Is The U.S. Economy Edging Closer To A Colossal Collapse?

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GDP, greed, stock market, stock market crash, U.S, U.S. debt, U.S. Economy, United States, Wall Street

What do 1929, 2000 and 2007 all have in common?  Those were all years in which we saw a dramatic spike in margin debt.  In all three instances, investors became highly leveraged in order to “take advantage” of a soaring stock market.  But of course we all know what happened each time.  The spike in margin debt was rapidly followed by a horrifying stock market crash.  Well guess what?  It is happening again.  In April (the last month we have a number for), margin debt rose to an all-time high of more than 384 billion dollars.  The previous high was 381 billion dollars which occurred back in July 2007.  Margin debt is about 29 percent higher than it was a year ago, and the S&P 500 has risen by more than 20 percent since last fall.  The stock market just continues to rise even though the underlying economic fundamentals continue to get worse.  So should we be alarmed?  Is the stock market bubble going to burst at some point?  Well, if history is any indication we are in big trouble.  In the past, whenever margin debt has gone over 2.25% of GDP the stock market has crashed.  That certainly does not mean that the market is going to crash this week, but it is a major red flag.

The funny thing is that the fact that investors are so highly leveraged is being seen as a positive thing by many in the financial world.  Some believe that a high level of margin debt is a sign that “investor confidence” is high and that the rally will continue.  The following is from a recent article in the Wall Street Journal…

The rising level of debt is seen as a measure of investor confidence, as investors are more willing to take out debt against investments when shares are rising and they have more value in their portfolios to borrow against. The latest rise has been fueled by low interest rates and a 15% year-to-date stock-market rally.

Others, however, consider the spike in margin debt to be a very ominous sign.  Margin debt has now risen to about 2.4 percent of GDP, and as the New York Times recently pointed out, whenever we have gotten this high before a market crash has always followed…

The first time in recent decades that total margin debt exceeded 2.25 percent of G.D.P. came at the end of 1999, amid the technology stock bubble. Margin debt fell after that bubble burst, but began to rise again during the housing boom — when anecdotal evidence said some investors were using their investments to secure loans that went for down payments on homes. That boom in margin loans also ended badly.

Posted below is a chart of the performance of the S&P 500 over the last several decades. Every time margin debt has soared to a dramatic new high in the past, a stock market crash and a recession have always followed.  Will we escape a similar fate this time?

What makes all of this even more alarming is the fact that a number of things that we have not seen happen in the U.S. economy since 2009 are starting to happen again.  See 12 Clear Signals That The U.S. Economy Is About To Really Slow Down:  http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/12-clear-signals-that-the-u-s-economy-is-about-to-really-slow-down

At some point the stock market will catch up with the economy.  When that happens, it will probably happen very rapidly and a lot of people will lose a lot of money.

Unfortunately most Americans rely on the mainstream media to do much of their thinking for them.  They will never see the colossal collapse coming!

Source:  http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/whenever-margin-debt-goes-over-2-25-of-gdp-the-stock-market-always-crashes

 

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18 Signs Of A Global Economic Meltdown!

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Asia, austerity, Australia, banking, Ben Bernanke, consumer spending, Cyprus, Debt, deception, decline, Depression, economic collapse, Economic inequality, economic meltdown, Economy, Elite, EU, European Union, eurozone, Federal Reserve, France, global, Greece, Hindenburg Omen, India, Italy, Japan, Japanese financial system, lending, McClellan Oscillator, money, New York Stock Exchange, NYSE, Poor, Portugal, Poverty, printing, production, Quotes, Recession, reckless, riots, Sentimen Trader Smart/Dumb Money Index, Sequestration, Spain, stock market, stock market crash, Stockholm, Sweden, The Great Cyprus Bank Robbery, U.S, Unemployment, Unemployment Rate, United States, wages, Wall Street, wealthy, world-wide, youth

