RUSSIA: A New Financial System INDEPENDENT From Wall Street

Thursday, April 3, 2014

The 4th Media News

Putin Flushes the US Dollar: Russia’s Gold Ruble Payments System Delinked from Dollar?

A New Financial System independent from Wall Street and City of London begins to take shape concretely in Russia?

Russia “forced” by the sanctions to create a currency system which is independent from the US dollar.

Russia announces that it will sell (and buy) products and commodities – including oil – in rubles rather than in dollars. The move is towards the development of bilateral.

Putin has been preparing this move — the creation of a payment system in rubles completely independent and protected from the Dollar and the “killer speculations” (e.g. short-selling) of the big Western financial institutions — for a long time.

After sanctioning several Russian banks to punish Russia for Crimea, the Washington politicians were told by the financial power-to-be to step back because obviously, the Wall Street vampires understand that putting Russian banks outside the reach of their blood sucking teeth is never a good idea.

For Wall Street and the city’s financial services, countries like Russia should always have an open financial door through which their real economy can be periodically looted.

So Washington announced that it was a mistake to enforce sanctions on all Russian banks; only one, the Rossiya bank shall be hit by sanctions, just for propaganda reasons and to make an example out of it.

It is what Putin needed. Since at least 2007, he was trying to launch an independent Ruble System, a financial system that would be based on Russia’s real economy and resources and guaranteed by its gold reserves.

No tolerance for looting and financial speculation: A peaceful move, but at the same time a declaration of independence that Wall Street will consider as a “declaration of war”.

According to the Judo strategy, the sanction attack created the ideal situation for a “defensive” move that would redirect the brute force of the adversary against him.

And now it’s happening. Bank Rossiya will be the first Russian bank to use exclusively the Russian ruble.

The move has not been done in secret. On the contrary. A huge golden ruble symbol will be set up in front of bank Rossiya headquarters in Perevedensky Pereulok in Moscow “to symbolize the ruble’s stability and its backing by the country’s gold reserves,” the official agency Itar-Tass explains quoting the bank officials.

In fact, the officials  are very clear on their intention to punish the western speculators that have been looting their country for a long time:

“Russia, at its present stage of development, should not be dependent on foreign currencies; its internal resources will make its own economy invulnerable to political wheeler dealers.”

This is only the first step, declared Andrei Kostin, the president of VTB, another bank previously sanctioned:

“We have been moving towards wider use of the Russian rouble as the currency of settlement for a long time. The ruble became fully convertible quite a long time ago.

Unfortunately, we have seen predominantly negative consequences of this step so far revealed in the outflow of capital from this country. The influx of foreign investments into Russia has been speculative and considerably destabilizing to our stock markets.”

According to Itar-Tass, Kostin was very precise and concrete:

“Russia should sell domestic products – from weapons to gas and oil – abroad for roubles and buy foreign goods also for rubles….Only then are we going to use the advantages of the rouble being a foreign currency in full measure.”

Putin himself lobbied for the new siystem in meetings with members of the Upper House of the Duma, the parliament, on March 28, overcoming the last doubts and indecisions:“

“Why do we not do this? This definitely should be done, we need to protect our interests, and we will do it. These systems work, and work very successfully in such countries as Japan and China. They originally started as exclusively national [systems] confined to their own market and territory and their own population, but have gradually become more and more popular…”

Alea Iacta Est!

By Umberto Pascali, Information Clearing House

Source

A Small President on the World Stage

At the U.N., leaders hope for a return of American greatness.

The world misses the old America, the one before the crash—the crashes—of the past dozen years.

By PEGGY NOONAN

That is the takeaway from conversations the past week in New York, where world leaders gathered for the annual U.N. General Assembly session. Our friends, and we have many, speak almost poignantly of the dynamism, excellence, exuberance and leadership of the nation they had, for so many years, judged themselves against, been inspired by, attempted to emulate, resented.

As for those who are not America’s friends, some seem still confused, even concussed, by the new power shift. What is their exact place in it? Will it last? Will America come roaring back? Can she? Does she have the political will, the human capital, the old capability?

