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Aug 5, 2011

Here's Why S&P Downgraded U.S credit rating: a $1 Billion Bet

 

The $1 Billion Armageddon Trade Placed Against the United States Bond Market

Interest-Rates / US Bonds Jul 25, 2011 - 06:04 AM

By: Money_Morning

Interest-Rates

Jack Barnes writes : Someone dropped a bomb on the bond market Thursday - a $1 billion Armageddon trade betting the United States will lose its AAA credit rating.

In one moment, an invisible trader placed a single trade that moved the most liquid debt market in the world.

The massive trade wasn't placed in bonds themselves; it was placed in the futures market.

The trade was for block trades of 5,370 10-year Treasury futures executed at 124-03 and 3,100 Treasury bond futures executed at 125-01.

The value of the trade was about $850 million dollars. In simple terms, if that was a direct bond buy, no one would be talking about it.

However, with the use of futures, you have to have margin capacity behind the trade. That means with a single push of a button someone was willing to commit more than $1 billion of real capital to this trade with expectations of a 10-to-1 return ratio.

You only do this if you see an edge.

This means someone is confident that the United States is either going to default or is going to lose its AAA rating. That someone is willing to bet the proverbial farm that U.S. interest rates will be going up.

I believe what happened is a debt-ceiling deal was done in Washington and leaked to a major proprietary trader. Everyone knows the debt negotiations in Washington have been an extreme game of brinksmanship between political parties, but now someone knows how that game played out.

This had the hallmarks of one of the largest bond shops in the world knowing something the rest of the market didn't.

The number of shops or even central banks that can take on this level of market risk is extremely small. Some that come to mind are hedge fund manager John Paulson, Bill Gross's PIMCO, and the U.S. and Chinese central banks.

Paulson already scored big - about $6 billion big - on a similar trade years ago when he bet against subprime mortgages, the investments that helped bring down Lehman Bros. and many other investors.

Whoever was behind it wanted a trade on ASAP, and didn't care about the ripples they would cause.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article29477.html

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S & P's Downgrade Purely Political Act Against President Obama

 

The U.S. Treasury Dept. said "A judgment flawed by a $2 trillion error speaks for itself."
 
ron sez: "This was purely a political act by Standard and Poor aimed at President Obama. The other two credit reporting agencies didn't issue any such downgrade - S&P is the same group of crooks who issued TRIPLE AAA credit ratings to all these failed mortgage securities. S&P was complicit in the big Wall Street fiasco. Since the S&P announcement, Republicans have issued a Pahvlovian-type response, railing against President Obama, blaming Obama for this downgrade. S&P Republicans couldn't stand how Obama has been bullet-proof against their failed attacks and failing economy; so this was a move they felt would stick against Obama's re-election run."
 
Treasury Dept.: Downgrade flawed by $2-Trillion error
By
S&P credit rating (Credit: CBS)

The Obama administration wasted little time in firing back at Standard and Poor's history-making downgrade of U.S. debt.

Late Friday, a Treasury Dept. spokesman told CBS News' Mark Knoller that "A judgment flawed by a $2-trillion error speaks for itself."

It was the first salvo in what will likely be extensive damage control by the Obama Administration, which now goes down in history as the first presidency to have a credit downgrade occur on its watch.

S&P cited "political brinksmanship" from both parties in its downgrade.

S&P downgrades U.S. debt
S & P statement on downgrade of U.S. debt

In as statement released Friday, S&P said: "The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policy making becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed."

"Republicans and Democrats have only been able to agree to relatively modest savings on discretionary spending while delegating to the Select Committee decisions on more comprehensive measures. It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options. In addition, the plan envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements, the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key to long-term fiscal sustainability."

President Obama met with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Friday before heading to Camp David for the weekend.

The credit rating agency announced Friday that it is cutting the country's top AAA rating by one notch to AA-plus. The credit agency said late Friday that it is making the move because the deficit reduction plan passed by Congress on Tuesday did not go far enough to stabilize the country's debt situation and that the policymaking is not stable or effective as needed to address the current economic challenge.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20088959-503544.html

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Thomas Dalton: Jewish Wealth, American Poverty (Aug. 5, 2011) [1 Attachment]



Hi Michael -- See attached.  

Thanks,
Thomas.

