• July 24, 2008
• Ron Paul: The Federal Burglars Are Stealing Your Prosperity, Again
• Posted by Lew Rockwell at July 24, 2008 09:24 AM
• Oh, and this monstrous "law" includes further crackdowns on our privacy for the tax police.
• This time to reward the fascist Fannie and Freddie, other corrupt agencies, the banks, and politically connected borrowers.
• Just another day in the district of parasites.

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• Famous Freemasons Exposed

• History of the Bush Family
• The documents, many of which were declassified only three years ago, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis’ plans and policies, Prescott Bush worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that hoisted Hitler to power.
• While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause (nor is there any proof to the contrary), the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman acted as a U.S. base for Fritz Thyssen, the German industrialist who financed Hitler in the 1930s.
• Evidence shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corp. that represented Thyssen’s U.S. interests and he continued to work for the bank well after America entered the war.
• Bush was also on the board of at least 1 of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world.
• Papers also show, Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen, Germany’s most powerful industrial family, and with I.G. Farben, which was prosecuted for war crimes, and is best known as the producer of Zyklon B, a lethal poison widely used at the Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps.

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• Secrets of the Federal Reserve
• This is an excellent video covering the secrets of the Federal Reserve system, how it was formed, and how this private firm controls our everyday lives.
• In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this video is distributed without profit, to those who have expressed interest, for research or educational purposes.

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• Operation Sarkozy: how the CIA placed one of its agents at the presidency of the French Republic
• Global Research, September 4, 2008
• One should judge Nicolas Sarkozy according to his actions, and not according to his personality. Yet when his doings surprise even his own constituents, it is legitimate to take a detailed look at his biography and question the bonds that brought him to power.
• Thierry Meyssan has decided to write the truth about the French Republic’s president background.
• All the information included in this article is provable, except for two assertions signalled by the author who alone takes full responsibility.
• Tired of the overextended presidencies of François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, the French elected Nicolas Sarkozy counting on his energy to revitalize their country.
• They were hoping for a break with years of no-change and ideologies of the past. What they got instead was a break with the very principles which founded the French nation, and have been shocked by this “hyper-president”, seizing every day a new dossier, attracting towards him the right and the left wing, and tearing apart all points of reference to the point of creating a total confusion.

  • "Order out of Chaos?"
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• Like children who have just made a boo-boo, the French are too busy trying to find excuses for themselves to admit the magnitude of the damages and of their naiveté, and they refuse all the more to see who Nicolas Sarkozy really is, that they realize they should have known since a long time who he was.
• One must say the man has talents. Like a magician he tricked them. By offering them the spectacle of his private life and posing in People’s magazines, he got them to forget his political history.
• The aim of this article must be clearly understood. It is not to reproach M. Sarkozy his family, his friends or his professional ties, but the fact of having hidden those ties from the French who believed, wrongly, they were electing a free man.
• To understand how a man whom all agree today to view as an agent of the United States and of Israel was able to become the head of the Gaullist party and the president of the French Republic, we must go back in time, very very far back. We must make a long digression in the course of which we will present the protagonists who are today taking their revenge.
• The family secrets
• At the end of Second World War, the United States secret services relied on Italo-US godfather, Lucky Luciano, to control the security of American ports and prepare their disembarking in Sicily.
• The main contacts of Luciano — held at that time at a New York luxury prison — to the US intelligence services went notably through Frank Wisner, Sr.
• Later, when the “godfather” was liberated and chose to exile in Italy, they operated through his Corsican “Ambassador”, Étienne Léandri.
• In 1958, worried about a possible victory of the FLN in Algeria which could open the way to Soviet influence in Northern Africa, the United States decided to provoke a military coup d’Etat in France.
• The operation was jointly organized by the Cia’s Direction of Planning – theoretically lead by Frank Wisner, Sr. – and by NATO.
• But Wisner had already become senile by that time and it was his successor, Allan Dulles, who supervised the coup.

  • Good ole Dulles. His and his brother's name pop up and have been popping up for years whenever one reads something on the "conspiracy" for world government.
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• Out of Algeria, French generals organized a Public Salvation Committee which pressured the Parisian civilian authorities to vote full powers to General de Gaulle without having had to use force.
• Yet, Charles de Gaulle was not the pawn the Anglo-Saxons had believed they could manipulate.
• In a first phase, he attempted to deal with the colonial contradiction by granting to the overseas territories a large autonomy within the French Union.
• But it was already too late to save the French empire; the colonized people didn’t believe any longer in the promises of the Metropolitan France and demanded their independence. After victorious but fierce repression against those fighting for independence, de Gaulle decided to face reality, and in a rare show of political wisdom, he granted independence to each colony.
• The CIA and NATO supported then all kinds of plots to eliminate him, among which a missed coup and some 40 attempts to murder him.
• This turn about was perceived by most of those who brought him to power as a betrayal.
• However, certain of his followers approved of his political evolution. Around Charles Pasqua, they created the SAC (Civic action services), a militia to protect him.

  • A private militia organized to protect deGaulle.
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• Pasqua was both a Corsican bandit and a former resistant. He married the daughter of a Canadian bootlegger who made fortune during the prohibition and he directed the Ricard company who, after commercialising absinthe, a forbidden alcohol, won respectability by converting to the sales of another alcohol based on liquorice (anisette).
• The company continued however to serve as a cover for all sorts of traffics connected to the New York Italian American family of the Genovese (and) that of Lucky Luciano.

  • Again, the "Mob" and it's connections surface again as having ties with ad being used by Western governments to further their exclusive NWO policies.
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• It is therefore not surprising that Pasqua called on Étienne Léandri (Ambassador of Luciano) to recruit the hands that constituted the Gaullist militia. A third man played an important role in the formation of the SAC, the former body guard of de Gaulle, Achille Peretti, also a Corsican.
• Thus protected, de Gaulle designs an audacious national independence policy.
• Even though asserting his belonging to the Atlantic camp, he questions the Anglo-Saxon leadership. He opposes the entry of the United Kingdom into the European common market (1961 and 1967); refuses the deployment of UN helmets into Congo (1961); encourages the Latin American states to become free of US imperialism (speech of Mexico, 1964); kicks NATO out France and withdraws from the Atlantic Alliance’s integrated command (1966); he condemns Israeli expansionism during the Six Day war (1967); supports independence of Quebec (Speech of Montreal 1967), etc.
• Simultaneously, de Gaulle consolidated the power of France by endowing it with a military industrial-complex including a nuclear deterrent and guarantying its energy provisions.
• He conveniently distanced the encumbering Corsicans of his entourage by entrusting them with foreign missions. Thus, Étienne Léandri became a leader of the ELF group (today Total), while Charles Pasqua the trusted man of the Francophone heads of State in Africa.
• Conscious that he could not defy the Anglo-Saxons on all fronts at the same time, De Gaulle allied himself to the Rothschild family, choosing as Prime Minister, Georges Pompidou, who was the fondé de pouvoir of the bank.

  • deGaulle and the Rothschilds
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• The two men constituted an efficient tandem, the political audacity of the first never losing sight of the economic realism of the second.
• When De Gaulle resigned in 1969, Georges Pompidou succeeded him briefly at the Presidency before being taken out by a cancer. The historical Gaullists did not admit his leadership, however, and worried about his anglophile proclivities.
• They howled treason when Pompidou, supported by the General Secretary of the Élysée, Edouard Balladur, had “perfidious Albion” join the European Common Market.
• The making of Nicolas Sarkozy
• That decorum having been put into place, we can now return to our main character, Nicolas Sarkozy.
• Born in 1955 he is son to a Hungarian catholic nobleman, Pal Sarkösy of Nagy-Bosca, who sought refuge in France after fleeing the Red Army, and to Andree Mallah, a Jewish commoner from Thessalonica.

  • Sarkozy then is Hungarian on his father's side and a Greek Jew on his Mother's.
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• After having three children (Guillaume, Nicolas and François), the couple divorced. Pal Sarkösy of Nagy-Bocsa remarried with an aristocrat, Christine de Ganay, with whom he had two children (Pierre Olivier and Caroline).
• Nicolas will not be raised by his own parents alone, but will go back and forth within this recomposed family.
• His mother became the secretary of De Gaulle’s bodyguard, Achille Peretti. The latter, after founding the SAC, pursued a brilliant political career. He was elected Deputy and Mayor of Neuilly sur Seine, the richest residential suburb of the capital, and later President of the National Assembly.
• Unfortunately, in 1972, Achille Peretti comes under grave accusations. In the United States, Time Magazine reveals the existence of a secret criminal organization « the Corsican Union » which controls a large part of the drug trade between Europe and America, the famous « French connection » which Hollywood popularized on the large screen.

  • The "French Connection"
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• Based on parliamentary auditions and on his own investigations, Time names the name of a mafia boss, Jean Venturi, arrested a few years earlier in Canada, who is none other than Charles Pasqua’s commercial delegate at the liquor society Ricard.
• The names of several families headed by the “Corsican Union” are cited, among which that of the Peretti. Achille denies, but is forced to renounce to the presidency of the National Assembly, and barely escapes a “suicide”…
• In 1977, Pal Sarkösy of Nagy-Bocsa separates from his second wise, Christine de Ganay, who then gets together with the N°2 of the US State Department central administration. She marries him and settles in America with him. The world being very small, as everyone knows, her husband is none other than Frank Wisner, Jr, son of the previous.

  • Sarkozy's step mom, Christine de Ganay married the No-2 at the U.S. State Department, Frank Wisner, Jr..".son of the previous."
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• Junior’s responsibilities at the CIA are unknown, but it is clear that he plays an important role.
• Nicolas, who remains close to his mother in law, his half brother and his half sister, begins to turn towards the United States where he “benefits” from training programs of the State Department.
• During that same period, Nicolas Sarkozy adheres to the Gaullist party coming into frequent contact with Charles Pasqua, who was not only a national leader then, but also the head of the party’s Haut de Seine department section.
• Having finished Law School in 1982 and joined the Barr association, Nicolas Sarkozy married the niece of Achille Peretti. His best man was Charles Pasqua.
• As a lawyer, Sarkozy defended the interests of his mentors Corsican friends. He bought a property on the Island of Beauty, in Vico, and went as far as envisaging to make his name more “Corsican” by replacing the “y” by an “i”: Sarkozi.
• The next year, he was elected Mayor of Neuilly sur Seine in replacement of his uncle in law, Achille Peretti, thundered by a heart attack.
• However, it was not long before Nicolas Sarkozy betrayed his wife, and since 1984, he had a secret liaison with Cecilia, the wife of the most famous entertainer of French television at that time, Jacques Martin, whom he had met while celebrating their marriage, a function he exerted being mayor of Neuilly.
• That double life lasted five years, before the lovers decided to quit their respective couples in order to build a new home.
• In 1992, Nicolas was best man in the marriage of Jacques Chirac’s daughter, Claude, with an editorialist of Le Figaro.
• He couldn’t refrain himself from seducing Claude and having a short liaison with her, while officially living with Cecilia.
• The cuckold husband committed suicide by absorbing drugs. The break was brutal and without pardon between the Chirac’s and Nicolas Sarkozy.
• In 1993, the left lost the legislative elections. President François Mitterrand refused to resign and entered into cohabitation with a right wing Prime Minister.
• Jacques Chirac who ambitioned the presidency, and was thinking at that point of constituting, with Edoaurd Balladur, a couple comparable to that of De Gaulle and Pompidou, refused to be Prime minister and left his post to his “30 year long friend”, Edouard Balladur.
• In spite of his sulphurous past, Charles Pasqua became Interior Minister. While keeping high hand over Moroccan marijuana trade, he took advantage of his situation to legalize his other activities taking control of casinos, gambling and horse races in francophone Africa.

  • French ties with North Africa and the drug trade.
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• He wove ties with Saudi Arabia and Israel and became an officer of honour to the Mossad. Nicolas Sarkozy on his part, became minister of Budget and spokesman for the government.
• In Washington, Frank Wisner, Jr. became the successor of Paul Wolfowitz as head of the Political Planning department of the Department of Defense. Nobody noticed at that time the ties to the spokesman of the French government.

  • Frank Wisener, Jr and the U.S. DoD
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• It is then that tensions similar to those which rocked the Gaullist party 30 years earlier, broke out between the historical Gaullists and the financial right wing, incarnated by Balladur.
• The new element was that Charles Pasqua and along with him, the young Nicolas Sarkozy, betray Jacques Chirac in order to join the Rothschild current.

  • Rothschild again
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• Mayhem breaks out. The conflict will reach a climax in 1995 when Edouard Balladur ran for president, against his former friend, Jacques Chirac, and was beaten. Foremost, following instructions from London and Washington, the Balladur government opened negotiations for membership status to the European Union and NATO to States of Central and Eastern Europe who had freed from Soviet control.
• Havoc reigns then in the Gaullist party where the friends of yesterday are ready to kill themselves today. To be able to finance his electoral campaign, Edouard Balladur attempts to grab the secret slush fund of the Gaullist party, hidden in the double deckered accounting of the books of the oil group ELF.
• The ride through the desert

• Through out his first mandate, Jacques Chirac keeps Nicolas Sarkozy at arms distance. The man was discrete during his ride through the desert. Discretely, however, he continued to weave ties to the financial circles.

   

  In 1996, finally succeeding to bring to conclusion an endless divorce procedure, Nicolas Sarkozy marries Cecilia. Two billionaires were their best men, Martin Bouygues and Bernard Arnaud (the richest man of the country).
• The final act
• Way before the Iraqi crisis, Frank Wisner Jr. and his colleagues at the CIA plan the destruction of the Gaullist current and the coming to power of Nicolas Sarkozy.
• They move in three phases: first, the elimination of the leadership of the Gaullist party and the take over of the party apparatus, then the elimination of his main right wing rival and the securing the nomination to the presidential election for the Gaullist party; finally, the elimination of any serious challenger on the left to make sure that Nicolas would win the presidential election.
• Before dying from a terminal disease, for reasons which remain unknown, he decided to video tape his confessions and for reasons which are even more obscure, the “cassette” landed in the hands of a Socialist party leader, Dominique Strauss Kahn, who addressed it indirectly to the media.
• During years, posthumous revelations by a real estate dealer kept the media on their toes.
• While the confessions of the real estate dealer did not lead to any juridical sanctions, they opened up the Pandora’s Box.
• The main victim of the series of scandals was Prime Minister Alain Juppé. To protect Chirac, he assumed alone all the penal sanctions. The removal of Juppé from the front lodges opened the way for the take by Sarkozy of the leadership of the Gaullist party.
• Sarkozy exploited then his position to force Jacques Chirac to take him into the government once again, in spite of their reciprocal hatred.
• In the end, he became Interior Minister. Mistake !
• This post gave him control over the prefects and the internal intelligence apparatus which he used to gain positions of power over the large administrations.
• He dealt also with Corsican affairs. Prefect Claude Érignac was murdered. Even though nobody claimed it, the murder was immediately interpreted as a challenge by the independentists to the Republic.
• Following a long hunt, the police managed to arrest a fleeing suspect, Yvan Colonna, son of a Socialist deputy. Caring little about the presumption of innocence, Nicolas Sarkozy announced the arrest, accusing the suspect of being the assassin.

  • Another rail road job?
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• The news is too important, a mere two days away from the referendum the minister has organized in Corsica to modify the status of the island. Be as it may, the electors reject the Sarkozy project, who, according to some, favoured mafia interests.
• While Yvan Colonna was ultimately declared guilty, he always claimed his innocence and no material proof was ever found against him. Strangely, the man preferred to remain totally silent rather than reveal what he actually knew.
• We reveal here that prefect Érignac was not directly killed by the nationalists, but by a paid killer, immediately exfiltrated towards Angola where he was hired to the security of the Elf group.