This is no time to be complacent.  Massive economic problems are erupting all over the globe, but most people seem to believe that everything is going to be just fine.  In fact, a whole bunch of recent polls and surveys show that the American people are starting to feel much better about how the U.S. economy is performing.  Unfortunately, the false prosperity that we are currently enjoying is not going to last much longer.  Just look at what is happening in Europe.  The eurozone is now in the midst of the longest recession that it has ever experienced.  Just look at what is happening over in Asia.  Economic growth in India is the lowest that it has been in a decade and the Japanese financial system is beginning to spin wildly out of control.  One of the only places on the entire planet where serious economic problems have not already erupted is in the United States, and that is only because we have “kicked the can down the road” by recklessly printing money and by borrowing money at an unprecedented rate.  Unfortunately, the “sugar high” produced by those foolish measures is starting to wear off.  We are going to experience a massive amount of economic pain along with the rest of the world – it is just a matter of time.

But for the moment, there are a lot of skeptics out there.

For the moment, there are a lot of people that are declaring that the problems of the past have been fixed and that we are heading for incredibly bright economic times ahead.

Unfortunately, those people appear to be purposely ignoring the economic horror that is breaking out all over the globe.

The following are 18 signs that massive economic problems are erupting all over the planet…

#1 The eurozone is now in the midst of its longest recession ever.  Economic activity in the eurozone has declined for six quarters in a row.

#2 Italy’s economy has now been contracting for seven quarters in a row.

#3 Industrial production in Italy has fallen for 15 months in a row.  It has now fallen to its lowest level in about 25 years.

#4 The number of people that are considered to be “seriously deprived” in Italy has doubled over the past two years.

#5 Consumer confidence in France has just hit a new all-time low.

#6 The number of unemployed workers seeking a job in France has hit a brand new all-time record high.  Many unemployed workers in France are utterly frustrated at this point…

“I’ve sent CVs everywhere, I come to the unemployment agency every day, for 3 or 4 hours to look for work as a truck driver and there’s never anything,” said 42-year old Djamel Sami, who has been unemployed for a year, leaving a job agency in Paris.

#7 Unemployment in the eurozone as a whole has just hit a brand new all-time record high of 12.2 percent.

#8 Youth unemployment continues to soar to unprecedented heights in Europe.  The following is from an article that was recently posted on the website of the Guardian that detailed how bad things are getting in some of the worst countries…

In Greece, 62.5% of young people are out of work, in Spain it’s 56.4%, then Portugal with 42.5%, and then Italy with 40.5%.

#9 Youth unemployment is being partially blamed for the worst rioting that Sweden has seen in many years.  The following is how the Daily Mail described the riots…

Sweden is reeling after a third night of rioting in largely run-down immigrant areas of the capital Stockholm.

In the last 48 hours violence has spread to at least ten suburbs with mobs of youths torching hundreds of cars and clashing with police.

It is Sweden’s worst disorder in years and has shocked the country and provoked a debate on how Sweden is coping with youth unemployment and an influx of immigrants.

#10 An astounding 10 percent of all banking deposits were pulled out of banks in Cyprus during the month of April alone.

#11 Economic growth in India is the slowest that it has been in an entire decade.

#12 Suddenly Australia is experiencing some tremendous economic challenges.  The following quotes are from a recent Zero Hedge article…

-“We’re seeing a much sharper contraction in the Australian economy than we’d anticipated four or five months ago”. Coffey MD, John Douglas. The engineering group has seen its shares, which traded above $4 in 2007, hit 10c last week.

-“By 10am, the Fitness First gym in the city is packed full of brokers who’ve had a gutful of sitting at their desk doing nothing – salary cuts are starting and next it will be jobs” Perth broker

-“Oh mate, the funding market is dead. You are now seeing a few deeply discounted rights issues for those that are reaching desperate levels ….. liquidity has completely disappeared” Perth broker

#13 The financial system in Japan is beginning to spin wildly out of control.  The Japanese stock market has now declined about 15 percent from the peak, and many believe that the yen will continue to get weaker and that interest rates in Japan will start to rise significantly.

