I like Stefan’s videos and include them here because they always make me think and they do so in a way which helps me to understand why my financial and business independence is important, along with many other things. To expand on this, I feel that it is risky to rely on anyone else, because others have their own agenda. Every time I put this theory to the test, the results come back the same – independence and freedom are a crucial part of the ExRat way.
I thought it was fitting to add the follow-up video to that one here. In this video Stefan expresses his viewpoint that statism is just another religion – it has similarities in the churches, symbols, deities, rewards and punishments plus it relies on the control and abuse of children.
He feels that the solution lies in raising our children without the language of the state – instead of aggression, raised voices and hands, bullying, control, punishment and manipulation we should instead choose gentleness but firmness coupled with love.
He suggests that violence is a language that we must unlearn, because then the state will reveal itself as just a silly superstition.
I believe that it’s an important part of anyone’s personal development to find the kind of material that makes us stop, think and ask more questions of ourselves and of the world around us.
I am increasingly finding myself drawn to ZeroHedge.com to further my education regarding the current financial crisis involving the banking/financial system. It’s also refreshing to read this website after seeing the tripe served up by the mainstream media.
The article draws heavily on Reuters for it’s references which is always a little bit more reassuring. It’s not a quick read but it explains how financial investments are leveraged up to four times larger than they should ever be within the shadow banking system and how this has led to a situation where one weak link in the daisy-chain of debt can now bring down the whole house of cards and more than likely will at some point.
I consider it essential reading for anyone who wants to become more knowledgeable about this subject and if you’re in business or have anything to do with money (all of us, in other words) you really should try and keep abreast of what’s going on in the higher echelons of financial ‘society’ because their shenanigans affect us all.
This is probably the best Keiser report I have seen. If you have ever wondered what on earth really happened within the banking sector and financial markets in 2007/2008 and why, then the first fifteen minute segment of this video will cast a lot of light on the answer.
In the second half of the video, Max talks to Jon Thorisson of the Eva Joly Institute. In a fascinating interview, Jon talks about the Icelandic banking collapse and how the perpetrators are apparently hiding out in the City Of London.
Max and Jon also talk about the need for people to ‘wake up’ and see what is happening to their financial world around them and Jon asserts that part of this problem is that the press isn’t free and he also explains the ‘plasma screen’ theory.
I’ve embedded a few Keiser report videos on this site, but so far this one is the cream of the crop. If you haven’t watched it, I urge you to take thirty minutes out of your life to listen to some real straight talking.
It’s one of those stories in the newspaper that wasn’t placed on the home page of the website in a manner which would draw attention to it. In fact, since I opened that story about an hour ago, it’s now disappeared off the front page altogether.
I wonder why that happens, eh? Is it so that the newspaper can appear to uphold it’s impartiality by appearing to ‘report the news’, without mentioning the fact that editorial control means that this interesting story can easily be buried very quickly beneath much more important stories like –
EweTube shows ram’s mating acts
Jacko:top-earning dead celebrity
Amanda Knox and I ‘need each other’ says Sollecito
It’s also interesting to note that the headline and sub-heading is actually out-done in terms of shockingness by the final sentence, which many people won’t even see.
This last sentence is the defence offered by a lawyer against the accusation that paying lawyers £200 an hour from taxpayers’ money over a long period of time to work on an inquiry into the hacking scandal is too much money and not value for money.
Here is the ‘attack’ –
Robert Oxley, campaigns manager at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said of the Leveson inquiry: “With an issue that affects the foundation of democracy, there has to be a proper investigation in to the allegations.
“But it is important the investigation represents value for taxpayers’ money and that the result is to restore faith in the organisations and not to bolster the pockets of well-paid lawyers.”
And here is the defence –
Mark Stephens, of Finers Stephens Innocent, who has worked on previous inquiries, including Bloody Sunday, said the hourly rates were a fraction of usual fees. He said a barrister in an inquiry could command £1,000 an hour, while a solicitor could earn £300 an hour. He said Lord Justice Leveson had to be commended for preventing lawyers treating the inquiry as a “money cow”.
£1000 an hour? That’s some income. £200 an hour isn’t to be sniffed at – I’d take it. Take a moment to consider the state of the economy around the world and also to consider exactly what it is that these people do – how much value do they provide society for that money?
I guess that they would take the position that they are essential in ‘upholding law and order.’ Others would suggest that it’s people and earnings like this that will ultimately be responsible for the total breakdown in law and order.
I think it’s safe to say that there’s a lesson here.
After a little break, The Keiser Report returns to the ExRat blog. I watch both of Max’s half-hour shows each week but I haven’t been inspired to embed them here recently, but this one was excelllent and made the cut.
In the first half, the part which caught my eye was about Harry Markopolos who apparently tipped off the SEC about Bernard Madoff and his activities some time before he was finally exposed –
The Keiser Report refers to this MP3 recording which is an interview with KingWorldNews, summarised on that page as such –
Markopolos stated, “The Bank of New York is going to go down, Eric. Between Bank of New York Mellon and State Street, these two institutions have stolen between $6 to $10 billion from tens of millions of Americans retirement savings accounts. It’s been a hell of a crime spree for the bank, but now they are being brought to justice.”
Markopolos also told KWN, “The New York Attorney General filed suit on Tuesday (against Bank of New York Mellon) for stealing money from pension funds on currency transactions. This theft has been from tens of millions of Americans, policemen, firemen, librarians, municipal workers, judges and the list goes on and on and they’ve been doing it for decades.”
If you listen to Max’s commentary on this and hear part of Markopolos’s recording, he explains how pension funds are used and abused by traders as a dumping ground for any trades which go wrong and how transactions by pension funds are manipulated by those who administer them in order for those traders to skim percentages off of each transaction.
One of the reasons why I feel that this is interesting is because as an ExRat, it’s important to understand why we are self-employed and why it’s important to reject ‘the system’ which society tries to funnel us into, starting in school for most of us.
Max even confesses that he himself has done similar things while working on Wall Street (7.20 in the video.) He calls this a ‘look-back trade’. Max explains –
“You put on a big option trade, a volatility trade, at the end of the day. You don’t give an account number to the options dealer on the desk because they’re you know, in line for a big Christmas bonus. Then at the end of the day, if it’s a loser, you dump it into a pension account or you give it to a corporation for a tax loss. If it’s a winner, you go into an account that you’ve already got a pre-arranged relationship with where there’s a massive kick-back. And most of the trading on Wall Street is like this.”
In the second half, Max talks with Charles Hugh Smith, the author of An Unconventional Guide to Investing in Troubled Times. I found this interview quite interesting, not least at 17.20 in the video where he suggests and discusses with Max an alternative direct action plan for the ‘occupy’ movement which could have even more impact and involve the population at large.
Also at around 18.20 he explains how vastly increasing the number of banks would stop the current monopoly of a handful of banks from creating ‘a mass concentration of wealth to buy the political process.’
I present these pieces of information here in order to assist the budding entrepreneur to re-educate themselves about current affairs by absorbing alternative viewpoints in order that they can remove the blinkers which are conveniently placed upon us and reinforced by the mainstream media and to counteract that disinformation which is all around us.