by Reverse Engineer, Doomstead Diner
A long time ago, Capo di Tutti Capis Alfonse Capone delivered his opinion upon being convicted on Racketeering charges that “Capitalism is the Legitimate Racket of the Ruling Class”. Far as Alfonse was concerned, he was no different than the folks running Da Goobermint and Da Federal Reserve Bank, and he was basically correct, except for the fact he wasn’t near so big or near so violent in trying to control his small market of the Chicago Liquor and Gambling Biz as TPTB were or still are in controlling the Oil and Banking biz.
Transcript:
Greetings Doomfans, and welcome to another edition of the Frostbite Falls Daily Rant, here on the Doomstead Diner.
A long time ago, Capo di Tutti Capis Alfonse Capone delivered his opinion upon being convicted on Racketeering charges that “Capitalism is the Legitimate Racket of the Ruling Class”. Far as Alfonse was concerned, he was no different than the folks running Da Goobermint and Da Federal Reserve Bank, and he was basically correct, except for the fact he wasn’t near so big or near so violent in trying to control his small market of the Chicago Liquor and Gambling Biz as TPTB were or still are in controlling the Oil and Banking biz.
If you don’t believe Alfonse, one of the main Enforcers for this Biz, General Smedley Butler said exactly the same thing at around the same time Alfonse said it, when he published his War is a Racket treatise. Smedley Butler was one of the most highly decorated Soldiers of the early 20th Century, he won the CMH not once, but TWICE! His words were as follows in his “On War” speech:
“I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
During the depths of the Great Depression in 1934, Smedley Butler was approached by Banksters and Industrialists to lead a Coup d’Etat against Franklin Roosevelt. To his great credit, Smedley refused this offer, but by no means does this mean the same bunch of criminals hasn’t been running the show here for the last 80 years either.
Basically, everyone in the Banking and Energy industries in the top echelon is at the very least involved in Criminal Fraud, but often much more than that in terms of influencing State Sponsored violence in the form of War to control the resources of other nations. WWII itself was all about Oil, the Japanese were embargoed and eventually forced into striking out and attacking Pearl Harbor as a justification for the FSoA to enter that war. The Germans had the thumbscrews put to them by the Banksters after WWI in the Treaty of Versailles and eventually forced the hyperinflation of the Weimar era which radicalized the Nazi party and created that nightmare, just as they now have radicalized the ISIS Muslims and forced that escalation to warfare.
It all escalates as a result of non-stop fraud that funds the Energy Industry, which begins with small frauds and the fleecing of small investors, which has occurred now on a large scale with the so-called “Fracking Revolution”, but has occurred before during Oil Price hikes, most notably in the aftermath of the Arab Oil Embargo in the 1970s.
John Michael Greer in his most recent Blog wrote about the Penn Square Bank, a small OK bank that started issuing out Loans to “Oilmen” back in the 70s when the prices skyrocketed after the Arab Oil Embargo. They didn’t have a whole lot of capital, but bigger banks were happy to buy up the loans from them, this is the “Money Multiplier” effect in reality, which is not that the same money is used over and over again, but NEW money gets pitched out every time somebody signs for a loan.
These folks used this money for all sorts of fun stuff, like buying Lear Jets and throwing Orgies in OK. LOL. When Oil prices crashed in the 80s, the tide ran out and not just the girls were swimming naked here, everybody was. Down goes Penn Square.
Fast forward to today out in Frackerville, you got the same story, this time on STEROIDS. These days, they don’t buy those El Cheapo miniature Learjets, they buy Gulfstream Vs at the very least, and if you are really on the Gravy Train here, you pick up a fucking Jumbo Jet to turn into your Flying Party Machine. You don’t got one Mansion in OK Shity to party with the local girls, you got Mansions from the Hamptons to the Costa del Sur to the Bahamas to party hearty with the latest Ford Models.
