What Part of Simple Arithmetic Do You not Understand?

What Part of Simple Arithmetic, Destroying This Country and it’s People, Do You not Understand? (buyout firms profited as a company's debt soared)
An uninformed/misinformed public in energy science and economics is incapable of creating the survival parameters for a sustainable and prosperous future. Since the late 40's when advanced energy concepts for the world's fuel base and advanced understanding of human nature became available, how many billions of women and children have died of starvation, malnutrition, disease, lack of education, and poverty? (one clue: methods for obtaining exclusive licensing rights to a country's resources in return for mile long tin ovens without windows where women & children work 12 hour days producing our goods - methods using bribery, corruption, installing dictators, supplying arms .......will the real terrorists stand up?) The horrors a suppressed, broken science will bring are unimaginable: For the greatest living physicist, Stephen Hawking to write (2007) “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion”, (or delusion), regarding the original, infantile interpretation of E=MC2 still believed today, spells umbrellas for the earth, a global warming solution, and corn for Energy Innovation. When the parameters of freedom and survival disappear, so do people and life. ..........repeating from blog "Traveling at Warp Speed" http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-travel-at-warp-speed.html - how could any intelligent species sit for 100 years upon such delusional concepts of: "as an object travels faster and faster, its mass increases (time slows, stops, goes backwards – approaching, at, exceeding VC)," or "As an object approaches the speed of light its mass becomes infinite." The obvious subsequent realization of such a short sighted error swiftly corrects to - the 'increasing mass' of the target is only the measure of the kinetic energy differential which exists between them http://fuel2000.net/ This concept completely overhauls the stubbornly persistent delusions, primitive definitions and stranglehold restrictions of E=MC2, opening the doors to the unified field theory.

October 5, 2009
Buyout Firms Profited as a Company’s Debt Soared
By JULIE CRESWELL

