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. . .
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
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.
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!
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
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
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.