The One People’s Public Trust’s (OPPT) UCC Filing of Foreclosure

I have been researching this topic for a number of years now by never posted on it until I recently started to see it come more mainstream. Max Keiser ran a piece regarding the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) filing by The One People’s Public Trust (OPPT) pointing a story in the Guardian Express. The background to all this is all English-speaking countries use the Common law system. Put simply there needs to be a victim to your crime. Governments have implemented taxation and administrated their own system using commercial laws (Admiralty law) whereby a person through their ignorance cedes their power to commercial courts. In other words, taxes are voluntary. One explanation is

Unfortunately, the actual law, the common law has been usurped by another system run by the legal industry and supported by the mass media – civil law which is ALL commerce based. We are compelled to live under Admiralty Law or the law of the sea without even realising it ! And without realising that all commerce is based in the concept of bilateral contract. Think about this. Because you won’t read it in newspapers and you won’t get it from the mass media. Thus all statutes and ALL Acts of Parliament (I repeat, ALL Statutes and ALL Acts of Parliament from Parliament) are only given the ‘force of law’ by the individual consent of the governed. They are NOT THE LAW OF THIS LAND. PARLIAMENTS DO NOT MAKE LAWS. Stop believing the nonsense ! You are tricked into commerce because the legal system of this nation has devised a language of its own called LEGALESE – the language of a Society called the Law Society. Legalese is nothing but the forked tongue of COMMERCE. You unwittingly contract with the state without even realising it and because ignorance is not a defence, you sell yourself into slavery.

Astonishing as this story is, I did manage to gather some proof to this. Dun & Bradstreet maintains a database of over 213 million companies globally. I did a search and managed to find many Irish government departments themselves are registered as corporations. Indeed, Ireland itself is a corporation. Many groups have set up in recent years including the lawfulrebellion.org in the UK which aim to awaken people.

The Guardian Express has reported on an open letter by The One People’s Public Trust (OPPT) to the Swedish Government as follows :

The members of a group calling themselves The One People’s Public Trust (OPPT) have been in the news lately, because of  recent UCC filings, with regards to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC).

The UCC is not a U.S. law, rather a uniform code of conduct for Intra-State and Global commerce, drafted and approved by private organizations, to be enacted by the individual U.S. States, and World Governments.

It has been approved by all 50 States in the U.S., Washington, D.C., The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and The U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as all major World Governments.

What follows is a Press Release of a letter sent to the Prime Minister of Sweden, Fredrik Reinfeldt.

>>>Press Release – For Immediate Distribution<<<

Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt,
Regeringskansliet
103 33 Stockholm

February 20, 2013

Open Letter to the Prime Minister and the Ministers of THE GOVERNMENT OF SWEDEN

Dear Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt,

I am writing this letter to you to inquire about a very pressing issue, an issue that touches every human being on this planet, at this very moment.

I stand in my honor before you. My request to you has no other motive but my human desire to uncover the truth, and bring remedy and hope to the rest of my broken hearted brothers and sisters.

It has recently come to my attention, that we, the people of this beautiful country, had a corporate government. This implies that we actually did not have a government serving the needs of its people but a corporation, acting as a government.

*SEC lists SWEDEN KINGDOM OF as a corporation.

The difference between the real, active and lawful government and the corporate government that was operating in its place is enormous. We the people, had, by an act of deception, become commercial commodities; our lives had a monetary value to the corporation and we were considered cargo or chattel. Our personal possessions could be seized from us, our children taken from us, our lives lost and our dreams stolen by it.

We belonged to the CORPORATION. We were its slaves.

This is very important information for all of us; information that we the people of this planet are waking up to.

~~

On December 25th 2012 the world changed, but not the way we were told it would though. No cataclysmic destruction, no planetary upheaval, no “End of the World” prophecy came true. Still, the world has changed more than anyone could ever imagine, let alone dream of….

After long years of legal investigations, through a series of UCC filings, and an extensive list of legal notification processes, all the corporate entities around the world were foreclosed upon and duly notified on December 25th 2012 by the One Peoples Public Trust (OPPT).
As the only Law that governed our legal systems was Corporate Admiralty-Maritime Law (Law of Water or Law of Commerce) and not Common Law (Law of the land and the people) these corporate judiciary systems are now foreclosed upon as well.

Since late December 2012 millions of people around the world have been introduced to our new Trust. All of us, including you, are the beneficiaries of this Trust. The funds that were kept in “safekeeping” for the people of this planet by the corporate commercial entities are now being kept for us by the One People’s Public Trust (OPPT).

Every man, woman and child of this world can now step out of the old slavery system that kept us in lack, ignorance, fear and injustice, and finally walk into the new era of personal freedom, abundance, love and compassion.

I know of hardly anyone who enjoyed the old world of oppression, control, poverty and war; the world where the biggest danger to the well-being and the freedom of the people were often their own governments; the world where a self-selected few had the power to control by fear, intimidation, theft, murder and torture the people they were supposed to protect, serve and help.

That world is today in its last, dying days….and it is better this way……

We have reached the end of this mad, destructive and cruel parody. For the first time ever, we are legally free as the divine beings that we truly are, and not the commercial commodity that we had become by the force of deception by a few.

With joy in my heart, I notify you today, that the time of slavery and blind obedience to any and all “authority” and the use of force towards any and all peoples for the purpose of control, be it financial, spiritual, physical or any other, in order to obtain profit, power and dominance over our Divine and Universal rights, is now over.

We, the inhabitants of this planet, are now legally free, equal and abundant!

I urge you to read the attached material. You, along with the rest of us, stand to benefit immensely from this historic change…. in every way imaginable!

For every man and woman alive, there comes a moment when the biggest choice in life has to be made, the choice that will forever change the stream of events to follow.

We all recognize when such a moment is upon us. We are defined by its presence and power. Sometimes our awareness of its might and its consequences isn’t immediate but the result of a rather slow process that ends with a complete transformation and the final awakening to our true essence.

This moment is here now… for all of us. We get to be the generation with enough courage, knowledge, compassion, love and understanding to make this historic leap from darkness into the light, from “reason” to “heart”, from service-to-self to service-to-others.

