"While I miss Alan Greenspan, a.k.a. Mr. Magoo, his replacement Ben Bernanke, or Braying Bernie as I like to call him, is growing on me. Braying Bernie's economic vision is spreading like the fungus from the meteor in that Steven King horror flick, all green and icky and growing real fast. Braying Bernie's version of the World War Two cliche "Praise the Lord and pass the ammo" would be, "Praise the Fed and pass the manure." Gee, what a guy we got in Braying Bernie. Considering Obama the First just renominated this corrupt clown for another term, I guess Obama's new motto should be "Change you can't see." One New World Order puppet is pretty much the same whatever political party they are in.

What got me going was today, September 15th Braying Bernie was quoted as saying "the recession was technically over, but we had a lot of "weakness" ahead." Yeah right. When Braying Bernie says idiotic things like that it reminds me of my old TOP Sergeant, in the 2/68th Armor, when he would gleefully tell us in formation that "WE" had something to do. There was no "WE" in it. It was always us and never him. Braying Bernie is giving us the Federal Reserve version of "let them eat cheap bread." The US economy is not weak. It is withering away into nothingness. Just like our NWO masters have long planned. It is madness, but there is method in this NWO inspired economic collapse. They know exactly what they are doing to achieve their political goal of collapsing the USA into region 10.

The very same day that Braying Bernie is uttering these tidbits of economic wisdom, we are told the stock market rallied due to "positive economic news." Positive economic news being, in Japan, hope about the new government. It seems the stock markets go up on hope and the vapors of economic good humor which the whore press and government leaders give them. The economic version of Vicks Vapo Rub I guess. As to what happened out in the real economic world, two points come to mind. While Braying Bernie was assuring us the recession is over, Blockbuster video will close 960 stores. Further, we were assured that a retail surge of 2.7% happened in August. This being compared to a .2% decline in July. However, if you dig beneath the cow pie crust called economic statistics you will find the maggots writhing happily away. The things I do for you.

This 2.7% "retail surge" was based upon a 10% increase in car sales. In other words, the so called cash for clunkers program spiked sales. Gee what a surprise. I could note that this merely pushed forward car and truck sales from the rest of the year. I could also note than when the retail sales from the next few months are depressed due to this, you won't see that fact shouted from the media housetops like this "retail surge" was. Good economic news is promoted and the true economic reality is ignored. Braying Bernie for instance, who now assures us the recession is over, took a year to say it began. The recession began in December of 2007, although Braying Bernie was saying it wasn't well into the fall of 2008, nearly a year later. So, you will excuse me if I am unimpressed with his opinion. One more thing about this "retail surge", a full 1.6% of the 2.7% was in fact the cash for clunkers effect. The other 1% was the back to school spending. A 1% spending increase in back to school is pathetic. As usual you need to do a year to year comparison, which are all DOWN.

However, the most significant economic story of the day was the crushing reality of the banks and their credit card default rates. Without the direct intervention of the Plunge Protection Team, we would have had gutted banks today. Remember back in the spring when we had the leaked memos about how great bank earnings were going to be? And how this leaked information was used to spark the spring stock market rally? Corrupt and open fraud involving the highest levels of government regulatory agencies, banks and the media. I said so then and I say so now. Today we had the truth come out. This is why Braying Bernie was all over the news today with his "recession is over" spiel. If he hadn't been, the banking sector would have imploded. For the record, the US banking system is insolvent. It has been for months. This fact has been carefully hidden by a corrupt media, banking and regulatory system. Only today the brown stuff hit the fan.

We are now officially told, as in press releases from both Bank of America and Citi, the true extent of their credit card default rates. Over a year ago I warned about the danger of Washington Mutual collapsing. They did. Now I am openly warning you that the entire US banking system is kaput. The reason I say this is simple. Banks have been hammered by sub prime, alt-a and now commercial real estate failures. Now they are being crushed under consumer credit card default rates. Some of the numbers I am going to list below you may not believe. They are absolutely true. Check them out yourself. Remember only a year or two ago bank consumer credit card default rates were in the 1 to 2 % range. The following list should make my case. The numbers are from August of 2009. Bear in mind that both Bank of America and Citigroup were two of the largest pigs sucking at the bailout trough.

Bank of America: 14.54% of consumer credit card loans that will not be repaid, up from 13.81% in July.

CitiGroup: 12.4% of consumer credit card loans that will not be repaid, up from 10.03% in July. City is mostly Mastercard.

JP Morgan Chase: 8.73%, up from 7.92%. Chase is mostly VISA

Discover went from 8.43% to 9.16% and American Express went down from 8.9% to 8.5% since they increased their loan portfolio. In other words, they would have gone up if they hadn't increased the amount loaned.

JP Morgan, Chase and Capital One also noted that late payments increased. This means further defaults are coming down the pike. There was some stock market revenge as City went down almost 7%. IF THE PPT HADN'T BEEN IN MELTDOWN MODE THE US STOCK MARKET WOULD HAVE GONE DOWN 7% TODAY!!!!!

I am telling you openly and plainly. The banking system is insolvent, despite Braying Bernie pumping over 2 TRILLION into it. The reason for that is the derivative exposure is in the TENS/HUNDREDS of TRILLIONS. Consider yourself warned. If you have more than one months living expenses in a bank account, or more money than you can afford to lose, you are a fool. You can believe me, or you can believe Braying Bernie. The choice is yours.

http://www.stevequayle.com/News.alert/09_Money/08_Mac_Attack/090916.braying.Bernie.html