Did Today’s Flow of Funds Report Predict the Fed’s Next Confession?

Submitted by F.F.Wiley of Cyniconomics blog,

In return for speaking fees reported to be “at least” $250,000, Ben Bernanke confessed a few of the Fed’s missteps while speaking to guests of the National Bank of Abu Dhabi on Tuesday:

“Bernanke says he underestimated impact of subprime problem.”
“This is going to sound very obvious but the first thing we learned is that the U.S. is not invulnerable to financial crises,” Bernanke said.
“Bernanke says he thought slowdown would be ‘moderate’.”

Bernanke’s gentle mea culpas had us wondering what kind of confessions we may hear next. It’s probably not surprising that we didn’t have to wait long for clues.

Consider this chart created from the household balance sheet in today’s Flow of Funds report:

As shown, the aggregate equity allocation for U.S. households is now at a level that’s only ever been reached in the Internet bubble years of 1998 to 2000.

This will surely lift spirits at the next FOMC meeting. (Cue the laugh track.) Higher equity allocations are exactly what the Fed tries to achieve with its so-called portfolio balance channel – their jargon for driving up the prices of a few assets by enough that you push investors into other assets (risky assets, such as equity, in the present case).

It doesn’t seem like such a good result to us, though. As we discussed here and here, there are a variety of indicators linking today’s S&P 500 valuation to at least the middle stages of the Internet bubble. Now the household balance sheet puts us right back in, well, the middle stages of the Internet bubble. What could possibly go wrong?

The Fed’s confessions haven’t gone far enough

Getting back to Bernanke’s speech on Tuesday, the conference attendees in Abu Dhabi were told that: “For the future, I’m in a mode of reflection.”

Unfortunately, such reflection – whether by Bernanke or his former colleagues still at the Fed – only extends so far. The Fed’s basic beliefs and workings are clearly sacrosanct, no matter how many times they fail. And as long as that continues to be the case, expect current and future Fed Chairs to follow Bernanke’s lead and draw up a list of boom-bust blunders shortly after leaving office. They can then offer a first-hand reading sponsored by large financial institutions at $250,000 a pop. It’s nice work if you can get it.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1lCuXqv Tyler Durden

Watch As A US Missile Destroyer Departs Greece For The Black Sea

Yesterday we reported that with the US aircraft carrier, CVN-77 George H.W. Bush, anchoring in Piraeus, Greece, an unnamed US warship had been granted permission by Turkey to cross the Bosphorus and enter the Black Sea. There was speculation it may be the carrier itself, even though such a crossing would be forbidden by the Montreaux Convention. Today we have the answer: it is not CVN-77, but one of the ships from its aircraft carrier strike group – the guided-missile destroyer USS Truxton, which as the clip below shows, just departed the Greek port of Souda Bay earlier today.

From Stripes.com:

A U.S. guided-missile destroyer is bound for the Black Sea in what the Navy calls a routine visit unrelated to events in Ukraine.

The USS Truxtun, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer with about 300 sailors on board, departed Greece early Thursday, said a spokesman for U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa in Naples.

The Truxtun is part of the George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group, which recently entered the Mediterranean and is training with regional navies before continuing to the Middle East. The group also includes Carrier Air Wing 8, the destroyer USS Roosevelt and the cruiser USS Philippine Sea.

But lest someone think that just like Russia’s ICBM test coming at a most inopportune time, this move has anything to do with Ukraine tensions, the US Navy would like to frame the situation in a far more amicable manner:

The ship is scheduled to train with Romanian and Bulgarian naval forces for an unspecified period of time, conducting joint maneuvers and landing aircraft on ships. The spokesman, Lt. Shawn Eklund, said the visit is unrelated to Russia’s recent incursion into Ukraine. “Truxtun’s operations in the Black Sea were scheduled well in advance of her departure from the U.S.,” he said.

Well of course they were. But just in case not sending a missile destroyer into the Black Sea would be seen as a way to avoid escalations, it is best to make sure such confusion is avoided entirely.

For a brief glimpse of the truth behind the real purpose of this trip, we also find the destroyer will join the USS Taylor as the only two U.S. vessels inside the Black Sea during a period of heightened tensions. A a reminder, the Taylor, a guided-missile frigate, remains moored in Samsun, Turkey, after it ran aground in February – good thing it did not have to defend the “free world” from all those Sochi terrorists that America was convinced will blow everything up.

