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Gary Edwards

The Libertarian View: Are Tariffs Bad? - 1 views

www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php

Libertarian Austrian-Economics Tariffs-NAFTA China Ron-Paul

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Jan 12
     
    As many know, i spent quite a bit of time working for a Chinese Company seeking to enter the USA-European software market.  My task was to research the market, discover and define a market opportunity, design the product, and then work as product manager to get that service to market.  I took this job to better understand the Chinese marketplace and how sovereign Chinese companies work.  What i learned is how the Chinese seek to exploit and totally dominate open markets.  Software is just a category whose time has come.  and there are thousands of Chinese companies lining up.  The first step though is to fine tune the existing blueprint used by other Sina sovereigns.  amazing stuff. My take away from this experience is that the USA MUST set up a 30% tariff on ALL imports, and do so IMMEDIATELY!!!  Yesterday is not soon enough! As a newly minted libertarian, i wondered about the obvious conflict with Austrian Economics and their dedication to free markets and free trade?  I found the answer at this Libertarian forum, where many members were in heated discussion.  Comment #7 sums it up best i think.  Including a link to Ron Paul's Tariff-NAFTA speech. The thing is, the 30% Tariff should be part of an overall TAX REDUCTION PLAN.  I support the FAIR TAX and the Balanced Budget Amendment.  As an alternative to the Fair Tax, I would also support a 17% flat tax with no exceptions.  The ideal situation being an immediate, uncompromising, no exceptions 30% tariff on ALL imports coupled with the Fair Tax and the Balanced Budget Amendment.   And yes, i do believe this plan is consistent with the Founding Fathers Constitution.  But it took some kind of research to establish that opinion.   I've also concluded that "conservatism" is a convenient philosophical vehicle for the corrupt crony corporatism of both the military-industrial-complex, banksters and, international corporations.  Free trade and open markets concepts are perverted to become a thin veil
Gary Edwards

The Divider vs. the Thinker - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...3554104577002262150454258.html

Banksters Paul-Ryan Obammunism Peggy-Noonan WSJ The-American-Idea

shared by Gary Edwards on 28 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • There's a lot to rebel against, to want to throw off. If they want to make a serious economic and political critique, they should make the one Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner make in "Reckless Endangerment": that real elites in Washington rigged the system for themselves and their friends, became rich and powerful, caused the great catering, and then "slipped quietly from the scene."
  • It is a blow-by-blow recounting of how politicians—Democrats and Republicans—passed the laws that encouraged the banks to make the loans that would never be repaid, and that would result in your lost job.
  • It began in the early 1990s, in the Clinton administration, and continued under the Bush administration, with the help of an entrenched Congress that wanted only two things: to receive campaign contributions and to be re-elected.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Specifically it is the story of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage insurers, and how their politically connected CEOs, especially Fannie's Franklin Raines and James Johnson, took actions that tanked the American economy and walked away rich.
  • "the temptation to exploit fear and envy returns." Politicians divide in order to "evade responsibility for their failures" and to advance their interests.
  • "The American Idea"
  • Which gets us to Rep. Paul Ryan. Mr. Ryan receives much praise, but I don't think his role in the current moment has been fully recognized. He is doing something unique in national politics. He thinks. He studies. He reads. Then he comes forward to speak, calmly and at some length, about what he believes to be true. He defines a problem and offers solutions, often providing the intellectual and philosophical rationale behind them.
  • But Republicans, in their desire to defend free economic activity, shouldn't be snookered by unthinking fealty to big business. They should never defend—they should actively oppose—the kind of economic activity that has contributed so heavily to the crisis.
  • Here Mr. Ryan slammed "corporate welfare and crony capitalism."
  • "Why have we extended an endless supply of taxpayer credit to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, instead of demanding that their government guarantee be wound down and their taxpayer subsidies ended?" Why are tax dollars being wasted on bankrupt, politically connected solar energy firms like Solyndra? "Why is Washington wasting your money on entrenched agribusiness?"
  • The "true sources of inequity in this country," he continued, are "corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless."
  • The real class warfare that threatens us is "a class of bureaucrats and connected crony capitalists trying to rise above the rest of us, call the shots, rig the rules, and preserve their place atop society."
  • Gary Edwards on 28 Oct 11
     
    Peggy Noonan writes about Paul Ryan's "The American Idea" speech he recently gave at the heritage Foundation.  It's a beautifully written summary that goes right to the heart of the matter:  the ruling elites have been enriching themselves, feeding at the public trough of corporate welfare and crony capitalism.  Washington DC is corrupt and rotten to the core, and the hand maiden of Banksters, Global Corporatist, Big Unions, and Big Bearucracy.   One things for sure.  Congressman Paul Ryan is a brilliant thinker aho believes in the great promise he calls "The American Idea".   Funny how, as the presidential primary race rolls on, my hopeful attention is being drawn towards four men:  Herman Cain, Paul Ryan, Ron Paul and Marco Rubio.   Herman unfortunately is soft on Banksters, totally unaware and oblivious to the need to take back the currency, and end the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel.  I also have some difficulties with the "revenue neutral" aspects of his 999 plan.  We need less government, not more.  The private sector needs to keep more money, not less.   Too bad because everything else about Herman excites me.  Especially his authentic, from the heart love of America, American exceptionalism and opportunity, and the founders truly unique "American Idea". Ron Paul has an awesome "American Recovery" plan.  Awesome.  But his remarks on terrorism and foreign policy stray far from his usual reliance on the Constitution and the 10th Amendment.   He's right about the connection between global corporatism and the never ending militarism they push.  But he's dead ass wrong about our enemies and their intentions.  And that's scary.  If RP had stuck to the Constitution and 10th Amendment, i would fully support him.   If it's not an enumerated power, it belongs to the States and individual citizens.  End of story.   Marco Rubio is awesome in the same way Herman is.  He connects with a special authenticity that screams the principles and val
Gary Edwards

Stansberry's Investment Advisory - 0 views

www.stansberryresearch.com/...PR

Banksters Porter-Stansberry financial-collapse dollar-destruction Obammunism

shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Sep 11 - No Cached
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 10 Sep 11
       
      excerpt: THE FOLLOWING IS A FICTIONAL DRAMATIZATION OF A PRESS CONFERENCE BY PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, ADDRESSING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, FROM THE EAST ROOM OF THE WHITE HOUSE Set in December 2012, this speech details what we believe The President might say on the day America's foreign creditors finally stop lending us money, and demand repayment for our country's debts. The largest debts EVER accumulated in the history of mankind. intro: Barack Obama Impersonator Records Shocking "Speech"  It may be fiction for now... But this eye-opening "speech," recently recorded by a Barack Obama impersonator, is sending shock waves through the financial community. It could forever change how you think about our country and your safety. 
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Sep 11
     
