Big Republican Gains in Congress. Is President Obama Secretly Celebrating?

Is Obama, in his heart of hearts, delighted at the results of last week's election? After all, it didn't take President Obama long to sell out the progressives in his first term when his cabinet picks didn’t include a single liberal and he extended, not to mention, expanded, many of the Bush administration's policies: from increasing drone strikes in foreign countries to drafting legal justification for killing U.S. citizens abroad to signing the Bush tax cuts into law to spying on Americans to deportation of immigrants. Unfortunately, President Obama has no problem helping his financial friends on Wall Street.

Now, Obama is very good at spouting liberal rhetoric and Fox News is very good at spreading the delusion that he's some extreme left-wing socialist, if one looks at Obama's actions, they clearly prove otherwise. Obama, as author and activist Cornel West said, is a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface."  

“AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to be with you. So we’re right here in the president’s city. In fact, he just flew out on Wednesday after his re-election. Cornel West, the figures—who is ahead? Who isn’t? As your book is titled The Rich and the Rest of Us.

CORNEL WEST: Well, one, I think that it’s morally obscene and spiritually profane to spend $6 billion on an election, $2 billion on a presidential election, and not have any serious discussion—poverty, trade unions being pushed against the wall dealing with stagnating and declining wages when profits are still up and the 1 percent are doing very well, no talk about drones dropping bombs on innocent people. So we end up with such a narrow, truncated political discourse, as the major problems—ecological catastrophe, climate change, global warming. So it’s very sad. I mean, I’m glad there was not a right-wing takeover, but we end up with a Republican, a Rockefeller Republican in blackface, with Barack Obama, so that our struggle with regard to poverty intensifies.

One thing is for sure: the Republican Congress and President Obama certainly agree on one very important issue: prioritizing and fast tracking the very secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which virtually exempts multinational corporations from national laws.  In other words, even more protection for corporate profits..."NAFTA on steroids".

Fast-track legislation was introduced in January but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would not allow a vote. Many Democrats fear that opening markets to countries with lower wages and standards will cost American jobs. Republicans tend to be supportive, because from the small leaks, since the TPP is negotiated mostly in secret, seem to indicate favoring US big business above overseas consumers (e.g entertainment, pharmaceuticals etc.)

After the election, when Mitch McConnell was asked what specific areas he could work on with President Obama:

“ Trade agreements. The president and I were just talking about that right before I came over here. Most of his party is unenthusiastic about international trade. We think it’s good for America. And so, I’ve got a lot of members who believe that international trade agreements are a winner for America. And the president and I discussed that right before I came over here, and I think he’s interested in moving forward. I said, "Send us trade agreements. We’re anxious to take a look at them." -- Sen. Mitch McConnell, November 5, 2014 

Links:

McConnell and Obama are Already Planning to Undercut Liberal Democrats in Congress

“Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that he and President Barack Obama are already discussing plans to cut corporate tax rates and pass free trade agreements, following the GOP's major gains in Tuesday's elections.

...

“Obama has struggled to sell Democrats on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a pact his administration is negotiating with 11 other Pacific nations. Leaked drafts of the text have sparked a host of liberal concerns. Consumer advocates are worried about potential restrictions on food safety and other regulations, environmentalists fear it will undermine environmental protections, and global health experts are concerned it will curb access to low-cost generic medicines.

U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman has a testy relationship with many Democrats in Congress and with many liberal policy organizations, who accuse him of making promises on key Democratic priorities and then retracting them as trade negotiations continue.

Large swaths of the Democratic Party are simply wary of free trade deals in the mode of the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement. Some studies have concluded that such deals exacerbate income inequality and depress wages. While the NAFTA and World Trade Organization treaties have helped to expand overall U.S. economic growth, many economists argue they have had substantial negative consequences for American workers.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, however, is a strong supporter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has not yet been finalized. The pre-eminent American corporate lobbying group almost exclusively supports Republican candidates.

Trade and Income Distribution: The Debate and New Evidence

“Trade policy in particular has at times been hostage to the fears of some (including Ross Perot) that international trade and globalization are reducing living standards for American workers.

Stop TPP

Expose the TPP

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The Crash of 2016?

Is the response to the 2008 financial meltdown a band-aid fix that "punished none of the financial abusers, propped up the major culprits at the expense of consumers and taxpayers, and brought us closer to an even worse disaster?" That is the question radio host Thom Hartmann, author of “The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America and What We Can Do to Stop It,” answers on NPR's  show, The Takeaway..