For most of the 133 years since its founding in a small city in Wisconsin, the Simmons Bedding Company enjoyed an illustrious history.
Presidents have slumbered on its mattresses aboard Air Force One. Dignitaries have slept on them in the Lincoln Bedroom. Its advertisements have featured Henry Ford and H. G. Wells. Eleanor Roosevelt extolled the virtues of the Simmons Beautyrest mattress, and the brand was immortalized on Broadway in Cole Porter’s song “Anything Goes.”
Its recent history has been notable, too, but for a different reason.
Simmons says it will soon file for bankruptcy protection, as part of an agreement by its current owners to sell the company — the seventh time it has been sold in a little more than two decades — all after being owned for short periods by a parade of different investment groups, known as private equity firms, which try to buy undervalued companies, mostly with borrowed money.
For many of the company’s investors, the sale will be a disaster. Its bondholders alone stand to lose more than $575 million. The company’s downfall has also devastated employees like Noble Rogers, who worked for 22 years at Simmons, most of that time at a factory outside Atlanta. He is one of 1,000 employees — more than one-quarter of the work force — laid off last year.
But Thomas H. Lee Partners of Boston has not only escaped unscathed, it has made a profit. The investment firm, which bought Simmons in 2003, has pocketed around $77 million in profit, even as the company’s fortunes have declined. THL collected hundreds of millions of dollars from the company in the form of special dividends. It also paid itself millions more in fees, first for buying the company, then for helping run it. Last year, the firm even gave itself a small raise.
Wall Street investment banks also cashed in. They collected millions for helping to arrange the takeovers and for selling the bonds that made those deals possible. All told, the various private equity owners have made around $750 million in profits from Simmons over the years.
How so many people could make so much money on a company that has been driven into bankruptcy is a tale of these financial times and an example of a growing phenomenon in corporate America.
Every step along the way, the buyers put Simmons deeper into debt. The financiers borrowed more and more money to pay ever higher prices for the company, enabling each previous owner to cash out profitably.
But the load weighed down an otherwise healthy company. Today, Simmons owes $1.3 billion, compared with just $164 million in 1991, when it began to become a Wall Street version of “Flip This House.”
In many ways, what private equity firms did at Simmons, and scores of other companies like it, mimicked the subprime mortgage boom. Fueled by easy money, not only from banks but also endowments and pension funds, buyout kings like THL upended the old order on Wall Street. It was, they said, the Golden Age of private equity — nothing less than a new era of capitalism.
These private investors were able to buy companies like Simmons with borrowed money and put down relatively little of their own cash. Then, not long after, they often borrowed even more money, using the company’s assets as collateral — just like home buyers who took out home equity loans on top of their first mortgages. For the financiers, the rewards were enormous.
Twice after buying Simmons, THL borrowed more. It used $375 million of that money to pay itself a dividend, thus recouping all of the cash it put down, and then some.
A result: THL was guaranteed a profit regardless of how Simmons performed. It did not matter that the company was left owing far more than it was worth, just as many people profited from the mortgage business while many homeowners found themselves underwater.
Investors who bought that debt are getting virtually nothing in the new deal.
“From my experience, none of the private equity firms were building a brand for the future,” said Robert Hellyer, Simmons’s former president, who worked for several of the private equity buyers before being asked to leave the company in 2005. “Plus, the mind-set was, since the money was practically free, why not leverage the company to the maximum?”
Just as with the housing market, the good times ended when the economy fell into recession and the credit markets froze. Simmons is now groaning under a huge amount of debt at a time when its sales are slowing. And this time there is no escaping by finding yet another buyer willing to shoulder its entire burden.
Simmons is one of hundreds of companies swept up by private equity firms in the early part of this decade, during the greatest burst of corporate takeovers the world has ever seen. Many of these deals, cut in good times, left little or no margin for error — let alone for the Great Recession.
A disproportionate number of the companies that were acquired during that frenzy are now struggling with the enormous debts. More than half the roughly 220 companies that have defaulted on their debt in some form this year were either owned at one time or are still controlled by private equity firms, according to analysts at Standard & Poor’s. Among them are household names like Harrah’s Entertainment and Six Flags, the theme park operator.
Executives at THL counter that Simmons was the victim of hard economic times, not mismanagement or too much debt. As proof, executives point to Simmons’s 40 percent growth in sales and its 26 percent climb in operating income from 2003 through 2007 as well as its 13 consecutive quarters of market share gains against competitors through March 2009.
Simmons’s woes, said Scott A. Schoen, a co-president of the firm who sat on Simmons’s board, are entirely caused by the “unprecedented and unforeseeable” downturn that has shaken the entire bedding industry.
“We think the work we had done had positioned the company for us to reap the financial rewards that this economic cycle has taken away,” said Mr. Schoen, gazing across a conference table at THL’s headquarters overlooking Boston Harbor.
Still, he acknowledged, “We are clearly disappointed in the outcome of this investment. Make no bones about it.”
Built Over Generations
Like other emerging industrialists of the 19th century, Zalmon G. Simmons, of Kenosha, Wis., had his hand in numerous businesses — the local bank, a telegraph company, a railroad and a cheese-box factory. He was even, for a time, the mayor of Kenosha.
Around 1876, Mr. Simmons came across a new machine that could mass-produce woven wire mattresses. The Simmons bedding company was born.
From its humble beginnings on the banks of Lake Michigan, Simmons grew to become one of the country’s largest manufacturers of mattresses. Along the way, it even sprinkled a little Hollywood pixie dust on the ho-hum mattress business, hiring Dorothy Lamour and Maureen O’Hara to plug its products.
Until the 1970s, Simmons largely prospered. Then the troubles started, and the company was soon buried deep inside two enormous conglomerates, Gulf & Western and the Wickes Corporation, for a number of years.
But in the mid-1980s, Simmons caught the attention of a new type of investor. The businesses that stormed corporate America in recent years under the banner of private equity were not always called private equity firms. In the 1980s, they were known as leveraged buyout shops. Their strategy is essentially unchanged, however: they try to buy undervalued companies, using mostly borrowed money, fix them up and sell them for a fast profit.
Because they pile debt onto the companies they buy, the firms free up their own cash, allowing them to make additional investments and increase their potential profits.
Simmons’s first trip through the revolving door of private equity came in 1986. Like the latest trip, it was not a pleasant one for employees, but the buyers did just fine.
William E. Simon, a private equity pioneer and a Treasury secretary under President Richard M. Nixon, was the man with the golden touch. In 1986, his investment firm, Wesray Capital, and a handful of Simmons’s top managers acquired the company for $120 million, the bulk of which was borrowed. After selling several businesses to pay back some of the money it had borrowed, Wesray cashed out in 1989. It sold Simmons to the company’s employee stock ownership plan for $241 million — twice what it paid just three years earlier.
The deal was a fiasco for the employees. As part of the buyout, Simmons stopped contributing to its pension plan, since the stock ownership plan shares were meant to pay for the employees’ retirements. But then the bottom fell out of the housing market and Simmons, with its large debt, stumbled. Its pensions crumbled as the value of the stock plan shares plunged.
A succession of private equity buyers came and went. Merrill Lynch Capital Partners bought Simmons in 1991 for $32 million for a 60 percent stake in the company and the assumption of its debt. Merrill sold it to Investcorp, an investment group based in Bahrain, for $265 million in 1996. Two years later, Investcorp sold the company to Fenway Partners for $513 million.
During Fenway’s tenure, Simmons released one of the industry’s biggest innovations: the no-flip mattress. Profits soared. But after five years, Fenway executives decided to cash out. By the fall of 2003, Simmons was back on the block.
Teddy Bear at the Gate
A longtime figure in investment circles, Thomas H. Lee vaulted into the big leagues of private equity with what is regarded as one of the legendary deals of all time. After founding Thomas H. Lee Partners in 1974, he grabbed headlines in 1994 when he sold Snapple, the iced tea maker, for $1.7 billion to Quaker Oats. He bought the company two years earlier for around $130 million.
But while other captains of the buyout craze — like Henry Kravis of Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts — chased giant companies in hostile deals, Mr. Lee focused largely on midsize companies and steered clear of deals where he was not welcome. The research firm Hoover’s describes Thomas H. Lee Partners as “the teddy bear at the gate.”
Mr. Lee, scion of the family that founded the Shoe Corporation of America, left his namesake firm in 2006 to start another investment company. During his 30-year tenure at THL, his firm invested in a series of big names: Ghirardelli Chocolate, Petco Animal Supplies and General Nutrition Companies, among others. And by 2003, as the buyout boom began to build, his firm had Simmons in its cross hairs.
The Deal
The fall of 2003 was little more than a blur of meetings and presentations for Robert Hellyer, the former Simmons president who is among the fourth generation of his family involved in the mattress industry. In eight weeks, the company was shown to 20 private equity suitors in the corporate version of speed dating.
The list of potential buyers was quickly whittled to three and finally to THL, whose $1.1 billion bid for the company consisted of $327 million in new equity from the firm and more than $745 million in bonds and bank loans that had to be raised from investors.
“They were good guys; very smart guys,” Mr. Hellyer said. “Their thesis was to buy a good business with good management and let them get better.”
What THL wanted from the deal was a return of two to three times its initial investment.
From the get-go, the lofty price the firm paid for Simmons and the amount of debt raised red flags on Wall Street.
The “higher debt burden will limit the company’s ability to respond to unexpected negative business developments, including economic or competitive threats or internal missteps,” analysts at Moody’s Investors Service warned at the time.
But nobody, it seems, was listening. Six months after acquiring Simmons, THL set in motion plans to take the company public. And by December 2004, THL found a way to get part of its initial investment back. Simmons issued debt that required the company to pay a hefty 10 percent annual interest rate. The proceeds were used to pay THL a dividend of $137 million. With the company’s debt climbing, Simmons executives had to aim high with new products — and pray they were right.
In late 2004, Simmons unveiled the HealthSmart mattress in a blitz of marketing.
It gave away 250 beds to the audience of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” It began a $15 million advertising campaign. It put coupons for free HealthSmart beds in celebrity souvenir bags during New York’s Fashion Week.
A mattress line aimed at combating dust mites, mold and germs, the HealthSmart featured a zip-off top that could be washed or dry cleaned. But in the rush to get the product to market, Simmons did not go through its normal research and testings, Mr. Hellyer says.
HealthSmart was a flop. Consumers did not like the mattress — they thought the zip-on cover was troublesome. Sales at the company slid nearly 8 percent in the first quarter from the previous year.
“Panic ensued. Thomas H. Lee came in and pulled the national advertising right away,” said a former Simmons employee involved with HealthSmart who declined to be named because he is still involved with the mattress industry.
THL shelved its plans to take Simmons public, and the company shook up its sales division. By the third quarter of 2005, Simmons had “one of the best quarters in the company’s entire history up to that point,” a spokesman for THL said in an e-mail message. The numbers tell a slightly different story: Net sales declined 4.8 percent in that quarter from a year earlier, and operating income fell to $25.1 million, from $25.5 million in the third quarter of 2004. Later, spokesmen for THL and Simmons clarified the statement by saying that after excluding a one-time reorganization expense, an adjusted earnings figure for the quarter was the 10th best in the company’s history.
Executives at THL say they moved quickly to put Simmons back on track.
“More than a dozen THL professionals have devoted literally thousands of man-hours to Simmons, including making over 115 visits to company headquarters and site facilities around the country,” the firm said in a statement.
The results, it argued, speak for themselves. In the following years, Simmons’s sales and profits climbed, and the company introduced several new products, including the successful premium-price Beautyrest Black line of mattresses.
By early 2007, at the very top of the credit market bubble, THL took a bit more out of Simmons. It created a holding company that it used to issue $300 million more in debt, which paid an additional $238 million dividend to the private equity firm. With that, THL had recouped its entire $327 million equity investment in Simmons and booked a profit of around $48 million. (It made an additional $28.5 million in various fees over the years.)
THL was hardly alone in undertaking this sort of financial engineering, known as a dividend recapitalization. From 2003 to 2007, 188 companies controlled by private equity firms issued more than $75 billion in debt that was used to pay dividends to the buyout firms.
Asked whether the 2007 dividend was too much for Simmons, Mr. Schoen of THL defended the deal.
“That debt financing, which clearly spelled out to the market the use of the proceeds, was extremely well received. The securities were heavily oversubscribed,” Mr. Schoen said. “Not only did we think it was appropriate, but the market did as well,” he added.
As the economy soured in late 2007, so did Simmons’s sales. The company slashed costs and cut jobs throughout 2008. But last fall, unable to meet the terms of its bank loans and debt dating back to the 2003 acquisition itself, Simmons stopped making interest payments to its bondholders. THL began talking to the banks and bondholders about how to lighten Simmons’s debt load, and put the company up for sale.
The Impact on Employees
From the start, Noble Rogers loved working at Simmons.
“There were picnics, March of Dimes walks, Christmas parties, and we always had Halloween parties. It was a really family-oriented company,” Mr. Rogers, 50, recalled. “I told my wife that this was a great place for me to work. A great place for me to retire, to make a living at.”
For a long time, it was. For 22 years, Mr. Rogers worked at Simmons, the bulk of those years at a factory in Mableton, outside Atlanta. After operating the coiler machine for the company’s Beautyrest mattress, he moved into maintenance and kept all of the plant’s machinery humming.
Over the years, as Simmons passed from one private equity firm to another, and as Mr. Rogers became president of the local union at the plant, he saw little difference on the plant floor. Then, in the spring of 2008, when the slowing economy had begun to hurt sales, Simmons laid off the night shift at the Mableton plant. And on Sept. 18 that year, it gathered employees in the cafeteria to say that the plant was closing.
“So many people were hurt because they thought this was a great company to work for and they planned on spending the rest of their lives here. Their families were here. They bought houses and cars here,” Mr. Rogers recalled. “After this happened, people were really struggling.”
Between the closings and other cuts, Simmons let go of more than a quarter of its work force last year, said its chief financial officer, William S. Creekmuir.
Mr. Rogers, who received his union-negotiated severance package of two months’ pay, said he and other union representatives had tried to get a little more for workers, particularly those who would have been eligible for retirement. Simmons had a long history of giving retiring employees a bonus of $20 for each year worked and a free mattress set, Mr. Rogers said.
“They wouldn’t give us anything,” he said.
In the months after he lost his job, Mr. Rogers nearly lost his home to foreclosure and struggled to pay his family’s bills. Mr. Rogers, who eventually landed a job at an air filter company and picked up part-time work doing maintenance at an apartment complex, said Simmons bore little resemblance to the company he once loved.
“They stopped the picnics. They stopped the Christmas parties. They stopped the retirement parties,” he recalled. “That showed you the type of people I was working for. I just didn’t realize it until the hard times came like they did.”
For now, the Golden Age of private equity is over, the financiers say. In a speech to an industry gathering last spring. Mr. Schoen said that bankers and bondholders were reluctant to lend more money to the buyout kings.
“We’re in a brave new world,” he said. “We can’t go back to where we were, at least not in this investment cycle, and probably not in my career.”
But some private equity investors are searching for profits in the detritus of the buyout bust. Simmons hopes to emerge from bankruptcy in the hands of two new private equity firms. One is Ares Management, which owns the mattress giant Serta. Under the plan, Simmons’s debt would be more than halved, to $450 million, in part reflecting the losses suffered by its existing bondholders.
Simmons and its remaining employees face an uncertain future. Some in the industry predict Ares will eventually merge at least part of Simmons with Serta, jeopardizing more jobs.
“Simmons has been a cash cow. It’s made a lot of people a lot of money,” said David Perry, executive editor of Furniture/Today. “But there’s a growing question in the industry of how many more times can this be repeated. How much more juice can be squeezed out of the orange?”

