iftttwall

What is the common element between Liborgate, the Fed manipulating capital markets, China hoarding gold, and the recent ubiquotous NSA spying revelations? At one point, before they became fact, they were all “conspiracy theories” as were the Freemasons, the Illuminati, McCarthy’s witch hunts, 9/11, and so many more. The same theories, which – don’t laugh – are now part of a Cambridge University study titled Conspiracy and Democracy,  which looks at the prevalence of conspiracy theories and what they tell us about trust in democratic societies, about the differences between cultures and societies, and why conspiracy theories (ostensibly before they become fact) appear at particular moments in history. But, at its core, whether conspiracy theories will, as the BBC summarizes, it, eventually destroy democracy.

Because, supposedly, it is not the corruption at the top echelons of government, the ultimate usurpation of power by assorted globalist money groups “never letting a crisis go to waste”, that plunder wealth from what is left of the middle class and hands it over, via latent inflation, asset bubbles and capital appreciation to the 1% peak of society’s wealth pyramid (in the US), or kleptofascist, unelected bureaucratic groups seeking the “greater good” despite the complete tear of the social fabric (in Europe) that is a threat to democracy.

No – you see it is evil conspiracy theories and the theorists that spin them that are the biggest threat to the “democratic” way of life.

The BBC has more on this amusing, if potentially troubling, avenue:

“The reason we have conspiracy theories is that sometimes governments and organisations do conspire,” says Observer columnist and academic John Naughton. It would be wrong to write off all conspiracy theorists as “swivel-eyed loons,” with “poor personal hygiene and halitosis,” he told a Cambridge University Festival of Ideas debate. They are not all “crazy”. The difficult part, for those of us trying to make sense of a complex world, is working out which parts of the conspiracy theory to keep and which to throw away.

 

Mr Naughton is one of three lead investigators in a major new Cambridge University project to investigate the impact of conspiracy theories on democracy.

 

The internet is generally assumed to be the main driving force behind the growth in conspiracy theories but, says Mr Naughton, there has been little research into whether that is really the case. He plans to compare internet theories on 9/11 with pre-internet theories about John F Kennedy’s assassination.

 

Like the other researchers, he is wary, or perhaps that should be weary, of delving into the darker recesses of the conspiracy world.

 

“The minute you get into the JFK stuff, and the minute you sniff at the 9/11 stuff, you begin to lose the will to live,” he told the audience in Cambridge.

 

Like Sir Richard Evans, who heads the five-year Conspiracy and Democracy project, he is at pains to stress that the aim is not to prove or disprove particular theories, simply to study their impact on culture and society.

Impact on culture and society… and then judge: because if heaven forbid the fabled institution of higher learning that is Cambridge – the progenitor of many a statist thinkers – finds that conspiracy theories are a danger to fine, upstanding, democratic society… then what?

Why are we so fascinated by them? Are they undermining trust in democratic institutions?

No, but a far better question is do conspiracy “theories”, at least until confirmed, simply provide the beholder with a far more skeptical view of a world than the one spoon fed by a complicit media, whose sole purpose is to perpetuate and multiply – hence enrich – the advertising dollars of the status quo? And is the long overdue questioning of everything that emanates from institutions of power a bad thing, or were people simply too lazy to think for themselves and let the government do it, at least until said “cognitive outsourcing” led to the second great depression of 2008?

David Runciman, professor of politics at Cambridge University, the third principal investigator, is keen to explode the idea that most conspiracies are actually “cock-ups”.

 

“The line between cock-up, conspiracy and conspiracy theory are much more blurred than the conventional view that you have got to choose between them,” he told the Festival of Ideas.

 

“There’s a conventional view that you get these conspirators, who are these kind of sinister, malign people who know what they are doing, and the conspiracy theorists, who occasionally stumble upon the truth but who are on the whole paranoid and crazy. “Actually the conspirators are often the paranoid and crazy conspiracy theorists, because in their attempt to cover up the cock-up they get drawn into a web in which their self-justification posits some giant conspiracy trying to expose their conspiracy.

“And I think that’s consistently true through a lot of political scandals, Watergate included.”

Such a “complex” and profoundly introspective theory – truly something only a Cambridge professor could come up with.

[Runciman] is also examining whether the push for greater openness and transparency in public life will fuel, rather than kill off, conspiracy theories.

 

“It may be that one of the things conspiracy theories feed on as well as silence, is a surfeit of information. And when there is a mass of information out there, it becomes easier for people to find their way through to come to the conclusion they want to come to.

