Commercial Mortgage Default Rate in U.S. More Than Doubles

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aj9Yttz_UYxg

Feb. 24

By Dan Levy and David Henry

The default rate for commercial property mortgages held by U.S. banks more than doubled in the fourth quarter and may reach a peak of 5.4 percent at the end of next year, according to Real Capital Analytics Inc. The default rate for loans on office, retail, hotel and industrial properties surged to 3.8 percent from 1.6 percent a year earlier, the New York-based real estate research firm said yesterday in a report. The default rate for loans on apartment buildings climbed to 4.4 percent from 1.8 percent.

US senator warns of ‘financial meltdown’ risk

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d618a9a4-225b-11df-a93d-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1

February 25 2010
By Edward Luce

The US is heading for a debt-driven “financial meltdown” within five to seven years, according to Judd Gregg, the outgoing Republican senator for New Hampshire. In a robust and at times testy video interview for the Financial Times’s View from DC series, Mr Gregg also complimented China for showing rising alarm about the US’s mounting levels of public debt. “We have had China say that they are looking for other places to put their reserves and that is probably a smart decision on their part,” said Mr Gregg, who will not seek re-election in November. “So the warning signs are pretty clear and the path is unsustainable and, at this point, unless we take different actions, unavoidable.”

Lets talk taxes folks.

http://www.gcstation.net/liefreezone/


I first came across this story a couple of years ago, please take the time to gander over the information shared there.

His theory is correct as far as i can see, lets start with the 16th amendment.

this story is a good look at one part of it.


LISTEN TO THE BRILLIANCE OF ATTORNEY JEFFREY DICKSTEIN BEFORE THE 7TH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS, IN U.S. v BENSON. PASS IT ON!30 minutes of fascinating audio, click here to listen.

http://www.thelawthatneverwas.com/new/7th_circuit.mp3




this is straight up awesome listening, great learning.

will post more later.

The Only Outcome

Alot of people ask me, do you really believe the dollar will collapse and civil unrest will run rampant? The answer of course is ABSOLUTELY the dollar will collapse!! This is the only outcome possible anymore, and here is a couple of reasons why....

1. In our economic system, money IS debt. Meaning the only way you can pay off your debt is if someone else takes on debt.

2. Fiat currency's have always collapsed, due to greed of the politician's and the printing press(or devaluing of the currency)

3. Our debt is so large the only way we could begin to try and pay it is if we inflate it away.


4. But the biggest reason is because there is not enough money in existence, be it paper FRN's or gold. The interest never gets printed, just the principal.


With our national debt at 12 trillion and our yearly debt to gdp at about 10% which is historically low, your thinking wtf right?

You would be wrong, total debt is anywhere between 50-70 trillion dollars.

US debt clock has it at 54 trillion right now, but i have heard estimates of up to 70 trillion, but we don't have hard figures on this as the fed does not allow outside audits of it's books.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/


Now when the boomers start to retire, how do you think we are going to pay for that? Social security is already running in the red.

http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/onair/transcripts/social_security_100217/
GERSH: That's the
Heritage Foundation's David John. The administration's latest figures show
Social Security will pay out $34 billion more this year than it takes in from
tax revenues. John says that cash deficit is a warning Social Security is not
sustainable.

JOHN: This is just saying flatly, look, this is real. It's
happening. It's happening now.

The fed is buying up most of debt and worse yet, hiding it in the balance sheets as household buying.

Now get this, household bought 15 billion worth of us debt in 2008, but in 2009 household bought 700+ billion worth of debt.

Who believes this crap?

We must admit that we were surprised to discover that "Households" had bought so
many Treasuries in 2009.

They bought 35 times more government debt than
they did in 2008. Given the financial condition of the average household in
2009, this makes little sense to us.

With unemployment and foreclosures
skyrocketing, who could afford to increase treasury investments to such a large
degree?

For our more discerning readers, this enormous "Household"
investment was made outside of Money Market Funds, Mutual Funds, ETF's, Life Insurance
Companies, Pension and Retirement funds and Closed-EndFunds, which are all
separate reporting categories.

This leaves a very important question-
who makes up this Household Sector? Amazingly, we discovered that the Household
Sector is actually just a catch-all category.

It represents the buyers
left over who can't be slotted into the other group headings. Formost categories of
financial assets and liabilities, the values for the Household Sector are
calculated as residuals. That is, amounts held or owed by the other sectors are
subtracted from known totals, and the remainders are assumed to be the amounts
held or owed by the Household Sector.

