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Doggy Style Position: Trillionixxx Deep Impact

 
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 9:04 pm    Post subject: Doggy Style Position: Trillionixxx Deep Impact Reply with quote

Doggy Style Position: Trillionixxx Deep Impact

Quote:

According to Bloomberg News on 09.02.2009, "The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government's commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion."

Tuesday, 10.02.2009, Senator Byron Dorgan: “Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose. How much from the FDIC? How much from TARP? When? Why?”




40% of the world's wealth has disappeared in the last days.
World governments are united in hysterical effort taken to create new "money".



Now, let's do some math:

1 + 1 = 2

money creation = debt creation
more money = more debt
debt = obligation to repay
bigger debt = bigger obligation to repay

non-repayed obligation = bankruptcy
non-admitted bankruptcy = living on a lie
living on a debt = living on a war

donation = no profit
investment = profit
investment in donation = investment without profit
invest other people's money in certain loss = fraud
this kind of fraud = crime

wealth = debt
deceiving people into thinking that debt is a wealth = fraud
this kind of fraud = crime

21st century democracy = absolute power in the hands of the few
money = power
debt = slavery
creation of money out of nothing = unlimited money supply
unlimited amount of money = unlimited power
unlimited amount of debt = unlimited slavery
money created by the few = power created for the few
public debt created by the few = slavery created for all
laws created by the few = laws created for all
respect for the law = respect for the fraud
respect for the truth = no respect for the law
implementing the law = hiding the truth
penalizing the justice = rewarding the crime

How is this possible?

US government alone needs $9.7 trillion at the global taxpayer expense.
This necessity is just a drop in the ocean of global debt, but it's more than enough "wealth" to avoid catastrophe of corruption chain money supply.
For the money creator, possibility of corrupting every

- local public officer
- regional public officer
- national public officer
- international public officer

- local politician
- regional politician
- national politician
- international politician

- local government
- regional government
- national government
- international government

- local public organization
- regional public organization
- national public organization
- international public organization

- local private organization
- regional private organization
- national private organization
- international private organization

- local court
- regional court
- national court
- international court

- local police officer
- regional police officer
- national police officer
- international police officer

- local human rights institution
- regional human rights institution
- national human rights institution
- international human rights institution

- teacher
- instructor
- professor
- public education institution
- private education institution

- journalist
- media

- financial institution
- and any other kind of important subject or object

in the whole world, remains open.
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 6:28 pm    Post subject: New Europe With Old Problems: Banks Need $24 Trillions Reply with quote

New Europe With Old Problems: Banks Need $24 Trillions

Quote:
'Toxic' EU bank assets total £16.3 trillion

Published on 02-11-2009 Source: Telegraph

It is not surprising that European Union finance ministers looked ashen faced in Brussels on Tuesday.

The breakfast meeting discussed how EU governments should deal with, in other words pay for, the "toxic" banking assets that triggered the economic crisis.

The figures, contained in a secret European Commission paper, are startling. The dodgy financial packages are estimated to total £16.3 trillion in banks across the EU.

The "impaired assets" may amount to an astonishing 44 per cent of EU bank balance sheets. It is a deep ditch the bankers, regulators and their friends in government have dug us into.


“Estimates of total expected asset write-downs suggest that the budgetary costs – actual and contingent - of asset relief could be very large both in absolute terms and relative to GDP in member states,” the EC document, seen by The Daily Telegraph, cautioned.

"It is essential that government support through asset relief should not be on a scale that raises concern about over-indebtedness or financing problems.”

The secret 17-page paper was discussed by finance ministers, including the Chancellor Alistair Darling on Tuesday.

National leaders and EU officials share fears that a second bank bail-out in Europe will raise government borrowing at a time when investors - particularly those who lend money to European governments - have growing doubts over the ability of countries such as Spain, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Britain to pay it back.

The Commission figure is significant because of the role EU officials will play in devising rules to evaluate “toxic” bank assets later this month. New moves to bail out banks will be discussed at an emergency EU summit at the end of February. The EU is deeply worried at widening spreads on bonds sold by different European countries.

In line with the risk, and the weak performance of some EU economies compared to others, investors are demanding increasingly higher interest to lend to countries such as Italy instead of Germany. Ministers and officials fear that the process could lead to vicious spiral that threatens to tear both the euro and the EU apart.

“Such considerations are particularly important in the current context of widening budget deficits, rising public debt levels and challenges in sovereign bond issuance,” the EC paper warned.

Quote:
Banks' toxic debts risk overwhelming EU governments

The Telegraph, London - Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The toxic debts of European banks risk overwhelming a number of European Union governments and may pose a "systemic" danger to the broader EU banking system, according a confidential memo prepared by the European Commission.

"Estimates of total expected asset writedowns suggest that the budgetary costs of asset relief could be very large both in absolute terms and relative to GDP in member states," said the document, prepared for a closed-door meeting of EU finance ministers.

"For some member states, it may be the case that asset relief for banks is no longer an option, due to their existing budgetary constraints and/or the size of their banks' balance sheet relative to GDP. The extent of any risks to the EU banking system as a whole from an inadequate response in these member states needs to be considered, particularly in the case of cross-border banks."
While no country was mentioned, the obvious candidates are Ireland, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, and Britain -- and non-EU member Switizerland -- which all have oversized banking sectors. EU banks hold balance sheet assets of E41.2 trillion (L36.9 trillion).

Brussels refused to comment on the paper, but it is clear that officials are concerned about default risk in the weaker states, where interest spreads on government bonds are flashing warning signs. The International Monetary Fund has questioned the lack of a proper lender of last resort in the eurozone. The European Central Bank is not allowed to bail out individual states, yet national goverments do not control the monetary levers.

The IMF says European and British banks have 75 percent as much exposure to US toxic debt as American banks themselves, yet they have been much slower to take their punishment. Writedowns have been $738 billion in the US, just $294 billion in Europe.

