By Gary P Jackson
When I first learned of this, late Thursday, I was so angered I couldn't even put it into words. Even now I'm really doing all I can to measure and moderate my tone. One thing about it, now we know why so many were adamantly opposed to auditing the Fed!
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders [Socialist-VT] reports the first ever top-to-bottom audit of The Fed shows $16 TRILLION in secret "emergency" loans to American and foreign banks and other businesses. All sympathetic to the democrat party.
Last year, the gross domestic product of the entire U.S. economy was only $14.5 trillion!
These secret loans started during President George W Bush's last month in office, December 2007, but it was all orchestrated by the Fed. In fact, many of the people who work for the Fed also have ties to the banks and corporations who got this money.
Here's what Senator Sanders posted on his website:
The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. "As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," said Sanders. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."
Among the investigation's key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. "No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president," Sanders said.
The non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress also determined that the Fed lacks a comprehensive system to deal with conflicts of interest, despite the serious potential for abuse. In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans.
For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed's board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed's emergency lending programs.
In another disturbing finding, the GAO said that on Sept. 19, 2008, William Dudley, who is now the New York Fed president, was granted a waiver to let him keep investments in AIG and General Electric at the same time AIG and GE were given bailout funds. One reason the Fed did not make Dudley sell his holdings, according to the audit, was that it might have created the appearance of a conflict of interest.
To Sanders, the conclusion is simple. "No one who works for a firm receiving direct financial assistance from the Fed should be allowed to sit on the Fed's board of directors or be employed by the Fed," he said.
The investigation also revealed that the Fed outsourced most of its emergency lending programs to private contractors, many of which also were recipients of extremely low-interest and then-secret loans.
The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates. Altogether some two-thirds of the contracts that the Fed awarded to manage its emergency lending programs were no-bid contracts. Morgan Stanley was given the largest no-bid contract worth $108.4 million to help manage the Fed bailout of AIG.
A more detailed GAO investigation into potential conflicts of interest at the Fed is due on Oct. 18, but Sanders said one thing already is abundantly clear. "The Federal Reserve must be reformed to serve the needs of working families, not just CEOs on Wall Street."
To read the GAO report, click here.
This is simply incredible. It's crony capitalism at it's worst, and the numbers are so large they are almost incomprehensible. We're talking about more money than our yearly GDP, trillions more. It's frightening enough to know our debt is equal to 100% of our GDP, and totally unsustainable, this puts us in a whole other world.
What's more incredible is there have been numerous reports of bailout money going to foreign banks, a separate situation, and yet, Congress has done nothing.
Astute readers have heard of the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It was developed by a couple of radical, socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. both Cloward and Piven have been big players in the democrat party for decades, and have even been photographed at the White House with President Bill Clinton at official ceremonies.
Cloward-Piven is a strategy to overwhelm the system with debt, demand, and confusion, in order to cause the collapse the entire system of capitalism, and bring about a Marxist state. This is why you see the democrats wanting to add MORE debt, and spend MORE money, at a time we are beyond broke. It's a deliberate, calculated strategy to destroy America as we know it, and bring about a command-and-control form of government .... Not that we aren't almost there now!
In September of 2008 James Simpson wrote an great article: Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis for the American Thinker. Simpson laid out the strategy Obama would use, as well as giving readers a nice history lesson of Cloward-Piven and the art of "manufactured crisis." It's a must read if you want to understand where we are at right now, and what is actually going on.
It's a damned shame our "betters" in the GOP didn't take time to learn about all of this BEFORE Obama was elected. Had the feckless Republican establishment learned what many of us already knew about Obama, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess!
Besides the banks, you'll notice General Electric is involved in all of this. GE's CEO Jeffery Immelt is attached to Barack Obama at the hip. GE has received all sorts of special treatment, because Immelt has supported Obama so strongly, and is even on many regime advisory committees. He even turned the TV networks the company owns, most notably NBC and MSNBC, into propaganda channels for Obama and the DNC.
It's crony capitalism. It reminds me of how socialist and communist states operate. The fat cats, as long as they support the regime, are allowed to not only make money, but actually raid the public coffers.
While these $16 TRILLION in secret loans are so over the top it's almost hard top comprehend, they are no different to the Obama regime's handouts to the labor unions, and other special interests who have the regime's back. History tells us that it's a good bet most of these loans will never be repaid.
It's quite telling that at a time Obama is threatening to stop sending seniors and the disabled the monthly checks they have EARNED, as well as gutting the military, [while we are in three wars and terrorism is high] that he has plenty of party favors for his buddies.