Anders Breivik: A Fundamentalist Noahide By Richard Edmondson

 

Anders Breivik: A Fundamentalist Noahide

By Richard Edmondson

[A shortened and edited version; read in full on http://leftwing-christian.net/ This is a very important article explaining that far from being a fundamentalist Christian, Breivik was a fundamentalist Noahide, a biggish sect whose members de-emphasize Christ and deify Jews. He even dreamed to build the Third Temple! Richard Edmondson answered the question that many of us pondered and pinpointed the religious ideas of Breivik- ISH]

Insofar as children and teens were the principal and deliberate targets, the atrocity of Breivik revealed a level of malevolence scarcely seen or imagined before. Perhaps the only thing that could compare to it would be the deliberate targeting of Palestinian children by Israeli soldiers during Operation Cast Lead.
Since the 7/22 terror attack, a number of Christian writers ( here and here for instance) have hastened to point out that Anders Breivik, though painted as a "Christian fundamentalist" by the media, does not appear to have been deeply religious and mainly seems to have been Christian in name only. While this may be true, what it overlooks is that such a de-emphasis of Christ is largely in keeping with Christian Zionism.
In Christian Zionism, Christ is reduced to a minor, almost inconsequential figure. CZs are quick to point out that Jesus was Jewish, and that's certainly a point in his favor where they are concerned, but the vast majority of his teachings are discarded. For CZs, the real object of worship is the Jewish people in a collective sense. Let me repeat that: CZs do not worship Christ; they worship Jews.
[…]So far as I know, it was Eileen Fleming who first drew an analogy between Christian Zionism and the Antichrist, writing: "The cult of 'Christian' Zionism is what the concept of the Anti-Christ is all about. This heretical theology of Premillennial Dispensation worships a god of Armageddon and not the God of love, forgiveness and compassion that Jesus/AKA The Prince of Peace taught." Christian Zionism has indeed become an "Antichrist virus" (for lack of a better metaphor) that has caught hold of Christianity and spread to near epidemic proportions. So acute is the problem, I suspect that what we are headed toward now is a rupturing of the faith similar to what took place in Judaism 2000 years ago with the rise of Christianity. In fact, one Catholic blogger has gone so far as to suggest that Christian Zionists are not Christians at all, but are in reality "Noahides":

Christians are not supposed to support Zionism. Nor are Christians supposed to support Judaism, as the religion itself seeks to undermine Christianity by sponsoring a new religion for Gentiles called Noahidism. Make no mistake about it, the purpose of this religion is to replace Christianity in the distant future.


The blogger is correct. Noahidism, based upon the so-called Seven Laws of Noah (see video), is a Talmudic construct that has been heavily promoted by the Chabad Lubavitch movement. It does not encompass any belief in Christ, who in fact is vilified by the Talmud.

Another common misconception about CZs is that they hope to trigger Armageddon and thereby bring about the second coming of Christ, but again we have to remember that Christ is not the main consideration. The primary object of veneration is Jews:

It was Judaism that believed man was created in God's image. It was traditional Judaism that gave us the concepts of hell, heaven, angels, devils, the acceptance of Adam and Eve as the first man and woman, the creation of the world in seven days, and even its age, four thousand years.
 
It was Judaism that taught us to sing while other religions wail in sorrow. It was Judaism that gave us love and respect for life. While pagan religions sacrificed their children to foreign gods, Judaism gave us a loving God who adored the life of every child.


The above words were written by Christian Zionist leader John Hagee in his book, In Defense of Israel (pg. 96-7). Hagee goes on to claim that the Old Testament "is the light of truth and reason upon which our society and civilization is built;" he asserts that Muslims "intend to crush Israel and destroy America;" and even defends the bombing of the King David Hotel. An attack which left 91 people dead, the blowing up of the King David was carried out by the Jewish Irgun exactly 65 years to the day before the atrocity in Norway.

 

Whether Breivik had ever come upon any of Hagee's writings or his numerous videos on YouTube I have no idea, but as I noted previously, this kind of ideology has the properties of a virus. And of course it's not hard to imagine a social misfit, such as Breivik seems to have been, coming to conceive that a murder spree against critics of Israel might be a good thing and coming to adopt such as his mission in life.

