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Bail outs, timing:
who knew what when?Monday, September 29, 2008
By Devvy Kidd
“We're turning risk investment funds into the hands of taxpayers,” pointing out that since no private investor wants to take responsibility for “risk investments, we're simply wall papering them on to the taxpayer, and this is monstrous.” Nobel Prize recipient in Economic Sciences, Joseph Stiglitz [1]
Fifteen years ago today, my Project on Winning Economic Reform delivered 1,720,000 signatures to the U.S. Congress to abolish the privately owned Federal Reserve Banking System and the IRS. During the rally, we collected just under 24,000 more signatures, which were all delivered to every member of the House and Senate. Some 4400 Americans gathered to tell Washington, DC, we the people demand a return to an honest monetary system and stop the stealing of the fruits of our labor for the benefit of the powerful banking cartel.
Of course, it didn't matter back then or through all the years since. On March 6, 2006, I wrote in 'No More Pretense of Representation': "On March 2, 2006, the counterfeit U.S. Senate passed the insidious un-Patriot Act by a vote of 89-10. This vote flies in the face of a massive outcry from millions of Americans against the Patriot Act and more than 440 cities and counties who refuse to enforce it....It no longer matters how strong or massive opposition is to what's going on in Washington, DC...There is no longer any pretense these people in Congress represent we the people or even pretend to uphold the U.S. Constitution. They are far, far beyond that."
We the people have been pounding on Congress for the past two weeks. Phone calls, faxes and the numbers running so high against these bail outs (300-1) you would think these members of Congress would listen to their constituents.
But, those of us who understand the big picture know that no matter how many slick marketing slogans, i.e., "protect Main Street," the bail outs were a done deal. Period. Finito. One hundred "conservative republicans" came out against this massive fraud and rape of Main Street. Where have these conservative Republicans so outraged now over this grand larceny been all these years? They controlled Congress for more than a decade. The Democrats did nothing the past two years they've had power as the storm gathered steam, now blame the Republicans.
Yesterday's headlines: House GOP leaders back bailout bill, urge passage. Note the H-bomb is still in the package: "The core of the bill is based on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's request for authority to purchase troubled assets from financial institutions..." And, hello: "The ultimate cost to the taxpayer is not expected to be near the amount the Treasury invests in the program. That's because the government would buy assets that have underlying value." Not expected to be near the amount? Oh, please, it's closer to a trillion dollars. Government would buy the assets? We the people you mean and hundreds of billions of those "assets" are toxic. Can you hear the big sucking sound from your wallet?
Sadly, too many Americans will overlook the facts and defend their congress critter's lack of understanding on this issue, like this nonsense from an emailer: "Right now senior Indiana Congressman Mike Pence (R) and others are at Capitol Hill holding their ground against The Fed, Bush, Paulson, and Bernanke. Time is of the essence because Bush continues to feed the message to the media that our world will melt on Monday if they don't get their $700+ billion bailout regardless of what America's taxpayers want...Currently, Congressman Pence is wisely calling for a suspension of the capital gains tax on investments in order to encourage the millions of Americans without debt to invest in the markets."
If Pence really understood the problem, he would have led the charge to get H.R. 2755 passed 15 months ago and a bill to abolish the unnecessary direct taxation against we the people. If you don't have time to read that piece, you can listen on audio; down load to your IPod or onto a CD to listen while you drive.
When Ron Paul introduced his bill (H.R. 2755) to abolish the Federal Reserve in June, 2007, where were these newly outraged Republicans? There's not a single cosponsor to Dr. Paul's bill. Instead of these Johnny-come-lately's all indignant about this pillage and plunder of the people's sweat and blood, why didn't they all come together and say, it doesn't matter the terms or what it says, we will not vote on this unconstitutional bail out of private corporations? Instead, just like the herd they are, the prod has been effective and the people be damned.
The Hounds of Hell have been unleashed on we the people. Dr. Edwin Vieira so correctly called it on March 17, 2005:
"In addition, rather than disseminating demands for sound money and honest banking in order to deal with the crisis, the controlled media will orchestrate calls for massive increases in the supply of fiat currency and credit, ostensibly in order to enable common people to pay their debts. Of course, this will necessitate the maintenance of fractional-reserve central banking to emit the new currency, as well as the creation of more, more, and even more debt to serve as "security" for these emissions--thereby perpetuating the cause of the crisis and ensuring that further crises will break out later on. In this way, credulous Americans will be duped into chaining themselves to new debts in order to pay off their old ones, rendering permanent their financial indentured servitude to the Establishment."[2]
Sun Tzu's Art of War: Sell your enemy his own death while making him think it's a good idea. The coup de grâce has been administered and the masses will quiet down, believing it's their obligation to live a life of quiet desperation because their "leadership" in Congress, while painful for "Main Street," has done the right thing.
