All the President's Goldman Sachs Men -- Michelle Malkin -- GOPUSA

All the President's Goldman Sachs Men -- Michelle Malkin -- GOPUSA

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GOD is With Us

God is with us! Alleluia

 

His name is called Emmanuel,

More wonderful than words can tell.

God is with us! Alleluia!

Born in our darkness, He is Light.

Born in our weakness, He is might.

God is with us! Alleluia!

God is with us! Alleluia! Alleluia!

 

Rejoice, and lay aside your fear.

Rejoice, the Holy One is here.

God is with us! Alleluia!

Lift up your voices, come and sing.

Come worship Christ, the newborn King.

God is with us! Alleluia!

God is with us! Alleluia! Alleluia!

 

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.

Praise Him, all creatures here below.

God is with us! Alleluia!

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host.

Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

God is with us! Alleluia!

God is with us! Alleluia! Alleluia!

 

 

From Failure to Famous

   

The stone which the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
(St. Mark 12:10 )

Woody Allen , Academy Award-winning writer/producer/director, flunked motion picture production at New York University and the City College of New York and failed English at N.Y.U. (The Best of Bits & Piece s, p. 60)

Who flunked first and fourth grades yet went on to become an astronaut ? Ed Gibson. (Glenn Van Ekeren, The Speaker's Sourcebook , p. 355)

Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis: Some 17 publishers rejected this novel about a free-spirited older woman before Vanguard accepted it. An immediate hit, the book was soon made into a popular film starring Rosalind Russell. Ten years later a musical version of the play, now called Mame , started a long Broadway run. The film Mame was released in 1974. Total book sales have been around 2 million copies. (Wallace/Wallechinsky, The Book of Lists, #2 )

In the Irish uprising of 1848, the men were captured, tried and convicted of treason against Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. All were sentenced to death...
Passionate protest from all over the world persuaded the Queen to commute the death sentences. The men were banished to Australia --as remote and full of prisoners as Russian Siberia. Years passed. In 1874 Queen Victoria learned that a Sir Charles Duffy who had been elected Prime Minister of Australia was the same Charles Duffy who had been banished 26 years earlier. She asked what had become of the other eight convicts. She learned that:
Patrick Donahue became a Brigadier General in the United States Army.
Morris Lyene became Attorney General for Australia.
Michael Ireland succeeded Lyene as Attorney General.
Thomas McGee became Minister of.. Agriculture for Canada.
Terrence McManus became a Brigadier General in the United States Army.
Thomas Meagher was elected Governor of Montana.
John Mitchell became a prominent New York politician and his son, John Purroy Mitchell, a famous Mayor of New York City.
Richard O'Gorman became Governor of Newfoundland.
(Johnny Rocco, in Abundant Living magazine)

It is said that there is not a moment of the day when reruns of the madcap television series I Love Lucy are not playing somewhere in the world. Lucille Ball 's career didn't start off so well, however. She was once dismissed from drama school for being too quiet and shy.
(Paul Stirling Hagerman, It's a Weird World )

Big companies that went bankrupt :
1. Quaker Oats (3 times)
2. Pepsi-Cola (3 times)
3. Birds Eye Frozen Foods
4. Borden's
5. Aunt Jemima
6. Wrigley's (3 times) (Press-Telegram newspaper, Long Beach, CA)

In 1962 the Decca Recording Company turned down the opportunity to work with the Beatles . Their rationale? "We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on their way out." Of course, the Beatles turned that imminent failure into prominent success.
(Glenn Van Ekeren, The Speaker's Sourcebook )

Alexander Graham Bell , the inventor of the telephone, an invention without which the business world of today could not even begin to function, was hard pressed to find a major backer. In 1876, the year he patented the telephone, Bell approached Western Union, then the largest communications company in America, and offered it exclusive rights to the invention for $100,000. William Orton, Western Union's president, turned down the offer, posing one of the most shortsighted questions in business history: "What use could this company make of an electrical toy?"
(M. Hirsh Goldberg, The Blunder Book , p. 151)

Lee Strasberg, head of the famed Actors Studio, once told Robert Blake he could never learn to act. Blake went on to star in the popular American TV show Baretta and was voted outstanding actor in a dramatic series in 1975 by the U. S. Academy of TV Arts and Sciences.
(Ripley's Believe It or Not!: Book of Chance)

