Data Show Fund-Raisers Begin Capitalizing on Bankers' Regret Over Backing Obama.
Republicans are stepping up their campaign to win donations from Wall Street, trying to capitalize on an increasing sense of regret among executives at big financial institutions for backing Democrats in 2008.
In discussions with Wall Street executives, Republicans are striving to make the case that they are banks' best hope of preventing President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats from cracking down on Wall Street.
GOP strategists hope to benefit from the reaction to the White House's populist rhetoric and proposals, which range from sharp critiques of bonuses to a tax on big Wall Street banks, caps on executive pay and curbs on business practices deemed too risky.
Democrats have dominated Wall Street's fund-raising circles in recent elections. Mr. Obama himself raised millions of dollars from employees of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and other Wall Street firms.
Now, at least some Wall Street executives have reduced their political contributions to the Democratic Party and its candidates, according to fund-raising reports and interviews with executives at financial-services firms.
Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio made a pitch to Democratic contributor James Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of J.P. Morgan, over drinks at a Capitol Hill restaurant, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Boehner told Mr. Dimon congressional Republicans had stood up to Mr. Obama's efforts to curb pay and impose new regulations. The Republican leader also said he was disappointed many on Wall Street continue to donate their money to Democrats, according to the people familiar with the matter.
A spokeswoman for J.P. Morgan declined to comment.
"I sense a lot of dissatisfaction and a lot of buyer's remorse on Wall Street," said Rep. Eric Cantor (R., Va.), the second-ranking House Republican and a top Wall Street fund-raiser for his party.
.....more at link.....Data Show Fund-Raisers Begin Capitalizing on Bankers' Regret Over Backing Obama.... more
Famed steakhouse Smith & Wollensky is offering a novel payment plan: steak for stock.
The restaurant has in ad in today's New York Times Business section offering to "swap all NYSE and NASDAQ stock certificates (priced at the close of business) for our USDA Prime, dry aged steaks at both lunch and dinner."
Since many Wall Street firms are giving bonuses in stock, the ad claims that the restaurant is just doing its part in getting that money "back into the city's economy." And for those unlucky GM-shareholders (last traded at $0.61), don't worry -- they'll even take that off your hands.
From The Daily Beast: "All of this has given the heads of the big financial firms—bruised by a vengeful public that can’t seem to accept how the firms are getting ready to dole out billions in bonus money just a year after being bailed out—something finally to snicker about, at least in the private conversations I am having with them. “Joke” is the most common word I hear coming from top Wall Street executives when discussing Volcker’s “reform” efforts.
“If Volcker thinks what he’s saying is going to stop another financial collapse, he’s crazy,” one CEO recently told me."
Are banks that are "too big to fail" impossible to regulate now? It seems like every quarter there's a new cycle of Big Bonus / Middle Finger To Regulator stories. Any good ideas out there you've heard?
This is the first post for the new group, Legislation Consideration. Post links to text of actual bills being considered by Congress, read and comment.
The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 is sponsored by Barney Frank and the purpose is: "To provide for financial regulatory reform, to protect consumers and investors, to enhance Federal understanding of insurance issues, to regulate the over-the-counter derivatives markets, and for other purposes."
Does it? What's the good, the bad and the ugly??This is the first post for the new group, Legislation Consideration. Post links to... more
The idea of a global currency has been kicking around for several years now, most visibly in last year’s G20 meeting in Pittsburgh — a clear sign that the march toward world government, also known as the “new world order,” is very much on track. A new investigation suggests that the global currency won’t be just another euro — a globalized fiat money. Instead, it will be based on carbon, and this will bring it into alignment with a variety of concerns, including fossil fuels depletion (also known as "peak oil") and anthropogenic climate change (ACC), as well as the belief among the new world orderlies that populations need to be monitored and controlled.
Patrick Wood — one-time collaborator with ace investigator Antony Sutton and founder of The August Review — is best known as one of the foremost authorities on the Trilateral Commission. He has here assembled circumstantial evidence that the global elite could soon begin considering a carbon currency as a live option: as, in his words, “the ultimate solution to global calls for poverty reduction, population control, environmental control, global warming, energy allocation and blanket distribution of economic wealth.” To think in these terms would be to revive technocracy, which Wikipedia defines as “a system of government where those who have knowledge, expertise or skills compose the governing body.”
