I'm going to go out on a limb today. Some who read this post will undoubtedly say that I'm being paranoid--that I'm nuts. My response is: maybe, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
Today my post will be about some of the many ways that ordinary Americans are being marched to our own demise by our own government. In many ways, the government is being assisted by our own stupidity, blindness, and refusal to wake up and see the darkness that has been gradually taking over our society and the world for the last few decades. We are living in a police state, and if we don't quickly quit squabbling with each other over meaningless distinctions, join forces, and stop it, there will come a time when it can't be stopped.
Here's some evidence.
The government has criminalized protest protected by the First Amendment. We can look around each day and see the headlines of police being used to break up peaceful Occupy protests, brutalize protesters, and arrest both protesters and even journalists covering the protests.
The government is trying to criminalize citizens recording police interactions in public. Recently, a 41-year-old auto mechanic in Illinois was charged with five Class One Felonies and faced 75 years in prison. What was his crime? He videotaped police who came to his home and place of business and seized several unregistered cars that he was trying to repair.
Prosecutors actually charged this man with sufficient offenses to result in a life sentence--for recording police on his own property. After an Illinois trial-court judge threw out the case, holding the law that was used to be unconstitutional, the prosecutors plan to appeal. Similar incidents are happening all over the U.S. See here, and here, and here, and here and here. What possible motivation would government officials have to want to put people in prison for documenting police behavior? Suppose it's because they want the police to be free to abuse and even kill people and then be able to lie about it, as they did routinely before everyone had cell phones to prove their misconduct? Interestingly, at the same time it's trying to stop us from recording cops whose salaries we pay, while doing their jobs as 'public servants,' the government is successfully contending that we regular people have no expectation of privacy in public places and so they can surveil us all they want with hidden cameras, GPS devices put on our cars, and other devices, all used without warrants or suspicion of wrongdoing. Something about geese and ganders comes to mind, but of course, common sense means nothing.
The government is trying to stop people from having their own independent food sources. We are $15 TRILLION (and counting) in debt; schools are cutting staff, increasing class size and cutting out buses; cities and counties are too broke to keep street lights. So, why are government officials wasting time and effort trying to stop people from drinking milk, having barbecues with fresh garden produce, and taking supplements? Why is the government allowing huge companies to patent naturally occuring genes (yes, like DNA) of plants, animals and humans? My own opinion is that they are trying to gain the ultimate control over us--to tell us that we do not have the right to decide what to put in our own bodies, unless it is that which generates maximum profit for their corporate overlords.
The government is trying to revoke the rights of the American People to be free from unreasonable search and seizure and to a trial when accused. Yesterday the Senate defeated an amendment to SB1867, the National Defense Authorization Bill. The amendment proposed to remove new language in the bill that would allow the military to indefinitely detain any person, even an American citizen, anywhere in the world, even on American soil, without charge or trial. Some have argued that the bill doesn't actually mean that, but one of the bill's primary proponents, warmonger Lindsey Graham (R, S Carolina), has stated on video that believes it does. I've read this section of the bill (section 1031). As a formerly practicing attorney, I can say that I believe that's exactly what it means--the government can grab you and toss you in prison forever if it says you pose a terrorist threat. The Senate will vote on the bill, still containing the detention language, later this month.
The government has already claimed the power to 'legally' assasinate American citizens. Several weeks ago, the Obama Administration carried out the summary assasination of American citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi, with a targeted drone strike in Yemen. When asked to legally support its decision to execute an American without a trial, the administration said that its legal reasoning was "classified." Isn't that convenient? Murder someone, then classify the justification for it, so it can't be legally challenged. If another government did this, we'd condemn them and impose sanctions for human rights abuses.
I'm sorry to sound like one of the 'crazies.' I've been a left-leaning centrist my whole adult life. I squawked as much as anyone during the Bush years. I don't live in a 'compound,' and I don't own a hundred guns. But I'm starting to believe that the conspiracy theorists are right. In fact, I know they are. Look above. If the conspiracy is to intentionally, sytematically strip rights from the American people, then it's fairly clear, isn't it? They not only plan to kill Americans--they have. They're writing into law that we have no right to a trial, and they don't have to prove anything before they throw us in prison. They're systematically eroding the general Constitutional rights we thought we had, and trying to make it more and more difficult for anyone to catch them in abuses. Is this the action of a benevolent governing body? Or is it more akin to the action of war-mongering, power-drunk shills for the ruling financial-military-industrial complex who want to wage perpetual war to get rich and steal resources, quash the rights of anyone who says to stop, and quash the spirit and health of everyone else who's not yet screaming their heads off?
I know which I'm betting on.
So, what do we regular people do? Well, our enemies' best weapons are the ignorance, apathy, and silence of the many. They can't beat an informed public, so they've co-opted most of the biggest sources of information and given us unending ways to distract ourselves from the truth of what's happening. So far, they've been able to characterize anyone talking like I am now as a nut or an extremist, but that won't fly when lots of people start hearing and speaking the truth. We're all not nuts.
So, first we stop being ignorant. Tune in. Stop looking exclusively at the mainstream 'news' media, which is owned by the same financial-military-industrial complex who's hijacked our government. Seek out information from all sources, especially the alternative ones who have no financial interest in the game. Read. Listen. And, above all, THINK.
Second, talk about it. Bitch, moan, and complain about it. Put your Senators' and Representatives' emails in your address book and use them often. If you read about something you think is wrong, email the proper officials to demand it stop. It takes about 2 minutes to search for and find a public official's email online. Tell them we know what they're doing. Talk about it around the water cooler. Make comments on news stories online. The powers that be have their shills there to make it seem like all reasonable people think its just wonderful that we're killing people left right and center to be "safe." Let other people know if you don't agree.
Third, don't voluntarily give them your money. If you still have accounts with any of the big banks, close them. Use a local credit union or small, locally-owned bank instead. Stop being the mindless consumer, especially just to save 9 cents a roll on paper towels. Buy little, and what you do buy, buy locally whenever you can. Shop second hand or thrift stores. Plant a garden and grow your own safe, healthy, non-GMO food, or buy it from a CSA, a local farmer, or farmers' market when you can. There's no reason to give them the profits they are using to buy our government and destroy us.
Fourth, stop fighting each other. The Tea Party started from the same principle as the Occupy Movement--that the system is gravely, seriously broken. We may disagree about what would be better, but couldn't we work that out AFTER we get rid of current bankster-bought mess we've already got? Ever hear that old saying, the enemy of my enemy is my friend? Remember who the enemy is.
Finally, don't hate, don't fear, and don't give up. Hate and fear are their game, not ours, and as for giving up--well, there's still more of us 'crazies' who want to live peacefully and be left alone than there are the 'sane' people who are out blowing up the world.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
What The Fed Didn't Want Us to Know-And Why We Need to Know It
From Bloomberg, yesterday:
The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.
The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.
Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse. . .
The size of the bailout came to light after Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, won a court case against the Fed and a group of the biggest U.S. banks called Clearing House Association LLC to force lending details into the open.
The Fed, headed by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, argued that revealing borrower details would create a stigma -- investors and counterparties would shun firms that used the central bank as lender of last resort -- and that needy institutions would be reluctant to borrow in the next crisis. Clearing House Association fought Bloomberg’s lawsuit up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the banks’ appeal in March 2011.
$7.77 Trillion
The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he“wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.
Translation:
The criminal banking cartel who controls the Federal Reserve and who has bought our corrupt government, pretty much from top to bottom, fought like a lioness, all the way to the Supreme Court, to protect its secrets--that it committed half the entire country for a year to bail out a handful of huge foreign-controlled banks and keep them from facing bankruptcy when the magnitude of fraud they perpetrated on investors threatened to come to light. It wasn't just TARP. It was trillions of dollars of free money lent to the banks to shore up their balance sheets so they could continue to rape and pillage our economy without consequence.
If you read on through the article, you'll see more, like this: Following this enormous gift, courtesy of you and I, the American taxpayer, the criminals went on to earn $13 Billion in profits, and still manage to pay their employees fully twice as much as the average worker in the U.S. After being understood as 'too big to fail,' so as to have a perpetual gun to the heads of every person on the planet, who can't let them go bankrupt without setting the world economy on fire, the six biggest criminal firms in the criminal banking enterprise GREW by almost 40%. We took away their derringer and gave them a 9mm to hold to our heads.
The point? It's this:
The only political action that matters right now in the United States is to dismantle this Mafioso banking cartel and break the stranglehold that it has on our government and us. Everything else, liberal or conservative, amounts to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.
The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.
Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse. . .
The size of the bailout came to light after Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, won a court case against the Fed and a group of the biggest U.S. banks called Clearing House Association LLC to force lending details into the open.
The Fed, headed by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, argued that revealing borrower details would create a stigma -- investors and counterparties would shun firms that used the central bank as lender of last resort -- and that needy institutions would be reluctant to borrow in the next crisis. Clearing House Association fought Bloomberg’s lawsuit up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the banks’ appeal in March 2011.
$7.77 Trillion
The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he“wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.
Translation:
The criminal banking cartel who controls the Federal Reserve and who has bought our corrupt government, pretty much from top to bottom, fought like a lioness, all the way to the Supreme Court, to protect its secrets--that it committed half the entire country for a year to bail out a handful of huge foreign-controlled banks and keep them from facing bankruptcy when the magnitude of fraud they perpetrated on investors threatened to come to light. It wasn't just TARP. It was trillions of dollars of free money lent to the banks to shore up their balance sheets so they could continue to rape and pillage our economy without consequence.
