Political “leadership” of the two oligarchy parties spin their economic policy as being for the public benefit. Professional economists increasingly cast economic policy in unprecedented harsh criticism, even calling for public demonstrations against what they claim as gross violations of financial law. Let’s consider current facts of high importance:
• Transfer of somewhere over $3 trillion with a total potential of $23.7 trillion to banks and financial institutions for the socialization of their gambling losses on illegal sub-prime mortgages and credit default swaps. We know the sub-prime lending was illegal because the FBI concluded 80% of all sub-prime criminal fraud originated from the lenders.
• A so-called bailout designed to give money to the banksters without accountability of where the money is going. This is according to testimony of Elizabeth Warren, Harvard law professor appointed to oversee the bailout for Congress, with video explanation below. The bankster-bailout was chosen rather than simply protecting depositors and reorganizing the banks under standard bankruptcy procedure. The two oligarchy political parties denied Congressional hearings for the bankster-bailout, which should have considered cost-benefit analysis for public banks rather than private banks. An important fact that would have come out of the hearings is that the total market capitalization of all the major US banks was less than $300 billion; meaning that the government could have outright bought all of them for less than a tenth of the amount given away. Think about that.
• A 2009 record payout to bank employees, including lucrative bonuses, on pace for $140 billion. Goldman Sachs, with three recent CEOs who have also been Secretary of the US Treasury, is doubling their bonuses from 2008.
• Depression-level unemployment, with the government’s “official figures” understating true unemployment by half.
• 100,000 laid-off teachers with class sizes expanding to over 40 students per class, and over a million homeless US students.
• The economic crushing of the American middle class, as explained by Elizabeth Warren in her video.
• Record high home foreclosures. An alternative policy to the bankster-bailout would have been to have the banks write-down the value of the mortgages they fraudulently wrote, and reset that lower value as the new loan amount for the homeowner. This could have been a preliminary move to creating non-profit mortgage rates for the public benefit.
• Record federal budget deficit of $1.4 trillion.
• Record federal debt of $12 trillion with annual interest payments of ~$450 billion every year. The oligarchy has no policy to ever pay the national debt, only to make the minimum interest payment. They don’t even try to defend that the national debt is in the public good and never discuss monetary reform to end the debt.
• Record total US debt from all sources of over $70 trillion.
• US military recruitment hitting targets because young Americans have no other options for work. These men and women will feed the expansion of illegal US Wars of Aggression.
Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC’s show, “Morning Meeting,” calls the economic “bailout” and subsequent policy, “the largest theft and cover-up ever,” “the worst deal since the Indians sold Manhattan,” “the ‘Masters of the Universe’ are on the take from the taxpayers,” “the biggest transfer of money in the history of the world,” and “No one, the Pharaohs, you pick ‘em, no one even comes close to how much the banks and politicians have stolen from us.” His video is also below.
Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University simply writes, “The rich have stolen the economy.”
If it’s any comfort, remember that America was born from recognition that our government was playing us, exploiting our labor for their financial gain and not for the public good. Remember that our government labeled Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, James Madison, and all the Founding Fathers as “traitors” when they didn’t blindly and stupidly believe the empty spin that the government was acting in the public good. They also predicted that future generations would have to fight to retain the liberty they wrested from lying political whores who murdered the public good in exchange for personal wealth, fame and power.
If you ever wondered how educated Germans could ever believe Nazi propaganda, all you have to do is look around the US today.
The good news is that the structural economic change for the public good is simple. Monetary reform ends the banks from creating money, shifts this power to the Treasury for the direct payment of public goods and services and minimizing the peoples’ cost of credit (think 1% interest-rate mortgages). Real regulation will end casino capitalism with exotic derivatives betting on future economic outcomes that produce no public benefit in the gambling. Taking money out of elections and politics will limit political corruption. Breaking up the five corporations that currently serve as the propaganda arm of the oligarchy will help; the so-called mainstream media, or sheepstream media corpse as I like to call it.
To get from here to the good news is a formidable task. I suggest a Truth and Reconciliation process to exchange our getting the complete truth and ending all criminal and damaging political and economic acts for the perpetrators' cooperation and return of public assets. I’d even allow them a stipend to facilitate their surrender of our government and economy; what the oligarchy presently consider their own twisted private playground.
The two interviews are necessary education for the public to see the economy for what it is. They are 6-minutes and 7-minutes.
As always, please share this article with all who say they want economic competence and want to be responsible citizens. If you appreciate my work, please subscribe by clicking under the article title. Please feel free to peruse my archive of work here.
Comments
"We know the sub-prime lending was illegal because the FBI concluded 80% of all sub-prime fraud originated from the lenders. "
Can you read? They aren't saying that all the sub-prime lending was illegal, but that out of the fraud that was commited, 80% was by the lenders. That is like saying that because people are arrested for shoplifting at malls, that malls are illegal.
