The economic shutdown imposed by government bureaucrats and their "science advisors" in the name of controlling the recent virus outbreak has already devastated millions of people in all regions. Forced unemployment is now at record levels and many businesses, large and small, may never recover. However, some people are complaining more loudly than others, including one illegal migrant working at a meat packing plant:

"How am I going to survive? It’s a question without an answer.... I don’t feel safe going to work. I worry about getting sick and bringing the virus home to my three children... Fortunately I work in an area where we have a good amount of space... I stand at one of three conveyor belts where 120 chickens pass per minute... I look for the ones that look purple or still have feathers and take them off of the belt. I make $16 per hour doing that...

At [this plant], the majority of us are Latinos. For those of us who are unauthorized immigrants, in reality, there are very few jobs we can do... If we didn’t go to work, you wouldn’t have those products in the store... I’ve been in the United States for more than 10 years... The government is giving money to a lot of people but as an unauthorized immigrant, I don’t qualify for anything... A lot of people in the plant are saying, if the coronavirus kills us, who are the ones who are going to die of hunger?"

-- BuzzFeed article

Here's a better question: Who allowed these employers to get away with using illegal migrant workers instead of American citizens? How many are living on government handouts without working? Who pays for the schools and the healthcare for their kids? How much do they siphon out of the local community to support their paisanos in Latino land every month? Why shouldn't they all be deported immediately?

This is one "social distancing" policy that is long overdue. The overall cost to American society for maintaining these low-skilled illegal migrants and their extended families is far greater than the cost of shipping them back home. If industry executives cannot manage to run critical production facilities without them, then a change of ownership and management of those facilities should also be a national priority.

Meanwhile, a similar situation is happening across Europe, where illegal migrants continue to receive preferential treatment at the expense of ordinary European citizens. Who benefits from this?

"European governments are using the coronavirus pandemic to grant mass amnesties to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. While Europe is experiencing an economic shock without precedent, and tens of millions of Europeans have lost their livelihoods, migrants in Europe illegally are being showered with free housing and healthcare...

In Italy, the left-wing coalition government has announced a plan to grant amnesty to at least 600,000 migrants in the country illegally. They would receive residency permits that could be renewed in perpetuity... In Portugal, migrants were granted access to the national health service, welfare benefits, bank accounts, and work and rental contracts. The move by Portugal has spurred similar calls for mass amnesties in other European countries... In the United Kingdom, the government released more than 700 migrants from Immigration Removal Centers (IRC) because they cannot be deported due to the coronavirus pandemic... The aim of both migrants and smugglers is now to be "intercepted" by British authorities and taken to a UK port where a large majority of those arriving will claim asylum."

-- Soeren Kern article

The recent decline in commodity prices has pushed some of the major global trading firms towards the brink of default, including the Swiss based giant Glencore*, whose stock has fallen over 50% this year. If their bonds collapse, the related multi-billion dollar "derivatives" pyramid could also implode, a potential debacle many times larger than the failure of the venerable Jewish investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008 which set off the last financial crisis:

"Which will be first: Trafigura, Mercuria or Glencore?... A quick look at Trafigura bonds reveals that the contagion from the Glencore commodity trader collapse...has spread... Trafigura, the world's third largest private commodity trader after Vitol and Glencore...has publicly-traded bonds. They just cratered...in a move comparable to what happened to Lehman bonds the day after the [2008] bankruptcy filing. Clearly the Lehman bondholders could not believe what just happened until it was too late...

Trafigura was formed in 1993...when it split off from a group of companies managed by [Jewish financier] Marc Rich, aka "the king of oil". Who is March Rich? Why the founder of Glencore of course who...was indicted [in the U.S.] in 1983 on 65 criminal counts including income tax evasion, wire fraud, racketeering, and trading with Iran during the oil embargo... Rich promptly fled to Switzerland..."

-- Zero Hedge

"Not only is Glencore confirmed to be systemically important... All those very banks which have $100 billion in exposure to the giant commodity trading company will quietly do their best to hedge their exposure, ostensbilty by buying default protection adding even more stress to Glencore's "shadow" funding channels, in the process unleashing the very same chain of events that ultimately led to Lehman's downfall."

