlled by extremely wealthy and powerful families whose incorporated old world assets have, with modern extortion strategies, become the foundation upon which the world's economy is currently indebted. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fourth veil.
The fourth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fourth veil to discover the Illuminati, Freemasonry and the other secret societies. These societies use symbols and perform ceremonies that perpetuate the generational transfers of arcane knowledge that is used to keep the ordinary people in political, economic and spiritual bondage to the oldest bloodlines on earth. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fifth veil.
The fifth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fifth veil to learn that the secret societies are so far advanced technologically that time travel and interstellar communications have no boundaries and controlling the actions of people is what their members do as offhandedly as we tell our children when they must go to bed. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the sixth veil.
The sixth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the sixth veil where the dragons and lizards and aliens we thought were the fictional monsters of childhood literature are real and are the controlling forces behind the secret societies. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without piercing the seventh veil.
The seventh veil: I do not know what is behind the seventh veil. I think it is where your soul is evolved to the point you can exist on earth and be the man Ghandi was, or the woman Peace Pilgrim was-people so enlightened they brighten the world around them no matter what.
The eighth veil? Piercing the eighth veil probably reveals God and the pure energy that is the life force in all living things-which are, I think, one and the same.
If my math is accurate there are only about 60,000 people on the planet who have pierced the sixth veil. The irony here is too incredible: Those who are stuck behind veils one through five have little choice but to view the people who have pierced the veils beyond them as insane. With each veil pierced, exponentially shrinking numbers of increasingly enlightened people are deemed insane by exponentially increasing masses of decreasingly enlightened people.
Adding to the irony, the harder a “sixth or better veiler” tries to explain what he is able to see to those who can't, the more insane he appears to them.
Our enemy, the state
Behind the first two veils we find the great majority of people on the planet. They are tools of the state: Second veilers are the gullible voters whose ignorance justify the actions of politicians who send first veilers off to die in foreign lands as cannon fodder -- their combined stations in life are to believe that the self-serving machinations of the power-elite are matters of national security worth dying for.
Third, fourth, fifth and sixth veilers are of increasing liability to the state because of their decreasing ability to be used as tools to consolidate power and wealth of the many into the hands of the power-elite. It is common for these people to sacrifice more of their relationships with friends and family, their professional careers and personal freedom with each veil they pierce.
Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945), author of “Our Enemy, the State” (1935), explained what happens to those who find the seventh and eighth veils: “What was the best that the state could find to do with an actual Socrates and an actual Jesus when it had them? Merely to poison one and crucify the other, for no reason but that they were too intolerably embarrassing to be allowed to live any longer.”
Conclusions
And so now we know that it's not that our countrymen are so committed to their lives that, “they don't want to see,” the mechanisms of their enslavement and exploitation. They simply “can't see” it as surely as I cannot see what's on the other side of a closed curtain.
The purpose of this essay is threefold: To help the handful of people in the latter veils to understand why the masses have little choice but to interpret their clarity as insanity; 2. To help people behind the first two veils understand that living, breathing and thinking are just the beginning and; 3. Show people that the greatest adventure of our life is behind the next veil because that is just one less veil between ourselves and God.
Slavery and the eight veils : an oldy but goody
Slavery and the eight veils
by Don Harkins
Over the last several years I have evolved and discarded several theories in an attempt to explain why it is that most people cannot see truth -- even when it smacks them in the face. Those of us who can see “the conspiracy” have participated in countless conversations amongst ourselves that address the frustration of most peoples' inability to comprehend the extremely well-documented arguments which we use to describe the process of our collective enslavement and exploitation. The most common explanation to be arrived at is that most people just “don't want to see” what is really going on.
Extremely evil men and women who make up the world's power-elite have cleverly cultivated a virtual pasture so grass green that few people seldom, if ever, bother to look up from where they are grazing long enough to notice the brightly colored tags stapled to their ears.
The same people who cannot see their enslavement for the pasture grass have a tendency to view as insane “conspiracy theorists” those of us who can see the past the farm and into the parlor of his feudal lordship's castle.
Finally, I understand why.
It's not that those who don't see that their freedom is vanishing under the leadership of the power-elite “don't want to see it” -- they simply can't see what is happening to them because of the unpierced veils that block their view.
All human endeavors are a filtration process. Sports is one of the best examples. We play specific sports until we get kicked off the playground. The pro athletes we pay big bucks to watch just never got kicked off the playground. Where millions of kids play little league each spring, they are filtered out until there are about 50 guys who go to the World Series in October.
Behind the first veil: There are over six billion people on the planet. Most of them live and die without having seriously contemplated anything other than what it takes to keep their lives together. Ninety percent of all humanity will live and die without having pierced the first veil.
The first veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the first veil and find the world of politics. We will vote, be active and have an opinion. Our opinions are shaped by the physical world around us; we have a tendency to accept that government officials, network media personalities and other “experts” are voices of authority. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the second veil.
The second veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the second veil to explore the world of history, the relationship between man and government and the meaning of self-government through constitutional and common law. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the third veil.
The third veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the third veil to find that the resources of the world, including people, are controlled by extremely wealthy and powerful families whose incorporated old world assets have, with modern extortion strategies, become the foundation upon which the world's economy is currently indebted. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fourth veil.
The fourth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fourth veil to discover the Illuminati, Freemasonry and the other secret societies. These societies use symbols and perform ceremonies that perpetuate the generational transfers of arcane knowledge that is used to keep the ordinary people in political, economic and spiritual bondage to the oldest bloodlines on earth. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fifth veil.
The fifth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fifth veil to learn that the secret societies are so far advanced technologically that time travel and interstellar communications have no boundaries and controlling the actions of people is what their members do as offhandedly as we tell our children when they must go to bed. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the sixth veil.
The sixth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the sixth veil where the dragons and lizards and aliens we thought were the fictional monsters of childhood literature are real and are the controlling forces behind the secret societies. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without piercing the seventh veil.
The seventh veil: I do not know what is behind the seventh veil. I think it is where your soul is evolved to the point you can exist on earth and be the man Ghandi was, or the woman Peace Pilgrim was-people so enlightened they brighten the world around them no matter what.
The eighth veil? Piercing the eighth veil probably reveals God and the pure energy that is the life force in all living things-which are, I think, one and the same.
If my math is accurate there are only about 60,000 people on the planet who have pierced the sixth veil. The irony here is too incredible: Those who are stuck behind veils one through five have little choice but to view the people who have pierced the veils beyond them as insane. With each veil pierced, exponentially shrinking numbers of increasingly enlightened people are deemed insane by exponentially increasing masses of decreasingly enlightened people.
Adding to the irony, the harder a “sixth or better veiler” tries to explain what he is able to see to those who can't, the more insane he appears to them.
Our enemy, the state
Behind the first two veils we find the great majority of people on the planet. They are tools of the state: Second veilers are the gullible voters whose ignorance justify the actions of politicians who send first veilers off to die in foreign lands as cannon fodder -- their combined stations in life are to believe that the self-serving machinations of the power-elite are matters of national security worth dying for.
Third, fourth, fifth and sixth veilers are of increasing liability to the state because of their decreasing ability to be used as tools to consolidate power and wealth of the many into the hands of the power-elite. It is common for these people to sacrifice more of their relationships with friends and family, their professional careers and personal freedom with each veil they pierce.
Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945), author of “Our Enemy, the State” (1935), explained what happens to those who find the seventh and eighth veils: “What was the best that the state could find to do with an actual Socrates and an actual Jesus when it had them? Merely to poison one and crucify the other, for no reason but that they were too intolerably embarrassing to be allowed to live any longer.”