It is a world in a new kind of flux, one that doesn’t know what to make of America anymore. In part because of our president.

“We want American leadership,” said a member of a diplomatic delegation of a major U.S. ally. He said it softly, as if confiding he missed an old friend.

“In the past we have seen some America overreach,” said the prime minister of a Western democracy, in a conversation. “Now I think we are seeing America underreach.” He was referring not only to foreign policy but to economic policies, to the limits America has imposed on itself. He missed its old economic dynamism, its crazy, pioneering spirit toward wealth creation—the old belief that every American could invent something, get it to market, make a bundle, rise.

The prime minister spoke of a great anxiety and his particular hope. The anxiety: “The biggest risk is not political but social. Wealthy societies with people who think wealth is a given, a birthright—they do not understand that we are in the fight of our lives with countries and nations set on displacing us. Wealth is earned. It is far from being a given. It cannot be taken for granted. The recession reminded us how quickly circumstances can change.” His hope? That the things that made America a giant—”so much entrepreneurialism and vision”—will, in time, fully re-emerge and jolt the country from the doldrums.

The second takeaway of the week has to do with a continued decline in admiration for the American president. Barack Obama‘s reputation among his fellow international players has deflated, his stature almost collapsed. In diplomatic circles, attitudes toward his leadership have been declining for some time, but this week you could hear the disappointment, and something more dangerous: the sense that he is no longer, perhaps, all that relevant. Part of this is due, obviously, to his handling of the Syria crisis. If you draw a line and it is crossed and then you dodge, deflect, disappear and call it diplomacy, the world will notice, and not think better of you. Some of it is connected to the historical moment America is in.

But some of it, surely, is just five years of Mr. Obama. World leaders do not understand what his higher strategic aims are, have doubts about his seriousness and judgment, and read him as unsure and covering up his unsureness with ringing words.

A scorching assessment of the president as foreign-policy actor came from a former senior U.S. diplomat, a low-key and sophisticated man who spent the week at many U.N.-related functions. “World leaders are very negative about Obama,” he said. They are “disappointed, feeling he’s not really in charge. . . . The Western Europeans don’t pay that much attention to him anymore.”

The diplomat was one of more than a dozen U.S. foreign-policy hands who met this week with the new president of Iran, Hasan Rouhani. What did he think of the American president? “He didn’t mention Obama, not once,” said the former envoy, who added: “We have to accept the fact that the president is rather insignificant at the moment, and rely on our diplomats.” John Kerry, he said, is doing a good job.

Had he ever seen an American president treated as if he were so insignificant? “I really never have. It’s unusual.” What does he make of the president’s strategy: “He doesn’t know what to do so he stays out of it [and] hopes for the best.” The diplomat added: “Slim hope.”

This reminded me of a talk a few weeks ago, with another veteran diplomat who often confers with leaders with whom Mr. Obama meets. I had asked: When Obama enters a room with other leaders, is there a sense that America has entered the room? I mentioned de Gaulle—when he was there, France was there. When Reagan came into a room, people stood: America just walked in. Does Mr. Obama bring that kind of mystique?

“No,” he said. “It’s not like that.”

When the president spoke to the General Assembly, his speech was dignified and had, at certain points, a certain sternness of tone. But after a while, as he spoke, it took on the flavor of re-enactment. He had impressed these men and women once. In the cutaways on C-Span, some delegates in attendance seemed distracted, not alert, not sitting as if they were witnessing something important. One delegate seemed to be scrolling down on a BlackBerry, one rifled through notes. Two officials seated behind the president as he spoke seemed engaged in humorous banter. At the end, the applause was polite, appropriate and brief.

The president spoke of Iran and nuclear weapons—”we should be able to achieve a resolution” of the question. “We are encouraged” by signs of a more moderate course. “I am directing John Kerry to pursue this effort.”

But his spokesmen had suggested the possibility of a brief meeting or handshake between Messrs. Obama and Rouhani. When that didn’t happen there was a sense the American president had been snubbed. For all the world to see.

