Federal Reserve

Occupy Wall Street: The hidden meaning behind protests

November 18, 2011 By T Kelly 1 Comment

For nearly our entire history as a country, Americans have shared a social contract.

As police crack down on protests in New York City and elsewhere, what does OWS say about America?

It went something like this:

One of the cultural characteristics that makes America great is the fact that we celebrate winners in our society. We look at people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and we say to ourselves, “If I work hard enough, I can be like them.”

So we look in the mirror each morning and ask, “How am I doing? Am I working hard enough? Do I have the right education, skills and talent to succeed in this country?”

We don’t blame the rich for their successes, this cultural norm goes, because we know they worked hard and got what they deserved.

Instead, Horatio Alger-like, we turn these impulses inward in the name of self-improvement. We turn the success of others into models for our own behavior. We do not direct our personal frustrations and hostilities onto others.

This cultural reality in the US — this shared belief that hard work leads to economic success — has helped promote political stability and propel economic growth through the decades.

This idea has helped hard-working Americans grow richer, regardless of where they started and is perhaps the most important economic contribution the US has made to human society.

The critical assumption here, of course, is that the system needs to be fair. The rules of the game need to apply to all.

And that’s where the trouble starts.

The Occupy Wall Street movement represents a reversal of this largely unstated social contract in this country.

Right on cue, protesters nationwide are reacting to this change in this longstanding social contract. They are massing. They are demanding change. They are standing up to what has become — to the perceptions of far too many Americans — a rigged game.

A glance at the many protest signs from around the country makes the point:

“Robin Hood was right.”

“This country was built by men in denim and will be destroyed by men in suits”

“I am a human being, not a commodity”

“I can’t afford a lobbyist. I am the 99 percent”

In short, the social contract in America is broken. The optimistic glue that has successfully held together so much diversity, so many disparate dreams, for so long, is coming undone.

This is the unspoken message behind the Occupy Wall Street movement — in New York, Boston, Oakland, Portland and in all the other unhappy cities around the US. Its echoes can be heard around the world, from Tahrir Square, to London, to Tokyo, to every other place where economic inequality is today rearing its ugly head.

This is the larger point that so many people are trying to make, in so many different places.

Understanding this root cause is critical to addressing the problem, and finding a potential solution.

Unfortunately, the 99 percent and the 1 percent appear to be miles apart, and this is particularly true in the US right now.

Read the following statement attributed to Dennis Gartman, author of the popular financial industry newsletter the Gartman Letter, that was published Thursday on the FT Alphaville blog:

“We celebrate income disparity and we applaud the growing margins between the bottom 20% of American society and the upper 20% for it is evidence of what has made America a great country. It is the chance to have a huge income… to make something of one’s self; to begin a business and become a millionaire legally and on one’s own that separates the US from most other nations of the world. Do we feel bad for the growing gap between the rich and the poor in the US? Of course not; we celebrate it, for we were poor once and we are reasonably wealthy now. We did it on our own, by the sheet dint of will, tenacity, street smarts and the like. That is why immigrants come to the US: to join the disparate income earners at the upper levels of society and to leave poverty behind. Income inequality? Give us a break? God bless income disparity and those who have succeeded, and shame upon the OWS crowd who take us to task for our success and wallow in their own failure. Income disparity? Feh! What we despise is government that imposes rules that prohibit or make it difficult to make even more money; to employ even more people; to give even more sums to the charities of our choice. That is what we despise.”

Yes, Gartman is tapping into this rags to riches tradition in America. But his argument — which is a common refrain among those fighting for the staus quo — ignores what every child on every playground in the US intuitively knows: the rules of the game have to be fair.

Prior to this chaotic moment in our history, most Americans could turn their personal frustrations into productive energy. They could work harder. They could plot, plan and dream about riches. And, god bless America, millions succeeded in these endeavors.

But this social contract only worked if there was reasonable hope that these human energies would produce results. This only worked, in other words, if fairness was the norm.

This is also the larger point that Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman — the heavyweight champion of the world of free markets — made regularly.

In his seminal 1960 work Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman wrote the following:

“The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the “rules of the game” and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on.

In 1970, Friedman was at it again, this time on the social responsibilities of business as it relates to profit:

“There is one and only one social responsibility of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

So long as it stays within the rules of the game, Friedman believed, business was the best mechanism for producing social harmony.

According to most OWS protesters, this is precisely the problem: the American system is no longer free or fair (bankers win). The rules of the game no longer apply equally to all (lobbyists hired by the most powerful write the laws). The government’s umpire role is non-existent (Washington is staffed with former Goldman Sachs CEOs who bail out banks instead of helping “regular people”).

Of course, Friedman was the first to argue — highly effectively — that less government is better. Smaller and more efficient government is better for the economy, better for people and better for society. Anyone who has waited hours in line for a driver’s license or any other government service can attest to that.

But goverment has a role to play, even if it’s a limited one, of allowing a sense of fairness back into the American story.

Vitriolic rampage against government only creates more division. Vilification of the less well-off is no answer to this country’s rising inequality problems. Triumphalism from society’s winners breeds abhorrence from the rest.

Taken together this toxic mix of anger, frustration, and rising contempt by all threatens everything that America — the most successful economic engine the world has ever produced — once represented for all.

Source: https://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business-tech/111117/occupy-wall-street-the-hidden-meaning-behind-protests

Filed Under: Banks, Capitalism, Censorship, Consumerism, Corporations, Corruption, Downloads, Economy, Education, Federal Reserve, Health, Imperialism, Income Inequality, Justice, Libya, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Occupy, Oil, Police, Politicians, Politics, Poverty, Privacy, Propaganda, Protests, Revolution, Rights, Spirituality, Symbolism, Taxes, USA, War, Weapons, Welfare Benefits

Hillary Clinton and the new American (Pacific) Century

November 18, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently published in Foreign Policy magazine, “America’s Pacific Century,” a Hitlerian declaration of imperial intent for American “leadership” in Asia for the next 100 years. The piece, which could just as easily been penned by Neo-Con policy makers begins with, “the future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the center of the action.”

Of course, America’s presence throughout the Middle East and the control it exercises over the region’s oil resources, as well as over the region as a logistical hub, is essential in tempering the rise of Asiaand ultimately hemming in the rise of China and Central Asia. The “Arab Spring” which Secretary Clinton and the US State Department had been a part of preparing, equipping, training, and even arming for at least 2 years prior, is the coup de grâce meant to completely overturn the multi-polar nature of the Middle East and ultimately the world.

Upon reading Clinton’s declaration of intent for American leadership into the next century, readers may recall the similarly named, ranting “Project for a New American Century” signed off on by some of America’s most notorious Neo-Conservatives, which almost verbatim made the same case now made by Clinton. In fact, America’s evolving confrontation with China, marked acutely by Obama’s announcement of a permanent US military presence in Australia just this week, is torn directly from the pages of decades-old blueprints drawn up by corporate-financier funded think-tanks that truly rule America and its destiny.