-- Zero Hedge

Remember the sudden collapse of energy trader Enron back in 2001 and the convenient destruction of the SEC files on 9/11?

"The core of Enron’s business appears to have been dealing in derivative contracts based on the prices of oil, gas, electricity and other variables... Since the markets in which Enron traded are largely unregulated, with no reporting requirements, little information [was] available about the extent or profitability of Enron’s derivatives activities.... With the swift collapse, shareholders, including thousands of Enron workers who held company stock in their retirement accounts, lost tens of billions of dollars."

-- Congressional Research Service (2002)

"Glencore has, in some circles, been called not only the Lehman of the commodity-trading world but even gained the far less reputable nickname of Glenron... As the WSJ reports, "some investors have described Glencore’s trading business as a 'black box' in which the risks are impossible to value... Brompton Group, a Toronto fund that manages $2.2 billion, doesn’t invest in commodity-trading houses because of the lack of transparency... "Companies like Glencore say, ‘Trust us,’ but trust is not enough of a reason to invest your money."

-- Zero Hedge

Consider the history of the past century and the track record of these secretive, parasitic organizations. Are the recurring financial crises merely the result of unplanned market forces as advertised, or part of a carefully contrived "controlled demolition" process? Either way, the oligarchs win and everyone else pays the price.

"People who worked with Marc Rich described him as secretive and this persona was embodied at Glencore, which for many years as a private company [until 2011] did not publish sales or earnings figures and had a one-page website that merely listed its address. Rich sold his interest in the [trading unit of] Marc Rich Group in 1993, when the company, renamed Glencore, was doing $30 billion of business a year in 125 countries...

In January 2001, by then living in a Swiss mansion, Rich was pardoned by Bill Clinton on his last day as US president... The outcry intensified as it emerged that Rich's ex-wife Denise had given $450,000 to the Clinton Library and $1.2 million in donations to Democratic party campaigns, including Hillary Clinton's bid for the Senate... Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and former prime minister Shimon Peres made personal pleas to Clinton on his behalf to secure the controversial pardon."

-- The Guardian (2013)

"[The elites] have openly admitted to the public on numerous occasions exactly what they want — namely, the institution of a truly global and centralized economic system revolving around a highly controlled world currency framework and dominated by a select cult of banking oligarchs... In January 1988, the financial magazine 'The Economist' published an article titled “Get Ready for a World Currency by 2018,” in which it outlined the framework for a global currency system called the “Phoenix” (see cover)...

The plan is to introduce a basket currency system as an alternative to the dollar as world reserve, then slowly but surely phase out all sovereign currencies... A "Phoenix" rises from the ashes of calamity, reborn. What 'ashes' are the elites expecting the new global currency to rise from?... 'The Economist' is not just any random financial publication; it is in large part owned by the Rothschild banking family** and is based out of the London financial center. The Economist does not have to “guess” on the economic developments of the future; it has an inside track on exactly what is planned to occur."

-- Brandon Smith article

* The CEO of Glencore is Jewish billionaire Ivan Glasenberg. Fellow billionaire Nat Rothschild is reportedly a major investor.

** Billionaire Evelyn de Rothschild was chairman of The Economist when the "Phoenix" article was published. His current wife, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, friend and supporter of Hillary Clinton, is now a director. The couple spent their honeymoon at the White House as guests of the Clintons.

"$1.8 billion of IMF bailout funds intended for Ukraine have mysteriously found their way to a Cyprus bank account controlled by notorious Ukrainian [Jewish] oligarch Igor Kolomoisky...the former governor of Dnipropetrovsk, [and] one of Ukraine's richest businessmen... At the center of Kolomoisky's wealth is PrivatBank, Ukraine's largest financial institution, which received 40 percent of the bailout money which had been earmarked for stabilizing the banking system...

