People Don’t Understand the Scale of the Emergency That’s Going On Right Now

Discussion in 'Financial Cents' started by Yard Dart, Dec 15, 2013.


  1. kellory

    kellory An unemployed Jester, is nobody's fool. Banned

    You are not admitting to the possibility of Jesters in the family now, are you?:rolleyes: perhaps a black sheep or two?;)
     
  2. -06

    -06 Monkey+++

    LOL, pleading the 5th on that one Kellory
     
    kellory likes this.
  3. nathan

    nathan Monkey+++

    Thanks guys, I try to understand the fundamentals of financials, so I have some idea where to invest in preps i believe Ill need for future
     
  4. gunbunny

    gunbunny Never Trust A Bunny

    It's funny, I found this site because the other forums I frequented back in 2008 didn't have much in the way of economic discussion. Everybody around me knew things were bad because nobody I knew was as happy as the people on the news telling us how good it was.

    Although I wasn't caught completely blindsided by the 2008 crisis, I sure wasn't looking in the right direction. I'm sure that when it comes, it will come from something we weren't expecting, but at least I'll be looking in roughly the right direction this time.
     
    kellory and Yard Dart like this.
  5. nathan

    nathan Monkey+++

    I was fortunate to be on these sites when I lost my job in 2007, and I hurried up and got another job before the Recession hit
     
    Yard Dart likes this.
  6. AmericanRedoubt1776

    AmericanRedoubt1776 American Redoubt: Idaho-Montana-Wyoming Site Supporter+

    Regarding the debt and deficit:
    debt-ceiling-visualized.

    Fair Use Source: It Will Take 6.25 BILLION "Man Years" To Pay Off FedGov Liabilities: "A Mathematical Impossibility"

    "We often hear government officials and mainstream financial pundits throwing around numbers like a billion or trillion. To most Americans these numbers are indiscernible. They are so incredibly enormous that we can’t even imagine what one billion dollars actually looks like, let alone what it takes to generate such capital. And a trillion, or better yet, the $17.9 Trillion that is our national debt? Forget about it! That’s so much money that we’re talking piles of cash the size of skyscrapers.

    But even a visualization like this makes it difficult to understand how much money this actually is.

    Ann Bardnhardt, who in 2011 shut the doors to her investment firm and urged her clients to withdraw their money from all markets because she says the entire system has been utterly destroyed, will blow your mind in her most recent blog post.

    It turns out money the way we were taught to understand it in school isn’t really how we should be valuing economies or debt. Instead, we need to be looking at what that money represents.

    How do we define the sizes of economies? In dollars? Nope. These systems should be measured in terms of a transcendent, invariant unit. Currencies are, by definition, variant, because they are constantly changing relative to one another. This includes the dollar, which is itself measured against a BASKET of other currencies. I propose that GDP should be measured in the unit of MAN HOURS or MAN YEARS. $20 per hour average wage. 2000 hour average work year. Because the buying power of an average man hour or man year shouldn’t change much at all. Think about it.

    So, if we take the latest bee-ess GDP for the former US of $16.8 trillion, and if we use an average wage of $20 per hour, or $40,000 per year, we get an economy of 840 billion man hours, or 420 million man years.

    Puts a different spin on it, huh? Now, you really want your mind blown? Do that same calculation with the debt (now $18 trillion). Now do it with the unfunded liabilities of the FEDGOV (conservatively $250 trillion).

    450 million man years, and 6.25 billion man years respectively.

    Source: Notes for Apres la Guerre Part 2: Banking and Financial Market Theory

    So, when we talk about trillions of tax dollars being spent on banks or infused into shadow investment houses around the globe, we’re actually not just talking about money being stolen from one group of people that’s being distributed to another. What we’re talking about is the literal theft of our lives – our time and energy.

    The unfunded liabilities are estimated at $250 trillion, or as Barnhardt noted, 6.25 Billion man years.

