Can I get your assessment of this information, I’m puzzled.

The FBI has said that anyone believing that the country is bankrupt is some sort of terrorism. Here is my question, relating to open and closed stock issues. If a company goes bankrupt the old stock is devalued and traded in for new stock at a ratio, or becomes worthless. So if a country’s money supply is devalued new money is issued at a lower value isn’t this very similar to a Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 restructuring of a bankrupt company?

for reference: http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/bankrupt.htm

What Every Investor Should Know …
Corporate Bankruptcy

What happens when a public company files for protection under the federal bankruptcy laws? Who protects the interests of investors? Do the old securities have any value when, and if, the company is reorganized? We hope this information answers these and other frequently asked questions about the lengthy and sometimes uncertain bankruptcy process.
What Happens to the Company?

How Are Assets Divided in Bankruptcy?

1. Secured Creditors – often a bank, is paid first.

2. Unsecured Creditors – such as banks, suppliers, and bondholders, have the next claim.

3. Stockholders – owners of the company, have the last claim on assets and may not receive anything if the Secured and Unsecured Creditors’ claims are not fully repaid.

Federal bankruptcy laws govern how companies go out of business or recover from crippling debt. A bankrupt company, the “debtor,” might use Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code to “reorganize” its business and try to become profitable again. Management continues to run the day-to-day business operations but all significant business decisions must be approved by a bankruptcy court.

Under Chapter 7, the company stops all operations and goes completely out of business. A trustee is appointed to “liquidate” (sell) the company’s assets and the money is used to pay off the debt, which may include debts to creditors and investors.

The investors who take the least risk are paid first. For example, secured creditors take less risk because the credit that they extend is usually backed by collateral, such as a mortgage or other assets of the company. They know they will get paid first if the company declares bankruptcy.

Bondholders have a greater potential for recovering their losses than stockholders, because bonds represent the debt of the company and the company has agreed to pay bondholders interest and to return their principal. Stockholders own the company, and take greater risk. They could make more money if the company does well, but they could lose money if the company does poorly. The owners are last in line to be repaid if the company fails. Bankruptcy laws determine the order of payment.
What Will Happen to My Stock or Bond?

A company’s securities may continue to trade even after the company has filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11. In most instances, companies that file under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code are generally unable to meet the listing standards to continue to trade on Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange. However, even when a company is delisted from one of these major stock exchanges, their shares may continue to trade on either the OTCBB or the Pink Sheets. There is no federal law that prohibits trading of securities of companies in bankruptcy.

Note: Investors should be cautious when buying common stock of companies in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It is extremely risky and is likely to lead to financial loss. Although a company may emerge from bankruptcy as a viable entity, generally, the creditors and the bondholders become the new owners of the shares. In most instances, the company’s plan of reorganization will cancel the existing equity shares. This happens in bankruptcy cases because secured and unsecured creditors are paid from the company’s assets before common stockholders. And in situations where shareholders do participate in the plan, their shares are usually subject to substantial dilution.

If the company does come out of bankruptcy, there may be two different types of common stock, with different ticker symbols, trading for the same company. One is the old common stock (the stock that was on the market when the company went into bankruptcy), and the second is the new common stock that the company issued as part of its reorganization plan. If the old common stock is traded on the OTCBB or on the Pink Sheets, it will have a five-letter ticker symbol that ends in “Q,” indicating that the stock was involved with bankruptcy proceedings. The ticker symbol for the new common stock will not end in “Q”. Sometimes the new stock may not have been issued by the company, although it has been authorized. In that situation, the stock is said to be trading “when issued,” which is shorthand for “when, as, and if issued.” The ticker symbol of stock that is trading “when issued” will end with a “V”. Once the company actually issues the newly authorized stock, the “V” will no longer appear at the end of the ticker symbol. Be sure you know which shares you are purchasing, because the old shares that were issued before the company filed for bankruptcy may be worthless if the company has emerged from bankruptcy and has issued new common stock.

During bankruptcy, bondholders will stop receiving interest and principal payments, and stockholders will stop receiving dividends. If you are a bondholder, you may receive new stock in exchange for your bonds, new bonds, or a combination of stock and bonds. If you are a stockholder, the trustee may ask you to send back your old stock in exchange for new shares in the reorganized company. The new shares may be fewer in number and may be worth less than your old shares. The reorganization plan will spell out your rights as an investor, and what you can expect to receive, if anything, from the company.

The bankruptcy court may determine that stockholders don’t get anything because the debtor is insolvent. (A debtor’s solvency is determined by the difference between the value of its assets and its liabilities.) If the company’s liabilities are greater than its assets, your stock may be worthless. Contact your local Internal Revenue Service (IRS) office or call 1-800-829-1040 for information about how to report worthless securities as a loss on your income tax return. If you don’t know whether your stock has value, and you can’t find a stock or bond price in the newspaper, ask your broker or the company for information.