    Comment:  While researching the September 2008 financial collapse, a freind introduced me to Porter Stansberry (thanks Marux!).  I've been following Porter through the Daily Crux Report ever since, and, as extreme as his opinions appear, time and again he has proven to be drop dead right.  This latest presentation summarizes Porter's thinking and is buttressed with facts and quotes.  The first part of the presentation is a fictional press conference dated December 2012.  This about 15 minutes.  Porter then follows that with near 45 minutes of facts and quotes woven into a comprehensive summary of how we got into this mess and what the possible outcomes going forward.   The basics are simple enough: the combination of Government borrowing, spending, printing and regulating is killing the dollar.  Our currency is very special in that it's the world's reserve currency; a good fortune that has unfortunately resulted in our spending and borrowing way more than we produce.  On top of this dilemma, the financial crisis of 2008 resulted in the world's Banksters offloading their $Trillions of debt and losses onto the US Treasury; the taxpayers.  So now we have the taxpayers holding the debt of an out of control socialist government spending, borrowing, and regulating us into the dirt regulating.  And, these same taxpayers picking up all the losses of the World's most greedy and evil criminals - the Banksters.  At the center of it all is the Federal Reserve, a world Bankster cartel in control of our currency, and printing it out like there's no tomorrow.  Porter talks about that tomorrow, and what it might look like if we the people do not take back our government and our currency.   excerpt: THE FOLLOWING IS A FICTIONAL DRAMATIZATION OF A PRESS CONFERENCE BY PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, ADDRESSING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, FROM THE EAST ROOM OF THE WHITE HOUSE Set in December 2012, this speech details what we believe The President might say on the day America's fore
Paul Merrell

Americans on Wrong Side of Income Gap Run Out of Means to Cope - 0 views

www.moneynews.com/...544365

financial-collapse income inequality statistics Obama Boehner

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • “We’ve exhausted our coping mechanisms,” said Alan Krueger, an economics professor at Princeton University in New Jersey and former chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. “They weren’t sustainable.” The result has been a downsizing of expectations. By almost two to one — 64 percent to 33 percent — Americans say the U.S. no longer offers everyone an equal chance to get ahead, according to the latest Bloomberg National Poll. The lack of faith is especially pronounced among those making less than $50,000 a year, with close to three-quarters in the Dec. 6-9 survey saying the economy is unfair.
  • The diminished expectations have implications for the economy. Workers are clinging to their jobs as prospects fade for higher-paying employment. Households are socking away more money and charging less on credit cards. And young adults are living with their parents longer rather than venturing out on their own. In the meantime, record-high stock prices are enriching wealthier Americans, exacerbating polarization and bringing income inequality to the political forefront. Even independent government agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve have been dragged into the debate.
  • “The basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed,” Obama said in a Dec. 4 speech in Washington. “This is the defining challenge of our time: Making sure our economy works for every working American.” Democratic lawmakers also intend to press next year for a higher minimum wage to tackle the yawning gap between rich and poor, Durbin said. Republicans aren’t ceding the issue. “The American dream is certainly more in doubt than in decades,” House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio said in response to Obama’s speech. “But after more than five years in office, the president has no one to blame but himself.”
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Income inequality has been rising more or less steadily since the mid-1970s. The Gini coefficient, a broad-based measure of inequality, stood at a record high last year, according to Census Bureau data dating back 46 years.
  • Women who became unemployed during the recession and its aftermath have been slower to find new positions. Among women losing jobs they’d held for at least three years between January 2009 and the end of 2011, 50 percent were re-employed by the start of 2012, while the share for men was 61 percent, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released in February. Households turned to stepped-up borrowing to help make ends meet, until that avenue was shut off by the collapse of house prices. About 10.8 million homeowners still owed more money on their mortgages than their properties were worth in the third quarter, according to Seattle-based Zillow Inc. The fallout has made many Americans less inclined to take risks. The quits rate — the proportion of Americans in the workforce who voluntarily left their jobs — stood at 1.7 percent in October. While that’s up from 1.5 percent a year earlier, it’s below the 2.2 percent average for 2006, the year house prices started falling, government data show.
  • “The middle has really collapsed,” said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a former chief economist at the Labor Department in Washington. Even those with college degrees are having trouble keeping up, he said. While they earn more than those with less schooling, they’ve seen no real wage growth in recent years. The median income of men 25 years of age and older with a bachelor’s degree was $56,656 last year, 10 percent less than in 2007 after taking account of inflation, according to Census data.
  • It’s the richest of the rich who are reaping the most benefit as an increasingly interconnected and technologically sophisticated world puts a premium on those perceived to have the highest skills — a phenomenon dubbed “winner take all” by Cornell University Professor Robert Frank. Government policies also play a role. The Treasury Department, for instance, taxes capital gains racked up by the wealthy on the sale of shares, bonds and other assets at about half the rate of ordinary income. The top 1 percent captured 95 percent of the gains in incomes in the first three years of the recovery, based on analysis of tax returns by Saez. Those less well-off, meanwhile, are running out of ways to cope. The percentage of working-age women who are in the labor force steadily climbed from a post-World War II low of 32 percent to a peak of 60.3 percent in April 2000, fueling a jump in dual-income households and helping Americans deal with slow wage growth for a while. Since the recession ended, the workforce participation rate for women has been in decline, echoing a longer-running trend among men. November data showed 57 percent of women in the labor force and 69.4 percent of men.
  • The disparity has widened since the recovery began in mid-2009. The richest 10 percent of Americans earned a larger share of income last year than at any time since 1917, according to Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley. Those in the top one-tenth of income distribution made at least $146,000 in 2012, almost 12 times what those in the bottom tenth made, Census Bureau data show. Economists have posited a variety of explanations for the growing differences in incomes. Manufacturing companies moved once high-paying jobs abroad, to China and elsewhere. Technological advances led to the loss of clerical and office work, especially relating to routine tasks. The decline of unions — 11.3 percent of workers were represented in 2012 compared with 20.1 percent in 1983 — has advantaged bosses at the expense of their employees.
  • Millennials — adults aged 18 to 32 — are still slow to set out on their own more than four years after the recession ended, according to an Oct. 18 report by the Pew Research Center in Washington. Just over one in three head their own households, close to a 38-year low set in 2010. Obama has proposed a raft of policies to attack the widening wage gap — from simplifying the tax code and increasing exports to enhancing worker training and boosting pre-kindergarten education. Yet in a divided Washington he hasn’t made much progress pushing them through. The president’s renewed focus on income inequality has more to do with politics than policy, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a self-described center- right institute in Washington.
  • “It’s great politics to demagogue income distribution and complain about the rich getting ahead and the poor falling behind,” said Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director. “The substance of what he’s actually done doesn’t match the enormity of the problem as he’s portrayed it.”
  • The wage-gap debate has reverberated to other parts of Washington, as the SEC published a rule Sept. 18 that would compel public companies to reveal pay ratios between chief executives and their employees. While businesses have decried the requirement as overreach, some investors welcome the data as a way to help assess a company’s health.
  • Across companies in the S&P 500, the average multiple of CEO compensation to that of rank-and-file workers is 204, up 20 percent since 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg in April. The Fed also has been caught up in the debate over growing income disparities. Lawmakers from both parties have questioned whether its bond-buying policy, called quantitative easing, has benefited the rich at the expense of those less well-off by boosting prices of stocks and other assets.
  • The S&P 500 stock index has risen 29 percent in 2013. The richest third of U.S. households account for 89 percent of all equities ownership, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
  • Janet Yellen, nominated to take over as Fed chairman next year, defended the central bank’s actions at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Nov. 14. “The policies we’ve undertaken have been meant to generate a robust recovery,” Yellen told the committee. The growing calls for action to reduce income inequality have translated into a national push for a higher minimum wage. Fast-food workers in 100 cities took to the streets Dec. 5 to demand a $15 hourly salary.
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Jan 14
     
