Diagnosis: America Has A Malignancy

All the evidence is conclusive, America has cancer.  The only question is whether or not this people will remain in denial, because the longer we wait to undergo treatment – the less chance we have of survival.

This is one of the best, concise “rants” I have read in a long time.  In a nutshell, Neal Boortz lays it all out for us – all the ugliness of the tumor found in the head of our nation, the defacto dictator that rules by “executive action”  while refusing to enforce laws he disagrees with (open border anyone?) – and punishing those peoples and industries he has targeted for destruction.

I like how Mr. Boortz paraphrases Churchill at the end of this blog rant – and it is true: if we will not fight when the cost will be minor, we may face the fact we will have to fight and perish with no chance of victory, or live as slaves.

THE UGLY TRUTH — A DIAGNOSIS

By Neal Boortz

THE UGLY TRUTH … A DIAGNOSIS.     

Sometimes reality slaps us in the face.  Reality arrives, stands before you, grabs you by the throat and shakes you around a bit ..and still you can’t believe it.  Can’t absorb it.  The reality is just so foreign to everything you’ve ever thought or believed all your life. When that moment comes denial will inevitably be your first response.  Anger soon follows … often directed at the person or persons who brought the dangerous, destructive reality to your attention.

Maybe an unexpected cancer diagnosis could illustrate this.  First .. Denial.  “No.  It just can’t be true.  Not for me.”  Then anger at the doctor who brought you the bad news. I know a doctor who had his nose broken by a patient to whom he broke the devastating news.

Now in a sense, whatever the tragedy or crisis, this denial may be helpful.  It might slow you down enough to fashion an appropriate first response based on good information rather than a panicked response that could possibly make the situation worse.  Sooner or later, though, you have to accept the reality that you have cancer; and sooner rather than later you must move denial and anger to determination … determination to do whatever you need to do; undergo whatever therapies and treatments you need to endure; in order to beat the disease.

OK.  Sit down.  I have a diagnosis for you.  This reality is going to be hard to accept.  You may have first heard this diagnosis a few years ago, and totally rejected it.  New tests – more modern tests — have been run.  Better research has been performed.  I’m sorry, but the diagnosis has been confirmed.  Many of you who are just now studying the issue are going to embrace the denial stage immediately.  If you read on, if you pay attention, if you have even a semblance of an open mind, you’re going to see that this diagnosis is pretty much accurate.

Diagnosis:  America is currently being ruled by a man who came to this country in 1979 determined to destroy America as we know it, and who is well on his way to realizing that goal.

There!  There’s the denial, right?  That Boortz guy is just a hater.  Barack Obama cares so much for people.  It’s those Republicans and their obstructionism that have made him look so bad. Go ahead … go with that response for a while, but I’m going to give you some facts to digest.  Call them dots.  Connect them yourself.  See where they lead you.

OBAMA HISTORY

I’ve blogged about Obama’s history – his upbringing – many times.  If you’re reading this you’ve probably read my previous thoughts on the subject. I do have a different and more concise way to express to you the reality of 0bama’s formative years.  Let’s try this:

With one exception, every single person involved in bringing Obama into this world, nurturing him, educating him and escorting him into adulthood literally despised America.  From the time he was born until the time he left home in Hawaii to attend Occidental College in California, every single person involved in raising Obama thought America was a blight on the world.

Now I did say that there was one exception.  That would be a man named Lolo Soetoro.  Soetoro was the second husband to Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham.  Soetoro was an Indonesian businessman, and when he started doing business with American businessmen he made the mistake of expressing positive thoughts about America in front of young Barack and his mother.  According to researchers this resulted in Obama being shipped out of the house to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents.

So there’s your first dot.  The people who taught Obama as a child and as a young adult harbored a deep dislike of The United States and they did what they could to make sure Obama grew up with the same attitude.

You only have to read Obama’s books to find the second dot.  When Obama arrived at Occidental he felt that he didn’t really belong.  It wasn’t until he found some Marxist student groups and professors, the people he admits to being drawn to, that he felt welcomed and accepted.  Another dot.

While at Occidental one of Obama’s friends was a student named John Drew.  At that time Drew was a Marxist.  That’s also the way he described Obama as a new student; a Marxist-Leninist.  That’s a polite way of saying “communist.”  Head to Google and enter “John Drew Occidental” and start reading.  You’ll learn that it was Drew, now a PhD political scientist, who convinced Obama that a violent communist revolution just wasn’t going to happen in the United States.  If Obama, as was his stated wish, wanted to bring America to Marxism it was going to have to be through political means, not violence.  Another dot.

