PRO LIBERTY PATRIOTISM = ANTI -GOVERNMENT PHOBIA MENTAL ILLNESS, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry Volume 11, series 3, pages 4-5

A CLINICAL ANALYSIS OF ANTI-GOVERNMENT PHOBIA


Ivor E. Tower, M.D.
Journal of Clinical Psychiatry
Volume 11, series 3, pages 4-5

Abstract

This study conclusively demonstrates that unfounded fear of government is a recognizable mental illness, closely related to paranoid schizophrenia. Anti-Government Phobia (AGP) differs from most mental illnesses, however, in that it is highly infectious and has an acute onset. Symptoms include extreme suspiciousness, conspiracy-mongering, delusional thought patterns, staunch "us against them" mentality, withdrawal from reality, and often religious fanaticism. Having the patient committed to a qualified mental health institution is the best option for family and loved ones. For this reason, all psychiatrists and family physicians should be provided with educational materials which will help them recognize the various symptoms and warning signs accompanying onset. Since comparatively little is known about Anti-Government Phobia at the present time, a government-funded health commission should be set up to oversee, and help focus, future research.

Incidence and Etiology

Anti-Government Phobia has a worldwide distribution, but has a particularly high incidence in the United States. Infection rates are estimated by mental health officials to be about 5% of the general population, and this rate is growing at an alarming rate. Rates are highest, but not limited to, those who are disaffected in some fashion, especially those who have a strong personal grudge against the federal government for one reason or another.

Although certain variants of the illness have been around for many years, it is only in the last decade or so that the more virulent and infectious strains have appeared. This is most likely due to the rapid buildup of government, at all levels, during the 1980's. Closely paralling this trend was an explosion in the number of cases in which individuals were diagnosed as having unfounded fears concerning such.

Clinical Manifestations and Diagnosis Anti-Government Phobia is marked by extreme suspiciousness toward government. Onset is acute. Symptoms start almost immediately after a run-in with some agency or institution of the government, or when the patient is introduced to anti-government propaganda, in one form or another, by a self-styled "patriot." Common ways in which this harmful, anti-government propaganda is spread include: books, pamphlets, magazines, newspapers, audiotapes, videotapes, short-wave and conventional radio programs, computer bulletin boards, and various Internet sites.

Upon exposure to "patriotic" propaganda, the patient mysteriously begins to imagine hidden links between unrelated current events, weaving these gross distortions of reality into a complex delusional web; a labyrinth of conspiracy theories with all imagined clues leading straight to the federal government. With further exposure, the patient becomes increasingly paranoid, and slowly withdrawals from reality. However, mental deterioration is usually so gradual that the patient is often unaware of it.

This mysterious malady progresses until the patient invariably assumes a staunch "us against them" mentality. For instance, in the patient's warped mind-set, each new piece of gun-control legislation is oddly rationalized to be merely one additional step in an ultimate plot by the federal government to confiscate guns altogether. In some unusually severe cases, the patient assumes a survivalist mentality, stockpiling guns, ammunition, de-hydrated food, and other "essentials," in preparation for "D-Day" or "Armageddon."

At this stage, the patient also inexplicity experiences increased delusional thinking. For instance, he may start fallaciously believing that the Federal Reserve is not in fact part of the federal government, but is instead controlled by wealthy Zionists. Other far-flung delusions may involve the United Nations, "black helicopters," concentration camps, or the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Delusions involving "takeovers" by foreign military troops, or jack-booted government storm troopers dressed in all black, are also commonly diagnosed.

Anti-Government Phobia is often associated with religious fanaticism. An excellent example of this is the infamous Branch Davidian case, in which most cult members preferred a fiery suicide over peaceful surrender to the forces of what they considered to be "Mystery Babylon." There have been other prominant cases in which "patriots" have became involved with terrorist activity, fallaciously believing that they were somehow doing the "will of God." More commonly, "patriots" have been involved in aggressive outbursts in courtrooms, and other public places such as town-hall meetings.

Overall, the worldview eventually adopted by "patriots" interprets modern-day news events as pieces of a giant jig-saw puzzle. Oddly, they believe that it is their solemn duty to put these unrelated pieces together in order to discover the underlying "picture." The warped interpretive framework used by many "patriots" in their missionary-like endeavor of saving the lost "sheep" (derogatory term comparing non-patriots to lost sheep) is a hyper-literal interpretation of Biblical prophecies, particularly those contained in the book of Revelation.

Spread of the Illness

In the eyes of the so-called "patriots," the relentless drive to indoctrinate others with extremist political beliefs is seen as a righteous and compulsory act to save their "self-destructing" nation. Wildly fantasizing that America can somehow turn back the clock to better times, which in reality never existed, many "patriots" feel obligated to quote constantly from the Declaration of Independence, United States Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the writings of the Founding Fathers. In an ironic twist of fate, when "patriots" expose others to their divisive anti-government propaganda, through their misguided efforts to restore "individual liberty," they are actually infecting them with an extremely contagious mental illness.

A strong analogy can be drawn between "patriotic" indoctrination and patterns of religious conversion. In both cases, ultra-idealistic individuals believe that it is their solemn duty to gain proselytes for their particular faith. This is usually done on a person-to-person basis with a friend or acquaintance. To keep new converts from going astray or "backsliding," they are eagerly provided with a steady stream of propaganda. In each case, the devotee imagines that there is an evil, sinister force which must be opposed at all costs. In the case of various religions, the faithful are supposedly rewarded in the afterlife for sparring with the "devil." In the case of the "patriot," the so-called "New World Order" is viewed as the demonic bogeyman, with the reward for opposing it supposedly being an increased amount of "personal freedom." In both "patriotic" and religious circles, there is an entire counter-culture, centering around various anthems and holy books, constantly being promoted by prophets, preachers, and paranoid propagandists of all creeds, colors, and strains.

Prevention

Needless to say, prevention is the first line of defense against any type of illness or disease. Unfortunately, many mental illnesses are genetic in nature and thus can not be prevented. Fortunately, Anti-Government Phobia is non-genetic and thus wholly preventable. From an individual standpoint, the most effective prevention policy is obviously not to allow oneself to become indoctrinated by a self-styled "patriot," preferably by staying as far as possible away from any potentially divisive propaganda. As an added precaution, one should rely exclusively on well-known and reputable sources for news and other information.

Family members and loved ones can help out in this effort. However, it should be noted that prevention programs work best only when the entire community is involved. We all need to practice constant vigilance in order to spot diviseness and hate in our communities. In this regard, networking is the ultimate key to success. A successful community-based empowerment program would include the following elements: citizen-citizen networks, police-citizen networks, parent-teacher networks, pastor-parisoner networks, doctor-patient networks, state-local law enforcement authority networks, and federal-state law enforcement authority networks.

Treatment and Prognosis

Although the prognosis is generally good if the illness is treated soon after symptoms first appear, studies have shown that a disturbingly low percentage of patients allow themselves to be treated. Thus, having the patient committed to a qualified mental health institution is the best option for family and loved ones. For this reason, all psychiatrists and family physicians should be provided with educational materials which will help them recognize the various symptoms and warning signs accompanying onset. Once the illness is properly diagnosed, they should next notify the patient's immediate family members and discuss the various treatment options with them. This effort should be reinforced with extensive public ad campaigns promoting a 1-800 help line. Since comparatively little is known about Anti-Government Phobia at the present time, a government-funded health commission should be set up to oversee, and help focus, future research.