    Monetary policy of, by, and for banksters continues in the U.S. One irony is that banksters press for transition to an all digital currency so that savers can be penalized, a blatant "trickle-up"economic policy, whilst also pressing for more bank bailouts, wielding the thoroughly-discredited "trickle down" economic theory. But "trickle down" theory, in the context of bank bailouts, has not successfully trickled down and the only beneficiaries have been the few Americans who can still invest in the stock market, paying the highest dividends to the wealthiest among us. Has their ever been a time when the stock market's behavior has been so divorced from the well-being of the middle and lower economic classes? I doubt there has been at least in the last 50 years. Where would we be if the bank bail-out trillions had instead been mailed as checks to the middle and lower economic classes? "Trickle up" works and that is what built the American economy to its peak in inflation-adjusted dollars -- an affluent middle class. But do not expect leadership from Washington, D.C. in correcting income inquequality; only political rhetoric and a fight over extension of unemployment benefits, now lapsed. "According to the World Bank, the GINI coefficient "measures the extent to which the distribution of income or consumption expenditure among individuals households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution." Therefore it is used as an indication of income inequality within countries. ... In the late 2000s, Chile had the highest GINI coefficient, after taxes and transfers, among OECD member countries. The United States, Turkey and Mexico came right before it. At the other end of the scale, Slovenia, Denmark and Norway led the ranking with the lowest levels of income inequality." http://www.gfmag.com/tools/global-database/economic-data/11944-wealth-distribution-income-inequality.html#ixzz2pGpv4xGZ Higher minimum wages? How about instead abolishing the Feder
Paul Merrell

Eric Cantor's Opponent Beat Him By Calling Out GOP Corruption | - 0 views

www.republicreport.org/...dave-brat-cantor

U.S. banksters Brat Cantor corruption

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • “All of the investment banks, up in New York and D.C., they should have gone to jail.” That isn’t a quote from an Occupy Wall Street protester or Senator Elizabeth Warren. That’s a common campaign slogan repeated by Dave Brat, the Virginia college professor who scored one of the biggest political upsets in over a century by defeating Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary last night. The national media is buzzing about Brat’s victory, but for all of the wrong reasons.
  • Did the Tea Party swoop in and help Brat, as many in the Democratic Party are suggesting? Actually, the Wall Street Journal reports no major Tea Party or anti-establishment GOP group spent funds to defeat Cantor. Did Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in Congress, lose because of his religion, as some have suggested? There’s no evidence so far of anti-Semitism during the campaign. Was Cantor caught flatfooted? Nope; Cantor’s campaign spent close to $1 million on the race and several outside advocacy groups, including the National Rifle Association, the National Realtors Association and the American Chemistry Council (a chemical industry lobbying association) came in and poured money into the district to defeat Brat. The New York Times claims that Brat focused his campaign primarily on immigration reform. Brat certainly made immigration a visible topic in his race, but Republic Report listened to several hours of Brat stump speeches and radio appearances, and that issue came up far less than what Brat called the main problem in government: corruption and cronyism. Brat told Internet radio host Flint Engelman that the “number one plank” in his campaign is “free markets.” Brat went on to explain, “Eric Cantor and the Republican leadership do not know what a free market is at all, and the clearest evidence of that is the financial crisis … When I say free markets, I mean no favoritism to K Street lobbyists.” Banks like Goldman Sachs were not fined for their role in the financial crisis — rather, they were rewarded with bailouts, Brat has said.
  • rat, who has identified with maverick GOP lawmakers like Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, spent much of the campaign slamming both parties for being in the pocket of “Wall Street crooks” and D.C. insiders. The folks who caused the financial crisis, Brat says, “went onto Obama’s rolodex, the Republican leadership, Eric’s rolodex.” During several campaign appearances, Brat says what upset him the most about Cantor was his role in gutting the last attempt at congressional ethics reform. “If you want to find out the smoking gun in this campaign,” Brat told Engelman, “just go Google and type the STOCK Act and CNN and Eric Cantor.” (On Twitter, Brat has praised the conservative author Peter Schweizer, whose work on congressional corruption forced lawmakers into action on the STOCK Act.) The STOCK Act, a bill to crack down on insider trading, was significantly watered down by Cantor in early 2012. The lawmaker took out provisions that would have forced Wall Street “political intelligence” firms to register as traditional lobbyists would, and removed a section of the bill to empower prosecutors to go after public officials who illegally trade on insider knowledge. And Brat may be right to charge that Cantor’s moves on the STOCK Act were motivated by self interest. Cantor played a leading role in blocking legislation to fix the foreclosure crisis while his wife and his stock portfolio were deeply invested in mortgage banks.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Most self-described Tea Party Republicans, including Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, have railed against Washington in a general sense without calling out the powerful – often Republican-leaning — groups that wield the most power. Not Brat. “Eric is running on Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable principles,” Brat told a town hall audience, later clarifying that he meant the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest lobbying trade group in the country. He also called out the American Chemistry Council for funding ads in his race with Cantor, telling a radio host that his opponent had asked his “crony capitalist friends to run more ads.” Brat repeats his mantra: “I’m not against business. I’m against big business in bed with big government.” Indeed, Cantor has been a close ally to top lobbyists and the financial industry. “Many lobbyists on K Street whose clients include major financial institutions consider Cantor a go to member in leadership on policy debates, including overhauling the mortgage finance market, extending the government backstop for terrorism insurance, how Wall Street should be taxed and flood insurance,” noted Politico following Cantor’s loss last night. In 2011, Cantor was caught on video promising a group of commodity speculators that he would roll back regulations on their industry. 
  • There are many lessons to be learned from the Cantor-Brat race. For one, it’s worth reflecting on the fact that not only did Cantor easily out raise and outspend Brat by over $5 million to around $200,000 in campaign funds, but burned through a significant amount on lavish travel and entertainment instead of election advocacy. Federal Election Commission records show Cantor’s PAC spent at least $168,637 on steakhouses, $116,668 on luxury hotels (including a $17,903 charge to the Beverly Hills Hotel & Bungalows) and nearly a quarter million on airfare (with about $140,000 in chartered flights) — just in the last year and a half! But on the policy issues and political ramifications of this race, it’s not easy to box Brat into a neat caricature of an anti-immigration zealot or Tea Party demagogue, or, in TIME’s hasty reporting, a “shopworn conservative boilerplate.” If Brat ascends to Congress, which is quite likely given the Republican-leaning district that he’ll run in as the GOP nominee, he may actually continue taking on powerful elites in Washington.  
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Jun 14
     