The biggest question out there: how could this have happened? Those of us who have studied America's fatal fiat currency and monetary system know the answer, but average, struggling Americans throughout this country do not. A huge portion of the blame for that can be placed on corporate media who control the "news" papers in this country and cable network "news" channels.[3]
Please pay particular attention to this one important piece of the puzzle:
How SEC Regulatory Exemptions Helped Lead to Collapse
"The current excess leverage now unwinding was the result of a purposeful SEC exemption given to five firms. You read that right -- the events of the past year are not a mere accident, but are the results of a conscious and willful SEC decision to allow these firms to legally violate existing net capital rules that, in the past 30 years, had limited broker dealers debt-to-net capital ratio to 12-to-1. Instead, the 2004 exemption -- given only to 5 firms -- allowed them to lever up 30 and even 40 to 1.
"Who were the five that received this special exemption? You won't be surprised to learn that they were Goldman, Merrill, Lehman, Bear Stearns, and Morgan Stanley. As Mr. Pickard points out that "The proof is in the pudding — three of the five broker-dealers have blown up."
"So while the SEC runs around reinstating short selling rules, and clueless pension fund managers mindlessly point to the wrong issue, we learn that it was the SEC who was in large part responsible for the reckless leverage that led to the current crisis....
"The Securities and Exchange Commission can blame itself for the current crisis. That is the allegation being made by a former SEC official, Lee Pickard, who says a rule change in 2004 led to the failure of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch.
"The SEC allowed five firms — the three that have collapsed plus Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — to more than double the leverage they were allowed to keep on their balance sheets and remove discounts that had been applied to the assets they had been required to keep to protect them from defaults. Making matters worse, according to Mr. Pickard, who helped write the original rule in 1975 as director of the SEC's trading and markets division, is a move by the SEC this month to further erode the restraints on surviving broker-dealers by withdrawing requirements that they maintain a certain level of rating from the ratings agencies.
"They constructed a mechanism that simply didn't work," Mr. Pickard said. "The proof is in the pudding — three of the five broker-dealers have blown up."
Who knew what and when?
All this brain power on Wall Street and the million regulations pumped out by Congress after Congress over decades and no one saw this coming? None of them noticed a pattern of melt down emerging?
Americans very afraid of financial meltdown underway
February 8, 2008. On January 14, 2008 the FDIC web site began posting the rules for reimbursing depositors in the event of a bank failure.
February 18, 2008. US banks borrow $50bn via new Fed facility
February 21, 2008: Wall Street Bank Run
February 22, 2008: Bank of America circulating confidential proposal to Congress seeking $739 billion bailout.
February 29, 2008. Risks seen for growing Fannie, Freddie.
March 3, 2008. New recession worry: Bank failures
March 4, 2008. Gulf investors may not save CITIGROUP, Dubai executive says.
The FBI began investigating AIG back in March: "Federal investigators have been scrutinizing American International Group since March, focusing on whether the insurance giant knowingly concealed mammoth losses that helped lead to the company's $85 billion federal bailout this month."
March 13, 2008. Latest Trouble Spot for Banks: Souring Home-Equity Loans. "Other types of consumer loans also are souring, including credit cards and auto loans. But delinquent home-equity loans are rising faster, representing 12.5% of all delinquent loans in the fourth quarter at Bank of America Corp., the largest U.S. bank in stock-market value. That was up from 9.4% in last year's first quarter, according to research firm SNL Financial."
September 23, 2008, while the tempest was building, an important admission came from White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto: "Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough."
A few days to "peruse" 2,300 pages of save the banking cartel trillions? This scheme was drawn up months before and adjusted over the weeks as these immoral vultures waited until just the right time to spring the trap. The Bush Administration, Paulson, Bernanke and other key players KNEW this whole mess was going to blow up in their faces. The staggering numbers simply could not hold back the flood gates. How very convenient that it all just happens to come to a head ten days before Congress is about to adjourn for the year. The new mantra becomes "We have to do something now!" and "The world will come to an end tomorrow!"
Something else was going on in March, 2008: "While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush's new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators....Who are they kidding? Spitzer’s lynching and the bankers’ enriching are intimately tied...How? Follow the money."
June 20, 2008. Brokers threatened by run on shadow bank system. A $10 trillion shadow.
Ultimately greed is the biggest factor for why "no one saw this coming"
"The report, "Ask Yourself Why ... They Didn't See This Coming," also spotlights the story of the nation's two largest housing lenders, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, their lobbying and campaign activities, and how the government bailout contrasts with how legislators approached the crisis for average people.
"The story of the housing bubble and meltdown that now threatens the homes and communities of literally millions of Americans is largely about political power. The financial services industry focuses its lobbying efforts around its immediate desires, and for more than the past decade, this focus has been on relaxing regulation of the mortgage lending and securitization market," the report says.