How do you get this flow of Funny Money flying your way during one of these Booms? You Hire Up Shills and Con Men masquerading as World Class Geoscientists who give presentations to investors demonstrating that there is COPIOUS fossil fuel energy left underground, which of course will cost a FORTUNE to pump up, but then THEY introduce some jackass Ph.D. Theoretical Physicists from MIT turned Economista who presents still more graphs demonstrating that the prices for this energy will rise…FOREVER! Your Return on Investment is GUARANTEED! TRUST US! We are EXPERTS! LOL.
IOW, you sell a complete line of utter BULLSHIT, and the suckers come pouring in chasing Yield, especially in a ZIRP interest rate environment where any type of typical investment grabs you a big 1 or 2%, whereas to stay Solvent your Pension Fund needs MINIMUM 5% return, and probably more than that.
Everybody here at the Top of the Heap is a Happy Pigman at this time, the Banksters are getting huge bonuses for dishing out Loans in the Billions, and the Shills, Con Men and Criminally Insane Maniacs are pulling in bloated paychecks to do the sales job. Even the Ford Models are Happy here, they are getting $5000 for a Blow Job they only got $1000 for before the Boom. LOL.
Unfortunately, the whole Con goes BLOOEY when prices which were SUPPOSED to rise ad infinitum go down the toilet because the fucking CUSTOMERS can’t afford to buy the shit anymore! The Tide goes OUT, and there are Naked Pigmen EVERYWHERE! LOL.
You wanna talk NAKED here? You know I trust that Halliburton just swallowed up Baker-Hughes, but you probably do NOT know that Baker Hughes Investors (read that your pension fund) took it up the ass getting only HALF the share asking price to keep this white elephant floating another day under a new name. I get this info from Deep Throat, one of my contacts in the Oil Patch.
How many Baker Hughes employees at the bottom end here are gonna be eating Ramen Noodles this Christmas, hopefully still solvent enough to give their kids a Lump of Coal to stay warm in their Christmas Stocking? No precise number on this yet, but I can tell you that Halliburton is laying off by the thousands, EOG is shutting down and selling off Canadian leases to bigger fools, and this is while the Hedges which keep these companies from going instantly underwater are still locked in. Another 6 months of this, even the Big Boys like Chevron and Exxon-Mobil will be swimming naked.
Speaking of Chevron, not only are the folks running their racket district criminals, they are fucking INCOMPETENT criminals to boot! Chevron is set to lose a bundle this year because some dimwit running the numbers forgot to convert the Australian Project Proposal into the correct currency! LOL.
On top of that buffoonery, Zero Hedge reported that at least a half dozen cheapskate companies bought idiotic 3-Way Hedges which collapse when the price drops too low.
“Tumbling oil prices have exposed a weakness in the insurance that some U.S. shale drillers bought to protect themselves against a crash.
At least six companies, including Pioneer Natural Resources Co. (PXD) and Noble Energy Inc. (NBL), used a strategy known as a three-way collar that doesn’t guarantee a minimum price if crude falls below a certain level, according to company filings. While three-ways can be cheaper than other hedges, they can leave drillers exposed to steep declines.
Collusion, Insider Trading, Market Manipulation, Bribery of Politicians, Regulatory Capture, False Flags, Assassinations, War, collusion with the “Enemy”, Training of Terrorists, etc, etc etc are all the halmark of the Energy & Banking Biz, and have been so since even before Edwin Drake drilled his well in Pennsylvania in 1859, before that it was the Coal Mining and before that the rape of the New World and the Genocide of the aboriginal population.
As the resource runs thinner and thinner here, the water runs out and the Criminality is exposed for all to see. Mass Murder, Planetary Rape, Ecosphere destruction, nothing in the panoply of sins is enough to satisfy the Greed of the people who run the Oil & Banking Biz. You can’t do anything about it either, because besides owning the Politicians they own the Judges and the Cops too, with the money they dish out and you have to use to survive, because there isn’t a spot left on the earth now where these sociopaths haven’t brought under their control.
On the upside to this though is the fact the monetary system used here is collapsing as we speak, and this paradigm is about done now.
And that’s all the Doom, this time until next time, here on the Doomstead Diner.