Conclusions
And so now we know that it's not that our countrymen are so committed to their lives that, “they don't want to see,” the mechanisms of their enslavement and exploitation. They simply “can't see” it as surely as I cannot see what's on the other side of a closed curtain.
The purpose of this essay is threefold: To help the handful of people in the latter veils to understand why the masses have little choice but to interpret their clarity as insanity; 2. To help people behind the first two veils understand that living, breathing and thinking are just the beginning and; 3. Show people that the greatest adventure of our life is behind the next veil because that is just one less veil between ourselves and God.
by Don Harkins
Over the last several years I have evolved and discarded several theories in an attempt to explain why it is that most people cannot see truth -- even when it smacks them in the face. Those of us who can see “the conspiracy” have participated in countless conversations amongst ourselves that address the frustration of most peoples' inability to comprehend the extremely well-documented arguments which we use to describe the process of our collective enslavement and exploitation. The most common explanation to be arrived at is that most people just “don't want to see” what is really going on.
Extremely evil men and women who make up the world's power-elite have cleverly cultivated a virtual pasture so grass green that few people seldom, if ever, bother to look up from where they are grazing long enough to notice the brightly colored tags stapled to their ears.
The same people who cannot see their enslavement for the pasture grass have a tendency to view as insane “conspiracy theorists” those of us who can see the past the farm and into the parlor of his feudal lordship's castle.
Finally, I understand why.
It's not that those who don't see that their freedom is vanishing under the leadership of the power-elite “don't want to see it” -- they simply can't see what is happening to them because of the unpierced veils that block their view.
All human endeavors are a filtration process. Sports is one of the best examples. We play specific sports until we get kicked off the playground. The pro athletes we pay big bucks to watch just never got kicked off the playground. Where millions of kids play little league each spring, they are filtered out until there are about 50 guys who go to the World Series in October.
Behind the first veil: There are over six billion people on the planet. Most of them live and die without having seriously contemplated anything other than what it takes to keep their lives together. Ninety percent of all humanity will live and die without having pierced the first veil.
The first veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the first veil and find the world of politics. We will vote, be active and have an opinion. Our opinions are shaped by the physical world around us; we have a tendency to accept that government officials, network media personalities and other “experts” are voices of authority. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the second veil.
The second veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the second veil to explore the world of history, the relationship between man and government and the meaning of self-government through constitutional and common law. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the third veil.
The third veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the third veil to find that the resources of the world, including people, are controlled by extremely wealthy and powerful families whose incorporated old world assets have, with modern extortion strategies, become the foundation upon which the world's economy is currently indebted. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fourth veil.
The fourth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fourth veil to discover the Illuminati, Freemasonry and the other secret societies. These societies use symbols and perform ceremonies that perpetuate the generational transfers of arcane knowledge that is used to keep the ordinary people in political, economic and spiritual bondage to the oldest bloodlines on earth. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fifth veil.
The fifth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fifth veil to learn that the secret societies are so far advanced technologically that time travel and interstellar communications have no boundaries and controlling the actions of people is what their members do as offhandedly as we tell our children when they must go to bed. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the sixth veil.
The sixth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the sixth veil where the dragons and lizards and aliens we thought were the fictional monsters of childhood literature are real and are the controlling forces behind the secret societies. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without piercing the seventh veil.
The seventh veil: I do not know what is behind the seventh veil. I think it is where your soul is evolved to the point you can exist on earth and be the man Ghandi was, or the woman Peace Pilgrim was-people so enlightened they brighten the world around them no matter what.
The eighth veil? Piercing the eighth veil probably reveals God and the pure energy that is the life force in all living things-which are, I think, one and the same.
If my math is accurate there are only about 60,000 people on the planet who have pierced the sixth veil. The irony here is too incredible: Those who are stuck behind veils one through five have little choice but to view the people who have pierced the veils beyond them as insane. With each veil pierced, exponentially shrinking numbers of increasingly enlightened people are deemed insane by exponentially increasing masses of decreasingly enlightened people.
Adding to the irony, the harder a “sixth or better veiler” tries to explain what he is able to see to those who can't, the more insane he appears to them.
Our enemy, the state
Behind the first two veils we find the great majority of people on the planet. They are tools of the state: Second veilers are the gullible voters whose ignorance justify the actions of politicians who send first veilers off to die in foreign lands as cannon fodder -- their combined stations in life are to believe that the self-serving machinations of the power-elite are matters of national security worth dying for.
Third, fourth, fifth and sixth veilers are of increasing liability to the state because of their decreasing ability to be used as tools to consolidate power and wealth of the many into the hands of the power-elite. It is common for these people to sacrifice more of their relationships with friends and family, their professional careers and personal freedom with each veil they pierce.
Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945), author of “Our Enemy, the State” (1935), explained what happens to those who find the seventh and eighth veils: “What was the best that the state could find to do with an actual Socrates and an actual Jesus when it had them? Merely to poison one and crucify the other, for no reason but that they were too intolerably embarrassing to be allowed to live any longer.”
Conclusions
And so now we know that it's not that our countrymen are so committed to their lives that, “they don't want to see,” the mechanisms of their enslavement and exploitation. They simply “can't see” it as surely as I cannot see what's on the other side of a closed curtain.
The purpose of this essay is threefold: To help the handful of people in the latter veils to understand why the masses have little choice but to interpret their clarity as insanity; 2. To help people behind the first two veils understand that living, breathing and thinking are just the beginning and; 3. Show people that the greatest adventure of our life is behind the next veil because that is just one less veil between ourselves and God.
Slavery and the eight veils : an oldy but goody
Slavery and the eight veils
by Don Harkins
Over the last several years I have evolved and discarded several theories in an attempt to explain why it is that most people cannot see truth -- even when it smacks them in the face. Those of us who can see “the conspiracy” have participated in countless conversations amongst ourselves that address the frustration of most peoples' inability to comprehend the extremely well-documented arguments which we use to describe the process of our collective enslavement and exploitation. The most common explanation to be arrived at is that most people just “don't want to see” what is really going on.
Extremely evil men and women who make up the world's power-elite have cleverly cultivated a virtual pasture so grass green that few people seldom, if ever, bother to look up from where they are grazing long enough to notice the brightly colored tags stapled to their ears.
The same people who cannot see their enslavement for the pasture grass have a tendency to view as insane “conspiracy theorists” those of us who can see the past the farm and into the parlor of his feudal lordship's castle.
Finally, I understand why.
It's not that those who don't see that their freedom is vanishing under the leadership of the power-elite “don't want to see it” -- they simply can't see what is happening to them because of the unpierced veils that block their view.
All human endeavors are a filtration process. Sports is one of the best examples. We play specific sports until we get kicked off the playground. The pro athletes we pay big bucks to watch just never got kicked off the playground. Where millions of kids play little league each spring, they are filtered out until there are about 50 guys who go to the World Series in October.
Behind the first veil: There are over six billion people on the planet. Most of them live and die without having seriously contemplated anything other than what it takes to keep their lives together. Ninety percent of all humanity will live and die without having pierced the first veil.
The first veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the first veil and find the world of politics. We will vote, be active and have an opinion. Our opinions are shaped by the physical world around us; we have a tendency to accept that government officials, network media personalities and other “experts” are voices of authority. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the second veil.
The second veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the second veil to explore the world of history, the relationship between man and government and the meaning of self-government through constitutional and common law. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the third veil.
The third veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the third veil to find that the resources of the world, including people, are controlled by extremely wealthy and powerful families whose incorporated old world assets have, with modern extortion strategies, become the foundation upon which the world's economy is currently indebted. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fourth veil.
