This self education category is to inspire the reader to improve their education and critical thinking skills, particularly in relation to financial freedom and personal development with sub categories of philosophical and financial. A key part of my personal development has been to overcome the ‘dumbing-down’ process I have experienced and here I present information which has been key to this process for me. Self education is about empowering yourself and taking responsibility – these are crucial aspects of entrepreneurialism and have many knock-on benefits which I will explain in various posts in this section.
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.
‘The Money Masters’ is an excellent film produced by Patrick Carmack and directed/narrated by Bill Still, and released sometime around 2004 as ‘The Money Masters’, but repackaged and released in 2009 by Still as ‘The Secret Of Oz’ – this is the repackaged version.
It covers fractional-reserve banking, the Federal Reserve, central banking, the bond market and many other related subjects and attempts to explain why this monetary system is problematic and fundamentally flawed.
The main premise (generalised somewhat) is that the financial system has been designed and set up to reap the spoils of the many for the benefit of the few.
In this repackaged version the new premise is that ‘The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz’ by L. Frank Baum has many parallels with the financial system and perhaps the prevalence of what could be construed as hidden symbolism within the original story was a surreptitious way of ‘getting the message out’ to the people about the need for monetary reform, without Baum endangering himself in the process.
You can find quite a lot more background information about the two versions of the film here at the Wikipedia link.
This is the second in the series of the ‘Money As Debt’ films by Paul Grignon and this one was released in 2009. You can see the first one, released in 2002 by clicking HERE.
This second film was made as a response to the global financial crisis of 2008. Therefore it goes a little further into interest burdens, bailouts, stimulus packages and the ‘gambling economy.’
It also explains aspects of the law and how they relate to the financial system and the economic crisis. I will add ‘Money As Debt 3 – Evolution Beyond Money’, as soon as it becomes available for embedding.
These films are ideal for anyone who is new to this subject, as they take their time to explain complex concepts and utilise animations to demonstrate the important points.