Kelly

Every day I wake up to pour another cup of hot coffee and delight in a hot shower is another day that I am grateful to have been born on American soil.  I know we’ve had it good.

But lately, every day as I pass my fellow Americans at the grocery store or the gas station  I wonder,  do they know what is going on?  Are they paying attention?  Do they see what I see?

It is not that long ago,  a time when Americans were beginning to get very comfortable with a slogan and a way of life that claimed you could have anything you wanted, even if it meant that you could not afford it.

Instant gratification became the crack of middle class America.  Credit line after credit line, a new car there and a new computer here, snowballed in to a dozen other must-have gadgets. Gadgets for him, gadgets for her, and an  XBox 360 for every boy and girl.  Not happy yet?  Spend more money.  How should we fight terrorism?  Spend more money.  Do you need a 3000 sq ft home to compete for a status symbol?  Spend more money.  No down payment?  We’ve got credit.

Is there more to it than that?  Sure.  There’s speculation, and brokers, and bankers, and Wall Street.  There’s interest rates, and deficits, and mortgage backed securities, sub-prime and ARM’s.  There’s the Federal Reserve, and the IMF, and a pyramid scheme from hell…  and a list of illiquid assets that would stretch for miles long.

“Who will fix this mess?” We ask.  And the fixers step in…

* With that in mind, I wanted to share the following video commentary, entitled  America’s Controlled Economic Implosion.   It presents how the American people are falling victim to the current tailspin of “fixing.”

Russell Means

This week’s update discuses why “small is beautiful” and the impossibility of the global banker’s math. Their drive to maintain infinite expansionism violates natural law.Yet, there is an answer, a silver lining which we can all celebrate.

Allison Bricker

NOTE: This is the fourth part in a 4 part series. Your questions and commentary are both welcomed and appreciated.

• Part 1 – How to Save the Republic
• Part 2 – Abolish the Income Tax
• Part 3 – Repeal the Direct Election of Senators
• Part 4 – Similarities Between the Great Depression and Our Current Crisis

As the Dow Jones Industrial average continues its most volatile sessions in recent times, up 700 points one day, down 400 the next, the United States government continues its pointless scramble to prop up the debt based house-of-cards it built itself upon. It is most assuredly eerie when one dives down into the annals of history; back to our Republic’s last great economic calamity, the Great Depression. Upon further inspection, we see the same type of centralized planning and grossly negligent monetary policy going on today is exactly what brought Americans to their knees leading up to and throughout the Great Depression.

After the FEDERAL RESERVE Act of 1913, “fractional reserve banking”¹ now became the law of the land. Fractional reserve banking allows that for every $100 Dollars deposited into a bank, $900 Dollars of “new loans” (debt) can be created out of thin air and thus issued by said bank¹. The system accomplishes this by clinging to the principle that no more than a small minority of depositors will ever seek to withdraw their money at one time. Operating under this hedge of the fractional reserve system dictated by the FEDERAL RESERVE, debt soared throughout the 1920’s. This new massive influx of debt was of course on top of the massive debt in the form of bonds borrowed from the FEDERAL RESERVE in order to finance World War I.

With banks lending at a record pace for the new gadgets of the decade and a new need for housing, it was not long before many Americans began plunging themselves into debt. In these exuberant times and with easy access to “credit”, real estate prices began to soar. The apex of this bubble came in 1925, soon there after people began defaulting on their over leveraged loans at an escalating rate². Foreclosures began to rise as the defaults continued to pile up which in turn led to bank failures due to over exposure in the housing market.

Additionally, the new automated technology which once had employed thousands from its initial creation, now began to replace these same workers en mass as the efficiency gains of the new machinery made them obsolete. President Hoover, who as Secretary of Commerce under President Coolidge, birthed unemployment benefits, believing that “depressions were caused by “low wages”, now called for a massive “bailout” of the economy by a gigantic expansion of public works programs, price controls, subsidies, and the creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation just to name a few.

