from Global Research - Important . Please READ
The Shadow Money Lenders: The Real Significance of The Fed’s Zero-Interest-Rate Policy (ZIRP)
The Battle To Save The Fiat Money System Has Begun
by Matthias Chang
Global Research, December 26, 2008
Global Central Banks Acting In Concert - Disinformation In Financial Dailies To Confuse The People When The Truth Dawns On Hapless People, There Will Be Blood On The Streets. This Is The Warning By IMF!
INTRODUCTION
The disinformation by the global financial dailies in the last twelve months as to the cause of the global financial tsunami, serve the same purpose as the global mass media when they perpetuated the lies that lulled the people to support the war criminals Bush, Blair and Howard to launch the barbaric war against Iraq and Afghanistan which resulted in the genocide of millions, the mutilation of hundreds of thousands, physically and psychologically, and the devastation of an entire nation.
The wars unleashed thus far, specifically the “War on Terror” was launched to preserve the shadow money-lenders’ political and military power.
This War on Terror is the greatest military sideshow that distracted the great American people from the financial rape and plunder of their economy and the destruction of their Constitution.
Since the summer of 2007, we have witnessed a concerted effort by the world’s central banks and global commercial and investment banks to preserve the shadow money-lenders’ financial power, one that is founded on fraud and structured in every detail as in the infamous Ponzi scheme.
In the last seven years, the Ponzi scheme was globalised by the Shadow Money-Lenders, siphoning hundreds of billions from so-called sophisticated investors and sovereign wealth funds. At its peak, the Ponzi scheme was estimated to be worth over $500 Trillion, with the Credit Default Swap (CDS) portion just under $60 Trillion!
Hidden behind the headlines of the financial destruction that is sweeping across the globe, lies another story – a dark tale of men who orchestrated the crisis and have amassed enormous wealth and power at the expense of the millions who are now unemployed and whose homes have been foreclosed. This select group of men is in absolute control of the unfolding events. Who are they? read
from Bloomberg.com
America's Second Great Depression Has Started
America's Second Great Depression is not a typical 20th century recession that happens to strike a bit harder or linger somewhat longer. Nor is it merely a fictional scenario conjured up by economists with a murky crystal ball.
America's Second Great Depression is the probable consequence of a great housing bust, a massive mortgage meltdown and the biggest financial crisis in history.
It promises to bring the worst wave of bankruptcies, job losses and wealth destruction any citizen under 90 has ever experienced.
It challenges the smartest minds in Washington, defies the deepest pockets on Wall Street and threatens to rip through our life with the force of a Cat-5 hurricane. And yet, among all those making the decisions that could forever change our future, no one has personal experience with a similar episode.
I don't either. I was born in 1946, just as we were leaving the final vestiges of America's First Great Depression behind. I've studied that historic period with books, charts and numbers, but that's not the same thing. I've lived in Brazil and Japan during tough times, but that, too, was different. read
America's Second Great Depression Has Started
America's Second Great Depression is not a typical 20th century recession that happens to strike a bit harder or linger somewhat longer. Nor is it merely a fictional scenario conjured up by economists with a murky crystal ball.
America's Second Great Depression is the probable consequence of a great housing bust, a massive mortgage meltdown and the biggest financial crisis in history.
It promises to bring the worst wave of bankruptcies, job losses and wealth destruction any citizen under 90 has ever experienced.
It challenges the smartest minds in Washington, defies the deepest pockets on Wall Street and threatens to rip through our life with the force of a Cat-5 hurricane. And yet, among all those making the decisions that could forever change our future, no one has personal experience with a similar episode.
I don't either. I was born in 1946, just as we were leaving the final vestiges of America's First Great Depression behind. I've studied that historic period with books, charts and numbers, but that's not the same thing. I've lived in Brazil and Japan during tough times, but that, too, was different. read
from Bloomberg.com
Dubai Speculators Quit as Lending Drought Bursts Desert Bubble
By Glen Carey
Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- The classified ads in Dubai read like an obituary for a real-estate market that until a few months ago seemed immune from the global credit crisis.
A Turkish investor, who identified himself as Sebat, took out 10 bright yellow ads in the Nov. 25 edition of Gulf News, the United Arab Emirates’ biggest newspaper, with the headline: “DIRECT FROM OWNER DISTRESS SALE!!!” Sebat said he used to be able to buy four or five properties at a time and sell them the next day for a profit of as much as 5 percent. read
Dubai Speculators Quit as Lending Drought Bursts Desert Bubble
By Glen Carey
Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- The classified ads in Dubai read like an obituary for a real-estate market that until a few months ago seemed immune from the global credit crisis.
A Turkish investor, who identified himself as Sebat, took out 10 bright yellow ads in the Nov. 25 edition of Gulf News, the United Arab Emirates’ biggest newspaper, with the headline: “DIRECT FROM OWNER DISTRESS SALE!!!” Sebat said he used to be able to buy four or five properties at a time and sell them the next day for a profit of as much as 5 percent. read
from Prison Planet.com
Follow the M3 money to hell
Jerry Mazza
Online Journal
Monday, Oct 27, 2008
Let me not keep you in the dark. As Wikipedia states, our money supply has three large components. M1 is physical currency circulating in the economy plus demand deposits (checking accounts). This measure is used by economists to try and quantify the amount of money in circulation. M1 is the most liquid measure of money supply since it only contains cash and assets quickly usable for conversion to currency. Hang in.
M2 is MI + time deposits, savings deposits and non-institutional money-market funds. M2 is a wider category of money than M1. It’s also used to quantify the volume of money in circulation and to explain economic conditions. M3 is the biggie. It’s M2 + M1 + large deposits, institutional money-market funds, short-term repurchase agreements, and other larger liquid assets. It’s the broadest measure of money used to estimate total supply of money in the economy.
The Fed used to publish data on all three money descriptors. But for some strange reason (couldn’t be saving money as they claimed because they never save money), the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve discontinued publishing data on M3 (which contain all data on M1 + M2 =M3) on March 23, 2006. M3 also included balances in institutional money funds, repurchase liabilities issued by depository institutions and Eurodollars held by US residents at foreign branches of US banks, in fact at all banks in the United Kingdom and Canada.
In other words, M3 tracked what the fat cats were doing with their bucks. You have to think, why would the Fed do this? Of all three categories, M3 was your best bet to track inflation, i.e., to monitor what the Free-Market’s “Invisible Hand” was picking from your pocket through inflation, sometimes called “the hidden tax” because that’s just what it is. When the government runs off some extra funny money rest assured it’s to spend it. And you get the tab. read
Follow the M3 money to hell
Jerry Mazza
Online Journal
Monday, Oct 27, 2008
Let me not keep you in the dark. As Wikipedia states, our money supply has three large components. M1 is physical currency circulating in the economy plus demand deposits (checking accounts). This measure is used by economists to try and quantify the amount of money in circulation. M1 is the most liquid measure of money supply since it only contains cash and assets quickly usable for conversion to currency. Hang in.
M2 is MI + time deposits, savings deposits and non-institutional money-market funds. M2 is a wider category of money than M1. It’s also used to quantify the volume of money in circulation and to explain economic conditions. M3 is the biggie. It’s M2 + M1 + large deposits, institutional money-market funds, short-term repurchase agreements, and other larger liquid assets. It’s the broadest measure of money used to estimate total supply of money in the economy.
The Fed used to publish data on all three money descriptors. But for some strange reason (couldn’t be saving money as they claimed because they never save money), the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve discontinued publishing data on M3 (which contain all data on M1 + M2 =M3) on March 23, 2006. M3 also included balances in institutional money funds, repurchase liabilities issued by depository institutions and Eurodollars held by US residents at foreign branches of US banks, in fact at all banks in the United Kingdom and Canada.
In other words, M3 tracked what the fat cats were doing with their bucks. You have to think, why would the Fed do this? Of all three categories, M3 was your best bet to track inflation, i.e., to monitor what the Free-Market’s “Invisible Hand” was picking from your pocket through inflation, sometimes called “the hidden tax” because that’s just what it is. When the government runs off some extra funny money rest assured it’s to spend it. And you get the tab. read
from Rense.com
The PRE-PLANNED Financial/Economic 911
From T. Anthony Michael
10-3-8
WHAT: A pre-planned collapse of the US (and global) financial and economic systems.
WHO: The same characters who perpetrated the original 911.
WHERE: New York City & DC, of course. Plus a sideshow in Washington state.
WHEN: The days surrounding September 11, naturally.
HOW: Instead of painted drones, missiles with wings & big fins, and fake airplanes, they used the much more stealthy short seller.
WHY: To remake the economic/financial order of the world into a "PPP".
WHY Really: Think about it ! And then ask yourself, "Cui bono?"
The 911 blueprint worked so magically for the world controllers that they were compelled to use virtually the same playbook. "If it ain't broke, why fix it?
So, what's the real deal here?
By analogy, let's take a quick look at the 911 timeline and stack it up against the new 2008 Financial "911", as it began to unfold earlier this year.
1. The Bear Stearns collapse that began in March 2008 is analogous to the 1st World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Just a warm up. This was preceded by a little failure back in January featuring Countrywide the largest US mortgage lender.
2. The nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac marks the beginning of the new 911. Both in the DC area, they were the first to come down this time. Just as they struck at the heart of the military complex, this time they went for the jugular of the national real estate market. Remember this is a financial 911.
3. Next came this year's version of the twin towers, building 7 and other assorted NYC landmarks in the form of Lehman Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch, as well as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs in their "new & improved" form. Basically took out the whole of American investment brokerage, heh?!
4. And, of course, we still have Washington Mutual out there in the boonies just like the one that "crashed" in a PA farm field. Update: WashMu is now history! As is another "little" bank by the name of Wachovia.
5. Their MO! What else, but controlled demolition? Throughout 2008, and especially this month of September, we have seen some of the world's largest banks, brokerage houses, mortgage lenders, insurance companies and investment brokers go bust, as each of them fell perfectly into their own footprint faster than you can say: C O N T R O L L E D D E M O L I T I O N ! ! !
6. The 700 billion dollar Bailout Plan is just like the Patriot Act, isn't it? Only this time it's maybe a 1 or 2 page document (in its original form) that conferred absolute authority on the Executive Branch to do just about anything they want with the taxpayer's money. And they want it rubber stamped now. Not tomorrow. NOW!!! Without discussion, or unnecessary congressional debate. Talk about Shock & Awe being used against the American people, and their elected representatives!?! "The Greatest Depression" never sounded more like "Weapons of Mass Destruction", eh?!?!
7. Now we know we can expect further gyrations, panics and precipitous declines in the market and elsewhere, just as we had anthrax attacks in the Capital, beltway snipers in Maryland in October of '02, the 3/11/04 train bombings in Madrid, and the 7/7/05 bombings in London. Not to mention the 50+ other synthetic terror events staged throughout the world to enforce compliance and create distraction.
8. The sudden and dramatic downfall of NY Gov Eliot Spitzer can also now be seen in its proper light. Having left the reservation one too many times, he simply could not be trusted to go with the flow. He had their numbers, their signatures (especially their MO's), their addresses --- the whole ball of wax, as well as his own reputation to burnish. Eliot, to seal his fate, wrote a masterful expose on the subprime mortgage fiasco/fraud that was published in the WashPo just weeks before his public humiliation. He had recently testified before Congress in fine revelatory fashion as well. The elimination of John O'Neil, Head of Security at the WTC complex, is quite similar, except that John O. a great patriot died on 911, having just been given the job.
9. To date, the most obvious and glaring example of this manipulated takedown is the case of a NY Senator. His letter to the FDIC contained confidential information that triggered the IndyMac bank collapse in July. California AG Jerry Brown was called to review the entire affair after the OTS Director explicitly blamed the letter for causing a run on the bank (3rd largest bank failure in US history). This episode is eerily reminiscent of Larry Silverstein's order to, "Pull it." just prior to the expertly controlled demolition of Building # 7on 911.
10. Just as 911 was perpetrated as a cover for: inaugurating the War on Terror, overtly advancing the NWO regime globally (in contrast to this previously covert operation), imposing a police state (Homeland Security) in the US (by gutting the US Constitution), UK and elsewhere, dominating and securing oil/gas reserves in the Middle East and Cacaucus (to include running energy pipelines through Afghanistan and stealing Iraq's oil wealth via military invasion), jump starting the Afghan opium trade, etc., the ECO/FIN 911 of '08 is a cover for many of these same agenda items. However, there is one little item that is particularly high on the current agenda. And that concerns the derivatives market, which in its totality approximates somewhere between 750 trillion and 1 quadrillion dollars of instruments as of 2008. In fact, the sub prime mortgage defaults are just a tip of the tip of the iceberg when compared to the real megilla DERIVATIVES. This is what they're really worried about, and having to cover for. Except this is a quadrillion dollar megilla that can't be covered without unraveling the entire capitalistic system, and its fascist corpocracy and kleptocratic oligarchy.
11. And then there is the teenie-weenie matter concerning the Federal Reserve, and its collection agency the IRS. The man standing behind this curtain has a lot at stake, especially in the form of mountains of evidence that will indict, and convict, the entire system. Lots of evidence was destroyed during and after 911, as will happen after many of these Wall Street firms are taken over, nationalized, liquidated, merged and disappeared. The veil, however, has already been lifted.
Does anyone see a pattern here?!
The real lesson to be gleaned from this analysis is that events of such enormity and consequence are rarely spontaneous and unchoreographed. Especially when they happen just weeks from an era defining presidential election. They have obviously been planning this one for a long time, and it has been fastidiously engineered to have a very definite effect and desired outcome a permanent planetary plantation (PPP).
The execution, thus far, has been flawless. Even for those of us who stood there on the 1st 911, and knew it was a fraud while the buildings were coming down, this one is exceedingly more difficult to penetrate. However, penetrate we will, until every last conspirator is sitting before the TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION spillin' the beans. The ultimate and lasting effect of these inquiries will be a New World Order of our making, not theirs. The only remaining, $64,000 question will undoubtedly be, "What do we do with them after we head them off at the pass?"
For the uninitiated, it may take quite a lot to wrap your mind around this extremely complex and convoluted plot, but, please, just be patient. As this drama plays out, the true intentions of the primary perpetrators will become manifest as they unwittingly reveal themselves by their handiwork. As Eliot Spitzer, no - Eliot Ness, nee Sherlock Holmes once alluded to a fingerprint inadvertently left as evidence is impossible to erase.
You see, the short sellers, unlike the "airplanes", are still with us. Each one had a target to take down which they did with amazing speed and dexterity. And the myriad transactions that converged to topple their prey are all preserved somewhere, in some huge database, with multiple backups to serve as confirmation of trades of staggering amounts. AHHH! Nothing like computers, especially when they're not confiscated and shipped off to China for permanent disposal.
May all financial wizards and economic soothsayers, henceforth, be inspired to stare into their crystal ball and divine the upcoming financial and economic events of global proportions with the keenest of acumen and sleuthing. As we shine the LIGHT of our collective awareness on these rapidly unfolding schemes, we will serve as beacons of revelation, and hope to the world.
Remember we now know the script. We know the major players involved. We know their MO: Controlled Demolition. We are able to watch the crimes being committed in real time. Each of us has now been thusly notified, and empowered, to serve as a vector of dissemination of this critical information. So -----> LET'S GET BUSY ! ! !
T. Anthony Michael 9/22/08
TAnthonyMichael@gmail.com
Permission is expressly granted to copy, email, scan, attach, forward or post this article.
Special Message to the Market Oracles and Money Masters of the Universe
Our "PRE-PLANNED" scenario delineated above in no way ignores the true state of the national economy, international finance or global economic picture. In fact we are, and have been, fully cognizant of the fact that the true state of every market real estate, equity, bond, commodities, currency, derivative, etc. has been in shambles for many years, just waiting for the Perfect Storm to come around and blow it all away.