 

“Plus, you don’t have to be an especial cynic to believe that, in the age of open government, governments will be even more careful to keep secret the things they want to keep secret. “The demand for openness always produces, as well as more openness, more secrecy.”

You mean… like the NSA spying on everyone to be abreast of just what everyone knows?

Or does that mean that the Fed’s faux transparency affair is nothing but a red herring designed to redirect attention from the Fed’s true intentions somewhere else?

Unpossible.

That said, having been accused of a conspiratorial bent on a few occasions, we kinda, sorta see where this is going, and will go so far as to venture that in a few years, the Cambridge study’s conclusions (which certainly will cast all paranoid and crazy conspirators in a culpable light and worth of “social isolation”), will be escalated to enforce that anyone found of harboring “conspiratorial” thoughts will be bound and shackled in whatever WIFI-free dungeon the local host Big Brother government has created precisely for this ulterior subclass of humans.

But for now – conspire away… and upon exposing the deep lies beneath the surface of “democracy” – since the mainstream media simply refuses to be painted in the same paranoid and crazy brush – remember to promptly depart for the “evil undemocratic empire” that is Russia…

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/zPB9MYE-kf8/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg

Top U.S. Hospitals Are Opting Out Of Obamacare

In the off chance you are actually able to access the website and successfully sign up for the epic disaster that is Obamacare, you might be a bit surprised about your options when you actually encounter a medical issue. Every American that is even considering signing up for this nightmare needs to be aware of the disturbing fact that many of the top hospitals in the nation will not be accepting Obamacare related insurance plans. Even worse, in many cases it is virtually impossible to find out which doctors and hospitals are on your plan.

One of the most egregious examples of failure is the following:

Seattle Children’s Hospital ranks No. 11 on the U.S. News & World Report best pediatric hospital list. When Obamacare rolled out, the hospital found itself with just two out of seven insurance companies on Washington’s exchange.

Seattle Children’s is the only pediatric hospital in King County, and offers keys services, such as cancer care, which are not available anywhere else in the region. So if you sign up for Obamacare, good luck surviving. Fortunately, that represents only about six people at the moment.

More from U.S. News:

Americans who sign up for Obamacare will be getting a big surprise if they expect to access premium health care that may have been previously covered under their personal policies. Most of the top hospitals will accept insurance from just one or two companies operating under Obamacare.

Watchdog.org looked at the top 18 hospitals nationwide as ranked by U.S. News and World Report for 2013-2014. We contacted each hospital to determine their contracts and talked to several insurance companies, as well.

The result of our investigation: Many top hospitals are simply opting out of Obamacare.

Chances are the individual plan you purchased outside Obamacare would allow you to go to these facilities. For example, fourth-ranked Cleveland Clinic accepts dozens of insurance plans if you buy one on your own. But go through Obamacare and you have just one choice: Medical Mutual of Ohio.

Consumers, too, will struggle with the new system. Many exchanges don’t even list the insurance companies on their web sites. Some that do, like California, don’t provide names of doctors or hospitals.

Continue reading ?

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/OFl2T2mNhds/story01.htm Tyler Durden

There has been much media insinuation in recent months that just because Spain’s economy has virtually shuttered, and imports have slid to unprecedented low levels in the process pushing the (adjusted) GDP beancount positive for the first time in 3 years, that things are somehow getting better. What the media has roundly ignored is that as a result of the collapse in consumption and end demand, courtesy of an unemployment rate that at least according to Eurostat just rose to a new record high, the companies that actually operate in Spain and form the basis for any real economic growth, are shuttering at an unprecedented pace. Of note: Spanish electrical appliance maker Fagor, which employs 5,700 people worldwide, or in a few shorts months, employed, is one step closer to bankruptcy after its Polish subsidiary filed for protection from its creditors. The company, which claims to be the fifth-biggest electrical appliance company in Europe, had trading of its debt suspended after its mother firm – private Spanish conglomerate Mondragon – refused to pour in money to rescue the company.

Fagor makes washing machines, refrigerators and other appliances at 13 factories in five countries. Or, in a few shorts months, made.

AFP reports:

Spain’s financial market regulator said Fagor Electrodomesticos’s debt was suspended from the fixed-interest market on Thursday morning as a precaution “owing to circumstances which could disturb normal trade” in its securities. Shortly afterwards, the regulator said Fagor’s Polish subsidiary, Fagor Mastercook, had voluntarily filed for bankruptcy protection. It employs 1,400 people at its factory in Wroclaw, southwestern Poland. The Polish offshoot’s filing at a court in the northern Spanish city of San Sebastian did not affect the status of the parent Fagor Electromesticos, which is part of the sprawling Basque cooperative Mondragon.

