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Gary Edwards

The planned re-election of Obama, revolutionary style - 0 views

www.canadafreepress.com/...46516

Doug-Hagmann Obama-Czars overthrow Obama-revolution

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 May 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 May 12
     
    Obama administration, including his czars and his closest Progressive supporters, are planning a manufactured insurgency against America. Using the media to garner both sympathy and support for his unfinished goals
    The ambition to re-elect Obama is nothing short of the plan to overthrow the US Constitutional Republic and replace it with a new world order. The article explains the carefully planned re-election of Obama, concluding that it's counting on chaos, rebellion, anger, fear and rioting. Author Doug Hagmann calls this "re-election via revolutionary style". He identifies three areas of aggressively planned chaos: economic, racial, and class warfare. Doug has a source inside the Department of HomeLand Security (DHS), which seems to be the main instrument of overthrow. The model is that of 1968 anti-war, anti-establishment, pro marxist movement. Hagmann and his inside source predict the destruction of the dollar, the seeming breakup and fall of the European Union, riots in the streets of America, and a failed attempt on Obama's life that will result in a horrific crackdown and roundup of Tea Party members. This is truly frightening stuff. Yet, Reagan era Conservative leaders like Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh - the guys with the megaphone - have no idea what the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel and their Globalist cronies have pulled off here. Obama is just a stooge carrying out the final stages of a plan that has been in place at least since 1875, when Freemason Albert Pike slipped up with the aging blueprint known to insiders as the "Luciferian Document", inadvertently leaking into the public through a series of letters to a trusted American henchman. Obama himself cut his marxist - new world order teeth, teaching the Alinsky "Rules for Radicals" plan of street revolution and overthrow. Alinsky dedicated his marxist handbook to that first revolutionary, Lucifer. Amazing. And here we are, wondering what mechanisms
Gary Edwards

PETER SCHIFF: The Housing Bust Was Just A Preview For The Coming Catastrophe - Business... - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/the-real-crash-2012-5

peter-schiff Lindsey-Williams The-Real-Crash

shared by Gary Edwards on 23 May 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 23 May 12
     
    Peter Schiff talks about his new book "The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy, How to Save Yourself and Your Country".  I caught the Coast-to-Coast "Financial Crisis Special" interview with Peter earlier this week where he spoke on the "Real Crash" issues.  Stunning stuff.  His hour on Coast was followed by Lindsey Williams who pointed out that the New World Order - Illuminati - Bankster trigger point would be signaled by a collapse in the derivatives market. The derivatives market is now over a quadrillion dollars of  casino style gambling.  This is where Banksters make huge bets on things like whether or not interest rates will go up or down.  Then they take out insurance to cover their bets, which further compounds the cost.  Recent events like the Jon Corzine MF Global gamble that the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel would backstop explosive European sovereign bankster debt are the first indications of collapse in the derivatives market.  We now know that JP Morgan placed similar bets on a European bailout by the Federal Reserve and World Bank, and lost big.  The only difference is that Corzine robbed his clients personal accounts to cover his bets. While Schiff argues the facts on the table, the "what", Lindsay argued the "why"; claiming that this escalating debt mess is all by design.  Lindsay claims that an operational fundamental of the New World Order elites is to first overturn the USA Constitution.  Using a Machiavellian Principle known as, "out of chaos comes order", they seek to de-stabilize and overthrow the USA Constitutional Republic using massive and crushing debt to first destroy the dollar currency.  This will create massive chaos requiring martial law and government seizure of private property and production. Peter Schiff warns that the government is driving us deeper into debt at exactly the time we should be saving and investing those savings in future private sector productivity.  Lindsay argues that this is all by desig
Gary Edwards

A New Reserve Currency to Challenge the Dollar | Veterans Today - 0 views

www.veteranstoday.com/...ng-on-in-the-straits-of-hormuz

Banksters GOLD David-Malone Oil Islamic-Wars

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Jan 12
     
    Author David Malone digs into world events, suggesting that all the saber rattling over Iran and nuclear weapons is really about GOLD!   He argues that the dollar is rapidly being replaced as the world's "settlement" currency.  As a function, "settlement" is different than "reserve", but since WWII and the Basel Conference, the USA Dollar has been both the currency of "reserve" and settlement".  That is now changing, and fast! David further suggests that the Iraqi wars with Saddam Hussein were also about his use of the Euro to "settle" oil purchases.  It could also be argued that Muamma Gaddafi in Lybia was removed because he was organizing all of Africa to "settle" oil and other commodity purchases in GOLD, and not the USA Dollar. Are the Islamic wars really about oil?  Or are they about how oil purchases are "settled"? David further argues that Russia, India, China and Japan are actively pursuing a GOLD based settlement currency agreement series where the Chinese Yuan plays a central role.  Interestingly, all of these countries have cut agreements with Iran.  Which seems to have triggered the December 2011 Obama response banning any banks, both private and government controlled, from dealings with Iran.   It's increasingly looking like it's not the Iranian nuclear weapons program that is upsetting to Obama and his Bankster buddies.  It's the rapid replacement of the worthless paper USA dollar as a settlement currency. One of the interesting points the venerable "Veterans Today" news sight is making is that our military is being used to forcefully prop up an inflationary Bankster Dollar, and force oil producing countries into accepting that inflated Bankster Dollar as payment.  The one thing the International Bankster Cartel doesn't want is for the trade of important commodities, especially energy, to be paid for in GOLD instead of the worthless paper they control. excerpt: I think the stand-off with Iran in the Straits of Hormuz over sanctions is a
Gary Edwards

Thrive - 0 views

www.thrivemovement.com

Banksters Coast-to-Coast Thrive Film

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 04 Mar 12
     
    I listened to the Coast to Coast interview with Foster & Kimberly Gamble, who researched and produced the film "Thrive".  Fascinating stuff, but if you're a Coast to Coast regular, you've heard this all before.  The Gamble's are different however in that they really have produced a top notch, highly visual and engaging film documenting their research and interviews.  The energy and bankster discussions are really well done.  Let's hope this wake up call finds some traction. The one disappointing aspect of the Gamble's presentation is their hopefulness with the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Sure, of course, we we're all hopeful in the early days of the movement.  Until it became obvious that this was being driven by Saul Alinsky radical watermelons and Obammunists. After listening to the Gamble's for an hour, there's no doubt in my mind that they true Patriots, fully embracing the founders value for "individual liberty" and the system of ordered liberty embedded in the Constitution and Declaration.  But i don't think they have thought things out to the full extent of realizing that "individual liberty" and "socialism" are at odds.   A socialist believes the welfare of the society (the group) is more important than the liberty of the individual.  Socialist are at odds with the Constitution.  While libertarians welcome any help they can get overthrowing the heavy yoke of psychopathic banksters and crony corporatists, help from the socialists is very dangerous.  It's an established fact that Marx and Engels were hired and paid by global banksters to create a new system that would counter the economic, social and cultural forces of individual liberty.  Banksters and corporatists are quite willing to lend money and collect interest for vast and unsustainable socialist programs and military interventions racking up debt that spans and enslaves generations.  Socialism is the new indentured servitude.  And it will last as long as the banksters control the fia
Gary Edwards