    The Cantor defeat was not a Tea Party upset victory as claimed by MSM, according to this article. Instead, Brat's stump speeches were about crony capitalism, bankster corruption of Congress, and libertarian principles. So if this article is correct, then MSM would rather claim that Cantor was a victim of the Tea Party than acknowledge the issues that Brat actually raised, Congressional corruption and big government/big corporation cronyism.  Very interesting food for thought.
Gary Edwards

Crony Capitalists Are the Ruling Class, the Forgotten Cause of Free Markets and Sound M... - 0 views

www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article39260.html

David-Stockman Banksters Corporate-Facsists

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Mar 13
     
    David Stockman, former Reagan Budget Director, gives an amazingly insightful and indepth analysis of the 2008 financial collapse.  He also identifies the banksters, fascist corporatists, politicians and political forces behind the collapse.  Great read, but also a very long speech.  Worth every bit of your time though.  Very informative.
Paul Merrell

Amend the Federal Reserve: We Need a Central Bank that Serves Main Street | Global Rese... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5360637

banksters federal-reserve Federal-Reserve-reform

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • December 23rd marks the 100th anniversary of the Federal Reserve. Dissatisfaction with its track record has prompted calls to audit the Fed and end the Fed.  At the least, Congress needs to amend the Fed, modifying the Federal Reserve Act to give the central bank the tools necessary to carry out its mandates. The Federal Reserve is the only central bank with a dual mandate. It is charged not only with maintaining low, stable inflation but with promoting maximum sustainable employment. Yet unemployment remains stubbornly high, despite four years of radical tinkering with interest rates and quantitative easing (creating money on the Fed’s books). After pushing interest rates as low as they can go, the Fed has admitted that it has run out of tools. At an IMF conference on November 8, 2013, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers suggested that since near-zero interest rates were not adequately promoting people to borrow and spend, it might now be necessary to set interest at below zero. This idea was lauded and expanded upon by other ivory-tower inside-the-box thinkers, including Paul Krugman. Negative interest would mean that banks would charge the depositor for holding his deposits rather than paying interest on them. Runs on the banks would no doubt follow, but the pundits have a solution for that: move to a cashless society, in which all money would be electronic. “This would make it impossible to hoard cash outside the bank,” wrote Danny Vinik in Business Insider, “allowing the Fed to cut interest rates to below zero, spurring people to spend more.”
  • Business Week quotes Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office: “We’ve had four years of extraordinarily loose monetary policy without satisfactory results, and the only thing they come up with is we need more?” Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, calls the idea “harebrained.” He is equally skeptical of quantitative easing, the Fed’s other tool for stimulating the economy. Roberts points to Andrew Huszar’s explosive November 11th Wall Street Journal article titled “Confessions of a Quantitative Easer,” in which Huszar says that QE was always intended to serve Wall Street, not Main Street.  Huszar’s assignment at the Fed was to manage the purchase of $1.25 trillion in mortgages with dollars created on a computer screen. He says he resigned when he realized that the real purpose of the policy was to drive up the prices of the banks’ holdings of debt instruments, to provide the banks with trillions of dollars at zero cost with which to lend and speculate, and to provide the banks with “fat commissions from brokering most of the Fed’s QE transactions.”
  • Bernanke created debt-free money and bought government debt with it, returning the interest to the Treasury. The result was interest-free credit, a good deal for the government. But the problem, says Lounsbury, is that: The helicopters dropped all the money into a hole in the ground (excess reserve accounts) and very little made its way into the economy.  It was essentially a rearrangement of the balance sheets of the creditor nation with little impact on the debtor nation. . . . The fatal flaw of QE is that it delivers money to the accounts of the creditors and does nothing for the accounts of the debtors. Bad debts remain unserviced and the debt crisis continues.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Bernanke delivered the money to the creditors because that was all the Federal Reserve Act allowed. If the Fed is to fulfill its mandate, it clearly needs more tools; and that means amending the Act.  Harvard professor Ken Rogoff, who spoke at the November 2013 IMF conference before Larry Summers, suggested several possibilities; and one was to broaden access to the central bank, allowing anyone to have an ATM at the Fed. Rajiv Sethi, Barnard/Columbia Professor of Economics, expanded on this idea in a blog titled “The Payments System and Monetary Transmission.” He suggested making the Federal Reserve the repository for all deposit banking. This would make deposit insurance unnecessary; it would eliminate the need to impose higher capital requirements; and it would allow the Fed to implement monetary policy by targeting debtor rather than creditor balance sheets. Instead of returning its profits to the Treasury, the Fed could do a helicopter drop directly into consumer bank accounts, stimulating demand in the consumer economy. John Lounsbury expanded further on these ideas. He wrote in Econintersect that they would open a pathway for investment banking and depository banking to be separated from each other, analogous to that under Glass-Steagall. Banks would no longer be too big to fail, since they could fail without destroying the general payment system of the economy. Lounsbury said the central bank could operate as a true public bank and repository for all federal banking transactions, and it could operate in the mode of a postal savings system for the general populace.
  • The Federal Reserve Act was drafted by bankers to create a banker’s bank that would serve their interests. It is their own private club, and its legal structure keeps all non-members out.  A century after the Fed’s creation, a sober look at its history leads to the conclusion that it is a privately controlled institution whose corporate owners use it to direct our entire economy for their own ends, without democratic influence or accountability.  Substantial changes are needed to transform the Fed, and these will only come with massive public pressure. Congress has the power to amend the Fed – just as it did in 1934, 1958 and 2010. For the central bank to satisfy its mandate to promote full employment and to become an institution that serves all the people, not just the 1%, the Fed needs fundamental reform.
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Dec 13
     
