Conspiracy Theory

Conspiracy Theory: Aliens & Antichrist Satanic Demonic Las Times Evil Alliance

2008-02-16T03:28:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
This is an Incredible documentary that will open your eyes about Ufo, aliens, extraterrestrials beings visiting our planet since old times. Watch with your own eyes what Satan is planning to deceive humanity at the Last Times to finally carry our souls into Hell. The Devil will apart many from Jesus Christ, this is his last attempt to grab more souls to his eternal kingdom of torment and perdition.

Total Isolation Documentary

The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Iraq Reckoning

Free Typing Games

Informative Speech Ideas

Conspiracy Theory: The Bridge (Scientology)

2008-02-15T04:23:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
Directed and Written by Brett Hanover. Produced by Tom Padgett. Starring Carole Smith, Bill Baker, Tom Padgett. Released online for free on September 10, 2006. Subsequently pulled by Mr. Hanover after legal battle with Church of Scientology.

The film was initially released as a free download over the Internet in September 2006. The film credits state: The Bridge is licensed as royalty-free digital media, and may be distributed online for personal viewing without permission. All offline distribution rights are reserved by Brett Hanover.

"Diane Wheat", portrayed by Carole Smith, is a Scientologist who becomes disillusioned with Scientology over the course of the film. A parallel plot follows the father of another Scientologist who attempts to get his daughter to leave Scientology (the father is played by Tom Padgett). The story touches on such Scientology-related issues as the suppressive person doctrine, the state of Clear, security checks, disconnection, Scieno Sitter, and the Church's secret upper level teachings, including the story of Xenu, as well as including a reference to the South Park episode: Trapped in the Closet.

The film ends with a written dedication: For all who speak out - for those who have been silenced.

We do not forgive. We do not forget. Posted in memory of Lisa McPherson and all others who have died and/or had their lives ruined by the "Church" of Scientology.

Conspiracy Theory - The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Informative Speech Topics

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Conspiracy Theory - Total Isolation Documentary

2008-01-24T03:48:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
Six people are taken to a nuclear bunker and subjected to a world without sensory stimulation. Three subjects are left alone in dark, sound-proofed rooms, while the other three are given goggles and foam cuffs as white noise is piped into their ears. Over the 48 hour experiment their brains undergo strange alterations.

Shawn Casey is now giving away hia five hundred dollar e-mail marketing software for free

10 Million Dollar Ideas That Shouldn't Have Worked.

Conspiracy Theory - The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

2008-01-20T05:05:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
The most definitive video existing DOCUMENTING the FBI's conspiracy to kill MLK.

As MLK went above and beyond issues of Civil Rights, the policy makers behind the secret curtain had to have him killed.

Black America . . . . PLEASE join the fight to expose the evil shadow government.

Dispatches - Iraq Reckoning

2008-01-16T09:14:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
A documentary created by Dispatches for Channel four in the UK.

This is an interesting look at the image portrayed about Iraq by the politicians and the general media and then what is the actual truth.

Conspiracy Theory - War Against the Weak: Eugenics

2008-01-12T09:27:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
Edwin Black discussed his book War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race, published by Four Walls Eight Windows. The book discusses a large-scale eugenics movement that began in the U.S. in 1904 and that was championed by the nation's medical, political, and religious elite. Eugenics sought to eliminate social "undesirables" and was eventually copied by the Third Reich. Mr. Black responded to questions from members of the audience.

'Stock' Beats 'Sex' on Google China

Woman Spends 3 Days In Walmart

The Truth About Psychiatry

Conspiracy Theory - Banking With Hitler

2008-01-12T09:25:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
The US Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, began investigating Nazi finances 60 years ago and found Allied banks, including many British and American high street names, who continued to do business with Hitler's Germany throughout the war.

Conspiracy Theory - Paul Krugman On US Economy

2007-12-19T22:29:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
Paul Robin Krugman (born February 28, 1953) is an American economist. Krugman is currently a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University. He is also an author and a columnist for The New York Times, writing a twice-weekly op-ed for the newspaper since 2000.

Krugman is well known in academia for his work in trade theory, which provides a model in which firms and countries produce and trade because of economies of scale and for his textbook explanations of currency crises and New Trade Theory. He was a critic of the "New Economy" of the late 1990s. Krugman also criticized the fixed exchange rates of the island Asia nations and Thailand before the 1997 East Asian financial crisis, and of investors such as Long-Term Capital Management that relied on the fixed rates just before the 1998 Russian financial crisis.

Krugman is generally considered a neo-Keynesian, with his views outlined in his books such as Peddling Prosperity. His International Economics: Theory and Policy (currently in its seventh edition) is a standard textbook on international economics without calculus. In 1991 he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal by the American Economic Association.