If you read on through the article, you'll see more, like this: Following this enormous gift, courtesy of you and I, the American taxpayer, the criminals went on to earn $13 Billion in profits, and still manage to pay their employees fully twice as much as the average worker in the U.S. After being understood as 'too big to fail,' so as to have a perpetual gun to the heads of every person on the planet, who can't let them go bankrupt without setting the world economy on fire, the six biggest criminal firms in the criminal banking enterprise GREW by almost 40%. We took away their derringer and gave them a 9mm to hold to our heads.
The point? It's this:
The only political action that matters right now in the United States is to dismantle this Mafioso banking cartel and break the stranglehold that it has on our government and us. Everything else, liberal or conservative, amounts to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Cats
I confess, I'm a dog person at heart. But since I've been about 18, through a variety of circumstances, I've almost always had cats too. Cats are infuriating creatures.
Have you ever noticed that cats are intent upon loving people, whether the people want them to or not? They twirl and rub in and out of your feet while you're walking. They do that weird kitty head-butting thing to your face while you're trying to watch a show. They lick you with that creepy sandpaper tongue that gives any human with nerve-endings instant shivers. They come to wake you up at 5 a.m. on a Saturday by lying down on your chest and purring out an absolutely crazy-making declaration of affection/demand for attention. Often, it seems, cats will become more intent on loving someone if that person doesn't like them. My mother, for example, is totally creeped out by cats. Every cat I've ever had has made a bee-line to her to love on her whenever she visited. It was like they all knew that she disliked them, and so it was a challenge they couldn't turn down to love her in spite of her antipathy. Cats are affirmatively, stubbornly, annoyingly, loving.
Another notable thing about cats is their complete refusal to be compliant. Hence the lament, "It's like herding cats." You can teach a dog just about anything with consistency, praise and food. Cats, not so much. It's not that cats are dumb--they understand perfectly and they'll do what you ask--if they want to. Otherwise, you're toast. You can bat a cat halfway across the room each and every time it tries to jump on the counter for two decades, and it will still stride into the room right in front of you and jump on the counter if it feels like it. I know; I've done it.
Cats have a way of defying you right to your face, without malice so much as a genuine conviction that you should be on their side anyway, and so it's ok. I had a cat years ago who loved little balls of tinfoil to play with. I showed him a game once where he would lie on his side and I would toss him a ball of tinfoil and he'd bat it back to me--right at me, in the numbers every time. He loved this game. I thought it mildly amusing for the first 3 or 4 thousand repetitions. Any time he felt like playing, he'd go find a ball of tinfoil somewhere around the house, and he'd bring it and drop it right in front of me. Then he'd stare at me. If I didn't go for the staring, then he'd try sidling up to me, rubbing on my leg. If that wasn't sufficient to start the playful juices, he'd try meowing loudly, head-butting, licking, biting my hands, or lying down on my book or keyboard or whatever was taking my full attention away from tinfoil tennis. This could go on forever and no matter how hard I tried, I never got that cat to give up his plea for tinfoil tennis without incarcerating him in another distant room where I couldn't hear his beating on the door and his yowling. He never gave up. Ever.
So, here's the reason I'm talking today about cats. We need to learn a lesson from them. For quite a while now, I've talked about things that are wrong in our world. Corruption, greed, inequity, violence, prejudice, etc. etc. etc. Those of us who aren't 'bad' people sometimes feel overwhelmed by how much has gone awry. Sometimes it's hard to know what to do. Every day, there seems to be another disclosure of how terribly broken our society is. But, last night, I hit upon the answer. We need to behave like cats.
First, we need to demand what we want. We need to drop our tinfoil ball at the feet of the powers that be and dare them to ignore us. If they don't listen, we need to systematically ratchet up our demands. If necessary, we need to keep yowling until they lock us in a distant room, and then we need to beat on the door and yowl some more. Never give up. Ever.
Second, we need to stop being compliant with the things we see in the world that we know are wrong. We need to start refusing to be herded--into the fear-mongering games, into the us-vs.-them mentality, into hatred of anyone who sees things differently, into wars we know are pointless and stupid. We need to get where we're going like cats. Don't believe them when they tell you no--they'll come around. Start toward your goal, and if someone opposes you, go there FASTER. Zig and zag if you must, but . . . Get. . . Onto. . . That . . .Counter.
And finally, we need to affirmatively, stubbornly, annoyingly love. And not just the people who love you back. Love the ones with antipathy for you especially. You know why? Well, there's that whole religious thing--love your enemies, and all that. It's cool. It's evolved. It's even a good idea.
Maybe just as importantly, it works. Why do you suppose that Jesus has gotten such high billing in the spiritual world for the last couple millenia? He wasn't some celebrity or high roller; he was just some scruffy peasant from the sticks. And it wasn't because he died, either--for peoples' sins or otherwise. Think about it--it wasn't uncommon for people to get executed by the Roman Empire. It wasn't even uncommon for it to happen by crucifixion. Dying was pretty easy to do back then. What made Jesus a legend, whether you're a Christian or not--what makes pretty much everyone acknowledge Jesus' influence was that he did something amazing-- he loved. He not only didn't fight the Romans or the Sadduces or the Pharisees--he forgave them. And in doing so, he won even though at the time it might have looked like he was overwhelmed by the darkness he faced.
Remember the iconic image of the young man who marched out in front of the tanks at Tianamen Square? He didn't walk out there with a suicide bomb or an AK47. He chose the path of peace in an insanely violent circumstance. No one has reported conclusively who that man was or what happened to him. It's possible that the Chinese government took him out of public view and killed him. But he won. No one who watched what he did can ever forget it, and oddly enough, China began to change, not so very long later.
Besides Jesus and the Tank Man, there are lots of examples of people who won by loving like cats--Mother Teresa, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, and so many others. They all just refused to buy the idea, popular in their surroundings, that someone else was in control of the matter. They became people who changed stuff not by shooting or bombing or burning or even screaming, but by just patiently continuing to 'purr' their message of love, justice, equality, or fairness until the other side started to give up and love them back.
So I've decided. We need more cats.
Have you ever noticed that cats are intent upon loving people, whether the people want them to or not? They twirl and rub in and out of your feet while you're walking. They do that weird kitty head-butting thing to your face while you're trying to watch a show. They lick you with that creepy sandpaper tongue that gives any human with nerve-endings instant shivers. They come to wake you up at 5 a.m. on a Saturday by lying down on your chest and purring out an absolutely crazy-making declaration of affection/demand for attention. Often, it seems, cats will become more intent on loving someone if that person doesn't like them. My mother, for example, is totally creeped out by cats. Every cat I've ever had has made a bee-line to her to love on her whenever she visited. It was like they all knew that she disliked them, and so it was a challenge they couldn't turn down to love her in spite of her antipathy. Cats are affirmatively, stubbornly, annoyingly, loving.
Another notable thing about cats is their complete refusal to be compliant. Hence the lament, "It's like herding cats." You can teach a dog just about anything with consistency, praise and food. Cats, not so much. It's not that cats are dumb--they understand perfectly and they'll do what you ask--if they want to. Otherwise, you're toast. You can bat a cat halfway across the room each and every time it tries to jump on the counter for two decades, and it will still stride into the room right in front of you and jump on the counter if it feels like it. I know; I've done it.
Cats have a way of defying you right to your face, without malice so much as a genuine conviction that you should be on their side anyway, and so it's ok. I had a cat years ago who loved little balls of tinfoil to play with. I showed him a game once where he would lie on his side and I would toss him a ball of tinfoil and he'd bat it back to me--right at me, in the numbers every time. He loved this game. I thought it mildly amusing for the first 3 or 4 thousand repetitions. Any time he felt like playing, he'd go find a ball of tinfoil somewhere around the house, and he'd bring it and drop it right in front of me. Then he'd stare at me. If I didn't go for the staring, then he'd try sidling up to me, rubbing on my leg. If that wasn't sufficient to start the playful juices, he'd try meowing loudly, head-butting, licking, biting my hands, or lying down on my book or keyboard or whatever was taking my full attention away from tinfoil tennis. This could go on forever and no matter how hard I tried, I never got that cat to give up his plea for tinfoil tennis without incarcerating him in another distant room where I couldn't hear his beating on the door and his yowling. He never gave up. Ever.
So, here's the reason I'm talking today about cats. We need to learn a lesson from them. For quite a while now, I've talked about things that are wrong in our world. Corruption, greed, inequity, violence, prejudice, etc. etc. etc. Those of us who aren't 'bad' people sometimes feel overwhelmed by how much has gone awry. Sometimes it's hard to know what to do. Every day, there seems to be another disclosure of how terribly broken our society is. But, last night, I hit upon the answer. We need to behave like cats.
First, we need to demand what we want. We need to drop our tinfoil ball at the feet of the powers that be and dare them to ignore us. If they don't listen, we need to systematically ratchet up our demands. If necessary, we need to keep yowling until they lock us in a distant room, and then we need to beat on the door and yowl some more. Never give up. Ever.
Second, we need to stop being compliant with the things we see in the world that we know are wrong. We need to start refusing to be herded--into the fear-mongering games, into the us-vs.-them mentality, into hatred of anyone who sees things differently, into wars we know are pointless and stupid. We need to get where we're going like cats. Don't believe them when they tell you no--they'll come around. Start toward your goal, and if someone opposes you, go there FASTER. Zig and zag if you must, but . . . Get. . . Onto. . . That . . .Counter.
