Tag Archives: Media

Feds Blame Former Marine For Alleged Hutaree “Christian Militia” Conspiracy

Posted on by

Michael Isikoff at Newsweek has posted on the non-story de jour, which apparently is that the federal government has filed a court document in the Hutaree case. The document is a brief in opposition to the defendant Michael Meeks’ motion to revoke the detention order against him.

We are looking forward to the day when a defendant’s every legal filing also becomes the subject of such prompt attention. I’ve italicized the federal government designation of the “crime” that Isikoff has adopted as established fact:

______________________________________________________________________________________

“A former U.S. Marine rifle expert and veteran of the 1991 Persian Gulf War supplied the extremist Christian “Hutaree” militia with a “hit list” of federal judges and elected officials and served as the group’s “heavy gunner” who was responsible for providing a “significant volume of firepower” against designated law-enforcement targets, according to a court document released by federal prosecutors.

In a new court filing, federal prosecutors for the first time portray the former Marine, Michael David Meeks, 40, as a key figure in the Michigan-based Hutaree’s alleged conspiracy to trigger an “uprising” against the U.S. government by plotting to assassinate law-enforcement officers with improvised explosive devices.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Meeks, the prosecutors allege, used his four years of U.S. military training to become a member of the Hutaree’s “inner circle” and participated in “military-style training exercises ” with the group on a dozen occasions between October 2008 and February of this year.”

As far as I can tell from this, the only thing the federal government has got on them so far is hearsay and some combat-style exercises.

Iraq War: Firing On Old Women And Taxis

Posted on by

Update: This comes from Glenn Greenwald. There’s been criticism by the Weekly Standard and others that WikiLeaks released an edited rather than a complete video. Greenwald says Wikileaks released both on the same site and the mistake arises from an erroneous statement in a NY Times piece on the subject.

“The only problem with this?  From the very beginning, WikiLeaks released the full, 38-minute, unedited version of that incident — and did so right on the site they created for release of the edited video.  In fact, the first video is marked “Short version,” and the second video — posted directly under it — is marked “Full version,” and just for those who still didn’t pick up on the meaning, they explained:

WikiLeaks has released both the original 38 minutes video and a shorter version with an initial analysis. Subtitles have been added to both versions from the radio transmissions.

This is Bumiller’s fault for misleadingly suggesting that WikiLeaks failed to release the full video. I know she’s been notified by at least one NYT reader of her misleading sentences but has thus far failed to respond.  Establishment media outlets can’t stand that WikiLeaks is breaking major stories and are trying — consciously or otherwise — to imply that they’re not as reliable as Real Media Outlets (hence, the “WikiLeaks edited the video to 17 minutes” without indicating that they released the full video).  But this is exactly how clear falsehoods are manufactured and then spread.”

Update (Thanks to AD Niven):

The blog post below (April 6, 2010; see also the April 8, 2010 post) says the Wikileaks video was edited to make the event look less defensible.

(Lila: That’s the reason I didn’t post it…….I’ve been through this a number of times with “war footage”)

***********************************

The NY Times, in their story about the incident, spends paragraph after paragraph fretting that we killed a bunch of innocent men standing around doing nothing more than contemplating whether Grotius’ notion of jus ad bellum conflicted with that of Aquinas. Then they hit you with this seemingly important piece of information buried near the end:

“Late Monday, the United States Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, released the redacted report on the case, which provided some more detail.The report showed pictures of what it said were machine guns and grenades found near the bodies of those killed. It also stated that the Reuters employees “made no effort to visibly display their status as press or media representatives and their familiar behavior with, and close proximity to, the armed insurgents and their furtive attempts to photograph the coalition ground forces made them appear as hostile combatants to the Apaches that engaged them.”

I’d also direct you to Bill Roggio’s post on the subject if my own thoughts didn’t convince you that this was one of the worst smear jobs against our military based on zero evidence in the last decade.

Case closed.

Dahr Jamail in Truthout (hat-tip to Lawrence Vance at LRC blog):

“On Monday, April 5, Wikileaks.org posted video footage from Iraq, taken from a US military Apache helicopter in July 2007 as soldiers aboard it killed 12 people and wounded two children. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency: photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh.

The US military confirmed the authenticity of the video.