  • Ahhh..such is the way of the world of the "Movers & Shakers"
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• The mobile of the crime was precisely connected to the previous functions of Érignac, responsible for the African networks at Pasqua’s cooperation ministry.
• As for Yvan Colonna, he is a personal friend of Nicolas Sarkozy since decades and their children have entertained social relations.
• A new scandal broke out then: phoney computer listings were circulating falsely accusing several personalities of hiding bank accounts in Luxembourg, at Clearstream.
• Among the defamed personalities: Nicolas Sarkozy, who filed a suit insinuating that he suspected his right wing rival to the presidency, Dominique de Villepin, to have organized this machination.

  • Sarkozy and de Villepin
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• In reality, the false listings were put in circulation by members of the French American Foundation, of which John Negroponte was the president and Frank Wisner Jr, the administrator.

  • John Negroponte's name surfaces yet again. He is a very busy man...
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• Sarkozy didn’t hide his intention either to throw him in jail.
• What the judges ignored and which we reveal here is that the listings were fabricated in London by a common office of the CIA and of MI6, Hakluyt and co, of which Frank Wisner is also an administrator.
• Villepin denied the accusations, but was indicted, assigned to residence and, de facto, eliminated from political life temporarily.

  • Villepin removed and gotten out of the way by international mechinations..CIA, MI6 out of London with a Wisener connection.
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• The road is thus free on the right wing for Nicolas Sarkozy.
• It remained for the opposition candidacies to be neutralized. The membership fees to the Socialist party were reduced to a symbolic level in order to attract new activists. Suddenly, thousands of youth take membership cards. Among them, there were at least 10 000 new members who are in reality militants from the “Lambertist” Trotskyite party, (named after its founder Pierre Lambert).

  • SEE: American Neocons
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• This small extreme left group historically served the CIA against the Stalinist communists during the cold war (it is the equivalent of the Social democrats/USA of Max Schatchman, who trained the US neo-conservatives).

  • SEE: the Neocons of the GOP and Google their Trotsky background
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• It is not the first time the “Lambertists” infiltrate the Socialist party. They introduced there two notorious CIA agents : Lionel Jospin (who became Prime minister) and Jean Christophe Cambadelis, the main advisor to Dominique Strauss Kahn.
• Two personalities were competing: Laurent Fabius and Ségolène Royal. Only the first was a danger for Sarkozy.
• Primaries were organized inside the Socialist party to designate its candidate to the presidential election.
• Dominique Strauss Kahn came into the race with the mission to eliminate Fabius at the last moment. Something he did with the help of the votes of the infiltrated “lambertists”, who voted not for him but for Royal.
• The operation is possible because Strauss Kahn is since long on the pay roll of the United States.
• Frenchmen ignore that he teaches at Stanford, where he was hired by the prévot Dean of the University, Condoleeza Rice. From the beginning of his term, Nicolas Sarkozy and Condoleeza Rice will thank Strauss Kahn by having him elected to the leadership of the International Monetary fund.

  • The Stanford University and Condoleeza Rice connections with French politics. The Stanford agent, Strauss-Kahn will then be selected to head the IMF in thanks.
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• First days at the Élysée
• The evening of the second round of the presidential election, when polling agencies announced his probable victory, Nicolas Sarkozy gave a short speech to the nation from his general campaign quarters. Then, contrary to all custom, he didn’t celebrate with the militants of his party, but went to the Fouquet’s.
• The famous brasserie at the Champs-Élysées, formerly the place of rendez-vous of the “Corsican union” is today the property of Casino magnate, Dominique Desseigne. It was lent to the elected president to receive his friends and main campaign donors. Some hundred guests crowded there, the richest men of France hobnobbing with the casino bosses.
• Transported to Malta by a private Falcon 900, he relaxed on the Paloma, a 65 m yacht of his friend Vincent Bollore, a billionaire trained at the Rothschild bank.
• The elected president then offered himself some days of well merited rest.
• Finally, Nicolas Sarkozy was inaugurated president of the French Republic.
• The first decree he signed was not to enact an amnesty, but to authorize the casinos of his friends Desseigne and Partouche to multiply the money machines.
• He composed his working team and his government. Without surprise, one finds there an ominous casino owner (the minister of Youth and Sports) and the lobbyist of the casinos of his friend Desseigne (who became a spokesman of the “Gaullist party”.)

• Nicolas Sarkozy relies above all on 4 men:

   

  - Claude Guéant, secretary general of the Elysée Palace, the former right hand of Charles Pasqua.
   - François Pérol, under-secretary general of the Elysée, an associate manager of the Rothschild bank.
   - Jean-David Lévitte, diplomatic advisor. Son of the former director of the Jewish Agency. French ambassador to the UN, he was removed by Chirac who judged him too close to George Bush.
   - Alain Bauer, the man of the shadows. His name does not appear in the directories. He is in charge of the secret services. Former Grand Master of the French Great Orient (the most important Masonic organization in France) and former N°2 of the United States National Security Agency in Europe.

  • Here is a list of characters with connections to the U.S. National Security Agency and Freemasonry. Looks as if the Conspiracy Theorists are not so off the mark after all.
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• Frank Wisner Jr. who in the meantime was named “special envoy” to President Bush for the independence of Kosovo, insisted that Bernard Kouchner be named minister of Foreign affairs with a double mission priority: the independence of Kosovo and the elimination of France’s Arab policy.

  • Frank Wisenr, jr, President Bush and Kosovo connection
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• Kouchner started his career by participating in the creation of a humanitarian NGO.
• Thanks to financial support from the National Endowment for Democracy, he took part in operations of Zbigniew Brzezinski in Afghanistan against the soviets, along sides with Oussama Ben Laden and the Karzai brothers.

  • Barnard Kouchner, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Karzais of Afghanistan and....guess who: Ossama Ben Laden. Well-well-well....The picture puzzle is beginning to make some sense.
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• One finds him again in the 90’s working with Alija Izetbegovic in Bosnia Herzegovina. From 1999 to 2001 he was high representatives of the UN to Kosovo.
• Under the rule of the youngest brother of president Hamid Karzaï, Afghanistan became the first world producer of opium poppies transformed in heroin locally and transported by the US Air force to Camp Bondsteed (Kosovo).

  • And here, yet again, the involvement of the United States government in international drug production and smuggling. Which is why so many investigators and writers are always insisting the U.S. authorities are into the lucrative drug trade.
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• There, the men of Hacim Thaci take charge of the drug and distribute it mainly in Europe and accessorily in the United States.

  • The "War on Drugs" is a freak'n joke!
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• The benefits are used to finance the illegal operations of the CIA.
• Karzai and Thaci are longstanding personal friends of Bernard Kouchner who undoubtedly ignores their criminal activities in spite of all the international reports which have been dedicated to them.
• To complete his government, Nicolas Sarkozy named Christine Lagarde, minister of the Economy and Finances. All her career was made in the United States where she directed the prestigious law firm Baker and McKenzie.
• At the Center for international and strategic studies of Dick Cheney, she copresided with Zbigniew Brzezinski a working group which supervised the privatisations in Poland. She organized also an intense lobbying effort for Lockheed Martin against French airplane producer Dassault.
• New escapade during the summer. Nicolas, Cecilia, their common mistress and their children went on holidays to the United States at Wolfeboro, not far from the property of President Bush.
• The bill was paid this time by Robert F. Agostinelli, an Italian-New Yorker investment banker, Zionist and a pure brand of neo-conservative who writes in Commentary, the magazine of the American Jewish Committee.

  • Ahhhhh...and now we have the AIPAC, Neocons, investment bankers and Zionists connection in all this. My apologies to all the conspiracy "nuts" out there.
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• The success of Nicolas had impact on his half brother, Pierre Olivier. Under the American name of Oliver, he was named by Frank Carlucci (formerly N°2 of the CIA after having been recruited by Frank Wisner, Sr.) Director of the new investment fund of the Carlyle Group (the common investment firm of the Bush family and Ben Laden).

  • The criminal cabal stretches across national borders and the Bush Family seems to keep popping up again and again...
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• Having become the 5th largest business dealer in the world, he handles the main assets of the sovereign funds of Kuwait and Singapore.
• One of his communications advisors, Jacques Seguela (also consultant for political communication at the NED where he is in charge of diverse CIA operations in Western Europe and Latin America), proposes to detract the public’s attention with new “people stories”.
• The popularity of the President is in a free fall in the polls.
• The announcement of the divorce with Cecilia was publicised by Libération, the paper of his friend Edouard de Rothschild, to cover up the slogans of demonstrators in a day of general strike.

  • The same idiotic nonsense and superficialities that pass for "news" in America. Americans need to turn off the Idiot Tube; get a computer, get on-line and began researching...researching...researching.
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• Stronger even, the communications agent organized a meeting between the president and the former top model, Carla Bruni. Some days later, her liaison with the president became official and the media hammering covered up once again political criticism.
• This time, he chose as best men Mathilde Agostinelle (the wife of Robert) and Nicolas Bazire, a former cabinet director of Edouard Balladur who became assistant manager at the Rothschilds.
• Some weeks later, the third marriage of Nicolas occurred.
• When will the French use their eyes to see what they have to do ?

  • And Americans too...!
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• References
• [1] Quand le stay-behind portait De Gaulle au pouvoir, par Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, 27 août 2001
• 3] L’Énigme Pasqua, par Thierry Meyssan, Golias ed, 2000.
• [5] Un relais des États-Unis en France : la French American Foundation, par Pierre Hillard, Réseau Voltaire, 19 avril 2007.
• 6] Les New York Intellectuals et l’invention du néo-conservatisme, par Denis Boneau, Réseau Voltaire, 26 novembre 2004.
• [8] Dominique Strauss-Kahn, l’homme de « Condi » au FMI, par Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, 5 octobre 2007.
• [10] Le gouvernement kosovar et le crime organisé, par Jürgen Roth, Horizons et débats, 8 avril 2008.
• [11] Avec Christine Lagarde, l’industrie US entre au gouvernement français, Réseau Voltaire, 22 juin 2005.
• [12] L’honorable Frank Carlucci, par Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, 11 février 2004.
• [13] Les liens financiers occultes des Bush et des Ben Laden et Le Carlyle Group, une affaire d’initiés, Réseau Voltaire, 16 octobre 2001 et 9 février 2004.
• Tags: CIA, France, New World Order, Sarkozy

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• Fannie & Freddie's Friends In High Places
• Inside Look At How Influential Mortgage Financers Kept Regulations At A Distance

• NEW YORK, July 15, 2008
•  <!-- sphereit start -->It was during the Great Depression that Fannie Mae was founded - in 1938 - with a simple purpose in mind: to give lower and middle income Americans more access to the Great American Dream, owning your own home.
• It did it by guaranteeing if a homeowner defaulted on a loan the bank would get paid, CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports.
• Today Fannie and its smaller sibling, Freddie Mac, hold a pivotal place in the home loan market - one that has grown to include special advantages, such as:  
  
  • guaranteed lines of credits from the U.S. Treasury 
    
  • exemption from state and local taxes 
    
  • limited government oversight 
• Their privileged status is that of government-sponsored Fortune 500 companies, powered by a vast political machine.
• "Fannie and Freddie have probably had more influence than any set of institutions in modern times," said former Rep. James Leach.
• As the former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Leach tried for years to hold Fannie and Freddie to tougher financial standards. 
   
  "You'd have people in Congress that would make it very clear that they wanted nothing to touch Fannie and Freddie," Leach said.

  • "Political criminal class.."
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• CBS News has learned Fannie and Freddie now boast nearly 150 lobbyists - spending more than $5 million this year alone.
• In addition, the mortgage giants have doled out about $2 million more in campaign donations in the last four years to key member of Congress.
• "The view was always held that if they lost even a small battle, it might slide into something more meaningful," said former Rep. Richard H. Baker, R-La. "So every threat was taken seriously."
• A few years ago, Fannie was fined nearly $400 million after overstating earnings by $10 billion to maximize bonuses.
• In 2006, Freddie paid a record $4 million fine for illegal fundraisers.
• Both Fannie and Freddy say they've changed their ways. But, more and more, it appears two companies designed to help average Americans have, in fact, been helping themselves.<!-- sphereit end -->

  • Yes..and another Government underwritten scam for the bilking and shaving of the sheep.
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13 more annotations...

• Sep 4, 2008
• SF Bank Under Siege By People Facing Foreclosure
• SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) ―     A San Francisco Wachovia branch was under siege Wednesday afternoon by people on the verge of losing their homes.
• Those people accuse the bank of giving them mortgages that the bank knew they couldn't afford.
• Wachovia is the owner of the former Oakland-based World Savings, a bank that CBS 5 has been investigating for months.
• Reporting
  Anna Werner
• The bank is one of the Bay Area's largest, but one that advocates say repeatedly refuses to modify loans and help keep customers in their homes.
• A CBS5 investigation revealed a pattern of loans to elderly minority homeowners in Oakland and other cities, loans many now say they didn't understand, and could never afford.
• One of those people is 81-year-old Nell Walker of San Francisco, whose family said in 2006 received a "Pick-A-Pay" loan for over $300,000 even though she's on a fixed retirement income.
• "I think a lot of it was misleading and it wasn't explained," said Walker.
• "They gave it to my mom and to this day we still don't know how. She has never worked a day in her life," said her daughter Jacqueline Phillips.
• Now the minimum payment is about to go up, and Walker may lose her home of over 40 years. "It's awful! I'm 81 years old," she said.
• "We got fooled into loans that we couldn't understand, and I think they need to show a little good faith and renegotiate our loans," said her daughter.
• Phillips, who belongs to community organizing group Acorn, took her frustrations directly to the teller counter at this downtown Wachovia office.
• The demand: that the branch fax a letter to Wachovia's new CEO. "We would like you to fax this to your CEO," she told the branch manager.
• "We will not," he replied. As she later put it to us: "Just like Wachovia, that's what you get. The brushoff."
• A few hours later the bank did agree to fax the letter, which calls for Wachovia to renegotiate the protesters' loans.

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• The Globalizer Who Came In From the Cold
• June 1, 2003
• World Bank Insider Speaks Out by Greg Palast
• JOE STIGLITZ: TODAY´S WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS

• The World Bank´s former Chief Economist´s accusations are   eye-popping - including how the IMF and US Treasury fixed the Russian   elections

   

  http://jahtruth.net/greeneco.htm
• This was like a scene out of Le Carre. The brilliant old agent   comes in from the cold, crosses to our side, and in hours of debriefing,   empties his memory of horrors committed in the name of a political ideology   he now realizes has gone rotten.
• "It has condemned people to death," the former apparatchik   told me.
• And here before me was a far bigger catch than some used Cold War spy.   Joseph Stiglitz was Chief Economist of the World Bank. To a great extent,   the new world economic order was his theory come to   life.
• I "debriefed" Stigltiz over several days, at Cambridge University,   in a London hotel and finally in Washington in April 2001 during the big   confab of the World Bank and the International Monetary   Fund.
• But instead of chairing the meetings of ministers and central   bankers, Stiglitz was kept exiled safely behind the blue police cordons,   the same as the nuns carrying a large wooden cross, the Bolivian union   leaders, the parents of AIDS victims   and the other anti-globalization protesters. The ultimate insider was   now on the outside.
• In 1999 the World Bank fired Stiglitz. He was not allowed quiet retirement;   US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, I´m told, demanded a public   excommunication for Stiglitz´having expressed his first mild dissent   from globalization World Bank style.

