I said yesterday...

is walk off with all the gold in the national treasury. (And maybe the foreign currency reserves, although those would be much easier to "disappear" internally).

I am assuming it was the West, since it happened after the coup.
Every gambit since has been a total fiasco.

If the gold had been the only target, then Ukraine could be left alone, but obviously, there's other booty for the Pirates of Capitalism. They want the port. They want the farmland. They want the gas and oil, even the pipelines. But they can't just walk in and take them; that wouldn't be politic. They have to be given them, by an either desperate or grateful people.

What the Western PTB have no interest in is a lively, healthy independent nation. That possibility was lost when the Nazis were unleashed upon the ethnic Russians and the Civil War broke out.

And the EU just plays along with this odious crime, imposes sanctions on Russia, because they are all too grateful not to be the target themselves. The Europeans are operating under the delusion that they have some kind of power and will reap some kind of reward from the coup. Nothing could be further from the truth. The EU has already lost, by joining in the suicide pact that is the Eurozone.


This is a very sad world. Banksters and fascists on the loose, undermining 3 centuries of human progress for more power and more loot than they could possibly make good use of, or accumulate by honest means. It's not as if they are doing it for the benefit of humanity....

with each portion attaching to the neighboring "un-failed" state that most fits its population isn't the fastest and most viable way to stop the fighting.

OR, MORE PERTINENTLY, JPMORGAN CAN'T AFFORD AMY MORE REVELATIONS OF ITS SCREW-UPS...OF WHICH I AM CERTAIN THERE ARE MANY THAT HAVEN'T YET COME TO LIGHT.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/jp-morgan-acknowledged-cant-afford-184602058.html

JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon JPMorgan has acknowledged that it simply can't afford to screw up anymore. The banking behemoth has come to accept the new world order of Wall Street — a world order in which capital requirements are high (and maybe climbing higher), markets can be painfully calm for long stretches at a time, and legal expenses can tip the scales of profitability. In other words — the cynical "cost of doing business" on Wall Street has actually become too expensive. This was an underlying theme during JPMorgan's Investor Day on Tuesday.
Three things are whacking profits

"We are 100% committed to embracing change," said Daniel Pinto, the head of JPMorgan's investment bank. It's not hard to see why. During Pinto's presentation he explained that three things whacked JPMorgan earnings in 2014 — capital requirements, legal costs, and low revenue (partially due to low market volatility.) JPMorgan knows it has no control over when the market will change and things will get volatile again. So there's nothing that can be done about that. As for capital requirements, there's a distinct possibility that the bank could be required to have even more cash on hand than post-financial crisis regulations require now.

In December the Federal Reserve proposed a rule requiring "globally systemically important banks" (GSIBs) to hold even more capital. Those banks include Bank of America Corporation, The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, Citigroup Inc., The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley, State Street Corporation, and Wells Fargo & Company. Pinto said this measure could have a "high single digit" impact on how much capital the bank has to hold.

JPMorgan can control one thing

So the only one out of those three drags on return on equity that JPMorgan can actually control are its legal expenses. Controlling that is tough, however, because it has to do with culture, and that's intangible. At least, it's intangible until it isn't. Pinto admitted that some employees have cost the company millions. To combat that, "we're rolling out a best in class culture and conduct program," said Pinto. CFO Marianne Lake said that the bank is starting these culture programs all over the world and that the bank published an internal report on how it does business. This is key for JP Morgan's investment bank. Pinto said that he wants to get the bank's return on equity from 10.1% to 13%, and getting rid of legal expenses is a big part of the plan. Getting rid of legal costs could put JPMorgan's return on equity up by 2.5% by the bank's own calculations.

Staying huge

What's at stake here for JPMorgan is its size. If it doesn't seem like it can perform cleanly being as huge as it is, eventually investors will get tired of it. And that's nothing to say for the regulators and politicians on the left and right who've had their fill. As long as banks get keep getting in trouble for supervisory issues, or keep dragging along weak businesses, the "break up the banks" talk isn't going to stop. JPMorgan, as the biggest US bank, especially hates this kind of talk (though Citi seems to be in most danger of seeing a chop shop). JP Morgan CFO Marianne Lake addressed this concern head on and at length during Investor Day. She said clients want JPMorgan to stay large. "We've done the work... and we've drawn our own conclusions on what a breakup would look like," Lake said. Naturally, the bank concluded that a break up would be terrible. So many synergies would be lost — synergies that JPMorgan's peers don't enjoy because they're simply not as big.

That said, Lake admitted that if you do the break up math "the revenue lost would be relatively modest," but added that "benefits of the company as a whole which we don't measure would likely be lost over time."

So no more screw ups, or it could be the chop house.

WHAT OBAMA JUST SAID:

INSTEAD OF HIRING THE UNEMPLOYED AMERICANS TO PLANT FORESTS, BUILD BRIDGES AND DAMS, CREATE ART, ETC., LIKE FDR DID WITH HIS WPA AND VARIOUS OTHER NEW DEAL PROGRAMS,

WE HAVE INSTEAD BUILT OURSELVES A STAZI PROGRAM FAR SUPERIOR TO ANYTHING THE EAST GERMANS OR EVEN THE KGB EVER HAD...AND THIS IS OUR "WORK PROGRAM" FOR THIS GREATER DEPRESSION.

U.S. President Barack Obama warned on Monday that a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security would suspend pay for more than 100,000 border patrol, port inspection and airport security agents.

"It will have a direct impact on your economy, and it will have a direct impact on America's national security because their hard work helps to keep us safe," Obama said in a speech to a meeting of state governors at the White House.

Homeland Security spending authority will expire at midnight on Friday unless Congress approves new funding. While essential security personnel would still report to work, there would be no money to pay them during the funding lapse.

A new $39.7 billion budget for the department is stalled in Congress over Republican-authored provisions to block any spending on Obama's recent executive orders that lift the threat of deportation from millions of undocumented immigrants...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/23/us-usa-congress-security-idUSKBN0LR1M920150223

AND THAT'S WHY OUR ECONOMY RESEMBLES THAT OF THE USSR OR EAST GERMANY'S.....