Krugman is an outspoken critic of the George W. Bush administration and its foreign and domestic policy. Unlike many economic pundits, he is also regarded as an important scholarly contributor by his peers. He has written over 200 scholarly papers and 20 books—some academic, and some written for the layperson.

Conspiracy Theory - Alan Greenspan Urges U.S. to Help Those Facing Foreclosure

2007-12-17T03:55:00.000-08:00

Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, said Sunday that the government should provide direct financial assistance to homeowners who are threatened by foreclosure in the worsening credit crisis.

In an interview on “This Week” on ABC, Mr. Greenspan said that helping homeowners directly would create “a short-term fiscal problem” for the government, but that doing so would be more effective than solutions like freezing mortgage rates.

Two ways to help homeowners directly would be to reduce taxes or to give cash grants similar to those given to disaster victims.

Either approach would strain the federal budget, but Mr. Greenspan said, “It’s far less damaging to the economy to create a short-term fiscal problem, which we would, than to try to fix the prices of homes or interest rates.”

Either of those efforts, Mr. Greenspan said, would “drag this process out indefinitely.”

“It’s important to recognize that there are a very large number of people who are in very major stress and having great difficulty in paying off their mortgages,” Mr. Greenspan said.

“Cash is available,” he added, “and we should use that in larger amounts, as necessary, to solve the problems of the stress of this.”

In one step taken by the Bush administration, Henry M. Paulson Jr., the secretary of the Treasury, has negotiated a freeze on interest rates on some subprime mortgages. Mr. Paulson has not called for any government spending to help homeowners or banks.

Two Democratic presidential candidates have urged the federal government to take a more direct role. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has urged a suspension of foreclosures and John Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, has suggested that the government set up a rescue fund for homeowners in trouble.

Last Tuesday, the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark short-term interest rate a quarter of a percentage point, to 4.25 percent, in hopes of bolstering the economy. But the stock markets had hoped for a larger cut, causing stock prices to drop sharply. Last Wednesday, the Federal Reserve and other central banks announced a plan to lend billions of dollars to private banks to encourage them to make loans more available and thus spur the economy.

The Fed said it would make $40 billion available for lending to banks during December. Other central banks around the world said they would provide $50.2 billion in December and January.

Banks routinely borrow from one another to provide loans. But the cost of interbank borrowing has risen sharply at the same time that banks are being required to hold more capital on their books.

As the economy was slowing and talk of an impending recession increased, Mr. Greenspan and other economists said they worried about inflation. Mr. Greenspan said it was “critically important” that the Federal Reserve be permitted to suppress “the inflation rate that I see emerging, not immediately, but clearly over the intermediate and longer term period.”

Mr. Greenspan said he was not sure that directly helping homeowners would solve the credit crisis. “I don’t know if it would work,” he said, “but it would certainly help people. It would help their incomes; it would help their personal state.”

School District To Pay $95,000 In Legal Fees To Families That Pooh-Poohed Dress Code

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Conspiracy Theory - The Truth About Psychiatry

2007-12-15T06:36:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
This riveting presentation, two years in the making, lays bare the destruction wrought by psychiatrists upon every sector of our society. Graphic footage from archival and current films depicting psychiatrists-in-action, eye-opening interviews with medical experts and moving accounts from victims and their families, make this the most complete and devastating documentary of psychiatric abuse ever produced.

.."Powerful and disturbing but ultimately inspirational"..Martin Whitely, Member of Parliament..." Through rare historical and contemporary footage and interviews with more than 160 doctors, attorneys, educators, survivors and experts on the mental health industry and its abuses, this riveting documentary blazes the bright light of truth on the brutal pseudoscience and the multi-billion dollar fraud that is psychiatry.

Conspiracy Theory - Man Faked Own Death For Over Three Years

2007-12-11T10:06:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
LONDON (Reuters) - A man who had been declared dead after a canoeing accident but in fact survived hid in his home for three years before his arrest this week, his wife told British newspapers Saturday.

Anne Darwin described how her husband, John, had avoided discovery by using a small passage to an apartment in an adjoining house owned by the couple.

John Darwin was arrested on suspicion of fraud after he sensationally reappeared and walked into a police station claiming amnesia.

"For three years, while virtually everyone close to us believed John was missing presumed dead, he was actually at home with me," Anne Darwin, who recently left Britain for central America, told the Daily Mirror.

"We were living as man and wife, although it was far from a conventional life," she added.

"There were a few hairy moments and I lived in fear of being found out," she told the Daily Mail in another interview.

She said Darwin had talked to her before his disappearance about faking his death as a way to solve financial problems.