  • U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers wanted Stiglitz fired from the World Bank
  Add Sticky Note
• Here in Washington we completed the last of several hours of exclusive   interviews for The Observer and BBC TV´s Newsnight about the real,   often hidden, workings of the IMF, World Bank, and   the bank´s 51% owner, the US Treasury.

  • The IMF, the World Banks and the US Treasury which owns 51% of the World Bank
  Add Sticky Note
• And here, from sources unnamable (not Stiglitz), we obtained a cache   of documents marked, "confidential," "restricted,"   and "not otherwise (to be) disclosed without World Bank authorization."
• Stiglitz helped translate one from bureaucratise, a "Country Assistance   Strategy." There´s an Assistance Strategy for every poorer   nation, designed, says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation.

  • SEE: Deanna Spingola
  Add Sticky Note
• But according to insider Stiglitz, the Bank´s staff investigation   consists of close inspection of a nation´s 5-star hotels. It concludes   with the Bank staff meeting some begging, busted finance minister who   is handed a restructuring agreement pre-drafted for his voluntary´   signature (I have a selection of these).
• Each nation´s economy is individually analyzed, then, says Stiglitz,   the Bank hands every minister the same exact four-step program.
• Step One is Privatization - which Stiglitz said could more accurately   be called, Briberization. Rather than object to the sell-offs of state   industries, he said national leaders - using the World Bank´s demands   to silence local critics - happily flogged their electricity and water   companies. "You could see their eyes widen" at the prospect   of 10% commissions paid to Swiss bank accounts for simply shaving a few   billion off the sale price of national assets.

  • Wonder if this is going on in Iraq with that country's oil?
  Add Sticky Note
• And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the case   of the biggest briberization of all, the 1995 Russian sell-off.
• "The   US Treasury view was this was great as we wanted Yeltsin re-elected. We   don´t care if it´s a corrupt election. We want the money to   go to Yeltzin via kick-backs for his campaign.
• Stiglitz is no conspiracy nutter ranting about Black Helicopters. The   man was inside the game, a member of Bill Clinton´s cabinet as   Chairman of the President´s council of economic advisors.

  • Stiglitz was in Bill Clinton's Cabinet
  Add Sticky Note
• Most ill-making for Stiglitz is that the US-backed oligarchs stripped   Russia´s industrial assets, with the effect that the corruption   scheme cut national output nearly in half causing depression and starvation.

  • You don't suppose this is why Putin (summer 2008) is on a mad vamp of rage?
  Add Sticky Note
• After briberization, Step Two of the IMF/World Bank   one-size-fits-all rescue-your-economy plan is Capital Market Liberalization.   In theory, capital market deregulation allows investment capital to flow   in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and Brazil, the money simply   flowed out and out. Stiglitz calls this the "Hot Money" cycle.   Cash comes in for speculation in real estate and currency, then flees   at the first whiff of trouble. A nation´s reserves can drain in   days, hours. And when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning   a nation´s own capital funds, the IMF demands these nations raise   interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%.
• "The result was predictable," said Stiglitz of the Hot Money   tidal waves in Asia and Latin America. Higher interest rates demolished   property values, savaged industrial production and drained national treasuries.
• At this point, the IMF drags the gasping nation   to Step Three: Market-Based Pricing, a fancy term for raising prices on   food, water and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half:   what Stiglitz calls, The IMF riot.´

  • Sounds like what is happening in the USA today..(2008)
  Add Sticky Note
• The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation   is, "down and out, [the IMF] takes advantage   and squeezes the last pound of blood out of them. They turn up the heat   until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up," as when the IMF   eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998.   Indonesia exploded into riots, but there are other examples - the Bolivian   riots over water prices last year and this February, the riots in Ecuador   over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. You´d   almost get the impression that the riot is written into the plan.

  • IMF caused rioting and social chaos
  Add Sticky Note
• And it is. What Stiglitz did not know is that, while in the States, BBC   and The Observer obtained several documents from inside the World Bank,   stamped over with those pesky warnings, "confidential," "restricted,"   "not to be disclosed."
• Let´s get back to one: the "Interim   Country Assistance Strategy" for Ecuador, in it the Bank several   times states - with cold accuracy - that they expected their plans to   spark, "social unrest," to use their bureaucratic term for a   nation in flames.

  • These World Bank, IMF guys are pirates and cutthroats of the lowest order. In any other age, in any other time in History, these criminals would have been hunted down and strung up by their heels in market squares.
  Add Sticky Note
• That´s not surprising. The secret report notes that the plan to   make the US dollar Ecuador´s currency has pushed 51% of the population   below the poverty line. The World Bank "Assistance" plan simply   calls for facing down civil strife and suffering with, "political   resolve" - and still higher prices.
• The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations   dispersed by bullets, tanks and teargas) cause new panicked flights of   capital and government bankruptcies. This economic arson has it´s   bright side - for foreign corporations, who can then pick off remaining   assets, such as the odd mining concession or port, at fire sale prices.

  • "Carpetbaggers" in every sense of the word (something the American South can tell you about): utter destruction and chaos in a nation and then international "carpetbaggers" swoop in to pick off the prey and snap up assets at fire sale prices.
  Add Sticky Note
• Stiglitz notes that the IMF and World Bank are not   heartless adherents to market economics. At the same time the IMF   stopped Indonesia subsidizing food purchases, "when the banks need   a bail-out, intervention (in the market) is welcome." The IMF   scrounged up tens of billions of dollars to save Indonesia´s financiers   and, by extension, the US and European banks from which they had borrowed.
• A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers in this system   but one clear winner: the Western banks and US Treasury, making the big   bucks off this crazy new international capital churn.

  • Pillaging the world
  Add Sticky Note
• Stiglitz told me   about his unhappy meeting, early in his World Bank tenure, with Ethopia´s   new president in the nation´s first democratic election. The World   Bank and IMF had ordered Ethiopia to divert aid money   to its reserve account at the US Treasury, which pays a pitiful 4% return,   while the nation borrowed US dollars at 12% to feed its population.
• The   new president begged Stiglitz to let him use the aid money to rebuild   the nation. But no, the loot went straight off to the US Treasury´s   vault in Washington.
• Now we arrive at Step Four of what the IMF and World   Bank call their "poverty reduction strategy": Free Trade.
• This   is free trade by the rules of the World Trade Organization and World Bank,   Stiglitz the insider likens free trade WTO-style to the Opium Wars.

  • "Free Trade"
  Add Sticky Note
• "That   too was about opening markets," he said. As in the 19th century,   Europeans and Americans today are kicking down the barriers to sales in   Asia, Latin American and Africa, while barricading our own markets against   Third World agriculture.
• In the Opium Wars, the West used military blockades to force open markets   for their unbalanced trade. Today, the World Bank can order a financial   blockade just as effective - and sometimes just as deadly.
• Stiglitz is particularly emotional over the WTO´s intellectual   property rights treaty (it goes by the acronym TRIPS, more on that in   the next chapters). It is here, says the economist, that the new global   order has "condemned people to death" by imposing impossible   tariffs and tributes to pay to pharmaceutical companies for branded medicines.   "They don´t care," said the professor of the corporations   and bank loans he worked with, "if people live or die."

  • Brutal, uncaring and murderous
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• By the way, don´t be confused by the mix in this discussion of   the IMF, World Bank and WTO. They are interchangeable   masks of a single governance system.
• They have locked themselves together   by what are unpleasantly called, "triggers." Taking a World   Bank loan for a school triggers a requirement to accept every conditionality   - they average 111 per nation - laid down by both the World Bank and IMF.   In fact, said Stiglitz the IMF requires nations to   accept trade policies more punitive than the official WTO rules.
• Stiglitz greatest concern is that World Bank plans, devised in secrecy   and driven by an absolutist ideology, are never open for discourse or   dissent. Despite the West´s push for elections throughout the developing   world, the so-called Poverty Reduction Programs "undermine democracy."
• And they don´t work. Black Africa´s productivity under the   guiding hand of IMF structural "assistance"   has gone to hell in a handbag. Did any nation avoid this fate? Yes, said   Stiglitz, identifying Botswana. Their trick? "They told the IMF   to go packing."
• So then I turned on Stiglitz. OK, Mr Smart-Guy Professor, how would you   help developing nations? Stiglitz proposed radical land reform, an attack   at the heart of "landlordism," on the usurious rents charged   by the propertied oligarchies worldwide, typically 50% of a tenant´s   crops. So I had to ask the professor: as you were top economist at the   World Bank, why didn´t the Bank follow your advice?
• "If you challenge [land ownership], that would be a change in the   power of the elites. That´s not high on their agenda." Apparently   not.
• Ultimately, what drove him to put his job on the line was the failure   of the banks and US Treasury to change course when confronted with the   crises - failures and suffering perpetrated by their four-step monetarist   mambo. Every time their free market solutions failed, the IMF simply demanded   more free market policies.
• "It´s a little like the Middle Ages," the insider told   me, "When the patient died they would say, well, he stopped the bloodletting   too soon, he still had a little blood in him."
• I took away from my talks with the professor that the solution to world   poverty and crisis is simple: remove the bloodsuckers.

• A version of this was first published as "The IMF´s   Four Steps to Damnation" in The Observer (London) in April and another   version in The Big Issue - that´s the magazine that the homeless   flog on platforms in the London Underground. Big Issue offered equal space   to the IMF, whose "deputy chief media officer"   wrote:

   

  "... I find it impossible to respond given the depth and breadth   of hearsay and misinformation in [Palast´s] report."

   

  Of course it was difficult for the Deputy Chief to respond. The information   (and documents) came from the unhappy lot inside his agency and the World   Bank.

  • The IMF duck and run when exposed
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46 more annotations...

• Wall Street privatises US government: be very afraid
• By Charles Dumas
  

  Last Updated: 2:03am BST 14/09/2008

  Page 2 of 3
• Nor is the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve designed to give  comfort.
• Last autumn and winter, only too clearly panicked by Wall  Street's fear of meltdown, the Fed made huge cuts in interest  rates, as well as advancing (much more reasonably) over a quarter  trillion dollars to the money market.
• The sense of panic told global  investors all they needed to know.
• China's accumulation of reserves, running at $500bn a year,  had to be kept in dollars to support its (unwise) policy of  controlling the yuan/dollar exchange rate.
• But the funds all got  shifted to government or Frannie paper - no doubt a major force  behind the US government's backing of Frannie:
• sudden  withdrawal of China's dollar support genuinely might lead to  financial Armageddon, in contrast with a few badly needed Wall  Street failures.
• Others flew the dollar - to anything they could think of. The  euro, the yen, but notably to oil and other commodity derivatives.  Commodity derivatives held off the public exchanges, "over the  counter" (OTC), grew six-fold in three years, from $1.5  trillion at the end of 2004 to $9 trillion at the end of 2007 (and  no doubt more since, though the data have yet to be published).
• This is eight times the size of public-exchange commodity  derivatives about which information is more detailed.
• Nobody knows  the form of these OTC positions. But oil prices doubled from $70 a  barrel just before the credit crisis to over $140 at the peak in  July this year - and have since seen one of the fastest commodity  price collapses ever, to little over $100. Those positions contained  huge speculative accounts.
• Who pays for dearer oil? Chiefly, the US consumer.
• So the rescue  of Wall Street has panicked the Fed into a policy that has hammered  American taxpayers, just as they have been called upon to finance  the bailout of Wall Street.

  • Carpetbagger jerks!
  Add Sticky Note
• The Fed's goals, as specified by Act of Congress, are to  sustain good growth and keep inflation low (in that order).
• By its  subjection to Wall Street priorities, it has both stimulated price  inflation - the CPI was up 5.6 per cent over the latest 12 months -  and thereby cut the real value of US incomes, and with them US growth.

  • Slick move, Ex-Lax
  Add Sticky Note
• It has thus failed in both its mandated goals. With one bullet -  panicky interest rate cuts that have little relationship to saving  Wall Street in any case - it has shot itself in both feet.
• The irony is - I hesitate to say "joke", though black  joke it is - that Wall Street did not need it, and will not (of  course) be grateful.
• Sometime over this weekend, probably - or maybe  a little later - Lehman Brothers is expected to endure a similar  fate to Bear Stearns six months ago.

  • Well spoken Dumas. This happened on Monday following your projected weekend bust.
  Add Sticky Note
• Perhaps "Hank the hunk" Paulson, former head of the  leading Wall Street firm, Goldman Sachs, will play his usual highly  visible part in devoting US taxpayers' resources to the cause.  And will the world come to an end? Just as was feared at Y2K, or the  CERN experiment last week? Well, actually, no.
• And Wall Street realised this on Thursday when, after several  days' worry over Lehman's fate, the stock market managed  to go down sharply at the opening and then realise that it did/does  not matter so much after all, ending up sharply instead. Neither  would it have mattered much last March, had Bear Stearns simply been  let go. Finally light has dawned.
• Free markets have  been abandoned in America at the crucial hour by their chief  exemplars, the financial masters of the universe.
• In the meantime, the world has been changed.
• Let us hope that  the convictions of the British financial and political community,  though less confidently flaunted, will prove more durable.
• Firms that fail after doing stupid things - or sometimes firms  that are just plain unlucky - should go to the wall.
• Opinions may  differ as to which category Northern Rock (our own particular policy  disgrace) falls into.
• The economy will recover sooner if banks that have made stupid  mortgage loans suffer, and house prices fall more rapidly to levels  at which affordability is obvious and buyers come forward.
• We should be grateful the Bank of England  has an inflation target, not a confusing mishmash like the Fed. And  that Mervyn King sticks to it.
• Society  will also be more just.
• It seems that President Bush and the Republicans are not just well  to the left of Grover Norquist. They leave clear blue water on the  left of Gordon Brown, much to the envy of Euro-lefties no doubt, who  would love to ditch what they call "neo-liberalism", and  what we call free markets, as easily as the American right wing.

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• Wall Street privatises US government: be very afraid
• By Charles Dumas
  

  Last Updated: 2:03am BST 14/09/2008

  Page 1 of 3
• The US low-tax zealot, Grover Norquist, is famous for wanting to  "shrink government down to the size where we can drown it in  the bathtub".
• Still alive, he is not turning in his grave, but  his idea has been well and truly buried - and not by the Democrats  he hates; they have been tongue-tied on the credit crisis.
• It is Wall Street, the paradigm of "red in tooth and  claw" capitalism, that has turned to government subsidy on an  unprecedented scale.
• Low, ideally non-existent, taxes may be very desirable, but when  free-market principles came into conflict with the survival of  business as we know it, priorities were clear. The US Federal  government's full faith and credit - in other words, the  resources of American taxpayers - should be urgently deployed to  preserve as much as possible of the financial industry.
• Luckily for Wall Street, government was still too big to fit in  that bathtub - and proved only too willing to take up the challenge.
• The scale of the operation has been huge. The Bear Stearns'  takeover last March by JP Morgan was helped down by a spoonful of  sugar in the form of $29bn of quasi-equity investment by the Federal  Reserve Board that can only go down in value, never appreciate.
• By March the Fed might have been forgiven for hardly noticing a  mere $29bn: it had provided more than $250bn in liquidity assistance  to the money markets, accepting dodgy mortgage paper as collateral.
• Lucky old Wall Street - though, to be fair, this liquidity was the  only justifiable aspect of the Fed's conduct in the 15 months  of credit crunch.
• The "Bear" was only the hors d'oeuvre, as anyone  could see. After a mid-summer Act of Congress promising major help  to the mortgage market, the full scope of potential largesse from  Washington was more thoroughly exploited last weekend when the two  giant "government sponsored enterprises", nicknamed Fannie  Mae and Freddie Mac - here collectively "Frannie" for  convenience - were formally extended a Federal government guarantee  by Treasury Secretary Paulson.
• Frannie is emphatically, in fact by definition, not part of the  sub-prime crisis.
• Out of the country's total home mortgages of  $10.5 trillion the lowest tier, sub-prime, is (or was) about $1.5  trillion, with another dubious category called "Alt-A"  (also not "prime"), of another $0.5 trillion.
• Within sub-prime, came the so-called "Ninja" mortgages:  qualifications required being No Income, No Job or Assets, and in  the bulk of cases no documentation either.

