"We need to recognize up front that the Fed is not, as currently designed, a purely public institution... "

The Federal Reserve is a privately owned and operated corporation whose shareholders are the Member Banks they are supposed to regulate. As a corporation the head of that corporation, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is, by law, obliged to put his shareholders interests first and foremost in front of everybody else.

The problem is of course that the Federal Reserve is using public monies enacted as debt with interest payable by the public, to underwrite the failures of banks.

The question is of course: Why should the tax payers pay for private loss while not sharing in the gain? The answer is of course: The tax payer shouldn't be on the hook for private banks malfeasance and greed.

This is exactly why we need a Public Central Bank. The privately owned and operated Federal Reserve has demonstrated in word and deed, time after time, that it can and will risk public money for private profit.

Our financial system is vital for the functioning of our society and cannot be entrusted to a private corporation, The Federal Reserve, run by and for the private profit of banks.

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Lest we forget the power of the financial industry lobbyists, our elected representatives in Congress will be adequately reminded just who they are beholden to. Not us, the American people/taxpayers. We need to find new economic principles to build a sustainable economy upon. Obviously, laisseze-faire capitalism has failed the average American. How will our jobs, assets, debts be managed in this recessionary environment? Congress is not looking to help the American people in this recession. Do we need help? Of course we do!!! There are millions of Americans who are at the threshold of bankruptcy, foreclosures, and insolvency, but unfortunately, they do not have a lobbying arm in D.C. politics. As for regulatory reform of the financial industry, don't make me laugh. IT WILL NOT HAPPEN IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE !!!

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We need to audit Banks and other financial institutions through a Bank Holiday and defuse the ticking time bomb of trillions in unknown derivatives.

One thing can be said for sure. As the economy crashes these, what Warren Buffet calls, "weapons of mass financial destruction" are only getting closer to blowing a hole in our economy that will send us into a Depression worse than the Great Depression.

Unless Obama really takes control of the situation we're likely to see the public get taken for hundreds of billions or even trillions more dollars than have been lost so far.

The situation is getting worse by the day. Bank of America just asked for more aid. Just weeks ago the CEO Ken Lewis was saying they didn't need the TARP money. Famous last words. They took the first TARP money and they are back for more. Bank of America was thought to be one of the strongest banks!

Is Obama going to try to prop up failed banks that could have trillions in losses ? Obama had better take a hard look at a situation that could not only cost him his presidency in 4 years but the country a decade or two in financial purgatory. This is certainly not the time to believe what the banks or their minions have to say. Verify then verify again, trust will come when the crisis is over.

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Whenever the government bails out a business it destroys an opportunity for somebody to step into the void and do it better than the losers who failed. That is no way to build a strong economy or to encourage innovation in the long term.

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Whenever the government bails out a business it destroys an opportunity for somebody to step into the void and do it better than the losers who failed. That is no way to build a strong economy or to encourage innovation in the long term.

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"We need to recognize up front that the Fed is not, as currently designed, a purely public institution and therefore debate whether the Fed's authority for bank regulation should be expanded..."

The bulk of this Alternet story is a dead-end farce. The "Federal Reserve" Corporation has always been a private Ponzi scheme. The "Fed" is in fact an unconstitutional bank monopoly created and rigged by cartel robber barons, for cartel robber barons on Jekyll Island in 1910 and rubber-stamped into law by another puppet "progressive" president and Ku Klux Klan fanatic Woodrow Wilson in the dead of winter, 1913.

Virtually every founder of the nation warned against private banks and their crooked manipulators hijacking the nation as they had already done to Europe. A corporate crime bank Mafia was the major opponent of America and the prime reason for the Revolutionary War, according to Benjamin Franklin.

Until Americans realize that control of money is unlimited power over all that matters, they will suffer the consequence of their serial ignorance.


