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In depth story about the Federal Reserve failure to act as an unregulated subprime mortgage industry raced out of control, and major banking and financial institutions bought into the wild wild west of high interest rate - predatory lending. excerpt:  during the years of the housing boom, pleas from consumer advocate groups failed to move the Fed, the sole federal regulator with authority over subprime mortgage businesses. Under a policy quietly formalized in 1998, the Fed refused to police lenders' compliance with federal laws protecting borrowers, despite repeated urging by consumer advocates across the country and even by other government agencies. The hands-off policy, which the Fed reversed earlier this month, created a double standard. Banks and their subprime affiliates made loans under the same laws, but only the banks faced regular federal scrutiny. Under the policy, the Fed did not even investigate consumer complaints against the affiliates.

Ron Paul racks up another near win, as conservative writer Alan Caruba smells the coffee and starts paying attention to the criminal enterprise known as the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel.  It's about time.  But sadly there are too few conservatives paying attention to the money.  Sadly, conservatives choose to wallow in 1980 political issues where conservative social values and national security - military buildup were the concerns of the day. The truth is that it's always the money.  Follow the money!!  And all things will become clear.  Including how to get America back on track. excerpt: Anyone taking notice of Obama's latest budget has to conclude that his mission is to crash the nation's economy and turn America into a Socialist worker's paradise. The only problem is that Socialism has been a dismal failure everywhere it has been tried. One only has to look at the collapse of the Soviet Union for confirmation of that, the Chinese abandonment of Communist economic theory, and Obama's odd notion that a nation can spend itself out of ever-increasing debt. I am not a fan of Paul's isolationism, but he is absolutely right about getting rid of the Federal Reserve. Established in 1913, the same year income taxes were instituted, the Reserve is not part of the federal government. It is, in fact, privately owned by a consortium of banks and that might include foreign banks as well. In a remarkable essay, "10 Things That Every American Should Know About The Federal Reserve" by Michael T. Snyder, it is clear that the Constitution intended to have the U.S. Treasury to be soley responsible to "coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures." Synder points out that the Federal Reserve System (the Fed) is a privately owned banking cartel and one granted the right to create money out of thin air. It is, says Synder "a perpetual debt machine because "whenever more money is created, more debt is creat

Liberty's backlash -- why we should be grateful to Edward Snowden By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano Published August 01, 2013 FoxNews.com Last week, Justin Amash, the two-term libertarian Republican congressman from Michigan, joined with John Conyers, the 25-term liberal Democratic congressman from the same state, to offer an amendment to legislation funding the National Security Agency (NSA). If enacted, the Amash-Conyers amendment would have forced the government's domestic spies when seeking search warrants to capture Americans' phone calls, texts and emails first to identify their targets and produce evidence of their terror-related activities before a judge may issue a warrant. The support they garnered had a surprising result that stunned the Washington establishment. It almost passed. The final vote, in which the Amash-Conyers amendment was defeated by 205 to 217, was delayed for a few hours by the House Republican leadership, which opposed the measure. The Republican leadership team, in conjunction with President Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, needed more time for arm-twisting so as to avoid a humiliating loss. But the House rank-and-file did succeed in sending a message to the big-government types in both parties: Nearly half of the House of Representatives has had enough of government spying and then lying about it, and understands that spying on every American simply cannot withstand minimal legal scrutiny or basic constitutional analysis. The president is deeply into this and no doubt wishes he wasn't. He now says he welcomed the debate in the House on whether his spies can have all they want from us or whether they are subject to constitutional requirements for their warrants. Surely he knows that the Supreme Court has ruled consistently since the time of the Civil War that the government is always subject to the Constitution, wherever it goes and whatever it does. As basic as that sounds, it is not a universally held belief am