It has been obvious to many of us that each of these markets have operated according to the whim of a very few individuals with extremely concentrated power to manipulate. Therefore, all markets can be artificially inflated, as we have seen time and time again. Likewise, they can be artificially deflated, sometimes rather quickly for effect, as we have seen. "The Invisible Hand" of the market is just that a very carefully hidden hand that makes a complete and total mockery of every economic and financial theory ever advanced. Time for a lot of us to accept this fact of modern economic life.
Perhaps we should now take off our blinders and admit that while, yes, all of the indicators are, and have been, there for a catastrophic economic meltdown & financial cataclysm, these events are still completely controllable. All of us have seen bubble after bubble grow and balloon, and merge and overlap, and inextricably interpenetrate each other, until all we have is one massive bubble ready to pop. But, when will it pop?! It will pop when the confidence level is sufficiently undermined by the very same MEDIA that controls the flow of the relevant information. And who, pray tell, controls the media, if not The Invisible Hand? Clearly, the real Market Oracles are not a part of that MSM juggernaut. Therefore, it is incumbent upon each oracle to get it right, since they are the very best sources of pertinent financial and economic data/information.
The inevitability of self destructive capitalism does not preclude the process of controlled destruction. As the system eats itself, there are those who are eaten, and those who eat. We are witnessing this devolution in living color, as we both write and read these words. The "strong" at the top of the pyramid have always done the eating, as the "weak" at the bottom provide the bone for the stew. The only major difference at this particular, and final, feast is that the internet has allowed for an unprecedented explosion of true and accurate information in real time. Therefore, the playing field has been leveled like never before. The little guy or gal, for the first time ever, has the opportunity to take back a little, or a lot, of his/her power (WEALTH), should he/she so choose.
Even as the Wall Street gangs team up with the opportunistic political class, as well as the numerous corporate/legal jackals and lobby parasites, to effectuate the most massive redistribution of wealth (aka in your face THEFT) in recorded history, something has profoundly and fundamentally changed. There is a dynamic at work which can alter the game just enough to potentially turn the pyramid upside down. This, however, requires a no nonsense, "look in the mirror with raw honesty" approach. Then we (the oracles) will not deign to render a judgment that is not fully baked. And the recommendations we make are more likely to be issued in the best interest of ALL, especially for those who are in a position of class disadvantage, financial ignorance or structured powerlessness.
So, we have made it clear that all the forces have been put into place for the upcoming monetary apocalypse. But even these forces are controlled, each and every one of them, all the way up to the top. It's probably a very good time to contemplate just who it is that resides at the peak of the global financial decision-making process. And, their agenda ?!?
HINT: Let's get serious for a moment. Most of us know by now that the Crash of '29 was an intricately engineered fiscal armageddon as a necessary prelude to the real Armageddon known as WWII. Historically speaking, a man without a job, or prospects for employment in his homeland, is much more likely to hire himself out to his gumment as a mercenary fighting in a foreign land. Hasn't this been their (TPTW)* formula for both war and wealth creation for eons. Although it has always worked like a charm (see "War is a Racket" by Major General Smedley Butler), wethinks the charm has finally worn out. We also think this misbegotten plan to foist WWIII upon us has somehow been thwarted. Yes, they've finally been snoockered! And they don't even know it yet.
Someone, please send them this email.
* The Powers That Were
The PRE-PLANNED Financial/Economic 911
From T. Anthony Michael
10-3-8
WHAT: A pre-planned collapse of the US (and global) financial and economic systems.
WHO: The same characters who perpetrated the original 911.
WHERE: New York City & DC, of course. Plus a sideshow in Washington state.
WHEN: The days surrounding September 11, naturally.
HOW: Instead of painted drones, missiles with wings & big fins, and fake airplanes, they used the much more stealthy short seller.
WHY: To remake the economic/financial order of the world into a "PPP".
WHY Really: Think about it ! And then ask yourself, "Cui bono?"
The 911 blueprint worked so magically for the world controllers that they were compelled to use virtually the same playbook. "If it ain't broke, why fix it?
So, what's the real deal here?
By analogy, let's take a quick look at the 911 timeline and stack it up against the new 2008 Financial "911", as it began to unfold earlier this year.
1. The Bear Stearns collapse that began in March 2008 is analogous to the 1st World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Just a warm up. This was preceded by a little failure back in January featuring Countrywide the largest US mortgage lender.
2. The nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac marks the beginning of the new 911. Both in the DC area, they were the first to come down this time. Just as they struck at the heart of the military complex, this time they went for the jugular of the national real estate market. Remember this is a financial 911.
3. Next came this year's version of the twin towers, building 7 and other assorted NYC landmarks in the form of Lehman Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch, as well as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs in their "new & improved" form. Basically took out the whole of American investment brokerage, heh?!
4. And, of course, we still have Washington Mutual out there in the boonies just like the one that "crashed" in a PA farm field. Update: WashMu is now history! As is another "little" bank by the name of Wachovia.
5. Their MO! What else, but controlled demolition? Throughout 2008, and especially this month of September, we have seen some of the world's largest banks, brokerage houses, mortgage lenders, insurance companies and investment brokers go bust, as each of them fell perfectly into their own footprint faster than you can say: C O N T R O L L E D D E M O L I T I O N ! ! !
6. The 700 billion dollar Bailout Plan is just like the Patriot Act, isn't it? Only this time it's maybe a 1 or 2 page document (in its original form) that conferred absolute authority on the Executive Branch to do just about anything they want with the taxpayer's money. And they want it rubber stamped now. Not tomorrow. NOW!!! Without discussion, or unnecessary congressional debate. Talk about Shock & Awe being used against the American people, and their elected representatives!?! "The Greatest Depression" never sounded more like "Weapons of Mass Destruction", eh?!?!
7. Now we know we can expect further gyrations, panics and precipitous declines in the market and elsewhere, just as we had anthrax attacks in the Capital, beltway snipers in Maryland in October of '02, the 3/11/04 train bombings in Madrid, and the 7/7/05 bombings in London. Not to mention the 50+ other synthetic terror events staged throughout the world to enforce compliance and create distraction.
8. The sudden and dramatic downfall of NY Gov Eliot Spitzer can also now be seen in its proper light. Having left the reservation one too many times, he simply could not be trusted to go with the flow. He had their numbers, their signatures (especially their MO's), their addresses --- the whole ball of wax, as well as his own reputation to burnish. Eliot, to seal his fate, wrote a masterful expose on the subprime mortgage fiasco/fraud that was published in the WashPo just weeks before his public humiliation. He had recently testified before Congress in fine revelatory fashion as well. The elimination of John O'Neil, Head of Security at the WTC complex, is quite similar, except that John O. a great patriot died on 911, having just been given the job.
9. To date, the most obvious and glaring example of this manipulated takedown is the case of a NY Senator. His letter to the FDIC contained confidential information that triggered the IndyMac bank collapse in July. California AG Jerry Brown was called to review the entire affair after the OTS Director explicitly blamed the letter for causing a run on the bank (3rd largest bank failure in US history). This episode is eerily reminiscent of Larry Silverstein's order to, "Pull it." just prior to the expertly controlled demolition of Building # 7on 911.
10. Just as 911 was perpetrated as a cover for: inaugurating the War on Terror, overtly advancing the NWO regime globally (in contrast to this previously covert operation), imposing a police state (Homeland Security) in the US (by gutting the US Constitution), UK and elsewhere, dominating and securing oil/gas reserves in the Middle East and Cacaucus (to include running energy pipelines through Afghanistan and stealing Iraq's oil wealth via military invasion), jump starting the Afghan opium trade, etc., the ECO/FIN 911 of '08 is a cover for many of these same agenda items. However, there is one little item that is particularly high on the current agenda. And that concerns the derivatives market, which in its totality approximates somewhere between 750 trillion and 1 quadrillion dollars of instruments as of 2008. In fact, the sub prime mortgage defaults are just a tip of the tip of the iceberg when compared to the real megilla DERIVATIVES. This is what they're really worried about, and having to cover for. Except this is a quadrillion dollar megilla that can't be covered without unraveling the entire capitalistic system, and its fascist corpocracy and kleptocratic oligarchy.
11. And then there is the teenie-weenie matter concerning the Federal Reserve, and its collection agency the IRS. The man standing behind this curtain has a lot at stake, especially in the form of mountains of evidence that will indict, and convict, the entire system. Lots of evidence was destroyed during and after 911, as will happen after many of these Wall Street firms are taken over, nationalized, liquidated, merged and disappeared. The veil, however, has already been lifted.
Does anyone see a pattern here?!
The real lesson to be gleaned from this analysis is that events of such enormity and consequence are rarely spontaneous and unchoreographed. Especially when they happen just weeks from an era defining presidential election. They have obviously been planning this one for a long time, and it has been fastidiously engineered to have a very definite effect and desired outcome a permanent planetary plantation (PPP).
The execution, thus far, has been flawless. Even for those of us who stood there on the 1st 911, and knew it was a fraud while the buildings were coming down, this one is exceedingly more difficult to penetrate. However, penetrate we will, until every last conspirator is sitting before the TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION spillin' the beans. The ultimate and lasting effect of these inquiries will be a New World Order of our making, not theirs. The only remaining, $64,000 question will undoubtedly be, "What do we do with them after we head them off at the pass?"
For the uninitiated, it may take quite a lot to wrap your mind around this extremely complex and convoluted plot, but, please, just be patient. As this drama plays out, the true intentions of the primary perpetrators will become manifest as they unwittingly reveal themselves by their handiwork. As Eliot Spitzer, no - Eliot Ness, nee Sherlock Holmes once alluded to a fingerprint inadvertently left as evidence is impossible to erase.
You see, the short sellers, unlike the "airplanes", are still with us. Each one had a target to take down which they did with amazing speed and dexterity. And the myriad transactions that converged to topple their prey are all preserved somewhere, in some huge database, with multiple backups to serve as confirmation of trades of staggering amounts. AHHH! Nothing like computers, especially when they're not confiscated and shipped off to China for permanent disposal.
May all financial wizards and economic soothsayers, henceforth, be inspired to stare into their crystal ball and divine the upcoming financial and economic events of global proportions with the keenest of acumen and sleuthing. As we shine the LIGHT of our collective awareness on these rapidly unfolding schemes, we will serve as beacons of revelation, and hope to the world.
Remember we now know the script. We know the major players involved. We know their MO: Controlled Demolition. We are able to watch the crimes being committed in real time. Each of us has now been thusly notified, and empowered, to serve as a vector of dissemination of this critical information. So -----> LET'S GET BUSY ! ! !
T. Anthony Michael 9/22/08
TAnthonyMichael@gmail.com
Permission is expressly granted to copy, email, scan, attach, forward or post this article.
Special Message to the Market Oracles and Money Masters of the Universe
Our "PRE-PLANNED" scenario delineated above in no way ignores the true state of the national economy, international finance or global economic picture. In fact we are, and have been, fully cognizant of the fact that the true state of every market real estate, equity, bond, commodities, currency, derivative, etc. has been in shambles for many years, just waiting for the Perfect Storm to come around and blow it all away.
It has been obvious to many of us that each of these markets have operated according to the whim of a very few individuals with extremely concentrated power to manipulate. Therefore, all markets can be artificially inflated, as we have seen time and time again. Likewise, they can be artificially deflated, sometimes rather quickly for effect, as we have seen. "The Invisible Hand" of the market is just that a very carefully hidden hand that makes a complete and total mockery of every economic and financial theory ever advanced. Time for a lot of us to accept this fact of modern economic life.
Perhaps we should now take off our blinders and admit that while, yes, all of the indicators are, and have been, there for a catastrophic economic meltdown & financial cataclysm, these events are still completely controllable. All of us have seen bubble after bubble grow and balloon, and merge and overlap, and inextricably interpenetrate each other, until all we have is one massive bubble ready to pop. But, when will it pop?! It will pop when the confidence level is sufficiently undermined by the very same MEDIA that controls the flow of the relevant information. And who, pray tell, controls the media, if not The Invisible Hand? Clearly, the real Market Oracles are not a part of that MSM juggernaut. Therefore, it is incumbent upon each oracle to get it right, since they are the very best sources of pertinent financial and economic data/information.
The inevitability of self destructive capitalism does not preclude the process of controlled destruction. As the system eats itself, there are those who are eaten, and those who eat. We are witnessing this devolution in living color, as we both write and read these words. The "strong" at the top of the pyramid have always done the eating, as the "weak" at the bottom provide the bone for the stew. The only major difference at this particular, and final, feast is that the internet has allowed for an unprecedented explosion of true and accurate information in real time. Therefore, the playing field has been leveled like never before. The little guy or gal, for the first time ever, has the opportunity to take back a little, or a lot, of his/her power (WEALTH), should he/she so choose.
Even as the Wall Street gangs team up with the opportunistic political class, as well as the numerous corporate/legal jackals and lobby parasites, to effectuate the most massive redistribution of wealth (aka in your face THEFT) in recorded history, something has profoundly and fundamentally changed. There is a dynamic at work which can alter the game just enough to potentially turn the pyramid upside down. This, however, requires a no nonsense, "look in the mirror with raw honesty" approach. Then we (the oracles) will not deign to render a judgment that is not fully baked. And the recommendations we make are more likely to be issued in the best interest of ALL, especially for those who are in a position of class disadvantage, financial ignorance or structured powerlessness.
So, we have made it clear that all the forces have been put into place for the upcoming monetary apocalypse. But even these forces are controlled, each and every one of them, all the way up to the top. It's probably a very good time to contemplate just who it is that resides at the peak of the global financial decision-making process. And, their agenda ?!?
HINT: Let's get serious for a moment. Most of us know by now that the Crash of '29 was an intricately engineered fiscal armageddon as a necessary prelude to the real Armageddon known as WWII. Historically speaking, a man without a job, or prospects for employment in his homeland, is much more likely to hire himself out to his gumment as a mercenary fighting in a foreign land. Hasn't this been their (TPTW)* formula for both war and wealth creation for eons. Although it has always worked like a charm (see "War is a Racket" by Major General Smedley Butler), wethinks the charm has finally worn out. We also think this misbegotten plan to foist WWIII upon us has somehow been thwarted. Yes, they've finally been snoockered! And they don't even know it yet.
Someone, please send them this email.
* The Powers That Were
from real-debt-elimination.com
The Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR)
Walter Burien Jr. worked as a Wall Street Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) for fifteen years, but now resides in Arizona. According to Mr. Burien, every state, county and major metropolitan city is keeping two sets of books. One set, the Budget, is commonly available and tracks each governmental entity's costs and tax revenue. The Budget is the financial record that's seen by the public and used by politicians to justify new governmental services and higher taxes.
However, there is a second set of books, called the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, or CAFR, which is virtually unknown to the public but contains the real record of total governmental income. According to Mr. Burien, although the Budget gives an accurate account of government costs, only the CAFR gives an accurate account of government's income.
For example, while a particular state budget might report receiving $20 billion in taxes (just barely enough to sustain its $20 billion in costs) - the CAFR might reveal the state's real income is in the neighborhood of $60 billion - three times as much as reported on the budget. If these allegations are accurate, the particular state could stop charging all the taxes we are familiar with and, not only survive but, either double the amount of reported government services or give every citizen a huge tax rebate.
The implications are mind-boggling. The CAFRs reveal that the world is so different from what we are led to believe, so much more corrupt than suspected, that we are left with three choices, either; 1) government agrees to end the deception and stop overtaxing us, or 2) the American people agree to accept their status as slaves, or 3) both sides refuse to agree and precipitate a shooting revolution. The issue is that big.
Are Mr. Burien's allegations correct? How could any governmental entity dare to routinely overcharge its citizens by 200%, underreport its income by 2/3rds, and knowingly press for higher taxes based on an inaccurate budget? Worse, how could such a fraudulent system become widespread among all states, counties, cities and the Federal Government?