  • What?!!!!!!!!!!!
  Add Sticky Note
• Wall Street's  enthusiasm for this kind of paper led to the losses even at 15 per  cent higher, house prices a year ago, requiring the hors  d'oeuvre described above.
• With house prices now nearly 20 per cent down from their peak, the  story has moved on from sub-prime to prime. Frannie is the main  course.
• The definition of a prime loan is one that can be taken onto  the Frannie balance sheet, or placed with investors under a Frannie  guarantee. With about $8.5 trillion of prime loans out there in  total, Frannie is on the hook, in one form or another, for more than  half, some $4.5 trillion.
• Back in the sound-money days of more than a half-century ago,  Senator Everett Dirksen came up with the classic thought about the  US Federal government: "A billion here, a billion there… pretty  soon you're talking about real money".
• In these go-go days for fiscal "conservatives", it  is more like "a trillion here, a trillion there…".
• The Frannie deal is big even by today's standards. It  single-handedly vaults the US from a public debt ratio in the  sound-money range into the company of fiscal basket-cases like Italy  and Belgium, and that long-standing economic invalid, Japan.

• The chart shows how the net US government sector debt pre-Frannie  was about the same size relative to the economy as Germany, though  worse than other G7 peers such as Canada, Britain and France. Now  with one bound, the addition of $4.5 trillion puts it up there with  Italy and Japan.

  Fed closes the door on hands-off economics. Source:  Lombard Street Research
• For connoisseurs, the post-Frannie endorsement of the rating  agency, Standard & Poor's, may raise an eyebrow: the  triple-A rating of the US government is unaffected, we were told  after last weekend's events.
• Many a nasty, even catastrophic,  deterioration of credit has started with such a reassurance.
• I have myself dealt with bankruptcy of a company that was  actually "in the can" less than a year after it was  triple-A rated. But triple-A rated mortgage securities trading at 50  cents in the dollar are bad enough.
• A bank whose credit-worthiness  requires public defence has generally lost it.

23 more annotations...

• Execute
• By Dick Eastman
    9-20-8
• The damage has been done and will continue all the way  to the bottom for us -- but not for them.
• The men behind Goldman-Sachs  and JPMorganChase and BankAmerica are eliminating the competition, are  gaining the assets they will no longer have to share with the lower circles  of banking thought-they-were elites.
• This is a controlled economic event,  a well-planned transfer of wealth, an intensified concentration of financial  power among the credit monopolists.

  • A "coup" in fact
  Add Sticky Note
• I offered the solution -- no not  social credit, of course no one is going to adopt that right path and  I know that --
• but I offered a solution that was in the hands of American  institutions that exist today, that would have ended the housing crisis  and would have avoided the marble soul death of the American people
• --  I see that other countries' central banks are rushing to lower their reserve  requirements to prevent the American disease from killing them too.
• You will recall that I proposed cutting the reserve requirement  and having banks use the funds for interest free loans extending credit  to the distressed homeowners and allowing stimulation of the people (as  close as we could come to actually doing what social credit would do for  us) -- the proposal was here: http:// groups.yahoo.com/group/frameup/message/26239  --
• and it is still a good answer, although there are so many many fewer  of households left to save from ruin now.
• But you know that our financial  elites -- who you know are our real ruling elites -- do not give bailouts  to the common man, but only to themselves, bailing out their own derivatives  and other malinvestments --
• actually predatory investments knowing exactly  that they could figure on the bailouts when they planned all of this.
• But of course they made it nearly impossible for us to declare bankruptcy  from the condition their manipulations forced upon us.

  • Remember George W. Bush's initiative law that changed the Bankruptcy laws; making it harder for everyday, ordinary Americans to protect their property and assets when filing for bankruptcy and those scoundrels/criminals in Congress on both sides of the aisle went along with it!
  Add Sticky Note
• Of course they  outlawed the people who have caught on to what was afoot from making their  own short sells on this economy.
• And the Rothschilds' IMF audited the Fed to learn exactly  what could be gotten away with -- this will help you remember http://www.rense.com/general82/audit.htm  .

  • URL
  Add Sticky Note
• There are gainers, but the media would have you believe their are only  losers. Don't be fooled; when Morgan and Goldman Sachs stocks go down  in this crisis down it is only because they realized they were looking  too good and standing too obviously pretty earlier in the week when everyone  else was dying off and Morgan raised a penny.
• Their gains in monopoly  power and in new regulatory advantage of incalculable wealth and advantage  for them -- they gain like Israel after 9-11.
• Anyway, I have been enjoying my retirement from "conspiracy  theory" and home-schooling my 12-year-old daughter Madeleine is going  well -- I don't even think about the world outside the house.
• My heath  and happiness have increased -- only at night or when driving past the  empty houses for sale and the boarded up businesses -- see picture above  -- does the truth break out in my mind and a cloud comes over Dad's face.
• I wrote a solution back March on what should be done  "If the Banks Fail" which is still available on rense here:  http:// www.rense.com/general82/banks.htm

  • URL
  Add Sticky Note
• On Friday, I re-hook up the computer to let my daughter  view the youtubes her young friends have made -- and when she is done  I download my mail. The no-planers and gatekeepers are still controlling  the 9-11 discussion.
• The pro-Obama, pro-Paul and pro- Barr people are  still pretending to be on our side and most of you are believing it.

  • I've been coming to that conclusion too..
  Add Sticky Note
• But just as no herd of cattle was ever benefited by a maverick steer (especially  one with the AIPAC brand) so we see that Obama's advisors are all money  power Zionists -- his economic adivsors and his VP -- are as close to  Bush as Bill Clinton was close to Newt Gingrich on every issue of the  Rockefeller-Rothschild globalist agenda.
• And St. Paul of the Golden  Cross was so clever to "endorse Barr, McKinney and Nader and a few  others" making it look like he is resistance, when in fact by not  zeroing in one any one opposition candidate to support he has in effect  taken all of that support people have given him and wrapped it in a big  wet sack and tossed it into the black and bottomless well of nowhere and  never.

  • I had begun to suspect Mr Paul when he did not come out stronger and more stringent during the initial primaries and when he refused to organize and run on a third party ticket.
  Add Sticky Note
• Paul has done his job for his masters -- he has prevented real  opposition from appearing, just as Kucinich and Perot before him.
• I have been reading Plutarch's lives at night. His Lives  of the Noble Greeks. Plutarch understood politics better than we do.  If you ever homeschool your teens, have them read Plutarch's biography  of Alcibiades -- and you will see the perfect type of the people who  rule the world today.
• I was amazed that this account by Plutarch existed  and that no one has told me about it before I discovered it from a copy  purchased at Good Will when looking for some pants that fit.
• Every citizen  of any commonwealth with any hope for saving his countrymen from penury  and slavery should read this warning of what evil men are capable of and  how they operate.
• http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/  Alcibiades*.html
• Or here: 

    

  http://www.bostonleadershipbuilders.com/plutarch/alcibiades.htm
• Now we know what the elites have been reading and why  they love the classics and keep them to themselves.
• You may also wish to read about the founder of Sparta  -- for the type of man that we the people need today -- for that read  Plutarch's history of Lycurgus 

    

  http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/  Lycurgus*.html 

    

  http://www.constitution.org/rom/plutarch/lycurgus.htm
• The watchman on the wall must sound the alarm or the  blood of his city will be on his hands.
• Yours sincerely, 

    

  Dick Eastman  

  Yakima, Washington  

  Every man is responsible to every other man. oldickeastman@q.com
• Comment
    Bob Taft
• Most of the "why's are well known but it is the  dearth of solutions that most hesitate to suggest.
• Apparently those in attendance at the meeting of politicians  and bureaucrats that just decided on the current bailout of the banksters  all went away "scared" according to reports.
• Five million Main Street  home owners indebted to the banksters vs. a handful of mega-banksters  on Wall Street. More billions to come out of our hides. No question  as to who wins.
• We should all  be scared of what they have decided to do to us.
• On the solution side, there is one emergency plan that  worked well in 1933 and could do so again. You can buy a catalog of  DEPRESSION SCRIP, quite a big book, for collectors of such.
• When Roosevelt  shut the bank doors for a few days - to save the banks - thousands of  communities across the country, and in Canada, went to their local printers  and had local currency printed up to keep local economies moving.
• Not  all were political entities, many fraternal or business groups jumped  in to run the programs. All it took was a few people with integrity.
• We know that this is seriously lacking in FedGov.

  • To be sure and also in some State and local municipalities..
  Add Sticky Note
• To be sure, the banks  quickly reopened, lest the people discover that they could get along quite  nicely without them.
• Actually there are hundreds of communities already in  position, using local currencies to a limited extent.
• While all our political subdivisions in the US are corporate  entities functioning with huge asset accumulations as shown in their CAFRs,  there are undoubtedly many thousands of local politicians and local government  employees who when the chips are down, as they are about to be, will side  with their fellow citizens and against the faceless banksters who manage  the huge accumulations of wealth in government coffers.

  • Well, this may be; but read the article on Rense.com about the Oct 1, 2008 inauguration of the 3rd ID's BCT under North Com that is set to begin martial law to make sure the "French Aristocracy" is not tirn limb from limb in the streets by a justly irate American populace.
  Add Sticky Note
• Like UticaHours  in NY state.
• Actually all  wealth, governments' included, is placed at risk by the criminal minds  on Wall Street and in the Fed, which is actually owned by Wall Street  and their ilk.
• It will soon become critically important for all communities  to have a currency available to keep their economies viable.
• It would  be great of the several states would do this so their currencies might  keep larger territories functioning. Better yet, it would be great if  the states would use their own ability to create currency, and the threat  thereof, to force US Treasury to go back into money creation and to DUMP  the FedRes.
• So what if the 1787 ConJob says only the US may create money.  They have abandoned that mandate for nearly a century.
• It is time the  American people demanded the government do what their ConJob requires  of them. OR ELSE, the states will take charge.
• All revolutions need  not be bloody ones. The system is collapsing. Time is of the essence.  Screw Wall Street. 

    

    

  Best regards,.  

  Bob Taft  

  The Taft Ranch  

  Upton, Wyoming
• Comment  

  Jim Kirwan
• Excellent analysis Dick, but equally dire because you  care so much about those of us that are trapped at the bottom of the ladder
• In so many ways you and I are very much alike, and yet  in many ways we are also polar opposites, not by nature, but by circumstance  and environment.
• I just finished a trio of articles on this same topic,  but I've lived and worked "among them" for many many years.  And what I gleaned from that experience is that they always eat their  young along with all those they are sometimes forced to come in contact  with: once anyone comes to "know" this they violate the margins  of their own survival by failing to remember who these butchers truly  are.
• In many ways I envy your 'place apart' but I could never  live there. I wanted to go to college many decades ago, to actually get  an education, and while I had three full scholarships lined up each one  met with complete disaster for one reason or another, until I figured  out that I wouldn't be going to college - so I set about educating myself  instead.
• I'm pleased with how that worked out, but that's also part of  what separates our views in these treacherous times.
• My 'education' is  of the kind where there are very seldom any second chances, hence there  is almost no room to retain too much illusion. Imagination and creativity  - YES, but expecting the junk-yard-dogs to suddenly lie down with new-born  infants isn't part of these equations.
• I love literature and the arts, but for me; when I first  began to paint I wore a 32 Berretta in a shoulder-holster, with a paint  brush in my other hand, and because of where I was and how I was living  that was not extreme.
• That 'kid' seems to have remained alive at least  inside, even though I no longer wear a gun: but I have come to understand  that part of fighting for anything is the willingness of spirit to see  the value in that native expression: "It's a Great Day to Die."
• I realize that this only works for some people, it is certainly not something  that would work for most. This by way of saying that whenever anyone wants  to change anything major in this world, then we must be prepared to fight  those enemies where they live, but with our weapons, not theirs.
• I've shed some blood over the things I believe in, and  lost some of my own in that process. I've survived a number of 'contracts'  on my life, over the years by some equally determined people from the  other side. I'm still here, most of them are not.
• But no one can remain  lucky or careful enough forever, and none of us gets out of this experience  alive.
• What has carried me a lot further than I could ever have imagined  are the invisible means of support that I've been fortunate enough to find  along the way. That is indicated by the bright line of fire near the knees  that indicates the strength of the invisible- means-of-support, that anyone  with them can fall back upon. http://www.kirwanesque.com/deck/crossroads/xii.htm
• I imagine that you have had similar experiences. Please  revisit your power-bases and recharge the batteries, because the worst  is yet to come, and we need you in one piece for the war that's coming!
• Critical thinking in my case came out of the need to  survive in a world where I was very small and without most of the resources  that tend to assist the downtrodden with small victories.
• The logic and  reason that have survived in my world have been tempered in cauldrons  of fire and caves of ice: it's part of what has shaped me, and at the  same time it sets my views apart from most of the others that roam the  fringes of society today.
• Please stay in the fray Dick, do not let the bastards  grind you down - they will ultimately fail, because no cause or person  can survive with the kind of Karma they're currently dragging around,  and the world 'knows' this, as clearly as we do.
• Thank you for the article! It will take some time to  absorb it all, given everything else you sent as well, but I'm sure there  will be much in there that will go further than you might imagine at this  moment - because nature still has lots of cards to play, and nothing  is yet written in stone!
• These creatures brought us the first major depression  and everything from then till now, but that does not mean that they have  a license to continue doing this to all the rest of us, in perpetuity! 

    

  Please keep writing. . . 

    

  kirwan

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• We Are In One Of The Great
    Vortexes Of History
• By Karl Schwarz
    9-21-8
• We are in one of the great vortexes of history now.

  • And it was prophesied in the Bible...it is called the "Time of the End"
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• If  you stand back, from the "trees" of daily life, and look at the  broad "forest" of our joint history as the human race, you can  see clear patterns.
• Every so often the human race, or major parts thereof,  goes through major life changing events: wars, revolutions, economic crisis/recessions/depressions.
• It is clear that we are now in one of the largest of such events; that  we are in a great vortex and we have not even gone half way into this experience.
• Terms like "global financial meltdown", "global  financial catastrophe", "World War III", "global depression"  are becoming standard in describing where we are and where we are headed.
• The world's central banks are pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into  the global economy. Additionally government backed bailouts and arranged  sales in the tens and hundreds of billions are now daily events,
• the total  in America alone is now about one trillion dollars; and still the news  continues to get worse. 

    
• Many are rightly claiming to have warned us of the financial  nightmare that we are now in.
• A nightmare that is more and more like a  "tar baby"; the more we handle it, the worst it gets. One economic/financial  crisis leads to another.
• Already serious worries about the US$455 trillion  derivative market are beginning to creep into worried conversations and  news stories. Elderly people, who can remember the "Great Depression"  are saying we are going into another one; and increasingly serious economic  experts are voicing the same opinion.
• We "knew", or should have known, that the dismantling  of governmental controls, erected in the aftermath of the Great Depression,  would eventually cause a financial firestorm.
• We "knew", or should  have known, that the "hands off" approach of the last several  administrations in America, and the United Kingdom and elsewhere, would  lead to no good.
• We "knew", or should have known, that all these  new financial instruments, debt swaps, derivatives, etc., etc., were nothing  but trouble.
• So, why did "we" let this happen.
• The answer is  two-fold: the "we" is not us; and the "we" is us. The  true masters of the financial world, and political world for that matter,  are simply not the elected political leaders ~ they are largely just "front  men" ~

  • Politicians just the "front men" for the real rulers
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• the real power always is largely unseen and "behind the  throne" and constitute a very tiny percentage of the human race.
• However,  we ~ the great masses of people ~ are the very ones that empower those  behind the throne/curtain, who like the Wizard of Oz can only maintain  control if the masses chose to remain blind, stupid, and too lacking in  courage and morality to see and change reality.

