Bloomberg on Colorado recall: “What do you mean we lost?”

The two Democratic state senators who lost their jobs last month in recall elections for endorsing strict gun control initiatives in Colorado are nothing more than sacrificial lambs in New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s mission to reform the nation’s gun laws.

While Bloomberg didn’t precisely use the words “sacrificial lambs,” he essentially said as much in an interview with Time Magazine, when he rejected the notion that the recall was a sign that his side had lost in Colorado.

“What do you mean we lost?” Bloomberg told Time. “I’m sorry for those two people. But we won in Colorado. On to the next state.”

The “two people” he is referring to are Senate President John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) and Sen. Angela Giron (D-Pueblo), both strongly backed bills to ban magazines that hold more than 15 rounds of ammunition and to require background checks for private transfers, including those made over the Internet and at gun shows.

In March, Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper signed those bills into law. They were the legislature’s response to the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012 and the movie-theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, in July 2012.

The bills were strongly opposed by gun owners and gun rights advocates. In the ensuing months, several lawsuits were filed challenging the constitutionality of the new laws, including one that was spearheaded by at least 50 Colorado sheriffs.

With the lawsuits pending, several gun rights activists got together and started a grassroots recall effort targeting the senate’s most vulnerable lawmakers: Morse and Giron. Now that they’ve succeeded in unseating Morse and Giron, they’re focusing their efforts on state Sen. Evie Hudak (D-Arvada and Westmister).

“She has infringed upon our constitutional right to bear arms,” said “Recall Hudak Too” in a statement, as reported by the Huffington Post.

Hudak has been mired in controversy leading up to the recall, particularly during the gun control bill public hearings after she rejected testimony from Amanda Collins, a rape survivor, denying that carrying a gun could have prevented the crime, as noted in a previous Guns.com article.

Yet, despite all this backlash, Bloomberg appears to be undaunted. As long as those laws stay in place, it doesn’t matter who loses their job, he’s won, he’s foisted his gun control agenda on another state.

Looking ahead, Bloomberg plans to continue the fight no matter what the cost. It appears his pride won’t let him quit.

“A lot of elected officials are afraid to back controversial things. I’m not afraid of that,” Bloomberg told Time. “You’re not going to hurt my business, and if you are, I don’t care. I take great pride in being willing to stand up.”

Bloomberg’s got billions. He can afford to do what he wants, regardless of the political fallout. However, other politicians aren’t so lucky. The question is: will other lawmakers be willing to be pawns or sacrificial lambs for Bloomberg’s agenda?

> “Looking ahead, Bloomberg plans to continue the fight ***no matter what the cost***.”

> “You’re ***not going to hurt*** my business, and if you are, I don’t care.”

> “Bloomberg’s got billions. He can ***afford to do what he wants***, regardless of the political fallout.”

This is why the GOP-e is the GOP-e. They bow before the big dollar donor.

At one time in 2010, the Tea Party claimed more than 60 million supporters. One phone call could raise vast amounts of money. The GOP-e which is the permanent republican presence inside the beltway was blindsided. When Tea Party passions calmed down in 2011 and 2012 and the money was reduced to a trickle, the NY news media started touting the Tea Party was dead. Hence, the GOP-e kicked up dust at the ‘memory’ of the Tea Party.

How does this relate to Bloomberg and his money? Banking.

Banking, International Trade and Private Placement.

The money stems from bank credit lines and loans from the Federal Reserve. The acute concentration of the money and the scale of the transactions ensure enormous profits, like 20 to 40% per month if not per week (it sounds crazy but that’s what is intended; I explain below).

The principals and controllers of this money flow choose who will be recipients. Trump, Bush family, Icahn, Bloomberg, Soros and so many others including Gates III and all tech giants are recipients.

Note that Wall St. IPOs are crafted based on bank controlled hedge fund investment to subscribe to the IPO and so the money flows to where they want the concentration.

How does it work?

Note that only insiders (cronies, heads of powerful families, longtime facilitators) are allowed to participate and in most cases are allowed to even know the existence of a ‘transaction’. Such transactions are never advertised, never. It’s been this way since the end of World War II when Lord Keynes was one of the big guns to establish private placement banking. This was done to get the wealthy in Europe to take their money out of private vaults and to lure them back into commerce banks to restart the devastated economies using international trade.