What the hell just happened? 'Tyranny By Executive Order' | by Constitutional Attorney ... - 0 views

www.redflagnews.com/...l-attorney-michael-connelly-jd

Tyranny-by-Executive-Order

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Aug 13
     
    "What the hell just happened? That is the question that many Americans should be asking themselves following the news conference where Obama unveiled his plan for destroying the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. At first glance it appeared to be a case of Obama shamelessly using the deaths of innocents, and some live children as a backdrop, to push for the passage of radical gun control measures by Congress. Most of these have no chance of passing, yet, Obama's signing of Executive orders initiating 23 so called Executive actions on gun control seemed like an afterthought. Unfortunately, that is the real story, but it is generally being overlooked. The fact is that with a few strokes of his pen Obama set up the mechanisms he will personally use to not only destroy the Second Amendment to the Constitution, but also the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. It will not matter what Congress does, Obama can and will act on his own, using these Executive actions, and will be violating both the Constitution and his oath of office when he does it. Here are the sections of the Executive Order that he will use: "1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background-check system." What exactly is relevant data? Does it include our medical records obtained through Obamacare, our tax returns, our political affiliations, our military background, and our credit history? I suggest that all of the above, even if it violates our fourth Amendment right to privacy will now be relevant data for determining if we are allowed to purchase a firearm. "2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background-check system." This should be read in conjunction with section 16 of the order that says: "16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors
Paul Merrell

The American Deep State, Deep Events, and Off-the-Books Financing | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5376904