And finally, we need to affirmatively, stubbornly, annoyingly love. And not just the people who love you back. Love the ones with antipathy for you especially. You know why? Well, there's that whole religious thing--love your enemies, and all that. It's cool. It's evolved. It's even a good idea.
Maybe just as importantly, it works. Why do you suppose that Jesus has gotten such high billing in the spiritual world for the last couple millenia? He wasn't some celebrity or high roller; he was just some scruffy peasant from the sticks. And it wasn't because he died, either--for peoples' sins or otherwise. Think about it--it wasn't uncommon for people to get executed by the Roman Empire. It wasn't even uncommon for it to happen by crucifixion. Dying was pretty easy to do back then. What made Jesus a legend, whether you're a Christian or not--what makes pretty much everyone acknowledge Jesus' influence was that he did something amazing-- he loved. He not only didn't fight the Romans or the Sadduces or the Pharisees--he forgave them. And in doing so, he won even though at the time it might have looked like he was overwhelmed by the darkness he faced.
Remember the iconic image of the young man who marched out in front of the tanks at Tianamen Square? He didn't walk out there with a suicide bomb or an AK47. He chose the path of peace in an insanely violent circumstance. No one has reported conclusively who that man was or what happened to him. It's possible that the Chinese government took him out of public view and killed him. But he won. No one who watched what he did can ever forget it, and oddly enough, China began to change, not so very long later.
Besides Jesus and the Tank Man, there are lots of examples of people who won by loving like cats--Mother Teresa, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, and so many others. They all just refused to buy the idea, popular in their surroundings, that someone else was in control of the matter. They became people who changed stuff not by shooting or bombing or burning or even screaming, but by just patiently continuing to 'purr' their message of love, justice, equality, or fairness until the other side started to give up and love them back.
So I've decided. We need more cats.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
I Like this Guy
The world truly has changed. A commentator on Fox News is fast becoming one of my favorite people. Yikes.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Brave New World--Do Something NOW
Just about completely under the radar, the Senate will be taking up a bill for a vote on Monday or Tuesday. This bill, SB 1867, is one of the insidious 'anti-terrorism' measures for which our government is becoming infamous. A provision in this bill provides that people inside the United States can be considered 'terrorists' and detained indefinitely by the U.S. Military, without charge or trial. This is true whether the person is an American citizen, or not. Read more here.
This gem, drafted in secret by Sens. John McCain (R, Arizona) and Carl Levin (D, Michigan), in the latest in the American Government's declaration of war on the American people. Mark Udall, a Democratic Senator from Colorado, has proposed an amendment that would delete the language permitting indefinite detention of Americans in America and replace those provisions with language requiring Congress to review detention power.
If you are willing to take your chances on being sentenced by the military to life imprisonment for the crime of being called a terrorist by our government, then do nothing. If you'd rather that you and your children not be subject to life sentences by fiat of the federal government, contact your Senators and Representatives and request that they vote for the Udall Amendment to SB 1867. Then forward the link above to everyone you know and ask that they do the same.
This gem, drafted in secret by Sens. John McCain (R, Arizona) and Carl Levin (D, Michigan), in the latest in the American Government's declaration of war on the American people. Mark Udall, a Democratic Senator from Colorado, has proposed an amendment that would delete the language permitting indefinite detention of Americans in America and replace those provisions with language requiring Congress to review detention power.
If you are willing to take your chances on being sentenced by the military to life imprisonment for the crime of being called a terrorist by our government, then do nothing. If you'd rather that you and your children not be subject to life sentences by fiat of the federal government, contact your Senators and Representatives and request that they vote for the Udall Amendment to SB 1867. Then forward the link above to everyone you know and ask that they do the same.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
The New Math
Just a tidbit today. The 'mainstream media' has finally decided it must report on the successes of Ron Paul or risk losing its iron grip on the mostly anesthetized minds of Americans. But, not to be said to be too honest, here's the way MSNBC presented its own polling results.
See the bars? Apparently, some time since I took math in college, 14.5 percent (Romney's second place result) became HALF of 57.3 percent (Paul's winning result).
All I've got to say is anyone the crooks dislike this much must be worth a second look.
See the bars? Apparently, some time since I took math in college, 14.5 percent (Romney's second place result) became HALF of 57.3 percent (Paul's winning result).
All I've got to say is anyone the crooks dislike this much must be worth a second look.
M-O-N-E-Y (Part 6)
For about a week now, I've been posting about the U.S. Monetary system--its history, and a quick primer on how it works. In technical terms, my descriptions obviously had holes you could drive trucks through, but I hope they have been informative. Today's post will be the last in the series, and the most important. Because today, I need you to ponder one additional point.
That point is simply this. The central banking system--in the U.S. it's the Federal Reserve--has one purpose and one purpose alone. It is not to stabilize economies. It is not to ensure the flow of credit. It is not any of the grand purposes we've been told it's all about. Its real purpose is to put the control of money in the hands of a few powerful people who can then use their great wealth and power to buy and sell businesses, governments, the press, and, most importantly, us.
The original architect of this system was a very wealthy German banker back in the 18th century, a man named Mayer Amschel Rothschild. Here's what he said about it: "Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws." That's because he knew that with control of the money, he could buy the cooperation of the people who make the laws.
Since the United States was formed, banking interests, including generation after generation of the Rothschild family, have pushed to have a central bank. The First Bank of the United States was formed in 1791, with a 20-year charter that lasted until 1811. When it was proposed, smart people like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison immediately and vociferously argued that the Bank (and the tax that was levied to finance it) was unconstitutional. And the guy who was the mouthpiece for the banks who wanted to "control the money" of the nation, Alexander Hamilton, basically argued, "well, the Constitution doesn't actually say we can't." That argument should have been seen as the tripe it was, since the Constitution enumerates the powers that the government will have, with all the rest of the powers reserved to the sovereign states and the people. But, ultimately, Hamilton wheeled and dealed, and essentially bought the support the bank needed. The United States bought its shares in the bank with money borrowed from the bank. An excise tax was levied to pay back that money, and the first iteration of the American people as debt slaves to big banking began. The First Bank of the United States dissolved when its charter ended in 1811. Needless to say, the bankers were not happy--their cash cow had died.
Interestingly, shortly thereafter, a war broke out--the war of 1812, and the country struggled to have enough money to fight it, issuing Treasury bonds and scratching and clawing for the funds. It is said that the banking House of Rothschild nearly single-handedly started that war, instigating the British Parliament to try to retake the Colonies. Deeply in debt from the war, in 1816 the U.S. chartered the Second Bank of the United States. President James Madison signed the bank into law exprssing his hope that it would stem the tide of devastating inflation that had occurred with the issuance of the huge war debt. The Second Bank of the United States dissolved when its twenty year charter expired in 1836. Andrew Jackson, then-President of the United States, had argued against re-chartering of the Bank, because he said
The country popped along for quite some time without a central bank. There was inflation and bank failures and so on, and then in 1907, the Panic occurred. The Panic of 1907 started when a lot of Wall Street Banks lent money to a group trying to corner the market on copper by buying up the stock of the United Copper Company. The takeover failed, and the banks, who had overextended (basically stole depositors' money) to finance the scheme, suddenly faced bank runs as it was exposed they didn't have enough money left to pay deposits--sound familiar?
The answer to the self-induced banking panic was provided by some rich bankers and their pal in Congress, a guy named Aldrich. Central Banking! Specifically, the Federal Reserve. President Woodrow Wilson signed the Fed into existence in 1913, and the rest, as they say, is history. Throughout the history of the Fed, it has engineered financial 'growth' and collapse. When it prints lots of money, there are inflation and 'bubbles,' and then the bubble pops--like the 1920s stock market bubble whose collapse caused the Great Depression, and the 1990s housing bubble, whose collapse is causing the Depression now.
The thing that has stayed constant throughout is that the banks make money--lots of it. How can you miss when you loan a country its own money and charge interest on it? The only time anyone's made a serious bid to take back the power over our money supply was when President Kennedy signed Executive Order 11110, in June, 1963. By that order, he essentially bypassed the Fed, and said the government could issue money, called silver certificates, on its own authority, without "borrowing" it from the Fed. This imminently sensible thing to do (even the Crazy Al type furniture dealers know you save money when you 'cut out the middle man' ) would have put the Fed out of business. Oddly enough, Kennedy was assassinated a few months later, and President Johnson didn't share Kennedy's zeal for taking back monetary sovereignty.
Keep control of the money, and keep control of the nation. The bankers know this--have since the 1700s. Can't understand how our Government could make such a mess of the economy? It's easy. They did what they were told by their banking masters--spend a lot, 'borrow' it from the Fed and make the public pay back made-up-Monopoly-money (together with interest) with real work, products, and services. The result is a never-ending cycle of ever-increasing debt, whereby the entire population becomes nothing more than debt slaves to the banks.
So here's the deal. I'm tired. I'm tired of believing in a country where elected officials consider the public's opinion irrelevant because we don't have millions to throw at their campaigns or fancy million dollar 'consulting' gigs for them and their families, like the people who "control the money". I'm tired of laws being only enforced against the people who can't pay to get a pass, because they don't "control the money." I'm tired of this system where both of the 'major party' candidates are always purchased in advance by the same people--the people who "control the money." I'm tired of the people who "control the money" pitting the people who don't against each other and then laughing as they steal us blind while we're otherwise occupied hating each other. I'm tired of the people who "control the money" starting wars so they can sell the government arms or planes or mercenaries, while ordinary people die for their profit. I'm tired of being sold by my government to the highest bidder. And the highest bidder is always going to be the one who controls the money, just like old Mr. Rothschild said.
