The Recession and What Caused It

Introduction

Let us not just assume, as the media would have us do, that poor people who bought houses they could not afford (or were suckered into it by predatory lenders) were the cause of the crisis or that they're the sole worthy recipient of blame. After all, bankers control the mainstream media corporations by exploiting interlocking directorships.

No, there's much more to the story and the duped poor people may in fact be only a tiny part. It appears to be about bankers engaging in derivatives gambling, fraud, and money laundering on a massive scale.

The workers

1. Excessive outsourcing of jobs and offshoring of entire factories has hollowed out the US economy.
2. Excessive importation of foreign workers under H1B and L1 visas has meant that many middle-class jobs have gone to foreigners.
3. Mass immigration of uneducated foreign workers who work at low-paying jobs either without papers or using stolen or invented social security numbers has meant blue-collar jobs have gone to them.
4. Therefore more American workers have less income and fewer job prospects.

The borrowers

1. 9/11 (which was perpetrated by the US government) was used as an excuse by the Federal Reserve to reduce interest rates to make money much too easy to get.
2. After 9/11, Bush stood on the WTC rubble and ludicrously told Americans to go out and shop. This reflected two key facts:
   • 70% of the US GDP of $13 trillion is based on consumption due to exporting of factories and jobs to lower-wage countries.
   • This hollowed-out US economy exists in a debt bubble. Americans have borrowed too much and prices have risen to match available debt money.
3. Americans generally want to live a middle-class lifestyle and many have used debt to accomplish that. That has increased the debt bubble.
4. Many Americans who either have money or are willing to take on risky debts have become speculators in the housing bubble with the goal of "flipping" houses or similar.
5. Therefore home prices rose based on speculation and what the Fed recently called the "illusion" of wealth occurred.
6. We observed a disappearance of affordable homes for sale and even cheap rentals. For many people this necessitated the use of debt.
7. Cities enjoyed increased revenues because increased homes prices meant higher tax revenue.
8. Many Americans who either have money or are willing to take on risky debts have become buy-to-rent operators.
9. The inability of borrowers/spectulators to pay variable-rate mortgages has led to many foreclosures and the realization that banks possess "troubled assets" meaning worthless loan papers.
10. Therefore the stock market fell from its high of 14000 to presently near 7000.
11. Cities also speculated in the stock market and some have reported a halving of assets since the stock market fell.
12. People who possess retirement accounts have also reported significant falls in their retirement booty.

The speculators

Wealthy speculators like:

1. Borrowing at low interest.
2. Collecting (privatizing) all of their gains.
3. Walking away from (socializing) all of their losses.

This effectively results in a global Ponzi scheme.

Wealthy speculators dislike:

1. Regulation on derivatives gambling.
2. Higher bank interest rates.
3. Higher Treasury bond interest rates.
4. Stock dividends that are actually paid out.

Wealthy speculators use part of their ill gotten gains to bribe politicians (which is legal in the USA where we call bribes "campaign contribution" or private consultant jobs). Therefore politicians are on their side, not on the side of the savers.

The savers

Savers like:

1. Higher bank interest rates.
2. Higher Treasury bond interest rates.
3. Stock dividends that are actually paid out.
4. A guarantee that their money will not disappear if the bank fails.

Now that the FDIC has no money, the guarantee that they formerly offered is ringing pretty hollow.

The shadow banking system

According to Max Keiser:

• Every brokerage firm normally has an "error account" in which brokers' mistakes are collected. That's normal.
• What's not normal however is that brokerages started trading "derivatives" between themselves through these error accounts. This practice expanded to become the off-the-books or "shadow banking system".
• The shadow banking system includes derivatives trading and globally $500 trillion of derivatives debt.
• Major players include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citibank, Morgan Stanley.
• The shadow banking system grew larger than the legitimate, public stock market. The estimate is that it grew to $25 or 30 billion dollars in the US, says Keiser. But $14 trillion globally.
• Credit default swaps and securitizing are effectively money laundering in his view.