It can not be over-emphasized that prevention is the key to stopping the spread of Anti-Government Phobia. Once a person is infected, the illness is generally incurable. The only proven treatment is an extended, and often risky, "de-programming" session conducted by qualified professionals, such as the Cult Awareness Network (CAN). Left untreated, chronic symptoms invariably persist throughout the entire lifetime of the patient. Sadly, even the patients themselves realize this horrifying fact and surprisingly, seem apathetic to it. Oddly, they often confuse their symptoms with being "awake." For instance, they have been known to garble gibberish such as "once your awake, you can't go back to sleep." Further research is presently being conducted on the reasons why they rationalize their mental illness in this highly unusual manner.

Acknowledgements

The writer wishes to thank the following individuals and organizations for contributing their expertise to this report: Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Rick Ross of the Cult Awareness Network (CAN), the United States Justice Department (USJD), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF). This study was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).


http://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/info_schedule_battle/Anti_Government_Phobia.html

A MUST READ! WHY THE FED IS DEPRECIATING THE CURRENCY

In its June 29, 2009 issue, Business Week ran an article, by Peter Coy, entitled "Why the Fed Isn't Igniting Inflation." This perfectly illustrates how the paper aristocracy lies to the American people, the purpose being to steal their (meaning your) wealth. Today I want to point out the lies and the doubletalk involved in this article and why it is absolute crucial (for your own well being) that you understand what is going on.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, there are two things which are absolutely crucial for you to understand. First, almost everyone in the world wants wealth. There is an expression to this effect: "I've been rich, and I've been poor. And rich is better." There were a few hermits in the Middle Ages and a few hobos from time to time. But the vast majority of human beings on planet Earth want wealth.

So far, so good. Second, some of these people want wealth but do not want to do work to produce it. They want to take from the other people around them (meaning you). Most of these people are common thieves, and we deal with them by creating a police force and putting them in jail. However, a small group of these thieves have figured out a better angle. You can understand this technique by studying the medieval aristocracy.

They had seized all of the arable land in Europe by the sword, and they enserfed the average guy to work the land, produce food for him and other goods. In those days, if you didn't like your boss (the land lord), it was against the law to quit your job. If your boss' son wanted to rape your daughter, there were no police or courts to stop him. And he had an armed gang of thugs to beat you up (with a session of torture thrown in for good measure).

Yes, things were bad. But here is the problem. The common people outnumbered the aristocrats by 100 to 1. I don't care if the aristocrats had weapons and armed thugs. Why couldn't the common person simply rise up and overthrow these aristocrats by sheer force of numbers? Ultimately they did, and there were a series of revolutions (of which the American Revolution is an example). But my point is that they didn't for a long, long time. The people of Europe went over a thousand years working as serfs (in incredible poverty and misery) for their feudal lords. Even the use of the word "lord" to describe these people shows the imbalance because this is the same word we use for God. These people were looked upon as little gods, and all they were were thieves. This leaves us with two questions.

Since the people were ultimately able to overthrow the medieval aristocrat, how come they went on for a thousand years working as serfs? And when they did successfully rebel, how did they do it?

This brings us to the third crucial point. The way that the successful thieves got away with their robbery was via a class of intellectuals. This is an incredible story, and it proves that the pen is mightier than the sword.

Take as an example the peasant's revolt of 1381, the first well-known case of the people's attempt to win their freedom. On one fine day, the King of England looked out and saw 60,000 angry peasants, armed and knocking at the gates of London. The gates of the city were thrown open to them by 40,000 Londoners, and an army of 100,000 angry people faced the king (who had been caught by surprise and had no army). They were demanding the abolition of serfdom (meaning the right to quit their jobs).

Caught off guard, the king lied to the people and pretended to grant their demand. Then when they had dispersed, the king raised an army, reneged on his promises and crushed the peasant opposition. The peasants were defeated, but their movement (called Lollardry) went underground. There it simmered for a century-and-a-half and finally emerged victorious in the early 1500s, where it is known as the Protestant Reformation.

The reason the aristocrats were successful from about 400 AD to about 1400 AD was that a class of intellectuals, in the form of the priests of the Catholic Church, preached on the side of the aristocrats. They told the peasant that God wanted him to meekly turn the other cheek and submit to outrageous injustices. For saying this, the priests were given a privileged position by the aristocrats (vow of poverty be damned). The feudal lord simply passed on to them a small portion of the wealth that he stole from the peasants.

This system started to collapse, as noted, with the Protestant Reformation. The new Protestant ministers were a different class of intellectuals. They were on the side of the people. They preached freedom and defiance of the aristocracy. By the mid-1600s, half the people of Britain (the more dedicated Protestants) were for freedom, and half the people (the Catholics and their sympathizers) were for the king. There was then a war (the English Civil War, 1642-46) in which the people (led by the Protestants) rose up and fought for democracy. Our own American Revolution of 1776 was based on this war, and the slogan "no taxation without representation" comes from this period in English history. The democrats won the war, chopped off the king's head and tried to set up a democracy in England. Unfortunately, they had no understanding of politics. Although their intentions were good, they fell to quarreling among themselves, and this democracy collapsed in 1660. However, they did not give up heart. There was a second revolution in 1688 (the Glorious Revolution). The king was thrown out, and England became a democracy for good.

Now let us apply these principles to our own day. Again we are faced with a group of thieves who want to steal our wealth. Again these thieves are especially dangerous because they have a group of intellectuals on their side. However, today the intellectuals are not priests; they are Keynesian economists. And the way they steal our wealth is not by enserfing us to the land; it is by the counterfeiting of money. The most important event, the event determining the character of the world in which we live, was the enactment of the Emergency Banking Bill of 1933, on March 9, 1933 by the Democratic Congress on the first day of the Administration of F.D.R. This took the country off the gold standard and created a new money (the legal tender Federal Reserve note) which was issued by a group of (private and government) bankers. Since that time there has been a steady creation of money and a steady decline in the value of money. Today's dollar is worth about 6¢ (using official figures, which are suspect).

Ludwig von Mises pointed out that, when money is created, the people who get it first benefit. The people who get it last lose. The privilege to create money is a form of stealing. Because the United States Constitution (via the 10th amendment) prohibits paper money, the Emergency Banking Bill of 1933 is null and void, and the entire paper money system is illegal. Our government is now only a democracy in name.

In fact, we have returned to the Middle Ages whereby an aristocratic class steals our wealth. Instead of the medieval aristocracy we have the paper aristocracy.

Right now the combination of presidents Bush and Obama have just created a trillion new paper dollars, a 70% increase over the money supply of last May ($1.3 trillion). Trillion dollar deficits are planned as far as the eye can see. These deficits will be monetized. There is no deficit of any size in the history of the United States, or any other democracy (in name) which has not been monetized. The idea that government finances its deficits by borrowing from the people is a lie, pure and simple. All deficits (except very small ones) are financed by the printing of money. If the U.S. prints a trillion dollars for each of the next 3 years, then the money supply will increase from $1.3 trillion to $5.3 trillion, and this will lead to a 4-fold multiple of prices. Pretty it will not be.

This is the point of the Peter Coy article in Business Week. He is one of the class of new intellectuals who act as apologists for the paper aristocracy and help them to steal our wealth. His job is to lie to the average American (that's you).