Friday, magistrates granted Cleveland Police an extra 36 hours to question Darwin, 57, on suspicion of fraud. Officers plan to question his 55-year-old wife if she returns to Britain.

Newspaper reports said his life insurance and work benefits had been paid to his wife.

Anne Darwin spoke to the Daily Mail in Miami where she had traveled from Panama, apparently heading to Britain after telling reporters she had been "living a lie" and fears her children would never forgive her.

She told the Daily Mirror her husband partly lived with her in the family home but, if visitors called, had to flee through the passage hidden by a wardrobe with a false back. It led to one of several apartments the other house was divided into.

"VERY ANGRY"

Former prison officer Darwin vanished in March 2002 from his home in Hartlepool, but according to his wife, he turned up at their house a year later.

"I didn't even recognize him at first," she told the Mirror. "He was an absolute mess, all disheveled. I was relieved he was alive, of course, but I was also very angry with him."

She added: "We had a lot of debt, in the tens of thousands. He said there was only one way out of the situation and that was to fake his death. I said it was the wrong thing to do and could not go along with it but he badgered away."

She said the couple decided to move to Panama but Darwin, who was missing their sons Anthony and Mark, invented a plan to "return from the dead."

"I didn't think he would get away with it, but he had enough of being dead. John desperately wanted contact with the boys."

In 2002, Anne Darwin reported her husband missing, saying she feared he had suffered an accident while kayaking in the North Sea near their home in Hartlepool, in Cleveland.

A few weeks later the shattered remains of his red kayak were discovered. In 2003, following a police inquiry, a coroner declared him dead.

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100 million pennies displayed in NYC

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Conspiracy Theory - The shadowy world of penny stocks

2007-12-08T10:47:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
What began with an undercover F.B.I. agent’s posing as a corrupt hedge fund manager led to the indictments of six people yesterday on charges of fraud in the shadowy world of penny stocks, federal prosecutors said.

A year-long investigation code-named Missed Information uncovered five separate stock schemes, according to the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida.

In each case, the undercover agent posed as a hedge fund manager at Fillmore Capital, a fake firm created by the F.B.I. in Palm Beach.

The unidentified agent got word out to the penny stock community that he was willing to buy stocks in struggling companies in return for bribes. Prosecutors said he accepted kickbacks from company insiders and stock promoters for buying stocks, some through an online brokerage account, to pump up prices.

The case was brought in conjunction with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which brought civil charges against seven defendants; six defendants were indicted by the United States attorney on criminal charges in the case, the S.E.C. said.

The charges exposed a murky underworld of penny stocks, a longtime staple of boiler rooms running illegal pump-and-dump schemes. Such shares trade over the counter, rather than on an exchange.

In each of the cases, company insiders or stock promoters tried to build support for their share prices by making a deal with the undercover hedge fund manager to buy large stakes of shares. In return, the insiders would pay the hedge fund manager a kickback, usually 25 to 35 percent of the total purchase price, the prosecutors said.

In each instance, the agent insisted he had to hide the transaction from his hedge fund clients — because of a “fiduciary obligation” to them, leading the parties to execute a fake consulting agreement with a fake company, Global Connect Services. “This case illustrates the commission’s ability to work together with criminal authorities in creative ways to uncover fraudulent schemes and to protect our markets,” said Linda Chatman Thomsen, director of the S.E.C.’s division of enforcement.

The five suspected penny-stock schemes were remarkably similar. In mid-April, prosecutors say, Virgil G. Williams, the 59-year-old chief executive of Asgard Holdings, a Nevada-based investment firm, contacted the agent posing as a hedge fund manager and asked him to buy Asgard Holdings shares.

Mr. Williams agreed to pay the agent 25 percent of the price of the transaction as a kickback, the prosecutors said. The next day, Mr. Williams contacted his broker to make sure that the broker accepted the appropriate bid in the marketplace, the complaint says.

The agent told Mr. Williams he had a fiduciary duty to his hedge fund requiring that he hide the kickback. As a result, the complaint charges, the agent and Mr. Williams agreed to set up a fake consulting agreement to hide the bribe.

But then the operation almost went awry. On April 24, the agent and the stock owner talked about the transaction and agreed to the terms, but the next day, the seller said he was uncomfortable with the deal and did not want to do anything illegal. Two days later, Mr. Williams rescinded the offer because he thought he was part of a sting operation, the complaint says.

In late July, Mr. Williams contacted the agent again to do the deal. In August, the agent used an E-Trade account to buy two million shares of Asgard Holdings at $0.015 a share. In the preceding month, only 172,00 shares had been traded.

A few days later, a Florida corporation believed to be controlled by Mr. Williams wired $7,500 to the agent’s fake consulting firm.