The fourth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fourth veil to discover the Illuminati, Freemasonry and the other secret societies. These societies use symbols and perform ceremonies that perpetuate the generational transfers of arcane knowledge that is used to keep the ordinary people in political, economic and spiritual bondage to the oldest bloodlines on earth. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fifth veil.
The fifth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fifth veil to learn that the secret societies are so far advanced technologically that time travel and interstellar communications have no boundaries and controlling the actions of people is what their members do as offhandedly as we tell our children when they must go to bed. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the sixth veil.
The sixth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the sixth veil where the dragons and lizards and aliens we thought were the fictional monsters of childhood literature are real and are the controlling forces behind the secret societies. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without piercing the seventh veil.
The seventh veil: I do not know what is behind the seventh veil. I think it is where your soul is evolved to the point you can exist on earth and be the man Ghandi was, or the woman Peace Pilgrim was-people so enlightened they brighten the world around them no matter what.
The eighth veil? Piercing the eighth veil probably reveals God and the pure energy that is the life force in all living things-which are, I think, one and the same.
If my math is accurate there are only about 60,000 people on the planet who have pierced the sixth veil. The irony here is too incredible: Those who are stuck behind veils one through five have little choice but to view the people who have pierced the veils beyond them as insane. With each veil pierced, exponentially shrinking numbers of increasingly enlightened people are deemed insane by exponentially increasing masses of decreasingly enlightened people.
Adding to the irony, the harder a “sixth or better veiler” tries to explain what he is able to see to those who can't, the more insane he appears to them.
Our enemy, the state
Behind the first two veils we find the great majority of people on the planet. They are tools of the state: Second veilers are the gullible voters whose ignorance justify the actions of politicians who send first veilers off to die in foreign lands as cannon fodder -- their combined stations in life are to believe that the self-serving machinations of the power-elite are matters of national security worth dying for.
Third, fourth, fifth and sixth veilers are of increasing liability to the state because of their decreasing ability to be used as tools to consolidate power and wealth of the many into the hands of the power-elite. It is common for these people to sacrifice more of their relationships with friends and family, their professional careers and personal freedom with each veil they pierce.
Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945), author of “Our Enemy, the State” (1935), explained what happens to those who find the seventh and eighth veils: “What was the best that the state could find to do with an actual Socrates and an actual Jesus when it had them? Merely to poison one and crucify the other, for no reason but that they were too intolerably embarrassing to be allowed to live any longer.”
Conclusions
And so now we know that it's not that our countrymen are so committed to their lives that, “they don't want to see,” the mechanisms of their enslavement and exploitation. They simply “can't see” it as surely as I cannot see what's on the other side of a closed curtain.
The purpose of this essay is threefold: To help the handful of people in the latter veils to understand why the masses have little choice but to interpret their clarity as insanity; 2. To help people behind the first two veils understand that living, breathing and thinking are just the beginning and; 3. Show people that the greatest adventure of our life is behind the next veil because that is just one less veil between ourselves and God.
by Don Harkins
Over the last several years I have evolved and discarded several theories in an attempt to explain why it is that most people cannot see truth -- even when it smacks them in the face. Those of us who can see “the conspiracy” have participated in countless conversations amongst ourselves that address the frustration of most peoples' inability to comprehend the extremely well-documented arguments which we use to describe the process of our collective enslavement and exploitation. The most common explanation to be arrived at is that most people just “don't want to see” what is really going on.
Extremely evil men and women who make up the world's power-elite have cleverly cultivated a virtual pasture so grass green that few people seldom, if ever, bother to look up from where they are grazing long enough to notice the brightly colored tags stapled to their ears.
The same people who cannot see their enslavement for the pasture grass have a tendency to view as insane “conspiracy theorists” those of us who can see the past the farm and into the parlor of his feudal lordship's castle.
Finally, I understand why.
It's not that those who don't see that their freedom is vanishing under the leadership of the power-elite “don't want to see it” -- they simply can't see what is happening to them because of the unpierced veils that block their view.
All human endeavors are a filtration process. Sports is one of the best examples. We play specific sports until we get kicked off the playground. The pro athletes we pay big bucks to watch just never got kicked off the playground. Where millions of kids play little league each spring, they are filtered out until there are about 50 guys who go to the World Series in October.
Behind the first veil: There are over six billion people on the planet. Most of them live and die without having seriously contemplated anything other than what it takes to keep their lives together. Ninety percent of all humanity will live and die without having pierced the first veil.
The first veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the first veil and find the world of politics. We will vote, be active and have an opinion. Our opinions are shaped by the physical world around us; we have a tendency to accept that government officials, network media personalities and other “experts” are voices of authority. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the second veil.
The second veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the second veil to explore the world of history, the relationship between man and government and the meaning of self-government through constitutional and common law. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the third veil.
The third veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the third veil to find that the resources of the world, including people, are controlled by extremely wealthy and powerful families whose incorporated old world assets have, with modern extortion strategies, become the foundation upon which the world's economy is currently indebted. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fourth veil.
The fourth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fourth veil to discover the Illuminati, Freemasonry and the other secret societies. These societies use symbols and perform ceremonies that perpetuate the generational transfers of arcane knowledge that is used to keep the ordinary people in political, economic and spiritual bondage to the oldest bloodlines on earth. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fifth veil.
The fifth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fifth veil to learn that the secret societies are so far advanced technologically that time travel and interstellar communications have no boundaries and controlling the actions of people is what their members do as offhandedly as we tell our children when they must go to bed. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the sixth veil.
The sixth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the sixth veil where the dragons and lizards and aliens we thought were the fictional monsters of childhood literature are real and are the controlling forces behind the secret societies. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without piercing the seventh veil.
The seventh veil: I do not know what is behind the seventh veil. I think it is where your soul is evolved to the point you can exist on earth and be the man Ghandi was, or the woman Peace Pilgrim was-people so enlightened they brighten the world around them no matter what.
The eighth veil? Piercing the eighth veil probably reveals God and the pure energy that is the life force in all living things-which are, I think, one and the same.
If my math is accurate there are only about 60,000 people on the planet who have pierced the sixth veil. The irony here is too incredible: Those who are stuck behind veils one through five have little choice but to view the people who have pierced the veils beyond them as insane. With each veil pierced, exponentially shrinking numbers of increasingly enlightened people are deemed insane by exponentially increasing masses of decreasingly enlightened people.
Adding to the irony, the harder a “sixth or better veiler” tries to explain what he is able to see to those who can't, the more insane he appears to them.
Our enemy, the state
Behind the first two veils we find the great majority of people on the planet. They are tools of the state: Second veilers are the gullible voters whose ignorance justify the actions of politicians who send first veilers off to die in foreign lands as cannon fodder -- their combined stations in life are to believe that the self-serving machinations of the power-elite are matters of national security worth dying for.
Third, fourth, fifth and sixth veilers are of increasing liability to the state because of their decreasing ability to be used as tools to consolidate power and wealth of the many into the hands of the power-elite. It is common for these people to sacrifice more of their relationships with friends and family, their professional careers and personal freedom with each veil they pierce.
Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945), author of “Our Enemy, the State” (1935), explained what happens to those who find the seventh and eighth veils: “What was the best that the state could find to do with an actual Socrates and an actual Jesus when it had them? Merely to poison one and crucify the other, for no reason but that they were too intolerably embarrassing to be allowed to live any longer.”