"Basically, this was a transfer of $1.8 billion abroad, with the help of [offshore companies], fake contracts, the siphoning off of assets and violation of existing laws," explained journalist Lesya Ivanovna. In March, Kolomoisky was dismissed from his position as governor of Dnipropetrovsk after a power struggle with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko; the [alleged] fraud was carried out while he was governor of the region in east-central Ukraine [bordering the conflict zone]... It appears that Kolomoisky is unlikely to face justice, as he is currently living in exile [in Switzerland] -- he fled Ukraine earlier this year."

-- Sputnik article

Igor Kolomoisky, sponsor of the fascist "Azov Battalion", is also a leader of the international Zionist movement. He is the founder of the European Jewish Parliament and donated the funds for construction of the palatial $100 million dollar Jewish Community Center in Dnipropetrovsk. The center is managed by the Chabad Lubavitch, an orthodox Jewish sect whose stated mission is to "conquer all the gentile nations" according to rabbi Menachem Schneerson, the revered leader of the sect in New York -- and son of the former Chief Rabbi of Dnipropetrovsk.

Someone had to pay for this largess; why not the "gentile nations" which fund the IMF? American taxpayers provide 18% of total IMF funding, which works out to about $325 million of the $1.8 billion allegedly skimmed off by Mr. Kolomoisky. It is unlikely that IMF Governor and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, a Jewish CFR member, will press for a refund.

The IMF representative in Ukraine maintains close relations with Jewish oligarch Victor Pinchuk, financial supporter of the Clintons, whose bank also receives IMF bailout funds. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government is diverting IMF loans to pay for military aggression, and trying to avoid repaying a $3 billion loan from the Russians:

"Russia, unlike Ukraine’s private sector lenders, will not accept a 20 percent write-down on the $3 billion Eurobond due in December...[due in part to] President Poroshenko’s promise -- in direct violation of the IMF’s articles of agreement -- to use part of the IMF’s $17.5 billion loan to carry out Ukraine’s “anti-terrorist operation” against its own citizens [the ethnic Russians of eastern Ukraine]. Still worse, the IMF loan and the [proposed] debt restructuring...will do little to address either the oligarchical nature of the economy or widespread government corruption."

-- The Nation article

What about the "oligarchical nature" of the U.S. economy? The Nation, a "liberal" New York magazine whose owner/editor is Jewish CFR member Katrina vanden Heuvel*, is unlikely to explore that subject in detail. The Ukrainian oligarchs are merely a rough imitation of their New York cousins, and they are all members of the same club.

Billionaire Petro Poroshenko, former head of the National Bank, led the 2014 coup. Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk is chairman of the "Open Ukraine" Foundation sponsored by Chatham House (RIIA) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), both of which are affiliates of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The long-time president of NED is Jewish CFR member Carl Gershman, and the current chairman of the CFR is Jewish banker Robert Rubin.

Billionaire Victor Pinchuk and his Pinchuk Foundation are partners with the Soros "Open Society" Institute, the Peterson Institute**, and the Clinton Global Initiative. Jewish billionaire George Soros is a former director of the CFR. Billionaire Pete Peterson is the former chairman of the CFR, and co-founder of Blackstone along with Jewish billionaire and fellow CFR member Steve Schwarzman. The Clintons (and Bushes) are mere servants of the oligarchy; paid actors on the public stage.

See our previous comments on the subject here and here.

* William vanden Heuvel, Katrina's father and former U.N. ambassador, is also a CFR member. In the 1950s, he was a protoge of intelligence officer William Donovan, Roman Catholic Knight of Malta and founder of the OSS.

** The Peterson Institute is another branch of the club whose interlocking directorate includes names like Rothschild, Soros, Greenberg, Fischer, Summers, Zoellick, etc.

"For both Russia and the United States, that [common] adversary was not simply another nation-state like England or France, but a financial international bent on controlling the world through elaborate fraud, war, and revolution. Banking dynasties under names like Rothschild, and later Morgan, Warburg, and Rockefeller, had ascended to power in the West from the seventeenth century onward. Their planned global imperium of borderless labor and capital flows, today promoted as the 'Open Society' by billionaire speculators such as George Soros, was already entering its initial stages of implementation. Thus the fledgling American Republic, an Enlightenment project but not yet under bankster domination, and Imperial Russia could unite for the freedom of their peoples and against the assaults of the Money Power.