What would result is an economic system based on energy allotments instead of price measured in terms of fiat currencies. The latter are slowly collapsing all over the world as individuals, corporations, and governments all drown in seas of debt accrued from living beyond their means. In other words, in the scenario Wood envisions, the global elite would move to eliminate money, understood as fiat money decoupled from backing by a commodity such as gold, and replace it with a system of carbon credits that would be allocated to every person, possibly monthly.
This would mean “authoritarian and centralized control over all aspects of life, from cradle to grave.” Each individual would receive a unique identifier at birth, possibly in the form of an RFID-embedded identification card. The global ID would follow him or her through life and record the specifics of the person’s schooling, test results, work history, physical location including travel history if any, consumption patterns, health and medical history, and so on. It could not be stolen, since the individual ID would be designed to work only for the person it is assigned to. The global ID could also be implanted under one’s skin. An implant would have the advantage that the person could never lose or misplace it.
Here is Wood’s speculation on how the system might work. “In a nutshell, carbon currency will be based on the regular allocation of available energy to the people of the world. If not used within a period of time, the Currency will expire (like monthly minutes on your cell phone plan) so that the same people can receive a new allocation based on new energy production quotas for the next period.” In other words, there would no point in saving, as with cash. At the end of the cycle, any unused credits would immediately lose their purchasing power.
Wood continues, “Because the energy supply chain is already dominated by the global elite, setting energy production quotas will limit the amount of Carbon Currency in circulation at any one time. It will also naturally limit manufacturing, food production and people movement."
“Local currencies could remain in play for a time, but they would eventually wither and be fully replaced by the Carbon Currency, much the same way that the Euro displaced individual European currencies over a period of time.”
More at the link:The idea of a global currency has been kicking around for several years now, most... more
Professor Sutton stated, "Western textbooks on Soviet economic development omit any description of the economic and financial aid given to the 1917 Revolution and subsequent economic development by Western Firms and banks." "In the Bolshevik Revolution we have some of the world's richest and most powerful men financing a movement which claims its very existence is based on the concept of stripping of their wealth," declared Allen. "[M]en like the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Schiffs, Warburgs, Morgans, Harrimans, and Milners."
Perloff agreed, "Jacob Schiff, the head of Kuhn, Loeb and Co., heavily bankrolled the [Communist] revolution. This was reported by White Russian General Arsine de Goulevitch in his book Czarism and the Revolution." "According to his grandson John," described Allen, "Jacob Schiff ... long-time associate of the Rothschilds, financed the Communist Revolution in Russia to the tune of $20 million." He continued, "According to a report on file with the State Department, his firm, Kuhn Loeb and Co. bankrolled the first five year plan for Stalin," and added, "Schiff's descendents are active in the Council on Foreign Relations today."
Referring to the emergence of a communist dictatorship which resulted from the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Professor Marrs wrote that they were funded by "Germany and America. ... Their repugnant campaign to purify and cleanse Mother Russia and to seek world domination resulted in ... [millions of] human beings wiped out and brutally purged..." He attested, "Brown Brothers Harriman" helped finance it with "money made possible by it and the affiliated Guaranty Trust Company." Professor Sutton agreed, writing "W. Averell Harriman was a director of Guaranty Trust Company" and "was involved in the Bolshevik Revolution."
On February 3, 1949, the New York Journal-American stated, "Today it is estimated even by Jacob's grandson, John Schiff, a prominent member of New York Society, that the old man sank about $20,000,000 for the final triumph of Bolshevism in Russia. Other New York banking firms also contributed."
Referring to a June 15, 1933, Congressional Record, Allen wrote "Congressman Louis McFadden, chairman of the House Banking Committee, maintained in a speech to his fellow Congressman: "The Soviet government has been given United States Treasure funds by the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks acting through the Chase Bank and the Guaranty Trust Company and other banks in New York City. ... Open up the books of Amtorg, the trading organization of the Soviet government in New York, and of Gostorg, the general office of the Soviet Trade Organization, and of the State Bank of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and you will be staggered to see how much American money has been taken from the United States' Treasury for the benefit of Russia."