This letter is to let you know that this historic moment of choice has now arrived for you as well.

My humble request is that you read carefully the attached documents and become acquainted with their authenticity, the love for each of us conveyed in them and the poetry of the manner by which we have all been liberated from our collective imprisonment, be it physical, spiritual, intellectual, financial or moral.

I invite you to join the rest of humanity on this path to love, compassion, freedom, abundance and endless co-creation. Take a long, close look at all of us, including yourself, and your personal struggle towards the betterment of this fragile but beautiful world and see the future that now stands ahead for us all.

Isn’t it glorious!

Come and join us. The world is waking up to our true nature and unlimited potential. There is nobody else who can give value to us and our experience but us.

We now have a permanent legal standing which enables us to turn away from the slavery system and we humans, the incredible beings of unbelievable potential and grace, finally get to dream the dream and build the kind of world that we want to leave for future generations, with pride and a true sense of accomplishment.

The wave of freedom is now visible on the horizon. The veils of the sad, dark and cruel illusion that dominated us for thousands of years are lifting and the bright light of the dawn of the new era is shining upon us! For the first time in history we can dream the dream that our brothers and sisters of times long gone never dared.

The corporate system in which a divine human was a commercial commodity is no more.

The old corrupt entities are falling and their grotesque symbols are being swept away along with them.

History scholars will try to explain the insanity and cruelty that ruled by force throughout the long centuries of suffering and bloodshed. They will try to understand why humanity accepted such abuse of the weak by the force of the strong.

They will find no answers to our history of madness….
.
You will be making a choice now along with the rest of us. This choice stands to affect you and us equally.

I ask you to take time and to listen carefully to that silent voice inside your soul. Only the most attentive of us ever get to hear it. Only the best of us will heed it.

Ask yourself under what liability you will be acting from now on and in whose and what authority.

What “laws” do you intend to enforce from now on and in whose name?

What “authority” do you serve and who do you represent?

The end of this story is now becoming clear and known to more and more of us. Let us hope that the decisions taken from now on by you, and all of us, in light of this historic action taken by the One People’s Public Trust 1776 (OPPT), will be made in accordance with this legally and lawfully enforceable act.

From this moment onward, your actions, as well as the actions of every human being alive on this planet, now and in the future, will carry with them complete personal responsibility and liability as we begin to act in absolute truth, aware of who we really are: divine beings with equal rights and obligations towards one another in perpetual freedom to create.

Endlessly.

Forever.

I invite you to join the rest of us during these historic times. I extend to you my hand in invitation to become part of the solution and not part of the problem; part of the momentous act of the creation of the new world and not part that supports the old, sad, dark world that is no more….. It is no more.

With all my honor, respect and love, I stand in truth and I salute you,

With the utmost sincerity,

Oliver Troll

SEC (U.S. Sequrities and Exchange Commission) Corporate Registered Number
0000225913 SWEDEN KINGDOM OF SIC: 8888
Business Address: Box 16 306
Riksgäldskontoret
103 26 STOCKHOLM
Sweden

http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse
________________________________________________________________________
Links to the original documents: http://peoplestrust1776.org/ <<<

It remains to be seen what happens but my guess is it will be ignored by governments and the MSM but maybe a few more people will have awakened to how the system really works.

Sources:

1.  Max Keiser
2. Guardian Express
3. The One Peoples Trust
4. Dun and Bradstreet

 

 

Euro May Have To Devalue By Mid Year

In an original interview with Handelsblatt, Felix Zulauf founder of  Zulauf Asset Management in Switzerland has declared that the euro will most likely experience a crisis by mid year and will have to devalue.

The Euro crisis will escalate again says Felix Zulauf. Swiss money manager is preparing for a collapse of the stock market. But even greater is his concern that angry citizens could take to the streets.

The markets were expecting the world economy to recover, but he suspected that neither the economy nor corporate earnings would develop as hoped. Once the distance between “wish” and “reality” became apparent, “it could cause a crash.”

Timeframe? This year. Optimism might hang in there for a while; the second quarter would be more problematic. Over time, downdrafts in some markets could reach 20% to 30%. Despite the incessant insistence by Eurozone politicians that the worst was over, he didn’t see “any normalization.” The structural problems were still there, they’ve only been hidden, “drowned temporarily in an ocean of new liquidity.”

“Look at the economic data,” he said. “There is no visible improvement.” As if to document his claim, the Eurozone Purchasing Managers Index was released. It dropped again after three months of upticks that had spawned gobs of hope that “the worst was over.” Business activity has now declined for a year and a half. New orders, a precursor for future activity, fell for the 19th month in a row. While Germany was barely in positive territory, France’s PMI crashed to a low not seen since March 2009 and was on a similar trajectory as in 2008—when it was heading into the trough of the financial crisis!

Sure, the financial markets calmed down, but only because the ECB pulled the “emergency brake” by declaring that it would finance bankrupt states so that the euro would survive. It was a signal for the banks to buy sovereign debt. Borrowing from the ECB at 1%, buying Spanish or Italian debt with yields above 5%, while the ECB took all the risks—”a great business for the banks,” he said. As a consequence, the banks were once again loaded up with sovereign debt. “The problems weren’t solved but kicked down the road,” he said.

Politicians would muddle through. Government debt would continue to rise. But next time something breaks, the pressure would come from citizens, he said. Standards of living have been deteriorating. Many people have lost their jobs. Real wages have declined. “We’ve sent millions into poverty!” People were discontent. And it was conceivable that “someday, they could go on the street and attack these policies.”

Mid year is the timframe for the euro to hit a crisis. Draghi will have no choice but to “lira-ize” the euro.

Countries were devaluing their currencies to gain an advantage. This “race to the bottom” could escalate to where governments would impose limits on free trade. The devaluation of the yen would hit other countries. In Germany, it would pressure automakers, machine-tool makers, and others. By midyear, he said, “Europe will reach a point when it can no longer live with this euro.”

It would have to be devalued. France’s President François Hollande was already agitating for it. “And he has to because the French economy is in a catastrophic condition. It’s no longer competitive. France is becoming the second Spain.”

