M O N E Y A N D M A R K E T S* BREAKING NEWS BULLETIN *
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INSANITY AT THE FED!
Fed to Print $480 BILLION!
by Mike Larson
Thursday, September 13, 2012
******************************************Dear Jean,
At 12:30 today, Fed chief Ben Bernanke proved that what many have suspected all along is indeed true:
The U.S. Federal Reserve is patently INSANE!
In reporting on this week’s FOMC meetings, “Helicopter Ben” announced that the Fed is going to do the same old thing and expect better results:
It’s going to hold interest rates near zero as far as the eye can see …
And it’s going to print $40 BILLION new dollars per month in an attempt to stimulate the economy — a whopping $480 billion per year!
In short, it’s doing the same things it has done since 2008 — but expecting better results:
Any way you look at it, that’s THE VERY DEFINITION OF INSANITY!
Look: The Fed has ALREADY held interest rates near zero percent for four long years, now.
Plus, it has ALREADY created $1.8 trillion out of thin air through QE I and QE II …
And it has ALREADY bought hundreds of billions of dollars more worth of long-term Treasuries as part of Operation Twist 1 and 2.
So what’s the result?
NO IMPACT WHATSOEVER ON THE REAL ECONOMY!
Sure — all that free, easy money temporarily buoyed the stock market — but despite everything the Fed has done …
** Unemployment has stayed over 8% for 42 straight months …
** The average family home is STILL falling in value …
** Profits at many major corporations STILL stink — and they’re getting more rotten almost by the day …
** U.S. economic growth is STILL grinding to a near standstill …
** And now, as America approaches the precipice of its great fiscal cliff, the stock market looks for all the world as if it’s a massive bubble about to burst!
Worse, the middle class — the very backbone of the U.S. economy — is getting eaten alive:
>> HOUSEHOLD INCOME IS PLUNGING: The U.S. Census Bureau just reported that real median household income has now fallen for the fourth straight year.
Income has fallen so low, in fact, that when you adjust for inflation, the median family has the same income today as it did in 1967 — 45 long years ago!
>> THE INCOME GAP IS WIDENING ALARMINGLY: The Census Bureau is also reporting that the movement of income away from the middle class has just hit a record high.
That’s terrible news: Typically this kind of increasing disparity in income occurs just before economic calamities — and today, it’s more extreme even than before the 1929 stock-market crash and the Great Depression!
>> U.S. POVERTY IS AT ALL-TIME RECORD HIGH LEVELS: Finally, as if to add insult to injury, the Census Bureau also reports that a staggering 46.2 million Americans now live in poverty!
And not only isn’t the Fed HELPING … its failed efforts to revive the economy are creating a second crisis:
Thanks to the Fed’s past money-printing gambits, the Producer Price Index just jumped 1.7% in August — hands-down the biggest surge in producer price inflation going back to June of 2009!
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Make no mistake:
The U.S. economy is broken.
Nothing the Fed can do will fix it.
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To the contrary: The Fed’s easy money policies CREATED this crisis by inflating the housing bubble.
Now, they’re only making matters worse — doing absolutely NOTHING for the job market, while driving inflation higher!
And as America’s great Fiscal Cliff approaches — the catastrophe that JPMorgan says will push America “head-first into the fiscal meat grinder” — the storm clouds are darker than ever.
This is why we produced our new video — “America on the Brink: The Great Fiscal Cliff of 2012-13” — and why it is absolutely imperative that you view it immediately:
In this extensively documented video, I show you why so many leading authorities are saying this crisis is threatening to …
- Tear trillions of dollars out of the hands of U.S. consumers and companies …
- Bankrupt thousands of businesses …
- Drive the unemployment rate to unimaginable levels, and …
- Leave the U.S. stock market a smoking ruin.
Plus, I reveal …
- Why this will dwarf every financial catastrophe the world has ever seen and explain why it is now all but inevitable …
- The giant banks and popular stocks that are most likely to crash and burn as this event explodes into the headlines …
- Name the special types of investments that are most likely to skyrocket in value as this crisis unfolds …
- Give you six free survival manuals designed to help you defend what’s yours — and even grow your wealth as this modern-day catastrophe unfolds.
- And much more!
And although this crisis will not wait for you, me or anybody else … you can get all the critical information you need to prepare right now — for FREE!
This video is absolutely free to view — just turn up your computer speakers and click this link to begin preparing NOW!
Best wishes,
Mike Larson
We love hearing from readers. But our editors won’t get your e-mail if you simply hit the “reply” button. So please send your questions, comments and suggestions to: support@weissinc.com.
I’ve simply published this entire notice . . . Can you all watch the video? I don’t know, but if you’re interested, it’s worth a try. ~Comment Jean Haines
Weiss Research Inc.15430 Endeavour DriveJupiter, FL 33478tel: 800-291-8545 fax: (561) 625-6685
9/13/2012
Breaking News Bulletin – Mike Larson – Insanity At The FED – 13 September 2012
Bix Weir – Let the Games Begin! – 13 September 2012
LET’S THE GAMES BEGIN!
The Fed announced the beginning of QE3 with $40B in purchases of Mortgage Backed Securities PER MONTH without stating any end date or dollar amount. Here is the statement:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/20120913a.htm
“the Committee agreed today to increase policy accommodation by purchasing additional agency mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $40 billion per month.”
“If the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially, the Committee will continue its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability. “
No limits. No end date. This is QE to INFINITY!
Make no mistake…this is all on purpose. This is the END GAME and the blame for the global meltdown will be placed, rightfully, on the shoulders of the Federal Reserve.
Basically, the Fed has chosen to FALL ON IT’S OWN SWORD!
The Gold and Silver move upward has caught all the shorts off guard. The Bad Guys are in deep, deep trouble as they took their cues from the likes of Jeffrey Christian and Jon Nadler who were advising EVERYONE to short gold and silver.
Now it gets exciting!
PS – Ron Paul just happens to be speaking tomorrow night at the Liberty Political Action Conference…if you think that is a coincidence then I have some lovely swamp land to sell you in Florida!
The world is about to change.
May the Road you choose be the Right Road.
Bix Weir
Tom Bearden: Clean Electrical Energy from the Active Vacuum
Source: The 2012 Scenario - Steve Beckow, 9/12/12
<img class=" wp-image-143732 " style="margin: 10px;" title="Tesla 321" src="http://cdn.the2012scenario.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Tesla-321-300x161.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="161" />Tesla Statue in Niagara Falls
Clean Electrical Energy from the Active Vacuum
Tom Bearden, Jan. 2002
http://cheniere.org/articles/clean%20electrical.htm
A bit of “empty space” the size of a sugar cube contains enough “seething electromagnetic energy” to power all the electrical loads on earth for millions of years.
A System Continuously Extracting Energy from the Vacuum Can be Made for a Dollar
Nature readily provides bountiful sources of unending EM energy, free for the taking and using — anywhere, anytime. They are called “charges” and “dipoles” — and often, source charges and source dipoles. As an example, simply place an electret or charged capacitor on a permanent magnet so that the electric field of the electret or capacitor and the magnetic field of the magnet are at right angles to each other.
That silly thing will sit there and pour out EM energy in all directions, at the speed of light, so long as you just leave it alone and do not destroy it. One year after you create it, its outpouring of energy will have reached a radius of one light year — out beyond the solar system — in all directions. It will have changed the energy density of that vast volume of surrounding space of one light-year radius. And it is still pouring out energy at the same rate, steadily changing the energy density of still more space.