Those who have made efforts to verify Burien's research indicate that the conclusions drawn by Burien are probably correct. For instance: The State of Alaska and the city of Anchorage both use Budget/CAFR accounting systems that conceal a breathtaking difference in reported revenue. Another researcher in Wyoming claims that a comparison of his state's budget and CAFR also support Mr. Burien's arguments. In every case, there are two sets of books and the income reported on the budget is millions or billions of dollars less than is reported on the CAFR.
These verifications of Burien's research and findings lend credence to his allegations.
What follows is an amalgam of statements or implications raised by Mr. Burien in various interviews.
Mr. Burien reports first discovering the CAFR report in New Jersey in 1989, when he helped start and incorporated a New Jersey tax protest group called "Hands across New Jersey." While involved with that group, Mr. Burien read in the state's Annual Budget that the total cost of all public services was $17 billion and the "net available" (the money on hand to pay all bills) was $24.6 billion. But then he asked the first question the IRS asks in any audit: "What are the gross receipts?" He added the figures from various state government sources and came up with about $44 billion and began to wonder how the state could have $17 billion in costs, $24.6 billion in cash on hand, and $44 billion annual income? The numbers didn't add up, so he began to dig deeper.
Because his father had been Personnel Manager for the State Treasury for four years, Mr. Burien understood how to get around in the various government departments. The state Director of the Budget was on vacation, so Mr. Burien called one of his lowest level assistants and said, "I m working on a report for Richard [the vacationing Budget Director] and I need all the figures on the autonomous agency accounts, interest accounts, investment accounts." The assistant said, "Ohh, you want the CAFR." This was the first time Burien had heard of the CAFR but he said, "Yes" and the assistant mailed it to him.
The 1989 CAFR showed that New Jersey had liquid investment funds (cash) of $188 billion of which; common stocks worth $70 billion, $10 billion in loans made by the state due from public and private corporations, and $14 billion in insurance company equity participation. The little state of New Jersey, which admitted to less than $25 billion in annual income on its budget, reported $188 billion in cash, stocks, loans and equity participation on its CAFR. According to Mr. Burien, "On that day, I learned the definition of syndicated organized crime." Keep in mind that most of the revenue and investments from the 21 counties, hundreds of cities, municipalities, school districts, state financial authorities, pension funds, and 69 enterprise authorities, all of which put out their own CAFR or Combined Financial Statement are not inclusive with the state's revenue and investments. Totals here when looking at composite New Jersey government figures are well in excess of 1.8 Trillion dollars. Divide that figure by the population of New Jersey to see the per capita share of the wealth.
So why are the taxes in New Jersey some of the highest in the country? The answered is; Power corrupts, absolute Power corrupts absolutely. Mr. Burien keeps emphasizing to the public that they, the public, left the VAULT door open, and those sharp little crackers said thank you very much. The problem is that most (95%) of the public responds with, Vault, what vault. With this well entrenched attitude of naivety by the public in place, those sharp little crackers now have even stopped saying thank you very much as they plunder the wealth in their unabated efforts towards the building of their own empires within the corporate structure of Composite Government.
The scam worked something like this: Anything that was a cost or expense for public services (the traditional side of the Annual Service Budget, such as the Department of Transportation, health and welfare, etc.) was reported on the Budget where public taxes primarily paid 100% of the bill for those services. That was $17 billion.
However, any governmental agency that was a profit center (the Port Authority for New Jersey, the New Jersey Turnpike, and investment accounts, etc.) that generated no tax revenue was "restricted by statute from being reported in and benefiting the Annual Budget. Why? Because the state legislature passed laws to prevent reporting the income from investment or venture profit centers on the Budget. Instead, income from these profit centers was disclosed only on the CAFR or other financial reports referenced in the notes of the CAFR.
But that disclosure was not immediately apparent. For example, when Mr. Burien looked for New Jersey's 1989 "gross cash receipts" in the CAFR, he found the figure buried on page 174, under the "Waste Water Treatment Trust Fund." It showed the amount of the total cash receipts (Cash Additions) for 1989 from all state agencies, departments and sources was $86.799 billion. In other words, New Jersey State Government from all sources was grossing $87 billion to provide $17 billion in public services as seen in the openly represented Annual Service Budget. New Jersey citizens were paying $5 for every $1 in services they received, and the state was pocketing the other $4 as "profit."
When breaking down the true revenue income, the most important revelation was that only one third of the states income came from taxes, fines and fees. Two thirds of state government’s income came from Other Sources with no direct tie to the publicly known budget. When looking at the openly disclosed Budget, which each year continued to grow at a runaway pace, here ever expanding taxation primarily covered the expenses.
The CAFR also reported the state owned $32 billion in common stocks - but this figure was footnoted. The footnote revealed that the stocks were valued according to their original purchase price, not the current market value. In other words, if the state bought a stock in 1968 at $1.25 a share and it's worth $300 a share now, they still report it on the CAFR as worth $1.25 a share. Burien determined that the true market value for the "$32 billion" in stocks reported on the New Jersey CAFR was actually about $70 billion.
But Mr. Burien goes further - he claims that the dual system of books is not unique to New Jersey, but also common among the over 54,000 local government corporate entities operating within all fifty states. Moreover, he claims the dual accounting system used ten years ago in New Jersey was created in 1946 through an organization by the name of GFOA (Government Financial Officers Association) and is the primary local government accounting structure being used today.
For example, "In 1987 Arizona's annual service budget reported $2.8 billion in revenues but the state's 1987 CAFR reported total cash receipts of $3.1 billion, a mere $300 million difference."
"However, in 1997, Arizona reported an Annual Service Budget of $5.5 billion while the State's CAFR (printed by the Auditor General's Office) showed total gross cash receipts of $17 billion. That's a difference of over $11 billion. In just ten years, Arizona had caught up to New Jersey in that both states annual budgets reported less than one third of the actual gross income seen in the states CAFRs.
"CAFR and Combined Financial Statement reports indicate that the composite totals for all government (Federal, state, county and city) ownership of publicly traded stocks exceeds $32 TRILLION (53% of the total ownership of all listed stocks from ALL exchanges), $8 TRILLION in insurance company equity (should we be surprised by high priced mandatory auto insurance or unaffordable health care?) and $5 TRILLION in Bond Surety Escrow Accounts for future liability of existing or potential debt.
Governments use Bond Surety Escrow Accounts to evade that pesky little rule that government should not operate at a "profit." That is, government should not impose more taxes than it actually uses to run the government. By designating tax revenue that exceeds operating costs as “Bond Surety Escrow" for future liability, government avoids calling excess revenue a "profit" and is thereby enabled to continue to enrich itself at public expense.
To illustrate the potential for abusing "future liability payments,” consider the New Jersey plan in the 1950s to build the New Jersey State Turnpike and Garden State Parkway Authorities. The state asked voters to approve a $7.5 billion bond to construct the turnpikes. The state explained that these turnpikes would be operated as toll roads by the bondholders until the $7.5 billion bond was paid off - but the bondholders could not operate the toll roads at a profit. Once the bonds were repaid, the turnpikes would revert back into the state s Annual Budget as a normal cost/revenue item. The public voted yes.
Over the following years, the state sometimes alleged that the toll revenue from operating those turnpikes failed to cover their operating expenses, and so additional bonds were passed to fund the turnpikes. As a result, in 1990, the total bond liability still owed for the turnpike had grown to $14.5 billion. But guess how much was in the Bond Surety Escrow Accounts? $38 Billion! Enough to repay the original $7.5 billion bonds almost four times!
How could that happen? Say the toll road made a $400 million profit for the year and the scheduled payment on the $7.5 billion bond was $100 million. The state made the $100 million payment but kept the extra $300 million in a Bond Surety Escrow Account which generated substantial annual dividend returns for future liability payments. Although they kept the $300 million, they did not declare it as an asset but wrote it off as a line item payment. In other years, even though they made a profit, they alleged that they lost money and therefore floated more billions in bonds. (Guess who pays?)
The bottom line is that New Jersey and other local government entities are collecting hundreds of billions of virtually unreported dollars from other operations. The motivating factor is not public welfare, but control of those billions.
Mr. Burien not only alleges that the dual accounting system exemplified by CAFR is not only used by all fifty states, but also by all counties, cities and the Federal Government itself. If Mr. Burien's allegations are correct, they comprise the most damning indictment of big government yet seen. In sum, Mr. Burien implies that our government is in fact a criminal enterprise bent on oppressing Americans by extorting several times as much tax revenue as it spends on public services and using the majority of those extorted revenues to enrich, empower and enlarge government at public expense.
Mr. Burien contends that the inner circle of the individuals controlling the top wealth of this structure, have the attitude toward the public of; Keep the Chipmunk (the public) running on the treadmill, as through trickle down economics, just enough revenue is supplied to keep the chipmunk running at optimum efficiency as the top inner circle controlling parties tap off 80% of the energy produced by the treadmill. The key words here are Optimum Efficiency and by the definition of what the public has allowed to happen as they left the vault door unintentionally open, the true final effect of forced labor and subservience by unrestrained takeover.
According to Mr. Burien, although the public is absolutely ignorant concerning CAFR, the primary cause for that ignorance is not the politicians but the mainstream media. When Mr. Burien first discovered the CAFR reports in New Jersey in 1989, he went on radio 101.5 FM in a live 45 minute interview. Two days later, that radio station was threatened with losing its license and was almost shut down. CAFR had become another example of - "third rail journalism" - any reporter or media outlet that touched the issue would be silenced or driven from journalism. As a result, there's been a total mainstream media blackout on disclosing CAFR reports. For over twenty five years the directors and CEOs of the primary syndicated media organizations both print and broadcast, were sent state CAFR reports each and every year, as they maintained a blackout towards the simple mentioning of the report.
Mr. Burien reports the discovery of the fact that New Jersey State Judges are vested in a personal retirement guarantee of $5,000,000.00, per judge after they serve as a judge for one year. Federal district court judges did not have a retirement or pension plan do to the fact that they were appointed for life. Being appointed for life they received their full paycheck and benefits for life. Do you need anyone to spell it out for you? Would a New Jersey State or Federal District Judge allow an attack on the squirreled away $Billions and jeopardize his entry into $Millionaire$ status? The inner circle gets the gold!!
Later, Burien learned that the New Jersey official in charge of discrediting his CAFR discoveries was a former reporter (Harvey Fisher) who d been appointed Assistant State Treasurer - even though he had no former financial background. Burien investigated his background and learned that as a reporter he made $35,000 a year. But as Assistant State Treasurer he made $65,000 a year - plus a Carte Blanche expense account of $125,000 !????????
Burien claims this was not an aberration: "I knew there was a state data search department under the Department of Treasure Personnel division which tied all agencies and departments together. I called that department and asked for a data search on all key level directorships and supervisory positions for all budgetary or autonomous agencies, and they came up with some 3,400 names from several administrations. Almost 1800 of these Directors were former editors or reporters! It is a virtual certainty that many of these appointments were payoffs for the journalist’s previous "cooperation" in spinning or silencing stories to suit government.
If you conduct a comparable search in other states, you may find a similar symbiotic relationship between government, editors, and reporters. The more money held and generated by an agency, the higher the percentage will be. If so, the media's "liberal, pro-government bias" may run much deeper than anyone has imagined, and the military-industrial complex" described by President Eisenhower in the 1950's may have been replaced by a “media-bureaucracy-banker complex" in the 1990s.
Therefore, Mr. Burien recommends that once you analyze your state's Budget and CAFR reports, you insist that your local news mainstream media (TV, papers, radio) raise the "Public Awareness" by reporting the difference between the composite "total of cash receipts from all agencies, departments, investments, etc." and the "actual total composite revenues held or controlled." Mr. Burien started with national disclosure of the CAFR and the structure behind it on June 8th 1998. In 1999, GFOA and GASB (Government Accounting Standards Board) changed the accounting requirements for local governments within the Combined Financial Columns of the CAFR from; All revenue, income and investments being shown, To; All revenue, income and investments being shown that were necessary to meet obligations and liabilities of that local government. This change in accounting is substantial. The good point here for disclosure is that you can look at a pre 1999 CAFR report, 1997-95-93, etc., and spot large drops in revenue from post 1999 reports in comparison with pre 1999 CAFR reports. With this being done, you now know to ask and look for the accounting of those revenues taken off the balance columns of the CAFR. Read the notes of the CAFR carefully.
If your local media refuse to publicize your state's CAFR, they may be cooperating with a criminal agreement which has effectively silenced public disclosure of the CAFR reports for over forty years. However, once Americans know how much money is out there, where it's coming from and where it's going - the government's and the inner circle's game will be over.
Any media that refuses to make immediate mention of the CAFR report should be publicly and aggressively boycotted. Exposure of the complicity of media is the jugular vein of the evil and corruption.
A video produced in December of 1999, by Mr. Burien, entitled: "The Biggest Game In Town", is available and is set up for airing on your Public Access or local TV stations. Mr. Burien, in this video introduces a program that could lead to the final elimination of taxation in this country with a possible dividend return to the public by and through the restructuring of the principle of operation of government by public mandate in making the public the direct beneficiary of the wealth. The information on the video is a must see for every American.
The Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR)
Walter Burien Jr. worked as a Wall Street Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) for fifteen years, but now resides in Arizona. According to Mr. Burien, every state, county and major metropolitan city is keeping two sets of books. One set, the Budget, is commonly available and tracks each governmental entity's costs and tax revenue. The Budget is the financial record that's seen by the public and used by politicians to justify new governmental services and higher taxes.
However, there is a second set of books, called the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, or CAFR, which is virtually unknown to the public but contains the real record of total governmental income. According to Mr. Burien, although the Budget gives an accurate account of government costs, only the CAFR gives an accurate account of government's income.
For example, while a particular state budget might report receiving $20 billion in taxes (just barely enough to sustain its $20 billion in costs) - the CAFR might reveal the state's real income is in the neighborhood of $60 billion - three times as much as reported on the budget. If these allegations are accurate, the particular state could stop charging all the taxes we are familiar with and, not only survive but, either double the amount of reported government services or give every citizen a huge tax rebate.
The implications are mind-boggling. The CAFRs reveal that the world is so different from what we are led to believe, so much more corrupt than suspected, that we are left with three choices, either; 1) government agrees to end the deception and stop overtaxing us, or 2) the American people agree to accept their status as slaves, or 3) both sides refuse to agree and precipitate a shooting revolution. The issue is that big.
Are Mr. Burien's allegations correct? How could any governmental entity dare to routinely overcharge its citizens by 200%, underreport its income by 2/3rds, and knowingly press for higher taxes based on an inaccurate budget? Worse, how could such a fraudulent system become widespread among all states, counties, cities and the Federal Government?
Those who have made efforts to verify Burien's research indicate that the conclusions drawn by Burien are probably correct. For instance: The State of Alaska and the city of Anchorage both use Budget/CAFR accounting systems that conceal a breathtaking difference in reported revenue. Another researcher in Wyoming claims that a comparison of his state's budget and CAFR also support Mr. Burien's arguments. In every case, there are two sets of books and the income reported on the budget is millions or billions of dollars less than is reported on the CAFR.
These verifications of Burien's research and findings lend credence to his allegations.
What follows is an amalgam of statements or implications raised by Mr. Burien in various interviews.
Mr. Burien reports first discovering the CAFR report in New Jersey in 1989, when he helped start and incorporated a New Jersey tax protest group called "Hands across New Jersey." While involved with that group, Mr. Burien read in the state's Annual Budget that the total cost of all public services was $17 billion and the "net available" (the money on hand to pay all bills) was $24.6 billion. But then he asked the first question the IRS asks in any audit: "What are the gross receipts?" He added the figures from various state government sources and came up with about $44 billion and began to wonder how the state could have $17 billion in costs, $24.6 billion in cash on hand, and $44 billion annual income? The numbers didn't add up, so he began to dig deeper.
