RESIST AFRICOM (AND NORTHCOM FOR THAT MATTER!!)

AFRICOM: The expansion of UN NATO (not U.S.) military interests on African soil (NORTHCOM: The expansion of UN NATO military interests on American soil!) 


Let's not forget that the U.S. government and military is under the control of foreign international central bankers who founded the UN/NATO global government authorities that we now serve!!! This was verified thanks to shocking testimony by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta at a Senate Armed Services Committee congressional hearing during which it was confirmed that the U.S. GOVERNMENT IS NOW (and has been for a very long time!!) COMPLETELY BEHOLDEN TO INTERNATIONAL POWER STRUCTURES and that the legislative branch is a worthless relic. 


It's all part of the plan to usurp the U.S. monetary system, industrial power/wealth, and military using it to gain global control and then lootiing and trashing what is left, and that includes our reputation!! The CIA is and always has been a PRIVATE corporation owned and operated by the central banking families, who place tin pot dictators like Kony into power and fund and arm them along with their competitors, thereby fomenting civil war... and then claim to come to the rescue with military intervention and AID extortion funds to take power over all land and natural resources, etc. 


Wake the fuck up, people, you are being had!! These central bankers have been fomenting, funding and arming war for hundreds of years and now their wet dream of global empire is almost realized while a dumbed down celebrity worshiping society falls all over themselves in complete and total ignorance of the marketing brain wash scam that is being played out... throwing money at another money laundering NGO that goes right back into the pockets of the same banksters who are funding and arming that dictator that you think you are "saving the children" from!!

Keiser Report: Spiral of debt towards the paranormal (E233)

Every week Max Keiser looks at all the scandal behind the financial news headlines. In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss Brits using payday loans to pay off interest only mortgages while Greeks bury their cash for fear of being Gaddafi'd by the banksters. In the second half of the show, Max talks to David Morgan of Silver-Investor.com about silver, Sprott and bonds.

KR on FB: http://www.facebook.com/KeiserReport

PLEASE READ AND REPOST! Monetary Collapse, Agenda 21 and Understanding Freedom

What if the Federal Reserve dollar falls – hard? How is the globalist blueprint known as Sustainable Development Agenda 21 designed to make humans into livestock? Why liberty must be understood by this generation of Americans lest it be lost for a very long time.

More Americans, an accelerating percentage of ordinary citizens, have come to understand the nature of “fiat” monetary system – that is money created out of thin air. The contemporary fiat system came to the United States in 1913 with the congressional creation of the privately owned United States Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve legislation violated Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution by the issuance of legal tender and brought once again the influence/control of the globalist banking cartel to the U.S.

Today’s global monetary system was originally authorized by the British Parliament. Its purpose was to form the central bank of England as the Bank of England, which is the equivalent to our Federal Reserve, to control a nation’s money.

“Issuing money” means controlling fiat (phony) money creation through the operation of a printing press or computer entry. This results in the regular increase in the money supply which ultimately expresses itself as price inflation.

Newly issued money is infused into the money supply via the creation of debt. Much of this debt is held by the federal government. More money equals more debt. ‘The harder I work’, says the average American, ‘the deeper in debt the nation becomes.’

Growing debt cedes the ultimate exercise of control to the creditor, particularly as the system breaks down under its own largesse. A “new” system is being designed by the same forces who designed today’s fiat system and who now have America close to the brink of dollar destruction. It is the replacement system that we must be wary of if we are to exercise a wise defense and restoration of freedom.

In the meantime keep your faith in the dollar’s viability. Don’t let the blame for its destruction be placed upon the people. The creators of funny (fiat) money have the advantage and they control its destruction; they are wholly responsible.

The power in having charge of the printing press provides control of the direction of government. A thorough analysis of that control would be an illuminating dynamic.

After all, we can begin to think of how Congress has taken physical control over a large percentage of American land in violation of strict constitutional limitations on federal government land ownership. No doubt this centralized land and resource control works to the benefit of the globalist financiers.

Another example: American government, at all levels directs funds and partners with Smart Growth advocates and participants in an effort to remake society while herding people and controlling human action. Smart Growth operates pursuant to the ultimate and documented Agenda 21 objective – to massively reduce human population.

And another: Increasingly Government institutes policies and programs that monitor and control your every action, e.g., TSA, cameras everywhere, Smart Meters, bio-metric drivers’ licenses, and more.

Understand what the global elite’s control of money is doing to the world’s inhabitants.

Thomas Jefferson warned: “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

Congress has passed legislation that built debt of trillions owed to the Federal Reserve. America’s creditors are the descendants and current representatives of the creators of the globally controlled monetary system in which the Federal Reserve simply participates.

In order to subject America to Globalist political and economic control, Congress has made possible the construction of a financial house of cards – our currency! Fiat systems either implode through the forces of economics or are imploded by those in control.

One can anticipate that the core globalists’ power is planned to increase as they scheme to take charge of the selection of the replacement monetary system. While springing this new monetary system, globalists will have created supporting systems of justice and government for this new monetary model. Such is the New World Order.

This ‘new’ order must be understood to be a process. The question of our time is: How far along is this process?

Advancing Globalism – Agenda 21

The new order grows out of ownership and control of the monetary system. This power already controls: compliant governments around the world, multinational corporations, and education and academia designed to create a new man – one unconnected to the principles of the past. An existent infrastructure for world government has been established that includes the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the Bank of International Settlements and the United Nations. The United Nations in turn accredits thousands of so-called Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) for the purpose of implementing the United Nations’ Agenda 21. Agenda 21 is the “comprehensive” blueprint for the construction of a global-to-local network of localized outposts of the global order.

Agenda 21 is known in counties across America as “Sustainable Development.” Sustainability policies are now pursued in every county in the United States. Agenda 21 is the globalist program designed to achieve the step-by-step abolition of private property, education for global citizenship and control over human action. This control includes the written objective that human population be reduced by 85%.

As noted above, every county in America has adopted its own Sustainability program. It is often couched in the advancement of the so called Three Es: Equity, meaning the use of sociology and the remaking of the law to meet government’s social objectives and establish a collectivist society; Economics, meaning the international redistribution of America’s wealth and meaning the conversion of our economy from a free enterprise system based on private property to a system of “public private partnership” (otherwise known as economic fascism or corporatism); and Environment, meaning nature before man.

Upon examination one can begin to see how Globalism is advanced through the local implementation of Agenda 21. The key elements of the land use component of Agenda 21 are the Wildlands Network and Smart Growth. Between these two programs, people will be herded into metropolitan environs while made reliant on public transportation and subjected to increasing monitoring. The Wildlands – 50% of America’s land mass plus buffer zones fronting the Wildlands – will be off-limits to ordinary people and to resource extraction. This program is advanced from a thousand points of darkness lead by the environmental movement in action.

The battlefield for Sustainable Development has become local. Agenda 21 is implemented through your city council, County Boards of Commissioners, local water boards, fire boards, school boards and more. Elected officials have accepted the bogus Sustainable “consensus” advocated by NGOs and other followers of Sustainability policy.

A prime player in bringing globalist policy to locales like yours is ICLEI, the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. Over 600 cities or county governments have treasonous contracts with this international NGO. A handful of cities, recently and in response to an informed citizenry, have cancelled their contracts. In these communities, local policy must now be cleansed of globalist influence. The process has begun. The battle is on! Now is the time to cleanse your town of Agenda 21 policy! KICK ICLEI OUT!

Other significant contributors to Agenda 21 policy at the local level are the federally established Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and the Councils of Governments (COGs). These soviet style organizations work to impose Sustainability policies in their member jurisdictions. Cities, counties, school districts and other local political subdivisions need to withdraw from these extensions of the federal commitment to implement Agenda 21. It becomes clear that these organization types were created in order to further an evolving globalist agenda. Regionalism is the pathway to New Order governance!

The commitment to Agenda 21 is fully imbedded in American government, business and educational systems.

Restoring America; Every Person Matters

The American ideal was predicated on the idea of the political recognition of the unalienable rights of the individual. That is the notion that human beings are vested by their creator with an unalienable right: to life, to liberty, to the use and enjoyment of private property and to other undesignated rights that are natural to man. This experiment in governance necessarily limited the scope of government power so as to not infringe on these natural rights while charging the citizens as being responsible for their own lives. Accordingly, philosophers, historians, and ordinary people have claimed that America’s Declaration of Independence is mankind’s greatest achievement. Now that achievement is being buried under Agenda 21’s onslaught.