What changed? In the early twentieth century the masters of usury struck back decisively against the United States and Russia, by stealth in the former case and an outright coup d’état in the latter. Through various machinations, the privately-run Federal Reserve Bank was established in 1913 to issue the US currency at interest, suborning institutions of government and crushing Americans with a national debt now counted in unfathomable trillions. The Great War was unleashed upon Europe in a nightmarish conflagration, and in 1917 the Russian Revolution, funded by the banking houses of London and Wall Street, installed a vicious Bolshevik regime – dependent on Western credit for the whole of its existence. As for the rest of the twentieth century, we witness globalist plutocrats’ use of dialectics, wielding ideologies as weapons and pitting nation against nation, in the Hegelian procession toward the World State...

[They consitute] a cosmopolitan oligarchy that sets policy, subsidizes scholarship, and manufactures consent in pursuit of its totalitarian agenda. In their quest to liquidate the American, the Russian, and every other unique people, the predators from the bankster international consider themselves above all laws human and divine."

-- Mark Hackard article

Follow the links above for related articles and more information. Note that Jacob Rothschild was a director of the "Open Russia" foundation a decade ago, see previous comments.

Today was the day of the "fast food worker walkout" in New York, with similar events in several other major cities around the U.S. The organizers would like to form a union, and their primary demand is to double the minimum wage to $15 per hour.

"The fast food workers' movement was born in New York less than two years ago, when a couple of hundred workers from 30 franchises across the city walked off their jobs — a bold move in an industry with no unions... Workers decided that they were fed up with being paid poverty wages, the disrespect that would happen in their stores, the irregular hours, and they just went on strike"

-- Vice News article

In the typical fast food business, labor accounts for about 30% of the cost of the product. If the labor cost doubles, the $6 lunch will then become an $8 lunch. But what about the working-class customers that these places depend on, whose wages are not going up? Can they afford a 30% increase in the price? The operating cost goes up, the sales volume goes down, the store becomes unprofitable, and the owner goes out of business.

To avoid this outcome, restaurant owners are likely to accelerate the use of technology to replace demanding and unreliable workers instead. Customers already place orders using tablets and smartphones, and machines already do most of the cooking. As trends continue and the technology advances, how much longer will it be until McDonald's opens its first fully-automated restaurant? For example, here's a video from China demonstrating a low-cost robot preparing fresh noodles in a small restaurant. This is considered cost-effective even in China, where the wages are closer to $1.50 per hour.

Either way, these low-skilled workers are not likely to get paid $15/hr for flipping burgers or pouring coffee; they will probably wind up with EBT cards instead. At least they won't have to worry about "disrespect" from managers or customers anymore -- and vice versa.

The exorbitant salaries and benefits enjoyed by corporate executives, hundreds of times greater than those of the workers, are not justified by "market forces" either. However, the attempt to artificially inflate the minimum wage level will not solve the problem. It will only result in less employment, higher taxes, higher prices, and the elimination of many smaller businesses -- all of which favor the corporatists that the "workers movement" claims to oppose.

"The advocates of minimum wage rates, whether decreed and enforced by the government or by violent union action, contend that they are fighting for the improvement of the conditions of the working masses. They do not permit anyone to question their dogma that minimum wage rates are the only appropriate means of raising wage rates permanently and for all those eager to earn wages. They pride themselves on being the only true friends of "labor," of the "common man," of "progress," and of the eternal principles of "social justice."...

If the government or the unions succeed in enforcing wage rates which are higher than those the unhampered labor market would have determined, the supply of labor exceeds the demand for labor. Institutional unemployment emerges. Firmly committed to the principles of interventionism, governments try to check this undesired result of their interference by resorting to those measures which are nowadays called full-employment policy: unemployment doles, arbitration of labor disputes, public works by means of lavish public spending, inflation, and credit expansion. All these remedies are worse than the evil they are designed to remove...