I'm tired. And I'll bet you are too. And we really don't have to take it anymore. Send people to read this series. Stop ignoring the evidence that we're being played for patsies. And realize that knowing what they're up to gets us half the way to winning.
That point is simply this. The central banking system--in the U.S. it's the Federal Reserve--has one purpose and one purpose alone. It is not to stabilize economies. It is not to ensure the flow of credit. It is not any of the grand purposes we've been told it's all about. Its real purpose is to put the control of money in the hands of a few powerful people who can then use their great wealth and power to buy and sell businesses, governments, the press, and, most importantly, us.
The original architect of this system was a very wealthy German banker back in the 18th century, a man named Mayer Amschel Rothschild. Here's what he said about it: "Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws." That's because he knew that with control of the money, he could buy the cooperation of the people who make the laws.
Since the United States was formed, banking interests, including generation after generation of the Rothschild family, have pushed to have a central bank. The First Bank of the United States was formed in 1791, with a 20-year charter that lasted until 1811. When it was proposed, smart people like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison immediately and vociferously argued that the Bank (and the tax that was levied to finance it) was unconstitutional. And the guy who was the mouthpiece for the banks who wanted to "control the money" of the nation, Alexander Hamilton, basically argued, "well, the Constitution doesn't actually say we can't." That argument should have been seen as the tripe it was, since the Constitution enumerates the powers that the government will have, with all the rest of the powers reserved to the sovereign states and the people. But, ultimately, Hamilton wheeled and dealed, and essentially bought the support the bank needed. The United States bought its shares in the bank with money borrowed from the bank. An excise tax was levied to pay back that money, and the first iteration of the American people as debt slaves to big banking began. The First Bank of the United States dissolved when its charter ended in 1811. Needless to say, the bankers were not happy--their cash cow had died.
Interestingly, shortly thereafter, a war broke out--the war of 1812, and the country struggled to have enough money to fight it, issuing Treasury bonds and scratching and clawing for the funds. It is said that the banking House of Rothschild nearly single-handedly started that war, instigating the British Parliament to try to retake the Colonies. Deeply in debt from the war, in 1816 the U.S. chartered the Second Bank of the United States. President James Madison signed the bank into law exprssing his hope that it would stem the tide of devastating inflation that had occurred with the issuance of the huge war debt. The Second Bank of the United States dissolved when its twenty year charter expired in 1836. Andrew Jackson, then-President of the United States, had argued against re-chartering of the Bank, because he said
- It concentrated the nation's wealth in one institution,
- It opened the government to control by foreign interests,
- It served mostly to make the rich richer,
- It exercised too much control over Congress,
- It favored northeastern (business and finance) states over southern and western (agricultural) states,
- A few wealthy families controlled it.
The country popped along for quite some time without a central bank. There was inflation and bank failures and so on, and then in 1907, the Panic occurred. The Panic of 1907 started when a lot of Wall Street Banks lent money to a group trying to corner the market on copper by buying up the stock of the United Copper Company. The takeover failed, and the banks, who had overextended (basically stole depositors' money) to finance the scheme, suddenly faced bank runs as it was exposed they didn't have enough money left to pay deposits--sound familiar?
The answer to the self-induced banking panic was provided by some rich bankers and their pal in Congress, a guy named Aldrich. Central Banking! Specifically, the Federal Reserve. President Woodrow Wilson signed the Fed into existence in 1913, and the rest, as they say, is history. Throughout the history of the Fed, it has engineered financial 'growth' and collapse. When it prints lots of money, there are inflation and 'bubbles,' and then the bubble pops--like the 1920s stock market bubble whose collapse caused the Great Depression, and the 1990s housing bubble, whose collapse is causing the Depression now.
The thing that has stayed constant throughout is that the banks make money--lots of it. How can you miss when you loan a country its own money and charge interest on it? The only time anyone's made a serious bid to take back the power over our money supply was when President Kennedy signed Executive Order 11110, in June, 1963. By that order, he essentially bypassed the Fed, and said the government could issue money, called silver certificates, on its own authority, without "borrowing" it from the Fed. This imminently sensible thing to do (even the Crazy Al type furniture dealers know you save money when you 'cut out the middle man' ) would have put the Fed out of business. Oddly enough, Kennedy was assassinated a few months later, and President Johnson didn't share Kennedy's zeal for taking back monetary sovereignty.
Keep control of the money, and keep control of the nation. The bankers know this--have since the 1700s. Can't understand how our Government could make such a mess of the economy? It's easy. They did what they were told by their banking masters--spend a lot, 'borrow' it from the Fed and make the public pay back made-up-Monopoly-money (together with interest) with real work, products, and services. The result is a never-ending cycle of ever-increasing debt, whereby the entire population becomes nothing more than debt slaves to the banks.
So here's the deal. I'm tired. I'm tired of believing in a country where elected officials consider the public's opinion irrelevant because we don't have millions to throw at their campaigns or fancy million dollar 'consulting' gigs for them and their families, like the people who "control the money". I'm tired of laws being only enforced against the people who can't pay to get a pass, because they don't "control the money." I'm tired of this system where both of the 'major party' candidates are always purchased in advance by the same people--the people who "control the money." I'm tired of the people who "control the money" pitting the people who don't against each other and then laughing as they steal us blind while we're otherwise occupied hating each other. I'm tired of the people who "control the money" starting wars so they can sell the government arms or planes or mercenaries, while ordinary people die for their profit. I'm tired of being sold by my government to the highest bidder. And the highest bidder is always going to be the one who controls the money, just like old Mr. Rothschild said.
I'm tired. And I'll bet you are too. And we really don't have to take it anymore. Send people to read this series. Stop ignoring the evidence that we're being played for patsies. And realize that knowing what they're up to gets us half the way to winning.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
M-O-N-E-Y (Part 5)
Over the last few posts, I've reviewed the history of money and central banking in the U.S., the systematic devaluation of the dollar as a fiat currency since the 1970s, and the artificial growth in the currency supply created by fractional reserve banking.
So we now understand that the Federal Reserve is not actually owned by the government. It is owned by 'member banks' in the Federal Reserve System--private banks. The private banks are then in turn owned by shareholders--mostly rich people--some of whom are American, but many of whom aren't.
We saw in part two how the creation of the fiat money system led to the devaluation of the dollar, the magical inflation of prices for stuff that people buy, and to the huge inflation of home prices we came to call the housing bubble.
Next, we learned how the banks got themselves in a crack--through the legalized Ponzi Scheme called fractional reserve banking, in which, by design, there is never actually enough money in the banks to pay their obligations to depositors. This shortfall, as we've seen, gets bigger whenever a loan defaults, which happens all the time, so it just keeps making the system rack up larger and larger shortfalls. But it does result in a whole lot of money getting lent out, at a profit.
And last time, we learned about derivatives, a creature of legal maneuverings, where banks manage to get money they've loaned back quicker so they can loan it again for another profit while transfering the risk of default to investors who buy the derivatives. And we saw how this practice led to worse and worse lending practices until the whole scheme crashed in 2007 and 2008.
So now, we'll have a look at how the banking system has, so far, managed to avoid responsibility for all of its thus far greedy and irresponsible behavior. In common parlance, we can refer to this as the bank bailouts.
Fall, 2008. Due to the popping of the housing bubble and the other bad practices we've already talked about, the big banks and financial service companies found themselves with a whole lot of worthless assets in the form of pools of loans that weren't paying and way too little capital to meet their obligations. One went bust--Lehman Brothers. Then politicians ran around for a few days with their hair on fire, screaming that we couldn't let the banks go broke; they were "too big to fail."
Then Treasury Secretary and bank fairy godfather Henry "Hank" Paulson (a very rich guy who was once Assistant Secretary of Defense and who once succeeded the now-clearly-criminal Jon Corzine as CEO of one of the largest financial services companies in the world, Goldman Sachs) came up with a "plan." It was called TARP, or the Toxic Asset Relief Program. In brief, this program worked like this:
1) The Federal Reserve would push a button on its super-money-making computer and miraculously create a whole lot of previously non-existent money (more than 3/4 of a Trillion Dollars' worth);
2) This would devalue all of the dollars that were already outstanding in the economy, because the Federal Reserve doesn't have a super-product-and-service-making computer to miraculously create any additional value in the form of products or services to go along with the imaginary money;
3a) In theory, the new imaginary money would be lent to the U.S. Treasury to be used to buy back "toxic assets," that is--assets that weren't worth anything because they consisted largely of huge pools of loans that either were, or were about to be, in default. This did not happen. No one has been willing to say exactly why (in fact, very few have even asked), but I find it likely that the reason was that if the government owned these "toxic assets," people within the government might actually be foolish enough to go and try to collect them. Then, I think they'd find out that they were, in a legal sense, just as imaginary as the money--that is, that the supposed rights associated with the assets to collect on debts were unenforceable because they hadn't been structured properly, and that the quality of the assets was so poor that it would have opened up all the banks to lawsuits for fraud or possibly even criminal theft; so...
3b) In practice, the imaginary money wasn't actually used to buy those worthless assets, but instead was just lent to the banks that were "too big to fail," so that it would not become immediately apparent that they were completely underwater and unable to pay their obligations. This is called insolvency, and usually is when you file bankruptcy, unless you are "too big to fail." All the big banks had to take the money, because if only the ones that were completely broke took the money, then we'd all know who was completely broke and it would show us where all the bodies were buried. We needed to loan this money to the banks, it was said, so that they would have enough money to continue lending money to businesses and consumers and get the economy going again. Unfortunately, the banks just kept the money and didn't loan much to anyone; so...