Best-selling books rejected by six or more publishers: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street , Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss); MASH , Richard Hooker; Kon-Tiki , Thor Heyerdahl; Jonathan Livingston Seagull , Richard Bach; Auntie Mame , Patrick Dennis.
(Wallace/Wallechinsky,The Book of Lists , #2)

Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-1884) the Austrian botanist who discovered the basic laws of heredity, never was able to pass the examination to become a full-fledged teacher of science.
(Ripley's Believe It or Not!: Weird Inventions and Discoveries, p. 67)

Winston Churchill did not become prime minister of England until he was 62, and then only after a lifetime of defeats and setbacks. His greatest contributions came when he was a senior citizen.
(Joe Griffith, Speaker's Library of Business , p. 250)

Discussing her early career as a would-be stage actress at England's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, "Dynasty" star Joan Collins reveals that her first report card there contained a rather ironic assessment of her talents. It read: "Joan has a good personality and lots of stage presence. But she must try to improve her voice projection or she will wind up in films and TV, and that would be a pity." (People Weekly)

Turn On , a television series hosted by Tim Conway , proved to be a turn off. It premiered on February 5, 1969, and was cancelled the same day.
(Jack Kreismer, The Bathroom Trivia Book , p. 88)

Gary Cooper wore his best suit to a tryout for a western movie, but suspicious producers thought the big actor was a dude and made him prove he could ride--and fall off--a horse. He went on to a career that culminated in the classic High Noon , but before he made it big, Coop was fired and rehired by the movie bosses seven times.
(Ripley's Believe It or Not!: Book of Chance , p. 8)

Twenty dollars a week was all the salary Joan Crawford drew in her first job on the stage. She was a dancer in a road show which closed two weeks after it opened. (Sunshine magazine)

Edison knew 1800 ways not to build a light bulb. One of Madame Curie's failures was radium. Columbus thought he had discovered the East Indies. Freud had several big failures before he devised psychoanalysis. Rodgers and Hammerstein's first collaboration bombed so badly that they didn't get together again for years. The whole history of thought is filled with people who arrived at the "wrong" destinations . (Bits & Pieces)

Neil Diamond was on his way to becoming the first member of his family to graduate from college when he dropped out in his senior year to take a songwriting job with a music-publishing company. "It was a chance to step into my career," he explains. The job lasted only four months. Eventually, he was fired by five other music publishers. "I loved writing music and lyrics," he says, "and I thought, 'There's got to be a place for me somewhere.'" After eight years of knocking around and bringing songs to publishers and still being basically nowhere, I met two very successful producers and writers, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, who liked the way I sang. They took me from being a guy with a guitar to a guy who could make real records," he adds. (Claire Carter, in Parade magazine)

Dune by Frank Herbert: Herbert's massive science-fiction tale was rejected by 13 publishers with comments like "too slow," "confusing and irritating," "too long," and "issues too clear-cut and old fashioned." But the persistence of Herbert and his agent, Lurton Blassingame, finally paid off. Dune won the two highest awards in the science-fiction writing and has sold over 10 million copies. (Wallace/Wallechinsky, The Book of Lists, #2 )

Clint Eastwood was once told by a Universal Pictures executive that his future wasn't very promising. The man said, "You have a chip on your tooth, your Adam's apple sticks out too far, and you talk too slow." (Ed Lucaire, Celebrity Setbacks )

Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931) America's most prolific inventor, was granted 1,093 patents by the U.S. Patent office, more than anyone else--yet they included such duds as a perpetual cigar, furniture made of cement and a way of using goldenrod for rubber.
(Ripley's Believe It or Not!: Weird Inventions and Discoveries , p. 36)

Paul Ehrlich , the German bacteriologist, always performed badly at school, and he particularly loathed examinations. He had a flair for microscopic staining work, however, and this carried him through his education despite his ineptness at composition and oral presentations. He eventually used his talent with the microscope to develop the field of chemotherapy, and he was awarded a Nobel Prize in medicine in 1908.
(Wallace/Wallechinsky, The Book of Lists, #2 )

Albert Einstein did poorly in elementary school, and he failed his first college entrance exam at Zurich Polytechnic. But he became one of the greatest scientists in the history of the world.
(Charles Reichblum, Knowledge in a Nutshell , p. 137)

If starting your own business is what you'd like to do, please note that studies at Tulane University suggest the average entrepreneur fails 3.8 times before making it work. (L. M. Boyd)
Hope, can be increased and fears decreased when you keep in mind that failure, like success, is never fatal . God always has new experiences and surprises in store for us. Often what appears to be the end is, in the hands of God, a new beginning. (Victor M. Parachin, in Unity magazine)