Bank for International Settlements

The BIS has useful statistics on the global derivatives market, which is $1200 trillion or so. BIS stats.

Market irrationalism

Market Religion

I kept seeing these characteristics of religiousness in financial news reporting, but also in the America's capitalist culture generally. So I began to consider capitalism to be a kind of pseudo-religion.

It was a satirical claim of course, but then again, as an atheist I often see patterns of religiousness in people, even in other atheists' behaviors and beliefs. More here.

Market Fundamentalism

Some of these claims:

• The market is or can be self-regulating.
• Businesspeople can or should be self-regulating.
• A higher stock price means a healthier or better company. (The stock market equivalent of the trailer park credo that bigger hair means a better woman.)

Ponzi schemes

Fractional reserve lending

• This is lending by banks of more money that they have on hand.
• By law banks can lend out 10 times what they have in deposits.
• It is standard practice and has been in use for 300+ years.
• It is explained in the documentary Money Masters.
• It is a Ponzi scheme.

US dollar

Bubbles

The money supply

There are two sources of money:

1. Money comes into existence by being printed. This is about 3 percent of the total money supply.
2. Money comes into existence (e.g. Fractional Reserve Lending) by being loaned by banks. This is the other 97% of the money supply.

When banks do not lend and/or people are the masses of peole and businesses are too poor to borrow, the money supply shrinks. When the money supply shrinks, money becomes more expensive and the relative value of a currency can increase and deflation can set in.

In the USA, the Goldman-Sachs-controlled Obama Administration started giving billions of dollars away to corrupt, incompetent bankers and to anyone else who would accept it. This expanded the money supply but some deflation has occurred anyway.

What is a market maker?

They have great power over the market, because they are closer to the core mechanisms of the market. They can do program trading very quickly (trades made by a computer program) in 15 seconds or less.

The market maker has two roles: As a broker and as an entity that trades for its own profit. As a result, they are in a position to profit twiceover from the market:

1. First they take a brokers fee.
2. Second they can if they wish act to undermine their own clients trades.

Zero-reserve banking system

Leverage

Bernie Madoff

1. Madoff was probably just the tip of the iceberg.
2. Since his situation came to light several other con men like him have been identified as well.
3. The stock market itself for years has been pushing profit increases of 20% per year. This was not a realistic rate of return.
4. A stock bubble is effectively (like the tech bubble or the housing bubble) a Ponzi scheme.
5. Since the presidency of Ronald Reagan we have seen a series of economic bubbles and bubble-bursts.
6. One of the best funds is Berkshire Hathaway run by Warren Buffett. It is considered legit.
7. Bernie Madoff in this context used a simple scheme of offering a rate of return that was less than Berkshire Hathaway and less than short-lived Ponzi schemes of the past. Therefore it was not perceived as a scam.

Goldman Sachs has taken over the US government?

1. Barack Obama is loyal to them since they were his largest campaign contributor.
2. Timothy Geithner (formerly NY Fed chief) appointed as his chief of staff a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist. Source
3. Timothy Geithner as head of the NY Fed had the job of helping Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs make more money which is why the worldwide economic system is at risk of collapse.
4. Ben Bernanke is alleged to be under the thumb of Goldman Sachs.
5. The SEC is headed up by yet another Goldman Sachs banker.
6. Henry Paulson was a former CEO of Goldman and yet he became Treasury secretary. When he left Goldman he got a golden parachute of $500 million.

What are they up to?

The WTC 7 connection

Building 7 falling on 9/11:

Bubbles

What is an economic bubble?

Anything that is a Ponzi scheme naturally creates a bubble.

The Dot Com Bubble was created by a Ponzi scheme.

The Housing Bubble was created by a Ponzi scheme.

The credit crash of 2000-2008 was caused by a credit bubble.

Since fractional reserve lending is a Ponzi scheme, it too creates a bubble.

America's social security system is a Ponzi scheme.

Bubbles beget more bubbles

Source:
Head Of China Sovereign Wealth Fund Openly Admits Asset Bubble Addressed By Creation Of More Bubbles (8/09).