3(c) In practice, the Federal government borrowed imaginary money from the Federal Reserve (which is, in fact the banks) to lend back to the banks, who didn't loan money to businesses or consumers much, but did manage to make sufficient profits so they could pay nice dividends to the rich guys who own most of the stock in big banks and and pay extremely nice bonuses to the rich guys who run the big banks.
4) We would then proceed to ignore the fact that when you are insolvent, borrowing more money does not actually improve your financial condition, since each dollar of loan money (asset) comes with an equal or greater (with interest) obligation to repay the money (liability).
5) We would also proceed to not ask ANY questions about where the money went, because the Federal Reserve and the Treasury don't actually want to tell us, and the rest of the government doesn't really want to know, because then they wouldn't be able to take campaign donations from the crooked ones any more.
6) American taxpayers will then dutifully pay taxes to pay back the big banks' loan back to themselves, plus interest, which will mean less money for all that frivolous stuff like roads and schools and police and fire protection, and pensions for people who paid in their whole lives in return for a promise they'd get a check when they are old, and so on. This is called 'austerity.'
And now that this has worked so well here in the U.S., we want to do it on a global scale, in the form of the IMF and World Bank making similar loans to Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, etc.
American ingenuity, exported once again.
So we now understand that the Federal Reserve is not actually owned by the government. It is owned by 'member banks' in the Federal Reserve System--private banks. The private banks are then in turn owned by shareholders--mostly rich people--some of whom are American, but many of whom aren't.
We saw in part two how the creation of the fiat money system led to the devaluation of the dollar, the magical inflation of prices for stuff that people buy, and to the huge inflation of home prices we came to call the housing bubble.
Next, we learned how the banks got themselves in a crack--through the legalized Ponzi Scheme called fractional reserve banking, in which, by design, there is never actually enough money in the banks to pay their obligations to depositors. This shortfall, as we've seen, gets bigger whenever a loan defaults, which happens all the time, so it just keeps making the system rack up larger and larger shortfalls. But it does result in a whole lot of money getting lent out, at a profit.
And last time, we learned about derivatives, a creature of legal maneuverings, where banks manage to get money they've loaned back quicker so they can loan it again for another profit while transfering the risk of default to investors who buy the derivatives. And we saw how this practice led to worse and worse lending practices until the whole scheme crashed in 2007 and 2008.
So now, we'll have a look at how the banking system has, so far, managed to avoid responsibility for all of its thus far greedy and irresponsible behavior. In common parlance, we can refer to this as the bank bailouts.
Fall, 2008. Due to the popping of the housing bubble and the other bad practices we've already talked about, the big banks and financial service companies found themselves with a whole lot of worthless assets in the form of pools of loans that weren't paying and way too little capital to meet their obligations. One went bust--Lehman Brothers. Then politicians ran around for a few days with their hair on fire, screaming that we couldn't let the banks go broke; they were "too big to fail."
Then Treasury Secretary and bank fairy godfather Henry "Hank" Paulson (a very rich guy who was once Assistant Secretary of Defense and who once succeeded the now-clearly-criminal Jon Corzine as CEO of one of the largest financial services companies in the world, Goldman Sachs) came up with a "plan." It was called TARP, or the Toxic Asset Relief Program. In brief, this program worked like this:
1) The Federal Reserve would push a button on its super-money-making computer and miraculously create a whole lot of previously non-existent money (more than 3/4 of a Trillion Dollars' worth);
2) This would devalue all of the dollars that were already outstanding in the economy, because the Federal Reserve doesn't have a super-product-and-service-making computer to miraculously create any additional value in the form of products or services to go along with the imaginary money;
3a) In theory, the new imaginary money would be lent to the U.S. Treasury to be used to buy back "toxic assets," that is--assets that weren't worth anything because they consisted largely of huge pools of loans that either were, or were about to be, in default. This did not happen. No one has been willing to say exactly why (in fact, very few have even asked), but I find it likely that the reason was that if the government owned these "toxic assets," people within the government might actually be foolish enough to go and try to collect them. Then, I think they'd find out that they were, in a legal sense, just as imaginary as the money--that is, that the supposed rights associated with the assets to collect on debts were unenforceable because they hadn't been structured properly, and that the quality of the assets was so poor that it would have opened up all the banks to lawsuits for fraud or possibly even criminal theft; so...
3b) In practice, the imaginary money wasn't actually used to buy those worthless assets, but instead was just lent to the banks that were "too big to fail," so that it would not become immediately apparent that they were completely underwater and unable to pay their obligations. This is called insolvency, and usually is when you file bankruptcy, unless you are "too big to fail." All the big banks had to take the money, because if only the ones that were completely broke took the money, then we'd all know who was completely broke and it would show us where all the bodies were buried. We needed to loan this money to the banks, it was said, so that they would have enough money to continue lending money to businesses and consumers and get the economy going again. Unfortunately, the banks just kept the money and didn't loan much to anyone; so...
3(c) In practice, the Federal government borrowed imaginary money from the Federal Reserve (which is, in fact the banks) to lend back to the banks, who didn't loan money to businesses or consumers much, but did manage to make sufficient profits so they could pay nice dividends to the rich guys who own most of the stock in big banks and and pay extremely nice bonuses to the rich guys who run the big banks.
4) We would then proceed to ignore the fact that when you are insolvent, borrowing more money does not actually improve your financial condition, since each dollar of loan money (asset) comes with an equal or greater (with interest) obligation to repay the money (liability).
5) We would also proceed to not ask ANY questions about where the money went, because the Federal Reserve and the Treasury don't actually want to tell us, and the rest of the government doesn't really want to know, because then they wouldn't be able to take campaign donations from the crooked ones any more.
6) American taxpayers will then dutifully pay taxes to pay back the big banks' loan back to themselves, plus interest, which will mean less money for all that frivolous stuff like roads and schools and police and fire protection, and pensions for people who paid in their whole lives in return for a promise they'd get a check when they are old, and so on. This is called 'austerity.'
And now that this has worked so well here in the U.S., we want to do it on a global scale, in the form of the IMF and World Bank making similar loans to Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, etc.
American ingenuity, exported once again.
Monday, November 21, 2011
M-O-N-E-Y (Part 4)
In the past three posts, we've talked about the history of money in the U.S., the creation of a fiat monetary system, and the inflation that occurs with such a system, and the Ponzi Scheme known as Fractional Reserve Banking. Today our topic is derivatives. Before your eyes glaze over, buck up. We'll learn this hideously--well, hideous-- subject in the form of a fairy tale.
Once upon a time, there was a bank, and this bank made money by taking in deposits from customers and then lending that money to other customers for a fee called interest. The bank did ok. A lot of the time, the deposits it took in were free. People just put their money in the bank to be safer and more convenient to use, and the bank didn't pay them any interest in return for holding their money. Sometimes those people would even pay a fee to the bank for holding their money for them. This fee was called a service charge.
Other deposits, the bank had to pay for. The people who owned the money would agree that they wouldn't take the money out for a while, and in return for that promise, the bank would pay them a small amount of interest--maybe a couple of percent per year.
Whenever the bank had deposits it would lend that money out to another customer. It would figure out how much it had to pay to get the deposit, and then it would charge more to the customer getting the loan. Not a whole lot on each dollar, but there were a LOT of dollars, and so the bank did well and made a profit.
But the people who owned the bank, its shareholders, didn't think they were making enough money and they threatened they would take their money and buy shares in a company making televisions or something flashier than a bank unless they started to make more money on their investment.
So the bank figured out that lending money and waiting years for it to be paid back was just too slow. The bank got the idea that if it lent the money and charged some fees and so on and then turned around and sold the right to be paid back to someone else, it could get a little profit from the fees up front and a little profit from the sale of the loan, and then it could turn around and lend the same money again and make more profit. So it started to sell loans to investors like Fannie Mae and FreddyMac and other banks who had some extra money lying around. This worked especially well when interest rates were falling, because the bank could make the loan at say 8 percent interest and charge a 1 percent fee to make the loan, and then if interest rates had fallen in the meantime, it could sell the loan for a premium because the investor couldn't get 8 percent on new loans--it might only get seven.
Soon, though, interest rates weren't falling anymore, and the bank couldn't charge much premium to its investors anymore, and so it was only making a little bit on its loan sales. And the bank's investors said they were going to take their money and go invest in a company that made DVD players, or something flashier unless they started to make more money.
So the bank started to make loans that it could charge higher interest for. People who had some credit problems, or people who didn't have much money to put down on their purchase were willing to pay more interest! The bank knew that the risk of those people not paying their loan was higher, but they also knew that they were going to sell the loan and it would be someone else's problem to try to collect it, so the bank didn't mind. But eventually, the investors started to say, 'wait a minute,' these aren't good quality loans, so we're going to pay less for them, and the bank only made a little bit on each one.
And after a while, the bank's shareholders got tired of only making a few percent in dividends and they threatened to sell their shares and invest in a company making i-pads or something flashier than a bank unless they made more money. And so the bank thought and thought.
And a bright young analyst said to the bank, "Hey! What if we put a whole bunch of these loans in a pot and chop them up and stir them so that no one knows exactly which loan is which. And we'll do all the paperwork and collecting on the loans, so that no one else knows who the borrowers are or whether they are good or bad borrowers. And we can still charge the borrowers the fee up front for loaning the money in the first place. And we can charge a fee to the investor for the servicing of the loans. And we can also sell the loans for a premium, because we'll say that there's so many loans in the pot that while one or two may default, overall, the percentage that will pay will make up for it." And the bank said, "Good idea! We'll call the pot a Collateralized Debt Obligation. I'll go have lunch with my friend the credit reporting agency and I'll get them to say that this pot is a VERY SAFE INVESTMENT." And so the derivative was born.