William Faulkner failed to graduate from high school because he didn't have enough credits.
He bummed around the United States and Canada, enlisting in the Royal Canadian Air Force, trying to get into a university and later working as a postmaster until he was fired for reading on the job.
He then tried writing and had five books finished by 1930 but failed to earn enough money to support a family. But he kept going and became popular in the mid 1930's. He eventually received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. (Ripley's Believe It or Not!: Book of Chance, p. 37)

Malcolm Forbes , the late editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, one of the largest business publications in the world, did not make the staff of The Princetonian , the school newspaper at Princeton University.
(The Best of Bits & Piece s, p. 60)

Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.
(Joe Griffith, Speaker's Library of Business , p. 250)

Henry Ford forgot to put reverse gear in the first car he manufactured. Then in 1957, he bragged about the car of the decade. It was the Edsel, renowned for doors that wouldn't close, a hood that wouldn't open, paint that peeled, a horn that stuck, and a reputation that made it impossible to resell. However, Ford's future track record contains more glowing productions. (Glenn Van Ekeren, The Speaker's Sourcebook , p. 150)

Who was dismissed from the psychiatric society in Vienna, Austria, only to become a world respected, prominent psychiatrist? Victor Frankl .
(Glenn Van Ekeren, The Speaker's Sourcebook , p. 355)

Past performance is usually a pretty good indication of a man's future potential--but not always.
In 1860 a thirty-eight-year-old man was working as a handyman for his father, a leather merchant. He kept books, drove wagons, and handled hides for about $66 a month.
Prior to this menial job the man had failed as a soldier, a farmer, and a real estate agent. Most of the people who knew him had written him off as a failure.
Eight years later he was President of the United States. The man was Ulysses S. Grant . (Bits & Pieces)

In World War II, the army classified thirty-three-year-old Joe Rosenthal as 4-F because he had one-twentieth normal vision, but he followed the fighting anyway as a war photographer. When the U. S. invaded the island of Iwo Jima under heavy Japanese fire, Rosenthal was there wearing his thick glasses and carrying two spare pairs.
At the top of Mount Suribachi he caught the greatest picture of the war--five marines and a navy corpsman raising the Stars and Stripes. Rosenthal became an immediate celebrity and his picture won the Pulitzer Prize. The flag-raising appeared on a three-cent stamp and broke all records for first-day-issue sales. On November 19, 1954, a seventy-five-feet-high sculpture of the raising was dedicated at Arlington National Cemetery.
(John & Claire Whitcomb, Oh Say Can You See , p. 101)

Eighteen publishers turned down Richard Bach's 10,000-word story about a "soaring" seagull, Jonathan Livingston Seagull , before Macmillan finally published it in 1970. By 1975, it had sold more than 7 million copies in the United States alone. (Joe Griffith, Speaker's Library of Business , p. 250)

One November night, Michael Jordan and I found ourselves alone, and he told me about being cut as a sophomore from his high-school basketball team in Wilmington, N.C. "The day the cut list was going up, a friend--Leroy Smith--and I went to the gym to look together," Jordan recalled. "If your name was on the list, you made the team. Leroy's name was there, and mine wasn't. I went through the day numb. After school, I hurried home, closed the door to my room and cried so hard. It was all I wanted--to play on that team." (Bob Greene, in Reader's Digest )

Who flunked the first grade and went on to become attorney general? Robert F. Kennedy . (Glenn Van Ekeren, The Speaker's Sourcebook )

When he was 22, he failed in business. When he was 23, he ran for the legislature and lost. When he was 24, he failed in business again. The following year he was elected to the legislature. When he was 26, his sweetheart died. At the age of 27, he had a nervous breakdown. When he was 29, he was defeated for the post of Speaker of the House in the State Legislature. When he was 31, he was defeated as Elector. When he was 34, he ran for Congress and lost. At the age of 37, he ran for Congress and finally won. Two years later, he ran again and lost his seat in Congress. At the age of 46, he ran for the U.S. Senate and lost. The following year he ran for Vice President and lost that, too. He ran for the Senate again, and again lost. Finally, at the age of 51, he was elected President of the United States. Who was this perpetual "loser"? Abraham Lincoln .
(Paul Stirling Hagerman, It's a Weird World , p. 74)

