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This article has two parts.  The first is Bernanke's waarnign to Congress that the Federal debt is out of control and they need to raise taxes AND cut spending.  The second part however is far more interesting.  Author Greg Hunter describes the Bloomberg Media court quest to force the Fed to reveal which banks received $2 trillion in bailout money and why.  Bernanke of course is fighting in the courts to keep this secret.   excerpts:  Earlier this week, Fed Chief Ben Bernanke told Congress to basically raise taxes and cut the federal budget.  The inference was, if Congress doesn't get its financial house in order, it will be their fault if the economy tanks.  Here is how Bernanke actually said it, ". . . Maintaining the confidence of the public and the financial markets requires policy makers more decisively to put the budget on a sustainable fiscal balance."   Bernanke also said the federal debt ". . .is already expected to be greater than 70%" of Gross Domestic Product, ". . . at the end of 2012."  And if that is not bad enough, Bernanke said that by 2020, ". . .federal debt would balloon to more than 100% of GDP," provided  taxes are not raised and budgets are not cut.  The Fed was sued by financial news network Bloomberg two years ago.  Bloomberg wants the Fed to reveal which banks received $2 trillion in bailout money and why.  Bloomberg won the case and the Fed appealed.  Bloomberg, also, won the appeal in March 2010!  The precedent setting case would force the Fed to reveal the details of secret bank bailouts-including $500 billion given to foreign financial firms!!    In a Bloomberg story earlier this week, lawyers representing the Federal Reserve (which is made up in part by big U.S. banks) said, "U.S. commercial banks will take their fight against disclosure of Federal Reserve (documents) in 2008 to the Supreme Court if necessary . . ."  Lawyers representing the Fed say they are worried that if details of tril

Ok, this goes into the must read category. I don't however agree with the proposed solution. There's no mention that governments must stop spending money they don't have. Stop the borrowing. Cut the spending. Cut payroll, pension and healthcare spending. Privatize. Return Federal assets to the States, and let them handle the leasing and privatization. Flatten the tax code. Eliminate corporate and unearned (investment) income taxes.  When this country came out of WWII, there was great apprehension that the great depression would simply pick up where it left off. These concerns led to a break with the Hoover-Roosevelt big and bigger government - tax and spend approach. Congress moved to cut taxes and level the margins. Depression over.  excerpt:  Today the Federal government is carrying an even bigger debt per GDP than the cost of WWII had left us with! The out of control spending has to stop. For just over half of all Americans today is Tax Day. But for the other half it is just another day on the calendar. That's because they pay no federal income taxes. The old saying goes "you can't get something for nothing." But these "non-payers" receive government services and benefits without chipping in.

Today may be the last chance we have to save our country.  Congress and Obama must come up with $4 Trillion in short term spending cuts to save the dollar.  I don't see it happening.  Boehner and the Republican establishment traded away the Cut, Cap & Balance Bill before it was even passed.  And it was passed only to be immediately put in the dirt by Boehner, Reid and McConnell.  Instead they came up with the largest increase in borrowing power the US Treasury has ever seen, $2.4 Trillion, near immediately.  Then they baked in the end of the Bush tax cuts, the $1 Trillion porkulous addition to the budget, and, ObamaCare to guarantee the largest tax increase in US history. This is indeed the End of America. excerpt: Yes, it's for real. We've been wondering when the markets would wake up to the reality of the sovereign debt crisis. Today is the day… The action in the fixed-income markets this morning verged on collapse. Yields on the world's benchmark sovereign debt - the U.S. 10-year Treasury bond - plummeted. Investors panicked and moved into the market, which is the world's most liquid market. Meanwhile, just about everything else in fixed income got killed. Mortgage REITs were briefly "no bid," for example. Annaly - the blue-chip mortgage REIT - was down more than 15% at the open. (I'll explain why in a moment.) It was as if the world's fixed-income investors finally woke up and realized the world's economy has serious problems… which our politicians seem unable to address, let alone repair.

