Amid mounting concern that illegal activity has occurred inside publicly-traded banks Gylfi Magnusson, Iceland’s business minister, has conceded there are similarities with the country’s banking system and failed US energy company Enron."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5145969/Iceland-banking-inquiry-finds-murky-geysers-run-deep.html
The article speaks for itself, but doesn't it seem a little odd that these practices were so widespread, in so many countries during the same period in time? If that is just co-incidence, then it's just simply amazing!
Well well well. The financial misfits have grown a lot murkier. The link I posted at the end re: AIG fits in quite nicely -- they're all a bunch of half-witted has-beens, still trying to shore up their false hopes (wealth)!
ReplyDeleteMore on that later, but I wanted to bring all of you up to date on The Totally Illegal Charlesius Investment / Hedge Fund, how it's doing and what the rest of the world has lost in the interim.
As of this past Friday, the net worth of the above Fund was worth $793 sex-quin-quad--tri-bil-million, not exactly rounded off but it's as near as dammit!
I also acknowledge Dogbert, CEO extraordinaire who helped in setting the fund up. The following pictorial gives a much better understanding of how management works! -- http://www.dilbert.com/2009-04-12/
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A lady opened her refrigerator and saw a rabbit sitting on one of the shelves staring at her.
"What are you doing in there?", she asked.
The rabbit replied, "This is a Westinghouse, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Well," the rabbit said,
"I'm westing."
Enjoy Your Easter!
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Pondering On How Washrooms Are Used In Space? Ponder no more! -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6RpCYGxzD0
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A hearty good day to one and all. Rumors abound that something called "Income Tax Forms" have to be completed at some point during one's life. I'll check and get back to y'all!
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Ahhh, Le Great Conspiracy Theory Returnzzz. 'Spose, just for a moment, that AIG deliberately intended to be caught short with CDS and Derivatives.
Like Sherlock Holmes -- Observe and Deduce -- seeing beyond the horizon, asking questions leads to multitudes of answers, but getting the msm to report them is an entirely different matter (capital letters mine).
"The unit that all but destroyed AIG has FAILED TO SIGN UP for the overhaul of the global derivatives market which was given added impetus by the troubles at the US insurance group.
"AIG confirmed that its financial products unit, whose soured bets on credit default swaps forced the company into government hands last year, did not adopt the “Big Bang” protocol that has been SIGNED BY MORE THAN 2,000 market participants."
More than 2,000 market participants did sign the protocol, but AIG conveniently forgot. Why? What were the reasons? Who stands to benefit from this fiscal fall-out? -- http://tinyurl.com/dlakfm
Garth's site has some new and really weird hippies appearing there so, are they real or ARE THEY MERELY CONSPIRACY THEORIES MASQUERADING AS THONGS?!
You had to mention Income Tax forms didn't you Charles. I started 2 of them yesterday and couldn't complete either one with the materials provided. The most frustrating parts were realizing standard forms aren't standard, and are in fact different and don't include information or appropriate spaces necessary to take advantage of tax breaks and refundable items. Best one was where a calculation called for factoring line 215 and line 215 didn't exist in any of the forms nor was it referenced in the guide. That was for something as simple as a medical costs refundable expense. Or what should have been simple.
ReplyDeleteSimplified tax form eh?
Garth's site has some new and really weird hippies appearing there so, are they real or ARE THEY MERELY CONSPIRACY THEORIES MASQUERADING AS THONGS?!Heh. I was just over there reading. I've given up beating my head against the desk.
ReplyDeleteChina says they're doing alright but there is huge stockpiles of steel etc...Mixed messages coming from that country. They also said loans were up but the Chinese save a lot of their earned money because they don't have the social safety nets.
GS made money betting against the market and mortgages, won and received payment from AIG which received it's money from TARP and now GS is going to pay TARP back. Confused yet?? The lastest spin from the nutters is that the banks didn't want the bailouts in the first place and that the government Made them take it.
They're throwing shit and hoping some of it sticks.
Creative accounting. We'll just money to ourselves. Robbing peter to pay paul then robbing peter to pay peter.
http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/instant-profits-at-barclays/
Tumbled onto this site from one of the rags.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.goldmansachs666.com/
He has a link in on of his entries to zerohedge which gives excellent analysis.
Peace.
Ah taxes.
ReplyDeleteIn a country that produces little in finished products for export and relies on selling non-renuable resources at pennies on the dollar then collects only a token sales tax on most of what we consume in imported goods it is a wonder we haven't had a tax revolt yet. To top that off we have one of the highest rate of taxation on incomes and one of the lowest taxation rates on business that is 90% foreign owned and takes most profits before paying taxes offshore. Anybody still believe Harper we are in the best shape in the world? Or are we trully screwed for a long time to come?
Maybe a start to the revolution is to change the income tax form to read the following on page one.
- add all income for the year on line one
- Add personal deduction of $50,000 and any other deductions for dependents at $20,000 each and put total in line 2
- Subtract line 2 from line one and if there is a positive balance turn over page and go through the rest of the thirty pages
- If number is negative sign form and mail.
Then let government get creative to make up the lost tax revenue!!! Wonder if this might turn our economy around a bit?
I'm B-B-A-A-A-A-C-C-C-K-K-K!
ReplyDeleteGetting closer -- I understand that's the fifth volcano along the Ring Of Fire which has lost its cool over the past couple of months, combined with two EQ's. Nearer to Nirvana! -- http://tinyurl.com/c37ysz
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Goes (somewhat) with what I posted before about AIG. Scroll down a little before you come to it. -- http://tinyurl.com/cjzsrt
". . . Obviously, Lord Blankfein, you needed the money because you don't have it to pay back . . . and you don't even have the billions you got from AIG.