The Fed is a bad situation all unto itself. That said, there is congressional oversight of the agency. That the agency has been allowed to run wild, while Congress did nothing, is criminal. Every single member of Congress charged with overseeing the agency must be fired. They also must be investigated. We should be filling our prisons with the corrupt bastards who allowed all of this to happen.
It's quite obvious the Obama regime has purposely enriched it's friends through all of this corruption.
We've never put a United States President in prison. Obama wants to be "historic" I say we need to make a little history. Obama, Fed chair Ben Bernanke, and an entire cast of characters have created a situation that will most certainly cause the Republic to collapse, if something radical isn't done.
If the United States collapses, the entire world will collapse. Liberty and Freedom will be things we'll read about in books. [if books aren't outlawed] We'll all be living in a very dark time.
I have no faith in Congress. Even though Senator Sanders has exposed this massive corruption, you can bet this will be swept under the rug.
We, the people, must rise up and DEMAND satisfaction.
We must DEMAND that any member of Congress charged with keeping an eye on the Fed resign immediately, pending criminal investigation.
We must DEMAND Ben Bernanke resign immediately, pending criminal investigation.
We must DEMAND members of the Fed involved in this scheme resign immediately, pending criminal investigation.
We must DEMAND any bank officer, corporation management, absolutely anyone involved with any company that received these secret loans, and was involved in the process, should be investigated for criminal activity.
We must DEMAND the resignation of Barack Obama, and anyone else connected to this in his regime, pending criminal investigation.
We also MUST DEMAND a our next elected President have a record of successfully going after corruption, even in her own party. [I just happen to have someone in mind]
Never in the history of our nation has corruption been so rampant in government. We need a top to bottom overhaul. We MUST cut spending and get government out of our lives so we can grow jobs and create opportunities.
The only way we'll even come close to surviving as a nation is to make the U.S. the most business friendly place on earth.
It's going to take something radical. It's going to take our government going back to First Principles, back to the Constitutional Republic our founders created. It's going to take the federal government realizing what they can and cannot, and should not, interfere with. They need to realize most things, constitutionally, are left to the states to sort out and control.
We need new leadership. We need people who understand reality. We need people who understand they work for us, the people. That WE are their employers, their bosses.
We need people who are mindful of how hard it is to earn a living, and how precious those tax dollars that flow into D.C. are. We need people who will treat those dollars with respect, and spend them wisely.
We also need to send a message to the corrupt bastards in Washington now, by sending the guilty to prison [and throwing away the key] and the inept packing!
With all of the insanity we are seeing from Washington, we can no longer sit by and tolerate it. We must take action and we must be successful. The very existence of our Republic depends on us all standing up and being heard.
I'm continually tickled by the supposedly "intelligent" people who dismiss Sarah Palin when she speaks. Never mind that she's always proven right after the fact.
I know the left wing's [and the Republican establishment's] default position is that any strong Conservative leader, someone who doesn't subscribe to far left ideology, or in the GOP's case, someone not of the country club, soggy cucumber and mayo sandwich set, someone who doesn't go to the "right" schools, is in their eyes, an idiot. A rube. Too stupid to understand complicated issues.
Nothing could be further from the truth, and we have decades worth of evidence that it's the over-educated, but inexperienced, Ruling Class elites who are clueless. After all, it's these Ivy League elites who have gotten us in all of this mess in the first place!
The last President we had that had an ounce of common sense when it came to complex issues was Ronald Reagan. He was called an "amiable dunce" because he didn't go to the right schools either.
In Sarah Palin's case it's breathtaking.
Her record as a Mayor, oil and gas regulator, and Governor is filled with the sort of successes most politicians would kill for. She wasn't a "One-Note-Johnny" either. She was strong on every issue. Most overlooked though are her strong fiscal abilities. The fact she was able to balance budgets and create multi-billion dollar surpluses is lost on those who want to dismiss her outright.
I'm reminded of an excerpt from Kay Cashman's book: Sarah Takes On Big Oil:
Dan Seamount, one of two commissioners who served with Sarah Palin in 2003 and early 2004 on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, had the following to say about Palin.
"She's pro-development, not pro industry. She'll tell you,'My boss is the people of Alaska.'
"She s smart, a quick study. Her adversaries biggest mistake is underestimating her intelligence, her understanding of issues. And she uses their arrogance against them.