With the money supply about to multiply by a factor of 4 times, there is one way to protect yourself. You must place your wealth in real assets. The best asset for this purpose is gold, as has been proven for the past 2 millennia. It is not exactly rocket science to see that, with the nation's money supply about to quadruple, one has to move one's assets into gold.

We have not been reduced to the level of the medieval serf. We still have a considerable amount of freedom. There is a world-wide functioning gold market. There are gold coin shops in every city of any size. Anybody can see that, as the currency depreciates, prices expressed in that currency have to go up. But prices expressed in a gold currency have remained the same for two-and-a-half thousand years. (U.S. statistics, by the way, prove that, while the United States was on a gold standard, from 1788 to 1933, the Wholesale Price Index was unchanged over the period, that is, from 1793-1933 the WPI came out exactly the same.)

So it is Peter Coy's job to serve the paper aristocracy by convincing us not to buy gold. He even admits the enormous expansion of the money supply:

"The nation's monetary base - consisting of bills and coins in circulation plus banks' deposits at the Fed - has climbed 114% over the past year through May." (Peter Coy, "Why the Fed Isn't Igniting Inflation," Business Week, 6-29-09, p. 20.)

First a little background here. Every time in economic history that there has been a significant increase in the supply of money there has been a corresponding decline in the value of the money. (By the way, the use of "inflation," meaning a rise in goods, rather than "depreciation," meaning a fall in money was an early example of intellectuals twisting language to confuse us. There is nothing wrong with goods that causes prices to rise. 

It is always an increase in money.) There is a perfect correlation here. Every time they have printed money prices have gone up.There is not a single exception. Every real economist has studied the money fluctuations of American history. Here is the record.

During the gold standard period (1788-1933), it was not a perfect gold standard. There were 3 interruptions. The Government used paper money (from the banks) to finance the War of 1812. The banks of the Middle Atlantic states and the South created money and lent it to the Federal Government. New England was anti-war, and its banks did not create money. Daniel Webster notes that Washington D.C. bank notes had dropped to 75% of their nominal value (meaning that prices in D.C. had risen by 33%). Prices in New England did not rise. After the war ended, a hard money faction (led by Andrew Jackson and Martin van Buren) came to power, abolished the central bank and put the gold standard on a firmer footing.

During the Civil War, Lincoln financed the war by issuing greenbacks. The money supply doubled, and so did the price level. After the war, the greenbacks were retired, and the price level subsided. By 1879, prices were back to their 1860 level and the gold standard had been restored. 

And finally in WWI, the money supply also doubled, and prices doubled also. Cigars went from 5¢ to 10¢, leading to the famous Republican policy of "a good 5¢ cigar." To implement this policy, the Republicans reduced the money supply and brought prices back down. By 1933, the WPI was back to its 1914 level (which by the way was the same as its 1793 level).

Mr. Coy's argument is as follows: "the inflationary effects of the new money are being fully offset, or more than offset, by the far-reaching and long-lasting impact of household debt repayments. "Americans have abruptly switched to working down the debts." [Peter Coy, Ibid.]

So I went to the current Fed website and checked the statistics on the rate at which Americans are paying down their debts. Household debt repayments are not going up. They are going down. Americans are not paying off their debts more rapidly. They are paying their debts more slowly.

In general, there has been a small contraction in outstanding loans since mid-2008, but this is normal in every "recession" and does not approach the degree of monetization by the Fed. Normal Fed expansion overwhelms this minor contraction at every turning point, and the result is an increase in prices. However, the current Fed monetization is gigantic. The monetary base is up by over 100% from a year ago, and I estimate the money supply proper as up 70%. This will result in a massive rise in prices - far, far beyond what this country has ever seen.

You have to protect yourself. Peter Coy is trying to lull you to sleep so that his bosses can steal your wealth. They benefit from the Fed easing. For them to benefit, the average guy must lose. There are times when one can protect one's self by going long stocks. (I was a stock bug in 1982.) But this is not one of those times. We are in the (upswing of the) commodity pendulum. Commodities are going to be the beneficiary of the Fed's monetization. And gold is the most user friendly commodity there is.

© 2009 Howard S. Katz

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Howard S. Katz is author of the One Handed Economist, a financial newsletter with timely market advice that integrates technical analysis with insights about Austrian economics and analysis of Federal Reserve Bank policy.

http://www.dollardaze.org/blog/?post_id=00662

WAS AMERICA SOLD?

By Nancy Levant
July 3, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

In 1992, George H.W. Bush signed Executive Order 12803, which gave D.C. the authority to sell America’s infrastructure. They called this authority “Infrastructure Privatization.” E.O. 12803 tells us this power cleared the way for the “disposition or transfer of an infrastructure “asset” such as by sale or by long-term lease from a State or local government to a private party.”

E.O. 12803 also lists examples of America’s saleable and/or lease-able infrastructure:

• Roads
• Tunnels
• Bridges
• Electricity supply facilities
• Mass transit
• Rail transportation
• Airports
• Ports
• Waterways
• Recycling/wastewater treatment facilities
• Solid waste disposal facilities
• Hospitals
• Prisons
• Schools
• Housing

E.O. 12803 tells us that this list represents infrastructure “examples.” Let us, therefore, assume that this is not the complete list of America’s saleable infrastructure.
However, this list is a stunning confession.

Notice that all items listed in 12803 are the very same infrastructure items listed in all Martial Law Executive Orders (see here). Martial Law kicks in to power during declared states of emergency and with the single signature of the president. Strangely (and ignorantly), we currently have multiple declared states of emergency:

• Act of March 9, 1933, a declared state of emergency at the request of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. This state of emergency was never lifted.

• Global pandemic - Level 6
• Mortgage/housing crisis
• Banking/lending crisis
• Automobile industry crisis
• Insurance industry crisis
• Healthcare crisis
• Southwestern border crisis
• Black market drug crisis
• National education crisis
• Nature/global warming crisis
• Jobs/unemployment crisis
• On-going weather and forest fire crises
• Extreme and unread congressional legislation crisis due to on-going crises

What are the odds of complete and total social and “natural” crisis in every single facet of our lives and all at the same time? I will tell you how it was accomplished with simple math:

Federal Reserve System + Politicians + Tell-A-Vision = Assembly Line Crises. It is called the Hegelian Dialectic Show.

Everything in the country, including the current planet-sized medical emergency, is in crisis. So enters Martial Law.

Think of our president’s promises to “change” the country and to fix the economy (which the Federal Reserve and Congress destroyed) by rebuilding America’s infrastructure, including “21st Century schools” and by greening-up our living standards and conditions (International Code Council, Carbon Credits, Waxman-Markey Climate Bill, etc.) - minus, of course, privately owned land and homes (Agenda 21). In the last six months, consider the massive growth of the Federal Government, the national debt, and the powers of the Federal Reserve Central Banking System - all with stated intentions of fixing the economy that they single-handedly destroyed - and fixing it with “infrastructure” projects.