Even the “conventional” electrodynamicists agree that a flow of EM energy is continuously emitted from that arrangement {[xx]}. However, the conventional electrodynamics is resoundingly silent on where that steady outpouring of EM energy comes from and how it is input to the charge or dipole. There is no detectable input of EM energy to the charge or dipole, but there is a detectable and continuous output of energy from it.
Seemingly, every charge and dipole is creating energy out of nothing, which of course totally destroys the conservation of energy law if true {[xxi]}. Since classical electrodynamicists have not been able to solve it, their textbooks have remained very silent on this fundamental problem and its implications. By their resounding silence, classical electrodynamicists implicitly assume that every source charge and source dipole in the universe is a perpetual motion machine, freely and continuously creating energy out of nothing.
Either one rejects the energy conservation law entirely, or one explains the source charge problem. There is no middle position, because the source charge is real and it ubiquitously exists. And it ubiquitously pours out that energy.
So we point the finger right back at the self-appointed critics and ask in their own terminology, “Who are the real perpetual motion nuts here? You cannot logically consider and implicitly accept every charge and dipole as a perpetual motion machine, freely creating energy out of nothing at all, and then protest that there can be no such thing as a COP>1.0 EM system!”
All the EM energy in any EM circuit or device comes from those same source charges and source dipoles. If one cannot explain where and how those charges obtain the energy to keep pouring it out, then one knows absolutely nothing about what truly powers every electrical circuit. Since the energy being received is nonobservable, it must be received in some peculiar and normally unusable form. The charges must then transduce the received energy into usable and observable form, and re-emit it in that new form, so that the circuit can catch some of it and be “energized”.
The source charge problem focuses one’s attention on the real problem. Either we must discard energy conservation altogether, or we must admit that every charge and dipole is already a COP>1.0 Maxwellian EM system, freely changing the form of some unusual received energy. It is continuously doing “free” work, since work is the changing of form of energy, and every charge and dipole is freely receiving virtual EM energy and changing its form to observable EM energy, continuously.
The quandary of the source charge and its continuous outpouring of real EM energy has been called “the most difficult problem in classical and quantum mechanics” {[xxii]}. Until 2000 there did not appear any classical solution to that long-vexing problem of the association of the fields and potentials — and their energy — reaching across all space, with the source charge that produces them. But the basis for the solution was already present in particle physics since the discovery of broken symmetry in 1957.
In 2000 the present author proposed a formal solution {[xxiii]} consistent with quantum field theory {[xxiv]}, particle physics {[xxv]}, quantum electrodynamics {[xxvi]}, and re-interpretation {12} of Whittaker’s biwave decomposition of the scalar potential {[xxvii]}. We used the term “giant negentropy” since the charge and dipole continuously and freely absorb, cohere, organize, and re-emit energy from the vacuum.
Since every charge in every circuit is already continuously negentropic, then our building of entropic circuits using these negentropic charges must involve some characteristic of circuit design where we kill the negentropy. We will explain that aspect shortly.
Our universities should — but do not — focus on the main problem: How does one then intercept, divert, and collect some of that freely flowing EM energy so easily evoked by every charge and dipolarity, and use it to freely power loads, without disarranging and destroying the actual “power source”? No university seems to be working on that problem, nor is the Department of Energy, nor are any of the great national laboratories. Nor are any of the great scientific associations.
Yet that single problem is the only fundamental electrical power problem. All the rest of the “recognized power problems” are just so much psychological displacement activity so as not to have to disturb the comfortable Lorentz-regauged and crippled classical electrodynamics.
There is no problem at all in obtaining great rivers and gushers of EM energy from the ubiquitous vacuum — cheaply, easily and enduringly. Every charge and every dipole already does that. There is no problem in producing the free “electromagnetic energy winds” needed to power even the greatest loads, any place in the universe, any time.
Instead, the only problem is in building a proper “electrical windmill” to divert, collect, and use some energy from such a steady electrical wind — without destroying the broken symmetry source of the wind (the source dipole) — and using (dissipating) that collected energy to power our desired load.
All our present closed-current loop circuits are designed {[xxviii]} to use half their freely collected energy to destroy the source dipole (in the generator or battery). The other half of their collected energy is used to power the external circuit’s losses and loads. So more of the freely collected EM energy is used to destroy the “wind” source than is used to power the load. We then have to continually input at least as much energy to restore the source (the dipole) as was used to destroy it.
So we must continually input more energy to restore the dipole — that the engineers unwittingly design and build the circuits to deliberately destroy — than the circuit provides to power the loads. All our engineers design and build electrical power systems that destroy their free electrical wind sources faster than they power their loads. Such inane power systems obviously provide COP
It is akin to building a magnificent but flawed sailboat, which — once it starts to move in the wind — rapidly and continually lowers its own sails faster than the wind can propel the boat. To keep the boat going, one thus has to continually pay to keep raising the sails that the boat itself keeps lowering. Our electrical engineers and electrical power scientists are busily engaged in perpetuating an analogous electrical power technology, and our scientific community is busily assuring us that they are practicing “the most advanced electrical science”.
We actually pay the power company to engage in a giant sumo wrestling match inside its generators, and deliberately lose.
The Modern Vacuum: Empty Space Has Unlimited EM Energy
“Vacuum” is what we usually think of as the empty space left after all the air is removed. However, in modern physics it is well-known that space is not such an “emptiness” at all. Instead, it is filled with energetic particles that appear and disappear with extraordinary speed. Hence “the vacuum” in physics is more like a seething cauldron, boiling fiercely {[xxix]}. The energy density of this boiling is so great that it literally boggles one’s mind {[xxx]}.
A bit of “empty space” the size of a sugar cube contains enough “seething electromagnetic energy” to power all the electrical loads on earth for millions of years. Obviously, if we can extract just a tiny fraction of this energy in electromagnetic form, we can use it to power our loads for free or nearly so. We need only power the “gating” or “switching” of the flowing energy, and thus cause a great deal of work to be performed, even though we ourselves input little or no energy.
Can the EM Energy of the Vacuum be “Tapped” and Extracted for our Use?
It’s widely believed that it is impractical to try to extract very much usable energy from the seething, highly energetic vacuum. Oh yes, the tiny little Lamb shift {[xxxi]} of the orbit of one electron in a certain atom is admittedly due to vacuum energy interaction. Well, although the Lamb shift is a very small effect of a single electron in a single atom, the energy density of that interaction is greater than the surface energy density of the sun {[xxxii]}!
And, oh yes, the Casimir effect {[xxxiii]} — a vacuum-induced attraction of two conducting plates when separated but close — also is due to vacuum energy interaction, but it too is a very small effect and not practical to consider {[xxxiv]}.Then the assertion is often made — particularly by electrical power engineers, who normally are not well-acquainted with modern physics — that thermodynamics prohibits extracting and using vacuum energy. That is quite untrue, as we have explained, and as Cole and Puthoff have rigorously demonstrated {[xxxv]}. Thermodynamics does not explain how to do it practically, but it does permit it technically.
The principle of superposition of charge and the field effects of charges, ubiquitously assumed and verified in countless classical experiments, also tells us a magnificent thing: The source charge production of its associated fields and potentials is additive and coherent as the source charge is increased . Within reason, doubling or tripling the amount of energy-collecting and transducing charged particles (source charges) at a given point will give double or triple the resulting potentials and fields (gathered EM energy and local EM energy winds) produced by that source charge collection, and so on.
So the proven broken symmetry of opposite charge collections — such as on the ends of a dipole or dipolarity — need not be a small effect at all! We can use as many unit charges as we wish in each one of those “separated opposite charges” in a dipole, so long as we hold the charges apart with a proper restraining dielectric.
