Newcomers to the forex trading system may be asking themselves many difficult questions when it comes to considering putting their hard earned money onto the international FOReign EXchange trading system, or FOREX.  The purported ethical dilemma that some may see in this trading system is the fact that you are placing your money into a risky arena of hoping one currency will out perform another in a given amount of time.  Sometimes that currency could be representative of a small, poor country’s economic stature, or the might of a very strong economy.

The Christian perspective on the FOREX trading world is asking yourself how using your money to speculate against other currencies by selling and buying them would have an effect on the peoples of these countries; either directly or indirectly.   If it had an effect, would it be negative (making a country poorer) or positive (helping poor people get out of poverty).

In addition, and not only related to poor countries, is the fact that the entire world monetary system was hijacked and placed upon the feet of Satan by the end of the Bretton Woods Gold Standard in 1971 by President Nixon which used to guarantee a certain amount of gold for every certain amount of currency. This was the death knell of honest, non-speculative currency trading to which all Christians would have been proud of to trade in. Unfortunately, the social architects are working overtime to destabilize monetary markets in order to control the population.

Death of money is a term coined by Joel Kurtzman, a former editor of Harvard Business Review in 1993 to refer to the change in the economic nature of money in the United States following Richard Nixon’s removal of US Dollar from the Gold Standard (as in the Bretton Woods system), informally referred to as the Nixon Shock.

The concept of death of money also refers to the fundamental change in the nature of business transactions based on a complex, electronically managed system of valuations used for stocks, bonds, insurance policies and other financial contracts that go beyond the simple, historic notion of money representing physical reserves. A simple view of this concept is that if everyone decides to cash out their bank account on a single day, there is no longer enough paper money to represent it. In 2002, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development addressed this, along with many other financial issues, in their report on the Future of Money (Wikipedia, 2009).

“Whoever trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf.” ~ Proverbs 11: 28
“Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless.” ~Ecclesiastes 5:10
“A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes life merry, but money is the answer for everything.” ~Ecclesiastes 10:19

That being said, if one wanted to truly stay away from causing harm to poorer countries, it would be wise to stay away from them all together and just maintain a position between the major economies.  Indeed, if you were of the likes of George Soros betting your billions and billions of dollars against a country like Zimbabwe, it would probably cause that country a lot of damage, put a lot of money into your own pocket, but at whose cost?  George Soros is mentioned because he was infamously credited with single-handedly crashing the Thai economy  by speculating on a very large segment of Thai futures markets.
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Christians Stay Away from FOREX High Yield Programs

Investment programs such as high yield HYIP are mostly affiliates who defraud investors through the promise of return on investment as high as 80 percent per day. These scams have proliferated in the Western world since the legendary exploits of Charles Ponzi. Usually, the blatant unrealistic promises of income are reinforced by demands for exclusivity, limiting entries and a kind of secret formula that will allow unlimited profits for investors.

In the forex HYIP program, the fraudster often requires knowledge of a sort of secret formula that allows it to record high profits on a consistent basis. Since the alleged knowledge is almost certainly non-existent, its nature can be anything from an automated trading method, a kind of arbitrage strategy and exclusive, or less frequently, some combination of indicators techniques that allows the artist to outperform with professional investors and large corporations with great skill. What they say they are not relevant: Because in most cases they do nothing and just refund your money, depending on your seniority in the structure.

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The day the masses were fearing would never appear seem to have just been hit by the reality of the giant tiger on the other side of the world beginning to awaken. Since 1994 China has pegged its currency to the US dollar in attempts to siphon manufacturing and industrial bases from the United States, where in 2005 it switched to a tightly banded currency regime, but for all intents and purposes, still a currency peg.

Now that China has bought all the US treasuries it can buy without feeling more nervous of not seeing any return on default, they have essentially cancelled their willingness to continue funding the rising United States national debt through the purchase of treasury bonds. The planned deal, according to mainstream economists, was that the economic alignment would be fixed so that China would be the producer of goods for the US, and the US would purchase these goods with investments sold to the Chinese in the form of treasury bills.

This may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but as soon as the US started piling up more debt, and as soon as the mortgage lending and economic crisis took hold, it became less and less palatable for our pending Asian overlords to continue purchasing increasingly worthless US dollars.

Now is your time to purchase Gold and Silver coins at extremely discounted rates to hold value of your precious and hard-earned money.

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China has ‘canceled US credit card’: lawmaker

WASHINGTON (AFP) — China, wary of the troubled US economy, has already “canceled America’s credit card” by cutting down purchases of debt, a US congressman said Thursday.

China has the world’s largest foreign reserves, believed to be mostly in dollars, along with around 800 billion dollars in US Treasury bonds, more than any other country.