Hartmann claims the crash of 2008, that really began in 2006 when housing started to collapse, is still ongoing, despite the over-the-top performance of the stock market.  Millions of people have fallen out of the middle class since the 1980s, including 700,000 in the last couple of years, driving wealth inequality to an all time high. These enormous concentrations of wealth are not being used productively in the economy as they are invested internationally and stored in Swiss bank accounts.

One of the main problems is that banking has replaced manufacturing as the fundamental impetus of our economy, yet it creates no wealth, not to mention, Glass-Steagall Act (1933) has never been replaced so the banks are still gambling with our deposits.  Then there is the the quantitative easing program that's devaluing our currency more and more every day.  Half of the program is buying toxic securities--junk--from the banks to the tune of $35-$40 billion per month.  That is they're  buying junk left on the books of the banks left over from the unregulated derivatives market that Phil Gramm created in 1999 and 2000 when the Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLB) Act of 1999 was passed and even more importantly, the Commodities Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) a law that opened the door to unregulated trading of credit default swaps, the financial instruments blamed, for the 2008 economic meltdown.  The passing of this Act catapulted the derivatives market to $800 trillion in 2008! (Keep in mind, the GDP of the entire planet is $65 trillion.) Right after the crash in 2008, It fell to $500 trillion, but according to the Bank of International Settlements it's back up to $800 trillion!

Since the wheels of commerce started to spin, there's always been some sort of  commodities futures market in play, where farmers and merchants could lock in on actual physical things--pork bellies, wheat, oil, etc.--in advance at a fixed price. Up until 2000, the commodities futures market ran through the Chicago Board of Trade and has always been transparent.  For example, airlines could hedge their bets by buying futures in oil.  With the CFMA it became possible to make these kind of bets on the non-physical, and it became possible to make bets on bets on bets.  In other words, they've created an economy that has absolutely no value!

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The Bought and Paid For Black Misleadership Class and the Neutraization of Black Politics

Glen Ford, creator of Black Agenda Report, who so often writes about the "Obama delusional state", where Black politics has been essentially neutralized, presented “The Black Misleadership Class Versus the Movement and its Legacy," to friends of Black Agenda Report gathered at New York City’s historic Riverside Church to celebrate the publication’s 7th anniversary on Friday, October 18.

The "Black Mis-Leadership Class", according to Glen Ford, "sees its own personal financial and social interests as being synonymous with the progress of black people as a whole. This class does not seek transformation of society, it seeks only their own elevation within the existing structures. The rest of Black Amereica,, as far as they're concerned, is supposed to applaud their individual success no matter what is actually happening to the masses of black people at the bottom. It is the politics of putting black faces in high places and to hell with those of us stuck at the bottom, or those of us who are below the bottom in the U.S. prison gulag."

Ford used the examples of rising political star, Cory Booker and already established political star President Barack Obama, who, in reality, are both front men for capital, front men for "the man" and front men for the empire, to illustrate the inherent danger of the black establishment to the American black population. What danger? The disastrous consequences that will result if these self-serving politicians succeed--and it appears as if they most certainly are-- at eliminating the mass movement of African Americans who traditionally acted as a "countervailing force to the power of capital," becoming even more influential internally in Black America, leaving "little hope of effective progressive resistance to the rule of Wall Street, its servants in government, and for peace."

“Has the fake-progressive, fake-liberal and in fact deeply conservative FTBP not been granted far too much of a pass on the power-friendly and authoritarian content of his character by those who have been bamboozled into thinking there was something inherently and magically progressive, egalitarian, and democratic about the initially and outwardly startling fact of a black family entering the White House in the land of chattel slavery? As some of us on the Left said from the beginning of Obama’s celebrity, the real story behind the Obama phenomenon has been the ruling class playing the race card in a different way than in King’s time, flipping it, so to speak – a winning strategy for the Democrats at the national level in the post-Civil Rights era, when changing demographics and the more superficial victories of the Civil Rights Movement have made victory possible for nonwhite candidates in national elections. -- Paul Street

Martin Luther King, Jr. is, undoubtedly, rolling in his grave, ironically,  at the election of the first "Black" President, who has managed to crush MLK's dream of:

“...forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws – racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of out society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction society of society itself is the real issue to be faced.”

Going "Beyond Obama" requires successfully passing through and politically defeating that ancient black American political current that holds that achieving the maximum number of black faces in high places is thee root to black progress, to black upward mobility, to black nirvana."



Links:

Black is Back Coalition

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CEO Bankruptcy Bonuses

Some CEOs get bonuses even when their corporations go bankrupt.

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It's Like Interviewing Nazis About the Falling Crime Rate.

"Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. "- George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

Today, after listening to Talk of the Nation (TOTN), on the decline of crime rates, any doubts I had about NPR being as much an inaccurate, misleading and run of the mill propaganda outlet as Fox News, are gone.  