Which, if you are an American, is embarrassing.

While Mr. Rouhani could not meet with the American president, he did make time for journalists, diplomats and businessmen brought together by the Asia Society and the Council on Foreign Relations. Early Thursday evening in a hotel ballroom, Mr. Rouhani spoke about U.S.-Iranian relations.

He appears to be intelligent, smooth, and he said all the right things—”moderation and wisdom” will guide his government, “global challenges require collective responses.” He will likely prove a tough negotiator, perhaps a particularly wily one. He is eloquent when speaking of the “haunted” nature of some of his countrymen’s memories when they consider the past 60 years of U.S.-Iranian relations.

Well, we have that in common.

He seemed to use his eloquence to bring a certain freshness, and therefore force, to perceived grievances. That’s one negotiating tactic. He added that we must “rise above petty politics,” and focus on our nations’ common interests and concerns. He called it “counterproductive” to view Iran as a threat; this charge is whipped up by “alarmists.” He vowed again that Iran will not develop a nuclear bomb, saying this would be “contrary to Islamic norms.”

I wondered, as he spoke, how he sized up our president. In roughly 90 minutes of a speech followed by questions, he didn’t say, and nobody thought to ask him.

Source

The debt bomb just got bigger

The amount of debt worldwide is more than all of the bank accounts in the world, and the current financial situation in Cyprus is the inevitable next phase: Confiscation.

All pretense is now gone that central or global bankers can ‘securitize’ growth by packaging and repackaging debt; by hypothicating and rehypothicating debt; by regulating and rergulating debt. Since the bond market rally began in the early 1980s (yes, it’s that old) each crisis has been met by central and global bankers – the IMF, EU and ECB, to name a few – and their Wall St. and City of London brethren with an increase in debt, and an extension of the debt’s maturity.

The result has been – as of 2007 – the biggest mountain of on-balance sheet and off-balance sheet debt in history: A staggering $220 trillion in debt in America’s $14-trillion economy alone (when you include all public, private and contingent liabilities of unfunded entitlement programs). Deals in the global debt derivatives market now stand in excess of $1 quadrillion, riding above a global GDP of approximately $60 trillion.

But starting in 2007, and then becoming spectacularly apparent in 2008 with the Lehman collapse, the ability of the world’s taxpayers to pay either the interest or principal on this debt has hit a brick wall. And for several years now, governments around the world have tried the same old tricks of ‘extend and pretend.’ Repackage and extend the maturity, and pray that tax receipts start picking up enough to pay some of the debt off. It didn’t work. The debt bomb just got bigger. Now in Cyprus we see the inevitable next phase: Confiscation.

To pay off the debts that were incurred to finance the biggest wealth grab in history, we see in Cyprus, as well as central and global banking institutions around the world, a trend to just reach in and grab people’s money from their ‘insured’ bank accounts. We should have figured out this was coming when JP Morgan (read: Jamie Dimon) reached in and illegally stepped ahead of customers at MF Global and grabbed over $1 billion, with the help of his crony pal Jon Corzine.

Have we learned our lesson yet? They have more debts to pay than there is money in all the bank accounts in the world. This means that chances are, you – whoever you are, and whatever country you live in – will have a sizable percent of your savings stolen by banksters.

Since the crisis hit (and for several years leading up to it) we’ve been recommending on ‘Keiser Report’ to put as much money as you can in gold and silver. Our advice then and now is: The only money you should keep in a bank is money you’re willing to lose.

Source

Tim Geithner Has Allowed Zombie Money To Drive The Markets, And This Poses Gargantuan Risk

by Raúl Ilargi Meijer

On January 25, Timothy Geithner will step down as US Treasury Secretary. A lot of people will say and write a lot of things about him at that point, and it sounds like a good idea to be ahead of the game and provide some perspective.

There are voices claiming (there will be many more, promise) that Geithner pulled us out of the recession and the crisis, and saved the economy. That seems presumptuous. It may just as well be true that Geithner has fooled us into thinking that. Just because the stock markets are pulling through so far doesn’t mean, let alone prove, that the economy has recovered or been saved. You would need something better, more substantial than that. While acknowledging that relatively strong stock market numbers are at least in potential a great way indeed to fool people about the economy.