But Treasury Department data shows that investors in China have sharply curtailed their purchases of bonds in January and February.

Representative Mark Kirk, a member of the House Appropriations Committee and co-chair of a group of lawmakers promoting relations with Beijing, said China had “very legitimate” concerns about its investments.

“It would appear, quietly and with deference and politeness, that China has canceled America’s credit card,” Kirk told the Committee of 100, a Chinese-American group.

“I’m not sure too many people on Capitol Hill realize that this is now happening,” he said.

The Republican lawmaker said that China was justified in concerns about returns from finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were bailed out by the US government due to the financial crisis.

Kirk said he was the first member of Congress to tour the Bureau of Public Debt, which trades bonds, and was alarmed at how much debt was being bought by the US Federal Reserve due to absence of foreign investors.

“There will come a time where the lack of Chinese participation may have a significant impact,” Kirk said.

“We should track that, because up until last month they were the number one provider of currency to the United States and now they’re gone.”

With China’s economy also hit by the global economic crisis, Premier Wen Jiabao has openly voiced concern about the status of his country’s investments in the United States.

China has also floated replacing the dollar as the key international currency with a basket of units bringing in the euro, sterling and yen.

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It appears as if many investors neglect to pay attention to the “laws” of the stock market and investing game. Indeed, the only real laws out there are those of raw emotion and cold calculation. The herd mentality dominates the stock market especially these days.

Key To Trading Success: Ignore Nature’s Laws?
March 25, 2009

The following is excerpted from Robert Prechter’s Independent Investor eBook. The 75-page eBook is a compilation of some of the New York Times bestselling author’s writings that challenge conventional financial market assumptions. Visit Elliott Wave International to download the eBook, free.

By Robert Prechter, CMT

…The natural tendency of people to apply physics to finance explains why successful traders are so rare and why they are so immensely rewarded for their skills. There is no such thing as a “born trader” because people are born — or learn very early — to respect the laws of physics. This respect is so strong that they apply these laws even in inappropriate situations. Most people who follow the market closely act as if the market is a physical force aimed at their heads. Buying during rallies and selling during declines is akin to ducking when a rock is hurtling toward you.

Successful traders learn to do something that almost no one else can do. They sell near the emotional extreme of a rally and buy near the emotional extreme of a decline. The mental discipline that a successful trader shows in buying low and selling high is akin to that of a person who sees a rock thrown at his head and refuses to duck. He thinks, I’m betting that the rock will veer away at the last moment, of its own accord. In this endeavor, he must ignore the laws of physics to which his mind naturally defaults. In the physical world, this would be insane behavior; in finance, it makes him rich.

Unfortunately, sometimes the rock does not veer. It hits the trader in the head. All he has to rely upon is percentages. He knows from long study that most of the time, the rock coming at him will veer away, but he also must take the consequences when it doesn’t. The emotional fortitude required to stand in the way of a hurtling stone when you might get hurt is immense, and few people possess it. It is, of course, a great paradox that people who can’t perform this feat get hurt over and over in financial markets and endure a serious stoning, sometimes to death. Many great truths about life are paradoxical, and so is this one.

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For more information, download Robert Prechter’s free Independent Investor eBook. The 75-page resource teaches investors to think independently by challenging conventional financial market assumptions.

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Robert Prechter, Certified Market Technician, is the founder and CEO of Elliott Wave International author of Wall Street best-sellers Conquer the Crash and Elliott Wave Principle and editor of The Elliott Wave Theorist monthly market letter since 1979.

North America set to experience the greatest decline in economic activity since the days of the Great Depression. Because of declining manufacturing output, banking collapse, astronomical public debt, and an imbalanced world trade system, the world economy is predicted to enter into a depression that makes the last look like a walk in the park. The new adversary, however, is a potential swine influenza pandemic set to stifle world trade even further due to each countries’ respective containment attempts. To make things worse, the United States has initiated a new passport requirement that will cripple the North American economies.

A new passport requirement set by the United States Homeland Security department has been watched very closely by officials and interested laymen for the past few years that will likely make life extremely more difficult for the Canadian economy, but particularly those industries reliant on consumers and tourists from the United States spending their hard earned dollars in the Northern economy at places like Casinos and tourist venues. Indeed, these venues were primarily established to recoup declining revenues generated by a dwindling manufacturing sector.

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The other challenged that has recently presented itself has been the introduction of the Mexican Swine Flu that originated in that country and quickly spread to almost every country in the world. Many countries such as the United States are considering protectionist measures to contain the spread of the virus, and many politicians like Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) has called for closure of the US border until the outbreak is cessated.

“The public needs to be aware of the serious threat of swine flu, and we need to close our borders to Mexico immediately and completely until this is resolved,” Massa said in a statement. “I am making this announcement because I see this as a serious threat to the health of the American public and I do not believe this issue is receiving the attention it needs to have in the news,” Massa said.