Inflation

That's not quite correct.

It is actually also the product of a scheme invented hundreds of years ago by kings and queens and dukes who realized that there was a hard limit on how much they could tax their subjects before they would face the end of a pitchfork. So a new scheme was invented. It works as follows.

If you or I write a check without any money in the bank to pay for it, we risk going to jail.

If the Federal Reserve does it however, Congress thanks them for it. Because although printing more money has bad future consequences those won't appear until later, and Congress will have spent the money by them. It was the same with royals.

Rather than tax the public more, Congress can go to the Fed anytime and get free money. This weakens the dollar, which results in inflation. But this harm will not occur right away, so:

1. Whoever gets the free money early and spends it right away is not affected by the inflation that will happen due to the free money.
2. Whoever makes a profit by conveying or storing the free money and can spend that profit sooner rather than later will likewise avoid the penalty of inflation.
3. But for the regular Joe Baggadonuts who will have to pay later in the form of taxes he will lose because his purchasing power will be reduced by inflation.

Thus, inflation is an indirect form of taxation.

Shady international cabal of financiers

For the common person who just wants to keep his or her down and live life, talk about an international cabal that is trying to shape world events will immediately illicit scoffs and condemnation of "conspiracy theories" and "tin foil hats".

Yet there seems to be historical evidence, unsurprisingly not provided by Establishment lackeys, that such Dr No wannabe's do exist and regularly meet in organizations such as the Bilderberg group, Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relation.

Which is to say that economic bubbles are not accidents but are planned, as are Depressions, Recessions, and the like. Rich people of this ilk frequently use the term "New World Order" in public to refer to their ultimate goal.

And indeed there are many momentous events where gross malfeasance or criminality played a role behind the scenes: The creation of the Federal Reserve; the Great Depression; major economic bubbles (Dot Com, Housing, etc.); repeal of the Glass-Stiegel Act;

Since the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh people have said that the NWO goal of a "one world government" and a worldwide bank and currency is now moving ahead, with the Dr No types in control of it.

What is the Federal Reserve?

The public despised them and wanted to break their parasitic grip on society so the Money Trust members pulled a fast one: They met secretly on Jekyll Island (Georgia) to write the Federal Reserve bill. They then used trickery to get it passed in Congress as a bill to break their own hold on the economy.

Woodrow Wilson foolishly signed it into law, which he later admitted was a grave mistake.

The Federal Reserve Act indeed legalized and enshrined the Money Trust as the Federal Reserve.

The purpose of any cartel is to reduce competition between members preferably to zero while increasing profits and reducing risk for members. The Federal Reserve Act did that.

The US government is fully in on the scam: The government is an active member in the cartel.

Derivatives

Definition

1. A derivative is a financial instrument (a contract) whose value is determined by something else which is called the underlying.
2. Derivatives are essentially bets that the value of the underlying item will go up or down. They are a kind of gambling. The underlying can be any of these:
   • An asset such as a stock or real estate or loan.
   • A stock index or other index e.g. Consumer Price Index.
   • The price of grain.
   • The weather.
   • Etc.
3. There are four kinds of derivatives:
   • Futures = a contract to provide goods at a specific price in the future e.g. grains.
   • Forwards
   • Swaps
   • Options
4. A recent tally by the Bank of International Settlements was that there exists $700 trillion in derivatives.
5. Warren Buffett recently referred to derivatives as weapons of mass financial destruction.
6. Buffetts firm Berkshire Hathaway has $63 billion of "exposure" to derivatives.
7. Another tally from March 2009 was that the world total of derivatives was near $1.2 quadrillion. This is much more than the world GDP. (The US GDP is $14.2 trillion.)
8. This sum has been referred as a "ticking time bomb."

OTC = over the counter

When you buy a car from another person as a private sale, that is an example of an "over the counter" transaction. Transactions negotiated through Craigslist classified ads and on Ebay are often OTC as well.