Because his father had been Personnel Manager for the State Treasury for four years, Mr. Burien understood how to get around in the various government departments. The state Director of the Budget was on vacation, so Mr. Burien called one of his lowest level assistants and said, "I m working on a report for Richard [the vacationing Budget Director] and I need all the figures on the autonomous agency accounts, interest accounts, investment accounts." The assistant said, "Ohh, you want the CAFR." This was the first time Burien had heard of the CAFR but he said, "Yes" and the assistant mailed it to him.
The 1989 CAFR showed that New Jersey had liquid investment funds (cash) of $188 billion of which; common stocks worth $70 billion, $10 billion in loans made by the state due from public and private corporations, and $14 billion in insurance company equity participation. The little state of New Jersey, which admitted to less than $25 billion in annual income on its budget, reported $188 billion in cash, stocks, loans and equity participation on its CAFR. According to Mr. Burien, "On that day, I learned the definition of syndicated organized crime." Keep in mind that most of the revenue and investments from the 21 counties, hundreds of cities, municipalities, school districts, state financial authorities, pension funds, and 69 enterprise authorities, all of which put out their own CAFR or Combined Financial Statement are not inclusive with the state's revenue and investments. Totals here when looking at composite New Jersey government figures are well in excess of 1.8 Trillion dollars. Divide that figure by the population of New Jersey to see the per capita share of the wealth.
So why are the taxes in New Jersey some of the highest in the country? The answered is; Power corrupts, absolute Power corrupts absolutely. Mr. Burien keeps emphasizing to the public that they, the public, left the VAULT door open, and those sharp little crackers said thank you very much. The problem is that most (95%) of the public responds with, Vault, what vault. With this well entrenched attitude of naivety by the public in place, those sharp little crackers now have even stopped saying thank you very much as they plunder the wealth in their unabated efforts towards the building of their own empires within the corporate structure of Composite Government.
The scam worked something like this: Anything that was a cost or expense for public services (the traditional side of the Annual Service Budget, such as the Department of Transportation, health and welfare, etc.) was reported on the Budget where public taxes primarily paid 100% of the bill for those services. That was $17 billion.
However, any governmental agency that was a profit center (the Port Authority for New Jersey, the New Jersey Turnpike, and investment accounts, etc.) that generated no tax revenue was "restricted by statute from being reported in and benefiting the Annual Budget. Why? Because the state legislature passed laws to prevent reporting the income from investment or venture profit centers on the Budget. Instead, income from these profit centers was disclosed only on the CAFR or other financial reports referenced in the notes of the CAFR.
But that disclosure was not immediately apparent. For example, when Mr. Burien looked for New Jersey's 1989 "gross cash receipts" in the CAFR, he found the figure buried on page 174, under the "Waste Water Treatment Trust Fund." It showed the amount of the total cash receipts (Cash Additions) for 1989 from all state agencies, departments and sources was $86.799 billion. In other words, New Jersey State Government from all sources was grossing $87 billion to provide $17 billion in public services as seen in the openly represented Annual Service Budget. New Jersey citizens were paying $5 for every $1 in services they received, and the state was pocketing the other $4 as "profit."
When breaking down the true revenue income, the most important revelation was that only one third of the states income came from taxes, fines and fees. Two thirds of state government’s income came from Other Sources with no direct tie to the publicly known budget. When looking at the openly disclosed Budget, which each year continued to grow at a runaway pace, here ever expanding taxation primarily covered the expenses.
The CAFR also reported the state owned $32 billion in common stocks - but this figure was footnoted. The footnote revealed that the stocks were valued according to their original purchase price, not the current market value. In other words, if the state bought a stock in 1968 at $1.25 a share and it's worth $300 a share now, they still report it on the CAFR as worth $1.25 a share. Burien determined that the true market value for the "$32 billion" in stocks reported on the New Jersey CAFR was actually about $70 billion.
But Mr. Burien goes further - he claims that the dual system of books is not unique to New Jersey, but also common among the over 54,000 local government corporate entities operating within all fifty states. Moreover, he claims the dual accounting system used ten years ago in New Jersey was created in 1946 through an organization by the name of GFOA (Government Financial Officers Association) and is the primary local government accounting structure being used today.
For example, "In 1987 Arizona's annual service budget reported $2.8 billion in revenues but the state's 1987 CAFR reported total cash receipts of $3.1 billion, a mere $300 million difference."
"However, in 1997, Arizona reported an Annual Service Budget of $5.5 billion while the State's CAFR (printed by the Auditor General's Office) showed total gross cash receipts of $17 billion. That's a difference of over $11 billion. In just ten years, Arizona had caught up to New Jersey in that both states annual budgets reported less than one third of the actual gross income seen in the states CAFRs.
"CAFR and Combined Financial Statement reports indicate that the composite totals for all government (Federal, state, county and city) ownership of publicly traded stocks exceeds $32 TRILLION (53% of the total ownership of all listed stocks from ALL exchanges), $8 TRILLION in insurance company equity (should we be surprised by high priced mandatory auto insurance or unaffordable health care?) and $5 TRILLION in Bond Surety Escrow Accounts for future liability of existing or potential debt.
Governments use Bond Surety Escrow Accounts to evade that pesky little rule that government should not operate at a "profit." That is, government should not impose more taxes than it actually uses to run the government. By designating tax revenue that exceeds operating costs as “Bond Surety Escrow" for future liability, government avoids calling excess revenue a "profit" and is thereby enabled to continue to enrich itself at public expense.
To illustrate the potential for abusing "future liability payments,” consider the New Jersey plan in the 1950s to build the New Jersey State Turnpike and Garden State Parkway Authorities. The state asked voters to approve a $7.5 billion bond to construct the turnpikes. The state explained that these turnpikes would be operated as toll roads by the bondholders until the $7.5 billion bond was paid off - but the bondholders could not operate the toll roads at a profit. Once the bonds were repaid, the turnpikes would revert back into the state s Annual Budget as a normal cost/revenue item. The public voted yes.
Over the following years, the state sometimes alleged that the toll revenue from operating those turnpikes failed to cover their operating expenses, and so additional bonds were passed to fund the turnpikes. As a result, in 1990, the total bond liability still owed for the turnpike had grown to $14.5 billion. But guess how much was in the Bond Surety Escrow Accounts? $38 Billion! Enough to repay the original $7.5 billion bonds almost four times!
How could that happen? Say the toll road made a $400 million profit for the year and the scheduled payment on the $7.5 billion bond was $100 million. The state made the $100 million payment but kept the extra $300 million in a Bond Surety Escrow Account which generated substantial annual dividend returns for future liability payments. Although they kept the $300 million, they did not declare it as an asset but wrote it off as a line item payment. In other years, even though they made a profit, they alleged that they lost money and therefore floated more billions in bonds. (Guess who pays?)
The bottom line is that New Jersey and other local government entities are collecting hundreds of billions of virtually unreported dollars from other operations. The motivating factor is not public welfare, but control of those billions.
Mr. Burien not only alleges that the dual accounting system exemplified by CAFR is not only used by all fifty states, but also by all counties, cities and the Federal Government itself. If Mr. Burien's allegations are correct, they comprise the most damning indictment of big government yet seen. In sum, Mr. Burien implies that our government is in fact a criminal enterprise bent on oppressing Americans by extorting several times as much tax revenue as it spends on public services and using the majority of those extorted revenues to enrich, empower and enlarge government at public expense.
Mr. Burien contends that the inner circle of the individuals controlling the top wealth of this structure, have the attitude toward the public of; Keep the Chipmunk (the public) running on the treadmill, as through trickle down economics, just enough revenue is supplied to keep the chipmunk running at optimum efficiency as the top inner circle controlling parties tap off 80% of the energy produced by the treadmill. The key words here are Optimum Efficiency and by the definition of what the public has allowed to happen as they left the vault door unintentionally open, the true final effect of forced labor and subservience by unrestrained takeover.
According to Mr. Burien, although the public is absolutely ignorant concerning CAFR, the primary cause for that ignorance is not the politicians but the mainstream media. When Mr. Burien first discovered the CAFR reports in New Jersey in 1989, he went on radio 101.5 FM in a live 45 minute interview. Two days later, that radio station was threatened with losing its license and was almost shut down. CAFR had become another example of - "third rail journalism" - any reporter or media outlet that touched the issue would be silenced or driven from journalism. As a result, there's been a total mainstream media blackout on disclosing CAFR reports. For over twenty five years the directors and CEOs of the primary syndicated media organizations both print and broadcast, were sent state CAFR reports each and every year, as they maintained a blackout towards the simple mentioning of the report.
Mr. Burien reports the discovery of the fact that New Jersey State Judges are vested in a personal retirement guarantee of $5,000,000.00, per judge after they serve as a judge for one year. Federal district court judges did not have a retirement or pension plan do to the fact that they were appointed for life. Being appointed for life they received their full paycheck and benefits for life. Do you need anyone to spell it out for you? Would a New Jersey State or Federal District Judge allow an attack on the squirreled away $Billions and jeopardize his entry into $Millionaire$ status? The inner circle gets the gold!!
Later, Burien learned that the New Jersey official in charge of discrediting his CAFR discoveries was a former reporter (Harvey Fisher) who d been appointed Assistant State Treasurer - even though he had no former financial background. Burien investigated his background and learned that as a reporter he made $35,000 a year. But as Assistant State Treasurer he made $65,000 a year - plus a Carte Blanche expense account of $125,000 !????????
Burien claims this was not an aberration: "I knew there was a state data search department under the Department of Treasure Personnel division which tied all agencies and departments together. I called that department and asked for a data search on all key level directorships and supervisory positions for all budgetary or autonomous agencies, and they came up with some 3,400 names from several administrations. Almost 1800 of these Directors were former editors or reporters! It is a virtual certainty that many of these appointments were payoffs for the journalist’s previous "cooperation" in spinning or silencing stories to suit government.
If you conduct a comparable search in other states, you may find a similar symbiotic relationship between government, editors, and reporters. The more money held and generated by an agency, the higher the percentage will be. If so, the media's "liberal, pro-government bias" may run much deeper than anyone has imagined, and the military-industrial complex" described by President Eisenhower in the 1950's may have been replaced by a “media-bureaucracy-banker complex" in the 1990s.
Therefore, Mr. Burien recommends that once you analyze your state's Budget and CAFR reports, you insist that your local news mainstream media (TV, papers, radio) raise the "Public Awareness" by reporting the difference between the composite "total of cash receipts from all agencies, departments, investments, etc." and the "actual total composite revenues held or controlled." Mr. Burien started with national disclosure of the CAFR and the structure behind it on June 8th 1998. In 1999, GFOA and GASB (Government Accounting Standards Board) changed the accounting requirements for local governments within the Combined Financial Columns of the CAFR from; All revenue, income and investments being shown, To; All revenue, income and investments being shown that were necessary to meet obligations and liabilities of that local government. This change in accounting is substantial. The good point here for disclosure is that you can look at a pre 1999 CAFR report, 1997-95-93, etc., and spot large drops in revenue from post 1999 reports in comparison with pre 1999 CAFR reports. With this being done, you now know to ask and look for the accounting of those revenues taken off the balance columns of the CAFR. Read the notes of the CAFR carefully.
If your local media refuse to publicize your state's CAFR, they may be cooperating with a criminal agreement which has effectively silenced public disclosure of the CAFR reports for over forty years. However, once Americans know how much money is out there, where it's coming from and where it's going - the government's and the inner circle's game will be over.
Any media that refuses to make immediate mention of the CAFR report should be publicly and aggressively boycotted. Exposure of the complicity of media is the jugular vein of the evil and corruption.
A video produced in December of 1999, by Mr. Burien, entitled: "The Biggest Game In Town", is available and is set up for airing on your Public Access or local TV stations. Mr. Burien, in this video introduces a program that could lead to the final elimination of taxation in this country with a possible dividend return to the public by and through the restructuring of the principle of operation of government by public mandate in making the public the direct beneficiary of the wealth. The information on the video is a must see for every American.
The secret congressional meeting March 2008
Here is what was revealed:
1. The imminent collapse of the U.S. Economy to occur sometime in late 2008
2, The imminent collapse of the U.S. Government finances sometime in mid 2009
3. The possibility of Civil War inside the United States as a result of the collapse
4. The advance round-ups of “insurgent U.S. Citizens” likely to move against the government
5. The detention of those rounded up at The REX 84 Camps constructed throughout the United States
6. The possibility of public retaliation against members of Congress for the collapses
7. The location of safe facilities for members of Congress and their families to reside during massive civil unrest
8. The necessary and unavoidable merger of The U.S. with Canada and Mexico establishing The North American Union
9. The issuance of a new currency called the AMERO for all three nations as an economic solution.
Here is what was revealed:
1. The imminent collapse of the U.S. Economy to occur sometime in late 2008
2, The imminent collapse of the U.S. Government finances sometime in mid 2009
3. The possibility of Civil War inside the United States as a result of the collapse
4. The advance round-ups of “insurgent U.S. Citizens” likely to move against the government
5. The detention of those rounded up at The REX 84 Camps constructed throughout the United States
6. The possibility of public retaliation against members of Congress for the collapses
7. The location of safe facilities for members of Congress and their families to reside during massive civil unrest
8. The necessary and unavoidable merger of The U.S. with Canada and Mexico establishing The North American Union
9. The issuance of a new currency called the AMERO for all three nations as an economic solution.
from BlackListedNews.Com
The FDIC Insurance Fund - Doesn't Exist!
When FDIC head Shelia Bair says her agency might have to bolster the FDIC's insurance fund with Treasury borrowings to pay for the new spate of bank failures, a lot of us, this 40-year banking veteran included, assumed there's an actual FDIC fund in need of bolstering.
We were wrong. As a former FDIC chairman, Bill Isaac, points out here, the FDIC Insurance Fund is an accounting fiction. It takes in premiums from banks, then turns those premiums over to the Treasury, which adds the money to the government's general coffers for "spending . . . on missiles, school lunches, water projects, and the like."
The insurance premiums aren't really premiums at all, therefore. They're a tax by another name.
Actually, it's worse than that. The FDIC, persisting in the myth that its fund really is an insurance pool, now proposes to raise the "premiums" it charges banks to make up for the "fund's" coming shortfall. The financially weakest banks will be hit with the biggest tax hikes.
Which makes absolutely no sense. You don't need me to tell you the banking industry is on the ropes. The last thing it needs (or the economy needs, for that matter) is an expense hike that will inhibit banks' ability to rebuild capital, extend new loans, or both. If the FDIC wants to raise its bank tax once the industry has recovered, I suppose that's fine. But to raise taxes on the industry now is perhaps the dumbest thing the agency can possibly do. At the margin, the FDIC will be helping bring about more of the failures it says it wants to prevent.
But this is the government we're talking about, so logic goes out the window. First, the FDIC insists its mythical bank insurance fund exists, when it really doesn't. Then the agency does what it can to run the imaginary fund's finances straight into the ground. Your tax dollars (sorry, "premiums") at work.
The FDIC Insurance Fund - Doesn't Exist!
When FDIC head Shelia Bair says her agency might have to bolster the FDIC's insurance fund with Treasury borrowings to pay for the new spate of bank failures, a lot of us, this 40-year banking veteran included, assumed there's an actual FDIC fund in need of bolstering.
We were wrong. As a former FDIC chairman, Bill Isaac, points out here, the FDIC Insurance Fund is an accounting fiction. It takes in premiums from banks, then turns those premiums over to the Treasury, which adds the money to the government's general coffers for "spending . . . on missiles, school lunches, water projects, and the like."
The insurance premiums aren't really premiums at all, therefore. They're a tax by another name.
Actually, it's worse than that. The FDIC, persisting in the myth that its fund really is an insurance pool, now proposes to raise the "premiums" it charges banks to make up for the "fund's" coming shortfall. The financially weakest banks will be hit with the biggest tax hikes.