The footage clearly shows an unprovoked slaughter, and is shocking to watch whilst listening to the casual conversation of the soldiers in the background.

As disturbing as the video is, this type of behavior by US soldiers in Iraq is not uncommon.

Truthout has spoken with several soldiers who shared equally horrific stories of the slaughtering of innocent Iraqis by US occupation forces.

“I remember one woman walking by,” said Jason Washburn, a corporal in the US Marines who served three tours in Iraq. He told the audience at the Winter Soldier hearings that took place March 13-16, 2008, in Silver Spring, Maryland, “She was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading toward us, so we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher, and when the dust settled, we realized that the bag was full of groceries. She had been trying to bring us food and we blew her to pieces.”

The hearings provided a platform for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan to share the reality of their occupation experiences with the media in the US.

Washburn testified on a panel that discussed the rules of engagement (ROE) in Iraq, and how lax they were, to the point of being virtually nonexistent.

“During the course of my three tours, the rules of engagement changed a lot,” Washburn’s testimony continued, “The higher the threat the more viciously we were permitted and expected to respond. Something else we were encouraged to do, almost with a wink and nudge, was to carry ‘drop weapons’, or by my third tour, ‘drop shovels’. We would carry these weapons or shovels with us because if we accidentally shot a civilian, we could just toss the weapon on the body, and make them look like an insurgent.”

Hart Viges, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division of the Army who served one year in Iraq, told of taking orders over the radio.

“One time they said to fire on all taxicabs because the enemy was using them for transportation…. One of the snipers replied back, ‘Excuse me? Did I hear that right? Fire on all taxicabs?’ The lieutenant colonel responded, ‘You heard me, trooper, fire on all taxicabs.’ After that, the town lit up, with all the units firing on cars. This was my first experience with war, and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the deployment….”

Rick Ackerman: Headlines Misread The Market

Posted on by

“Trader Rick Ackerman interprets the cheer-leading in the headlines:

“Could the newspapers simply be misinterpreting the signs? It would certainly seem that way. To take the headlines cited above, we see oil’s price surge as having absolutely nothing to do with a pick-up in demand. Rather, the push toward $90 a barrel represents speculative excesses in the futures markets, exacerbated by the reluctance of traders to take short positions.

How could they, when, on any given day, a terrorist with a missile launcher could cause the global price of crude to double instantly by scuttling a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz?

As for “bets on growth” pushing stocks higher, it is not bullish speculation that has been driving up shares for the last 13 months, but rather a vast excess of liquidity in the financial system.

As for the rise in T-Note yields to four percent, we seriously doubt this is being caused by competition from expansion-minded borrowers in the private sector; rather, it comes from the rising fear among lenders that they will be repaid in a currency whose value looks all but certain to fall precipitously in the years ahead.

If the central bankers truly believe that strong economic growth is about to trigger inflation, why do they continue to hold the federal funds rate near zero?“

Daily Bell Interview of GATA’s Bill Murphy

Posted on by

The Daily Bell interviews Bill Murphy of GATA (Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee):

“It’s something like out of a James Bond movie. What are the odds that my testimony gets blotted out from live coverage and then our whistleblower and wife get hit by a car the next day? … The gold scandal story is larger than life to begin with. Now throw this spooky stuff on top of it. Veteran Cafe (Le Metropole Cafe, Murphy’s website) members will recall that in the early part of this century what happened to me during a six week period …

My car was stolen and then found on a nearby highway one day after the insurance company paid me off. There was no damage to the car, money left in the console, and a cashmere sweater in the back seat.

My web site was hacked and somebody sent out a very goofy email supposedly from me, but it was not me.

Coming out of a restaurant/night spot less than two blocks from where I live, somebody jumped out from behind a wall and sucker-punched me with brass knuckles. I was out cold and thought my jaw was broken.

Nothing like this has happened before or since.

Daily Bell: Do you think, this time, that the CFTC must take all this seriously.

Bill Murphy: Outside of Bart, it appears none of them want to go there. GATA is like their worst nightmare because they are like everyone else … kowtowing to the rich and powerful. However, a firestorm is growing about what GATA has to say, partially ignited by the Andrew Maguire revelations. I suspect we are finally going to receive some mainstream press in the months ahead, which will be like shining a light on Dracula.