So what does a ship departing for the Black Sea for what may or may not be simple drills with friendly naval forces? The answer can be found in the clip below.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1lCtuQW Tyler Durden

To Address Obamacare’s Political Problems, Obama Creates a Bigger Policy Mess

Yesterday’s confirmation that
the Obama administration will extend a previous administrative
tweak allowing individuals with non-compliant health plans to keep
their current coverage through 2016 reveals two things about the
White House and its approach to the health law.

The first is that President Obama is willing to deviate from the
statute of the legislation as much as he sees fit, regardless of
his legal authority to do so. The second is that the politics and
policy considerations surrounding the law are at odds—and that
right now, short-term political considerations are winning.

The legal authority for the delay is murky at best. When
President Obama announced the first fix back in November, the
administration was
vague about the basis of its power to alter the provision. This
time around, administration officials are
describing the move as a “transitional policy.” But what it
boils down to is that the executive branch is simply declining to
enforce part of the law, because it’s inconvenient for them to do
so.

This makes 20 alterations to the health law through some sort of
administrative action, according to a count
by the Galen Institute, many without obvious legal authority. That
the administration has gone forth with so many dubious tweaks
suggests that they do not feel bound by such considerations, or, at
the very least, that they are more worried about the law’s failures
than about the legal niceties.

The legal haziness of the latest fix raises some thorny issues
for insurers—among them, that they might be liable to be sued by
someone who stayed on a non-compliant plan. If someone stays on
their current plan, files a claim for coverage that is not covered
by that plan but is mandated under Obamacare, then what happens? As
Case Western Reserve law professor Jonathan Adler
told National Journal’s Sam Baker when this question
was raised last year, the law is still the law. The administration
may be declining to enforce the provision. But what would the
courts say?

Aside from the legal liability, insurers have other concerns.
When the initial tweak was announced, Karen Ignagni, the head of
the biggest insurer trade group, said that the change could
“destabilize the market and result in higher premiums for
consumers.” If people are allowed to stay on their old plans, then
they won’t be buying into the new coverage insurers are selling
through the exchanges. And since the people most likely to stay on
the old plans are healthier and cheaper, that leaves the exchanges
with a sicker, more expensive population than expected—and raises
the likelihood that premiums will rise as a result. Already,
insurer has reported that the composition of the exchanges is more
adverse than expected, and
cited last November’s tweak as a reason why.

The latest tweak further undermines the policy foundation of the
law. So why did he go through with it? Because the immediate
political problems were even greater.

When the Obama administration announced the tweak, it took the
unusual step of
noting a group of legislators it had consulted with in
determining the change. Oddly enough, the group consisted almost
entirely of Democrats in tight races taking fire for their support
of the unpopular health law. Asked whether the change was made in
response to political concerns, a senior administration official
told reporters that he could “understand why some folks could look
at it” that way,
according to The Hill, but then insisted that there
were no political considerations involved. None whatsoever.

The timeline tells another story. The first change was announced
in response the outcry that resulted when the public found out that
President Obama had repeatedly misled about the effects of his
health law. If you like your plan, you can keep your plan, he
promised over and over. Despite his promise, millions of people
found out that they could not. So Obama announced that in some
circumstances they could, at least for another year. But that
merely pushed off the wave of cancellations until an election
year—a big problem, especially with so many Democrats already
vulnerable because of their support for Obamacare. The newest
change extends the transition period beyond the next presidential
election.

In other words, Obama chose to postpone the law’s political
consequences at the expense of its policy design. The result will
be plans that are sicker, smaller, and likely more expensive for
years. Additional risk corridor funding included in the change may
mitigate some of the cost, but the fundamental problem remains: the
law is politically problematic for Democrats, but solving its
political difficulties requires exacerbating its policy problems.
Each time Obama chooses to fix the law this way, he only makes it
worse.

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Obama Signs Executive Order Blocking Certain Russian Assets Due to Ukraine Crisis

Ok, so this seems like a very big deal and a may represent a serious escalation in the soft conflict happening between the U.S. and Russia. As of today, the U.S. seems to be using financial warfare in its response. Not only does this Executive Order issued today appear to block certain Russian assets, it also imposes travel restrictions. The question on my mind now is, does Russia hold some of its treasuries in the custody of the Federal Reserve? If so, are these now frozen?