"Now our textbooks tell us that the Nazis and Soviets were bitter enemies and their systems are opposites," observed Professor Sutton. But in the "1920s, W. Averell Harriman was a prime supporter of the Soviets with finance and diplomatic assistance ... [and] participated in RUSKOMBANK," which was "the first Soviet commercial bank. Furthermore, Max May, the Vice President of Guaranty Trust, which was dominated by Harriman and Morgan, became the first Vice-President of Ruskombank." However, declared Professor Sutton, "Averell Harriman, his brother Roland Harriman, and ... E.S. James and Knight Woolley, through the Union Bank ... were prime financial backers of Hitler." He asked, "How could a rational man support Soviets and Nazis at the same time?"
A curious dilemma arises when faced with the documented fact that Wall Street funded both Communists and Nazis. First, it would seem these two forms of government are at opposite ends of the political spectrum.
More at the link:Professor Sutton stated, "Western textbooks on Soviet economic development omit... more
East Boston is one of those urban neighborhoods that is easy to pass through and hard to get to. It's separated from downtown Boston by a river, bisected by two tunnels and a freeway, and hemmed in by Logan Airport on the east. Sonny Noto's restaurant is a reminder of the days when it was heavily Italian, but it's now overwhelmingly Latino, mostly Mexican, Salvadoran and Colombian immigrants, their desires for ice cream and cumbia CDs catered to by the Heladeria al Jardin and El Poder Musical.
East Boston has been hard hit by foreclosure. More than 400 buildings there have been foreclosed, says Dominic Desiata, a community organizer for City Life/Vida Urbana. He estimates that out of a population of 40,000 people, 500 to 700 have faced eviction because of foreclosures.
Unlike the rest of the country, most of the victims of foreclosure in the Boston area are renters. Steve Meacham, a longtime City Life/Vida Urbana organizer, estimates that three-fourths of the people facing eviction in foreclosed properties are tenants.
"The foreclosure crisis is mainly affecting the three-decker," says Zoe Cronin, an attorney with Greater Boston Legal Services, referring to the three-story, three-apartment wood buildings that are urban New England's iconic working-class housing.
But Boston has also seen a strong campaign against foreclosure evictions. Combining grassroots organizing, legal action, political and media pressure on the banks and eviction-day sit-ins, it's so far been able to keep dozens of people in their homes.
"We've kept many, many people in their apartments," says Desiata. "We don't want to be displaced at the right price. We want to stay and keep the community together."
The banks, he says, don't want to renegotiate mortgages, and want the buildings vacant once they've been foreclosed. So they have to be pressured to let residents stay and pay rent, or to sell the building at the current appraised value instead of the housing-bubble mortgage value.
Canvassing
Salvadoran immigrant Alfredo Martinez became an organizer with City Life/Vida Urbana two years ago, when he was fighting eviction. A short, stocky engaging man in a brown outdoor-work jacket and a baseball cap, Martinez first came to the United States in 1973 and settled in East Boston after several trips back and forth. He's worked in restaurants and construction, as a bricklayer, tiler and plasterer.
In 2007, Citizens Bank foreclosed on Martinez's landlord, and then moved to evict him. He got a Legal Services lawyer to contest the eviction on the grounds that the building needed repairs. Eventually, he won a $12,500 settlement and the right to stay, signing a lease with the new owner, although his rent was raised to $900 and he's still trying to get repairs done.
Now he spends Saturday afternoons canvassing East Boston. Organizers—mostly tenants who have fought their own evictions—trek through the neighborhood in pairs, knocking on the doors of recently foreclosed buildings to try to get the residents to join the movement against displacement.
On Brooks Street, a toddler peers out the window of a two-story clapboard home. Someone immediately pulls the curtains shut. A lot of immigrants have miedo—a fear of strangers, Martinez explains; they're scared that outsiders could be immigration agents or police.