Daily Bell: Why hasn’t it already?

Bill Murphy: The relationship between a government agency like the SEC and the CFTC is insidious. Nobody wants to rock the boat. Heck a number of these people at these agencies end up working on Wall Street, or interact business-wise in some other manner. The Chairman of the CFTC is a Goldman Sachs alumni. That about says it all.”

My Comment:

To follow..

Gold, Silver, and “Suspicious Foreigners”

Posted on by

Mark Mitchell comments on the CFTC hearings and the manipulation of trading of gold and silver derivatives (read IOUs):

“Maguire added: “What’s going to happen, if you’re an Asian trader, or a non-Western trader, who has no loyalty, or doesn’t care about homeland security or anything else, who says, now wait a minute, if I can establish in my mind that there is 100 ounces of paper gold, paper silver for example, for each ounce of real silver, than I have a naked short situation here that I can squeeze and they can go on the spot market which is basically a foreign exchange transaction, short dollar, long silver to any amount they want – billions, trillions — whatever they want, and they can take this market, squeeze this market, and blow it up…”

In other words, the problem isn’t just that criminal naked short sellers manipulate the metals market downwards. It is that they have created a condition where a foreign entity can merely demand delivery of real metal to induce a massive “squeeze” that sends the price of metals skyrocketing, putting huge downward pressure on the dollar. Meanwhile, says Maguire, with prices rising, “for 100 customers who show up there is only one guy who is going to get his gold or silver and there’s 99 who will be disappointed, so without any new money coming into the market, just asking for that gold and silver will create a default.”

This would be a point, except…except..

1. This kind of fraudulent activity in the markets in the West is going to be seen by most foreigners as a direct act of financial aggression against them, not just domestic market participants. You can’t admit that your entire market system is rigged in favor of US and European banks, and then expect that the rest of the world is just going to stand there and not retaliate in some way…with justification.

Turnabout is fair play. Defense is not offense.

2.  I doubt that Chinese, Saudis or any other foreigners are interested in squeezing the dollar, since they are the primary holders of dollars. In international markets, the dollar is still the reserve currency and most people save in it. Nor is the American middle class, loyal or disloyal, going to want a weaker dollar. They earn their money in dollars. The only people likely to attack the dollar are speculators, who will do it because they see a gain to be made from it. And the people most likely to do it successfully are the same people who are involved in manipulating it in the first place...the corrupt bankers and financiers who’ve got the most to gain in this and the least to lose.

Nothing that Paulson, Greenspan, Geithner, Summers, or Bernanke have been doing adds up to anything like a “strong dollar” policy. They’ve done everything but shout “bail” to dollar holders.

Propaganda Nation: Libertarian Labels

Posted on by

Robert Wenzel at EconomicPolicyJournal.com:

Tyler Cowen has listed from “his gut” the 10 books that have influenced him the most. Human Action by Ludwig von Mises is not on the list. None of Mises’s books are on the list. Keynes makes the list. Of Keynes, he writes:

John Maynard Keynes: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.  Keynes is one of the greatest thinkers of economics and there are new ideas on virtually every page.

Which raises the question for me, “Why does Cowen even care what Austrian economists call themselves?” If he can’t put a Mises book on a list of ten books that influenced him,when Human Action is the greatest economic text ever written, yet finds room for Keynes and “his new ideas,” I have to classify him a Keynesian, pure and simple.”

Why does Cowen care? It’s all about subversion of language…

“Libertarianism” thus defined (or, more accurately, labeled) comes to mean something not very removed from “liberalism”….

…which today has moved so much to the left that in many areas it’s indistinguishable from communism.

Which means you get to call yourself a libertarian but still push for the same programs and policies that the left-liberals push for.

Which keeps you within the range of “respectability.”

And keeps you out of SPLC lists that have you rubbing shoulders with the Pentagon shooter and anyone else who decides to get physical with the state apparatus.

Mind you, at our little blog, we have no quarrel with communism or communists. We don’t think they’re evil. We just don’t want them turning us into guinea pigs for their experiments. When they feel an urge to test the limits of human malleability, we suggest that they try it out first on their spouses and off-spring. See how that turns out after a generation, and then give us a call and we’ll talk….