What matters is not whether wages are "fair" or "unfair" by some arbitrary standard, but whether they do or do not bring about an excess of supply of labor over demand for labor. It may seem fair to some people to fix wage rates at such a height that a great part of the potential labor force is doomed to lasting unemployment. But nobody can [honestly] assert that it is expedient and beneficial to society."

-- Ludwig von Mises, "Minimum Wage Rates" (1949)

As the Federal Reserve system celebrates its centenary, chairman Ben Bernanke prepares to pass the baton. President Obama has now appointed Bernanke's lieutenant Janet Yellen and his mentor Stanley Fischer to assume the top positions on the board. Professor Fischer, the "most influential money printer in the world", is an Israeli citizen and recent chairman of the Central Bank of Israel.

"[Obama] also named Lael Brainard and Jerome Powell to positions as governors on the seven-member Federal Reserve Board... All four of these Obama nominees...are not only members but high-level operatives of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)... Stanley Fischer was named this past September to be a 'distinguished fellow' in residence at Pratt House, the CFR's New York City headquarters...

This curious Pratt House influence extends back over the past century to the founding era of the Fed, to such top Wall Street insiders as Paul Warburg who was the chief architect of, and propagandist for, the Federal Reserve Act, and one of the founding directors of the CFR. Warburg's CFR confreres who have served as Fed chairmen include Eugene Meyer (1930-33), Eugene Black (1933-34), Thomas B. McCabe (1948-51), William McChesney Martin (1951-70), Arthur F. Burns (1970-78), G. William Miller (1978-79), Paul A. Volcker (1979-87), and Alan Greenspan (1987-2006)."

-- William F. Jasper article

Why is it that every Fed chairman for the past half century, with one brief exception, has also been Jewish? Are there no other qualified candidates? Whose interests do they serve? Consider the exponential increase in public debt and the interest paid to the banking syndicate during that period. Consider the recent multi-billion dollar "bailouts" of unaccountable crony firms such as Goldman Sachs and AIG.

"When we talk about the Federal Reserve...we are overlooking something very important: Bernanke and Yellen are mere employees of the Federal Reserve, not the owners. And we don't know who the owners are... The Fed is a private banking group that has been given a monopoly on the creation of US currency, and the list of its [real] owners is a closely held secret... So, who are the people that Bernanke and Yellen take orders from? What do these people want? What are their long-term asset positions? Who might they protect, aside from themselves?... A large 'black box' sits in the center of our analysis, and we don't know what's happening inside of it. The people who can see inside of that black box - and there are some, whose secrecy is protected at the highest levels - have a gigantic advantage over all other investors and analysts."

-- Paul Rosenberg article

For background, there are several articles in our collection regarding the establishment of the privately owned Federal Reserve and the founding of the CFR, including the key role of Rothschild agent Paul Warburg. It should be evident what the chief architect of the Fed and co-founder of the CFR had in mind when he referred to "OUR banking system" over a century ago.

"Although many had a hand, or thought they had, in fashioning the Federal Reserve legislation, essentially the system was the brain child of one man: Paul Warburg , brother of Max Warburg... Paul Moritz Warburg (1868-1932) descended from the German banking family of Oppenheim. After early training in the offices of Samuel Montagu and Co. in London and the Banque Russe Pour le Commerce Etranger in Paris, Warburg entered the family banking house of M.M. Warburg & Co. in Hamburg. In 1902 Warburg became a partner in the New York banking house of Kuhn, Loeb and Co. [after marrying Loeb's daughter] while continuing as a partner in Warburg's of Hamburg. Five years later, in the wake of the [staged] financial panic of 1907, Warburg wrote two pamphlets on the U.S. banking system: "Defects and Needs of Our Banking System" and "A Plan for a Modified Central Bank".

-- From "Wall Street and FDR", chapter 6, by Antony Sutton

"The man who was to play the most significant part in providing America with that central bank was Paul Warburg, who along with his brother Felix had immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1902. They left brother Max (later a major financier of the Russian Revolution) at home in Frankfurt to run the family bank ( M.M. Warburg and Company). Paul Warburg married Nina Loeb, daughter of Solomon Loeb of Kuhn, Loeb and Company, America's most powerful international banking firm. Brother Felix married Frieda Schiff, daughter of Jacob Schiff, the ruling power behind Kuhn, Loeb. Stephen Birmingham writes in his authoritative book "Our Crowd": 'In the eighteenth century the Schiffs and Rothschilds shared a double house' in Frankfurt. Schiff reportedly bought his partnership in Kuhn, Loeb with Rothschild money. Both Paul and Felix Warburg became partners in Kuhn, Loeb and Company.

