Monday, February 6, 2012

FBI warns of threat from anti-government extremists

Story at Reuters here.
Anti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday. These extremists, sometimes known as "sovereign citizens," believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference. The extremists may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.
Sounds like the FBI may be concerned about Ron Paul's campaign supporters [ ;) ] or perhaps more generally they are concerned about extreme Libertarians of the Right from a law enforcement perspective.

This is where ignorance about our modern monetary systems can lead: extremism, threats of violence, and accordingly, surveillance.   I'm sure many (but probably not all the "hard cases") of these people would not be driven to this form of anti-social behavior and rebellion if they could see their way into the MMT paradigm and truly reach an understanding of how our monetary system operates.

It's really a shame, and many so-called "experts" that these people listen to are very much to blame for provoking these heavy handed policies.

7 comments:

Bob said...

I am sure the Central Bank chronnies and the politcal Cartel congress, senate, president, and justice department, lobbyists, and corporate monopolies are worried what will happen if the sheeple awake to the fact that William Dudley x Goldman Sachs partner now in charge of the New York Bank, along with the Bernanke who was not elected, and has managed to break everything he has ever tried to fix, unless you count enriching the primary dealers and socializing thier losses while privatizing their gains; These vermon know they will all have to pack for the Davos along with the ill gotten gains. Take one trillion Bernanke, and pay off everyones mortgages and just put and end to the farce of kicking the can down the road.Obama throw some of this scum in jail for accounting control fraud.

googleheim said...

Occupy X Tea

The only inclusive region of these movements' intersection is that fact that they both do not like wall street derivatives.

Tea wants the creative destruction of these shadow banks, while Occupy were only ones who really brought out Jim Black who panned across both aisles with his harkening back to the Resolution Trust Corp days.

Tea wants machine guns

Occupy wants civil disobedience

etc etc

The fine lined area where they could intersect in tandem is warped and mutually repelled each other by their differences.

googleheim said...

Matt

pass this to Mike :

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/06/us-japan-ma-idUSTRE8150H220120206

Japan companies are in expansion overseas - fueled by use of MMT in their recovery from gold standard 80's pop not doubt

googleheim said...

could be USA in next 5 years if we increase the debt

Matt Franko said...

goog,

I believe the term Ive seen to describe this is "foreign claims". and the trade deficit/Current account deficit balances that the US runs accrue to total these "foreign claims". I guess subject to govt approval, foreign firms can come in here and buy US firms with these accrued USD balances. (remember Dubai Ports fiasco)

These claims are fast approaching $5T as can in a way be mostly seen here:

http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt

You can see these most of these claims are held and accrued by the usual zombie nations outside of the west.

These zombies (I for now cannot think of another term to use to describe them so this is going to have to do) are so irrational and mindless, that they zealously seek USD balances even though as foreign entities they have no legal USD tax liabilities which would be the sole reason why any rational agent would seek USD balances in the first place.

I guess what they are doing here with these acquisitions is going for a complete zombiefication and actually buying US firms so they can now actually come as close as they can to experience a true USD tax liability just like we other humans in the west. So to them this may be nearly just as good as actually residing here with us in the west.

"It's the next best thing to being there..." type of thing. Go figure...

Resp,

Anonymous said...

These zombies (I for now cannot think of another term to use to describe them so this is going to have to do) are so irrational and mindless, that they zealously seek USD balances even though as foreign entities they have no legal USD tax liabilities which would be the sole reason why any rational agent would seek USD balances in the first place.

Matt, why is this irrational? Possessing US dollars is a prerequisite to participating in any kind of market in which transactions are conducted in dollars.

Matt Franko said...

Dan, I'm having a little fun here with the zombie references (hopefully folks recognize this), but when I look at this spreadsheet here:

http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt

I see this here:

http://www.aetv.com/hoarders/

I view this constant accrual of USD balances as similar to the irrationality/mental illness of "hoarders" on the reality TV show...

I dont understand why these foreign entities do not spend their surplus USD balances on real things that can measurably improve the lives of their citizens in real terms.

To me it is irrational AT BEST.

For instance Japan, they exposed their people to all of that radiation when they could have used just pennies of what they have there to purchase a few CH-46 heavy lift helos from Boeing here in the US and a few mobilized Cummins portable electric power units and had them ready to fly in in case of a nuclear accident like the tsunami caused.

But noooooooooo....

They would rather have these USD financial assets sitting here at the Fed than real assets sitting over there which can be used to protect/improve the quality of their citizens lives.

This is irrational.

Resp,