“The inability of the colonists to get the power to issue their own money, permanently, out of the hands of George III and the international [cartel] bankers was the prime reason for the revolutionary war.”
Benjamin Franklin (a founder of America condemning global cartel money monopoly power. 1706-1790)

“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… the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered… The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of [private] lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.”
President Thomas Jefferson - 1743-1826

“Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce… And when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”
PPresident James Garfield (a Republican, Garfield was the only preacher elected president. He was a defender of integrity in government and a staunch opponent of the international banking cartel. Garfield was assassinated in 1881. Quote 1881. 1831-1881)

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government of the U.S. ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.”
President FDR (on oligarch Fascist rule in a letter to handler “Colonel” Edward M. House, confidence man for the cartel and founder of the Council on Foreign Relations. House also handled President Wilson for the foisting of a private and unconstitutional “Federal Reserve” Corporation sham with its IRS in 1913. November 21st, l933 from the book "F.D.R.: His Personal Letters" - New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce 1950)

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This is the direction we need to go in and unfortunately all of the policy and incentives so far has been aimed in the opposite direction of further consolidation. Just imagine if the regulatory scheme was set up so that larger banks and financial institutions paid enough in FDIC insurance and through other fees and assessments to reflect the systemic risk their failure places on the financial system as a whole. If this was done, we could very quickly go to a financial system composed of thousands of independent companies rather than our current oligarchal system of just a few government preferred and supported companies.

Another avenue for getting at the unfortunate concentration in the banking and financial services sector would be through application of existing Anti-Trust laws. For almost 25 years Anti-Trust has been forgotten. It's time to rediscover it.

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But go right ahead and keep deluding yourselves with false hope. You Obamabots are nothing more than the same old yuppies who benefitted from the last 8 years of Bush's shitty economic policies. When do you people ever learn?

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Is this a joke?

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Please advise this audience when you discussed the financial plans of the Obama Administration. I find your claim misleading as Obama has stated he will enact new laws to regulate the banking system. Scare tactics are becoming of the George Bush but do not apply them to the American public until all the facts are known. Yes the banking system is severely flawed and taxpayers are footing the bills of an out of control capitalistic and archaic system. Hold Congress, Bush, Paulson, Bernanke accountable as they are the ones to allow the secrecy on spending the bailout money. But do not blame Obama for a situation that has not even occured with the remaining bailout dollars.

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As good as Obama has sounded when he talked against trickle down ecoonomics, is there anyone who will tell him to stop trying to practive trickle down economics before he is surprised by getting dumped in 2012?

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Am I missing something? I believe that Dubya is currently still the president. Obama's term begins next week. Can't we at least wait until the man takes office before we begin trashing what he is or isn't doing?

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James A. Swanson
www.bushleagueofnations.com [For FREE download of entire book]

I suggest there’s a parallel between America’s military and America’s financial system.

Both are too important to be entrusted to private mercenaries.

Have we learned nothing from the last eight years?

When the GOP talks about “reform” and uses wonderful words like “freedom,” “privatization,” and “deregulation”—and, during the last two months, “regulation!”—be sure to count your fingers.

My views appear in, “The Bush League of Nations: The Coalition of the Unwilling, the Bullied and the Bribed – the GOP’s War on Iraq and America,” by James A. Swanson (2008, CreateSpace Publishing, 448 pages).

You can download the entire book for free at www.bushleagueofnations.com.

I ask for nothing in return, except that you perhaps use my book to help restore and build America.

Jim Swanson, Los Altos, CA
“The Bush League of Nations”
www.bushleagueofnations.com

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Obama’s message to the world: Let the U.S. ruling class pound you in the face

Obama is silent as the grave - Palestinian graves - about Gaza, but shoots off his mouth in what appears to be a prelude to war against Social Security. The "Herald of Hope and Change" shows a "cowardice" on Palestine that "is beyond appalling," while huffing and puffing about how he'll solve the problems caused by "that seven hundred dollars a month the disabled collect from Social Security and the few hundred many people get from the ‘entitlement' programs of Medicare." As long as the "markets" are "soothed" by his ever-rightward policies, Obama is pleased.

"But the seal of the bankruptcy of bourgeois civilization is the bankruptcy of its thought. Its intellectuals run to and fro squealing like hens in a barnyard when a plane passes overhead."

---CLR James, Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity

It's been sixty years since the Pan African historian CLR James wrote the thoughts cited above, but most of what we find in the mainstream media even now is nothing more then "puk puk pukaw" in Mp3 format where it isn't outright chicken doo doo. As the moment of the Oba's Ascension to the Oval Office draws near, the Poultry Land Committee for Renewed Capitalist Mayhem is running its rooster tails off. As is the usual with true believers in Obamian politics, the objective reality that clings to the Big Man's cabinet picks is just one more political ploy from the President-Elect. The common mantra is that Obama is creating a "team of rivals," or exercising the old Don Corleone political counsel that one should keep one's friends close and one's enemies closer. And they'll get no argument from me on that score, certainly boojwah politics is gangster philosophy put into practice. Just ask the residents of the Gaza Strip if they think the owners of U.S. society and their allies are above drive-by shootings.