As Martial Law militarily guards all of E.O. 12803’s infrastructure as listed in the Order, and with homeland paramilitary armies holding practice drills with foreign armies, local law enforcement, and emergency responders all across the nation (and with a big drill planned July 27th through July 31st in FEMA Region 6),

And with all public schools, private schools, and universities forced to have “lock-down policies” and to be forced-used as quarantine holding tanks, and with all Americans having been repeatedly told to prepare for an emergency (meaning an emergency that will bring Martial Law into the full light of day, which the “drills“ have clearly done),

AND the very same infrastructures listed in Executive Order 12803 are also listed in all Martial Law Executive Orders, and all these infrastructures having been for sale, lease-able, or having been sold during the last 17 years- including our children’s schools, our hospitals, and our homes - I suggest to you that you are witnessing Central Banking Debt Magic at its finest moment. Wouldn’t you love to know how much money has been made by selling our nation to the highest bidders?

Let us review:

1. The country’s infrastructure has been for sale for 17 years. Roads, tunnels, bridges, electricity supply facilities, mass transit, rail transportation, airports, ports, waterways, water supply facilities, recycling/wastewater facilities, solid waste facilities, prisons, hospitals, schools, and housing -- this being of “examples” of saleable infrastructure and not the entire list of saleable items according to E.O. 12803--so the question begs: What exactly has been sold to “private parties in our nation? We would like to see the complete list. We know that many highway systems have been sold to foreign countries, but what of the other listed items? Have they been sold as well?

If so, who owns them, and more to the question, which D.C. department sold them and for how much? Did the Federal Reserve and Congress sell our nation? Where is the paperwork? Did they repay any of America’s debt that they purposefully created with their pyramid fiat money lending schemes? And why are they still raising our taxes if America is no longer America but belongs to foreign nations or “private parties?” Since the Federal Reserve is a “private” corporation, did the Fed buy any of America’s infrastructure “assets?”

As American “housing” is on 12803’s list, and since D.C. recently took over the mortgage industry, has the housing market been sold and/or leased to a “private party” like a foreign nation or the Federal Reserve Corporation? Are the American people tenants to unknown parties? Are American children occupying foreign-owned schools, and are our loved ones lying in foreign hospitals that are clearly chock-full of foreign doctors? Equally, who, exactly, is financing the building of 21st Century schools and classrooms complete with foreign curricula? The questions beg: who are the foreigners....the foreigners or the American people?

More to the point, who is dissolving, partitioning, and/or divvying up our nation? Is it Obama? Geithner? Bernacke? Bushes? Clintons? FDR? Wilson? American morons?

It would seem that we are preparing for the Big Transfer - the transfer of our nation to and beneath a new authority or several new authorities. It now makes a great deal of sense why foreign troops have been cross-training with our new paramilitary systems, and yes, there are foreign troops on American soil, which I fear may not be American soil at all. Equally, multiculturalism suddenly makes a great deal of sense. I believe we can call it “behavior modification” so that we the stupid people will behave and be obedient under the new rules of new and foreign leaders.

I ask you, has our nation been sold out from under us, and without our knowledge? Could there be any other possible explanation for selling the most critical components of our country, while at the same time creating new, multicultural and cross-trained armies; permanently bankrupting the nation and selling its debt to foreign countries, and having Martial Law orders written specifically to protect the sold “assets” of our nation--including our schools and homes? Are America’s new owners to be protected by new Martial Law armies, cross-trained with foreign armies, while our “traditional” military is spread all over the planet - except here with its nation’s people? Are we being transferred to new ownership as we speak?

Consider:

Washington D.C. debts were sold to foreign nations.

• Washington D.C. = politicians
• Debts = Federal Reserve Central (Fiat) Banking
• Sold = Wall Street

Is it not realistic to think that big league politicians, bankers, and CEOs are loyal to no nation when they were massively enriched by internationalized banking, internationalized trade, absurd and illegal taxation, and by interest rates forced upon the people of this nation, while at the same time selling our nation to other central banks around the world and “private parties” - and for personal profit? Truth is, they sold the infrastructure first, and then they sold we the people as tax generators and life-long human resources to their global banking and business partners in crime.

What is the crime, you ask? The Federal Reserve, which is a piece of a global banking cartel, and their politicians and CEO partners who made counterfeiting and Ponzi/pyramid schemes legalized theft on continental scales. Your country is 1) not your country and, 2) not what you thought it was for at least 100 years. You are going to have to seek God’s grace to be relieved from the bitterness of that truth. Today, we don’t know under whose authority we live, but Washington, D.C. and the Federal Reserve do know.

Big, big changes are on the horizon. All I can tell you is to remember that freedom, granted to all by God, is first and foremost a state of mind. Pray for guidance. Prepare yourselves because Obama spoke the truth. It is all about “infrastructure.” The promised change has arrived. The question is this: who owns America? Who have the American people been committed to serving and beneath what form of government?

We can pretty much assume that Asia owns a very large chunk of America, as does Great Britain, India, Middle Eastern countries, and perhaps Mexico and Canada, as well. We can also assume that Martial Law armies will be guarding all the sold “assets” during what could be an extraordinary and massively tyrannical transfer of power. The love of money is the root of all evil. No truer words were ever spoken.

Please join Darren Weeks and myself on the Republic Broadcasting Network’s Govern America radio program every Saturday morning, 8:00 A.M. to 11:00 A.M., Eastern Standard Time. Happy Inter-dependence Day. Please join us. Click here to listen live.

© 2009 Nancy Levant - All Rights Reserve

Nancy Levant is a renowned writer for Constitutional governance and American culture. She is the author of The Cultural Devastation of American Women: The Strange and Frightening Decline of the American Female (and her dreadful timing).

She is an opponent of deceptive governance and politicians, global governance by deception, political feminism, the public school system, political economics based upon manufactured wars and their corporate benefactors, and the Federal Reserve System. She is also a nationwide and lively radio personality. To book an engagement with Nancy Levant, send an email request to:

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http://www.newswithviews.com/Levant/nancy134.htm

HR.1207/S.605 Federal Reserve Transparency Act Co-sponsorship Skyrockets: Companion Bill in Senate

Ron Paul's "Federal Reserve Transparency Act" to audit the Federal Reserve is now up to 39 co-sponsors the House, and an identical companion bill, S604, has been introduced in the Senate. Here are the House co-sponsors:

Young (R-AK), McClintock (R-CA), Woolsey (D-CA), Rohrabacher (R-CA), Castle (R-DE), Stearns (R-FL), Grayson (D-FL), Buchanan (R-FL), Posey (R-FL), Kingston (R-GA), Price (R-GA), Broun (R-GA), Abercrombie (D-HI), Burton (R-IN), Fleming (R-LA), Alexander (R-LA), Bartlett (R-MD), McCotter (R-MI), Bachmann (R-MN), Peterson (D-MN), Akin (R-MO), Taylor (D-MS), Rehberg (R-MT), Jones (R-NC), Foxx (R-NC), Garrett (R-NJ), Heller (R-NV), DeFazio (D-OR), Platts (R-PA), Duncan (R-TN), Wamp (R-TN), Blackburn (R-TN), Poe (R-TX), Paul (R-TX), Marchant (R-TX), Burgess (R-TX), Chaffetz (R-UT), Petri (R-WI), Kagen (D-WI), Lummis (R-WY)

32 Republicans and 7 Democrats so far.  [Urge your Representative to co-sponsor]

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=14040#comments

FEDERAL RESERVE DEFAULTS: THE FED IS UNABLE TO SATISFY MERE $30 IN NOTES

Mentioned earlier, Tom Cryer and Dee Dee were in Philadelphia for the TA Mini-Sem recently conducted there.  After sharing the obligatory Philly cheese steak sandwich in the Farmer's Market and visiting Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell it was too early to go to dinner and too late to go to their other targets.  So, what to do?  Perhaps a little mischief?  Like bringing down the entire financial structure of the country?  That sounds like a worthwhile adventure, doesn’t it?