King World News Reports DNS Attack Following Post On CFTC Whistleblower

Posted on by

GATA reports attacks on friendly sites:

“Eric King told GATA today, “We are on one of the top grid server systems in the world, where traffic is not an issue, and this has never happened before. This was a case of an entity needing to silence the messenger.”

No Internet site has given as much voice to GATA and other pro-gold and free-market advocates as King World News has, so given the scope of the attack on the the King World News Internet site, it is hard not be awfully suspicious about it.

King’s interview with Murphy, Douglas, and your secretary/treasurer can be found here:

http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2010/3/31_G…

Meanwhile, GATA’s friend Trace Mayer, proprietor of RunToGold.com, reports that his March 28 commentary on last week’s hearing of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission —

http://www.runtogold.com/2010/03/cftc-gold-and-silver-hearing-is-old-new…

— was followed by a similarly massive attack on RunToGold’s Internet server. “To handle spikes in traffic,” Mayer says, “I am on an expensive enterprise-level cloud server with a company that handles hosting for some of the big dogs, like Sony and Toyota, and my server got hammered. The site was down for 2 1/2 hours, from about noon to 2:30p PT on March 30. There were no issues with my hosting provider and it appears we have everything under control now. I have never had an issue like this before. Anyway, it looks like we have someone’s attention. Keep yanking on that tail.”

My Comment:

You see. This isn’t paranoia. In the past, following certain sorts of posts, I’ve experienced peculiar things too. Sometimes, the blog feels like it’s been hacked. Or my email suddenly doesn’t work. Or I get nasty comments from what sounds like the same person, only writing from different IP’s. Or I get flooded with spam from porn sites (more than the usual quota, I mean).

You tend to dismiss these things as coincidental. But after a couple of years of noticing when they happen, you start realizing that someone doesn’t like what you’re saying.

And if that’s true of my little blog, it’s going to be doubly so for bigger venues.

Aldous Huxley On How “Scientific Dictatorships” Induce Compliance

Posted on by

Aldous Huxley, novelist and social critic, gave a talk at the University of Berkeley  on the dictatorship he saw in the future of the United States, a “scientific” dictatorship, he termed it. In it, control would be maintained by narcotizing the population with conveniences, entertainment, consumerism, and drugs. Ultimately, compliance would become pleasurable..

‘Today we are faced, I think, with the approach of what may be called the ultimate revolution, the final revolution, where man can act directly on the mind-body of his fellows.”

(Huxley, The Ultimate Revolution, University of Berkeley, March 20, 1962)

Hanky-Panky At The Counting House

Posted on by

I thought I’d repost a piece that I wrote in Dissident Voice, way back in 2006. It helps give some background to the JP Morgan manipulation story.

And it also adds some background to the ongoing re-valorization of the once discredited IMF. Along with that re-valorization, is the hyping of anyone supporting even further central regulation, although the financial crisis occurred in all sorts of places that have plenty of it.

All this centralization and global government is supposedly for the welfare of the world – but there is no “welfare of the world” that can be safely accepted as gospel from the mouths of the financial industry and its political and media allies.

Note the date of the piece below – back on June 6, 2006, when, dare I say it, most of the financial talking- heads and blogs now being treated as the only legitimate interpreters of reality were doing…well, they weren’t reading GATA or supporting its work, I’m pretty sure. To have done so then would have made them persona non grata in the very same liberal media that is now embracing this research and that GATA, in turn, seems to be endorsing….for its own reasons..

Check it out for yourself.

Here’s an excerpt from the piece: “Hanky-Panky at the Counting House” (June 6, 2006)

Also, at Dissident Voice, you can find “Was The IMF Involved in Gold Price Manipulation” (June 8, 2006) which was also posted at Daily Reckoning and on one of the gold sites.  I think it’s been taken off Daily Reckoning since.

“The unofficial theory is naturally a lot juicier, although described by even sworn enemies of paper currency as conspiratorial. Still, it’s managed to rear its head in the Wall Street Journal, so it can’t be all wet. Here is what widely respected libertarian Congressman Ron Paul had to say on Feb 14, 2002:

While the Treasury denies it is dealing in gold, the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) has uncovered evidence suggesting that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, operating through the Exchange-Stabilization Fund and in cooperation with major banks and the International Monetary Fund, have been interfering in the gold market with the goal of lowering the price of gold. The purpose of this policy has been to disguise the true effects of the monetary bubble responsible for the artificial prosperity of the 1990s, and to protect the politically-powerful banks that are heavy invested in gold derivatives. GATA believes federal actions to drive down the price of gold help protect the profits of these banks at the expense of investors, consumers, and taxpayers around the world.