When Fedzilla encroaches upon us and takes on tasks that the private sector does, the private sector gets forced out. This happened when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac expanded their influence in the housing market through the securitization of home mortgages with the assistance of the banksters on Wall Street: It allowed for almost anyone with a pulse to get a home loan. But community banks turned from being mortgage holders to mortgage initiators, thus putting all the mortgage financing business into the government’s hands. The same will happen as Obamacare swallows up the medical payments system, forcing consolidation in the delivery of medical care to a practitioner (or a group of practitioners) to have a staff of clerical intermediaries to deal with the back-office job of communicating with government panels. Slowly, every real occupation in America is having created for them a shadow cottage industry of people in business to be an intermediary in their dealings with the government bureaucrats. This is an all-new (to Americans) tax regime, where there’s an invisible hand extracting economic wealth from the system just so the producers can be allowed to produce. It adds to the cost of production but doesn’t create any wealth for the producer.

We’re rapidly turning most of the private sector into a bunch of busybodies to assist the producers in dealing with the political class. And the people that are leading us this direction are the same ones that complain about our country not having any jobs where people actually produce things–a nation of hamburger-flippers and clerks asking, “Do you want fries with that?”

Which Thought Products have you bought wholesale today? Today was a big trading day. China and Russia’s votes at the Security Council are “disgusting” from the State Department? Greece cannot default according to the international capital trifecta? Syria needs the “International Community” to come to together and eliminate Assad?

It’s difficult to have an original insight as there is so much “sponsored” noise out there Especially about economics … ever notice during umpteen years of broadcasting about the economy how Kuy Rihsdahl (sp?) remains hopelessly confused for the sake of his listeners? He si ply cannot be so dense. Yet, one would never be able to understand a whit about economics if you only read MSM.

Perhaps you mistakenly believe we are part of a team, the leaders of which have your interests in mind. Your interests are only taken into account at nomination and election time when some token appreciation of your concerns must be expressed to gain your vote and reaffirm the otion of democracy. Then, back to business as usual.

So many factors at play, the flattening of profits from the 70s, decades of trade agreements, WTO, indebtedness, dependence of the US economy on war, and finally, globalization of free trade, and now the resulting world equalization of wages. Most Americans cannot pick up and leave the country to follow the “jobs”, as they could when small differentials were contained within our borders. Pandora is out of the box and she ain’t goin’ back in.

I’ve read PCR’s columns for years — the first item on Counterpoint I turn to whenever it’s there. First time I’m here, though — and I came because I want to learn what an “inflationary depression” is/looks like and what causes it.

I assume we can agree that with the current labor disciplines (off-shoring and high unemployment) we aren’t going to have wage-push inflation. And with low-to-moderate utilization of factors (that is, we’re far short of a hotted up economy) we aren’t going to have demand-pull inflation. That leaves “printing money” as a potential cause, but –

Firstly, that money isn’t going into the economy (it’s sitting in banks’ checking accounts, that is, bank reserves at the Fed); thus, it isn’t directly inflationary. Note: banks which sold their garbage assets to the Fed for cash reserves may bid for financial assets and raise their prices, but that’s not inflation as generally understood. Secondly, it seems unlikely that the USD would depreciate much against the currencies of countries from whom we buy goods (potentially inflationary) — Will China ever allow the renmimbi to appreciate? — and in any case imports are a small part of the economy and a bit of USD depreciation is unlikely to have much of an inflationary effect.

So — Where’s this inflation supposed to be coming from?

The US middle-class is, I think, far less sophisticated than their European equivalents. They have been slow to realize the costs of war, of which Europeans have greater awareness. Also, they are distracted by religious and sexual issues. Occupy Wall Street raised many progressives’ hopes but not mine. Americans are not Egyptians, willing to risk blindness or death against repression. Who can blame us! We only have one life, and the purpose of life is enjoyment! So let’s have a good time!

A Hard Core MSM German TV/internet operation has this article, and the lead. My translation.

“New Recording from Air Force One
It was one of the most tragic moments in US history: On 22 November, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald shot US-President Kennedy in Dallas. New recordings provide a setback for conspiracy theorists. They reveal what was heard and happened on Air Force One, after the assignation.”

http://www.n-tv.de/politik/Neue-Toene-aus-der-Air-Force-One-article5383386.html

They don’t but they just keep on pumping this. Should leave it be. Rest in peace.