None other than the chairman of the murky criminal corporation that is Kroll - the privatized CIA Inc., who profited massively from the horror that took place on 9/11, who merged with the secretive industry giant, Marsh McLennan (World Trade Center tenant with 1,700 employees where plane impacted), who made a killing on pre-9/11 inside trading, and who capitalized on the heightened corporate fears of terrorism created by 9/11 - explained this apparent decline in crime to TOTN host, Neal Conan.

It is, in fact, security firms like Kroll Associates, Burns Security, Teg, Wackenhut, and their ilk that should garner our interest at least as much as the web of conservative think tanks that have welded in place the parameters of "mainstream" debate - for it is through these very firms that the former stars of law enforcement have gone through the revolving door into the lucrative private sector. It is a world where former military types mix with various operatives of the CIA, FBI, DEA and any number of alphabet soup agencies charged with the security of our nation.

Could it be that this "decline" in crime may have something to do with the fact that the thugs are now in charge?  And isn't it funny how NPR covers the so-called declining crime rate; however, totally failed to cover  the NYPD police thugs, including the pepper spraying of several young women standing on the sidewalk while penned in by orange netting, during Occupy Wall Street.  You see how that works.  The thugs are the law.

So, with the exception of "Fresh Air" and a few local broadcasts, NPR is now just another conformist militaristic propaganda machine. Oh sure, they claim they are "listener-sponsored", but in reality, NPR/PBS is in large part financed by grants from corporate donors. Bland, politically-correct, and totally compromised by their sponsors, that's about all you'll get tuning into public radio. So, what's the difference between this and commercial broadcasting? Nothing. All news is now bought and paid for by corporate-think.

Everything in Nazi Germany was clean and orderly; there were no slums; the trains ran on time. By 1938, the crime rate was at an all-time low because repeat offenders were being sent to a concentration camp after they had completed their second sentence. Anyone who did not have a permanent address and some visible means of support was hauled off the Dachau and put to work.

Once again, we can thank Ronald Reagan for it is he who repealed the Fairness Doctrine.

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The Bankruptcy Law Changes of 2005, Rehypothecation, MF Global, and Crisis.

Did you know that the changes made to the bankruptcy laws reordered the subordination of creditors? It's true. Bondholders used to be the most senior of creditors in a bankruptcy. Now, derivative holders are the most senior. That means derivative counterparties gained a strong bankruptcy privilege, according to Prof. Dr. Enrico Perotti, professor of international finance at Amsterdam Business School.

The special bankruptcy treatment extended to mortgage-backed repos and derivative transactions in 2005 played a crucial role in the financial crisis of 2008. Because they were the two main sources of systemic risk in the financial crisis of 2008.

Professor Perotti outlined how over the 2002-2005 period, bankruptcy laws were changed in all EU countries and the US, and secured financial credit (repos) and derivative counterparties gained a strong bankruptcy privilege, amounting to de facto “superiority”, as counterparties could gain immediate repossession of collateral in default (so-called “safe harbor claims”, as opposed to having to accept the “automatic stay” which protects the debtor in Chapter 11 for example)..

With that in mind, consider that banks/ securities brokerage, rehypothecate assets, including 401k, IRA, and even general savings accounts allow the rehypothecation of their assets. Check the fine print of your account agreement.

What is rehypothecation?

It is the practice that allows collateral posted by, let's say, a hedge fund to its prime broker to be used again as collateral by that prime broker for its own funding. In other words, if a firm rehypothecates its assets with its client's assets - co-mingling client funds - and then uses these funds to buy derivatives, the derivative holder can lay claim to the brokerage assets if that firm declares bankruptcy. If this is allowed to continue, it will set a precedent that will enable creditor firms to raid and steal your assets.

This is part of the reason JP Morgan was able to seize MF Global's assets the moment they claimed bankruptcy.

So, it's possible that the next time a firm fails, whomever is the counterparty on the bankrupt organization's credit default swap, will have precedent to step in and steal client money to settle their claims.

For a  less alarmist view which goes into great detail, see:

Revisiting Rehypothecation: JP Morgan Markets Its Latest Doomsday Machine (or Why Repo May Blow Up the Financial System Again)

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Secret Congress. Secret. Wall Street Government.

Now, Congress has the constitutional authority to meet in secret - excluding press and public - whenever they deem necessary. According to Congressional Research Service, since 1830, the House has met in secret four times: 1979, 1980, 1983, and 2008. The report: Secret Sessions of the House and Senate: Authority, Confidentiality, and Frequency.