#14 Global cash flow is declining at a rate not seen since the last recession.  This indicates that we could be headed for a global credit crunch.

#15 Real wages continue to decline in the United States.  Even though we are being told that the U.S. is experiencing an “economy recovery”, real weekly earnings have declined from $297.79 in 2010 to $295.49 in 2011 to $294.83 in 2012.  (The preceding calculation is based on 1982-1984 dollars)

#16 Wall Street is buzzing about the fact that “the Hindenburg Omen” appeared at the end of last week.  So exactly what is “the Hindenburg Omen”?  The following are the criteria that are used to determine whether it has appeared or not…

1. The daily number of NYSE new 52 Week Highs and the daily number of new 52 Week Lows must both be greater than 2.2 percent of total NYSE issues traded that day.

2. The smaller of these numbers is greater than or equal to 69 (68.772 is 2.2% of 3126). This is not a rule but more like a checksum. This condition is a function of the 2.2% of the total issues.

3. That the NYSE 10 Week moving average is rising.

4. That the McClellan Oscillator ( a market breadth indicator used to evaluate the rate of money entering or leaving the market and interpretively indicate overbought or oversold conditions of the market) is negative on that same day.

5. That new 52 Week Highs cannot be more than twice the new 52 Week Lows (however it is fine for new 52 Week Lows to be more than double new 52 Week Highs).

When the Hindenburg Omen makes an appearance, it supposedly means that the U.S. stock market is likely to experience a serious decline within the next 40 days.

#17 As I wrote about the other day, the SentimenTrader Smart/Dumb Money Index is now the lowest that it has been in more than two years.  That means that lots of “smart money” has been getting out of the market and lots of “dumb money” has been pouring in.

#18 Margin debt on the New York Stock Exchange has set a new all-time high.  The following is from a recent Market Oracle article…

Margin debt—that’s the amount of money borrowed to purchase stocks—on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) reached its all-time high in April. Margin debt on the NYSE registered at $384.3 billion as the key stock indices hit new record-highs. (Source: New York Stock Exchange web site, last accessed May 29, 2013.) The highest margin debt ever reached prior to this was in July of 2007, when it stood just above $381.0 billion. At that time, just like today, the key stock indices were near their peaks and “buy now before it’s too late” was the prominent theme of the day

Whenever margin debt spikes like this, a stock market crash almost always follows.

Wall Street has had a good couple of years, but it has been a “false prosperity” that has been pumped up by reckless money printing by the Federal Reserve.  Just like all of the other stock market bubbles that we have seen in recent years, this one is going to burst too.  And as Marc Faber recently pointed out, this bubble has been particularly beneficial to the wealthy…

The Fed has been flooding the system with money. The problem is the money doesn’t flow into the system evenly. It doesn’t increase economic activity and asset prices in concert. Instead, it creates dangerous excesses in countries and asset classes. Money-printing fueled the colossal stock-market bubble of 1999-2000, when the Nasdaq more than doubled, becoming disconnected from economic reality. It fueled the housing bubble, which burst in 2008, and the commodities bubble. Now money is flowing into the high-end asset market – things like stocks, bonds, art, wine, jewelry, and luxury real estate.

Money-printing boosts the economy of the people closest to the money flow. But it doesn’t help the worker in Detroit, or the vast majority of the middle class. It leads to a widening wealth gap. The majority loses, and the minority wins.

The fact that the U.S. stock market has set new all-time record high after new all-time record high in recent months means very little.  At this point, the stock market has become completely divorced from economic reality.  When this current bubble bursts, the adjustment is going to be very painful.  Wall Street will likely whine and complain and ask for more bailouts, but they may find that authorities are not nearly as sympathetic this time.

Much of the rest of the world is already experiencing the next major wave of the economic collapse.  Reckless money printing by the Fed and reckless borrowing and spending by the federal government may have delayed the inevitable in the United States for a little while, but those measures have also made our long-term problems even worse.

