U.S. Economic/Financial News

Obama Is Turning the Dollar into Toilet Paper—Deliberately

May 2 (EIRNS)—The dollar fell to its lowest level in three years on April 29, and is now down 7.5% over the course of 2011. The collapse accelerated after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's press conference on April 27, in which he promised to carry through on hyperinflationary "quantitative easing" (QE2) and left the door open to further QE3, to bail out the bankrupt banks.

Britain's Daily Telegraph's Liam Halligan today rightly places the blame for the policy fiasco squarely at Obama's doorstep. Bernanke's press conference "was in fact preparing the ground for the start of QE3," he wrote, but "the Fed's actions are undermining the dollar precisely because that's what the White House wants." On Obama's watch, "America's base money supply—the bedrock of the world's reserve currency—has doubled in little more than two years."

Halligan's comments reflect the fact that many informed people in continental Europe and the U.K. realize that the game is over for the entire system, as Lyndon LaRouche has stressed, and are looking to stake out fall-back options for survival.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) recently reported that international hedge funds have also been betting heavily against the dollar, and have made millions over its plunge.

Deutsche Bank Sued in L.A. as 'Slumlord'

May 4 (EIRNS)—The Los Angeles City attorney filed a suit on May 4 against Deutsche Bank, on its role as a "slumlord" engaged in "illegal" actions, including evictions. The suit charges the bank with being "among the largest slumlords in L.A.," and asks for hundreds of millions in fines. The City is also asking that the bank be compelled to clean up foreclosed properties. The city has identified at least 2,000 properties owned by the bank.

The legal papers say that Deutsche Bank was "transformed ... from detached investment brokers ... to large-scale residential property owners, a role whose responsibilities ... they have completely eschewed." The suit alleges that Deutsche Bank illegally evicted tenants, and shut off water and power to those who did not leave after the property was foreclosed. Deutsche Bank, which was identified in the U.S. Senate Levin Committee report for numerous violations, has been cited in legal cases in other cities, involving charges of illegal foreclosures, most notably in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2008.

In fact, Deutsche Bank is fully British, having been "merged" with Morgan Grenfell in 1990, in the wake of the assassination of Deutsche Bank chairman Alfred Herrhausen. The behavior of its executives certainly shows it.

They Want To Take Your Food Away

May 6 (EIRNS)—"Consumer food consumption habits associated with modern life-styles have sustained mainstream farming systems and food markets and have contributed to a national obesity and health crisis," according to a National Research Council study released May 5. Thus, it concludes, the time has come to use the power of the Federal government to transform modern U.S. agriculture into the kind of organic, free-range, feudal agricultural system of which the British Monarchy might approve.

This is the declaration of war issued this week by a team of U.S. "agro-ecologists," in a report titled, "Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century," released the same week that the Royal fruitcake Prince Charles personally delivered that a similar message at the Washington Post's Future of Food conference at Georgetown University, and at the White House, where he met President Barack Obama.

The NRC study calls for a "whole-system redesign" of U.S. agriculture, returning to no-tillage, grass-feeding, no-chemicals agricultural methods which they lie are "ecologically sustainable," in the entropic universe they live in. Chief author, Washington State University's J.P. Reganold, is one of the leading U.S. proponents of Prince Charles's speciality, organic-only farming. The report targets the U.S. Farm Bill, which comes up for Congressional renewal in 2012, and will start being debated at the first hearing, scheduled for this May 31 at Michigan State University. They demand that Federal funding impose these so-called "transformative approaches," by cutting funding for modern farming and research, pushing the population back into hunting-and-gathering era methods.