But didn’t the ECB emphasize that the exchange rate was irrelevant for monetary policy? And wasn’t the Bundesbank resisting devaluation?

“The policies of the Bundesbank are unfortunately dead,” he said, and its representatives were only “allowed to bark, not bite.” Monetary policy at the ECB was made by Draghi, “an Italian.” He’d push for the “lira-ization of the euro,” he said, “not because he likes it, but because he has no choice.” It was the only way to keep the euro glued together. “Mrs. Merkel knows that too, but she cannot tell the truth; otherwise citizens would notice what’s going on.”

So what does Zulauf recommend ?

Given this dreary scenario, what could investors do? Long-term, equities were a good choice, he said, but this wasn’t the moment to buy.

Gold? That it was down from its peak a year and half ago was “normal,” he said. Currently, gold funds were forced to liquidate, which could cause sudden drops, but it also signified “the end of a movement.” He expected the correction to end by this spring. “Long-term, the uptrend is intact,” he said.

Bonds? They had a great run for 30 years but were now “totally overvalued”—in part due to central banks that had bought $10 trillion in debt “with freshly printed money” over the past five years. Debt markets were completely distorted, but central banks would be able to hold the bubble together for “a while longer.” So he admitted, “Last summer, I sold all long-term debt.”

But where the heck was he putting his money now? That’s when he made his sobering remark, “I’m sitting on cash.”

Source: Testosteronepit, Handelsblatt

TYT: Financial Armageddon – Swaps Redefined As Futures

Peter Schiff: Its Going To Hit The Fan In Obamas 2nd Term

Peter Schiff’s interview with Varney on Fox.

• Gold is consolidating in preparation for another big move up.
• People are getting complacent and think things are getting better, but that’s only because governments are printing money. People will soon start to see the inflation.
• Japan will start to see high rises in inflation.
• Inflation is the new monetary policy for CBs.
• Markets are currently blindsided and won’t see inflation until it gets much worse.
• CPI numbers are phoney and designed to hide inflation.
• Bond bubble will eventually burst and that money will chase real goods.
• Would be shocked if there wasn’t an explosive move up in gold in next 2-3 years.
• It will hit the fan in Obamas 2nd term  – Currency crisis & Sovereign debt crisis.

This Time Its Different

ZeroHedge posted the following chart looking at the relationship between ISM new orders and unemployment rates. Of course this time its different 😉

CEO Of Saxo Bank Says Euro Is Doomed

Another name added to the list of people who believe the end of the euro is a matter of time. Lars Seier Christensen the co CEO of Saxo Bank has delivered his frank views on the euro.

Lars Seier Christensen, co-chief executive officer of Danish bank Saxo Bank A/S, said the euro’s recent rally is illusory and the shared currency is set to fail because the continent hasn’t supported it with a fiscal union.

“The whole thing is doomed,” Christensen said yesterday in an interview at the bank’s Dubai office. “Right now we’re in one of those fake solutions where people think that the problem is contained or being addressed, which it isn’t at all.”

………..

While the euro has strengthened, the economies of Germany, France and Italy all shrank more than estimated in the fourth quarter. Ministers from the 17-member euro area met during the week to discuss aid to Cyprus and Greece as a tightening election contest in Italy and a political scandal in Spain threaten to reignite the region’s debt crisis.

“I’d be a bigger seller of the euro at anything near 1.4,” according to Christensen, who said he isn’t making any speculative bets against the currency.

France is the danger ahead.

“Another possible fallout is getting rid of some of the countries that are being ruined by being in the euro, notably the southern European economies,” Christensen said. “People have been dramatically underestimating the problems the French are going to get from this. Once the French get into a full- scale crisis, it’s over. Even the Germans cannot pay for that one and probably will not.”

………..

“It’s the political world that has been extremely supportive of the euro, not for economic reasons but for political reasons,” said Christensen, a long-time critic of the single currency who now lives in Switzerland.

Source: Bloomberg

 

 

 

 

6 UK Water Firms Pay No Tax

What a sweet deal for some UK water firms whereby they pay no tax following in the footsteps of many other corporations like Starbucks. Over the past decade, water bills have soared by 82%, more than double the rate of inflation. Despite making over £1.5 billion in profits, water bills are set to rise again this year.

British water companies are evading millions of pounds in tax by the fraudulent method of getting loans from their owners abroad and listing themselves as under debt.

Following a public outcry over billions of pounds of corporate tax avoidance in Britain, involving names such as Google and Starbucks, research group Corporate Watch said that six British water companies have taken out high-interest loans from their owners through the Channel Islands stock exchange so that they could dodge tax using a legal loophole that reduces taxable profits in proportion to interest payments abroad.

That means their owners get fully untaxed profits from Britain by pretending that their subsidiaries in the country are under debt.

According to Corporate Watch, the six water companies of Northumbria, Yorkshire, Anglia, Thames, South Staffs and Sutton and East Surrey have got £3.4 billion in loans from overseas.

The group said the Northumbrian case is the “most brazen” as it has promised an 11 percent interest on a loan of over £1 billion from a Hong Kong-based group that belongs to Li Ka-shing, the world’s ninth-richest person.

The situation also directly affects British tax-payers who should foot the bill for the high-interest loans taken out by water companies.

Corporate Watch said water companies could secure loans with much lower interests if they were government-run adding the current situation is costing British consumers an additional £2 billion a year.

Source: PressTV

Economic Growth That Generates Poverty

A very interesting concept whereby countries that generate surpluses end up causing poverty to its own people. Ireland being a great example of this. The Troika demand that goods and services generated, are exported all the while wage reduction and austerity are forced on the people.

The extreme form of what Adam Smith called a “folly” occurs when surpluses finance poverty and economic instability. Two infamous twentieth century examples were the German reparation payments after World War One, and the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s and into the 1990s. In both cases, external powers pressured governments to generate trade surpluses in order make payments to foreign governments (in the case of Germany in the 1920s), or to foreign banks (the Latin American countries in the 1980s). The former led to Hitler and the latter to a generation of impoverishment.

In effect, these externally-imposed, government-generated surpluses take goods and services from residents and transfer them to foreign governments, banks and corporations. This type of trade surplus falls into the category of what Jagdish Bhagwati, the famous Indian economist (now at Columbia University), termed “immiserizing growth”, economic growth that generates poverty not improvement for a population. To put it simply, the country exports and the population grows poorer.