    In my view, the Fed is beyond salvage. It needs abolition, not a new role. The Constitution grants Congress the power to mint and coin money, not a group of rent-seeking banksters. 
Paul Merrell

America's Monetary Crisis: Even the Council on Foreign Relations Is Saying It: Time to ... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5398884

banksters economic-collapse trickle-down

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The Fed, it seems, has finally run out of other ammo. It has to taper its quantitative easing program, which is eating up the Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities needed as collateral for the repo market that is the engine of the bankers’ shell game. The Fed’s Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) has also done serious collateral damage. The banks that get the money just put it in interest-bearing Federal Reserve accounts or buy foreign debt or speculate with it; and the profits go back to the 1%, who park it offshore to avoid taxes. Worse, any increase in the money supply from increased borrowing increases the overall debt burden and compounding finance costs, which are already a major constraint on economic growth. Meanwhile, the economy continues to teeter on the edge of deflation. The Fed needs to pump up the money supply and stimulate demand in some other way. All else having failed, it is reduced to trying what money reformers have been advocating for decades — get money into the pockets of the people who actually spend it on goods and services.
  • Blyth and Lonergan write: [L]ow inflation . . . occurs when people and businesses are too hesitant to spend their money, which keeps unemployment high and wage growth low. In the eurozone, inflation has recently dropped perilously close to zero. . . . At best, the current policies are not working; at worst, they will lead to further instability and prolonged stagnation. Governments must do better. Rather than trying to spur private-sector spending through asset purchases or interest-rate changes, central banks, such as the Fed, should hand consumers cash directly. In practice, this policy could take the form of giving central banks the ability to hand their countries’ tax-paying households a certain amount of money. The government could distribute cash equally to all households or, even better, aim for the bottom 80 percent of households in terms of income. Targeting those who earn the least would have two primary benefits. For one thing, lower-income households are more prone to consume, so they would provide a greater boost to spending. For another, the policy would offset rising income inequality. [Emphasis added.]
  • A money drop directly on consumers is not a new idea for the Fed. Ben Bernanke recommended it in his notorious 2002 helicopter speech to the Japanese who were caught in a similar deflation trap.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Assume a $1 trillion dividend issued in the form of debit cards that could be used only for goods and services. A back-of-the-envelope estimate is that if $1 trillion were shared by all US adults making under $35,000 annually, they could each get about $600 per month.  If the total dividend were $2 trillion, they could get $1,200 per month. And in either case it could, at least in theory, all come back in taxes to the government without any net increase in the money supply.
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Sep 14
     
    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? 
Gary Edwards

Natural Rights and the un-Constitutional Patriot Act: Judge Andrew Napolitano youtube - 2 views

www.youtube.com/watch_popup

Judge-Andrew-Napolitano Natural-Rights Patriot-Act Campaign-for-Liberty

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 12
     
    Judge Napalatano The Campaign for Liberty Tea Party Group is holding patriotic meetings throughout the USA. Libertarian icon Judge Andrew Napolitano is a frequent and much requested speaker at these meetings. In this speech, the third part of a three part series, the Judge calls out to this generation of patriots to stand up for freedom; to defend liberty. Excellent speech. A fitting conclusion to parts one and two. Many thanks to Frank for this find!
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Jun 12
     
    My experience with Napolitano, as a retired lawyer, is that his present role is as a propagandist, willing to lie to make his central point. I've often caught him saying things about the law that he either knows are false or knows that he lacks sufficient knowledge to claim that one of his legal conclusions is true. (He is, however, a very effective orator.) This speech is no different. His premise is false, that there is no language in the Constitution authorizing a host of general welfare laws. First, we find in the Constitution's Preamble it's statement of purpose: "We the People of the United States, *in Order to* form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, *promote the general Welfare,* and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Note the distinction made between "promote the general Welfare" and the securing of Liberties. So the Constitution has a purpose beyond securing liberties that falls in the category of promoting the general welfare. Next we move on to Article 1 section 8, which itemizes the Powers of the Congress. In that section's first clause we find: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and *provide for the* common Defence and *general Welfare* of the United States;" But Napolitano's speech mistakenly brands a host of general welfare laws as abuses of the Commerce Clause, which only supplements the General Welfare Clause in relevant regard. His discussion of the meaning of "regulate" at the time of the Constitution's adoption is irrelevant. The far more pertinent question is what was meant at that time by the term "general Welfare." Napolitano simply ducks that question by ignoring the General Welfare Clause and pretending that it does not exist. That is not principled argument, in my humble opinion. Moral o
Paul Merrell

The Clintons' Paid-Speech Bonanza | Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...e-clintons-paid-speech-bonanza

Auction 2016 Hillary paid-speeches Wall-St. banksters

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • With primary voting set to start next month, one of Hillary Clinton’s remaining hurdles is convincing Democratic voters that she is not beholden to Wall Street and other wealthy interests that have fattened her family’s bank account with tens of millions of dollars for paid speeches, writes Chelsea Gilmour.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Jan 16
     
    Someone finally really dug into Hillary's income and campaign donations from big business. One might suspect that Hillary's campaign trail promises to rein in Wall Street were accompanied with private assurances that she has no true intent to do so, given that the Wall Street speeches for profit and for campaign donations continued to roll in. Hillary: the wrong woman for the first female U.S. president. 
Joe La Fleur