The World Health Organisation has repeatedly said, however, that the newly mutated H1N1 virus is not found in pigs – although the animals can be the vessels for the “genetic reassortment” that produces new strains – and that pork meat is safe to eat. Joseph Domenech, chief veterinary office with the UN Food and Agriculture Officer in Rome, said the Egyptian order was “a real mistake”. “There is no reason to do that. It’s not a swine influenza, it’s a human influenza,” he said (WHO, 2009).

The new passport requirement is set to decimate these industries when it comes into effect in June, 2009. Since only 20 to 30 per cent of Americans have valid passports, it is likely that the people who do not have them will not be travelling to Canada or Mexico as previous until they obtain one. The industries currently reliant on Americans travelling to Canada and Mexico for business, tourism, and pleasure purposes will no longer be able to engage in these activities unless they have passports or risk law enforcement sanctions.

As the NY Times reports, the new passport rules brings worry to tourism areas such as Niagara Falls where they say the new rules could discourage millions of visitors from coming to one of the nation’s most majestic and romantic tourist attractions and result in billions of dollars a year in lost revenue (NY times, 2009). Other affected regions of the country going whose tourism industries will likely be decimated will be Windsor, Ontario, and Sarnia, Ontario.

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“I think there will be an impact,” John Winston, general manager of Tourism London, warned yesterday. “It is just another barrier for people to go through if they want to go back to the U.S.” Especially hard hit could be bus tours, which rely on people on moderate incomes and seniors for business, Winston said. The London region relies on the U.S. and other countries for about 12% of its tourism business, he added (Cnews, 2009).

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All signs are pointing to a total economic, political, and social collapse in the United States, but also in Canada once the full effects of the economic crisis spreads to its norther neighbor as the US economy slows to a halt. Since Canada depends mainly on the United States for its economic well being, any kind of economic collapse of the United States would immediately obliterate the Canadian economy. Indeed, during the Great Depression, Canada was affected more negatively than the United States. Canada was hit hard by the Great Depression. Between 1929 and 1939, the gross national product dropped 40% (compared to 37% in the US).

Unemployment reached 27% at the depth of the Depression in 1933. Many businesses closed, as corporate profits of $396 million in 1929 turned into losses of $98 million in 1933. Families saw most or all of their assets disappear, and their debts become heavier as prices fell. Canadian exports shrank by 50% from 1929 to 1933. Worst hit were areas dependent on primary industries such as farming, mining and logging, as prices fell and there were few alternative jobs (Wikipedia, 2009).

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Remiscent of proposed border amnesty changes that the Bush administration was trying to railroad down the throat of Congress, the Governor of California stated his opinion voicing opposition to increased immigration and lax border controls. Seeing Mexico is such a drastically different county in terms of social, health, environmental, and economic standards, it is unwise to further open the already porous border that the Amnesty Program would have done. The problem with the current situation is that NAFTA essentially makes the borders extremely porous in both economic and immigration facets.

In the economic area, corporations are allowed to take legal action – potentially overriding sovereign countries’ legal precendents — over their right to profit from that market. In the immigration front, NAFTA, by permitting heavily-subsidized US corn and other agri-business products to compete with small Mexican farmers, has driven the Mexican farmer off the land due to low-priced imports of US corn and other agricultural products. Some 2 million Mexicans have been forced out of agriculture, and many of those that remain are living in desperate poverty. These people are among those that cross the border to feed their families. (Meanwhile, corn-based tortilla prices climbed by 50%. No wonder many so Mexican peasants have called NAFTA their ‘death warrant (Common dreams, 2006).

In a nutshell, NAFTA, the ficticious free trade agreement once labelled as a “new international structure, not simply a trade agreement” by former Secretary of State and murderer, Henry Kissinger, is a method to force countries to lower their standards built up over decades of court and legal struggles. These countries signed up to NAFTA and the World Trade organization are indeed starting to realize the full effects of so called “free trade,” which is in fact a permit to allow countries to dump their slave labor goods on their markets.

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It seems that with all the financial debacles, swine flu pandemic worries, trade imbalances, and the banking failures, that each country is starting to collapse into protectionist measures designed to protect their respective interests. Indeed, as John Raulston Saul mentions in his book, the world is on its way to a collapse of globalism. The past three decades have been marked by unimpressive economic growth and sharply increasing economic inequality, and recent years have seen a marked rise in economic populism, nationalism, and conflict, much of it within states.

Why is this all happening?