Armed with the ideas of “mercantilism” and “immiserizing growth”, we can have a look at the “Star Pupil”. The chart below shows why the Triad of the EC, IMF and German government (and the German opposition, it would appear) make Ireland the teacher’s pet. While the famous PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) languish in stagnation or plunge into decline, Irish GDP has increased, by 1.4 percent in 2011 and one percent in 2012. Not great, but looks good compared to decline. More important ideologically, the Triad assures us that this growth shows that “austerity works”. It shows the PIGS the shining path to recovery.

Here is the logic of the Troika

In case we missed it, the path to recovery runs along the following road. Austerity forces down wages, lowering production costs. Lower costs result in export competitiveness, and the growth of exports rejuvenates the economy as a whole. The rejuvenated growth reduces the fiscal deficit by raising tax revenue that can be used to pay foreign creditors. If the residents in the PIGS would show the discipline of the Irish, the euro crisis would soon end.

Who benefits from Ireland’s surplus?

The exposé of this ideological story would not be complete without pointing to the recipients of the Irish export surplus, the major banks in Europe that hold the debt of the Emerald Isle.

Even if by some miracle a mega-importer appeared on the world horizon (think China), the Irish path would still represent a road to misery. The chart below shows three economic trends since 2001. Unemployment rose continuously after 2007 in the land of the star pupil, with economic growth brining no reversal (measured in percentage of the labor force on the left). This rising unemployment rate went along with increasing exports per capita, from less than six thousand dollars per head in 2007 to over eleven thousand in 2011-2012 (measured on the right hand vertical axis).

While exports per head increased, domestic national income per person, total national income minus the trade surplus, declined, from $35,000 in 2007 to 25,000 in 2012, a drop of one-third. Domestic income per head declined in both the years of positive GDP growth. This appalling redistribution from the Irish to the European 1%, aka a trade surplus, was not the result of austerity reducing labor costs. For over twenty years Ireland ran a continuous annual trade surplus with no austerity to “lower costs” Under austerity imports contracted in Ireland because of falling incomes of the 99%.

Ireland, the Star Pupil of Immiserizing Growth, 2001-2012

This is Bhagwati’s “immiserizing growth” in real time, unrequited transfer abroad of almost a third of national income. The star pupil fails the test of a decent society, to protect the welfare of its people. And if the cause does not jump off the page, have a look at the final diagram. The vertical axis measures Ireland’s export surplus per capita, and the horizontal one measures domestic income per capita (GDP minus the export surplus). From 2001 through 2004, more exports per person went along with more domestic income per person. Then came the bad news, more exports, less left over for the Irish population to consume and invest.

Ireland may be the star pupil, but for the sake of the 99% its government needs to find different teachers and perhaps drop out of school.

Ireland, Star Student of Export-led Impoverishment, 2011-2012 (thousands of dollars)

 

Source: social-europe

American Serfs

After the property crash, Wall Street and big companies such as Blackstone Group are buying up foreclosed houses on the cheap and renting them back at a huge profit. Trends in the US show more and more people are moving towards rental rather than owning as the way forward into serfdom.

And as we mentioned on Friday, Americans continue to turn into “neo-serfs.”

“Wall Street is running a new profit game,” writes Shabnam Bashiri at Salon.com, “by buying foreclosed houses and renting them back to their former owners.”

Yes… nice business. Even better than it looks. It’s why the rich get richer… and the 1% are way ahead of the other 99%. Writes Bashiri:

Every day, it seems a new report comes out praising the ongoing housing recovery. In Georgia, home prices are up 5% over last year, a year in which we also had one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country. Seems a little odd, doesn’t it? Don’t foreclosures usually drive down the market?

That’s because the housing “recovery,” as they’re calling it, is fueled almost entirely by Wall Street private equity firms, hedge funds and the Fed’s unwavering support. After creating a massive bubble in home prices that eventually burst and caused our economy to go into a tailspin, these guys have decided to come back for more and figured out a way to profit off their destruction — by turning foreclosed homes into rentals and securitizing the rental income…

The Blackstone Group, the biggest player in the new REO [real estate owned] to rental market, has spent $2.5 billion in the last year purchasing 16,000 homes, a number that amounts to over $100 million per week.

Property records show that many of the homes Blackstone has acquired in Fulton County over the last few months were purchased on the courthouse steps at the monthly foreclosure auction, or through short sales — when a lender agrees to accept less than the amount owed on a loan. The vast majority of these homes are not empty, but occupied by homeowners who fell behind during the Great Recession…

Gone are the days of calling up your landlord to let them know rent will be there on the 7th instead of the 1st this month. As more and more Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and wages continue to decline or remain stagnant, paying rent a few days late could lead to a negative credit score, impacting their ability to secure resources and move up the ladder of the middle class.

“Paycheck to paycheck.” That’s the way serfs live. In someone else’s house. On someone else’s money. Often driving in someone else’s automobile. And sometimes even sitting on someone else’s furniture.

Got a health problem? Oh, yes — check into someone else’s health system.

Want an evening out at a restaurant? Put it on a credit card; let someone else pay for it.

Serfs don’t necessarily live poorly; they live badly. Because they’re not in control of the resources they need to live well. They are dependent, not independent.

We saw an ad for a new Smart car. “Just $199 a month,” said the ad.

People don’t own cars anymore. They just lease them… or not even. A lot of young people use Zipcar — a car-sharing service by which you “rent” a car using your iPhone. You never go to a rental agency or see a rental agent. You get a code via iPhone. You use the code to unlock the car. Easy. Peasy.

Some young people we know don’t own anything. They say it’s “liberating.” But that is something else. Not owning anything can be a smart financial strategy. But not owning a house because it was foreclosed… and not owning a car because you can’t afford one… does not sound very smart.

The Suits Take Over

You want a smart financial strategy?

Look at Blackstone. One of the houses it bought — probably much like the others — was bought for $90,000. It has a mortgage on it of $200,000. The former owners are still living in it. Instead of a mortgage, they’re now paying rent. Now they’re serfs.