Global banks have so far written down half the $2,200 billion losses estimted by the IMF. On top of this, EU banks have $1,600 billion of exposure to Eastern Europe -- increasingly viewed as Europe's subprime debacle, and EU corporate debts are 95 percent of GDP compared to 50 percent in the US, a mounting concern as default rates surge.
The EU document also highlighted the "real danger of a subsidy race between member states" if countries start to undercut each other in the way they value toxic debts in their 'bad bank' rescue programmes. This could be used as a means of covert state aid, undermining the unity of the EU single market.
It could also lead to an explosion of budget deficits, already threatening to hit 12 percent of GDP in Ireland next year and almost 10 percent in Spain and Britain.

"It is essential that government support through asset relief should not be on a scale that raises concern about over-indebtedness or financing problems. Such considerations are particularly important in the current context of widening budget deficits, rising public debt levels, and challenges in sovereign bond issuance," it said.

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PostPosted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 1:14 pm    Post subject: Sex And Money - Personality Disorder Test Reply with quote

Sex And Money - Personality Disorder Test



How much sex do you need in one week?

a) less than 7
b) more than 7

How much money do you earn in one week?

a) less than it needs to pay a prostitute once a day in one week
b) more than it needs to pay a prostitute once a day in one week

Who creates the money?

a) central bank
b) state

Who is the owner of the money in your pocket?

a) central bank
b) state
c) you

Central bank is

a) private institution
b) public institution

How much masturbation is too much?

a) 7 times a week
b) more than 7 times a week

State can only issue debt.
State can’t create money. Why?

a) because fair is fair
b) because it's good for business
c) because we are so screwed

Do you like anal sex?

a) yes
b) no

What do you prefer?

a) penetrate
b) receive

Why is money backed by nothing?

a) because it's good for business
b) because it's a good business

Would you have sex with a stranger for 1 million dollars?

a) yes
b) no

Why people accept the unacceptable lies?

a) too much sex, no time to think
b) they were deceived
c) they are forced to

What does freedom mean?

a) there is no freedom without monetary sovereignty
b) having sex every time you wish

When was the last time David Beckham had sex?

a) this morning
b) wait a moment, i have to check
c) i would give anything to be david beckham
d) it's not my problem
e) i don't care

World economy is a war economy

a) it's important to have a job
b) it's important to earn salary
c) gdp is a perfect excuse for everything

You are killing others by using official debt money

a) real people have a really good sex
b) if both partners accept it, good sex is without borders
c) it's remarkable how stupid a man can be when his job depends on not understanding something

Sex with consequences.
Are you prepared? Santa Claus

a) is having sex right now
b) is preparing a new surprise
c) is a coca-cola invention
d) is actually working on your factory adress
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 3:48 pm    Post subject: The Truth about America’s Debt Reply with quote

The Truth about America’s Debt

FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, February 13, 2009

At the cost of more than $800 billion, the just -passed stimulus bill stands as the largest single outlay item in history. So great is the amount involved that it exceeds the GDP of even such economies as Australia, Saudi Arabia and Argentina.

Needless to say, the federal government does not have the cash to finance its latest undertaking. Much of it will have to be borrowed, and that amount will be added to the budget deficit, which, many now believe, will top one trillion dollars.

The deficit will be then appended to the national debt, which currently stands at $10.7 trillion. Nearly than 70 percent of our GDP, this astounding amount grows by $2.3 billion every day. To put it in comprehensible terms, every single American family would have to pay $160,000 in taxes in order to erase that amount.

But this is not the full story. The $10.6 trillion is only a fraction of the real national debt, which, in reality, is roughly six times higher. The difference between the official figure and the government’s true obligations is made up of entitlements, primarily Medicaid and Social Security. By pledging to cover the costs associated with these programs, the U.S. government is now beholden to the tune of $50 trillion.

This pushes its overall obligations to the stratospheric neighborhood of $60 trillion.
To put it into prospective, this figure is roughly four times our national GDP and larger than the GDP of the entire world in the year 2007. A debt the like of which the world has never seen, to pay it off every American household would have to fork over on average $516,000. Yes, you are reading correctly: Every American family is now on the hook for over half a million dollars, and counting.

There are, however, some experts who estimate that the actual figure is larger still. One of them is Richard W. Fisher, the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, who said in a speech before the Commonwealth Club of California:

Add together the unfunded liabilities from Medicare and Social Security, and it comes to $99.2 trillion over the infinite horizon.
Traditional Medicare composes about 69 percent, the new drug benefit roughly 17 percent and Social Security the remaining 14 percent.

Since our spending-addicted representatives do not want us to know the full extent of America’s indebtedness, they have come with an ingenious way of taking entitlements off the nation’s balance sheet. Entitlements, they claim, are not genuine accounting liabilities, because they can be cut or reduced if the need should arise.

This is a rather clever argument to be sure, but there is one problem with it. Almost everyone knows that for all practical purposes entitlements can never be cut. For this to happen a willing president and a willing Congress would be required, a combination that is very unlikely to occur. Considered a minefield of American politics, most politicians steer well clear of the subject of entitlement reform. Those few brave ones who have attempted to place the crash-bound train on a sounder track have been invariably savaged. You may still remember what happened to George W. Bush who after his re-election sought to use his “political capital” to reform Social Security.

Unwilling to address the problem, those entrusted with our national finances are using accounting gimmicks to keep Americans in the dark about the state of the country’s financial condition. By underreporting the extent of the government’s fiscal obligations, they are seeking to prolong for as long as possible their unsustainable spending spree. There are many who fear that we may be past the point of no return in terms of our ability to make good on our commitments. In other words, we may be heading for national bankruptcy.

A few years ago, Senator Edward Kennedy was reported as saying to younger members of his family, “I'm glad I'm not going to be around when you guys are my age.” When they asked him why, he replied, “Because when you guys are my age, the whole thing is going to fall apart.” There can be little doubt that Senator Kennedy had the country’s dire fiscal condition in mind when uttering those haunting words. Although a proponent of big spending all his life, Kennedy seems to realize that sooner or later the hour of reckoning must come.

Regulations require that corporations as well as state and local governments record expenses immediately after a transaction takes place, even if the payment will be made in the future. The federal government, however, refuses to play by this rule. Instead it looks for ways to keep its astronomic obligations off the nation’s balance sheet.