Maybe if our "betters" weren't so busy telling us how dumb Sarah Palin is, they'd have had time to check our her strong comments at the CLSA Investors Summit in Hong Kong. You see, Sarah was talking tough to China, in China, back in September of 2009, long before reality TV show "star" Donald Trump was making noises.
The London Financial Times and Reuters noticed, for sure, but the lamestream media made sure it was never reported widely in this country.
That brings us to Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke's quantitative easing [QE2] scheme. QE2 is just a fancy way of saying: "Hey, let's just print more money!"
This is a plan for disaster. It has failed every time it has been tried. Countries have collapsed, totally and completely collapsed, because their leaders have chosen to just print money in just such a manner.
The Weimar Republic of Germany is a good example, where it took a wheelbarrow full of notes to buy a loaf of bread. Zimbabwe is a modern day example of what happens when the government just starts to print money.
How big of a disaster is the Obama/Bernanke fiasco? The New York Sun is seriously suggesting that, instead of being President, Sarah Palin should be named the next Fed Chairman!
Hard to argue with that reasoning, but I have faith that as President, she'll choose someone who actually understands practical economics, for that job.
Anyhow, from The Sun:
Sarah Palin for the Fed?
The big question as Chairman Bernanke gets set for his first quarterly press conference is how Sarah Palin was able to figure out sooner than everyone else that the Federal Reserve’s campaign of quantitative easing wouldn’t work.
Disappointment in the Fed’s policies is being reported this morning at the top of page one of the New York Times. It reports that "most Americans are not feeling the difference" from the Fed’s "experimental effort to spur a recovery by purchasing vast quantities of federal debt." It reports that "a broad range of economists say that the disappointing results show the limits of the central bank’s ability to lift the nation from its economic malaise."
It’s a terrific story, and well-timed, given that on Wednesday Mr. Bernanke will break tradition and meet with the press. It is part of the Fed’s effort to get ahead of what is emerging as a public relations catastrophe, as gasoline is nearing six dollars a gallon at some pumps, the cost of groceries is skyrocketing, and the value of the dollars that Mr. Bernanke’s institution issues as Federal Reserve notes has collapsed to less than a 1,500th of an ounce of gold. Unemployment is still high. Shakespeare couldn’t come up with a better plot.
But how in the world did Mrs. Palin, who is supposed to be so thick, manage to figure all this out so far ahead of the New York Times and all the economists it talked to?
She did this back in November in a speech at Phoenix, which the Wall Street Journal, in a laudatory editorial at the time, characterized as zeroing in on the connection between a weak dollar and rising prices for oil and food.
"We don’t want temporary, artificial economic growth brought at the expense of permanently higher inflation which will erode the value of our incomes and our savings," the Journal quoted Mrs. Palin as saying. "We want a stable dollar combined with real economic reform. It's the only way we can get our economy back on the right track." Now here is the New York Times quoting a raft of economists who have reached the conclusion that Mrs. Palin’s warning was right down the line.
It happens that Mrs. Palin’s demarche coincided with a piece in the Financial Times by the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, suggesting that a new international monetary system centered on the major currencies "should also consider employing gold as an international reference point of market expectations about inflation, deflation and future currency values."
The FT is such a Keynesian bastion that the Journal likened Mr. Zoellick’s mentioning gold in its pages to mentioning Sarah Palin’s name at the Princeton Faculty Club. The FT issued an editorial attacking its own op-ed piece, while Mr. Zoellick’s scoop so startled the New York Times that it brought in no less a heavyweight than James Grant of the Interest Rate Observer to write a piece on the virtues of the gold standard.
Alone among general interest publications, the Drudge Report has been fronting the gold price almost daily. And now the Times itself is out with its a story about how the Fed’s quantitative easing has been a disappointment.
It may have, as the Times puts it, "pumped up the stock market, reduced the cost of American exports and allowed companies to borrow money at lower interest rates," but "those benefits have been surprisingly small." Will any of this bring some humility to the Fed and its chairman?
It will be something to watch for in his first big press conference Wednesday. No doubt it will be one of the most crowded press conferences in recent memory, and there will be lots to ask about. But one of the questions will be how in tarnation Mrs. Palin figured it out so far ahead of everyone else.
Sarah Palin figured it because she's not stupid! Far from it.
Unlike the Ruling Class and the Beltway elites, Sarah Palin still buys the family's groceries, puts gas in her car, and pays attention to the real world around her.
The really incredible part about this is she is not alone. Anyone with an ounce of common sense could have figured this out. Of course, that's really where the problem lies with America's political class. No one has a lick of common sense!