To quote directly from the Flow of
Funds Guide, "For example, the amounts of Treasury securities held by all other
sectors, obtained from asset data reported by the companies or institutions
themselves, are subtracted from total Treasury securities outstanding, obtained
from the Monthly Treasury Statement of Receipts and Outlays of the United States
Government and the balance is assigned to the household sector." (Emphasis ours)

So to answer the question - who is the Household Sector? They are a
PHANTOM. They don't exist. They merely serve to balance the ledger in the
Federal Reserve's
Flow of Funds report.


http://www.docudharma.com/diary/18162/imploding-households-rescue-treasury-debt

Listen right now folks, you need to do everything you can now to get out of the dollar. Trade them for long term storable food, seeds,weapons,ammo,generators,water filters,etc.

whenshtf.com is a great source to help you get started, also i will be posting stuff i like on here for you readers.

Do not wait, China is not only buying less debt, but is selling some of the stuff it already holds.

China sold $34bn (£21.5bn) worth of US government bonds in December, raising
fears that ­Beijing is using its financial ­muscle to signal that it has
lost confidence in American economic policy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/17/china-sells-us-treasury-bonds

Get out of the dollar now, while you can. If you have alot of money to protect and your already set up with everything you need for your family to survive for 6 months to a year at least, then i would suggest gold and silver coins.

Please do not wait till this happens and it will be to late for you and your family. This is going to happen, if you believe it or not does not matter. So prepare and survive, or dont and more then likely die.

But remember if you have failed to prepare, do not look to people that have prepared and expect them to take care of you, only hard times lead down that path friends.

If i'm wrong, you get to laugh at me. If your wrong, your dead.

You see with your own eyes what i'm saying is true, override the sheep switch put into your brain by the msm and the government propaganda.

Be ready brothers and sisters, the time is not far out.

Tracy Residents Now Have To Pay For 911 Calls

TRACY, Calif. (CBS13) ―Tracy residents will now have to pay every time they call 9-1-1 for a medical emergency.But there are a couple of options. Residents can pay a $48 voluntary fee for the year which allows them to call 9-1-1 as many times as necessary.

Or, there's the option of not signing up for the annual fee. Instead, they will be charged $300 if they make a call for help."A $300 fee and you don't even want to be thinking about that when somebody is in need of assistance," said Tracy resident Greg Bidlack.Residents will soon receive the form in the mail where they'll be able to make their selection. No date has been set for when the charges will go into effect.

http://cbs13.com/local/tracy.911.calls.2.1502690.html

Citigroup Warns Customers It May Refuse To Allow Withdrawals

"Effective April 1, 2010, we reserve the right to require (7) days advance notice before permitting a withdrawal from all checking accounts. While we do not currently exercise this right and have not exercised it in the past, we are required by law to notify you of this change," Citigroup said on statements received by customers all over the country.


http://www.businessinsider.com/citigroup-warns-customers-it-may-refuse-to-allow-withdrawals-2010-2


update: it's being said that this only applys to texas customers, i guess we will see right?

SOVEREIGN ALCHEMY WILL FAIL

As the Austrian economist von Mises said: “There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency involved.”


http://matterhornassetmanagement.com/2010/02/11/sovereign-alchemy-will-fail/


The problem is not just the current debt levels of these nations, because the deficits in all the countries are rising. Tax revenues are collapsing and with rapidly rising unemployment, the governments’ expenses for social charges are soaring.

In the US for example the federal deficit in 2009 was $1.5 trillion (10.7% of GDP) and is forecast to stay around that level for many years. The plight of the US states is just as bad. Out of 50 states only 4 are expected to have a balanced budget in 2010. Up to 40 states, including California, New York, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina and New Jersey, are virtually bankrupt.

It took almost 200 years for US Federal debt to reach $ 1 trillion which it did in 1981. In 2009 the debt increased by $ 1.9 trillion in just that year to $ 12.4 trillion. In the next ten years the US debt is forecast to reach $ 25 trillion. And this doubling of the debt does not include any funds to prop up a bankrupt financial system or the spending of tens or maybe hundreds of trillions of dollars on worthless OTC derivatives.

The forecast also assumes growth in GDP which is extremely unlikely especially for the next 2-5 years. Currently US Federal debt is six times what it collects in tax revenue every year. With debt exploding and tax revenues collapsing, there is no chance that the debt can ever be repaid with normal money. Also, with debt out of control interest rates will rise substantially to 10-20% per annum. Applying a 15% interest rate to a $ 25 trillion debt would give an annual interest bill of $ 3.75 trillion which would be substantially more than tax revenues.

The chart below shows the US Federal Debt per person. In the last ten years it has gone from $ 20,000 to $ 40,000. Total US debt, including private and corporate debt as well as unfunded liabilities, comes to $430,000 per individual. It is an absolute certainty that every man, woman and child in the US cannot pay off almost half a million dollars with normal money. Only massive money printing will take care of that.

texas man flys plane into irs building

read his note to the world here...

