EconomicCrisis.US

U.S. stock futures rose on Thursday as markets interpreted news that Bank of America is repaying the government $45 billion as a sign that economic conditions are improving.

S&P 500 futures rose 3.3 points to 1,111.20 and Nasdaq 100 futures gained 2.25 points to 1,793.70. Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 27 points.

U.S. stocks were languid on Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average retreating 19 points while the S&P 500 rose fractionally and the Nasdaq Composite rose 9 points. ADP estimated job losses of 169,000 but the Fed’s Beige Book said economic conditions improved modestly.
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The United States does not control its own destiny. Rather it is controlled by an international financial elite, of which the American branch works out of big New York banks like J.P. Morgan Chase, Wall Street investment firms such as Goldman Sachs, and the Federal Reserve System. They in turn control the White House, Congress, the military, the mass media, the intelligence agencies, both political parties, the universities, etc. No one can rise to the top in any of these institutions without the elite’s stamp of approval.

This elite has been around since the nation began, becoming increasingly dominant as the 19th century progressed. A key date was passage of the National Banking Act of 1863, when the system was put into place whereby federal government debt was used to collateralize bank lending. Since then we’ve paid the freight through our taxes for bank control of the economy. The final nails in the coffin came with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
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Gold has surged 60% in the past 12 months and it’s not letting up. The “yellow metal” is continuing that scorching surge into the last part of the year, establishing new highs on a near-daily basis. In fact, gold established yet another record price Wednesday when it peaked at $1,153.40 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX).

And the records are going to keep on coming.

With the U.S. dollar in a freefall and global gold demand rising, analysts say the precious metal will likely continue its bullish trend through at least the first half of 2010. It could rise as high as $2,000 an ounce, which would represent a 73% gain from current record levels.
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The financial crisis taught us that markets can drop further and faster than anyone expects. Housing prices, for example, fell for three straight years starting in 2006, even though the conventional wisdom right up until the bust began was that prices would not fall even a little bit.

Let’s apply some of our hard-won knowledge to the dollar, which is also supposed to be resistant to a bust. After weakening gradually since 2002, the greenback rose during the financial crisis last year. It has fallen roughly 15% since March as investors moved to higher-yielding currencies. The conventional wisdom is that at these levels the dollar is cheap and, if anything, due for a rebound. “Currencies don’t go much more than 20% from their long-term averages in real [inflation-adjusted] terms. We’re there already,” says Michael Dooley, an economist who is co-founder and research chief of Cabezon Capital Management, a San Francisco investment firm.
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