Four short years later in October of 1929, over a period of five days, a market built on imaginary wealth felt the full force of a debt based economy and collapsed with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing 25% down from its high. Thus signaling the beginning of a decade’s long economic depression which would see the market lose 85% of its value and not trade at pre-crash levels again until January of 1951.³

As the depression took hold, the RFC dispersed billions of Dollars to state and local governments, made loans to banks, railroads, farm mortgage associations, and other businesses in an attempt to “fix” the economy. Interestingly, President Herbert Hoover is often blamed for “doing nothing”, however during the 1932 campaign for President, then candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt said:⁴

Candidate Roosevelt promised Americans throughout the campaign that he would seek immediate and drastic reductions of all public expenditures, abolish useless commissions and offices, consolidate bureaus and eliminate [government] extravagances. He went on to imply specifically targeted tax cuts, and promised to retain a sound currency at all hazards. All of his campaign promises were also approved planks of the Democratic Party Platform of that same year.⁵

However, when Roosevelt took office after defeating Hoover, his promises and the party planks fell by the wayside. Apparently Roosevelt thought of himself as the Godlike man he spoke of during the campaign and instead went on to expand Hoover’s meddling and interventionism into the economy, offering the American people a “New Deal”. Even though the government school history books credit FDR with the New Deal and saving the economy, Rexford Guy Tugwell a Roosevelt aide said years later, “We didn’t admit it at the time, but practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started.”⁸

Even with President Roosevelt’s meddling, the economy never recovered during his Presidency and only exacerbated the situation. Finally after emerging victorious from World War II and after FDR’s death, the American economy was able to drag itself out of the Great Depression.

In fact a recent study from 2004 by UCLA economists, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian found that:

“Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump,” said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Economics. “We found that a relapse isn’t likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies.“⁶

Further, just six short years ago, current Chairman of the FEDERAL RESERVE, Ben Bernake, said during a speech at Milton Freidman’s 90th birthday that Mr. Friedman was right, the government’s intervention caused/prolonged the Great Depression.⁷

Thus, as we sit here today with our Hoover; President Bush, and the 2nd coming of FDR; President-Elect Obama, the same cycle is on track to repeat itself all over again. We have a housing crisis created and fostered by the Federal government via the “Community Reinvestment Act”, which mandated mortgage loans by banks to wholly unqualified loan applicants. A mismanaged monetary policy by the same culprits, ergo the FEDERAL RESERVE, which prevented the recession after the “Tech Bubble” burst. The TARP fund bailout in homage to the RFC, and an incoming President who thinks nationalization of industries, price and wage controls coupled with massive government construction projects will fix what the bankers and plutocrats created in the first place.

In conclusion, there are some notable exceptions which should not be ignored; for one, we no longer have any semblance of a sound currency as we did in 1929 and two, the creditors to all this debt are no longer domestic, as the majority of our government’s financing comes from over seas.

Souce(s): ¹Modern Money Mechanics, FEDERAL RESERVE Bank of CHICAGO • ² Lessons from the Great American Real Estate Bubble:Florida 1926, National Bureau of Economic Research & Rutgers Univ, July 2008 • ³ The Economist, “Economics focus: The Great Depression” September, 17th 1998 • ⁴ Ralph de Toledano, INSIGHT, “Democrats Don’t Recall FDR’s ‘Promises’• ⁵ The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara • ⁶ FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate, UCLA newsroom • ⁷ Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke At the Conference to Honor Milton Friedman, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, November 8, 2002, FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD • ⁸ Paul Johnson, “A History of the American People” – New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997, p. 74

Kelly

As of September, the number of people using food-stamps grew to a record number of 31.5 million, up 17% from just last year.¹ Not surprising when you combine the expanding unemployment and foreclosure rates with the Washington crew taught philosophy that when the going gets tough, the government is the answer. After spending upwards of 3, 4, 5, trillion dollars on the bailout of every good ol’ boy on Wall Street, the public trough of food-stamps looks more and more like a dog dish. I say this, because though I am no cheerleader for entitlement programs, it becomes increasingly difficult to pick a bone with food-stamps when you compare the amount of money borrowed, printed, and created out of thin air that is being strewn about to shore up the base of the elite.