When you buy a stock on the stock market, this is not OTC. There is an intermediate (the market) who will sell you stocks even if there is no one selling to it. Likewise you can sell to the intermediate even if there is no buyer. The intermedate functions as a market maker.

OTC can be risky for society if some party buys a highly risky product like a mortage-backed security without understanding that it's junk, and then asks society to bail them out.

Mark to market is the act of defining the market value of a contract. Some companies, realizing that an objective value could not be set, abused the mark to market concept to engage in accounting fraud.

The insurers

1. AIG convinced itself that it would be a good idea to insure against a kind of derivative called a credit default swap.
2. This is a type of "insuring against loss." Imagine that you go to a casino to gamble. But you bring an insurance agent with you to ensure that if you lose at poker then the insurance company will pay for your loss.
3. So long as you the gambler are guaranteed to win the insurance company has no risk and any insurance premium that you pay is free money for them.
4. A credit default swap is a deal in which a lender seeks insurance on a loan but does not want to make insurance premium payments. If the loan goes bad the deal is that the insurer buys the troubled loan from the lender.
5. AIG insured so much of these credit default swaps because these are unregulated and at the time AIG believed that there was little or no risk involved in insuring them.
6. In other words AIG thought it could use CDSes to get free money.
7. When the global meltdown began AIG found its goose was cooked and unfortunately the US taxpayer has been giving them money to pay for their bad thinking and massive losses.
8. Insuring against loss is not a new idea. It has happened with every economic bubble and has caused huge destruction every time. Yet Congress will not outlaw it.

Program trades

What certain situations? Arbitrage, from microsecond to microsecond or millisecond to millisecond.

On the New York Stock Exchange, 70% of the trades are program trades.

Of that 70%, 50% are by Goldman Sachs.

Therefore, 35% of the volume on the NYSE is Goldman Sachs program trades.

Another major program trader is Citadel.

The mid-2009 scandal to do with Goldman Sachs software being stolen by a worker proved that Goldman is using program trades to reap $100 million per day, which is a collossal rigging of the market.

Naked short selling

• In a normal "short" sale, you borrow stock and then try to sell it for less money. If you sell, you must deliver what you sell.
• In a naked short, you don't borrow anything and if you sell it, you don't deliver. So it's totally fraudulent. But Wall Street loves it.

It is because of naked short selling that Bear Stearns' stock and Lehman Brothers' stock plummeted and each declared bankruptcy. They were the victims of fund managers orchestrating a coordinated attack on their stock using naked shorting.

It's not just banks that have been victims. Many companies have including Overstock.com, as explained by its CEO in this Fox News interview of David Byrne.

The SEC identified decreed that 19 banks to be protected from naked shorting. What this really meant was that the SEC was in all other cases and prior to that new rule refusing to enforce the laws against naked short selling, which is definitely an illegal activity.

Why? Because the people and companies who profit from naked shorting are very powerful. Indeed, according to David Byrne 9 of the protected banks were engaging in naked short selling.

Here's a YouTube video posted by WriterJudd about the naked-short-selling attacks on Bear Stearns and Lehman:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Notice that in this video the author (presumably WriterJudd) identifies three hedge fund managers whom he believes are guilty of the Bear Stearns and Lehman attacks:

• Jim Chanos
• Dan Loeb
• Steven Cohen

Hedge fund transactions may constitute 50% of the trades on the NYSE.

Counterfeit ratings

Because ratings agencies like Moody's were paid more to provide better ratings of these securities. It was fraud.

This established the mortgage-backed securities as a "confidence game", i.e. one in which a victim is made to feel confident that something is worth a great deal of money when actually it's fairly worthless.

Source

The unemployed

So while the official rate as of July 2009 is 9.5% the truth is it's more like 16%.

The Chinese lenders

• China has about $1.5 trillion of US dollars the value of which falls when the dollar falls and whenever the Fed prints more and more money.
• China holds about $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves overall.
  Source: FT article.
• China has $500 billion that is mortage-backed securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
  Source: NYT article.
• China can use this debt to demand key assets such as income-producing properties in the USA. For instance toll roads.