As reported in June, 2011′s “Collapsing China,” as far back as 1997 there was talk about developing an effective containment strategy coupled with the baited hook of luring China into its place amongst the “international order.” Just as in these 1997 talking-points where author and notorious Neo-Con policy maker Robert Kagan described the necessity of using America’s Asian “allies” as part of this containment strategy, Clinton goes through a list of regional relationships the US is trying to cultivate to maintain “American leadership” in Asia.

For example, the recently reinstalled Wall Street proxy regime in Thailand led by Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister Yingluck, has received reassurances by Clinton herself just this week stating that, “it is in the national security and political interest of the United States to have this government succeed.” As reported in-depth in “CONFIRMED: Thailand’s “Pro-Democracy” Movement Working for US,” Thaksin Shinawatra and his political regime have had long-standing, well-documented ties to Wall Street and London. The US backing of puppet-regimes like Thaksin, installing them into power, and keeping them there is central to projecting power throughout Asia and keeping China subordinate, or as Kagan put it in his 1997 report, these proxy regimes will have China “play Gulliver to Southeast Asia’s Lilliputians, with the United States supplying the rope and stakes.”

It is essential to look past the empty rhetoric of “democracy,” “human rights,” and “progress” used to justify foreign-funding and meddling to install servile autocrats like Thailand’s Thaksin orMalaysia’s stooge dictator-in-waiting Anwar Ibrahim and see the greater geopolitical game at play and the disastrous conclusion it is leading us all toward. It is also essential to expose the disingenuous organizations, institutions, and media personalities helping promote this global corporate-fascist agenda.

Above all, it is important not to allow ourselves and our countrymen to be manipulated and their lives wasted in the inevitable conflicts that are sure to arise as Wall Street and London struggle to maintain, or even expand their global financial, economic, and military hegemony.

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/hillary-clinton-and-new-american.html

Filed Under: Banks, Capitalism, China, Corporations, Corruption, Economy, Federal Reserve, Imperialism, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Politicians, Politics, Propaganda, Revolution, Rights, Surveillance, USA, War

41% of Americans say the the “American Dream” is dead

November 18, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

In a somewhat shocking poll conducted by Yahoo! Finance, it has emerged that 41% of Americans believe that the so-called “American Dream” has been lost.

I say this is somewhat shocking because it appears that many Americans are just waking up to this reality.

However, the majority of Americans polled believe that the economy is getting worse. 63% said the American economy is getting worse, while 72% of those over 55 find this to be the case.

The “American Dream,” for the most part, has had a war waged against it for many years and we are just now seeing the devastating impact that this has had.

This has been done by the criminal banking elite which, with the help of the private Federal Reserve, defrauds and robs the American people with impunity.

It appears that younger people, like myself, are so blinded by the propaganda of the establishment media and mindless entertainment that they either do not care about or do not see the reality of the situation in America.

The poll also brought some more disturbing numbers to light including: 37% of American adults have zero retirement savings, and 38% plan on living off of meager Social Security.

An article in Yahoo’s Daily Ticker claims that macroeconomic data shows that the economy has technically recovered, but the majority of Americans aren’t feeling it.

While they do point out that a record of 49.1 million Americans are poor, they don’t point out that the outlook for the unemployed is less than promising, especially for the long-term unemployed, and the only ones who seem to be coming out on top are the corporations and banksters.

This isn’t quite surprising, as most establishment news sources continue to pretend that everything is okay and that we are currently recovering.

If you talk to average Americans, this usually isn’t the case. Many are falling on hard times which are only getting worse as the days and weeks drag on.

Sure, the macroeconomic data might show a recovery, but this is heavily weighted by corporations and the financial industry.

They say, “Considering 49 million Americans are living in poverty, the ‘real’ unemployment rate is 16% and millions of Americans are facing foreclosure, it’s no wonder many believe the recession never ended.”

However, the use of “believe” indicates that many Americans are simply ignorant or misled, but is that really the case?

If many Americans do not see the economic recovery in their lives, is there really a real recovery or a corporate-bankster recovery?

The survey also showed that many Americans are increasingly unwilling to take on debt, feel less confident about purchasing a home, and are spending less money while having less in their savings than both 1- and 3-years ago.

Other results of the poll, which was conducted in September by polling 1500 Americans between 18 and 64 years of age with the help of Ipsos OTX MediaCT, were not quite as grim.

They also found that between Americans ages 18-34, 53% believe that America is still the land of opportunity.

45% of American parents think that their children will be better off than they are while a surprising 68% of those polled say that their current financial situation is either “satisfactory” or “excellent.”

The Daily Ticker reports that this is consistent with the broad trend of growing income inequality in the United States.

They point out, “those doing well in America are doing quite well, indeed.”

This also reinforces the point that the recovery is only being felt by individuals who are already wealthy, and those who continue to steal every penny possible from Americans within the Federal Reserve and the big banks nationwide.

Hopefully more Americans will begin to take notice of the reality of the economic situation and start speaking out before it gets worse.

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/41-percent-of-americans-say-that.html#more

Filed Under: Banks, Capitalism, Censorship, Consumerism, Corporations, Corruption, Democracy, Economy, Education, Employment, Federal Reserve, Food, Health, Imperialism, Law, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Police, Politicians, Politics, Poverty, Privacy, Propaganda, Protests, Rights, Surveillance, USA, War

Rise up and support the real revolution

November 15, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

“Promise, promise, lie (making money, making money, making money), lie, lie, lie, lie, promise.”

Sound familiar? It should — that’s the sound of your elected politicians. Between all the false promises there is nothing more than lies and profit. It’s a truth and its verification only requires the fundamental ability to read and the problem-solving skills of a 3rd grader. Let me explain.

The system that your politicians work for is no longer your system. It is their system. It is planned, modified, and controlled by them. It benefits their own interests and their own interests only. To realize this truth is very simple — all you have to do is look at the legislation. They create it, present it, pass it, and it’s written on paper for all to decipher.

So, let’s look at this legislation. What does it do?

Well, for the people, it creates restrictions. It decides what you as an individual cannot do. It decides what is considered to be wrong. It decides what you can be reprimanded, penalized, fined or incarcerated for. To the people, legislation is nothing more than the continual loss of our freedoms.

Now, let’s take a look at the corporate side of legislation. What does it do? It creates “regulations”, not restrictions. Regulations enable corporations instead of restrict them. Regulation is nothing more than a cute word that allows corporate entities to be exempt from the very same laws that apply to the individual. Basically, regulations set standards on how much crime can be committed by corporations.

It requires a very limited amount of thinking to understand almost immediately that this situation alone is a recipe for disaster. I need not delve any further for one to realize that restrictions for consumers, but freedom for profiteers, equals a fascist system. You don’t have to look into the specifics of the laws, or any law specifically to see that we lose freedom as corporations gain it. Nearly every piece of legislation that is created by the federal government serves to directly benefit either big business or the government itself.

Meanwhile, they use our tax monies to run rampant across the global landscape as they leverage their political powers to maximize the profits for corporations (which in turn reward them with commissions). They rape, rob, pillage, destroy, corrupt, and pollute in the name of profits. They deface the earth while simultaneously committing genocides which they then contort and present to us as either an act of liberation for oppressed peoples, or the elimination of a terror threat.