The upstairs apartment has five names listed on the mailbox, a common sight in the neighborhood. That's nothing, Martinez says. He once lived in a house with 24 people.
More at the link:East Boston is one of those urban neighborhoods that is easy to pass through and hard... more
Robert Greenwald interviews Oliver Stone on the new Wall Street, Stone's new 10 hour HBO series, W, Nixon, his Vietnam experience, his interview and doc on Castro, on Chavez, the economy, and Stone's prediction of the end of America, '....a disaster will happen [to America].' He compares the economic collapse of September 2008 to a heart attack and that the patient went back to eating butter. He says we will never end Afghanistan until the U.S. government economically collapses permanently, which he believes will happen when another currency, like the Yen perhaps, will take over the dollar.
At one point Stone admits he "was all fucked up" after he returned from Vietnam and felt so aggressive from that experience of seeing his comrades die in vain that he wanted to use guns and violence against the American government, as did many 60s radicals. He now feels we will need a similar breakdown in our society to change this corrupt American government which he sees as hopeless, but yet predicts a collapse of the economy like what almost happened in September 2008, will indeed bring down this country. I have to agree whole heatedly. I love this guy.Robert Greenwald interviews Oliver Stone on the new Wall Street, Stone's new 10... more
President Obama won’t tell us in his State of the Union address. The deficit hawks won’t crow about it. Don’t expect the Tea Party or Rush and Beck to highlight our generosity either. But the sad fact is this: During the worst year since the Great Depression, with 30 million people out of work or forced into part-time jobs, Wall Street is awarding itself $150 billion in bonus money…..and it comes from us!
That’s $500 for every man, women and child in the country — $2,000 for a family of four. (Maybe we should try deducting it from our income taxes as a charitable donation.)
Had we not bailed out the financial sector, there would be no bonus pool this year. Zip, zero, ziltch.
It seems like financial Alzheimer’s setting in as many forget how all this happened. Wall Street, and no one else, crashed the economy through its fantasy finance extravaganza. It created, sold and traded a slew of newfangled financial instruments that were supposed to remove risk from risky investments. Wall Street went begging for subprime debt in order to create and market their new financial securities, the most profitable activity in their history. As a result of their securitization casino, which leveraged bet upon bet, the housing market turned into a bubble and finally burst. Wall Street had miscalculated, big time. The risk returned with a vengeance.
Not matter what Rick Santelli proclaims, government interference didn’t cause the crash. Greedy, stupid home buyers didn’t cause the crash. Poor people backed by the Community Reinvestment Act didn’t crash the system. And China didn’t cause it either. The book should be closed on this: Wall Street’s fantasy finance casino did us in. (Please see The Looting of America for a fuller account.)
Once housing prices stopped their meteoric rise, the entire precarious structure of bets piled upon subprime loans, turned toxic. The banking system froze and the real economy was tossed off a cliff. We truly were on our way to the next Great Depression.
Policy leaders of all stripes bailed out the financial system because they thought there was no choice–and that was true to an extent. Preventing total financial collapse was necessary. The choices to be made were about how to prevent a further collapse and what kinds of demands we’d make on the banks that had brought disaster upon themselves and the rest of us. Bush, Paulson, Bernanke, Obama, Geithner, Summers and Congress made their choices. They poured money into the banking sector like never before. We gave the Wall Street banks gigantic loans and enormous guarantees on their toxic assets. We gave them TARP. It all totaled to more than $12 trillion, with most of it still in play, even after the TARP repayments. (See Nomi Prins’s excellent accounting..)
We can, and should, argue about whether the bailout was put together properly. A strong case can be made that the victims (the public), rather than the perpetrators (Wall Street’s casinos), should have received our support. Clearly, there were much better ways to rescue the failing economy and produce jobs, which is still by far our number one problem.
Wall Street was saved from bankruptcy, including Goldman Sachs which now cavalierly insists that it didn’t really need the bailout money (yet it took $12.9 billion of taxpayer support via AIG, and tossed it into its bonus pool.) Wall Streeters actually think they’ve earned the $150 billion in bonuses through their own cleverness. Think again. It’s nothing more than taxpayer welfare.