And the bank did very well. It collected money from the borrowers. It collected servicing fees. It collected premiums on the loans, because they were said to be VERY SAFE INVESTMENTS, and it always got paid back its principal too, because it sold the pots of loans before any could default. And this worked for quite a while. Whenever business would slow down a little, the bank would make up an even gimmickier kind of loan to attract more customers to borrow. After a while, the bank was making loans for really high interest rates to people it knew were lying about how much money they made and whether they could pay back the loans, but the bank didn't care, because it was going to chop them up and sell them in pots.
And since the investors who bought the pots couldn't ever see the actual paperwork on the loans, no one else knew that they were low quality. Every so often, loans would default, but because of inflation, the collateral had gotten to be higher priced, and so the bank would sell it off for enough to pay most or all of the loan, and no one was any the wiser.
And then, one day the bank got up and read the newspaper and it said that its friend the big bank, the Federal Reserve, had been printing so much money, and its friend the government had been spending so much money fighting wars and paying people not to complain about the wars that the debt of the United States was REALLY REALLY BIG.
And investors were saying the the United States couldn't pay all that debt, and some investors stopped loaning money to the United States anymore at all. And suddenly, investors wouldn't buy its pots of derivatives anymore because they were worried about the economy. And it kept getting worse and the bank had to keep the loans, but it knew that a lot of them were bad loans. And as people got more worried, they borrowed less, and as they borrowed less, the bank made less money, and so on, until the bank wasn't making even enough to pay back the deposits it owed to its customers--it was BANKRUPT.
And the bank couldn't let everyone know that it had been making and selling really bad loans and telling buyers that they were REALLY SAFE INVESTMENTS, because that would be FRAUD, and the bank would go to jail.
And so the bank went in its office and shut the door and cried. And after a moment, the bank's fairy godfather appeared. The fairy godfather said, "Hi. My name is Hank Paulson. I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you." And the bank knew it was all going to be ok.
Once upon a time, there was a bank, and this bank made money by taking in deposits from customers and then lending that money to other customers for a fee called interest. The bank did ok. A lot of the time, the deposits it took in were free. People just put their money in the bank to be safer and more convenient to use, and the bank didn't pay them any interest in return for holding their money. Sometimes those people would even pay a fee to the bank for holding their money for them. This fee was called a service charge.
Other deposits, the bank had to pay for. The people who owned the money would agree that they wouldn't take the money out for a while, and in return for that promise, the bank would pay them a small amount of interest--maybe a couple of percent per year.
Whenever the bank had deposits it would lend that money out to another customer. It would figure out how much it had to pay to get the deposit, and then it would charge more to the customer getting the loan. Not a whole lot on each dollar, but there were a LOT of dollars, and so the bank did well and made a profit.
But the people who owned the bank, its shareholders, didn't think they were making enough money and they threatened they would take their money and buy shares in a company making televisions or something flashier than a bank unless they started to make more money on their investment.
So the bank figured out that lending money and waiting years for it to be paid back was just too slow. The bank got the idea that if it lent the money and charged some fees and so on and then turned around and sold the right to be paid back to someone else, it could get a little profit from the fees up front and a little profit from the sale of the loan, and then it could turn around and lend the same money again and make more profit. So it started to sell loans to investors like Fannie Mae and FreddyMac and other banks who had some extra money lying around. This worked especially well when interest rates were falling, because the bank could make the loan at say 8 percent interest and charge a 1 percent fee to make the loan, and then if interest rates had fallen in the meantime, it could sell the loan for a premium because the investor couldn't get 8 percent on new loans--it might only get seven.
Soon, though, interest rates weren't falling anymore, and the bank couldn't charge much premium to its investors anymore, and so it was only making a little bit on its loan sales. And the bank's investors said they were going to take their money and go invest in a company that made DVD players, or something flashier unless they started to make more money.
So the bank started to make loans that it could charge higher interest for. People who had some credit problems, or people who didn't have much money to put down on their purchase were willing to pay more interest! The bank knew that the risk of those people not paying their loan was higher, but they also knew that they were going to sell the loan and it would be someone else's problem to try to collect it, so the bank didn't mind. But eventually, the investors started to say, 'wait a minute,' these aren't good quality loans, so we're going to pay less for them, and the bank only made a little bit on each one.
And after a while, the bank's shareholders got tired of only making a few percent in dividends and they threatened to sell their shares and invest in a company making i-pads or something flashier than a bank unless they made more money. And so the bank thought and thought.
And a bright young analyst said to the bank, "Hey! What if we put a whole bunch of these loans in a pot and chop them up and stir them so that no one knows exactly which loan is which. And we'll do all the paperwork and collecting on the loans, so that no one else knows who the borrowers are or whether they are good or bad borrowers. And we can still charge the borrowers the fee up front for loaning the money in the first place. And we can charge a fee to the investor for the servicing of the loans. And we can also sell the loans for a premium, because we'll say that there's so many loans in the pot that while one or two may default, overall, the percentage that will pay will make up for it." And the bank said, "Good idea! We'll call the pot a Collateralized Debt Obligation. I'll go have lunch with my friend the credit reporting agency and I'll get them to say that this pot is a VERY SAFE INVESTMENT." And so the derivative was born.
And the bank did very well. It collected money from the borrowers. It collected servicing fees. It collected premiums on the loans, because they were said to be VERY SAFE INVESTMENTS, and it always got paid back its principal too, because it sold the pots of loans before any could default. And this worked for quite a while. Whenever business would slow down a little, the bank would make up an even gimmickier kind of loan to attract more customers to borrow. After a while, the bank was making loans for really high interest rates to people it knew were lying about how much money they made and whether they could pay back the loans, but the bank didn't care, because it was going to chop them up and sell them in pots.
And since the investors who bought the pots couldn't ever see the actual paperwork on the loans, no one else knew that they were low quality. Every so often, loans would default, but because of inflation, the collateral had gotten to be higher priced, and so the bank would sell it off for enough to pay most or all of the loan, and no one was any the wiser.
And then, one day the bank got up and read the newspaper and it said that its friend the big bank, the Federal Reserve, had been printing so much money, and its friend the government had been spending so much money fighting wars and paying people not to complain about the wars that the debt of the United States was REALLY REALLY BIG.
And investors were saying the the United States couldn't pay all that debt, and some investors stopped loaning money to the United States anymore at all. And suddenly, investors wouldn't buy its pots of derivatives anymore because they were worried about the economy. And it kept getting worse and the bank had to keep the loans, but it knew that a lot of them were bad loans. And as people got more worried, they borrowed less, and as they borrowed less, the bank made less money, and so on, until the bank wasn't making even enough to pay back the deposits it owed to its customers--it was BANKRUPT.
And the bank couldn't let everyone know that it had been making and selling really bad loans and telling buyers that they were REALLY SAFE INVESTMENTS, because that would be FRAUD, and the bank would go to jail.
And so the bank went in its office and shut the door and cried. And after a moment, the bank's fairy godfather appeared. The fairy godfather said, "Hi. My name is Hank Paulson. I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you." And the bank knew it was all going to be ok.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
M-O-N-E-Y (Part 3)
In yesterday's post, I discussed an example of how the American dollar as a fiat currency has been systematically devalued since the removal of the Gold Standard in 1971. The next item it's crucial to understand is the concept of fractional reserve banking.
The way that our banking system works is that a bank has to keep a 'reserve' of money on deposit, ostensibly to ensure that it can give depositors access to their money on demand. This reserve is a fraction of the actual amount it has taken in on deposit--hence the name fractional reserve banking. Currently in the U.S., banks must keep in reserve 10% of transaction deposits like checking accounts or other forms of accounts where the owner is allowed to do more than six transactions a month. Banks must keep 0% reserve--no reserve at all-on time deposits like CDs or other deposits like money market accounts, where the number of transactions are limited to 6 per month.
Ok, so--at the most, a bank has to keep 10% of the money on deposit in reserve. Reserves include money kept in their vault and money on deposit with a central bank--the Federal Reserve. Let's see what this means in practice.
Let's pretend I make a deposit of $100 to my checking account at 1st Bank. According to the rules, the bank must keep 10% of my money in reserve. The rest it can lend out to other customers. So, to make this easier, let's assume my bank keeps a crisp $10 bill of my money in their vault. The other $90, they loan to customer A. Customer A uses that money to buy something from Merchant Z. Z deposits the $90 in his bank, 2nd Bank.
2nd Bank now has a deposit of $90, and it puts 10% or $9 in its vault. It then lends the remaining $81 to Customer B. B buys something at Merchant Y, and Y puts $81 in her bank account at 3rd Bank.
3rd Bank now has a deposit of $81, and puts 10% or $8.10 in its vault. It then lends the remaining $72.90 to Customer C. C buys something from Merchant X, who deposits $72.90 into his account at 4th Bank.
4thBank now has a deposit of $72.90, and puts 10% or $7.29 in its vault. It then lends the remaining $65.61 to Customer D. D buys something from Merchant W, who deposits $65.61 into her account at 5th Bank. And on down the chain.
If you carry this on down, the result is that the banks, collectively, lend almost $1000, based on my one little $100 deposit. And there is a total of $90 on reserve in all the banks combined. Not even as much as my original deposit, much less all the other deposits that have been made down the line.