Rather than wisely administering America’s finances, our representatives are about to add hundreds of billions of dollars to the already crushing national debt. Reckless and irresponsible, they are taking this nation down the road to a fiscal Gomorrah.
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 7:42 am    Post subject: Federal Obligations Exceed World Gross Domestic Product Reply with quote

Quote:


Large U.S. banks on brink of insolvency, experts say

February 13, 2009, Herald Tribune

"The United States banking system is effectively insolvent," Roubini said.

"At this moment, the liabilities they have far exceed their assets," said Posen of the Peterson institute. "They are insolvent."





Federal Obligations Exceed World Gross Domestic Product

February 13, 2009, World Net Daily

Does $65.5 trillion terrify anyone yet?

As the Obama administration pushes through Congress its $800 billion deficit-spending economic stimulus plan, the American public is largely unaware that the true deficit of the federal government already is measured in trillions of dollars, and in fact its $65.5 trillion in total obligations exceeds the gross domestic product of the world.

The total U.S. obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits to be paid in the future, effectively have placed the U.S. government in bankruptcy, even before new continuing social welfare obligation embedded in the massive spending plan are taken into account.

The real 2008 federal budget deficit was $5.1 trillion, not the $455 billion previously reported by the Congressional Budget Office, according to the "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" as released by the U.S. Department of Treasury.

The difference between the $455 billion "official" budget deficit numbers and the $5.1 trillion budget deficit cited by "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" is that the official budget deficit is calculated on a cash basis, where all tax receipts, including Social Security tax receipts, are used to pay government liabilities as they occur.

But the numbers in the 2008 report are calculated on a GAAP basis ("Generally Accepted Accounting Practices") that include year-for-year changes in the net present value of unfunded liabilities in social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

Under cash accounting, the government makes no provision for future Social Security and Medicare benefits in the year in which those benefits accrue.

"As bad as 2008 was, the $455 billion budget deficit on a cash basis and the $5.1 trillion federal budget deficit on a GAAP accounting basis does not reflect any significant money [from] the financial bailout or Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, which was approved after the close of the fiscal year," economist John Williams, who publishes the Internet website Shadow Government Statistics, told WND.

"The Congressional Budget Office estimated the fiscal year 2009 budget deficit as being $1.2 trillion on a cash basis and that was before taking into consideration the full costs of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, before the cost of the Obama nearly $800 billion economic stimulus plan, or the cost of the second $350 billion in TARP funds, as well as all current bailouts being contemplated by the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve," he said.

"The federal government's deficit is hemorrhaging at a pace which threatens the viability of the financial system," Williams added. "The popularly reported 2009 [deficit] will clearly exceed $2 trillion on a cash basis and that full amount has to be funded by Treasury borrowing.

"It's not likely this will happen without the Federal Reserve acting as lender of last resort for the Treasury by buying Treasury debt and monetizing the debt," he said.

"Monetizing the debt" is a term used to signify that the Federal Reserve will be required simply to print cash to meet the Treasury debt obligations, acting in this capacity only because the Treasury cannot sell the huge of amount debt elsewhere.

The Treasury has been largely dependent upon foreign buyers, principally China and Japan and other major holders of U.S. dollar foreign exchange reserves, including OPEC buyers purchasing U.S. debt through London.

"The appetite of foreign buyers to purchase continued trillions of U.S. debt has become more questionable as the world has witnessed the rapid deterioration of the U.S. fiscal condition in the current financial crisis," Williams noted.

"Truthfully," Williams pointed out, "there is no Social Security 'lock-box.' There are no funds held in reserve today for Social Security and Medicare obligations that are earned each year. It's only a matter of time until the public realizes that the government is truly bankrupt and no taxes are being held in reserve to pay in the future the Social Security and Medicare benefits taxpayers are earning today."

Calculations from the "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" also show that the GAAP negative net worth of the federal government has increased to $59.3 trillion while the total federal obligations under GAAP accounting now total $65.5 trillion.

The $65.5 trillion total federal obligations under GAAP accounting not only now exceed four times the U.S. gross domestic product, or GDP, the $65.5 trillion deficit exceeds total world GDP.

"In the seven years of GAAP reporting, we have seen an annual average deficit in excess of $4 trillion, which could not be possibly covered by any form of taxation," Williams argued.

"Shy of the government severely slashing social welfare programs, federal deficits of this magnitude are beyond any hope of containment, government or otherwise," he said.

"Put simply, there is no way the government can possibly pay for the level of social welfare benefits the federal government has promised unless the government simply prints cash and debases the currency, which the government will increasingly be doing this year," Williams said, explaining in more detail why he feels the government is now in the process of monetizing the federal debt.

"Social Security and Medicare must be shown as liabilities on the federal balance sheet in the year they accrue according to GAAP accounting," Williams argues. "To do otherwise is irresponsible, nothing more than an attempt to hide the painful truth from the American public. The public has a right to know just how bad off the federal government budget deficit situation really is, especially since the situation is rapidly spinning out of control.

"The federal government is bankrupt," Williams told WND. "In a post-Enron world, if the federal government were a corporation such as General Motors, the president and senior Treasury officers would be in federal penitentiary."


Quote:


Revealed: Pentagon's secret prisons, legal loopholes and CIA 'ghost' detainees

February 12, 2009, The Raw Story

Three major human rights organizations have declared the Department of Defense was running secret prisons at Bagram and in Iraq, actively sought ways around the terms of the Geneva conventions and cooperated with the CIA's "ghost detention" program which saw prisoners hidden from Red Cross oversight.

The arrival of the documents comes on the same day the ACLU published two unredacted pages of a government report which reveals detainees in US custody were tortured to death...





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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 9:05 pm    Post subject: China - Who Is Going To Buy $4.2Trillion Of New US Debt? Reply with quote

China - Who Is Going To Buy $4.2Trillion Of New US Debt?

13 Feb 2009, Daily Telgraph

Quote:
Chinese doubts about the value of US Treasury bonds highlight a crucial question: who will buy the estimated $2.7 trillion (£1.9 trillion) to $4.2 trillion of debt expected to be issued over the next two years?


With annual foreign purchases accounting for less than a tenth of the low end of that range, and domestic investors unable to bridge the gap, the Chinese are right to worry.

