The Truman Show goes on, as local gas pump prices have reportedly jumped more than 10%  since last evening, after unlimited quantities of dollars had been secured for the levitation of the largest member banks of the Federal Reserve System, and more generally, the entire system.

Quantitative Easing 0-1-2-3∞ & The Federal Reserve’s Love Affair with its Banks and Mortgage Bonds: Levitating The Black Hole and Beyond will test its limits against time (t) such as reported last month, Germany is scrambling to count its gold bars being held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York-London corridor. But perhaps Germany had reportedly already quietly withdrawn two-thirds of it home in 2001 after the creation of the euro (the Federal Reserve has been printing euros for its member banks through currency swaps). Hong Kong removed its gold from London in 2009 and Venezuela in 2012, which underscores confidence in a system that relies on QE (faith-based accounting & printing money) since the banking and financial system crisis-collapse in 2008 and more broadly, sustained shifts away from the U.S. dollar observed in currency holdings over time.

Carl Bernstein, one of the two journalists who broke the Nixon-Watergate scandal, wrote an interesting 25,000-word cover story published in Rolling Stone magazine on October 20, 1977, entitled, “The CIA and The Media.”

The article was published in 1977, so we can be 99% certain (+/- 100% margin of error) that such practices have been sharply curtailed. We will soon look at the $1,000 trillion in derivatives, but in the meantime, a few interesting snippets from Bernstein on the free press, journalism:

In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations. The history of the CIA’s involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception for the following principal reasons:

 ■ The use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence gathering employed by the CIA. Although the Agency has cut back sharply on the use of reporters since 1973 primarily as a result of pressure from the media), some journalist operatives are still posted abroad.

 ■ Further investigation into the matter, CIA officials say, would inevitably reveal a series of embarrassing relationships in the 1950s and 1960s with some of the most powerful organizations and individuals in American journalism.

 …Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company [ABC], the National Broadcasting Company [NBC], the Associated Press[AP], United Press International [UPI], Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune.

 By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc. The CIA’s use of the American news media has been much more extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed sessions with members of Congress. Continue reading →