I’m not sure about you, but I want absolutely nothing to do with a system that operates in this fashion. It’s 110% absolutely and completely ludicrous for anyone to obey the laws of murderous dictators who repeatedly commit high-crime against humanity on a global level.

If you knew that somebody was going to rape a 12-year-old girl before blowing her brains out and lighting her body on fire in front of her family, would you give them 20% of your paycheck to do so? I don’t think you would, and it’s for that same reason that I don’t believe you should pay income tax.

Our system is completely defunct, both financially and morally. It’s not only insufficient for our best interests as a society, it’s downright destructive. It suffers an absolute lack of reasoning and has no room whatsoever for even an ounce of human compassion.

The flags, the fake debates, the false promises, the “god bless our nation” — it’s nothing more than pure deception. It’s proven to be so convincing that although its creators don’t deserve the title of Human, one could easily say it’s a masterpiece worthy of the title of genius. This picture of America — a magical fairyland with freedom and prosperity for all — is painted with blood on the dead flesh of freedom.

Do not stand up for it. Do not represent your government, just as they don’t represent you. Denounce your association with them. Refuse to participate in a system that wreaks havoc on innocent human life. Refuse to play their game any longer. Refuse to believe their lies and refuse to let anyone else tell you otherwise. We are humans, living beings, individuals with souls who are born free. Refuse to be tied down by authority.

Do not be dumb. Do not be like the battered woman with broken arms who says she’s in love. Do not remain loyal to a hand that doesn’t feed you. Do not believe that you have to do what everyone else does, or that it’s right simply because they do it. Rise above the scum who run this system, let them know that you know the truth, that you’re not afraid and that you refuse to participate. Do it with your family, your friends, whoever you care about.

Rise above this oppressive regime of global control freaks. They are nothing. They are mental, physical and spiritual slumlords. They have nothing to hide behind except an illusion. They are weak, insecure and miserable. As the days pass by, their time to remain in charge grows shorter. It’s happening around the world — people are revolting. There is a knowledge being consumed and it is empowering the people.

The biggest myth that they ever created is that “freedom isn’t free”.

It is free, take it. Participate. Occupy. Denounce support for politics and corruption once and for all.

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/10/rise-up-and-support-real-revolution.html

Filed Under: Banks, Capitalism, Censorship, Corporations, Corruption, Democracy, Economy, Education, Environment, Federal Reserve, Health, Income Inequality, Law, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Monsanto, Occupy, Police, Politicians, Poverty, Privacy, Propaganda, Protests, Revolution, Rights, Taxes, USA, War

The Wall Street Pentagon Papers: Biggest Scam In World History Exposed: Are The Federal Reserve’s Crimes Too Big To Comprehend?

November 15, 2011 By T Kelly 4 Comments

What if the greatest scam ever perpetrated was blatantly exposed, and the US media didn’t cover it? Does that mean the scam could keep going? That’s what we are about to find out.

I understand the importance of the new WikiLeaks documents. However, we must not let them distract us from the new information the Federal Reserve was forced to release. Even if WikiLeaks reveals documents from inside a large American bank, as huge as that could be, it will most likely pale in comparison to what we just found out from the one-time peek we got into the inner-workings of the Federal Reserve. This is the Wall Street equivalent of the Pentagon Papers.

I’ve written many reports detailing the crimes of Wall Street during this crisis. The level of fraud, from top to bottom, has been staggering. The lack of accountability and the complete disregard for the rule of law have made me and many of my colleagues extremely cynical and jaded when it comes to new evidence to pile on top of the mountain that we have already gathered. But we must not let our cynicism cloud our vision on the details within this new information.

Just when I thought the banksters couldn’t possibly shock me anymore… they did.

We were finally granted the honor and privilege of finding out the specifics, a limited one-time Federal Reserve view, of a secret taxpayer funded “backdoor bailout” by a small group of unelected bankers. This data release reveals “emergency lending programs” that doled out $12.3 TRILLION in taxpayer money – $3.3 trillion in liquidity, $9 trillion in “other financial arrangements.”

Wait, what? Did you say $12.3 TRILLION tax dollars were thrown around in secrecy by unelected bankers… and Congress didn’t know any of the details?

Yes. The Founding Fathers are rolling over in their graves. The original copy of the Constitution spontaneously burst into flames. The ghost of Tom Paine went running, stark raving mad screaming through the halls of Congress.

The Federal Reserve was secretly throwing around our money in unprecedented fashion, and it wasn’t just to the usual suspects like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, etc.; it was to the entire Global Banking Cartel. To central banks throughout the world: Australia, Denmark, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, England… To the Fed’s foreign primary dealers like Credit Suisse (Switzerland), Deutsche Bank (Germany), Royal Bank of Scotland (U.K.), Barclays (U.K.), BNP Paribas (France)… All their Ponzi players were “gifted.” All the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations got their cut.

Talk about the ransacking and burning of Rome! Sayonara American middle class…

If you still had any question as to whether or not the United States is now the world’s preeminent banana republic, the final verdict was just delivered and the decision was unanimous. The ayes have it.

Any fairytale notions that we are living in a nation built on the rule of law and of the global economy being based on free market principles has now been exposed as just that, a fairytale. This moment is equivalent to everyone in Vatican City being told, by the Pope, that God is dead.

I’ve been arguing for years that the market is rigged and that the major Wall Street firms are elaborate Ponzi schemes, as have many other people who built their beliefs on rational thought, reasoned logic and evidence. We already came to this conclusion by doing the research and connecting the dots. But now, even our strongest skeptics and the most ardent Wall Street supporters have it all laid out in front of them, on FEDERAL RESERVE SPREADSHEETS.

Even the Financial Times, which named Lloyd Blankfein its 2009 person of the year, reacted by reporting this: “The initial reactions were shock at the breadth of lending, particularly to foreign firms. But the details paint a bleaker and even more disturbing picture.”

Yes, the emperor doesn’t have any clothes. God is, indeed, dead. But, for the moment at least, the illusion continues to hold power. How is this possible?

To start with, as always, the US television “news” media (propaganda) networks just glossed over the whole thing – nothing to see here, just move along, back after a message from our sponsors… Other than that obvious reason, I’ve come to the realization that the Federal Reserve’s crimes are so big, so huge in scale, it is very hard for people to even wrap their head around it and comprehend what has happened here.

Think about it. In just this one peek we got at its operations, we learned that the Fed doled out $12.3 trillion in near-zero interest loans, without Congressional input.

The audacity and absurdity of it all is mind boggling…

Based on many conversations I’ve had with people, it seems that the average person doesn’t comprehend how much a trillion dollars is, let alone 12.3 trillion. You might as well just say 12.3 gazillion, because people don’t grasp a number that large, nor do they understand what would be possible if that money was used in other ways.

Can you imagine what we could do to restructure society with $12.3 trillion? Think about that…

People also can’t grasp the colossal crime committed because they keep hearing the word “loans.” People think of the loans they get. You borrow money, you pay it back with interest, no big deal.

That’s not what happened here. The Fed doled out $12.3 trillion in near-zero interest loans, using the American people as collateral, demanding nothing in return, other than a bunch of toxic assets in some cases. They only gave this money to a select group of insiders, at a time when very few had any money because all these same insiders and speculators crashed the system.