"The media may or may not report on these individual occurrences, but what they will never do is provide the American people with the full context and scope of Obama's shrill pettiness. Below is a list of illogical, unnecessary, and shockingly spiteful moves our government is making in the name of essential and non-essential. This list will be regularly updated, and if you have something you feel should be added, please email me at jnolte@breitbart.com or tweet me @NolteNC.Please include a link to the news source. -- 1. Treatments for Children Suffering From Cancer - The GOP have agreed to a compromise by funding part of the government, including the National Institutes of Health, which offers children with cancer last-chance experimental treatment. Obama has threatened to veto this funding. 2. The World War II Memorial - The WWII memorial on the DC Mall is a 24/7 open-air memorial that is not regularly staffed. Although the White House must have known that WWII veterans in their eighties and nineties had already booked flights to visit this memorial, the White House still found the resources to spitefully barricade the attraction.  The Republican National Committee has offered to cover any costs required to keep the memorial open. The White House refused. Moreover, like the NIH, the GOP will pass a compromise bill that would fund America's national parks. Obama has threatened to veto that bill. 3. Furloughed Military Chaplains Not Allowed to Work for Free - Furloughed military chaplains willing to celebrate Mass and baptisms for free have been told they will be punished for doing so. 4. Business Stops In Florida Keys - Although the GOP have agreed to compromise in the ongoing budget stalemate and fund the parks, Obama has threatened to veto that funding. As a result, small businesses, hunters, and commercial fisherman can't practice their trade. While the feds have deemed the personnel necessary to keep this area open "non-essential," the "enforcement office

Maybe the best statement to date as to why we, the people, need to take back control of the Federal Reserve.  Ron Paul has noticeably tempered down his close the Fed rhetoric, moving to a audit-control the Fed position.   excerpt: The Federal Reserve has caused every single boom and bust that has occurred in this country since the bank's creation in 1913. It pumps new money into the financial system to lower interest rates and spur the economy. Adding new money increases the supply of money, making the price of money over time-the interest rate-lower than the market would make it. These lower interest rates affect the allocation of resources, causing capital to be malinvested throughout the economy. So certain projects and ventures that appear profitable when funded at artificially low interest rates are not in fact the best use of those resources. Eventually, the economic boom created by the Fed's actions is found to be unsustainable, and the bust ensues as this malinvested capital manifests itself in a surplus of capital goods, inventory overhangs, etc. Until these misdirected resources are put to a more productive use-the uses the free market actually desires-the economy stagnates. Enlarge Image Bloomberg Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke The great contribution of the Austrian school of economics to economic theory was in its description of this business cycle: the process of booms and busts, and their origins in monetary intervention by the government in cooperation with the banking system. Yet policy makers at the Federal Reserve still fail to understand the causes of our most recent financial crisis. So they find themselves unable to come up with an adequate solution.

synopsis: Tuesday May 8th, 2012 - Dr. Ron Paul Chaired the Congressional subcommittee holding the first hearings on the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel.  Dr. Paul has become famous around the world for his tireless efforts to audit, expose, and abolish the central bank. Even making that effort the centerpiece of his "Restore the Constitution - Take Back America" run for the presidency.  He published a best-selling book in 2009 entitled "End the Fed", a title that has become a rallying cry for millions of Americans angry about the institution's multi-trillion-dollar bailouts, market manipulations, corruption, and debasement of the currency. The subcommittee hearing, entitled "The Federal Reserve System: Mend It or End It?", examined a range of different proposals to reform the nation's monetary system - it was supposed to look at six different options emanating from both parties. One of the measures on the agenda was Congressman Paul's own "Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act," legislation to dismantle the central bank and restore sound money based on market principles. "More and more people are beginning to understand just how destructive the Federal Reserve's monetary policy has been. I hope that this hearing will kick start a serious discussion on the need to rein in the Fed," Chairman Paul said in a statement about the event. "A hundred years is far too long for Congress to have taken a hands-off approach. The Fed continues to reward Wall Street banks while destroying the dollar's purchasing power and driving up the cost of living for average Americans. This reckless behavior must come to an end."

Nice explanation of the Federal Reserve. Includes a list of Bankster Families and banks that actually own the FED, as well as how the FED makes incredible profits. There is also an interesting proposal explaining how we can repurchase the FED for $450 Million and quickly transition to a non interest bearing currency! Good stuff.

the Fed is now engaging in unlegislated, back-door fiscal policy. excerpt:  "The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency." Vladimir Lenin, leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution Last week, while Congress and the nation were preoccupied with the holidays, the Treasury made a Christmas eve announcement that it would be providing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac unlimited financial support for the next three years. Put simply, in a single, coordinated stroke, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve have encroached on spending powers that are enumerated for the Congress alone. Under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA), the Treasury has no such open-ended authority. Indeed, the applicable portion of the Act explicitly limits the total amount of mortgage principal (not losses, but total principal) as follows: .......... In a sharp break from the past, the issuance of these Treasury securities will not be accompanied by any revenue to the government for Congressionally approved programs. The Treasuries will be issued, the money will be handed over the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and those funds will go largely to the Federal Reserve and other holders of existing mortgage debt simply to replace the bad, but bailed-out agency securities with cash as they mature. The public gets nothing for something - the issuance of the Treasuries is in itself their expenditure.