In a normal electrical circuit (as between the terminals of a generator or battery), we can have many positive and negative charges involved, so that the EM energy extracted from the vacuum can be very powerful. In other words, the dipole can readily be made essentially as powerful as we need for our usual specific purposes. We can easily produce a megawatt or even 1,000 megawatts of energy flow per second, by making a bigger dipole consisting of more separated charges.
All we have to do is pay to make the dipole once. Then leave it alone and do not allow it to be destroyed by the inane way that engineers normally build their circuits and power their loads.
The latter problem — which is the only real problem preventing the engineers from easily producing all the cheap, clean electrical power they wish, without burning fuel, consuming fuel rods, building pipelines, building dams, etc. — is not being furiously funded and worked on as a national Manhattan Project. Indeed, the very notion continues to be castigated and ridiculed by the “defenders of the faith”. And that is perhaps the greatest scientific travesty of our times. It simply reveals the “soft underbelly” of our present energy science, which does not even include what powers its circuits.
Can an Electrical Power System Output More Energy than We Input to It?
Hopefully, by now the reader will exclaim, “Of course! Just pay to make a source dipole.” Prepare a suitable interception and collection external circuit which will dissipate its collected energy in a load, without destroying the source dipole faster than it powers the load. That’s all there is to it. The only remaining problem is in that single phrase, “without destroying the source dipole faster than it powers the load”.
Since that is the problem and the only problem preventing a total solution to the energy crisis forever, every university, every power company, the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, the Department of Energy, and every major research lab should be working on it. But of course none of them is working on it, interested in it, or funding it.
The problem calls for “out-of-the-box thinking”, to use a prevailing buzzword.. Simply consider a charged capacitor or a permanent magnet. That beast is freely extracting and pouring out real EM energy, from the active vacuum, continuously. So how do we intercept some of the energy flow, convert the intercepted energy to, say, oscillating EM energy, and then use that energy to power a load — all without destroying the magnet or killing the charge in the capacitor?
This is the problem, and work on it by our sharp young graduate students and post-docs is something which the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences should fund as the highest priority. They do not even recognize the fundamental problem, much less fund work on it.
These agencies’ lack of recognition of this, the primary electrical energy problem, is a sad commentary on our present scientific acumen.
Why Don’t Present EM Systems Power Themselves?
By now the reader hopefully will be able to see that our systems don’t power themselves because our engineers specifically design them so they cannot. The mindset of the scientists and engineers themselves is the greatest foe to cheap clean electrical energy, a clean biosphere and a decentralized power system using no fuel. The closed current loop circuit for power systems is considered to be hallowed, as if Moses had brought it down from the mountain with him, carved on those stone tablets. It isn’t and he didn’t.
To quote Nikola Tesla, who made practical generators and motors possible with his discovery of the rotating magnetic field: “Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments and they wander off through equation after equation and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.”
Understand, a good model is essential to technology. But if the model is inadequate, then it should either be corrected or a new model should be substituted that is adequate. However, our electrical power engineers and most of the scientific community have developed a mindset where the closed current loop circuit, Lorentz symmetrical regauging and COP
We should always remember one succinct statement by Evans {[xxxvi]}: “No theory can falsify a successful and repeatable experiment, but a single successful and repeatable experiment can falsify any theory.”
We borrow a quote from Tesla on another subject {[xxxvii]}and hope that it comes true with respect to the present dogma that only COP<1.0 electrical power systems are possible: “… in a short time it will be recognized as one of the most remarkable and inexplicable aberrations of the scientific mind which has ever been recorded in history.”
Footnotes
[xx]. As an example, quoting Jed Z. Buchwald, From Maxwell to Microphysics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1985, p. 44: “[Poynting's result] implies that a charged capacitor in a constant magnetic field which is not parallel to the electric field is the seat of energy flows even though all macroscopic phenomena are static.”
[xxi]. The key is in that word “detectable” — or as the physicist would say, “observable”. The experiment rigorously demonstrates that, if the law of energy conservation is valid, then the charge and the dipole must be continuously receiving energy (from its external environment) in nonobservable (virtual) form and integrating it into observable form. And so it is, as has been known in particle physics for 45 years. In the case of the dipole, it is due to the known broken symmetry of the opposite charges comprising the dipole. In the case of the charge, when one accounts for the clustering virtual charges (from quantum electrodynamics), then the charge is actually a set of composite dipoles, each exhibiting the required broken symmetry. Hence charges and dipoles freely absorb (receive) virtual photon energy from the seething vacuum (particle physics proves this), integrating the absorbed “disintegrated” energy into observable form, and re-emitting real, observable EM energy in all directions, continuously. That this has not yet appeared in the electrical engineering model is strictly the fault of the leaders of the scientific community who have not enforced its inclusion. Consequently, the electrical engineers do not even understand what powers an EM circuit or system. It is energy from the vacuum, extracted and integrated by the source charge and the source dipole.
[xxii]. E.g., see D. K. Sen, Fields and/or Particles, Academic Press, London and New York, 1968, p. viii.
[xxiii]. T. E. Bearden, “Giant Negentropy from the Common Dipole,” Proceedings of Congress 2000, St. Petersburg, Russia, Vol. 1, July 2000 , p. 86-98. Also published in Journal of New Energy, 5(1), Summer 2000, p. 11-23. Also carried on www.cheniere.org and the DoE restricted website http://www.ott.doe.gov/electromagnetic/.
[xxiv]. F. Mandl and G. Shaw, Quantum Field Theory, Wiley, 1984, Chapter 5.
[xxv]. With the broken symmetry of unlike charges and with the Nobel Prize awarded to Lee and Yang in 1957.
[xxvi]. With the fact that virtual charges of opposite charges cluster around an “isolated” observable charge. One differential piece of the observable charge and one clustering virtual charge of opposite sign comprise a composite dipole. The “isolated source charge” may thus be treated as a set of composite dipoles. The broken symmetry of opposite charges solves the problem for any dipole, and thus for the “isolated” charge as a set of composite dipoles.
[xxvii]. E. T. Whittaker, “On the Partial Differential Equations of Mathematical Physics,” Mathematische Annalen, Vol. 57, 1903, p. 333-355.
Petitioning United Nations : Support the Keshe Foundation technologies | The Galactic Free Press
Petition Letter
Greetings,
I just signed the following petition addressed to: United Nations' Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
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Support the Keshe Foundation' technologies for power, water, food, spaceYour Excellency,
We, the inhabitants of the planet Earth, ask you urgently, but respectfully to use your prestige, knowledge, experience and the UN-network to support and promote the space technology, water technology, power generation technology, environmental systems (direct CO2/CH4 capturing, nuclear waste cleaning), protein and food production systems, all technologies of the Keshe Foundation, developed by Nuclear engineer Mehran Tavakoli KESHE (www.keshefoundation.org). It has been proven safe, clean, productive and virtually an unlimited source of energy.
With this technology we will be able to reverse the damage done to our planet Earth and replace the environmentally harmful energy systems we have so long depended on.
In addition to this, it is our opinion the Keshe power technology is the only independent point-of-demand technology that is able to give rapidly electricity to the 1,5 Billion people, our brothers and sisters, which lack electrical power today. Within 15 years that number will grow and become 1,6 Billion (because the new grid infrastructure is too expensive).
Where electricity will give those 1,5 Billion brothers and sisters a new freedom and dignity and a decent life. Local electricity with Keshe plasma reactors will give them the possibility to create local business, give them communication systems, tools for distance education, irrigation pumps, etc. this move bringing prosperity, freedom and peace.