And going forward we can wax nostalgically about everything Tim has done, and about where the economy is now compared to 4 years ago, but when all else is said and done, there is still just one question that counts: what happened to the debt? What has Geithner done when it comes to debt? As long as you don’t know what happened to the debt, you won’t know the true state of the economy.

Well, Americans still have higher personal debt levels than they ever had before (in fact, the best anti-gun law would be to ban paying for them with credit) and government debt has grown exponentially. Those things at least we know to an extent; when it comes to bank debt, we don’t know much of anything. Tim has made sure of that. He’s handed trillions of dollars in our money to Wall Street and we haven’t received anything in return. Well, yes, we have the semblance of a somewhat stable stock market, but is that worth all that extra debt? Moreover, we still don’t know what happened to the debt that caused the crisis in the first place, because Tim made sure it has been kept hidden from view. And how’s that a good thing again?

Look, you can save banks that are in deep debt trouble, and perhaps that’s not necessarily such a bad thing, since letting them fail outright would have been a risky proposition. But you can’t make the choice to save banks and not at the same time restructure those debts and expose and prosecute the bankers who put their firms into a situation that necessitated saving them in the first place, and were paid big bonuses for doing it. That is not alright by any stretch of the imagination, either ethically or economically. Because the money used to save them comes from outside of the financial system; it comes from the taxes that everybody pays. And that means it has to be accounted for. But it never was.

The only reason the policy – if you can call it that – of handing banks trillions in cheap credit appears to work is because its consequences cannot be felt immediately, but are pushed forward into the future. That doesn’t absolve us from having to ask what happened to the debt, though, but we still have no answer to that question, and Tim Geithner carries a substantial part of the blame for that.

If you’re interested only in yourself, and you’re just looking to make a quick buck, sure, things may look good. And if you think you can best achieve your goals by things staying the same, by keeping the system going as it is, yeah, you’re likely to think that Tim Geithner has done a swell job, because from that point of view he has saved you.

But if you care about anything that goes beyond just today, and beyond the few square miles that make up your world, if you care about your family, your friends, your kids and their future, Tim Geithner is not your man. He set up the system so it would continue to provide fast money for the horses with blinders, but he’s done it with money that everyone else is on the hook for. Just not today, not right away.

And that plays perfectly to our proverbial human short – term – attention span: Hey, look at the markets, they’re doing fine. We’re in recovery. We left the crisis behind. We made it.

But what’s that bulge under the carpet there in the corner? Is that perhaps what happened to the debt? We tell ourselves we love our children. That what we need to do is put aside money for their education. That what they need for their futures is money. And that’s it. It’s not about the world we leave for them. It’s not about the debt we leave for them. But it should be. The education we buy for our kids today will mean very little if and when they will be forced to pay back all our debts. We should face up to the responsibility for it ourselves. We don’t. We prefer the cloud cuckoo land illusion that Tim Geithner has spun before our eyes. We prefer to let our kids deal with reality.

The main problem from a purely technical point of view with the way Geithner has gone about business is that it’s to a large extent zombie money that drives markets today, money that would not have existed if debts had been properly restructured. If anytime in the future, either driven by markets or governments, banks are forced to restructure their debt after all, this poses a gargantuan risk to both the financial system and the overall economy. And we’ll have Geithner to thank for that. Not only him, there’s Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, Hank Paulson and many more. Still, Geithner has had the option and the power to do the right thing, for four long years, and declined.

Obama said this about Tim Geithner recently: “When the history books are written, Tim Geithner is going to go down as one of our finest Secretaries of the Treasury…” And that the “unofficial” saying at the Treasury is “no peacocks, no jerks, no whiners” and “Few embody that ideal better than Tim Geithner.”.

That says much more about Obama than it does about Geithner. The reality is that Obama will go down as one of the worst American presidents in history. Because four more years of the above will sink the US economy to levels not even imagined today, and Obama will be seen as an accomplice if not the main perpetrator of a whole series of – financial – crimes against the people. The president that brought the country to its knees.