banksters CIA 9-11 arms-deals opium congtinuity-of-government

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • It is alleged that some of the bail money that released Sturgis and the other Watergate burglars was drug money from the CIA asset turned drug trafficker, Manuel Artime, and delivered by Artime’s money-launderer, Ramón Milián Rodríguez. After the Iran-Contra scandal went public, Milián Rodríguez was investigated by a congressional committee – not for Watergate, but because, in support of the Contras, he had managed two Costa Rican seafood companies, Frigorificos and Ocean Hunter, that laundered drug money.6
  • In the 1950s Wall Street was a dominating complex. It included not just banks and other financial institutions but also the oil majors whose cartel arrangements were successfully defended against the U.S. Government by the Wall Street law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, home to the Dulles brothers. The inclusion of Wall Street conforms with Franklin Roosevelt’s observation in 1933 to his friend Col. E.M. House that “The real truth … is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.”18 FDR’s insight is well illustrated by the efficiency with which a group of Wall Street bankers (including Nelson Rockefeller’s grandfather Nelson Aldrich) were able in a highly secret meeting in 1910 to establish the Federal Reserve System – a system which in effect reserved oversight of the nation’s currency supply and of all America’s banks in the not impartial hands of its largest.19 The political clout of the quasi-governmental Federal Reserve Board was clearly demonstrated in 2008, when Fed leadership secured instant support from two successive administrations for public money to rescue the reckless management of Wall Street banks: banks Too Big To Fail, and of course far Too Big To Jail, but not Too Big To Bail.20
  • since its outset, the CIA has always had access to large amounts of off-the books or offshore funds to support its activities. Indeed, the power of the purse has usually worked in an opposite sense, since those in control of deep state offshore funds supporting CIA activities have for decades also funded members of Congress and of the executive – not vice versa. The last six decades provide a coherent and continuous picture of historical direction being provided by this deep state power of the purse, trumping and sometimes reversing the conventional state. Let us resume some of the CIA’s sources of offshore and off-the-books funding for its activities. The CIA’s first covert operation was the use of “over $10 million in captured Axis funds to influence the [Italian] election [of 1948].”25 (The fundraising had begun at the wealthy Brook Club in New York; but Allen Dulles, then still a Wall Street lawyer, persuaded Washington, which at first had preferred a private funding campaign, to authorize the operation through the National Security Council and the CIA.)26 Dulles, together with George Kennan and James Forrestal, then found a way to provide a legal source for off-the-books CIA funding, under the cover of the Marshall Plan. The three men “helped devise a secret codicil [to the Marshall Plan] that gave the CIA the capability to conduct political warfare. It let the agency skim millions of dollars from the plan.”27
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  • The international lawyers of Wall Street did not hide from each other their shared belief that they understood better than Washington the requirements for running the world. As John Foster Dulles wrote in the 1930s to a British colleague, The word “cartel” has here assumed the stigma of a bogeyman which the politicians are constantly attacking. The fact of the matter is that most of these politicians are highly insular and nationalistic and because the political organization of the world has under such influence been so backward, business people who have had to cope realistically with international problems have had to find ways for getting through and around stupid political barriers.21
  • In the 1960s and especially the 1970s America began to import more and more oil from the Middle East. But the negative effect on the U.S. balance of payments was offset by increasing arms and aviation sales to Iran and Saudi Arabia. Contracts with companies like Northrop and especially Lockheed (the builder of the CIA’s U-2) included kickbacks to arms brokers, like Kodama Yoshio in Japan and Adnan Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia, who were also important CIA agents. Lockheed alone later admitted to the Church Committee that it had provided $106 million in commissions to Khashoggi between 1970 and 1975, more than ten times what it had paid to the next most important connection, Kodama.31 These funds were then used by Khashoggi and Kodama to purchase pro-Western influence. But Khashoggi, advised by a team of ex-CIA Americans like Miles Copeland and Edward Moss, distributed cash, and sometimes provided women, not just in Saudi Arabia but around the world – including cash to congressmen and President Nixon in the United States.32 Khashoggi in effect served as a “cutout,” or representative, in a number of operations forbidden to the CIA and the companies he worked with. Lockheed, for one, was conspicuously absent from the list of military contractors who contributed illicitly to Nixon’s 1972 election campaign. But there was no law prohibiting, and nothing else to prevent their official representative, Khashoggi, from cycling $200 million through the bank of Nixon’s friend Bebe Rebozo.33
  • The most dramatic use of off-the-books drug profits to finance foreign armies was seen in the 1960s CIA-led campaign in Laos. There the CIA supplied airstrips and planes to support a 30,000-man drug-financed Hmong army. At one point Laotian CIA station chief Theodore Shackley even called in CIA aircraft in support of a ground battle to seize a huge opium caravan on behalf of the larger Royal Laotian Army.30
  • At the time of the Marshall Plan slush fund in Europe, the CIA also took steps which resulted in drug money to support anti-communist armies in the Far East. In my book American War Machine I tell how the CIA, using former OSS operative Paul Helliwell, created two proprietary firms as infrastructure for a KMT army in Burma, an army which quickly became involved in managing and developing the opium traffic there. The two firms were SEA Supply Inc. in Bangkok and CAT Inc. (later Air America) in Taiwan. Significantly, the CIA split ownership of CAT Inc.’s plane with KMT bankers in Taiwan – this allowed the CIA to deny responsibility for the flights when CAT planes, having delivered arms from Sea Supply to the opium-growing army, then returned to Taiwan with opium for the KMT. Even after the CIA officially severed its connection to the KMT Army in 1953, its proprietary firm Sea Supply Inc. supplied arms for a CIA-led paramilitary force, PARU, that also was financed, at least in part, by the drug traffic.28 Profits from Thailand filtered back, in part through the same Paul Helliwell, as donations to members from both parties in Congress. Thai dictator Phao Sriyanon, a drug trafficker who was then alleged to be the richest man in the world, hired lawyer Paul Helliwell…as a lobbyist in addition to [former OSS chief William] Donovan [who in 1953-55 was US Ambassador to Thailand]. Donovan and Helliwell divided the Congress between them, with Donovan assuming responsibility for the Republicans and Helliwell taking the Democrats.29
  • The power exerted by Khashoggi was not limited to his access to funds and women. By the 1970s, Khashoggi and his aide Edward Moss owned the elite Safari Club in Kenya.34 The exclusive club became the first venue for another and more important Safari Club: an alliance between Saudi and other intelligence agencies that wished to compensate for the CIA’s retrenchment in the wake of President Carter’s election and Senator Church’s post-Watergate reforms.35
  • As former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal once told Georgetown University alumni, In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here, your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything. It could not send spies, it could not write reports, and it could not pay money. In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran.36 Prince Turki’s candid remarks– “your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. …. In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together … and established what was called the Safari Club.” – made it clear that the Safari Club, operating at the level of the deep state, was expressly created to overcome restraints established by political decisions of the public state in Washington (decisions not only of Congress but also of President Carter).
  • Specifically Khashoggi’s activities involving corruption by sex and money, after they too were somewhat curtailed by Senator Church’s post-Watergate reforms, appear to have been taken up quickly by the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), a Muslim-owned bank where Khashoggi’s friend and business partner Kamal Adham, the Saudi intelligence chief and a principal Safari Club member, was a part-owner.37 In the 1980s BCCI, and its allied shipping empire owned by the Pakistani Gokal brothers, supplied financing and infrastructure for the CIA’s (and Saudi Arabia’s) biggest covert operation of the decade, support for the Afghan mujahedin. To quote from a British book excerpted in the Senate BCCI Report: “BCCI’s role in assisting the U.S. to fund the Mujaheddin guerrillas fighting the Soviet occupation is drawing increasing attention. The bank’s role began to surface in the mid-1980′s when stories appeared in the New York Times showing how American security operatives used Oman as a staging post for Arab funds. This was confirmed in the Wall Street Journal of 23 October 1991 which quotes a member of the late General Zia’s cabinet as saying ‘It was Arab money that was pouring through BCCI.’ The Bank which carried the money on from Oman to Pakistan and into Afghanistan was National Bank of Oman, where BCCI owned 29%.”38
  • In 1981 Vice-president Bush and Saudi Prince Bandar, working together, won congressional approval for massive new arms sales of AWACS (airborne warning and control system) aircraft to Saudi Arabia. In the $5.5 billion package, only ten percent covered the cost of the planes. Most of the rest was an initial installment on what was ultimately a $200 billion program for military infrastructure through Saudi Arabia.41 It also supplied a slush fund for secret ops, one administered for over a decade in Washington by Prince Bandar, after he became the Saudi Ambassador (and a close friend of the Bush family, nicknamed “Bandar Bush”). In the words of researcher Scott Armstrong, the fund was “the ultimate government-off-the-books.” Not long after the AWACS sale was approved, Prince Bandar thanked the Reagan administration for the vote by honoring a request by William Casey that he deposit $10 million in a Vatican bank to be used in a campaign against the Italian Communist Party. Implicit in the AWACS deal was a pledge by the Saudis to fund anticommunist guerrilla groups in Afghanistan, Angola, and elsewhere that were supported by the Reagan Administration.42 The Vatican contribution, “for the CIA’s long-time clients, the Christian Democratic Party,” of course continued a CIA tradition dating back to 1948.
  • The activities of the Safari Club were exposed after Iranians in 1979 seized the records of the US Embassy in Tehran. But BCCI support for covert CIA operations, including Iran-Contra, continued until BCCI’s criminality was exposed at the end of the decade. Meanwhile, with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Washington resumed off-budget funding for CIA covert operations under cover of arms contracts to Saudi Arabia. But this was no longer achieved through kickbacks to CIA assets like Khashoggi, after Congress in 1977 made it illegal for American corporations to make payments to foreign officials. Instead arrangements were made for payments to be returned, through either informal agreements or secret codicils in the contracts, by the Saudi Arabian government itself. Two successive arms deals, the AWACS deal of 1981 and the al-Yamamah deal of 1985, considerably escalated the amount of available slush funds.
  • It is reported in two books that the BCCI money flow through the Bank of Oman was handled in part by the international financier Bruce Rappaport, who for a decade, like Khashoggi, kept a former CIA officer on his staff.39 Rappaport’s partner in his Inter Maritime Bank, which interlocked with BCCI, was E.P. Barry, who earlier had been a partner in the Florida money-laundering banks of Paul Helliwell.40
  • After a second proposed major U.S. arms sale met enhanced opposition in Congress in 1985 from the Israeli lobby, Saudi Arabia negotiated instead a multi-billion pound long-term contract with the United Kingdom – the so-called al-Yamamah deal. Once again overpayments for the purchased weapons were siphoned off into a huge slush fund for political payoffs, including “hundreds of millions of pounds to the ex-Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.”43 According to Robert Lacey, the payments to Prince Bandar were said to total one billion pounds over more than a decade.44 The money went through a Saudi Embassy account in the Riggs Bank, Washington; according to Trento, the Embassy’s use of the Riggs Bank dated back to the mid-1970s, when, in his words, “the Saudi royal family had taken over intelligence financing for the United States.”45 More accurately, the financing was not for the United States, but for the American deep state.
  • This leads me to the most original and important thing I have to say. I believe that these secret funds from BCCI and Saudi arms deals – first Khashoggi’s from Lockheed and then Prince Bandar’s from the AWACS and al-Yamamah deals – are the common denominator in all of the major structural deep events (SDEs) that have afflicted America since the supranational Safari Club was created in l976. I am referring specifically to 1) the covert US intervention in Afghanistan (which started about 1978 as a Safari Club intervention, more than a year before the Russian invasion), 2) the 1980 October Surprise, which together with an increase in Saudi oil prices helped assure Reagan’s election and thus give us the Reagan Revolution, 3) Iran-Contra in 1984-86, 4) and – last but by no means least – 9/11. That is why I believe it is important to analyze these events at the level of the supranational deep state. Let me just cite a few details.
  • 1) the 1980 October Surprise. According to Robert Parry, Alexandre de Marenches, the principal founder of the Safari Club, arranged for William Casey (a fellow Knight of Malta) to meet with Iranian and Israeli representatives in Paris in July and October 1980, where Casey promised delivery to Iran of needed U.S. armaments, in exchange for a delay in the return of the U.S. hostages in Iran until Reagan was in power. Parry suspects a role of BCCI in both the funding of payoffs for the secret deal and the subsequent flow of Israeli armaments to Iran.46 In addition, John Cooley considers de Marenches to be “the Safari Club player who probably did most to draw the US into the Afghan adventure.”47 2) the Iran-Contra scandal (including the funding of the Contras, the illegal Iran arms sales, and support for the Afghan mujahideen There were two stages to Iran-Contra. For twelve months in 1984-85, after meeting with Casey, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, in the spirit of the AWACS deal, supported the Nicaraguan Contras via Prince Bandar through a BCCI bank account in Miami. But in April 1985, after the second proposed arms sale fell through, McFarlane, fearing AIPAC opposition, terminated this direct Saudi role. Then Khashoggi, with the help of Miles Copeland, devised a new scheme in which Iranian arms sales involving Israel would fund the contras. The first stage of Iran-Contra was handled by Prince Bandar through a BCCI account in Miami; the second channel was handled by Khashoggi through a different BCCI account in Montecarlo. The Kerry-Brown Senate Report on BCCI also transmitted allegations from a Palestinian-American businessman, Sam Bamieh, that Khashoggi’s funds from BCCI for arms sales to Iran came ultimately from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who “was hoping to gain favor with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.”48
  • 3) 9/11 When the two previously noted alleged hijackers or designated culprits, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, arrived in San Diego, a Saudi named Omar al-Bayoumi both housed them and opened bank accounts for them. Soon afterwards Bayoumi’s wife began receiving monthly payments from a Riggs bank account held by Prince Bandar’s wife, Princess Haifa bint Faisal.49 In addition, Princess Haifa sent regular monthly payments of between $2,000 and $3,500 to the wife of Osama Basnan, believed by various investigators to be a spy for the Saudi government. In all, “between 1998 and 2002, up to US $73,000 in cashier cheques was funneled by Bandar’s wife Haifa … – to two Californian families known to have bankrolled al-Midhar and al-Hazmi.”50 Although these sums in themselves are not large, they may have been part of a more general pattern. Author Paul Sperry claims there was possible Saudi government contact with at least four other of the alleged hijackers in Virginia and Florida. For example, “9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and other hijackers visited s home owned by Esam Ghazzawi, a Saudi adviser to the nephew of King Fahd.”51
  • But it is wrong to think of Bandar’s accounts in the Riggs Bank as uniquely Saudi. Recall that Prince Bandar’s payments were said to have included “a suitcase containing more than $10 million” that went to a Vatican priest for the CIA’s long-time clients, the Christian Democratic Party.52 In 2004, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Riggs Bank, which was by then under investigation by the Justice Department for money laundering, “has had a longstanding relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency, according to people familiar with Riggs operations and U.S. government officials.”53 Meanwhile President Obiang of Equatorial Guinea “siphoned millions from his country’s treasury with the help of Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C.”54 For this a Riggs account executive, Simon Kareri, was indicted. But Obiang enjoyed State Department approval for a contract with the private U.S. military firm M.P.R.I., with an eye to defending offshore oil platforms owned by ExxonMobil, Marathon, and Hess.55 Behind the CIA relationship with the Riggs Bank was the role played by the bank’s overseas clients in protecting U.S. investments, and particularly (in the case of Saudi Arabia and Equatorial Guinea), the nation’s biggest oil companies.
  • The issue of Saudi Embassy funding of at least two (and possibly more) of the alleged 9/11 hijackers (or designated culprits) is so sensitive that, in the 800-page Joint Congressional Inquiry Report on 9/11, the entire 28-page section dealing with Saudi financing was very heavily redacted.56 A similar censorship occurred with the 9/11 Commission Report: According to Philip Shenon, several staff members felt strongly that they had demonstrated a close Saudi government connection to the hijackers, but a senior staff member purged almost all of the most serious allegations against the Saudi government, and moved the explosive supporting evidence to the report’s footnotes.57 It is probable that this cover-up was not designed for the protection of the Saudi government itself, so much as of the supranational deep state connection described in this essay, a milieu where American, Saudi, and Israeli elements all interact covertly. One sign of this is that Prince Bandar himself, sensitive to the anti-Saudi sentiment that 9/11 caused, has been among those calling for the U.S. government to make the redacted 28 pages public.58
  • This limited exposure of the nefarious use of funds generated from Saudi arms contracts has not created a desire in Washington to limit these contracts. On the contrary, in 2010, the second year of the Obama administration, The Defense Department … notified Congress that it wants to sell $60 billion worth of advanced aircraft and weapons to Saudi Arabia. The proposed sale, which includes helicopters, fighter jets, radar equipment and satellite-guided bombs, would be the largest arms deal to another country in U.S. history if the sale goes through and all purchases are made.59 The sale did go through; only a few congressmen objected.60 The deep state, it would appear, is alive and well, and impervious to exposures of it. It is clear that for some decades the bottom-upwards processes of democracy have been increasingly supplanted by the top-downwards processes of the deep state.
  • But the deeper strain in history, I would like to believe, is in the opposite direction: the ultimate diminution of violent top-down forces by the bottom-up forces of an increasingly integrated civil society.61 In the last months we have had Wikileaks, then Edward Snowden, and now the fight between the CIA and its long-time champion in Congress, Dianne Feinstein. It may be time to see a systemic correction, much as we did after Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers, which was followed by Watergate and the Church Committee reforms. I believe that to achieve this correction there must be a better understanding of deep events and of the deep state. Ultimately, however, whether we see a correction or not will depend, at least in part, on how much people care.
Paul Merrell