Understanding what we are up against is critical if we are to win the war to defend and restore liberty. That’s why seeing how the global-to-local action people operate – including the legions pursuing globalism within NGOs, academia, multinationals and more – is key if we are to reverse freedom’s fall. Today we need to revive our commitment to human liberty in order to survive the globalist onslaught.

While it is important to know what it is that we are fighting against, it is also necessary to know what we fight for. The fact is that liberty is being abandoned through the plunder of private property and the crush of privacy engineered through a system of fiat money created and manipulated by those with a maniacal pursuit to control the human species.

So what is the liberty we cherish? Liberty exists when there is a political recognition that everyman owns his life, when justice is applied equally, and when the economy proceeds naturally on the basis of free enterprise. Liberty acknowledges that man is nature’s steward and that stewardship is best advanced under a system of personal responsibility pursued in the context of advancing one’s own life. A private property forest owner has as a primary interest the long term protection of the land’s resource. This is why genuine private property rewards both its owner with continuing income and the market he serves with ample product.

Why is America the only place where human beings have lived free? The answer is simple. America is the only place where the government has recognized that every person is vested with certain unalienable rights. America falls as that recognition fades.

How does America revive? We must establish an honest monetary system and we must cleanse our municipal, state and federal laws of globalist policy as articulated in the Action plan of Agenda 21. As a consequence, we will: withdraw from internationalist organizations, restructure debt, massively shrink the scope of governmental operations, and reassume the American form of limited government where individual liberty can thrive.

Hope, predicated on a commitment to restore the principles of liberty, is rising. The course of the future is up to you.

Every person can make a difference.

© 2011 Michael Shaw - All Rights Reserved

Michael Shaw is a leading critic of Sustainable Development, also known as the U.N.'s "Agenda 21," which is he Action Plan implementing the Globalist one world vision. This year Michael has been and will be speaking around the country, delivering his current speech: The Ultimate War: Globalism vs. America. In this expos -- he illustrates the local infiltration of globalist policy in the community in which he is speaking.

Shaw leads Freedom Advocates.org which is dedicated to providing news and information on what America stands for and how Agenda 21 is designed to transform America and the human experience.

Web Sites: FreedomAdvocates.org & Liberty Garden

E-Mail: Shaw@FreedomAdvocates.org

PLEASE READ AND REPOST! Monetary Collapse, Agenda 21 and Understanding Freedom

Very wise words from Jim Corr in Ireland!! PLEASE LISTEN!!

THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE ISSUING POWER OF MONEY IS IN PRIVATE HANDS! THE PRIVATISATION OF MONETARY CONTROL WILL ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, BENEFIT THE PRIVATISERS AND NOT THE PEOPLE...WE SHOULD BE PRINTING OUR OWN DEBT FREE CURRENCY!! The VERY same words apply to the American people and our own nation!! "I warned people that based on historical fact, I believe this financial crash to be engineered. Designed so as to effect a corporate take over of not just our own country, but many countries... Our country is under predatory economic attack... an attack as potentially devastating as conventional warfare. Ireland is at the forefront of this war affecting other European countries. Once this nation capitulates, they will move on to do the same to the other European nations. What we are witnessing, I believe, is an engineered top down finanical crash cleverly designed so as to sheer the wealth from the masses, to cripple our country and others under inescapable debt to an extent that we have no choice but to sell off our national assets, state agancies, and natural resources...essentially to the SAME people and their proxies involved in this clever scam. I hope we realize just how devastating this will be if we allow it to happen. The ultimate aim is to gut our country of everything of value. See http://jimcorr.com and watch Money as Debt http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2550156453790090544#

Medvedev Shows Off Sample Coin of New ‘World Currency’ at G-8

http://www.outragedpatriots.com/

July 10 (Bloomberg) -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev illustrated his call for a supranational currency to replace the dollar by pulling from his pocket a sample coin of a “united future world currency.”

“Here it is,” Medvedev told reporters today in L’Aquila, Italy, after a summit of the Group of Eight nations. “You can see it and touch it.”

The coin, which bears the words “unity in diversity,” was minted in Belgium and presented to the heads of G-8 delegations, Medvedev said.

The question of a supranational currency “concerns everyone now, even the mints,” Medvedev said. The test coin “means they’re getting ready. I think it’s a good sign that we understand how interdependent we are.”

Medvedev has repeatedly called for creating a mix of regional reserve currencies as part of the drive to address the global financial crisis, while questioning the U.S. dollar’s future as a global reserve currency. Russia’s proposals for the G-20 meeting in London in April included the creation of a supranational currency.

http://www.futureworldcurrency.com/

To contact the reporter on this story: Lyubov Pronina in L’Aquila, Italy at lpronina@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aeFVNYQpByU4

WORLD GLOBALIZATION OF THE BANKING & REGULATORY STRUCTURE PART 2

Click here to read part one

By Joan Veon
June 30, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

Concentrating Total Financial Power at the Bank For International Settlements and the Financial Stability Board

BASEL, SWITZERLAND - There are those who have been predicting a time when there would appear a world government structure. That time is here. Many, however, have predicted that it would be political in power. That is not necessarily so. Although the United Nations has been an organizing power worldwide to harmonize national law with international law, they do not issue or print money—for that is the role of central banks. With the new and vast empowerments being given to the central banks of the world and with the restructuring of the Financial Stability Board, it appears that world government is financial and economic. The old adage is true, “He who owns the gold makes the rules.”

The entire banking system of the world, with the exception of a few Muslim countries, is run by private corporations called “central banks.” America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, was founded in 1913. People should understand that it is not Congress which runs America but the Federal Reserve because without the money and credit that it provides to banks and subsequently home owners, farmers, and businesses, would not be able to function. All one has to do is study the various past economic crises to know that they occurred when the national banking system cut off credit. There is no doubt that the 2008 Credit Crisis has helped everyone to see that it is the banks—primarily the international banks and the central banks which run the world. While the names of the shareholders of the Federal Reserve remain secret, many people believe that the large international banks are some of its owners.

As a result of the Credit Crisis, the Bush Administration proposed the “Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory Structure” which was approved by current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner who then was president of the New York Federal. He is now proposing the Obama regulatory blueprint. Recently released, it calls for many of the same recommendations as the previous blueprint, which can be summarized as a total centralization of power:

• A New Financial Services Oversight Council of financial regulators to identify emerging systemic risks and improve interagency cooperation.

• New authority for the Federal Reserve to supervise all firms that could pose a threat to the financial stability, even those that do not own banks.

• Stronger capital and other prudential standards for all financial firms, and even higher standards for large, interconnected firms.

• A new National Bank Supervisor to supervise all federally chartered banks (and other financial institutions currently not under Federal Reserve oversight).

• Elimination of the federal thrift charter and other loopholes that allowed some depository institutions to avoid bank holding company regulation by the Federal Reserve.

• The registration of advisors of hedge funds and other private pools of Capital with the SEC.

Since most are not acquainted with our financial and regulatory structure, they will not appreciate the incredible transfer of power being given to the Federal Reserve, a private corporation. Once Congress passes the necessary law, the Fed will be given massive powers over the entire financial and economic industry, the insurance industry, non-banking institutions as well as the mortgage industry.

While most Americans are hardly aware of the United Nations or World Bank, let alone the World Health Organization, it will be difficult to understand the two-pronged frontal attack: changing U.S. regulatory laws to correspond to global regulatory laws which are in the process of being strengthened and re-configured. The complexity is enormous and the areas affected are hardly known or at this time or truly understood. Sadly, Congress is so busy adjusting their togas, they do not understand that they no longer have the real power as it was given to the Federal Reserve in 1913.