There was one piece of advice that Ben Bernanke included in his commencement speech to students at Princeton recently that I thought was particularly ironic…

“Don’t be afraid to let the drama play out.”

Will he take his own advice when the next great financial crisis strikes the United States?

That seems very unlikely.

Unfortunately, things are not going to be so easy to fix this next time.

What happened back in 2008 was just a preview.

What is coming next is going to absolutely shock the world!

Source:  http://www.thesleuthjournal.com/18-signs-that-massive-economic-problems-are-erupting-all-over-the-planet/

 

Top 1% Own 39% Of All Global Wealth: Hoarding Soars!

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Africa, Americans, banks, Bilderberg, China, corporations, corruption, earth, Economy, Elite, global, governments, greed, housing bubble, hunger, income inequality, middle class, money, New World Order, planet, Poor, population control, Poverty, power, power control, power-hungry, Rich, starvation, stock market, tyranny, U.S, United States, Wal-Mart, Wall Street, wealth

According to a study that was just released by Boston Consulting Group, the wealthiest one percent now own 39 percent of all the wealth in the world.  Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent only own 1 percent of all the wealth in the world combined.  The global financial system has been designed to funnel wealth to the very top, and the gap between the wealthy and the poor continues to expand at a frightening pace.  The global elite continue to hoard wealth and heap together enormous mountains of treasure in these troubled days even though the economic suffering around the planet continues to grow.  So exactly how have the global elite accumulated so much wealth?  Well, one of the primary ways is through the use of debt.  There is about 190 trillion dollars of debt in the world but global GDP is only about 70 trillion dollars.  Our debt-based global financial system systematically transfers wealth from us and our governments into the hands of the global elite.  And, of course, the gigantic banks and corporations that the elite control are constantly gobbling up everything of value that they can find: natural resources, profitable small businesses, real estate, politicians, etc.  Money, power, ownership and control are becoming very, very tightly concentrated at the top of the food chain, and that is a very dangerous thing for humanity.  When too much money and power gets into too few hands, it almost always results in tyranny.

What will eventually happen when the global elite have ALL the wealth?

Will the rest of us work as serfs in a system that they have iron-fisted control over?

And what if they decide that they don’t really need billions of people working for them?  Will they decide to implement population control measures in order to reduce the number of “useless eaters”?  It is already happening in China and other highly centralized societies.

When all of the economic rewards of a society go to a very small handful of people, it tends to be very destabilizing.  We have seen this again and again throughout history.

When people have everything taken away from them and they have nothing left to lose, they tend to become very desperate.  And right now we are rapidly hurtling toward a time of great global instability.  Anger and frustration are growing all over the globe, and the rate at which the gap between the wealthy and the poor is widening seems to be accelerating.  Just check out these numbers…

-The wealthiest 1 percent of the global population now owns 39 percent of all the wealth on the planet.

-According to a report that was released last summer, the global elite have up to 32 TRILLION dollars stashed in offshore banks around the planet.

-According to a study conducted by Credit Suisse, the bottom two-thirds of the global population owns just 3.3% of all the wealth.

-A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research discovered that the bottom half of the world population owns approximately 1 percent of all global wealth.

-It is estimated that the entire continent of Africa only owns approximately 1 percent of the total wealth of the world.

-Approximately 1 billion people throughout the world go to bed hungry each night.

-If you can believe it, more than 3 billion people currently live on less than 2 dollar a day.

In the world that we live in, money equals power.  And the more money that the top one percent accumulate, the more power they will accumulate as well.

So exactly who are the top one percent?  The global elite are absolutely obsessed with power and control and they have been working to implement their agenda for a very long time.  In the end, they hope to unite the entire planet under a monolithic global system that they control.  They are actually quite open about this – it is just that most people do not want to believe it.