Yu Yongding, former adviser to the People’s Bank of China, recently demanded guarantees for the value of China’s $682bn of Treasury securities. Then Luo Ping, director of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said that China had misgivings about the US economy, but despite this it would continue to buy Treasuries. The two statements appear designed to raise the issue non-confrontationally before new chief US diplomat Hillary Clinton’s visit to Beijing on February 20.

China worries about the dollar’s value against other currencies, particularly the yuan. With US interest rates so low, the dollar’s value may slide. However, President Barack Obama has repeatedly said he wants a strong dollar, and indeed its trade-weighted value rose 13.9pc between April and December 2008.

The other area of concern for China is the value of its Treasuries. Given the US borrowing requirement and its lax monetary policy, Treasury bond yields could well rise sharply, causing a corresponding price decline. If China’s holdings match Treasuries’ average 48-month duration, then a 5pc rise in yields, from 1.72pc on the 5-year note to 6.72pc, would lose China 17.5pc of its holdings’ value, or $119bn.

Foreign buyers have absorbed a little over $200bn of Treasuries annually, a useful contribution to financing the $459bn 2008 deficit, but only a modest help towards the $1.35 trillion minimum average deficit forecast for 2009 and 2010.

Unless that changes substantially, there will be $1trillion annually to be raised by the Treasury from domestic sources, more than double the previous record from domestic and foreign sources together, plus whatever is needed to bail out the banks.

Even if the US savings rate were to rise from zero to its long-term average of 8pc of disposable personal income, that would create only an additional $830bn of savings -- not enough to fund the domestic share of the deficit. Interest rates would probably have to rise substantially to pull in more foreign investors.

Yu is right to worry.
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 4:38 pm    Post subject: If Money Is Created From Nothing, Why Are We Paying Taxes? Reply with quote

If Money Is Created From Nothing, Why Are We Paying Taxes?

By Mike Adams, February 11, 2009

If the U.S. government can create trillions of dollars out of thin air and use it to bail out corporations, banks and entire industries, then why are we still paying taxes at all?
Couldn't the government just create all the money we're paying in taxes anyway, and just let us keep all those tax dollars?
After all, if money can be created with no consequence, then there's absolutely no reason to collect taxes at all!

Quote:


GRACE COMMISSION REPORT

I realize some of you may be thinking "What will support the services offered by the government if none of us pay Federal Income Tax?" Well, below is a report requested by President Ronald Reagan to see just where the Federal Dollar goes.

The Grace Commission Report has no copyright notice in it. Since it appears to be in the public domain, the beginning of the report is found below.


The Grace Commission confirms the allegation that the income tax revenues go 100% to pay the interest on the national debt and not a single nickel of it goes to the government. Whatever government services we have, they are not being financed by the income tax.

The underlined section of this report is from the Grace Commission that proves that none of the personal income tax goes to pay for any government services and is used to pay only the interest on the national debt.

http://www.freecanadian.net/articles/grace.html


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PostPosted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 8:24 pm    Post subject: $1.2 Trillion Missing For US Government Retirees' Healthcare Reply with quote

US government short $1.2 trillion to pay its own retirees' healthcare

Monday February 16, 2009, The Raw Story

There may yet be more bailouts in sight. Next time it might not be the banks -- it might be your retirement, and there might not be enough money left.

While it's relatively well-known that Social Security is short as much as $50 trillion needed to pay the benefits of future retirees, the shortfall needed to pay civil servants' retiree benefits -- split between the federal government and US states -- is a whopping $1.7 trillion, according to an estimate released Monday.

State and local governments have set aside "virtually no money" to fund medical benefits for retired state and federal employees, USA Today revealed.

The estimate has gotten almost no attention, but the unfunded toll continues to climb. While the US government can spend money it doesn't have in an effort to jumpstart the economy, many cities and states have laws requiring them to balance their budgets, meaning the only way they could meet retirement benefit mandates is to raise taxes or cut benefits and services, or both.

Such unfunded medical benefits includes those of city, state and town employees; teachers; principals; superintendents; librarians; administrative assistants; custodians; school district staff; judges; public attorneys; retired military personnel; federal employees; park rangers; and water district personnel.

On the federal side, the cost totals around $1.2 trillion -- which includes retirement benefits for the Pentagon and for the federal government, the report says. On the states' side, the cost is harder to estimate but is at least $500 billion, according to the report.

Despite a $787 billion stimulus package, little money has been allocated to long-term benefits.

In the 1980s, the federal government and other employers of civil servants exchanged pay raises for future medical benefits, the report notes. But that tradeoff may end up costing the states and government more.

The paper says states are:

* "Cutting health benefits. Most governments have the legal authority to reduce or end retiree health coverage — unlike pensions, which cannot be cut under most states' laws. When Rhode Island trimmed retiree medical benefits in October, 1,291 workers — 9 percent of the state's workforce — retired to keep the more generous old health plan."

* "Saving money. Alaska, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Utah are among states that set aside some money last year to prepare for future medical costs."

Hawaii, meanwhile, plans to slash medical benefits for state and county employees. One plan eyes cutting benefits until a retiree reaches Medicare age, 10 years from when the plan originally kicked in -- at 55.

"That throws everyone's financial planning off, and at this late stage for someone who is 50, 55 years old, what do you do?" one critic said. "What options are you left with, because medical care is not free."
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 20, 2009 3:19 pm    Post subject: Economic Fascism and the Bailout Economy Reply with quote

Quote:


Czech President Compares EU To Soviet Union

February 19, 2009

"Not so long ago in our part of Europe we lived in a political system that allowed no alternative and therefore no parliamentary opposition," Klaus said, referring to the
communist regimes that fell two decades ago.

"We learned the bitter lesson that with no opposition, there is no freedom," he said.

"Here (in the European Parliament) there is only one single alternative, and those who dare think about a different option are labelled as enemies of European integration," Klaus said.





Economic Fascism and the Bailout Economy

2/20/2009, Ludwig von Mises Institute

I have lived through three monumental historical events. I remember only two of them.

I do not remember the dropping of the two atomic bombs in August of 1945. As symbols of scientific world transformation, this constituted the most momentous event of the 20th century. This breakthrough, so far, has not led to nuclear war, even though on several occasions, it looked as though nuclear war was a distinct possibility. Nevertheless, the arrival of the nuclear age heralded a transformation of the modern world. We have not yet seen the end of that transformation.