A very major piece of the new international architecture is the newly configured Financial Stability Board-FSB. At the spring meeting of the IMF/World Bank, NWV had asked former BIS Managing Director, Sir Andrew Crockett, now with JP Morgan, what the role, power and function would be of the FSB. He explained that while the chairs were still being arranged at the table, that it would act at the global level to oversee national stability risks, it would work with other regulators, it would review standards set by various board on the national level, and it would employ a ‘college of regulators’ that would define methodologies. At the inaugural meeting held on June 26-27 in Basel, FSB Chairman Mario Draghi, Governor of the Bank of Italy, provided a detailed report on its new structure. He explained,

The FSB’s mandate is to assess vulnerabilities affecting the financial system; identify and oversee action needed to address them; promote coordination and information exchange among authorities responsible for financial stability; monitor and advise on market developments and their implications for regulatory policy; advise on and monitor best practice in meeting regulatory standards; undertake joint strategic reviews on the policy development work of the international standards setting bodies; set guidelines for and support the establishment of supervisory colleges; manage contingency planning for cross-broader crisis management; and collaborate with the IMF to conduct Early Warning Exercises.

The FSB was given an official “plenary” structure which would be like the structure of any other international body, like the plenary of the United Nations. It will be comprised of G20 central bank ministers, treasury secretaries, and regulatory authorities. It will have a Steering Committee and three Standing Committees: for Vulnerabilities Assessment; Supervisory and Regulatory Cooperation; and Standards Implementation.

The Standing Committee for Supervisory and Regulatory Cooperation will address coordination issues that arise among supervisors and regulators and set guidelines for and oversee the establishment and effective functioning of supervisory colleges.

A number of questions have been raised with regard to the college of supervisors which will be a key component of the FSB. In April, 2008, the G7 welcomed the idea of the college of supervisors to make the world’s financial markets less risky. Paulson’s blueprint and his recommendation to bring all of the different U.S. regulatory bodies under one agency is key to making the supervisory colleges work. Many on the international level wanted to be the one responsible for suggesting it, Gordon Brown of the UK being one of them. The supervisory college would monitor the world’s top 30 financial firms in order to have “effective cross-border supervision.” This would be formally agreed to by Memorandum of Understanding which would describe how it will function, be organized and coordinate between supervisors, banks, and countries.

The FSB will be comprised of the Group of Seven plus: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey. In addition the European Central Bank and the European Commission, as well a host of international financial institutions and international standard setting, regulatory and supervisory groups with participate.

The above constitutes a total restructuring of the entire financial system, mortgage system, insurance industry, non-banking institutions, and any other entity connected with money on a worldwide basis. While the central banks control the monetary system, they are now being given complete centralization of these financial powers.

Congress can argue about whether or not they will put all of our regulatory agencies under one roof, but the real truth is that they don’t have the power to do that for “he who owns the gold makes the rules.” The Federal Reserve, along with Treasury has already been playing a major role to help set in place the new financial and regulatory infrastructure.

In short, what comes after this will probably be a global currency that will lead to a time of total control under a cashless system. The BIS would not answer NewsWithViews' questions about a change to the Special Drawing Right from the dollar. BIS Managing Director Jaime Caruana commented, “Repairing the financial system and building a more resilient one for the future also requires broad-based efforts involving cooperation between government and the private sector. At the same time, we need to resist the move towards protectionism; mounting that resistance puts a premium on international cooperation and a heightened sense of shared responsibility.”

It is ironic that here in Basle, the home of the Bank for International Settlements, the Rathaus, built in the early 1500s which was the center of town at that time, has written in gold a statement that is timeless, “Freedom is better than gold and silver.” For part one click below.

Click here to read part one

© 2009 Joan Veon - All Rights Reserved

Order Joan Veon's book;
"The United Nations'
Global Straitjacket"

Joan Veon is a businesswoman and international reporter, who has covered over 100 Global meetings around the world since 1994. Please visit her website: www.womensgroup.org. To get a copy of her WTO report, send $10.00 to The Women's International Media Group, Inc. P. O. Box 77, Middletown, MD 21769. For an information packet, please call 301-371-0541

E-Mail: t7w7g7@aol.com

Website: www.womensgroup.org

http://www.newswithviews.com/Veon/joan166.htm

WORLD GLOBALIZATION OF THE BANKING & REGULATORY STRUCTURE

By Joan Veon
June 29, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

BASEL, SWITZERLAND -The power base of the world has shifted…it is no longer in London, New York City, Washington D. C., or Tokyo. Neither is it in Beijing or Moscow. It is Basel, Switzerland. In 1930, the Bank for International Settlements-BIS was set up as a result of the Young Plan which was named after the man who presided over the Allied Reparation Committee, Owen D Young.

Basel was chosen as its location because everyone could get on a train from anywhere in Europe to attend its meetings. When you walk out of the main train station, the BIS is within easy walking distance of one block. A modern 18 story high building belies the power it extends globally. There is nothing about the building that calls anyone’s attention to it other than the plaque near the glass front doors that basically says it is private property. The world’s power brokers walk to the BIS without fanfare and are set apart from the citizenry by their business suit and ID pass.

Yet within its walls the world’s monetary system is being designing and directed by many illuminated and brilliant people from inside and from without, those who visit regularly from all over the world include: central bank ministers, treasury secretaries, regulators, insurance supervisors, deposit insurers and accountants. Truly the BIS is all powerful. Dr. Carroll Quigley in his book, Tragedy and Hope, wrote that,

The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalistic fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreement, arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland (pp. 324-25).

If this power was not evident before, it is in the process of becoming greater and more immense. While the BIS has always been the focal point of central bank activity globally, it now is finalizing the structure Dr. Quigley wrote about. Bi-monthly, the Group of Ten central bankers, along with those from majoring developing nations come together to discuss global monetary policy, among other things. Over the years it has expanded to the point that every aspect of banking, finance, insurance, deposit insurance, and regulation now constitute its core workings.

In the mid-1990s the word “globalization” came into our vocabularies as we were faced with naming the process whereby the barriers between the countries of the world started to fall. Beginning with the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in 1944, the financial barriers between countries fell; with the establishment of the United Nations in 1945, the political barriers fell; with the establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1994, the trade barriers fell; with the establishment of the International Criminal Court in 1998, the legal barriers fell; and with the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, the military and intelligence barriers fell.

Similarly, during the 1990s, the Bank for International Settlements started to set up its own level of globalization. In1998, the International Association of Insurance Supervisors was set up and is comprised of insurance supervisors from all over the world. In 1999, the Financial Stability Forum was set up which was comprised of the Group of Seven treasury secretaries, central bankers, and regulatory agencies.

Recently this organization was expanded to include the Group of Twenty. Then in 2002 the International Association of Deposit Insurers was set up. This organization is comprised of the “FDICs” of the world. Another organization which was set up in 1973 and then reconfigured in 1984 is the International Organization of Security Commissions-IOSCO which is basically a global “security and exchange” commission which has facilitated a global stock exchange.

What the 2008 Credit Crisis has provided is an opportunity to further enhance and empower these organizations which will and are in the process of transferring respective responsibilities from the national level to the global level, thus completing the process of banking, insurance, auditing, accounting, and regulatory globalization. It should be mentioned that in order for the United States to play its role in this process, the Obama Administration will have to set up a single national regulator over our seven different regulators that currently work independently. This is so important a step that the Financial Times recently ran an editorial on June 20 that warned America,

The need for thorough regulatory reform is still pressing. One concern stands out: the risk of the whole financial system breaking down, as it did last autumn. Those who want to give central banks the power and responsibility to monitor systemic risks are right. They include the US Treasury, whose proposals this week seek to turn the Federal Reserve into a systemic super-regulator. These proposals are contested. They should not be; the alternatives are worse. Reforms to rein in systemic risk must not now fall prey to politics. They must be enacted before the memory of last autumn fades.

Let us examine what the first paragraph of the Bank for International Settlements 79th Annual Report stated with regard to the credit crisis:

How could this happen? No one thought that the financial system could collapse. Sufficient safeguards were in place. There was a safety net: central banks that would lend when needed, deposit insurance and investor protections that freed individuals from worrying about the security of their wealth, regulators and supervisors to watch over individual institutions and keep managers and owners from taking on too much risk. Since August 2007, the financial system has experienced a sequence of critical failures.

While it provides their assessment of what went wrong, the report summarizes the problem and the solution this way:

In summary, financial regulators, fiscal authorities, and central bankers face enormous risks. Building a perfect, fail-safe financial system—one capable of maintaining its normal state of operations in the event of a failure—is impossible. Standing in the way are both innovation and the limits of human understanding, especially regarding the complexity of the decentralized financial world. We have no choice but to take up the challenge of first repairing and then reforming the international financial system.