So Much Food. So Much Hunger

An uninformed/misinformed public in energy science and economics is incapable of creating the survival parameters for a sustainable and prosperous future. Since the late 40's when advanced energy concepts for the world's fuel base and advanced understanding of human nature became available, how many billions of women and children have died of starvation, malnutrition, disease, lack of education, and poverty? (one clue: methods for obtaining exclusive licensing rights to a country's resources in return for mile long tin ovens without windows where women & children work 12 hour days producing our goods - methods using bribery, corruption, installing dictators, supplying arms .......will the real terrorists stand up?) The horrors a suppressed, broken science will bring are unimaginable: For the greatest living physicist, Stephen Hawking to write (2007) “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion”, (or delusion), regarding the original, infantile interpretation of E=MC2 still believed today, spells umbrellas for the earth, a global warming solution, and corn for Energy Innovation. When the parameters of freedom and survival disappear, so do people and life. ..........repeating from blog "Traveling at Warp Speed" http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-travel-at-warp-speed.html - how could any intelligent species sit for 100 years upon such delusional concepts of: "as an object travels faster and faster, its mass increases (time slows, stops, goes backwards – approaching, at, exceeding VC)," or "As an object approaches the speed of light its mass becomes infinite." The obvious subsequent realization of such a short sighted error swiftly corrects to - the 'increasing mass' of the target is only the measure of the kinetic energy differential which exists between them http://fuel2000.net/ This concept completely overhauls the stubbornly persistent delusions, primitive definitions and stranglehold restrictions of E=MC2, opening the doors to the unified field theory.

September 20, 2009 - NYT
So Much Food. So Much Hunger.
By ANDREW MARTIN
This past week the world celebrated the life and achievements of Norman Borlaug, the Iowa-born plant scientist who created high-yielding wheat varieties to stave off famine.
Dr. Borlaug, who died at age 95 on Sept. 12, led the so-called Green Revolution that created bumper crops in once impoverished countries like Mexico, India and Pakistan. In lauding Dr. Borlaug’s achievements, the United Nations’ World Food Program said he had saved more lives than any man in history.
But the eulogies for Dr. Borlaug often neglected an important and perplexing fact. Despite his accomplishments, more people are hungry today than ever and that total should exceed one billion people this year for the first time, according to the United Nations.
How can so many people be hungry when farmers produce enough food, at least in theory, to feed every person on the planet?
The answers are complex and involve everything from American farm politics and African corruption to war, poverty, climate change and drought, which is now the single most common cause of food shortages on the planet.
But David Beckmann, president of the antihunger group Bread for the World, boiled the causes down into one unifying theme — “a lack of give a damn.”
“It’s mainly neglect,” he said. “Political neglect.”
The yield gains of the last half-century, both in the developed and developing world, led to grain surpluses and low prices, creating a sense of complacency about agriculture and hunger.
“There was an attitude following the Green Revolution that the problem was solved,” said Gary H. Toenniessen of the Rockefeller Foundation.
So much grain was being produced so cheaply that Western leaders encouraged poor nations to buy grain on the world market rather than grow it themselves. Surplus was shipped to poor countries as food aid. But that aid system has often been ineffective in alleviating hunger in a timely way and in addressing broader agriculture problems facing impoverished countries. Support for agricultural research in developing countries was also cut back for other priorities. The result? While the food supply grew faster than the world’s population from 1970 to 1990, as the Green Revolution’s gains took hold, the situation has now reversed itself. Productivity gains in agriculture have slowed, and since 1990, the growth rate of food production has fallen below population growth.
The consequences have been particularly dire in sub-Saharan Africa, where the gains of the Green Revolution have been difficult to replicate. Among other problems, irrigation — which was key to the Green Revolution — is relatively scarce in Africa.
Few paid attention to these problems until last year, when a confluence of events caused food prices to spike to record levels. Riots erupted in many nations, and even American consumers felt pinched as prices soared.
Prices have come down in the United States, but the situation in Africa remains dismal due to an exploding population and now, a severe drought that threatens millions. The World Food Program says it is critically short of funds.
At a July summit meeting, President Obama and other leaders of industrialized nations pledged $20 billion for agricultural development in poor countries.
Activists say that some of the tools for success are within reach provided the financing and political will persist: those tools include seeds fine-tuned to local conditions, fertilizer and better roads and other infrastructure improvements.
The more difficult problems may lie within our borders. Farm programs are among the most entrenched entitlements in Washington. But crop subsidies and America’s habit of shipping grain to the poor tends to undermine robust markets in developing countries.
Dr. Borlaug, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, understood well the limitations of the Green Revolution’s success. After receiving the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, he noted that the “battle to ensure food security for hundreds of millions of miserably poor people is far from won.”
“World peace will not be built on empty stomachs or human misery,” he said. “It is within America’s technical and financial power to help end this human tragedy and injustice, if we set our hearts and minds to the task.”

A Year After a Cataclysm, Little Change on Wall St.

What happened to our money (bailout)? An uninformed/misinformed public in energy science and economics is incapable of creating the survival parameters for a sustainable and prosperous future. The horrors a suppressed, broken science will bring are unimaginable: For the greatest living physicist, Stephen Hawking to write (2007) “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion”, (or delusion), regarding the original, infantile interpretation of E=MC2 still believed today, spells umbrellas for the earth, a global warming solution, and corn for Energy Innovation. When the parameters of freedom and survival disappear, so do people and life. ..........repeating from blog "Traveling at Warp Speed" http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-travel-at-warp-speed.html - how could any intelligent species sit for 100 years upon such delusional concepts of: "as an object travels faster and faster, its mass increases (time slows, stops, goes backwards – approaching, at, exceeding VC)," or "As an object approaches the speed of light its mass becomes infinite." The obvious subsequent realization of such a short sighted error swiftly corrects to - the 'increasing mass' of the target is only the measure of the kinetic energy differential which exists between them http://fuel2000.net/ This concept completely overhauls the stubbornly persistent delusions, primitive definitions and stranglehold restrictions of E=MC2, opening the doors to the unified field theory.

NYT September 12, 2009
A Year After a Cataclysm, Little Change on Wall St.
By ALEX BERENSON