If you think and remark this is all conspiracy nonsense, Soros, the Bloomberg’s, the Meg Whitman’s, the Romney’s, the Bush’s of this world will smile and nod at you remarking how ‘sensible’ you are. IMO someone like Trump would probably decline to comment or he would tell you to stay out of matters that could land you in trouble.

Here’s an easy example where someone nominated to the inner ring is promised more than ten times their money in one year:

$1000 is invested.

The bank private placement facilitator (Bloomberg or one of his banker minions could fit the bill here) opens a credit line against the $1000 with a leverage of 1000:1 where I inflate the leverage to make a point but note that those who are privileged to obtain high leverage are connected to the inner circles.

The credit line is therefore $1,000,000 which is activated and used to purchase ‘safe’ treasuries with an annual yield of 2.5% returning proceeds of $25,000 at the end of one year.

Bloomberg’s banker minion acting as facilitator divides the $25,000 to $10,000; $10,000; $5,000. $10,000 goes to the new inner ring member who nets 10 times their money in one year. $10,000 goes to Bloomberg’s empire and $5,000 goes to buy off the banks that carry out the transaction.

Now a more realistic leverage is 30:1 or 40:1 but the initial money injection is more. Take for example a transaction involving an oil tanker carrying one million barrels of light crude oil at $111 per barrel Brent market price:

http://www.bloomberg.com/energy/

That’s a $111 million of cargo for one voyage out of hundreds of ongoing such shipments.

But each such shipment needs a bank guarantee that stands behind the purchasing entity to guarantee payment. Such bank guarantees put a bank on hook for at least 111 million as there will be shipping and insurance cost. And there will also be a hefty bank transaction fee of between 3% and 5% or more. So say the transaction amount is $120 million.

The bank guarantee instrument of $120 million will be created using the bank’s credit facility with a larger bank or a central bank. At a leverage of say 30:1 the amount the bank segregates for its bank guarantee of $120 million is $4 million which can easily come from the bank processing fee.

However, public banks are regulated and their profits are limited. But their hedge funds and private placement arms are not regulated and the profit potential of these entities is unlimited.

So for this example a hedge fund picks up a $120 million bank guarantee via private placement trading for $4 million with payoffs to its board members who are also on the boards of the banks or the private placement banks (inner circle dynamics). The HF sells the bank guarantee to an oil trader at a 30% discount or $84 million depending on the standing of the trader, or the HF is the oil trader on their own.

From the $84 million, the HF pay off $4 million to its parent bank for the bank guarantee and then it can use the net $80 million for whatever it decides. Say the HF purchases 20 more $120 million bank guarantees at $4 million each. Out of the 20 million bank guarantees it is managing say by selling them at a 30% discount , its total capital access is $1,680,000,000 all for an injection of just $80,000,000. As long as the trade doesn’t default, the billions upon billions of capital credits ‘float’.

The hedge fund does this over and over and over again amassing a huge amount of capital stemming from bank credit lines. As long as trader defaults are rare, the HFs have an enormous pool of funds to invest and they in fact pick and choose their roles in trades and IPOs. They are the ones that choose to make Zuckerberg a billionaire, they are the ones that choose to finance a Tom Cruise film etc.

Bloomberg is right smack in the middle of all things traded everywhere. As a banker boy he is obsessed with security and that means no guns for anyone except his own people.

This is the nature of the money powers that conservatives are up against. And by conservative I am talking about those conservatives that have not yet sold their souls such as Karl Rove. It wasn’t always so severe that bankers controlled everything. Repeal of Glass-Steagall was an important change agent.

A large part of the culture war is financial. Tea Party grassroots when inflamed can command large sums of money but the passions come and go. The McCain’s and McConnell’s wait until the emotions die down before they start snaking their way back into controlling the little people. Note the McCain and McConnell class of politician are puppets who are controlled by money managers behind the scenes. If these money powers say marriage equality is the order of the day, McCain and McConnell will craft a message or tactical plan to stay in line with minimal backlash from their constituents. Even Newt was out their saying gay marriage was the new reality, nothing could be done about it.

Another note, if conservatives were determined enough to formulate and carry out a plan to neutralize or topple a financial empire like Bloomberg’s, then when they succeed they will discover something. They will discover that such empires can only survive under secrecy. Hence, any conservatives that would be successful in this would become as the GOP-e is today, an organization of sellouts. It’s a Catch-22.

I leave it to a future post to discuss a long term plan for controlling the money without selling one’s soul.

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