The U.S. Federal Reserve gave out $16.1 trillion in emergency loans to U.S. and foreign financial institutions between Dec. 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010, according to figures produced by the government's first-ever audit of the central bank. Last year, the gross domestic product of the entire U.S. economy was $14.5 trillion. Of the $16.1 trillion loaned out, $3.08 trillion went to financial institutions in the U.K., Germany, Switzerland, France and Belgium, the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) analysis shows. Additionally, asset swap arrangements were opened with banks in the U.K., Canada, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, Norway, Mexico, Singapore and Switzerland. Twelve of those arrangements are still ongoing, having been extended through August 2012. Out of all borrowers, Citigroup received the most financial assistance from the Fed, at $2.5 trillion. Morgan Stanley came in second with $2.04 trillion, followed by Merill Lynch at $1.9 trillion and Bank of America at $1.3 trillion. The audit also found that the Fed mostly outsourced its lending operations to the very financial institutions which sparked the crisis to begin with, and that they delegated contracts largely on a no-bid basis. The GAO report recommends new policies that would eliminate such conflicts of interest, and suggests that in the future the Fed should keep better records of their emergency decision-making process.

"Donald Trump has a plan for dealing with the stock market bubble. Make it bigger. Before the election candidate Trump blasted Federal Reserve chairman Janet Yellen for keeping interest rates too low for too long to keep the economy humming along while Obama was still in office. The president elect accused Yellen of being politically motivated suggesting that the Fed's policies had put the country at risk of another stock market Crash like 2008. "If rates go up, you're going to see something that's not pretty," Trump told Fox News in an interview in September. "It's all a big bubble." Yellen of course denied Trump's claims saying, "We do not discuss politics at our meetings, and we do not take politics into account in our decisions." As we shall see later in this article, Yellen was lying about the political role the Fed plays in setting policy, in fact, last week's FOMC statement clearly establishes the Fed as basically a political institution that implements an agenda that serves a very small group of powerful constituents, the 1 percent. If serving the interests of one group over all of the others is not politics, than what is it? The problem we have with Trump is not his critique of the market or the Fed. The problem is his remedy which can be sussed out by reviewing his economic plan. Trump wants to slash personal and corporate taxes in order to put more money into the economy to increase business investment, boost hiring, and rev up growth. Regrettably, his tax plan achieves none of these. First of all, slashing taxes for the wealthy does not boost growth. We know that. It doesn't work. Period."

Awful stuff.  Brace yoruselves, the facts will make you wretch. excerpt: The American people got so upset about the bailouts that Congress gave to the Wall Street banks and to the big automakers, but did you know that the biggest bailouts of all were given out by the Federal Reserve? Thanks to a very limited audit of the Federal Reserve that Congress approved a while back, we learned that the Fed made trillions of dollars in secret bailout loans to the big Wall Street banks during the last financial crisis.  They even secretly loaned out hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign banks. According to the results of the limited Fed audit mentioned above, a total of $16.1 trillion in secret loans were made by the Federal Reserve between December 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010. The following is a list of loan recipients that was taken directly from page 131 of the audit report.... Citigroup - $2.513 trillion Morgan Stanley - $2.041 trillion Merrill Lynch - $1.949 trillion Bank of America - $1.344 trillion Barclays PLC - $868 billion Bear Sterns - $853 billion Goldman Sachs - $814 billion Royal Bank of Scotland - $541 billion JP Morgan Chase - $391 billion Deutsche Bank - $354 billion UBS - $287 billion Credit Suisse - $262 billion Lehman Brothers - $183 billion Bank of Scotland - $181 billion BNP Paribas - $175 billion Wells Fargo - $159 billion Dexia - $159 billion Wachovia - $142 billion Dresdner Bank - $135 billion Societe Generale - $124 billion "All Other Borrowers" - $2.639 trillion So why haven't we heard more about this? This is scandalous. In addition, it turns out that the Fed paid enormous sums of money to the big Wall Street banks to help "administer" these nearly interest-free loans....