  • The blame is ultimately our own for allowing these jackals to operate.
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• The world's economy and politics are largely controlled  by a small number of global banking families, some of whom have been at  the game for over 200 years.

  • The Rothschilds for one
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• They have simply massive levels of money and  resources of all types at their disposal. They control the central banks  of America (the Federal Reserve, which is privately owned ~ no more a part  of the constitutional Federal government than Federal Express [Fed Ex]  is), the European Union, etc.
• These families follow a formula when they want to institute  changes for their own benefit: thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
• For example,  they organized the First World War, and it resulted in mass murder and  economic crisis as it went on for years.
• In the Russian Empire the "thesis"  was WWI, the "antithesis" was the effect on the population and  the political "blow back" from the war. The "synthesis"  was the rise of communism, which they financed and controlled, and the  total police state control of the former Russian Empire that it gave them.
• Prior to WWI the Russian Tsar would not allow the Rothschilds and other  global bankers to control his economy.

  • So Nicholas had to be disposed of...
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• The "synthesis" was one  of the true goals of the "thesis" (WWI) and the "antithesis"  (the population's response to the horrors of war).
• The Great Depression was the antithesis to the excesses  (thesis) of the 1920s and the result (synthesis) was a greatly expanded  Federal government with massive programs (aimed at ending the Great Depression)  that required vast amounts of funding from their privately owned Federal  Reserve Bank and its ability to create money out of thin air and loan this  back to the government and collect interest on it (instead of the government  just creating the money itself without any interest being due to private  bankers).
• Side benefits to the global banking families was a great shake  out of wealthy Americans and their ability to capture a much larger amount  of corporate ownership/control than had existed before (using cutouts,  front men, and corporate control mechanisms established by them). 

    

  • The Bush Family and their satellite familial connections being one of them...
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• The Rothschild's Illuminati organization was instrumental  in setting up (thesis) and controlling the French Revolution (antithesis)  and the rise of Napoleon (synthesis).
• He in turn was instrumental in reshaping  the world, and in a massive growth in governmental debt as nations throughout  Europe borrowed money to arm themselves and fight in the various Napoleonic  wars.

  • So the Rothschilds were the winners in this one too
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• The game of thesis, antithesis, synthesis is played on  many levels and many such "games" are often ongoing at the same  time (think of it as multiple interrelated games of space chess).
• The unchecked  banking greed and the lack of proper legal controls and governmental oversight  (thesis) has led to the current nightmare events of major banks and insurance  companies failing or being bought out or funded by governments (antithesis).
• The synthesis is that, just in the United States alone, one trillion dollars  of new public debt has been created in the last week or so to "solve"  the problems.
• New debt that enriches the private owners of the Federal  Reserve System.
• One trillion dollars of debt, on top of the already massive  US national debt, that the American public has to pay interest on for many,  many, years.
• Of course, the "debt solution" is itself a antithesis  in a broader game with the synthesis being the New World Order (or a major  step towards it).

  • The Synthesis? The New World Disorder
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• The current "solution" to the crisis that the  FED and the Bush Administration have come up with allows the corrupt gains  to remain privatized while socializing the losses that Wall Street and  the global bankers have created.
• Its all a great evil scam and we, the public, are too  stupid, too scared, too blind, too wrapped up in television/etc. to be  educated as to what is really going on.
• And most importantly, we are simply  too lacking in good morality to have the strength, the moral strength,  to fight it.
• We are being told by the same governmental "leaders"  that allowed the current economic crisis to happen on their watch, that  they have fixed the problem with the latest round of new debt and governmental  slight of hand. Don't believe it for a second.
• We have just had a little  more chewing gum and bailing wire slapped on the global economic system,  but the system is collapsing and adding more national debt, no matter how  many trillions are involved, will not cure the problem. In fact the cure,  in this case, is simply more poison for the dying system.
• All of this has been planned. Do not let yourselves play  the village fool saying "why did they let this get so out of hand",  or "you would think that they could come up with something....".
• The global banking families, whose hands control the levers of political  and economic power in most nations of the world (and certainly America,  the United Kingdom, France, etc.), are very intelligent and are playing  a very sophisticated game ~
• actually the eco-political grand strategic  control of the world is the most sophisticated of all games. As FDR use  to say, "if something happens in politics you can bet that someone  planned it to happen".
• They are moving the world to a New World Order in which  they will have absolute and total control of all wealth and all levers  of political and military power.

  • And my Bible tells me what their end will be and the end of their corrupt NWO
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• To a world that utilizes 21st Century  technology to enslave the population. To a world that has a large percentage  of the "unnecessary eaters" purged by the coming next world war.
• Don't think that such a thing is possible? They organized, bankrolled,  and created the communists and killed about 80 to 100 million people in  the former Russian Empire and enslaved the remainder (and added most of  Eastern Europe after the Second World War) in a communist police state  using old technology.
• They bankrolled Hitler and his goons and set up the  Second World War.
• They organized the beginning of the First World War;  Trotsky was the controller of the team that killed the Hapsburg Archduke  that was the spark that began the war (of course, they had spent years  funding the military buildup and manipulating events to get Europe "ready"  for the "Great War").
• In the United Kingdom there is now one police spy camera  for every seven citizens; it is impossible to travel down a major roadway  for any distance without being under computer controlled police observation.
• The laws passed in the aftermath of 9/11, their organized false flag operation,  are designed to control the population and to end Americans' God given  rights that our ancestors fought for.
• Similar laws have been passed in  the United Kingdom in the aftermath of the 7/7 false flag operation.
• Across  Europe and much of the world, draconian measures have been passed into  law by national parliaments, all in response to the so-called "war  on terrorism". All based on lies and the greed of a very small number  of very powerful people leading the masses into the worst nightmare of  human history.
• The fact that so many of the secret ruling elite are  satanists should not be surprising.

  • Exactly and stupid asses still laugh at this fact
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• Ultimately, where their current End  Game in the drive for a New World Order is taking us is a place of total  global destruction.
• The various 21st Century weapons of mass destruction,  such as global strategic advanced biowar and global strategic nuclear war  and scalar war, are not weapons that are survivable for the human race  in a new world war.
• When you view the current strategic scenarios in a  cold analytical light and extrapolate what will happen you can only come  to the conclusion that the game is a satanic one that the human race cannot  win,
• and in fact, seems very similar to the rather strange last book of  the Christian Bible.

  • Exactly...and a few secularists are now looking at the old Biblical writings to explain what is happening and what the outcome will be; while the majority stick their heads in the sand or sign on to Satan's games with crystals, tarot cards, beads and meditation, as if those are going to effect any meaningful change at all. Who then exactly are the crazy ones?
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• Sadly, there is no force, political or otherwise, that  seems capable of reversing the trend to global economic disaster and global  war. 

    

  Stirling

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• Treasury Seeks Asset-Buying Power Unchecked by Courts (Update2)
• By Alison Fitzgerald and John Brinsley
• Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration sought unchecked power from Congress to buy $700 billion in bad mortgage investments from financial companies in what would be an unprecedented government intrusion into the markets.
• Through his plan, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson aims to avert a credit freeze that would bring the financial system and the world's largest economy to a standstill.
• The bill would prevent courts from reviewing actions taken under its authority.

  • No legal challenges now to what Paulson desires in bailing out his Bankster/Gangster buddies.
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• ``He's asking for a huge amount of power,'' said Nouriel Roubini, an economist at New York University. ``He's saying, `Trust me, I'm going to do it right if you give me absolute control.' This is not a monarchy.''

  • Secretary Paulson's gambit
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• As congressional aides and officials scrutinized the proposal, the Treasury late yesterday clarified the types of assets it would purchase.
• Paulson would have authority to buy home loans, mortgage-backed securities, commercial mortgage- related assets and, after consultation with the Federal Reserve chairman, ``other assets, as deemed necessary to effectively stabilize financial markets,'' the Treasury said in a statement.
• The Treasury would also have discretion, after discussions with the Fed, to make non-U.S. financial institutions eligible under the program.

  • In order to increase the pressure of sucking the USA into their Luciferian NWO feet first!
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• The plan would raise the ceiling on the national debt and spend as much as the combined annual budgets of the Departments of Defense, Education and Health and Human Services.
• Paulson is asking for the power to hire asset managers and award contracts to private companies.

  • 21st century version of the "Spoils System"
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• Most provisions of the proposal expire after two years from the date of enactment.
• Markets `Fragile'
• Paulson spent the morning today appearing on the Sunday television talk shows to build public support for his plan.

• He urged quick approval by Congress, saying financial markets are ``fragile.'' While the plan should have ``mortgage relief components,'' he suggested legislative changes should be kept to a minimum.

   

  ``We want this to be clean, we want this to be quick,'' Paulson said on Fox News Sunday.
• Speaking on NBC's ``Meet the Press, he said: ``This is not a position where I like to see the taxpayer, but it is far better than the alternative.''

  • Asshole!
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• He added that assets bought by the Treasury would later be sold, recovering some money for the government.
• A failure by the government to support the U.S. financial system could lead to ``a depression,'' Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat told reporters yesterday. ``To do nothing is to risk the kind of economic downturn this country hasn't seen in 60 years.''
• Buyer of Last Resort
• The Treasury is seeking authority to step in as buyer of last resort for mortgage-linked assets that few other financial institutions in the world want to buy, following government takeovers of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and insurer American International Group Inc.
• ``Democrats will work with the administration to ensure that our response to events in the financial markets is swift,'' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.
• The majority party will seek to reduce mortgage foreclosures and create ``fast-track authority'' for an overhaul of financial regulation, Pelosi said.

  • Sure they will, Hag!
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• Democrats will ensure ``the government is accountable to the taxpayers in any future actions under this broad grant of authority, implementing strong oversight mechanisms.''

  • Sure they will..just like prior to November 2006, Democrats were going to bring our troops home from Iraq!
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• The proposal will include curbs on executive pay for the companies whose assets the government will be buying, Steve Adamske, a spokesman for Representative Barney Frank, said yesterday in an interview.
• Preventing Foreclosures
• Democrats also will include a plan to stem foreclosures, which may involve tapping the loan-modification abilities of the Federal Housing Administration, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, Adamske said.
• Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts, is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that while he has misgivings about the rescue plan, ``the consequences of inaction could be catastrophic.''
• ``While the Bush proposal raises some serious issues, we need to resolve them quickly,'' he said yesterday in a statement. ``I am confident that, working together, we will.''
• House minority leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said yesterday he is reviewing the proposal but didn't say whether he was inclined to support it.
• ``The American people are furious that we're in this situation, and so am I,'' Boehner said in a statement. ``We need to do everything possible to protect the taxpayers from the consequences of a broken Washington.''

  • A "broken Washington" is an understatement, Boner!
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• Protection for Taxpayers
• Congress, which may pass legislation as soon as Sept. 26, needs to ``make sure there are protections built in for taxpayers,'' said Schumer, a New York Democrat on the banking committee.
• Lawmakers should ensure ``taxpayers who gave the money will be put ahead of the stockholders, bondholders and others.''
• Yesterday on Capitol Hill, legislative aides wearing polo shirts and jeans instead of their usual business suits filed into the House Financial Services Committee hearing room to question Treasury officials
• including David Nason, assistant secretary for financial institutions, and Neel Kashkari, a senior adviser to Paulson and former investment banker at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., where the Treasury secretary was previously chief executive officer.
• Paulson is seeking an expansion of federal influence over markets that hasn't been seen since the Great Depression, said Charles Geisst, author of ``100 Years of Wall Street'' and a finance professor at Manhattan College in New York.
• President George W. Bush said he called leaders in both houses of Congress and ``found a common understanding of how severe the problem is and how necessary it is to get something done quickly.''
• ``This is going to be a big package because it's a big problem,'' Bush said following a meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe at the White House. ``We need to get this done quickly, and the cleaner the better.''

  • When has anything in Chimpy's life not been a "big problem" and in which others had to bail his ass out?
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• Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said in a radio address that he ``fully supports'' Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke's efforts to stabilize the financial system. The plan, however, should benefit both main street and Wall Street, he said.

  • And here is another lieing, two faced asshole who is has his lips sewn to the Bankster-Gangster butt cheeks!
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• McCain Comments
• Republican Presidential nominee John McCain ``looks forward'' to reviewing the proposal while focusing at least in part on ``minimizing the burden on the taxpayer,'' said Jill Hazelbaker, communications director for the McCain campaign.
• The ban on legal challenges of actions by Treasury is ``distasteful, it's unfortunate and it's bad precedent, but this is an emergency and you have to act,'' said Jerry Markham, a law professor at Florida State University and author of ``A Financial History of the United States.''
• ``What you don't want happen is to have lawsuits that will slow things down and cause problems,'' he said.
• The proposal would raise the nation's debt ceiling to $11.315 trillion from $10.615 trillion and require the Treasury secretary to report back to Congress three months after Treasury first uses its new powers, and then semiannually after that.
• Paulson would gain discretion to act as he ``deems necessary'' to hire people, enter into contracts and issue regulations related to a revival of U.S. mortgage finance, according to a three-page proposal.
• The Treasury would ``take into consideration'' protecting taxpayers and promoting market stability.
• Reverse Auctions
• The Treasury may hire managers to purchase the assets through so-called reverse auctions, seeking the lowest prices, Treasury said yesterday.
• The document specifies that Treasury may buy only assets issued or originated on or before Sept. 17.
• The House will pass legislation to implement the plan by the end of this week, and the Senate will act soon after, Frank said on Sept. 19 in an interview on Bloomberg Television's ``Political Capital with Al Hunt.''
• Bush said yesterday he's unconcerned that the price tag on the package may seem high.
• ``I'm sure there are some of my friends out there that are saying, `I thought this guy was a market guy, what happened to him?''' the president said. ``My first instinct was to let the market work, until I realized, while being briefed by the experts, how significant this problem became.''
• The Bush administration seeks ``dictatorial power unreviewable by the third branch of government, the courts, to try to resolve the crisis,'' said Frank Razzano, a former assistant chief trial attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission now at Pepper Hamilton LLP in Washington. ``We are taking a huge leap of faith.''

  • Which is what the Luciferian Globalist assholes in both political parties have been after and we can include in these adjectives...TRAITORS!
  Add Sticky Note
• To contact the reporter on this story: Alison Fitzgerald in Washingtont ; John Brinsley in Washington at  jbrinsley@bloomberg.net

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• Financial crisis: Default by the US government is no longer unthinkable
• By Liam Halligan
  

  Last Updated: 11:48am BST 21/09/2008

  Page 2 of 2
• But, in the run-up to the US election in November, Democrats in  Congress - and even some Republicans - may decide they're  simply not having it.
• How much more can the US taxpayer take?
• It  sounds insane, but the liabilities being taken on by the Fed and the  US Treasury are now so enormous that the government itself could  default. No?

• How fragile we are: Chickens may yet come home to  roost for the US government

  Check out the chart showing the recent spikes in the US 10-year  credit default swap. In other words, the market is now pricing-in  the genuine possibility that the US will struggle to pay-back some  of its long-term T-bills.
• That possibility is still deemed to be quite low. But the ultimate  financial question - until recently, unthinkable - is now being  asked.
• Yes siree, the mighty US government could default.  That's how much the world has changed.