To bring about the end to all industrialization and the production of nuclear generated electric power in what they call “the post-industrial zero-growth society”. Excepted are the computer- and service industries. US industries that remain will be exported to countries such as Mexico where abundant slave labor is available. As we saw in 1993, this has become a fact through the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA. Unemployables in the US, in the wake of industrial destruction, will either become opium-heroin and/or cocaine addicts, or become statistics in the elimination of the “excess population” process we know of today as Global 2000 (John Coleman, 2002).

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“Step back and think for a minute before rushing and panicking” is the message coming from Texas Congressman Ron Paul who has warned that the swine flu scare will once again be used as a precedent for big government intrusion.

History suggests a new pandemic is long overdue, but has been delayed by accidental discoveries of anti-biotics. Politicians can ignore it, like they are effectively doing concerning the economic crises, but eventually it comes around full force, hitting victims devastatingly hard. The three pandemics of the 20th century were all linked to birds, but the new emerging viral disease has spread to humans, pigs, and other species; effectively crossing species gaps. The worry here is that viruses and bacteria have been quickly adapting to conventional medicine’s arsenal of anti-biotics and anti-virals, respectively. However, it appears that much of the worry and anxiety associated with anticipated pandemics might be just hype.

Repeat of 1976 fearmongering campaign in full swing

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“It makes me think back to 1976, the first year I served in the Congress,” Paul has said in a video update. “We had a vote on the swine flu. Back then there was panic, they said it was going to sweep the nation and they rapidly came up with some flu shots and the government was going to inoculate everybody and save the world from this disaster.”

“It turned out that our instincts were correct.” the Congressman, also a medical physician, commented. “Not only did we think that the government should be involved in making medical decisions… but the flu came, the flu went and one person died, except for those individuals that died from getting the flu vaccine.”

Earlier this week we reported on the events of 1976, highlighting the fact that this last significant outbreak of swine flu in the U.S. originated at the army base at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
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President Gerald Ford and then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (a man who has long standing intimate ties with the big pharma companies that have and will reap millions in profits from these scares) instituted a mass nationwide vaccination program. More than 40 million people were vaccinated. However, the program was stopped short after over 500 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a severe paralyzing nerve disease, were reported. Officially 30 people died as a direct result of the vaccinations, though the real figure is generally thought to have been much higher.

At the time Congressman Ron Paul was one of only two representatives to vote down the vaccination program. His comments were recorded in the book Swine Flu Expose, by Eleanora I. McBean, Ph.D., N.D.

Paul described the move as “a shocking misuse of funds …and an evil political maneuver”, “blatant advertising efforts to panic the people into taking Swine Flu shots will fail.” Paul said.

Some of the fearmongering advertisement campaigns from 1976 are featured in the following video:

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“Here we are once again, swine flu coming up and everybody is panicking.” Ron Paul says in his latest update.

“This is not to downplay the seriousness of it. Some people have died, some people might die, yet we’ve had no deaths in this country, there’s seven or eight cases up in New York, but none have even been hospitalised and yet it’s practically like we’ve been attacked by nuclear weapons.”

The Congressman put the current panic in perspective by pointing out that last year alone there were 13,000 cases of tuberculosis with the number of annual deaths last recorded in the hundreds.

Paul then opined on how the scare will once again be pounced upon to bolster and further empower big government. He referred to Janet Napolitano’s announcement Sunday that the Department of Homeland Security had started “passive surveillance protocols to screen people coming into the country.”

“How did the Department of Homeland Security get into the medical business? It’s just totally out of control,” Paul said, describing the situation as an open door invitation to allow the federal government to deal with medical problems.

The big question is ‘Does a bigger government always solve these problems?’ No, they usually make things much worse.

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Steve Watson, Infowars.net, Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Newspapers are fixated upon $160 million in bonuses given to American International Group (AIG) executives. And it’s nice to know where the millions are going (note: the bonuses could have been cancelled had the federal government let the company go bankrupt, as officials should have). But where are the trillions in TARP, TALC and Federal Reserve Bank bailout funds going?

The man in charge of administering the bailouts is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who served as a staff member of the New York City-based Council on Foreign Relations before being hired in 2003 to head the New York City branch of the Federal Reserve Bank (Fed). As the vice chairman of the Fed’s Open Market Committee, Geithner is probably a poor choice to get the nation out of it’s current economic mess. He served as Alan Greenspan’s number two man at the Fed, so Geithner is as responsible as anyone for facilitating the severity of the real estate and financial bubble and its subsequent collapse. After all, the Fed was the driving force behind the asset bubble, inflating the bubble larger and larger through artificially low interest rates and an inflationary easy-money policy.
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Under Geithner and his predecessor (former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry “Hank” Paulson), the majority of bailout funds have been awarded to high-level donors to Geithner’s former employer: the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Here’s a survey of  TARP bailout awards to the CFR’s corporate members (there are a total of only a little more than 200 corporate members at all levels): 