Banks fined over $5 billion for rigging global currency markets | Toronto Star - 0 views

www.thestar.com/...g-global-currency-markets.html

banksters fraud litigation criminal-convictions

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • A group of global banks will pay more than $5 billion U.S. in penalties and plead guilty to rigging the world’s currency market, the first time in more than two decades that major players in the financial industry have admitted to criminal wrongdoing. JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Barclays and The Royal Bank of Scotland conspired with one another to fix rates on U.S. dollars and euros traded in the huge global market for currencies, according to a resolution announced Wednesday between the banks and the U.S. Department of Justice. A group of currency traders, who called themselves “The Cartel,” allegedly shared customer orders through chat rooms and used that information to profit at the expense of their clients. The resolution is complex and involves multiple regulators in the U.S. and overseas.
  • The four banks will pay a combined $2.5 billion in criminal penalties to the DOJ for criminal manipulation of currency rates between December 2007 and January 2013, according to the agreement. The Federal Reserve is slapping them with an additional $1.6 billion in fines, as the banks’ chief regulator. Finally, British bank Barclays is paying an additional $1.3 billion to British and U.S. regulators for its role in the scheme. Another bank, Switzerland’s UBS, has agreed to plead guilty to manipulating key interest rates and will pay a separate criminal penalty of $203 million.
  • It is rare to see a bank plead guilty to wrongdoing. Even in the aftermath of the financial crisis, most financial companies reached “non-prosecution agreements” or “deferred prosecution agreements” with regulators, agreeing to pay billions in fines but not admitting any guilt. If any guilt were found, it was usually one of the bank’s subsidiaries or divisions — not the bank holding company.
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  • Big banks overall have already been fined billions of dollars for their role in the housing bubble and subsequent financial crisis. But even so, the latest penalties are big. Including a separate agreement with the Federal Reserve announced Wednesday and another announced last year, the group of banks will pay nearly $9 billion in fines for manipulating the $5.3 trillion global currency market. Unlike the stock and bond markets, currencies trade nearly 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The market pauses two times a day, a moment known as “the fix.” Traders in the cartel allegedly shared client orders with rivals ahead of the “fix”, pumping up currency rates to make profits. Global companies, who do business in multiple currencies, rely on their banks to give them the closest thing to an official exchange rate each day. The banks are supposed to be looking out for them instead of conspiring to get even bigger profits by using customers’ orders against them. Travelers who regularly exchange currencies also need to get a fair price for their euros or dollars.
  • The number of traders who participated in the criminal activity was small. JPMorgan, in a statement, said the one trader involved has been fired. Citi said it fired nine employees involved. The agreement between the banks and the DOJ is subject to court approval. If approved, all five banks have agreed to three years of corporate probation overseen by a court. The banks will also help prosecutors with their investigations into individual criminal activity related to the currency market rigging. In 2012, HSBC avoided a legal battle that could further savage its reputation and undermine confidence in the global banking system by agreeing to pay $1.9 billion to settle a U.S. money-laundering probe. Another British bank, Standard Chartered, signed an agreement with New York regulators to settle a money-laundering investigation involving Iran with a $340 million payment. In 2014, the Bank of America reached a record $17 billion settlement to resolve an investigation into its role in the sale of mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 financial crisis
Paul Merrell