Wall Street lives on.
One year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the surprise is not how much has changed in the financial industry, but how little.
Backstopped by huge federal guarantees, the biggest banks have restructured only around the edges. Employment in the industry has fallen just 8 percent since last September. Only a handful of big hedge funds have closed. Pay is already returning to precrash levels, topped by the 30,000 employees of Goldman Sachs, who are on track to earn an average of $700,000 this year. Nor are major pay cuts likely, according to a report last week from J.P. Morgan Securities. Executives at most big banks have kept their jobs. Financial stocks have soared since their winter lows.
The Obama administration has proposed regulatory changes, but even their backers say they face a difficult road in Congress. For now, banks still sell and trade unregulated derivatives, despite their role in last fall’s chaos. Radical changes like pay caps or restrictions on bank size face overwhelming resistance. Even minor changes, like requiring banks to disclose more about the derivatives they own, are far from certain.
Coming on the same weekend as the 11th-hour bailout of the giant insurer American International Group, and the sale of Merrill Lynch, Lehman’s failure was the climax of a cataclysmic weekend in the financial industry. In the days that followed, nearly everyone seemed to agree that Wall Street was due for fundamental change. Its “heads I win, tails I’m bailed out” model could not continue. Its eight-figure paydays would end.
In fact, though, regulators and lawmakers have spent most of the last year trying to save the financial industry, rather than transform it. In the short run, their efforts have succeeded. Citigroup and other wounded banks have avoided bankruptcy, and the economy has sidestepped a depression. But the same investors and economists who predicted, and in some cases profited from, the collapse last fall say the rescue has come at an extraordinary cost. They warn that if the industry’s systemic risks are not addressed, they could cause an even bigger crisis — in years, not decades. Next time, they say, the credit of the United States government may be at risk.
Simon Johnson, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, said that the seeds of another collapse had already sprouted. If major banks are allowed to keep making bets that are ultimately backed by taxpayer guarantees, they will return to the practices that led them to underwrite trillions of dollars in bad loans, Professor Johnson said.
“They will run up big risks, they will fail again, they will hit us for a big check,” he predicted.
The doomsday view is far from universal.
Wall Street executives say the Lehman bankruptcy opened their eyes to the fragility of their institutions. They note that they have pulled back on risk and reduced leverage, creating a bigger cushion against losses. And they say that regulators were right to support the financial industry over the last year, rather than imposing new rules or allowing weak banks to collapse.
“There is less leverage in the entire financial system,” said David A. Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer. At Goldman, $1 in capital now supports about $14 in loans and investments, compared with $24 a year ago.
But even some senior Wall Street executives acknowledge the lack of change surprises them, given how poorly the industry performed last fall and the degree of government support necessary to keep it from collapsing.
“There was a general feeling that an enormous amount of additional regulation should be put in place to prevent what happened that weekend from happening again,” said Byron Wien, vice chairman of Blackstone Advisory Services and the former chief investment strategist for Morgan Stanley and Pequot Capital. “So far, we haven’t seen a lot of action.”
Robert J. Shiller, the Yale University economics professor who predicted the dot-com crash and the housing bust, said the window for change may be closing. “People will accept change at a time of crisis, but we haven’t managed to do much, and maybe complacency is coming back,” Professor Shiller said. “We seem to be losing momentum.”
Kenneth C. Griffin, founder and chief executive of the Citadel Investment Group, a Chicago-based hedge fund that manages $13 billion, said that regulators and lawmakers needed to impose rules so failing banks could be shut, rather than allowed to operate indefinitely with taxpayer support.
“We’ve taken a lot of steps for the worse, and not for the better, in terms of the structural underpinnings of our capital markets,” Mr. Griffin said. “We have to change the rules and correct the fundamental flaws in the financial system.”
To be sure, Wall Street is not exactly as it was before the cataclysm of last year.
Then, a dozen or so big banks formed the top tier. Now Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are clearly the strongest, with Morgan Stanley struggling to compete. Bank of America and Citigroup are the weakest big banks, heavily reliant on government guarantees to survive.
“We have more separation between the healthiest and the least healthy of the big banks,” said Darrell Duffie, a finance professor at Stanford University.
Banks have collectively raised hundreds of billions in new capital to help cushion losses on bad loans and are taking a more prudent approach to lending and underwriting. The worst excesses of 2006 and 2007, when banks lent hundreds of billions of dollars against all kinds of real estate at terms that even at the time seemed absurd, have ended.
But those changes are not unexpected. Banks typically raise lending standards during recessions. And even if they wanted to keep up underwriting, they would not find much of a market. Many pension and hedge funds have suffered huge losses on mortgage-backed bonds and are hardly rushing to buy more.
Critics of the industry argue that the pullback in risk will be only temporary without deep regulatory changes. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a statistician, trader, and author, has argued for years that financial firms chronically underestimate their risks and must be managed much more cautiously. Universa Investments, a $5 billion fund in which he is a principal, made more than 100 percent profit last year betting on the possibility of a collapse.
Mr. Taleb warns that the system has grown riskier since last fall. The extensive government support that began after Lehman collapsed will lead investors to assume that governments will always prevent major banks from collapsing, he said.
So investors will lend money to the financial industry on easy terms. In turn, financial institutions will use that cheap money to make risky loans and trades. The banks will keep the profits when their bets pay off, while taxpayers will swallow the losses when the bets go bad and threaten the system.
Economists call the phenomenon moral hazard. Bankers have a different term: I.B.G. The phrase implies that by the time a deal goes sour, “I’ll be gone,” after having received a sizable bonus.
Despite the predictions last year about pay cuts, those bonuses appear secure. Kian Abouhossein, an analyst at J.P. Morgan in London, predicted this week that eight major American and European banks would pay the 141,000 employees in their investment banking units $77 billion in 2011 — about $543,000 per worker, not far from the 2007 peak — even after minor regulatory changes are adopted.
Because the rewards are so rich, the banks will not change unless regulators and lawmakers force them, Mr. Taleb said.
“I don’t know anyone on Wall Street who goes to work every day thinking of anything but how to increase their bonus,” he said.
To prevent a replay of last year’s crisis, investors in financial institutions, especially bondholders, must believe that they will lose money if banks fail, said Sheila C. Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. “You need to send that very strong, clear signal to restore market discipline,” Ms. Bair said.
But legislation that would allow regulators to close giant institutions in an orderly fashion has been stalled for months. So too have efforts to create a systemic regulator that would focus on the broader risk that might occur from the ripple effects caused by the failure of one major bank.
Another proposed change would require banks to list and trade derivatives through a central clearinghouse, just as stocks and options are traded through exchanges, but it has yet to go anywhere.
The term derivatives encompasses a variety of financial products, including contracts whose value changes as interest rates move and insurance that pays off if a bond defaults. Derivatives drove the boom before 2008 by encouraging banks to make loans without adequate reserves. They also worsened the panic last fall because they inherently tie institutions together. Investors worried that the collapse of one bank would lead to big losses at others.
Requiring that derivatives be traded openly sounds like a relatively small change, but it could have important effects.
Exchange trading would open pricing for derivatives, so banks could not hide money-losing positions. Banks would have to put up money as positions moved against them, since the exchanges would seize and sell derivatives that were not backed by adequate margin. That move would help avoid the situation A.I.G. faced last year, after it wrote hundreds of billions of dollars of credit insurance and had no money to make good on its promises when the bonds defaulted. But critics say that even the proposed changes would not go far enough, because they would exempt some complex derivatives from exchange trading or clearing. Moreover, some banks oppose opening derivatives trading, because it would cut their profits by making pricing more visible and as a consequence competitive. For now, legislation to force derivatives trading onto exchanges has stalled, and banks are still writing contracts with limited regulatory oversight.
“The off-exchange derivatives market is still the Wild West,” Ms. Bair said.

Our Gifts to Our Children and Future Generations

Our Gifts to Our Children and Future Generations

Without a corporate bill of rights and science freedom:

1. Bill of Rights – (not government control) for Corporations and the Economic System (note, we the people have to live by a common sense bill of rights)
2. Science Freedom, specifically the energy sector.

See "Revisiting the Nature of Power" http://www.relaxspa.net/Revisiting_Power.htm

Which Possess the potential, the promise, of a future foretold a half century ago for today: Appleby's world, "a world where he never had to pay a power bill, where heating and cooling were free of energy costs, where his water was pure and veggies local and fresh, and where a four hour work day allowed him ample spare time to indulge in his writing fantasies. Outside, the air was fresh and the streets clean. Everyone had a job, and in this world-the real world-there were no clandestine powers holding back progress. All received a fair share for their efforts" An Impossible World? Excerpt from The Energy Solution Revolution by Brian O'Leary http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2009/04/impossible-world.html

Our Gifts to Our Children and Future Generations become:

Progressive Transportation










Full Retirement available at 105 years “may you enjoy your remaining hours of life, and enjoy all the things you have wanted to do after a century plus of ever more productive, cost/benefit-cutting, cubicle/labor slavery that maximized profits for our 2% golden greedy guts masters"

The horrors a suppressed, broken science will bring are unimaginable: For the greatest living physicist, Stephen Hawking to write (2007) “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion”, (or delusion), regarding the original, infantile interpretation of E=MC2 still believed today, spells umbrellas for the earth, a global warming solution, and corn for Energy Innovation. When the parameters of freedom and survival disappear, so do people and life. ..........repeating from blog "Traveling at Warp Speed" http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-travel-at-warp-speed.html - how could any intelligent species sit for 100 years upon such delusional concepts of: "as an object travels faster and faster, its mass increases (time slows, stops, goes backwards – approaching, at, exceeding VC)," or "As an object approaches the speed of light its mass becomes infinite." The obvious subsequent realization of such a short sighted error swiftly corrects to - the 'increasing mass' of the target is only the measure of the kinetic energy differential which exists between them

With the “trickle down” economic principle almost dried up, and the “waterfall up” principle at 98%, never in human history, have totalitarian feudal systems been so large and powerful as in “too big to fail” corporations, what NYTimes called 2% greedy guts, owning 98% of the world’s wealth, with total direction of scientific funding, no bill of rights, and only one goal: MAXIMIZE PROFITS


Through continued M&A (mergers & acquisitions), all competition is being destroyed. From milk cartels, to oil cartels, to agribusiness, to pharmaceuticals – all which are economic necessities for Life. With competition gone, price gouging (economic strangulation) to the hilt has become an ongoing standard operating procedure.