Among the “Founders,” those who give $100,000 or more to the CFR, can be found:

• American Express Company: $3.389 billion TARP
• Goldman Sachs: $10 billion TARP, plus a separate Federal Reserve bailout and more than $13 billion of the allotment to AIG (below)
• Merrill Lynch: $45 billion through its corporate parent, Bank of America, which is also a CFR Premium corporate member, plus $6.8 billion of AIG’s bailout funds

“President’s Circle” CFR members ($60,000 or more) received the following bailout funds:

• American International Group (AIG): $182 billion in total TARP/TALF funds to date
• Citibank: $50 billion TARP
• Morgan Stanley: $10 billion TARP

Premium members ($30,000 or more to CFR):

• Bank of New York/Mellon Corporation: $3 billion TARP
• Freddie Mac: Sharing with Fannie Mae $1.25 trillion — that’s $1,250 billion — in mortgage securities being purchased from the Federal Reserve Bank
• Chrysler: $4 billion TARP, plus $1.5 billion TARP for Chrysler Financial
• JP Morgan Chase: $25 billion TARP
• CIT Group: $2.33 billion TARP

That’s a total of more than $1 trillion in bailout funds for CFR corporate members, easily the lion’s share of the total bailout funds awarded to date. CFR Membership seems to have its benefits, and then some.
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So why is no one asking questions about why most of the funds are going to the former employers of our Treasury secretaries? Perhaps because many of the entities who should ask “why” are also CFR corporate members. Among the financial press, the CFR counts among its members Bloomberg, General Electric (NBC, CNBC, MSNBC), News Corporation (Fox, Fox Business), Standard and Poor’s, ABC News, Time Warner (CNN, Time magazine, etc.), Moody’s, and McGraw Hill (book publishers).

Somebody should ask the question why the same people who brought us this financial crisis are now bringing us the “cure,” and why that cure necessarily involves financing former employers of the people making the decisions.

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Read the entire article here

Canada’s central bank has reduced its trendsetting interest rate to next to nothing to attempt to spur consumer and business spending, and plans to print money as it copes with a worse-than-expected recession. To add some stability to credit and mortgage markets, the Bank of Canada said its new key rate — halved to just 0.25 percent — will be kept there for the next year. The problem they are going to encounter here is the lack of available money in the monetary system to create all these stimulus packages.

The solution? Print the money out of thin air. The problems associated with printing money “out of thin air,” or more literally printing it without a solid backing, are numerous. The most common and deleterious effect of printing money,or multiplying each unit of money, is that every succeeding unit of currency created becomes less and less valuable over time the more is replicated.
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Back in the old days when the monetary system was more stable and honest, there was gold or silver as a backing or a “promise to pay” guarantee that the amount of metal kept somewhere in a vault was equivalent in value to the amount held in paper assets (ie. the money in peoples’ wallets). The problem we have now is that the entire monetary system of the world was taken off this standard in 1971 when Richard Nixon declared Fort Knox broke. Canada and other world central banks had to follow the lead or suffer the consequence of not being able to trade with the biggest country in the world at the time; that is, the United States.

CIBC chief economist Avery Shenfeld says printing money is becoming a key tool used by central bankers to try and keep the recession from turning into a lasting depression. What he doesn’t mention is that this has been tried again and again in the past to the detriment of countless countries’ economies because of careless and reckless overspending and overprinting of a currency.

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The Romans tried it, the Germans tried it, and more recently the Argentinians and Zimbabwe countries tried it; all with disastrous consequences. What is happening here is that politicians do not learn from history or think that economists today are some how more better equipped to predict economic activity. The truth is that no genius or computer can predict human activity; and this is the nature of the economic system.

Avery and other economists don’t expect Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney to go nearly as far as his counterparts in the United States and Britain, who have pumped trillions of dollars into the market, unless conditions seriously deteriorate. They note that with the prospects of a quick recovery receding and the bank’s trend setting interest rate near zero, Carney may have to resort to unusual measures to spark borrowing and boost the economy (The Canadian Press, 2009). With increasing inflation and increased borrowing, the Canadian national debt inevitably increases with money borrowed from private banks at extremely high interest rates.
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What is the alternative to government intervention in the economy?

Given that all major economies currently have a central bank supporting the private banking system, almost all new money is supplied into the economy by way of bank-created credit (or debt). Austrian economists believe that this bank-created credit growth (which forms the bulk of the money supply) sets off and creates volatile business cycles (see Austrian Business Cycle Theory) and maintain that this “wave-like” or “boomerang” effect on economic activity is one of the most damaging effects of monetary inflation.