6 more annotations...

• Financial crisis: Default by the US government is no longer unthinkable
• By Liam Halligan
  

  Last Updated: 11:48am BST 21/09/2008

  Page 1 of 2
• After the  tumultuous events of the last fortnight, the global economic  landscape will never look the same again.
• So, here we are - the start of a new world order.
• Power has tangibly shifted - away from the United States and the  Western world generally, and towards the fast-growing giants of the  East. That's been happening for some years now.
• But September 2008 marks the moment when the scale of our  excesses, the extent of our debts and the moral bankruptcy of our  financial regulatory system finally began to be truly exposed.
• Hard times: central banks have acted to avoid a  repeat of 1929
• I say began to be exposed. Back in March, Standard and  Poor's, the US ratings agency, estimated some $285bn (£156bn)  of mortgage-backed securities would eventually be written-off by the  global banking sector. On Friday, almost unnoticed amid the panic,  that forecast was upped to $378bn.
• But the extent of the 33 per cent one-off  increase in S&P's estimate speaks volumes. It reflects just  how little anyone truly knows about either the ultimate size of the  sub-prime losses or who ultimately holds the related securities.
• In reality, total credit losses will be much higher - at least  $750bn in my view.
• But with one in ten US mortgages now "delinquent" or  "in foreclosure", and house prices still falling, such  "toxic waste" is burning holes in balance sheets wherever  it sits. That's why this crisis is far from over.
• It's difficult to overstate the enormity of what happened  last week.
• By any standard, the collapse of Lehman Brothers was a  dramatic - and alarming event.
• One of the biggest names on Wall  Street, the 158-year old bank was consumed by the scale of its  losses and crippled by executive feuds. Deemed by the US Federal  Reserve to be "sufficiently unconnected" to the rest of  the global financial system, Lehman was allowed to fold.
• In contrast, American International Group, the world's  largest insurer, was judged "too interconnected" to  collapse.
• So the Fed effectively "nationalised" AIG - the  biggest rescue of a private firm in human history.
• And it's  only a few weeks, of course, since the even more expensive bail-out  of quasi-government lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - which,  between them, account for a mind-boggling $5,300bn of mortgages,  around half of America's home loans.
• On top of all that, US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson sent an  $800bn financial rescue plan to Congress. He wants to create a  second "Resolution Trust Corporation" - or  government-owned asset management company -
• to take on illiquid  mortgage-related debts. The original RTC was established to rescue  the US Savings and Loans Associations that went bust in the 1980s.
• And by the way, the Fed has also just offered another $125bn of  liquidity to banks outside the US that are desperate for dollars and  can't access America's frozen credit markets - a move  co-ordinated with central banks in Japan, the Eurozone, Switzerland,  Canada and here in the UK.
• The combination of these measures - each of them of enormous  significance in its own right - sent stock markets shooting-up on  Friday.
• America's S&P 500 rose 4.03 per cent and  London's FTSE 100 soared 8.84 per cent, its largest one-day  rise ever.
• But, despite the end-of-week euphoria and trader-talk  that "the only way is up", despite America's  undoubted resolve and Paulson's determination to do  "whatever it takes", the situation remains very fragile.
• Nothing better reflects the amount of fear among banks in America  - banks everywhere - than the sky-high rates they're continuing  to charge when lending to each other.
• Ordinarily, inter-bank (or  Libor) interest rates are only slightly above base rates. But with  so much uncertainty remaining about the scale and occurrence of  "sub-prime" - and with desperate bank executives still so  reluctant to "fess-up" their losses - the US Libor rate on  money to be paid back in three months is now a staggering 1.5 per  cent above base. In recent weeks, Libor rates have shot up in other  countries too.
• Paulson's latest liquidity injection has lowered over-night  Libor rates for now. But, despite the torrent of cash the US has  directed at the credit markets, longer-term inter-bank rates have  stayed stubbornly high, and some have gone up further.
• In other  words, even the banks themselves don't think the rescue plan  will work.
• Expect more - and bigger - liquidity operations in weeks  to come.
• The trouble is, though, as the bill for these bail-outs keeps  rising, so does the possibility that the political consensus will  crack and there'll be an almighty, and debilitating, dust-up.
• Paulson's RTC plan, in theory, could restore confidence. By  taking sub-prime loans off banks' books, it could de-ice the  inter-bank market, restoring credit lines to households and firms  and preventing the "credit crunch" from shifting  wholesale, in that fabled phrase, "from Wall Street to Main Street".

28 more annotations...

• 
     

  Half a Trillion Bailout For The Creators of the Market Crisis
• September 21 2008
• US Mortgage bailout at half a trillion, Loss of confidence means end of credibility in the markets. Phony wars, phony values in real estate will cost all of you, financial companies bought out, power consolidated in financial markets, Gold on the rise, stock markets as volatile as a drunken sailor, why are the markets rallying after the big bailout
• We recoil in disgust at the way these arrogant sociopaths, the henchmen of the Illuminati at the Fed and in our Treasury Department, led by Bernanke and Paulson, respectively, are taking the toxic waste losses of the Wall Street fraudsters and dumping them on the taxpayer sheople,
• while short-squeezing savvy investors by selectively prohibiting and prosecuting shorts of any kind for the stocks of about 800 financial institutions through early October, which all deserve to be shorted.
• Between the Byzantine dollar rally, the Saudi crude oil assassination, the peppering of precious metals by pernicious paper-hangers (wasn't Adolf Hitler a paper-hanger at one time?) and the short-squeeze on financials, we wonder how many more hedge funds are going to go under, and take everyone else with them in the process,
• as Lehman gets cannibalized just in time to rack up mark-to-market losses for the sheople to eat in the latest bailout bonanza for the fraudsters, soon to be revealed as the Resolution Trust Company II solution?
• Bailing out the toxic mortgages found among the half of US real estate mortgages held or guaranteed by Phonie and Fraudie, some 5+ trillion worth, was not enough for them.  Now, they want to pawn the rest of the toxins from the other half of US mortgages, which they estimate will be about a half a trillion.
• Gee, didn't they tell us the Iran War would cost 60 to 200 billion, only to find out later that when you add in future costs for veteran's disabilities and pensions, the cost could top 3 trillion?
•  And didn't Bernanke tell us that the fallout from the subprime situation was contained?
• Of course, that was before we saw fraudsters around the world eat $350 billion and counting.
• And didn't all the fraudster CEO's keep telling us that their walking dead zombie companies were sound and liquid right up to the time that their shareholders got vaporized?
•  Aren't you starting to get a little tired of all the lies?

  • Way past tired!
  Add Sticky Note
• Can we trust even a single word spoken by anyone from Wall Street, the Fed or our "beloved" Treasury Department anymore?
• The Street, the Fed and our government now have ZERO credibility.  This loss of confidence is going to take the markets down no matter what these reprobate and sociopath elitists do.
• (1) The phony War on Terror;
• You will eat multiple trillions of dollars from each of the following:
• (2) the loss in real estate values caused by record inventories that will be created by defaults and foreclosures resulting from rampant unemployment, loan fraud, over-leveraged consumers and ARM and Option ARM resets;
• (3) the combined bailout of Fannie's and Freddie's share of the toxic waste contained in the approximately half of all US mortgages which these cess pools have made or insured, plus the losses from the Resolution Trust Company II bailout of the toxic waste from the remaining half of US mortgages;
• (4) the shortage in the FDIC's insurance reserves that will be generated by losses incurred on account of what will be anywhere from 1,000 bank failures, as suggested by billionaire Wilber Ross, to perhaps as many as half of all banks in the US, as recently suggested by Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America;

  • FDIC's insured losses
  Add Sticky Note
• (5) the PBGC's funding shortage to cover losses suffered by pension plan beneficiaries on account of pension under-funding caused by what will be the loss of as much as half of the value of all US equity shares;
• (6) the bailouts likely to occur when the credit default swaps and interest rate swaps, along with the entire bond market, go under in what will be the greatest bear market of all time in both bonds and derivatives, which are guaranteed to occur based on the hyperinflation that will be caused by all the other bailouts just listed, as well as by our continually burgeoning budget and trade deficits, the resulting double digit interest rates which will become necessary in order to combat inflation and to properly reward risks, which are about to escalate in astronomical fashion, and to attract foreign investment, which will soon drop to nil based on negative rates of return;
• (7) the loss in purchasing power due to hyperinflation generated by 1 through 6 above;
• and (8) the new wars for profit that will be started in order to restart our vaporized economy in the wake of the death and destruction caused by 1 through 7, above,
• and you can also add in the costs associated with potential social unrest and revolution that are almost certain to occur.

  • Social unrest and revolution
  Add Sticky Note
• When number 6 above comes to fruition, the entire world economy will implode and go into deep depression.  None will escape the coming juggernaut of losses when the glowing, quadrillion dollar Derivative Death-Star goes supernova.
• The entire world economy will get sucked into the resulting financial black hole.   
• The Resolution Trust Company II will be rammed down the throats of Congress, just like (1) the Federal Reserve Act that has been used to inflate the middle class out of its wealth by imposing a stealth tax which is used to fund profligate government spending and enrich private banker's with their debt-based fractional reserve system of banking;
• (2) the passage of the US Income Tax, which is used to enslave and impoverish US citizens and to ensure payment of the US Treasury's debt to the Federal Reserve on its treasury paper;
• (3) the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act by the Gramm, Leach, Bliley Act, which is what paved the way for the speculation, fraud and  conflicts of interest that always arise when commercial banks and investment banks are allowed to be merged under one entity, as we just saw happen with Bank of America when it bought out Merrill Lynch, and this poisonous piece of legislation is what allowed the Illuminist bankers to pawn off the toxic waste which their investment banking division created for its investment banking clients, after getting fraudulent AAA ratings from the ratings agencies, on their hapless, sucker-dupe commercial banking clients;
• (4) the passage of the toxic Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which freed the then fledgling OTC derivatives market, including credit default swaps and interest rate swaps, from the regulatory power of both the SEC or the CFTC, leading to an out-of-control, unregulated, under-collateralized, quadrillion dollar volcano of smoldering, molten risk that no one understands in terms of its scope, its interrelationships and its counterparty risks, and now these financial weapons of mass destruction threaten the worldwide financial system;
• (5) the passage of the Iran War resolution based on Bush Administration lies regarding Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction and involvement in 911, which has led us into yet another bloody war for profit under the guise of security, democracy and freedom, and which has resulted in the killing of millions of Iraqi civilians and thousands of our soldiers (move over Hitler, Mao and Stalin, the Illuminati and their neocon henchmen are just getting warmed up as they take their shenanigans to the Balkans);
• (6) the approval of both Patriot Acts to help us fight the evil Osama Bin Laden and the phony "War on Terror" while dismantling our Constitutional rights;
• (7) the approval of the Military Commissions Act which makes all dissenters into "enemy combatants" and takes away their right to habeas corpus;
• (8) the passage of the John W. Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2006, which repeals Posse Comitatus, meaning that our military forces can now be used against our own citizens for the first time in our history, and contrary to our Constitution;

  • SEE: 1st BCT of the 3rd ID, U.S. Army; mobilized by North Com for purposes of "exercises and training" beginning Oct 1, 2008...(right on the heels of a growing theft scandal in Washington DC between the love triangle of Jewish Banksters-Neocon Bush-and a supine Congress.
  Add Sticky Note
• and (9) the Fannie and Freddie bailout, which was just authorized so the fraudsters can dump their slime on taxpayers in a futile attempt to save their precious system of Ponzi-schemes and insider trading which is becoming unraveled right before their eyes.
• This is why all incumbents, except for Ron Paul, must be voted out in November.

  • EXACTLY!
  Add Sticky Note
• The House Finance Committee, headed by Rep. Barney Frank, and the Senate Finance Committee, headed by Sen. Christopher Dodd, will give it their usual Boo-Boo, response: "I don't know, Yogi," in order to give the clueless sheople the appearance that they are going to protect taxpayers from the slimy bankers, when the reality is, it is already a done deal and has been planned long in advance, probably for many months, if not years, just like the Patriot Acts.
•  What you are seeing happen right before your eyes is the revenge of the Illuminati for the passage of the Glass-Steagall Act.
• Not only have they repealed that act, but now they have reverted our system back to the way it was when the Stock Market Crash of 1929 occurred.
• This is why Bank of America jumped all over Merrill Lynch, and why you are hearing continual overtures for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to do the same, with claims that their business models are flawed.
• The fane-stream media now tells us that we need such combinations to give our financial institutions greater strength and staying power in the face of a crisis, when it is such combinations that are responsible for creating the crisis in the first place.
• This is the classic Hegelian Dialectic on steroids: first create the crisis, and then propose the predetermined solutions, stuffing them down everyone's throats, if necessary.
• If you want to see institutions that will automatically be deemed to be too big to fail the next time they defraud the public, just check out the gargantuan financial behemoths that will emerge out of the current crisis!
• Then the system is brought into a crisis situation, which was easily accomplished through deregulation, in order to propel us into a situation where the Illuminists are allowed to consolidate their power with the full blessing of the dopey sheople.
•  First, all the legislation was put into place.
• Note how this was all set up.
• Note how Bear Stearns was assassinated just before the Fed opened up its Primary Dealer Credit Facility and its Term Securities Lending Facility, which could have saved BS.
• They arranged to have BS's clients abandon them and withdrew BS liquidity and credit, and down they went, payback for not helping in the LTCM bailout and for not joining the Illuminist club.
• Then they string out all the other big commercial and investment banks, to see which ones would turn out to be the keepers, because the carnage was so bad and so widely spread that no one could tell which of the big commercial and investment banks might survive, if any.
• They needed time to figure out who the survivors would be.  Hence, all the desperate bailouts dripping with moral hazard were made to keep them all afloat while they were attempting to make this determination. 
• They decide to let Lehman fail because their condition is irredeemable and it looks like criminal charges may come up at some point due to shenanigans that management committed against their employee's pension money, making them a hot potato.
• They pair up Bank of America with Merrill Lynch, and we see JP Morgan Chase and possibly Wachovia pairing up with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, respectively.
•  AIG is being preserved to see if they can be fit into the consolidation scheme once all their problems have been sorted out.
• Wachovia and Morgan Stanley are already in talks for a merger.
• To support the survivors, they then announce the Resolution Trust Company II bailout, kill all shorting of over 800 financial companies, and then spew out money and credit throughout the international banking system in amounts that are nothing short of spectacular.
• This is an outrageous, unbelievable, unprecedented consolidation of power, which flies in the face of free markets and paves the way for an ever-burgeoning corporatist, fascist police state.

  • Precisely what we were told in 1993, it was going to be and the political-philosophy direction the End Time world government was going to be based upon.
  Add Sticky Note
• Hanky Panky wants to give the Fed sweeping regulatory power over this new group of behemoths who will control everything, while occasionally allowing crumbs to fall off their table for the little guys to gobble up.
•  And there will be far fewer of the little guys to worry about after the carnage in the banking sector has finally ceased.
• This is not a sure thing for them.  The fraudsters remaining, even the big guys, could still fail, that is how bad this situation has become.
• The Illuminati are quaking with terror that they have overdone things and that they could end up destroying the whole system irreparably.  That is why we are having all these bailouts stuffed down our throats.