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2010/0218102stack1.html

was he a nut, or someone just fed up with the crap shoved down hardworking americans throats everyday.

PEW Study Shows Trillion Dollar State Pension Gap

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/02/pew-study-shows-trillion-dollar-state.html


Key FindingsIn eight states—Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and West Virginia—more than one-third of the total liability was unfunded.Two states had less than 60 percent of the necessary assets on hand to meet their long-term pension obligations: Illinois and Kansas. Illinois was in the worst shape of any state, with a funding level of 54 percent and an unfunded liability of more than $54 billion.


read more at the link

Foreign demand for US Treasury securities falls by record amount as China reduces holdings

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Foreign-demand-for-Teasury-apf-1402391707.html?x=0&.v=6

By Martin Crutsinger, AP Economics Writer , On Tuesday February 16, 2010, 9:58 am

WASHINGTON (AP) --

The government said Tuesday that foreign demand for U.S. Treasury securities fell by the largest amount on record in December with China reducing its holdings by $34.2 billion.The reductions in holdings, if they continue, could force the government to make higher interest payments at a time that it is running record federal deficits.

The Treasury Department reported that foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities fell by $53 billion in December, surpassing the previous record of a $44.5 billion drop in April 2009.The big drop in China's holdings meant that it lost the top spot in terms of foreign ownership of U.S. Treasuries, dropping to second place behind Japan.

Japan also reduced its holdings of U.S. Treasuries, cutting them by $11.5 billion to $768.8 billion in December, but that amount was still more than China's December total of $755.4 billion.The $53 billion decline in holdings of Treasury securities came primarily from a drop in official government holdings, which fell by $52.3 billion.

The holdings of foreign private investors fell by $700 million during the month of December.

For all of 2009, foreign holdings of U.S. Treasuries dipped by $500 million. In 2008, foreigners had increased their holdings of U.S. Treasuries by $456 billion as a global financial crisis triggered a flight to the safety of U.S. government debt.That flight to safety had driven down the interest rates that the government was having to pay on its debt to record lows with rates on some short-term securities dipping into negative territory for brief periods.

The Obama administration on Feb. 1 released a new budget plan which projects that the deficit for this year will total a record $1.56 trillion, surpassing last year's record of $1.4 trillion deficit. The trillion-dollar-plus deficit have been caused by a deep recession, which has reduced government tax receipts, and the massive spending that has been undertaken to jump-start the economy and stabilize the financial system.

The administration has pledged to begin addressing the huge government deficits with Obama saying he will soon appoint a commission to recommend ways to trim future deficits.Overall, the Treasury Department said that foreign net purchases of long-term securities totalted $63.3 billion in December, down from $126.4 billion in November.

This category covers Treasury securities and private company bonds.China's holdings are a result of the huge trade deficits the United States runs with China.

The Chinese take the dollars Americans pay for Chinese products and invest them in Treasury securities and other dollar-denomina ted assets.American manufacturers argue that China's huge dollar reserve reflect a strategy by the Chinese government to keep its currency artifically low against the dollar as a way to boost Chinese exports and dampen demand in China for American products.

Economic Collapse may be as soon as March 2010

Unfortunately, I believe we are looking at from as soon as March 2010 through August 2010.

As posted on my Blog, it may go something like this...It’s a Friday. You go to work in a normal fashion. At lunchtime, you swipe your credit card at the restaurant and the transaction is rejected. The cashier says that all the credit and debit card transactions are being rejected, and there must be something wrong with the satellite feed.

Luckily, you have cash, and you pay your bill. By the time you are leaving, the manager announces to the whole restaurant that they are not accepting any more new customers until their credit card system comes back online. All customers will have to pay cash. You go back to work. When you get there, you punch up CNN on your computer and find that the problem is not just that restaurant’s uplink. News reports state that the worldwide bond market crashed during the morning, sending the rest of the financial markets into a freefall.

The New York Stock Exchange called a halt to trading and closed at 11:30 am. Credit transactions all over the US are not working. Businesses are closing early, or only accepting cash transactions. You and your co-workers leave work early to go to your banks to make a withdrawal of cash to tide you over the weekend. But hundreds of thousands of other people have run to their banks to get cash, too.

And because the banks are only required by law to keep about 15% of their assets on hand in cash, they quickly run out of money. Many banks have closed their doors for the day. When you arrive at your branch bank, it’s already closed. The sign on the door says the branch will be open again Monday morning. The ATMs do not function…anywhere. You look in your wallet and there is six dollars there. Payday was today and now you cannot cash your paycheck.