However, does the U.S. Constitution grant authority to Wall Street and top government officials to conceal pertinent information from Congress and the public?  Well, obviously it doesn't matter because that's what's happening.

The documents show how top US government officials willfully concealed from Congress and the public the true extent of the 2008-'09 bailouts that enriched the few and enhanced the interests of giant Wall Streets firms. Here’s what came out as the result of Bloomberg's investigation:

The secret Wall Street bailouts totaled $7.77 trillion, 10 times more than the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) officially passed by Congress in 2008.

Knowledge of the secret bailout funds was not shared with Congress even while it was drafting and debating legislation to break up the big banks.

The secret loans financed bank mergers so that the largest banks could grow even larger. The money also allowed banks to step up their lobbying efforts.

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Ron Paul and the Federal Reserve Act

Clint Richardson takes a look at the "Ron Paul campaign and makes an honest assessment of Dr. Paul's true disposition, as well as those who call him a "prophet".

Richardson asks, "Why isn't Ron Paul talking about the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR)?" Which is the audit of the Federal Reserve, and  which does expose the true wealth of our nation, exposing the fact that government owns it all by investment.

Ron Paul won't tell you this, but federal government controls the Federal Reserve, not the other way around. The Federal Reserve is a tool which the United States Corporation uses to put us all in debt. 

The Federal Reserve Act states that it allows banks to be opened in and invested in foreign countries. The Federal Reserve Act has been amended many times. The Federal Reserve Act is prima facie law, which just means it is presumed law...that it goes on with your consent.

The Fed is the property of the United States. Assets of failed federal reserve banks go to the United States Inc, the corporate structure that rules the 50 states.  Yes, the United States is a corporation.

In other words, as I've always thought, Ron Paul is full of it.

"A gang is a group of men under the command of a leader, bound by a compact of association, in which the plunder is divided according to an agreed convention. If this villainy wins so many recruits from the ranks of the demoralized that it acquires territory, establishes a base, captures cities and subdues peoples, it then openly arrogates to itself the title of kingdom, which is conferred on it in the eyes of the world, not by the renunciation of aggression, but by the attainment of impunity" - Saint Augustine defining government

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Despite Record Level Poverty, Soaring Food Prices, Food Stamps on the Chopping Block.

Despite soaring food prices (double the core inflation rate), due mostly to excessive speculation because of a deregulated agricultural commodity derivatives markets; rapidly rising poverty rates, and steady unemployment numbers, Congress is calling for dramatic cuts to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the food stamp program, regardless of the fact that for every $1 spent on food stamps, $1.79 is made.

According to US Department of Agriculture, since December 2008, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has set records, every month, except one. August, 2011, the last month reported, was no exception, as it has set another record for the number of Americans - 45.8 million - receiving food stamps, a figure  1.1% higher than the previous month and 8.1% more than a year earlier, with Texas and California leading the pack.

Household participation in SNAP is climbing so steadily that it has far surpassed, even the peak reached after the fallout of hurricane Katrina.

"The slow economic strangulation of millions of middle-class Americans started long before the Great Recession, which merely exacerbated the “personal recession” that ordinary Americans had been suffering for years." -- Edward Luce in a Financial Times article.

Meanwhile, the incomes of the top 1 per cent have more than tripled.
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Occupy Wall Street:: Astro-Turf Rallies?

Is Occupy Wall Street (OWS) the work of the Serbian contract revolution organizers, the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies [C.A.N.V.A.S] and Otpor!? Is this the elite power structure replacing one corrupt system with another, even more corrupt system? Are they channeling the energy of a fed-up American public to nowhere? To usher in an even more destructive banking system?

The mainstream media's coverage of this "occupation", the lack of severe injury and/or fatalities, President Obama's endorsement, the lack of clear demands, and the services of a glitzy public relations firm makes it hard to believe otherwise.

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Bankster Back Door Bailouts Explained

Girl Bear: "What about the Goldman Sachs? Did they buy another bank?"
Boy Bear: "Because when you already own the U.S. government, you don't need to buy any more banks."

Boy Bear: "Actually, the Goldman Sachs probably profited from the failure of the AIGs".
Girl Bear: "How could someone profit from the downfall of one of their biggest clients?"
Boy Bear: "Because while the Goldman Sachs was loaning money to the AIGs, it was also making a secret bet that they would go under."
Girl Bear: "My god! Is this some kind of science fiction movie? Like the Star Wars?"