Their recommendations include the BIS standard-setting committees (the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, the Central Bank Governance Forum, the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems, and the Markets Committee) and the Financial Stability Board. For our purposes we will discuss the newly centralized power of the Financial Stability Board.

First it should be noted that with this kind of total economic and monetary failure, the entire system should be scrapped and perhaps we should go back to being individual nation-states, but you see for their purposes, they are expanding and empowering another level of control which will move the assets of the entire world into their domain. No physical war, no guns, no bullets—electronic financial warfare.

The Financial Stability Board was originally the Financial Stability Forum-FSF. When it was set up in 1999, I interviewed its Secretary-General, Svein Andresen who told me that there was no guarantee that it would be able to protect the global system from problems. However, it was believed that if you brought the central bank ministers together with the treasury secretaries and the regulatory agencies from the Group of Seven countries that it would provide a framework to protect the global financial system. Obviously they failed in their mission. The alternative instead of liquidating the FSF was to expand and empower it. When I asked FSB Chairman Mario Draghi about the role and input of the international bankers like Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, he replied,

We are in contact with various --say bankers association, market association—banks, hedge funds, securities fora and lots of other bodies. We look at what they do and then we make up our own mind. So it is an interesting context but in the end, ours is a forum where you have the regulators—banking regulators, market regulators, financial ministries and international organization and institutions and standard setters. So it is our own mind in the end which we look at.

It is important to note that the internationalization or globalization of the financial system is here. It constitutes tearing down the final barrier between the countries of the world. It has been almost fully operational for at least 10 years. At this point in the game, the integration between a handful of international organizations is apparent.

The need to coordinate international accounting through the International Accounting Standards Board with the American counterpart, Financial Accounting Standards Board- FASB with the FSB and G20 is already happening. IOSCO is working with the BIS Joint Forum and FSB. In order to develop high quality international standards for auditing, assurance, ethics and education for professional accountants, the Monitoring Group was set up and a Charter was put in place in 2008 by Memorandum of Understanding. Those participating include: IOSCO, the Basel Committee of Banking Supervision, the European Commission, the International Association of Insurance Supervisors, the World Bank, the Financial Stability Board and the International Forum of Independent Audit Regulators.

There are so many working groups which now comprise a new level of regulatory oversight operating internationally that it is almost impossible to go back to the power of the individual nation-state. The number and the oversight of these groups will make your head spin. Can we go back? Any country who would dare say no would be completely destroyed—ask the 5 Asian countries that chose to say no to the WTO Financial Services Agreement in the mid-1990s. It is now the Financial Stability Board which is now empowered with becoming the “United Nations of Financial and Regulatory Control” over countries.

© 2009 Joan Veon - All Rights Reserved

Order Joan Veon's book;
"The United Nations'
Global Straitjacket"

Joan Veon is a businesswoman and international reporter, who has covered over 100 Global meetings around the world since 1994. Please visit her website: www.womensgroup.org. To get a copy of her WTO report, send $10.00 to The Women's International Media Group, Inc. P. O. Box 77, Middletown, MD 21769. For an information packet, please call 301-371-0541

E-Mail: t7w7g7@aol.com

Website: www.womensgroup.org
http://www.newswithviews.com/Veon/joan165.htm

The Truth Behind AIG

Making Bernie Madoff Look Like The Artful Dodger Since at Least 2005

I knew something was fishy when I worked out the details on AIG's "Securities Lending" program. It sucked the whole institution into a long bet on rising housing prices, in an irresponsibly unprotected position. My one-year-old nephew's got better risk management than that. It just didn't add up.

Well, dear friend...it turns out I had no idea.

"AIG was a Ponzi scheme plain and simple," says a new report from Institutional Risk Analytics, "yet the Obama Administration still thinks of AIG as a real company that simply took excessive risks. No, to us what the fraud Bernard Madoff is to individual investors, AIG is to the global financial community."

That's right friend...our intuition was right on with this one. So grab yourself a cup of coffee, mute the television, and get ready to take a peek under the Emperor's Kimono.

What we're going to see truly might shock you...or...if you're like me, it'll just make your blood boil and wonder how you can "opt-out" of funding any more bailouts.

AIG...A Black Hole for Your Tax Money

So we'll start with some of AIG's less egregious sins. Namely selling Credit Default Swap contracts on GM bonds...and in doing so, indirectly driving GM into bankruptcy.

Here's how that works...

If I understand it correctly, Obama gave GM sixty days to negotiate with its bondholders. Either they take a "haircut" on the value of their bonds, or a "debt-for-equity" swap. But neither seems likely at this point. Why?

Well...as it happens, GM's bondholders bought CDS protection from AIG. And as the government's made perfectly clear over the last few months, AIG counterparties can expect their CDS contracts to be paid out at 100 cents on the dollar. What's more, bankruptcy recovery on bonds is rarely - if ever - zero. Lehman bonds were worth about ten cents on the dollar...even after the biggest bankruptcy in history.

So GM's bondholders are staring down the barrel at two grossly different opportunities. On the one hand, they could do the right thing - at least in terms of taxpayer bailout money - and take a haircut on their assets. That would mean taking a serious hit on the value of their bonds...something that would be necessary just to make GM solvent.

But on the other hand, they're looking at recovering 100%+ on the exact same bonds. Granted, through means of indirect taxpayer extortion, but nonetheless; a profit. And as we said yesterday, these guys are in the business because they love money, not because they feel a duty to their government or their people. (ed.: We could likely say the same thing about Washington at this point.)

And remember, President Obama vowed that the American auto industry would indeed survive...even if they're forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. That means any money paid out by GM in the aforementioned recovery process would need to be replenished by taxpayer dollars in order to get the company back up to speed.

So effectively - thanks to AIG - the taxpayers could end up bailing out GM twice...on the hook for paying to make GM's bondholders whole, but also indirectly paying for any recovery they make on those bonds post-bankruptcy.

Now...if your already steaming mad...and if you're worried about your blood pressure...well, you might just want to skip this next session...

AIG: The Ponzi Scheme Laid Bare

Because this is the big one folks.

The proof that AIG was just one big Ponzi scheme...cooking the books for the whole global financial system. If AIG really was bailed out because of "systemic risk," then it was bailed out because the system risked being exposed for how insolvent it truly was.

If the "systemic risk" was failure and a collapse in the global credit markets, then it holds that AIG was merely preventing an illusion...an incontrovertible fraud that disguised this ugly truth.

The major hat-tip here goes to the whistleblowers at Institutional Risk Analytics, and you can find their full report here.

Basically, they wanted to know why AIG would ditch the highly profitable business of writing Property and Casualty (P&C) insurance policies in favor of the highly risky CDS business. It just didn't add up.

So they spent a few months, "interview[ing] a number of forensic experts, insurance regulators and members of the law enforcement community focused on financial fraud. The picture we have assembled is frightening and suggests that, far from just AIG, much of the insurance industry has been drawn into the world of financial engineering and has thus become part of the problem."

It all started with reinsurance...and a form of communiqué known as "side letters"...

"In the regulatory world, a 'side letter' is perhaps the most insidious and destructive weapon in the white-collar criminal's arsenal. With the flick of a pen, underhanded executives can cook the books in enormous amounts and render a regulator helpless."

Reinsurance is a common practice in the insurance industry...where one insurer will offset another insurer's risk on his own books for a fee. But once side letters are involved, all bets are off.

At that point, reinsurance essentially becomes a show...a "window dressing" that helps keep accountants and regulators at bay while you get down to the business of making money - never mind those pesky safeguards.

Oh yeah, and it nullifies your CDS contracts...

"There are two basic problems with side letters," says the IRA report, "First, they are a criminal act, a fraud that usually carries the full weight of an '"A'" felony in many jurisdictions. Second, once the side letter is discovered by a persistent auditor or regulator examining the buyer of protection, the transaction becomes worthless. You paid $6 million to AIG to shift risk via the reinsurance, but the side letter makes clear that the transaction is a fraud and you lose any benefit that the apparent risk shifting might have provided."

Did this practice hit AIG's CDS business? It's highly, highly likely according to the report from the IRA...

"Indeed, our sources as well as press reports suggest that the CDS contracts written by AIG may have included side letters, often in the form of emails rather than formal letters, that essentially violated the ISDA agreements and show that the true, economic reality of these contracts was fraud plain and simple."