Prof. Steve Keen is also a must read. (new edition of Debunking Economics) He is also a fan of Hudson. “Debts that cannot be repaid, will not be repaid” is a quote from Hudson that Keen likes to quote, and so do I. It is very simple, yet accurate.

http://www.taz.de/Republikanische-Vorwahl-in-Florida/!86797/

German but clear that Romney is big winner. They love him, or is this front row staged? Says he beat down Gingrich and was clear winner. (He will beat Obama due to the economy, not the war. A few may understand deficit. Not in article.)
So much for anti-government, Power/Rulers.

Attendance is stacked. So what is freedom of assembly in Amerika. How can viewpoint at any event be general?
Lead item in article notes that the police cleared out the “Occupy Camp” in the Government Center in the middle of the City (Miami). Four refused to leave and were arrested. More NAZI stuff.

Frau Merkel in China, big oil customer of Iran. Iran touchy subject, says article. She likes bomb ‘em, but Germany is China’s second trading partner.

http://www.taz.de/Merkel-besucht-China/!86852/

Dr Michael Hudson has written extensively about debt repudiation, odius debt, and the law of fraudulent conveyance. I would add that RICO ( racketeering) is appropriate. RICO is a civil remedy providing 3X damages which does not require prosecution by Dept of (in) Justice personell. (Just us) Prof William Black who prosecuted some 1200 banksters in the S&L scandals also writes and speaks extensively about what he terms “control frauds.” Black makes clear that these actions are organized crime and beyond “fraud.” But there is a whole body of “law” that “fraud vitiates everything.” Google Hudson and Black for very interesting perspectives.

The concepts of “a nation of laws not men” and “no man is above the law” and “all officers of government are creatures of the law and bound to obey it” have become caricatures of themselves and swept away by “doctrines which are logically indefensible. The merger of “all powers executive,legislative, and jusdicial in the same hands is the very definition of tryanny.” But the tryanny manifests itself in the protection of private interests and merger of private power and government. Dr Roberts has amply stated that we should all be united against tryanny. This is what it is. It is the “gold standard” definition of fascism.

Far too little is exposed regarding the belief that ordinary citizens can claim or enforce their rights against any government person or entity. The common man attempting to claim his “inalienable” rights finds himself in a Kafkaesque nightmare and confronted with overcoming these “doctrines,” not legislation, of “sovereign immunity,” “absolute immunity,” and “qualified immunity,” “standing” “no private right of action” etc. etc. before they can ever present the “merits” of their case. Add to this jurisdictional hurdles, claims of “may harm the public interst if granted relief” or “may open the floodgates of litigation” and an endless rhetoric of “even if it is true” (that constitutional violations occured) rights are trampled on by the very persons sworn to uphold our laws. It is an abomination. Legal abuse syndrome may become recognized by the medical profession.

We have become a nation of men, not laws. The 4th branch of government, and all powerful, has to be in the hands of the people.

If the goal is to rule the world, you know no shore to off-shore. It is not about “income” ( a joke). What is a few hundred million, more or less. It is about power, and control of the worlds commodities.

In the 50′s, 60′s, they went by what is good for the Goose, is good for the Gander. What changed? Over population? Where will their future wealth come?

The Devil’s Advocate

“An offshored economy is a dead and exhausted economy.”

Additional support:

In the early 70s, a British astronomer, Adrian Berry, said China threw in the rag on Mao’s previous “agrarian reform” because a nation without industry, in this world, is like a man without limbs.

It might have been insensitive of Berry, for sure. But it remains an enduring mystery that after Berry made his comment in a book, a paen to scientific optimism called The Next Ten Thousand Years, the USA went about sawing off its limbs for the next four decades.

Excellent also, the comments who have said the elites are perfectly aware of what they’re doing. They sure are.

There’s money in selling people out. Our elites are only crabby now because, as PCR makes clear, the price for selling us out is now lots lower. Like it or not, Wall Street has to take a pay cut. There’s lots less to steal these days.

Free trade – http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2009/02/23/how-the-economy-was-lost/

Deregulation: http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/01/30/regulation-or-deregulation/

Tax cuts: Dr. Roberts has come out against the Bush era tax cuts repeatedly, here is an article about the Obama tax cuts: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2009/03/29/obamas-attack-on-the-middle-class/

Austerity Measures: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/181951.html

Gold Currency: Where Dr. Roberts stands on a return to the Gold Standard I’m not certain, but Tomas Allen is far brighter than me and says Dr. Roberts does not appear to be an adherent of the gold standard: http://tcallenco.blogspot.com/2011/02/do-we-really-need-to-return-to-hamilton.html

Of course they know. They were the ones that made the off-shoring possible. These cynical little eels simply make a trough out of “public service”, realizing, of course, that with the police violence available to them exactly how invulnerable they were to the peoples’ ire. But the day is coming, neigh it has already arrived, when this arrogance will be met with a justice that will be most difficult to restrain. I’ve always felt that Markham’s late nineteenth poem, The Man With The Hoe, best hints at the future these filth are certain to face. I quote its concluding stanzas:

“O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings–
With those who shaped him to the thing he is–
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world,
After the silence of the centuries?