Conclusions
And so now we know that it's not that our countrymen are so committed to their lives that, “they don't want to see,” the mechanisms of their enslavement and exploitation. They simply “can't see” it as surely as I cannot see what's on the other side of a closed curtain.
The purpose of this essay is threefold: To help the handful of people in the latter veils to understand why the masses have little choice but to interpret their clarity as insanity; 2. To help people behind the first two veils understand that living, breathing and thinking are just the beginning and; 3. Show people that the greatest adventure of our life is behind the next veil because that is just one less veil between ourselves and God.
Naked short selling: controlling the stock market
Why did gold and silver stocks just get hammered, at a time when commodities are considered a safe haven against widespread global uncertainty? The answer, according to Bill Murphy's newsletter LeMetropoleCafe.com, is that the sector has been the target of massive short selling. For some popular precious metal stocks, close to half the trades have been "phantom" sales by short sellers who did not actually own the stock.
A bear raid is the practice of targeting a stock or other asset for take-down, either for quick profits or for corporate takeover. Today the target is commodities, but tomorrow it could be something else. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in September 2008, some analysts thought the investment firm's condition was no worse than its competitors. What brought it down was a massive bear raid on 9-11 of that year, when its stock price dropped by 41 percent.
The stock market has been plagued by these speculative attacks ever since the four-year industry-wide bear raid called the Great Depression, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was reduced to 10 percent of its former value. Whenever the market decline slowed, speculators would step in to sell millions of dollars worth of stock they did not own but had ostensibly borrowed just for purposes of sale, using the device known as the short sale. When done on a large enough scale, short selling can force prices down, allowing assets to be picked up very cheaply.
Another Great Depression is the short seller's dream, as a trader recently admitted on a BBC interview. His candor was unusual, but his attitude is characteristic of a business that is all about making money, regardless of the damage done to real companies contributing real goods and services to the economy.
Here is how the short-selling game is played: stock prices are set by traders whose job is to match buyers with sellers. Short sellers willing to sell at any price are matched with the low-ball buy orders. When sell orders overwhelm buy orders, the price drops. The short sellers then buy the stocks back at the lower price and pocket the difference. Today, speculators have to drop the price only enough to trigger the automatic stop loss orders and margin calls of the big mutual funds and hedge funds. A cascade of sell orders follows, and the price plummets.
Where do the shorts get the shares they sell? As Jim Puplava explained on FinancialSense.com on Sept. 24, 2011, they "borrow" shares from the unwitting true shareholders. When a brokerage firm opens an account for a new customer, it is usually a "margin" account -- one that allows the investor to buy stock on margin, or by borrowing against the investor's stock. This is done although most investors never use the margin feature and are unaware they have it. The brokers do it because they can "rent" the stock in a margin account for a substantial fee -- sometimes as much as 30 percent interest for a stock in short supply. The real shareholders get none of this profit. Worse, they can be seriously harmed by the practice. Their shares are being used to bet against their own interests.
There is another problem with short selling: the short seller is allowed to vote the shares at shareholder meetings. To avoid having to reveal what is going on, stock brokers send proxies to the "real" owners as well; but that means there are duplicate proxies floating around. Hedge funds may engage in short selling just to vote on particular issues in which they are interested, such as hostile corporate takeovers. Since many shareholders don't send in their proxies, interested short sellers can swing the vote in a direction that hurts the interests of the real shareholders.
The Securities Act of 1933 regulated short selling by imposing an "uptick" rule, which required a stock's price to be higher than its previous sale price before a short sale could be made; and by forbidding "naked" short selling -- selling stocks short without either owning or borrowing them. But the uptick rule was repealed in July 2007; and and an exception created in 2005 turned the rule against "naked" short selling into a sham. The practice was allowed by "market makers" -- those brokers agreeing to stand ready to buy and sell a particular stock at a publicly quoted price. The catch is that market makers actually do most of the buying and selling of stock today. Market making is one of those lucrative pursuits of the giant Wall Street banks.
One of the more egregious examples of naked short selling was relayed in a story run on FinancialWire in 2005. A man named Robert Simpson purchased all of the outstanding stock of a small company called Global Links Corporation, totaling a little over one million shares. He put all of this stock in his sock drawer, then watched as 60 million of the company's shares traded hands over the next two days. Every outstanding share changed hands nearly 60 times in those two days, although they were safely tucked away in his sock drawer. The incident substantiated allegations that a staggering number of "phantom" shares are being traded around by brokers in naked short sales. Short sellers are expected to cover by buying back the stock and returning it to the pool, but Simpson's 60 million shares were obviously never bought back, since they were never on the market.
Any alleged advantages from the liquidity afforded by short selling are offset by the serious harm this sleight of hand can do to companies or assets targeted for take-down in bear raids. With the power to engage in naked short sales, market makers have the market wired for demolition at their whim.
What can be done to halt this destructive practice? Ideally, federal regulators would step in with some rules; but as Jim Puplava observes, the regulators seem to be in the pockets of the brokers. Lawsuits can have an effect, but they take money and time.
Puplava advises investors to call their brokers and ask if their accounts are margin accounts. If so, get the accounts changed, with confirmation in writing. Like the "Move Your Money" campaign for disciplining the Wall Street giants, this maneuver could be a non-violent form of collective action with significant effects if enough investors joined in. We need some grassroots action to rein in our runaway financial system and the government it controls, and this could be a good place to start.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/short-sellers-investors_b_985701.html
A bear raid is the practice of targeting a stock or other asset for take-down, either for quick profits or for corporate takeover. Today the target is commodities, but tomorrow it could be something else. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in September 2008, some analysts thought the investment firm's condition was no worse than its competitors. What brought it down was a massive bear raid on 9-11 of that year, when its stock price dropped by 41 percent.
The stock market has been plagued by these speculative attacks ever since the four-year industry-wide bear raid called the Great Depression, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was reduced to 10 percent of its former value. Whenever the market decline slowed, speculators would step in to sell millions of dollars worth of stock they did not own but had ostensibly borrowed just for purposes of sale, using the device known as the short sale. When done on a large enough scale, short selling can force prices down, allowing assets to be picked up very cheaply.
Another Great Depression is the short seller's dream, as a trader recently admitted on a BBC interview. His candor was unusual, but his attitude is characteristic of a business that is all about making money, regardless of the damage done to real companies contributing real goods and services to the economy.
Here is how the short-selling game is played: stock prices are set by traders whose job is to match buyers with sellers. Short sellers willing to sell at any price are matched with the low-ball buy orders. When sell orders overwhelm buy orders, the price drops. The short sellers then buy the stocks back at the lower price and pocket the difference. Today, speculators have to drop the price only enough to trigger the automatic stop loss orders and margin calls of the big mutual funds and hedge funds. A cascade of sell orders follows, and the price plummets.
Where do the shorts get the shares they sell? As Jim Puplava explained on FinancialSense.com on Sept. 24, 2011, they "borrow" shares from the unwitting true shareholders. When a brokerage firm opens an account for a new customer, it is usually a "margin" account -- one that allows the investor to buy stock on margin, or by borrowing against the investor's stock. This is done although most investors never use the margin feature and are unaware they have it. The brokers do it because they can "rent" the stock in a margin account for a substantial fee -- sometimes as much as 30 percent interest for a stock in short supply. The real shareholders get none of this profit. Worse, they can be seriously harmed by the practice. Their shares are being used to bet against their own interests.
There is another problem with short selling: the short seller is allowed to vote the shares at shareholder meetings. To avoid having to reveal what is going on, stock brokers send proxies to the "real" owners as well; but that means there are duplicate proxies floating around. Hedge funds may engage in short selling just to vote on particular issues in which they are interested, such as hostile corporate takeovers. Since many shareholders don't send in their proxies, interested short sellers can swing the vote in a direction that hurts the interests of the real shareholders.