You were going to fill your tank on the way home, but now you can’t. You wonder how you’ll get to work Monday with no gas. On your way home you drive past gas station after gas station. Many have already closed. Many have erected hastily-scrawled signs that say “CASH ONLY, NO CHECKS.” The lines of cars are blocks long. When you get home, your spouse has had much the same experience.

She went to the market on the way home from her job and the market manager had also posted “CASH ONLY” signs on the front door. People were buying up everything they could afford.

The milk and bread shelves were already bare. Thankfully, your wife’s car has a full tank of gas.

You look in the pantry. A quick look tells you that the family will be able to get through the weekend just fine, although the meals might be a little weird. But by Tuesday, you’ll be running out of essentials. Throughout the weekend, regularly scheduled news shows become 24/7 special reports about the banking and credit interruptions nationwide.

Videotape from all over America shows the closed banks, shops and gas stations. 18-wheelers are parked and shut down all over the roads and in truck stops since the truckers can’t fill their fuel tanks using credit. And, some of their loads of refrigerated or frozen goods will spoil if the reefer unit runs out of fuel. The Saturday news shows report that the Federal Reserve has been taken over by the World Bank.

The President has signed an Executive Order authorizing the takeover. But since taking over the failed Federal Reserve, they have now replaced all dollar-denominated money with the Euro. They also devalued the dollar’s convertibility by a factor of 2.

That means when you convert your dollars to Euros, you will only receive less than half of the face value of your dollars. Before the collapse, it cost $1.50 to buy one Euro. Now it costs $3.00. So, your $100 bill will only convert to about 33.50 Euros.

The President proclaims a limited window of 30 days in which citizens will be allowed to convert all dollar currency into Euros. Than after that, the Federal Reserve notes will be entirely worthless. The President states that this is the only solution to prevent chaos.

Read the rest at http://www.newamerica-now.blogspot.com

It's never to late to start preparing just get started

A great read about the dollar that every american should read.

http://www.fame.org/HTM/Vieira_Edwin_What_is_a_Dollar_EV-002.HTM

WHAT IS A DOLLAR?

Dr. Edwin Vieira, J.D., is the author of the preeminent legal treatise on monetary jurisprudence in American law Pieces Of Eight, holds four degrees from Harvard and practices law before the United States Supreme Court. I highly recommend reading Dr. Vieira’s entire essay, What Is A Dollar?,

BEATS ME! WHAT IS A DOLLAR?

http://the-moneychanger.com/articles_files/mmm_files/gold_files/enemy_in_mirrow.phtml

Pose this question to a federal government or Federal Reserve official and he will run you around the bush for months, mumbling blather like, “The value of the dollar depends on the productive capacity of the U.S. Economy” or “Dollar currency is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government.” They may even read to you from a dollar bill, “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private” -- perhaps adding to the mystification by citing some public law of such and such date.

Ask this question in a state court (say, when a judge assesses a fine) and you will most likely land in jail. “Judge, I want to pay all my debts, not just discharge them but the law makes conflicting statements about what a dollar is. Can you tell me what this state has declared a dollar to be, pursuant to the U.S. Constitution at Article 1, Section 10? Then I can be sure I have paid the fine in dollars.”

You will set off on a hilarious, rollicking journey through numerous damp penal institutions as the judge and every other state official from Governor to Second Assistant Tire Checker ducks, dodges, and weaves to avoid answering your question. They all know that every state violates Article 1, Section 10, enforcing payment in “dollars” of bank credit or Federal Reserve [bank]notes, but they surely won't be the ones to admit it. The emperor has no clothes, but I don’t want to be the one to tell him

Congress shall have power . . .

Under the common law, which is still our right, nothing but gold and silver was money The United States Constitution at Article 1, Section 8 granted congress power to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and 'measures.”

No State shall . . .

The Constitution at Article I, Section 10 withdrew from the states power to declare anything other than gold, or silver a tender in payment of debts. “No State shall *** emit Bills of Credit [legal tender paper money]; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”

THE STANDARD DOLLAR & DOLLAR STANDARD

Pursuant to the Constitution, congress later enacted the Coinage Act of April 2, 17921 which forever set and immutably fixed the standard dollar as a weight of silver equal to 371.25 grains (0.7734 troy ounce or 24.0565 grams or 1.292929 dollars of silver to the ounce. The same act provided for gold coins valued but not denominated in dollars ($10 eagles, $5 half-eagles, and $2.50 quarter eagles). Once a standard has been set, it cannot be changed, any more than congress could declare that the present “foot” measure should comprise ten inches rather than twelve. The only constitutional standard money of the United States is the 371.25 grain dollar of silver.