The Wall St. fraudsters

He refers to Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan as financial-terrorist organizations. He notes that even the mainstream media has said that the economy is being "held random" by these bankers, and that Goldman Sachs desires to put the entire world under the yoke of debt-slavery.

World debt versus world GDP

• The total of all GDPs of all nations in the world is only $100 trillion versus the US GDP of $13 trillion.
• The total debt in the world is something like $1000 trillion (a quadrillion).

The US dollar

• Oil and gold are traded in US dollars.
• The dollar-based financial markets are the "deepest". It involves $50 trillion.
• China has been buying up gold bars apparently in order to strenghen the importance of the yuan.

Dollar devaluation

This is the "decoupling effect" that Peter Schiff warns will happen.

It is known that China has been quietly accumulating gold. Gold has an inverse relationship with the dollar.

It is known that Gulf states have about $2 trillion dollars of reserves.

63% of worldwide reserves of foreign currencies are US dollars according to Russia Today in October 2009.

The Carry Trade

If the interest rates rise in country A, the carry trade disappears and investors are left with bad investments.

The carry trade was instrumental in Iceland's unlikely rise. The carry trade is how they made money without producing anything and despite Iceland's tiny population of only 300,000 people.

The carry trade can explain why the dollar has risen recently even while the stock market fell. The dollar was in demand because it's cheap to borrow. Interesting commentary by Jan-willem Nijkamp.

Gold

• China has 600 tons of gold bullion.
  • China has for some years been quietly buying gold whenever the price dips.
• USA has 8000 tons of gold bullion.
• IMF has 1000 tons of gold bullion.
• German gold is in New York.
• Hong Kong has demanded its gold back from London.
• The French took their gold back from New York a few decades ago.
• The total value of all gold in the world is about US $4 trillion.

The "Beijing put" refers to China's purchasing of gold whenever it falls below $1000 per ounce. It does so quietly so as to not send the price higher. Thus it buys in the valleys i.e. when the price dips.

Places

London

• London is the epicenter of the global money-laundering industry according to Max Keiser.
• London became the center of world hedge fund industry.
• Gordon Brown pushed to relax the rules (weaken regulations) for the City of London.
• Gordon Brown made the City of London the least regulated financial center in the world.
• AIG based its credit-default-swap (CDS) operations in London.
• The UK provides "safe haven" for money launderers.

The future: What could happen?

Peter Schiff says...

• His website
• His videos

At his point both Russia and China have argued that the US dollar should be abandoned as the world reserve currency.

Max Keiser says...

• His website
• His blog

Jim Rogers says...

Rogers is a famous investor and frugal man who has "little need for money". He and friend George Soros won big when trading currency during their younger years. Rogers warns everyone to get out of the US dollar and the UK pound. He has famously told young Britons to leave the UK.

Michael Hudson says...

Michael Hudson explains the meltdown: KPFA Guns and Butter interview MP3.

Mike Schedlock ("mish")

Mish has pointed out (in late 2009) that the US has been experiencing deflation for some time and that the Fed's printing more money will ironiclly not in itself change that.

Deflationists often refer to the lack of "money velocity".

It has been noted that a lot of the new money that the Fed has printed has not gone into circulation, which is why the increased money supply has not led to hyperinflation. Instead the money is being hoarded by companies that received it like JP Morgan.

Michael Moore

He does a pretty good job considering that he makes mainstream American films and is surely constrained from speaking verboten topics.

Yet what he doesn't say is almost more important than what he does. He fails in this documentary to mention:

• The $23.7 trillion in bailouts that Neil Barofsky has warned of.
• The $2 trillion of loans to unknown parties that the Fed issued and which Bloomberg sued over.
• The fact that the Fed was begun by and is today run by the major corrupt banks that he mentions.
• The ongoing and increasingly successful effort to audit the Fed.

Africa

Reminder: Our corrupt media

Both the mainstream media and the carefully-termed "alternative" media (as opposed to independent) have to varying extents been active in covering up the facts about all the major scams that have been in play and in protecting the guilty.