The gap between the wealthy and the poor is rapidly growing in the United States as well.  Sadly, this means that the middle class is steadily disappearing as the ranks of those that are living in poverty continues to increase.

But of course not everyone is doing badly in the U.S. right now.  In fact, those that own stocks have had lots of reasons to celebrate in recent months.

So who owns stocks?

Well, the wealthy do of course.  In fact, approximately 60 percent of all individually held stocks are owned by the top 5 percent of all Americans.

During the last recession, Americans lost 16 trillion dollars of wealth.  Since then, about 45 percent of that wealth has been “recovered”, but the vast majority of that “recovery” has been due to rising stock prices.  The following comes from a recent Washington Post article…

From the peak of the boom to the bottom of the bust, households watched a total of $16 trillion in wealth disappear amid sinking stock prices and the rubble of the real estate market. Since then, Americans have only been able to recapture 45 percent of that amount on average, after adjusting for inflation and population growth, according to the report from the St. Louis Fed released Thursday.

In addition, the report showed most of the improvement was due to gains in the stock market, which primarily benefit wealthy families. That means the recovery for other households has been even weaker.

“A conclusion that the financial damage of the crisis and recession largely has been repaired is not justified,” the report stated.

Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most thriving middle class in the history of the world.  That was a great thing.  But now the middle class is being destroyed and government dependence has surged to an all-time high.

The following are some of the incredible statistics that show how wide the gap between the wealthy and the poor in America is becoming…

-The wealthiest 1 percent of all Americans now own more than a third of all the wealth in the United States.

-In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

-According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.

-The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have as much wealth as the bottom one-third of all Americans combined.

-On average, households in the top 7 percent have 24 times as much wealth as households in the bottom 93 percent.

-Between 2009 and 2011, the wealth of the bottom 93 percent of all Americans declined by 4 percent, while the wealth of the top 7 percent of all Americans increased by 28 percent.

-The poorest 50 percent of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

-The top 0.01% of all Americans make an average of $27,342,212.  The bottom 90% make an average of $31,244.

Obviously we have a huge problem here.

With each passing day, poverty is rising and more people are becoming dependent on the government.

Source:  http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/top-1-own-39-of-all-global-wealth-hoarding-soars-as-we-hurtle-toward-economic-oblivion

U.S. Economic Black Hole On Horizon!

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banks, corruption, cuts, Dangerous, Economic bubble, economic collapse, Economy, Federal Reserve, Food Stamps, foreclosures, fraud, GDP, global crisis, Greece, greed, Japan, media blackout, national debt, profits, Social Security, stock market, U.S, Unemployment, United States, Wall Street

What is going to happen when the greatest economic bubble in the history of the world pops?  The mainstream media never talks about that.  They are much too busy covering the latest dogfights in Washington and what Justin Bieber has been up to.  And most Americans seem to think that if the Dow keeps setting new all-time highs that everything must be okay.  Sadly, that is not the case at all.  Right now, the U.S. economy is exhibiting all of the classic symptoms of a bubble economy.  You can see this when you step back and take a longer-term view of things.  Over the past decade, we have added more than 10 trillion dollars to the national debt.  But most Americans have shown very little concern as the balance on our national credit card has soared from 6 trillion dollars to nearly 17 trillion dollars.  Meanwhile, Wall Street has been transformed into the biggest casino on the planet, and much of the new money that the Federal Reserve has been recklessly printing up has gone into stocks.  But the Dow does not keep setting new records because the underlying economic fundamentals are good.  Rather, the reckless euphoria that we are seeing in the financial markets right now reminds me very much of 1929.  Margin debt is absolutely soaring, and every time that happens a crash rapidly follows.  But this time when a crash happens it could very well be unlike anything that we have ever seen before.  The top 25 U.S. banks have more than 212 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives combined, and when that house of cards comes crashing down there is no way that anyone will be able to prop it back up.  After all, U.S. GDP for an entire year is only a bit more than 15 trillion dollars.