In 1907, the year of the Morgan-precipitated panic, Paul Warburg began spending almost all of his time writing and lecturing on the need for "bank reform." Kuhn, Loeb and Company was sufficiently public spirited about the matter to keep him on salary at $500,000 per year while for the next six years he donated his time to "the public good." Working with Warburg in promoting this "banking reform" was Nelson Aldrich, known as "Morgan's floor broker in the Senate." Aldrich's daughter Abby married John D. Rockefeller Jr. (the [former] Governor of New York -- Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller -- is named for his maternal grandfather).

After the Panic of 1907, Aldrich was appointed by the Senate to head the National Monetary Commission. Although he had no technical knowledge of banking, Aldrich and his entourage spent nearly two years and $300,000 of the taxpayers' money being wined and dined by the owners of Europe's central banks as they toured the Continent "studying" central banking. When the Commission returned from its luxurious junket it held no meetings and made no report for nearly two years. But Senator Aldrich was busy "arranging" things. Together with Paul Warburg and other international bankers, he staged one of the most important secret meetings in the history of the United States... "

-- From "None Dare Call it Conspiracy", chapter 3, by Gary Allen

"In 1814, the Warburgs became one of the first affiliates of N.M. Rothschild of London. They were related to the leading banking families of Europe: the Rosenbergs of Kiev, the Gunzburgs in St. Petersburg, the Oppenheims and Goldschmidts in Germany. Moritz Warburg was apprenticed to the Rothschilds in Italy and Paris, and later married Charlotte Oppenheim, whose family were diamond merchants in Frankfort. They had five sons, known as "the Five Hamburgers": the oldest, Aby, founded the Warburg Institute; Max financed the German struggle in World War I and later, the Nazi regime; Dr. Fritz Warburg was German commercial attache in Stockholm during World War I; Paul and Felix emigrated to America and joined the firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. with Jacob Schiff, who had been born in the Rothschild house in Frankfort. Paul Warburg wrote the Federal Reserve Act and saw it through Congress. He also represented the U.S. at the Versailles Peace Conference [after World War I], while his brother Max represented German interests."

"The Federal Reserve Act was legislated through Congress as the Glass-Owen bill, backed by two Democrats, Congressman Carter Glass of Virginia, and Sen. Robert Owen of Oklahoma. Owen was persuaded to back the bill by Samuel Untermyer, who...flattered Owen by entertaining him at Greystone, his palatial Hudson River estate. Untermyer claimed to be a "progressive Democrat", although he lived in feudal splendor, employing 167 men to tend his expanse of orchids and greenhouses. At Greystone, Owen dined with Paul Warburg, Bernard Baruch, and other financiers who had been instructed to get the Federal Reserve Act passed. Owen, a former Indian agent who knew little about finance, was easily persuaded by Paul Warburg's doctrinaire pronunciamentos about "our antiquated banking system", which must be brought up to par with the 'more modern' banking system of Europe."

-- From "The World Order", chapter 4, by Eustace Mullins

"After our entry into World War I, Woodrow Wilson turned the government of the United States over to a triumvirate of his campaign backers: Paul Warburg, Bernard Baruch and Eugene Meyer. Baruch was appointed head of the War Industries Board, with life and death powers over every factory in the United States. Eugene Meyer was appointed head of the War Finance Corporation, in charge of the loan program which financed the war. Paul Warburg was in control of the nation's banking system."

-- From "Secrets of the Federal Reserve", chapter 8, by Eustace Mullins

Not much has changed, except for the degree of consolidation and control. Kuhn, Loeb & Co. was acquired by Lehman Brothers, which was later absorbed by BlackRock -- still firmly in the hands of "Our Crowd", along with Goldman Sachs, AIG, and the rest.