 

But it raised fears among Fagor workers in the Basque country, where the company says it employs 2,000 people directly and supports the same number of jobs indirectly.

 

Workers planned a demonstration on Thursday evening in San Andres, the remote Basque town where the company is based.

 

Fagor announced on October 16 that it had launched initial proceedings towards bankruptcy protection while it tried to refinance its debt, which a source within the company said was 800 million euros ($1.1 billion).

 

Under Spanish bankruptcy rules, Fagor has four months from that date to try to raise funds, but the source told AFP its fate could be determined much sooner in the absence of financing from Mondragon.

 

“If there is no change in the corporation’s decision, the company will have to enter bankruptcy proceedings. I don’t know if that will be within one week or two, but it will be in the short term.”

But while defaults are normal things, at least in the Old Normal economy, when failure was allowed, what is troubling is that Fagor’s parent company refused to preserve the firm’s viability in exchange for a tiny liquidity injection of just €170 million.

Fagor has said 170 million euros would be enough to save it and warned that a lack of financing would push it to an “imminent bankruptcy request”. But Mondragon said in a statement late on Wednesday that it felt Fagor, which has suffered a prolonged period of falling sales, “the company no longer responds to market needs, and the financial resources it requests would not ensure its business future”.

 

Fagor posted sales of 1.17 billion euros in 2012, a drop of over one-third since 2007, a year before Spain’s sharp economic downturn began with the collapse of a decade-long property bubble.

 

The company operates with 10 brands in 130 countries worldwide, and has 13 factories in Spain, France, Poland, Morocco and China. It has a market share of 16.3 percent in Spain and of 14.2 percent in France.

 

The Mondragon group was founded in the 1950s by a local priest, Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, as a small workers’ cooperative and is now an international conglomerate with a mission of maintaining jobs. Its various branches, present in 20 countries, include industry, distribution and finance.

 

Despite its international presence, Mondragon’s cooperative structure has kept most of its jobs and production at home, with 35,000 employees in the Spanish Basque Country, 35,000 elsewhere in Spain and about 13,500 abroad.

And since bankruptcy now appears inevitable, that is up to 70,000 former Spanish jobs that will very soon be on the streets, protesting and enjoying the Spanish “recovery.”

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/i3cRH02HYmM/story01.htm Tyler Durden

There has been much media insinuation in recent months that just because Spain’s economy has virtually shuttered, and imports have slid to unprecedented low levels in the process pushing the (adjusted) GDP beancount positive for the first time in 3 years, that things are somehow getting better. What the media has roundly ignored is that as a result of the collapse in consumption and end demand, courtesy of an unemployment rate that at least according to Eurostat just rose to a new record high, the companies that actually operate in Spain and form the basis for any real economic growth, are shuttering at an unprecedented pace. Of note: Spanish electrical appliance maker Fagor, which employs 5,700 people worldwide, or in a few shorts months, employed, is one step closer to bankruptcy after its Polish subsidiary filed for protection from its creditors. The company, which claims to be the fifth-biggest electrical appliance company in Europe, had trading of its debt suspended after its mother firm – private Spanish conglomerate Mondragon – refused to pour in money to rescue the company.

Fagor makes washing machines, refrigerators and other appliances at 13 factories in five countries. Or, in a few shorts months, made.

AFP reports:

Spain’s financial market regulator said Fagor Electrodomesticos’s debt was suspended from the fixed-interest market on Thursday morning as a precaution “owing to circumstances which could disturb normal trade” in its securities. Shortly afterwards, the regulator said Fagor’s Polish subsidiary, Fagor Mastercook, had voluntarily filed for bankruptcy protection. It employs 1,400 people at its factory in Wroclaw, southwestern Poland. The Polish offshoot’s filing at a court in the northern Spanish city of San Sebastian did not affect the status of the parent Fagor Electromesticos, which is part of the sprawling Basque cooperative Mondragon.

 

But it raised fears among Fagor workers in the Basque country, where the company says it employs 2,000 people directly and supports the same number of jobs indirectly.

 

Workers planned a demonstration on Thursday evening in San Andres, the remote Basque town where the company is based.

 

Fagor announced on October 16 that it had launched initial proceedings towards bankruptcy protection while it tried to refinance its debt, which a source within the company said was 800 million euros ($1.1 billion).

 

Under Spanish bankruptcy rules, Fagor has four months from that date to try to raise funds, but the source told AFP its fate could be determined much sooner in the absence of financing from Mondragon.

 

“If there is no change in the corporation’s decision, the company will have to enter bankruptcy proceedings. I don’t know if that will be within one week or two, but it will be in the short term.”