That is inevitable precisely because Geithner and Obama have done nothing at all for four years to restructure bank debt. All they’ve done in that time is keep the existing financial system, which was then and is now as bankrupt as any industry has ever been, standing upright. Or more correctly: appear to be standing upright. What the president and his Treasurer have done is feed zombies. With – future – human flesh. With the future prospects of our children. Obama has said that what Wall Street did was unethical but not illegal, but that is up to the courts to decide, not the president, and not Congress.

If you leave the decision making in a time of crisis to those who stand to profit most from keeping things as they are, it would perhaps be foolish to expect them to not try and do just that. Thing is, they can do so only by throwing others under the bus. And since this crisis is the biggest, the most widespread and the worst we’ve ever seen, it means just about everyone else will end up under that bus. Even the majority of those who think they would be better off keeping the system going: be careful what you wish for.

Timothy Geithner is a Robert Rubin protégé. Under Bill Clinton, then Treasury Secretary and Citigroup made man Rubin, assisted by Greenspan and Larry Summers, set the terms for US government (non) policy for derivatives that stands to this day.

Geithner certainly never touched it after he and Summers took over the Obama finance team. And now he will be succeeded by Jack Lew, who was director of the White House Office of Management and Budget when Rubin and Summers were there. Lew isn’t just a revolving door man, he does you one better: he went from K Street lobbyist to Citigroup director to the White House, rinse and repeat, pocketing a million dollar bonus from Citi three months after it received billions in taxpayer bailouts.

Once again, if we let them, it would perhaps be foolish to expect them to not try and do these things. Jack Lew’s nomination tells us all we need to know about Barack Obama’s intentions. Which are to let the bankers and their shareholders continue to hide their debts, and continue to use the zombie money they thus seem to have to make leveraged wagers whose profits they can pocket and whose losses they can pass on to you.

And you can continue to play the game as well as long as it lasts. So you can, if you’re lucky, hold on to your job and your home and use your money to pay for your children’s education. If you do, it might be a good idea to take a look at what it is they learn. Make sure they’re never tempted to look under the carpet. Or they may turn against you.

Source

Related articles

• Geithner Says Debt Limit Steps May Run Out by Mid-February – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
• Geithner warns clock is ticking on debt (upi.com)
• Geithner leaving Treasury post: Trouble for Obama? (capitolhillblue.com)
• Geithner gives Congress notice: Four to six weeks until default (dailykos.com)

Fear, Everywhere, Fear

By Alan Caruba

If my emails and the headlines I am reading indicate anything, there is widespread fear among Americans that something terrible has occurred with the reelection of President Obama. Not all Americans, though. Those who voted for Obama appear to remain oblivious despite the threat of a “fiscal cliff” or the new taxes in Obamacare that will kick in on January 2nd.

We have a Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy, Geithner, calling for an end to debt ceilings, apparently believing that America can continue to borrow money to pay for the interest on its escalating debt, now pegged at $16 trillion and growing daily. The U.S. borrows $4 billion a day. Anyone with a credit card knows that their payments increase as they struggle to deal with their personal debt. Eventually they either declare bankruptcy or turn to companies that negotiate a payment to release them.

If America was to default on its debt, the dollar, already in free fall, would be worth nothing. We would be bartering shiny beads and anything else to buy food and other necessaries. We would become Zimbabwe where you need a million of their dollars to buy a loaf of bread.

Writing recently on her Fox Business blog, Gerri Willis spelled out the huge rise in taxes Americans are facing. “All told, next year, total taxes will go to almost 50% for the middle class; the very group that the president says he wants to protect. That means 50 cents out of every dollar earned has to go to the government. Half of everything will go to an entity that didn’t earn that money, and shouldn’t be entitled to all that dough.”