Girl Bear: "Are any of the bailouts going on today?"
Boy Bear: "Yes, the Ben Bernanke keeps the short term rate at zero."
Girl Bear: "How is that a bailout?"
Boy Bear: "Low rates means the banks have to pay the American very little interest in their savings accounts?"
Girl Bear: "That is very nice gift from the American people to the banks."
BoyBear: "Yes."
Girl Bear: "And to show their gratitude, did the banks stop their foreclosures?"
Boy Bear: "No".
Girl Bear: "Did they give them mortgages?"
Boy Bear: "No".
Girl Bear: "Did they do anything at all?"
Boy Bear: "Yes, they increased the monthly fees on all bank accounts."
Girl Bear: "That does not sound like the gratitude, that sounds like the screwing over of the American people."

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Project Occupy Wall Street Meet Project Police State

Wall Street is the target of a nonviolent demonstration in which organizers say they want 20,000 people to participate with tents, kitchens and "peaceful barricades" in lower Manhattan. #OccupyWallStreet 's goal is to get President Obama to establish a commission to end "the influence money has over our representatives in Washington," according to Adbusters, the group promoting the demonstration. Adbusters want participants to "occupy" the area for "a few months".

If you are aware of this protest, you are probably not aware that people are being arrested at this non-violent demonstration for exercising their first amendment rights. It's interesting to see how this video's view count is frozen at 307. You can be sure, a lot more people than 307 have watched this video.



Yes, I'm sure the banksters are just loving this, and will do everything in their power to stop this effort to curb their criminal ways. All I can say is that it's about time, considering the banks are the source of most, if not all of our problems.

Unfortunately, unless a miracle happens, the banks will get their way.
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As the Debt Ceiling Crisis Turns

The Federal Reserve gave out $16.1 trillion in emergency loans to U.S. and foreign financial institutions between Dec. 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010, according to "first-ever audit of the central bank". Yet, we're supposed to worry about what is essentially, chump change, in comparison? Debt ceiling crisis, my ass!

Okay, let's pretend it's real. According to Rob Johnson, Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute (see video below), it's much easier to go after we, the people, than to take on Wall Street, the Military Industrial Complex, Big Pharma, etc., to pay for this so-called "crisis". As he says, it's the "logic of collective action".

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The Tragic Absurdity of In Debt We Trust:

Bill Stills, creator of the film, The Money Masters, which tries to answser the question, "why are Americans going broke and the American middle class rapidly disappearing, by going back and tracing the history of modern banking which began over 300 years ago (with the founding of the privately-owned Bank of England).

In his new film "The Secrets of Oz", Stills elucidates the powerful symbols of monetary reform which were the core of the Populist movement and the 1896 and 1900 presidental bids of Populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan in L. Frank Baum's, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Through fascinating metaphors, historical allusions, solutions are revealed.

The Secrets of Oz

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Longevity Swaps: Betting on How Long You Will Live

By 2007, the derivatives market had grown globally into a $516 trillion industry,  and, at the time, Warren Buffet warned of the "ticking time bomb".

Buffet wasn't the only one who warned about derivatives. "One month after Henry Paulson left Goldman Sachs as CEO with a net worth of over $500 million to become the new Treasury secretary, he spoke to the White House staff at Camp David: “Paulson held up over-the-counter derivatives as an example of financial innovation that could, under certain circumstances, blow up in Wall Street’s face and affect the whole economy.”

So, after the explosion of complex mortgage-backed securities brought down our financial system in 2008, and the speculators have been bailed out at our expense, they have the balls to speculate on our mortality. That's right, one of Wall Street's latest innovations is longevity swaps...waging in death futures.

What are longevity swaps? Well, it's the practice of hedging people's lives.  Some refer to them as death bonds.

Essentially, they are unconventional assets (little connection to more conventional stock and bond prices). Like mortgage backed securities, longevity swaps, ideally, would consist of policies from those who have diseases such as Leukemia, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, etc., in which investors buy into those life insurance policies and are paid when individuals die. Obviously, in this case, when cures are developed, the value of the life settlement plummets.

Remember, there are no profits in finding cures.



Another type of transaction involves "mortality catastrophe bonds," in which bond buyers contribute to pots of money that insurers can tap into if large numbers of people die in a disaster.

The bonds help insurers limit their exposure. If disaster doesn't strike, the investors get their money back with a preset return, typically a premium above some benchmark interest rate.

Goldman Sachs, of course, has already entered this market. When sick or elderly Americans need cash, they can sell their life insurance policies to companies that will pay them a fraction of the value.

Wall Street pursues profits in life bundles.

The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.

The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.

Either way, Wall Street would profit by pocketing sizable fees for creating the bonds, reselling them and subsequently trading them. But some who have studied life settlements warn that insurers might have to raise premiums in the short term if they end up having to pay out more death claims than they had anticipated.