The Latest US and World News - USATODAY.com - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...70808616

surveillance state DEA phone-surveillance

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • The U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans' international telephone calls nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a program that provided a blueprint for the far broader National Security Agency surveillance that followed.For more than two decades, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking, current and former officials involved with the operation said. The targeted countries changed over time but included Canada, Mexico and most of Central and South America.Federal investigators used the call records to track drug cartels' distribution networks in the USA, allowing agents to detect previously unknown trafficking rings and money handlers. They also used the records to help rule out foreign ties to the bombing in 1995 of a federal building in Oklahoma City and to identify U.S. suspects in a wide range of other investigations.The Justice Department revealed in January that the DEA had collected data about calls to "designated foreign countries." But the history and vast scale of that operation have not been disclosed until now.
  • The now-discontinued operation, carried out by the DEA's intelligence arm, was the government's first known effort to gather data on Americans in bulk, sweeping up records of telephone calls made by millions of U.S. citizens regardless of whether they were suspected of a crime. It was a model for the massive phone surveillance system the NSA launched to identify terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks. That dragnet drew sharp criticism that the government had intruded too deeply into Americans' privacy after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked it to the news media two years ago.More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and intelligence officials described the details of the Justice Department operation to USA TODAY. Most did so on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the intelligence program, part of which remains classified.The DEA program did not intercept the content of Americans' calls, but the records — which numbers were dialed and when — allowed agents to map suspects' communications and link them to troves of other police and intelligence data. At first, the drug agency did so with help from military computers and intelligence analysts
  • The extent of that surveillance alarmed privacy advocates, who questioned its legality. "This was aimed squarely at Americans," said Mark Rumold, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "That's very significant from a constitutional perspective."Holder halted the data collection in September 2013 amid the fallout from Snowden's revelations about other surveillance programs. In its place, current and former officials said the drug agency sends telecom companies daily subpoenas for international calling records involving only phone numbers that agents suspect are linked to the drug trade or other crimes — sometimes a thousand or more numbers a day.Tuesday, Justice Department spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said the DEA "is no longer collecting bulk telephony metadata from U.S. service providers." A DEA spokesman declined to comment.
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  • The system they built ultimately allowed the drug agency to stitch together huge collections of data to map trafficking and money laundering networks both overseas and within the USA. It allowed agents to link the call records its agents gathered domestically with calling data the DEA and intelligence agencies had acquired outside the USA. (In some cases, officials said the DEA paid employees of foreign telecom firms for copies of call logs and subscriber lists.) And it eventually allowed agents to cross-reference all of that against investigative reports from the DEA, FBI and Customs Service.
  • The result "produced major international investigations that allowed us to take some big people," Constantine said, though he said he could not identify particular cases.
  • In 1992, in the last months of Bush's administration, Attorney General William Barr and his chief criminal prosecutor, Robert Mueller, gave the DEA permission to collect a much larger set of phone data to feed into that intelligence operation.Instead of simply asking phone companies for records about calls made by people suspected of drug crimes, the Justice Department began ordering telephone companies to turn over lists of all phone calls from the USA to countries where the government determined drug traffickers operated, current and former officials said
  • The DEA obtained those records using administrative subpoenas that allow the agency to collect records "relevant or material to" federal drug investigations. Officials acknowledged it was an expansive interpretation of that authority but one that was not likely to be challenged because unlike search warrants, DEA subpoenas do not require a judge's approval. "We knew we were stretching the definition," a former official involved in the process said.Officials said a few telephone companies were reluctant to provide so much information, but none challenged the subpoenas in court. Those that hesitated received letters from the Justice Department urging them to comply.
  • A spokesman for AT&T declined to comment. Sprint spokeswoman Stephanie Vinge Walsh said only that "we do comply with all state and federal laws regarding law enforcement subpoenas."Agents said that when the data collection began, they sought to limit its use mainly to drug investigations and turned away requests for access from the FBI and the NSA. They allowed searches of the data in terrorism cases, including the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people in 1995, helping to rule out theories linking the attack to foreign terrorists. They allowed even broader use after Sept. 11, 2001. The DEA's public disclosure of its program in January came in the case of a man charged with violating U.S. export restrictions by trying to send electrical equipment to Iran.At first, officials said the DEA gathered records only of calls to a handful of countries, focusing on Colombian drug cartels and their supply lines. Its reach grew quickly, and by the late 1990s, the DEA was logging "a massive number of calls," said a former intelligence official who supervised the program.
  • At its peak, the operation gathered data on calls to 116 countries, an official involved in reviewing the list said. Two other officials said they did not recall the precise number of countries, but it was more than 100. That gave the collection a considerable sweep; the U.S. government recognizes a total of 195 countries.
Gary Edwards

20 Ways The Economy Has Gotten Worse Since Barack Obama Became President - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/otten-worse-under-obama-2011-6

obammunism financial-collapse Federal-Reserve banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Jun 11
     
    Wow!  Blockbuster stuff.... excerpt: Barack Obama is proving to be one of the worst presidents in all of U.S. history.  Perhaps when it is all said and done he will be recognized as the absolute worst.  Not that George W. Bush was much different.  In fact, the Republican Party will not regain much credibility with the American people until it admits that George W. Bush was an absolutely horrible president.  Sadly, the truth is that we have not had a decent president in decades.  This statement is going to upset almost everyone that is still trapped inside the false left/right political paradigm in this country, but I am not here to pander to the political establishment. Barack Obama is a horrific president. So was George W. Bush. That is the truth. Not that it is our presidents that actually run our economy.  As far as the economy is concerned, the U.S. Congress deserves as much (or more) of the blame as the executive branch does. However, if you really want to point fingers at someone, then you should place the most blame on the Federal Reserve. As I have written about previously, the Federal Reserve has more power over our economy that any other single institution.... So exactly what is the Federal Reserve?  Most people would say that it is an agency of the federal government.  But that is absolutely not true.  In fact, the Federal Reserve itself has argued in court that it is not an agency of the federal government.  Rather, the Federal Reserve is a privately-owned banking cartel that has been given a perpetual monopoly over our monetary system by the U.S. Congress.  This privately-owned central bank has been destroying the value of the U.S. dollar for decades, it has run our economy into the ground and it has driven the U.S. government to the brink of bankruptcy.  The Federal Reserve operates in great secrecy, it has never been subjected to a comprehensive audit and it is not accountable to the American people.  Yet the decisions that the Federal
Gary Edwards

GAO Audit: Fed Gave $16 Trillion in Emergency Loans to Bankster Cartel! - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28660.htm

Banksters GAO-Audit Federal-Reserve-Bank-Cartel Federal-debt-ceiling financial-collapse

shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Jul 11
     
    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.
Gary Edwards

GAO Fed Investigation: The Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel Audit - 1 views

www.scribd.com/...GAO-Fed-Investigation

Banksters GAO-Audit Federal-Reserve-Bank-Cartel financial-collapse financial-oligarchs fascism banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Jul 11
     