But the evidence might be harder to come by...largely thanks to our government's ham-fisted approach to the situation..., "Unfortunately, by not moving to seize AIG immediately last year when the scandal broke, the Fed and Treasury may have given the AIG managers time to destroy much of the evidence of criminal wrongdoing."

As for a resolution...or perhaps a recovery following fraudulent conveyance...

"Only when we understand how AIG came to be involved in CDS and the fact that this seemingly illegal activity was simply an extension of the reinsurance/side letter shell game scam that AIG, Gen Re and others conducted for many years before will we understand what needs to be done with AIG, namely liquidation. Seen in this context, the payments made to AIG by the Fed and Treasury, which were then passed-through to dealers such as Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), can only be viewed as an illegal taking that must be reversed once the US Trustee for the Federal Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York is in control of AIG's operations."

However Did We Get Here?

With US$200 Billion of our dollars already crammed down AIG's craw, and more fraudulent "bailout" on the way before we even inspect the legality of AIG's CDS contracts, I just want to know how the hell we got here in the first place.

This isn't the kind of America they told me about when I was in school. And they're not even covering it in the media. What happened? When did we become the United States of AIG?

But then I took a look at AIG's campaign contributions over the last few years and it all became perfectly clear. I wish I had US$9 million kicking around to subsidize measures that would have prevented utter financial collapse, rather than provoking one.

Sadly, it's often the culprits of financial collapse - the AIG's the Goldman's and the Madoff's - that have the money necessary to buy "democratic support" for their continued shenanigans. This stuff won't be stopping any time soon, but I'm taking steps to make sure it doesn't cost me a dime...are you?

http://www.sovereignsociety.com/2009Archives1stHalf/040209TheTruthBehindAIG/tabid/5522/Default.aspx

World Bank President Admits Agenda For Global Government/Global Dictatorship

Bilderberg elitist Zoellick calls for IMF, WTO & World Bank to regulate national policy

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, April 1, 2009

World Bank President and Bilderberg elitist Robert Zoellick openly admitted the plan to eliminate national sovereignty and impose a global government during a speech on the eve of the G20 summit.

Speaking about the agenda to increase not just funding but power for international organizations on the back of the financial crisis, Zoellick stated, “If leaders are serious about creating new global responsibilities or governance, let them start by modernising multilateralism to empower the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank Group to monitor national policies.”

In other words, give global institutions the power to regulate national policy as part of the creation of global government.

What Zoellick is outlining is essentially the end of national sovereignty and the reclassification of national governments as mere subordinates to a global authority that is completely unaccountable to the voting public of any country.

The more cynical amongst us would call this a global dictatorship. Zoellick couches the plan in flowery rhetoric of helping the poor and alleviating poverty, but as we have documented for years, the global elite’s goal of world government has little to do with saving the planet and everything to do with creating a global fascist state.

Zoellick, former Executive Vice President of Fannie Mae and advisor to Goldman Sachs, is a top elitist who was intimately involved in the Enron scandal and the 2000 presidential election debacle. He was also a signatory to the Project For A New American century document that called for invading Iraq as part of implementing a brutal world empire in 1998. He was later a foreign policy advisor to George W. Bush.

As to be expected, Zoellick is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. He also attended the annual invitation-only conferences of the Bilderberg Group in 1991, 2003, 2006 and 2007.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will use the G20 summit in London to extend an olive branch to China, offering them a central role in the construction of a new world order and a global government, according to reports.

“Brown will hold talks with Hu Jintao, China’s president, following discussions with Barack Obama, amid signs that developing countries see the G20 summit as a chance to impose a new world order and end the era of Anglo-European dominance,” reports the Guardian.

Under the proposal, China will vastly increase its IMF funding in return for more voting rights.

A central focus of the G20 summit will be the proposal to supplant the dollar with a new global currency. Both the IMF and the United Nations threw their weight behind the implementation of a new global reserve currency system to replace the dollar, in the same week that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told CFR globalists that he was “open” to the idea.

China and Russia brought the issue to the forefront of this week’s G20 when they jointly called for a new global reserve currency a week ago.

Brown has consistently called for global regulation of the financial system as a means towards global governance. In a speech at St Paul’s Cathedral in London yesterday he again called for a new “global society”.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/world-bank-president-admits-agenda-for-global-government.html

Research related articles:

1. Financial Times Editorial Admits Agenda For Dictatorial World Government
2. UN & IMF Back Agenda For Global Financial Dictatorship
3. CNBC Analyst: Global Bank, Global Currency Within 15 Years
4. Brown: World needs ‘global New Deal’
5. World Bank offers dire forecast for world economy
6. Bankers Want World Economic Government To Solve Financial Crisis They Created
7. Summit that’s hard to swallow - world leaders enjoy 18-course banquet as they discuss how to solve global food crisis
8. EU President Calls For “Global Governance” To Solve Financial Crisis
9. China Voices Support For New Global Currency To Replace Dollar
10. Slimeball Rachman Aghast At Reaction To “Global Government” Editorial
11. Obama’s Energy Czar: Socialist Agent For World Government
12. World Leaders Agree to Seek Major Global Reform

Monetary and Fiscal Failure, Fraud, and Fear of What's Next

by Stephen Lendman

Even the powerful are worried with the IMF on February 7 saying advanced economies are in "depression (and) the worst cannot be ruled out." Forecasting a 2010 recovery is "very uncertain" at this time as further financial turmoil may disrupt it regardless of policies adopted, and trouble is outpacing resources to alleviate it.

On March 10, its Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn forecast "below zero" 2009 global growth - what he termed "the worst performance in most of our lifetimes."

In a March 8, report, the World Bank expressed similar gloom saying:

-- "developing countries face a financing shortfall of $270 - 700 billion this year, as private sector creditors shun emerging markets, and only one quarter of the most vulnerable countries have the resources to prevent a rise in poverty;"

-- international financial institutions alone can't cover the (public, private and trade deficit) shortfalls for these 129 countries, so other help is needed - a "global solution" to prevent an economic catastrophe;

-- the global economy "is likely to shrink this year for the first time since World War Two, with growth at least 5 percentage points below potential;"

-- by mid-2009, global industrial production may be 15% lower than 2008 levels, a shocking differential reminiscent of the 1930s;

-- 2009 "world trade is on track to record its largest decline in 80 years, with the sharpest losses in East Asia;"

-- "the financial crisis will have long-term implications for developing countries" (and developed ones as well); they face higher borrowing costs, lower capital flows, weaker investment, and slower future growth at a very grim time globally.

At the same time, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) reported 2008 shrinkage of over $50 trillion in investor wealth, a shocking decline reflecting financial asset losses in stocks, bonds, currencies, real estate, and various other investments as well as a "surprising run" to the dollar in search of a safe-haven.

ADB said world's financial markets experienced "the most violent shock" since the Great Depression and global economies have rapidly deteriorated. Bank president Haruhiko Kuroda stated: "I'm afraid things may get worse before they get any better," maybe much worse. Yet his solution (like the IMF's and World Bank) is worse than the problem by proposing more debt on top of today's burden. He wants a 200% ADB capitalization increase, similar to though not as extreme as Fed policy, so instead of reducing Asian debt, he wants to increase it, make heavily-indebted nations more indebted, and let taxes, borrowing, and fewer social services bear the burden of a growing calamity the way America is doing it.

The solution to over-indebtedness, of course, is get free of it, but that doesn't work well for bankers, and in the end they generally get what they want, so the rest of us lose out and today's crisis will continue to worsen.

Warren Buffett to the Rescue - Again

It's so bad that Wall Street rolled out Warren Buffett for the second time to do what he rarely does - last October in a New York Times op-ed to calm investors and affirm his faith in "the long-term prosperity of the nation's many sound companies."

On CNBC March 9, he wasn't as sanguine saying the economy has "fallen off a cliff. (It's) in a shambles. Not only has (it) slowed down, people have changed their behavior like nothing I have ever seen (and government policy or at least its message has been) muddled." Then commenting on the importance of personal housing wealth and how much of it's been lost, he went the old adage one better about "the emperor ha(ving) no clothes."

"On top of that," he said, "the emperor doesn't have any underwear either." As a result, "We are in a very, very vicious negative feedback cycle" because people are scared to death and with good reason.