Just two blocks away from the Philadelphia branch of the Federal Reserve, Tom and Dee Dee strolled down to the Fed and paid them a visit.  They were surprised to see such a small and austere lobby with nothing but a bullet proof glass booth attended by a single guard.  Tom pulled two 1930’s vintage bills, a 20 and a 10, from his billfold and asked the guard who he should see about redeeming a couple of Federal Reserve notes.  The guard dug through some papers and handed out a sheet of instructions for exchanging mutilated bills.

Tom explained that he did not have any mutilated bills and did not want to exchange anything.  He was there to redeem two Federal Reserve notes totaling $30.  He showed the guard the two notes and pointed out that they were “redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury or at any Federal Reserve Bank.”  He showed him that the note was from the Federal Reserve and the United States of America who “will pay to the bearer on demand” 10 and 20 DOLLARS, not notes.  The guard said that the Federal Reserve does not exchange bills.

Tom took another stab at it explaining that he does not want any bills.  He showed the guard a silver dollar and said “See this?  This is a DOLLAR, just like the notes say they are redeemable in and the notes say they will pay the face amount to the bearer in DOLLARS", again showing him what a DOLLAR looks like.  “I’m calling these notes in, not exchanging them for another promise, I’m redeeming them for thirty of THESE”, again holding up the silver dollar.  The guard said he was sorry, but that the Federal Reserve does not redeem those there.

Dee Dee couldn't resist joining in the fun and injected "Are you telling me that the Federal Reserve Bank doesn't have $30?  That it is dishonoring its note?"  The guard grinned sheepishly (he really was a good sport) and said the Fed wasn't dishonoring the notes, but that they would have to redeem them somewhere else.  He then suggested that maybe they should try the U.S. Mint just a block over.

Tom said they couldn't do that because the U.S. Mint would only give them one silver dollar for the $30 in FRN's and Dee Dee piled on, saying "Do you mean to tell me that the U.S. Treasury has so little faith in the Federal Reserve Bank that it will only pay three cents on the dollar for its notes?"  By this time the guard was wanting to hide.  After a few more exchanges during which the guard admitted that the Fed was not only privately owned but that half of the principal owners were foreign, Tom and Dee Dee noticed a lady was waiting, so they made their exit.  As they were heading for the door, though, they heard the lady ask "Where can I get silver and gold for these?"

http://www.truthattack.org/jml/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=76:federal-reserve-defaults&catid=26:news-from-the-front-march-2009&Itemid=51

Why is the Fed Buying Long-Term Treasuries?

It has finally started . . . the long-threatened purchase by the Fed of long-term U.S. treasuries.

The Federal Open Market Committee announced today:

To help improve conditions in private credit markets, the committee decided to purchase up to $300 billion of longer-term Treasury securities over the next six months.

This may be an attempt to prop up the bond market so that bondholders don't take a big haircut, and to lower the costs of corporate and mortgage debt (often called "quantitative easing").

As CNN wrote Monday:

If the Fed started buying 10-year Treasury notes, that wouldn't do anything to reduce risk tied to soaring U.S. budget deficits.

But it would provide some support for the value of the bonds, especially if the Chinese start to pull back on purchases as some economists are expecting. ...

What's more, a large purchase by the Fed would help to lower the rates on longer-term Treasurys and other debt that is tied to the bond market, such as some corporate debt and mortgage loans. (Bond rates fall when prices rise.)

Former Fed Governor Lyle Gramley noted the Bank of England's announcement that it would buy about $100 billion in British government debt earlier this month was enough to lower long-term rates by a quarter-point to a half-point, even before the purchases started.

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/03/why-is-fed-buying-long-term-treasuries.html

More on this topic

The Fed Must Be Crazy(Top Gun Financial Planning, 3/18/09)

Loans Versus Bonds Relative Value: March 17 (Zero Hedge, 3/17/09)

Daily Forex Commentary for March 18, 2009(Oxbury Publishing, 3/17/09)

AIG Offices patrolled by Armed Guards

A tidal wave of public outrage over bonus payments swamped American International Group yesterday. Hired guards stood watch outside the suburban Connecticut offices of AIG Financial Products, the division whose exotic derivatives brought the insurance giant to the brink of collapse last year. Inside, death threats and angry letters flooded e-mail inboxes. Irate callers lit up the phone lines. Senior managers submitted their resignations. Some employees didn't show up at all.

"It's a mob effect," one senior executive said. "It's putting people's lives in danger."

Politicians and the public spent yesterday demanding that AIG rescind payouts that they said rewarded recklessness and greed at a company being bailed out with $170 billion in taxpayer funds. But company officials contend that the uproar is scaring away the very employees who understand AIG Financial Products' complex trades and who are trying to dismantle the division before it further endangers the world's economy.

"It's going to blow up," said a senior Financial Products manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the company. "I have a horrible, horrible, horrible feeling that this is going to end badly."

President Obama yesterday vowed to "pursue every legal avenue to block these bonuses." But that pledge might have come too late. About $165 million in retention payments started to go out Friday to employees at Financial Products, after numerous discussions with the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve.

Attorneys working for the Fed had been examining the matter for months and determined that the retention payments couldn't be touched because AIG would face costly lawsuits and be subject to penalties from states and foreign governments. Administration officials said over the weekend that they agreed with that assessment.

AIG disclosed its retention-payment program more than a year ago, and the amount of the bonuses -- more than $400 million for Financial Products alone -- had been widely reported. But as the payments were coming due in recent days, the White House began to express its indignation.

Pressure on the 370-person Financial Products unit, based primarily in Connecticut and London, grew even more intense yesterday when New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo threatened to issue subpoenas if the company failed to provide details about recipients of the retention payments.

The payments represent only the most contentious of a larger group of bonuses being paid throughout AIG. The company's top seven officials, including chief executive Edward M. Liddy, agreed in November to forgo bonuses through this year.

After a Wednesday call between Liddy and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, AIG agreed to restructure payments for the next 43 highest-ranking officers at the company, who are to receive half of their bonuses -- which total $9.6 million -- immediately, one-quarter July 15 and the rest Sept. 15. The last two payments would depend on whether the company makes progress in restructuring its business and paying back taxpayers. In addition, the company is set to pay another $600 million in retention awards to about 4,700 people throughout its global insurance units.

But each dollar remains in question after the president's reprimand yesterday and the deluge of rage from legislators and the American public. Government leaders already say they plan to recoup some of the bonus and retention pay while restructuring the company. In addition, administration officials said that the Treasury is planning to try to recover some of the bonus money by adding provisions to the additional $30 billion it gave AIG access to earlier this month.

The payment plan had been no secret.

Beginning in the first quarter of 2008, AIG disclosed the plan to offer retention awards at Financial Products. The unit had already begun to hemorrhage money, a problem that would later grow exponentially. The unit's executives, fearing they might lose valuable employees in the tumultuous months to come, successfully negotiated more than $400 million for their workers, to be paid this month and again next year.