Disgraceful: Obama adds socialist Buffett rule to Reagan's White House bio pa... - 1 views

www.therightscoop.com/o-reagans-white-house-bio-page

obama adds socialist buffett rule reagan white house bio page

shared by Joe La Fleur on 16 May 12 - No Cached
  • Paul Merrell on 16 May 12
     
    Reagan's exact words in pushing his "tax fairness" plan in that speech: "Just a few moments ago, I told some people inside the building here of a letter that I just received the day before yesterday. It's a letter from a man out here in the country, an executive who's earning in six figures -- well above $100,000 a year. He wrote me in support of the tax plan because he said, 'I am legally able to take advantage of the present tax code -- nothing dishonest, doing what the law prescribes -- and wind up paying a smaller salary than my secretary gets -- or I mean, paying a smaller -- I'm sorry, *paying a smaller tax than my secretary pays.'* And he wrote me the letter to tell me he'd like to come to Washington and testify before Congress as to how that's possible for him to do and why it is wrong. So, this is the kind of spirit that is going on throughout the country." http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1985/62885b.htm Read the whole speech. Reagan was pushing the Buffet rule long before Buffet did. What's said on Reagan's bio page is accurate. And Reagan signed the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, the largest peacetime tax increase in U.S. history. Reagan was no saint, just another big-spending politician willing to bend with the political winds. He did far more talking about supply-side economics than he did even attempting to implement the concept. Just more politician hot air. I'm going to vote for Ron Paul even if I have to write in his name on the ballot. I don't truck with the anti-Obama propaganda. That's just playing into Romney's hands. But Romney is just the flip side of the same coin Obama's on, two corporatist- bankster sycophants eager to run this nation into the ground to keep waging expensive foreign wars for the military-industrial types. Trading Obama for Romney leaves us neither better nor worse off. Two peas in the same pod. Better to send a message than to become a co-conspirator by voting for either Obama or Rom
Paul Merrell

Occupy Hillary Clinton's Wall Street Speeches. What Did She Tell the Banks? | Global Re... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5511198

Auction 2016 Hillary bankster-speeches transparency

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Hillary Clinton refuses to make public the transcripts of her speeches to big banks, three of which were worth a total of $675,000 to Goldman Sachs. She says she would release the transcripts “if everybody does it, and that includes Republicans.” After all, she complained, “Why is there one standard for me, and not for everybody else?” As the New York Times editorial board pointed out, “The only different standard here is the one Mrs. Clinton set for herself, by personally earning $11 million in 2014 and the first quarter of 2015 for 51 speeches to banks and other groups and industries.” Hillary is not running in the primaries against Republicans, who, the Times noted, “make no bones about their commitment to Wall Street deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.”
  • She is running against Bernie Sanders, “a decades-long critic of Wall Street excess who is hardly a hot ticket on the industry speaking circuit,” according to the Times. Why do voters need to know what Hillary told the banks? Because it was Wall Street that was responsible for the 2008 recession, making life worse for most Americans. We need to know what, if anything, she promised these behemoths. I Scratch Your Back, You Scratch Mine Hillary has several super PACs, which have recently donated $25 million to her campaign, $15 million of which came from Wall Street. Big banks and large contributors don’t give their money away for nothing. They expect that their interests will be well served by those to whom they donate. Hillary recently attended an expensive fundraiser at Franklin Square Capital, a hedge fund that gives big bucks to the fracking industry. Two weeks later, Hillary’s campaign announced her continuing support for the production of natural gas, which comes from fracking. Bernie opposes fracking. He said, “Just as I believe you can’t take on Wall Street while taking their money, I don’t believe you can take on climate change effectively while taking money from those who would profit off the destruction of the planet.”
Gary Edwards

Allen West to Democrats: Get your leftism the hell out of America! » The Righ... - 1 views

www.therightscoop.com/eftism-the-hell-out-of-america

Allan-West Socialism Obammunism Patriotism Constitutional-Republic

shared by Gary Edwards on 30 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 30 Jan 12
     
    Throw the socialist out!  The full video of Col. Allan West's speech at the Lincoln Day Dinner in West Palm Beach Florida.  Incredible and well worth your time.  You will want to stand up and cheer.   Left lengthy note in the new Diigo Quick Note.  Wish i could do the same with EverNote!!!  Quick note is okay.  Very convenient, but no tags, groups or lists.  And the only HTML-Rich Text editing is at Diigo where you can edit a QuickNote.  No bookmarking either with QuickNote either.  Hopefully Diigo users will persuade QucikNote to improve this useful product.  And hopefully EverNote will come to see the advantages of Diigo. Need to edit the QuickNote with some quick definitions of the isms: Conservatism, the ,any Socialisms, Fascism, Nazism, Communism, Obammunism and libertarianism. My QuickNote discusses three corners: Libertarianism, Socialism and Fascism. Some quick comments:  Libertarianism differs from Conservatism in that conservatives champion conservative-judeo-christian social values.  The kind you think of when you hear God, Country, Community and Family.  The Libertarian champions the founding documents; the Declaration and the Constitution.  Here the only "value" the founding fathers desired to be embedded in the governing structure was that of "individual liberty".  Making the governing structure a Republic focused entirely on the objective of "ordered liberty". socialist are also focused on social values, but their primary objective is the welfare of the group.  More often than not, the individual's liberty is sacrificed to the welfare of the group.  In fact, in knee jerk socialism, the individual only exist to benefit the greater society.  When the individual becomes a drag, euthanasia is the tool of choice for a socialist.  Not though that as long as the individual is a voting and consuming member of the group that is overturning the Constitutional Republic, and clamoring to replace the Republic with mobocracy democracy, the
Paul Merrell

UNASUR Moves toward Continental Freedom of Movement, Venezuela Makes "Equality" Call | ... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...-venezuela-makes-equality-call