While, as I said, bringing Jesus back for the second time is not the sought-after prize, a struggle between good and evil—Armageddon if you will—does factor heavily in Christian Zionist theology, and so yes, for sure, the "end times" are very much upon us. What is "ending," however, will be the idea of equality of all people, the "multiculturalism" espoused by such as the present ruling party of Norway, to be replaced by a Jewish world order—and here is where the dividing line between Christian Zionism and Noahidism becomes very thin. In fact, they could be viewed as two separate strains of the same virus.

Noahidism is basically Christian Zionism with all the trappings of Christianity—any mention of Christ or loving your neighbor, etc.—formally erased and dispensed of. What is left is the belief that Gentiles must abide by the "seven Laws of Noah"—a set of principles that sound basically reasonable but which derive from the Talmud, not the Torah. They include six proscriptions—against murder, theft, blasphemy, idol worship, sexual immorality and eating the flesh of living animals—and one mandate—that judicial courts be set up. As I say, it sounds perfectly reasonable, but it's important to realize that in Noahidism, Jews are regarded as spiritually superior, and that by default they hold authority. In my last post, I linked to a video here featuring an Orthodox Jew discussing the seven Noahide Laws. It is a 10-minute video exuding Jewish superiority at just about every camera frame as the presenter explains, among other things, how it is that the Jewish soul is able to hold more light than a Gentile's.

In another video, here , a Chabad rabbi gives a talk on Noahidism to gullible Gentiles ( or b'nei Noach, or "children of Noah," as they are referred in Hebrew), while here a separate rabbi discusses how "righteous Gentiles" are in need of "guidelines for functioning together as a community," and finally, here , we are promised nothing short of world peace, miraculous medical cures, and a 12 hour work week if only Jews rule the world.

Are significant numbers of Gentiles really buying into this? Hard to say, but if Zionists can sell them soap, beer, and toothpaste, it probably stands to reason they will buy this as well. Here we can read of a Chabad rabbi's experiences teaching Noahide classes to Gentiles in Australia, as well as view a photo gallery of his converts, (on the subject of intermarriage between Jews and Gentiles, he comments, tellingly, that the practice is "spiritually detrimental" for both groups and compares it to the field of chemistry wherein "we find that certain substances are harmless and even useful on their own, or when mixed with other substances, but are lethal when mixed with each other."), while Noahide communities in various cities and countries have set up their own sites hereherehereherehere, and here. There is also a Noahide group onYahoo, and even a Russian Noahide group.

Neo-fascists? Or Noahides? Take your pick. Perhaps most pertinent of all, on March 5, 1991, Noahidism pretty much became the official religion of the United States Congress. This is when Congress ratified H.J. Resolution 104 honoring Chabad Rabbi Memachem Mendel Schneerson and enshrining the seven Noahide Laws as the "edifice of civilization." As I noted in a post more than a year ago, the timing of this resolution was quite curious—coming less than a week after the U.S. carried out a massive overnight bombing of a retreating Iraqi convoy, a war crime incident that became known as the Highway of Death. A question that may now need to be considered is to what extent all this could be viewed as having been predicted. "No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit," said Jesus 2000 years ago. If we think of Zionism as the tree and Israel as the fruit of that tree, the tree has indeed borne bad fruit. What sort of unsavory fruit might we now expect from a Zionist, "anti-Christ" religion for Gentiles?

 

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Fun stuff to read, tell and watch:

Now FREE to watch all 91 minutes: "Defamation," from Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir. LINK: http://tinyurl.com/3rvhdvc

Some of His Best Friends Are Jewish: The Saga of a Holocaust Revisionist By Nathaniel Popper. Link: http://tinyurl.com/3v6m88c

...an Israeli lawyer has filed a class-action lawsuit against former President Jimmy Carter, seeking $5 million in damages because his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" allegedly defamed Israel. Link: http://tinyurl.com/3pltqg2

"...when you have laws against questioning the Holocaust narrative, you are screaming at the other person to stop thinking!!!" ---Mike Santomauro. *Anthony Lawson's Holocaust Video "were the Germans so stupid"... Link: http://tinyurl.com/44nsrco

An anti-Semite condemns people for being Jews, I am not an anti-Semite.--Mike Santomauro. Link: http://tinyurl.com/42z9p8o

Start reading DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST in under a minute: http://tinyurl.com/3f8h874

Peace.

Mike Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367




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CBS NEWS: S&P downgrades U.S. debt

 
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