At the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which has directly overseen AIG since its federal takeover in September, officials have studied the possibility of rescinding or delaying the bonuses. They even brought in outside lawyers for advice. The conclusion: If the bonuses weren't paid, the AIG staffers would be able to sue the company and probably would win, not just what they were owed but also punitive damages that would make the ultimate cost perhaps two to three times as high as the bonuses themselves.

Moreover, Fed officials also hope to keep current employees with the company. The senior executives whose decisions caused the company's collapse are long gone. Most of those left behind are trying to unwind complicated derivative contracts. Completing that process correctly is essential to preserving as much value as possible for taxpayers, officials at both the government and AIG have argued. If it is mishandled, it could expose taxpayers to billions of dollars in additional losses.

Law professors agreed with the Fed's assessment but said AIG employees could still agree to reduce their own bonuses.

And the outrage expressed by the president and lawmakers was designed to put pressure on these officers to do just that, the legal experts said.

Jonathan Macey, a professor at Yale Law School, said it was unlikely that any AIG employees would end up suing the company for changing compensation contracts, mainly because their names would be revealed publicly in a lawsuit and they would then be excoriated.

Macey added that the government is caught in a difficult position, squeezed between public outrage over the bonuses and the need to keep AIG Financial Products going so the company can restructure and the government can recoup some of its money.

"What's good for AIG is definitely not good for the country," Macey said. "But now that the government is invested, it may have to do what's good for AIG."

Liddy is scheduled to appear tomorrow in front of a House financial services subcommittee. //03.17.09 MiNa

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/6016/52/

Ron Paul: Culprits Of Financial Collapse Should Be Arrested

Not treated as saviors and given more power to “fix” the problem that they created

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, March 12, 2009

Congressman Ron Paul says that the people responsible for the economic crisis should not be hailed as saviors and given more power to fix the problem that they created, but arrested and criminally prosecuted.

Paul told the Alex Jones Show that the only way the private Federal Reserve could be brought under control would come as a result of a mass uprising, noting that there is a lot more awareness in Washington about the Fed’s contribution to the economic crisis.

The Congressman has two bills before Congress, one to abolish the Fed altogether and another to audit the organization.

“Today they’re protected, they’re in total secrecy and they’re protected by the law - if 1207 is passed we have an audit and they have to answer the questions and I figure, if we ever get that far and get the exposure and get the transparency that we need then people will wake up and realize, why do we have them at all,” said Paul.

The Congressman’s bill to audit the Fed is similar to another bill introduced by Bernie Sanders in the Senate which is aimed at getting the Fed to answer specific questions about where $2 trillion in bailout funds has gone, a subject that Bloomberg News sued the Fed simply to try and discover. Staggering scenes unfolded last week at a Senate budget Committee meeting when Bernanke arrogantly refused to state where any of the bailout money had gone despite repeated questioning by Sanders.

Asked if the people who caused the economic collapse should be trusted as saviors or criminally charged, Paul responded, “We should have minimal government, but even in a minimalist government your government is supposed to deal with theft and physical harm and fraud, and that’s what’s going on and that’s what they ignore or protect….it’s horrible what they’re doing….and they should be prosecuting these people, these people should be in prison.”

The Texas Congressman also discussed Obama’s monetary policy, noting that every time a new government initiative was announced to supposedly rescue the economy, the stock markets sink.

“In spite of how a lot of people think the markets don’t know what’s going on, the markets are pretty smart, so the fact that they’re not responding, in spite of all this stuff the government is doing, every time the government comes up with a new program, the markets go down even more,” said Paul, noting that free market advocates were right in warning that the problems will only begin to be resolved once liquidation is allowed to occur.

Asked how bad the economic picture would get, Paul responded, “I think it’s going to be very prolonged, I don’t see any rebound, markets may come back up and that sort of thing but to rebound I would expect it to last every bit as long as happened in the 30’s,” adding that the last depression did not really end until after a world war.

“I think it’s going to be a long long time but now we live in greater danger because people are far more demanding, they believe they have a right to their neighbors property and that’s why there’s liable to be violence….ultimately they’re going to destroy the dollar,” said the Congressman, adding that the only quick solution to the crisis was to follow constitutional principles.

Listen to the interview with Ron Paul below.

Research related articles:

1. Ron Paul Scolds Bernanke For Skipping Congressional Financial Hearings
2. Ron Paul: Printing Money Only Prolongs The Pain
3. Ron Paul Grills Bernanke: “You Can’t Reinflate The Bubble”
4. Ron Paul: Fear Based Bailouts Constitute Economic Terrorism
5. Ron Paul on The Alex Jones Show: “A Global Financial Order”
6. Ron Paul: Government Spending Driving Us Into Depression
7. Paul: Wars planned to save US empire
8. Ron Paul: Bailout Will Destroy Dollar, World Economy
9. Ron Paul: Greenspan, Bernanke Should Be Criminally Charged
10. CNBC Anchors Mortified That Ron Paul Was Allowed Air Time
11. Ron Paul Slams “Born-again Budget Conservatives”
12. Ron Paul: Obama Foreign Policy Identical To Bush

$5 Billion in Lobbying for 12 Corrupt Deals Led to the Multi-Trillion Dollar Financial Meltdown

By Robert Weissman, Multinational Monitor. Posted March 9, 2009.

What can $5 billion buy in Washington?

Quite a lot. (A financial coup d’état!!)

Over the 1998-2008 period, the financial sector spent more than $5 billion on U.S. federal campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures.

This extraordinary investment paid off fabulously. Congress and executive agencies rolled back long-standing regulatory restraints, refused to impose new regulations on rapidly evolving and mushrooming areas of finance, and shunned calls to enforce rules still in place.

"Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," a report released by Essential Information and the Consumer Education Foundation (and which I co-authored), details a dozen crucial deregulatory moves over the last decade -- each a direct response to heavy lobbying from Wall Street and the broader financial sector, as the report details. (The report is available at: www.wallstreetwatch.org/soldoutreport.htm.) Combined, these deregulatory moves helped pave the way for the current financial meltdown.

Here are 12 deregulatory steps to financial meltdown:

1. The repeal of Glass-Steagall

The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 formally repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and related rules, which prohibited banks from offering investment, commercial banking, and insurance services. In 1998, Citibank and Travelers Group merged on the expectation that Glass-Steagall would be repealed. Then they set out, successfully, to make it so. The subsequent result was the infusion of the investment bank speculative culture into the world of commercial banking. The 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall helped create the conditions in which banks invested monies from checking and savings accounts into creative financial instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps, investment gambles that led many of the banks to ruin and rocked the financial markets in 2008.

2. Off-the-books accounting for banks

Holding assets off the balance sheet generally allows companies to avoid disclosing “toxic” or money-losing assets to investors in order to make the company appear more valuable than it is. Accounting rules -- lobbied for by big banks -- permitted the accounting fictions that continue to obscure banks' actual condition.

3. CFTC blocked from regulating derivatives

Financial derivatives are unregulated. By all accounts this has been a disaster, as Warren Buffett's warning that they represent "weapons of mass financial destruction" has proven prescient -- they have amplified the financial crisis far beyond the unavoidable troubles connected to the popping of the housing bubble. During the Clinton administration, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sought to exert regulatory control over financial derivatives, but the agency was quashed by opposition from Robert Rubin and Fed Chair Alan Greenspan.