Risks in Derivatives Markets

Systemic risk is the aggregation of default risks; since default risk has been exaggerated, so has systemic risk. Finally, this debate seems to have ignored what we call "agency risk." Features of widely used incentive contracts for derivatives traders can induce them to take very risky positions, unless they are carefully monitored.

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Madoff's Mistake

Remember Bernie Madoff? He's the guy who ran a long-running Ponzi scheme that wreaked havoc on thousands of lives. Yes, that guy. Well, in relation to the giant Ponzi scheme on Wall Street, he's small potatoes, so, why is it that he is the only "bankster" doing time?

According to Cenk Uygur (video below), it's because he made the mistake of stealing from the rich. You see, those who directly invested with Madoff had lots and lots of money, which translates to lots and lots of clout. In fact, Madoff's direct investors were covered by Securities Investor Protection Corp (SIPC), which can pay out up to $500,000 to injured parties.  Therefore, not only do Madoff's victims get some of their money back, they get the satisfaction of seeing justice prevail.

Below: Matt Taibbi agrees, and enlightens us as to how the game is played.



Links:

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

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Who Really Profits From Drug Cartel Wars?

"Follow the money", "Deep Throat" tells Woodward in the film, "All the President's Men", or as former British newspaper journalist, Simon Jenkins, once said, "Follow the dirt and it leads to money. Follow the money and it leads to power. This maxim has rarely let me down."

Well, follow the money on the "War on Drugs" and it will expose a frightening truth: the drug cartels depend on a network of guardian angels and backers who come from where else: the ruling elites.

Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing (HUD) under the Bush Administration, and CEO of Solari, told Mel Fabregas from the Veritas show in a great interview in 2009 that one 14-year old kid in the projects can generate up to $10 million for the capital markets. How? Here's the example she used:

Let's say this 14-year old from the projects nets $100,000 in drug sales. That money must be laundered somewhere, right? Yes. In this case, it's laundered through a fast food franchise that’s traded on the stock market at $15/share. That transforms the $100,000 to $1.5 million in stock market value. Moreover, if that money is leveraged with debt and derivatives that amount can increase up to as much as $10 million. In other words, one 14-year old kid from the projects can generate up to $10 million in the capital markets for the privileged class.

In addition, that kid, if he avoids being shot and killed in the next couple of years has the potential to make even more money for the capital markets. How?  More than likely, he will face incarceration, where he's not only out of the way, (after he gets too smart for his own good); he will generate even more money for the prison industrial complex. Why? There is a $25,000 gain for each person in prison.

So, recycling these kids in and out of prison serves three purposes: Number one, the profits speak for themselves; number two, it keeps this segment of the population “dumb” and desperate, and number three, it deprives small business of the upcoming work-force, or the human capital, necessary to thrive; therefore making it easier for corporate take-over.

Fitts also explained, and, even more importantly, proved we the people's complicity, which eventually became “Narco dollars for beginners” how organized crime influences business and government.

She addressed a group of members of the Spiritual Frontiers Foundation International, who were having a conference of how to help our society evolve spiritually, and she began by telling them that someone from the   Department of Justice told a reporter she knows that the US banking and financial system launders $500 billion to a trillion dollars a year in illegal money, which includes narcotics trafficking, financial fraud and tax evasion

She then asked the audience, "What would happen if America stopped being the global leader and stopped laundering $500 billion to a trillion dollars a year in illegal money?

They responded that the stock market would go down because that money would go to other markets around the world, and that we would have trouble financing the government deficit, and our taxes would go up and/or our government checks would stop.

Fitts replied, "Okay, imagine a big red button up here on the lectern. If you push this button, you can stop all hard narcotics trafficking in your neighborhood, your city, town, county, state and  your country tomorrow. Who'll push the button?"

Out of 100 people dedicated to evolving our society spiritually, only one would push the button.

She asked the other 99 why they wouldn’t push the button.

They responded: "We don't want our mutual funds to go down. We don't want our government checks to stop, nor do we want our taxes to go up."

Fitts has asked that question to audiences all over the US, and the only time 80% of the audience responded that they would push the red button occurred in TN, in 2008. Why is 80% majority so important? The historical rule of thumb states that in order to shift policy, an 80% consensus is required.

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More Mexican cartel updates: 2/21/11:

Innocent victims of bloody drug cartel turf wars is normal every day news in Mexico. Spanning 72 hours, starting last Thursday, 53 people were killed in Ciudad Juarez

In the first 40 days of 2011, Juarez is averaging eight homicides per day, Sandoval said. Also, in February, at least 24 women have been killed in 20 days.