The Securities Act of 1933 regulated short selling by imposing an "uptick" rule, which required a stock's price to be higher than its previous sale price before a short sale could be made; and by forbidding "naked" short selling -- selling stocks short without either owning or borrowing them. But the uptick rule was repealed in July 2007; and and an exception created in 2005 turned the rule against "naked" short selling into a sham. The practice was allowed by "market makers" -- those brokers agreeing to stand ready to buy and sell a particular stock at a publicly quoted price. The catch is that market makers actually do most of the buying and selling of stock today. Market making is one of those lucrative pursuits of the giant Wall Street banks.
One of the more egregious examples of naked short selling was relayed in a story run on FinancialWire in 2005. A man named Robert Simpson purchased all of the outstanding stock of a small company called Global Links Corporation, totaling a little over one million shares. He put all of this stock in his sock drawer, then watched as 60 million of the company's shares traded hands over the next two days. Every outstanding share changed hands nearly 60 times in those two days, although they were safely tucked away in his sock drawer. The incident substantiated allegations that a staggering number of "phantom" shares are being traded around by brokers in naked short sales. Short sellers are expected to cover by buying back the stock and returning it to the pool, but Simpson's 60 million shares were obviously never bought back, since they were never on the market.
Any alleged advantages from the liquidity afforded by short selling are offset by the serious harm this sleight of hand can do to companies or assets targeted for take-down in bear raids. With the power to engage in naked short sales, market makers have the market wired for demolition at their whim.
What can be done to halt this destructive practice? Ideally, federal regulators would step in with some rules; but as Jim Puplava observes, the regulators seem to be in the pockets of the brokers. Lawsuits can have an effect, but they take money and time.
Puplava advises investors to call their brokers and ask if their accounts are margin accounts. If so, get the accounts changed, with confirmation in writing. Like the "Move Your Money" campaign for disciplining the Wall Street giants, this maneuver could be a non-violent form of collective action with significant effects if enough investors joined in. We need some grassroots action to rein in our runaway financial system and the government it controls, and this could be a good place to start.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/short-sellers-investors_b_985701.html
Naked short selling: controlling the stock market
Why did gold and silver stocks just get hammered, at a time when commodities are considered a safe haven against widespread global uncertainty? The answer, according to Bill Murphy's newsletter LeMetropoleCafe.com, is that the sector has been the target of massive short selling. For some popular precious metal stocks, close to half the trades have been "phantom" sales by short sellers who did not actually own the stock.
A bear raid is the practice of targeting a stock or other asset for take-down, either for quick profits or for corporate takeover. Today the target is commodities, but tomorrow it could be something else. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in September 2008, some analysts thought the investment firm's condition was no worse than its competitors. What brought it down was a massive bear raid on 9-11 of that year, when its stock price dropped by 41 percent.
The stock market has been plagued by these speculative attacks ever since the four-year industry-wide bear raid called the Great Depression, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was reduced to 10 percent of its former value. Whenever the market decline slowed, speculators would step in to sell millions of dollars worth of stock they did not own but had ostensibly borrowed just for purposes of sale, using the device known as the short sale. When done on a large enough scale, short selling can force prices down, allowing assets to be picked up very cheaply.
Another Great Depression is the short seller's dream, as a trader recently admitted on a BBC interview. His candor was unusual, but his attitude is characteristic of a business that is all about making money, regardless of the damage done to real companies contributing real goods and services to the economy.
Here is how the short-selling game is played: stock prices are set by traders whose job is to match buyers with sellers. Short sellers willing to sell at any price are matched with the low-ball buy orders. When sell orders overwhelm buy orders, the price drops. The short sellers then buy the stocks back at the lower price and pocket the difference. Today, speculators have to drop the price only enough to trigger the automatic stop loss orders and margin calls of the big mutual funds and hedge funds. A cascade of sell orders follows, and the price plummets.
Where do the shorts get the shares they sell? As Jim Puplava explained on FinancialSense.com on Sept. 24, 2011, they "borrow" shares from the unwitting true shareholders. When a brokerage firm opens an account for a new customer, it is usually a "margin" account -- one that allows the investor to buy stock on margin, or by borrowing against the investor's stock. This is done although most investors never use the margin feature and are unaware they have it. The brokers do it because they can "rent" the stock in a margin account for a substantial fee -- sometimes as much as 30 percent interest for a stock in short supply. The real shareholders get none of this profit. Worse, they can be seriously harmed by the practice. Their shares are being used to bet against their own interests.
There is another problem with short selling: the short seller is allowed to vote the shares at shareholder meetings. To avoid having to reveal what is going on, stock brokers send proxies to the "real" owners as well; but that means there are duplicate proxies floating around. Hedge funds may engage in short selling just to vote on particular issues in which they are interested, such as hostile corporate takeovers. Since many shareholders don't send in their proxies, interested short sellers can swing the vote in a direction that hurts the interests of the real shareholders.
The Securities Act of 1933 regulated short selling by imposing an "uptick" rule, which required a stock's price to be higher than its previous sale price before a short sale could be made; and by forbidding "naked" short selling -- selling stocks short without either owning or borrowing them. But the uptick rule was repealed in July 2007; and and an exception created in 2005 turned the rule against "naked" short selling into a sham. The practice was allowed by "market makers" -- those brokers agreeing to stand ready to buy and sell a particular stock at a publicly quoted price. The catch is that market makers actually do most of the buying and selling of stock today. Market making is one of those lucrative pursuits of the giant Wall Street banks.
One of the more egregious examples of naked short selling was relayed in a story run on FinancialWire in 2005. A man named Robert Simpson purchased all of the outstanding stock of a small company called Global Links Corporation, totaling a little over one million shares. He put all of this stock in his sock drawer, then watched as 60 million of the company's shares traded hands over the next two days. Every outstanding share changed hands nearly 60 times in those two days, although they were safely tucked away in his sock drawer. The incident substantiated allegations that a staggering number of "phantom" shares are being traded around by brokers in naked short sales. Short sellers are expected to cover by buying back the stock and returning it to the pool, but Simpson's 60 million shares were obviously never bought back, since they were never on the market.
Any alleged advantages from the liquidity afforded by short selling are offset by the serious harm this sleight of hand can do to companies or assets targeted for take-down in bear raids. With the power to engage in naked short sales, market makers have the market wired for demolition at their whim.
What can be done to halt this destructive practice? Ideally, federal regulators would step in with some rules; but as Jim Puplava observes, the regulators seem to be in the pockets of the brokers. Lawsuits can have an effect, but they take money and time.
Puplava advises investors to call their brokers and ask if their accounts are margin accounts. If so, get the accounts changed, with confirmation in writing. Like the "Move Your Money" campaign for disciplining the Wall Street giants, this maneuver could be a non-violent form of collective action with significant effects if enough investors joined in. We need some grassroots action to rein in our runaway financial system and the government it controls, and this could be a good place to start.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/short-sellers-investors_b_985701.html
A bear raid is the practice of targeting a stock or other asset for take-down, either for quick profits or for corporate takeover. Today the target is commodities, but tomorrow it could be something else. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in September 2008, some analysts thought the investment firm's condition was no worse than its competitors. What brought it down was a massive bear raid on 9-11 of that year, when its stock price dropped by 41 percent.