Austrian economists therefore regard the state-sponsored central bank as the main cause of inflation, because it is the institution charged with the creation of new currency units, referred to as bank credit. When newly created bank credit is injected into the fractional-reserve banking system, the credit expands, thus enhancing the inflationary effect (Wikipedia, 2009).

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Historical examples of currency debasement

The value of the denarius in Roman currency gradually decreased over time as the Roman government altered both the size and the silver content of the coin. Originally, the silver used was nearly pure, weighing about 4.5 grams. From time to time, this was reduced. During the reign of the Claudio-Julian Emperors, the denarius contained approximately 4 grams of silver, and then was reduced to 3.8 grams under Nero. The denarius continued to shrink in size and purity, until by the second half of the third century, it was only about 2% silver, and was replaced by the argenteus.

The Romans wanted luxury items and would pay a premium to get every comfort. However, without the influx of gold from conquering, Romans found it hard to afford their new expensive lives. Roman leadership started debasing the coins to make up for the loss of gold within Rome. The debasing of the coins devalued the Roman coin. Since the empirical coin was devalued, merchants had to make up the difference by raising prices. For instance, a clove of wheat that used to cost 100 denarii was selling for 10,000 denarii four decades later. The inflation that Roman was experiencing assisted the decline of Rome (Eric Swanson, 2002).

The recent spread of the potentially pandemic swine flu discovered in Mexico that spread across the world in the past few days could give world governments the ammunition they need to further increase already heightened levels of government intervention in already severely disrupted economic systems caused by the faulty monetary and financial system.

Governments might, in the short run, have an easy alibi to curtail so called free trade flows and other measures which are the last lifeline of the economy and could further degrade slumping trade between countries. Giving credence to the often used mantra that “governments should never waste a good crisis,” this swine flu, the so called war on terror, and the economic and financial collapses certainly give governments an excuse to “use crises to further their agendas.”

The World health organization, an arm of the “unholy trio” of the World Bank, International Monetary fund,. And the World trade organization, has already pushed its doctors to warn governments to contain the spread of this deadly new swine flu that has already claimed the lives of more than 100 people in Mexico and spread to many other countries of the world courtesy of fast human transportation systems.
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World economic markets have already reacted erratically to this news of a potentially new pandemic, and some politicians have already called for closing of borders to stem the spread of it. Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) said the border should be closed until the threat is resolved. “The public needs to be aware of the serious threat of swine flu, and we need to close our borders to Mexico immediately and completely until this is resolved,” Massa said in a statement (The Hill, 2009).

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The problem here is that markets have not had an overly negative reaction to this new swine flu, but if government intervention becomes increased, and likely will, it may cause markets to adverse extremely negatively due to the big hand of government stepping in to destroy markets further than they already have since the economic crisis and the government central bank interventions around the world.

Indeed, public debt has increased exponentially in many countries after all of the easy public money that was dumped into dying markets and companies. Japan had a similar problem in the early 1990s where the government intervened and created “zombie companies” that never recovered.

Also, if we were to see an increase in the severity of this new swine flu, and if it were to increase to a pandemic, analysts say this would cause a repeat of some of the government intrusions that worried many investors last year. From the introduction of controls to contain capital leaving countries, to the nationalizing of banks in the US and the fall of many previously stable companies, we are seeing some nasty government intervention indeed. The swine flu’s economic impact has already been felt in mexico where they saw their peso drop 3 per cent on Monday.
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John Raines, deputy director of political risk at London-based consultancy Exclusive Analysis, said even if swine flu was controlled and no more destructive than the SARS outbreak, it would likely further hit trade particularly in agricultural products.

“At the very least, I would expect them to use it as a way of supporting their domestic pork industries,” he said. “Trade is always the first to go and it is an easy excuse for protectionist measures. But if it became a true pandemic, affecting millions, then all bets are off.”

However, trade restrictions prompted by public health emergencies like the swine flu outbreak are permitted under international law, if they are only maintained as long as necessary, White & Case law partner Brendan McGivern said.

Totally unexpected “black swan” events such as the outbreak of the First World War — when investors suddenly had to adapt to the prospect of global conflict in a matter of weeks — have sometimes prompted draconian intervention and have had a seismic economic impact (Alertnet, 2009).
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Could Plagues Be God’s Punishment?

The Plagues of Egypt (Hebrew: ???? ?????, Makot Mitzrayim), the Biblical Plagues or the Ten Plagues (Hebrew: ??? ?????, Eser Ha-Makot) are the ten calamities imposed upon Egypt by God in the Bible (as recounted in the book of Exodus, chapters 7 – 12), in order to convince Pharaoh to let the poorly treated Israelite slaves go. The Plagues of Egypt are recognized by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

Could the decadence and immorality of the world finally be at a breaking point; so much that plagues and various other so called natural disasters could be on their way to destroy humanity. Indeed, the 10 plagues were not just punishment to the Egyptians. He uses plagues to chasten and discipline people for their disobedience and faithlessness. This is what has happened to the world today.