Do the math. If they bought the house in 2005, they probably had a 6% mortgage. Six percent of $200,000 is $12,000. Add in another, say, $3,000 in amortization and charges… and they probably had a monthly payment of about $1,250.

Now the suits take over. Thanks to the conniving of other suits at the Fed, they are able to borrow 30-year money for about 3.5%. Let’s add another $10,000 to their purchase price (closing, taxes, maintenance) to make the math easier.

That gives them a monthly capital cost of less than $300 per month. And because these guys have big hearts as well as big wallets, they reduce the renter’s monthly payment to only $1,000.

Everybody comes out ahead. The former homeowners don’t have to move. They save money each month. And Blackstone — which may have only about $10,000 of its own money in the deal — earns (are you ready for this?) as much as $6,000, net, per year. That’s about a 60% rate of return on its cash.

But wait. It gets better. Because Blackstone is not counting on a real bull market in housing. Nope, the geniuses at Blackstone are making a big bet on interest rates.

At no extra cost, they have gotten a free “put option” on the bond market. That’s right: They’re short the bond market in a major way. When bond prices finally fall (perhaps this process has already begun), Blackstone is going to get another big jackpot.

And this payoff is practically guaranteed. Blackstone’s got its money-printing friends at the Fed to make sure it happens.

Indeed, Bloomberg ran a story of Hughes the billionaire who made his money from renting storage is now only second to Blackstone for renting homes in the US. Its a trend thats catching on.

B. Wayne Hughes, a sharecropper’s son who became a billionaire pioneering warehouses for Americans needing storage space, is buying thousands of houses to rent as more people find homeownership out of reach.

Hughes, 79, has purchased about 10,000 properties through his American Homes 4 Rent, making the Malibu, California-based firm the second-biggest owner of single-family rentals after Stephen Schwarzman’s Blackstone Group LP. Hughes is using $600 million from the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. and other fundraising to buy real estate, mostly at foreclosure auctions, according to Paul Saylor, chairman of CS Capital Management Inc., who advises the Alaska fund.

Hughes founded Public Storage 40 years ago and turned it into the biggest storage-rental company in the world. Now he’s competing with an expanding pool of institutional buyers and individuals seeking low-priced properties in regions hardest hit by the housing crash. The firms are helping to drive the recovery, with home prices rising in December by the most since 2005, even after a record level of foreclosures makes it harder for millions of Americans to qualify for a mortgage.

The Alaska Permanent Fund’s joint venture with American Homes 4 Rent has spent $750 million to purchase about 4,500 of Hughes’ 10,000 single-family houses, according to Michael Burns, chief executive officer of the $44.8 billion Alaska fund, which invests state oil royalties that have financed annual dividends for Alaska residents since 1982. The American Homes 4 Rent venture should yield unleveraged returns of 6 percent to 7 percent from rents, before home prices and rents rise, according to Burns. By comparison, high-yield, high-risk company debt, or junk bonds, are yielding about 6.6 percent.

Alaska picked Hughes for the venture even though his background was largely storage, because “nobody has a track record in this space,” Burns said in a telephone interview from Juneau, Alaska. “Public Storage’s assets seemed to be the closest.”

…….

Rental Need

The need for rentals has increased after more than 5 million homeowners lost their houses since prices peaked in 2006, triggering the worst recession since the Great Depression, when Hughes’ family fled Oklahoma. The U.S. homeownership rate fell to 65.4 percent at the end of 2012, matching the level last seen in 1997 and down from a peak of 69.2 percent in June 2004, the Commerce Department reported.

Mortgage availability has also become more restrictive after lax standards fueled the housing boom and crash. Borrowers whose loans for purchases closed in 2012 had an average credit score of 740, according to data compiled by real estate data service CoreLogic Inc., up from 716 in 2006.

“Even with mortgage rates near a 50-year low, too many families with solid credit who want to buy a home are being rejected,” President Barack Obama said yesterday in the State of the Union address.

Single-family rentals have represented more than 10 percent of the U.S. housing stock since 2000, said Wally Charnoff, chief executive officer of Westminster, Colorado-based data provider RentRange LLC. “So even when the market normalizes, buying homes to rent should prove a good long-term strategy for investors,” he said.

 

Source: Bill Bonner’s Diary,   Bloomberg

Nearing The End Of Debt Based Economy – Its Going To Be Messy.

Jeff Berwick of the Dollar Vigilante sums up economic future ahead, whereby the US will be ground zero for the economic collapse.

All Wars Caused By Bankers

EU Toll Patrol To Counter Euro Skepticism

The EUSSR are launching a troll patrol in preparation for next years Euro elections to counter the growing skepticism within the empire EU. And we thought the USSR was bad 😉

Venezuela Devalues By 46%

Venezuela was ahead of the rest when Chavez repatriated the country’s gold. Now it looks to have stolen a lead in the currency wars. If history has thought us anything it’s that those who devalue fair best. The question remains who will be next to devalue so openly or will nations continue to do so via stealth mode via money printing.

While the rest of the developed world is scrambling here and there, politely prodding its central bankers to destroy their relative currencies, all the while naming said devaluation assorted names, “quantitative easing” being the most popular, here comes Venezuela and shows the banana republics of the developed world what lobbing a nuclear bomb into a currency war knife fight looks like:

• VENEZUELA DEVALUES FROM 4.30 TO 6.30 BOLIVARS
• VENEZUELA NEW CURRENCY BODY TO MANAGE DOLLAR INFLOWS
• CARACAS CONSUMER PRICES ROSE 3.3% IN JAN.

And that, ladies and gents of Caracas, is how you just lost 46% of your purchasing power, unless of course your fiat was in gold and silver, which just jumped by about 46%. And, in case there is confusion, this is in process, and coming soon to every “developed world” banana republic near you.

From Bloomberg

Venezuela devalued its currency for the fifth time in nine years as ailing President Hugo Chavez seeks to narrow a widening fiscal gap and reduce a shortage of dollars in the economy.

The government will weaken the exchange rate by 32 percent to 6.3 bolivars per dollar, Finance Minister Jorge Giordani told reporters today in Caracas. The government will keep the currency at 4.3 per dollar for some products, he said.

