Kelly

The Mayors of Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Atlanta are now asking the Federal Government Henry Paulson to reach into his 700 billion dollar money bag and give their cities a slice of the pie.

The three mayors proposed providing loans to help cities pay pension costs. They also want $50 billion in loans for investment in infrastructure, and additional one-year loans to cities unable to borrow cash because of the tight credit markets.¹

Not really so unbelievable when one considers the feeding frenzy that has occurred since plans of the ‘Bailout’ were announced back in September. The banks, the credit card companies, the auto industry, and so forth have all come forward, lobbyists in tow expecting billions in loans in order to buy some time and save themselves their CEO’s before the anticipated collapse of the economy. Sure, if in fact these companies are able to get their hands on some worthless printed paper that has become our currency, a portion of it would go towards an attempt to maintain business as usual, but a much larger portion will be paid out in more bonuses. Not so much because the executives are greed filled corporate monsters, they are, but more to the point is that they all know how useless this entire plan was from the very beginning. That even if there was a huge influx of funds going directly to the ‘troubled assets’ and ‘defaulted loans’, eventually the funds will dry up as more defaults pile up and it’s back to square one bankruptcy. In short, the crumbs that Paulson and our laziest-Congress-ever allocate for the these corporate welfare leeches will do nothing more than stave off the inevitable for a short time.

One would easily imagine that as unemployment and home foreclosures continue to climb, and tax revenues fall, hundreds of cities will be looking to Washington, each with a ‘Bailout’ plan of their own. But, in the meantime, are these cities doing all they can to curtail their bloated budgets?

The Philadelphia pension system lost more than $650 million in the first nine months of the year. Last week, Nutter announced Philadelphia would be laying off city employees, cutting salaries, closing most of its swimming pools and shutting nearly a dozen library branches to cope with a $108 million shortfall this year caused by lower business and real estate tax revenue. The deficit could grow to a total of $1 billion over five years.²

I suppose it is only a matter of time before the garbage man is picking up the trash once per month instead of every week. Perhaps those of us in the upper Midwest are in for icier than normal driving conditions this winter. Because, it is a near guarantee that cities across America will be facing some very difficult decisions as we all start to incur the damages and feel the pain of the current economic crisis. Main Street is merely catching up to the reality of the situation.

Source(s):^1,2 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/14/phoenix-philadelphia-atla_n_143885.html

Allison Bricker

In my video editorial published on October 16th, 2008, entitled “A Long Train of Abuses”, I included a list of political contributors gathered by the Center for Responsive Politics that show both Senator McCain (R-AZ) and Senator Obama (D-IL) receiving large contributions from the same syndicate of banks “we the People” just bailed out with the passage of H.R. 3997 “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008″.

Unfortunately due to my novice like abilities concerning video production and the video compression utilized by YouTube, the charts were too grainy to read clearly.

It is my opinion that these simple charts give stunning insight to where these candidates true loyalties lie and therefore merit a separate post including a readable image for public review.

To me it sheds new light on all the grandstanding Senator McCain embarked upon back during the passage of H.R. 2356- Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002¹, a.k.a McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform.

Click to enlarge2

Source(s):

¹Thomas.Gov -H.R. 2356- Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, retrieved 10/18/2008

² Center for responsive Politics, retrieved 10/12/2008

Allison Bricker

“Would you like fries with that unsecured loan?” This may not be too far off from reality now that the Federal Reserve has stepped in and decided to become the preferred drive-up ATM of multinational corporations.  The Federal Reserve has done such, due to Wall Street investment banks and global central banks utterly refusing to extend anymore of these loans, a.k.a Credit Crunch.

Yes, fellow readers, the Federal Reserve, under Section 13: Sub-Section 3 of the Federal Reserve Act (1913/Amended)¹, has decided to set up the Commercial Paper Funding Facility. The what you ask? Well let us see what the Federal Reserve says in its press release dated October 7th, 2008.²

* Green text denotes my attempt to decipher the double-speak legalese that follows.)

By eliminating much of the risk (i.e. bypassing the free market) that eligible issuers (private investment banks) will not be able to repay investors (your 401k) by rolling over (extending credit limit, delaying repayment) their maturing commercial paper obligations, this facility (the FED) should encourage investors to once again engage in term lending (more credit, more debt, more credit) in the commercial paper market. Added investor demand should lower commercial paper rates (interest rates) from their current elevated levels (free-market check/balance forcing interest rates high meant to stop businesses reliance on the endless cycle of debt to pay bills) and foster issuance of longer-term commercial paper.(bunches of more credit not due until a future generation and hey who cares we’ll all be dead) An improved commercial paper market will enhance the ability of financial intermediaries to accommodate the credit needs of businesses and households (perpetuating the addiction to debt and living beyond one’s means).

If this makes your head spin, let us just sum it up this way. “Commercial Paper” is an I.O.U written by Multi-National Corporation A, sold to Wall Street investment bank/global central banks for large sums of money so Multi-National Corporation A can pay its bills and employees. All this money is loaned from Wall Street investment bank/global central banks solely  based on a promise to repay; backed up by no real asset, i.e. a factory, a cement truck, etcetera.  Most of the time however, instead of demanding repayment of the loan, the investment bank merely rolls over the debt to be repaid at a later time with a higher rate of return and then stuffs them into their clients mutual funds and other crafty Wall Street “security instruments”.  Therefore in no time at all, a promise to repay $100 million becomes $150 million to $250 million and so on and so on.

So now that we know what “Commercial Paper” is, let us look at how the Federal Reserve will “fix” this problem. With the purchasing of Commercial Paper paper being refused by the banks, the Federal Reserve has put on its super hero cape (made from the finest Chinese silk, funded by the taxpayer of course) and has offered to buy up these I.O.U’s for companies the Fed decide “worthy”.   This effectively puts the Federal Reserve in a god-like position to determine which businesses survive while other businesses fail.

Don’t you just love the smell of a predatory market shell game in the morning?  We shall see the set up for mid to large sized Main Street/regional businesses to be absorbed into multi-national conglomerates or deemed a possible upstart competitor and thus allowed to fail.

Fellow readers, the international banking cartel cares not about Main Street. The Plutocrats who reside as the Secretary of the Treasury and Federal Reserve’s 7 member Board of Governors (appointed by President of the United States, confirmed by Senate) are solely concerned with amassing and consuming as much for themselves, the rest of us be damned. We must realize they look at us with scorn as parasites to be used up like any other commodity, you know, “human resources”.

Fellow readers, please do this very sleepy blogger a favor and do not misconstrue the aforementioned as Capitalism nor any semblance of a Free Market.  It is the power brokers practicing their brand of Greediocracy.  Let us do all we can to speak clearly, loudly, and in stark opposition to allowing these criminals to bypass the Constitution and amass any more power on their insidious march towards Feudalism 2.0

Source(s):¹http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/section13.htm •
²http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/20081007c.htm