Of course, no one wants to admit that we put the richest people in the world on welfare. It’s embarrassing to acknowledge that we are rewarding those who killed millions of jobs. And worst of all, our political establishment doesn’t have the nerve to take our money back.
More at the link:President Obama won’t tell us in his State of the Union address. The deficit... more
One of the most influential screen villains of the 1980s returns to engage with the real-life economic drama of the 21st century. Here's your first look at film provocateur Oliver Stone's 'Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps.'
BANGKOK, Thailand — Adolf Hitler was a psychopath and a monster but rose to power thanks to big business leaders and other supporters who appreciated his vow to destroy communism and control workers, Hollywood filmmaker Oliver Stone said Monday.
Stone, who is working on a 10-part documentary on the 20th century titled "The Secret History of the United States," said the German dictator was "enabled by Western bankers" and managed to "seduce" Germany's military industrial complex.
"Hitler is a monster. There is no question. I have no empathy for Hitler at all. He was a crazy psychopath," Stone told reporters in the Thai capital. "But like Frankenstein was a monster, there was a Dr. Frankenstein. He is product of his era."
He said the aim of his documentary, which two historians are helping him with, was to offer a fuller understanding of the 20th century and how some of those lessons may be relevant to President Barack Obama in 2010.
"What has America become? How can we in America not learn from Germany in the 1930s," the Oscar-winning director asked.
Earlier in the day, Stone told about 300 students that his 1991 movie "JFK," was his most controversial to date and that the United States remains in denial over the possibility that someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald could have assassinated John F. Kennedy.
Stone said exploring alternative theories over the JFK assassination remains too sensitive for those in the media or academia who "would be endangering their careers and their position."
"To this day, many key Americans in power are in total denial about this story," Stone said. "They don't even want to know about the possibility that he was killed by someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald. It is a national fairy tale."
A fairy tale is correct. All it takes is very little research to find that Prescott Bush, the Rockefellers (Standard Oil/Chase Bank), the Fords, GM, JP Morgan and countless other American corporations built up the Nazi powerhouse after the country was destroyed after WW1.
The best work on this subject is Professor Antony Sutton, whose 3 books 'Wall Street & the Bolshevik Revolution,' 'Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler' and 'Wall Street and FDR.' (books can be found on Scribd)BANGKOK, Thailand — Adolf Hitler was a psychopath and a monster but rose to... more
The following is an adapted excerpt from Chris Hedges' book, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (Nation Books, 2009) that first appeared in Tikkun magazine.
Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, armies of corporate lobbyists grease the palms of our elected officials, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia, and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East. Brand Obama is about being happy consumers. We are entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is like us. But like all branded products spun out from the manipulative world of corporate advertising, this product is duping us into doing and supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest.
What, for all our faith and hope, has the Obama brand given us? His administration has spent, lent, or guaranteed $12.8 trillion in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street and insolvent banks in a doomed effort to re-inflate the bubble economy, a tactic that at best forestalls catastrophe and will leave us broke in a time of profound crisis. Brand Obama has allocated nearly $1 trillion in defense-related spending and the continuation of our doomed imperial projects in Iraq, where military planners now estimate that 70,000 troops will remain for the next fifteen to twenty years. Brand Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan, increasing the use of drones sent on cross-border bombing runs into Pakistan, which have doubled the number of civilians killed over the past three months. Brand Obama has refused to ease restrictions so workers can organize and will not consider single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. And Brand Obama will not prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes, including the use of torture, and has refused to dismantle Bush's secrecy laws and restore habeas corpus.
Brand Obama offers us an image that appears radically individualistic and new. It inoculates us from seeing that the old engines of corporate power and the vast military-industrial complex continue to plunder the country. Corporations, which control our politics, no longer produce products that are essentially different, but brands that are different. Brand Obama does not threaten the core of the corporate state any more than did Brand George W. Bush. The Bush brand collapsed. We became immune to its studied folksiness. We saw through its artifice. This is a common deflation in the world of advertising. So we have been given a new Obama brand with an exciting and faintly erotic appeal. Benetton and Calvin Klein were the precursors to the Obama brand, using ads to associate themselves with risqué art and progressive politics. This strategy gave their products an edge. But the goal, as with all brands, was to make passive consumers confound a brand with an experience.