A spending spree that almost tripled the government’s fiscal deficit last year helped Chavez win his third term. Chavez ordered the devaluation from Cuba, where he is recovering from cancer surgery, Giordani said. Venezuela’s fiscal deficit widened to 11 percent of gross domestic product last year from 4 percent in 2011, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

The move can help narrow the budget deficit by increasing the amount of bolivars the government gets from taxes on oil exports. While a weaker currency may fuel annual inflation of 22 percent, it may ease shortages of goods ranging from toilet papers to cars.

In the black market, the bolivar is trading at 18.4 per dollar, according to Lechuga Verde, a website that tracks the rate. Venezuelans use the unregulated credit market because the central bank doesn’t supply enough dollar at the official rates to meet demand.

Source: ZeroHedge, Bloomberg

Path From USDollar to New Gold Note Global Trade System

Much has been written of the coming demise of the US dollar and a possible return to the gold standard. Jim Willie explores how he believes this will come about and what to expect along the way. 2013 being the key year.

The crux of the non-US$ trade vehicle devised as a USDollar alternative will be the Gold Trade Note. It will enable peer-to-peer payments to be completed from direct account transfers independent of currency, and most importantly, not done through the narrow pipes and channels controlled by the bankers with their omnipresent SWIFT code system among the world of banks. The Gold Trade Note will act much like a Letter of Credit, serve as a short-term bill, and maybe even push aside the near 0% short-term USTreasury Bills that litter the banking landscape. Any bond or bill earning almost no interest is veritable clutter. The zero bound USTreasurys open the door in a big way for replacement by a better vehicle. The new trade notes will involve posted gold as collateral, whose entire system for trade usage will bear a massive gold core that also will include silver and platinum, maybe other precious metals. The idea is to avoid the FOREX systems, to avoid the USDollar, and to avoid the banks as much as possible in a peer-to-peer system that can be executed between parties holding Blackberry devices or simple PC to complete the payments on transactions. If Gold is ignored by the corrupt bankers, then Gold will be the center of the new trade system and the solution in providing a globally accepted USDollar alternative.

 Do not be surprised to see the Chinese Yuan later as interchangeable with the Gold Trade Note. But first the Yuan must be convertible into the many major currencies actively traded in the world. Numerous reports have come in recent weeks that the Yuan currency will soon have a gold backing, yet unconfirmed. My expectation is for the Chinese Yuan eventually to be interchangeable with the Trade Note. That will signal its implicit gold backing. While many events and steps are not known, and many surprises will be thrust on stage, the guiding pathways are slowly coming to light.

Currency wars ongoing with no sign of abatement.

The list of nations undergoing active currency intervention is growing markedly. Currency manipulation actions are routine, each action inviting a reaction by other nations. It is not just Japan and the United States, the usual suspects. It is Luxembourg, Switzerland, South Korea, Sweden, Norway, and Brazil. Heck, even the venerable England has taken steps to create a Chinese Yuan swap facility. They do not wish to be left out when the Yuan becomes a more global currency, with full convertibility. London is aiding the path to a convertible Yuan. Who’d a thunk it? London wishes to remain a major trading center. Look for someday soon a Chinese Govt Bond auction denominated in Yuan, the offering managed by London banks. Such a development is not welcome news for New York, which must be seething with anger and flush with disgust. This is the more than a currency war, but rather a global currency tumult and transformation, with grand tectonic shifts, on the disruptive path to a return of the Gold Standard.

The Swiss and Japan will make an eventual switch from the current system to an Eastern orientated solution.

Watch for the Swiss and Japan to knock on the door for entrance in the Eastern Alliance, which will produce the USDollar alternative. It requires a critical mass for success. The stress felt in these two nations will motivate their pursuit of the USDollar alternative solution. They are being seriously wounded by the fiat paper currency system with floating rates.

The G20 meeting held in Russia later in the year(Sept) is one to watch out for as Willie suspects the plans will be put in place in the rumoured absence of US/UK.

Rumor is circulating in London that neither the United States nor the United Kingdom will attend the G-20 Meeting in Moscow. Refusal to attend by the Anglos would open a giant gate to coordinate plans by the leading Eastern nations (trade participants) on the new trade settlement system with attendant platforms. Rather than creating a new and better currency, they are more likely to establish a gold-backed trade settlement process that will render the USDollar obsolete. Failure to attend by the US-UK tagteam of financial fascists would ignite the Eastern-led consortium on motivation toward the launch of the new system in a more open public vocal manner with press conferences. The Third World awaits the nations that refuse to become part of a growing critical mass in global trade, which desires a more fair and equitable system of trade settlement. It is coming, but awaits a climax of collapse.

Source: silverdoctors

JHK: Cattle Drive From Bonds To Stocks

Recently Bill Gross warned of the “credit Supernova” whereby we could see a looming explosion that could see investors lost in space. James Howard Kunstler laughs at the Fed’s money printing which will ultimately cause huge damage to the bond market as investors move towards stocks in their droves.

 How hilarious is the Federal Reserve’s cattle drive of cash money (i.e. “liquidity”) into the stock markets? I’ll tell you: if that cash is outflow from bonds that pay ZIRP interest rates, then this attempt to stampede investment into the stock market is only going to succeed in ravaging the bond market and by extension the credibility of the dollar, the US banking cartel, and then the world financial system as a whole. 

If bond-dumpers rush into stocks, then who are the next bond buyers at ZIRP? The USA can’t keep going without continuous bond selling. Somebody has to buy the darn things. The Federal Reserve is now buying around 70 percent of US issue — a lot of it via secondary market pass-thru shenanigans involving “Primary dealers” (a.k.a. Too Big To Fail banks, who get to cream off a premium when they flip bonds to the Fed — tidy little racket). If the other 30 percent of issue can’t find willing buyers at ZIRP then interest rates will have to go up. If interest rates go up, then interest paid out on bonds (that is “debt service”) by the US government will go up catastrophically, because the aggregate debt is so colossal and most of the debt is short term, meaning that in a post-ZIRP world the interest rate ratchets up automatically every 13 weeks as bonds roll over. The US will then only be able to pretend that it can service the debt at higher interest rates. Everybody in the world will recognize this — surely only increasing the velocity of the stampede away from bonds. The question is: how long can pretending to service debt go on before it is just called by it’s real name: default? Or, if countered with additional furious computer “money” creation: hyperinflation? Either way, of course, you end up broke.