It's an historical fact that Carl Linder , the 1919 winner of the Boston Marathon, was rejected for military service because of flat feet.
(L. M. Boyd)

When Mickey Mantle graduated from Commerce High (Oklahoma) in 1949 he was not voted "Most Athletic." That's right, the man who possessed the greatest combination of power from both sides of the plate (he hit the longest home run in major league history, 565 feet in 1953) and speed (some experts suggested he could have won a track medal in the Olympics) lost out in the voting to his best friend, Bill Mosley.
(Jim Kreuz, in Baseball Digest )

Richard Hooker worked for seven years on his humorous war novel, M*A*S*H , only to have it rejected by 21 publishers before Morrow decided to publish it. It became a runaway best-seller, spawning a blockbusting movie and a highly successful television series.
(Joe Griffith, Speaker's Library of Business , p. 250)

Napoleon finished near the bottom of his class at military school, yet became one of the leading military men of all time.
(Charles Reichblum, Knowledge in a Nutshell , p. 138)

Lord Laurence Olivier is acknowledged by many critics as the greatest actor of the 20th century. However, his debut as an actor was less than auspicious. His first professional role was that of a policeman in a play called The Ghost Train . At his first entrance--the very first time he had ever set foot on the professional stage--he tripped over the door sill and fell headfirst into the floodlights. (Paul Stirling Hagerman, It"s a Weird World )

Charles Schulz, the cartoonist who draws " Peanuts ", was told by his high school's yearbook staff that his cartoons were not acceptable for the annual. But Charles Schulz knew that he was of importance to God. He kept on drawing and eventually became known internationally for his considerable talent. (Charles E. Ferrell, in The Clergy Journal )

Devotees of Elvis Presley will tell you their hero tried to join his high school glee club but was turned down. (L. M. Boyd)

As playwright Gore Vidal tells it, when his play The Best Man was being cast back in 1959, Ronald Reagan was proposed for the lead role of the distinguished front-running Presidential candidate. He was rejected. It was decided that he lacked the "Presidential look." (Fifty Plus)

Daniel Dafoe took Robinson Crusoe to 20 publishers before he finally got it printed. It has been a best-seller for over 250 years and has been translated into 10 languages. (Ripley's Believe It or Not!: Book of Chance)

The poet Carl Sandburg flunked out of West Point, according to the record, because of deficiencies in English. (L. M. Boyd)

One of America's most beloved writers was rejected 20 times by the magazine that eventually bought most of his work. James Thurber started writing sketches for the New Yorker in 1926, but they kept turning him down before finally accepting a short piece on a man caught in a revolving door. Thurber never looked back. He published more than 20 books of collected prose and delightful pictures he drew himself.
(Ripley's Believe It or Not!: Book of Chance)

Liv Ullman , two-time Academy Award nominee for Best Actress, failed an audition for the state theater school in Norway. The judges told her she had no talent. (The Best of Bits & Piece s, p. 60)

The United States greatest naval victory--Midway--occurred only six months after its greatest naval defeat--Pearl Harbor. (L. M. Boyd)

At that time we had the pleasure of visiting with Mary Oliff Ward, whose husband, William Arthur Ward , is one of America's most quoted writers of inspirational maxims...Mary told how Bill kept a rolling pin around which he wrapped all rejection slips received. When one of his students complained about rejected work, yet one more time, Bill would unwind the rolling pin to reveal yards of rejection slips!
(Dr. Delia Sellers, in Abundant Living )

George Washington lived in the day of the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon, both of whom far outshone him as military geniuses. He made some rather tragic blunders on the battlefield but somehow managed to bring our troops through that long and painful war to victory.
(Dr. D. James Kennedy)

Thoughts Along The Way : 8th issue. Compiled by Rev. David J. Seibert
c/o Unity Temple, 1555 Race Street, Denver, CO 80206--(303) 377-4838

Chart of the Day - Nasdaq Trend (2000-2010)

Chart of the Day - Nasdaq Trend (2000-2010)

Banks vs. Insurance Companies

Untitled Document

Fool’s Capitalism

Goldman-style Capitalism: Separating Fools from Their Money

Bill Bonner

And now the rest of today's reckoning from Baltimore, Maryland...

Cut expenses. Go broke. Be happy.

Everybody is convinced the market is going up. So what does the market do? It goes down - 72 points yesterday.

What do you call it when the market goes down 72 points? A beginning!