GATA has also produced evidence that American officials are involved in gold transactions. Alan Greenspan himself referred to the federal government’s power to manipulate the price of gold at hearings before the House Banking Committee and the Senate Agricultural Committee in July, 1998: Nor can private counterparts restrict supplies of gold, another commodity whose derivatives are often traded over-the-counter, where central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise. [Emphasis added] (3)

More specifically:

Gold is borrowed by Morgan Chase from the Bank of England at 1 percent interest and then Morgan Chase sells the gold on the open market, then reinvests the proceeds into interest-bearing vehicles at maybe 6 percent.

At some point, though, Morgan Chase must return the borrowed gold to the Bank of England, and if the price of gold were significantly to increase during any point in this process, it would make it prohibitive and potentially ruinous to repay the gold. (4)

In plain English, the strong dollar policy that put the sizzle in the stock market under Clinton was made possible only by manipulating the gold market to keep prices low. The low interest rates which kept the economy on the boil went hand in hand with low gold prices. Investment banks used the low rates to borrow gold from the central banks and sold them short (short selling being the technique of selling assets you don’t actually own in the hope of buying back at a cheaper price because you anticipate a fall in the price). This allowed the banks to make billions from a market rigged to take the risk out of their shorting. And it kept the dollar pumped up. And who was the architect of this strong dollar policy? Why, none other than Robert Rubin of Goldman Sachs — one of the bullion banks most implicated in the gold fixing scenarios.

So, the appearance of another Gold-man at this critical moment is all the proof the gold cartel theorists need that more manipulation is in store to keep the dollar up, gold down, and the bullion banks from losing their . . . er . . .  shorts. (5)

And if this seems conspiratorial, consider what Paul Mylchreest, investment analyst at Cheuvreux, top ranked for its research in Western Europe and part of Credit Agricole, the largest bank in France says today, “Central banks have 10-15,000 tonnes of gold less than their officially reported reserves of 31,000. This gold has been lent to bullion banks and their counterparties and has already been sold for jewellery, etc. Non-gold producers account for most and may be unable to cover shorts without causing a spike in the gold price…” (6)

Or what the Wall Street Journal itself wrote about what took place in the seventies:

Worried the falling dollar was undermining its anti-inflation efforts, the Carter administration announced a multi-part support package on Nov. 1, 1978: The Treasury would use gold sales and foreign borrowing and draw on its reserves with the International Monetary Fund to defend the dollar. At the same time the Federal Reserve raised its discount rate a full point. (7)

And that was in the ’70s, when there was no credible alternative to the dollar, India and China were sleeping giants, Russia was still the Soviet Union, and the United States was not threatening to nuke the Middle East.

How bad is the situation?

[A]s of June 2000, J.P. Morgan reported nearly $30 billion of gold derivatives and Chase Manhattan Corp., although merged with J.P. Morgan, still reported separately in 2000 that it had $35 billion in gold derivatives. Analysts agree that the derivatives have exploded at this bank and that both positions are enormous relative to the capital of the bank and the size of the gold market.

It gets worse. J.P. Morgan’s total derivatives position reportedly now stands at nearly $29 trillion, or three times the U.S. annual gross domestic product. Wall Street insiders speculate that if the gold market were to rise, Morgan Chase could be in serious financial difficulty because of its “short positions” in gold. In other words, if the price of gold were to increase substantially, Morgan Chase and other bullion banks that are highly leveraged in gold would have trouble covering their liabilities. (8)

That was 2000. This is 2006.

So long as gold remains a mere relic . . . a yellow reminder of what used to be money . . . no harm done. Unless something absurd happens, that is. Something absurd like, say, gold doubling to $573 an ounce inside 5 years. If that happened, then the “carry trade” of borrowing gold to invest in paper could become a very expensive way to bankrupt the entire global financial system. (9)

This spring gold hit over $700. And that’s why the hanky-panky is likely to begin in earnest now.