But Buffett didn't do a lengthy Q & A to scare people. He was there as a pitchman, a hawker like in a carnival, and his product is his own company, Berkshire-Hathaway, and America. When asked "Will everything be all right," he responded:

"Everything will be all right. We do have the greatest economic machine that man has ever created....(It's because) we ha(ve) a system that work(s). (It's gotten us through) six panics in the 19th century (and) in the 20th century we had the Great Depression and World Wars, all kinds of things. But we have a system, largely free market, rule of law, equality of opportunity (unleashing) human potential (so) your grandchildren will live better than your kids."

"The machine works (and buying) equities (is) the way to (profit from it). If (you) buy the right businesses, (you'll) do very well....American business will be worth more over time....Stocks will be worth more over time. I guarantee you that the Dow will be a lot higher."

Last October in his New York Times op-ed, Buffett said he's "buying American stocks." On March 9, he repeated the message even though the economy "is a shambles." Serious enough to need "the Oracle of Omaha" to save it, or at least try by making a public spectacle of himself on TV, and it wasn't the first time although others were more focused on his business or general view of things.

This time, stressing America's long-term strength, he ignored its fundamental weaknesses and systemic failure at the root of today's problems:

-- a system so unstable, crisis-prone, exploitive, unfair, self-destructive, and corrupted it can't endure;

-- Keynes warning about the consequences of "enterprise becom(ing) the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation;"

-- the inevitable decay that Marx and others predicted;

-- the untenability of great wealth disparities with few having too much and many too little - something untenable in the long run;

-- Lincoln's June 16, 1858 message to the Illinois Republican State Convention - that "A house divided against itself cannot stand;" slavery was the issue then; today it's inequality, human need, and growing poverty under a fundamentally unworkable system favoring wealth over public welfare.

Something else bothered Buffett as well - that Berkshire Hathaway (B-H) stock lost half its value, and the company had its worst ever year in 2008 since Buffett took it over in 1965 when it was a family-run textile maker. He's also not immune to credit default swap (CDS) problems, having increased his position to $14 billion as of year end 2008, and last year took hundreds of millions in write-offs as a result.

Further, some question B-H's health going forward given the current environment, insurance being his main business, and the worrisome CDS spreads on his debt. According to Merrill Lynch's Michaels Hartnett and Penn, they trade at wider spreads than those for Vietnam. They point out that GE is no better off as their swaps are wider than Russia's at a time its economy is reeling like many others.

Through March 11, B-H and GE were two of the six remaining companies rated AAA by S & P, according to CreditGuru.com. The others are ExxonMobil, Toyota, J & J, and ADP. In the late 1970s, 58 companies had the rating. That was then. This is now as two more of the mighty have fallen.

On March 12, the Wall Street Journal online reported that "General Electric Co. and its finance arm (GE Capital) have lost their coveted AAA long-term credit rating from Standard & Poors Ratings Service" when the agency cut it to AA+ in a move many analysts think was long overdue but not enough given the company's troubled state.

On the same day, Bloomberg reported that Fitch Ratings "cited concern about (B-H's) potential for losses on (its) equity and derivatives holdings" in cutting it to AA+ and its senior unsecured debt to AA." Bloomberg added: "Some investors (believe) the derivatives may saddle (B-H) with billions of (future) losses."

Economists and Financial Writers on The Global Research News Hour

Notable ones like F. William Engdahl, Michael Hudson, Ellen Brown, Jack Rasmus, Richard Wolff, John Bellamy Foster, and John Williams continue explaining the nature and consequences of the global economic crisis, and how it affects ordinary people. For example, Rasmus and Williams believe that the economy lost from 800,000 - 1,000,000 jobs for the past four months (not the Labor Department's lower figures) on top of all those lost earlier, and no end to the carnage is in sight.

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), over 23 million Americans were either out of work or underemployed in February, and the numbers are growing. In addition, 60.3% of the population has some form of employment, down from 63.4% in December 2006. EPI reported that BLS figures show job openings fell 7.2% in January to three million, down 32% from year end 2007. Currently there are over four unemployed workers for every job, and seekers "are seeing their chances of finding (employment) grow ever dimmer."

Reports are that jobs are being lost at the rate of one every five seconds, and according to Manpower International's US employer survey, hiring plans are the lowest since the company began polling in 1982. A slim 1% of firms expect to hire in Q 2, down from 10% in Q 1 and off 15% from Q 2, 2008. A company official said: "That's about as bad as it gets with our survey," but it looks like worse is still ahead.

Consider the latest initial jobless claim filings for the week ending March 6 - a record 654,000 following the previous week's upwardly revised 645,000. People getting benefits for more than a week increased by 193,000 to 5.3 million, another record high, and it's the sixth time in the past seven weeks that new records have been set. The proportion of the work force getting unemployment benefits is the highest since June 1983 when the economy began emerging from a deep recession. One year ago, only 2.8 million got benefits. Today the numbers are skyrocketing with no end of it in sight. It shows in the monthly payroll data.

In his latest ShadowStats report, Williams said February's payroll loss was 899,999 and unemployment reached 19.1%, when discouraged and involuntary part-time workers are included. He compared it to Great Depression 25% levels but noted then they may have been higher because measures included only non-farm workers at a time agriculture was over one-fourth of the economy and farm labor much greater in numbers than today. According to the US Department of Agriculture, it's now less than 2% of all workers so its impact on employment is marginal.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas (CG&C) tracks monthly announced job cuts, now making grim reading. On February 4, it reported:

"Company layoff announcements were unusually heavy in January, indicating that the shock to the labor force is increasing in intensity and pointing to severely depressed readings in Friday's employment report." CG&C cited 241,749 compared to 166,348 in December, or the highest figure since the end of the last recession. By comparison, January layoffs a year ago were only 74,986. Of great concern is how much higher numbers will go and for how many more months.

CG&C's February total slipped to 186,350, but it cautioned to "distinguish between layoffs scheduled for the short-term or the long-term, or whether job cuts are handled through attrition or actual layoffs." Most important is the trend, not monthly blips up or down that obscure it, and the latest home foreclosure data aren't reassuring.

On March 11, Dow Jones Newswires reported that completed US foreclosures soared 67% in February over January, putting them at their highest since the start of the crisis, according to Foreclosures.com.

Most worrisome is that they came in spite of Fannie, Freddie, and several major banks putting a temporary halt to the process, yet it persists at severely high levels. In addition, pre-foreclosure filings (an indicator of future foreclosures) jumped 27% to 207,703, topping December's highest ever number by 9%. Three of the hardest-hit states continued impacted with California soaring 67% from January, Florida 42%, and Arizona more than doubling. The data suggest more of the same ahead with perhaps millions more homeowners facing loss of their most valued asset and little in the way of government help to prevent it.

Citigroup on the Ropes, or Are They?

Believe the former despite its CEO saying that January and February were profitable. Take it with a grain of salt given its $37 trillion derivatives portfolio, much of it toxic, and its stock price at a buck - until The New York Times published a "leaked" confidential memo from Vikram Pandit to employees saying the company was on track for its best quarter since late 2007 when the market started to implode.

Left out was how numbers are calculated - based on operating, not reported earnings, excluding lots of write-offs but mostly ones left undeclared hoping investors won't notice and think the bank healthy again. On March 10, the market responded positively with Citi and other financials doing best, but for how long. Nothing changed in a very weak economy, and Citi is among the sickest banks in it, insolvent and on the edge of bankruptcy or being nationalized.

The McKinsey & Company consulting firm may agree in its recent bank profitability forecast. It states "2009 will be unprofitable (and) net investment income "drops dramatically in 2009 as deposit spreads compress (reflecting consumer and commercial), then (begin to recover) going forward. Yet by 2013, McKinsey sees revenues at $142 - 153 billion compared to $156 billion in 2008 with profits beginning to pick up after up after $53 billion in 2009 operating losses. For 2008, McKinsey said banks posted a $1 billion profit, excluding all taken and untaken write-offs. It affirms a very sick industry with no prospect of profits if they're included.

Institutional Risk Analytics co-founder and managing director Chris Whalen agrees in his March 13 analysis titled: "Stress Test Zombies - Not Too Big to Fail? Tough Tootsies Little Banks!" He refers to Bernanke and Geithner "cowardly feed(ing) the zombies." It's "not sustainable financially" nor workable politically and must eventually be changed. At some point, "the Obama administration may need to choose between our (banks and) foreign creditors and American voters."