Here’s the text of the Executive Order (emphasis mine):

Executive Order — Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine

EXECUTIVE ORDER

– – – – – – –

BLOCKING PROPERTY OF CERTAIN PERSONS CONTRIBUTING TO THE SITUATION IN UKRAINE

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.) (NEA), section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (8 U.S.C. 1182(f)), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,

I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, find that the actions and policies of persons — including persons who have asserted governmental authority in the Crimean region without the authorization of the Government of Ukraine — that undermine democratic processes and institutions in Ukraine; threaten its peace, security, stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity; and contribute to the misappropriation of its assets, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat. I hereby order:

Section 1. (a) All property and interests in property that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of any United States person (including any foreign branch) of the following persons are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State:

(i) to be responsible for or complicit in, or to have engaged in, directly or indirectly, any of the following:

(A) actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in Ukraine;

(B) actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine; or

(ii) to have asserted governmental authority over any part or region of Ukraine without the authorization of the Government of Ukraine;

(iii) to be a leader of an entity that has, or whose members have, engaged in any activity described in subsection (a)(i) or (a)(ii) of this section or of an entity whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order;

(iv) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, any activity described in subsection (a)(i) or (a)(ii) of this section or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or

(v) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.

(b) The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section apply except to the extent provided by statutes, or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the effective date of this order.

Sec. 2. I hereby find that the unrestricted immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens determined to meet one or more of the criteria in subsection 1(a) of this order would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants or nonimmigrants, of such persons. Such persons shall be treated as persons covered by section 1 of Proclamation 8693 of July 24, 2011 (Suspension of Entry of Aliens Subject to United Nations Security Council Travel Bans and International Emergency Economic Powers Act Sanctions).

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Vladimir Putin Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize

It would appear the Norwegian Nobel Institute is starting to lose it. Just a few years after President Obama won the Peace Prize (while mired in overseas wars), the director of the prestigious entity announced today that Russian President Vladimir Putin, accused of invading Ukraine – suspiciously un-peaceful action – has been nominated for the Peace Prize. Putin joins NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai as a nominee for the award to be announced in October.

Via Voice Of Russia,

Putin is thought to be on the list, since Russian figures proposed his name in October, citing his role in the Syrian crisis.

The former KGB agent is credited with averting a US attack against Syria by suggesting putting Bashar al-Assad’s regime’s chemical weapons arsenal under international control.

But, as HuffPo notes,

In order to secure a spot on the list, essentially all that’s required is for a group or individual who falls under the broad criteria set by the Nobel Committee to formally submit your name and good deeds. The committee then selects from these nominations, but takes no responsibility for the pool of candidates they choose from.

This process has resulted in some truly terrible people being proposed over the years, including but not limited to: Joseph Stalin (twice), Adolf Hitler (as a protest), and Rush Limbaugh. Putin was also nominated last year and faced similar criticism as today.

Just need a few more invasions and should be a lock…

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1igcoYz Tyler Durden

Ho Canada!: Porn Channels Aren’t Showing Enough Canuck-Made Content!

If only
Gordon Lightfoot, the Ontario-born singer-songwriter who has
arguably benefited more than any single human being from Canada’s
law mandating TV and radio stations air home-grown artistic
products, also did porn.

CBC News is reporting that porn stations in the Great White
North haven’t run enough skin flicks featuring good old Canadians.
Almost as bad, the content they are showing isn’t captioned. This,
in a country whose national animal is the
beaver and whose national police are called Mounties.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
says AOV XXX Action Clips and AOV Maleflixxx may not be airing
enough Canadian content or closed captioning.

The X-rated specialty channels are supposed to air 35 per cent
Canadian programming over the broadcast year and 90 per cent of its
content should have captioning.

As part of proposed licence renewals, the commission plans to
hear evidence on the apparent non-compliance.

It also has questions about the channels’ ownership
structure.

Possibilities include revocation of the licences or renewals for
shorter periods.

Full story here.

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Repo Businesses Building Huge Surveillance Network

People in the business of
repossessing cars are increasingly also in the business of
collecting and selling the sensitive data of bystanders.

The Boston Globe
reports on “Manny Sousa’s repo company” in Massachusetts, which
uses automatic license plate readers to collect roughly 8,000
plates everyday. Sousa and at least nine others in the state send
their data to Digital Recognition Network in Texas, which “claims
to collect plate scans of 40 percent of all US vehicles
annually.”

Of course, the job of repossessing unpaid cars is legitimate if
not popular. But, the vast majority of plates collected are of no
interest to repo men. The Electronic Frontier Foundation
explains that “license plate data allows the data gatherer,” or
whoever buys the information from them, “to track all
movement in and out of an area; specifically target
certain neighborhoods or organizations; or
place political activists on hot lists so that their
movements trigger alerts.”