In a separate scheme, according to the complaint, the agent entered into a deal with William L. Haynes, a 42-year-old Palm City, Fla., resident and stock promoter, to have the hedge fund buy shares in Environmental Service, a home environmental inspection company.

The agent bought one million shares of the company. Prosecutors said he had agreed to receive a kickback of 35 percent, which included a 2.5 percent kickback to Efrim Gjonbalaj, a colleague of Mr. Haynes who introduced the two.

After receiving a $532.68 payment, Mr. Gjonbalaj returned the money to the agent with a letter saying he did not recall participating in any dealing with the agent, prosecutors said.

Many of the schemes involved individuals with past regulatory infractions. Mr. Haynes was enjoined by the S.E.C. in 2001 in a fraud case associated with a $7 million stock offering and barred from associating with a broker- dealer. A defendant named in the civil suit, Vincent Cammarata, is on supervised release after serving time in federal prison on drug-related charges.

Other criminal defendants include Ron Williams, 57, of Miami; Mark Foglia, 52, of Hypoluxo, Fla., and Rex Morden, 57, of Henderson, Nev.

If convicted, Mr. Haynes faces a fine of $5 million and 25 years in jail while the others face 20 years in jail and potential fines of $250,000 to $500,000.

The other civil defendant is Sean Sheehan.

Lawyers for the defendants could not be reached for comment. conspiracy theory

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Conspiracy Theory - Forbidden Knowledge

2007-12-05T08:53:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
Jack B. Otto has the authored the book World War III. It is an expose? of massive corruption in high places. The conspirators comprise a large satanic cult that pretends to be Jews. They control the world through international banking and all it can buy.

Discover how their Illuminati organization fomented the French Revolution, American Revolution, Communism, Nazism, Civil War, the United Nations, World War I, II and soon III.

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Conspiracy Theory - The Truth About Democracy, Part I

2007-12-01T02:39:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
Athens – The truth about democracy Athens is revered as the birthplace of Western philosophy, art, science and perhaps the greatest political idea of all time – democracy.

But in this fascinating documentary (first shown on Channel 4 in July 2007), historian Bettany Hughes looks behind some of the myths of Athens’ golden age. She finds a very warlike and aggressive state, which was also capable of terrible mistakes, misdeeds and atrocities.

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Conspiracy Theory - Clash of the Worlds

2007-11-28T07:12:00.001-08:00

conspiracy theory
Exploring how past conflicts between a Christian West and Islam can help explain more recent violence. In the next three weeks this series looks at three great clashes between a Christian British Empire and Islam: the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the Mahdi uprising in 1880s Sudan and the creation of the state of Israel in the first half of the twentieth century. The first programme tells the story of the Indian uprising in which both sides committed atrocities in the name of their faiths.

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Conspiracy Theory - Dollar sets fresh lows as market dares Fed to cut

2007-11-22T07:49:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
LONDON (Reuters) - The dollar hit a record low against the euro, the Swiss franc and a basket of currencies on Thursday, as the market upped the ante on the Federal Reserve to deliver an interest rate cut next month.

Adding to downward pressure on the dollar was a recovery in equity markets and a slight pick up in risk appetite, which made investors more willing to put on riskier trades in high-yielding or emerging market currencies.

The more risk-friendly mood also hit the yen -- a favorite source of cheap funding for the carry trades. The Japanese currency eased from the previous day's 2-1/2 year peaks versus the dollar, while high-yielding Australia and New Zealand units -- top carry targets -- gained broadly.

With the United States marking Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday and Japan shut on Friday, volumes were likely to remain subdued into the end of the week, potentially exacerbating market volatility.

"We are looking for continued dollar weakness and would not be surprised to see euro break $1.50 within weeks rather than months," said Teis Knuthsen, head of FX research at Danske Markets in Copenhagen.

"Primarily it's still the relative economic development between the U.S. versus the rest of the world, combined with the ongoing financial crisis which is heavily concentrated in the U.S.," he added.

The euro hit a record high of $1.4873 according to Reuters data on Thursday, bringing its year-to-date gains to around 12.5 percent. It also set fresh all-time highs against the ECB's trade-weighted basket of 24 currencies at 111.17.

The dollar fell to a fresh historic trough of 1.1007 Swiss francs, before recovering a little to trade at 1.1022 francs by 3:11 a.m. EST.

The dollar index, which measures the dollar's value against a basket of major currencies, hit a record low of 74.916 (.DXY: Quote, Profile, Research).

Expectations for further U.S. rate cuts were reinforced on Tuesday by the Fed's projection that economic growth will slow next year, even though the central bank adopted a reasonably hawkish tone and said that October's cut was a "close call".