For info about who controls the alternative media, see here: diagram

A partial list of epic scams:

• $1.14 quadrillion in derivatives gambles worldwide.
• The naked-short-selling attacks on Bear Stearns and Lehman by criminals who were somehow connected with the SEC.
• The Recession ("Great Depression II").
• Iraq invasion and profiteering.
• $150 oil which was preplanned or announced at a Bilderberg meeting long before it occurred.
• 9/11 = inside job by CIA/military/FBI/Mossad.
• The rigged elections of 2000 and 2004.
• The attack on civil liberties in the US and UK by fascists in government.
• Israeli war crimes against civilians in Gaza.
• Israeli participation in bringing about 9/11.
• Theft of $2.2 trillion from Pentagon by Israeli Dov Zakheim.
• Etc.

Finance Jargon

1. Short selling ("shorting") = a bet in which you borrow something (you do not own it) and sell it in the hope of buying it back at a profit when the price falls. If the price rises then you lose money.
2. Naked short selling = an attack on a stock (such as Bear Stearns or Lehman) that drives its stock price down short-term so that the attacker can profit from a put option i.e. a bet that the price will go down.
3. Market liquidity = When the exchange itself serves as a buyer or seller to ensure that buyers and sellers can always find a partner for a transaction -- irregardless of whether both buyers and sellers (other than the exchange) are present.
4. Quantitative easing = The act of creating inflation by printing too much money. Why do that? Because the USA cannot pay back its national debt. Every time the Fed prints more dollars it is decreasing the value of the dollar itself (supply and demand) and since that debt is denominated in dollars the value of the debt decreases.
5. Black swan = an event that deviated significantly from the norm but that is hard to predict e.g. results of an inside job.
6. To "front run" = trading based on inside information.
7. Moral hazard = When one party acts more riskily because they know they are insulated from loss by another party. This has occurred with the US financial bailouts and is why some say that profits are privatized but losses are socialized -- the public is the second party paying for losses from the risky behavior of bankers.
8. Carry trade = Borrowing money in a low-interest currency and then exchanging it to invest it in another, higher-interest currency.
9. Mark to market = assigning value to an OTC (over the counter) derivative.
10. Front running = when a broker puts his own trade in front of a client trade. Link
11. Dead cat bounce = Creating a fake rally in the market just before the real shit hits the fan in order to pull in the "suckers" who wish and wish so hard that the Recession is already over.
12. Painting the tape = Creating a fake end-of-day rally in a stock so that the news media will claim in the evening/morning news tht the stock is now popular even though no real value has been added.
13. Margin = money paid to an exchange to be used in the event of a trading loss.
14. Margin call = use of a margin in the event of a trading loss.
15. Put option = contract saying you may sell X at price Y for a period of time. X is the "underlier". Y is the "strike price". If Y > spot price then you win.
16. Call option = contract saying you may to buy X at price Y for a period of time. X is the "underlier". Y is the "strike price". If Y < spot price then you win.
17. Straddle = a put combined with a call. You win more money than you bet if the price goes outside of a range. Otherwise you lose and the seller keeps your money.
18. Breakeven point = the point at which the costs of making a transaction equals the profit/gain achieved by the transaction.
19. White shoe = mafia-like bankster behavior concealed by a veneer of light-skinned Protestants.
20. Weenie waving = making stock market gambles just to show you are big stuff.

For reference: Gold price

A poem

We're soon to be hosed,
SDR superdollar or not.
By derivative scams under our nose,
Our Fed's greenback shall rot.