Martin van Creveld, the great military historian in the state of Israel, has argued that the nuclear age ruined the plans of empire for large nations. They could no longer risk a war with each other. Yet spending on empire increased. Today, large states face resistance from nonstate groups. The Soviet Union went down when the Afghans beat them by using Stinger missiles. The USSR was an empire, and an empire that loses to insurgents has lost its reason for existence.

We are about to experience a similar defeat in the same country.

There have been two other major events since 1945. I suppose most people would agree on at least one of them: the collapse of the Soviet Union, August 19–21, 1991. While the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was the symbolic evidence of the collapse of the Soviet empire, it did not become clear until August of 1991. Historically, there has been nothing to match that disintegration. No empire that large ever collapsed that fast without bloodshed. I was here to see it.

There are old-line anti-Communists who still insist that it was all fake, that it is all a deception, that the Communists are still running the show in Russia. They do not understand the difference between fascism and Communism. The Russian system is fascist to the core: state-run capitalism.

We are now seeing what hard-core liberals always predicted would happen: the economic convergence of the two systems, USA and USSR. The system of economic convergence is fascism. That was what the liberals always wanted, but called it something else: "economic democracy" or "the government-business alliance."
September/October 2008

The second event that I regard as almost comparable in importance to the collapse of the Soviet Union was the collapse of the American banking system that took place in September and October of 2008.

No one saw that collapse coming in August. The senior rulers of the United States — I do not mean politicians — have watched in horror as institutions that had survived since the mid-19th century went down: investment banks. These were banks that did not take deposits from the general public. They pooled large quantities of capital from private, wealthy investors. Within a matter of weeks, that business model collapsed. The investment banks scrambled to restructure their legal operations so as to be defined as commercial banks and therefore become eligible for the federal bailout money. Meanwhile, huge commercial banks almost went bankrupt. They did not go bankrupt only because of government intervention and because larger banks absorbed them. Wachovia went down. Washington Mutual went down. The share prices of the two largest banks in the United States, Bank of America and Citigroup, are still close to penny-share status.

Anyone who does not understand the magnitude of what is taking place is an economic ignoramus. I have plenty of these ignoramuses contacting me, telling me it was all planned by the insiders. The conspiracy has won again! In their worldview, the conspiracy always wins. That is because they believe that the conspiracy has the attributes of God. It is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent.

Here is their intellectual problem: they do not believe in the free market. They cannot conceive of a social institution based on voluntarism that can break the backs of government planners and central bankers. They will believe anything but this. They think of themselves as defenders of the free market, but they do not grasp the power of the free market to enforce consumers' decisions.

The conspiracy of well-placed insiders is now tottering. The whole structure of the national American political system has rested on the solvency of the largest American banks. These banks have all been called into question. They are now gutted.

The thought that commercial-bank insiders actively demolished trillions of dollars of their own equity as part of a conspiratorial plan is so imbecilic, so outrageous, so ludicrous that I am convinced that these conspiracy worshippers have lost whatever remained of their minds. They have been gutted intellectually, just as the banks have been gutted financially.

Some of them probably think that Communists still run Russia. Ex-Communists do: bureaucrats, mobsters, and KGB agents. But Communism is dead. How do I know? Look at a map of Russia. Look for the old names: Stalingrad and Leningrad. Gone. Maps tell a great deal about a civilization. Russian maps tell us that Communism is dead.

The American conspirators have lost the one thing that they thought they had: control over the nation and the nation's finances by means of the fractional-reserve banking system. That system is coming unglued, just as Ludwig von Mises said it would, just as Murray Rothbard said it would, and just as those other Austrian economists who understand the enormous weakness of the fractional-reserve system said it would.

I wonder sometimes if there is anything coherent remaining in what is generally called the conservative movement. Do any of these people have a clue as to what has been taking place? We are seeing the disintegration of the fractional-reserve banking system all over the world. It is being held together by bailouts, which are the government equivalent of bailing wire and chewing gum.

The only thing holding the whole structure together is an enormous residual faith in the state and a naïve faith that deficits don't matter. That phrase is associated with supply-side conservatives and the vast majority of those people who call themselves Chicago School economists. Supply-siders said it, and Chicago School economists cautiously chimed in, "Someday, maybe deficits will matter, but not soon. At the margin — this year, next year, and until I am dead — deficits don't matter."

It has been the Austrian School economists who have warned, decade after decade, that the increase in the federal debt would eventually threaten the solvency of the government and the stability of the dollar. Now that this is visibly coming true, we still do not hear from professional economists cries of warning regarding trillion-dollar annual federal deficits. They say nothing — except when they say it is a good idea, because it is necessary, because we have got to save the banks, because we have got to regulate the economy, and, most of all, because the unhampered free-market system really does not work.

This is what we are getting from people who have generally been known as free-market economists. They are lining up as cheerleaders as the banks go to the federal trough. The federal deficit soars into astronomical regions, and the monetary base soars just as fast, yet the academic economists are silent. This is not the silence of the lambs; this is a silence of unindicted coconspirators, most of whom teach in tax-supported universities and spend their careers writing unreadable articles in unread academic journals in order to get tenure, so that the taxpayers can never fire them. These people are apologists for the state. Most of them have been on a public payroll all of their lives. These are the people who, in the name of conservative free-market principles, are supposed to stand in the gap to warn us that the ship of state is going over the falls.

Don't hold your breath.
What Is to Be Done?

What can be done about it? Politically, nothing. The American political system has been soft-core fascist for almost a century. Liberals love to call conservatives fascists. The problem is, the liberals are right. Of course, well-informed conservatives like to call liberals fascists, and they are correct, too. Everyone who believes in the efficiency of the so-called government-business alliance is a fascist.

The fascist state has always been an attempt to control private industry by means of inflation, taxation, and regulation. Fascism has always been a system of keeping the big boys alive and happy at the expense of the taxpayers. Of course, the faces change. The system was always one gigantic system of cartels, regulation, and fiat money. It was, in short, everything that the critics of modern capitalism say is wrong with capitalism. This is why John Maynard Keynes wrote this in his foreword to the German edition of his General Theory (1936):

The theory of aggregated production, which is the point of the following book, nevertheless can be much easier adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state [eines totalen Staates] than the theory of production and distribution of a given production put forth under conditions of free competition and a large degree of laissez-faire. This is one of the reasons that justifies the fact that I call my theory a general theory.