Which makes absolutely no sense. You don't need me to tell you the banking industry is on the ropes. The last thing it needs (or the economy needs, for that matter) is an expense hike that will inhibit banks' ability to rebuild capital, extend new loans, or both. If the FDIC wants to raise its bank tax once the industry has recovered, I suppose that's fine. But to raise taxes on the industry now is perhaps the dumbest thing the agency can possibly do. At the margin, the FDIC will be helping bring about more of the failures it says it wants to prevent.
But this is the government we're talking about, so logic goes out the window. First, the FDIC insists its mythical bank insurance fund exists, when it really doesn't. Then the agency does what it can to run the imaginary fund's finances straight into the ground. Your tax dollars (sorry, "premiums") at work.
from WhatReallyHappened.com
Meltdown 2008
Jim Kirwan
9-17-8
The conspirators of Jekyll Island finally got the Meltdown that their secret little meetings were created to achieve. The story is called “The London Connection” by Eustace Mullins, and it is about how “The FED” was very secretly created. (1)
What am I talking about? The Federal Reserve Bank is not “Federal,” it is a privately held central bank; one of the twelve international private central banks that now control the money supply for the planet. The recent events that have “hit” the United States, were planned and carried out as part of this takeover that was the reason the FED was created in the first place.
When the so-called government asked the FED to step in and takeover AIG, they were actually inviting a private bank (masquerading as part of the Federal government) to take 80% of the targeted Insurance giant’ and in exchange the Fed decided to dump the shareholders and save the gamblers that created this mess in the first place. So the “banks” will get the profits and the bailout while the public gets the shaft—again!
Washington Mutual and Wachovia are both up for sale and Morgan Stanley is “having conversations,” as of tonight! This financial tsunami is just beginning, and the key player is still wearing its mask that is intended to disguise its true purposes!
The real problem with all of this is that most Americans are still unaware of the true nature of the Federal Reserve Bank and how it came to be called by that name even though it prints our money; it is still not a part of the Federal Government!
On Democracy Now this morning:
As of this morning” "The unprecedented run of events has altered the shape of Wall Street and brings the total amount of government rescue efforts to stabilize the financial system and housing market to about $900 billion."
NOMI PRINS: “In AIG and in Lehman and with Merrill and every other company on Wall Street that has faltered or is faltering, it’s about taking on too much leverage and borrowing to take on the risk and borrowing again and borrowing again, twenty-five to thirty times the amount of capital, the amount of money that they had to basically back the borrowing that they were doing. Human regular borrowers cannot do this. This is something that is an item only of the banking industry.
And not only was all that borrowing happening, but there was no transparency to the Fed, to the SEC, to the Treasury, to anyone who would have even bothered to look as to how much of a catastrophe was being created, so that when anything fell, whether it was the subprime mortgage or whether it was a credit complex security, it was all below a pile of immense interlocked, incestuous borrowing, and that’s what is bringing down the entire banking system."
"You had at the beginning of the show, McCain saying that this is the result of fraud and incompetence. The government has now bailed them out. But by bailing them out—Wall Street was coming to terms with the bad debts. When Bear Stearns went under and when Lehman Brothers went under, this began to wipe away the bad debts. And when the debts exceed the ability to pay, there’s only one thing any economy can do, and that’s wipe them out.
Instead, the government is trying to keep the fiction alive. And what Paulson did yesterday, in bailing out AIG, was to try to lock in whoever is the next president not only to further bailouts of Wall Street, ostensibly to protect the public money, but to make it impossible to write down the debts of the four million homeowners that are expected to default this year, impossible to write down the debts of companies that have issued junk bonds, impossible for the country to get rid of this excess of debts that can’t be repaid. And you’re having really a war now of creditors against debtors. And this is what Wall Street has been preparing for. It needed an emergency to do it. It’s really not an emergency at all. This has been building up for many years. Everybody expected it. And breathlessly now, the Secretary of Treasury has done it."
MICHAEL HUDSON: "The government has no adequate statistics on what the value of real estate is; what the amount of debt is, because if it did have statistics - it would show that the volume of debt is far in excess of the debtors (ability) to pay and when you have that, you have to do something about it!
Graham (Senator Phil Graham, McCain's top advisor) has said 'don't collect statistics because if you know how these guys are making money they are going to pay taxes on it; and if you don't look at what they're doing - if you let them do it through offshore vehicles - and you let them all bury everything then they're not going to be taxed and that is his (Graham's) constituency: Untaxed, financed and then to shift it all to labor and industry. (2)
The major media outlets are minimizing the costs (lying about the true costs), and attempting to paint this as just another two minute story. The world markets are reacting, Russia’s exchange did not open today because it lost 17% of its value yesterday, and the rest of the planet is beginning to reflect what is going on here because the central banks are controlling what is beginning to happen everywhere. (3)
If this outrage doesn’t get the attention of all those slumbering yuppies and yahoos in America that can’t be bothered with “politics” then maybe they ought to begin sleeping in their coffins so that when the time comes their loved ones can just nail the lid shut and be done with it! Remember, according to McCain ‘this election is not about issues, it’s about personalities.’
I don’t know about you but between the eight years of illegal wars that have killed millions of people, the total failure of the thugs in power to control any aspect of this government or our policies anywhere – hell they can’t even run rescue efforts during national disasters, just ask anyone that’s been affected—plus the fact that they have yet to keep a single promise they ever made to any of us about anything: So “let’s not talk about the issues,” let’s just ignore politics a bit longer until there is nothing left to discuss—the Meltdown will take care of everything else. . .
Meltdown 2008
Jim Kirwan
9-17-8
The conspirators of Jekyll Island finally got the Meltdown that their secret little meetings were created to achieve. The story is called “The London Connection” by Eustace Mullins, and it is about how “The FED” was very secretly created. (1)
What am I talking about? The Federal Reserve Bank is not “Federal,” it is a privately held central bank; one of the twelve international private central banks that now control the money supply for the planet. The recent events that have “hit” the United States, were planned and carried out as part of this takeover that was the reason the FED was created in the first place.
When the so-called government asked the FED to step in and takeover AIG, they were actually inviting a private bank (masquerading as part of the Federal government) to take 80% of the targeted Insurance giant’ and in exchange the Fed decided to dump the shareholders and save the gamblers that created this mess in the first place. So the “banks” will get the profits and the bailout while the public gets the shaft—again!
Washington Mutual and Wachovia are both up for sale and Morgan Stanley is “having conversations,” as of tonight! This financial tsunami is just beginning, and the key player is still wearing its mask that is intended to disguise its true purposes!
The real problem with all of this is that most Americans are still unaware of the true nature of the Federal Reserve Bank and how it came to be called by that name even though it prints our money; it is still not a part of the Federal Government!
On Democracy Now this morning:
As of this morning” "The unprecedented run of events has altered the shape of Wall Street and brings the total amount of government rescue efforts to stabilize the financial system and housing market to about $900 billion."
NOMI PRINS: “In AIG and in Lehman and with Merrill and every other company on Wall Street that has faltered or is faltering, it’s about taking on too much leverage and borrowing to take on the risk and borrowing again and borrowing again, twenty-five to thirty times the amount of capital, the amount of money that they had to basically back the borrowing that they were doing. Human regular borrowers cannot do this. This is something that is an item only of the banking industry.
And not only was all that borrowing happening, but there was no transparency to the Fed, to the SEC, to the Treasury, to anyone who would have even bothered to look as to how much of a catastrophe was being created, so that when anything fell, whether it was the subprime mortgage or whether it was a credit complex security, it was all below a pile of immense interlocked, incestuous borrowing, and that’s what is bringing down the entire banking system."
"You had at the beginning of the show, McCain saying that this is the result of fraud and incompetence. The government has now bailed them out. But by bailing them out—Wall Street was coming to terms with the bad debts. When Bear Stearns went under and when Lehman Brothers went under, this began to wipe away the bad debts. And when the debts exceed the ability to pay, there’s only one thing any economy can do, and that’s wipe them out.
Instead, the government is trying to keep the fiction alive. And what Paulson did yesterday, in bailing out AIG, was to try to lock in whoever is the next president not only to further bailouts of Wall Street, ostensibly to protect the public money, but to make it impossible to write down the debts of the four million homeowners that are expected to default this year, impossible to write down the debts of companies that have issued junk bonds, impossible for the country to get rid of this excess of debts that can’t be repaid. And you’re having really a war now of creditors against debtors. And this is what Wall Street has been preparing for. It needed an emergency to do it. It’s really not an emergency at all. This has been building up for many years. Everybody expected it. And breathlessly now, the Secretary of Treasury has done it."
MICHAEL HUDSON: "The government has no adequate statistics on what the value of real estate is; what the amount of debt is, because if it did have statistics - it would show that the volume of debt is far in excess of the debtors (ability) to pay and when you have that, you have to do something about it!
Graham (Senator Phil Graham, McCain's top advisor) has said 'don't collect statistics because if you know how these guys are making money they are going to pay taxes on it; and if you don't look at what they're doing - if you let them do it through offshore vehicles - and you let them all bury everything then they're not going to be taxed and that is his (Graham's) constituency: Untaxed, financed and then to shift it all to labor and industry. (2)
The major media outlets are minimizing the costs (lying about the true costs), and attempting to paint this as just another two minute story. The world markets are reacting, Russia’s exchange did not open today because it lost 17% of its value yesterday, and the rest of the planet is beginning to reflect what is going on here because the central banks are controlling what is beginning to happen everywhere. (3)
If this outrage doesn’t get the attention of all those slumbering yuppies and yahoos in America that can’t be bothered with “politics” then maybe they ought to begin sleeping in their coffins so that when the time comes their loved ones can just nail the lid shut and be done with it! Remember, according to McCain ‘this election is not about issues, it’s about personalities.’
I don’t know about you but between the eight years of illegal wars that have killed millions of people, the total failure of the thugs in power to control any aspect of this government or our policies anywhere – hell they can’t even run rescue efforts during national disasters, just ask anyone that’s been affected—plus the fact that they have yet to keep a single promise they ever made to any of us about anything: So “let’s not talk about the issues,” let’s just ignore politics a bit longer until there is nothing left to discuss—the Meltdown will take care of everything else. . .
Trillions of dollars are missing from the US government.
What's going on? Where is the money? How could this happen? Where are the checks and balances? How much more has gone missing? What would happen if a corporation failed to pass an audit like this? Or a taxpayer? Who is responsible for this? Would your banks continue to handle your bank account if you behaved like this? Would your investors continue to buy your securities if you behaved like this?
Webmaster's Commentary:
Remember the biggest new story of September 10th, 2001? Don Rumsfeld admitting that the Pentagon had lost $2.3 trillion (with a 't') of your tax dollars. That should have been the story of the decade, but lucky for ol' Don, just 24 hours later 9-11 wiped that story off of the front page, just as Flight 77 wiped out the very offices inside the Pentagon that were trying to find out just where all that cash had gone to! read
What's going on? Where is the money? How could this happen? Where are the checks and balances? How much more has gone missing? What would happen if a corporation failed to pass an audit like this? Or a taxpayer? Who is responsible for this? Would your banks continue to handle your bank account if you behaved like this? Would your investors continue to buy your securities if you behaved like this?
Webmaster's Commentary:
Remember the biggest new story of September 10th, 2001? Don Rumsfeld admitting that the Pentagon had lost $2.3 trillion (with a 't') of your tax dollars. That should have been the story of the decade, but lucky for ol' Don, just 24 hours later 9-11 wiped that story off of the front page, just as Flight 77 wiped out the very offices inside the Pentagon that were trying to find out just where all that cash had gone to! read
from webofdebt.com
WAG THE DOG: HOW TO CONCEAL MASSIVE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE
Ellen Brown, August 14th, 2008
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/wag_the_dog.php
“I’m in show business, why come to me?”
“War is show business, that’s why we’re here.”
– “Wag the Dog” (1997 film)
Last week, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had just announced record losses, and so had most reporting corporations. Unemployment was mounting, the foreclosure crisis was deepening, state budgets were in shambles, and massive bailouts were everywhere. Investors had every reason to expect the dollar and the stock market to plummet, and gold and oil to shoot up. Strangely, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 300 points, the dollar strengthened, and gold and oil were crushed. What happened?
It hardly took psychic powers to see that the Plunge Protection Team had come to the rescue. Formally known as the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, the PPT was once concealed and its very existence denied as if it were a matter of strict national security. But the PPT has now come out of the closet. What was once a legally questionable “manipulator” of markets has become a sanctioned stabilizer and protector of markets. The new tone was set in January 2008, when global markets took their worst tumble since September 11, 2001. Senator Hillary Clinton said in a statement reported by the State News Service:
“I think it’s imperative that the following step be taken. The President should have already and should do so very quickly, convene the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. That’s something that he can ask the Secretary of the Treasury to do. . . . This has to be coordinated across markets with the regulators here and obviously with regulators and central banks around the world.” 1
The mystery over what was going on with the dollar the first week in August was solved by James Turk, founder of GoldMoney, who wrote on August 7:
“[T]he banking problems in the United States continue to mount, while the federal government’s deficit continues to soar out of control. . . . So what happened to cause the dollar to rally over the past three weeks? In a word, intervention. Central banks have propped up the dollar, and here’s the proof.
“When central banks intervene in the currency markets, they exchange their currency for dollars. Central banks then use the dollars they acquire to buy US government debt instruments so that they can earn interest on their money. The debt instruments central banks acquire are held in custody for them at the Federal Reserve, which reports this amount weekly.
“On July 16, 2008 . . . , the Federal Reserve reported holding $2,349 billion of US government paper in custody for central banks. In its report released today, this amount had grown over the past three weeks to $2,401 billion, a 38.4% annual rate of growth. . . . So central banks were accumulating dollars over the past three weeks at a rate far above what one would expect as a result of the US trade deficit. The logical conclusion is that they were intervening in currency markets. They were buying dollars for the purpose of propping it up, to keep the dollar from falling off the edge of the cliff and doing so ignited a short covering rally, which is not too difficult to do given the leverage employed in the markets these days by hedge funds and others.”2
Just as central banks manipulate currencies in concert, so gold can be manipulated by massive selling of central bank reserves. Oil and any other market can be manipulated as well. But markets can be manipulated by only so much and for only so long without fixing the underlying problem. There is more bad news coming down the pike, news of such magnitude that no amount of ordinary manipulation is liable to conceal it.
For one thing, roughly $400 billion in ARMs (adjustable rate mortgages) have or will reset between March and October of this year. Assuming 3 to 6 months for strapped debtors to actually hit the wall with their payments, a huge wave of defaults is about to strike, continuing through March 2009 – just in time for the next huge wave of resets, in option ARMs.3 Option ARMs are loans with the option to pay even less than just the interest on the loan monthly, increasing the loan balance until the loan reaches a certain amount (typically 110% to 125% of the original loan balance), when it resets. The $800 billion credit line recently opened to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may be not only tapped but tapped out, at taxpayer expense. The underlying problem is little discussed but impossible to repair – a one quadrillion dollar derivatives scheme that is now imploding. Banks everywhere are facing massive writeoffs, putting the whole banking system on the brink of collapse. Only public bailouts will save it, but they could bankrupt the nation.
What to do? War and threats of war have been used historically to distract the population and deflect public scrutiny from economic calamity. As the scheme was summed up in the trailer to the 1997 movie “Wag the Dog” --
“There’s a crisis in the White House, and to save the election, they’d have to fake a war.”