    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.
Gary Edwards

We The Stupid - Ann Barnhardt on the National Debt Ceiling SCAM - 0 views

www.americanthinker.com/...we_the_stupid.html

Banksters national-debt-Ceiling Obammunism banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Aug 11
     
    If your angry over the National Debt Ceiling Scam, you're not alone. Ann Barnhardt is fist pounding furious. And with good reason. This is going to be a long battle. One thing i do disagree with her on though is where Obama will borrow the money to fund the $2.4 Trillion debt increase. She's right that no country in the world has $2.4 Trillion to lend us. But the Banksters have plenty! Two weeks ago the GAO released the results of the first time ever inventory of the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel. They found that the FRBC had created $16.1 Trillion of our money between 2009 and 2010, and passed that money to member Banksters, international Bankster associates, and too-big-to-fail Wall Street gamblers; at near zero percent interest. Combined with the the US TARP bailout, and the AiG - Fannie Mae - Freddie Mac bailouts, the total cost of converting Bankster debt to USA Taxpayer debt tops out at over $23.4 Trillion. The Banksters are flush with dollars, but what are they going to invest in? It's said that the Federal Reserve owns somewhere between 70%- 80% of the US Treasury issued debt. The way this happens however is that the Federal Reserve first "lends" (at near 0%) created dollars to member Banksters. Then the Banksters purchase the Treasuries at 3.25% and up depending on the payout period per note. In effect, American Taxpayers get to borrow back their own money while paying the Banksters a hefty, risk free handling fee of at least 3.25%. So, with $16.1 Trillion sloshing around, and not much too invest in, the Banksters really need Obama to borrow $2.4 Trillion, and spend a whole lot more. At some point this ponzi scheme will collapse, but not today. Least ways not until the Banksters can launder that $16.1 Trillion freebi. My guess is that the Banksters would like to turn the $16.1 Trill into 3.25% bonds, and then into land, indentured tax obligations (inter-generational), and investments in debt free third world countries - where the
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Aug 11
     
    "- where the game of new world order begins anew. Jaded, cynical, but very much awake and aware...... ~ge~" Sorry, Diigo truncated the comment but only for the Group "End of the American Dream" post. My bookmark actually has the entire comment. Very strange, and i think it's something that might be reported to Maggie. What i have found out is that if you use the diigo plug-in, your comments will be unexpectedly truncated. I've lost losts of stuff over the years. Then i switched to the Chrome plug-in "Share This". There is no truncation, except in the Group view of a post!!! So, the question for Maggie is, "Why are the Group comments to a bookmark unexpectedly truncated?"
Gary Edwards

Bruce Krasting: The Fed bombed the market - I ask, "Why?" - 1 views

brucekrasting.blogspot.com/...d-bombed-market-i-ask-why.html

Banksters Zero-Hedge Collapse-Euro banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Aug 11
     
    This is an interesting post.  The WSJ published an article yesterday claiming that the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel was looking at European Banksters and assessing the quality of "funding positions" and asset status for their USA branch operations.  The Fed Banksters are also consulting with EU regulators about European Bankster concerns. The WSJ article (http://on.wsj.com/nugr7s) triggered a massive market crash on Thursday.  Over $2 Trillion was washed away in the panic following the publication of this WSJ story.  That's on top of the $6 Trillion lost following the Obama Debt-Man-Walking deal with Congress. But here's where it gets interesting.  Bruce Krasting contacted Zero Hedge's Tyler Durden and got this reply; "the story is a Fed plant". Tyler Durden believes that the Feds want to create a world economic crisis to justify a massive QE3 where tens of trillions of dollars would be created and distributed to the worlds Banksters.  This follows the $16.1 Trillion created and distributed to the world's Banksters in 2009 - 2010 under QE1 and QE2. Incredible.  Just a few days ago Republican presidential candidate Gov Rick Perry warned the Fed Banksters not to flood the market with a new QE3.  No doubt what Perry has in mind is that the Fed will flood the world's economy with dollars, debasing the currency even further, but providing a phony and very temporary veil of prosperity - just enough to get Obama into a second term.   Not a bad concept for the Banksters since Obam has proven himself time and again as the bes tfriend the Banksters have ever had.  Obama has overseen the transfer of over $23 Trillion of USA taxpayer debt to the world Bankster community.
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
Gary Edwards

Gunrunning scandal uncovered at the ATF - CBS News Video - 0 views

www.cbsnews.com/...main20035609.shtml

Sharyl Sharyl-Attkisson Obammunism Impeachment fast-and-furious Project-Gunrunner Eric-Holder-Corruption ATF scandal

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 05 Oct 11
     
    This is the Sharyl Attkisson news report video that every American should take the time to view.  This is the trajic and still unfolding story of Obama's Project Gunrunner, where over 2,500 assault weapons, including 50 Caliber rifles, were ordered to be sold to criminal Mexican Drug Cartels.  Obama used over $10 Million of the Stimulous Act to fund the operation.  Now Mexican and American law enforcement and border patrol members are getting gunned down by the thugs Obama armed.  Must see video. excerpt: December 14, 2010. The place: a dangerous smuggling route in Arizona not far from the border. A special tactical border squad was on patrol when gunfire broke out and agent Brian Terry was killed. The assault rifles found at the murder were traced back to a U.S. gun shop. Where they came from and how they got there is a scandal so large, some insiders say it surpasses the shoot-out at Ruby Ridge and the deadly siege at Waco.........
Gary Edwards

The Purchase Of Our Republic | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...purchase-our-republic

