1st Qtr 2009: Looking Back

In our year-end wrap up, 2008: Looking Back, I said that the big question of 2008 was the same one I have been asking as $4 trillion went missing from the US government: “Where is the money?”

With bailouts now approaching $12-14 trillion and counting (See Bailout Mo’ Money) the importance of this question continued to grow in the first quarter of 2009.  With the laws related to public and private financial management treated by insiders as mostly irrelevant, the global financial coup d’ etat underway is becoming more apparent.

Who is in charge? Why are they behaving this way? Where is this going? We know that the first bailout overcame Congressional resistance thanks in no small part to Obama’s intervention and support. Now in office for less than 90 days, Obama has proved himself to the bankers who financed his campaign to be the change on which they were counting. My prediction is that Obama will do more to help the bankers achieve centralized control and one world government than any US politician to date.

For many years, America has led the global economy through defense spending, consumption and financial engineering. At year-end, the US stock market represented 44% of total global stock market float.  American financial clout has depended on the dollar serving as the world’s reserve currency and central banks, sovereign wealth funds and global institutional investors buying ever-growing amounts of US Treasury and agency bonds.

I am reminded of one British investment manager who said at a private conference in 2000, “The question of whether or not aliens exist is rising in importance. Now that the Americans have borrowed 80% of all the capital on the planet, it appears that the only place they could go for more capital is off planet.” Actually, there is more that can be extracted on the planet and that is what my Slow Burn scenario and belief that the military holds the US dollar up is all about.

With sufficient military and intelligence force, we can keep financial assets subsidized and financial markets manipulated forever.  We just need to be willing to control and depopulate.  Which is, indeed, what we appear to be doing. Financial theft and drain can now simply be added to a long list of poisons and control technologies: fluoridation, chemtrails, junk food, TV entrainment and subliminal programming, narcotics trafficking, suppression of health care and energy technology and so forth.

Recently, the proposed health care data system (See The Data Beast) and a carbon trading system were added to the list of methods to accelerate corporate and banking control and general depopulation. The subtle onslaught of tactics to lower the birth rate and the average life expectancy continue in a manner designed to make the general population appear bad and to blame for their failing condition.

The last time the US economy had to work through a dump, in a significant “pump and dump,” I was serving as Assistant Secretary of Housing. The economy was kept going with band-aids through the presidential election in 1988. Things started to come unglued after the inauguration, with the disclosure and corporate and individual tax collection dates in March and April heightening the tension. As growing unemployment and falling state and local revenues resulted in greater and greater pain and bankruptcies, the summer and early fall brought real fears that the global financial system was going to crash.

I remember sitting at Treasury with the Secretary of Treasury Brady and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan as we began the government resolutions of failing banks in the third quarter of 1989.  You could have cut the fear in the room that day with a knife. I anticipate similarities between the events of 1989 and 2009.

Corporations and investors delivered a lot of bad news as they filed in March. The pension fund losses announced in the first quarter were significant. Now individuals are preparing their taxes for filing on April 15. A stock market rally is easing investors losses in the short run.  State governments have been temporarily supported with the stimulus package. However, I expect the pain at the state and municipal levels to rise and the increased interest in asserting states rights to rise with it. ( See States vs. Feds.) Watch for tensions to rise steadily between now and late summer and early fall as we move into the reconciliation of the 2010 federal budget in September.

In this week’s Solari Report (Thursday, April 2), I’m doing a 1st Quarter “wrap-up” looking back at events in the first three months of 2009 and discussing what they mean to our future. Here are some of the charts I will be using in our discussion.

Here’s an outline:

• Davos, G-20 and The Midianite Thing
• Geography is Destiny
• Obama: Change Bankers Can Count On
• Your Pension Fund and 401k
• Local Crime, Disinformation and Covert Ops
• Print Media (and Lots More) Consolidates
• Russia, China & the Shift to Global Governance
• Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Is the Dollar Going to Fall?
• Opportunities Round Up
• April Solari Reports: Exploring the Worst Case
• Living with the Ostriches in Your Life

Following the first quarter wrap-up, throughout April, we will be exploring the worst scenarios for the economy and how you can successfully prepare and navigate them with Franklin Sanders of The Moneychanger in our precious metals update on April 9th, Dimitry Orlov, author of ReInventing Collapse on April 16th, and Clif High of Half Past Human: Adventures in Future Viewing on April 23rd. One of the many benefits of contemplating the worst case is that it inspires you to take those actions which diversify your resources and build local resiliency. These actions are an excellent investment of your time and will serve you well even if the worst case does not happen.

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I hope you’ll join us.