But most Americans are only focused on the short-term because the mainstream media is only focused on the short-term.  Things are good this week and things were good last week, so there is nothing to worry about, right?

Unfortunately, economic reality is not going to change even if all of us try to ignore it.  Those that are willing to take an honest look at what is coming down the road are very troubled.  For example, Bill Gross of PIMCO says that his firm sees “bubbles everywhere”…

We see bubbles everywhere, and that is not to be dramatic and not to suggest they will pop immediately. I just suggested in the bond market with a bubble in treasuries and bubble in narrow credit spreads and high-yield prices, that perhaps there is a significant distortion there. Having said that, it suggests that as long as the FED and Bank of Japan and other Central Banks keep writing checks and do not withdraw, then the bubble can be supported as in blowing bubbles. They are blowing bubbles. When that stops there will be repercussions.

And unfortunately, it is not just the United States that has a bubble economy.  In fact, the gigantic financial bubble over in Japan may burst before our own financial bubble does.  The following is from a recent article by Graham Summers…

First and foremost, Japan is the second largest bond market in the world. If Japan’s sovereign bonds continue to fall, pushing rates higher, then there has been a tectonic shift in the global financial system. Remember the impact that Greece had on asset prices? Greece’s bond market is less than 3% of Japan’s in size.

For multiple decades, Japanese bonds have been considered “risk free.” As a result of this, investors have been willing to lend money to Japan at extremely low rates. This has allowed Japan’s economy, the second largest in the world, to putter along marginally.

So if Japanese bonds begin to implode, this means that:

1)   The second largest bond market in the world is entering a bear market (along with commensurate liquidations and redemptions by institutional investors around the globe).

2)   The second largest economy in the world will collapse (along with the impact on global exports).

Both of these are truly epic problems for the financial system.

And of course the entire global financial system is a giant bundle of debt, risk and leverage at this point.  We have never seen anything like this in world history.  When you step back and take a good, hard look at the numbers, they truly are staggering.  The following statistics are from one of my previous articles entitled “Why Is The World Economy Doomed? The Global Financial Pyramid Scheme By The Numbers“…

–$70,000,000,000,000 – The approximate size of total world GDP.

–$190,000,000,000,000 – The approximate size of the total amount of debt in the entire world.  It has nearly doubled in size over the past decade.

–$212,525,587,000,000 – According to the U.S. government, this is the notional value of the derivatives that are being held by the top 25 banks in the United States.  But those banks only have total assets of about 8.9 trillion dollars combined.  In other words, the exposure of our largest banks to derivatives outweighs their total assets by a ratio of about 24 to 1.

–$600,000,000,000,000 to $1,500,000,000,000,000 – The estimates of the total notional value of all global derivatives generally fall within this range.  At the high end of the range, the ratio of derivatives to global GDP is more than 21 to 1.

The financial meltdown that happened back in 2008 should have been a wake up call for the nations of the world.  They should have corrected the mistakes that happened so that nothing like that would ever happen again.  Unfortunately, nothing was fixed.  Instead, our politicians and the central bankers became obsessed with reinflating the system.  They piled up even more debt, recklessly printed tons of money and kicked the can down the road for a few years.  In the process, they made our long-term problems even worse.  The following is a recent quote from John Williams of shadowstats.com…

The economic and systemic solvency crises of the last eight years continue. There never was an actual recovery following the economic downturn that began in 2006 and collapsed into 2008 and 2009. What followed was a protracted period of business stagnation that began to turn down anew in second- and third-quarter 2012. The official recovery seen in GDP has been a statistical illusion generated by the use of understated inflation in calculating key economic series (see Public Comment on Inflation). Nonetheless, given the nature of official reporting, the renewed downturn likely will gain recognition as the second-dip in a double- or multiple-dip recession.

What continues to unfold in the systemic and economic crises is just an ongoing part of the 2008 turmoil. All the extraordinary actions and interventions bought a little time, but they did not resolve the various crises. That the crises continue can be seen in deteriorating economic activity and in the panicked actions by the Federal Reserve, where it proactively is monetizing U.S. Treasury debt at a pace suggestive of a Treasury that is unable to borrow otherwise.

