Part 2 - Urban Teen Heroes - the twisted morality of the streets - fanning the fires of discontent? Floyd Mayweather, self-proclaimed greatest boxer in history

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That is a pretty hefty claim, to say a welterweight boxer is better than the legendary Joe Louis, Mohammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson, Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, or Michael Tyson.  They might just box the ears off the arrogant cash flasher.

Floyd is the person everyone loves to hate, because he gives everyone lots to hate.

Mayweather once gave a radio interview in which he said people sometimes ask him why he hasn’t “given to Africa.”

“Well, what has Africa given to us?” he said.

Joe Louis

“You hear people talking about, ‘Well he should give that to charity’ . . . No, I should donate to Floyd Mayweather.”

The fighter has also been accused of beating five women, including a 2010 attack on Josie Harris in front of their son, Koraun. He did two months in prison for the assault.

From the MGM Grand on May 2 to homes across America, boxing fans rained boos on Flamboyant Floyd — but the only sound the welterweight champ could hear was the ka-ching of cash registers.

The May 2 fight made him the highest-paid champ in boxing history, Mayweather hardly seemed to notice he was also one of the most reviled.

Mohammad Ali

“The check’s got nine figures on it, baby,” Mayweather bragged Sunday, as he waved the first of two $100 million checks he earned for beating Manny Pacquiao in a unanimous decision in Las Vegas.  The pay-per-view revenue would drive his total take to over $200 million.

“No pictures, though,” he warned reporters. “Don’t want any pictures of it.”

Sugar Ray Robinson

He did say he would take one million dollars in bundles of $250,000 each and share them with the prostitutes in Las Vegas.  It seems only appropriate to follow up pay-per-view with pay-to-play.

"Money" Mayweather, as he likes to be known, loves to have bags with millions of dollars in his bed, house, car, or whatever.

Jack Johnson

Of course, it is good he wins those hundreds of millions because it keeps him at the head of the pack as one of the most irresponsible spenders of the modern celebrity era.

Floyd baby has an image to keep up in order to be the role model he thinks he should be for all those aspiring kids stuck in the urban ghetto.

Jack Dempsey

Be like "Money".  He has millions of dollars in cars.

in planes,

in mansions,

in jewelry,

and God knows what else.

The welterweight titleholder has also earned the ire of boxing fans, who are less impressed by his 48-0 record than they are repulsed by his constant bragging, his selfishness, and his history of assaults on women.

Mayweather, who had a net worth of more than $300 million before the fight, has gained a reputation for extreme greed.

Mike Tyson

After winning, Mayweather jumped up onto the ropes and flexed his biceps for the crowd — which responded with vigorous boos.

He was later caught on a cellphone camera yelling at hecklers: “I told you so! I told you so!”

He admitted the crowd was against him, saying he was grateful the judges were not swayed.

After the fight, Mayweather took a pummeling on Twitter.

The Rev. Edward Beck, a Roman Catholic priest from New York, wrote: “Don’t understand how we make a serial batterer of women a national cultural hero. What does this say to our youth? #Mayweather is no winner.”

Newspaper headlines say it all.

Fans disgusted with money-hungry Floyd Mayweather

His focus on money, strippers, and suicide are insane influences in kids looking for hope and guidance, not arrogance and indifference.

We need a new set of real heroes for our youth.  Greed is yesterday's news and people like Mayweather belong in the forgotten past, not in our face today.

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Pope Francis Continues his assault on Global Capitalism - the Many Sides to the People's Pope

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The People's Pope has stayed true to his message of social justice and continued to say capitalism as it is practiced today is a manipulation by the rich to control the lives of everyone else.  It is a message that undermines the flamboyant living of a number of Bishops of the Church, a number of whom have already sold off million dollar estates.

More important, it is a direct challenge to the political leaders of America to stop protecting the rich and start caring for the middle class and poor.  It seems odd that all those defenders of the people running for and holding political office are pretty much silent when it comes taking on capitalism.

Capitalism is not protected by our Constitution and did not even exist when our nation was founded in this country.  It evolved over time and as it became more and more of a force in the evolution of America those practitioners of capitalism seemed to create their own creed, their own constitution and their own priorities far disparate from those of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

Where our nation was founded on equal opportunity and individual freedom, capitalism was based on greed, power, accumulation and control.  Once upon a time our nation was the model for the world in terms of social justice and the good of the people was the goal of the nation and it led us into combining charity and government assistance into housing, medical practices, transportation, education and agriculture practices that transformed our country and was a beacon to the world.

But somewhere along the line serving the public good fell victim to the greed driven obsession of wealth, power and control.  It wasn't enough to have more money than everyone else, it became fashionable to protect your own wealth by denying it to others.

Our institutions of commerce became more and more exclusive until financial vehicles like the stock markets were thoroughly corrupted with the blind complicity of our very own government.  Corruption has seeped into nearly every aspect of capitalism from financing to banks, to markets, to manufacturing, distribution, sales, quality control and you name it.