Since the Bretton Woods Agreement was signed in the wake of World War II, the global monetary system has been based on the US dollar. This means that when the Fed decides to create trillions of dollars of inflation, other countries can't simply say, "let them dig their own grave." Instead, because their international transactions are denominated in dollars, they feel a pressure to maintain relatively stable exchange rates between their currencies and the dollar. Most countries do this informally and have their own (bad) reasons for maintaining a certain level of inflation. China, however, is more literal in its devotion to the dollar system, perhaps due to its psychology as a new arrival on the world stage. So, in recent history, the People's Bank of China has largely maintained a "peg," by which it currently offers to pay 6.8 RMB for every dollar deposited, no matter how many extra dollars the Fed prints. To put it another way, China, and to a certain extent the entire world, is on a Dollar Standard -- like the Gold Standard, but based on another fiat currency instead of a precious metal. What this also means is that China does not intentionally devalue its currency against the dollar, but only to keep pace with the dollar. As the Fed seeks to blow up the global monetary system, I take comfort in the fact that gold cannot fight a currency war because it is not a currency. Gold is money. Currencies used to be backed by money until the global fiat system was introduced under President Nixon. Fiat currency can be printed at will until the economy collapses, as has happened many times in history. Money is impossible to devalue at the whim of politicians because it is naturally scarce. Even in the ruins of Europe after the Second World War, when there was no central authority and chaos reigned, an ounce of gold was worth what it always had been. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/bernanke-is-engaging-in-the-monetary-equivalent-of-nuclear-war-2010-11?utm_sourc

YES!  This works for me.  The Banksters should not profit from the corruption of our politicians.   Keep in mind that the recent GAO audit of the Federal Reserve - the first audit in a 100 yrs, making it the first audit ever, has disclosed that in 2009 and 2010, the bankster cartel gave over $16 Trill to international and wall street banks - interest free.  Don't you think they could spare us $1.6 Trill of our own money?   Many thanks to Dan Ferris ......  There's another solution to the debt ceiling problem that would instantly eliminate $1.6 trillion in government debt. In other words, it would instantly reduce the national debt to approximately $1.6 trillion below the debt ceiling. That would give the President and Congress at least a year to hash out an agreement on spending cuts and tax increases. The plan is elegantly simple and radical. The largest holder of U.S. Treasury debt is the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States, the central bank of the United States. Texas Congressman Ron Paul has proposed the Federal Reserve simply cancel the $1.6 trillion in Treasury debt it holds. The Federal Reserve owns the bonds, so the Treasury is paying the Fed interest. The Fed in turn refunds the interest back to the Treasury. This is theatre of the absurd. Though the Fed is technically a privately owned bank, it's really the hand maiden of the government. It was created by a government act and is overseen by a government-appointed board of governors. For practical intents and purposes, the government owns the Fed's Treasury debt holdings. In other words, the government is borrowing from itself and manufacturing an enormous liability on which it must make interest payments - to itself! I hope you're starting to get the feeling the government is playing games and inventing a phony crisis. That's much closer to the truth. But the government's shell game of lending to itself could turn genuinely ugly.

The first ever audit of the Fed Banksters found that $16.1 Trillion dollars had been created by the Fed and distributed to their international and Wall Street Bankster affilliates at very favorable terms and near zero interest rates.   Question: "Mr. Sutton, why do you rob Banks?  " Answer: "Because that's where the money they stole from us is kept." We are at war with the Banksters and their highly paid political toadies.  Time to respond.

Have the banksters finally accepted that trickle-down economics does not work, that only a money-drop on the lower classes can get the economy growing again? 

The audit of the Fed's emergency lending programs was scarcely reported by mainstream media - albeit the results are undoubtedly newsworthy.  It is the first audit of the Fed in United States history since its beginnings in 1913.  The findings verify that over $16 trillion was allocated to corporations and banks internationally, purportedly for "financial assistance" during and after the 2008 fiscal crisis. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) amended the Wall Street Reform law to audit the Fed, pushing the GAO to step in and take a look around.  Upon hearing the announcement that the first-ever audit would take place in July, the media was bowled over and nearly every broadcast network and newspaper covered the story.  However, the audit's findings were almost completely overlooked, even with a number as high as $16 trillion staring all of us in the face.