At first dimes, quarters, and halves were simply the tenth, fourth, or half weight of a silver dollar. However, the Act to Devalue the Subsidiary Silver Coinage of February 21, 18532 reduced the weights of the dime, quarter, and half dollar to 173.61 grains (0.3617 troy ounce), 86.805 grains (0.1808 troy ounce), and 34.722 grains (0.07234 troy ounce), respectively, and made them legal tender for $10.00 only.

ADJUSTING THE GOLD COINS

Because Congress set the silver price of gold too low in the Coinage Act of 1792 (at 15:1), gold fled the U.S. to other world markets where it bought more silver. Thus in 1834 congress finally had to adjust the weight of the gold coins to reflect their market value in silver. The Coinage Act of 18343 reduced the gold coins’ weight slightly. The Coinage Act of 18374 minutely reduced the weight of gold valued at one dollar to 23.22 grains of fine gold (0.04375 troy ounce or 1.5046 grams), 20.6718 dollars to the ounce.

A GOLD STANDARD?

The Gold Standard Act of March 14, 19005 defined a dollar of gold as a weight of fine gold (24 karat) of 23.22 grains (0.04375 troy ounce or 1.5046 grams), 20.6718 dollars to the ounce, no different from the Coinage Act of 1837.

WHAT ARE FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES?

Federal Reserve notes are not “dollars,’ but they are “legal tender.” Whenever a contract payable in “dollars” fails to specify payment in a certain form of “dollars,” the payee must accept whatever sort of “dollars” are defined in the law as “legal tender.” The law states, “United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts.” 6

The law defines Federal reserve notes as “obligations of the United States *** receivable for all taxes, customs, and other public dues.” 7

ANOTHER GOLD STANDARD?

The Gold Bullion Coin Act of 19858 provided for the American Eagle gold coins containing one troy ounce (denominated “$50”), one-half troy ounce (denominated “$25”), one-fourth troy ounce (denominated “$10” [sic]), and one-tenth troy ounce (denominated “$5”).

ANOTHER SILVER STANDARD?

The Liberty Coin Act of 19859 provided for 0.999 troy ounce (not 1.0000 troy ounce.) silver coins denominated “one dollar” and “one Oz. Fine Silver.” Although their official name is “Liberty [silver] coins,” they are commonly but erroneously called “silver American Eagles.’

MULTIPLE LEGAL TENDERS

Since 1985 congress has provided the United States with a complex multiple legal tender monetary system composed of many sorts of “dollars”: irredeemable United States notes10, irredeemable Federal Reserve note ‘dollars,” 11 base metal token coins and debased silver coins12, 1792-standard dollars of silver13, 1900-standard “dollars” of gold14, American Eagle gold “dollars” and silver Liberty 0.999 troy ounce “dollars” 15. All are denominated in “dollars” although markets value these various “dollars’ at vastly different rates.

NOT SINCE THE WAR OF NORTHERN AGGRESSION

The last time this situation prevailed was after the War Between the States when United States notes, national bank currency, U.S. silver coins, and U.S. gold coins were all legal tender denominated in “dollars” and all valued at differing rates. In 1878 the United States Supreme Court construed these contradictory laws as meaning that “a dollar is a dollar is a dollar” for legal tender purposes.16

“One owing a debt may pay it in gold coin or legal-tender notes of the United States, as he chooses, unless there is something to the contrary in the obligation out of which the debt arises. A coin dollar is worth no more for the purposes of tender in payment of an ordinary debt than a note dollar. The law has not made the note a standard of value any more than coin. It is true that in the market, as an article of merchandise, one is of greater value than the other; but as money, that is to say, as a medium of exchange, the law knows no difference between them.17“

WHAT IS A DOLLAR?

The implications, especially in accounting for revenue and paying taxes, are staggering but untried and unproven in court. In personal business you are unquestionably free to write contracts specifying payment in legal tender gold18 or silver coin and thus contract out of the paper money system. But one point is clear: the only thing that gives the government and the Federal Reserve power over our economic system is our own willingness to use their irredeemable paper notes in our daily lives. If you are a slave of the paper money system, you are forging your own chains.

-- Franklin Sanders

-- July 4, 1994

great post on FRN's and "dollars"

A well thought out post, that i am going to be spending some time investigating. What he is saying is that the coinage act of 1792 made dollars to be coins only(as in gold dollar,silver dollar), since federal reserve notes are not coins made from these metals, they are in fact, not "dollars" at all.

Hit me back with comments,insults and fat mom jokes yo!

http://www.whenshtf.com/showthread.php?26556-Jilted-The-Looming-Dollar-Disaster&p=314601#post314601

here is his post

In previous posts I tried to encourage folks to go read the law, or ask for
copies from their legislators so that they can determine for themselves,
what is really going on.