    To put that into perspective, it will take roughly 139 million Americans working non-stop for 45 years just to cover the government’s unfunded liabilities at their current levels.

    Currently there are about 144 million working Americans with about 100 million not in the labor force for various reasons. So, just to pay off those liabilities, every single working American would have to spend the next 45 years of their lives sending 100% of their income to the government.

    That’s how bad of a situation this is.

    The arithmetic is clear: Repaying our national debt and unfunded liabilities is a mathematical impossibility. It will never happen.

    Bardhardt understands the frustrations of many Americans who are fed up with having their livelihoods stolen on a wholesale basis by government, as well as business leaders who claim they are doing God’s work. She has a solution:

    Since you’re probably sitting there thinking that people need to be executed for this mess, let me throw out an idea for how to go about meting out justice for these massive financial crimes after the war. I would simply say that the amount of a theft should be converted to man years, and if the man years-equivalent of what was stolen is in excess of the average working life of a man, say 50 years, then the offense would be a capital offense and execution would be on the table. For anything less than that, the man years conversion would inform the judge or jury as to incarceration terms.

    So, just pulling a completely random number out of the sky, say $1.6 billion, and converting that to man years at an average wage of $40,000 per year, that is 40,000 man years, which equals exactly twelve feet of rope, which happily, can be reused an almost unlimited number of times.

    Over $1.6 billion in shareholder deposits were vaporized at MF Global under the watchful eye of Former New Jersey Governor John Corzine (left). He served no prison time.

    We’re talking massive amounts of time and energy here that have been pillaged from the American people, as well as tens of millions of others in Europe and Asia.

    As Ann Barnhardt notes in her post, the end result can only come in the form of widespread warfare and a total collapse of the system as we have come to know it.

    We are on the tail end of a paradigm built upon debt and false promises. The numbers are now so incredibly large that the trajectory is irreversible.

    Our banking system, monetary dominance and geo-political influence are at a breaking point and those who want to come out the other side of the coming disaster need to be making final preparations.

    The U.S. government has war-gamed and simulated these very scenarios. They know a massive economic collapse is not only on the horizon – it’s happening right now. They also know that as more people lose their jobs, homes and ability to put food on the table they’re going to come looking for someone to blame. There will be panic and violence. There will be bloodshed and war.

    This is the future that awaits."
     
    Sapper John, Yard Dart and Falcon15 like this.
  7. HK_User

    HK_User A Productive Monkey is a Happy Monkey

    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 26, 2015
  8. Falcon15

    Falcon15 Falco Peregrinus

  9. vonslob

    vonslob Monkey++

    I think i am as prepared for an economic downturn as i am going to get. I am handy with tools, my back is still good, have cash and other assets put away, and have learned to how to get by spending very little. I have different streams of income coming in ( not large amounts but enough) and if need be i can live the rest of my life without having to count on a regular job to provide for myself and my family. I might not be able to predict the future but i can damm well do my best to try to prepare for it.
     
    AmericanRedoubt1776 likes this.
  10. Dunerunner

    Dunerunner Brewery Monkey Moderator

    Pretty much in the middle of Welfare central here and if the economy goes there will be anarchy. I'm prepared and have made contacts with like minded neighbors with an action plan. It will be ugly here if it happens in the winter, food wise!!

    need to stock up on Emergen-C
     
  11. NotSoSneaky

    NotSoSneaky former supporter

    Macro economics was never my strong point but after taking a quick look at her blog all I can say is:

    We're skerooed. [OO]
     
  12. oldawg

    oldawg Monkey+++

    Having been pointed toward her by a monkey I've been following her for a while. A lot of what she says goes over my head but in her latest blog I whole heartedly agree with point #7.
     
  13. nkawtg

    nkawtg Monkey+++

    People Don’t Understand the Scale of the Emergency That’s Going On Right Now = Normalcy Bias
     
    vonslob likes this.
  14. Gopherman

    Gopherman Sometimes I Wish I Could Go Back to Sleep

    The best way to cover it all up is BLAME THE RUSSIANS! The collapse is immanent! It can't stand like it is so how do we conceal it all? Go for the Gold! We blame Mal-ware and close the Banks on Friday telling everyone don't worry it'll all be over on Monday, then they just shut the doors for good, blame another country and BINGO! done.

