Hitler gets a margin call

Up until yesterday this was what it felt like to be a gold and silver bug!

The CDO mess satirically exposed by the two Johns having "The Last Laugh"

It's brilliantly done and funny, too.

"The Counterfeiters" : how the Germans tried to destroy the British and American economies by printing money during the World War II.

Money is being printed at an ever increasing rate in most countries in the world. It's around 14% in the UK and maybe more than 10% in the US. Of course, the public are not aware of this as they have been told that inflation is only linked the CPI (the Consumer Price Index). This is widely said to be around 2-3%. What a joke as the index is composed of items that mainly exclude inflation and items that do, food, oil, house-prices, are excluded. Geobels would be proud of how modern governments manipulate statistics. Perhaps that is why these governments are so proud of them. Statistics are used for measuring everthing. The problem is they set false goals therefore statistics are merely an illusion and not worth a damn! The modern obsession with "target setting" can be reduced to a modern mania for creating illusions for the public mind control.

The excellent, recent German film, "The Counterfeiters" is based on real events. The Germans tried to use a master forger and his team to destroy the currencies of the UK and USA by printing money worth several times more than each country's reserves. This German inspired effort also represents the last big attempt to flood Britain and the US with specially printed money! However, one could argue that each country has been doing this already since the Fed was founded in 1913! For inflation has reduced the value of each currency by around 98% since the First World War.

Counterfeiters - Trailer

Posted Sep 19, 2007

Towards the end of World War II, the National Socialists forged millions of British pounds in order to weaken the enemy's economy. A counterfeiting plant was set up with prisoners in the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen.

"The Lives Of Others" directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Here is a trailer for a brilliant and timely film about a paranoid state (The East German GDR in 1984) and its obsession "to know everything" about its citizens, who were treated little better than "inmates". The film ironically positions itself during the time of George Orwell's novel entitled after the same year.

Given the regular cases that crop up in the US of people being spied on by their neighbours and work colleagues FOR YEARS and the sheer numbers of CCTV cameras in Britain (at the last count 4.2 million. One for every fourteen people in the UK!) the coming economic downturn will create a climate of western states who want "to know everything" about their citizens. Western governments are already well down that particular path as technology makes spying on people far easier than it has been before.

Paul Greengrasses's fast-moving "The Bourn Ultimatum" explores a similar issue. You would need to go back to Francis Ford Coppulas' "The Conversation" (1974) featuring Gene Hackman as Harry Caul to find another narrative about bugging in which the listener is affected by those he listens into. But then the 1970s was a period during which government paranoia was also high.

The Lives Of Others - Trailer - HiQ

Posted Jun 07, 2007

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's movie debut focuses on the horrifying, sometimes unintentionally funny system of observation in the former East Germany.

"The Lives of Others" is a must-see movie!