U.S. short-term interest rate futures are pricing in a 25 basis point Fed cut to 4.25 percent on December 11, and are even giving a small chance of a larger 50 basis point move.

CAUTIOUS RETURN TO RISK

However the dollar gained half a percent against the yen, to 108.87 yen, pulling away from the 2-1/2 year low of 108.23 yen hit according to Reuters data on Wednesday.

Buying by Japanese institutional investors helped boost the dollar versus the yen, traders said.

The euro rose 0.5 percent to 161.64 yen, while the Australian dollar recovered from a two-month low against the U.S. currency.

European stocks opened higher on Thursday (.FTEU3: Quote, Profile, Research), after Tokyo's bourse (.N225: Quote, Profile, Research) closed up despite earlier setting 16-month lows.

Nonetheless, analysts advised caution, saying more bad news from the financial sector's exposure to the global credit crunch could be just round the corner.

"Both financial market and macroeconomic risk are likely to continue to dominate G10 FX," Societe Generale said in a research note.

"Given this, we continue to avoid building long exposure to either the dollar or indeed the riskier higher yielding currencies, such as Australia and New Zealand dollars."

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Conspiracy Theory - Global Warming or Global Governance

2007-11-20T11:59:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
A movie about how Global Warming is another Global scare drummed up to further the goal One World Government under the United Nations or in the words of Mr. Bush Senior "The New World Order". This goes a long way in explaining Al Gore Nobel Peace prize.

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Conspiracy Theory - Angels And Demons Or The Secret History Of Illuminati

2007-11-20T11:58:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
Awesome documentary about the history of several secret societies that were the bases for the Illuminati.

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Conspiracy Theory - $2 Million Per Household Means Doom For Dollar

2007-11-20T11:57:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
Part II
Daniel R. Amerman, CFA
www.inflationintowealth.com
Overview

In Part 1 (link) of this article, we explored the total cost of all United States retirement promises and expectations and found that they added up to a staggering $2 million per household, when we include all the retirement expenses, and look only at households "able" to pay. A promise that will be impossible to keep - so long as a dollar in the future is worth anything close to the value of a dollar today. In this Part II, we will explore just how far the dollar might have to drop to turn those impossible promises into real payments to retirees.

A Failure To Connect The Inflation Dots

To understand how the impossible becomes the possible (and by definition - it must), we have to remember something fundamental that too many economists have been leaving out of their long-term projections - the inflation rate is not independent of the dollar. Inflation rates don't exist in some independent, mathematical universe, where we can assume the recent past will endlessly repeat itself - rather, inflation is the rate of change in the exchange rate between symbols and reality, and inflation is therefore the mechanism through which symbols will be forced to converge with reality.

There are fundamental limits on reality, with reality being the amount of resources that a society is producing at any time. There are no limits (unfortunately) on symbols or promises, with the amount of dollars that can be created at any one time representing a decision about symbols, rather than resources. So, if the promised symbols get out of whack with the reality of actual resources - it is the symbols which must do the adjusting necessary to bridge the gap. Which brings us to the chart below:

I think we can all agree that $2 million per household is not reasonable. If we pick a long-term inflation rate of 3% as being reasonable because it roughly corresponds to the recent experience of one nation - then it still leads to an impossible outcome of over $1 million per household (which also brings us back to current dollars). Which then means that 3% is also an impossible inflation assumption. An outcome of $750 thousand per household looks impossibly high as well, meaning that a 5% inflation rate is impossibly low. (There is implicit index "management" in this chart, as discussed below.)

However, once we raise our inflation assumption to 8%, then we are down below the USA Today projection, with "only" $429,000 per "able" household. A feat we accomplish by dropping the value of the dollar to 21 cents within the next 20 years. Interestingly enough, we are now approximately in the recent historical range for US inflation, and we can see what kind of results that scenario can have on investment returns. In June of 1972 the DJIA stood at 929 and exactly ten years later, over a decade where inflation averaged 8.7%, the index was at a level of 812. Adjusting for the dollar losing 57% of its value over those 10 years, that means the index lost 62% of its value over a ten year period, in "real dollar" or purchasing power terms (exclusive of dividends).

Unfortunately, that scenario may turn out to be too optimistic for current circumstances, for $429,000 is still way too high. The average US household owes a total of about $112,000 in total debt. Let's say that it is reasonable that total payments per household over the decades ahead will be equal to roughly the value of their current debts. When we look that up on the chart - a 15% rate of inflation does indeed bring the total inflation-adjusted obligations per household down to $122,000. With a side effect of making the dollar worth 6 cents within the next 20 years. (The $112,000 used in the USA Today article isn't really comparable with the $122,000 figure, as the first is debt balance and the second is total "debt" payments. That said, when we remember that the $122,000 per household is on top of all current income taxes, Social Security and Medicare as well as mortgage, car, credit card and other debt payments, then it may be pushing the limits of what can be done.)