And there are already lots of signs that the next economic downturn is rapidly approaching.

For example, corporate revenues are falling at Wal-Mart, Proctor and Gamble, Starbucks, AT&T, Safeway, American Express and IBM.

Would revenues at Wal-Mart be falling if the economy was getting better?

U.S. jobless claims hit a six week high last week.  We aren’t in the danger zone yet, but once they hit 400,000 that will be a major red flag.

And even though we are still in the “good times” relatively speaking, the federal government is already talking about tightening welfare programs.  In fact, there are proposals in Congress right now to make significant cuts to the food stamp program.

If food stamps and other welfare programs get cut, that is going to make a lot of people very, very angry.  And that anger and frustration will get even worse when the next economic downturn strikes and millions of people start losing their jobs and their homes.

What we are witnessing right now is the calm before the storm.  Let us hope that it lasts for as long as possible so that we can have more time to prepare.

Unfortunately, this bubble of false hope will not last forever.  At some point it will end, and then the pain will begin.

Source:  http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/americas-bubble-economy-is-going-to-become-an-economic-black-hole

 

READER ALERT! Boston Counter-Terror Unit Tracked Protesters NOT Terrorists!

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1st Amendment, 2011, Boston, Boston Marathon, Boston Marathon Bombings, Boston Police Department, BRIC, CIA, Civil Rights, corruption, covert operations, Demonstrations, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, Facebook, FBI, Fenway Park, finance, greed, internet, invasion, Occupy Boston, occupy movement, Occupy Wall Street, Partnership for Civil Justice, Peace, Police, privacy, protests, Russia, secrecy, spying, Take Back Boston Rally, Tsarnaev Brothers, U.S, U.S. Bill of Rights, U.S. Constitution, U.S. Government, United States, violations, Wall Street

We wanted to share with our friends and supporters the following article by Michael Isikoff of NBC News. The article references documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund showing that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security coordinated with local police agencies, including Boston’s counter-terror unit, to monitor Occupy Wall Street demonstrations and other peaceful protest activities.

From NBC News:

Unaware of Tsarnaev warnings,
Boston counterterror unit tracked protesters

By Michael Isikoff

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis testifies before a House committee on the marathon bombings. (Photo: NBC News)

In the fall of 2011, a key Boston police counterterror intelligence unit — funded with millions of dollars in U.S. homeland security grants — was closely monitoring anti-Wall Street demonstrations, including tracking the Facebook pages and websites of the protesters and writing reports on the potential impact on “commercial and financial sector assets” in downtown areas, according to internal police documents.

The police monitoring of the activities of Occupy Boston — an off-shoot of the Occupy Wall Street protests that swept the country in 2011 — came during a period after the U.S. government received the second of two warnings from the Russian government about the radical Islamic ties of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told a congressional panel Thursday that his department was never alerted by any federal agency to the information about Tsarnaev, but added that it was “hard to say” whether it would have made any difference in preventing the bombing. FBI  officials have insisted that the intelligence about Tsarnaev was vague and uncorroborated and that their own assessment at the time produced no “derogatory” information that justified opening a full-scale investigation.

But the internal Boston police documents, recently obtained by a civil liberties group, could raise fresh questions about the role of Homeland Security-funded “fusion centers” like the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, or BRIC, which conducted the monitoring. The Boston unit  is one of 72 such units set up to collect, analyze and share intelligence about potential terror threats. While  Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has called the units “one of the centerpieces” of the nation’s counterterrorism efforts, congressional critics have questioned their effectiveness and accused them in some cases of writing “useless” reports that infringed on civil liberties.

“They  were monitoring completely lawful activities,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice, a civil liberties group that recently obtained the documents on the BRIC’s monitoring of Occupy Boston under the Freedom of Information Act. She said the BRIC monitoring was an example of the “vast expenditure of government money” to collect intelligence on activities unrelated to terrorism, in violation of First Amendment rights.