In addition, last Friday, 13 people were killed in Acapulco, four of whom, authorities believe, were alive and tortured before they were dropped from a bridge. The worst torture was of a man who was decapitated; scalped with his face skinned. This spate of attacks on taxis in the Mexican resort city of Acapulco occurred hours before the Mexican Open tennis tournament was scheduled to start. Acapulco has been the scene of , and taxi drivers have often been targeted for extortion or recruited by the gangs to act as lookouts or transport drugs.

On February 14, Gunmen killed 18 people in Tamaulipas, a state in northeastern Mexico,

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Mexican cartel updates: December 2010
 
Only death would stop her from protesting the impunity with which criminals operate in Mexico

Two years ago, Marisela Escobedo's daugher was killed in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Her daughter's boyfriend confessed to the crime, but a court exonerated him earlier this year. When a second trial convicted the boyfriend, Sergio Barraza, of murder and sentenced him to 50 years in prison, he had already fled and gone into hiding.

Escobedo had actively protested the decision ever since, rather ominously stating that only death would stop her from protesting the impunity with which criminals operate in Mexico, and especially Chihuahua -- the home state of deadly Ciudad Juarez.

Now, Marisela Escobedo's protests have been silenced.

She was shot and killed by an assassin on Thursday, and the episode was caught on tape.

Mexico's drug war: Number of dead passes 30,000

...12,456 people had been registered killed in drug-related violence so far this year, compared to 9,600 in 2009, bringing the total to 30,196 since President Calderon took office in December 2006.

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(Left) People clean a blood stained patio at a home in the northern city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Saturday Oct. 23, 2010. At least 13 young people were shot dead and 15 wounded in an attack on this house late Friday during a 15-year-old boy's birthday party. (AP Photo/Raymundo Ruiz)

The latest, in Mexico’s increasingly bloody drug war, are a series of massacres.  

Gunmen stormed a 15-year old's birthday party, last Saturday, October 23,  killing 13 people, the youngest, only 9-years old, wounding 20 more, in the second "drug cartel" massacre at a party this month, in Ciudad Juarez 2-days later, in Tijuana, 13 people were lined up and executed inside a drug rehabilitation clinic by gunmen who stormed the building. The next day, 15 people at a Mexican car wash.

Ciudad Juarez is crippled by escalating warring drug cartels, as they battle security forces and each other over smuggling routes into the United States.

The money trail has already lead to Citibank, Wachovia, Bank of America, etc. The banks play a critical role to the continuing success of the cartels as they allow the drug trade to flourish by providing essential financing.

Alternatively, the banks could serve as part of the solution - when hell freezes over, maybe, for only they have the power to  deal a crippling blow to the cartels.

The egregious hypocrisy prevalent in the current relationships between the cartels, the global political and economic powers who profit immensely from this huge industry, facilitated by the "War on Drugs" is almost too much to comprehend, but comprehend we must if we want the slaughter to stop.

The drug trade is amongst the most, if not thee most, lucrative of all industries in the world, and has continued to escalate through decades of  failing to account for this massive revenue.

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Survivor: Drug gang massacred 72 migrants in northern Mexico

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Banking System Rigged to Blow if We Do Not Continue Bailing Out the Wealthy.

If you took the $1.4 trillion that was initially spent to bail out the banks and distributed it amongst financially troubled Americans, each person would receive close to $400,000.  Even better, if you took the $3.3 trillion recently reported by the Federal Reserve to bail out international as well as national banks and corporations, and distributed amongst financially troubled Americans, each person would receive close to $1 million!

Keep in mind that most of this money would be spent immediately, thus returning it to the stream of purchasing power so crucial to the economic flow.  Without a doubt, new jobs would be created as aggregate demand would increase.   Obviously, it's not that simple, however it demonstrates how rigged our financial system is to favor the wealthiest Americans.

We live in a country that has enjoyed more wealth than any other country in human history, yet we live amidst rampant unemployment, with one in six people living in poverty, and millions of people living without health insurance. We, the ordinary Americans are left to fend for ourselves while the wealthy get bailed out for "being evil".  Why? Because our banking system is rigged to blow up the global economy if we do not continue to bail the rich bastards out. Wait, isn't that what terrorists do?

Consider the following excerpt from  Marketplace:

Kai Ryssdal from Marketplace: "...the news this week that the Federal Reserve released all of those documents on Wednesday...we now know who borrowed how much and at what times.  Here's the thing though, John, as much as the WikiLeaks cables at the State Department show that our diplomats say nasty things about other countries, does it matter that we know Goldman Sachs went to the Fed 84 times?"