When there is the Horn of Plenty (logo of the Keshe Foundation) then there is no political need to steal the water, the resources or the food of other nations, with this the present geopolitical conflicts lose their essense.
Mr. Ban Ki-moon, all inhabitants of our planet believe that your willingness to stand behind the Keshe project will lead to and will deliver prosperity, dignity, equality, peace and personal freedom to all of us.
We, the people of the Earth, thank you in advance for your efforts to make Earth a better place to live.
An inhabitant of the Earth
----------------Sincerely,
[Your name]
Did Tesla Reincarnate as Patrick Flanagan? 2012 SEPTEMBER 12
This is the article that Poof mentioned in his column Sept. 9, 2012. Thanks also to Fay.
Did Tesla Reincarnate as Patrick Flanagan?
I consider Gillis Patrick Flanagan to be the most likely candidate for the reincarnation of Telsa, born a little over a year after Tesla died, with full recollection of his previous life, building a Tesla coil at 8, and literally shocking the neighborhood at 9.5 years of age with his 14 MHz coil that created 6-foot arcs.
by Sterling D. Allan, Pure Energy Systems News
http://pesn.com/2012/07/10/9602131_Did_Tesla_Reincarnate_as_Patrick_Flanagan/
For a week now, I’ve been gearing up for my pending appearance tonight on Coast to Coast AM to do a three-hour segment on “Tesla Today“. On July 4, I posted a compilation of previous coverage about Tesla on their program. Yesterday, I posted a report of my interview with Karl Palsness, who is one of the most gifted Tesla researchers I know and is involved with several inventors and groups in process of taking some of Tesla’s more exotic technologies to market, possibly as soon as a year from now.
Today, I present to you an interview I did yesterday with Patrick Flanagan, who I met a year ago at a small conference in Costa Rica.
When I was invited to come on Coast, I asked Patrick if he wouldn’t mind 1) doing an interview with me in preparation, and 2) standing by on Skype to help answer any questions that might come up. He was happy to oblige.
The conversation I had with him in Costa Rica was one of the most amazing of my life, covering much of the same material as in our recorded interview today.
Now, it turns out that he’s going to be joining me on Coast tonight, to be be introduced as a very likely candidate for the reincarnation of Nikola Tesla. That certainly fits the theme of “Tesla Today.”
I hadn’t planned on being that forward with the Coast audience, but that is how things have materialized.
Here are some of the reasons why I see Patrick as the most likely candidate for the reincarnation of Nikola Tesla:
- He has the same sort of prolific inventive ability.
- He has sent me copies of documents (news stories, awards) that corroborate many of his accomplishments, assignments and collaboration claims.
- He was born just over a year after Tesla died.
- He said that when he was a baby, he remembered everything from his previous lifetime, and he remembers thinking: “Oh God, I have to regrow this body before I can get going again.” “I remember great details of Nikola Tesla’s life. I don’t talk about it much any more.”
- When he was seven years old, out of the blue, he told his mom that he had been Nikola Tesla in his previous life. She said, “Who’s that?”, not knowing who Tesla was.
- His inventions come to him in dreams, and if he doesn’t get them right, they come to him in visions, sometimes lasting 5 seconds, which give details such as circuit diagrams, part numbers needed, to get it working.
- When I asked him if he recalled lifetimes prior to the lifetime as Tesla, he said that for seven lifetimes he was a Tibetan monk. That is where he gained the ability to have the visions that guided his inventive capability.
- At 8 years old, he was building functioning Tesla coils.
- When he was 9.5 years old in North Dakota, he built a 14 MHz Tesla coil, produced lightning bolts at 6 feet long, something Tesla couldn’t have done because he didn’t have the electronics we have today. When it was activated with just 100 Watts, it would peg the meters of his Ham radio friends half way across the globe, as if he had a 1 kW transmitter. The neighbors got upset because their mechanical alarm clocks would start going off, and they would get shocks from everything they touched. One neighbor went to brush his teeth, and he got shocked when the toothbrush was still 4 inches away. So Patrick had to shut the thing down and stop using it.
- At the age of 13, he invented the Neurophone (which includes a Tesla coil) that by-passes the 8th cranial hearing nerve and transmits sound into long term memory centers of the brain through a “dormant” amphibian/reptilian hearing organ which was previously thought to be an organ of balance, the saccule.
- At 14, for a school science fair, using spare parts left over from a ham radio, he invented an atomic missile detector capable of detecting atomic missiles within a 4,000 mile radius, which was picked up by the U.S. government.
- At the age of 17, he had received all radio/antennae related licenses attainable. In May of 1962, Life magazine called him a “unique, mature and inquisitive scientist”.
- His personality is similar to Tesla’s: motivated not by money but by a desire to help the planet. He is a proponent of peace, not war. He believes in benevolent extraterrestrial intervention upon our proving ourselves to be peaceful.
- He met Ralph Bergstresser who was present when Tesla’s papers were confiscated by the FBI and reviewed after Tesla’s death. Patrick told Ralph that he was Tesla in his previous life. Ralph asked him to tell him what he knew about the “Particle Beam project”. Patrick drew a diagram, and Ralph said, “I haven’t seen that since I reviewed Tesla’s papers, and I’ve never seen it anywhere else.”
- His statement in our interview, saying “I’m not a businessman. Never have been a business man”, is parallel to Tesla, too.
- His “distillation” of what Tesla’s latter work is all about — longitudinal waves — coincides with Karl Palsness’ independent synopsis of Tesla’s work.
- While the physical resemblance is not strong, there are some similarities, such as both being barrel-chested. Do a for Patrick Flanagan and compare.
The above statement ascribed to Tesla resembles Patrick’s statements about being able to tap into the Akashic records…something Tesla alluded to and Patrick achieved. The physical resemblance of the young Tesla to the young Pat are actually quite striking.
When I asked him what he thought about how the black ops had absconded with most of his technologies and used them for militaristic purposes, not peaceful; with tears, he replied, “That is why I’ve only shared 1% of what I know in this life.”
- When I asked him what he thought about how the black ops had absconded with most of his technologies and used them for militaristic purposes, not peaceful; with tears, he replied, “That is why I’ve only shared 1% of what I know in this life.”
- He is very knowledgeable about the HAARP array. He said it uses “circular polarized arrays.”
- When I gave my presentation on the Top 5 Exotic Free Energy Technologies at the Costa Rica conference, Patrick was totally keyed in to what I was saying, understanding and appreciating everything and making comments to elaborate on what I was saying. He knows the subject well.
He doesn’t wear this stuff on his sleeve, but neither was he bashful about answering my questions when I broached the subject, either in person last year, or in our interview yesterday. [July 11 note: I learned today that Patrick actually has kept his belief about his previous lifetime as Nikola Tesla very quiet until now, sharing it only with close friends or those he felt needed to know.]
Overall, it seems to me that while he was a prodigy as a child, that as an adult he has taken more measured steps, not trying to invent at breakneck speed, but learning to focus on certain tasks. He has also steered away from energy and has focused on peaceful remedies, such as health and spiritual wellness.
One time, for example, Patrick transmitted a voice signal through a mountain with only 100 microwatts of power.
He has been employed by a Think Tank at the Pentagon, and later as a consultant to the NSA, CIA, NASA, Tufts University, the Office of Naval Research, and the Aberdeen Proving Grounds for the Department of Unconventional Weapons and Warfare. But these were not for aggressive militaristic applications, but for defense and communications.
During the 1970s, he wrote Pyramid Power, which sold 1.5 million copies and is credited as spawning the New Age movement.
Since the 80′s, he has been involved in water technology for health and healing.