4. Formal financial derivative deregulation: the Commodities Futures Modernization Act

The deregulation -- or non-regulation -- of financial derivatives was sealed in 2000, with the Commodities Futures Modernization Act. Its passage orchestrated by the industry-friendly Senator Phil Gramm, the Act prohibits the CFTC from regulating financial derivatives.

5. SEC removes capital limits on investment banks and the voluntary regulation regime

In 1975, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) promulgated a rule requiring investment banks to maintain a debt to-net capital ratio of less than 15 to 1. In simpler terms, this limited the amount of borrowed money the investment banks could use. In 2004, however, the SEC succumbed to a push from the big investment banks -- led by Goldman Sachs, and its then-chair, Henry Paulson -- and authorized investment banks to develop net capital requirements based on their own risk assessment models. With this new freedom, investment banks pushed ratios to as high as 40 to 1. This super-leverage not only made the investment banks more vulnerable when the housing bubble popped, it enabled the banks to create a more tangled mess of derivative investments -- so that their individual failures, or the potential of failure, became systemic crises.

6. Basel II weakening of capital reserve requirements for banks

Rules adopted by global bank regulators -- known as Basel II, and heavily influenced by the banks themselves -- would let commercial banks rely on their own internal risk-assessment models (exactly the same approach as the SEC took for investment banks). Luckily, technical challenges and intra-industry disputes about Basel II have delayed implementation -- hopefully permanently -- of the regulatory scheme.

7. No predatory lending enforcement

Even in a deregulated environment, the banking regulators retained authority to crack down on predatory lending abuses. Such enforcement activity would have protected homeowners, and lessened though not prevented the current financial crisis. But the regulators sat on their hands. The Federal Reserve took three formal actions against subprime lenders from 2002 to 2007. The Office of Comptroller of the Currency, which has authority over almost 1,800 banks, took three consumer-protection enforcement actions from 2004 to 2006.

8. Federal preemption of state enforcement against predatory lending

When the states sought to fill the vacuum created by federal non-enforcement of consumer protection laws against predatory lenders, the Feds -- responding to commercial bank petitions -- jumped to attention to stop them. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision each prohibited states from enforcing consumer protection rules against nationally chartered banks.

9. Blocking the courthouse doors: Assignee Liability Escape

Under the doctrine of “assignee liability,” anyone profiting from predatory lending practices should be held financially accountable, including Wall Street investors who bought bundles of mortgages (even if the investors had no role in abuses committed by mortgage originators). With some limited exceptions, however, assignee liability does not apply to mortgage loans, however. Representative Bob Ney -- a great friend of financial interests, and who subsequently went to prison in connection with the Abramoff scandal -- worked hard, and successfully, to ensure this effective immunity was maintained.

10. Fannie and Freddie enter subprime

At the peak of the housing boom, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were dominant purchasers in the subprime secondary market. The Government-Sponsored Enterprises were followers, not leaders, but they did end up taking on substantial subprime assets -- at least $57 billion. The purchase of subprime assets was a break from prior practice, justified by theories of expanded access to homeownership for low-income families and rationalized by mathematical models allegedly able to identify and assess risk to newer levels of precision. In fact, the motivation was the for-profit nature of the institutions and their particular executive incentive schemes. Massive lobbying -- including especially but not only of Democratic friends of the institutions -- enabled them to divert from their traditional exclusive focus on prime loans.

Fannie and Freddie are not responsible for the financial crisis. They are responsible for their own demise, and the resultant massive taxpayer liability.

11. Merger mania

The effective abandonment of antitrust and related regulatory principles over the last two decades has enabled a remarkable concentration in the banking sector, even in advance of recent moves to combine firms as a means to preserve the functioning of the financial system. The megabanks achieved too-big-to-fail status. While this should have meant they be treated as public utilities requiring heightened regulation and risk control, other deregulatory maneuvers (including repeal of Glass-Steagall) enabled them to combine size, explicit and implicit federal guarantees, and reckless high-risk investments.

12. Credit rating agency failure

With Wall Street packaging mortgage loans into pools of securitized assets and then slicing them into tranches, the resultant financial instruments were attractive to many buyers because they promised high returns. But pension funds and other investors could only enter the game if the securities were highly rated.

The credit rating agencies enabled these investors to enter the game, by attaching high ratings to securities that actually were high risk -- as subsequent events have revealed. The credit rating agencies have a bias to offering favorable ratings to new instruments because of their complex relationships with issuers, and their desire to maintain and obtain other business dealings with issuers.

This institutional failure and conflict of interest might and should have been forestalled by the SEC, but the Credit Rating Agencies Reform Act of 2006 gave the SEC insufficient oversight authority. In fact, the SEC must give an approval rating to credit ratings agencies if they are adhering to their own standards -- even if the SEC knows those standards to be flawed.

From a financial regulatory standpoint, what should be done going forward? The first step is certainly to undo what Wall Street has wrought. More in future columns on an affirmative agenda to restrain the financial sector.

None of this will be easy, however. Wall Street may be disgraced, but it is not prostrate. Financial sector lobbyists continue to roam the halls of Congress, former Wall Street executives have high positions in the Obama administration, and financial sector propagandists continue to warn of the dangers of interfering with "financial innovation."

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/130683/$5_billion_in_lobbying_for_12_corrupt_deals_caused_the_multi-trillion_dollar_financial_meltdown/

The Obama Deception Full Length

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7535755025025800195&ei=SDG5SeL2KYiGqwK6i_XzAg&q=the+obama+deception&hl=en

The Obama Deception is a hard-hitting film that completely destroys the myth that Barack Obama is working for the best interests of the American people.

The Obama phenomenon is a hoax carefully crafted by the captains of the New World Order. He is being pushed as savior in an attempt to con the American people into accepting global slavery.

We have reached a critical juncture in the New World Orders plans. Its not about Left or Right: its about a One World Government.

The international banks plan to loot the people of the United States and turn them into slaves on a Global Plantation. Covered in this film: who Obama works for, what lies he has told, and his real agenda. If you want to know the facts and cut through all the hype, this is the film for you. Watch the Obama Deception and learn how:

* Obama is continuing the process of transforming America into something that resembles Nazi Germany, with forced National Service, domestic civilian spies, warrantless wiretaps, the destruction of the Second Amendment, FEMA camps and Martial Law.

* Obamas handlers are openly announcing the creation of a new Bank of the World that will dominate every nation on earth through carbon taxes and military force.

* International bankers purposefully engineered the worldwide financial meltdown to bankrupt the nations of the planet and bring in World Government.

* Obama plans to loot the middle class, destroy pensions and federalize the states so that the population is completely dependent on the Central Government.

* The Elite are using Obama to pacify the public so they can usher in the North American Union by stealth, launch a new Cold War and continue the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The information contained in this film is vital to the future of the Republic and to freedom worldwide.

President Barack Obama is only the tool of a larger agenda. Until all are made aware, humanity will remain captive to the masters of the New World Order.

http://www.obamadeception.net  and  http://www.prisonplanet.com

*** Please SUPPORT ALEX JONES, go to the prison planet website and sign up for a membership *** Pass this video ON!

Don't let the television and mass media tell you what to choose, watch and make your own conclusions.