John Carney from CNBC: "I think it matters in that it shows how severe the financial crisis really got. That even relatively healthy banks had to depend on the Fed for funding in late 2008.  I think that is a good reminder that things were really, really, really were awful, and measures that the Fed took allowed a lot of these banks to actually stay alive.  It's very clear from the numbers that Morgan Stanley was dead. They borrowed so heavily from the Fed's facilities because there was no other way for them to continue to operate. 

Kai Ryssdal from Marketplace: What about that?

Lee Gallagher of Fortune magazine: What also was really interesting about that dump that it really drove home that it was not just the banks. It was companies like Verizon and Harley Davidson and GE and we knew back then that the commercial paper market had frozen up but most people really don't know what that means. What we see now is that companies like Harley Davidson couldn't make their payroll and needed to have those facilities."

"Need to have those facilities?"  Need??  Well, what about our needs? I thought this country belonged to us.  What about when things get really, really, really awful for us  ordinary Americans? What about when we the people can no longer operate, or survive because terrorist bankers stole our money, our jobs, our quality of life? Where is our "facility" that disperses money at 0%, so that we can loan it out at three-four times that amount?  Well?

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Power of the Purse: How the Wealth of the World Remains in the Hands of the Few.

"When the government fears the people, there is freedom. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson

The Power of the Purse Volume 1 Part 1




The Power of the Purse Volume 1 Part 2

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Are the World's Wealthiest People Pulling Out While We Continue to Drink the Kool-Aid?

The world is chock-full of money, so why does everyone seem to be getting poorer? Well, not everyone.  Speak of the devil, what is going on in the world of the elite?  Because they seem to know something we don't. But what else is new?

First things first. The Federal Reserve plans on stepping up its expansionary monetary policy even further in November, and the rest of the world is responding accordingly, by devaluing its own currency. Quantitative easing is the name of the game. This Fed policy is supposed to keep interest rates as low as possible by purchasing government securities, or other securities from the market, thereby flooding financial institutions with capital in an effort to promote increased lending and liquidity.

Now, keep in mind that the interest rate is essentially the price of money, and although, people like former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan would have you believe he promoted the idea of free markets, he did not. Because, at the same time he's preaching the gospel of laissez-faire capitalism, his heavy hand was busy intervening, controlling the price of money (interest rates).

You will find a good explanation of debt monetization here.

Anyway, Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz thinks the ultra-loose monetary policies by the Federal Reserve is throwing the world into chaos rather than helping global economic recovery.

"The irony is that the Fed is creating all this liquidity with the hope that it will revive the American economy. It's doing nothing for the American economy, but it's causing chaos over the rest of the world. It's a very strange policy that they are pursuing." -- Joseph Stiglitz

Back to the wealthy.  Why the hurry to move assets out of the financial system? Do they know something we don't?
Well, they know one thing for sure: the Federal Reserve will go as far as it takes to protects their ASSets.

By all appearances, the way the wealthiest people in the world are rushing to gain exclusive access to real gold, as they buy it up by the ton, gold just might become extremely scarce in the future, as if it's not already. 

Even the Federal Reserve is selling its paper gold and buying up real gold.  Everyone knows if the financial system collapses, paper gold is worthless, right?  The price of real physical gold goes up as paper gold trades lower and lower and lower. Like everything else, precious metals will never find their true free trade value. That's the scam plan, anyway. Gold bubbles are created the same way other bubbles are created – by converting a limited item to unlimited, by fiat.

JPMorgan reopened its New York gold vault.

JPMorgan has reopened an underground gold vault in New York that was mothballed in the 1990s, in the latest sign of the soaring appetite for bullion.

Investors are piling money into gold in record quantities, pushing the price on Friday to a record nominal high of more than $1,320 a troy ounce. That has made the vaulting business highly lucrative, since banks often charge a small percentage of the value of the gold stored.

And why are insiders in such a rush to get out? 

Insider Selling To Buying: 2,341 To 1 "...insiders in these names sold a combined $200 million in stock in the last week alone (following Oracle insider sales of $223 million in the prior week). Insiders can. not. wait. to. get. out. fast. enough."

So, as more and more high income Americans are reduced to living paycheck to paycheck and record numbers apply for government anti-poverty programs, those at the top are cashing out.

Thirty percent of workers with salaries of $100,000 or more said they are living paycheck to paycheck, up from 21 percent last year, according to the survey of 4,400 workers nationwide.

Overall, 61 percent said they always or usually live paycheck to paycheck, up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

To cope, Americans have been cutting back on how much they save.

Some 21 percent of all respondents said they have reduced their 401(k) contributions or personal savings in the last six months in order to get by, while 23 percent of the $100,000-and-over group said they had done so.

While some Americans have cut back on what they set aside, others have stopped saving all together.

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Calculate your net worth, if you dare.

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