But while defaults are normal things, at least in the Old Normal economy, when failure was allowed, what is troubling is that Fagor’s parent company refused to preserve the firm’s viability in exchange for a tiny liquidity injection of just €170 million.

Fagor has said 170 million euros would be enough to save it and warned that a lack of financing would push it to an “imminent bankruptcy request”. But Mondragon said in a statement late on Wednesday that it felt Fagor, which has suffered a prolonged period of falling sales, “the company no longer responds to market needs, and the financial resources it requests would not ensure its business future”.

 

Fagor posted sales of 1.17 billion euros in 2012, a drop of over one-third since 2007, a year before Spain’s sharp economic downturn began with the collapse of a decade-long property bubble.

 

The company operates with 10 brands in 130 countries worldwide, and has 13 factories in Spain, France, Poland, Morocco and China. It has a market share of 16.3 percent in Spain and of 14.2 percent in France.

 

The Mondragon group was founded in the 1950s by a local priest, Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, as a small workers’ cooperative and is now an international conglomerate with a mission of maintaining jobs. Its various branches, present in 20 countries, include industry, distribution and finance.

 

Despite its international presence, Mondragon’s cooperative structure has kept most of its jobs and production at home, with 35,000 employees in the Spanish Basque Country, 35,000 elsewhere in Spain and about 13,500 abroad.

And since bankruptcy now appears inevitable, that is up to 70,000 former Spanish jobs that will very soon be on the streets, protesting and enjoying the Spanish “recovery.”

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/i3cRH02HYmM/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Two months ago we reported that Obama had officially declared war on the weather, after it was reported that he was ready to use “administrative authority” to fight climate change. While at the time it was not quite clear just what authority he had to unleash centrally-planned weather, today we finally got a glimpse of how Obama’s biggest war yet would look like.

As Washington Times reports, “President Obama issued an executive order Friday directing a government-wide effort to boost preparation in states and local communities for the impact of global warming. The action orders federal agencies to work with states to build “resilience” against major storms and other weather extremes. For example, the president’s order directs that infrastructure projects like bridges and flood control take into consideration climate conditions of the future, which might require building structures larger or stronger — and likely at a higher price tag.”

In other words, following the epic Syrian fiasco, whose primary intention was to boost the US budget deficit as a result of a localized war, and allow Bernanke more debt issues to monetize, Obama now has decided to unleash a very expensive, and very much debt-funded war against the greatest enemy of all: the weather.

The article goes on:

“The impacts of climate change — including an increase in prolonged periods of excessively high temperatures, more heavy downpours, an increase in wildfires, more severe droughts, permafrost thawing, ocean acidification and sea-level rise — are already affecting communities, natural resources, ecosystems, economies and public health across the nation,” the presidential order said. “The federal government must build on recent progress and pursue new strategies to improve the nation’s preparedness and resilience.”

 

There’s no estimate of how much the additional planning will cost. Natural disasters including Superstorm Sandy cost the U.S. economy more than $100 billion in 2012, according to the administration.

Well, the more the merrier. Since interest costs in the New Normal are not an issue as long as the Marriner Eccles politburo is around, debt is wealth, and the more debt the US incurs to comply with Obama’s latest executive order, the better.

Sure enough, as a result of this idiotic development, it is best to have very lofty aspirations, of the variety that come in 9 or more digits: after all, since nobody can quantify “climate change” may as well unleash the most ridiculous numbers conceivable.

The White House is also setting up a task force of state and local leaders to offer advice to the federal government, with several Democratic governors having agreed to serve and at least one Republican governor, from the U.S. territory of Guam.

 

Mr. Obama has a goal of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020, and the Environmental Protection Agency is working on rules that would impose tougher regulations on coal-burning power plants. But much of the president’s climate-change agenda has stalled in Congress, and the administration says the new order recognizes that global greenhouse gas emissions are still rising, making further damage from global warming inevitable.

Actually no:

But since when did an autocrat, whose only concern is pandering to his populist, Obamaphone-equipped electorate, while spying on the middle class and doing the bidding of Wall Street, care about the facts?

Finally:

“The question is not whether we need to act,” Mr. Obama said at the time. “The question is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late.”

Damn right: however the “action in question has nothing to do with spending trillions to prepare for a crisis that may come long after the Federal Reserve has destroyed western civilization, but rather to overthrow a corrupt, oligarchic, self-serving system, in which the middle-class, once the backbone of a great nation, is being forced into extinction by its “elected” representatives through the most subversive form of wealth transfer in the Fed’s 100 years of existence.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/51_i2oXFKUw/story01.htm Tyler Durden