Obama, who has become a global celebrity, was molded easily into a brand. He had almost no experience, other than two years in the Senate, lacked any moral core, and could be painted as all things to all people. His brief Senate voting record was a miserable surrender to corporate interests. He was happy to promote nuclear power as "green" energy. He voted to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He reauthorized the Patriot Act. He would not back a bill designed to cap predatory credit card interest rates. He opposed a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining Law of 1872. He refused to support the single-payer health care bill HR 676, sponsored by Reps. Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers. He supported the death penalty. And he backed a class-action "reform" bill that was part of a large lobbying effort by financial firms. ///More at the link above:The following is an adapted excerpt from Chris Hedges' book, Empire of Illusion:... more
Glenn Beck will roll out his Fox News documentary today. It’s called “Live Free Or Die,” a motto taken from General John Stark and inspired by Patrick Henry’s famed March 23, 1775 speech to the House of Burgesses. Henry famously declared: “I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
Glenn Beck is no Patrick Henry. His latest book’s title is a direct rip-off of Thomas Paine’s revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense. Beck is no Thomas Paine. He is not a patriot. He is an Operation Mockingbird asset and his assignment is to take down the patriot movement. He is a Judas Goat. His task is to destroy the patriot movement and lead it into political irrelevance.
THE FIVE THAT STAND AGAINST ALL AMERICANS, THE “MAFIA” JUDGES
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor
Five members of the Supreme Court declared that a “corporation” is a person, not a “regular person” but one above all natural laws, subject to no God, no moral code but one with unlimited power over our lives, a power awarded by judges who seem themselves as grand inquisitors in an meant to hunt down all heretics who fail to serve their god, the god of money.
Their ruling has made it legal for foreign controlled corporations to flush unlimited money into our bloated political system to further corrupt something none of us trust and most of us fear. The “corporation/person” that the 5 judges, the “neo-con” purists, have turned the United States over to isn’t even American. Our corporations, especially since our economic meltdown are owned by China, Russia and the oil sheiks along with a few foreign banks. They don’t vote, pay taxes, fight in wars, need dental care, breathe air, drive cars or send children to school. Anyone who thinks these things are people is insane. Anyone who would sell our government to them is a criminal and belongs in prison. There is nothing in the Constitution that makes this “gang of five” bribe sucking clowns above the law. There is nothing in the Constitution that even mentions corporations much less gives them status equal to or greater than the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government.
The Supreme Court of the United States has no right to breathe human life into investment groups owned by terrorist sympathizers, foreign arms dealers or groups working for the downfall of the United States and everything we believe in, but 5 “justices” have done just that. We now have a new government above our government, above our people, one above any law. Five judges have created institutionalized gangsterism as the new form of government for the United States.
No American soldier can ever go to war fighting for a Chinese hedge fund, a German bank or a Saudi Arabian fertilizer company. Will our new debates in Congress be between members representing the opium warlords against the Columbian cartels? Their cash, which long ago has infiltrated one major corporation or bank after another is now heading for your local representative. How important do you think secure borders for America are for these new policial “influencers?”
For years we complained about AIPAC, the Sierra Club, the NRA, trial lawyers, trade unions, NAM (National Association of Manufacturers) and the churches that got involved in politics. Behind all of these were people, American citizens, and, on some occasions, Americans who fought for their country, raised kids here and were invested in the survival of America although they didn’t always act that way. This was an American problem. Now we aren’t even sure we have an America anymore.
Anyone who believes that a massive flood of corporate money into politics won’t throw control of both houses of Congress into the hands of the wealthy nations that are also our primary strategic enemies, you know the ones, the ones loaded with oil cash, the ones with 10 cent an hour labor and legal systems that shoot first and ask questions later. They just were told they can buy the United States, not just our government, but our military, and the lives of our soldiers. They can now make our laws, raise our taxes, decide on our civil rights, where we can live, if we can own guns, how late we stay up, where and what we drive and, eventually, how we think. The Supreme Court has given foreign owned corporations the eventual power to silence us all.