    Malware Attacks Drain Russian ATMs - BankInfoSecurity

    Pay special attention to the date of this article! 10/8/14!

    Malware Attacks Drain Russian ATMs

    Interpol Warns Attacks Could Spread Worldwide
    By Mathew J. Schwartz, October 8, 2014. Follow Mathew J. @euroinfosec
    Credit Eligible

    [​IMG]

    Criminals have infected at least 50 ATMs in Eastern Europe, including Russia, with malware that enables them to drain ATMs of their cash via "jackpotting" attacks, netting attackers millions of dollars (see ATM Malware: Hackers' New Focus).
    The international police organization Interpol has issued a global alert warning that criminals may soon use the malware against ATMs located not only in Eastern Europe, but around the world, including the United States.
    The malware - variously referred to as PinPad and Tyupkin by anti-virus vendors - first surfaced in March 2014, according to the malware analysis database #Totalhash.

    But Kaspersky Lab says the malware was recently installed on more than 50 machines across Eastern Europe, including Russia. "Based on submissions to VirusTotal, we believe that the malware has spread to several other countries, including the U.S., India and China," Kaspersky Lab researchers say in a blog post.

    Meanwhile, Malaysia's The Star reports that over a three-day period at the end of September, attackers stole approximately 3 million Malaysian Ringgit - about $1 million (U.S.) - from 18 ATMs in that country. But police have yet to detail which malware attackers employed, meaning it's not clear if it was PinPad.

    Using malware to "cash out" ATMs appears to be a new cybercrime tactic. "Past reports have been about malware which was used to capture card and PIN information from customers," Sean Sullivan, security advisor at anti-virus vendor F-Secure, tells Information Security Media Group. "This PinPad malware appears to be the first case of malware being used to drain cash directly from the ATM, without the need for customer data."

    Financial organizations should expect more attacks of this nature because it lets criminals turn ATMs into their own personal "money machines," Troels Oerting, head of Europol's European Cybercrime Center, or EC3, tells ISMG. "It shows that the criminal underground is extremely agile and innovative in producing new types of malware," he says. "But they're also helped - to an extent - by the very, very low security of ATMs, which are still running old-fashioned Microsoft systems, and they take advantage of that, and the physical ability to approach them and make them spit out money."

    Oerting says the campaign is "probably linked to Russian organized crime," and he expects repeat attacks. "I think we've just seen the tip of the iceberg in the case of these attacks against cash machines," he says, noting that the only way to truly block these types of exploits may be to embrace digital currency. "This could lead in the future ... to where cash will be something you see in museums."

    ATM Malware Waits for Instructions
    The PinPad malware literally allows an attacker to tell an ATM to dispense money - no credit or debit card required. An analysis published in May 2014 by Symantec says PinPad is a Trojan which, if installed, "enables an attacker to use the ATM PIN pad to submit commands to the Trojan," and can be set to automatically delete itself if the infection isn't successful. As that suggests, the malware can't be used to infect every type of ATM. To date, versions of the malware found in the wild have only been compatible with the Extension for Financial Services (XFS) DLL that runs in a 32-bit version of the Windows Embedded operating system, according to a blog post from F-Secure.

    Likewise, Kaspersky Lab says the malware "affects [only] ATMs from a major ATM manufacturer," which it declined to name. But F-Secure says that, based on an analysis of the specific APIs used by the malware, it appears to correspond with a Programmer's Reference Manual published by ATM manufacturer NCR Corp., which contains instructions for programming NCR machines that use its NCR APTRA XFS self-service software for ATMs.

    NCR didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the report that its systems are targeted by the PinPad malware.