Indeed, it was Dr. Henry Kissinger who wrote: “Depopulation should be the highest priority of U.S. foreign policy towards the Third World.” “Dr. Henry Kissinger proposed in his memorandum to the NSC that “depopulation should be the highest priority of U.S. foreign policy towards the Third World” (Rense, 2004)

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Will Pandemic Protectionism Kill Off Globalization?

Protectionism is rapidly replacing free trade as the political, if not the economic, orthodoxy. Lord George Bentinck would have loved it (Dizzy was only along for the ride during the Corn Laws debacle, as his subsequent embrace of free trade demonstrated). Globalisation is in retreat. Recessions do funny things like that; and it gets worse as it deepens into full-blown depression, as this crisis will do.

Globalisation has failed. The chief reason for this failure is not the current recession – that is only the occasion – but the neglect of governments around the world to respond to it fiscally and culturally. Now it is too late. Every time demonstrators against foreign contractors appear at factory gates, the local MP has to support them. (Gerald Warner, 2009).

It seems that once in a while news headlines destined for front page news do not make it there, but make it to the page section of the newspaper where they hope nobody will notice.

Since Canada is heavily reliant on the USA for its economic prosperity, people should be very afraid concerning the US’ economic downturn since Canada depends so much on trade with the block of people.

Bank of Canada says recession worse here than U.S.

By Alia McMullen, Canwest News ServiceApril 23, 2009

TORONTO – Canada’s economy likely shrank at a record postwar pace in the first quarter of this year as problems in the automotive sector weighed on the economy and helped push it into a deeper recession than the United States.

The Bank of Canada said in its quarterly monetary policy report Thursday the economy likely shrank by 7.3 per cent in the first quarter of this year – the worst annualized decline since modern records began in 1961. However, it said Canada was better positioned to spring back once growth resumes at the end of this year, albeit a quarter later than previously expected.

Even so, a glaring obstacle lies in the way of the better times on the horizon: the fate of the country’s automakers who have done so much damage on the economy already and has the potential to do more.

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Derek Holt, an economist at Scotia Capital, said a worse-case scenario for the country’s automakers, which would involve the complete collapse of their operations, would likely cause Canada to relive the dramatic drop of the first quarter with a second quarter contraction verging on seven per cent. Barring such a shock to the system, Holt currently expects the economy to grow 2.5 per cent in the second quarter.

“The auto sector is starting to show up as having the biggest impact on our GDP numbers in the first and second quarters,” Holt said. He said if the automakers and the unions are unable to reach an agreement, the economy would face a very serious possibility of a much sharper hit to growth for the rest of the year.

The Bank of Canada expects the pace of contraction to slow to 3.5 per cent in the second quarter and one per cent in the third quarter before growth creeps back in a 2.4 per cent in the fourth quarter.

At a yearly level, the predicted three per cent drop in the Canadian economy will be deeper than the likely 2.4 per cent contraction for the United States in 2009.

Dragging on Canada have been abrupt structural changes in the automotive and forestry sectors. The bank said adjustments in these sectors were having a huge drag on Canada’s potential output of goods and services.

Holt said drooping exports and a delay in unwinding Canadian business inventories at the beginning of the recession were also dragging on Canada now relative to other countries.

While these factors have weighed on the economy in recession, the central bank expects Canada to outperform the U.S. in recovery.

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“The Canadian economy is projected to grow more rapidly than the U.S. economy in 2010 and 2011,” the Bank of Canada said in the report. It said this is because the need for households to repair their balance sheets was smaller in Canada, the housing market correction is expected to be much less severe and Canadian exports are predicted to benefit from a recovery in the U.S. housing and automotive sectors.

The central bank indicated that provided its economic projections hold and core inflation stays on track to bottom out at 0.9 per cent in the fourth quarter, the 4.25 percentage points in rate cuts to date should be sufficient to pull the economy back on track.

GENEVA — The World Health Organization convened a meeting of an emergency advisory group Saturday to discuss the outbreak of swine flu which has infected people in Mexico and the southwestern United States.

WHO Director General Dr. Margaret Chan said the group would advise her on whether the worrying disease outbreak, which is reported to have claimed at least 20 lives so far, should be deemed a public health emergency of international concern.

NAPOLITANO SAYS US SHOULD SHOULD PREPARE FOR NEW FLU OUTBREAK SOON EVEN IF THIS ONE FIZZLES OUT (Reuters, 2009).