"And one final note. Wasn't it Lord Blankfein that told us the billions they got from AIG were not material? If so, why do they need to sell stock to pension funds and other fiduciary pockets of money in order to repay TARP?"
BTW, this is the website Goldman Sachs hired a law firm to have shut down.
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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY! (Courtesy wrh.com)
"We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees] never do return." -- David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, July 18, 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar's "Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet," Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.
Ben-Gurion wrote this in 1948. Would The Christ, Buddha, Mother Teresa or Gandhi say the same thing about the Jewish race? You can figure that one out, and it correlates with the following two links.
First is US and Israel are having a scrap over what to do Iran / Palestine. Note the term Palestine, because the second link gives a slightly different view on Palestinians.
Para. comes from second link. -- http://tinyurl.com/dyxu3m and http://tinyurl.com/cylo29
"Modern genetics testing of Y-chromosomes has demonstrated that at least 50% of all Palestinian males have a direct genetic trail back to the biblical Israelites."
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The comment from wrh.com re: the Holocaust says it better than I could. -- http://tinyurl.com/c7ej3e
"Truth needs no laws to support it. Truth is self-evident to all. Truth withstands re-examination. Truth survives questions. Throughout history, from Galileo to Zundel, only lies and liars have resorted to the courts to enforce adherence to dogma." -- Michael Rivero
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Islamic financing -- a better, kinder and gentler way to do business. -- http://tinyurl.com/cc996l
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Comrades! Gerald Celente has heard our cry for a revolution, so bring it on! -- http://tinyurl.com/dewjh6
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Seems Chavez is preparing for a US collapse, by signing a new agreement with China. Shit happens! -- http://tinyurl.com/cu8ls2
Out of interest, why is Obama making noises about 100,000 US troops in Af'stan / Pakistan for at least a decade? Surely there are enough problems at home in his own backyard to deal with?
Besides, the Georgian people are getting restless; immediate prior neo-con govts. from the US and Israel used Georgia as an entrance point to Iran, and failed miserably.
From Charles' link to words from Gerald Celente.
ReplyDelete""The 'Intellectual Revolution' must be waged on the battlefield of the mind," said Celente. "Americans are doomed unless they kick the junk news habit, deprogram themselves from celebrity worship, refuse to blindly follow political leaders and question all ideological dogmas ... especially their own.
"For the revolution to succeed, people must repudiate the one-headed, two party system, and learn to think for themselves," said Celente.
It's not just Americans either. Have you noticed the difference in quality of MSM articles here to say Great Britain? The Guardian for example.
Way up a couple of quick thoughts on this for now. I will write more later on.
ReplyDeleteI remember when everyone got the same personal tax forms. Then they offered an option for you to have a simplified form sent to you if you didn't require the longer unit. Longer only took about 20 minutes in most cases, but they duped people with the short version. It was still up to you to request it though.
Now it appears what is offered at the post offices etc. and sent to most people automatically is a version of the simplified form which does not include any references whatsoever to a number of tax breaks/refundable items.
It's almost as if they don't want people to know. (Wonder why?) heh..
The other thing it has done is create a huge cottage industry of tax form filler outers, and that is what many of them are. Form filler outers. The one time I took my return to H and R Block this was my experience;
I had completed a draft copy so as to know how much to expect back, then I went to H and R. The reason I took it there in the first place was because I needed an official looking hard copy to give to family court (another cottage industry). I knew CRA wouldn't have the thing processed in time, so I chose that method. And I got a speeding ticket on my way there. 12 km over the speed limit, $75. (Yet another cottage industry).
I presented all my stuff to the 20 something year old form filler, except my draft, and patiently waited for it to be completed. When finished I was told I would receive $800 back. I looked at said form filler with some concern and asked to see the calculations as they did not give with mine. My figures indicated $1,600 refund.
Upon my explaining the areas that said form filler had missed, my return was then taken to a head form filler, who referenced a number of things on a computer. Eventually, form filler one returns with another figure of $1,500 and something. I wasn't in the mood to argue further so I accepted that, and expected them to present me with hard copies free of charge given their apparent ineptitude. WRONG!
I was presented with a bill for $65 and a request for immediate payment. Accompanied by a rather sheepish look. So, for my valuable tutoring I was charged the amount of $65.
First and last time anyone ever did my personal tax form. What used to take me 15 to 20 minutes now takes 1 to 1 1/2 hrs.
Lastly, I can't remember a time when I redid someones H and R prepared return and didn't find money they had missed.So why does Revenue Canada make the forms so complicated that it forces many people to take them to the H and R types?
Ok, now I get your drift about weird stuff at Gart's place. I saw some of it, then fast forwarded. I don't pay much attention to that kind of thing.
ReplyDeleteThe one constant in all that though, is that when you collect squirrels, some bring their nuts along too.
Dee, I saw links to and info on the site dedicated to Goldman Sachs a day or two back. One the interesting aspects is the desire to shut the site down. I didn't realize that it only began on March 26th of this year though, until I scanned your link.
ReplyDeleteInteresting how fast word of the site is spreading and how quickly Gold/Sachs has jumped to squash it.
I had read previously they were trying to do this, and that the person who started the site has previous experience in this area and an expert in that area of law advising him. Said he is not going to go away and knows what he can print and what he can't within the law.
Not sure where I picked up on the link, could have been from one of the more serious squirrels over at Gart's. I'm thinking a little lone link posted without much into or fanfare.
This site re-enforces a thought I posted earlier about the problem with opening pandora's box.