The stock market has been plagued by these speculative attacks ever since the four-year industry-wide bear raid called the Great Depression, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was reduced to 10 percent of its former value. Whenever the market decline slowed, speculators would step in to sell millions of dollars worth of stock they did not own but had ostensibly borrowed just for purposes of sale, using the device known as the short sale. When done on a large enough scale, short selling can force prices down, allowing assets to be picked up very cheaply.
Another Great Depression is the short seller's dream, as a trader recently admitted on a BBC interview. His candor was unusual, but his attitude is characteristic of a business that is all about making money, regardless of the damage done to real companies contributing real goods and services to the economy.
Here is how the short-selling game is played: stock prices are set by traders whose job is to match buyers with sellers. Short sellers willing to sell at any price are matched with the low-ball buy orders. When sell orders overwhelm buy orders, the price drops. The short sellers then buy the stocks back at the lower price and pocket the difference. Today, speculators have to drop the price only enough to trigger the automatic stop loss orders and margin calls of the big mutual funds and hedge funds. A cascade of sell orders follows, and the price plummets.
Where do the shorts get the shares they sell? As Jim Puplava explained on FinancialSense.com on Sept. 24, 2011, they "borrow" shares from the unwitting true shareholders. When a brokerage firm opens an account for a new customer, it is usually a "margin" account -- one that allows the investor to buy stock on margin, or by borrowing against the investor's stock. This is done although most investors never use the margin feature and are unaware they have it. The brokers do it because they can "rent" the stock in a margin account for a substantial fee -- sometimes as much as 30 percent interest for a stock in short supply. The real shareholders get none of this profit. Worse, they can be seriously harmed by the practice. Their shares are being used to bet against their own interests.
There is another problem with short selling: the short seller is allowed to vote the shares at shareholder meetings. To avoid having to reveal what is going on, stock brokers send proxies to the "real" owners as well; but that means there are duplicate proxies floating around. Hedge funds may engage in short selling just to vote on particular issues in which they are interested, such as hostile corporate takeovers. Since many shareholders don't send in their proxies, interested short sellers can swing the vote in a direction that hurts the interests of the real shareholders.
The Securities Act of 1933 regulated short selling by imposing an "uptick" rule, which required a stock's price to be higher than its previous sale price before a short sale could be made; and by forbidding "naked" short selling -- selling stocks short without either owning or borrowing them. But the uptick rule was repealed in July 2007; and and an exception created in 2005 turned the rule against "naked" short selling into a sham. The practice was allowed by "market makers" -- those brokers agreeing to stand ready to buy and sell a particular stock at a publicly quoted price. The catch is that market makers actually do most of the buying and selling of stock today. Market making is one of those lucrative pursuits of the giant Wall Street banks.
One of the more egregious examples of naked short selling was relayed in a story run on FinancialWire in 2005. A man named Robert Simpson purchased all of the outstanding stock of a small company called Global Links Corporation, totaling a little over one million shares. He put all of this stock in his sock drawer, then watched as 60 million of the company's shares traded hands over the next two days. Every outstanding share changed hands nearly 60 times in those two days, although they were safely tucked away in his sock drawer. The incident substantiated allegations that a staggering number of "phantom" shares are being traded around by brokers in naked short sales. Short sellers are expected to cover by buying back the stock and returning it to the pool, but Simpson's 60 million shares were obviously never bought back, since they were never on the market.
Any alleged advantages from the liquidity afforded by short selling are offset by the serious harm this sleight of hand can do to companies or assets targeted for take-down in bear raids. With the power to engage in naked short sales, market makers have the market wired for demolition at their whim.
What can be done to halt this destructive practice? Ideally, federal regulators would step in with some rules; but as Jim Puplava observes, the regulators seem to be in the pockets of the brokers. Lawsuits can have an effect, but they take money and time.
Puplava advises investors to call their brokers and ask if their accounts are margin accounts. If so, get the accounts changed, with confirmation in writing. Like the "Move Your Money" campaign for disciplining the Wall Street giants, this maneuver could be a non-violent form of collective action with significant effects if enough investors joined in. We need some grassroots action to rein in our runaway financial system and the government it controls, and this could be a good place to start.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/short-sellers-investors_b_985701.html
Naked short selling: controlling the stock market
Why did gold and silver stocks just get hammered, at a time when commodities are considered a safe haven against widespread global uncertainty? The answer, according to Bill Murphy's newsletter LeMetropoleCafe.com, is that the sector has been the target of massive short selling. For some popular precious metal stocks, close to half the trades have been "phantom" sales by short sellers who did not actually own the stock.
A bear raid is the practice of targeting a stock or other asset for take-down, either for quick profits or for corporate takeover. Today the target is commodities, but tomorrow it could be something else. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in September 2008, some analysts thought the investment firm's condition was no worse than its competitors. What brought it down was a massive bear raid on 9-11 of that year, when its stock price dropped by 41 percent.
The stock market has been plagued by these speculative attacks ever since the four-year industry-wide bear raid called the Great Depression, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was reduced to 10 percent of its former value. Whenever the market decline slowed, speculators would step in to sell millions of dollars worth of stock they did not own but had ostensibly borrowed just for purposes of sale, using the device known as the short sale. When done on a large enough scale, short selling can force prices down, allowing assets to be picked up very cheaply.
Another Great Depression is the short seller's dream, as a trader recently admitted on a BBC interview. His candor was unusual, but his attitude is characteristic of a business that is all about making money, regardless of the damage done to real companies contributing real goods and services to the economy.
Here is how the short-selling game is played: stock prices are set by traders whose job is to match buyers with sellers. Short sellers willing to sell at any price are matched with the low-ball buy orders. When sell orders overwhelm buy orders, the price drops. The short sellers then buy the stocks back at the lower price and pocket the difference. Today, speculators have to drop the price only enough to trigger the automatic stop loss orders and margin calls of the big mutual funds and hedge funds. A cascade of sell orders follows, and the price plummets.
Where do the shorts get the shares they sell? As Jim Puplava explained on FinancialSense.com on Sept. 24, 2011, they "borrow" shares from the unwitting true shareholders. When a brokerage firm opens an account for a new customer, it is usually a "margin" account -- one that allows the investor to buy stock on margin, or by borrowing against the investor's stock. This is done although most investors never use the margin feature and are unaware they have it. The brokers do it because they can "rent" the stock in a margin account for a substantial fee -- sometimes as much as 30 percent interest for a stock in short supply. The real shareholders get none of this profit. Worse, they can be seriously harmed by the practice. Their shares are being used to bet against their own interests.
There is another problem with short selling: the short seller is allowed to vote the shares at shareholder meetings. To avoid having to reveal what is going on, stock brokers send proxies to the "real" owners as well; but that means there are duplicate proxies floating around. Hedge funds may engage in short selling just to vote on particular issues in which they are interested, such as hostile corporate takeovers. Since many shareholders don't send in their proxies, interested short sellers can swing the vote in a direction that hurts the interests of the real shareholders.
The Securities Act of 1933 regulated short selling by imposing an "uptick" rule, which required a stock's price to be higher than its previous sale price before a short sale could be made; and by forbidding "naked" short selling -- selling stocks short without either owning or borrowing them. But the uptick rule was repealed in July 2007; and and an exception created in 2005 turned the rule against "naked" short selling into a sham. The practice was allowed by "market makers" -- those brokers agreeing to stand ready to buy and sell a particular stock at a publicly quoted price. The catch is that market makers actually do most of the buying and selling of stock today. Market making is one of those lucrative pursuits of the giant Wall Street banks.