A few links

• Jargon

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    • My review of the film Apocalypto
    • My review of the film Battle Royale
    • My review of the film Clerks
    • My review of the film Ghostworld
    • My review of the film Hot Fuzz
    • My review of the film Juno
    • My review of the film Nacho Libre
    • My review of the film The Punisher
    • My review of the film Super Bad
    • My review of the film Watchmen
• Food: see Cuisine.
• Freedom & Liberty
  • Reasons to Reject Authority
  • My quotations from Henry David Thoreau: Walden
  • 32 Reasons to Speak Your Mind
• Frugality: see here
• Fuels: alternative
  • My list of biodiesel cooperatives and collectives
• Games
  • My Architecture Crossword Puzzle
• Health
  • How I lost weight
  • Notes about Puerh tea and EGCG
  • Common food serving sizes
  • Food pyramids from around the world
  • Options for Natural Living
  • Industrial chemicals listing and their health effects
• History and Archeology
  • An Actual Ancient Roman Caliga (plural caligae); this is a type of sandal.
  • Some of my quick reference guides including Roman History
• Humor
  • Knowledge versus Wisdom: Story of the Shoe-Tying Man.
  • Hoodia Risks
  • Hoodia Benefits
  • How to hide an unsightly erection
  • Sex tale about some tail
  • The Story of Flatulence
  • The art of appealing to stupidity.
• Language
  • My French language quick reference
  • My Spanish language quick reference
  • My English cliches and other stuff
• Mathematics
  • Quadratic formula solver
  • Trigonometry quick reference
  • Resistance/capacitance calculator
• News
  • My favorite video links and news
• Politics
  • Notes about 9/11 conspiracies.
  • Applying logic to the events of 9/11.
  • The USA is becoming a police state.
  • What is a conspiracy theory really?
  • Quiz: What do you know about building demolitions?
  • My Guide to America for Foreigners.
  • Definition of a poverty culture
  • Corporate Terrorism
  • Evidence of US Special Forces Performing Military Exercises for Taking Over US Cities (Martial Law)
  • Techniques of cowardly squabblers
  • Why the two-party political system does not work.
  • Quotations from Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch
  • Famous quotations
  • Member list for secretive elite Yale club "Skull and Bones" including Bush & John Kerry
  • My Corporate Malfeasance Information Repository or by first letter of company name:

    A B C D E F G H I J

    J K L M N O P Q R

    S T U V W X Y Z

• Real Estate
  • My notes on the book Country Property Dirt Cheap
• Religion and Atheism
  • My summary of Freud: The Future of an Illusion
  • How religion is a mind-virus.
  • Debunking bad argumentation of religious zealots.
  • Is atheism a religion? (No.)
  • Does Islam operate like a cult? (Yes.)
  • If Muslims hate Jews so much then why do Muslims pray to the Jewish god?
• Sciences
  • Anthropology
    • My summary of Cultural Anthropology by R. Robbins
    • My definition of a poverty culture
  • Biology
    • Notes about Viruses
    • Notes about Bacteria
    • Notes about Protists
    • The Universal Codon of Life
    • A few of my one-page quick reference guides
    • My Evolution quick reference guide
    • The infamous OOOTTAFVGVAH mneumonic (neurology)
    • Various biology notes of mine
  • Chemistry
    • Commonplace chemicals and their health effects
    • Chemistry clip art
    • Worlds Smallest Periodic Table
  • Physics
    • Evidence showing 9/11 was an inside job
    • Applying logic to the events of 9/11
    • Quiz: What do you know about building demolitions?
  • Psychology
    • Knowledge versus Wisdom: Story of the Shoe-Tying Man.
    • Dumb behaviors and characteristics.
    • Things that trip up even intelligent people
    • Reasons to reject authority
    • Tips on avoiding stress.
    • Unclever ways to waste your life.
• Travel
  • The Running of the Bulls
  • Tips on packing light
  • France
    • Frugal living in Paris France
    • Eiffel Tower information page
    • Homeless living structures in Paris France
  • Germany
    • My guide to living in Germany
  • Hostels
    • Hostels in Europe Listing
      • Hostels in Belgium
      • Hostels in Denmark
      • Hostels in France
      • Hostels in Germany
      • Hostels in Italy
      • Hostels in the Netherlands
      • Hostels in Spain
      • Hostels in Switzerland
      • Hostels in Sweden
      • Hostels in the UK
    • Hostels in the USA
• Work
  • My guide to living in Germany
• Videos
  • My favorite online documentary films