When a corporation commits a crime, nobody goes to jail. When wars come, they don’t fight, they simply rake in cash.
More at the link:THE FIVE THAT STAND AGAINST ALL AMERICANS, THE “MAFIA” JUDGES
By Gordon... more
Editor's Note: It's now come out that Ben Bernanke's future at the helm of the Federal Reserve is in question. "Bernanke's confirmation vote by the Senate for a second four-year term has been delayed, pending receipt by the committee of documents concerning the Fed's role in the massive bailouts of the U.S. financial industry in 2008 during the economic meltdown." The Huffington Post reported that on Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a Bernanke opponent, said that opposition was growing against his re-confirmation. And on Thursday Jim Manley, senior communications adviser to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said that the vote had not been firmly locked in and won't take place this week. A spokeswoman for the Federal Reserve referred questions to the Senate."
***
Here's a story that reads like the script of an old B-grade monster movie -- and it would be comic, were it not so serious. The monster is named "The Fed," a hydra-headed creature with enormous and destructive power, which it exercises from within the misty confines of a marble cavern that is unapproachable by commoners.
In real life, the Fed is the Federal Reserve -- a private, for-profit bank that is run by and mostly for other big bankers. But it's also its own, secretive branch of our national government. The Fed creates its own money (check your bills -- they're called Federal Reserve notes), it sets our interest rates, it regulates Wall Street and (as we've recently learned the hard way) it has sweeping power to bail out Wall Street.
The Fed operates largely beyond the purview of Congress or even the White House, and both the media and the public are essentially shut out from scrutinizing its financial machinations. The banking gods who dwell within the Fed's temple are said to have knowledge, even wisdom, that the rest of us cannot fathom, so the Powers That Be tell us that these deities must be left alone to make their decisions and work their wonders.
But, wait -- aren't these the same omniscient gods, including Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, that failed to see -- much less forestall -- the looming financial disaster created by Wall Street gamblers who used people's homes as their personal gambling chips during the past decade? Yes, indeed, those are the gods -- the very ones who were supposed to be monitoring and regulating the gamblers to keep them from crashing our financial system and wrecking America's real economy.
Where were these all-knowing ones when we needed them? The blissful Bernanke, who heads the Fed, now claims that the crash of '08 happened because he and other gods did not have enough regulatory clout to stop it.
"Give us more power," is Bernanke's current demand to Congress!
But, wait -- as New York Times analyst David Leonhardt recently wrote -- Fed officials failed to use the substantial power they already had. Why? Because they're too cozy with the quick-fingered Wall Street gamblers they "regulate," so they simply refused to see (or believe) clear signs that the whole system would topple as housing prices headed over the cliff.
While Bernanke is a very smart guy, he was soaked in the stupid conventional wisdom of the day, which was that housing prices only go up. In 2005, he dismissed non-conformist critics of the Fed's inaction by flatly declaring, "We've never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis." And, two years later, as prices were plummeting and modest-income families were defaulting on their home payments, he calmly assured us that the gods "do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy."
Our financial rulers were so intoxicated with the fumes of their own omnipotence that they failed abjectly as regulators, as public servants and, most certainly, as gods.
More at link above:Editor's Note: It's now come out that Ben Bernanke's future at the helm... more
The CIA was created at the behest of the bankers on Wall Street. OSS spook and Wall Street lawyer Frank Wisner was recruited by Dean Acheson to work under Charles Saltzman, at the State Department’s Office of Occupied Territories in 1947. The CIA’s first director, Allen Dulles, was a Wall Street lawyer.