In my discussions with countless people, who still claim “capitalism” is the best, I ask “WHERE THE HELL DO YOU SEE ANYTHING RESEMBLING CAPITALISM OR DEMOCRACY OR SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING in the major players causing worldwide economic damage? The only goal these (Ralph Nader’s Term) Frankenstein CORPORATE monsters have is maximization of profits at all costs, including human. 'Capitalist Pig and Proud' seems oblivious to how many Americans are destroyed, lose their homes, their retirement savings, lose their jobs, go hungry, - or those working, continually having to increase productivity in spite of downsizing, while sacrificing benefits, insurance, and salary, as their bridges fall down and local governments run out of money even with DOUBLE TAXATION (selling services for which we continue to pay taxes, to private firms who charge hundreds of times more for the same services). THIS USED TO BE CALLED SURFDOM IN A FEUDAL SYSTEM, NOT FAR FROM ABJECT SLAVERY.

Updates from the News (this is not about surface trivia, twiddledee winks and clothing styles of republicans or democrats all in bed with the same Masters, all pre-selected, chosen by big money, whence the public subsequently plays the extreme hyped-up and staged kindergarten "I choose" game, called Freedumbland Voting by our media controlled masters)



Sept 6, 2009 How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
I. MISTAKING BEAUTY FOR TRUTH It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes — or so they believed — were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession. On the theoretical side, they thought that they had resolved their internal disputes. Thus, in a 2008 paper titled “The State of Macro” (that is, macroeconomics, the study of big-picture issues like recessions), Olivier Blanchard of M.I.T., now the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, declared that “the state of macro is good.” The battles of yesteryear, he said, were over, and there had been a “broad convergence of vision.” And in the real world, economists believed they had things under control: the “central problem of depression-prevention has been solved,” declared Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago in his 2003 presidential address to the American Economic Association. In 2004, Ben Bernanke, a former Princeton professor who is now the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, celebrated the Great Moderation in economic performance over the previous two decades, which he attributed in part to improved economic policy making.
Last year, everything came apart.
Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field’s problems. More important was the profession’s blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy.

Sept. 2, 2009 Productivity up 6.6%, Highest in 6 Years. Businesses Produce More with Fewer Workers
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/02/business/main5281537.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody AP) Worker productivity, the single biggest factor determining living standards, grew at the fastest pace in nearly six years in the spring while labor costs fell by the most in nine years, as companies slashed costs to survive the recession. But economists worry that such aggressive cuts will make it harder to mount a sustainable recovery. That's because the lack of wage growth and shortage of jobs will depress household incomes and make the prospects for a sustained rebound in consumer spending less likely. Consumer spending is critical to the recovery since it accounts for about 70 percent of total economic activity.

Sept 2,, 2009 Pfizer to Pay $2.3 Billion, Agrees to Criminal Plea By REUTERS NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/09/02/business/business-us-pfizer-settlement.html?scp=1&sq=Pfizer%20to%20Pay%20%242.3%20Billion,%20Agrees%20to%20Criminal%20Plea%20&st=cse Pfizer Inc agreed on Wednesday to plead guilty to a U.S. criminal charge relating to promotion of its now-withdrawn Bextra pain medicine and will pay a record $2.3 billion to settle allegations it improperly marketed 13 medicines.
The world's biggest drugmaker was slapped with the huge fines by the U.S. government after being deemed a repeat offender in pitching drugs to patients and doctors for unapproved uses. Pfizer pleaded guilty in 2004 to an earlier criminal charge of improper sales tactics and its practices have been under U.S. supervision since then.

August 20, 2009 Independent Farmers Feel Squeezed By Milk Cartel "We all worship at the altar of the free market — that's what we're taught as good Americans," Goodman said on the air. "But I don't know what is free about a handful of companies destroying competition, controlling the process from beginning to end." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112002639&ft=1&f=1006 Behind that pure, wholesome, nourishing glass of milk, there's an insurgency - by John Burnett "That's why we have reached, in my opinion, the point we have reached, where farm prices are so abysmal," Hardin says. "And we know the money is in the marketplace — we see what the consumer's paying for these dairy products. If the farmer would get a fair share of that, we wouldn't be having this discussion." Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose home state of Vermont has lost 32 dairy farms so far this year, has gone on the offensive. "Dean Foods controls about 90 percent of the milk supply in Michigan, 80 percent in Massachusetts, over 80 percent in Tennessee and 70 percent in northern New Jersey. That's not a free market." Sanders says.


Aug. 20, 2009—Oil Speculator: 'Capitalist Pig and Proud' Are Oil Traders to Blame for Your High Price at the Gas Pump? http://abcnews.go.com/Business/blaming-oil-speculators-high-gas-prices/story?id=8366397 By SCOTT MAYEROWITZ
John Wesley McPherson, Jr. is an oil speculator. While most Americans were suffering last summer from an economic double whammy -- $4-a-gallon gas and a plunging stock market -- McPherson was profiting. And in the fall when oil prices plunged, McPherson cashed in again. Betting on oil is a very risky business. But get it right, like McPherson did, and there's a gusher of money to be made. In 2008, McPherson and the other principals of Sequoia Financial Advisory Services turned a 32.4 percent profit, according to International. Members of Congress and the trade group representing the major U.S. airlines have blamed speculators for run-ups in the price of crude.

April 15, 2009 The big business/big government axis of evil
By Chuck Baldwin http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/baldwin/090415
Self-proclaimed "conservatives" love to tout themselves as ardent supporters of the "free enterprise" system. In the name of "capitalism," they support any and every piece of legislation or governmental decision that caters to business — especially Big Business. Favorite policies of these folks include anything and everything that calls itself "free trade." Furthermore, these same "conservatives" will support just about anything and everything that is said to advance the so-called "global economy."
Needless to say, in the name of "free trade" millions of American jobs and thousands of American manufacturing plants have been outsourced to foreign countries and interests. And leading the charge for "free trade," outsourcing, and the "global economy" is the international cabal known as Big Business. But Big Business does not play this game alone. Joining Big Business is its pernicious partner, Big Government.
Together, Big Business and Big Government form a tyrannical tandem that is squeezing the breath out of our once-great republic. In fact, people need to understand that what is passing for "capitalism" in America today is nothing more than "Corporatism."

Aug. 28, 2009 Banks 'Too Big to Fail' Grow Even Bigger
Washington Post: Behemoths Born of the Bailout Reduce Consumer Choice, Tempt Corporate Moral Hazard The pursuit of profit was put ahead of the regard for safety, soundness and human life.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/28/politics/washingtonpost/main5271210.shtml (Washingtonpost.com) This story was written by Washington Post Staff Writer David Cho.

The new 21st Century Golden Rule for Advanced Civilizations: maximize profits, delete scientific facts and understanding Sept 7, 2009 U.S. Share of Worldwide Arms Market Grows http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/world/07weapons.html?_r=1&hp
By THOM SHANKER WASHINGTON — Despite a recession that knocked down global arms sales last year, the United States expanded its role as the world’s leading weapons supplier, increasing its share to more than two-thirds of all foreign armaments deals, according to a new Congressional study.
The annual report was produced by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, a division of the Library of Congress. Regarded as the most detailed collection of unclassified global arms sales data available to the general public, it was delivered to the House and Senate on Friday in time for their return from the Labor Day recess.