  • Illuminati afraid they may have gone too far, too soon?
  Add Sticky Note
• Gold and silver went on a moon shot this week, with gold setting a new all-time record for a one-day increase in value.  That is what happens when you keep pressing on the lid of a pressure cooker, trying to keep boiling, molten precious metals from escaping.
• Aiding gold and silver was the unraveling of longs in the USDX futures market, who were forced to cover because they had pushed the dollar up as far as it could go.
• Suddenly, the 93,701 contracts of open interest on Tuesday were reduced to 52,872, being cut virtually in half.  That means the dollar rally is over and the ever more desperate bailouts are going to undermine confidence in the dollar.
• Soon, all these trillions in bailouts may lead to a downgrade of our treasuries, as our debt load will soon reach unsustainable levels, no matter how much the PPT tries to manipulate the markets.  The stupidest dolt should be able to figure out that much.
• The stock markets are shooting up and down with unprecedented volatility, bobbing and weaving like a drunken sailor as the PPT tries to fight the gravity created by the financial black hole created by the collapse of the Bailout Death-Star and the total lack of confidence of market players who are finally starting to realize that CEO's, Treasury Secretaries and Fed Chairmen are little more than pathological liars, and that the markets are rigged in ways that make China and Russia green with envy.
•  Look at the condition of the Russian and Chinese stock markets, which are being vaporized, compared to ours, which has been placed in a state of suspended animation by the PPT anti-gravity machine.

  • We will up them one better
  Add Sticky Note
• Hey Russia, and China, take some notes.  We'll show you what it means to be a died-in-the-wool Marxist/Communist state!
• And we lead by example, so pay attention.
• Remember, the satanic trillionaires that run our command economy from behind the scenes are the ones who set you up and financed you.     They are the true masters of Communism and Marxism!  You guys are amateurs!!!

  • The Illuminati; the Brotherhood; the "300"; the "Sirius Cult; the Luciferians; the NWO; the Globalists; the Satanic Elite
  Add Sticky Note
• Do you really think the markets are rallying because everyone is impressed with the new string of bailouts?  All the pros know where this is leading us, and they are de-leveraging.
•  If you want to know why the markets are rallying, besides tens of billions of dollars being unleashed from the repo pool for insidious and in-your-face manipulations, check out the yen.
• At 9 am on the 16th, it was super yen, at 103.650 yen per dollar and 147.592 yen per euro.  Now suddenly, despite the dollar crash, the yen has wimped out, and as of 2:25 pm on Friday, it stood at 107.065 against the dollar, and at 154.653 against the euro.  Rally mystery solved.  Let's get ready to rumble!!!
• The members of Pink Floyd become prophets for America.  Thanks to all the Illuminist lies the sheople have been injected with, the Goldilocks Matrix remains in tact.  Yes indeed, you have all become "comfortably numb.

• "O.K.
  Just a little pinprick.

  There'll be no more aaaaaaaaah! But you may feel a little sick.
  Can you stand up? I do believe it's working, good. That'll keep you going through the show

  Come on it's time to go.

  There is no pain you are receding

  A distant ship, smoke on the horizon.

  You are only coming through in waves.

  Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.

  When I was a child

  I caught a fleeting glimpse

  Out of the corner of my eye.

  I turned to look but it was gone

  I cannot put my finger on it now

  The child is grown,

  The dream is gone.

  I have become comfortably numb."

  Group: Pink Floyd; Album: The Wall; Song: Comfortably Numb 
• We hope and pray that the dream is not yet gone, and that Americans get a fleeting glimpse of our former glory and greatness, and that they wake up and stop allowing these scum-bags to have their way with them.    

  • Amen!
  Add Sticky Note
• RIP Richard Wright

75 more annotations...

• Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle

• By William Greider

    

   

  September 19, 2008
• Financial-market wise guys, who had been seized with fear, are suddenly drunk with hope. They are rallying explosively because they think they have successfully stampeded Washington into accepting the Wall Street Journal solution to the crisis: dump it all on the taxpayers.
• That is the meaning of the massive bailout Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has shopped around Congress.
• It would relieve the major banks and investment firms of their mountainous rotten assets and make the public swallow their losses--many hundreds of billions, maybe much more. What's not to like if you are a financial titan threatened with extinction?
• If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public--all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims.
• My advice to Washington politicians: Stop, take a deep breath and examine what you are being told to do by so-called "responsible opinion."
• If this deal succeeds, I predict it will become a transforming event in American politics--exposing the deep deformities in our democracy and launching a tidal wave of righteous anger and popular rebellion.

  • When the American people have finally had enough.....That is what North Com's Oct 1, 2008 activating of the 1-BCT of the 3rd ID is for; to protect the SOBs in Washington from the wrath of an enraged American citizenry.
  Add Sticky Note
• As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice.

  • Neither one of them are worth a damn!
  Add Sticky Note
• Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics, a brave conservative critic, put it plainly: "The joyous reception from Congressional Democrats to Paulson's latest massive bailout proposal smells an awful lot like yet another corporatist lovefest between Washington's one-party government and the Sell Side investment banks."
• A kindred critic, Josh Rosner of Graham Fisher in New York, defined the sponsors of this stampede to action: "Let us be clear, it is not citizen groups, private investors, equity investors or institutional investors broadly who are calling for this government purchase fund. It is almost exclusively being lobbied for by precisely those institutions that believed they were 'smarter than the rest of us,' institutions who need to get those assets off their balance sheet at an inflated value lest they be at risk of large losses or worse."
• Let me be clear. The scandal is not that government is acting. The scandal is that government is not acting forcefully enough--using its ultimate emergency powers to take full control of the financial system and impose order on banks, firms and markets.
• Stop the music, so to speak, instead of allowing individual financiers and traders to take opportunistic moves to save themselves at the expense of the system.
• The step-by-step rescues that the Federal Reserve and Treasury have executed to date have failed utterly to reverse the flight of investors and banks worldwide from lending or buying in doubtful times.
• There is no obvious reason to assume this bailout proposal will change their minds, though it will certainly feel good to the financial houses that get to dump their bad paper on the government.
• A serious intervention in which Washington takes charge would, first, require a new central authority to supervise the financial institutions and compel them to support the government's actions to stabilize the system.
• Government can apply killer leverage to the financial players: accept our objectives and follow our instructions or you are left on your own--cut off from government lending spigots and ineligible for any direct assistance.
• If they decline to cooperate, the money guys are stuck with their own mess.
• If they resist the government's orders to keep lending to the real economy of producers and consumers, banks and brokers will be effectively isolated, therefore doomed.
• Only with these conditions, and some others, should the federal government be willing to take ownership--temporarily--of the rotten financial assets that are dragging down funds, banks and brokerages.
• Paulson and the Federal Reserve are trying to replay the bailout approach used in the 1980s for the savings and loan crisis, but this situation is utterly different.
• The failed S&Ls held real assets--property, houses, shopping centers--that could be readily resold by the Resolution Trust Corporation at bargain prices.
• This crisis involves ethereal financial instruments of unknowable value--not just the notorious mortgage securities but various derivative contracts and other esoteric deals that may be virtually worthless.
• Despite what the pols in Washington think, the RTC bailout was also a Wall Street scandal. Many of the financial firms that had financed the S&L industry's reckless lending got to buy back the same properties for pennies from the RTC--profiting on the upside, then again on the downside.
• Guess who picked up the tab? I suspect Wall Street is envisioning a similar bonanza--the chance to harvest new profit from their own fraud and criminal irresponsibility.
• Call off their lobbyists, bar them from the bribery disguised as campaign contributions. Any contact or conversations between the assisted bankers and financial houses with government agencies or elected politicians must be promptly reported to the public, just as regulated industries are required to do when they call on government regulars.
• More important, if the taxpayers are compelled to refinance the villains in this drama, then Americans at large are entitled to equivalent treatment in their crisis.
• That means the suspension of home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies for debt-soaked families during the duration of this crisis.
• The debtors will not escape injury and loss--their situation is too dire--but they deserve equal protection from government, the chance to work out things gradually over some years on reasonable terms.
• We don't know how much damage has been done to economic growth or how long the cold spell will last, but I don't trust the bankers in the meantime to provide investment capital and credit. If necessary, Washington has to fill that role, too.
• Robert A. Johnson, a veteran of global finance now working with the Campaign for America's Future, suggests that our global trading partners may recognize the need for self-interested cooperation and can negotiate temporary--maybe permanent--reforms to balance the trading system and keep it functioning, while leading nations work to put the global financial system back in business.
• Finally, the crisis is global, obviously, and requires concerted global action.
• The agenda is staggering. The United States is ill equipped to deal with it smartly, not to mention wisely.
• We have a brain-dead lame duck in the White House.

  • And who should not be trusted with a box of Lincoln Logs; must less running the Government!
  Add Sticky Note
• The two presidential candidates are trapped by events, trying to say something relevant without getting blamed for the disaster. The people should make themselves heard in Washington, even if only to share their outrage.

33 more annotations...

• Who Will Speak For Us?
• Jim Kirwan
    9-21-8
• The short answer is "no one" because we have  chosen to abstain from speaking for ourselves.
• As a result; the government  no longer fears the people; so the people having chosen not to have a  voice, are increasingly used and abused to further the takeover that has  now become impossible to escape.
• The government is saying among themselves, that this  meltdown will encompass credit cards, student loans, all the pension funds,  social security and virtually everything else including our non- existent  jobs programs-not to mention the fact that we're looking at real job loses  this year of over a million people.
• This is part of their defense for  saddling the public with more than $11 TRILLION in debt, without any relief  for the public that is expected to pay for this obscene crime.
• When Ronald Reagan initiated the idea of "Morning  in America" people had forgotten that he came to office from a failed  governorship in California and from his stint on "Death Valley Days"  both of which had more to do with his policies than anything like his  vision of America as that "Shining City on the Hill."
• What Reagan  instituted was "Greed is Good" and 'Americans ought to have  whatever they want, no money down, and to hell with tomorrow,' (the core  of that un-checked capitalism that created the housing-bubble).
• One of the unspoken principle planks in the platform  of Capitalism Inc. is that 'Yes there is a free-lunch, and that every  citizen is entitled to it"!
• The second plank in un-regulated Capitalism  is that congress and the laws are meaningless.
• And as the decades have  passed what we see now where the congress used to be, is just a privileged  compound apart from the public's real concerns, where a bunch of toothless  mongrels prowl in luxury among themselves and bark incessantly at the  shadows in the world, well beneath their lavish perks.

  • A very apt description of Congress today.
  Add Sticky Note
• Now we come to a crisis the like of which the world has  never seen before: Because this global event has dwarfed all other previous  financial and political events, since those dark days when public records  first began to be kept.
• The stand-in theorhetorically responsible for  the Treasury who appeared this morning to be in the middle of a series  of heart-attacks, keeps trying to tell the public that "We MUST do  this quickly," despite the fact that he has no real numbers as to  cost or duration!

  • Henry Paulson
  Add Sticky Note
• He has also assured the nation that there should be  nothing in this for the taxpayers, those individuals who are expected  to pay for these failures.
• From Paulson we also learned that both parties plan to  remain bi- partisan (no opposition from within the government), regarding  this draconian step.
• Paulson freely admits that there are many components  to this massive failure brought on by several privately-held corporate  and offshore interests that have FAILED, yet he sees his measure as the  only way out of this global mess.
• People might have forgotten that the entire premise for  private- enterprise rests upon the risks that the so-called privatized-  interests take, which include the right to fail, in order to remain free  to profit hugely!
• The right to FAIL is part of their sacred circle of rights  that no one else can have-that is until they fail-bigtime-because then  as now those same private companies then demand a bailout by none other  than the public they so vastly screwed in the first place!

  • Well, screw them!
  Add Sticky Note
• To cap this  all off, now the government is telling the public that we have no choice  but to capitulate to these obscene demands-this is governance at the point  of a gun,
• and this demands that we change the government according to  the ideas laid out in the Declaration of Independence, which says in part: 

    

  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all  men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain  inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit  of happiness. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among  men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that,  whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it  is the right of the people to alter or abolish it. . ."
• This so-called government in Washington no longer represents  the people of this land,

  • Fact
  Add Sticky Note
• they only represent the corporations and the  global interests of the ancient New World Order that seek to enslave  Americans along with everyone else.

  • Fact
  Add Sticky Note
• In this case the idea is to create  a fire-sale out of a once thriving economy in order to buy up what's left  of this country at bargain prices, before they declare themselves the  sole owners of the world.
• The second amendment was placed in the Constitution  in order for the public to have the means to form militias that could  take back the nation, if that ever became necessary.
• Apparently the time  has come for the public to begin to give more than idle thought to this  crisis that threatens to literally remake the entire structure of this  nation and the world.
• If the congress cannot put monetary and legal limits  on this legislation, and if the congress and the White House are allowed  to pass something that does not insure the survival of the general public  which they shall have so freely and unconditionally taxed beyond all bounds  of sanity: then we must have a revolution in the streets!

  • Oh, the Government has covered all it's bases this past weekend when the request from Paulson for pillaging yet again the American tax payer became public: North Com is to institute an "exercise" and "training" operation with the 1st BCT of the 3rd ID out of Fort Stewart, Georgia, which will continue for a year; to make ready for any natural disasters or "other" situations that might arise in order "to protect the American people." NO! The bastards in Government can smell a firestorm coming and they are putting their military in place to keep themselves from suffering what the French "Elite" of the 18th century suffered at the hands of a pissed off citizenry.....Martial Law...beginning Oct 1, 2008

  • Fact
  Add Sticky Note
• The government needs to come again, to fear the public,  because they have proven beyond all doubt that they are unfit to lead  anyone anywhere, ever again!
• Their list of on-the-record failures is  staggering, and to any sentient being it is "unbelievable" even  before they have added this final insult to the pending total collapse!  "Capitalism must be checked, and leashed forever, so that these crimes  can never-again be repeated in the public's name.
• The laws on the books must be enforced, and everyone  involved in creating this hijacking must have everything they own confiscated  and go to jail at the very least: because to do less would be to encourage  these new-old Robber-Barons to continue with business as usual.
• Please remember: What is at stake is EVERYTHING monetary,  all pensions, retirement funds, social security, credit cards, bank loans  of any kind, not to mention the total lack of any funds for legitimate  business costs or expansions-the jobs don't matter because they're gone  already!
• Offshore-anything must be heavily taxed or forbidden  outright.
• No person with a hyphenated nationality ought to be allowed  to hold any high office in this nation:
• at the very least our representative  offices must be reserved for Americans only:
• and all foreign interest  groups must be registered as such including AIPAC;
• that way whatever they  do can be traced back to those who are directing their actions and their  influence will at least be on-the- record.
• The choice is simple, we must clean house because virtually  everything that has been running everything, at the highest levels, is  corrupt!
• If we can't do this, then we shall become the slaves that those  on top, have now decided, that we should be!
• So either we find our long  unused voices and our bodies to demand an end to all of this, or we shall  set precedent, by caving in to tyranny at the point of those guns that  we gave them with our long-held silence about everything they have done;  both to us and to the rest of the planet!
• kirwanstudios@sbcglobal.net 

    

  BACKGROUND:

37 more annotations...

• Monday Sept. 22, 2008 07:47 EDT
• Growing right-wing opposition to the Paulson plan
• (updated below - Update II)
• On Saturday morning, I noted -- quoting Atrios -- the almost complete lack of debate over the ever-changing dictates issued by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.
• Last week, whatever Paulson said on any given day -- no bailouts; only selected bailouts; massive $700 billion bailout plan -- immediately became the unchallenged conventional wisdom.
• That has all changed. Prominent economists, who had previously been defending Paulson for the most part, began voicing serious doubts about his plan.
• As the AP put it yesterday: "Many of the same economists and opinion-makers who'd provided a bipartisan sheen of consensus to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's previous moves have quickly begun casting doubts on the wisdom of a policy that would allow Treasury to purchase without oversight hundreds of billions of dollars of difficult-to-price assets from financial institutions."
• Not only Paul Krugman, who was a skeptic from the start, but conservative economic experts have also now expressed opposition, including former Bush and Romney advisor Greg Mankiw and -
• in an excellent column on Saturday -- Sebastian Mallaby, who described the rapid move to embrace Paulson's plan as "extremely dangerous."
• And now, some of the most rabid ideologues on the Right are voicing increasingly strident opposition as well.
• At National Review last night, Newt Gingrich wrote that "watching Washington rush to throw taxpayer money at Wall Street has been sobering and a little frightening" and said he "hopes Congress will slow down and have an open debate."
• Thereafter, NR's Yuval Levin proclaimed that nobody could read through the Paulson proposal "without concluding that everyone in Washington has lost their minds."