Reason‘s Jacob Sullum has previously suggested
that license plate readers “raise privacy issues similar to those
raised by GPS tracking,” and that despite the conventional
view that people do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in
public,” court cases have affirmed that they do.

The American Civil Liberties Union told the Globe that
regulating the use of license plate readers by businesses is the
answer. Yet, attempting to legislate away private action would be
ineffective. Government can
never keep pace with technological developments. What appears
to be a well-intentioned regulation today could prove to be a
costly prohibition with unintended consequences tomorrow.
Legislators from the local to federal level could, however, push
for budgetary limitations and other restrictions on law
enforcement’s data collection abilities that would disincentivize
the industry.

After all, government entities create a big chunk of the demand
for companies like Digital Recognition Network. Police forces
around the country has contracts with them, and as
Reason‘s J.D. Tuccille
noted recently, the Department of Homeland Security already

pays billions to implement this type of technology and briefly
considered creating a national database that would “give new life,
purpose, and resources” to such businesses.

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Question Everything, Believe Nothing – Chapter Two – Group Think and the Hive Mind

Question Everything, Believe Nothing

Chapter Two

Group Think and the Hive Mind

Cognitive Dissonance

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Chapter One may be found here.

There is a pretty common ‘belief’ among many that to ask questions of some ‘things’ that others consider settled or ‘true’ is a sign of weakness, of someone who is weak minded, indecisive or one who just can’t be trusted when the nitty gets gritty. They ‘believe’ that the very act of questioning something that is obviously correct implies instability, doubt, hesitation, uncertainty, etc. They ‘believe’ that these people, the shameful Doubting Thomas’s, cannot be trusted and must be viewed with suspicion and distrust. You are either with the herd or you are against the herd.

Group think is most prevalent in the conditioned mind, a phenomenon that is completely invisible to the group members who truly believe they are thinking independently. The irony of group think is that each member is afforded just enough wiggle room with which to modify or mold the groups common ‘beliefs’ so that each member can call it their own original thinking. Does this sound familiar? No two members of the same political party are of exactly the same mind, yet they all pull the same political lever as one with the herd.

Group Think

The hive mind is most certainly capable of great feats of strength and perseverance precisely because it is narrowly focused and of ‘one mind’. A common argument in favor of the hive mind is the great feats of human engineering that are part of our daily life. I do not argue that the results can be quite spectacular. In fact I am somewhat of an engineering geek and marvel at today’s ships, planes, bridges, buildings, technology and so on.

But I do not accept the premise that these co-created ‘things’ would only be possible under the direction and control of the coordinated hive mind. From my point of view it is a marvel that they actually exist considering all the truly cruel and destructive effects of the hive mind. War and genocide come to mind as something that can only be accomplished by way of group think and the hive mind.

This state of mind is the antithesis of awareness and perspective, of true compassion and empathy, the act of actually transferring yourself emotionally and spiritually into someone else’s shoes rather than simply believing yourself to be in their shoes. Believed empathy is telling someone you feel their pain dawg. True empathy is doubling over in pain and nausea as wave after wave of the shared agony crashes over you.

Those who claim they have a flexible mind often have the least and those who worry they don’t have enough flexibility usually have the most. The same applies to those who ‘believe’ they have questioned their beliefs enough and found them sound, and those who continuously question what they believe precisely because there appears to be no doubt. There is nothing more certain than the certainty that our perception of reality has been seriously distorted and we do not, and cannot, perceive clearly now.

Distortion

Personally I have no substantial problems with questioning certain fundamental ‘truths’ that I have believed in the past were unassailable, yet still carry them with me to use until I have something better to replace them with………or I just decide to discard them altogether. Rather than flee in terror from this Cognitive Dissonance because it might undermine the very basis of my existence, I welcome the opportunity to cast off the binds that tie my mind to the hive.

For the hive mind though, this is a true paradox that sends the mind reeling and the stomach spinning. Having never begun an inward journey to locate the true source of their power, or if so, then quickly abandoning it as obviously too dangerous to the ‘self’ to continue, ‘certainty’ is the only force that group think has to propel itself forward. Remove that and the mind freezes, the body falters and the resolve quickly melts away.

For the conditioned mind there is no other fuel source to tap other than those resources supplied externally by group think and the hive mentality. This is why any approach to life other than slightly modified group think is seen as dangerous to the hive’s existence and must be repelled at first sight and expelled if found to already exist. Independent thought, let alone action is as dangerous to group think and the hive mind as Gold or any other ‘real’ substantial foundational basis is to ‘faith and belief’ central bank fiat.