A Boston police spokeswoman said the department has changed its reporting procedures since the monitoring of the protests and emphasized that the BRIC is “about a lot more than terrorism.”

A Homeland Security official declined comment, saying the BRIC, like other fusion centers, was “locally owned and operated.” But the official noted that, just five days before the marathon bombing, the BRIC did produce an assessment for the event that, while concluding there was “no specific” or “credible” threat information, advised that “officials should be aware of a range of potential terrorist threats, from scattered unsophisticated attacks to dispersal of chemical or biological agents.” The assessment also identified the marathon finish line — where the bombing took place — as well as Fenway Park as “an area of increased vulnerability.”

The internal police documents about the activities of the BRIC show that on Sept. 30, 2011 — just two days after the second Russian warning about Tsarnaev was sent to the CIA — the Boston police unit was focused on an upcoming “Take Back Boston Rally” planned for the city’s Dewey Square.

“Approximately 100 people are listed as attending the Take Back Boston Rally on the event’s Facebook page and Occupy Boston organziers are encouraging people to attend it as well,” reads one BRIC report written by a U.S. homeland security official on Sept. 30, 2011. “The BRIC has received information that approximately 700 people will participate in the Take Back Boston march, with approximately 100 people staying to camp out as part of Occupy Boston.”

A follow-up report, three days days later, tracked the number of protesters, noting that “the size of the camp in Dewey Square has steadily grown over the weekend” and that “according to the group’s website” the demonstrators were planning two marches, including one to a “local media station, very likely to be Fox News Boston on Beacon Hill.”

Verheyden-Hilliard, whose group obtained the documents, said it was not surprising that the BRIC would be reporting such information since later documents appear to show Homeland Security officials requesting such data. In one “Daily Intelligence Briefing,” dated Oct. 21, 2011, the “Threat Management Division” of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service outlines a “template for creating the daily intelligence brief for your region” and then cites a “list of events we want to request” that officials submit “for daily briefing information.” Among the categories, in addition to reporting on domestic terrorist acts and “significant criminal activity” is one called “Peaceful Activist Demonstrations.”

In his testimony Thursday, Commissioner Davis acknowledged to a House committee that his department, which runs the BRIC, was never provided any of the intelligence from the FBI and CIA that Tsarnaev, a resident of Cambridge, had been twice flagged by the Russians as an Islamic radical with ties to “underground” groups in that country.

“We were not aware of the two brothers,” Davis said in response to questioning by Rep. Mike McCaul of Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. “We were not aware of Tamerlan’s activities.”

Davis acknowledged that police counterterrorism detectives were assigned to an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) — a separate unit from the Homeland Security fusion centers that serves as the government’s primary investigative arm for probing terror threats. An FBI agent at the Boston JTTF conducted an “assessment” of Tsarnaev in 2011 after the first warning about his ties was sent by Russia’s FSB intelligence service. The assessment found no “derogatory” information about Tsarnaev that justified conducting a formal investigation. Later information about Tsarnaev included a second Russian warning to the CIA on Sept. 28, 2011.

But while Boston police had access to the JTTF’s classified database, Davis said that his own officers assigned to the task force were never  specifically alerted to any the information about Tsarnaev. “They tell me they received no word about that individual prior to the bombing.”

FBI spokesman Jason Pack said Thursday that state and local members of the JTTF are “responsible for maintaining awareness of possible threats” in their areas and could have performed “customized key word searches” of the FBI database that would have yielded the information about Tsarnaev.

NBC News researcher Taylor Sears contributed to this report.

Background reading

DHS documents revealing that peaceful protesters were monitored as a matter of policy can be read by clicking here:  http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/new-documents-reveal-dhs.html

FBI documents showing the nationwide monitoring of the Occupy movement can be read by clicking here:  http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.html