We're told that guys like Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, Mitch Daniels, and other dead end candidates are financial geniuses, and yet it's the housewife from tiny Wasilla, Alaska who is running circles around these "intelligent" candidates. All of these cats were hiding under their desks rather than hammering Obama and Bernanke over their dangerous fiscal policies.
At a time when we need leaders, only one has consistently proven to be one. Only one knows how to get out there and fight like a girl!
I'm always tickled by the artwork above, which appeared on the cover of the Economist after the 2010 election. It shows Sarah Palin leading the Republican posse as they come to take back Congress. I'm looking forward to the cover of their magazine after November of 2012.
In a speech delivered on Monday In Phoenix, Arizona, Sarah Palin slams Fed Chair Ben Bernanke and the Obama regime's insane plan to monetize the debt.
Robert Costa over at National Review Online reports:
As President Obama prepares for the G20 summit in South Korea this week, Sarah Palin is challenging the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy, which will likely be a key issue at the talks. On Monday, in a keynote address at a trade-association convention in Phoenix, Palin will urge Fed chairman Ben Bernanke to “cease and desist” his “pump priming.” The United States, she says, “shouldn’t be playing around with inflation.”
Here are snippets from Palin’s prepared remarks obtained by National Review Online:
I’m deeply concerned about the Federal Reserve’s plans to buy up anywhere from $600 billion to as much as $1 trillion of government securities. The technical term for it is “quantitative easing.” It means our government is pumping money into the banking system by buying up treasury bonds. And where, you may ask, are we getting the money to pay for all this? We’re printing it out of thin air.
The Fed hopes doing this may buy us a little temporary economic growth by supplying banks with extra cash which they could then lend out to businesses. But it’s far from certain this will even work. After all, the problem isn’t that banks don’t have enough cash on hand – it’s that they don’t want to lend it out, because they don’t trust the current economic climate.
And if it doesn’t work, what do we do then? Print even more money? What’s the end game here? Where will all this money printing on an unprecedented scale take us? Do we have any guarantees that QE2 won’t be followed by QE3, 4, and 5, until eventually – inevitably – no one will want to buy our debt anymore? What happens if the Fed becomes not just the buyer of last resort, but the buyer of only resort?
All this pump priming will come at a serious price. And I mean that literally: everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them even higher. And it’s not just groceries. Oil recently hit a six month high, at more than $87 a barrel. The weak dollar – a direct result of the Fed’s decision to dump more dollars onto the market – is pushing oil prices upwards. That’s like an extra tax on earnings. And the worst part of it: because the Obama White House refuses to open up our offshore and onshore oil reserves for exploration, most of that money will go directly to foreign regimes who don’t have America’s best interests at heart.
We shouldn’t be playing around with inflation. It’s not for nothing Reagan called it “as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hit man.” The Fed’s pump priming addiction has got our small businesses running scared, and our allies worried. The German finance minister called the Fed’s proposals “clueless.” When Germany, a country that knows a thing or two about the dangers of inflation, warns us to think again, maybe it’s time for Chairman Bernanke to cease and desist. We don’t want temporary, artificial economic growth bought at the expense of permanently higher inflation which will erode the value of our incomes and our savings. We want a stable dollar combined with real economic reform. It’s the only way we can get our economy back on the right track.
Sarah is right, of course. Hyperinflation will destroy America. In fact, the historical evidence of this is so strong, one might think that is the purpose of this dangerous path. It's like the Obama regime is purposely destroying our nation. Surely the Marxist-democrats aren't this stupid, are they?
One of the most well known cases of monetizing the debt occurred in Germany in the 1920s, and led to the collapse of the Weimar Republic. This led directly to the rise of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism. It also led to the ridiculousness that included needing a wheelbarrow full of German marks to buy a loaf of bread. It was a complete disaster.
Surely the Marxist-democrats know this, and one must wonder if the total collapse of America isn't their end game.
We don't have to go back to the early decades of the 20th Century to see the evils of what the Obama regime is up to. Obama's good buddy Robert Mugabe has worked similar “magic” in Zimbabwe. This tin pot dictators policies have been so idiotic that by December 2008, inflation was estimated at 6.5 quindecillion novemdecillion percent! (65 followed by 107 zeros)
Yes we can! (turn America into Zimbabwe)
This is a very serious matter and if the Obama regime and the Fed are not stopped, we could not only see the collapse of the United States, but the entire world's economy. Again, one wonders if something like this isn't by design. As Reuters reports, China and Russia are most certainly alarmed, and Obama just keeps on keepin' on.