Not much is known about Obama’s educational journey after he left Occidental for Columbia.  The records are pretty much sealed.  It is rather strange that not one person of note has surfaced who claims to have known and been close to Obama at Columbia.  Ditto for Harvard. We do know that Obama became the president of the Harvard Law Review without ever writing one single law review article.  That hasn’t happened before or since.  No … not exactly a dot.  A smudge perhaps, but not a dot.

But what about the people Obama associated with when he moved to Chicago after Harvard?  I told you above that virtually all of the people involved in raising Obama had a strong dislike – bordering on hatred – for America.  Then in college he gravitated toward Marxist students and professors .. more people you don’t exactly hear saying the Pledge of Allegiance every morning.  Well … once he arrived back in Chicago he was right back at it.  Obama decided that he was going to need a church to join .. part of his credentials as a Christian he felt were necessary for political advancement.  What church did he join?  Jeremiah Wright’s church of “God Damn America.”  Doesn’t that qualify for a dot?

And then there’s Obama’s friends Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.  Terrorists.  Marxist terrorists.  These are people who planted bombs in government buildings as part of the Weather Underground movement.  And just how close a friend to Obama was Bill Ayers?  There’s some pretty convincing research, research that I accept, that it was Ayers who ghost-wrote Obama’s “Dreams from My Father.”

But to really define the closeness of the relationship between Obama and Ayers (a closeness Obama denies) you have to look at that moment when Obama decided it was time to announce his entry into politics.  Obama was going to run for the Illinois State Senate.  He wanted his announcement to be as meaningful as possible, and to do that he would have to carefully chose just where that announcement would be made?  His decision?  The living room of Bill Ayers.  Are you absorbing this?  Obama announces his entry into the world of politics – his journey that would lead to the White House – from the living room of a convicted Marxist domestic terrorist.  And you thought that Lewinsky and Clinton in that room off the Oval Office was bad!  Another dot.

CLOWARD-PIVEN

Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.  Names you should know.  They were sociologists and political activists in the ‘60s.  They were professors at Columbia University … Obama’s alma mater.  Cloward and Piven set a goal, to end poverty. They developed a strategy to do just that, called the Cloward-Piven strategy, and outlined that strategy in a May 1966 article in the liberal magazine The Nation entitled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty”.  Here – in their words – was the plan:

“The ultimate objective of this strategy—to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income—will be questioned by some. Because the ideal of individual social and economic mobility has deep roots, even activists seem reluctant to call for national programs to eliminate poverty by the outright redistribution of income.^”

Sound familiar?  A guaranteed annual income and income redistribution are liberal goals to this day, and Obama speaks of income redistribution often.  In a 2008 interview with Charlie Rose Obama was questioned on his plans to raise capital gains taxes.  Rose told Obama that when these taxes had been raised in the past it had only resulted in lowered tax revenues.  Obama’s response?  “I would look at raising capital gains taxes for the purpose of fairness.”

What?  You raise taxes NOT to get revenue for the operation of government, but because it’s just not fair that those people who invested and earned those capital gains have that money?  There’s your income redistribution for you.  Only in the case of capital gains taxes, it’s wealth redistribution, not income redistribution.

The Cloward-Piven strategy for achieving this goal was simple.  You overwhelm the federal government with entitlement payments; welfare payments, disability payments and other social entitlement benefits to the point that chaos erupts and the congress simply has to step in to stop the bleeding, and the only real way to do that would be through a massive wealth and income seizure and redistribution program known as a Guaranteed Annual Income.

OK .. there’s Cloward-Piven.  Once again, Google that phrase and do some reading.  You’re going to recognize what’s happening here today.

So, since he took office what has Obama been doing to implement the Cloward-Piven strategy?