The world scientific community, including many disease research organizations, and scientific experts have been predicting an over due appearance of a pandemic similar to the Spanish flu and the black plague for many decades now. The former was responsible for the death of some 50 million people worldwide in the first half of the 20th century (1914) and was so deadly that the victims’ corpses were quickly and effectively destroyed due to fears of re-emergence. The death of 50 million people devastated world economies because of both human capital loss, but also mass protectionism due to quarantined borders. A pandemic would deal a major blow to a world economy already knocked into its worst recession in decades by the crisis in financial markets.
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History suggests a new pandemic is long overdue, but has been delayed by accidental discoveries of anti-biotics. Politicians can ignore it, like they are effectively doing concerning the economic crises, but eventually it comes around full force, hitting victims devastatingly hard. The three pandemics of the 20th century were all linked to birds, but the new emerging viral disease has spread to humans, pigs, and other species; effectively crossing species gaps. The worry here is that viruses and bacteria have been quickly adapting to conventional medicine’s arsenal of anti-biotics and anti-virals, respectively.

Countries Prepare for Next Pandemic

The top EU health official urged Europeans on Monday to postpone nonessential travel to the United States and Mexico because of the swine flu virus, and Spanish health officials confirmed the first case outside North America.

When the next influenza pandemic strikes, New Zealand’s borders are likely to be closed to all incoming travellers. The lock may be on for several days, says a pandemic planning guide for businesses. All passengers may be quarantined for at least eight days, says the guide, published yesterday by the Ministries of Health and Economic Development.

The United States, however, has no plans on closing borders for the current bout of swine flu that has infected thousands of people worldwide and killed hundreds. Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) said the border should be closed until the threat is resolved.

“The public needs to be aware of the serious threat of swine flu, and we need to close our borders to Mexico immediately and completely until this is resolved,” Massa said in a statement. “I am making this announcement because I see this as a serious threat to the health of the American public and I do not believe this issue is receiving the attention it needs to have in the news,” Massa said.

It appears as if the cheerleaders of the re-emergence of such a deadly flu similar to those described above is making headway onto the human race. Indeed, academics and scientists such as Dr. Pianka, formerly of Texas University, was a large proponent of the re-emergence of a deadly flu to advocate killing off 90% of the human population in order to save the planet. “He then showed solutions for reducing the world’s population in the form of a slide depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” writes Mims. “War and famine would not do, he explained (WND, 2006).

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It looks as if Dr. Pianka will get his wish, as there are four manifestations, commonly used by God in The Bible, for executing judgment upon people who reject Him and His commandments. These four are: the sword, famine, wild beasts and plague (see Ezek. 14:21). These are repeated over and over and are also mentioned in conjunction with the plagues of Revelation. Humanity has many sins to pay for indeed. The strange thing here is that Dr. Pianka is not the only person or group of people who have advocated for the extermination of a large segment of humanity, or the “useless eaters” as Henry Kissinger was quoted as saying. Henry represents the collective interests of the New World Order chiefly spoken through groups like the Council of Foreign Relations.

A New Plague?

The global pandemics that the 21st century encountered 6-8 years ago such as SARS and the outbreaks of bird flu in China have been the contemporary outbreaks that worried global scientific communities and spurred tremendous amounts of conspiracy theories. Infections like the bird flu encountered in China were suspected as being the proof that the influenza virus was on its way to spreading to humans; crossing the barrier from species to species. Indeed, this was the case with the H5N1 virus that did spread to humans, but was mainly contained in areas like China thanks to quick quarantines. he World Health Organisation has warned that H5N1 could seed a human pandemic that could infect one fifth of the world’s population, and hospitalise 30 million, of whom some 20 per cent would die (WHO, 2006).
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In a strange series of coincidences, President Obama, while visiting Mexico during his trip in April, 2009, came into contact with a man infected with the suspected emergence of the next major flu pandemic spread by contact with swine. Obama was received at Mexico’s anthropology museum in Mexico City by Felipe Solis, a distinguished archeologist who died the following day from symptoms similar to flu, Reforma newspaper reported (Bloomberg, 2009).

Pandemics encourage protectionism?

Pandemics, if they were allowed to flourish, would easily do so even easier than the outbreaks of the early 20th century because of the increased mobility of humans. Increasing trade between countries with diverse cultures and standards, courtesy of the so called free trade agreements amorously pushed by the world’s elite, make it easier for people and transport to easily spread disease. To curb outbreaks, governments of the past have utilized border restrictions and outright closures of them to halt outbreaks, but the World Health Organization (WHO) believes there is no need to close Mexican border despite over 1,000 cases of human infections with swine flu registered in the country, Mexico’s health minister said Friday (Xinhua, 2009). The caveat here is that they say this because they do not wish to spur even further protectionism that the financial crisis of late has been encouraging.

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