What kind of madness is it that the Teamsters union would impose such senseless rules that it would weaken Hostess to the point of bankruptcy, preferring to let the company die rather than to protect the jobs of 18,500 bakers? Other unions are engaged in attacks on a weakened economy. What kind of nation is it that its government employees are lobbying Congress to not only increase their pay, but to exempt them from the impact of the spending cuts scheduled to kick in?

There is a full-scale attack on the privacy Americans have taken for granted, protected by the fourth Amendment that says “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…”

On November 14th, the Heritage Foundation asked “Do you trust the government with your computer?” The government has had “13 breaches and failures of its own cybersecurity just in the last six months.” Even so, “the President and his allies in the Senate are pushing forward to regulate America’s cyber-doings, without any clues about how much this will cost or how it will work.”

“It has become the norm with this President—if Congress fails to accomplish his objectives, he goes around it with executive orders and federal regulations. He’s doing it again. Congress did not pass the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 before the election, so the President has issued a draft of an executive order to put much of that legislation in place without lawmakers voting.”

This is the very essence of tyranny and the President has had four years to perfect it. Are conservative think tanks the only ones paying any attention? It would appear so.

A new proposed law in the Senate would strip Americans of any privacy as they communicate with one another by email. A vote for the law would allow warrantless access to American’s email and is scheduled for a vote shortly. It would allow 22 federal agencies as well as state and local law enforcement to access one’s emails with nothing more than a subpoena. This is totally unconstitutional.

Already $16 trillion in debt, the government is looking for ways to take over the $3 trillion that is held in private retirement plans such as 401(k) plans and IRA’s. A recent hearing by the Treasury and Labor Departments addressed the nationalization of the nation’s pension system. The director of the National Senior’s Council, Robert Crone, warns “It is clear that this is the first step towards a government takeover. It feels just like the beginning of the debate over health care and we all know how that ended up.”

As we move closer to an Electoral College vote confirming Obama’s reelection, whistleblowers are coming forth in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere to reveal that significant voter fraud was a contributing factor, but it receives little or no media coverage. One must ask how 99% of votes in Philadelphia districts went to Obama and ask why nothing is being done to investigate this and other offenses such as the 141.1% of the vote recorded in Florida’s St. Lucie County. That is statistically impossible, but it robbed Rep. Allen West (R) of his seat in Congress.

This isn’t government. It is gangsterism. It is “the Chicago way.”

The monster Homeland Security Agency just graduated its first class of FEMA Corps, kids aged 18-24, recruited from the President’s Americorps volunteers, that will become a full time, paid standing army. Fears of FEMA camps abound and in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, people seeking shelter and food were herded into one that resembled a concentration camp of the Nazi regime and told not to use various means of communication to contact the media or outside community. They went from hurricane victims to prisoners of the government.

In so many ways, the freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution are in danger of disappearing along with the separation of powers it requires.

Little wonder that citizen’s petitions from a growing number of states are called for secession. Or that governors are refusing to set up the Obamacare exchanges required by a law that has taken control of twenty percent of the nation’s economy; their budgets held hostage to Medicaid.

On an individual level, people who have jobs are fearful of losing them. College graduates are fearful of the huge debt they carry for the loans they received. People wonder if they can afford to get married. Married couples fear the cost of having another child. Homeowners fear not being able to pay their mortgages. Seniors fear that their savings won’t last as they live longer.

There is ample reason to fear not only the collapse of the nation’s economy, but the loss of liberty in America.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Source

Related articles

• Fear, Everywhere, Fear (papundits.wordpress.com)
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Audit of the Federal Reserve Reveals $16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts

unelected.org
Sat, 01 Sep 2012 01:33 CDT

The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out.

Ben Bernanke (pictured to the right), Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100 year history were posted on Senator Sander’s webpage earlier this morning.

What was revealed in the audit was startling:

$16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious – the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs.

To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is “only” $14.5 trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is “only” $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.

In late 2008, the TARP Bailout bill was passed and loans of $800 billion were given to failing banks and companies. That was a blatant lie considering the fact that Goldman Sachs alone received 814 billion dollars. As is turns out, the Federal Reserve donated $2.5 trillion to Citigroup, while Morgan Stanley received $2.04 trillion. The Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank, a German bank, split about a trillion and numerous other banks received hefty chunks of the $16 trillion.