Do you get that? The very people most responsible for crashing the system, were then rewarded with trillions of our dollars. This gave that select group of insiders unlimited power to seize control of assets and have unprecedented leverage over almost everything within their economies – crony capitalism on steroids.

This was a hostile world takeover orchestrated through economic attacks by a very small group of unelected global bankers. They paralyzed the system, then were given the power to recreate it according to their own desires. No free market, no democracy of any kind. All done in secrecy. In the process, they gave themselves all-time record-breaking bonuses and impoverished tens of millions of people – they have put into motion a system that will inevitably collapse again and utterly destroy the very existence of what is left of an economic middle class.

That is not hyperbole. That is what happened.

We are talking about trillions of dollars secretly pumped into global banks, handpicked by a small select group of bankers themselves. All for the benefit of those bankers, and at the expense of everyone else. People can’t even comprehend what that means and the severe consequences that it entails, which we have only just begun to experience.

Let me sum it up for you: The American Dream is O-V-E-R.

Welcome to the neo-feudal-fascist state.

People throughout the world who keep using the dollar are either A) Part of the scam; B) Oblivious to reality; C) Believe that US military power will be able to maintain the value of an otherwise worthless currency; D) All of the above.

No matter which way you look at it, we are all in serious trouble!

If you are an elected official, (I know at least 17 of you subscribe to my newsletter) and you believe in the oath you took upon taking office, you must immediately demand a full audit of the Federal Reserve and have Ben Bernanke and the entire Federal Reserve Board detained. If you are not going to do that, you deserve to have the words “Irrelevant Puppet” tattooed across your forehead.

Yes, those are obviously strong words, but they are the truth.

The Global Banking Cartel has now been so blatantly exposed, you cannot possibly get away with pretending that we live in a nation of law based on the Constitution. The jig is up.

It’s been over two years now; does anyone still seriously not understand why we are in this crisis? Our economy has been looted and burnt to the ground due to the strategic, deliberate decisions made by a small group of unelected global bankers at the Federal Reserve. Do people really not get the connection here? I mean, H.E.L.L.O. Our country is run by an unelected Global Banking Cartel.

I am constantly haunted by a quote from Harry Overstreet, who wrote the following in his 1925 groundbreaking study Influencing Human Behavior: “Giving people the facts as a strategy of influence” has been a failure, “an enterprise fraught with a surprising amount of disappointment.”

This crisis overwhelmingly proves Overstreet’s thesis to be true. Nonetheless, we solider on…

Here’s a roundup of reports on this Bernanke Leaks:

Prepare to enter the theater of the absurd…

I’ll start with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). He was the senator who Bernanke blew off when he was asked for information on this heist during a congressional hearing. Sanders fought to get the amendment written into the financial “reform” bill that gave us this one-time peek into the Fed’s secret operations. (Remember, remember the 6th of May, HFT, flash crash and terrorism. “Hey, David, Homeland Security is on the phone! They want to ask you questions about some NYSE SLP program.”)

In an article entitled, “A Real Jaw-Dropper at the Federal Reserve,” Senator Sanders reveals some of the details:

At a Senate Budget Committee hearing in 2009, I asked Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to tell the American people the names of the financial institutions that received an unprecedented backdoor bailout from the Federal Reserve, how much they received, and the exact terms of this assistance. He refused. A year and a half later… we have begun to lift the veil of secrecy at the Fed…

After years of stonewalling by the Fed, the American people are finally learning the incredible and jaw-dropping details of the Fed’s multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America….

We have learned that the $700 billion Wall Street bailout… turned out to be pocket change compared to the trillions and trillions of dollars in near-zero interest loans and other financial arrangements the Federal Reserve doled out to every major financial institution in this country.…

Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign private banks and corporations including two European megabanks — Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse — which were the largest beneficiaries of the Fed’s purchase of mortgage-backed securities….

Has the Federal Reserve of the United States become the central bank of the world?… [read Global Banking Cartel]

What this disclosure tells us, among many other things, is that despite this huge taxpayer bailout, the Fed did not make the appropriate demands on these institutions necessary to rebuild our economy and protect the needs of ordinary Americans….

What we are seeing is the incredible power of a small number of people who have incredible conflicts of interest getting incredible help from the taxpayers of this country while ignoring the needs of the people.

In an article entitled, “The Fed Lied About Wall Street,” Zach Carter sums it up this way:

The Federal Reserve audit is full of frightening revelations about U.S. economic policy and those who implement it… By denying the solvency crisis, major bank executives who had run their companies into the ground were allowed to keep their jobs, and shareholders who had placed bad bets on their firms were allowed to collect government largesse, as bloated bonuses began paying out soon after.

But the banks themselves still faced a capital shortage, and were only kept above those critical capital thresholds because federal regulators were willing to look the other way, letting banks account for obvious losses as if they were profitable assets.

So based on the Fed audit data, it’s hard to conclude that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was telling the truth when he told Congress on March 3, 2009, that there were no zombie banks in the United States.

“I don’t think that any major U.S. bank is currently a zombie institution,” Bernanke said.

As Bernanke spoke those words banks had been pledging junk bonds as collateral under Fed facilities for several months…

This is the heart of today’s foreclosure fraud crisis. Banks are foreclosing on untold numbers of families who have never missed a payment, because rushing to foreclosure generates lucrative fees for the banks, whatever the costs to families and investors. This is, in fact, far worse than what Paul Krugman predicted. Not only are zombie banks failing to support the economy, they are actively sabotaging it with fraud in order to make up for their capital shortages. Meanwhile, regulators are aggressively looking the other way.

The Fed had to fix liquidity in 2008. That was its job. But as major banks went insolvent, the Fed and Treasury had a responsibility to fix that solvency issue—even though that meant requiring shareholders and executives to live up to losses. Instead, as the Fed audit tells us, policymakers knowingly ignored the real problem, pushing losses onto the American middle class in the process.”

Even the Financial Times is jumping ship:

Sunlight Shows Cracks in Fed’s Rescue Story

It took two years, a hard-fought lawsuit, and an act of Congress, but finally… the Federal Reserve disclosed the details of its financial crisis lending programs. The initial reactions were shock at the breadth of lending, particularly to foreign firms. But the details paint a bleaker, earlier, and even more disturbing picture…. An even more troubling conclusion from the data is that… it is now apparent that the Fed took on far more risk, on less favorable terms, than most people have realized.

In true Fed fashion, they didn’t even fully comply with Congress. In a report entitled, “Fed Withholds Collateral Data for $885 Billion in Financial-Crisis Loans,” Bloomberg puts some icing on the cake:

For three of the Fed’s six emergency facilities, the central bank released information on groups of collateral it accepted by asset type and rating, without specifying individual securities. Among them was the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, created in March 2008 to provide loans to brokers as Bear Stearns Cos. collapsed.

“This is a half-step,” said former Atlanta Fed research director Robert Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Cumberland Advisors Inc. in Sarasota, Florida. “If you were going to audit the facilities, then would this enable you to do an audit? The answer is ‘No,’ you would have to go in and look at the individual amounts of collateral and how it was broken down to do that. And that is the spirit of what the requirements were in Dodd-Frank.”