Perhaps that explains the sudden breakout of war in the Eurasian country of Georgia on August 8, just 3 months before the November elections. August 8 was the day the Olympic Games began in Beijing, a distraction that may have been timed to keep China from intervening on Russia’s behalf. The mainstream media version of events is that Russia, the bully on the block, invaded its tiny neighbor Georgia; but not all commentators agree. Mikhail Gorbachev, writing in The Washington Post on August 12, observed:
“What happened on the night of Aug. 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas. Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against ‘small, defenseless Georgia’ is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity. . . . The Georgian leadership could do this only with the perceived support and encouragement of a much more powerful force.” 4
Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power, commented in OpEdNews on August 11:
“The U.S. has long been involved in supporting ‘freedom movements’ throughout this region that have been attempting to replace Russian influence with U.S. corporate control. The CIA, National Endowment for Democracy . . . , and Freedom House (includes Zbigniew Brzezinski, former CIA director James Woolsey, and Obama foreign policy adviser Anthony Lake) have been key funders and supporters of placing politicians in power throughout Central Asia that would play ball with ‘our side’. . . . None of this is about the good guys versus the bad guys. It is power bloc politics . . . . Big money is at stake . . . . [B]oth parties (Republican and Democrat) share a bi-partisan history and agenda of advancing corporate interests in this part of the world. Obama’s advisers, just like McCain’s (one of his top advisers was recently a lobbyist for the current government in Georgia) are thick in this stew.”5
Brzezinski, who is now Obama’s adviser, was Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy adviser in the 1970s. He also served in the 1970s as director of the Trilateral Commission, which he co-founded with David Rockefeller Sr., considered by some to be the “master spider” of the Wall Street banking network.6 Brzezinski, who wrote a book called The Grand Chessboard, later boasted of drawing Russia into war with Afghanistan in 1979, “giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War.”7 Is the Georgia affair an attempted repeat of that coup? Mike Whitney, a popular Internet commentator, observed on August 11:
“Washington’s bloody fingerprints are all over the invasion of South Ossetia. Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili would never dream of launching a massive military attack unless he got explicit orders from his bosses at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. After all, Saakashvili owes his entire political career to American power-brokers and US intelligence agencies. If he disobeyed them, he’d be gone in a fortnight. Besides an operation like this takes months of planning and logistical support; especially if it’s perfectly timed to coincide with the beginning of the Olympic games. (another petty neocon touch) That means Pentagon planners must have been working hand in hand with Georgian generals for months in advance. Nothing was left to chance.”8
Part of that careful planning may have been the unprecedented propping up of the dollar and bombing of gold and oil the week before the curtain opened on the scene. Gold and oil had to be pushed down hard to give them room to rise before anyone shouted “hyperinflation!” As we watch the curtain rise on war in Eurasia, it is well to remember that things are not always as they seem. Markets are manipulated and wars are staged by Grand Chessmen behind the scenes.
Ellen Brown, J.D., developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are webofdebt.com and ellenbrown.com.
WAG THE DOG: HOW TO CONCEAL MASSIVE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE
Ellen Brown, August 14th, 2008
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/wag_the_dog.php
“I’m in show business, why come to me?”
“War is show business, that’s why we’re here.”
– “Wag the Dog” (1997 film)
Last week, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had just announced record losses, and so had most reporting corporations. Unemployment was mounting, the foreclosure crisis was deepening, state budgets were in shambles, and massive bailouts were everywhere. Investors had every reason to expect the dollar and the stock market to plummet, and gold and oil to shoot up. Strangely, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 300 points, the dollar strengthened, and gold and oil were crushed. What happened?
It hardly took psychic powers to see that the Plunge Protection Team had come to the rescue. Formally known as the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, the PPT was once concealed and its very existence denied as if it were a matter of strict national security. But the PPT has now come out of the closet. What was once a legally questionable “manipulator” of markets has become a sanctioned stabilizer and protector of markets. The new tone was set in January 2008, when global markets took their worst tumble since September 11, 2001. Senator Hillary Clinton said in a statement reported by the State News Service:
“I think it’s imperative that the following step be taken. The President should have already and should do so very quickly, convene the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. That’s something that he can ask the Secretary of the Treasury to do. . . . This has to be coordinated across markets with the regulators here and obviously with regulators and central banks around the world.” 1
The mystery over what was going on with the dollar the first week in August was solved by James Turk, founder of GoldMoney, who wrote on August 7:
“[T]he banking problems in the United States continue to mount, while the federal government’s deficit continues to soar out of control. . . . So what happened to cause the dollar to rally over the past three weeks? In a word, intervention. Central banks have propped up the dollar, and here’s the proof.
“When central banks intervene in the currency markets, they exchange their currency for dollars. Central banks then use the dollars they acquire to buy US government debt instruments so that they can earn interest on their money. The debt instruments central banks acquire are held in custody for them at the Federal Reserve, which reports this amount weekly.
“On July 16, 2008 . . . , the Federal Reserve reported holding $2,349 billion of US government paper in custody for central banks. In its report released today, this amount had grown over the past three weeks to $2,401 billion, a 38.4% annual rate of growth. . . . So central banks were accumulating dollars over the past three weeks at a rate far above what one would expect as a result of the US trade deficit. The logical conclusion is that they were intervening in currency markets. They were buying dollars for the purpose of propping it up, to keep the dollar from falling off the edge of the cliff and doing so ignited a short covering rally, which is not too difficult to do given the leverage employed in the markets these days by hedge funds and others.”2
Just as central banks manipulate currencies in concert, so gold can be manipulated by massive selling of central bank reserves. Oil and any other market can be manipulated as well. But markets can be manipulated by only so much and for only so long without fixing the underlying problem. There is more bad news coming down the pike, news of such magnitude that no amount of ordinary manipulation is liable to conceal it.
For one thing, roughly $400 billion in ARMs (adjustable rate mortgages) have or will reset between March and October of this year. Assuming 3 to 6 months for strapped debtors to actually hit the wall with their payments, a huge wave of defaults is about to strike, continuing through March 2009 – just in time for the next huge wave of resets, in option ARMs.3 Option ARMs are loans with the option to pay even less than just the interest on the loan monthly, increasing the loan balance until the loan reaches a certain amount (typically 110% to 125% of the original loan balance), when it resets. The $800 billion credit line recently opened to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may be not only tapped but tapped out, at taxpayer expense. The underlying problem is little discussed but impossible to repair – a one quadrillion dollar derivatives scheme that is now imploding. Banks everywhere are facing massive writeoffs, putting the whole banking system on the brink of collapse. Only public bailouts will save it, but they could bankrupt the nation.
What to do? War and threats of war have been used historically to distract the population and deflect public scrutiny from economic calamity. As the scheme was summed up in the trailer to the 1997 movie “Wag the Dog” --
“There’s a crisis in the White House, and to save the election, they’d have to fake a war.”
Perhaps that explains the sudden breakout of war in the Eurasian country of Georgia on August 8, just 3 months before the November elections. August 8 was the day the Olympic Games began in Beijing, a distraction that may have been timed to keep China from intervening on Russia’s behalf. The mainstream media version of events is that Russia, the bully on the block, invaded its tiny neighbor Georgia; but not all commentators agree. Mikhail Gorbachev, writing in The Washington Post on August 12, observed:
“What happened on the night of Aug. 7 is beyond comprehension. The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas. Russia had to respond. To accuse it of aggression against ‘small, defenseless Georgia’ is not just hypocritical but shows a lack of humanity. . . . The Georgian leadership could do this only with the perceived support and encouragement of a much more powerful force.” 4
Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power, commented in OpEdNews on August 11:
“The U.S. has long been involved in supporting ‘freedom movements’ throughout this region that have been attempting to replace Russian influence with U.S. corporate control. The CIA, National Endowment for Democracy . . . , and Freedom House (includes Zbigniew Brzezinski, former CIA director James Woolsey, and Obama foreign policy adviser Anthony Lake) have been key funders and supporters of placing politicians in power throughout Central Asia that would play ball with ‘our side’. . . . None of this is about the good guys versus the bad guys. It is power bloc politics . . . . Big money is at stake . . . . [B]oth parties (Republican and Democrat) share a bi-partisan history and agenda of advancing corporate interests in this part of the world. Obama’s advisers, just like McCain’s (one of his top advisers was recently a lobbyist for the current government in Georgia) are thick in this stew.”5
Brzezinski, who is now Obama’s adviser, was Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy adviser in the 1970s. He also served in the 1970s as director of the Trilateral Commission, which he co-founded with David Rockefeller Sr., considered by some to be the “master spider” of the Wall Street banking network.6 Brzezinski, who wrote a book called The Grand Chessboard, later boasted of drawing Russia into war with Afghanistan in 1979, “giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War.”7 Is the Georgia affair an attempted repeat of that coup? Mike Whitney, a popular Internet commentator, observed on August 11:
“Washington’s bloody fingerprints are all over the invasion of South Ossetia. Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili would never dream of launching a massive military attack unless he got explicit orders from his bosses at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. After all, Saakashvili owes his entire political career to American power-brokers and US intelligence agencies. If he disobeyed them, he’d be gone in a fortnight. Besides an operation like this takes months of planning and logistical support; especially if it’s perfectly timed to coincide with the beginning of the Olympic games. (another petty neocon touch) That means Pentagon planners must have been working hand in hand with Georgian generals for months in advance. Nothing was left to chance.”8
Part of that careful planning may have been the unprecedented propping up of the dollar and bombing of gold and oil the week before the curtain opened on the scene. Gold and oil had to be pushed down hard to give them room to rise before anyone shouted “hyperinflation!” As we watch the curtain rise on war in Eurasia, it is well to remember that things are not always as they seem. Markets are manipulated and wars are staged by Grand Chessmen behind the scenes.
Ellen Brown, J.D., developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are webofdebt.com and ellenbrown.com.
from Rumor Mill News
CAR LOAN CALLED-ASSET SEIZURE BY BANK IN SPITE OF PERFECT PAYMENT RECORD!!!
I warned you... I warned you that the banks would resort to seizing assets of people even with perfect payment records.
Mr. Quayle;
This is unbelievable, Mr. Quayle! My wife and I had our car loan called in by U.S. Bancorp! We were NOT even notified ahead of time! They just took our 2003 Ford Focus wagon! We found it missing from our driveway the other morning!! We were NOT in default, and current with all payments!!!
U.S. Bancorp said that as lien holders, they reserve the right to take any financed car at ANY TIME and for ANY REASON!! We only had a year to go before the car was completely paid off!
They told us the car was being auctioned off any any monies received above and beyond the payoff would be paid to us. (Sure....) Other then this, we were no longer under any financial obligations to U.S. Bancorp, even if the car was sold for less than the payoff. (I even got that in writing!!!)
I can't believe this!!! This is insane!!!!
Now WHY would a bank do this UNLESS they were in SERIOUS financial trouble and needed to raise QUICK CAPITAL!!!!
Everyone is telling me to sue U.S. Bancorp. But why??? I say; let them have that old car! I'm out from under a debt. I'm free to pay cash for another vehicle.
But the manner in which this was literally stolen out from under us is just another indication that the bank crisis in this nation is GROWING!
Plant those gardens! Can those veggies! Stock up on food! The bottom is falling out from the banking industry....RAPIDLY!
CAR LOAN CALLED-ASSET SEIZURE BY BANK IN SPITE OF PERFECT PAYMENT RECORD!!!
I warned you... I warned you that the banks would resort to seizing assets of people even with perfect payment records.
Mr. Quayle;
This is unbelievable, Mr. Quayle! My wife and I had our car loan called in by U.S. Bancorp! We were NOT even notified ahead of time! They just took our 2003 Ford Focus wagon! We found it missing from our driveway the other morning!! We were NOT in default, and current with all payments!!!
U.S. Bancorp said that as lien holders, they reserve the right to take any financed car at ANY TIME and for ANY REASON!! We only had a year to go before the car was completely paid off!
They told us the car was being auctioned off any any monies received above and beyond the payoff would be paid to us. (Sure....) Other then this, we were no longer under any financial obligations to U.S. Bancorp, even if the car was sold for less than the payoff. (I even got that in writing!!!)
I can't believe this!!! This is insane!!!!
Now WHY would a bank do this UNLESS they were in SERIOUS financial trouble and needed to raise QUICK CAPITAL!!!!
Everyone is telling me to sue U.S. Bancorp. But why??? I say; let them have that old car! I'm out from under a debt. I'm free to pay cash for another vehicle.
But the manner in which this was literally stolen out from under us is just another indication that the bank crisis in this nation is GROWING!
Plant those gardens! Can those veggies! Stock up on food! The bottom is falling out from the banking industry....RAPIDLY!
from rense.com
$5 Trillion To Bail Out Fannie And Freddie
From Cliff Mickelson 7-14-8
HEY BUDDY!....GOT AN EXTRA 5 TRILLION?.....
....Because that's what it's going to take to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...
But, not to worry! Our fearless leaders can simply order the Treasury Dept. to print it up and we can borrow it back with interest from the not-so-Federal Reserve! Makes perfect voodoo-economic sense to me!
My only other issue with the otherwise acerbic NY Times article linked below is it's half-hearted attempt to make excuses for the actions of the Federal Reserve under the tenure of Lord Greenspan.
Despite what we are told ad-nauseam by the press...The actions of the Fed under the Marionette hand of "Sir" Greenspan were NOT erroneous. Greenspan (and the shadowy clique of International Banksters who pulled his strings) knew EXACTLY what they were doing. (And...This aint the first time, Virginia)
What we see happening now is just part of the same old plan. You will notice that the Fed is now rushing forward to be an integral part of the "solution"! How selfless and considerate of them! Are we grateful yet?
Of course we are!...The gullible American Sheeple will bleat thankfully as they follow their Judas-Goat leadership all the way to the Bankster's final solution.
Perhaps, from a historical point of view.. its all for the best. Somebody needs to end this charade and finally put Lassie out of her misery! It's painful to watch the betrayed trust of the doe-eyed old girl continue to limp on so faithfully.
-Cliff Mickelson
$5 Trillion To Bail Out Fannie And Freddie
From Cliff Mickelson 7-14-8
HEY BUDDY!....GOT AN EXTRA 5 TRILLION?.....
....Because that's what it's going to take to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...
But, not to worry! Our fearless leaders can simply order the Treasury Dept. to print it up and we can borrow it back with interest from the not-so-Federal Reserve! Makes perfect voodoo-economic sense to me!
My only other issue with the otherwise acerbic NY Times article linked below is it's half-hearted attempt to make excuses for the actions of the Federal Reserve under the tenure of Lord Greenspan.
Despite what we are told ad-nauseam by the press...The actions of the Fed under the Marionette hand of "Sir" Greenspan were NOT erroneous. Greenspan (and the shadowy clique of International Banksters who pulled his strings) knew EXACTLY what they were doing. (And...This aint the first time, Virginia)
What we see happening now is just part of the same old plan. You will notice that the Fed is now rushing forward to be an integral part of the "solution"! How selfless and considerate of them! Are we grateful yet?
Of course we are!...The gullible American Sheeple will bleat thankfully as they follow their Judas-Goat leadership all the way to the Bankster's final solution.
Perhaps, from a historical point of view.. its all for the best. Somebody needs to end this charade and finally put Lassie out of her misery! It's painful to watch the betrayed trust of the doe-eyed old girl continue to limp on so faithfully.
-Cliff Mickelson
From Loadworkout.org
Angry Consumers Flood Federal Reserve Board with Complaints
By Moe Bedard on July 2nd, 2008
The message is out to struggling consumers and the Federal Reserve may be sorry they offered a helping hand to the millions of consumers who are drowning in credit card debt and in their homes.