Well, we don't know if it's really the beginning of the end or not. We've seen more beginnings than we can count. Still, no sign of the end. But there must be an end out there somewhere. Always is.

And look at what is happening in the gold market. While everyone has been watching health care...and stocks...and bonds, gold has been moving up. It rose another $17 yesterday to bring the price up to $1,151.

Why is gold moving up? Because it anticipates higher inflation? Because it is afraid of government defaults?

Most likely, it has no more idea than we do. It doesn't know what's going to happen...but with the feds borrowing more than 10% of GDP each year, it ain't going to be pretty.

The S&P is now trading at a P/E over 23, according to the most recent Barron's report. Dave Rosenberg:

"No matter how we slice it, whether on a Shiller P/E, Tobin Q or historical profit basis, the US market is anywhere between 20% and 30% overvalued."

Emerging markets are soaring. Oil is over $85. And the temperature here in Baltimore is 83 degrees.

The heat is on. Something's gonna blow.

But Goldman Sachs is as cool as a cucumber. Goldman released its annual report earlier this week. The firm said it hadn't done anything wrong. It hadn't bet against its own clients. Nor had it expected any help from the government.

Here at The Daily Reckoning, we've always taken Goldman's side. We've always had a weak spot for cripples, lamebrains and predatory lenders. Besides, Goldman stole the money fair and square.

Critics charge that Goldman 'perverted' capitalism. But they just don't understand how kinky capitalism can be on its own.

You see, dear reader, when it comes to putting meat on the table, nothing beats capitalism. But it only succeeds so well because it is allows foolish hunters to blow their own heads off. In his book FIASCO, Frank Partnoy recalled his days on Wall Street:

"The way you made money from derivatives was by trying to blow up your clients," he writes.

He described how Wall Street regularly sold extravagantly complicated derivative instruments to institutional buyers who were either too dim or too lazy to figure out what they were buying. If they had known what was in them, they wouldn't have bought them.

Then, of course, the instruments blew up...along with the pension funds, endowments and insurers who bought them.

But that's just the way it should work. Capitalism doesn't like it when idiots have too much money. So it uses people like Goldman to help take it away from them. That's what Lloyd Blankfein meant when he said Goldman was doing "God's work."

We don't know if God wanted Goldman to blow up the world economy...but capitalism seemed to be calling for it. And it looked like capitalism was going to blow up the bomb tosser, too. Unfortunately, the feds stepped in. They bailed out AIG...and the whole financial industry - including Goldman. Now, they lend the big banks money for practically nothing...which the banks lend back to the feds at 4%. The banks make money. They restock their reserves with US Treasury debt. And the feds get to finance their gigantic deficits. It's great for everyone - until it blows up too.

It's true, of course, that capitalism had already been twisted long before the feds bailed out the banks. Individual investors believed they could make money just by buying mutual funds or a house. Institutional buyers thought they could make money by buying collections of mortgages, any one of which they knew was likely to be garbage. But these crackpot ideas are just part of what makes capitalism so much fun to watch. And don't worry, just leave it alone...it will correct those mistakes in a jiffy.

Here we are barely 24 months after the correction began. Who thinks he can make money by buying a house now? Only people standing on the courthouse steps and hoping for an extreme bargain. Who thinks he can finance his retirement by buying stocks? Only the young and the dreamers.

And who thinks you can make an economy richer by consuming more? Or cure a problem of too much private sector debt by adding more debt in the public sector?

Only economists! And that's a whole 'nuther subject.

And more thoughts...

While the markets are hot, the economy is cool.

Nearly 7,000 people go bankrupt every day - a record number. And in March, M3, the broadest measure of the money supply, recorded its biggest drop ever.

And get this. Peak to trough, December '07 to February '10, 8.3 million jobs were lost. As we reported yesterday, take away the statistical tricks and the number of people with real jobs actually fell last month - despite reports of an additional 163,000 new jobs in March.

Consumer credit fell again in February - down $11 billion. To put this number in perspective, the US government has run about $2.5 trillion in deficits since the correction began. So, in spite of pumping monthly deficits on the order of $120 billion...consumer credit still sank by $11 billion.

What can we say? It's a Great Correction, after all.

Greece is going broke after all. Yields on Greek debt rose over 7% yesterday. So let's look at how this works. Investors worry about a default. They push up yields (they need higher interest payments to justify the risk). This causes Greece to go further into debt (the cost of paying the extra interest), which causes even more worry among lenders.