One of the more egregious examples of naked short selling was relayed in a story run on FinancialWire in 2005. A man named Robert Simpson purchased all of the outstanding stock of a small company called Global Links Corporation, totaling a little over one million shares. He put all of this stock in his sock drawer, then watched as 60 million of the company's shares traded hands over the next two days. Every outstanding share changed hands nearly 60 times in those two days, although they were safely tucked away in his sock drawer. The incident substantiated allegations that a staggering number of "phantom" shares are being traded around by brokers in naked short sales. Short sellers are expected to cover by buying back the stock and returning it to the pool, but Simpson's 60 million shares were obviously never bought back, since they were never on the market.
Any alleged advantages from the liquidity afforded by short selling are offset by the serious harm this sleight of hand can do to companies or assets targeted for take-down in bear raids. With the power to engage in naked short sales, market makers have the market wired for demolition at their whim.
What can be done to halt this destructive practice? Ideally, federal regulators would step in with some rules; but as Jim Puplava observes, the regulators seem to be in the pockets of the brokers. Lawsuits can have an effect, but they take money and time.
Puplava advises investors to call their brokers and ask if their accounts are margin accounts. If so, get the accounts changed, with confirmation in writing. Like the "Move Your Money" campaign for disciplining the Wall Street giants, this maneuver could be a non-violent form of collective action with significant effects if enough investors joined in. We need some grassroots action to rein in our runaway financial system and the government it controls, and this could be a good place to start.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/short-sellers-investors_b_985701.html
A bear raid is the practice of targeting a stock or other asset for take-down, either for quick profits or for corporate takeover. Today the target is commodities, but tomorrow it could be something else. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in September 2008, some analysts thought the investment firm's condition was no worse than its competitors. What brought it down was a massive bear raid on 9-11 of that year, when its stock price dropped by 41 percent.
The stock market has been plagued by these speculative attacks ever since the four-year industry-wide bear raid called the Great Depression, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was reduced to 10 percent of its former value. Whenever the market decline slowed, speculators would step in to sell millions of dollars worth of stock they did not own but had ostensibly borrowed just for purposes of sale, using the device known as the short sale. When done on a large enough scale, short selling can force prices down, allowing assets to be picked up very cheaply.
Another Great Depression is the short seller's dream, as a trader recently admitted on a BBC interview. His candor was unusual, but his attitude is characteristic of a business that is all about making money, regardless of the damage done to real companies contributing real goods and services to the economy.
Here is how the short-selling game is played: stock prices are set by traders whose job is to match buyers with sellers. Short sellers willing to sell at any price are matched with the low-ball buy orders. When sell orders overwhelm buy orders, the price drops. The short sellers then buy the stocks back at the lower price and pocket the difference. Today, speculators have to drop the price only enough to trigger the automatic stop loss orders and margin calls of the big mutual funds and hedge funds. A cascade of sell orders follows, and the price plummets.
Where do the shorts get the shares they sell? As Jim Puplava explained on FinancialSense.com on Sept. 24, 2011, they "borrow" shares from the unwitting true shareholders. When a brokerage firm opens an account for a new customer, it is usually a "margin" account -- one that allows the investor to buy stock on margin, or by borrowing against the investor's stock. This is done although most investors never use the margin feature and are unaware they have it. The brokers do it because they can "rent" the stock in a margin account for a substantial fee -- sometimes as much as 30 percent interest for a stock in short supply. The real shareholders get none of this profit. Worse, they can be seriously harmed by the practice. Their shares are being used to bet against their own interests.
There is another problem with short selling: the short seller is allowed to vote the shares at shareholder meetings. To avoid having to reveal what is going on, stock brokers send proxies to the "real" owners as well; but that means there are duplicate proxies floating around. Hedge funds may engage in short selling just to vote on particular issues in which they are interested, such as hostile corporate takeovers. Since many shareholders don't send in their proxies, interested short sellers can swing the vote in a direction that hurts the interests of the real shareholders.
The Securities Act of 1933 regulated short selling by imposing an "uptick" rule, which required a stock's price to be higher than its previous sale price before a short sale could be made; and by forbidding "naked" short selling -- selling stocks short without either owning or borrowing them. But the uptick rule was repealed in July 2007; and and an exception created in 2005 turned the rule against "naked" short selling into a sham. The practice was allowed by "market makers" -- those brokers agreeing to stand ready to buy and sell a particular stock at a publicly quoted price. The catch is that market makers actually do most of the buying and selling of stock today. Market making is one of those lucrative pursuits of the giant Wall Street banks.
One of the more egregious examples of naked short selling was relayed in a story run on FinancialWire in 2005. A man named Robert Simpson purchased all of the outstanding stock of a small company called Global Links Corporation, totaling a little over one million shares. He put all of this stock in his sock drawer, then watched as 60 million of the company's shares traded hands over the next two days. Every outstanding share changed hands nearly 60 times in those two days, although they were safely tucked away in his sock drawer. The incident substantiated allegations that a staggering number of "phantom" shares are being traded around by brokers in naked short sales. Short sellers are expected to cover by buying back the stock and returning it to the pool, but Simpson's 60 million shares were obviously never bought back, since they were never on the market.
Any alleged advantages from the liquidity afforded by short selling are offset by the serious harm this sleight of hand can do to companies or assets targeted for take-down in bear raids. With the power to engage in naked short sales, market makers have the market wired for demolition at their whim.
What can be done to halt this destructive practice? Ideally, federal regulators would step in with some rules; but as Jim Puplava observes, the regulators seem to be in the pockets of the brokers. Lawsuits can have an effect, but they take money and time.
Puplava advises investors to call their brokers and ask if their accounts are margin accounts. If so, get the accounts changed, with confirmation in writing. Like the "Move Your Money" campaign for disciplining the Wall Street giants, this maneuver could be a non-violent form of collective action with significant effects if enough investors joined in. We need some grassroots action to rein in our runaway financial system and the government it controls, and this could be a good place to start.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/short-sellers-investors_b_985701.html
Naked short selling: controlling the stock market
Why did gold and silver stocks just get hammered, at a time when commodities are considered a safe haven against widespread global uncertainty? The answer, according to Bill Murphy's newsletter LeMetropoleCafe.com, is that the sector has been the target of massive short selling. For some popular precious metal stocks, close to half the trades have been "phantom" sales by short sellers who did not actually own the stock.
A bear raid is the practice of targeting a stock or other asset for take-down, either for quick profits or for corporate takeover. Today the target is commodities, but tomorrow it could be something else. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in September 2008, some analysts thought the investment firm's condition was no worse than its competitors. What brought it down was a massive bear raid on 9-11 of that year, when its stock price dropped by 41 percent.
The stock market has been plagued by these speculative attacks ever since the four-year industry-wide bear raid called the Great Depression, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was reduced to 10 percent of its former value. Whenever the market decline slowed, speculators would step in to sell millions of dollars worth of stock they did not own but had ostensibly borrowed just for purposes of sale, using the device known as the short sale. When done on a large enough scale, short selling can force prices down, allowing assets to be picked up very cheaply.
Another Great Depression is the short seller's dream, as a trader recently admitted on a BBC interview. His candor was unusual, but his attitude is characteristic of a business that is all about making money, regardless of the damage done to real companies contributing real goods and services to the economy.
Here is how the short-selling game is played: stock prices are set by traders whose job is to match buyers with sellers. Short sellers willing to sell at any price are matched with the low-ball buy orders. When sell orders overwhelm buy orders, the price drops. The short sellers then buy the stocks back at the lower price and pocket the difference. Today, speculators have to drop the price only enough to trigger the automatic stop loss orders and margin calls of the big mutual funds and hedge funds. A cascade of sell orders follows, and the price plummets.