Based on what I found, is that :
A) The "dollar bill" is acting as "legal tender" because of the 300
million human resources via FICA.
B) The nation has been under a state of
emergency, since 1933, due to the
Congress' bankruptcy.

C) No one can
question the validity of the public debt,
due to the 14th amendment, clause 4.
D) There is no law compelling participation, yet millions believe they are
obligated to enroll, get their number, and pay their "fair
share".

What that means, is that though millions BELIEVE they are
obligated by some law, the government officials can excuse themselves and
say : "Look, YOU VOLUNTEERED."

I stopped volunteering, in 1993, and have not been a person liable
for certain taxes derived from voluntary participation in national
socialism.

If one is a non-taxpayer, the government leaves you alone. But if you
never investigate the law, and operate on the illusions taught to you, I may
appear to be "ranting".Go read the law, for yourself.

If you can find where I made a mistake, please, let us all know. I am not
infallible, and may have made an error.But to the best of my knowledge, the law
on the books states that a dollar is a coin stamped from precious metal and a
dollar bill is a repudiated, worthless note. Since 1933, no one has used dollars
to pay debts or have been paid with dollars.

If you've been misled to claim that you were paid "dollars" and entered
that data into the public record, via government forms, that's a problem.

I believe that the confusion is intentional, and no one will express the
facts, in clear terms, so that the people can decide for themselves.

I've filed quite a few legal court cases, wherein I did not pay fees, by
asserting that I did not have sufficient DOLLARS, as dollars are defined in the
Coinage Act of 1792.

And each case had to be reviewed by the sitting judge, to weed out
frivolous suits. (No, I did not file in forma pauperis. I am not a pauper
(i.e.,
socialist).)I've even ducked being fined (when losing), by pointing
out that I do not have nor possess any dollars, as dollars are defined by
the Act.

I've never had to raise the objection that if the fine is
payable with FRNs, and said FRNs have no par value, then the fine is
effectively zero. Americans have been kept ignorant for generations. I was
in my late 30's when circumstances compelled me to dive into the law.

Up till that moment, I was SURE I knew all about America's legal
heritage. I had the benefits of a higher education - a college degree - I
was well read.

Boy, was I mistaken!

I strongly urge every American to use a week or two of each year, to
witness the shenanigans played out in the courts of this nation. You won't
believe it if I tell you, so you will have to witness it for yourself.

Colorado Springs Cuts Basic Services

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_14303473

COLORADO SPRINGS — This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet.

The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

"I guess we're going to find out what the tolerance level is for people," said businessman Chuck Fowler, who is helping lead a private task force brainstorming for city budget fixes. "It's a new day."

Some residents are less sanguine, arguing that cuts to bus services, drug enforcement and treatment and job development are attacks on basic needs for the working class.

"How are people supposed to live? We're not a 'Mayberry R.F.D.' anymore," said Addy Hansen, a criminal justice student who has spoken out about safety cuts. "We're the second-largest city, and growing, in Colorado. We're in trouble. We're in big trouble."

Mayor flinches at revenue

Colorado Springs' woes are more visceral versions of local and state cuts across the nation. Denver has cut salaries and human services workers, trimmed library hours and raised fees; Aurora shuttered four libraries; the state budget has seen round after round of wholesale cuts in education and personnel.

The deep recession bit into Colorado Springs sales-tax collections, while pension and health care costs for city employees continued to soar. Sales-tax updates have become a regular exercise in flinching for Mayor Lionel Rivera.

"Every month I open it up, and I look for a plus in front of the numbers instead of a minus," he said. The 2010 sales-tax forecast is almost $22 million less than 2007.

Voters in November said an emphatic no to a tripling of property tax that would have restored $27.6 million to the city's $212 million general fund budget. Fowler and many other residents say voters don't trust city government to wisely spend a general tax increase and don't believe the current cuts are the only way to balance a budget.
Dead grass, dark streets

But the 2010 spending choices are complete, and local residents and businesses are preparing for a slew of changes:

• The steep parks and recreation cuts mean a radical reshifting of resources from more than 100 neighborhood parks to a few popular regional parks. The city cut watering drastically in 2009 but "got lucky" with weekly summer rains, said parks maintenance manager Kurt Schroeder.
With even more watering cuts, "if we repeat the weather of 2008, we're at risk of losing every bit of turf we have in our neighborhood parks," Schroeder said. Six city greenhouses are shut down. The city spent $19.6 million on parks in 2007; this year it will spend $3.1 million.