The modern economic system is one gigantic interlocking system of promised bailouts, beginning with Social Security. In commerce, it is a system designed to keep large producers protected from consumers. It has never been anything else ever since the national political triumph of the Progressive movement in the fateful year of 1912. In that year, the three candidates for president were statists to the core, all followers of the Progressivist doctrines, all advocates of central banking, and all happy to see the federal government expand control over business throughout the country — and throughout the world.

This is not the story we get in the history textbooks, because the textbook writers love what was done in 1912 and subsequently. The public school system has taught that this was the salvation of capitalism ever since.

We are now seeing the unraveling of the entire system, all over the world. Whatever happens from this point on, economic production will be hampered by ever-increasing regulation. The government is now intervening to save the banks, which means that the banks are beholden to the government.

President Obama has said that senior bank officials are not going to be able to receive more than $500,000 a year. They are not going to get money from stock options until the government gets its money back. I think this is great. My only regret is that he didn't say it was $250,000 year. Or maybe $100,000 year. Or maybe about $50,000 a year. Let them live in New York City on that! The whole crew should resign and go into some decent line of work.

Fractional-reserve banking has been a con job from the beginning. Rothbard and Mises pointed this out, and they were hated for it. The economists trust bureaucracy. They trust people with Ph.D.'s just like themselves. But, except at the Federal Reserve, the agencies are run by lawyers and by appointees who hope to get a fat lobbying salary when they leave the government. Why should we think that a bunch of Harvard- and Yale-educated lawyers, who were recruited by New York City banks that were always protected by the Federal Reserve System, would have any idea of how to run an economy? We now know how well they could run the economy: they stripped off million-dollar bonuses for running the system over the falls.

It is not going to get much better. The banks are gutted. The best and the brightest graduates will not be going into banking for as long as there is a $500,000 cap on salaries, if Obama gets his way.

As far as I am concerned, the pay cap should be forever. And when the bank-created inflation comes, the government should not change this salary cap to let them benefit from a cost-of-living escalator clause. Their predecessors knew how to get rich under a manipulated currency. As far as I'm concerned, their replacements should get poorer the same way.

For over a century, the best and the brightest of the students graduating from the senior universities of the country have been recruited into big government and fractional-reserve banking. In other words, they relied on coercion to get rich personally and to direct the growth of American capitalism. They got rich, and capitalism grew, but it grew in terms of malinvestments. It grew because the fiat money was used to lower interest rates, and these lower interest rates led to malinvested capital. Mises showed how this system operated as early as 1912.

Ever since September of 2008, we have seen the fruits of the fiat money roots that Mises warned against almost a century ago. But modern free-market economists are as hostile to Mises's theory of the business cycle as they were hostile to Mises's theory of the economic irrationalism of socialism … until the Soviet Union fell. Then, they got religion, but they still never mention Mises. It was as if he had never lived.

Mises? Who is Mises? Yes, the Soviet Union went bankrupt. We didn't think it would in 1986. Except for that lucky guesser Judy Shelton, nobody predicted that it would. We told people that the Soviet Union had remarkable economic growth. Yes, it turned out that the Soviet Union was nothing but Bangladesh with missiles, just as journalist Richard Grenier said in the 1980s. We did not see this at the time. Still, we will take credit for its collapse anyway: the new capitalism defeated it. We will continue to praise the regulated fascist economy that the United States has been over the last hundred years, and call for more of the same. We love economic efficiency, because efficiency lets the state get larger. When people get richer, they can pay more taxes.

This is why academic economists are demanding even more federal spending to bail out the banks and the other institutions associated with high finance. Almost to a man, they are saying that the bailouts are necessary. Why? Because they have been great proponents of the mixed economy ever since John Maynard Keynes wrote The General Theory in 1936 — even before this, since the real mentor of American fascist banking, Irving Fisher, back in 1911.

Fisher almost went bankrupt in the Great Depression, yet he is still revered as the greatest economist in American history. He was a fiat-money man from day one. He believed that the government and the central bank could control the economy by means of monetary policy. He was the great apologist of the corrupt monetary system that we now suffer from. An academic, he was the high priest. Milton Friedman was little more than an acolyte to Irving Fisher on the money question.
Nominal Recovery

There is real recovery and nominal recovery — recovery in terms of rising prices. Rising wages and rising prices give the illusion of prosperity.

Always in the past, there has been a recovery after a recession. Always in the past, the bailouts have worked to cover up the underlying malinvested capital. Always in the past, the Federal Reserve has inflated, and the economy revived.

This economy will revive, but it will revive on a new basis. It is no longer possible for someone who understands Austrian School economics to look at this economy as anything remotely resembling a free-market economy. At the very core of the free-market economy, as Mises said in 1912, is the monetary system. That system is now completely and openly run by a cartel that is now trapped by the federal government. The Federal Reserve System is soon going to have to bail out the federal government. The federal government is bailing out the commercial banks, and if the federal government cannot bail out the banks, the Federal Reserve has got to do it directly. In either case, the banks are busted. The capital is gone: wasted. The money is still in people's bank accounts, but the fiat-money-funded projects have turned out to be losers. The skyscrapers are empty. The recovery is going to be a nominal recovery, based on the digits known as dollars. These digits are going to be produced in such massive quantities that prices will shoot up as never before in peacetime America. It is going to be the destruction of the dollar.

Austrian School economists have been predicting this for years, but now we have the Federal Reserve on our side. We can look at the adjusted monetary base, and we can see what is going to happen. Unless the Federal Reserve System raises the reserve requirement — thereby undermining the profitability of the entire banking system, and thereby busting hundreds of banks, including some big ones — the adjusted monetary base is going to be translated into real money. That real money is going to get spent. When it gets spent, it is going to raise prices.

We are seeing the culmination of a century of bad economic policies. Academic economists never sounded the alarm after 1936. They did not sound the alarm because they are the paid agents of the state, certified by earlier generations of paid agents of the state. The state has paid for the services of these men and women, and they perform accordingly. They understand the fundamental rule: "When you take the king's shilling, you do the king's bidding."