"The Bernanke/Geithner approach to not dealing with the financial crisis amounts to a hideous public subsidy, a transfer of wealth from American taxpayers to the institutional investors who hold the bonds and derivative obligations tied to the zombie banks, AIG and the GSEs." All these companies will need continued cash subsidies in the trillions of dollars to keep them out of bankruptcy.

Yet imagine, Bernanke and Geithner are proceeding on their own. "No legislation has been passed and no meaningful debate has occurred. The biggest danger facing the markets is that Ben and Tim still do not seem to have a clue what to do about the big banks -- other than to write more checks against the public trust. The conflict over this decision to pass the cost to the taxpayer, between the Fed, Treasury and the Congress, on the one hand, and the Wall Street dealer banks is staggering, yet nothing is said in the Big Media."

The fact is that "bailing out toxic waste sites....could cost trillions of dollars....The only issue is whether we recognize it directly, via a public resolution, or hide (it) via public subsidies and future inflation."

The right strategy is to break up or close down zombie banks, keep taxpayers out of it, and let bond and equity holders absorb the cost of "marking (their) assets to market" and ending the charade that they're profitable or heading toward it.

On March 10, the Wall Street Journal's front page reported that repeated Citi bailouts haven't helped so "US officials are examining what fresh steps they might need to take to stabilize the bank if its problems mount, according to people familiar with the matter....(called) 'contingency planning.' " Weekend discussions were held with Citi officials downplaying their seriousness. But given the bank's condition, profitability claims (the next day) are deceptive, so how long can the charade continue.

Further, on March 12 according to Bloomberg.com, there's more. "Four Citigroup Inc. executives who bought the bank's stock last week have already generated a $2.2 million paper profit, regulatory filings show." Insiders included:

-- director Roberto Hernandez bought six million shares on March 2 at an average $1.25 price; after briefly dipping below $1, it closed on March 5 at $1.52 for a paper profit of $1.7 million;

-- Latin America CEO Manuel Medina-Mora bought 1.5 million shares on March 3 at an average $1.24; and

-- other buyers included vice-chairman Lewis Kaden buying 100,000 shares and controller and chief accounting officer John Gerspach 65,000 shares - in each case ahead of Pandit's profitability claim and the day earlier Wall Street Journal front page story saying Citi is in trouble.

Another key point is that the US Securities Exchange Act of 1934 "prohibit(s) the making of false or misleading statements to a public company's auditors." It's also "a crime to knowingly and willfully make a false or fraudulent statement in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the US government" (18 U.S.C. 1001, January 2007). Further, it's unlawful to mislead investors or violate any provision of the 1934 act. True or false, Pandit's memo was internal and only covered a two-month period, not the full Q 1 filing for after March 31, so likely no violation occurred.

That aside, there's the issue of stock manipulation and insider trading with the above-cited evidence casting suspicion. It's illegal for anyone to buy or sell securities based on non-public information, and those doing it face prosecution if caught. A high-profile case was against former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio - indicted in December 2005 on 42 insider trading counts involving $100 million worth of his company's stock, then convicted on 19 counts in April 2007. He was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to forfeit $52 million in fraudulently earned profits plus a $19 million fine, $1 million for each count.

The Wages of Reckless Spending

They're painful, costly and, according to Michel Chossudovsky, heading the country for "fiscal collapse" in an analysis that's stunning but unsurprising. A "Second New Deal?" Quite the contrary to:

-- continue the most massive wealth transfer in history;

-- achieve it by looting the Treasury;

-- build a crushing debt burden;

-- undertake "the most drastic curtailment in public spending in American history;"

-- govern under a war budget directing most revenues for defense, militarism, and foreign wars; trillions for "the Wall Street bank bailout;" and servicing the enormous public debt - in 2008 an astonishing $451 billion;

-- provide no fiscal stimulus for the economy; in fact, do the opposite by requiring no mandate that banks lend; instead, let them speculate and use hundreds of billions to buy real assets (the "real economy") on the cheap after their stock prices have been manipulated to crash;

-- impoverish tens of millions of Americans through reduced social services when they're losing jobs, homes, savings, pensions and futures; and at the same time

-- privatize America to pay for reckless spending - everything: "public services," infrastructure, highways, national parks, various other state assets, the entire State sold on the cheap to plunderers for profit - "the State is being taken over by the banks, the State is being privatized;" the public has no idea what's happening or that their government is betraying them.

America is for sale as a commodity. Serfdom is planned for most people, and Obama is as much at fault as Bush so let's be clear. He's either a consenting co-conspirator in the looting of the country or a willing dupe letting it happen in his name. Either way, he's part of a crime syndicate driving world economies and most people everywhere to ruin to enrich and further empower a select Wall Street elite - the same ones and their lobbyists that provided millions for his campaign.

On March 12 at the Business Roundtable, Obama assured attending CEOs that serving corporate America is Priority One, especially the financial elite with as much of the nation's resources as they need. He said that the "only way we can truly unlock credit and heal our financial system for good is to address the state of our banking system. And I know that this crisis is at the top of your immediate concerns - and I promise you, it is at the top of mine as well." He means that he'll continue to:

-- stiff-arm the public with empty rhetoric, hollow promises, and little in the way of real help;

-- strip-mine the nation's wealth for Wall Street and the rest of the FIRE sector (finance, insurance and real estate); and

-- provide smaller amounts for other business sectors at his discretion but not enough to keep bankers and vulture investors from buying much of it on the cheap.

Follow the data as the plot unfolds. On March 12, the Fed reported that American household net worth plunged by the largest amount in over half a century during 2008 Q 4 - a record 9% from Q 3 and the sixth quarterly drop in a row. Net worth represents total consumer wealth - homes, savings, pensions, investments, and other material assets minus liabilities.

It hit an all-time high of $64.36 trillion in 2007 Q 2, then fell every quarter ever since. Through 2008 Q 4, it's at $51.48, or a drop of 20% from its peak and declining. At the same time, US credit quality is deteriorating as measured by the cost of buying default insurance (CDSs) on government debt - it's soaring as it is for private companies like GE and Berkshire-Hathaway.

It costs US bond investors 98 basis points for protection, up from 7 basis points in late 2007, or a 14-fold increase, and it's no surprise why. Debt creation has skyrocketed to unimaginable levels raising the specter that today's deflation will become tomorrow's inflation, perhaps hyperinflation, and that's bearish for bonds, stocks, the economy, and ordinary people losing purchasing power.

It's got China worried according to a March 13 New York Times report. As the largest US debt holder, Premier Wen Jiabao wants assurance that the investment is safe at a time he has reason to have doubts. "To be honest," he said, "I am definitely a little worried," and why not. Money creation has been excessive. Interest rates are rock bottom, and America is reeling under a mountain of unsustainable debt as it continues to add more of it. According to some, interest rates have only one way to go - up, although it's likely to be a while before it happens.

Bond expert Henry Kaufman (the original "Dr. Doom" for his 1970s and early 1980s bearish bond forecasts) believes the secular bond bull market is over. In a February 14 Wall Street Journal op-ed, he tracked the rise in the cost of long-term government debt from 1946 to its 1981 peak, then down to around 2.5% early this year, "which probably marks the end of this extended wave." Yet conditions today compared to 1946 are "strikingly different" and very worrisome given the private sector debt overload, the federal government issuing an unprecedented volume of new obligations, and the Fed printing money like confetti.

In 1946, "the nation stood on the brink of an unprecedented boom (whereas) today wealth is contracting massively and the economy" teeters on the edge of depression. "Which raises (serious) questions: Why are we so poor at managing our key economic institutions while at the same time so accomplished in medicine, engineering and telecommunications? Why can we land men on the moon with pinpoint accuracy, yet fail to steer our economy away from the rocks? Why do our computers work so well - except when we use them to manage derivatives and hedge funds?"

Securitization, globalization and the explosion of debt changed everything for the worst and "altered financial behavior in ways that econometric models miss....Let's hope that is about to change. A central goal of new financial legislation should be to rein in extreme financial behavior."

What Kaufman left out is that none of this was happenstance. It could never go on without high-level government-institutional complicity, so a good place to start would be to clean out the corruption in Washington. Fire and punish those in charge of running it, and establish a legislative mandate henceforth to serve all Americans, not just Wall Street's criminal class.