Apparently the Federal Reserve has been inundated with over 8,200 consumer complaints against various banking and lending institutions for credit card abuse and predatory lending. The Fed’s inbox has been full since it invited personal comments regarding a proposed new rule to end “Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices.” Sarah Byrnes said, Campaign Manager of Americans for Fairness in Lending (AFFIL)
Here are some of the complaints from Federal Reserves Freedom of Imformation Office:
“I get a form letter from Bank of America that says my interest rate is going to be raised from 7.9% to 21.99%. Why? Because I have a large balance that I haven’t paid off and I carry balances on a few other cards. Never mind that I’m not late, overlimit or anything else that would be a problem.” — Angela, Louisville, Kentucky
“The worst is Bank of America….The worst experience with this card was when I received my statement the other day. There was a $39 late fee on it. I knew that I paid on time and when I called the rep stated that I ‘paid too early’ so that it was applied to my previous billing cycle. Therefore, it was if I hadn’t made any payment in [the] current billing cycle. I have never heard of such a thing, being penalized for paying too soon.” — Eileen, Farmingdale, New York
“My husband and I recently experienced Bank of America raising our interest rate on our credit card from 13% to over 24%. The reason they sited [sic] was because they ‘re-evaluated’ our credit history…. Thankfully we continue to pay all our bills on time but these actions are predatory as I feel like they are in a dark corner just waiting to pounce.” — Jennifer, Fort Meyers, Florida
“Back when the President signed the new bankruptcy law, all my credit cards doubled the minimum payment and at least doubled my interest rates. What was a $100 minimum payment with a 9.99% interest rate went to $200 a month at 28%. I had to open more cards to transfer balances to help pay the other cards. Now I have to file for bankruptcy.” — Tim, Troy, Ohio
From the AAFIL:
“Americans are telling the Federal Reserve Board in no uncertain terms that they have had enough of these tricks and traps. Consumers are demanding strong federal regulations to ban the most egregious credit card practices—doubling and tripling interest rates, applying these higher interest rates retroactively to outstanding balances, imposing exorbitant penalty fees, and requiring binding mandatory arbitration clauses. But many wonder whether the Fed will listen to banks more than consumers and come down on the side of ‘business as usual.’ There’s no doubt that the banks are pressuring the Fed to tone down the proposed changes.
“Our government protects us from unsafe foods and drugs. Shouldn’t we demand reasonable protection against dangerous lending practices that deplete and destroy assets? We believe that consumer voices are what’s missing in the dialogue between banks and the Federal Reserve Board. That’s why AFFIL is helping consumers to contact the Fed during this period through its website http://www.affil.org. The Fed’s invitation for comments remains open through August 4, 2008.”
More information from the Federal Reserve:
Regulation AA - Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices [R-1314 ]
Interagency proposed rule prohibiting institutions from engaging in certain acts or practices in connection with consumer credit card accounts and overdraft services for deposit accounts
Angry Consumers Flood Federal Reserve Board with Complaints
By Moe Bedard on July 2nd, 2008
The message is out to struggling consumers and the Federal Reserve may be sorry they offered a helping hand to the millions of consumers who are drowning in credit card debt and in their homes.
Apparently the Federal Reserve has been inundated with over 8,200 consumer complaints against various banking and lending institutions for credit card abuse and predatory lending. The Fed’s inbox has been full since it invited personal comments regarding a proposed new rule to end “Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices.” Sarah Byrnes said, Campaign Manager of Americans for Fairness in Lending (AFFIL)
Here are some of the complaints from Federal Reserves Freedom of Imformation Office:
“I get a form letter from Bank of America that says my interest rate is going to be raised from 7.9% to 21.99%. Why? Because I have a large balance that I haven’t paid off and I carry balances on a few other cards. Never mind that I’m not late, overlimit or anything else that would be a problem.” — Angela, Louisville, Kentucky
“The worst is Bank of America….The worst experience with this card was when I received my statement the other day. There was a $39 late fee on it. I knew that I paid on time and when I called the rep stated that I ‘paid too early’ so that it was applied to my previous billing cycle. Therefore, it was if I hadn’t made any payment in [the] current billing cycle. I have never heard of such a thing, being penalized for paying too soon.” — Eileen, Farmingdale, New York
“My husband and I recently experienced Bank of America raising our interest rate on our credit card from 13% to over 24%. The reason they sited [sic] was because they ‘re-evaluated’ our credit history…. Thankfully we continue to pay all our bills on time but these actions are predatory as I feel like they are in a dark corner just waiting to pounce.” — Jennifer, Fort Meyers, Florida
“Back when the President signed the new bankruptcy law, all my credit cards doubled the minimum payment and at least doubled my interest rates. What was a $100 minimum payment with a 9.99% interest rate went to $200 a month at 28%. I had to open more cards to transfer balances to help pay the other cards. Now I have to file for bankruptcy.” — Tim, Troy, Ohio
From the AAFIL:
“Americans are telling the Federal Reserve Board in no uncertain terms that they have had enough of these tricks and traps. Consumers are demanding strong federal regulations to ban the most egregious credit card practices—doubling and tripling interest rates, applying these higher interest rates retroactively to outstanding balances, imposing exorbitant penalty fees, and requiring binding mandatory arbitration clauses. But many wonder whether the Fed will listen to banks more than consumers and come down on the side of ‘business as usual.’ There’s no doubt that the banks are pressuring the Fed to tone down the proposed changes.
“Our government protects us from unsafe foods and drugs. Shouldn’t we demand reasonable protection against dangerous lending practices that deplete and destroy assets? We believe that consumer voices are what’s missing in the dialogue between banks and the Federal Reserve Board. That’s why AFFIL is helping consumers to contact the Fed during this period through its website http://www.affil.org. The Fed’s invitation for comments remains open through August 4, 2008.”
More information from the Federal Reserve:
Regulation AA - Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices [R-1314 ]
Interagency proposed rule prohibiting institutions from engaging in certain acts or practices in connection with consumer credit card accounts and overdraft services for deposit accounts
From Rumor Mill News
"SUCKERNOMICS"
By Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D. April 24, 2006
1, Don't teach students basic reading and math skills, so they will not be able to compete economically against those of other nations.
2, Convince Americans that more money is needed to solve our educational problems, even though a tremendous increase in educational funding has occurred over the past 4 decades, with negative results.
3, Teach children that petroleum products come from decayed fossils, even though there is no evidence of massive numbers of dinosaurs or massive amounts of vegetation in Middle Eastern desert regions or in the North Sea or near Alaska where large deposits of oil have been found. Don't let them know petroleum products are plentiful and come from methane derivatives, available through deep-drilling techniques used by the Russians for decades. Otherwise, they won't believe there's an oil shortage, and pay continuously rising prices.
4, Require Americans to pay about 40% of their annual income in taxes, but tell them that they are still better off than the serfs of feudal days who paid a smaller percent of their production to the nobles.
5, Persuade Americans that they should pay taxes for government programs which operate less efficiently than if run by private enterprise.
6, Entice Americans to purchase items on credit, even though that increases the cost of the goods by 10-20%.
7, Have Americans place a large percent of their paycheck into a Social Security "Trust Fund," which Congress then raids, leaving future senior citizens wondering what happened to their hard-earned money for retirement.
8, Allow the federal government to get away with posting an inflation rate that does not include increases in the price of food and fuel. This also allows the federal government to pay senior citizens less in Social Security benefits each year, because cost-of-living increases are not based upon an accurate inflation rate.
9, Give authority regarding trade decisions to the World Trade Organization, run by unelected bureaucrats overseas who can tell Congress it has to change our laws. Convince Americans that this is "free trade" when it is actually "managed trade," because many nations still have trade restrictions and subsidize industries in their own countries.
10, Dismiss calls for "fair trade," claiming American workers can compete against slave and child labor.
11, Persuade Americans there are still such things as "American corporations" as ownership increasingly goes overseas (e.g., 97% of sound recording industries, 65% of metal ore mining, 64% of motion picture and video industries, 63% of book publishers, etc.).
12, Have Americans believe that profits from American companies still stay in the U.S. (e.g., Amoco's profits go to England, Random House's and Chrysler's profits go to Germany, Gerber's profits go to Switzerland, TransAmerica's profits go to The Netherlands, etc.).
13, Convince Americans that government incentives for American companies to locate offices/jobs overseas will not harm the job prospects of American workers (even comedian Jay Leno said President Bush went to India to visit the American jobs that had relocated there).
14, Persuade Americans that NAFTA and GATT would bring high-paying high-tech jobs to the U.S., while increasing numbers of high-tech jobs are outsourced to India, etc., and while President Bush and Congress propose dramatically increasing (from 65,000 to 350,00 annually) the number of H-1B visas so that high-tech foreign workers can come to the U.S.
15, Convince Americans that increasing numbers of guest workers working for minimum wage (because they are placed, for example, 10 in a house and pay only 1/10th each for expenses) will not undercut American workers in many industries (e.g., fast foods, construction, hotel and motel, grass-cutting, carpet-cleaning, etc.) who have to pay 100% of their own expenses.
16, Persuade Americans increasingly to purchase cheap foreign-made products here, leaving them to wonder why they cannot find a good-paying American job anymore.
17, Convince Americans that they have still gotten their monies' worth purchasing cheap products from overseas even though they don't last as long as American-made products.
18, Have government severely regulate/limit the use of people's private property, but still require them to pay the full amount of taxes on their property.
19, Force/coerce people to turn over their private property to the government in the name of preserving a pristine environment, but then this same property is contracted out to developers/mining companies, etc., for exploitation.
20, Drastically reduce the United States manufacturing base, yet assure Americans that having missile parts, etc., made in Communist China or elsewhere will not compromise our national security at any time, especially during wartime.
21, Persuade Americans that building up the economy of Communist China via investment and trade will not strengthen their military with which they can threaten/attack us. Also convince Americans that giving the Communist Chinese advanced missile technology will not aid them militarily either, if they decide to attack the U.S., Taiwan, Japan, or some other nation in the future.
22, Assure Americans that genetically modified foods and animals are economically beneficial, even though the long-term health consequences of such genetic modification is unknown. In an experiment, half of a field was planted with unmodified soybeans and the other half of the field with genetically modified soybeans----geese refused to eat the genetically modified soybeans! Do they know something we don't know?
23, Spend millions of American tax dollars to build the Panama Canal and then hand it over to a Panamanian dictator who sells operation rights at either end of the canal to the Communist Chinese who could destroy it if in a war with the U.S. in the future.
24, Have millions of American tax dollars spent on political campaigns to oust Slobodan Milosevic as leader of Yugoslavia at the same time Americans are expressing outrage over Communist Chinese political campaign contributions to American candidates.
25, Spend millions of American tax dollars on textbooks teaching Afghan children jihad (holy war) against foreign invaders, causing the Afghans when grown to fight against the U.S. invasion.
26, Americans give millions of dollars in foreign aid to countries that give large amounts of money to terrorists who want to destroy us (this is the "sell them the rope with which they'll hang us" principle).
27, Convince Americans that the unemployment rate is going down, when this figure does not include those who have stopped looking for work. Also, hide the fact that many who have been laid off jobs and found new employment are now working in the service industries which pay less than their former jobs. Thus, while they are counted as "employed," they have less purchasing power.
28, Condition the American people to abandon moral principles in order to benefit economically. For example, the reason Americans can buy cheap Chinese products in the U.S. is because the Communist Chinese dictatorship can force laborers to work cheaply or go to prison where they sometimes are raped. Therefore, Americans have accepted the immoral attitude that it's allowable for women and men to be threatened with imprisonment (where they may be raped) if that's what it takes to buy cheap shirts, shoes, etc., in the U.S.
29, Have the American people accept the U.S. going from having the greatest economy in the world to being the greatest debtor nation. Former President Clinton recently said the only way we can pay for the Katrina disaster is the extent to which China is willing to continue to buy our debt. This makes us subject to international blackmail.
30, Condition the American people passively to accept Congressional provisions for offshore tax shelters for their corporate friends, at the same time the U.S. faces serious problems concerning the national debt, budget deficits, trade imbalances, the dollar's loss in value, many personal bankruptcies, and a high tax rate for the rest of us.
"SUCKERNOMICS"
By Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D. April 24, 2006
1, Don't teach students basic reading and math skills, so they will not be able to compete economically against those of other nations.
2, Convince Americans that more money is needed to solve our educational problems, even though a tremendous increase in educational funding has occurred over the past 4 decades, with negative results.
3, Teach children that petroleum products come from decayed fossils, even though there is no evidence of massive numbers of dinosaurs or massive amounts of vegetation in Middle Eastern desert regions or in the North Sea or near Alaska where large deposits of oil have been found. Don't let them know petroleum products are plentiful and come from methane derivatives, available through deep-drilling techniques used by the Russians for decades. Otherwise, they won't believe there's an oil shortage, and pay continuously rising prices.
4, Require Americans to pay about 40% of their annual income in taxes, but tell them that they are still better off than the serfs of feudal days who paid a smaller percent of their production to the nobles.
5, Persuade Americans that they should pay taxes for government programs which operate less efficiently than if run by private enterprise.
6, Entice Americans to purchase items on credit, even though that increases the cost of the goods by 10-20%.
7, Have Americans place a large percent of their paycheck into a Social Security "Trust Fund," which Congress then raids, leaving future senior citizens wondering what happened to their hard-earned money for retirement.
8, Allow the federal government to get away with posting an inflation rate that does not include increases in the price of food and fuel. This also allows the federal government to pay senior citizens less in Social Security benefits each year, because cost-of-living increases are not based upon an accurate inflation rate.
9, Give authority regarding trade decisions to the World Trade Organization, run by unelected bureaucrats overseas who can tell Congress it has to change our laws. Convince Americans that this is "free trade" when it is actually "managed trade," because many nations still have trade restrictions and subsidize industries in their own countries.
10, Dismiss calls for "fair trade," claiming American workers can compete against slave and child labor.
11, Persuade Americans there are still such things as "American corporations" as ownership increasingly goes overseas (e.g., 97% of sound recording industries, 65% of metal ore mining, 64% of motion picture and video industries, 63% of book publishers, etc.).
12, Have Americans believe that profits from American companies still stay in the U.S. (e.g., Amoco's profits go to England, Random House's and Chrysler's profits go to Germany, Gerber's profits go to Switzerland, TransAmerica's profits go to The Netherlands, etc.).
13, Convince Americans that government incentives for American companies to locate offices/jobs overseas will not harm the job prospects of American workers (even comedian Jay Leno said President Bush went to India to visit the American jobs that had relocated there).
14, Persuade Americans that NAFTA and GATT would bring high-paying high-tech jobs to the U.S., while increasing numbers of high-tech jobs are outsourced to India, etc., and while President Bush and Congress propose dramatically increasing (from 65,000 to 350,00 annually) the number of H-1B visas so that high-tech foreign workers can come to the U.S.
15, Convince Americans that increasing numbers of guest workers working for minimum wage (because they are placed, for example, 10 in a house and pay only 1/10th each for expenses) will not undercut American workers in many industries (e.g., fast foods, construction, hotel and motel, grass-cutting, carpet-cleaning, etc.) who have to pay 100% of their own expenses.
16, Persuade Americans increasingly to purchase cheap foreign-made products here, leaving them to wonder why they cannot find a good-paying American job anymore.
17, Convince Americans that they have still gotten their monies' worth purchasing cheap products from overseas even though they don't last as long as American-made products.
18, Have government severely regulate/limit the use of people's private property, but still require them to pay the full amount of taxes on their property.
19, Force/coerce people to turn over their private property to the government in the name of preserving a pristine environment, but then this same property is contracted out to developers/mining companies, etc., for exploitation.
20, Drastically reduce the United States manufacturing base, yet assure Americans that having missile parts, etc., made in Communist China or elsewhere will not compromise our national security at any time, especially during wartime.
21, Persuade Americans that building up the economy of Communist China via investment and trade will not strengthen their military with which they can threaten/attack us. Also convince Americans that giving the Communist Chinese advanced missile technology will not aid them militarily either, if they decide to attack the U.S., Taiwan, Japan, or some other nation in the future.
22, Assure Americans that genetically modified foods and animals are economically beneficial, even though the long-term health consequences of such genetic modification is unknown. In an experiment, half of a field was planted with unmodified soybeans and the other half of the field with genetically modified soybeans----geese refused to eat the genetically modified soybeans! Do they know something we don't know?
23, Spend millions of American tax dollars to build the Panama Canal and then hand it over to a Panamanian dictator who sells operation rights at either end of the canal to the Communist Chinese who could destroy it if in a war with the U.S. in the future.
24, Have millions of American tax dollars spent on political campaigns to oust Slobodan Milosevic as leader of Yugoslavia at the same time Americans are expressing outrage over Communist Chinese political campaign contributions to American candidates.