The government, federal, state and local, became the way to legitimize corruption and all it took was the rich setting aside a small percentage of the trillions of dollars in our economy to lobby politicians, set up kickbacks, insider trading deals, political campaign contributions, arms deals and you name it as long as tax dollars were used and there were no restrictions on bonuses whether corporate executives or government employees.

When the dark side takes hold the talons run deep, straight to the heart, and both those people who were participating in corruption and those who were ignoring corruption became the normal, not the exception to the rule.

Total it takes a Pope from South America to point out the obvious to Americans because those here in America responsible for what goes on are caught up in the game and long ago lost their moral compass.

Long ago Jesus Christ went ballistic when he found the merchants peddling their wares in the Temple and he drove them away.  There is no Jesus today and instead of a Temple we have a nation that is full of corrupt and unethical practices.  Maybe instead of trying to fix economic problems caused by greed we should eliminate the instruments of evil used to cheat the people through capitalism and restore individual rights, freedom and equality.

As for the Pope, well he practices what he preaches.  Just check out the next article about how he has cleaned house in the Vatican Bank, a corrupt partner to the American banking system.  If only our elected representatives had the same guts for protecting the people.  Maybe the multi-million dollar bonuses earned by defrauding the American people and triggering a worldwide recession won't happen again.

Pope Francis Fires His Bankers…Again

By Rob Garver

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Pope Francis Fires His Bankers…Again

When he took over as head of the Roman Catholic Church last year, Pope Francis made it clear that he meant to be the leader of a “poor church” – meaning that the Vatican would focus less on its own splendor and more on finding ways to use its vast financial resources to benefit the world’s poor.

It’s turning out to be more of a struggle than Francis may have expected; last week he found it necessary to fire all five directors of the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority – essentially the primary financial watchdog over the Papal State’s considerable financial operations.

The announcement on Thursday was only the most recent in a series of firings, replacements, and arrests that have rocked the Vatican’s financial hierarchy. It turns out that for Francis, casting the moneychangers out of the Temple has proven to be a time-consuming task.

Last summer, a number of senior officials with the Vatican Bank resigned around the time that one of its senior accountants, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, was arrested and charged with conspiring to smuggle more than $20 million from Italy to Switzerland. Scarano, reportedly known in Rome as “Monsignor 500” for his habit of displaying a wallet full of €500 notes, has since been charged with multiple other offenses, including money laundering.

In January, Francis fired four out of the five cardinals on the commission overseeing the bank, known as the Institute for Works of Religion, or IOR in its Italian acronym. Supposed to serve only priests, nuns, and religious orders, the Vatican Bank has been implicated in money laundering schemes and other illegal activity. Francis made it clear that he was open to closing down the bank completely.

In February, by Papal edict, he laid out multiple new transparency requirements for the Vatican’s financial arm, and created a new Secretariat for the Economy, meant to act as an auditor general for the Vatican. The following month, he indicated that the Vatican Bank would survive, though in a vastly different form, as a large number of accounts not related to its central mission were shut down.

The edict, though, has not cleaned out all of the old guard who have made the Vatican’s financial system a laughingstock among law enforcement professionals and a haven for criminals.

Last week’s announcement came after Swiss money laundering expert René Brülhart, who was named to head the Financial Information Authority, complained that he was being obstructed by the board – made up of five Italians with connections to the Vatican’s old guard.

In years past, it might have been Brülhart, at one point the head of Liechtenstein’s respected Financial Intelligence Unit, who found himself out on the street.

To Francis’s credit, there is a new board on its way in oversee the Vatican’s financial watchdog Its makeup is remarkable only because of its international nature: it’s made up of four international experts, including former financial regulators – one from the U.S., one from Switzerland, one from Singapore and a fourth from Italy. It is also notable that the Italian member is a woman, insurance executive Maria Bianca Farina, making her one of the few women with significant authority in the Vatican.

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The Games People Play Part 4 - Voodoo Economics - Who Loses?

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Oh the Games People Play Now

Every night and every day now

Never meaning what they say now

Never saying what they mean now

Where is Dr. Who when you need him?  We gotta get out of this place...

There are a few things they forgot to teach us in Economics 101 and they have nothing to do with algorithms, exchange rates, return on investment or earned income.  You see, basic economics is a mathematical function but the underlying factor in American Capitalism has nothing to do with mathematics.

Our system of capitalism has fallen into the age old trap of being controlled by ethics and morality rather than math tables and the masters of capitalism are those who manipulate the system for only one purpose, the accumulation of wealth and the power that comes with it.

Once upon a time in America there was such a thing as a fair and relatively honest system but it has long been banished to the land of fairy tales and mythology as if it never really existed in the first place.

Now we eat, sleep and dream the lies that have been implanted in us as if we never knew better in the first place.  Economics must be derived from the word control because that is what it is all about and because control is what the 1% of the population have over all the money earned by the 99% .

In my studies and experience over the years there are a handful of guiding principles I found in all those who make their fortunes on the backs of the middle class.