Deliberate intention to pretend all is well.

This cattle drive into stocks is strictly a political gambit. The cattle are being driven to the slaughterhouse. It’s discretionary strategic national financial suicide. They’re driving up the stock markets for cosmetic purposes, to make it appear that an economic recovery is going on, and with the aim of setting in motion a self-reinforcing financial feeding frenzy in this rush to “equities.” By the way, in case my manner seems didactic today I am attempting to define my terms as I go along because most other financial bloggers seem to assume that ordinary people understand all their jargon, which I am quite sure they do not.

   Returning to my point… the Fed and their auditors on Wall Street and in government, are jacking up the stock markets in the hopes of stirring up “animal spirits,” as the financial psychologists say, to put over the story that it equals a vibrant economy — which is nonsense, of course, to anyone who shoots a casual glance at the economic wreckage all around them. Anyway, since the stock market action these days is dominated by high frequency trading robots running on algorithms, where exactly would animal spirits even factor in? If anything the absence of real animal spirits in this action also implies the absence of its counterpart, animal survival instinct, of which human intelligence is an order. What can come of stirring up animal spirits among robots? A train wreck is exactly what.

 Now, I ask you: at a moment in history when vast interlinked global financial markets have never been so unstable, so primed for unintended consequences courtesy of the diminishing returns of technology, so ripe for a massive, cascading “accident,” is it a prudent thing to fuck around with such crude PsyOps?

Gross isn’t quite as specific as Kunstler but does warn of the credit bubble running out of energy.

Pimco’s Bill Gross looks at the investing universe and sees a dangerous supernova – a looming explosion that could see investors lost in space.

The head of the Pacific Investment Management bond giant has issued an ominous forecast in which he worries that the global central bank-induced credit bubble “is running out of energy and time.” (Read More: Federal Reserve Should Do Less, Not More: Morici)

As a result, investors will have to get used to an atmosphere of diminishing returns and portfolios that will hold more hard assets like commodities and fewer less-tangible financial assets like stocks.

“Our credit-based financial markets and the economy it supports are levered, fragile and increasingly entropic,” Gross said in his February newsletter.

Gross recommends gold, commodities and other currencies.

“When does money run out of time? The countdown begins when investable assets pose too much risk for too little return; when lenders desert credit markets for other alternatives such as cash or real assets,” he added.

Gross advocates investors turn to gold and other commodities for inflation protection and currencies and assets in other countries that don’t have such active central banks and huge debt loads. He favors Australia, Brazil, Canada and Mexico.

All this money printing but where is the growth?

In the U.S. alone, the Federal Reserve has created a shade under $3 trillion in new money to buy more than $1.7 trillion in Treasurys and $968 billion in mortgage-backed securities, according to the most recent Fed balance sheet. The Fed will be buying $85 billion a month of the two debt instruments as it seeks to continue stimulating the slow-growth economy, which actually contracted 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter.

The inability of central banks to generate robust growth despite all the money-printing has stoked concern about future returns by Gross and Pimco, which manages $1.92 trillion for clients.

“Unless central banks and credit extending private banks can generate real or at second best, nominal growth with their trillions of dollars, euros, and yen, then the risk of credit market entropy will increase,” Gross said.

His “credit supernova” metaphor describes a condition in which “our current monetary system seems to require perpetual expansion to maintain its existence” similar to the physical universe.

That expansion to $56 trillion, though, has generated consistently lower results, he said. Consequently, the investor base needed for the expansion to continue may not last.

“The end of the global monetary system is not nigh. But the entropic characterization is most illustrative,” Gross said. “Appreciate the supernova characterization of our current credit system. At some point it will transition to something else.”

Source: 24hGold.com,  CNBC

Germany On Verge Of Bailing Out Cyprus

This euro crisis just gets better and better. Cyprus is locked out of the bonds markets for over a year now and is being kept alive by a loan from Russia but badly needs a bailout. Thats where the dilemma lies for Germany which will bear the brunt of any bailout. A lot of the depositors in Cypriot banks are Russian black money and with an election later this year, it would be very embarrassing for Merkel to be seen to supporting handing over German taxpayers money to pay back dodgy Russians.

When German officials said they would save the euro zone at all costs, the prospect of bailing out Russian oligarchs was not what they had in mind.

But eight months before a crucial election in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing charges that Europe is doing just that as the tiny island of Cyprus, a haven for Russian cash, threatens to become the next point of contention in the euro crisis.

In recent days, Germany has signaled that it is reluctantly edging toward a bailout for Cyprus, after lifelines have been extended to Greece, Ireland and Portugal to prevent potentially calamitous defaults. While Cyprus makes up just a sliver of the euro zone economy, it is proving to be a first-rate political headache.

“I don’t think that Germany has ever in the history of the euro zone crisis left itself so little wiggle room,” said Nicholas Spiro, the managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy in London. “But Germany wants the euro to succeed and survive, and they are saying we can’t afford a Cyprus bankruptcy.”

But giving a bailout to Cyprus is trickier than it seems. Cyprus’s politicians would prefer not to take European money, which comes with the harsh austerity conditions that have spread misery in Greece. And they can argue that Cyprus was doing relatively well until Greece’s second bailout, when Greek government bonds — of which Cypriot banks held piles — lost considerable value.

The question of keeping the euro together had seemed to be conveniently fading for Ms. Merkel, who in the fall put her full backing behind the euro zone, quieting fears of a breakup. But Berlin seems to have been caught off guard by the political tempest stirred up by Cyprus, which has been shut out of international bond markets for a year but has been kept afloat by a $3.5 billion loan from the Russian government.