August 11, 2009 FINDINGS The Earth Is Warming? Adjust the Thermostat
By JOHN TIERNEY Originally called geoengineering, this approach used to be dismissed as science fiction fantasies: cooling the planet with sun-blocking particles or shades; tinkering with clouds to make them more reflective http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/science/11tier.html?scp=1&sq=The%20Earth%20Is%20Warming?%20Adjust%20the%20Thermostat%20&st=cse

Aug 4th, 2009 (IANS) US firms look beyond India, China as offshoring surges
China News.Net - US companies are increasingly turning to offshoring their functions to achieve cost savings with small companies looking for new talent clusters beyond India, China and Eastern Europe, according to a new survey. The number of US companies with a corporate offshoring strategy in place more than doubled from 2005 to 2008, according to the fifth annual report on offshoring trends, published by Duke University in collaboration with the Conference Board, a nonprofit business research organization Monday. http://www.chinanews.net/story/527045

July 20, 2009— $23.7 Trillion to Fix Financial System? In New Report, Neil Barofsky Says It's Possible Government Could Spend $23.7 Trillion to Fix Financial System http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Politics/story?id=8127005&page=1 By MATTHEW JAFFE Sitting down? "The total potential federal government support could reach up to $23.7 trillion," says Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in a new report obtained Monday by ABC News on the government's efforts to fix the financial system.
Yes, $23.7 trillion. "The potential financial commitment the American taxpayers could be responsible for is of a size and scope that isn't even imaginable," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "If you spent a million dollars a day going back to the birth of Christ, that wouldn't even come close to just $1 trillion -- $23.7 trillion is a staggering figure."

July 19, 2009 Why Are Banks Raising Fees? As Citigroup and Bank of America Post Huge Profits, Why Are Bank Fees Going up? By Anthony Mason http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/business/19dimon.html?_r=1&hpw

July 19, 2009 In Washington, One Bank Chief Still Holds Sway By JACKIE CALMES and LOUISE STORY http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/business/19dimon.html?scp=1&sq=In%20Washington,%20One%20Bank%20Chief%20Still%20Holds%20Sway%20&st=cse

National Ignition Facility, Crystals, Atlantis

National Ignition Facility, Crystals, Atlantis

As the rise and fall of great, legendary civilizations fortell, there are potentially devastating, lethal dangers to their sustainability brought on by the suppression of knowledge, history and the science of Energy.

Today, many scientists, pursuing various paths of scientific inquiry are mutually engaged in the attempt to re-discover and to exploit the advanced art and science of crystalology that was lost to the earthman during the last great collapse of science and civilization many thousands of years ago.

Large KDP crystal grown in two months for NIF. (legend: ...the maximum amount of energy that can be generated or transmitted by a crystal is limited only by its size and by the material of which it is composed. Because of the precise lattice like structure of the crystal its energy output can be controlled and directed in a very precise manner..)

The interior of the National Ignition Facility target chamber, which weighs one million pounds and measures 30 feet in diameter

The National Ignition Facility, a man-made machine designed to recreate the power source of stars. If all goes as planned, the facility’s 192 lasers — made of nearly 60 miles of mirrors and fiber optics, crystals and light amplifiers — will fire as one to smash a fleck of hydrogen fuel smaller than a match head. Compressed and heated to temperatures hotter than those of the Sun, the hydrogen atoms will fuse into helium, releasing bursts of thermonuclear energy.

missing in action, simple simon (4th grade level) science fundamentals of space time mass matter energy gravity
TIME: Many of the difficulties which we encounter in our attempt to understand the operation of the natural laws arise because of our severely restricted concept of the nature of time. Time follows the same curve of natural law which is apparent in the operation of all the basic factors of nature, and again the radius of that curvature is measured by the quantity C. Follow the example in StarSteps which puts us in a unique position from which we can, from a single point in time, observe ourselves occupying three rather widely separated positions in space.
SPACE: The degree of separation which exists between any two bodies is determined by the degree of curvature of the natural laws which exist between them. In making observations, of course, we must remember that, since the natural laws are relative, the mass of the body itself influences the degree of curvature

• StarSteps
• In short, the quantity C is the measure of the radius of curvature of natural law. It is the factor which will enable us to determine precisely the degree of change in the curvature of one law which will be brought about by a specified change in the application of the others. It is the factor which will eventually tell us how to place our transport vehicles in either the positive or negative portion of the gravitational curve with respect to the earth or any other planet which we may choose to visit.
• When we state that the quantity C is the radius of the curvature of natural law, we mean simply that if a differential of energy equal to this quantity exists between the observer and the point which he is observing, the natural laws will be suspended. If the energy differential is in excess of the quantity C, the laws will appear to operate in reverse at that point.

Crystal Fundamentals and History

"It would seem therefore that the transportation device driven by the huge Atlantean Fire Crystals performs its function equally well whether the object on which it acts is in the air, upon the surface or beneath the sea"

My mentor’s 1970 Lecture that follows, incorporates two subjects, which at first glance, may seem to be far apart both in time and basic nature. However, both subjects have roots in antiquity. And as we shall see, the one becomes the only adequate and logical explanation of the other.
......................................
The science of metaphysics has always had a deep interest in, and respect for, the crystal, because of the many references in ancient language to its unique nature and remarkable properties. It has only been in the past few years, however, that the crystal has begun to find its rightful place in the progress of the more conventional sciences.

The chemist of course, has always had a certain special interest in the crystal because it represents the only completely natural assembly of atoms or molecules, each one of which has settled exactly into its proper spot in the solid crystal from the saturated liquid in which the crystal grows. Thus the finished structure becomes one of great regularity and considerable beauty as most of our precious jewels and gem stones demonstrate.

It was not, however, until the scientist began to apply various forms of energy and forces to the crystal that its true importance began to be realized, although it is as yet far from being completely understood.

Because the crystal is a solid in which each particle is exactly in its natural place, it constitutes a matrix of precisely balanced forces and fields. Any application of force to the crystal will therefore result in the generation of energy, and conversely, any application of energy will result in the generation of force.

Our present day science is making many practical applications of these properties, such as in the crystal microphone in which the force of sound waves impinging upon the crystal cause it to generate an electrical potential; and in ultrasonic drills and vibrators where the application of high frequency electrical potential causes the crystal to generate mechanical displacement or force waves which are then transmitted to some other part of the system or to the surrounding medium.

The maximum amount of energy that can be generated or transmitted by a crystal is limited only by its size and by the material of which it is composed. Because of the precise lattice like structure of the crystal its energy output can be controlled and directed in a very precise manner.

For example, medical science is now producing laser beams so sharply focused that they can be used to cut into and remove portions of individual body cells, which are themselves so tiny as to be invisible except under a strong microscope.

Today, many scientists, pursuing various paths of scientific inquiry are mutually engaged in the attempt to re-discover and to exploit the advanced art and science of crystalology that was lost to the earthman during the last great collapse of science and civilization many thousands of years ago.

There is a possibility that these questing scientists could hasten considerably the achievement of their goal if they knew where to look and if it were possible to look there.

In the dusty archives of our most ancient historical records, it is recorded that beneath the left forepaw of the great Sphinx at Giza in Egypt, there is a sealed compartment in which have been stored whole volumes of the scientific records of the past, together with the samples of scale models of many of its devices and artifacts.

Unfortunately, I can only recount here what has been written because I have not as yet been able to verify these accounts by personal inspection.

During the course of our last investigative tour of Egypt, we were permitted to examine the exterior of the Sphinx as carefully as we wished, but there was no opportunity for digging. I can report, however, that certain definite and repeatable deviations of the needle of the compass which I carried, did indicate strongly that a considerable quantity of magnetic, or at least magnetically permeable material, was indeed located beneath the surface in the immediate vicinity of the left forepaw.

From those records of the lost civilization that are still available, we can learn something of the tremendous powers inherent in the crystal. And in our own laboratories, we are working sometimes almost feverishly to rediscover and to put into operation the same powers and abilities that our ancient ancestors used so widely and so effectively.

Our present laser systems are, as we have pointed out, one of the tangible results of such efforts. The output of the ruby crystal in a laser system is probably quite similar to that of the drillstick of which so much has been written in the ancient records except, of course, that the drillstick employed a somewhat simpler and more compact system than any of those which we have yet been able to produce. Although with our rapid advance in miniaturization, we should soon begin to approach the results obtained by our remote ancestors.

In the hands of a supreme ruler who was the only person permitted to possess or to use the brillstick, it represented total authority since it contained the power of life or death to the laser like beam which it emitted. The crystals produced by present day science are quite limited in size, and their shape is determined almost entirely by the nature of the electrical fields within the molecules of which they are composed.

The Atlanteans, however, had no such limitations. By growing their crystals within an area of precisely controlled exterior electrical and magnetic fields, they could cause a crystal to continue to grow almost indefinitely and to take on any one of a number of predetermined shapes.