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • The massive consolidation of wealth, combined with the removal of any limits on money in campaigns, has allowed for the purchase of our government. Today I am publishing a comprehensive and important guest essay, The Purchase of Our Republic, by longtime correspondent Y. Falkson.
  • Americans know that something is wrong, deeply wrong. They see signs of the problem everywhere: income inequality, growing concentration and power of mega corporations, political donations/corruption, the absence of jobs with decent salaries, the explosion of the US prison population, healthcare costs, student loan debt, homelessness, etc. etc.  However, the true causes and benefactors behind these problems are purposely hidden from view. What Americans see is Kabuki Theater of a functioning form of capitalism and democracy, but beyond this veneer our country has devolved into the exact opposite. Those who benefit from this crony capitalist state go to extreme lengths to paper over the reality and convince Americans that the system works, the American Dream is still a reality and that American democracy is in fact democratic. Below I hope to begin to outline some of the underlying dynamics and trends that have evolved in recent decades and led us so far from what we once were. As fun as it would be, the answer is not some evil conspiracy by the Illuminati, but rather the unfortunate result of three long term and mutually reinforcing components that have been attacking the fundamental roots of the structure of our Republic. The first is the increased concentr
  • ation of corporate and private wealth. Both of which are quickly yelled down in the media as anti-free market and class war hysteria. The second is the use of this wealth to capture all three branches of government in order to ensure the continued extraction of capital from the many and to the few.The rich might have climbed the ladder because they earned it, but they have then purchased government to pull up the ladder behind them. The consequence of the first two components is a democracy in name only that represents the very few.
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • 1. Faux Capitalism = Wealth Consolidation / Income Inequality
  • While there is no true beginning to the story, we can start with the incredible build up and concentration of wealth among corporations in recent decades. The USA now boasts a cartel-like set of corporate titans in almost every industry. It goes beyond, but certainly includes, our Too Biggerer To Fail banks, merged from what was 37 banks in 1995 into a Frankenstein’s monster like 5 (Citigroup, JP Morgan-Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs). In agriculture, Monsanto alone controls over 85% of all corn and soy bean crops, four companies control 83% of the beef market, 66% of the hog market and 58% of the chicken market. So while shopping at the grocery store might appear to be the manifestation of capitalism at its finest, it doesn’t take much digging to look behind the curtain to see how little competition truly exists.
  • When the average American goes to pick up some groceries, they are shopping at Walmart and buying something from P&G that is mostly made of Monsanto corn. Is that true choice? The same story plays out with our news and media (and other industries) where we have gone from 50 companies in 1983 to the big 6 which control over 90% of all media. Is choosing to watch one of 30 news channels, all of which are owned by News Corp (Rupert Murdoch) a real choice? This is not capitalism and they are not competing, not in the true sense of the word. Along with this consolidation of corporations in recent decades, their senior leaders have taken up a larger and larger piece of the pie at the expense of their employees. In particular, the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay has increased 1,000 percent since 1950. Unsurprisingly, Walmart is both the largest employer in the country and the worst CEO pay offender with a ratio of over 1000:1. This is at a time where worker productivity has increased significantly, something that historically correlated with increased pay. But no more. It’s a new twist on the old Soviet saying “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us”, but now it’s closer to “we do all of the work and they pretend to pay us”.
  • Private Wealth: As a consequence of the royal tribute we pay to the C-suite class these days, we have likely surpassed the pre-Depression Roaring Twenties in terms of inequality.
  • This, amazingly, has only accelerated since the crisis in 2008 in thanks to bailouts, Quantitative Easing and other gifts from Congress and the Fed. The wealthy 1% and in particular the .01% have now grown their fortunes to levels that tax comprehension and even their ability to spend it (the decisions by a few billionaires such as Bill Gates to essentially donate his fortune is a tacit acknowledgement that our current system over provides wealth to a select few).
  • So what is an incredibly wealthy capitalist CEO of a mega-corporation do once they control their industry and have essentially limitless wealth? Well in a competitive market, the only way to go from the top is down and the only thing that can make that happen is competition. Consequently, competition must be avoided whenever possible.
  • To squash or prevent competition, the oligopolies and oligarchs target their resources on the one place that can make competition illegal, our government.Something to keep in mind the next time you see a corporate billionaire grandstanding about the importance of “Free Markets” when their strategy is quite the opposite. As this capture of the government has taken place we have essentially shifted from capitalism and to crony capitalism. So we now have industries that have mastered the art of faking capitalism by turning our government into one that fakes democracy. This government takeover took time, but the purchase of all 3 branches of government has almost been completed by 2014. You don’t have to take my word for it, luckily that has now been empirically proven in an analysis of over 20 years of government policy where the clear conclusion was that policy makers respond solely to those in the top 90th percentile and essentially ignore the large majority of Americans.
  • 2. Wealthy Purchase of Government Institutions / Elections
  • Purchase of the Executive Branch:
  • Let’s take a step back and take a glimpse at how the government was purchased, beginning with the executive branch. In 1980, Reagan’s election cost less than $300 million. When Bush beat Kerry in 2004, it cost almost 3x times as much, almost $900 Million. 4 years later, the 2008 election cost a record $1.3 Billion. It was in this election where Obama hammered the final nail in the coffin for government funded for elections. Obama, more so than any other candidate in recent decades had the widespread support of millions of small donors, but in the end I guess it wasn’t enough. So when Obama “leaned to the green”, it forever set the precedent that you can’t win without the backing of our nation’s oligarchs. Consequently, the money has only gushed in since as the cost of Obama’s reelection in 2012 skyrocketed to an unfathomable $7 billion. Needless to say this is slightly above the rate of inflation. Our Presidents are now preselected exclusively by a tiny fraction of Americans can have the money to fund what has become necessary for a legitimate run. Summary: Candidates spend years courting the super-rich to build up a multi-billion dollar war chest. Only those who succeed can actually run a campaign that an average American will be aware of. Then Americans get to choose one of the pre-selected “candidates”. No wonder voter turnout is so low… Executive branch, check!
  • – Note that media corporations benefit doubly as they can use their cash to fund elections, but are also the beneficiary of all that money as it is used for campaign spending.
  • Purchase of the Legislative Branch:
  • The process has progressed similarly in Congress. In 1978, outside groups spent $303,000 on congressional races. In 2012 that was up to $457,000,000. That is over 1,500 times the level in 1978. It would be funny, if it was so blatant and terrifying. By many accounts, our “leaders” in Congress spend 50% or more of their time working the phones or fundraisers rather than trying (and failing) to actually do the “people’s business”. Let’s also take a minute to appreciate the hypocrisy of anyone that pretends that the money doesn’t influence our government. Businesses do not give to politicians for charity. This is a payment for services that has proven exceedingly reliable and profitable. The ROI for money invested in purchasing Congressman is what CEO dreams are made of. No wonder the incentive is to invest in Congress rather than R&D or marketing. There are very few places in the world or times in history where you can find ROI’s in the thousands, or even the tens of thousands.
  • Review: Congressmen beg for money to get elected, make sure to vote the way your benefactors would like, consequently get more money to get elected again. If at any point they do lose or quit, they take the big payday to work for those who have been paying them all along. Legislative Branch, Check!
  • In addition, increasingly those who work on Congress (and regulators) were previously employed by these large corporations or expect to work there later. A recent example is Chris Dodd who left the Senate the head lobbyist for Hollywood at the MPAA, the guys behind SOPA and PIPA, but there are many many others.
  • Judicial Branch Endorsement of the Purchase of Government:
  • Last but not least, we have the enabling Judicial Branch. It only took a few purchased presidents to ensure the appointment of a majority of “free market” and “pro-business” judges. For instance, and disgracefully, Clarence Thomas was once legal counsel for Monsanto, but has not once recused himself from any cases involving Monsanto and always votes in their favor. These radicals have now fully endorsed and enabled the influx of money used to purchase the other branches. Specifically, 2 major decisions have completely opened the floodgates, Citizens United and McCutcheon. The first allowed unlimited contributions of corporate money into elections and brought us the notorious declaration that “corporations are people” and that “money is free speech”. This was more recently followed up with the private wealth equivalent in McCutcheon. In this ruling, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said as part of his majority opinion (presumably with a straight face) “… nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner influence over or access to elected officials or political parties”. And with this, the Supreme Court has fully endorsed both major sources of immense wealth to purchase our elections and consequently our government. Review: The rich fund Presidential elections, Presidents nominate “business-friendly” judges and then the bought Congress approves their nominations. New judge then votes to ensure even more money is allowed to purchase elections. Judicial Branch, CHECK!
  • 3. A Faux Republic Dependent Upon the Funders and Not the Voters
  • The Founder’s Hope and the Sad Reality:
  • Acknowledging where we are as a country, it is often helpful to look to where we started for some perspective. Unsurprisingly, this type of problem was not overlooked back in the 18th century. In 1776, James Madison stated that his goal was to design a republic in which “powerful interest groups would be rendered incapable of subdoing the general will”. Madison hoped, perhaps naively, that factions would be thwarted by competing with other factions. Sadly, we are now in a time where factions (aka wealthy special interests) subdue the will of the people and ensure the government responds to them alone on those issues where they have a “special interest” and consequently asymmetric stakes in the game (Charles Hugh Smith). As a result, these groups essentially collude to allocate their resources to their own issues, but do not “thwart” or compete with other factions as they do the same. It’s a pretty great system, as long as you’re one of the wealthy few who can use their money to drown out the poor and voiceless many. And just like that, what was once a Republic has become a corrupt shell of its past self. All the signs are still there; votes, elections, campaigns, branches of government, etc., but behind the scenes the only ones represented are those who can afford to be heard.
  • Summary: This massive consolidation of wealth, combined with the removal of any limits on money in campaigns, has allowed for the purchase of our government, or as Dick Durban once stated, “frankly they [the banks in this case] own the place”. If money = free speech, then those with all the money, have all the free speech.
  • What Might Help? Now that I have likely and thoroughly depressed the reader, let’s bounce around some ideas for what can be done. As stated in the beginning, this is not an unknown problem and many people are promoting a number of ways to fix or at least ameliorate the problem. I will briefly describe just a few which I think provide some direction any of us could easily implement or support.
  • Change the Rules: Laurence Lessig of Harvard Law has put forward a visionary proposal for re-writing the way that campaigns are financed in his book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It. Put simply, he would like to empower every voter with a stipend, say $150 per election to give to whatever candidate or candidates they prefer. If you would like to accept this money, you would need to forgo any other contributions or support (one would hope including the indirect PAC kind). This would actually provide even more money than is used in current elections, but would effectively democratize the funding process. While there would still be a “funding election” that takes place before the actual election, the funding would not be unequally provided. Lessig’s work has only begun, as this sort of bill or likely constitutional reform is nearly impossible to achieve, but he has undertaken and I assume will continue to implement many brave and creative ways of bringing about the change all American’s should support. Most recently he has suggested we begin to fund, ironically enough, a Super PAC to end all Super PACs. It would be funded with the solitary goal of changing how money impacts our elections. Please support them here: www.mayone.us/
  • Change Our Day-to-Day: At the more micro level, Charles Hugh Smith believes that we will inevitably see our overly centralized and inefficient system erode away as it is replaced by more resilient, local and efficient businesses and societies outside of the current system. With that in mind, he recommends that “all anyone can do is the basic things--lower our energy footprint, stay healthy and avoid unnecessary medications and procedures, support local businesses, organic food growers, etc. In other words, what we can do is support local businesses that are part of the emerging economy rather than support corporate cartels.” Your Vote Does Matter: Do you live in Ohio, Florida or New Hampshire? Probably not. Despite what we are told every 4 years, there are actually states outside of the “swing states”, and even more surprising, the very large majority of Americans live in those states where your “vote doesn’t matter”. New Yorkers an Californians all know their state will turn Blue no matter who the candidates are and either don’t vote at all, or often vote for the Blue team in order to feel like they are on the winning side.
  • The truth is that if you see the election as Red vs. Blue, you vote probably doesn’t matter. But here is the trick, if all the people who think their vote didn’t matter decided to vote for whom they might actually believe in, then their votes just might matter.
  • What if all the growing number of “Independents” (who usually still vote Blue), chose to vote for a third party? What if a third party candidate won a state like New York or California? What if that candidate was one whose primary promise to the voters was to champion a change to the role of money in government (perhaps in line with what Lessig proposes)? Would you vote for such a person?I would argue you should. If California alone (with 55 electoral votes) were to vote for a 3rd party that would likely prevent either Red or Blue candidate from winning the requisite 270 electoral votes.
  • Think about the message that would send to both parties. I would predict that both sides would start to bend over backwards for an endorsement from that 3rd party and they would have to get it by taking up the same primary cause for reforming money in government. Consequently, at the root of our corrupted system which is perpetually ignored as both sides might suddenly become the big issue of the election. Then maybe we might begin to turn things around.
  • Sources: Charles Hugh Smith (oftwominds, Surivival+, etc.), Yves Smith (Naked Capitalism, Econned), Laurence Lessig (Republic Lost, multiple TED Talks), Matt Taibbi (blog at Rolling Stone and now at The Intercept), Zero Hedge, John Robb, Max Keiser, Clay Shirky (Cognitive Surplus), Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, Brave New World Revisited), George Orwell (1984), Michael Lewis, Daniel Kahneman (Thinking Fast and Slow), James Richards (Currency Wars), Han Joon Chang (23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism) and Joseph Stiglitz (Mismeasuring Our Lives) 
Paul Merrell