We Need Our Heads Examined, Says Harvard

by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

Last weekend, Harvard University sponsored a conference called (I am not making this up) "The Free Market Mindset: History, Psychology, and Consequences." Its purpose was to try to figure out why, since everyone knows the current crisis amounts to a failure of the market economy, the stupid rubes continue to believe in it. The promotional literature for the conference opened with That Quotation from Alan Greenspan – the one in which he suggested that there was, after all, a "flaw" in the free market he hadn’t noticed before.

Well, that does it, then! If our Soviet commissar in charge of money and interest rates says the free market doesn’t work, who are you to disagree?

The promotional material continues: "If the current state of the U.S. economy makes clear that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's faith in free markets was misplaced, the question remains: what was it about free markets that proved – and still continues to prove – so alluring to economists, scholars, and policy-makers alike?" Because, of course, if there’s one guiding principle behind the largest government in world history, it’s free markets. Ahem.

This conference, we were told, "brings together leading scholars in law, economics, social psychology, and social cognition to present and discuss their research regarding the historical origins, psychological antecedents, and policy consequences of the free market mindset. Their work illustrates that the magic of the marketplace is partially an illusion based on faulty assumptions and outmoded approaches." The speakers then spent the day, I am sure, laying out their own faulty assumptions and outmoded approaches, and studiously ignoring the Austrian School of economics.

In short, the conference was about this: Why do people still think the interaction of free individuals is a superior economic system to one directed by Harvard Ph.D.s like us? I mean, apart from the failure of central planning in every case in which it’s been tried, a failure so staggering that only a blockhead could miss it, why would people cling to the idea that being herded into a collective run by the experts isn’t the best way to live?

So by assuming from the outset the very thing that needs to be proven – namely, that the current state of the economy just occurred spontaneously, as the result of wicked market forces – our betters relieve themselves of the need to consider that central banking, a government-established institution, just might have had, you know, a little something to do with what happened.

George Reisman has already demonstrated the absurdity of referring to our present system as a "free market" one. Naturally, of course, none of the participants bothered to notice that a Soviet commissar in charge of money and interest rates amounts to something like the opposite of the free market, or that the economic distortions he causes cannot, therefore, be the fault of the free market. This is exactly why, in my book Meltdown, I call the Fed "the elephant in the living room." We’re not supposed to notice it, and we’re supposed to pretend the damage it causes is the result of wildcat capitalism, unfettered free markets, or whatever other juvenile phrase is currently in vogue to describe the usual bogeyman.

Now I don’t want to list all the paper topics at this conference, since it’d be a shame to make all of you feel stupid for having frittered away your weekend when you could have listened to, say, Stephen Marglin’s paper on "How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community." Now there’s a topic I haven’t heard quite enough platitudes about. (If you must, you can view the whole schedule here.) You could also have heard a bunch of totally conventional polemics about how the market economy allows for "too much" pollution, when in fact a genuine free market – which, I need hardly point out, is not actually considered in any of these alleged papers – would punish polluters and bring about the internalization of so-called externalities. Murray Rothbard dealt with this matter in an extremely important article none of the participants had read.

I wonder if anyone at the conference asked questions like this:

When Greenspan flooded the economy with newly created money and brought interest rates down to destructively low levels, thereby distorting entrepreneurial calculation as well as consumers’ home purchasing decisions, was that the fault of the free market? Do you think the Fed’s creation of cheap credit out of thin air makes market participants more careful or less careful in how they allocate borrowed funds?

When Alan Greenspan bailed out Long Term Capital Management in 1998, was that a "free market" phenomenon? Do you think he thereby encouraged more or less risk-taking among other major market actors?

The Financial Times spoke in 2000, in the wake of the dot-com boom, of an increasing concern that the so-called "Greenspan put" was injecting into the economy "a destructive tendency toward excessively risky investment supported by hopes that the Fed will help if things go bad." "All the insane dot-com investment we’ve seen, all this destruction of capital, all the crazy excesses of the past few years wouldn’t have happened without the easy credit accommodated by the Fed," added financial consultant Michael Belkin. Did the free market cause that?

Do lending standards decline for no particular reason, or could this phenomenon have a teensy weensy bit to do with (a) government regulation aimed at increasing "homeownership" and (b) loose monetary policy by the Fed? When the banks get the additional reserves the Fed creates, they naturally want to lend it out – and in order to do so, they wind up lending it to people they either have or would have rejected previously. As I show in Meltdown, the phenomenon of lax lending standards in the wake of an inflationary boom by a central bank is traceable all the way to the nineteenth century. There is nothing even slightly unexpected – or market-driven – about it.

Questions like these could go on and on. Not one, you can be certain, was raised at this conference.

Now if you really wanted to sponsor an event whose purpose was to try to understand why people believe inane things that have been falsified by reality, you’d do much better to hold a conference on socialism, or on Keynes and his school. It would be fascinating to learn the psychological motivation behind the persistence of Keynesian economics, whose popular version is a non-falsifiable, ersatz religion. Is Japan’s economy still suffering? Why, that’s because Japan didn’t spend enough – even though it spent so much that it became the most indebted country in the developed world. Have people spent so much that they’re now burdened with debt they can’t possibly repay? Then we need more spending. Is the economy a distorted mess after an artificial boom? Then instead of letting the economy restructure itself along sustainable lines, let’s instead "stimulate" the system just as it is, with the goal of bringing about more "consumption," more "labor" employed, and higher "income," without bothering to disaggregate any of these things and deciding what kinds of labor need to go where, what kinds of consumption are sustainable and what are figments of the bubble economy, or how the capital structure needs to be reassembled in order to cater to genuine consumer demand. In fact, let’s actually boast about neglecting capital theory altogether (as indeed Keynes did in a 1937 article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics).

Here’s another thought: given how many Keynesian economists predicted a return to depression conditions when World War II spending came to an end, and that what we instead got was the single most robust year the private economy has ever seen, isn’t it a little strange that not one of these economists went back and re-examined his premises?

On the other hand, consider the names Jim Grant, Peter Schiff, Ron Paul, and Jim Rogers. Apart from having predicted the current crisis – unlike anyone at the Harvard conference and indeed unlike the paper-tiger economists they unsurprisingly preferred to spar with during their deep-thinking session last weekend – one thing these men have in common is that they are all Austrian economists, they all believe in the Austrian theory of the business cycle, and they all pin the blame for the crisis on the Fed, a non-market institution. These men believe in the real free market, not the centrally planned market of Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, and the Federal Reserve. And they saw a crisis coming at a time when everyone else was predicting new highs for the Dow and singing the praises of a world economy that was more robust than it had ever been.

Maybe that’s why people believe in market economics: unlike the Rube Goldberg models of their counterparts in the profession, the things Austrian economists write and say actually have some connection to the real world.

People who believe in the market economy support a social order in which free individuals make voluntary contracts with each other, and no one can initiate physical force against anyone else. Is that vision so obviously unattractive that we have to refer its supporters for psychological evaluation? We might instead wonder at the psychological condition of those who would denounce such a system: might they be motivated, for all their noble talk, by nothing but base envy of those with more material wealth than they, or by a pathological desire to dominate other people?

I’m sure that will be covered at next year’s conference.

March 12, 2009

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. [send him mail] is senior fellow in American history at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author of nine books, including two New York Times bestsellers: The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History and the just-released Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse. Visit his new website.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods106.html

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