These huge crystals they then incorporated into devices and systems, which, while they were relatively simple compared to some of our present technology were still capable of performing functions which would certainly cause our best scientists to stare in awe and wonder, probably mixed with a liberal amount of ego saving skepticism of that which they were seeing.

Tremendous forces acting over great distances could readily be produced. When we bounce our tiny laser beams off the surface of the moon and record the return signal after its 480,000 mile round trip journey, we are taking the first few childlike steps in the redevelopment of the Atlantean art.

Substantial changes could be brought about in the electrical, the magnetic, and even in the gravitational fields over rather large areas, and significant changes in the time field could be created in local areas by the huge crystal controlled systems of the Atlanteans.

In his manuscript, Timaeus, or Theory of the Universe, and again in his brief twenty two page paper Critias, the Greek philosopher Plato, described the history and the culture of this long submerged island continent, its amazing people, and some of the incredible science with which they could control even the heavens at will. http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/Atlantis/timaeus_and_critias.html

He named the continent Atlantis, which is simply the plural form of Atlas, the titan of Greek mythology who was said to stand at the western extremity of the earth near the islands of the Hesperides upholding the heavens with his shoulders. There is no evidence however, that even Plato realized that the very mythology of the titans from which he borrowed the name Atlantis was in fact the unwritten history, handed down through the centuries of the race of all powerful titans of the continent of Poseidon who commanded forces so great that they could indeed control the heavens at will.

We cannot fail to note, however, that the western extremity of the known earth was at that time about the center of what we now know as the Atlantic Ocean and from which the continent of Atlantis once rose. We must also remember that Poseidon, the brother of Atlas, and the god of the sea, was said to dwell in the same locality in a huge and magnificent palace at the bottom of the sea from which he occasionally rose to vent his wrath upon those who defied or ignored him.

In the late Edgar Casey’s book on Atlantis mention is made of the all powerful crystal systems. On page 86 we find the following words: “In Posedia the entity dwelt among those that had charge of the ‘motivative’ forces from the great crystals that so condensed the light and the forms of activity as to guide the ships in the sea and in the air”.

Again on page 87 we read: “In Atlantean land, at the time of the development of the electrical forces that dealt with transportation of craft from place to place, overcoming gravity itself, to preparations of the crystal, the terrible, the mighty crystal, much of this later brought destruction” end of quote.

Apparently some of these systems made use of energy accumulators coupled to natural energy sources and were designed to operate automatically when triggered by some specific and predetermined stimulus. They required no human control or maintenance and were practically immune and impervious to time or to the conditions of their environment.

At least two, and probably more of these periodically operating devices are apparently still in operation, and still performing their designed function after some thousands of years of immersion in the Atlantic Ocean.

When the continent of Atlantis or Poseidon descended into these depths, it took with it not only a whole nation of people, but also some of the most remarkable technology ever created upon this planet. Because they worked with the natural laws instead of using one to oppose or overcome another as we have fallen into the habit of doing, their systems were on the whole somewhat simpler and less bulky than ours, and yet they were capable of producing results which we are not yet able to duplicate, or in some cases even to understand.

Not only was this civilization aware of the many huge spaceships which had for countless generation cruised the galaxy, but it had established firm commercial relations with the galactic foundation. And the sale or barter of material and supplies to those ships whose course took them near to the earth had become one of the nation’s most profitable industries.

The transportation of these materials and supplies between the earth and the spaceship, did however, present some problems and difficulties because of the intense resonating fields produced by the propulsion systems of the huge ships and the tremendous degree of ionization that would be created in any atmosphere through which they moved, it was not practical for them to approach closer than a few hundred miles to the earth’s surface. And no matter how the lifting was done, the earth’s gravitational field still exacted a tremendous toll of energy from the transfer operation.

To solve this problem, several crystal driven and controlled systems were developed which were capable of creating the effect of an almost complete warp in the space between the earth and the spaceship when the ship was directly above the system. The electrical and magnetic fields present were not greatly affected, although their direction was changed. But the time and the space factors between the earth and the spacecraft became practically zero. Material and supplies placed within the conveying chamber or area could then immediately be transferred to the hold of the ship.

While this concept may at first glance be somewhat difficult to grasp or accept and while it may appear to be in violation of several of our currently cherished laws of science, it really is not at all. In the change of location, the energy of position offsets the gravitational loss and all laws of conservation are upheld and satisfied.

We have been too much in the habit of assuming that if an object is to change from one location to another, that is, if it is to cease to occupy point A, and instead occupy some other point B, it must in the process occupy, momentarily, all possible points between the two. This idea is not, however, a necessity of thought, nor is it a law of nature. It is in fact, simply a habit of thought which has resulted from the fact that objects which we observe in motion almost always follow this pattern.

For example, if we place a number of sheets of paper at various distances between a rifle and the target at which it is aimed, when the bullet has left the gun and reached the target we will find a hole in each piece of paper indicating that the bullet had occupied that point during some part of its motion. All of our laws of ballistics are based upon this principle and the exceptions to these laws, that is the cases where an object ceases to occupy one point and simultaneously begins to occupy some other point without having occupied any of the points between are so rare and so difficult to observe or demonstrate that it is much simpler for science to ignore or to deny them than to make any effort to explain.

Somewhere off the coast of Florida under many fathoms of water, one of these Atlantean crystal driven systems apparently still exists and still performs at least some of its original functions. Powered by accumulators drawing their energy from natural sources, and unaffected by time or its surroundings it still springs into action when triggered by a specific impulse or signal and still goes through its designed task of transporting any solid state matter within its range from its original location to some unknown to us and probably remote point x.

Since there are no detail descriptions of this device available to us, we can gain more knowledge of it only through a careful and complete study of its performance and its effects upon other objects during those brief but fateful periods when it comes into operation and thereby manifests its properties and its effects to us.

Since there have been many such demonstrations which are well documented, some of them in rather precise detail and since they continued to occur at relatively frequent intervals quite a substantial body of dependable fact and detail exists to furnish a fairly sound basis for such a study.

To describe in detail the many separate events that have occurred in this area and which can only be adequately explained by the operation of the Atlantean device would require several hours. The records fill a number of folders in my own research files and the specific date it continues to accumulate. It covers a period of more than one hundred and fifty years and it involves the area commonly known as the Bermuda Triangle, although it is usually defined geographically as being roughly a square bounded on the north by a line stretching from Bermuda to the Virginia coast and on the south by the islands of Cuba and Espanola.

This stretch of ocean dotted with a few islands which are the only visible remnants of the Atlantean continent has been the scene of more unconventional and inexplicable disappearances than any equivalent area on earth. In the last century alone forty two ships and twenty seven planes for which well documented records exist have sailed into this area and simply vanished without warning and without a trace.

Ships or planes lost to storms, fire or other normal hazards are not counted in this list. They are all cases where no distress call was sounded, the weather was moderate, and in spite of the widest possible search and rescue operations, no wreckage, no debris, no survivors and not even an oil slick was ever found.

A few examples of these ships are: the Swedish owned Lotta, which disappeared in 1866; the Spanish merchantman, Viego, in 1868; the British training ship, Atalanta, in 1880; the Italian schooner, Miramon, in 1884; and the American collier Cyclops, in March of 1918. Similar disappearances have occurred every two or three years since then and will undoubtedly continue to occur in the future unless the exact location of the events can be determined and those spots avoided.

Attempts have been made to explain the loss of these ships as being due to mid-ocean earthquakes, or seaquakes, which might raise sudden waves as high as several hundreds of feet. Such waves might swallow a ship so suddenly and completely that there would be no time for distress calls or the launching of lifeboats.

The Tsunami theory is however, like many other attempted explanations in that it raises other questions even more difficult than those which it attempts to answer. In the first place, a tsunami or tidal wave, once it has been created, rolls on and on with little loss of height or energy until it encounters some land surface. A two hundred foot wave generated anywhere in the Bermuda Triangle would still be at least one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet high when it reached the Florida coast where it would then proceed to roll over about half of the state destroying everything in its path.

Also, we are faced with the necessity of explaining the equally abrupt vanishing of some twenty seven or more airplanes in mid-flight and it is exceedingly difficult to imagine a wave high enough to snatch up an airplane flying at ten thousand feet.