I’d never heard that before. That is very interesting to me because it dovetails with my thesis that America’s destiny has been governed chiefly by the decline of our national oil production and response to it. With US lower-48 oil production peaking about that time, we were suddenly entering a situation where importing wasn’t just a temporary way to fund foreign wars, but vital to our continued existence as a super power. Yet government was in debt from Vietnam. So Nixon went off the gold standard and devalued the dollar inflating away the debt. OPEC embargoed us in response to get the price of oil back up to a reasonable level. We used our military and economic position to establish and maintain the fiat dollar as the global reserve currency providing us with cheap oil and imports as long as that could be maintained. As a cost however, we could no longer export competitively (particular if labor was involved) hence corporations pressured the government into allowing outsourcing. Hence, the decline of American labor began and the asset bubble cycle got going. The system was stable provided NET world oil production kept growing, but in 2005 it flat-lined, destabilizing housing and in 2008 the entire economy. The last 30 years of world political economy may have been driven primarily by the peak of American mainland oil production and response to it. The the next 30 may be driven by peaking world production.

It appears to me that we almost always get a more accurate perspective on America from the foreign media. I was in Russia during the last year of Communism and I was astounded to see 5 or 6 newspapers in Leningrad, each with a different headline and each with a different perspective on the news. There was no question that they had a more free press than we have, a much more free press. And during the Vietnam war, I got the most accurate reporting from the Red Chinese press. And during the 2006 Israel – Hezbollah war I got the best information from the Italian press – and by the way did yo know that Hezbollah defeated the IDF – thoroughly. They stopped and turned back an assault by 500 Israel tanks destroying 67 and damaging another 250 ! All the while raining down thousand of missiles on Israel. They keep this out of the news.

No wonder the likes of Reich, Krugman, Bernanke et al. are to be found all over the presstitute media cartel, yet articles like this are not. No wonder RT is one of the few news channels in the English language to have hosts and guests like Dr. Roberts, Gerald Celente, Max Keiser, Michael Hudson, Steve Keen and others. Who would have though that “commie” Russia would be home to such a great TV channel. The Orwellian dystopia just keeps on rollin.

I try and post links to this site as much as I can.

Thanks again Dr. Roberts.

Which “School of Economics” applies? None. They are all obsolete but some astute commenter here will produce a new one.

Engineer.

Macht Spaß!

K. Vet.

Yes, the Fed needs to go. But replacing it with gold currency is like jumping from the fire into the frying pan. The real answer is to “nationalize” the Fed so that the money it creates is a *public* asset and not an instrument of debt. This is being proposed by a real man of the people, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, with his bill HR 2990 (the “NEED” Act).

This bias is shown throughout the whole discipline; for example, labor is considered as just an element or cost of production and is something to be reduced or eliminated altogether, rather than the primary purpose of production. Off-shoring reduces costs, so they look at it as a good thing, rather than as a catastrophe for those that become unemployed. The bias can even be seen in something as fundamental as a financial calculator. The initial loan is entered as a negative number because it is a money outflow for the lender, and the loan payments are entered as a cash inflow. However, 99% of us are borrowers and the calculators could be set up to show the loan as positive number because it is cash in to us, and the loan repayments as a negative number because we are paying out our cash to the lenders. The numbers of other examples are many.

The backs of the poor and destitute (once known as “The Middle Class”) are far from total exhaustion. There are many yet to starve out, before they allow you to totally take over.

Thank you, Dr Roberts. for beginning to highlight the total hypocrisy of the meme compared to the honest reality.

“to wars of aggression, police state, and banker bailouts” and lying government personnel. Who pays them?

What is the Rulers’ goal? A stupefying (concentration) camp society? Less overhead. (Read Margaret Atwood.)

What is in it for the pathetic government “economists” and pitiful slob news readers? Will they get a cut of the ultimate pie or become honorary lodge members? Or just prostitutes beholden up. Pride is gone.

A junk/fluff consumer based society is subject to a tail-spin. Income falls, junk drops. jobs drop.

What about an economy that already has dead-in-the-water products like “Yellow Pages”, and electronics trash. And those that are a burden on the earth, like automania, which will catch up. Dumping thousands of tons of chemicals on lawns, which could be let go. About 5 percent of Jet flights likely can be the least bit justified, if any. Regions of the ocean fished dry. Bigger farm machinery, which makes sense.

Gruß Gott!