“This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”- Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

When you have conservative Republican stalwarts like Jim DeMint(R-SC) and Ron Paul(R-TX) as well as self identified Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders all fighting against the Federal Reserve, you know that it is no longer an issue of Right versus Left. When you have every single member of the Republican Party in Congress and progressive Congressmen like Dennis Kucinich sponsoring a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, you realize that the Federal Reserve is an entity onto itself, which has no oversight and no accountability.

Americans should be swelled with anger and outrage at the abysmal state of affairs when an unelected group of bankers can create money out of thin air and give it out to megabanks and supercorporations like Halloween candy. If the Federal Reserve and the bankers who control it believe that they can continue to devalue the savings of Americans and continue to destroy the US economy, they will have to face the realization that their trillion dollar printing presses will eventually plunder the world economy.

The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131of the GAO Audit and are as follows..

• Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
• Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
• Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
• Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
• Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
• Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
• Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
• Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
• JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
• Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
• UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
• Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
• Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
• Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
• BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)

and many many more including banks in Belgium of all places

View the 266-page GAO audit of the Federal Reserve (July 21st, 2011):

Sources:
US Government Accountability Office (GAO)
FULL PDF on GAO server.
Senator Sander’s Article

Audit of the Federal Reserve Reveals $16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts — Puppet Masters — Sott.net.

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Financial Crime Must Be Punished!

Monday, July 02, 2012 – by Staff Report

Four In Five Want Bankers Prosecuted … Four out of five people want individuals to be prosecuted when banks break the law, according to a new survey. Research by consumer watchdog Which? also showed that two-thirds of people believe the Government will not act in their best interests when implementing banking reform. And only one in five think the Financial Services Authority is effective in regulating UK banks. The watchdog is calling on the Government to ensure criminal prosecutions can be brought against individuals – up to boardroom level – who have presided over corrupt practices. – Yahoo News UK

Dominant Social Theme: Get ’em, whup ’em and impound ’em.

Free-Market Analysis: The bankers are up to no good. This is a fact and the poll referred to above is further evidence of it. Eventually, laws must be changed and hearings must be held to ensure that the financial industry is made as transparent and honest as every other part of Western industry. > Read more

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• The Barclays scandal is not ‘wholly inappropriate’. It’s a crime | Jonathan Freedland (guardian.co.uk)
• Will Barclays’ Rate-Fixing Scandal Lead to Prosecutions? (world.time.com)

Do-Nothing Democrats

Senate Democrats set to reject Ryan, Obama budgets

BY: Andrew Stiles – May 16, 2012 5:00 am

Senate Democrats are poised to continue their impressive streak of budgetary negligence on Wednesday by unanimously rejecting as many as five different budgets, including the one offered by President Obama. Republicans, meanwhile, are hoping that voters will pick up on the disturbing trend.

The Democratic-led Senate has not formally proposed a federal budget resolution in more than three years, and is not expected to offer one Wednesday. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) have made explicitly clear that they have no intention of doing so before the November election.

Senate Republicans plan to offer four GOP budgets—authored by Sens. Mike Lee (R., Utah); Rand Paul (R., Ky.); Pat Toomey (R., Pa.); and House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.)—as well as the president’s budget. None of them are expected to draw any support from Democrats.

It would mark the second year in a row that Senate Democrats have unanimously opposed the White House budget proposal. The House of Representatives has already voted to reject Obama’s budget 414-0.

In total, members of Congress have cast more than 500 votes in favor of what is widely seen as the official Republican budget (Ryan’s) and zero in support of the president’s plan.

It is a sign, Republicans say, that Democrats are not serious about solving what experts have called “the most predictable economic crisis in history.”

“They simply don’t want to be held accountable,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) told the Washington Free Beacon. “Either they don’t have a plan, or they are totally unwilling to tell the American people what their plan is.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said he thought the latter was true. “I actually think they do have a plan,” he told the Free Beacon. “Their goal is to increase spending and increase taxes. But that plan will be rejected by the American people.”