Privatizing profits + socializing losses = communism.
Anyone that thinks they know whats going on needs to get a brief but important education.
Google The Money Masters and watch this...
Then you will find that Bankers have been doing this for centuries...
James: can you think? Did you read the link??? Sub-prime is a euphemism for unqualified, which was rated as "AAA" or "no risk" as a financial investment. This is massive fraud, engineered to create an asset bubble that would predictably pop when adjustable rate mortgages increased and/or the economiy slowed that would break these unqualified home owners.
No, James. This is like saying 80% of the hamburger sold by YOUR grocery store was excrement being sold as top-rated meat. This is massive intentional fraud that should have been prosecuted. You are either a HUGE fool, James, or a government propagandist trying to continue this system of socializing the parasites in control.
James, I have to say more. Sub-prime fraud took down our economy. The point of my article is that our economy is designed to be a house of cards; it's a Robber Baron-era paradigm to exploit the "little people" - that's us. You either act to perpetuate this fraud upon our labor being drained to this self-proclaimed "master race" or stand-up that our labor benefit US. Humanity is poised to move forward with technology that can have a world that works for all of us, not just the "masters."
Which side are you on? Choose carefully; be willing to live with your choice!
Democracy cannot work with ignorant and apathetic people, which I'm sorry to say describes a large cross section of Americans. You see, the truth is, they don't really mind bailing out the Wall Street Criminals, because afterall, we have been brainwashed into believing that one day, we to, can make millions pushing paper, producing nothing, and selling working Americans down the drain. Right??
Yep. Pretty well sums it up. Destruction of a nation by design. The Fed did exactly what was intended...drain the wealth and transfer it to the elite. Rome did something similar, called itself a democracy, then folded like a bad chair.
Good article. More Americans need to open their eyes to what is really going on in our country.
Bailout companies get pay-cuts?? What's that mean? Don't loot the stores(stupidity-empowerment bonuses) anymore because there's nothing left and we've locked the doors? Americas' 'best and brightest' maybe a dull herd but they will be richer and more empowered to lead(or rob) America. So this is how Civilizations rise and fall?
Reward stupidity with lavish bonuses, fire the hard-working Americans but don't wonder how America went the way of Civilizations before it.
Republican economic plan? De-regulate sub-prime lending in 2002 so $100K homes can be sold for a million. Let the next President figure out the huge mess caused by the inequity. "Short-term-ism" is such a nice euphemism for this catastrophic way of thinking. Approve mergers, buy-outs and create companies that are "Too Big To Fail" and you'll actually be rewarded for your stupidity. Mommy asked the rich banker/investment mgr if he would jump off a cliff just because his friends did it.........and he said---YES!
Wall Street employees have so many dollars now that they should get a fair exchange rate with Zimbabwean currency. Thank you my fellow-Americans for working those extra hours of overtime instead of paying attention to the news. Don't worry about your bank accounts...the FDIC doesn't cover printed green toilet paper.
Carl,
Excellent assessment. I'm going to post it on my forum.
And thanks for including actual numbers. The $450 billion/year in interest payments is about 3.3% of our current dollar GDP. Even in good years, this is ~1/2 of our annual GDP growth.
HAS, 'Any One HEARD, Of The "Re-Funding Programmes"? They are also known as 'the trigger packs'? Both 'Mr. Bush' & 'Mr. Obama',
just don't wanna TELL "ANY Of YOU", about 'ALL The $$$$$$$$$'!
This IS, "REAL STRANGE"! As, "The Re-Funding Programme", WILL Even "FIX", 'ALL The DEBT, with CHINA'! (Yet, NO One, Is Talking!)
Carl, what an incredible piece of documentation. You are a very passionate writer. The oligarchs are running the country like it is their own corporation and the White House is their board of directors, and the Congress are their shareholders.
I believe nothing will change until the average American with their savings in the stock market decide to take it all out and place it into cash, such as CDs, or money funds. Those with 401Ks can transfer it all into money funds.
Until then, Wall Street, Obama, and Congress will ignore the Real Economy and all who work in it.
James, I have no clue how your example relates to the quote from the article. Please elaborate.
I have printed this out just in case the link ever goes dead and have bookmarked all the links within the article. It is important that freedom loving people in general and Americans in particular start to wake up from this slumber we are in. This great transfer of wealth at this moment in time completes the puzzle that oligarchs are putting together for people within their own social/political class - working people and the bottom 80% be damned.
There's money to fortify the oligarchs and plutocrats castles on the sand. But there's no money for health care for EVERYONE. No money to build America's infrastructure and bring us into the 21st Century. No money for jobs (those are all now outsourced to other lands). No increases in salary or hourly wage increases. I believe pockets of America will start to look like Haiti if these people are not removed power.
Remember, the benefits (to the already insanely wealthy) are SOCIALIZED, the costs (to taxpayers) are PRIVITIZED.
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