The fractional reserve system means that for every dollar deposited, ten dollars are 'created' by lending. And in order for people to get paid back, the chain of 'debt' has to keep going forever. It's a Ponzi scheme, where more patsies have to play in order for the first patsies to get paid. If the system stopped, everyone on the chain has to pay their loan fully, or someone is going to come up short. And, of course we know that not all loans get paid back fully.
This is, for example, why they try to make it hard to withdraw your money from a bank in cash--they haven't got it. They have computer entries, not cash. And they have the ability to borrow money from the Federal Reserve (which also are banks, so they borrow from themselves) if their computer entries come up short.
So now it's easier to see why the bursting of the American housing bubble caused such a global crisis. Housing values going down meant that: 1) fewer people were buying houses (and borrowing to do so), which seriously slowed the deposit, lend, deposit, lend cycle that keeps the system able to pay back people's deposits; and 2) more people concluded that it wasn't worthwhile to pay the loans, and defaulted on their mortgages, which the banks knew meant that they were short to pay the deposits.
Hence the bank bailouts, in which the Federal Reserve made up some all new imaginary money to give to the banks to delay the day when it would become apparent they don't have anywhere near enough assets to actually meet their obligations.
But not for long.
The way that our banking system works is that a bank has to keep a 'reserve' of money on deposit, ostensibly to ensure that it can give depositors access to their money on demand. This reserve is a fraction of the actual amount it has taken in on deposit--hence the name fractional reserve banking. Currently in the U.S., banks must keep in reserve 10% of transaction deposits like checking accounts or other forms of accounts where the owner is allowed to do more than six transactions a month. Banks must keep 0% reserve--no reserve at all-on time deposits like CDs or other deposits like money market accounts, where the number of transactions are limited to 6 per month.
Ok, so--at the most, a bank has to keep 10% of the money on deposit in reserve. Reserves include money kept in their vault and money on deposit with a central bank--the Federal Reserve. Let's see what this means in practice.
Let's pretend I make a deposit of $100 to my checking account at 1st Bank. According to the rules, the bank must keep 10% of my money in reserve. The rest it can lend out to other customers. So, to make this easier, let's assume my bank keeps a crisp $10 bill of my money in their vault. The other $90, they loan to customer A. Customer A uses that money to buy something from Merchant Z. Z deposits the $90 in his bank, 2nd Bank.
2nd Bank now has a deposit of $90, and it puts 10% or $9 in its vault. It then lends the remaining $81 to Customer B. B buys something at Merchant Y, and Y puts $81 in her bank account at 3rd Bank.
3rd Bank now has a deposit of $81, and puts 10% or $8.10 in its vault. It then lends the remaining $72.90 to Customer C. C buys something from Merchant X, who deposits $72.90 into his account at 4th Bank.
4thBank now has a deposit of $72.90, and puts 10% or $7.29 in its vault. It then lends the remaining $65.61 to Customer D. D buys something from Merchant W, who deposits $65.61 into her account at 5th Bank. And on down the chain.
If you carry this on down, the result is that the banks, collectively, lend almost $1000, based on my one little $100 deposit. And there is a total of $90 on reserve in all the banks combined. Not even as much as my original deposit, much less all the other deposits that have been made down the line.
The fractional reserve system means that for every dollar deposited, ten dollars are 'created' by lending. And in order for people to get paid back, the chain of 'debt' has to keep going forever. It's a Ponzi scheme, where more patsies have to play in order for the first patsies to get paid. If the system stopped, everyone on the chain has to pay their loan fully, or someone is going to come up short. And, of course we know that not all loans get paid back fully.
This is, for example, why they try to make it hard to withdraw your money from a bank in cash--they haven't got it. They have computer entries, not cash. And they have the ability to borrow money from the Federal Reserve (which also are banks, so they borrow from themselves) if their computer entries come up short.
So now it's easier to see why the bursting of the American housing bubble caused such a global crisis. Housing values going down meant that: 1) fewer people were buying houses (and borrowing to do so), which seriously slowed the deposit, lend, deposit, lend cycle that keeps the system able to pay back people's deposits; and 2) more people concluded that it wasn't worthwhile to pay the loans, and defaulted on their mortgages, which the banks knew meant that they were short to pay the deposits.
Hence the bank bailouts, in which the Federal Reserve made up some all new imaginary money to give to the banks to delay the day when it would become apparent they don't have anywhere near enough assets to actually meet their obligations.
But not for long.
Friday, November 18, 2011
M-O-N-E-Y (Part 2)
Yesterday, I posted a link to a little video about the history of money. From that video, readers should have learned that the US was founded, and our Constitution written with the idea that specific amounts of precious metals--silver and gold--would constitute money and be used to buy things. Congress (and only Congress) was to have the power to coin money. The Treasury was set up to be the depository of those precious metals. The idea was that silver and gold are relatively scarce, and of finite supply, and therefore have an intrisic value. This concept was very old. Gold especially, and silver to a lesser extent had been used for money since ancient times.
In the US, we observed some form of tie to the value of precious metals up until 1971, when President Richard Nixon abolished the Gold Standard, which tied the value of currencies to gold in stores held by the Treasury. At the time of abolishment of the Gold Standard, a system of exchange rates called the Bretton Woods System had fixed the price of gold at $35 per ounce. All other currencies at the time were valued with reference to the Bretton Woods System, and Nixon's abolishment of the Standard represented the first time in history that currency had absolutely no tie to a real commodity, like gold. This was the beginning of what is called "fiat money," or money that is intrinsically useless, without value, that is only used as a method of exchange. And it's issued not by Congress, but by the Federal Reserve, which is under supposed oversight by it's Board of Governors, which is under supposed oversight by Congress. But it's not owned by the Government: it's owned by its "member banks," that is, all national banks and some state banks. So, in essence, the US monetary system is owned by banks.
Now, let's start an example of what this means and why it matters, using the single biggest thing most people buy--a home. In 1970, I was a kid, living with my folks in a modest brick ranch home in a suburb of Denver, Colorado. Let's pretend that my parents' home was the "median home" at that time. I think it probably was pretty close to it. According to census records, the median home in the U.S. in 1970 cost $17,000.
A home is a tangible commodity. It is what it is. It has a certain size, a certain number of rooms, a certain quality of construction, etc., that is constant. So, it should stay fairly close to a constant value, so long as it is maintained in good condition, and realizing that, as fashions and people's standards of what they want in a home change the value may also change a little--maybe 10--15%--downward. So, for example, since people started to demand larger rooms and more bathrooms after the 1970s, the same house should have stayed the same or lost a little value, if it were maintained in good condition.
But last year the "median home" cost $177,900. So, in the forty years between the removal of the gold standard and 2010, the median home increased in price by almost 10.5 times. And gold? Well, gold went from $35 an ounce in 1970 to around $1200 an ounce in 2010, an increase of more than 34 times!
At the same time, median household income grew only from $8,730 to $49,445, an increase of about 5.7 times. So between 1970 and 2010, it came to take $10.50 to buy the same amount of home it used to take 1 dollar to buy. And it came to take $34.00 to buy the same amount of gold that one dollar used to buy. And yet, people got paid only $5.70 for each dollar of their old wages.
Houston, we have a problem.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
M-O-N-E-Y
I've gotten some email from readers wondering why I've been dishing on the banks. After a recent personal conversation, I've realized that most people don't have any idea how our monetary system works. Accordingly, I will be posting on the subject of money, banking, and the economic situation in which we find ourselves. For a start, readers need to understand a bit of history about our money. This is a very good little video about the history of American money. (Caveat: at the end of part 2, there's a bit about what prices would be which is misleading because he assumes that wages would stay the same--ignore that part)
By the end of this video, if you aren't thoroughly confused about how our economy got where it is, you weren't paying attention.
By the end of this video, if you aren't thoroughly confused about how our economy got where it is, you weren't paying attention.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
When the People Win
Every day, we've been hearing about how the troubled nations of the Eurozone have no choice but to take bailouts (read, "huge counterfeit debts to be repaid by regular people to globalist financial interests who control the IMF and WorldBank and the big banks all over the world") in order to save their economies.
What is really being proposed is this: 1) Everyone will ignore the fact that the financial crisis in Europe, like the financial crisis here in the US, is a creation of globalist bankers having created so much fake money (leverage, they call it) that it can't ever be repaid, even if the entire world's assets were confiscated and paid on the fake debt; 2)the IMF will borrow more fake money, created on a computer screen by the global banking cartel and backed by no actual assets of any kind; 3) the IMF will then lend said fake money to troubled countries like Greece, to be repaid by the people of the country in the form of taxes; 4) the Greek government will impose further "austerity," which means that all the functions of government that they have promised their people, and that the people have paid their taxes for, like decent roads and public works, and the social safety net, will be renounced and taken away to show Greece's "good faith" about repaying the fake money; 5) the Greek people will toil and slave, but will never ever be able to pay back all the fake money with their real work and real products; 6)after a sufficient waiting period, the global banking cartel will instigate another crisis; 7) Repeat steps 1 through 6. Eventually, the global banking cartel will have all the people working all the time just to pay back the fake money that they made on a computer--no social projects, no functions of government--just a whole nation working full time to pay the banksters back for having extraordinary imaginations.
This is also what will be happening in the rest of Europe, and the US, if not sooner, then a little later. Sounds positively festive, doesn't it?
So what would happen if Greece, or the rest of Europe, or the US, or even better, all of them, said no? Well, we happen to have an example of just that. Back at the beginning of this collapse, in 2008, as we in the US were preparing to fork over $800 billion or so to the banking cartel to keep the global economy lurching along in its undead, zombie-like state, Iceland also fell upon hard times.