“If they believed their plan was popular, they’d want to put it out in front of people, vote on it, and brag about it,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. “That’s not what they’re doing. They’d rather run for reelection without the American people knowing what their vision of the budget would look like. It’s one thing for me to say their plan is unpopular. That’s what they’re saying.”

Democrats have been particularly reticent to propose a credible plan to reform federal entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, despite the fact that these programs are the primary drivers of the national debt. Medicare’s trustees project that the program will be insolvent by 2024.

Earlier this year, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted that, even if Congress were to enact President Obama’s latest budget, “We would still be left with … what are still unsustainable commitments in Medicare and Medicaid.”

Obama pledged to make entitlement reform a priority as a candidate in 2008. “We’re going to have to take on entitlements, and I think we’ve got to do it quickly,” he said during a debate moderated by NBC. “I can’t guarantee that we’re going to do it in the next two years, but I’d like to do it in my first term as president.”

Nearly four years later, the closest thing to Medicare reform the president has offered is the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a council of appointed “experts” given sweeping power to reduce federal reimbursements to healthcare providers. Medicare’s chief actuary, Richard Foster, has raised doubts about the board’s ability to control costs.

Ryan’s budget, on the other hand, proposes to save trillions of dollars by gradually transitioning Medicare from a “fee-for-service” model to a market-oriented “premium support” plan modeled after a bipartisan proposal co-authored by Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.).

Democrats have countered by accusing Republicans of trying to “end Medicare as we know it”—a charge the nonpartisan fact-checking site PolitiFact rated “Lie of The Year” in 2011—and in one case by portraying Ryan as literally throwing the elderly off a cliff.

Geithner summed up the Democratic position on entitlement reform during a House Budget Committee hearing in February when he told Ryan, “we’re not coming before you today to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is, we don’t like yours.”

President Obama and his Democratic allies have been far more resolute in their determination to raise taxes. Obama’s most recent budget calls for nearly $2 trillion in tax increases over the next decade. Conrad, the Senate budget chairman, has indicated that a similar amount would be appropriate.

Raising taxes is not something on which many politicians are eager to base their re-election campaigns. Studies have also shown that it is a particularly ineffective way to solve a nation’s debt and deficit problems. One report produced by the American Enterprise Institute examined data from a variety of countries between 1970-2007 and found “strong evidence that expenditure cuts outweigh revenue increases in successful consolidations.”

The findings echo those of a recent report from the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, which concluded: “International experience shows expenditure-based fiscal consolidation tends to be more successful.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently concluded that the president’s budget, if enacted, would have a negative impact on long-term economic growth.

Ryan’s budget, on the other hand, simplifies the notoriously complex federal tax code by eliminating various loopholes and tax shelters while lowering tax rates.

Wednesday’s vote encapsulates what ought to be central issue in the 2012 campaign, Republicans say.

“This is an opportunity for the American people to assess the differences between the two parties,” a GOP budget committee aide told the Free Beacon. “We’re headed for financial disaster, and Senate Democrats are making no effort to take us off that path.”

“Republicans are actually putting forward proposals that are serious, that address the major challenges—on tax reform, entailment reform, spending reductions,” said another Republican aide. “Democrats have punted on all these issues.”

Few things better illustrate this lack of leadership more than unwillingness of Democratic lawmakers to support the president’s plan, Republicans say. Senate Democrats in all likelihood will vote in lockstep against every budget proposal, including Obama’s, and quickly move to change the subject.

“It’s a tear-off-the-Band-Aid kind of moment for them,” the GOP budget aide said. “They want to get it over with quickly so they can avoid a serious conversation about the budget.”

Even though Ryan’s budget, or any other GOP plan, has no chance of passing the Senate, Republicans want to use the moment to lay the groundwork for a winning political agenda.

“This is preparation for a Romney presidency,” Norquist said. “Republicans can line up and vote for an actual, written down budget. If Romney wins, they can turn and say, ‘I was elected to do this.’ That’s not something Obama could say about anything he did.”

Source

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