Not that any of this makes a difference to many the leaders of what passes for the "left" in this country. The line from the aging Port Huron "radical" types like Davidson, Hayden and Gitlin has been a refurbishing of the same old "democratic" party hoo ha some of them used to take issue with in more forthright days. To be specific, our eminence gris from the Sixties favor a steady repetition of the "democratic" party fix offered by His Oba-ness, and the Oba Fish has taken the line of silence on Gaza since there's only "one president at a time." Well, okay. But I say that state terrorist is as state terrorist does, whether state terrorist wishes to address the matter or not.


So, now we can't expect the Herald of Hope and Change to speak out against Israeli war crimes in Palestine since "there's only one president at a time." What a load of horse manure. And what a cheap cop-out is being put over on us all. The cowardice of this moment is beyond appalling.

There is only one president at a time, you see, but there are several vice-chairmen of the board, and their first concern is how they're going to keep people like you and I under the lash. We're not under the same lash the Palestinians are under yet, but anyone who thinks it's a direct impossibility has short term memory problems. The victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans know what I'm talking about. Be it fire or be it flood, you're just as dead if the nickel counters who run this craphole system decide you're expendable.


Entire article here:
Obama's message to the World

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Appoint Bernie Madoff to the Federal Reserve!

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ALL IS LOST!

We have several centuries of corrupt banking and usury practices and nothing we can do any time soon will remedy the problems. Humpty Dumpty fell off a wall, and we all know how that story ends.

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Nothing will change until we tear the money making powers from the Fed.


"As you know, I am entirely sympathetic with the objectives of your Monetary Reform Act...You deserve a great deal of credit for carrying through so thoroughly on your own conception…I am impressed by your persistence and attention to detail in your successive revisions... Best wishes,
Milton Friedman"

Nobel Laureate in Economics; Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace


Monetary Reform Act - A Summary (in four paragraphs)

This proposed law would require banks to increase their reserves on deposits from the current 10%, to 100%, over a one-year period. This would abolish fractional reserve banking (i.e., money creation by private banks) which depends upon fractional (i.e., partial) reserve lending. To provide the funds for this reserve increase, the US Treasury Department would be authorized to issue new United States Notes (and/or US Note accounts) sufficient in quantity to pay off the entire national debt (and replace all Federal Reserve Notes).

The funds required to pay off the national debt are always closely equivalent to the amount of money the banks have created by engaging in fractional lending because the Fed creates 10% of the money the government needs to finance deficit spending (and uses that newly created money to buy US bonds on the open market), then the banks create the other 90% as loans (as is explained on our FAQ page). Thus the national debt closely tracks the combined total of US Treasury debt held by the Fed (10%) and the amount of money created by private banks (90%).

Because this two-part action (increasing bank reserves to 100% and paying off the entire national debt) adds no net increase to the money supply (the two actions cancel each other in net effect on the money supply), it would cause neither inflation nor deflation, but would result in monetary stability and the end of the boom-bust pattern of US economic activity caused by our current, inherently unstable system.

Thus our entire national debt would be extinguished – thereby dramatically reducing or entirely eliminating the US budget deficit and the need for taxes to pay the $400+ billion interest per year on the national debt - and our economic system would be stabilized, while ending the terrible injustice of private banks being allowed to create over 90% of our money as loans on which they charge us interest. Wealth would cease to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands as a result of private bank money creation. Thereafter, apart from a regular 3% annual increase (roughly matching population growth), only Congress would have the power to authorize changes in the US money supply - for public use -not private banks increasing only private bankers' wealth.

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Please, I am a philosophy major, not an economist and am just beginning to learn about our fractional reserve system. Can we really never pay off our debt without money ceasing to exist????

Wouldn't that mean that our national debt is almost total GDP??? I am desperately confused. That would mean it's way more than $10 trillion right?

And is it true that we have to perpetually be increasing in debt (our economy must constantly be growing and consuming) in order to pay off the interest that in reality cannot be payed off?? It cannot be payed off since technically once all the "debt" or money is payed off there is none left to pay off the interest (I suppose this scenario would only happen assuming we were a closed economy)?

Anyone recommend good, sound web sites?