The next college-level economics textbook that exposes the Federal Reserve System as the commercial bank cartel's enforcement arm will be the first one.

There is no academic hue and cry against the massive deficits of the federal government and the massive bailouts by the federal government. Economists are silent because they have been cheerleaders for the Federal Reserve System from day one. For these people, the Federal Reserve can do no wrong today, because it did wrong from 1929 to 1933, and Milton Friedman exposed this for all to see. What was the great evil of the Federal Reserve during that period, according to Friedman? It did not inflate to offset the contraction of money due to collapsing banks.

Friedman hated free-market banking. He disparaged the gold standard. He believed in government control over money. At the core of the free market is money. At the core of Friedman's economics was the state. He just wanted to make the state more efficient.

The academic economists never mention the fact that it was the expansionary policies of the Federal Reserve during the 1920s that led to the collapse of the banking system in the early 1930s. The Fed had been set up so as to prevent any such collapse, and yet that collapse was the worst collapse in American history. Then what is the right approach? What do the economists say should be done? Give more power to the Federal Reserve System. That is exactly what has been done over the last five months, and the academic economists cheer.

The academic economists say that things will recover. They tell us that it will again be business as usual. They tell us that once we get through this crisis, the American economy will boom once again. They believe in the fascist economy. They believe that government regulation is better than the free market. They believe the government-run, bankruptcy-protected banks, which we now openly have, are better than private, profit-seeking institutions that are not protected by a government-created cartel called the Federal Reserve System. They believe in fascism, and they are going to tell you that everything is fine as the fascist state extends power over every aspect of our lives.
Broken Promises, Waning Faith

Do I see this as the end of freedom? No, I see it is the end of the fascist state. The monstrosity came close to going belly-up last October. It is on its last, tottering legs. It has lost the respect of the public.

The politicians are even convinced that the banks were run by a bunch of corrupt, self-serving men, which was in fact the case. What government-protected industry isn't? But that was not why the bankers lost money. They were lured by Alan Greenspan's policies of easy money and low interest rates into believing that the boom was real, and that they could leverage themselves 30 to 1 or 40 to 1 and get paid for their wisdom. They were high-paid suckers. The Austrian School economists warned all through the period that this was going to happen. We were all dismissed as cranks.

As the Internet grows in its influence, alternative views can get to a minority of educated people. The success of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in getting Austrian School economics in front of hundreds of thousands of young people, all over the world, who would never have heard about Mises or Rothbard had it not been for the World Wide Web, indicates that the foundations of the modern fascist economy are being undermined where it counts, which is in the minds of bright people who are no longer buying into the system.

In the long run, Keynes was right: the economic policies of politicians today are based on the writings of some obscure economist of the past. Those two economists were Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes. Their world is now toppling. Through their disciples, they are like a pair of drunks staggering along, holding each other up. Keynes wanted deficit spending. Fisher wanted a banking system that would cover these deficits.

The money from the central-banking system funds the Treasury, and the Treasury in turn bails out the big commercial banks — no longer nearly so big. Everything is based on a daisy chain of digits. Meanwhile, unemployment is rising, production is falling, fear is spreading, loss of faith is spreading, and tens of thousands of formerly highly paid specialists in finance are looking for jobs. This is not a matter of a conspiracy; this is a matter of the free market finally voting no against the conspirators.

There are conservatives who think that all is lost because of the conspiracy. These are people who never did anything anyway. They do not see that we are at the end of an era. We are seeing the culmination of a 500-year era. Jacques Barzun titled his great history of this era From Dawn to Decadence. We are seeing what Martin van Creveld called the fall of the state, meaning the nation-state.

These scholars agree: we are seeing the bankruptcy of every Western government that has made too many big promises to too many voters regarding free healthcare and guaranteed retirement. All of it will collapse. The tatters of the promises will point to the tatters of those who made the promises — politicians — and the tatters of the system that was supposedly going to guarantee delivery of the promises.

The academics still believe in the healing power of the state. The voters still believe this, too. But voters are catching on more rapidly than the academics that the state is running out of wiggle room. Millions of voters have figured out that they are going to get stiffed. They don't know what to do about it, but at least they understand that they really are going to get stiffed.

The academics say "no." They keep telling all of us that everything is okay, that a few more trillion-dollar deficits will solve the problem. The doubling of the monetary base in 2009 will have no more disruptive effects than the doubling of the monetary base did in the second half of 2008. They tell us all this, but the public is either oblivious, or else is growing suspicious.

We will have another round or two of centralized government, and probably more than one or two rounds of increased monetary expansion. But what we will not have is a restoration of anything resembling the financial world that existed prior to September 2008. That world is gone. The insiders will not get it back. They may get an imitation of it, based on fiat money that does not buy very much, but they will not see the world of 2007 restored. The power base of the modern fascist state is unraveling rapidly.

This is why it is important for you to preserve your assets by not believing the official assurances. Put your money where the experts tell you that you should not put your money. You should take your money out of those segments of the economy into which the experts say you should put your money, claiming it will soon boom. They have ignored the fact that the stock market has been a losing case since March 2000. They would not admit it then; they will not admit it now. Anybody who bought and held a portfolio of indexed American stocks in March of 2000 has lost well over half of his money. Investors will learn, even though academic economists will not.
Conclusion

What I am saying is this: this time it's different. This time the fractional-reserve banking system has shot its wad. It is begging for ever-larger handouts from the Treasury Department, which needs central-bank fiat money to bail out the economy. The public is accepting this grudgingly, and the academic economists are cheering, but the reality is that this time it's different. You had better adjust your portfolio, your career plans, and your retirement plans accordingly.
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 31, 2009 3:08 am    Post subject: Geithner’s Secret: Global Financial System is at Risk Reply with quote

Geithner’s ‘Dirty Little Secret’: The Entire Global Financial System is at Risk

Global Research, March 30, 2009

When the Solution to the Financial Crisis becomes the Cause

US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has unveiled his long-awaited plan to put the US banking system back in order. In doing so, he has refused to tell the ‘dirty little secret’ of the present financial crisis. By refusing to do so, he is trying to save de facto bankrupt US banks that threaten to bring the entire global system down in a new more devastating phase of wealth destruction.