"If a playground burns down, I can't replace it," Schroeder said. Park fans' only hope is the possibility of a new ballot tax pledged to recreation spending that might win over skeptical voters.

• Community center and pool closures have parents worried about day-care costs, idle teenagers and shut-in grandparents with nowhere to go.

Hillside Community Center, on the southeastern edge of downtown Colorado Springs in a low- to moderate-income neighborhood, is scrambling to find private partners to stay open. Moms such as Kirsten Williams doubt they can replace Hillside's dedicated staff and preschool rates of $200 for six-week sessions.

"It's affordable, the program is phenomenal, and the staff all grew up here," Williams said. "You can't re-create that kind of magic."

Shutting down youth services is shortsighted, she argues. "You're going to pay now, or you're going to pay later. There's trouble if kids don't have things to do."

• Though officials and citizens put public safety above all in the budget, police and firefighting still lost more than $5.5 million this year. Positions that will go empty range from a domestic violence specialist to a deputy chief to juvenile offender officers. Fire squad 108 loses three firefighters. Putting the helicopters up for sale and eliminating the officers and a mechanic banked $877,000.

• Tourism outlets have attacked budget choices that hit them precisely as they're struggling to draw choosy visitors to the West.

The city cut three economic-development positions, land-use planning, long-range strategic planning and zoning and neighborhood inspectors. It also repossessed a large portion of a dedicated lodgers and car rental tax rather than transfer it to the visitors' bureau.

"It's going to hurt. If they don't at least market Colorado Springs, it doesn't get the people here," said Nancy Stovall, owner of Pine Creek Art Gallery on the tourism strip of Old Colorado City. Other states, such as New Mexico and Wyoming, will continue to market, and tourism losses will further erode city sales-tax revenue, merchants say.

• Turning out the lights, literally, is one of the high-profile trims aggravating some residents. The city-run Colorado Springs Utilities will shut down 8,000 to 10,000 of more than 24,000 streetlights, to save $1.2 million in energy and bulb replacement.

Hansen, the criminal-justice student, grows especially exasperated when recalling a scary incident a few years ago as she waited for a bus. She said a carload of drunken men approached her until the police helicopter that had been trailing them turned a spotlight on the men and chased them off. Now the helicopter is gone, and the streetlight she was waiting under is threatened as well.

"I don't know a person in this city who doesn't think that's just the stupidest thing on the planet," Hansen said. "Colorado Springs leaders put patches on problems and hope that will handle it."

Employee pay criticized

Community business leaders have jumped into the budget debate, some questioning city spending on what they see as "Ferrari"-level benefits for employees and high salaries in middle management. Broadmoor luxury resort chief executive Steve Bartolin wrote an open letter asking why the city spends $89,000 per employee, when his enterprise has a similar number of workers and spends only $24,000 on each.

Businessman Fowler, saying he is now speaking for the task force Bartolin supports, said the city should study the Broadmoor's use of seasonal employees and realistic manager pay.

"I don't know if people are convinced that the water needed to be turned off in the parks, or the trash cans need to come out, or the lights need to go off," Fowler said. "I think we'll have a big turnover in City Council a year from April. Until we get a new group in there, people aren't really going to believe much of anything."

Mayor and council are part-time jobs in Colorado Springs, points out Mayor Rivera, that pay $6,250 a year ($250 extra for the mayor). "We have jobs, we pay taxes, we use services, just like they do," Rivera said, acknowledging there is a "level of distrust" of public officials at many levels.

Rivera said he welcomes help from Bartolin, the private task force and any other source volunteering to rethink government. He is slightly encouraged, for now, that his monthly sales-tax reports are just ahead of budget predictions.

Officials across the city know their phone lines will light up as parks go brown, trash gathers in the weeds, and streets and alleys go dark.

"There's a lot of anger, a lot of frustration about how governments spend their money," Rivera said. "It's not unique to Colorado Springs."


Michael Booth: 303-954-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com

Jilted: The Looming Dollar Disaster

http://thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=6933.5451.0.0

Most Americans have no idea what is happening to the economy. Many people think America is emerging from a vicious little recession, and will soon be back on the road to prosperity. America always has, so it always will, is the common reasoning.

Yet this time, things may turn out very different.

On January 8, cnbc reported that the U.S. Federal Reserve purchased an unprecedented 80 percent of all U.S. treasury securities issued in 2009.

This is earth-shaking, game-changing news with possibly lethal repercussions. Here is why.
During 2009, the federal government ran a $1.4 trillion deficit—the largest deficit in the history of both America and the world. It was over three times the size of the previous year’s record-breaking deficit. And if the government has its way, 2010’s deficit may be even greater.
Since Americans save so little money, foreigners have come to provide almost all of the federal government’s borrowing needs in recent years. They accomplish this by purchasing U.S. treasury bonds. This was something foreign nations were happy to do since they earned interest on their money, plus big-spending Americans tended to spend the borrowed money purchasing foreign-made goods. So a good proportion of the money cycled right back to them.