"[Our Crowd] offers an insider's view of one of the wealthiest segments of an affluent city: Jewish upper-class life in New York. Working with diaries, letters, and personal reminiscences supplied by members of interwoven families - Loeb, Lehman, Straus, Seligman, and Guggenheim, among others - Birmingham has assembled a composite portrait. His tales are set within a world of numbing opulence - Fifth Avenue mansions, chateaux on Long Island, castles in Westchester, vast art collections -- with millions given away so quietly and steadily that they have never properly been counted."

-- "Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York", by Stephen Birmingham, 1967

It is easy to be generous with other people's money, especially when the largess is going to support your own clan:

"A record breaking $23 million was raised at the annual gala dinner of the UJA-Federation of New York's Wall Street and Financial Services Division... Distinguished guests of honor included Robert S. Kapito, president of BlackRock Inc., an American multinational investment management corporation and the world's largest asset manager...

Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the spiritual leader of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side of Manhattan delivered the invocation while Cantor Angela Buchdahl led the dinner guests in the traditional blessings that are recited over the lighting of the Chanukah menorah. In unison, the attendees then sang 'Maoz Tzur' with great enthusiasm... "[You have] enabled us to respond quickly to urgent needs here in New York and in Israel. Your generosity, your support of our annual campaign and endowment, is what makes it all possible."...

Receiving the Gustave L. Levy Award -- which is considered a pre-eminent honor in the industry -- was Robert S. Kapito, 55, of BlackRock. This auspicious award recognizes a leader in the Wall Street community for both exceptional professional achievements and an enduring commitment to the UJA-Federation. The award was named for the leader of Goldman Sachs in the 1960s and 70s."

-- Jewish Voice, Dec 2012

Here is an excerpt from the "Maoz Tzur" that these Jewish oligarchs sing -- in unison -- with such "great enthusiasm", according to the Chabad Lubavitch sect:

"Restore my House of Prayer and there we will bring a thanksgiving offering
When you will have prepared the slaughter for the blaspheming foe...

Avenge the vengeance of your servants' blood from the wicked nation
For the triumph is too long delayed for us, and there is no end to days of evil..."

-- Maoz Tzur, from Chabad.org

Note that the "house of prayer" refers to the Temple in Jerusalem, while the "blaspheming foes" and "wicked nations" include anyone who is not a "son of the Covenant" -- especially Christians and Muslims.

"My personal observations during my daily trek through the slums of West Philly [confirm] the oligarch scheme to create an artificial auto recovery by distributing auto loans to deadbeats, the SNAP army, and hip hop nitwits. As I maneuver quickly through the West Philly badlands...I see an inordinate number of brand new BMWs, Mercedes, Lexus, Cadillacs, and Jaguars parked in front of $20,000 dilapidated fleapits...

The real unemployment rate in these garbage strewn, disintegrating neighborhoods exceeds 50%. The median household income is less than $20,000. Over 40% of the adult population hasn't graduated high school and 63% of the population lives below the poverty level. These people put the "sub" in subprime. How can anyone in this American version of the third world afford to drive a $40,000 vehicle? The answer is they can't. But you the taxpayer, out of the goodness of your heart and without your knowledge, have loaned them the money so they can cruise around West Philly in Jay Z or Kanye style... Maybe the West Philly subprime Mercedes drivers can trade their SNAP (EBT) cards for cash to make their car loan payments...

When 'the Man' offered to loan them $300,000 in 2005 so they could buy their very own McMansion, what did they have to lose? They got to live in a fancy house for a few years until they were booted out by the bank and left in exactly the same spot they were before... Now 'the Man' has knocked on their hovel door again and offered to put them in a brand spanking new Cadillac Escalade with no money down, no proof of employment, and no prospects of repaying the loan... They get to tool around West Philly for a year or two impressing their fellow SNAP recipients until the repo man shows up and absconds with their wheels..."

-- Jim Quinn article

The city of Detroit, former center of automobile production in the U.S., has been in the process of decline for decades. Little by little, manufacturers decided to setup operations elsewhere and took the good-paying jobs with them. Most of the people with ability and initiative soon followed, as neighborhoods decayed and crime rates soared.