A Wells Fargo personal banker pleaded guilty to helping launder millions of dollars for... - 1 views

www.mysanantonio.com/...pleaded-guilty-to-13852917.php

banksters litigation money-laundering Wells-Fargo

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 May 19 - No Cached
  • A Wells Fargo banker pleaded guilty to knowingly opening bank accounts for people working with the Sinaloa cartel. Luis Figueroa of Tijuana admitted he took part in the money laundering scheme that stretched across the US. Money laundering organizations recruited people who would open bank accounts for the cartel's drug money, according to US investigators. The drug money would be deposited in amounts below the threshold for regulatory reporting into "funnel accounts."
Gary Edwards

Porter Stansberry- Porter Stansberry: These events confirm my greatest fears - 0 views

www.thedailycrux.com/...ents-confirm-my-greatest-fears

Banksters Porter-Stansberry Inflation Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Sep 12
     
    The Central Banksters of the World are printing money as fast as possible, and using this paper to buy up tons of GOLD.  Rather than lending to productive businesses, the Banksters are using their fiat paper volumes to buy up hard assets, with land, precious metals, and controlling positions in asset rich productive or leading commodity enterprises.  This is not going to end well for those left holding paper when it all crashes. "If you didn't take our warnings or strategies seriously before, I hope now you can see that we have been right: The authorities mean to print their bad sovereign debts away through an ongoing and massive inflation. Just how big is this inflation likely to be? When you look at the world's largest external debt positions, two economic areas appear as outliers: the European Union ($16 trillion) and the U.S. ($14.7 trillion). Even on a per-capita basis, the external foreign debts of the U.S. are enormous ($50,000 per person). Many countries in the European Union are in an even more precarious position. France has $74,000 in external debt per person. Germany has $57,000. These countries obviously have much to gain by printing the currency necessary to repay their obligations. I estimate we'll see at least another doubling of the monetary base in both the U.S. and the ECB. The question is how these nations' creditors will respond. In response... the West's creditors are piling into the one reserve asset no one can print: gold. Since the beginning of quantitative easing in America, Russia has almost doubled its holdings of gold, buying 500 tons. China bought 454 tons during the same period. And it's not only America's economic and military rivals who obviously no longer trust the U.S. dollar or the euro. In the last year, Switzerland's central bank has quietly increased its holdings of gold by nearly 25%. We are approaching the moment of a global paper currency collapse: In the second quarter of this year, central banks around the world
Gary Edwards

The Top 15 Economic 'Truth' Documentaries | ZeroHedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...5-economic-truth-documentaries

financial-collapse Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel MeltDown

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 15 Oct 12
     
    " Economic Reason has gathered together the Top 15 'reality' economic documentaries -"  This is an incredible list of YouTube documentaries discussing and describing economic realities - most dating from the September 11th, 2008 week of economic collapse. Lots of great historical context, including commentary from Nial Fergusson, Peter Schiff, Edward Griffen and many others.  What an awesome collection!
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