Here’s the only person on US TV “news” who actually covers and understands any of this, enter Dylan Ratigan, with his guest Chris Whalen from Institutional Risk Analytics. This quote from Whalen sums it up well: “The folks at the Fed have become so corrupt, so captured by the banking industry… the Fed is there to support the speculators and they let the real economy go to hell.”

The Progressive’s Matthew Rothschild has a good quote: “The financial bailout was a giant boondoggle, undemocratic and kleptocratic to its core.”

Matt Stoller on NewDeal 2.0:

End This Fed

The Fed, and specifically the people who run it, are responsible for declining wages, for de-industrialization, for bubbles, and for the systemic corruption of American capital markets. The new financial blogosphere destroyed the Fed’s mythic stature…. With a loss of legitimacy comes a lack of public trust and a vulnerability to any form of critic. The Fed is now less respected than the IRS…. Liberals should stop their love affair with conservative technocratic myths of monetary independence, and cease seeing this Federal Reserve as a legitimate actor. At the very least, we need to begin noticing that these people do in fact run the country, and should not.

The Sunlight Foundation shines a light on Bank of America and the Federal Reserve’s brother money manager BlackRock:

Federal Reserve Loan Program Allowed Bank of America to Benefit Twice

Bank of America was one of several banks that was able to play both sides of a Federal Reserve program launched during the 2008 financial crisis. While Bank of America was selling its assets to firms obtaining loans through the Fed program, the investment firm BlackRock—partially owned by Bank of America—was potentially turning a profit by using those loans to buy assets similar to those sold by Bank of America.

Gretchen Morgenson at the New York Times jumps into the act:

So That’s Where the Money Went

How the truth shines through when you shed a little light on a subject….

All of the emergency lending data released by the Fed are highly revealing, but why weren’t they made public much earlier? That’s a question that Walker F. Todd, a research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, is asking.

Mr. Todd, a former assistant general counsel and research officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, said details about the Fed’s vast and various programs should have been available before the Dodd-Frank regulatory reform law was even written.

“The Fed’s current set of powers and the shape of the Dodd-Frank bill over all might have looked quite different if this information had been made public during the debate on the bill,” he said. “Had these tables been out there, I think Congress would have either said no to emergency lending authority or if you get it, it’s going to be a much lower number — half a trillion dollars in the aggregate.” [read more]

Welcome to the “global pawnshop:”

The Fed Operates as a “global pawnshop:” $9 trillion to 18 financial institutions

What the report shows is that the Fed operated as a global pawnshop taking in practically anything the banks had for collateral. What is even more disturbing is that the Federal Reserve did not enact any punitive charges to these borrowers so you had banks like Goldman Sachs utilizing the crisis to siphon off cheap collateral. The Fed is quick to point out that “taxpayers were fully protected” but mention little of the destruction they have caused to the US dollar. This is a hidden cost to Americans and it also didn’t help that they were the fuel that set off the biggest global housing bubble ever witnessed by humanity. [read more]

“No strings attached.” Financial reporter Barry Grey unleashes the truth:

Fed report lifts lid on Great Bank Heist of 2008-2009

The banks and corporations that benefited were not even obliged to provide an account of what they did with the money. The entire purpose of the operation was to use public funds to cover the gambling losses of the American financial aristocracy, and create the conditions for the financiers and speculators to make even more money.

All of the 21,000 transactions cited in the Fed documents―released under a provision included, over the Fed’s objections, in this year’s financial regulatory overhaul bill―were carried out in secret. The unelected central bank operated without any congressional mandate or oversight.

The documents shed light on the greatest plundering of social resources in history. It was carried out under both the Republican Bush and Democratic Obama administrations. Those who organized the looting of the public treasury were long-time Wall Street insiders: men like Bush’s treasury secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson and the then-president of the New York Federal Reserve, Timothy Geithner….

The Fed documents show that the US central bank enabled banks and corporations to offload their bad debts onto the Fed’s balance sheet. Now, in order to prevent a collapse of the dollar and a default by the US government, the American people are being told they must sacrifice to reduce the national debt and budget deficit.

But as the vast sums make clear, the “sacrifice” being demanded of working people means their impoverishment―wage-cutting, mass unemployment, cuts in health care, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

The very scale of the Fed bailout points to the scale of the financial crash and the criminality that fostered it…. The entire US capitalist economy rested on a huge Ponzi scheme that was bound to collapse…

The banks were able to take the cheap cash from the Fed and lend it back to the government at double and quadruple the interest rates they were initially charged―pocketing many billions in the process….

The ongoing saga of the looting of the economy by the financial elite puts the lie to the endless claims that “there is no money” for jobs, housing, education or health care. The ruling class is awash in money.

Ben Shalom Bernanke is wanted for violating the United States Constitution, committing acts of financial terrorism and crimes against humanity. As a leading member of the Global Banking Cartel, he is considered a highly dangerous enemy combatant. Citizens of the United States hereby demand that he be properly detained under the laws and customs of war.

Source: https://pubrecord.org/nation/8622/pentagon-papers-wall-street/

Filed Under: Banks, Capitalism, Consumerism, Corporations, Corruption, Democracy, Economy, Federal Reserve, Money, Politicians, Politics, Poverty, USA, Whistleblowers

Ten Years Ago, The U.S. Began Borrowing Billions To Pay For The Bush Tax Cuts

November 13, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

As debates about deficit reduction continued to be heavily tilted toward cutting spending, which threatens to undermine a fragile recovery, rather than raising revenue from those who can afford it, it’s important to remember the budgetary impact of the Bush tax cuts.

Nearly 10 years ago today, on August 1, 2001, the Associated Press reported that the Treasury Department was tapping $51 billion of credit in order to pay for the budgetary cost of the first round of Bush tax cuts’ rebate checks. The AP reported at the time that Democratic Party opponents of the tax cuts worried that they’d return government budgets to “red ink“:

The opponents of the tax cut turned out to be right. The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts combined have blown a $2.5 trillion hole in America’s budget and created deficits stretching on for years.

Source: https://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/07/20/273795/ten-years-ago-bush-tax-cuts/

Filed Under: Banks, Capitalism, Censorship, Consumerism, Corporations, Economy, Federal Reserve, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Politics, Poverty, Propaganda, Protests, Rights, Taxes, USA, War

Seven Elephants Now Thrashing Your Living Room

November 13, 2011 By T Kelly 1 Comment

According to the mass media fog machine, the following phenomena are really not worth reporting. In fact, by their omission they literally do not fully exist in people’s minds but are just slight vague ephemeral illusions dancing on the fringe of their consciousness.

As many people say to this day, “if 9/11 was an inside job the media would have been all over it.”

Conditioning complete.

Here They Come . . . Just 7 Of The Herd for Starters

1. Fukushima Is Irradiating the Planet
Estimated to have already far surpassed Chernobyl in dangerous radioactive emissions that are not abating in the least and expected to get worse, we hear nothing about this in the mainstream news.
In fact, the level of denial is outright Orwellian. Here’s a perfect example in recent news:

Nuke agency reports unusual radiation in Europe

VIENNA (AP) — Very low levels of radiation, which are higher than normal but don’t seem to pose a health hazard, are being registered in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Europe, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday.