No doubt the Banksters have a plan, and we're watching it role out before our very eyes. The national debt ceiling crisis is the plan! Whether Congress approves or shoots down an increase in the borrowing limit of the government, the Banksters win.  If the the debt limit is raised, the Banksters win in that they can unload that $16.1 Trillion in free taxpayer money at a minimum of 3.25% interest through new Treasury bond initiatives forced by uncontrolled increases in government spending.  They also win in that their hand maiden credit agencies, having insisted on Congressional spending cuts of $4 Trill that are not going to materialize, WILL downgrade the USA credit rating. This will result in interest rates much higher than 3.25%!!! Cha Ching! If the outcome is no debt increase, there will be a constitutional crisis beyond imagination. Banksters always win in a crisis because panicked citizens will trade their constitutionally guaranteed liberty, freedoms and property rights for security and calm. This perhaps translates into a long term cha ching for th eBanksters that will have them owning America. The one outcome where the Banksters don't gain, would be where the debt ceiling is raised enough to cover the obligations of the continuing resolution, but includes serious and immediate across the board spending cuts, caps on future spending increases, and the end of base line budgeting through a Balanced Budget Amendment. Like the CCB; Cut, Cap and Balanced Budget bill the House of Representatives ahs already passed

What kind of a person would make up stories about his mother in order to score political points? The same person who would tell the American people that he wants to cut spending when he has presided over an increase in the federal debt from 53 percent of GDP in 2009 to 72 percent this year. In February, that same person presented Congress with a budget that increases federal debt by $10 trillion over the next decade. In April, that person rejected Republican efforts to raise the debt ceiling in return for spending cuts. Now Obama is claiming he wants spending cuts, but he will not specify which ones beyond a pathetic $2 billion. The disparity between Obama's words and his actions goes back to the healthcare bill. He claimed no one would lose their existing coverage. It turns out that was more hocus-pocus. A McKinsey & Co. survey found that nearly a third of private-sector employers say they will discontinue covering their employees with health insurance because of the rising cost imposed by Obama's healthcare legislation. One reason for the increased cost is the requirement that health insurers cover everyone regardless of whether they have a pre-existing condition. That is like allowing drivers to go without car insurance and then letting them sign up for it to pay for an accident that has already occurred. The rest of the country foots the bill.

The War Party wins again. Spending cuts will come out of non-defense branches of government. Meanwhile, the Judicial Branch is nearly flat on its back because of sequestration. Judicial spending before sequestration was only 0.19 per cent of federal spending (19 cents of each $100) but  $350 million got chopped by sequestration.  The result: things like massive delays in court proceedings and a 35 per cent cut in personnel in the Federal Defenders office, a loss of institutional knowledge that will never be recovered.

Excellent analogy.  My take on the fiscal cliff is that we have an agreement in place, signed off on by Obama, the Democrats and the Republicans.  Let's hold to it.  Hold the line.  And under no circumstances raise the debt limit.  Bring home the troops.  Make the spending cuts in the sequestration agreement.  Replace that idiot Speaker of the House Boehner with Representative Darryl Isa.  Freeze Obama with his own agreement, and then dig our way out of this by stopping the socialist spending spree. "In the movie Usual Suspects, Keyser Soze is confronted with the fact that his wife and children would be an impediment in dealing with his business competitors. In a way the House GOP finds itself in the same position as Keyser Soze. Our home has been invaded. Our family despoiled. And we are facing a never ending series of ever increasing demands from the criminals who have abused us. Sometimes the only way out of a dilemma is by clearing the table and starting again from scratch. At midnight on December 21, 2012 the United States will be faced with what is being called the "fiscal cliff." In short this cliff is composed of several parts. 1. The payroll tax reduction passed in 2010 will end. 2. The temporary tax rates passed under President Bush will lapse. 3. Obamacare's taxes will come due. 4. The Alternative Minimum Tax will expand to many more taxpayers. 5. Extended unemployment benefits will expire. 6. Some $78 billion in federal spending will be sequestered. 7. Medicare "doc fix" will expire. There are several sets of sacred cattle here. The GOP is primarily interested in protecting the tax cuts and Defense spending. The Democrats are primarily interested in preserving the social spending and free stuff for their base. This time around the Democrats, in their never ending paean to class warfare, are insisting that the Bush Tax Rates for the wealthiest Americans be allowed to expire. The GOP should not negotiate on this. This will put the GOP