Instead of cutting expenses, the city has been borrowing to finance an operating deficit of over $100 million per year. It is now officially bankrupt with over $20 billion in debt and its bonds reduced to junk status. In March, the state Governor was forced to bypass the "honorable" city officials featured in the 2012 financial report and appoint an emergency manager with special authority to try and clean up the mess. The preliminary recovery plan outlines some of the problems.

The industrialists and engineers that built the "Twentieth Century Motor Company" have moved on, the skilled workforce has been dispersed, and the bondholders have just been screwed again. The remaining population of "Mo'Town" is 85% black, most are dependent on government welfare, and over half of them can't even read. The city is now rated the "most dangerous" in the country, with a murder rate 8 times the national average and similar stats for assault and robbery.

What sort of "recovery" is possible under these conditions?

At the start of a holiday weekend, the Eurogroup finance ministers and the government of Cyprus announced a surprise 10% "tax" on all bank deposits in the country as part of a secretly negotiated bank rescue agreement. Banks immediately froze depositor accounts to prevent people from withdrawing their funds.

"Bank depositors will lose up to nearly 10 percent of their money and authorities have prohibited withdrawals for now, setting off furious reaction as depositors lined up outside the institutions demanding their cash... The decision came late in the night of March 15 and by the next morning customers were trying to make a too-late run on the bank, lining up outside major and cooperative banks..."

-- Greek Reporter

Some reactionaries say that "taxation" is just a euphemism for organized theft and the forced transfer of wealth from producers to parasites. But the central committee has met and decided that everyone must pay his "fair share". Who can argue with the will of the collective, comrades? It's the socialist way!

Whoever "deposits" money in a bank account is actually loaning the bank the use of that money in exchange for the service of processing transactions. The bank pays little or no interest on that loan, and there is also a risk that it won't even return the principal. To offset that risk, most governments provide "deposit insurance" up to a certain amount. The feckless Eurocrats have now pressured Cyprus to default on the promised coverage in a flagrant breach of contract. Who will be next?

UPDATE: Someone finally realized that this insane proposal would scare the sheep in other countries and cause a panic run on the entire European banking system. The current agreement avoids hitting depositors below the €100K insurance limit, and will not be called a "tax". Larger depositors stand to lose at least 60% of their money. I'm sure the Russians will think of their own names for it.

History never repeats exactly, but recurring patterns are always present. Technology has advanced, but human nature hasn't changed that much over the centuries. Does any of this sound familiar?

"In 58 B.C., Clodius...began distributing the grain for free. The result was a sharp increase in the influx of rural poor into Rome, as well as the freeing of many slaves so that they too would qualify for the dole. By the time of Julius Caesar [a decade later], some 320,000 people were receiving free grain...

[Under the Caesars] as the private wealth of the Roman Empire was gradually confiscated or taxed away, driven away, or hidden, economic growth slowed to a virtual standstill. Moreover, once the wealthy were no longer able to pay the state's bills, the burden inexorably fell onto the lower classes, so that average people suffered as well from the deteriorating economic conditions...

At this point, in the third century A.D., the money economy completely broke down. Yet the military demands of the state remained high... Moreover, it was now explicitly understood by everyone that the Emperor's power and position depended entirely on the support of the army. Thus, the army's needs required satisfaction above all else, regardless of the consequences to the private economy.

With the collapse of the money economy, the normal system of taxation also broke down. This forced the state to directly appropriate whatever resources it needed wherever they could be found. Food and cattle, for example, were requisitioned directly from farmers. Other producers were similarly liable for whatever the army might need. The result, of course, was chaos... Eventually, the state was forced to compel individuals to continue working and producing... Farmers were tied to the land, as were their children, and similar demands were made on all other workers, producers, and artisans as well. Even soldiers were required to remain soldiers for life, and their sons compelled to follow them."

-- Bruce Bartlett article

The Judeo-Roman empire of today, now global in scope, will soon reach its inevitable climax and then it will collapse. What follows is anyone's guess.