Not wanting to give up their standard of living, Americans too willingly went further into debt, even as American industry and other wealth-producing sectors of the economy were being shut down and shipped overseas.

For example: From 2006 through November 2009, Bejing lent $527 billion to America through treasury purchases alone. Hong Kong lent an additional $100 billion. Other countries like Japan lent hundreds of billions more. Then there is the hundreds of billions of dollars they have lent to government-sponsored entities like mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

During this time, American industry was being hammered. Jobs were being outsourced and offshored by the millions to places like China and India. In 2004, the Boston-based consultancy Forrester estimated that a relentless 15,000 jobs per month were moving out of America. Forrester predicts that America will see another 3.3 million jobs offshored over the coming 15 years.

But now it is as if the foreign nations see the writing on the wall. They are beginning to realize that America is addicted to debt and that their loans might never get repaid.

Now, all of a sudden America’s most important source of lending is drying up.

For five months in a row, not only has China stopped lending money to the federal government, it has actually sold some of its treasuries. Is China trying to quietly get out as much of its money as possible while it can? Even the oil-exporting nations, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Venezuela, have been net sellers of treasuries since March. Thus, two of America’s four most important foreign creditors are awol. And Japan, one of America’s other most important creditors, has massively curtailed its lending to America.

All things being equal, this exodus of foreign money would have caused massive credit contraction capable of smothering America—interest rates skyrocketing into the double digits, zombified Wall Street banks with broken business models, small businesses unable to roll over their debts, a housing market in a renewed free fall, soaring consumer bankruptcies, and unemployment far worse than the Great Depression.

But so far, this has not happened. Why? Faced with the above list of catastrophes, the Federal Reserve decided to risk the biggest catastrophe of them all in a forlorn attempt to avoid the inevitable financial reckoning.

To save the economy, the Federal Reserve would risk sacrificing the dollar.

The Federal Reserve began doing the one practice anathema to all fiat-currency-based economic systems. It began creating money by divine right. With the foreigners unwilling or unable to provide the money the U.S. government needed to pay the bills, the Federal Reserve simply created more dollars from nothing by adding additional bookkeeping entries to its logs.

Remember that $1.4 trillion deficit that America ran this last year? Eighty percent of that—$1.12 trillion worth—was funny money. The U.S. government needed money, so the Fed simply turned on its digital printing presses and electronically sent over some 1s and 0s.

But the Fed didn’t just print up money to give to the government to spend. It also created close to $1 trillion to prop up asset prices in America. It printed up money to give to the big banks and to purchase toxic mortgages from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It was theft and highway robbery on the grandest of scales because the Fed did nothing to earn this money—it simply “said they had the money, and it was so.” Consequently, all other money in circulation became worth less. The Fed now has over $2 trillion worth of assets on its balance sheet. This is mostly money that the Fed “willed” into existence over the past year.

No wonder foreigners are beginning to flee the dollar. The Fed is doing what every failed fiat currency system in the history of paper money has done. When push comes to shove, the temptations of the printing press are too great. Governments always take the seemingly easy way out—simply printing up whatever money is needed, and with disastrous results that always end the same way.

Once you start down the money-printing road, it is almost impossible to turn back. The history of money printing says the dollar is doomed. It is a lesson of history that the Fed has failed to learn.

Maybe that is why the Chinese have dumped their Fannie and Freddie investments. During 2009, they took the Fed’s newly created money and ran, while the dollars still had some value remaining.

America’s foreign financial partners are beginning to abandon it. And for good reason. The dollar has lost almost a third of its value over the past decade.

But did you know that this exact scenario in which America finds itself was prophesied thousands of years ago?

Speaking of the modern nations descended from ancient Israel, of which America is currently the most geopolitically prominent, the Prophet Jeremiah warned that a time would come when America’s trade partners would abandon it despite America’s best attempts to pretty itself up and make itself look good. “And when you are plundered, what will you do? Though you clothe yourself with crimson, though you adorn yourself with ornaments of gold, though you enlarge your eyes with paint, in vain you will make yourself fair; your lovers will despise you; they will seek your life” (Jeremiah 4:30; New King James Version).

America has two choices. Raise interest rates to try and attract its economic lovers back to lend more money (which means that America’s debt payments would mushroom, potentially derailing the economy), or continue to destroy the dollar to pay off the bills. Neither option is a good one. Expect America’s foreign lovers to continue voting with their feet—as they head out the door.