As Henry Paulson and Ben Bernake decide which CEO’s can line their pockets with corporate welfare, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will decide how much to increase the economic stimulus by so that the 1in 10 American families can purchase more soda. It is a disease, from the top to the bottom. And our so-called leaders are determined to keep everyone it their perspective roles.

The problem is that ‘we the people’ have become nothing more than ‘we the taxpayers’ and the bottom line-we, our children, and our grandchildren (those not yet born) are becoming more and more enslaved with each and every dollar spent.

The bailouts need to end, but we have less and less control over that at this point. What we do have control over now and forever is the mindset that we as Americans have adopted, that tells us we are entitled to anything and everything that we want. Understanding that the talk of “loosening credit” so that we can buy more Ford tough trucks and 46 inch wide screen televisions only adds to problem, putting us further and further in debt. It is as if our only job in life is to consume. Mindless consumers, you can bet that is exactly how they see us. And this same consumption of products extends to the food we consume.

Cases of Pepsi products, and bags of Frito Lay products (also under Pepsi) is always in the grocery cart of a food-stamp customer. Priorities? And they call the food-stamp programs anti-hunger. Because there is nothing like a can of Mountain Dew and a bag of Cheetos to satisfy those hunger pains. I speak from experience on this subject, not from assumption. I work in a grocery store and I am shocked every time I see this-$40 on cases of soda, bags of chips, boxes of doughnuts, and the list goes on and on. It would seem to me that if this is what one requires food-stamps for, then the need is not so great. Bread, meat, milk, vegetables, and fruit can all be had at a local food pantry. But, junk food as necessity can only be had through food-stamps.

This illustrates a complete reinforcement of adding debt to debt so that Americans can keep the consumption train on track. Allow me to reiterate- this is a disease, from the top to the bottom. And our so-called leaders are determined to keep everyone it their perspective roles.

Source: ¹http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE4B28CB20081203?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews

Allison Bricker

Finance Ministers and Central Bankers from twenty advanced and emerging nations continue to fly into Washington D.C. to join President Bush and President-Elect Obama for tomorrow’s “Emergency Economic Summit”¹. As the global financial meltdown continues to worsen, the architects of the crisis are ready to heave upon us the next step in their scheme to monopolize monetary policy into one global central bank. As we have watched these preceding weeks, these criminal financiers and bankers have already advanced their agenda by nationalizing banks, flooding the market with an endless supply of new fiat bank notes, and continuing to artificially control the value of these currencies via adjustment of interest rates.

While their filthy blood soaked hands continue to manipulate their faux capitalist market; a power struggle for which currency will become the global currency is emerging. This most certainly will be issue number one when the “Emergency Economic Summit” is called to order.

Fellow readers, it is necessity to plainly articulate the ruse in progress now being perpetrated upon us. Most people give not a penny’s thought to the structure of a Central Bank, but we must first realize its structure to comprehend the sinister nature of their manipulation.

Central Banks are those banks in charge of issuing currency in the name of a government. However, these Central Banks are not government owned, they are confederations of private banks which then lend debt instruments in the form of “Reserve Notes” for use in the markets.

The banks that own the FEDERAL RESERVE hold shares of stock in the corporation that is the FEDERAL RESERVE. However, “we the people” cannot own these “private” shares of stock, they are reserved solely for bankers.²

As the Central Banks loan “Reserve Notes”, the owners of these banks fraudulently amass obscene amounts of wealth for themselves. We are not talking about the “Upper Class”, these criminal bankers make up a fraction of 1% of the Globe’s population, a separate wholly exclusive “Banker class”. As we are distracted by “middle class” and “upper class” fighting over “tax-breaks for the wealthy”, the “Banker class” gets government to use their currency first loaned to us then taken from us via taxation to purchase assets for these Central Bankers vis-a-vi “The Wall Street Bailout”.