The agency said the cause was not known but was not the result of Japan’sFukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, which spread radiation across the globe in March.

Go ahead and rub your eyes, but you actually just read that. In fact in Japan the denial is so great that people are moving BACK to Fukushima and eating the contaminated food while children play in its highly toxic playgrounds.

All part of the same message; “The elephant doesn’t exist.”

2. Illegal Drone Attacks are Terrorizing Innocent Populations
Be sure to click on the BBC link at the bottom of this quote for a glimpse into a terrorized teen’s last words before he was beheaded by a drone attack while driving his car with his cousin who was also murdered.

The human toll of the US drone campaign

The principal reason so little attention is paid to the constant victims of American violence in the Muslim world is because the U.S. Government refuses to disclose anything about these attacks and media outlets virtually never report on those victims (MSNBC demoted and then fired its then-rising-star Ashleigh Banfield when she returned from Iraq and pointed out that fact in an April, 2003 speech denouncing the “one-sided” coverage of American wars: meaning, the invisibility in U.S. media of America’s civilian victims). It’s easy to cheer for a leader who regularly extinguishes the lives of innocent men, women, teenagers and young children when you can remain blissfully free of hearing about the victims. It’s even easier when the victims all have Muslim-ish names and live in the parts of the Muslim world we’ve been taught to view as a cauldron of sub-human demons. That’s why it’s periodically worth highlighting the actual impact of those drones and the actual people they kill, as the BBC did today.

3. Geoengineering and Weather Wars
The amount of documentation and evidence supporting the existence of these ongoing programs is staggering, yet never a word in the mainstream press. All you hear about is more hype regarding “climate change problems” and the scientific community’s “concern” and ideas for “mitigating this problem”, where they slowly introduce weather mod “ideas” that are actually black ops programs already under way for years.

That the UN had to pass a treaty to NOT use weather weapons as far back as 1977 says it all. Where do you think they are with that technology now, 34 years later?

Wikepedia: Weather control, particularly hostile weather warfare, was addressed by the “United Nations General Assembly Resolution 31/72, TIAS 9614 Conventionnon the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques” was adopted. The Convention was: Signed in Geneva May 18, 1977; Entered into force October 5, 1978; Ratification by U.S. President December 13, 1979; U.S. ratification deposited at New York January 17, 1980.

With earthquakes and storm systems demonstrably proven to be manipulated or outright caused by powerful EMF manipulation, and our skies constantly streaked with a chemical haze emitted by thousands of planes worldwide, one might think there would be cause for alarm and a little public education

“Nope, no elephant here….cuz we don’t even talk about it.”

4. The Obama Hoax

Now this one you may think is obvious but it’s a doozy. Here’s a guy who came out of nowhere and they can’t even find anyone who knew him where he claimed to go to college. He produces no paperwork on his nationality, education or health records, has multiple social security numbers and whose only credentials are a book by himself about himself! ..and of which he is very likely not even the author!

And the contents of the book? How much is true and how much is just made up and cleverly packaged? At least with a food package you get a contents list. This fable rivals a Disney production.

He comes in on a hope and change anti-war ticket and what does he do? The same as the rest of them and no one seems to notice!

He escalates America’s illegal wars and wins the Nobel Peace Prize. He promises transparency and we know less about the government’s goings on than ever. And he has devolved the US government into a defacto fascist dictatorship with his use of Czar appointments, executive orders and arbitrary war forays without Congressional approval.

And he’s President of the United States! Not only that, he has presided (as figurehead) over the worst downturn in American history and is now running for re-election based on his amazing record of accomplishments!

“No elephant here. He’s hope and change! More smoke up my butt please…”

5. Universal Sickcare

This is business as usual for the PTBs but it’s still a giant stomping elephant in every room of the house.

When organic food and supplements are on the verge of being banned, growing your own food regulated and hindered, and the Federal Drug Administration approves poisonous toxins in your food and water and the genetic modification of living organisms that we consume but have no right to know which ones they are…we have a problem.

When our children are being drugged and vaccinated, and given a steady diet of junk food laden with MSG, aspartame, wood pulp and genetically modified high fructose corn syrup, just to name a few of their poisons…we have a problem.

When doctors won’t treat unvaccinated patients, chemotherapy becomes mandatory and natural and homeopathic treatments are illegal…we have a problem.

It’s not a healthcare system. It’s sick, and promotes sickness. Hey, don’t believe me? Follow the money. Cui bono?

6. Media Magick Madness

That they can get away with camouflaging and ignoring and getting the public to ignore major issues such as these is akin to magick or sorcery. They do this by,amongst other things, introducing subconscious rules and guidelines as to what we should consider truth or not. And one of the rules is, “if we the media mogul mouthpieces don’t talk about it, it might as well not exist because we don’t consider it important”.

Truth erased by omission and supplanted with a false narrative.

The perfect example again is 9/11. There’s not an iota of the official story that is provable except that things blew up, while the anomalies in what transpired that day are myriad. And is this even debatable? No. In fact even challenging the official story has become tantamount to heresy. After all, rule #1 is to NEVER point out an elephant. Elephants simply do not exist.

That kerosene can’t melt steel? Sorry, never heard that on TV. That an Arab passport flutters supernaturally in perfect condition from this horrific exploding plane hitting and supposedly melting an entire building? Wow, what luck!

And the pancake theory? Anyone see any pancaked floors? “Oh well, I’m sure they were there cuz they told us that’s how it happened, move along.” And to this day mention building 7 and you’ll be shocked how many people never even heard of it.

Why? The old news blackout trick. Do the same with Oklahoma City…review what was on the news the first day and notice how you never ever heard again about “the other bombs” they found that day that were sophisticated military grade munitions. The reporters said these were crucial evidence and were going to help identify the culprits.

Gone. Erased by omission from the public mind. Virtually the “lone gunman” story once again. JFK redux. How convenient.

Besides the lies and political side show, when the populace is bombarded with shallow roll models, decadent athletes and rock stars, degrading sexual deviancy and an endless stream of horrific violent images via TV, movies, computer games and even actual war…we have a problem.

7. Marginalization Of Extra “Ordinary” Phenomena

What UFOs? 10′s of thousands of sightings doesn’t apparently mean squat if “official sources” don’t acknowledge their existence. A secret space program and mega militarization of space? “C’mon, they couldn’t hide something like that! And underground bases? That would be such a story the media would never ignore and surely someone would have spoken up about them.”

Mind control? “Now who would do that to you but a demonic Asian in a POW camp? Get over it. It’s not possible any more. I’m a free entity, there’s no way they could pull that off. Pass the cool aid, honey, I’m thirsty..”

Funny, they talk about the technological capability to do things like these, and put out scores of movies on these subjects, but in order to apply it to your reality they’ve positioned themselves as the final authority on every subject. For example, that the wicked PTBs may be targeting the general population with mind control techniques, never mind manipulating thousands of actual Manchurian candidates around the world would seem crazy to most. Yet they know advertising works on this very basis.