To question everything and believe nothing is not an all or nothing proposition, a dead ended process of a lost soul endlessly chasing its own mind. To the contrary it is a fearless moral, spiritual and emotional self examination, an inner exploration that yields as much, if not more, from the process of journeying than from actually arriving at any particular destination. In fact if one allows their ‘self’ to believe they have actually arrived at enlightenment, most likely they are standing face to face with their carefully concealed ego.

Here’s the rub though. How does one even achieve enough sanity to begin questioning everything while simultaneously surrounded by, and interacting with, an insane world? Worse, how can we trust anything we might discover when we have finally accepted that deliberate deception runs ten layers deep and we haven’t even penetrated level one?

The question is similar to walking into a clothing store and not knowing your size or even what you like. What do you do? The answer is simple; proceed slowly and try on many different garments for size, shape and feel. Most of all trust your intuition and gut. Equally important, before starting, be settled in the knowledge that you will make many mistakes and that this is entirely expected. Navigating a maze while blindfolded is not an easy task and managing your own expectations and disappointments is paramount to moving forward.

As well, we must recognize that because we were conditioned from an early age, a time when our vulnerability was the greatest because we had no real ability to differentiate between programming, propaganda and believed ‘truth’ (nor did most of our familial programmers), we enter this examination process with our cup full of beliefs and our mind convinced in ways we haven’t even begun to explore that there are unassailable truths. These ‘unassailable truths’ are thus the most difficult to question, let alone shake, and shouldn’t be the first to be challenged.

While our ego might insist we charge directly into the valley of death, understand that the ego, the supreme expert in the manipulation of our ‘self’, is sending us into a psychological trap, a sort of reverse psychology deception by luring us in with false bravado and confidence, only to put us at cliffs edge staring down into the black abyss.

Close to the Edge

Having little to no experience in these matters, many (including myself on several occasions) are quickly overcome by vertigo and scurry back to the safety of terra firma and our familiar self deceptions. Knowing what we have just done, our ego, the master puppeteer, then skillfully encourages us to bargain with what we have just seen to assuage our shame and remorse and to settle for just another comforting version of the original lie.

Instead of pealing back another layer of the onion, tragically we have successfully added yet one more deposit, this time deeply set in stone by our own frightened hands. If we ever venture back down this path again this self created monolith will mock us in ways we can only imagine. Best to travel carefully as if walking a crumbling sandstone path then to delude ourselves into thinking we are surefooted mountain goats.

How arrogant we are to think we could quickly and easily challenge decades, centuries, of pre-conceived group think notions, ‘beliefs’ really since they can be termed nothing else without a thorough examination, without losing our footing and skinning our knees or (perish the thought) breaking some cognitive bones.

I remember well the cold sweat that formed on the back of my neck when I realized I had been criminally deceived into believing the ‘official’ story of nine eleven. Why then, after such a disorienting blow to the egoic mind, would I not expect whiplash when the dawning realization finally sweeps over me that I actually enabled The Big Lie, that I wasn’t quite the helpless victim I had comfortingly conceptualized?

The cognitive problem is never a difficulty in learning about new people, places and things, but in letting go of the old ‘certainty of belief’. We are attracted to the perceived ‘order of certainty’ because our conditioning compels us to seek it out precisely because that empowers outside forces, external author-ities (those who create or ‘author’ their own right to receive/take our power) to supplant our own inner knowing. By rejecting the certainty of belief we are confronting the complete ‘self’ destruction, a rebuilding from the foundation up and then the reordering of all that we ‘believe’ constitutes ‘me’.

Once the curtain is pulled back just a smidge to expose the wizard and his motley crew, our world begins to fly apart as if ravaged by centrifugal forces greater than the human mind can withstand. It is ‘we’ who find ourselves swimming naked when the tide goes out. Worse, we are the gravitational force that determines when, and if, the tide actually ever recedes. The pain we feel when balanced at the cliff’s edge is entirely of our own making and completely within our control to extinguish. All we need do is to abandon the certainty of belief that is presently stuck in our craw.

The Individual 'Self'

Our identity, our ‘self’, our very basis, all that we think ‘we’ are, is called into question when we seriously question everything, then look within for some real honest answers. It all comes back to one of the questions I posed at the beginning of this piece. Who, or more accurately, what are ‘you’ if very little of substance differentiates ‘you’ from ‘us’? This is the stark reality we face when we find ourselves beached naked as a jay bird after being blissfully ignorant nearly our entire life.

