In the third of our dislocated troika of posts on corporate crime and the corporate media, we have a statement to make...
You should trust the BBC.
It is an Institution.
The other day, BBC News 24 kept repeating a mantra to me, numerous times every fifteen minutes on an eternal tape loop of hyperreal news: "Its official! Prices are falling!"
Accompanied by images suggestive of a festive splurge to save the immense number of businesses that are doing the decent thing, and waiting until January before keeling over, the consumerist message was clear.
But it was a lie.
Prices are not falling.
The rate of inflation fell to 4.5% from the previous month high of 5.2%.
Instead of addressing the volatility in the rate of inflation and the invalid pricing mechanisms that allow oil to be now trading at virtually one-third of its summer highs, the BBC lied to those threatened by the impact of numbers.
As I reeled from this corporate journalism, the following news item told me that "John Sargent has the right to win Strictly Come Dancing."
The right??
The BBC wouldn't be fiddling the figures again, would they?
Meanwhile, in Africa, child soldiers with their western-made 'kiddie-weapons' - nice and light - are butchering one another in the most dreadful realities away from the reality-lite lenses of the BBC.
All we ever get on Africa is Mugabe and Darfur.
Colonial revenge journalism of the worst kind.
The narrative never goes back far enough to address the structural reasons why the countries of Sudan and Zimbabwe are ungovernable. These structures were put into place by the British in the imperial divide-and-rule template.
Read Ryszard Kapuściński "The Shadow Of The Sun" or watch Al-Jazeera.
Forget the BBC.
We also get given international piracy and the 'theft' of the Sirius Star.
How much coverage does the BBC give to the theft in the Niger Delta or Angola?
Corporate theft is fine, thank you very much...
If these 'pirates' showed such ingenuity in the City of London, it would be termed 'innovative' and a fine example of 'free enterprise', and a bonus would be in order.
Somalia is a failed state thanks to the US/Ethiopian assault also, strangely, not worthy of mention on the BBC.
The 'pirates' that have been caught attempting to ply their trade look desperate.
The hyperreality presented to us is not an acceptable narrative.
In the midst of all these fake realities, the BBC foisted 'Children In Need' on us, without anybody making the really obvious point that, if the children dressed up as derivative traders, the government would look after them without the need for charity.
Why do the British so hate their children?
Gordon Brown, along with all other supporters of a boom and bust economy, is trying to rewrite history so that his fingerprints may no longer be found over the files marked 'Recession' and 'Depression'.
When Slackjaw was first presented with the vestiges of power, he released democratic control over the level of interest rates by giving the Bank of England total power over this vital lever of the economy.
While Slackjaw promised us 'no more boom and bust', his policies were deliberately developing this very market cycle type. Central bankers love boom and bust because, overall, it is financially more rewarding for all involved in the financial sector.
Within government, Slackjaw exacerbated the cyclical hyperrealities by rampant public spending (good) and the private finance initiative (very bad).
Now, having thrown £500 billion at the banking sector, and, to the point of puerility, having told anybody who was willing to listen that he had nothing to do with this 'global crisis', we need to deconstruct the Slackjaw Scam.
As the Economist stated: "His bid to disavow all responsibility for Britain's economic plight is another brazen intellectual heist."
And then some...
The financial crisis is only global in one sense, everybody is going to suffer in the Depression.
The causes of the crisis were the psychopathic free market shenanigans in those countries that welcomed a neo-capitalist system in either their financial or their housing sectors.
Or both.
The US, Britain, Eire, Spain etc have brought the crisis to everyone else.
The countries least affected currently are the ones who avoided the free market prescriptions of the IMF, the World Bank and World Government.
The Basel II banking rules repeatedly allowed the banking sector to undertake self-regulation.
And still the ruse continues.
Naomi Klein: "First of all, the equity deals that were negotiated with the largest banks and also some smaller banks, representing $250 billion worth of the bailout money, this is the deal to inject equity into the banks in—to inject capital into the banks in exchange for equity. The idea was to address the so-called credit crunch to get banks lending again. The legislation that enabled this was quite explicit that it had to encourage lending. Barney Frank, who was one of the architects of that legislation, has said that it violates the act if the money is not going to that purpose and is instead going to bonuses, is instead going to dividends, going to salaries, going to mergers. He said that violates the acts, i.e. it's illegal. But what we know is that it's going precisely to those purposes. It is going to bonuses. It is going to shareholders. And it is not going to lending. The banks have been quite explicit about this. Citibank has talked about using the money to buy other banks.
"There's another piece of this puzzle that is also borderline illegal, which is that in addition to the $700 billion that we are discussing, the $700 billion bailout, there's another $2 trillion that's been handed out by the Federal Reserve in emergency loans to financial institutions, to banks, that actually we don't really know who they're handing the money out to, because, apparently, it's a secret. They could be handing it out to a range of other corporations — I think they are — but they're saying that they won't disclose who has received these taxpayer loans, because it could cause a run on the banks, it could cause the market to lose confidence in the institutions that have taken these loans. Once again, that represents an additional $2 trillion.
"The other thing that the Fed won't disclose is what they have accepted as collateral in exchange for these loans. This is a really key point, because, of course, at the heart of the financial crisis are these so-called distressed assets. The value of these assets is enormously controversial. They may be worth very little. So if the Fed has accepted distressed assets as collateral in exchange for these loans, there's a very good chance the taxpayers aren't going to be getting this money back. So Bloomberg News has launched a lawsuit in federal court to find out who has received the loans and what has been accepted as collateral, because they believe that this lack of transparency is illegal."
Joseph Stiglitz: "To too great extent, there has been a race to the bottom in accordance with the myth that deregulation breeds innovation. Instead, the innovation was greatest when it came to getting around the regulations designed to ensure good information and a sound financial system."
It still is...
Stiglitz: "Financial markets are supposed to be a means to an end - a more prosperous and stable economy as a result of good allocation of resources and better management of risk. But instead, financial markets didn't manage risk, they created it."
This week Citigroup sacked 52,000 staff.
Citigroup are looking to use the bailout to takeover distressed banks.
This week, seven Goldman Sachs executives agreed to pass on their annual bonuses as the firm is about to post its first quarterly loss in its history.
No psychopathic market control there, then...
Meanwhile, former Goldman boss Hank Paulson continues to live in an alternative hyperreality: "We have turned the corner in terms of stabilising the system and preventing collapse."
His partner in crime is not so convinced, as Bernanke thinks that "... overall credit conditions are still far from normal."
Paulson has hoodwinked democracy.
This unelected investment banker is able to unilaterally determine the direction this handout/bailout/merger and acquisition fund is going to take.
As Congressman Paul Kanjorski said to Hanky: "We are trying to figure out... the 180 degree change you made in policy."
The Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP) was designed to protect the financial sector against toxic assets.
Hanky decided then that the crisis was not one of liquidity but one of solvency.
Hence the 180 degrees...
But Hanky is still missing the point.
As John Authers said in the Financial Times: "But the problems of liquidity and solvency were not mutually exclusive. The liquidity problem remains. With the economy worsening, it becomes harder to raise those troubled assets."
Hanky has scammed it all the way through...
Naomi Klein, once again: "In a moment of high panic in late September, the US Treasury unilaterally pushed through a radical change in how bank mergers are taxed--a change long sought by the industry. Despite the fact that this move will deprive the government of as much as $140 billion in tax revenue, lawmakers found out only after the fact. According to the Washington Post, more than a dozen tax attorneys agree that 'Treasury had no authority to issue the [tax change] notice.'"
Gaming the Recession.
Guilty as Charged.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