What Government Controls - And What It Doesn't

There is of course a problem with the perspective above - retirees are expecting real wealth in the form of goods and services, rather than just dollars. Meeting those expectations at the levels promised by the government will indeed be impossible, unless economic growth reaches all new levels. The government doesn't actually control economic growth, the private sector does. Therefore - absent an extraordinary long term surge in productivity growth rates - the promises will need to be broken in substance, and the government likely won't have much choice about that. However, it would highly inconvenient for all levels of government and the large corporations to legally break the retirement promises.

Therefore, there will be an overwhelming incentive for the government to meet the promises in form though not in substance, through using what it does control. Which is both the supply of dollars - and the indexes which are used to determine the fulfillment of inflation-indexed promises. Slash the value of the dollar and dollar denominated promises can be met. Slash the value of the official index versus the real value of the dollar, have the official rate of inflation be substantively less than the real rate, have the difference between the two rates compound over the years ahead, and the indexed promises are met. With meetings occurring in form through what the government does control, albeit not in substance with what the government does not. (With the side effect of drastically boosting tax revenues through inflation taxes as covered in the article "Seizing Your Assets To Cover Retirement Promises", available in the archives here or at the author's website.)

(The chart in the section above is an illustration which does implicitly show index "management" by the government, with differing real and official inflation rates. Our $2 million total comes from assuming a 3% official inflation rate. If real inflation is 3%, then we get real costs in current dollars, which is $1.1 million per household, in that simplified example. As we then increase our inflation assumptions by going down the chart, what we are doing then is increasing the differential between official and real inflation, which decreases the cost of meeting inflation-indexed promises.)

It all comes back to the very basics. We've promised more dollars than there are resources to back them up. Too many dollars chasing too few resources means inflation. The sum of our promises is an extraordinary $2 million or so (give or take half million) per household of working age and above the poverty line. Which means we will need an extraordinary amount of inflation to reconcile dollar promises and actual resources.

Economics Are Not Impersonal

There is one more factor that is routinely left of the long-term projections, that goes right back to Adam Smith and the very foundations of modern economics. People act in their own self interests. Let's say you are a younger worker, there are tens of millions of Boomers trying to collect money from you, and you are looking at the chart below:

The chart is of course identical to the previous one, other than the title. The change in title may, however, show the single greatest danger to Boomer retirement wealth expectations. If you are a younger worker, and you are in control of the economy - how much will you want to pay?

Two basic principles of economics come into play here. The first is that inflation generally redistributes wealth from creditors to debtors. A second and related basic principle, is that big bursts of inflation usually redistribute wealth from older people to younger people. The older portion of the population typically owns a disproportionate share of the money, as they have been saving and investing for many years. When the value of the dollar plummets, the value of all their previous savings and years of works plummets along with it. Worse, retirees or workers late in life won't typically have the years of income at new price levels needed to replace there losses - so they now face a future of impoverishment, their savings permanently destroyed.

This destruction of the value of the savings is a substantial benefit to many younger workers. They are more likely to have debts than substantial savings, so the inflation may improve their real net worth, as more debts are wiped out than assets. They rely on their current incomes to support their spending, and because their incomes rise with inflation, they do not take a hit in their ability to consume. Indeed, because they now have less competition for homes, cars, meals and other goods from the retirees (for the retirees have been impoverished), the current workers are able to enjoy more consumption than they could before the inflation occurred.

(If you are a Baby Boomer, then you may want to reread the two preceding paragraphs several times. What you have just read is what basic economics says is all too likely to be your future - unless you are prepared.)

When we add motivation and people acting their self-interests to the feature, then the case for the destruction of the dollar grows stronger still. Without a high rate of inflation - we have the largest attempted intergenerational resources grab in US history, as the Boomers attempt to collect exponentially compounded returns on their own work product over the previous decades, by using both their private dollars and the public promises they have made to themselves through current laws, to take huge bites out of the current goods and services that will be produced by the younger workers in the future.

The hole in the plan - is that the attempted grab is necessarily a claim on symbols, rather than directly on real goods and services. The workers who are producing the real wealth of the future will have an overwhelming incentive to slash the value of that symbol (the dollar) - because they don't have the assets to lose, but they have all the benefits to gain. From the perspective of the following generations, the question will not be how much they are capable of paying - but how little they can get away with paying. With inflation being a fundamental economic force that the following generations will use to fend off the Baby Boom's attempted resource grab.