Consider just for a moment that we carry around with us, on our backs if you will, a huge pack stuffed to the gills, crammed with all our suppositions, assumptions, beliefs and precious ‘truths’ we hold so dear to ‘us’. That in a nut shell pretty much describes each one of us once we are released from the primary school indoctrination machine, competently instructed in the ways of the beast (these days more like trained as disposable shock troops) and ready to make our mark upon the ‘real’ world.

Now consider how much more that backpack has been stuffed after twenty or thirty years of ‘real’ life experience and imagine what a burden, what an absolute impediment, it must present to real substantial organic growth, the type that nourishes from within, that frees the mind and spirit rather than furthers our enslavement.

Is it really so hard to recognize that ‘belief’ is just another tool we may use, one of dozens we can employ at any time we wish to transport our ‘self’ from one way station to the next as we work our way through life? Instead, when unsettled or directly challenged, we desperately grasp for our beliefs with the ferocity of a drowning swimmer, our backpack clutched to our bosom with a death grip, certain beyond belief that we are identified by our beliefs rather than condemned by them to be chained to a life of spiritual stagnation and decay on every level. Either we sink to the bottom firmly anchored to the herd’s beliefs or we rise to the surface and beyond buoyed by true freedom of thought, mind and conscious spirit.

If I were to hold my hammer, chisel or even my chain saw with the same death grip I hold my beliefs I would soon find myself maimed for life, if not pushing up daises six feet under. Fortunately any and all damage done by the mishandling of my beliefs by my ‘self’ can be undone in mere minutes with a decision born of desperation or determination, it matters not, that I am not my beliefs, that it is my beliefs that control me and not the other way around.

This is why it is advisable to hold the contents of my backpack as I would a butterfly rather than the anvil it so often is. If I view my certainties as fragile and fleeting rather than anchored and immovable, much less effort is required when displacing one for another. Or better yet, to simply discard as no longer need or wanted, as outmoded and useless, what previously I could not imagine living without. Cut the ties, one by one, that binds our mind to the hive. This is the true genesis of substantial original organic life fulfilling growth.

03-06-2014

Cognitive Dissonance

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The Next Shoe To Drop On Your Retirement Account

Submitted by Simon Black of Sovereign Man blog,

President Obama released his 2015 budget proposal this week… and as expected, it contained even more language about his MyRA initiative.

As we’ve discussed so many times in the past, IRAs are an irresistible kitty for such a bankrupt government.

The US government itself estimates that over $5 trillion is tucked away in American retirement accounts.

They need that money. Your money.

Think about it– the Chinese are starting to dump their US Treasuries in record numbers. The Social Security trust fund is also on track to start dumping Treasuries in order to pay out record numbers of retirees.

The US government is struggling to come up with new funding sources… and retirement accounts are by far the easiest target.

Why? Because the majority of retirement accounts at trapped at big Wall Street banks, which are all de facto agents of the government. All the Treasury Department has to do is make a phone call.

Of course, they’ll claim that it’s for your own good. I suspect they’ll wait until there’s a big stock market crash and then say “We must protect Americans from such risky investments. And that’s why today we are requiring these banks to invest a portion of the retirement accounts they manage in the safety and security of US government Treasuries.”

A few weeks ago in his Sad State of the Union address, President Obama announced this MyRA program– a new initiative that will “help” Americans invest directly in US Treasuries.

Then he looked everyone in the eye and said, “These accounts will never go down in value…”

Naturally. How could loaning money at rates which don’t even keep pace with inflation to a country that has racked up more debt than any other nation in the history of the world possibly pose a risk?

After announcing MyRA, Mr. Obama took to the streets, and his team took to the media… flooding newspapers and airwaves with MyRA propaganda.

Yesterday’s budget announcement constitutes the next phase: automatic enrollment.

And I suspect that, just like Obamacare, there will soon come a time when it will become MANDATORY to have some sort of retirement plan set up, naturally with the government option at people’s fingertips.

This isn’t some far-fetched conspiracy theory. In fact, it’s already happened in so many countries over the last few years– from Argentina to Ireland to Poland.

In fact, even the Treasury Department grabbed government pension funds at least three times since 2011 in order to plug temporary funding gaps.

The Federal Times, a publication for senior government managers, ran a story back in 2011 entitled “Treasury raids your pension – but don’t worry, Geithner says”.

This idea is no longer theory or conjecture. It’s happening, and the conclusions are all supported by the data.

Anyone who thinks ‘that will never happen here’ is really fooling themselves… and playing very dangerous games with their hard-earned savings.