    Kaspersky Lab says that when infecting an ATM with the malware, attackers register a unique access code with the Trojan running on that machine. That way, regular users - or other attackers - can't accidentally gain access to the Trojan's functionality. Kaspersky Lab also says the malware recovered from the infected Eastern European ATMs was set to work only on Sunday and Monday nights.

    Once installed, the malware runs in the background, watching to see if a designated, preset numeric code gets entered on the PIN pad, after which the malware activates and lists the cash cassettes inside the ATM, as well as the number of bills each holds. The attacker - most likely a money mule - can select each cassette and instruct it to dispense up to 40 bills, Kaspersky says. Before the money gets dispensed, however, the mule must then enter a second code. And malware can be set to disable access to the local network, says Symantec, presumably to foil any related monitoring that might trigger an alarm.
    Defensive Measures
    To defend against ATM malware attacks, Kaspersky Lab's researchers recommend ATM operators focus, in part, on strengthening their physical security. "According to footage from security cameras at the location of the infected ATMs, the attackers were able to manipulate the device and install the malware via a bootable CD," they say. "The cyber-criminals behind Tyupkin infected only those ATMs that had no security alarm installed." Likewise, it recommends replacing any default locks issued by a manufacturer, because they're tied to default master keys that might work across a wide number of machines.
    On a system level, Symantec recommends that ATMs be set to never auto-run executable files from network-attached or removable drives. Sullivan says ATM operators could also enable BIOS passwords and force users to manually enable a CD drive or USB port before they could be used.

    Kaspersky Lab also recommends installing anti-virus software on ATMs, which might detect and block malware such as PinPad. But F-Secure's Sullivan says it's currently rare for anti-virus to be allowed to run on most such systems. "These types of computers are practically crippled compared to what we think of as a computer," he says. "They are expected to run in a nearly 'frozen' state." Anti-virus software, however, typically requires more dynamic interaction with a system, both to update signatures as well as scan and quarantine malware. "An extremely light AV client with cloud-based logic is what's needed - and we, among others, are working to develop such clients," he says.
    But Mike Park, a security tester who specializes in ATM attacks at security firm Trustwave, says anti-virus software is not a practical solution for ATM operating systems.
    "Most ATMs do a lot of file and network IO [input/output], meaning for every transaction being done, the ATM software is doing a great deal of reading and writing to disk or over a network," Park says. "AV is usually configured to scan for malware on both read and write operations, otherwise it would be very ineffective. Having AV scanning each file or network read would add seconds or even minutes to transactions - these machines read configurations files and write diagnostic logs all the time. Tuning AV would be a tremendous effort for something that, and with the right encoding could be fairly easily bypassed anyway. And some businesses have indicated that AV would cause the process of withdrawing cash, or doing other transactions, to become so slow that it would be unusable."

    And while Park agrees physical security surrounding ATMs needs to improve, Trustwave recommends banking institutions and other ATM deployers use full disk encryption , so that when an ATM is rebooted or shut down, the operating system and the data on the disk is encrypted and unreadable. In most of the recent malware attacks, the ATM is first infected with malware from a USB or disk and then rebooted to launch the attack.

    "This would prevent the criminals from being able to boot into an alternate OS to install malware or alter the operating system settings of the ATM," Park says.

    To block attacks of this nature going forward, however, F-Secure's Sullivan says ATM manufacturers will have to work more closely with security researchers, and educate them in the intricacies of their ATM platform software. "ATM vendors would need to form a strong working partnership with their providers to make sure all environmental factors are known," he says. "Or else, the security vendor is working in the dark."

    Some efforts to enhance information sharing among ATM manufacturers and other vendors are already under way. In August, ATM manufacturers Diebold Inc. and Wincor Nixdorf AG announced plans for the formation of a global industry group focused on thwarting ATM crime
     
    Last edited: Nov 16, 2014
    Yard Dart and NotSoSneaky like this.
survivalmonkey SSL seal        survivalmonkey.com warrant canary
17282WuJHksJ9798f34razfKbPATqTq9E7