If You Can't Beat Them - Join Them

The retirees of the future have expectations for symbolic wealth in retirement that likely greatly exceed actual resources that will be available. Too many people attempting to cash out too much paper wealth over a period of decades will have all too of predicable results on the value of the paper wealth, whether we call it dollars, stocks, bonds, or government retirement plans. The first and most obvious step then is to choose to invest in the reality of tangible assets rather than symbols. These tangible assets could be gold, silver, or real estate, to name some of the most prominent examples.

In combination with the tangible asset step, there is a second step to take as well, whether you are a Boomer, or older or younger - and that is to change your alliance. Instead of being part of a vast herd of Boomers marching in lockstep towards a future of broken retirement and investment promises - change your investment strategy so that you will be profiting from the upcoming promise breaking. If it is in the economic self-interest of the generations behind the Boomers to destroy the value of the symbols - then change your choice of allies, and align yourself with the self-interests of those who will be paying for the Boomer's retirement promises.

This will mean looking inflation straight in the eye and saying: "Inflation, you are likely to play a big role in my personal future, and instead of ignoring you or thoughtlessly flailing away at you - I will study you and your ways. I will learn the deeply unfair ways in which you redistribute wealth, and the counterintuitive lessons about how some investors will be destroyed by inflation and repeatedly pay taxes for the privilege, even while other investors are claiming real wealth on a tax-free basis. I will learn to position myself so that you redistribute wealth to me, and the worse the financial devastation you wreak - the more my personal real net worth grows. I will examine the official blindness to inflation within government tax policy that creates the Inflation Tax, and instead of raging or despairing, I will understand that a blind opponent is a weak opponent, and I will take advantage your blindness and use tax policy to multiply my real wealth."

It truly does boil down to common sense. The impossible is approaching fast, and we each have the choice of positioning ourselves so that our financial well-being depends on impossible promises being kept - or positioning ourselves so that we will profit from those impossible promises being broken. As you decide, do keep in mind that some of the most lucrative long-term and tax-advantaged opportunities to profit from inflation that have been available for decades can be found right now, but, by the time resurgent inflation dominates the headlines - the easy arbitrage opportunities will be long gone.

Conspiracy Theory - BBC Why Democracy ? The Ministry of Truth.

2007-11-20T11:56:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
Filmmaker Richard Symons asks members of the British government to support his campaign for truth in the Houses of Parliament, and attempts to get a pledge from MPs that they will never tell a lie.

Conspiracy Theory - $2 Million Per Household Means Doom For Dollar

2007-11-20T11:55:00.000-08:00

conspiracy theory
part I
Overview

What is the total cost of all United States retirement promises and expectations, and what are the implications for the dollar? In this article we are going find a startling answer to that question - approximately $2 million per able to pay household. To get there will involve taking five steps:

* Start with the well-publicized figure of $500,000 per household for the present value of government retirement promises;
* Subtract out the below poverty line households
* Subtract out the past retirement age households
* Add in the cost of cashing out pensions, IRAs and Keoghs
* Convert from current dollars to total dollars

When we add those simple steps together, we will find that our answer is an impossible sum - if the dollar in the future is worth anything close to a dollar today. Far too many symbols have been promised relative to the actual resources that will available - meaning doom for the dollar. We will close by discussing how through understanding this issue - we can find the means to turn it from major societal problem into potentially lucrative individual opportunities for building wealth on a long-term and tax-advantaged basis.

The Big Picture

The chart below is a rough blueprint for retirement related expenses over the years ahead. Call it the Baby Boom's promises to itself, which the Boomer's have done their best to legally obligate their descendents to pay for in as many ways as possible:

Line (1) begins with a fairly well known figure, from a USA Today article in May of 2007, that showed that the unfunded expenses of paying for future government retirement promises was $59 trillion, or about half a million per household (link below). The $59 trillion is not the total expected expenses, but the deficit after taking out the revenues our current tax structure is estimated to generate (assuming current economic growth rates continue).

www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-05-28-federal-budget_N.htm

That $59 trillion is shown in the "Current Dollar" column of our chart, because it is inflation-adjusted, meaning much of the assumed value of the dollar has already been destroyed in getting there. This is routine for the presentation of future societal costs, as what we want to get to is "real wealth", that being goods and services, so we adjust out the anticipated inflation. However, our objective in this article is to understand the impact of future promises upon the value of the dollar, so we don't want to start with a footnoted assumption that half the value has already been destroyed. We therefore make a rough (and quite conservative) adjustment to bring the total back to dollars before inflation. A 3% level of inflation will drop the value of a dollar in half over a little more than 20 years, so we multiply the half destroyed dollars by two, and come up with $118 trillion in dollar promises, in the "Total Dollar" column. (As discussed below in footnote (1), the chart combines two models with differing terms and other assumptions. Painting with broad strokes and assumptions is appropriate when looking at future retirement obligations, as the details can't be known in a number of crucial areas.)