Thanks!

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Read "WEB OF DEBT" by Ellen H. Brown and watch these two videos if you want to learn how money works (for them and not you); Money Masters, and America: Freedom to Fascism. If anyone wants free copies of the films please let me know and I will get with you and send you some. 911truthfarmer@gmail.com

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that Obama was president. He must have been sworn in while I was visiting Mars.

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Charlie Cray is obviously a gifted and well studied analyst of corporate corruption and political ineptitude. I just wanted to add some thoughts concerning the continued use of terms such as "regulation" and "regulation reform" as this debate moves forward.

There are many politicians and bank executives who reflexively cringe whenever the word "regulation" is invoked, even if it is used to advocate "regulation reform." Frankly, I think this kind of knee-jerk ideological indignation is absurd to the extreme, especially considering the immensity of the failure that "deregulation" has now overwhelmingly proven to be. But, as Charlie Cray knows very well, in politics, choice of words is critically important, especially when giving title to any program or initiative. This case is no different.

I suggest that in order for our government to succeed in achieving badly needed oversite of the financial system, we advocates and reformers need to get semantically pragmatic. Seriously.

I am concerned that the more the argument for "regulation reform" is put forward, the more "regulation reform" will be characterized by opponents as a typical left-wing call for big government interference with the legitimate free-market activities of finacial institutions and businesses. This recurrent demonization of the "R" word consistently slithers its way into the debate over "regulatory reform."

Such characterizations are, of course, entirely unfounded and rightfully should quickly fossilize in the ideological tar pit that is the Bush legacy--a tar pit already full to the brim with neo-conservative derugulatory cronies. Unfortunately, these deeply embedded aristocratic views toward "regulation reform"--harmful and misguided though they have now proven to be--persist. They still don't get. The elite politicians and financial monarchs (see "Bernie Madoff") still don't get it. The most egregious perpetrators of the problem, most of whom are still in power, just don't get it.

That's the worst part. They are still there. These ideologues and schemers who have repeatedly played semantic and financial Russian roulette on multiple critical issues and on multiple occasions--on our dime--still have their hands on the golden steering wheel. Yes, Bush is gone, but the destructive anti-transparency philosophies of the Wall Street disosaurs and their congressional cohorts endure.

I therefore offer this potential linguistic solution to at least the "regulation"--"deregulation"--"regulation reform" semantic impasse: How about referring to regulation reform and transparency initiatives as "free market enhancement" programs? Is that more acceptable your highnesses? The truth is that such free market enhancement initiatives truly would enhance the success of our highly revered free market. Or, perhaps more accurately, free market enhancements that include transparency and oversite would allow a true free market to emerge from the ashes of the failed hands-off "deregulated" financial system and may help our system to overcome the lingering effects from the tyranny of King George the conquered. Placing such a name-tag on the policy initiative might help to deflect criticism on many levels, cosmetic though it may seem. This is a frustratingly shallow undertaking on some levels. Nevertheless, it is positive action in response to a truth that is hard to ignore. Semantic precision is essential now more than ever.

Perhaps there is a better, more patriotic term than "free-market enhancement" that represents a better formula for success. Perhaps there is a term that would be more to the liking of the conservative ideological word-smiths that wish to pick nits with unpatriotic liberal socialist regulatory reformers.

I hope some clever reformers out there can contribute to this linguistic treasure hunt. We need words. I bet Charlie has some...

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The American people have nothing to protect them. We have been robbed and left to die in the gutter. We need safety nets NOW. Why should any one spend when there is no place to invest your money, no job security or jobs, low wages and no affordable health care or housing. They are still paying 2 billion per day for Iraq and more for Afganistan not to mention the 700 bases and we are paying billions for Black Water and the biggest prison system on the planet. Banks get bailed out but millions are losing everything and many are in dire poverty and starving. So until they give us protection I'm not going out and spending. This is our only weapon. It is the only way to show our greedy, lying, robbing government that we are not spending if they can pull the rug our from under us and not give a damn if we live or die.

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Kill the Fed. Read The Creature at Jekyll Island to get an idea of what money really is in this country. I don't agree with the political part of the book but the take on how money works in this country is spot on. Also check out Money as Debt by Paul Gagnon. The video will blow you away. Money is debt and the Fed is a hall of smoke and mirrors that does not have this country's best interest as part of their operating style. If Obama does nothing to resolve this problem, we're toast.

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