  • Yes..the lunatics are running the institution and have been for a long time.
  Add Sticky Note
• In The New York Times today, Bill Kristol said he's "doubtful that the only thing standing between us and a financial panic is for Congress to sign this week, on behalf of the American taxpayer, a $700 billion check over to the Treasury," while Michelle Malkin posted a lengthy alarmist screed warning that "Hank Paulson must be contained."
• Right-wing opposition to the Paulson plan is vital for having any meaningful chance to stop it.
• Does anyone have any confidence at all in the Democrats' willingness and/or ability to impede this bailout train if the Bush administration and the Right were vigorously behind it,
• warning the nation of impending doom unless we submit to vast, unchecked government power of the type Henry Paulson is demanding?
• The instances of complete Democratic acquiescence under those circumstances -- including when they "controlled" the Congress -- are far too numerous to allow any rational person to think Democrats, standing alone, would stop the Paulson plan. As sad as it is, meaningful right-wing opposition is critical for that to happen.
• More interesting are the reasons why these right-wing polemicists have decided they have real doubts about the wisdom of the Paulson plan.
• In opposing the plan, each of them cited -- with alarm -- the provision which vests full, unfettered and unreviewable discretion in the Treasury Secretary to determine how the $700,000,000,000 is allocated:
• Levin (plan gives "essentially unlimited power to use $700 billion to make purchases the scope of which is defined very loosely and vaguely");
• Gingrich ("We are being reassured that we can trust Secretary Paulson 'because he knows what he is doing'. Congress had better ask a lot of questions before it shifts this much burden to the taxpayer and shifts this much power to a Washington bureaucracy");
• Kristol ("There are no provisions for — or even promises of — disclosure, accountability or transparency");
• Malkin (Washington is demanding we "fork over $700 billion to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and allow him to dole it out to whomever he chooses in whatever amount he chooses -- without public input or recourse").
• Apparently, the same political faction that has cheered on every instance of unchecked, absolute executive power over the last eight years -- which demanded that the President, and he alone, decide which citizens, including Americans, can be spied on, detained, even tortured, and that no oversight or disclosure was needed for any of that -- has suddenly re-discovered their desire for checks on federal government power.
• The reason? They say it themselves: with the looming prospect of an Obama presidency, they may no longer be in charge of that Government and these "small government conservatives" have thus suddenly re-awoken to the virtues of checks and balances, oversight and other restraints.

  • True
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• In explaining his opposition to the Paulson plan, Levin warns:
• Even if Hank Paulson were the all knowing god of economics, would it make sense to give this kind of power to the treasury secretary for the next two years just forty days before an election? Shall we go through our mental list of who an Obama administration (or a McCain administration for that matter) is likely to put in that post?
• Gingrich writes:
• Imagine that the political balance of power in Washington were different.  

    If this were a Democratic administration the Republicans in the House and Senate would be demanding answers and would be organizing for a "no" vote . . . . But because this gigantic power shift to Washington and this avalanche of taxpayer money is being proposed by a Republican administration, the normal conservative voices have been silent or confused.

   

    It's time to end the silence and clear up the confusion.
• Malkin is actually worried about vesting such power in Paulson himself -- she thinks he's basically a tool of the Communist Chinese, a follower of "Gore-esque" eco-zealotry, and worst of all, someone with ties to some Democrats --
• but the point is the same: people have long predicted that the Right will do a complete reversal (once again) in their positions on vast federal power and unlimited executive authority the minute that such power is vested in someone they oppose and fear rather than in themselves.
• The remarkable spectacle of watching these right-wing authoritarians suddenly demand Congressional oversight and voice opposition to unlimited executive power -- two months before a highly possible Obama victory -- is quite obviously reflective of that shift.
• Rather hilariously, this was the very first comment from a Malkin reader after she sounded the alarm about the provision in the Paulson plan providing that his decisions are "non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency":
• So something that is unconstitutional cannot be reviewed by a Federal court? I guess, not even the Supreme Court. Well, if it is accepted, a precedent has been set, which will allow other proposals/bills to go through, regardless of legality, being "non-reviewable" by Federal court. A government running amok . . . with people cheering.

  • Where have you been, lady, for the past 8 years?!
  Add Sticky Note
• This person obviously has no idea that such provisions are hardly "unprecedented," but have been appearing in several of the most controversial bills of the last eight years (as but one example, The Military Commissions Act, a right-wing favorite, essentially purported to bar courts from reviewing the President's decisions about who to detain and further barred judicial review of the Congressional scheme, and similar "court-stripping provisions" have long been a right-wing favorite in all sorts of contexts).
• And more generally, this is how our Government has worked: the President demands unlimited power and Congress gives it to him.
• It's only because visions of a Muslim, terrorist-sympathizing, socialist President Obama are haunting them in their feverish nightmares is the Right suddenly deeply fearful once again of vesting vast power in the Federal Government and the Executive.

  • Exactly
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• But no matter. The blatant hypocrisy here, while extreme, craven and obvious, is also healthy.
• Hypocrisy of this sort is actually a vital part of how checks and balances are supposed to work. It is expected that political factions, when in charge of the government, will seek to obtain greater power for themselves, and the check against that is that the "opposition party" will battle and resist -- not necessarily out of ideology or principle but due to raw power considerations and self-interest.
• That is what has been so tragically missing from our political process for the last eight years: while the GOP sought greater and greater government power, Democrats acquiesced almost completely when they weren't complicitly enabling it.
• While the Executive was off the charts in terms of the power it seized, the Congress was off the charts in its passivity and eagerness to relinquish its Constitutionally assigned powers to the Bush White House.
• That's what has caused the extreme imbalance, with a bloated Republican Party and virtually unlimited presidential power: the failure of Democrats and the Congress to serve as a check on any of that.
• As their newfound contempt for unlimited power makes conclusively clear, the executive-power-worshipping Republicans of the last eight years -- if there is an Obama presidency -- will quickly re-discover their limited government power "principles" and won't be nearly as accommodating.
• UPDATE: I should add that Congressional Democrats, while largely on board with the fundamentals of the bailout plan, have been making noises about demanding some limits and oversight on how this fund is managed, and the political climate is certainly part of what is motivating the Right to voice these doubts, as illustrated by the bizarre and deeply cynical spectacle of the GOP presidential nominee -- of all people -- joining with the Democrats to demand limits on CEO compensation.
• The point, though, is that Democrats typically make noises of this type and then capitulate at the end if they stand alone.
• This Paulson bill can be stopped only with widespread opposition that cuts across the standard ideological/partisan lines, and it shouldn't be that hard to argue why handing over $700 billion to the very people who caused this disaster, while allowing them to walk away soaked with profits, is not a good idea,
• and that vesting unlimited power in the Bush administration to manage that is a particularly bad idea. If Democrats can't win that argument, what argument can they win?
• UPDATE II: A Rasmussen Reports poll released today found that "most Americans are closely following news reports on the Bush Administration's federal bailout plan for the country’s troubled economy, but just 28% support what has been proposed so far."
• As El Zongo notes in comments, this bailout -- like the FISA gutting and telecom amnesty which preceded it -- has no real constituency beyond the Washington establishment.
• Thirty-seven percent oppose it and 35% are unsure.
• That the public is so opposed and/or primed to oppose it more doesn't mean this won't pass -- we don't exactly have a substantial connection between what Washington does and public opinion -- but it does provide an important foundation for derailing this if political leaders decide they should or must.
• -- Glenn Greenwald

50 more annotations...

• USA
    Jim Kirwan
    9-22-8
• Today Bush literally said: "Yeah, this is a big price  tag, cause it's a big problem. I told my people that I don't want to be  timid in the face of a significant problem that'll affect the average citizen."
• In that same spirit, the public needs to respond to the  fact that the United States has become nothing more than one continuous  "immediate crisis" constantly on alert for threats of all kinds,  but which responds only to the needs of the private corporate elite:
• while  consigning the needs of ordinary working people to the trash-heap!
• Our  failed leader has left out some key points in his most recent proposals  that need to be considered:
• POINT 1, is that this country is no longer a Republic  we are a corporation that is still in bankruptcy, which is why we cannot  now just declare bankruptcy!
• "The UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT CORPORATION  went BANKRUPT in 1933.
• They MUST renew the bankruptcy every 70 years.   It was renewed in 2003.
• So it's already been bankrupt for over  70 years which is why everything is such a mess.
• The U.S. Government  became the US GOVERNMENT CORPORATION via the Act of 1871.

  • Thank you, damned Yankees!!
  Add Sticky Note
• The result is  that even our elections have been a complete sham and scam.
•  The American  people believe the system goes something like this, because it is what  we have been taught in school (and) essentially brainwashed to believe."  (1)
• POINT 2, is that the government is also lying about the  urgency of this crisis, it does not "have to be addressed this instant."  In fact 'the problem has not happened yet.'
• What is relevant is that Bush  & Cheney have decided to create a pre-emptive financial attack upon  the people of the USA, in order to crush dissent, before opposition to  their plans can get organized.

  • Nuremburg! Nuremburg! Nuremburg!
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• "With truly extraordinary speed, opinion has swung  behind the radical idea that the government should commit hundreds of billions  in taxpayer money to purchasing dud loans from banks that aren't actually  insolvent.
• As recently as a week ago, no public official had even mentioned  this option. Now the Treasury, the Fed and congressional leaders are promising  its enactment within days.
• The scheme has gone from invisibility to inevitability  in the blink of an eye. This is extremely dangerous.
• The plan is being marketed under false pretenses.
• Supporters  have invoked the shining success of the Resolution Trust Corporation as  justification and precedent. But the RTC, which was created in 1989 to  clean up the wreckage of the savings-and-loan crisis, bears little resemblance  to what is being contemplated now.
• The RTC collected and eventually sold  off loans made by thrifts that had gone bust. The administration proposes  to buy up bad loans before the lenders go bust. This difference raises  several questions.
• The first is whether the bailout is necessary.
• In 1989,  there was no choice. The federal government insured the thrifts, so when  they failed, the feds were left holding their loans; the RTC's job was  simply to get rid of them.
• But in buying bad loans before banks fail, the  Bush administration would be signing up for a financial war of choice.
• It would spend billions of dollars on the theory that preemption will avert  the mass destruction of banks. There are cheaper ways to stabilize the  system." (2)
• POINT 3, involves the actual status of the USA, or any  other country, as a nation state today.

  • In light of the treasanous elite peeing in their silken knickers for a NWO
  Add Sticky Note
• There are literally hundreds national  flags still flying in the world - but the only 'countries' that matter  now are the privately owned corporate states that have taken over everything  already.
• We must resist or we shall be sentencing ourselves to meaningless  impoverished lives of torture, shame, and needless death at the hands of  the same people that have caused this so called 'crisis' in the first place.
• POINT 4, is that the same people that created this phony  fiscal emergency still have their jobs.
• If this were real, then the first  order of the day, for the nation and the world, would have been to fire  the head of the Treasury and the SEC, at a minimum, but that was never  contemplated because they are part of the pre-emptive strike and are needed  to steal our money, reward the thieves and criminals and then leave us  with the bills for all of it
• without bothering to tell the public what  exactly they will use the money for, or how much this will actually cost  the public-nevermind the fact that like the Iraq War, there could well  be no end in sight for this hijacking of the entire financial system of  the USA! (3)
• This goes all too well with the other surprises that were  forced on Americans for political purposes: The lie of Pearl Harbor; the  lie of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident; the lies about 911 and all that flowed  from that; and of course the lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction in  Iraq ­ that's quite a lot of history to be associated with:
• Especially  when the last three mega-lies are directly associated with the same people  who were also never fired, and who like Kissinger and Rumsfeld and Rove  and dozens of others are still active in American policy today!
• We need serious investigations beginning with 911 and  moving on from there: but none of this will happen once Americans are permanently  saddled with the kind of debt that is now being proposed for the backs  of every American citizen, except of course for the elites who will become  even more fabulously wealthy over this latest mega-lie!
• On top of everything else, according to Citizens for Legitimate  Government Bush is now asking for dictatorial control over all of this:  "Bush administration seeks 'dictatorial power unreviewable by the  third branch of government, the courts'

  • That damned little Dictator
  Add Sticky Note
• 20 Sep 2008 The Bush administration  asked Congress for unchecked power to buy $700 billion in bad mortgage  investments from U.S. financial companies in what would be an unprecedented  government intrusion into the markets."
• Unreviewable decisions by  a US president, amounts to making GWB into a King, not unlike the King  George whom the American colonists rebelled against!
• POINT 5: If this plan gets the green light; then what  will happen to our retirement plans and to social security may end up looking  a lot like what happen to the Australians who have already done this.
• "Governments at every level, federal, state and local,  are warning of severe cuts to spending on social programs, basic services  and infrastructure. In New South Wales, the most populous state, it has  been revealed that local councils have lost hundreds of millions of dollars  by sinking funds into complicated, high-risk investment products, and are  preparing to slash spending on essential projects, including roads.
• A recent  report found that NSW councils had a combined exposure to collateralized  debt obligations and capital-guaranteed products of $1 billion. Before  Lehman Brothers collapsed, some 24 councils had been considering a class  action against the corporation.
• At the same time, millions of people are seeing their  retirement funds decimated.
• Over the past two decades, ordinary working  people have been compelled by the compulsory superannuation scheme introduced  by the previous federal Labor government to take cuts in real wages and  divert money into giant superannuation funds, all of which have been caught  up in speculating on the financial markets." (4)
• And finally why not force the US 'government' to prove  their case: demand that they show us that their "BAILOUT" will  even work. And if their plan does not work, then what is their plan for  that eventuality?
• In times of a real crisis what is needed above all are  calm and determined individuals, not the overly hyped-up babblings of a  Paulson or a Bush. What is needed is a clean slate of players in the financial  sphere of everything to do with our money?
• The FED bears major responsibility  for every monetary crisis going back to 1913 and yet Bush wants to turn  all this over to them, where no questions will ever be considered!
• Above all, the public whom this grand charade is supposedly  all about, will not only get nothing but more debt from the "BAILOUT,"  but the people will be burdened to the point of slavery for at least the  next fifty years.
• This entire fraud needs to be dissected, studied and  verified by people other than those who got us into this in the first place!
• The USA is not what it used to be in any aspect, but if even a shadow of  this country is to remain, then the people who this government is suppose  to serve must be heard from!

  • USA a different country now
  Add Sticky Note
• Unemployment is at 27% and climbing, working people are  in a Depression, and the candidates are dithering around mumbling about  gestures: they need to face questions from the people that are reasoned,  thought-out and audible before a national audience!
• Tough to do given that  'the media' is the formal mouthpiece for these same corrupt pretenders  all the way down the line. But 'creative people' might find a way, if it  really matters to them!
• Bush says he "refuses to be timid in the face of  (this) significant problem." So if that's good enough for the lame-duck  in the Oval Office, it ought to be good enough for more Americans!
• kirwanstudios@sbcglobal.net