But again, that’s been cleverly camouflaged, excused and justified as “free enterprise”. Clever little bastards, aren’t they?

“And now those wackos are talking about secret societies, ritual child abuse and paedophilia amongst the elites? All that stuff’s nonsense. Why the news man would laugh at all that, honey. I could tell by the smirk on his face not to believe all that stuff in that interview…”

And consciousness and extra-dimensional realities? That’s relegated to “scientists” to package up and serve in some remote non-applicable sanitized fashion. Otherwise, you talk about that stuff and you’re a new age paranoid conspiracy nut job.

Again, the false choice technique…neither option they give you is the Truth.

Conclusion

These are just 7 of these things. There is an entire herd of elephants running around the whole human household with more roaming through each day! The extent to which humanity is being massively manipulated can be overwhelming at first, but it’s actually quite liberating once you get through most of the maze and start to “get it”.

But this is real education. The other is predominantly programming your mind to accept a predetermined version of reality that they would like you to have.

Solution: Pull the Plug

It’s clear the so-called government and it’s plethora of bloated agencies are not there to help you, but to manage, seduce, suppress, subjugate and control you. Yet they convince you otherwise to keep you dependent and upside down and backwards while telling you everything’s on the up and up.

Their fundamental technique is trauma-based mind control and cognitive dissonance. Keep affronting your senses with violent images and then reversing your sense of right and wrong and telling you white is black and black is white long enough and you’ll finally give in.

The only place to turn is OFF. Turn it all off. Get your real life back. Read, play, love those around you, laugh, visit inspiring and revelatory alternative internet sites while they’re still available. Spend time in nature. Just get away from televisions and any form of mass media. Have you noticed how TVs are constantly playing in just about every lobby, restaurant, lounge, terminal etc., and people leave them on at home just for companionship?

Big Brother wants your attention. Don’t give it to him.

And be careful as to what music you listen to. I cringe when I see young people with their earbuds in and a strange stare on their faces or slumped over in obvious depression. I can only imagine what rubbish their subjecting themselves to thinking it’s cool or OK cuz it’s some famous group or something iTunes is pushing. Music is programming, either good or bad.

Skepticism Is Good

Their pollution has become so pervasive it’s hard to trust anything any more. Don’t worry, that’s a healthy attitude.

Stay free…it takes some doing and undoing, but it’s what life is all about. And help others do the same.

Conscious awareness is a thrill worth detaching for!

Source: https://beforeitsnews.com/story/1359/061/7_Elephants_Now_Thrashing_Your_Living_Room.html?currentSplittedPage=0

Filed Under: Banks, Big Pharma, Biotechnology, Capitalism, Censorship, Consumerism, Corporations, Economy, Federal Reserve, Fukushima, Guantanamo, Health, Internet, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Monsanto, Occupy, Police, Politics, Poverty, Prison, Privacy, Propaganda, Protests, Radiation, Rights, Science, Surveillance, Taxes, Torture, USA, War, Weapons

Big Banks Plead with Customers Not to Move Their Money

November 13, 2011 By T Kelly 3 Comments

Yes, The Big Banks DO Care If We Move Our Money

650,000 customers moved $4.5 billion dollars out of the big banks and into smaller banks and credit unions in the last month.

But there is a myth making the rounds that the big banks don’t really care if we move our money. For example, one line of reasoning is that no matter how many people move their money, the Fed and Treasury will just bail out the giants again.

But many anecdotes show that the too big to fails do, in fact, care.

Initially, of course, if the big banks really didn’t care, they wouldn’t have prevented protesters from closing their accounts.

NBC notes that – in response to inquiries regarding how many people have moved their money – Bank of America refused to provide figures, and instead sent the following defensive email:

“Bank of America continues to be a great place for customers to manage their everyday finances and achieve their savings goals,” [Colleen Haggerty, a spokeswoman for Bank of America's Southern California operations] said in an email. “We offer customers more choice and convenience, including industry-leading fraud protection, access to thousands of banking centers and ATMs, and the best online and mobile banking, which allow customers to bank on their terms 24/7.”

A writer noted at Daily Kos:

At Wells Fargo, my sister walked up to the teller and politely asked to close her account. The teller said, “No problem.” She pulled up her account and saw the balance and told her that due to the amount she had to speak with the branch manager. The branch manager came out. He was probably 30 years old and was very arrogant. He asked my sister why she wanted to close her account and my sister told him she thought Wells Fargo was part of the problem with the economy. He went thru some talking points about why she shouldn’t move her money, but my sister didn’t back down. When he asked her where she was going she told him that she would be banking at the North Carolina State Employees Credit Union. She isn’t a state employee, but anyone can join if you are related to a state employee. It turns out her husband is. Anyway, the bankster told her “You’ll be back. Credit unions can’t provide the services you need.” We’ll see about that. She withdrew over $200k from Wells Fargo.

Next we went to Bank of America. I closed my last account with hardly any questions asked. Of course, I had taken most of my money out so there wasn’t much left to take. My sister on the other hand had a large balance in multiple accounts. They actually refused to cut her a check for the full amounts. They only gave her 1/3 of her money and told her she’d have to come back to withdraw the rest. They claimed they were only allowed to make checks for a certain amount, and that they had no authority to cut additional checks on the same day. Stupid BofA. She had her check in hand and politely told off the branch manager when he told her she had to come back another day or two to withdraw the rest.

At BofA, we weren’t the only ones closing accounts. There was a line of people. Most had small accounts because they weren’t even being challenged, but she actually had to wait in line to speak with a branch manager.

At SunTrust, the branch manager went off his rocker. He just kept asking her “is there anything I can do or anything I can say to change your mind?” He asked probably twenty times. He even offered to have the market executive meet with her and hear out her concerns. She told him she wasn’t interested. He really looked nervous about it.

And a writer at Daily Bail pointed out:

I went in, asked to speak with a banker and was seated in an office. When the young associate came in and asked the purpose of my visit, I handed her my ATM card and requested that she tell me the balance. When she did, I then asked for a cashiers check in that amount. That’s when things got wonky. She froze, stumbled over her words and asked why I needed that amount (It was not a small sum). This gave me an opportunity to explain that although I personally would not be affected by their new fees I know plenty of friends and family that would feel the pain. In solidarity with them, I wished to close the account and move on. She unwittingly suggested that if I just use my debit card once a month then there would be no fee. That was good for a belly laugh from me, then I again requested the balance to be issued to me in the form of a cashier’s check. She then told me that there would be a $10 fee for this service. Another laugh. I guess it didn’t sink in when I told her that I was fee adverse. There was an easy work-around anyway – I requested the cash. That finished my time with this associate banker as the amount I was requesting was “well past” her daily limit for withdrawals. I asked if there would be an issue with securing the cash and she said “I honestly don’t know if we have that here” and walked out to get the branch manager.

The manager was pleasant enough and very direct. After introducing herself she flat out asked “What can we do to change your mind?” “We don’t want to see you go” she emphasized. This opened a door for me to further explain my decision to leave the bank and why I was doing it. Amazingly, it did not fall on deaf ears. She indicated that understood where I was coming from and actually showed genuine surprise at some of the facts I provided her about the less than consumer friendly policies and machinations of her employer. She did make some feeble counter-arguments and repeatedly asked me if I would change my mind (with a hint of desperation!). I stood firm and by the end of our conversation she asked if I would be willing to put it all in writing so she could send it up the chain.