Neurophone
Patrick invented the Neurophone when he was 13. According to his biography, it is a device that:
“…By-passes the 8th cranial hearing nerve and transmits sound into long term memory centers of the brain through a ‘dormant’ amphibian/reptilian hearing organ which was previously thought to be an organ of balance, the saccule. The saccule has since been shown to be an ultrasonic hearing organ that detects ultrasonic sound only if the sound is transmitted through the tissues and bones of the body. Whales and dolphins ‘hear’ through the saccule. The only way our ancestors would have used the saccule for hearing is when they were swimming in water with whales and dolphins. The saccule has nerve channels that extend to all parts of the brain, including the ‘hearing’ centers of the brain. Under the right conditions, totally nerve deaf people have been able to hear with the Neurophone. The Neurophone patent was filed in 1959 and it took 14 years for the U.S. Patent Office to issue the patent because the Defense Department considered the device to be vital to National Security.
He designed the Neurophone because: “I couldn’t stand sleeping because I couldn’t learn why I sleep; wanted to be able to learn 24 hrs/day.” The problem with playing audio tapes while sleeping, is the brain naturally filters out the information. Not so with the Neurophone. The Neurophone also balances the left and right hemispheres of the brain and increases IQ.
Patrick said that when Tesla was sitting in vicinity of machines he had built, he could hear the spark discharge as if it were coming from inside the head. But it’s a phenomena he didn’t pursue.
Patrick designed a loudspeaker that uses longitudinal waves and is not any louder standing next to it than it is at one mile away. He has not commercialized that yet. Patrick pursued it at 13, and implemented longitudinal waves into it.
At first, the patent was rejected because they said it wouldn’t work. But when he brought the Neurophone to the Patent Office and enabled a deaf employee to hear, then the government got involved and slapped a national security gag order on it. He finally got it released when one of the 3-letter agency guys made good on a promise to help him out, because he was willing to help by giving them a voice encryption methodology.
When he was 17, lecturing at the Mayo Clinic, a brain specialist asked him if he could measure his brain activity. The specialist said that his brain activity was identical to the Swami Rama who had meditated in a cave for 30 years. Patrick’s brain showed these patterns while awake and even while working on a mathematical equation. He attributes part of that to the Neurophone, though I imagine that part had to do with the seven previous lifetimes as a monk.
The devices are presently being built (a batch of 700 under way) in Germany and can be purchased by request through the contact page at http://phisciences.com (they are not listed explicitly).
Hunza Water
Patrick’s focus for the past three decades has been on studying, characterizing, stabilizing, and selling Hunza water, which has an alkalizing, energising and antioxidant effect. He tells the story about how pioneer, Dr Henri Coanda, conveyed to him his 60 years of research so he could carry on that work, when he was 17. After 20 years of research, Patrick discovered that the water contains tiny silica particles that have an electrical charge called a “zeta potential.”
He pointed out that an objects ability to generate an arc is proportional to how sharp its point is. A basketball, for example, would take millions of volts to get an electrical discharge, whereas a 5 nm particle the size of these silica particles can generate a similar discharge. Or something along those lines.
He sells a product called Crystal Energy (WetterWater.net) that you add to your water to give it these properties. The water increases the cell’s ability to transport water-soluble minerals across the cell membrane.
The Hunza water is rich in “hydride ions”, which are basically a hydrogen molecule with two electrons, one bound closely, and the other opposite it, loosely. Scientists first balked at this notion, but several peer reviewed papers documented its stable existence, both in the Hunza water and in the human body, correlating its existence with the health of the body.
The Chinese government was so impressed with Patrick’s research in this area that last year (shortly after our Costa Rica conference), they honored him in the Great Hall of the People, where usually only government dignitaries lecture. It was the #1 story in Chinese news for three weeks. They now sell the water at the Olympic village.
Wing Angel
Patrick tells an interesting story about his boy, whose given name is John Patrick Flanagan. He used to tug at his gold, Rolex watch, saying, “Mine, mine.” And Patrick would chuckle and pry his little fingers off of it.
When he was five, he said, “My name isn’t John Patrick. It’s Wing Angel. My wife, Smokey, lives in Cocoa Beach, Florida, I miss her a lot.”
Given that info, Patrick dialed information and found that there was a “Smokey Angel” living in Cocoa Beach, FL, so they phoned her, told her what their son said, and she replied, “He always said he’d come back for me.”
They flew down to Florida to meet her, and after hugging, and talking like they’d know each other for years; Wing asked, “Where’s my stuff?” She went and retrieved a cigar box of stuff and opened it. There on the top of the things in the box was a gold, Rolex watch, identical to the one Patrick wore.
They moved her to LA, and she became his nanny, slept in the same bed. They would walk around holding hands, and he would tell people, “This is my wife,” causing them to chuckle.
She lived with them until he was 13, when a problem arose because Wing started taking an interest in the girls his age, and Smokey got jealous, so they sent her to live with her sister.
Now he’s 40, and his memory has faded of that prior lifetime, but he still goes by the name, “Wing Flanagan.”
Autistic/Indigo Child
When Patrick was three years old, he was playing with a flask of mercury and took what normally would have been a lethal dose. (When he was 30 years old, he was told he had a higher level of Mercury in his blood than any other person ever recorded, and the lab doing the test expected him to be ambulatory.) This created some speech difficulties, causing him to stutter, and slowing his speech and social development, so that he didn’t speak until he was five.
This explains why it wouldn’t be until seven years of age that he finally told his mother that he was Nikola Tesla; and she then took him to the library to find out who that was, and he developed an insatiable inquisitiveness.
While the mercury certainly is not recommended for anyone, it played into Patrick’s life work. It destroyed the Substantia Nigra of his brain, leading him to be a risk taker. Once he did a hand stand on the ledge of a 50 story building. “If I fell, I would have fallen inward. I was totally in control.”
“Someone said I’m like a crystal radio signal, able to tune into anything. I can tune into the Akashic records and get any info I want.”
He signs his emails: “encyclopedic synthesist”.
Ego in Check
Patrick doesn’t believe in riding on the laurels of past lifetimes, but believes that what is important is what you do in this lifetime. In my opinion, Patrick’s lifetime is great as a stand-alone. However, the concept that this is Part II of a previous lifetime, which he remembered when he was born, certainly makes him an interesting specimen and worth watching.
2012, End of a Cycle
Patrick sees 2012 as being a pivotal time in which the choices we make individually and as a civilization having far-reaching consequences. Though a lot of bad things are happening as a conspiracy clamps down on freedoms, he thinks good will win out — narrowly; and he believes that there is a vast host of good people presently living on the earth who will help pull off that victory.
He believes that extraterrestrials are watching with interest in how this plays out, and are there to help when we merit their intervention, but first, there must be a crucial core that chooses peace instead of fear. He expects that “disclosure” of the ET presence will happen sooner rather than later.
“2012 is the end of a cycle, 26,000 years long. Earth is a school. Graduation is at hand. There’s the darkness and the light. We’re getting ready to go into 1,000 years of peace, where there will be no predators, perfect telepathic communications; no one will be able to screw around with each other. It’s coming…
The dark forces who want to keep [good] forces down, turn us into zombies, keep us from realizing our potential [will not prevail]. It’s happening right now; we’re so lucky to be alive.”
UntitleCommon Dreams – Numbers, Analysis Show 30 Years Of Failed US Economic Policy – 13 September 2012
Census numbers show persistent poverty, falling wages, and rising inequality
- Common Dreams staffThe latest US Census Bureau numbers on poverty, income inequality, and healthcare, coupled with newly released economic analysis of US public policy reveals the reality and the reasons behind the persistent rut of the poverty-stricken, the working-poor, and the middle class in America.