One of the most significant, and by far the best documented cases of plane disappearances is of course that of flight 19 consisting of five TBM avenger bombers, which on December 5th,1945 took off on a routine patrol flight from the US naval air station at Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Most premid reports state that the weather was clear and the flying conditions excellent. My personal perusal of the weather reports for that day as printed in the Fort Lauderdale newspapers indicate that there were a few broken clouds and a small amount of wind. However there were certainly no weather conditions which would endanger a short routine patrol of this kind.

The flight leader’s plane had a crew of two, while the remaining four planes carried three men each. The lead plane’s third man had reported sick that morning and so was not on the flight. All of the fourteen pilots and crewmen had flight and navigation experience ranging from thirteen months to six years. The planes were expected to make a triangular patrol flying east for one hundred and sixty miles, then north for forty miles, and then directly back to base at Fort Lauderdale, a total flight time of about one hour and forty five minutes.

The flight took off at 2:00 PM and by 3:45 PM they were expected to call the tower for landing instructions. But the message actually received at that time was anything but a routine one. “This is an emergency”, this is an emergency” it said in part. And even with radio distortion there was an unnerving fear noticeable in the flight leader’s voice. When asked for his position, he replied, “We’re not sure of our position, we can’t be sure where we are, we don’t know”. When told to assume a bearing of due west, the flight leader replied “we cannot be sure which way is west, we cannot be sure of any direction, everything is wrong, everything is strange, the ocean doesn’t look as it should”. By this time the sun was nearing the western horizon, and when the tower operator, half jokingly, half sarcastically, suggested they head for the setting sun since it usually sets in the west, or had they forgotten that, the flight leader replied that neither clouds nor sun were visible in the strange sky through which they were flying.

For nearly thirty minutes thereafter, the tower could hear the planes talking to each other. It was obvious that none of the five pilots or any of the nine crewmen had any idea of their position, even though all of them were experienced in aerial navigation, and it was completely incredible that all navigation instruments and all compasses could fail on all five of the planes simultaneously. The overheard conversation showed increasing signs of fear and hysteria among the five pilots. Then without prior warning, the flight leader abruptly turned over the flight command to another plane. This in itself was a most unusual act, and one which usually occurs only under the most desperate of emergencies.

At about 4:15 PM the control tower received its last message from the flight. It said, “We are not certain where we are, must be about 225 miles northeast of base, it looks like we are” the message broke off at that point instantly and completely. Immediately thereafter, a Martin flying boat with full rescue equipment and a crew of thirteen men was dispatched to search for the missing flight and to rescue the dazed pilots who with all of the navigation equipment to be found in military bombing planes still couldn’t find west.

The rescue plane gave several routine radio reports and then lapsed into silence. Neither this plane nor any of the original five bombers were ever heard from again nor was any sign of them ever found in spite of one of the largest air and sea rescue searches in American history.

The aircraft carrier Solomons was in the vicinity and by mid afternoon of the next day, many ships and over three hundred planes had joined the search. Not a single item of wreckage or debris from any of the six planes was ever seen, even though the Martin flying boat was designed to land upon the ocean, and because it was used for marine rescue service, had aboard life preservers, rafts, and literally hundreds of items which would rise to the surface of the ocean and continue to float indefinitely no matter how hard the plane had hit the water.

The navy, after an exhaustive investigation of the incident in which a total of twenty seven lives had presumably been lost was unable to come up with any solution. Their report stated simply, we are not even able to make a good guess as to what happened.

A little more than two years later, on January 29th, 1948, a four engine commercial airliner belonging to the British South American Airways Company with thirty four passengers and a crew of six were in route to Kingston, Jamaica.. The weather was clear and mild. At 10:30 PM a routine report was made to the control tower at Bermuda. This was the last message ever received from this airliner. No evidence was ever found that would indicate a crash into the ocean or elsewhere. No wreckage, no oil slick, no debris of any kind was ever located. The big plane with a total of forty persons aboard had simply vanished.

Again on January 7th, 1949, one year later, another four engine airline, also belonging to the British South American Airways with seven crewmen and thirteen passengers took off from Bermuda bound for Jamaica at 7:30 AM in excellent weather. At 8:15 AM there was a routine report and then silence. As in the previous case, no sign of wreckage, plane or passengers was ever found.

As in the previous cases, a thorough investigation of the above cases could only report that the planes had, quote, “ presumably been lost at sea”, unquote, an undeniable premise but not very enlightening.

In January of 1960 a convoy of five planes was in route from Puerto Rico to New York when two of the planes suddenly disappeared in fair weather and without having given any signs of distress. They had been flying at some distance from the remaining three but well within visual range. Again, no sign of planes or their crew was ever found.

These are but four of the documented cases, but the balance of them are so similar as to seem like carbon copies of these. In every case they involve planes flying in mild weather in level flight and with no known problems yet suddenly they were no longer there. The total number of planes that have vanished in this manner can only be guessed at since no genuinely coordinated effort has ever been made to assemble all of even the known cases. And of course the loss of smaller planes could and almost certainly would be attributed to engine failure, lack of fuel, radio malfunction or other more readily understood causes.

It would seem therefore that the transportation device driven by the huge crystals performs its function equally well whether the object on which it acts is in the air, upon the surface or beneath it.

There have been half hearted efforts by several departments of the federal government to probe the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. In January 1946, a group of naval intelligence officers were ordered by President Truman to form a central intelligence group which became the forerunner of the CIA. In the spring of 1946 this central intelligence group participated in a series of secret hearings in Washington DC in which the wives and relatives of the missing Flight 19 were flown to Washington to attend the meeting.

Since that time, most of those involved have refused to discuss the matter at all. But the mother of one of the missing flyers has said that she thought her son was still alive, perhaps somewhere in space. In 1965 and 1966, the National Bureau of Standards undertook a project in which special microphones capable of picking up sounds above the audible range were installed off the coast of Florida, and while some results were reportedly obtained no conclusions have yet been announced.

In an interview in 1968, a spokesman for the Coastguard’s Search and Rescue branch said, “Quite frankly we don’t know what is happening in this so called Bermuda Triangle. All we can do about these unexplainable disappearances is to speculate”. The navy is trying to get to the bottom of the mystery with a project called Project Magnet, in which they are investigating the electromagnetic, gravitational, and atmospheric disturbances. Some experts think that some such disturbance might have disintegrated those planes in 1945. A ship in the area reported sighting a large ball of fire in the skies which could of course also have meant a midair collision, but that’s exceedingly unlikely among five planes all flying together. The fact is we have no real opinions.

If the Atlantean device is indeed the answer to the endless chains of disappearances the destination to which all of these planes, ships and the submarine were transported can only be a matter of speculation since we have never had a report from any of the crews or passengers of the missing vehicles. It could perhaps be another planet, another dimension, or another frequency. But until some of those who were transported find a way to return through the same gate through which they left we can only guess.

While the total number of vanished ships and planes may be far greater than anyone realizes, it is still fairly obvious that the transporting mechanism is operative only at certain points, at certain times, and under certain conditions. For example, it might be triggered only by a certain minimum size mass passing directly over the sensing device. The system would probably be operative only within a certain area above the device. This would explain why only two of a flight of five planes vanished while the other three which were flying just outside the radius of the area were untouched and unaffected. In the case of the five TBM Bombers, all of them chanced to be within the radius of activity when the system was triggered.

Note that, as I mentioned in the beginning, the electrical and magnetic fields are relatively unchanged by the action of the device therefore the pilots of the five planes were able to continue radio communication with the control tower so long as the device continued to produce and maintain the space warp. The planes were no longer really on earth, nor had they really left it, although the rising degree of panic and hysteria which developed among the normally calm and experienced pilots showed their awareness that something strange and totally inexplicable had happened to them. When the device shut off and no longer produced the warp, the pilots and their planes were instantly and completely at the remote end of the transportation system, wherever that might have been and their communication was instantly cut off.

In most of the other instances it seems that the pilots did not become aware that anything dangerous was happening until it was too late for radio communication. If it were possible to compile a comprehensive list of all such events within the area together with all of the known data surrounding each event, it might be possible with the aid of a computer to derive valid or at least very probable conclusions concerning the location or locations of activity, the nature of the device, its active periods, and the mechanism by which it is triggered.

But since it is very unlikely that the possibility of such advanced systems can or will be accepted even in theory by our present day science, it is improbable that any comprehensive list will ever be made or studied by any official agency, even though the events will probably continue to occur at frequent intervals.

Thus the great mystery of the Bermuda Triangle is likely to remain just a growing mystery until we begin to develop similar systems in our own technology, or until the land upon which the present one is built rises again above the ocean surface.