Chase Bank, the 3rd largest bank in the world for example, (also one of the member banks which owns part of the FEDERAL RESERVE), used a portion of the taxpayer bailout funds to buy up the assets of “Washington Mutual Bank”. Just recently, the FEDERAL RESERVE poured another $125,000,000,000 Billion into nine banks in exchange for partial ownership. The FEDERAL RESERVE is now refusing to identify the banks and other recipients of these funds, as another $125,000,000,000 Billion sits ready to acquire additional assets at a moments notice.³

So why is all this important to the aforementioned “G20 Emergency Economic Summit”? Because European Central Bankers see the mismanagement of our economy by our Central Bank, the FEDERAL RESERVE, as an opportunity to make the “Euro” and the European Central Bank the world’s currency and Global Central Bank respectively.

Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has referred to this meeting as “Bretton Woods II” stating:

“Stage two is to make sure problem that developed in the financial system, problems we know started in America, do not happen again.”⁴

Bretton Woods was the international monetary policy agreement that shaped the financial order following World War II. At the time, one of the chief architects of the Bretton Woods Policy, John Maynard Keynes called for the creation of a World Central Bank and currency called the “Bancor”.⁵ The United States refused to go along and instead the U.S. Dollar became the defacto currency of choice. However, the EU and many others are convinced that now is the time to knock us from our perch. The International Herald Tribune reports:

PARIS: French President Nicolas Sarkozy says the U.S. dollar should no longer be seen as “the only global currency” that it has been since World War II.

The French leader says he will deliver that message to leaders of the Group of 20 major world economies at a summit in Washington this weekend to discuss the global financial crisis.⁶

While our Central Bank is most certainly responsible for the mismanagement of their centralized banking scheme, do not expect the FEDERAL RESERVE to go down without a fight. In order to buttress our negotiating strength, the FEDERAL RESERVE has agreed to bribe the Central Banks of Brazil, Mexico, and South Korea⁷ (all attending this weekend’s summit⁸) with the issuance of $30,000,000,000 Billion Dollars in currency swaps each. A currency swap is where we agree to take a Central Bank’s currency such as the Mexican Peso, loan their Central Bank a line of our currency, hold it for a time up to 30 years or when volatility in a market has passed and then swap back the currency for an additional fee.

Fellow readers, regardless of what new schemes emerge from this “Emergency Economic Summit” of corrupt Central Bankers. Regardless of whether the Dollar loses its status as preferred currency now or later is immaterial. We the People, just as Americans did twice before in our history, must call for an end to the 3rd Central Bank of America. We must End the FEDERAL RESERVE, return to sound money owned wholly by our U.S. Treasury, or risk becoming subservient within a decade, by my estimation, to a Global Central Bank.

The opportunity is indeed upon us to take the first step in the long journey towards Reclaiming the Republic and Restoring America’s financial Independence. To re-secure the blessings of debt free liberty to ourselves and our posterity, we must not bury our heads and refuse to acknowledge the crisis; that through candid observation of the facts, can no longer be denied. If we refuse, or shrink from our responsibility, let it be clear that further erosion of liberty and independence will become all the more difficult to regain. If like me, you wish not to pass on this perpetual cycle of debt and its inherent bondage, then please consider joining me on November 22nd to work towards ending the Federal Reserve’s corrupt tenure.

God’s Speed and Long Live the American Republic!

Source(s): ¹National Interest Online – “Bretton Woods Redux” • ² Woodward, G. Thomas (1996), “Money and the Federal Reserve System: Myth and Reality,” Congressional Research Service. • ³Bloomberg – “Bank Bonds Rise May Ease Pain of Refinancing $89 Billion Deb” • ⁴ Politics.co.UK “Brown Launches ‘Bretton Woods Two’ “ • ⁵ BBC – “How Bretton Woods Reshaped the World” • ⁶ International Herald Tribune – France’s Sarkozy questions dollar’s supremacy • ⁷Bloomberg – “Fed Opens Swaps With South Korea, Brazil, Mexico” •⁸ G20 Website, “About-Us” #3 Membership

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