Why doesn't Greece just cut expenses?

Ah...glad you asked. This just goes to show what a dead-end debt can be. The government has already proposed substantial cuts. But it has to answer to the voters - who are on the verge of rioting in the street. And its own cabinet ministers are calling the Germans 'racist' because they refuse to give the Greeks money.

It's hard for a popular democracy to cut spending. And then when it does, it discovers that it is in another trap. So much of the private sector depends on government spending that, take it away, and the whole economy shrinks. This causes tax revenues to fall by more than the budget cuts. In other words, a multiplier works in the other direction - causing the budget deficit to widen when cuts are made!

And guess what? Greece is not the only government that is falling into this hole. Latvia. Iceland. Maybe Ireland, England, California...and even the US...

Where, exactly, the point of no return lies, we don't know. But it's out there somewhere...

What's the solution? Well, just to bite the bullet. Make the cuts. Default. Be happy.

Regards,

Bill Bonner,
for The Daily Reckoning

Incompetent or Bold Faced Liars?

Dear Bottarelli Research Reader,

As you know, I take tremendous pride in offering a small group of high-level traders the very best market research available.

That's why it troubles me to write you this letter today…

You see, never before in history has Wall Street been dripping with so many lies, deceit, and manipulation. In this day and age, it seems like unethical behavior is now a commonly accepted practice, and it's costing honest, hardworking folks like you money.

Lots of money.

In short, the time has come to turn the tables on the financial elite, and that's why I'm writing you today.

You see, you're now invited to enjoy a new "white-knuckled" trading strategy designed to beat these lying rats at their own game.

Starting now, you can make phenomenal trading profits by using these manipulative tricks to your advantage.

That's right! By following this new trading methodology, you can lock in daily returns of 322.73%, 52.17%, 245.95%, 150.00%, 42.86%, and 59.53%.

You can review our track record below. But first, let's be perfectly clear about the lies and deception that I'm referring to above.

Over the last few years, the following quotes (which I'm calling "boldfaced lies") were made by some of the top financial figureheads in the world. As you'll see, every single one of them has been dead wrong.

In fact, some of them are so laughable, you'll wonder how these bozos can even keep their jobs. See for yourself:

BOLDFACED LIE #1:

"I think this is a case where Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are fundamentally sound. They're not in danger of going under. I think they are in good shape going forward."

– Barney Frank, July 14th 2008

BOLDFACED LIE #2:

"Freddie and Fannie will make it through the storm. They are in no danger of failing….adequately capitalized."

- Ben Bernanke, July 16th 2008

BOLDFACED LIE #3:

"We have no plans to insert money into either of those two institutions [referring to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]."

- Hank Paulson, August 10th 2008

What Happened? Within two months of the above assurances of Barney Frank, Ben Bernanke, and Hank Paulson, the U.S. government forced both mortgage giants into conservatorship and committed $100 billion in each company to save them from imploding. If you believed these guys — and bought Freddie or Fannie stock — you got completely wiped out.

But that's just the beginning…

BOLDFACED LIE #4

"I don't see sub-prime mortgage market troubles imposing a serious problem. I think it's going to be largely contained. All the signs I look at show the housing market is at or near the bottom."

- Hank Paulson, April 20th 2007

As you know, sub-prime mortgages sparked the financial meltdown that nearly sent the entire global economy into free-fall. How could Paulson not see this coming? Is he really that stupid?

It gets worse…

BOLDFACED LIE #5

"In today's regulatory environment, it's virtually impossible to violate rules."

- Bernie Madoff, October 20th 2007

Are you kidding me? One year later, Madoff (who once sat atop the NASDAQ stock market) admitted that he cost investors over $50 billion in an alleged Ponzi scheme. You know how this story ends. Madoff is now wearing an orange jumpsuit behind bars.

But here's the doozy of them all…

BOLDFACED LIE #6

"It is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve — nor would it be appropriate — to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions."

–Ben Bernanke, October 15th 2007

In a major reversal, Bernake decided to bail out every major financial institution in trouble, setting up one of the biggest "false market recoveries" in financial history.

I can go on with hundreds of other examples, but I think the bottom line is pretty clear…

Right now, our financial and political leaders are either incompetent or they're stone-cold liars. Either way, the loser in this deal is the individual investor like you and me. That's why I'm sending you this special invitation to subscribe to Bottarelli Research today.