For the latter, Philip Stephens, in a March 9 Financial Times op-ed, proposed: "Fix the banks first - and then shoot the bankers" in commenting on the collapsed UK banking system and lack of decisive action to correct it. Sounds like a sensible way to address America's problems as well.

The Thud of More Shoes Dropping

Deteriorating commercial real estate is another with experts saying it resembles the housing decline with about a one-year lag, so right now it's increasingly apparent. Look at the signs.

On January 12, Financial Week headlined: "Banks gird for commercial property collapse (as a) spike in loan defaults batter balance sheets," and it's just beginning. According to Fitch Ratings managing director Eric Rothfeld:

"Loans originated at market peaks experienced from 2005 - 2007 will face increasing defaults as real estate performance declines during the stressed economic climate of 2009 and beyond." More defaults mean greater losses for exposed banks, already reeling from the housing collapse and trillions of toxic debt on their books.

Developers are also hard hit given empty buildings, vacant shopping malls, and for-sale signs everywhere. On March 5, the Washington Post said "Not a single office building has been started in (D.C) since October, a sign that the slowdown that began in the far-out suburbs has now reached prime city locations." According to Gerry Widdicombe, director of economic development for the city's Downtown D.C. Business Improvement District, "Things are frozen. Nobody's doing anything." It's the same most everywhere across the country except for occasional small deals that are owner and investor-financed.

More signs include idle cranes, empty lots, few new tenants, rising evictions, falling rents, a 95% year-over-year drop in commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) issuance, and soaring CMBS delinquencies. The American Institute of Architects reported that its Architecture Billings Index (ABI) hit a historic 33.3 low in January, reflecting the worst conditions seen since the index's 1995 inception.

On March 10, Moody's reported that corporate bond defaults will triple their 2008 level, be 15 times more than in 2007, and said bankruptcies usually follow. They placed 283 companies on its bottom-rung listing, up from 157 last year, and added 73 companies since last reporting.

Well-known companies made the list, including General Motors, Chrysler, Eastman-Kodak, AMR (parent of American Airlines), UAL (parent of United Airlines), AirTran, Advanced Micro Devices, R.H. Donnelly, Rite-Aid, Reader's Digest Association, and numerous top retailers because of reduced consumer spending.

According to experts, many, perhaps all, large US banks are zombies. They're insolvent "dead men walking" and should be on the list as well. So is the US economy suggests Nouriel Roubini in a March 5 Forbes.com article headlined: "The US Financial System is Effectively Insolvent." In it he explains the "grave risk of a global L-shaped depression, (much) worse than the current, painful U-shaped global recession" that's deepening as conditions continue to deteriorate. "Shoot(ing) the bankers" may indeed be a good start to fix it.

Perhaps also help the "1 in 50 children in America (who) are homeless each year" also, according to a new National Center on Family Homelessness report titled: "America's Youngest Outcasts - State Report Card on Child Homelessness." It calls it "unacceptable for one child in the United States to be homeless for even one day, (and says) children without homes are on the frontline of the nation's economic crisis." The problem continues to worsen as foreclosures increase, yet the administration and Congress aren't helping.

"The year 2008 will long be remembered....as a time when grossly overpaid bankers (and) captains of industry....hobbled to Washington (asking) for bailouts (in the billions of dollars). Ignored by....Congress and the media were (many thousands) of children - many still infants and toddlers - who were (and still are) homeless in the midst of this economic (calamity). Without a voice, more than 1.5 million (of them) go to sleep (each night) without a home each year....they endure (too little food), a lack of safety, comfort, privacy....adequate health care, uninterrupted schooling, sustaining relationships, and a sense of community." Their deprivation is inflicting "profound and lasting scars," yet public discourse excludes them from consideration and consigns them to be another lost generation - unwanted, unnoticed and ignored by an uncaring government.

Militarizing America for Business and All Contingencies

Since WW II, America has had contingency plans in case of large-scale disasters or attacks. However, since the late 1960s, at the height of anti-Vietnam war protests, focus has been mainly on controlling dissent.

On October 30, 1969, Richard Nixon signed Executive Order (EO) 11490, "Assigning Emergency Preparedness Functions to Federal Departments and Agencies." It consolidated 21 previous emergency preparedness EOs and two Defense Mobilization Orders issued between 1951 - 1966.

In 1976, Gerald Ford signed EO 11921 ordering the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency (FEPA) to let government take over all essential functions in case of an undefined "national emergency." In other words, to give government dictatorial powers by simply seizing them.

In 1979, Jimmie Carter signed EO 12148 establishing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to replace FEPA. Clinton later made its director a cabinet position, and Bush gave DHS control under its Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate.

On inception, FEMA mandated an interface with the Defense Department (DOD), appointed an "emergency czar," and authorized the strategic relocation of industries, services, government, and other essential economic activities should conditions warrant. Little known is that FEMA spends most of its budget for "black operations," not disaster relief, although the latter makes headlines. Further, the president has emergency powers to declare martial law, activate FEMA's extraordinary powers, and run the country with other agencies like a police state for no other reason than to quell legitimate dissent - against war, abusive federal power, or an economic depression.

In 1988, Ronald Regan signed EO 12656 empowering the National Security Council as the principal body in charge of emergency powers and let the government increase domestic intelligence and surveillance of US citizens. It also restricted free movement, authorized the seizure of property, construction of detention camps, and isolation of US civilians in them.

Numerous other EOs followed to let government control:

-- all forms of transportation, including highways, airports, rail, seaports, inland waterways, and more;

-- the media and all forms of communication;

-- all forms of energy;

-- food and farms;

-- brigades in which civilians would be placed under government supervision;

-- health, education, and welfare functions;

-- the registration of all persons into a national database;

-- the relocation of communities, areas to be abandoned, and building of new housing in designated places;

-- implementation of all emergency measures in times of international tensions and economic or financial crises; and

-- empowering the Justice Department (DOJ) to operate penal and correctional institutions along with FEMA for its own camps.

The Bush administration funded FEMA with hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit former military bases and construct other facilities as detention camps. According to a November 2008 Wall Street Journal article, "Intelligence Policy (will) Stay Largely Intact" under Obama who recognized and legitimized its existence for use in case of a "national emergency" declarable for any reason, real or contrived.

Currently, over 800 camps are in every state, ready for use if ordered, with enough capacity for many tens of thousands of internees. They're not ordinary in any sense. They're concentration prison camps in the true sense of the term for dissidents or whomever is to be interned for whatever reason, at any time, and for any designated period on command of the president, others he directs, and FEMA as a police state operational arm. Some may turn into Guantanamo on the Mississippi, the Chesapeake Bay, the Lake Michigan lakefront outside Chicago, or neighborhoods anywhere or close by.

Local police have been militarized to help and much more, according to a March 13 Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com article headlined: "Police Trained Nationwide That Informed Americans Are Domestic Terrorists." In other words, enemies of the state are people who know their rights and demand them, who support progressive issues, who want more from government than betrayal, and who believe democracy and the rule of law are sacred and must be defended.

Prison Planet got a copy of a Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) report it described as "outlandish (and) shocking," and most likely it's replicated throughout the country. It concentrated mostly on a so-called "militia movement" but "conflate(d) it with supporters of Ron Paul, Constitution Party presidential nominee Chuck Baldwin, and former congressman Bob Barr as 'militia' influenced terrorists and instructs the Missouri police to be on the lookout for supporters" of libertarian parties, issues, and people opposed to the North American Union and New World Order.

The MIAC report is similar to a Phoenix FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force one under Clinton that designated constitutional defenders as "right-wing extremists." The MIAC document "expands significantly on the earlier" one and represents the latest example of police state plans under Democrat as well as Republican administrations - a very disturbing prospect at a very grim time for most people.

A Final Comment

Everything discussed above is real and worrisome at a time the greatest ever economic crisis is deepening, government policies are corrupted, broken, and uncaring for deprived millions, so sooner or later public anger will erupt, but when it does severe crackdowns await it.

Obama promised change. Few understood that he meant abandoning the millions who elected him, looting the national wealth for fraudsters, and crushing public dissent should it erupt. Given growing impoverishment and pain, it's hard imagining it won't. It's only a matter of when and how much - but then what.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net .

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday through Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12698

 

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/03/monetary-and-fiscal-failure-fraud-and.html