"At the national level, the top five spenders among mortgage brokers and bankers paid more than $31 million in lobbying fees and in political contributions since the beginning of last year. The two largest home-loan companies that have been bailed out by Congress, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, spent roughly $180 million on lobbying and campaign contributions since the 2000 election cycle.
"Across the country, an estimated 20,000 families are losing their home every week. Estimates of total foreclosures run about 3 million during 2007 and 2008. There are about 2.3 million vacant homes on the market - the highest rate ever recorded. Most of these figures have not been seen since the Great Depression. Most troubling, analysts predict a second wave of foreclosures still coming."
Now, we have a scramble unseen in our life times that will only make the situation worse. Former Fed Governor William Poole: "These are grand ideas that cannot be executed."
Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- "More than 150 prominent U.S. economists, including three Nobel Prize winners, urged Congress to hold off on passing a $700 billion financial market rescue plan until it can be studied more closely."
Before the ink is even dry, the big lie is that $700 billion borrowed dollars is old news:
Bank Borrowing From Fed Already Exceeded Bailout Total in Last Week
September 26, 2008"U.S. banks borrowed $188 billion per day on average in the latest week from the Federal Reserve, meaning that the Fed loaned out more money than the Treasury's proposed bailout in just one week, still barely managing to keep the economy afloat. Federal Reserve data showed on Thursday the total amount banks borrowed nearly quadrupled the previous record of $47.97 billion per day notched just the week before, Reuters reports."
Some very sharp people are also suggesting the rush to ram this disaster down our throats is because the FDIC has known for some time that banks were going to start collapsing like dominos and there isn't enough in the current pool to bail out depositors. This is a mathematical fact. We know that the FDIC fund has about $50 billion to "insure" about $1 trillion in assets at the nation's financial institutions. A run on banks would cause another nightmare for the robber banker barons.
WaMu filed for bankruptcy while part of their operations were purchased by JP Morgan Chase. Wachovia is likely running on fumes, but some analysts are optimistic they aren't just rearranging their deck chairs. As U.S. home sales decline, more of the nation's top builders are going to be in deep trouble: "NEW YORK, September 26, 2008 -- KB Homes on Friday reported a third-quarter loss of $144.7 million...compared with a loss of $35.6 million... in the year-ago period."
There is a massive out cry against this thievery about to be finalized (which may be the case by the time this is published) with the battle cry to throw out the entire Congress in November. Save Ron Paul, what a fabulous idea. A dear friend has suggested everyone send a tube of cheap lipstick to their congress critter and counterfeit U.S. Senator. Hear, hear! Send a deep red like hookers wear as they ply their wares on the street corner and send it to their district offices since Congress should adjourn for the year (nice vacation) later this week. Let them return to their district offices to tens of thousands of tubes of red lipstick.
Reality has come to Main Street. The political shenanigans by members of CON-gress during this "negotiation" of another bail out package has been shameful. People are demanding a RICO action be brought against these lenders and conglomerates. A grand jury is now looking at Countrywide and the Federal Department of Justice should also investigate Senators Dodd and others; see here.
A combination of factors eventually led to this blow up. The icing on the cake is from bird brain, Nancy Pelosi, who is proposing (as has Obama) yet another "economic stimulus package." Bush's economic stimulus packages, kissed and blessed by both parties, didn't work in 2001 or 2008. But, Nancy, not realizing there's no money in the people's treasury (OUR checkbook thanks to these crooks is overdrawn $9.8 TRILLION dollars) wants to add more debt to the funeral pyre: Pelosi Vows to Push Forward With Second Economic Stimulus.
By yesterday afternoon, due to the massive resistance by the American people, Pelosi has declared this is not a bail out, it's a "rescue plan." A rescue plan sells better; see here. "Protect jobs and home owners" she said in a late day press conference. BULL. This is a rescue job for the big money interests while we the people get the shaft and the money magnates knew it was coming.
Footnotes:
1 - Joseph Stiglitz: Bailout Scam “Monstrous”
2 - Monetary and Banking Crisis Coming
3 - A Real NewspaperImportant Links:
1 - Must watch one minute video
2 - Poison-Pill Proposal Would Ask Taxpayers to Bankroll Group Accused of Voter Fraud Nationwide
3 - VoteNoBailout.org
4 - Ron Paul: Greenspan, Bernanke Should Be Criminally Charged
5 - Indictment Federal Reserve
Devvy left the Republican Party in 1996 and has been an independent voter ever since. She isn't left, right or in the middle; she is a constitutionalist who believes in the supreme law of the land, not some political party. Her web site (www.devvy.com) contains a tremendous amount of information, solutions and a vast Reading Room.
Devvy's website: www.devvy.com
E-mail is: devvyk@earthlink.net
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