More than three years after the collapse of the housing bubble, the federal government’s bailout of Wall Street, and the start of the Great Recession, the US poverty rate remains persistently high with nearly 1 in 5 Americans living at or below the poverty line, according to new figures released on Wednesday by the US Census Bureau
In addition, the numbers show rampant joblessness, stagnant or falling wages among workers, household incomes that continue to fall, and an inequality gap that continues to grow.
Meanwhile, the Economic Policy Institute released their annual review of US economic policy which includes a wide variety of data on family incomes, wages, jobs, unemployment, wealth, and poverty that allow for a clear, unbiased understanding of the economy’s effect on the living standards of working Americans.
As the Census reports, “the nation’s official poverty rate in 2011 was 15.0 percent, with 46.2 million people in poverty. After three consecutive years of increases, neither the poverty rate nor the number of people in poverty were statistically different from the 2010 estimates.”
New data on the continued rise in inequality—where income inequality increased by 1.6 percent between 2010 and 2011—prompted Robert Greenstein, President of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, to underscore that the nation’s wealthiest should begin to share in the sacrifices that will be needed to correct the economy in the coming years.
“Given the need for substantial sacrifice and the skewing of income gains to those at the top,” he said in a statement, “it is difficult to justify extending the rather lavish tax cuts for high-income individuals that policymakers enacted in 2001 and 2003, which average $129,000 a year for people who make over $1 million a year, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.”
The Economic Policy Institute, which on Tuesday released its 12th annual “State of Working America” report, listed the key numbers from the Census report:
Poverty
- 15.0%: The share of the population in poverty in 2011
- 21.9%: The percent of children under 18 in poverty
- 46.2 million: The number of people in poverty in 2011
- $22,811: The poverty threshold for a family of four with two children
- 44.0%: The share of the poor population in “deep poverty,” or below half the poverty line
- 2.3 million: The number of people unemployment insurance kept out of poverty in 2011
- 21.4 million: The number of people Social Security kept out of poverty in 2011
- 5.7 million: How many fewer people would be in poverty if the Federal Earned Income Tax Credit was included in the Census definition of money income
- 3.9 million: How many fewer people would be in poverty if food stamps (SNAP) were added to money income
Income
- -1.7%, +5.1%: The change in average household income between 2010 and 2011 for the middle 20 percent, and the top 5 percent, respectively. The disparity means income inequality increased in 2011.
- $7,887, -12.4%: The decline in median working-age household income from 2000 to 2011 in level terms and percentage terms, respectively
- $6,518, -16.8%: The decline in median African-American household income from 2000 to 2011 in level terms and percentage terms, respectively
- $4,695, -10.8%: The decline in median Hispanic household income from 2000 to 2011 in level terms and percentage terms, respectively
- $50,622, $48,202: Median earnings for a man working fulltime, full year in 1973 and 2011, respectively
- $28,699, $37,118: Median earnings for a female working fulltime, full year in 1973 and 2011, respectively
Putting the Census numbers in the context of public policy in their new report, EPI explains how economic policies, including policymakers’ actions and failures to act, have continuously undercut the ability of workers to benefit from economic growth in the United States. Its primary findings include:
- America’s vast middle class has suffered a “lost decade” and faces the threat of another. The wages of typical Americans, including college graduates, are lower today than they have been in over a decade. Because hourly wages and compensation failed to grow after the 2001 recession, household incomes had declined even before the Great Recession. Furthermore, forecasts of high unemployment for many years ahead suggest that another lost decade for typical American workers and their families, as measured by wages and income, has already begun.
- Income and wage inequality have risen sharply over the last 30 years. Income inequality has grown sharply since 1979, a fact that is universally recognized by researchers. The trends that have driven this growing inequality in overall incomes are growing concentration of both capital income (the returns to financial assets) and labor income (wages and benefits), as well as a shift from labor income toward capital income.
- Rising inequality is the major cause of wage stagnation for workers and of the failure of low- and middle-income families to appropriately benefit from growth. The typical worker has not benefited from productivity growth since 1979, though there has been sufficient economic growth to provide a substantial across-the-board increase in living standards. Instead, higher earners have reaped a disproportionate share of wage income, and the top one percent of households have received a disproportionate share of all income growth. Aside from the period of strong growth in the late-1990s, wages for low-and middle-wage workers were stagnant from 1979 to 2007, and incomes for lower- and middle-class households grew slowly.
- Economic policies caused increased inequality of wages and incomes. Inequality between the very top wage earners and all others grew from 1979 to 2011 except during stock declines, driven by growing executive compensation and an expanded and increasingly highly-paid financial sector. Inequality between the top wage earners and middle-wage earners also grew from 1979 to 2011. A number of policies played a role in this growth, including those that: (1) targeted rates of unemployment too high to provide reliably tight labor markets for low- and middle-wage workers; (2) hastened global integration of the U.S. economy without protecting U.S. workers; (3) failed to manage destructive international trade imbalances; (4) allowed employer practices hostile to unions to flourish; (5) privatized and deregulated industry, including the financial sector; and (6) eroded labor standards. Inequality between middle-wage earners and the lowest wage earners grew only in the 1980s, fueled by the erosion of the purchasing power of the minimum wage and, again, the targeting of rates of unemployment that were too high. Tax and budget policies have compounded the inequalities that have been generated in market-based, pre-tax incomes.
- Claims that growing inequality has not hurt middle-income families are flawed. Some recent studies have suggested that measures of comprehensive income since 1979 show that middle-income families have seen adequate income growth. Rather, incomes for the middle class have not grown as fast as average incomes, and middle-income growth was much slower between 1979 and 2007 than it was between 1947 and 1979. Furthermore, more than half of the income growth between 1979 and 2007 was made up of government transfers, which reflects the strength of programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, not the strength of the labor market. In fact, higher household labor earnings can be traced to increasing work hours, not higher wages. Finally, the data on comprehensive incomes are technically flawed because they count rapidly rising health expenditures made on behalf of households by employers and the government as income, without taking excessive health care inflation into account.
- Growing income inequality has not been offset by increased mobility. There is no evidence that mobility—changes in economic status from one generation to the next—has increased to offset rising inequality, and some research shows a decline.
- Inequalities persist by race and gender. Key economic measures, including unemployment, wealth, and poverty (particularly child poverty), continue to show staggering disparities by race and ethnicity. Gender disparities also persist, and while gaps in labor market outcomes have closed in recent decades, a number have done so because men lost ground, not because women gained it.
“The State of Working America, 12th Edition” includes new and compelling data on:
Income
- the components of the Congressional Budget Office’s “comprehensive income” growth for the middle class (health care insurance, wages, pensions, work hours, government benefits)
- the growth of capital income by income group and the growing concentration of capital incomes
Mobility
- the stagnation of economic mobility
- the poor performance of the U.S. economy in international rankings of mobility
Wages
- flat or falling wages for college graduates in almost every occupation over the past 10 years
- wage trends by education, decile, gender, and race/ethnicity
- the growth of wage inequality for the three key wage gaps: between the top one percent and others, between the top and middle (95/50 wage gap), and between the middle and bottom (50/10 wage gap)
- the impact of rising health care costs on wage growth and wage inequality
- the factors driving the gap between productivity and median hourly compensation growth
- the role of the financial sector and CEO compensation in fueling the top one percent’s income growth
Jobs
- the extent to which changes in the labor force participation rate are due to the weak economy or are structural/demographic
- why current unemployment is cyclical and not structural
Wealth
- the decline of median wealth between 1983 and 2010 (while wealth at the top grew strongly)
- the collapse of wealth in African American and Hispanic households
- the role of housing equity’s collapse on middle class wealth
- the increasing concentration of stock ownership
Poverty
- the factors driving high poverty and low-end wages
- the large role income inequality plays in growing poverty (as opposed to demographic factors like family formation)
- the contribution of longer work hours to low-income families’ income
- the relatively small role tax and transfer policy plays in reducing poverty in the U.S. in comparison to peer countries
- high child poverty rates in comparison to peer countries
Richard (RJ) Eskow – Deficit Rorschach Test: The Presidents, The Editors, And The Truth – 11 September 2012
Both political parties have “an aversion to telling the truth,” says The Washington Post. The truth? That newspaper’s editors are part of a small but powerful billionaire-funded circle that seems to believe that any facts that don’t support their distorted and unpopular ideas are deviations from the “truth.”