The Boomers are of course counting on much more from the generations behind them than just Medicare and Social Security, however, they want their pensions, IRAs and Keoghs cashed out as well. Using some reasonably conservative assumptions, that total comes to about another $44 trillion (or $22 trillion in half destroyed dollar terms). The link below leads to a 50 page report which demonstrates the calculation of that $44 trillion total, based on underlying Census Bureau and Federal Reserve household statistics:

http://the-great-retirement-experiment.com/pamphlets.htm

After adjusting for a bit of double-counting of state & local government pensions, the total dollar amount comes to a whopping $160 trillion that future retirees expect the generations behind them to pay, with most of that total consisting of legally binding promises. Even when we destroy half the value of the dollar in advance, we are still looking at a figure of $80 trillion in current dollars. Those numbers are so high that are almost impossible to comprehend. For perspective, we could say $160 trillion is 3 times the size of the total global economy, and it represents promises that only about 1% of the world's population (US retirees) have made to themselves. Other than saying it's fantastically high, it is hard to derive meaning from figures like that.

USA Today tried to make these vast numbers more understandable by putting them into per household terms. Take the $59 trillion in current dollars, divide it by all 111 million household in the United States, and you come up with each household needing to pay over $500,000, if retirement promises are to be met (not including private pensions and retirement accounts). Remember - this is assuming that half the value of the dollar has already been destroyed. If you are comparing to the dollars you have in your bank and investments accounts right now - total obligations work out to over $1 million per household (line 14 of the chart).

The government has promised to pay benefits representing a cost of $1 million per household. What has already been promised is obviously impossible if a dollar is worth a dollar. It's also impossible if a dollar is worth fifty cents, as in the USA Today projections, for we can't expect the average household to come up with half a million dollars. To make the impossible into the possible - is going to require doing a much more effective job of destroying the dollar than merely cutting it's value in half, as we will review a bit later. But before that, we're going to have to do a better job of determining what the real costs per household are going to be. For, unfortunately, the USA Today number included too many households, and too few expenses - the full picture is much worse.

Per Census Bureau statistics, there are indeed 111 million households in the US, but 11 million of them are below the poverty line. They are not able to pay for themselves in full, let alone bear the tax burdens of cashing out others. So we drop down to 100 million households able to pay, as shown in line (7).

Next, the implicit assumption within all households paying for retirement expenses, is that the retirees are paying for their own expenses, in some sort of endless circle, where they pay themselves so they can pay themselves so they can pay themselves. From a currency perspective, tapping some retirees to pay for promises to less wealthy retirees is quite likely at some point, but when we look at goods and services, the games end. The retirees need goods and services, the non-retired will be producing the goods and services, and by 2027 we will be down to about two people of working age for every one person of retirement age.

So we adjust down by 33 million in line (9), but that is too much, because the youngest Boomers will still be working after the oldest Boomers have retired and even passed away. So we adjust back for Boomers still below retirement age in lines (10) and (11), and find that over the next forty years or so, an average of about 21 million Boomer households will be past retirement age, and not providing the goods and services they will need to consume in retirement. (This adjustment is one of proportion, rather than purely numbers of households. Yes, new households will be entering the workplace, yet, there is no getting around the heart of the demographic problem, which is the steady decline down to two workers for every person of retirement age over the next twenty years.)

We are now down to about 79 million households that are above the poverty line, and won't be (on average) over retirement age themselves. When we compare this number of households that will be effectively paying to the total government costs - then the total comes to a staggering $1.5 million per household (line 16). Even when we assume the destruction of the half the dollar to put it in the present value terms, then adjusting for below poverty line households not paying their share, and retiree households not paying for their own benefits, brings the total up to three quarters of a million per household.

Then we need to add in the costs of cashing out all the private pensions and retirement savings. The dollars to cash out those pensions and the associated goods and services will need to come to come from somewhere - and that somewhere is the productively working rest of the economy, which is our 79 million households above the poverty line and below the retirement age. This adds another full half million dollars per household (it will cost you a mere quarter million if you pre-assume that half the value of your dollars have been destroyed). It is also worth noting that most private pension promises aren't really private, as the federal government guarantees pension payments through the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. This means that from a taxpayer's perspective, the government has effectively issued a standby guarantee for private pension investment performance.

As shown on line 20, our total is now a staggering $2 million per household, when we include all the retirement expenses, and look only at households "able" to pay. A promise that will be impossible to keep - so long as a dollar in the future is worth anything close to the value of a dollar today. Which brings us back to the central flaw in the USA Today study, a flaw with profound implications for all of our long-term investments.