Here, is where it get hilariously funny 😉

With that money running out, Germany and its European partners have been locked in a fierce debate over whether and how to throw Cyprus a lifeline. The problem is, most of the money lost by Cypriot banks was Russian, and the worry is that most of the bailout money could wind up in the hands of Russian oligarchs and gangsters. That fear, backed by a recent report by German intelligence, has stoked a furor even among some of Ms. Merkel’s political partners. “I do not want to vouch for black Russian money,” Volker Kauder, a prominent member of her conservative bloc, said recently.

The Russian presence is thick on Cyprus, a picturesque Mediterranean island and a onetime British colony. The bustling, large city of Limassol has an enclave of restaurants, shops and fur boutiques so packed with Russians that locals call it “Limassolgrad.”

You know when something is true, when you get an official denial.

Officials in Cyprus say there is no proof that the Russian cash in its banks is of dubious origin, and they insist that they cracked down on money laundering before joining the European Union. The officials point to an evaluation by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showing that Cyprus is compliant with more than 40 directives against money laundering.

With a population of slightly over 1 million, Cyprus is looking for about €22 billion for its banks.And  I thought Ireland messed up its banks bigtime.

While any lifeline for Cyprus would be small — about $22 billion compared with about $327 billion for Greece — the quandary has reverberated in Europe’s halls of power, and especially in Berlin, which appears to have been backed into a corner by Ms. Merkel’s commitment to keep the euro zone together no matter what.

The outspoken German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, recently cast doubt on whether Cyprus should even be considered for a bailout, given its small size and the stark reality that it is not nearly as vital to the euro’s existence as the larger economies of Spain or Italy. His blunt assessment reportedly drew an admonishment from Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, which has spent hundreds of billions of euros on a program intended to discourage financial market speculators from attacking euro zone countries.

Already Cyprus is implementing austerity measures and they are having predictable consequences.

With Russia refusing to provide any further financing unless the so-called troika of creditors — the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission — provides most of the bailout, the Cypriot government has few options. It signed a memorandum of understanding in November with the troika, setting off a wave of austerity measures that are already starting to hit the enfeebled Cypriot economy.

The salaries of public sector workers have since been slashed by up to 15 percent, state pensions are to be cut by up to 10 percent and the value-added tax is set to rise. “The island has been hard hit, and there is an atmosphere of fear,” Mr. Faustmann said. “People are not sure if they will keep their jobs, and if they do, how long they will have them.”

Mr. Faustmann estimated that it would take at least a half-decade for the Cypriot economy to recover — assuming that the conditions required by Germany and the troika do not send Russian money fleeing from the banks. “If that happens,” he said, “then Cyprus is dead.”

Source: NY Times

Happy Anniversary Federal Reserve

Happy 100th anniversary to the Federal Reserve, created on 3rd February 1913. 96% devaluation and has been fucking things up ever since.

Worlds Biggest Pension Funds Looking to Sell Its Japanese Bonds

Much has been written already of the impending collapse in the bond market this year but when a big fish makes a move, nobody wants to be left behind. Japan’s biggest pension fund (Government Pension Investment Fund) is looking to move away from it large holding of JGBs. Many more will sure to follow suit.

Japan’s public pension fund, the world’s biggest manager of retirement savings, is considering the first change to its asset balance as a new government’s policies could erode the value of $747 billion in local bonds.

Managers of the Government Pension Investment Fund, which oversees about 108 trillion yen ($1.16 trillion) in assets, will begin talks in April about reducing its 67 percent target allocation to domestic bonds, President Takahiro Mitani said in a Feb. 1 interview in Tokyo. The fund may increase holdings in emerging market stocks and start buying alternative assets.

The GPIF, created in 2006, didn’t alter the structure of its holdings during the worst global financial crisis in 80 years or in response to the 2011 earthquake and nuclear disaster. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Bank of Japan (8301) have pledged to restore economic growth and spur inflation, which will mean higher interest rates, Mitani said.

“If we think about the future and if interest rates go up, then 67 percent in bonds does look harsh,” Mitani, who was appointed in 2010 after serving as an executive director at the Bank of Japan, said. “We will review this soon. We will begin discussions for this in April-to-May. Any changes to our portfolio could begin at the end of the next fiscal year.”

GPIF, one of the biggest buyers of Japanese government bonds, held 69.3 trillion yen, or 64 percent of total assets, in domestic debt at the end of September, according to its latest quarterly financial statement. That compares with 12 trillion yen, or 11 percent, in Japanese stocks; 9.6 trillion yen, or 9 percent, in foreign bonds; and 12.6 trillion yen, or 12 percent, in overseas stocks.

……..

The yield on Japan’s 10-year government bond climbed 3 basis points to 0.795 percent as of 12:33 p.m. in Tokyo today. By comparison, the projected dividend yield for the Topix Index (TPX), the country’s broadest measure of equity performance, is 2.05 percent. The Topix added 1.1 percent today.

Japan’s bonds handed investors a 1.8 percent return in 2012, according to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch Index, compared with the 18 percent surge in the Topix.

Even as shares jumped amid optimism surrounding Abe’s stimulus plans, benchmark Japanese government bond yields have remained below their five-year average yield of 1.18 percent. Benchmark 10-year yields are the lowest in the world after Switzerland and are less than half the level in the U.S.

“JGBs were how we made money over the past 10 years,” Mitani said. “The BOJ said that they are increasing buying bonds, but they’re also putting power into lowering interest rates. If the economy gets better, then long-term interest rates like a 10-year yield at less than 1 percent are unlikely.”

The five-year JGB rate touched a record low 0.14 percent last month amid speculation the Bank of Japan will expand bond purchases as part of the monetary easing advocated by Abe.

The comments by Mitani show the pension manager needs to consider higher-risk, higher-yield assets to help fund retirements of the world’s oldest population. About 26 percent of the nation is older than 65, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Under Mitani’s leadership, the GPIF began buying emerging- market assets in September 2011 and started purchasing shares in countries included in the MSCI Emerging Market Index (MXEF) last year. Mitani said in July 2012 that the fund was selling JGBs to pay for people’s entitlements and might consider alternative investments as it seeks better returns.

Source : Bloomberg

 

EU Moving Towards EUSSR

How long before the EU becomes the EUSSR?

 

Related Story: EU provides funding for propaganda

What The Presidents Said About US National Debt

Talk is cheap.