The Geithner Plan, his so-called Public-Private Partnership Investment Program or PPPIP, as we have noted previously is designed not to restore a healthy lending system which would funnel credit to business and consumers. Rather it is yet another intricate scheme to pour even more hundreds of billions directly to the leading banks and Wall Street firms responsible for the current mess in world credit markets without demanding they change their business model. Yet, one might say, won’t this eventually help the problem by getting the banks back to health?



Not the way the Obama Administration is proceeding. In defending his plan on US TV recently, Geithner, a protégé of Henry Kissinger who previously was CEO of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, argued that his intent was ‘not to sustain weak banks at the expense of strong.’ Yet this is precisely what the PPPIP does. The weak banks are the five largest banks in the system.



The ‘dirty little secret’ which Geithner is going to great degrees to obscure from the public is very simple. There are only at most perhaps five US banks which are the source of the toxic poison that is causing such dislocation in the world financial system. What Geithner is desperately trying to protect is that reality. The heart of the present problem and the reason ordinary loan losses as in prior bank crises are not the problem, is a variety of exotic financial derivatives, most especially so-called Credit Default Swaps.



In 2000 the Clinton Administration then-Treasury Secretary was a man named Larry Summers. Summers had just been promoted from No. 2 under Wall Street Goldman Sachs banker Robert Rubin to be No. 1 when Rubin left Washington to take up the post of Vice Chairman of Citigroup. As I describe in detail in my new book, Power of Money: The Rise and Fall of the American Century, to be released this summer, Summers convinced President Bill Clinton to sign several Republican bills into law which opened the floodgates for banks to abuse their powers. The fact that the Wall Street big banks spent some $5 billion in lobbying for these changes after 1998 was likely not lost on Clinton.



One significant law was the repeal of the 1933 Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act that prohibited mergers of commercial banks, insurance companies and brokerage firms like Merrill Lynch or Goldman Sachs. A second law backed by Treasury Secretary Summers in 2000 was an obscure but deadly important Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. That law prevented the responsible US Government regulatory agency, Commodity Futures Trading Corporation (CFTC), from having any oversight over the trading of financial derivatives. The new CFMA law stipulated that so-called Over-the-Counter (OTC) derivatives like Credit Default Swaps, such as those involved in the AIG insurance disaster, (which investor Warren Buffett once called ‘weapons of mass financial destruction’), be free from Government regulation.



At the time Summers was busy opening the floodgates of financial abuse for the Wall Street Money Trust, his assistant was none other than Tim Geithner, the man who today is US Treasury Secretary. Today, Geithner’s old boss, Larry Summers, is President Obama’s chief economic adviser, as head of the White House Economic Council. To have Geithner and Summers responsible for cleaning up the financial mess is tantamount to putting the proverbial fox in to guard the henhouse.



The ‘Dirty Little Secret’



What Geithner does not want the public to understand, his ‘dirty little secret’ is that the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000 allowed the creation of a tiny handful of banks that would virtually monopolize key parts of the global ‘off-balance sheet’ or Over-The-Counter derivatives issuance.



Today five US banks according to data in the just-released Federal Office of Comptroller of the Currency’s Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activity, hold 96% of all US bank derivatives positions in terms of nominal values, and an eye-popping 81% of the total net credit risk exposure in event of default.



The five are, in declining order of importance: JPMorgan Chase which holds a staggering $88 trillion in derivatives (€66 trillion!). Morgan Chase is followed by Bank of America with $38 trillion in derivatives, and Citibank with $32 trillion. Number four in the derivatives sweepstakes is Goldman Sachs with a ‘mere’ $30 trillion in derivatives. Number five, the merged Wells Fargo-Wachovia Bank, drops dramatically in size to $5 trillion. Number six, Britain’s HSBC Bank USA has $3.7 trillion.



After that the size of US bank exposure to these explosive off-balance-sheet unregulated derivative obligations falls off dramatically. Just to underscore the magnitude, trillion is written 1,000,000,000,000. Continuing to pour taxpayer money into these five banks without changing their operating system, is tantamount to treating an alcoholic with unlimited free booze.



The Government bailouts of AIG to over $180 billion to date has primarily gone to pay off AIG’s Credit Default Swap obligations to counterparty gamblers Goldman Sachs, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, the banks who believe they are ‘too big to fail.’ In effect, these five institutions today believe they are so large that they can dictate the policy of the Federal Government. Some have called it a bankers’ coup d’etat. It definitely is not healthy.



This is Geithner’s and Wall Street’s Dirty Little Secret that they desperately try to hide because it would focus voter attention on real solutions. The Federal Government has long had laws in place to deal with insolvent banks. The FDIC places the bank into receivership, its assets and liabilities are sorted out by independent audit. The irresponsible management is purged, stockholders lose and the purged bank is eventually split into smaller units and when healthy, sold to the public. The power of the five mega banks to blackmail the entire nation would thereby be cut down to size. Ooohh. Uh Huh?



This is what Wall Street and Geithner are frantically trying to prevent. The problem is concentrated in these five large banks. The financial cancer must be isolated and contained by Federal agency in order for the host, the real economy, to return to healthy function.


This is what must be put into bankruptcy receivership, or nationalization. Every hour the Obama Administration delays that, and refuses to demand full independent government audit of the true solvency or insolvency of these five or so banks, inevitably costs to the US and to the world economy will snowball as derivatives losses explode. That is pre-programmed as worsening economic recession mean corporate bankruptcies are rising, home mortgage defaults are exploding, unemployment is shooting up. This is a situation that is deliberately being allowed to run out of (responsible Government) control by Treasury Secretary Geithner, Summers and ultimately the President, whether or not he has taken the time to grasp what is at stake.



Once the five problem banks have been put into isolation by the FDIC and the Treasury, the Administration must introduce legislation to immediately repeal the Larry Summers bank deregulation including restore Glass-Steagall and repeal the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 that allowed the present criminal abuse of the banking trust. Then serious financial reform can begin to be discussed, starting with steps to ‘federalize’ the Federal Reserve and take the power of money out of the hands of private bankers such as JP Morgan Chase, Citibank or Goldman Sachs.
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