25, Spend millions of American tax dollars on textbooks teaching Afghan children jihad (holy war) against foreign invaders, causing the Afghans when grown to fight against the U.S. invasion.
26, Americans give millions of dollars in foreign aid to countries that give large amounts of money to terrorists who want to destroy us (this is the "sell them the rope with which they'll hang us" principle).
27, Convince Americans that the unemployment rate is going down, when this figure does not include those who have stopped looking for work. Also, hide the fact that many who have been laid off jobs and found new employment are now working in the service industries which pay less than their former jobs. Thus, while they are counted as "employed," they have less purchasing power.
28, Condition the American people to abandon moral principles in order to benefit economically. For example, the reason Americans can buy cheap Chinese products in the U.S. is because the Communist Chinese dictatorship can force laborers to work cheaply or go to prison where they sometimes are raped. Therefore, Americans have accepted the immoral attitude that it's allowable for women and men to be threatened with imprisonment (where they may be raped) if that's what it takes to buy cheap shirts, shoes, etc., in the U.S.
29, Have the American people accept the U.S. going from having the greatest economy in the world to being the greatest debtor nation. Former President Clinton recently said the only way we can pay for the Katrina disaster is the extent to which China is willing to continue to buy our debt. This makes us subject to international blackmail.
30, Condition the American people passively to accept Congressional provisions for offshore tax shelters for their corporate friends, at the same time the U.S. faces serious problems concerning the national debt, budget deficits, trade imbalances, the dollar's loss in value, many personal bankruptcies, and a high tax rate for the rest of us.
From Financial Oracle
Washington, DC - Hidden deep in Senator Christopher Dodd's 630-page Senate housing legislation is a sweeping provision that affects the privacy and operation of nearly all of America 's small businesses. The provision, which was added by the bill's managers without debate this week, would require the nation's payment systems to track, aggregate, and report information on nearly every electronic transaction to the federal government.
FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey commented: "This is a provision with astonishing reach, and it was slipped into the bill just this week. Not only does it affect nearly every credit card transaction in America , such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express, but the bill specifically targets payment systems like eBay's PayPal, Amazon, and Google Checkout that are used by many small online businesses. The privacy implications for America 's small businesses are breathtaking."
What is Senator Dodd up to? The concept of this bill is to create a repository of all financial transactions. For whom? Let's hope this legislation doesn't pass.
Washington, DC - Hidden deep in Senator Christopher Dodd's 630-page Senate housing legislation is a sweeping provision that affects the privacy and operation of nearly all of America 's small businesses. The provision, which was added by the bill's managers without debate this week, would require the nation's payment systems to track, aggregate, and report information on nearly every electronic transaction to the federal government.
FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey commented: "This is a provision with astonishing reach, and it was slipped into the bill just this week. Not only does it affect nearly every credit card transaction in America , such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express, but the bill specifically targets payment systems like eBay's PayPal, Amazon, and Google Checkout that are used by many small online businesses. The privacy implications for America 's small businesses are breathtaking."
What is Senator Dodd up to? The concept of this bill is to create a repository of all financial transactions. For whom? Let's hope this legislation doesn't pass.
From Unknown News
The greatest screwjob ever
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News June 15, 2008
It happens in publicly traded corporations all the time, Enron being the most notorious example -- management goes rogue, cooks the books, and makes off with a fortune before anyone gets wise leading to bankruptcy, investor losses and job losses.
That is exactly what happened to USA Inc. Our treasury has been looted, taken to offshore banks with secret accounts, and we have been left with a mind-numbing debt that our great, great grandchildren will still be paying off.
That's the unnerving, crazymaking thing. In spite of the fact that we know the Bush/Cheney gang is looting the country to the last dime on the last credit card and rapidly going after every dollar of our money, which should be being spent on pressing needs like education, health and caring for our growing crowd of wounded vets, we can't get anything done about it! read
The greatest screwjob ever
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News June 15, 2008
It happens in publicly traded corporations all the time, Enron being the most notorious example -- management goes rogue, cooks the books, and makes off with a fortune before anyone gets wise leading to bankruptcy, investor losses and job losses.
That is exactly what happened to USA Inc. Our treasury has been looted, taken to offshore banks with secret accounts, and we have been left with a mind-numbing debt that our great, great grandchildren will still be paying off.
That's the unnerving, crazymaking thing. In spite of the fact that we know the Bush/Cheney gang is looting the country to the last dime on the last credit card and rapidly going after every dollar of our money, which should be being spent on pressing needs like education, health and caring for our growing crowd of wounded vets, we can't get anything done about it! read
Spending On Iraq Poorly Tracked
Pentagon Audit Cannot Find $15 Billion
By Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 23, 2008; D01
The inspector general for the Defense Department said yesterday that the Pentagon cannot account for almost $15 billion worth of goods and services ranging from trucks, bottled water and mattresses to rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns that were bought from contractors in the Iraq reconstruction effort.
The Pentagon did not have the proper documentation, including receipts, vouchers, signatures, invoices or other paperwork, for $7.8 billion that American and Iraqi contractors were paid for phones, folders, paint, blankets, Nissan trucks, laundry services and other items, according to a 69-page audit released to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
An earlier audit by the inspector general found deficiencies in accounting for $5.2 billion of U.S. payments to buy weapons, trucks, generators and other equipment for Iraq's security forces. In addition, the Defense Department spent $1.8 billion of seized Iraqi assets with "absolutely no accountability," according to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who chairs the oversight committee. The Pentagon also kept poor records on $135 million that it paid to its partners in the multinational military force in Iraq, auditors said.
The Army disagreed with some of the auditors' findings, saying that it is difficult to maintain an adequate paper trail in a war zone and that it has improved its record-keeping and accountability efforts. Robert L. Wilkie, assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs, declined an invitation to testify before from Waxman's committee. read
Pentagon Audit Cannot Find $15 Billion
By Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 23, 2008; D01
The inspector general for the Defense Department said yesterday that the Pentagon cannot account for almost $15 billion worth of goods and services ranging from trucks, bottled water and mattresses to rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns that were bought from contractors in the Iraq reconstruction effort.
The Pentagon did not have the proper documentation, including receipts, vouchers, signatures, invoices or other paperwork, for $7.8 billion that American and Iraqi contractors were paid for phones, folders, paint, blankets, Nissan trucks, laundry services and other items, according to a 69-page audit released to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
An earlier audit by the inspector general found deficiencies in accounting for $5.2 billion of U.S. payments to buy weapons, trucks, generators and other equipment for Iraq's security forces. In addition, the Defense Department spent $1.8 billion of seized Iraqi assets with "absolutely no accountability," according to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who chairs the oversight committee. The Pentagon also kept poor records on $135 million that it paid to its partners in the multinational military force in Iraq, auditors said.
The Army disagreed with some of the auditors' findings, saying that it is difficult to maintain an adequate paper trail in a war zone and that it has improved its record-keeping and accountability efforts. Robert L. Wilkie, assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs, declined an invitation to testify before from Waxman's committee. read
Almost 900 Iraq reconstruction projects unfinished
Posted Mon Apr 28, 2008 3:33pm AEST
A review of US-funded reconstruction projects in Iraq has found that millions of dollars have been wasted because almost 900 separate projects have never been completed.
The reconstruction of Iraq has cost American taxpayers more than $107 billion.
An audit by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction shows that at least 855 contracts to help build schools, hospitals and transport systems have never been completed because of excessive cost or delays, poor performance or violent conditions.
The audit also says that many reconstruction projects were being described as complete or successful when they were not.
Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, said: "The report paints a depressing picture of money being poured into failed Iraq reconstruction projects. read
Posted Mon Apr 28, 2008 3:33pm AEST
A review of US-funded reconstruction projects in Iraq has found that millions of dollars have been wasted because almost 900 separate projects have never been completed.
The reconstruction of Iraq has cost American taxpayers more than $107 billion.
An audit by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction shows that at least 855 contracts to help build schools, hospitals and transport systems have never been completed because of excessive cost or delays, poor performance or violent conditions.
The audit also says that many reconstruction projects were being described as complete or successful when they were not.
Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, said: "The report paints a depressing picture of money being poured into failed Iraq reconstruction projects. read
Admitted: Income Tax Never Properly Ratified
From What Really Happened.Com
Sullivan v USA
Posted Apr 9, 2008 04:50 PM PST Category: TAXES
A lot of people asked me to give this a more prominent link. This is a transcript from the court trial mentioned in Aaron Russo's "America: From Freedom to Fascism." On page 23 of this transcript, Judge James C. Fox admits that the 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Amendment on which the income tax is based, was never properly ratified.
This is a rare admission for a Judge to make, given that the entire court system (including the Judge's salary) is funded from tax revenues, but in this case, the Judge states what we have known all along; when the relevant documents are actually examined, as opposed to the majority of Judges who simply declare the Amendment ratified by judicial fiat (a power and authority NOT granted to them under the Constitution), it cannot be demonstrated that the 16th amendment was ratified.
Now, as you fill out that 1040 form this week, just think about how the government lied to you about Saddam's "Nookular" bombs, and ask yourself if you trust the government to tell you the truth about the law that they claim allows them to take so much of your money.
"Fool me once..."
From What Really Happened.Com
Sullivan v USA
Posted Apr 9, 2008 04:50 PM PST Category: TAXES
A lot of people asked me to give this a more prominent link. This is a transcript from the court trial mentioned in Aaron Russo's "America: From Freedom to Fascism." On page 23 of this transcript, Judge James C. Fox admits that the 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Amendment on which the income tax is based, was never properly ratified.
This is a rare admission for a Judge to make, given that the entire court system (including the Judge's salary) is funded from tax revenues, but in this case, the Judge states what we have known all along; when the relevant documents are actually examined, as opposed to the majority of Judges who simply declare the Amendment ratified by judicial fiat (a power and authority NOT granted to them under the Constitution), it cannot be demonstrated that the 16th amendment was ratified.
Now, as you fill out that 1040 form this week, just think about how the government lied to you about Saddam's "Nookular" bombs, and ask yourself if you trust the government to tell you the truth about the law that they claim allows them to take so much of your money.
"Fool me once..."
The Final Trump Of Britain Over America Read
Closer Fianancial And Regulatory Ties Sealing Two Countries As One
By Joan M. Veon 4-5-8
The Women's International Media Group, Inc WomensGroup.org
Closer Fianancial And Regulatory Ties Sealing Two Countries As One
By Joan M. Veon 4-5-8
The Women's International Media Group, Inc WomensGroup.org
Bear Stearns Bailout Proves US Fed is Merely an Extension of the Financial Industry
What is a Plunge Protection Team?
What is a Plunge Protection Team?
American Economic Refugees fleeing to Canada! more
In September of 2007, the city of Windsor, which borders the United States, officially asked for financial assistance from Ottawa to deal with American refugees flooding into Canada. This is proving to be the tip of the iceberg, and only the first wave of economic refugees that have been created in the United States.
There are now tent cities being built outside most large metropolitan areas, one of the largest of which is in Los Angeles. The following report from the BBC highlights the consequence of the US subprime meltdown and the fears that the crisis is growing. > more
In September of 2007, the city of Windsor, which borders the United States, officially asked for financial assistance from Ottawa to deal with American refugees flooding into Canada. This is proving to be the tip of the iceberg, and only the first wave of economic refugees that have been created in the United States.
There are now tent cities being built outside most large metropolitan areas, one of the largest of which is in Los Angeles. The following report from the BBC highlights the consequence of the US subprime meltdown and the fears that the crisis is growing. > more
Bearns buyout very suspicious more
Reuters
By Martha Graybow
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stunned Bear Stearns shareholders who saw investments virtually wiped out overnight when a takeover deal with JPMorgan Chase was unveiled are demanding to know how it was put together in the first place.
For instance, they -- and Washington lawmakers -- want answers on how the deal was arranged, and gained government approval and financing, all in a few hours, and seemingly without alternative bidders being canvassed.
Reuters
By Martha Graybow
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stunned Bear Stearns shareholders who saw investments virtually wiped out overnight when a takeover deal with JPMorgan Chase was unveiled are demanding to know how it was put together in the first place.
For instance, they -- and Washington lawmakers -- want answers on how the deal was arranged, and gained government approval and financing, all in a few hours, and seemingly without alternative bidders being canvassed.
Huffington Post: Fraud for Iraq Contractors Unchecked more
WASHINGTON — House Democrats demanded documents Thursday about a multibillion-dollar overseas contracting loophole to track down how _ and why _ the Bush administration slipped it into plans to protect taxpayer money.
Leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee gave the administration until April 4 to turn over the documents or, aides have said, face a possible subpoena.
The controversial loophole has irked Democrats and Republicans alike. But it has the support of a trade association that lobbies on behalf of giant global government contractors, including Blackwater USA, KBR Inc., Boeing Co., CACI International Inc. and Lockheed Martin.
The United States has spent more than $102 billion over the last five years to help rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. In that time, the Justice Department has uncovered at least $14 million in contract bribes in those two nations alone.
WASHINGTON — House Democrats demanded documents Thursday about a multibillion-dollar overseas contracting loophole to track down how _ and why _ the Bush administration slipped it into plans to protect taxpayer money.
Leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee gave the administration until April 4 to turn over the documents or, aides have said, face a possible subpoena.
The controversial loophole has irked Democrats and Republicans alike. But it has the support of a trade association that lobbies on behalf of giant global government contractors, including Blackwater USA, KBR Inc., Boeing Co., CACI International Inc. and Lockheed Martin.
The United States has spent more than $102 billion over the last five years to help rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. In that time, the Justice Department has uncovered at least $14 million in contract bribes in those two nations alone.
Got Your Attention Yet?
Are you starting to link the utterly insane practices of the so-called Republican economic policies of the Bush administrations with our impending financial meltdown in the US? Is it starting to make sense now? The obscene amounts of money 'spent' in a frivolous war is now starting to come into focus. Let's ask ourselves again. We're in Iraq for what purpose? Why are we there?
If you say weapons of mass delusion, then you are right.
Gas has TRIPLED since Bush started office. The dollar is at it's lowest point in history compared to foreign currency. Inflation is much higher than advertised. (At least 10%, probably more like 14%).
Thanks for your great leadership, Georgie boy. Thanks for your great moral example. It's much better than before.
CNN Warns of a Severe Recession
From WhatReallyHappened.COM
CNN Warns Americans A New Great Depression Is Coming
An economy survives and prospers when the money circulates around, creating products that sell to generate more revenue.
In contrast, money taken out of the economy and poured into weapons development is "dead ended." The weapons either sit in storage until they become obsolete and are junked (which costs money to do) or used in war where they are destroyed. In neither case so these expensive devices create products that we can sell to bring more money into the system.
When too much money is dead ended in weapons, too little remains in general circulation to support the society and the infrastructure on which it depends. The economy and that society stutter to a halt, after having suffered through cheapened roads, cheapened schools, cheapened hospitals, etc.
The USSR collapsed when military spending choked the life out of their economy. Why the US Government persists in making the same mistake is a mystery.
CNN Warns Americans A New Great Depression Is Coming
An economy survives and prospers when the money circulates around, creating products that sell to generate more revenue.
In contrast, money taken out of the economy and poured into weapons development is "dead ended." The weapons either sit in storage until they become obsolete and are junked (which costs money to do) or used in war where they are destroyed. In neither case so these expensive devices create products that we can sell to bring more money into the system.
When too much money is dead ended in weapons, too little remains in general circulation to support the society and the infrastructure on which it depends. The economy and that society stutter to a halt, after having suffered through cheapened roads, cheapened schools, cheapened hospitals, etc.
The USSR collapsed when military spending choked the life out of their economy. Why the US Government persists in making the same mistake is a mystery.
Real Cost of Inflation 10%
I think it is more, because the supply of money is around 16%
Read the article
Read the article
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