• Through an Executive Order he removes the welfare work requirement.  This requirement was put into place during the Clinton presidency.  Clinton was forced into it by a GOP congress.  Immediately the welfare roles began to diminish and the income levels for those in the lowest income quintile began to climb.  As soon as Obama eliminated the work requirement the welfare rolls started to expand again .. as did the expense of the program.  Another dot.
• The rules on Social Security disability were softened.  Today the numbers of people claiming and receiving Social Security disability checks has exploded.  I recently read of one Democrat administrative judge who overturned virtually ALL decisions by Social Security hearing officers to deny disability benefits.  Yet another dot.
• Obamacare.  Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but Obamacare is a massive wealth seizure and redistribution plot.  Younger and healthier Americans are being forced to pay huge premiums for insurance policies with far more coverage than they need in order to subsidize the insurance policies for older and poorer Americans.  The cost of Obama will overwhelm the federal government and the cry for “single payer, i.e. socialized medicine, will eventually win the day.  Another dot.
• The Hispanic invasion.  Since pretty much day one Obama has steadfastly refused to secure our borders.  He has repeatedly made public utterances that have been interpreted by Central Americans as an open invitation to come to America, without permission, to sit and wait for the eventual amnesty.  Our social welfare systems in the border states are being overwhelmed by the costs of the hundreds of thousands of so-called “immigrants” swarming across the border.  Another dot.  By the way, don’t buy this Obama Bolshoi about how his administration has been deporting record numbers of illegals.  It’s nonsense.  It’s all in what you call a “deportation.”  Obama has ordered that when a Latino shows up at a border crossing without proper documentation, and is turned back, that should count as a deportation.  Uhhhhh ….. right.
• Unemployment insurance.  Under Obama we’ve seen endless expansions and extensions of unemployment insurance.  Unemployment insurance costs have gone up for employers and for the federal and state governments.  The cost is quickly becoming unsustainable.  Another dot.

Ignore the diagnosis if you will.  Denial is common.  Get angry if you will.  Call me a racist, a hater … anything you want.  It doesn’t change the diagnosis.

Whistle past the graveyard!  Maybe that will work.  Know, however, that governments are not forever.  Constitutional Republics like ours based on the rule of law and property rights generally destroy themselves after about 230 years.  Ignore that though.  Couldn’t happen here, right?

Before you go … something else.  America is the only nation in the world that has seen a decrease in economic freedom for seven years in a row.  Another dot?

Connect them, ignore them.  Sooner or later, though, you’re going to have to fight.  You’re going to have to undergo the therapies and treatments that will restore our body politic – our country – to health.  Are you going to do that now when victory is possible?  Or are you going to wait until the situation is so far along – the Cloward-Piven Strategy and Obama’s destructive plans – that victory is doubtful .. but you fight because your back is against the wall.

Your choice.

A Systemic Collapse, By Design, Has Begun

The MF Global Theft and Implosion may start a financial panic, as the Rule of Law is replaced with a kleptocracy run by the Obama Regime.

I continue to be impressed with this fine lady, Ann Barnhardt and her ability to explain her thoughts as cogently and succinctly as she does.  As a broker, her words here should be a klaxon alarm that sounds about the death knell of the Capitalist trading system, that Obama’s own crony, triggered to the collapse you are about to see unfold before your eyes in the coming weeks and months.

The world is at a frightening crossroads, and each direction is a promise of acute pain unlike anything we have endured in our lifetimes.  One direction will lead to mass unrest, violence and bloodshed.  The other, mass death and slavery.

There is no turning back.

Only God can save us from the dark hour soon to come upon the world.

And considering how we have sat on our hands while Our Lord has been tossed from our society, I see no reason for our Lord to do so, unless to demonstrate His unfailing mercy.

But our Lord is no enabler, and He has let civilizations collapse and die violently in the past.

History shows that what replaces what we now face, is far worse than most imagine.

“The Entire System Has Been Utterly Destroyed By The MF Global Collapse”

BCM Has Ceased Operations, the first casualty of a soon coming systemic domino collapse.

by Ann Barnhardt

Dear Clients, Industry Colleagues and Friends of Barnhardt Capital Management,

It is with regret and unflinching moral certainty that I announce that Barnhardt Capital Management has ceased operations. After six years of operating as an independent introducing brokerage, and eight years of employment as a broker before that, I found myself, this morning, for the first time since I was 20 years old, watching the futures and options markets open not as a participant, but as a mere spectator.

The reason for my decision to pull the plug was excruciatingly simple: I could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were safe in the futures and options markets – because they are not. And this goes not just for my clients, but for every futures and options account in the United States. The entire system has been utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse. 

Given this sad reality, I could not in good conscience take one more step as a commodity broker, soliciting trades that I knew were unsafe or holding funds that I knew to be in jeopardy.

The futures markets are very highly-leveraged and thus require an exceptionally firm base upon which to function. That base was the sacrosanct segregation of customer funds from clearing firm capital, with additional emergency financial backing provided by the exchanges themselves.

Up until a few weeks ago, that base existed, and had worked flawlessly. Firms came and went, with some imploding in spectacular fashion. Whenever a firm failure happened, the customer funds were intact and the exchanges would step in to backstop everything and keep customers 100% liquid – even as their clearing firm collapsed and was quickly replaced by another firm within the system.

Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global.

Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise. What was a surprise was the reaction of the exchanges and regulators. Their reaction has been to take a bad situation and make it orders of magnitude worse. Specifically, they froze customers out of their accounts WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO TRADE, refusing to even allow them to liquidate. This is unfathomable. The risk exposure precedent that has been set is completely intolerable and has destroyed the entire industry paradigm.

No informed person can continue to engage these markets, and no moral person can continue to broker or facilitate customer engagement in what is now a massive game of Russian Roulette.

I have learned over the last week that MF Global is almost certainly the mere tip of the iceberg. There is massive industry-wide exposure to European sovereign junk debt. While other firms may not be as heavily leveraged as Corzine had MFG leveraged, and it is now thought that MFG’s leverage may have been in excess of 100:1, they are still suicidally leveraged and will likely stand massive, unmeetable collateral calls in the coming days and weeks as Europe inevitably collapses.

I now suspect that the reason the Chicago Mercantile Exchange did not immediately step in to backstop the MFG implosion was because they knew and know that if they backstopped MFG, they would then be expected to backstop all of the other firms in the system when the failures began to cascade – and there simply isn’t that much money in the entire system. In short, the problem is a SYSTEMIC problem, not merely isolated to one firm.

Perhaps the most ominous dynamic that I have yet heard of in regards to this mess is that of the risk of potential CLAWBACK actions. For those who do not know, “clawback” is the process by which a bankruptcy trustee is legally permitted to re-seize assets that left a bankrupt entity in the time period immediately preceding the entity’s collapse.

So, using the MF Global customers as an example, any funds that were withdrawn from MFG accounts in the run-up to the collapse, either because of suspicions the customer may have had about MFG from, say, watching the company’s bond yields rise sharply, or from purely organic day-to-day withdrawls, the bankruptcy trustee COULD initiate action to “clawback” those funds.

As a hedge broker, this makes my blood run cold. Generally, as the markets move in favor of a hedge position and equity builds in a client’s account, that excess equity is sent back to the customer who then uses that equity to offset cash market transactions OR to pay down a revolving line of credit. Even the possibility that a customer could be penalized and additionally raped AGAIN via a clawback action after already having their customer funds stolen is simply villainous. While there has been no open indication of clawback actions being initiated by the MF Global trustee, I have been told that it is a possibility.

And so, to the very unpleasant crux of the matter. The futures and options markets are no longer viable. It is my recommendation that ALL customers withdraw from all of the markets as soon as possible so that they have the best chance of protecting themselves and their equity. The system is no longer functioning with integrity and is suicidally risk-laden. The rule of law is non-existent, instead replaced with godless, criminal political cronyism.

Remember, derivatives contracts are NOT NECESSARY in the commodities markets. The cash commodity itself is the underlying reality and is not dependent on the futures or options markets. Many people seem to have gotten that backwards over the past decades. From Abel the animal husbandman up until the year 1964, there were no cattle futures contracts at all, and no options contracts until 1984, and yet the cash cattle markets got along just fine.

Finally, I will not, under any circumstance, consider reforming and re-opening Barnhardt Capital Management, or any other iteration of a brokerage business, until Barack Obama has been removed from office AND the government of the United States has been sufficiently reformed and repopulated so as to engender my total and complete confidence in the government, its adherence to and enforcement of the rule of law, and in its competent and just regulatory oversight of any commodities markets that may reform. So long as the government remains criminal, it would serve no purpose whatsoever to attempt to rebuild the futures industry or my firm, because in a lawless environment, the same thievery and fraud would simply happen again, and the criminals would go unpunished, sheltered by the criminal oligarchy.

To my clients, who literally TO THE MAN agreed with my assessment of the situation, and were relieved to be exiting the markets, and many whom I now suspect stayed in the markets as long as they did only out of personal loyalty to me, I can only say thank you for the honor and pleasure of serving you over these last years, with some of my clients having been with me for over twelve years. I will continue to blog at Barnhardt.biz, which will be subtly re-skinned soon, and will continue my cattle marketing consultation business. I will still be here in the office, answering my phones, with the same phone numbers.

Alas, my retirement came a few years earlier than I had anticipated, but there was no possible way to continue given the inevitability of the collapse of the global financial markets, the overthrow of our government, and the resulting collapse in the rule of law.

As for me, I can only echo the words of David:
“This is the Lord’s doing; and it is wonderful in our eyes.”

With Best Regards-
Ann Barnhardt