regional-governments UNASUR South-American-integration de-dollarization

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • The 12 member Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) has taken a step toward creating South American citizenship and freedom of movement. Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro also called for strategies to promote continental economic development, social equality and defence sovereignty. The new proposals for South American integration were made during a UNASUR summit in Guayaquil, Ecuador yesterday. Today regional leaders are meeting in the Ecuadorian capital Quito for the opening of the organisation’s new permanent headquarters.
  • Taking place over two days, the summit in Guayaquil sought to design strategies to further develop regional integration. “We have approved the concept of South American citizenship. This should be the greatest register of what has happened,” said UNASUR general secretary Ernesto Samper at the summit yesterday. Part of this proposal is to create a “single passport” and homologate university degrees in order to give South Americans the right to live, work and study in any UNASUR country and to give legal protection to migrants – similar to freedom of movement rules for citizens of the European Union.
  • Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, argued that the statutes of UNASUR should be changed and that majorities, rather than absolute consensus, should be the minimum necessary basis on which to advance important areas of integration. In particular, Correa called for the advancement of financial integration and sovereignty, such as the Bank of the South and Reserve Fund, a currency exchange system to minimise the use of the dollar in intercontinental trade, the creation of a regional body to settle financial disputes, and a common currency “in the medium term”.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro agreed that the creation of new financial instruments was central to advancing regional integration and sovereignty. “From Venezuela we believe that we must take the agenda of shared economic development into our hands; a new financial architecture [that includes] the Bank of Structural Projects, that converts us into a powerful bloc,” he said to media in Guayaquil before the meeting with other UNASUR leaders. The two other priorities for the Venezuelan government at the meeting were to promote strategies for social equality and regional defence sovereignty. On defence, Maduro said that Venezuela would support a “new South American military doctrine” based on a “system of education for South American militaries, below the guidance of the South American Defence Council,” in which the thought of the continent’s 19th century independence leaders would be present.
  • Outgoing Uruguayan president Jose Mujica made a passionate speech while accepting the presidency on behalf of his country, where he stated, “There won’t be integration without commitment, willpower, and political will, because the global obstacles are enormous and the past continues to constrain us”. Meanwhile, respected former Brazilian president Lula Da Silva declared, “Today our main challenge is to deepen the construction of strategic thought of Latin America and the Caribbean. We can construct an integration project that is more daring, that takes advantage of the formation of our rich history, goods and cultures”.
  • The UNASUR was created in 2008. Its members are: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Dec 14
     
    A rough equivalent of the EU for South America and the Carribean? De-dollarization? A common currency? Regional defense sovereignty? Quite obviously, the CIA needs to expand its destabilization operations in Venezuela to a few more countries, else the banksters get grumpy. 
Paul Merrell

If Elizabeth Warren Were Running for President, This Would Be Her Agenda | The Nation - 0 views

www.thenation.com/...ch-how-finish-financial-reform

banksters-reform regulation legislation warren Auction 2016

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • If Elizabeth Warren ran for president, a key part of her campaign—if not the centerpiece—would likely involve how to restructure the financial sector in a less dangerous and more productive way. Dodd-Frank was by many accounts a good start, but it’s clear the economy is still over-financialized and too-big-to-fail banks continue to pose an existential threat. Warren isn’t running for president, but she unveiled that exact agenda in a sweeping speech Wednesday in a conference at the Levy Institute in Washington. It advocated an array of specific, often ambitious policy proposals, many of which have circulated in Washington for years and that Warren, at various times, has already called for. But tied together in one place, and packaged as a clear call for structural and not just technocratic changes, a blueprint emerged for how Warren thinks Democrats should attack continued financial reform. Whether purposeful or not, the speech was timed exactly to start of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
  • Her ideas fit into four basic categories: first, getting tougher on bad financial actors, particularly big banks, and presenting them with actual legal accountability for malfeasance. Second, Warren outlined how to change the basic structure of the country’s largest financial institutions so their very existence doesn’t threaten the economy nor taxpayer money via inevitable bailouts. Third, she outlined how to change tax policies that incentivize financial risk-taking and instability. And finally, Warren called for tougher regulations on the shadow-banking sector that was a huge contributor to the 2008 crash and which remained largely untouched by Dodd-Frank.
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Apr 15
     
    Nice set of points for financial reform activists to use in forcing Hillary to take positions.
Gary Edwards

The Money Masters - 0 views

www.themoneymasters.com

Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 24 Oct 16 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 24 Oct 16
     
    ""The purpose of this financial crisis is to take down the U.S. dollar as the stable datum of planetary finance and, in the midst of the resulting confusion, put in its place a Global Monetary Authority [GMA - run directly by international bankers freed of any government control] -a planetary financial control organization"- Bruce Wiseman *The U.S did modify these rules somewhat a year after the devastation had taken place here, but the rules are still fully in place in the rest of the world and the results are appalling. "The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching plan, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole… Their secret is that they have annexed from governments, monarchies, and republics the power to create the world's money…" .- Prof. Carroll Quigley renowned, late Georgetown macro-historian (mentioned by former President Clinton in his first nomination acceptance speech), author of Tragedy and Hope. "He [Carroll Quigley] was one of the last great macro-historians who traced the development of civilization…with an awesome capability." - Dr. Peter F. Krogh, Dean of the School of Foreign Service (Georgetown) The Two Step Plan to National Economic Reform and Recovery 1. Directs the Treasury Department to issue U.S. Notes (like Lincoln's Greenbacks; can also be in electronic deposit format) to pay off the National debt. 2. Increases the reserve ratio private banks are required to maintain from 10% to 100%, thereby terminating their ability to create money, while simultaneously absorbing the funds created to retire the national debt."
Gary Edwards

George Soros Hacked, Connections To Global 'Dissident Groups' Revealed - 1 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...219531

Soros New-World-Order Globalist Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • The documents are from multiple departments of Soros’ organizations. Soros’ the Open Society Foundations seems to be the group with the most documents in the leak. Files come from sections representing almost all geographical regions in the world, from the USA, to Europe, Eurasia, Asia, Latin, America, Africa, the World Bank “the President’s Office”, as well as an unknown entity named SOUK. As the Daily Caller notes, there are documents dating from at least 2008 to 2016. Documents in the leak range from research papers such as “EUROPEAN CRISIS: Key Developments of the Past 48 Hours” focusing on the impact of the refugee crisis, to a document titled “The Ukraine debate in Germany“, to an update specific financials of grants. They reveal work plans, strategies, priorities and other activities by Soros, and include reports on European elections, migration and asylum in Europe.
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Aug 16
     
    "Last Thursday, as Bloomberg was gingerly setting the stage, and the preemptive damage control for what was about to be a historic leak, it did everything in its power to deflect attention from the key topic, namely that prominent liberal billionaire and Hillary supporter, George Soros had been hacked and countless documents were about to be leaked, and instead focus on the alleged identity of the hackers, the so-called DCLeaks, which - like all other "experts" - it positioned as yet another Russian government-sponsored operation. To this we had one retort: "Far more important than the inane speculation on the hackers' identity, is the now official disclosure - and warning - that Soros himself was hacked. Bloomberg writes that Open Society Foundations, the Soros group, reported the breach to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in June, according to spokeswoman Laura Silber, who added that an investigation by a security firm found the intrusion was limited to an intranet system used by board members, staff and foundation partners." And, sure enough, over the weekend that is precisely what DCLeaks revealed as it disclosed over two thousand internal documents from groups run by George Soros were leaked online Saturday after hackers infiltrated the groups. The 2,576 files were released by DCLeaks, a website which claims to be "launched by the American hacktivists who respect and appreciate freedom of speech, human rights and government of the people.""
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Aug 16
     