She shared that management is nervous, they are seeing money leaking out of the bank and realize that they have made mistakes…. They are also aware of the growing momentum behind the November 5th move your money movement.

***

Management is aware that people are angry (how could they not be!) and have put an ear to the ground.

Hundreds of similar stories are being told all over America.

Even though the government may keep throwing money at the dinosaurs, the Basel regulations do havesome capital requirements, and so the big banks need to bring in some actual deposits to fund theircasino gambling.

Moreover, if too many depositors leave, the illusion that the big banks are serving the American public will be burst, and a critical mass of consciousness will occur, so that the banks’ unquestioned control over the American political and financial systems will start to be questioned.

So moving our money is an effective step towards reclaiming America.

Source: https://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/11/big-banks-plead-with-customers-not-to-move-their-money.html

Filed Under: Banks, Campaigning, Capitalism, Consumerism, Corporations, Economy, Federal Reserve, Income Inequality, Money, Occupy, Politics, Propaganda, Protests, Rights, USA

Bailed-out banks paid no income tax in some years, according to study

November 13, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

Banks that received TARP money managed to avoid income tax

Five banks that received federal bailout funds during the financial crisis didn’t pay income taxes for one or more years between 2008 and 2010, according to an iWatch News analysis of a new study of tax dodgers.

Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group, PNC Financial Services Group, Capital One Financial Inc. and State Street Corp. were among 78 of America’s largest and most profitable corporations that managed to avoid paying income tax in at least one of those years.

Researchers looked at 280 corporations that reported total pretax U.S. profits of $1.4 trillion. The federal corporate tax code “ostensibly requires big corporations to pay a 35 percent corporate income tax rate, on average, the 280 corporations in our study paid only about half that amount.”

The study was released Thursday by nonpartisan advocacy groups Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

All five financial institutions named were profitable, but still received funds in the form of stock purchases from the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Wells Fargo received the greatest benefit among all 280 companies studied. If the bank were assessed at the usual 35 percent corporate income tax rate, it would have paid the IRS nearly $18 billion, the study said. The banking giant paid no taxes in 2009.

Wells Fargo was also among the most profitable corporations on the list, having collected $21.8 billion in profits over the three-year span. Wells Fargo received a $25 billion government investment in October, 2008 from the TARP program and paid the government back, plus a $2 billion profit, according to Treasury Department records.

In a statement, Wells Fargo disputed the report’s finding and accused the authors of taking “data out of context to advance an agenda.” The company says that over the past 10 years it has paid more than $30 billion in income taxes to federal and state authorities, billions more in other taxes and “it fulfills all tax obligations.”

As to the finding that the company paid no income tax in 2009, the company says the years cited by the study were unusual and reflect “significant losses as a consequence of its acquisition of Wachovia” in December 2008. The purchase of the troubled bank reduced Wells Fargo’s taxable income. Based on results for the first three quarters 2011, Wells Fargo “expects to pay significant income taxes for 2011.”

Goldman Sachs also received government money under the TARP program in the form of a $10 billion investment. It paid it back plus $1.4 billion. The investment bank paid no income taxes in 2008, the same year of the TARP infusion. Over the three-year period Goldman reported $4.9 billion in profit, according to the study.

The other TARP recipients named:

PNC Financial Services Group received an investment of $7.6 billion from the government and paid it back, plus $745 million. PNC’s three-year profit was just under $8 billion. It paid no income tax in 2009 and 2010, according to the study.

State Street Corp. received $2 billion from the government and paid it back, plus $124 million. The company’s three-year profit was $731 million. It paid no income tax in 2010, according to the study.

Capital One Financial Corp received a $3.6 billion investment and paid it back, plus $254 million. The company’s three-year profit was $1.3 billion. It paid no income tax in 2010, according to the study.

A PNC spokesman said the bank “strictly adheres to the tax code” and that for 2009 and 2010 it recorded approximately $1.8 billion in federal income tax expenses. A spokeswoman from Capital One said the bank “fulfills all tax obligations” and that the in the three years, it paid “$2 billion in taxes to federal, state, and foreign jurisdictions” as well as $300 million in taxes for 2010.

Goldman Sachs and State Street did not respond to a request for comment.

Robert McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice and the report’s lead author said tax breaks enjoyed by the companies that paid less than 35 percent amounted to “wasted money that could have gone to protect Medicare, create jobs and cut the deficit.”

Source: https://www.sott.net/articles/show/237577-Bailed-out-banks-paid-no-income-tax-in-some-years-according-to-study

Filed Under: Banks, Capitalism, Censorship, Corporations, Economy, Federal Reserve, Human Rights, Income Inequality, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Occupy, Politics, Protests, USA

Wall Street Protests Inspire Ire Over Bank Recruiting

November 12, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

As protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement continue to camp out in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, students at some of the nation’s top colleges are also taking up the banner of antibank activism, beginning with their schools’ on-campus recruiting programs.

The Stanford Daily published an op-ed piece on Tuesday entitled “Stop the Wall Street Recruitment.” In the piece, two Stanford seniors, Teryn Norris and Eli Pollak, argue that the “extensive influence” Wall Street banks have on campus, including aggressive recruiting programs and access to top undergraduates, is undeserved.

“Three years after the financial industry nearly caused a second Great Depression, our nation’s top universities remain the primary training and recruiting grounds for these same reckless institutions,” the students wrote. “This is antithetical to the civic mission and responsibility of higher education, and it is time for the academic community to seriously address this problem.”

Also on Tuesday, an op-ed in The Harvard Crimson entitled “Boycott Wall Street” encouraged Harvard undergraduates to consider careers in more creative fields, such as engineering and journalism.

“Many of these careers may not be as financially rewarding as investment banking,” the op-ed’s author, David Weinfeld, a Harvard alumnus, wrote. “But I assure you, they will almost certainly make you less insipid than your profiteering peers.”

These are far from the first op-ed rallying cries about Wall Street’s campus recruiting programs. In August, a Dartmouth undergraduate, Andrew Lohse, called the recruitment programs a “tragedy of wasted minds.” And a recent article by Marina Keegan in The Yale Daily News turned a critical eye to the historically high percentage of Yale graduates who go into finance or consulting jobs.

“There’s something sad about so many of us entering a line of work in which we’re not (for the most part) producing something, or helping someone, or engaging in something that we’re explicitly passionate about,” Ms. Keegan wrote.

But antibank activism hasn’t stopped at the op-ed column. Students at Brown University have begun conducting group meetings in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, and a group of Harvard students joined forces with an “Occupy Boston” protest last week.

Clearly, the protests in downtown Manhattan have not only galvanized many of the 99 percent. They are drawing in the 99th percentile, too.

Source: https://www.truth-out.org/wall-street-protests-inspire-ire-over-bank-recruiting/1321036163

Filed Under: Banks, Capitalism, Corporations, Economy, Employment, Federal Reserve, Money, Occupy, Politics, Protests