The CIA is Wall Street’s finely honed tool for the neoliberal agenda of the banksters. “A considerable proportion of the developed world’s prosperity rests on paying the lowest possible prices for the poor countries’ primary products and on exporting high-cost capital and finished goods to those countries. Continuation of this kind of prosperity requires continuation of the relative gap between developed and underdeveloped countries – it means keeping poor people poor,” former CIA agent Philip Agee wrote. “Increasingly, the impoverished masses are understanding that the prosperity of the developed countries and of the privileged minorities in their own countries is founded on their poverty.”The CIA was created at the behest of the bankers on Wall Street. OSS spook and Wall... more
Remuneration for Wall Street bankers set to exceed $65bn-
US investment bank Goldman Sachs is expected to reveal a pay and bonus pot of $20bn (£12.3bn) for 2009 tomorrow, reigniting the row over City pay and taking the total amount being paid out by Wall Street financiers to more than $65bn.
Goldman has made sure to report after its rivals in an attempt to deflect public attention from its profits and bonuses, which are forecast to top more than $600,000 per person on average.Remuneration for Wall Street bankers set to exceed $65bn-
US investment bank Goldman... more
United States Representative and former GOP Presidential hopeful Ron Paul of Texas still has much criticism towards the hefty $700 billion bailout of Wall Street.
Paul expressed his criticism today on CNN’s “American Morning.” However, this is not the first time that Paul has expressed criticism on the bailout.
This could be counted as the third time that Paul has openly blasted the hefty bailout.United States Representative and former GOP Presidential hopeful Ron Paul of Texas... more
The short answer is, we don’t. But that does not mean we leave the hop or stay at home.
It is very important for the life and health of our crumbling and mostly artificial democracy that all American voters participate in civil life actively and aggressively, I might even say viciously. This is regardless of the superficial nature of American politics.
Why?
Because even if and when we have huge voter turnouts, the rich, connected and powerful turn the dials on the machinery of government to get what they want any way.
To some extent, elections are theater, no matter who wins or loses. The rich, the powerful, the connected and the entire Patrician class understand this dynamic intimately. They always have. They always will. Their knowledge of how power works gives them a lifetime of staying above the fray that the rest of us are destined to suffer.
Elections, no matter what they are about or what issues are involved are public salve on private wounds that will never completely heal. The powerful will always be the powerful and to some extent they will always be above the will of the people.
Lots of money and lots of “position” power allow Patricians to literally live in a different world than you and I. They know this and that is why money and social connections are so important. These things can literally buy citizenship in an Amerika that you and I know very little about; it is the Amerika of the elites.
It is Skull and Bones, it is Harvard and Princeton and Penn and Vassar and Smith College and Stanford and Yale. It is elite country clubs, membership in the best social groups, teenage sons and daughters of the elites “summering” overseas to get “enculturated”.
It is an MBA from the Wharton School of Business or Yale or Harvard and then a high paying job on Wall Street after graduation. It is learning how to manipulate federal regulations and oversite of financial dealings. It is learning how to hide money in overseas accounts so as not to pay a fair share of taxes.
It is not serving in the Armed Forces (it would be beneath a Patrician to do that) and at the same time insisting that the U.S. Armed Forces be continually used as a thug or a heavy in overseas protections of Patrician holdings and emerging market deals. Let working class kids fight and die, let working class kids become disabled veterans. Patricians do not do such things.
It is the complete domination of all government agencies and structures by these “special” people.
They make belonging to the Republican or Democratic Party a joke. Neither Party runs anything. The elites in both Parties run everything. That is the sad truth of how things work in Amerika, which is actually much more real than America.
There are no real rules of any substantive nature for these people. It has been that way for them since childhood. They count on that to get what they want. Money can buy anything. They know that too.
So where does that leave you and me; out in the cold? Not exactly. The people can stage bloodless revolutions too. It is not simply the aristocracy that can arrange a silent coup. Dubya came close but he got caught. We won’t.
Lets take a look at the news and see what I am saying here.
First off, let me say that I grew up in Republican politics in Philadelphia, PA. My grandfather was a Republican ward leader in that city for decades. My family is still involved in GOP politics in that city.
I am actively involved in Democratic Party politics where I live now, in Northern Virginia. But Party affiliation aside, you need to know that American politics really has little to do with party politics. It really has to do with money and connections. It has more to do with bloodlines and school affiliation and other such things than you could ever imagine. It really is that simple.
More at the link:The short answer is, we don’t. But that does not mean we leave the hop or stay... more