Where do the shorts get the shares they sell? As Jim Puplava explained on FinancialSense.com on Sept. 24, 2011, they "borrow" shares from the unwitting true shareholders. When a brokerage firm opens an account for a new customer, it is usually a "margin" account -- one that allows the investor to buy stock on margin, or by borrowing against the investor's stock. This is done although most investors never use the margin feature and are unaware they have it. The brokers do it because they can "rent" the stock in a margin account for a substantial fee -- sometimes as much as 30 percent interest for a stock in short supply. The real shareholders get none of this profit. Worse, they can be seriously harmed by the practice. Their shares are being used to bet against their own interests.
There is another problem with short selling: the short seller is allowed to vote the shares at shareholder meetings. To avoid having to reveal what is going on, stock brokers send proxies to the "real" owners as well; but that means there are duplicate proxies floating around. Hedge funds may engage in short selling just to vote on particular issues in which they are interested, such as hostile corporate takeovers. Since many shareholders don't send in their proxies, interested short sellers can swing the vote in a direction that hurts the interests of the real shareholders.
The Securities Act of 1933 regulated short selling by imposing an "uptick" rule, which required a stock's price to be higher than its previous sale price before a short sale could be made; and by forbidding "naked" short selling -- selling stocks short without either owning or borrowing them. But the uptick rule was repealed in July 2007; and and an exception created in 2005 turned the rule against "naked" short selling into a sham. The practice was allowed by "market makers" -- those brokers agreeing to stand ready to buy and sell a particular stock at a publicly quoted price. The catch is that market makers actually do most of the buying and selling of stock today. Market making is one of those lucrative pursuits of the giant Wall Street banks.
One of the more egregious examples of naked short selling was relayed in a story run on FinancialWire in 2005. A man named Robert Simpson purchased all of the outstanding stock of a small company called Global Links Corporation, totaling a little over one million shares. He put all of this stock in his sock drawer, then watched as 60 million of the company's shares traded hands over the next two days. Every outstanding share changed hands nearly 60 times in those two days, although they were safely tucked away in his sock drawer. The incident substantiated allegations that a staggering number of "phantom" shares are being traded around by brokers in naked short sales. Short sellers are expected to cover by buying back the stock and returning it to the pool, but Simpson's 60 million shares were obviously never bought back, since they were never on the market.
Any alleged advantages from the liquidity afforded by short selling are offset by the serious harm this sleight of hand can do to companies or assets targeted for take-down in bear raids. With the power to engage in naked short sales, market makers have the market wired for demolition at their whim.
What can be done to halt this destructive practice? Ideally, federal regulators would step in with some rules; but as Jim Puplava observes, the regulators seem to be in the pockets of the brokers. Lawsuits can have an effect, but they take money and time.
Puplava advises investors to call their brokers and ask if their accounts are margin accounts. If so, get the accounts changed, with confirmation in writing. Like the "Move Your Money" campaign for disciplining the Wall Street giants, this maneuver could be a non-violent form of collective action with significant effects if enough investors joined in. We need some grassroots action to rein in our runaway financial system and the government it controls, and this could be a good place to start.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/short-sellers-investors_b_985701.html
A bear raid is the practice of targeting a stock or other asset for take-down, either for quick profits or for corporate takeover. Today the target is commodities, but tomorrow it could be something else. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in September 2008, some analysts thought the investment firm's condition was no worse than its competitors. What brought it down was a massive bear raid on 9-11 of that year, when its stock price dropped by 41 percent.
The stock market has been plagued by these speculative attacks ever since the four-year industry-wide bear raid called the Great Depression, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was reduced to 10 percent of its former value. Whenever the market decline slowed, speculators would step in to sell millions of dollars worth of stock they did not own but had ostensibly borrowed just for purposes of sale, using the device known as the short sale. When done on a large enough scale, short selling can force prices down, allowing assets to be picked up very cheaply.
Another Great Depression is the short seller's dream, as a trader recently admitted on a BBC interview. His candor was unusual, but his attitude is characteristic of a business that is all about making money, regardless of the damage done to real companies contributing real goods and services to the economy.
Here is how the short-selling game is played: stock prices are set by traders whose job is to match buyers with sellers. Short sellers willing to sell at any price are matched with the low-ball buy orders. When sell orders overwhelm buy orders, the price drops. The short sellers then buy the stocks back at the lower price and pocket the difference. Today, speculators have to drop the price only enough to trigger the automatic stop loss orders and margin calls of the big mutual funds and hedge funds. A cascade of sell orders follows, and the price plummets.
Where do the shorts get the shares they sell? As Jim Puplava explained on FinancialSense.com on Sept. 24, 2011, they "borrow" shares from the unwitting true shareholders. When a brokerage firm opens an account for a new customer, it is usually a "margin" account -- one that allows the investor to buy stock on margin, or by borrowing against the investor's stock. This is done although most investors never use the margin feature and are unaware they have it. The brokers do it because they can "rent" the stock in a margin account for a substantial fee -- sometimes as much as 30 percent interest for a stock in short supply. The real shareholders get none of this profit. Worse, they can be seriously harmed by the practice. Their shares are being used to bet against their own interests.
There is another problem with short selling: the short seller is allowed to vote the shares at shareholder meetings. To avoid having to reveal what is going on, stock brokers send proxies to the "real" owners as well; but that means there are duplicate proxies floating around. Hedge funds may engage in short selling just to vote on particular issues in which they are interested, such as hostile corporate takeovers. Since many shareholders don't send in their proxies, interested short sellers can swing the vote in a direction that hurts the interests of the real shareholders.
The Securities Act of 1933 regulated short selling by imposing an "uptick" rule, which required a stock's price to be higher than its previous sale price before a short sale could be made; and by forbidding "naked" short selling -- selling stocks short without either owning or borrowing them. But the uptick rule was repealed in July 2007; and and an exception created in 2005 turned the rule against "naked" short selling into a sham. The practice was allowed by "market makers" -- those brokers agreeing to stand ready to buy and sell a particular stock at a publicly quoted price. The catch is that market makers actually do most of the buying and selling of stock today. Market making is one of those lucrative pursuits of the giant Wall Street banks.
One of the more egregious examples of naked short selling was relayed in a story run on FinancialWire in 2005. A man named Robert Simpson purchased all of the outstanding stock of a small company called Global Links Corporation, totaling a little over one million shares. He put all of this stock in his sock drawer, then watched as 60 million of the company's shares traded hands over the next two days. Every outstanding share changed hands nearly 60 times in those two days, although they were safely tucked away in his sock drawer. The incident substantiated allegations that a staggering number of "phantom" shares are being traded around by brokers in naked short sales. Short sellers are expected to cover by buying back the stock and returning it to the pool, but Simpson's 60 million shares were obviously never bought back, since they were never on the market.
Any alleged advantages from the liquidity afforded by short selling are offset by the serious harm this sleight of hand can do to companies or assets targeted for take-down in bear raids. With the power to engage in naked short sales, market makers have the market wired for demolition at their whim.
What can be done to halt this destructive practice? Ideally, federal regulators would step in with some rules; but as Jim Puplava observes, the regulators seem to be in the pockets of the brokers. Lawsuits can have an effect, but they take money and time.
Puplava advises investors to call their brokers and ask if their accounts are margin accounts. If so, get the accounts changed, with confirmation in writing. Like the "Move Your Money" campaign for disciplining the Wall Street giants, this maneuver could be a non-violent form of collective action with significant effects if enough investors joined in. We need some grassroots action to rein in our runaway financial system and the government it controls, and this could be a good place to start.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/short-sellers-investors_b_985701.html
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