With a few selected phrases, President Obama and former President Clinton appeared to endorse this tiny faction’s recovery-crushing austerity approach last week in Charlotte. But the rest of their speeches, along with others given at the convention, were a strong rejection of the privately authored set of policy proposals known as Simpson-Bowles. That’s good, since Simpson-Bowles so closely resembles the Republican Party Platform that the Democrats could wind up running against themselves.
Voters should embrace the Democrats’ stirring anti-austerity rhetoric. They should also encourage Democratic leaders to embrace their own rhetoric, to stop “triangulating” themselves into invisibility, and speak plainly and directly to the American people. In other words, Democrats should say they oppose any cuts to Medicare or Social Security benefits. They should say they’ll use government resources to create and protect the jobs we need — for teachers, firefighters, and police officers, among others. And that they’ll face facts and address the real cause of the government’s long-term budget deficit.
The Circle
The “truth”? To paraphrase Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, the members of this circle can’t handle the truth. But then, contradiction is their stock in trade: They call themselves “bipartisan,” though their views are opposed by majorities in both parties. They call themselves “civil,” although they engage in relentlessly ad hominem attacks on their critics. They call themselves “truth tellers,” although all but the most extreme and ideological economists reject their ideas. And they insist that they’re the only ones displaying “courage,” as if advocating for the rich and powerful has ever been the brave thing to do.
Who are they? They’re the small group of politicians, ex-politicians, consultants, and advisors who are closely connected to anti-government billionaire Pete Peterson. Several of them were appointed to the President’s Deficit Commission, in what is most generously described as a colossal error in judgment. This small but well-funded cadre has convinced a number of key media outlets, chief among them The Washington Post, that long-term government deficits are our chief problem — this in a time of growing wealth inequity, wage stagnation, declining consumer confidence, and the widespread human anguish that has been brought on by extraordinarily high (and extraordinarily long-term) unemployment.
The Editors
You’d think The Washington Post would change up its editorial positions once in a while, if only to avoid the appearance of being a house organ for the crowd that’s pushing low tax rates for millionaires and billionaires while advocating cuts to Medicare and Social Security for everyone else. But they can’t seem to help themselves.
They “can’t recall a single hard truth the politicians told us” at the conventions, the paper’s editors wrote this weekend. Which “truth” went untold and un-”hardened”? “The national debt,” say the editors. And yet Obama mentioned the national debt, his “bipartisan debt commission,” and the “deficit” (our annual shortfall) quite a few times. Biden mentioned the national debt, too. And Bill Clinton devoted five or 10 minutes to the subject in the “arithmetic” portion of his speech. The Democrats’ emphasis on debt reduction was, in my opinion, misplaced, at least while the country struggles through a jobs and wage stagnation crisis, but the Washington Post editors are wrong to claim it wasn’t mentioned. Then again, to this crowd, the “truth” only seems to mean one thing: their truth, and their program.
The Program
This small circle is pushing a clear, simple program: even lower tax rates for corporations and the wealthiest Americans; benefit cuts to Social Security, along with changes to Medicare that (especially in today’s political climate) would cause its slow deterioration and eventual collapse; and limits on how much money the government can spend, irrespective of the need at any given time. If you think that looks a lot like Paul Ryan’s budget, which is now the GOP’s official budget, or like the Republican Platform, you’re right. Even the GOP’s lower tax rates for millionaires and billionaires are in the Simpson-Bowles proposal.
Is that what President Obama was endorsing when he said these words: “I’m still eager to reach an agreement based on the principles of my bipartisan debt commission”? (That commission actually deadlocked and failed to issue any conclusions; he is referring to a document which was privately prepared by Simpson and Bowles, its two co-chairs.) Or what Bill Clinton was endorsing when he spoke of “the kind of balanced approach proposed by the Simpson-Bowles Commission, a bipartisan commission [sic]“? (Clinton was endorsing an approach that depends twice as much on cuts as it does on tax increases for the wealthy; that doesn’t sound “balanced” to me.) Only Joe Biden kept a slight distance from the Simpson-Bowles proposal, suggesting only that it came from a “respected” source. Said Biden, “They rejected every plan put forward by us, by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles Commission [sic] they referenced or by any other respected group.”
Equal Time
The Simpson-Bowles tax plan is very similar to the one Bill Clinton was mocking last week when he talked about those unspecified, I’ll-tell-you-after-the-election loopholes President Obama made fun of this policy, too: “Have a surplus? Try a tax cut. Deficit too high? Try another.” Joe Biden said, “President Obama knows that creating jobs in America, keeping jobs in America, bringing jobs back to America is what the president’s job is all about.” And that was after his moving tribute to his wife’s work as a teacher — which is, after all, a government-funded job. And just two weeks ago Joe Biden told some older voters in a Virginia diner that he could “flat guarantee” there would be no changes to Social Security if he and the president were reelected. So why did the president, former President Clinton, and Vice President Joe Biden all name-check Simpson-Bowles last week?
The Inkblot
You’ll have to ask them. But maybe the plan has become a kind of political Rorschach test, a shapeless inkblot meant to conjure up “reasonableness.” There is a slightly fluid element to the otherwise far-right proposals made by two individuals, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, after their commission ended in deadlock and failure. (You wouldn’t know it by reading their document, but the commission never issued a report). The Simpson-Bowles proposal does, for example, say this: “Don’t disrupt the fragile economic recovery. We need a comprehensive plan now to reduce the debt over the long term. But budget cuts should start gradually so they don’t interfere with the ongoing economic recovery. Growth is essential to restoring fiscal strength and balance.” It also says, “Protect the truly disadvantaged. We must ensure that our nation has a robust, affordable, fair, and sustainable safety net.” And the proposal also reiterates the need for additional tax revenue — even though it would do so through some unspecified “loophole-closing” sleight of hand that would almost certainly hit the middle class much harder than it would wealthy Americans. Under Simpson-Bowles billionaires would see their already rock-bottom tax rates (35 percent, compared with 91 percent under Dwight Eisenhower) reduced even further to 27 percent. (Another Simpson-Bowles scenario would eliminate the even lower rate on “hedge fund” management fees and capital gains — but in return it would lower the top tax rate to 23 percent!)
The Problem
Contrary to what the Circle would have you believe, only one issue is driving our government’s long-term deficit problem, and it isn’t Social Security: It’s Medicare. Unfortunately, fixing that problem would require a complete overhaul of our profit-driven health-care system.
Simpson and Bowles basically throw their hands in the air. Their plan’s hodge-podge of suggestions implicitly says, “We have no idea what to do about Medicare.” Instead, in what looks like the policy equivalent of throwing an entire deck of cards on the floor and saying, “Pick one,” they toss out a grab bag of unrelated ideas.