1. OPM -  Always use "Other People's Money" to make money.

2. DOY -  Always make the little people "Dependent On You".

3. DTBS - Always "Dazzle Them with Bull Shit" to keep them confused.

4. WCF -  Always "Work to Create Fear" to keep people in line.

   

As a result, if we have any disposable income, money we don't need to survive, we invest it in the stock markets based on the promise to grow your portfolio.  Then, as a card-carrying member of what I call the Raggedy People, we are denied the right to buy new stock issues at the offering price.

Nor are we allowed to have our money invested by the massive computer generated strategies of the super rich (high frequency trading) in which they intercept your pension fund strategy and beat you to the punch.

We are drowning in financial news, analysis and misinformation.  What we need is a little truth.  Here is some.

On October 9, 2007 the Dow Jones hit 14,164.  By March 6, 2009 it collapsed to 6,443, a loss of 54% of it's value.  That is what happened to your investments and pension funds other than your home equity which was also crashing.

As of today, May 13, 2014 it has risen to 16,715, an astonishing increase of 259% in just shy of 4 years.  Ask yourself, do you now have almost 3 times as much money from investments, or in your pension or 401k as you did just 4 years ago?

As far as stocks, the wealthiest 10% of Americans own 80% of all stock.

Just this year it was reported that the wealthiest 1% of Americans possess 40% of the nation's wealth while the bottom 80% possess 7% of the wealth.  The other 19% just below the super rich possess 50.5% of the nation's wealth.  As a result, the top 20% control 90% of all the nation's wealth.

Of course these are the people sucking the stock market profits up.

So why invest in the market - don't.  You are only padding the pockets of those who could care less about you.  And while you are at it demand that Congress protect the pension and 401k funds managed by the rich as these funds seem to make a lot less money than the stocks owned by the people doing the managing.

It is too easy to use your money to manipulate the market so the high frequency boys can steal a few hundred million or billion dollars a day at your expense.

What can we do?  Be aware of how you are being used.  Keep abreast of the market fluctuations and demand to know from your broker or pension manager why you aren't benefiting just like the rich.

Pay attention to all the things they say are right like inflation, are you really not seeing massive increases in health care and food, and wild changes in gasoline?  How could we be at a 1-2% inflation when the price of meat can double?

The unemployment rate is down but not because of economic recovery but because millions of  people have dropped out of the labor force because they can't find jobs.

In America all people are entitled to equal opportunity but when it comes to capitalism that is far from the truth.  Demand answers to how your money is being manipulated.  Demand now before it is too late.

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The Facebook IPO - A Billionaires Delight and Forbearer of the Next Internet Stock Collapse

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The culmination of greed in America

Tomorrow the boys of Facebook become billionaires as they cash out just before millions of new stockholders are left holding another Internet stock that lost half it's value.

Make no mistake, the billions to be made over a 48 hour period will be the last profits from the Internet for years to come because there is no business model for pure and simple greed.  This IPO and every other Internet company surviving on revenue from Internet advertising will crash because the truth slipped out of the bag too early.

Yes, the speculators who control the IPO and have purchased all the offering before the public even had access to it, will simply let the value increase since the IPO was over subscribed and that means fewer shares are available for purchase.  In a day or two they will sell into the market, take their billions of cash and walk away.

GM created a huge potential problem for the IPO when it announced just a couple of days before the IPO release that it was stopping all Internet advertising on Facebook and everyone else because after spending billions of dollars on Internet ads over the past few years because the ads have no impact on consumers.

For years the Coltons Point Times has warned of the foundation of quicksand when it comes to valuing Internet stocks and advertising revenues.  In fact a year before the last Dot.com bust in 2000 we published a column outlining why the market was about to collapse.

For those who don't remember, it has now been twelve years since the dot com bubble began to seriously deflate.  The financial climax had its high water mark on March 10, 2000 when the NASDAQ peaked at 5132.52.

The subsequent stock market crash caused the loss of $5 trillion in the market value of companies from March 2000 to October 2002, and those parts of the world which were the epicenters of the dot com boom, such as the San Francisco Bay Area, were plunged into a financial nuclear winter.

More than a decade later we still haven't learned.  Facebook is going public with over 97% of their revenue from Internet ads, ads General Motors, the largest car company in the world, says are worthless.  American's and foreigners driven by greed will purchase the stock, not from Facebook but from the financial institutions who already bought  stock before the people had a chance.

Now that's fair President Obama, our first president to embrace the Internet speculators as economic wonders not to mention huge financial contributors to the President's reelection campaign.  You don't suppose Obama has some of that Facebook stock do you?

There is no financial basis to say Facebook is bigger than Exxon, Proctor & Gamble or GM when the sole basis for revenue is advertising which recent polls indicate 83% of Facebook users never click on.  The other 17% say they occasionally click on one if it is of interest.

Don't be surprised if another five trillion dollars is lost and that most of it comes from Internet stocks, or should I say stockholders.  Of course the Internet executives will cash out starting tomorrow leaving you holding the bag.

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