    The leaked documents are here. http://soros.dcleaks.com/
Paul Merrell

ECB Head Mario Draghi Admits For First Time EU May Break-Up - TruePublica - 0 views

truepublica.org.uk/...for-first-time-eu-may-break-up

banksters euro EU-disintegration

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Back in 2012, Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, pledged to do “whatever it takes” to protect the eurozone from collapse, infamous words I’m sure he has come to regret. Draghi’s speech at an investment conference in London boosted markets at the time and forced down Spain and Italy’s borrowing costs after saying; “Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough.” The markets responded because they were effectively being manipulated. Known as “Outright Monetary Transactions” the scheme was to have been deployed alongside a QE programme from March 2015, itself racking up ¢80billion a month. Several trillion euros later and the EU looks as precarious as ever with growth a distant memory. In Italy, yields on bonds dropped from 6.3 per cent to 1.2 per cent after that famous speech and all seemed good – on the face of it. But deep down, it was not as we had been led to believe. Italy’s government debt grew and is now equal to 133 per cent of GDP. When Ireland imploded and had to be fully bailed out by the ECB, it’s debt pile was 132.2% of GDP.
  • With all this intervention, the ECB’s balance sheet ballooned – set to overtake the U.S. Fed Reserve and has now reached over $3trillion according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch (not to be confused with national debt). Then, totally off the mainstream media radar came news that another Italian bank had disintegrated. And while attention was focused on the rescue of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which is still not fully finalised, news came that Banca Etruria, has quietly slipped into bankruptcy. “It was announced (Dec 21st) that the first part of an investigation concerning fraudulent bankruptcy charges (at Banca Etruria), in which 21 board members are implicated, had been closed. This strand of the investigation concerns €180 million of loans offered by the bank which were never paid back, leading to the regional lender’s bankruptcy and eventual bail-in/out last November that left bondholders holding virtually worthless bonds.” Next up and out of the blue comes UniCredit, the country’s largest bank. It is seeking to raise €13bn of desperately needed capital but large as though this is, the biggest problems, according to the FT is that the smaller banks, like Banca Etruria, are now in a perilous position and on the verge of falling over the cliff edge. Italy has banks on every street corner, with more branches per capita than any other OECD country. The lack of growth (occurred since it joined the Euro), has suppressed much needed profits on the one hand whilst seeing poor wage growth on the other, causing drastically increased non-performing loans that now add up to an eye-watering €360billion.
  • The FT reports that Italian banks “have long sold their own shares and debt to their retail customers as an attractive alternative to savings products, a disgraceful practice that should never have been allowed. It means that ordinary Italians, many in retirement, have already suffered as bank shares have fallen. They will suffer much more in a bail-in.” The FT is suggesting that a full bail-in is on the cards. It is. truepublica reported back in September that banks throughout the EU would simply steal depositors money if any of them failed now that new bail-in rules had been implemented. And that is exactly what is happening. The result of all this is that Mario Draghi, clearly feeling the strain, has finally admitted defeat and said that there is a strong possibility of the EU falling apart. This time the tactic to keep unity was to threaten every country in the EU by stating that leaving the Eurozone would cost dearly and would require any member country to settle its claims or debts with the bloc’s payments system before severing ties. There’s nothing to stop a desperate member country from leaving and simply defaulting.
Gary Edwards

EconomicPolicyJournal.com: My Speech Delivered at the New York Federal Reserve Bank - 1 views

www.economicpolicyjournal.com/...vered-at-new-york-federal.html

economic-freedom liberty Rpbert-Wenzel Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Apr 12
     
    At the invitation of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Robert Wenzel spoke and had lunch in the bank's Liberty Room.  he had some very shocking things to say.  Right between the eyes kind of things.  Like ending the Federal reserve.  Incredible.  He took right to the the belly of the beast.
Paul Merrell

Covington & Burling Gets Eric Holder Back After 6-Year Stopover - 0 views

firstlook.org/...rns-law-firm-lobbies-big-banks

banksters too-big-to-jail Holder revolving-door

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • After failing to criminally prosecute any of the financial firms responsible for the market collapse in 2008, former Attorney General Eric Holder is returning to Covington & Burling, a corporate law firm known for serving Wall Street clients. The move completes one of the more troubling trips through the revolving door for a cabinet secretary. Holder worked at Covington from 2001 right up to being sworn in as attorney general in Feburary 2009. And Covington literally kept an office empty for him, awaiting his return. The Covington & Burling client list has included four of the largest banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Lobbying records show that Wells Fargo is still a client of Covington. Covington recently represented Citigroup over a civil lawsuit relating to the bank’s role in Libor manipulation.
  • Covington was also deeply involved with a company known as MERS, which was later responsible for falsifying mortgage documents on an industrial scale. “Court records show that Covington, in the late 1990s, provided legal opinion letters needed to create MERS on behalf of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and several other large banks,” according to an investigation by Reuters. The Department of Justice under Holder not only failed to pursue criminal prosecutions of the banks responsible for the mortage meltdown, but in fact de-prioritized investigations of mortgage fraud, making it the “lowest-ranked criminal threat,” according to an inspector general report. For insiders, the Holder decision to return to Covington was never a mystery. Timothy Hester, the chairman of Covington, told the National Law Journal that Holder’s return to the firm had been “a project” of his ever since Holder left to the join the administration in 2009. When the firm moved to a new building last year, it kept an 11th-story corner office reserved for Holder.
  • Holder’s critics charge that he made a career out of institutionalizing “Too Big to Prosecute” rules within the department. In 1999, as a deputy attorney general, Holder authored a memo arguing that officials should consider the “collateral consequences” when prosecuting corporate crimes. In 2012, Holder’s enforcement chief, Lanny Breuer, admitted during a speech to the New York City Bar Association that the department may go easy on certain corporate criminals if they believe prosecutions may disrupt financial markets or cause layoffs. “In some cases, the health of an industry or the markets are a real factor,” Breuer said. Rather than face accountability for their failures, the incentive structure of modern Washington is designed to reward both men. Breuer left the department in 2013 to rejoin Covington. Holder is set to become among the highest-earning partners at the firm, with compensation in the seven or eight figures.
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