"However, now we - at least those of us who pay attention - know, thanks to Glenn Beck, the Saudi person of interest is not just some innocent bystander after all. Just hours after the April 15 bombing, Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi was put on a terror watch list and had an event file created that indicated he was armed and dangerous; and actions began that would lead to his deportation. Alharbi, who is related to a number of terrorists now residing in Gitmo and/or listed as part of al-Qaida, was admitted to the United States under a "special advisory opinion," indicating someone pulled some strings for him. His strings go a long way - all the way to the White House, where Alharbi was a frequent visitor (seven times since 2009). His file contained one prior event, indicating he was already in the terrorism watch list system. Yet even though he's marked as a terrorist, he was allowed in. Perhaps that explains Michelle Obama's hospital visit. Alharbi and the Obamas are friends. After news of his possible deportation leaked, government officials backtracked. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano refused to answer questions from a Congressman about Alharbi. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told Beck a different Saudi was in custody but not connected to the bombing. Someone altered Alharbi's file on April 17 in a way that disassociated him from the bombing, according to Beck, but an original had been printed out and saved. The change happened around the time that first Secretary of State John Kerry and then President Barack Obama met with the Saudi foreign minister - a meeting that wasn't on Obama's schedule. There are photographs on the Internet that purport to show Alharbi with two other Saudis near the bomb site. If the government will lie about who Alharbi is and whether his is a suspect, what else about the official narrative is a lie? Despite initial claims by the FBI that included a request to help identify the two men

Left unsaid in this Moscow TImes article: if the E.U. did as requested by the Ukraine coup government, Russia has the ability to cut off its gas supply to the E.U., which accounts for some 30% of the E.U. gas supply. With the business community in the E.U.already upset with sanctions on Russia that are cutting into exports from the E.U. to Russia, I'll be surprised if this proposal has wings, unless the U.S. pushes it.  

Cutting off the ISIL and al-Nusrah supply lines from Turkey would indeed create problems for Turkish (and U.S. neocon) plans. 

Excellent interview. excerpt:  if you were the President of the United States today, do you think that there are any practical steps that you could take immediately to fix the economy, and what would they be? JR: Oh, sure. I would abolish the Federal Reserve. I would cut taxes. I would cut spending in a draconian manner. A very draconian manner. The idea that you can solve a problem of too much debt and too much consumption, with more debt and more consumption, defies comprehension. I can't believe that grown-ups would say words like that out-loud. But that's what they seem to think - I don't know if they really believe it's going to work, but they just don't know what else to do, and you know they're all doing... for the next elections, so they're making things worse. There are plenty of ways to solve the problem. You let the people who go bankrupt go bankrupt. You let Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac go bankrupt, go out of business. You let AIG go out of business. You stop bailing everybody out. The Japanese tried it our way in the early 90s; they refused to let anybody go bankrupt, and they still talk about the 1990s as "the lost decade." Now they're talking about this decade as the second lost decade. Japanese stock market today is 75% below where it was in 1990. That is not a typo. It is down 75% in 20 years. Can you imagine if the New York Stock Exchange, or if the DOW Jones to use a better example, were at 4000? I don't think people would be very happy. Well, that's the equivalent of the situation in Japan right now. It didn't work in Japan; it's not going to work in the US. It's going to lead to more problems. People say, "Oh, our poor grandchildren! Look at all this debt!" No, no, no, it's not our poor grandchildren; it's us! This is a current problem! This is a problem, even our parents, if they're still alive, forget our grandchildren; our parents are going to be suffering, and our grandparents if they're still alive! This is a current disaster for all of us

There were promises of transparency and of a new kind of collaborative politics where establishment figures listened to ordinary Americans. We were going to see net spending cuts, tax cuts for nearly all Americans, an end to earmarks, legislation posted online for the public to review before it is signed into law, and a line-by-line review of the federal budget to remove wasteful programs. These weren't the tea-party platforms I heard discussed in Nashville last weekend. They were the campaign promises of Barack Obama in 2008.