Lila Rajiva is a freelance writer in Baltimore, and the author of the must-read book The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the US Media (Monthly Review Press, 2005) She can be reached at: lrajiva@hotmail.com. Copyright (c) 2006 by Lila Rajiva

NOTES

(1) “Good as Goldman: Bush drafts Hank to bat third,” Daniel Gross, Slate, Tuesday, May 30, 2006.

(2) “Please, Sir, I Want Some More. How Goldman Sachs is carving up its $11 billion money pie,” Duff Mcdonald, New York Metro, Dec 21, 2005.

(3) Speech of Congressman Ron Paul, U.S. House of Representatives, February 14, 2002, www.house.gov/paul

(4) “All That Glitters Is Not Gold,” Kelly Patricia O’Meara, Insight Magazine, March 4, 2000.

(5) According to GATA, the cartel includes J.P. Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the U.S. Treasury, and the Federal Reserve

(6) “How Central Banks Have Kept Gold Down,” Adrian Ash, Money Week, February 9, 2006.


(7) “As Dollar Weakens, Hidden Strengths May Stave off Crisis,” Wall Street Journal, January 17 2005.


(8) See Note 4.

(9) See Note 6.

The Corporate Media: Suffering From Truth Emergency

Posted on by

We have an elite that has a stranglehold on what gets heard through its grip on professional societies and the major print and TV news. Prizes, media attention, peer approval go to very few media outlets. It’s well- known that only reporters and columnists at a handful of papers get serious attention. That’s a truly dangerous state of affairs and we’re suffering the fall-out from it. What makes it even worse is that news itself is more and more swept aside by trashy, sensation-seeking reporting, which leaves the audience with misinformation or simply a great black hole of ignorance.

Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips analyze the “truth emergency” ravaging the corporate media in the West (and to a lesser degree, everywhere):

“Truth Emergency: Keeping the Facts at Bay

The truth comes as conqueror only because we have lost the art of receiving it as guest.
– Rabindranath Tagore

What are some of these truths, that not knowing them creates a literal state of emergency for human society? Here are two of many possible examples. A 2008 report from The World Bank admitted that in 2005, over three billion people lived on less than $2.50 a day and about forty-four percent of these people survive on less than $1.25. Complete and total wretchedness can be the only description for the circumstances faced by so many, especially those in urban areas of so-called developing nations. Simple items Americans take for granted like phone calls, nutritious food, vacations, television, dental care, and inoculations are beyond the possible for billions of people.6

In another ignored but related story, Starvation.net logged the increasing impacts of world hunger and starvation. Over 30,000 people a day (eighty-five percent of children under five) die of malnutrition, curable diseases, and starvation. The number of deaths has exceeded three hundred million people over the past forty years. These stories should be alarming headlines, certainly more significant than celebrity tripe and tabloid hype.7

Continuing on the theme of human poverty and its ramifications, farmers around the world grow more than enough food to feed the entire world adequately. Global grain production yielded a record 2.3 billion tons in 2007, up four percent from the year before, yet, billions of people go hungry every day. The website Grain.org describes the core reasons for continuing hunger in a recent article “Making a Killing from Hunger.” It turns out that while farmers grow enough food to feed the world, commodity speculators and huge grain traders like Cargill control the global food prices and distribution. Starvation is profitable for corporations when demands for food push the prices up. Cargill announced that profits for commodity trading for the first quarter of 2008 were eighty-six percent above 2007. World food prices grew twenty-two percent from June 2007 to June 2008 and a significant portion of the increase was propelled by the $175 billion invested in commodity futures that speculate on price instead of seeking to feed the hungry. This results in erratic food price spirals, both up and down, with food insecurity remaining widespread.“

My Comment:

Some of this commentary of course paints speculation with too broad a brush. Futures markets can, and do, provide efficient allocation of resources if they function as they should. The problem is not the futures market but the corruption of the market and the constant meddling in it by the state, which blunts the normal checks that the market would otherwise provide.

And again that goes back to public culture and professional standards that have become debased. The deeper question is how they became debased.

Which, of course, leads us to the government’s manipulation of the interest rate. That is where the problem lies.

But meanwhile, where is the media in all this? Providing the context so people can understand what’s going on?

No. It’s rooting around in John Edward’s trash can……