One of those ideas is “an all-payer system,” where government (or insurers, acting together) would establish uniform reimbursement rates for all medical providers. That’s an ace in the deck, and the Democrats should grab it. While they’re at it, if they’re serious about deficit reduction, they should go one step further and come up with an even more effective cost-cutting proposal: Revive the public option they traded away during dealings over the health-care bill.
In the end, the guaranteed solution to our Medicare cost problem — which is our deficit problem — is “Medicare for All.” But we’re told that this approach isn’t “politically feasible.” It would certainly take “courage,” which may be why we haven’t heard Alan Simpson, Erskine Bowles, or the editors of The Washington Post pushing for it.
I guess they have “an aversion to telling the truth.”
The Race
Did the Democrats embrace their opponents’ platform when they embraced Simpson-Bowles, which they misleadingly presented as the work of a “bipartisan commission”? Were they playing some sort of deep game, counting on their opponents to be intransigent so that they could appear reasonable? Or were they making the decision to run on a platform of benefit cuts to Social Security and Medicare? That would be political suicide and a grim harbinger of things to come under a second Obama term.
If that’s the case, then voters, especially Democratic ones, have an opportunity and an obligation: They should inundate the White House with phone calls and emails asking the Democrats to declare their unequivocal support for the Democratic portions of their convention and pre-convention speeches: job creation, “fair share” taxation for millionaires and billionaires, and defending Social Security and Medicare benefits from that small circle who will go to any lengths to cut them.
But the race is on, and the finish line is within sight. If voters are going to persuade the White House to make a course correction, they’d better do it soon. One thing is clear: If Democrats don’t do a better job distinguishing themselves from the GOP than they did in 2010, they’ll get the same outcome.
Obama isn’t enjoying that bump because a few people mentioned a Simpson-Bowles plan. The bump came from talk about jobs, protecting Social Security and Medicare, and asking millionaires to pay their fair share. Call it what you want, but the right economic plan is also a winning political platform.
But the Simpson-Bowles plan, even if it’s presented as “Austerity Lite,” will hurt the Democrats. And it will spell disaster for people who depend on Social Security or Medicare, people who need a job, or… well, for pretty much everyone. American voters want these programs protected. They’ve rejected the austerity economics that’s currently wounding Europe. And they appreciate it when someone represents their interests.
The party that speaks for these voters will find better rewards than anyone else can offer — even the billionaire-funded insiders who make up the Circle and want to leave the rest of us in a hole.
Der Spiegel – German High Court OKs Permanent Bailout Fund With Reservations – 12 September 2012
(Lucas : Draghi is also pushing for a banking union that will bring more centralized power to the ECB and the ones in power in the (now to establish) ESM and the EU. The bondbuying can go through. Also we await Bernanke tomorrow say QE3. It is highly likely. So we are still putting on the bandages till the things fall apart anyway.)
Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has cleared the way for the country to ratify the European Stability Mechanism, the permanent euro bailout fund.
Germany and Europe can both breathe a sigh of relief on Wednesday: The Federal Constitutional Court has rejected a petition to stop the ratification of the permanent euro rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism. The decision clears the way for the ESM to go into effect.
In a historically significant signal for the euro rescue, the German Federal Constitutional Court on Wednesday ruled there are no grounds to stop the country from ratifying the European Stability Mechanism, the permanent euro bailout fund, and the fiscal pact aimed at bringing economic governance to countries in the euro zone. The decision bolstered stock markets in Europe and around the world and also strengthened the euro. However, the justices at the Karslruhe-based court also expressed some reservations.
The court ordered that ratification can only be completed if it is ensured under international law that Germany’s current maximum liability of €190 billion ($245 billion) can only be increased with the approval of the German representatives in both the ESM Board of Governors and its Board of Directors, court President Andreas Vosskuhle said. “(No) provision of this treaty may be interpreted in a way that establishes higher payment obligations for the Federal Republic of Germany without the agreement of the German representative,” the court states.This also means that Germany’s federal parliament, the Bundestag, must play the leading role in important decisions. Under a German law accompanying the ratification of the ESM treaty, the German parliament must first vote on the positions taken by German representatives in the ESM boards before they can act on them. However, it is still unclear at this point whether decisions will require a vote of the full parliament or the significantly smaller budget committee.
In another significant condition, the court ruled that Germany must ensure that the treaty is implemented in a way that ensures that representatives of the Bundestag, and the Bundesrat, the upper legislative chamber that represents the federal states, are comprehensively informed of the bailout fund’s activities despite the professional secrecy that ESM employees are required to adhere to.
Vosskuhle also noted that the decision on the permanent rescue fund is provisional and that full proceedings would follow.
Germany is the only euro-zone member state that has not yet ratified the treaty establishing the ESM. Without the participation of the EU’s largest member state, the bailout fund has not been able to begin its work yet.
‘Good for Germany, Good for Europe’
Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), which is the junior coalition partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, greeted the ruling. “It was a smart decision reflecting the pro-European spirit of our consitution,” he said, adding that the conditions imposed by the court had been necessary and that Germany could not be allowed to become overburdened. “The Federal Constitutional Court has affirmed the policies of the federal government and declared it to be constitutional. That’s good for Germany and good for Europe.”
The group Mehr Demokratie (“More Democracy”), together with 37,000 German citizens, had sued at the country’s highest court to halt the ESM’s ratification. The group alleged that Germany was entering into “unlimited and irreversible liability risks.” Peter Gauweiler, a politician with the conservative Christian Social Union who is a prominent critic of the German government’s euro rescue policies, and the Left Party had claimed that accepting the new liabilities would be irresponsible.
There are also critical voices within Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union party, which has largely stood behind her policies in rescuing the euro, but is also home to some of her greatest adversaries in the crisis. Wolfgang Bosbach, a notorious critic of the euro rescue, expressed skepticism about the court’s ruling. Depite the conditions imposed by the court, he said, Germany still carried enormous liabilities. “I have mixed feelings about the ruling,” he said. On the one hand, it has strengthened parliament’s hand in Berlin. But he also warned that it only created the appearance that the upper ceiling on Germany’s liability would be limited to €190 billion. He argued that if the European Central Bank purchases government bonds in an unlimited manner, as the bank has said it may do, that would also increase Germany’s potential liability.
German President Free To Sign Treaty
Following Wednesday’s ruling, German President Joachim Gauck is now free to sign the ESM treaty, which was already approved by Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, in June. The ESM can only go into effect with his signature.
The permanent euro bailout fund will operate in parallel with its predecessor, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), for a period, completely replacing it by mid-2013. The ESM will be equipped with €700 billion in capital but will only be able to lend a maximum of €500 billion.
In accordance with its share capital in the European Central Bank (ECB), Germany is providing guarantees for 27 percent of the ESM’s funds. Germany is required to provide €22 billion in cash to the fund as well as guarantees totalling close to €170 billion. But critics fear that Germany will have to provide far more cash and guarantees in the end.
Despite firm words of warning in the past, the court has never ruled against the ratification of a major EU treaty and most politicians in Berlin, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, expected that the constitutional guardian in Karlsruhe would give its blessing to the ESM.Stock markets across Europe showed gains following the Karlsruhe ruling. Eurostoxx, an index of blue chip European companies, rose briefly by 1.2 percent — to close to 2,580 points. Spain’s leading index, Ibex, also rose for a time by over 1 percent exceeding 8,000 points. Meanwhile, Italy’s FSTE rose by more than 1 percent, bringing it to a total of almost 200 points.
The euro also rose on the news to $1.2906, its highest level since mid-May.
Check SPIEGEL INTERNATIONAL later for further updates.
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