The Icelandic folks refused all 'bailouts,' and instead defaulted on their debts. The powers that be (the banking cartel and its minions, the European governments) pitched a fit, threatened, begged, wheedled and cajoled, but ultimately the Icelandic people would have none of it. They insisted that they were not going to pay back the banks their fake money. And here's what has happened--a freaking democracy broke out. A government is emerging in Iceland, actually controlled by the people, who are still pretty intent on flipping the bird to the Eurozone and the IMF and their puppetmasters, the bankers. And, you know what? Last I checked the news, the sky is still hanging in there over Iceland. The sun still rises there. And they're taking their country back from the globalist crooks. Read about it here. Iceland. All those guts, and reindeer too. Cool.
What is really being proposed is this: 1) Everyone will ignore the fact that the financial crisis in Europe, like the financial crisis here in the US, is a creation of globalist bankers having created so much fake money (leverage, they call it) that it can't ever be repaid, even if the entire world's assets were confiscated and paid on the fake debt; 2)the IMF will borrow more fake money, created on a computer screen by the global banking cartel and backed by no actual assets of any kind; 3) the IMF will then lend said fake money to troubled countries like Greece, to be repaid by the people of the country in the form of taxes; 4) the Greek government will impose further "austerity," which means that all the functions of government that they have promised their people, and that the people have paid their taxes for, like decent roads and public works, and the social safety net, will be renounced and taken away to show Greece's "good faith" about repaying the fake money; 5) the Greek people will toil and slave, but will never ever be able to pay back all the fake money with their real work and real products; 6)after a sufficient waiting period, the global banking cartel will instigate another crisis; 7) Repeat steps 1 through 6. Eventually, the global banking cartel will have all the people working all the time just to pay back the fake money that they made on a computer--no social projects, no functions of government--just a whole nation working full time to pay the banksters back for having extraordinary imaginations.
This is also what will be happening in the rest of Europe, and the US, if not sooner, then a little later. Sounds positively festive, doesn't it?
So what would happen if Greece, or the rest of Europe, or the US, or even better, all of them, said no? Well, we happen to have an example of just that. Back at the beginning of this collapse, in 2008, as we in the US were preparing to fork over $800 billion or so to the banking cartel to keep the global economy lurching along in its undead, zombie-like state, Iceland also fell upon hard times.
The Icelandic folks refused all 'bailouts,' and instead defaulted on their debts. The powers that be (the banking cartel and its minions, the European governments) pitched a fit, threatened, begged, wheedled and cajoled, but ultimately the Icelandic people would have none of it. They insisted that they were not going to pay back the banks their fake money. And here's what has happened--a freaking democracy broke out. A government is emerging in Iceland, actually controlled by the people, who are still pretty intent on flipping the bird to the Eurozone and the IMF and their puppetmasters, the bankers. And, you know what? Last I checked the news, the sky is still hanging in there over Iceland. The sun still rises there. And they're taking their country back from the globalist crooks. Read about it here. Iceland. All those guts, and reindeer too. Cool.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Reality Indeed
We have grown comfortable with the notion that reality is, well, real. We believe that reality is outside ourselves, an independent thing over which we have little control. It's a handy way of thinking, really, because if we're stuck in here and everything else in reality is out there, we don't have to take responsibility for it. We're just innocent bystanders to everything except our own individual actions. When good stuff happens--what a happy surprise! When bad stuff happens--we're victims.
But both science and spirituality indicate that our reality is not at all as we perceive. Let me give you some examples. According to science, all matter is made of atoms. Atoms are made of a nucleus of some protons and neutrons and then some orbiting electrons that whirl around the nucleus. Cool, right? Well, here's the rub. If you blew up an atom's nucleus to be the size of a pea, and you stuck it out on the 50 yard line of a football stadium, the electrons would be outside the bleachers, in the parking lots. And, even the protons, neutrons and electrons aren't solid--they're energy--things called quarks and strings, that can't make up their minds whether they are waves or particles. So, science proves that the stuff our reality is supposed to be made of is more than 99% space, and less than 1% energy, yet our perception of the world is that it is solid and "real."
Here's another example. What we see is not what's really there, but a result of the clever programming of our brains. Our eyes merely focus light, which is energy. Our brains, through the visual cortex, turn that light into a dimensional picture. Over 100 years ago, an experimenter proved that if you turn your 'vision' upside down with lenses, within a few days, your brain turns it 'right side up' again, and you pop along, seeing everything as it should be. Oddly, though, once you remove the lenses, your vision would turn 'upside down' again for a few days, until your brain programming had enough time to catch up to the new reality. That old saw about 'what you see is what you get?' Well, not so much.
And a final example. Have you ever watched news coverage of the same event on Fox News and MSNBC? To do so is to understand that there is no "real," only perception. On Fox, Sarah Palin was a goddess of conservative values and constitutional adherence. On MSNBC, she was a dimwit with a messiah complex and a deer rifle. In fact, the woman is probably neither, but whatever she is, we'd never know it by looking at the so-called news.
So, what's the point, you may ask. The point is that reality ain't all it's cracked up to be. If we're willing to fall in line, sheep-like, behind whatever version of life happens to be in front of us at the moment, we are buying into an illusion, colored by the perspective of whoever painted that fictionalized version of the way things are. In our reality, that's usually the government, either directly or through some paid filter, and it's usually telling us that some group, some ideology, some 'other' is the cause of all our problems. And as we dutifully jump on board, parroting the talking points, chowing down on their propagandized message, hook line and sinker, and blaming someone for our ills, we allow reality to pass us by.
I believe, after many many hours of research and thought and pondering, that reality is exactly this. There is an element of society worldwide today who finds us regular people to be about the same worth as any other piece of livestock. We are slave labor, cannon fodder, and loyal unthinking minions all rolled up in one. We are worthy only to make sure their money gets counted, their sheets get washed, their food gets grown, and their wars get fought. They own the biggest businesses, the biggest banks, and most of the governments. There aren't enough of them to actually defeat us all, if we actually tried to stop them. Their continued success turns on whether they can continue to be successful at having us fight one another. And so their game is to keep us stupid, scared, and angry at the "enemy" which they've conveniently defined for us.
Today, a fair number of people are actually starting to get this. Unfortunately, a lot of them are sitting around waiting for someone to save them--for Jesus to return, or for ETs to swoop in and defeat the evil ones, or whatever--when what we really need to do is save ourselves.
They want us stupid, so refuse to be stupid. Stop only looking at information that confirms your pre-conceived notion of what's good and bad. Consider the other side. Think. Be critical.
They want us scared, so refuse to be scared. Stop buying the "threat of the week." Just in the last few years, we've been told that the downfall of America is going to be the "illegals" taking our jobs, the Chinese manipulating their currency, the liberals killing babies, the conservatives hoarding guns, the Black Panthers intimidating voters, ACORN comitting voter fraud, the Muslims imposing Sharia law on the world, Saddam Hussein and his imaginary nukes, Moammar Gadhaffi and his whatever it was we killed him for, Iran developing enough nuclear material to blow their noses, some used car salesman conspiring with an FBI agent to assassinate a Saudi diplomat, killer asteroids and comets, murderous aliens, etc., etc., etc.
They want us angry at their defined enemy, so stop listening to them about who the enemy is. It's a manipulation--a sham. While we've been busy being scared of all these threats, the scary thing that's actually been occuring is that our own government has been systematically eroding our rights. They claim it's now Constitutional for our government to read our emails and listen to our phone conversations, put cameras and recording devices everywhere to spy on us, and put GPS units on our cars to track us, without warrants. They claim they can tell us what kind of food to eat, and what kind of medicines we must take. They even claim they can kill us, legally and without trial or proof of wrongdoing, if only they call us a name first. And they're only getting away with it because we're letting them--so stop letting them. Stop considering other ordinary people, whether they are liberals or conservatives, pro-life or pro-choice, Chinese or Russian, Muslim or Christian, as the enemy. They're not. They may disagree with us, yes, they may annoy us--but ordinary people can't make us do anything. The enemy is the authority--the people who have the money and the power to make us do stuff--and it's them that we need to oppose.
That's the only reality worth buying into--the one that makes us free.
But both science and spirituality indicate that our reality is not at all as we perceive. Let me give you some examples. According to science, all matter is made of atoms. Atoms are made of a nucleus of some protons and neutrons and then some orbiting electrons that whirl around the nucleus. Cool, right? Well, here's the rub. If you blew up an atom's nucleus to be the size of a pea, and you stuck it out on the 50 yard line of a football stadium, the electrons would be outside the bleachers, in the parking lots. And, even the protons, neutrons and electrons aren't solid--they're energy--things called quarks and strings, that can't make up their minds whether they are waves or particles. So, science proves that the stuff our reality is supposed to be made of is more than 99% space, and less than 1% energy, yet our perception of the world is that it is solid and "real."
Here's another example. What we see is not what's really there, but a result of the clever programming of our brains. Our eyes merely focus light, which is energy. Our brains, through the visual cortex, turn that light into a dimensional picture. Over 100 years ago, an experimenter proved that if you turn your 'vision' upside down with lenses, within a few days, your brain turns it 'right side up' again, and you pop along, seeing everything as it should be. Oddly, though, once you remove the lenses, your vision would turn 'upside down' again for a few days, until your brain programming had enough time to catch up to the new reality. That old saw about 'what you see is what you get?' Well, not so much.
And a final example. Have you ever watched news coverage of the same event on Fox News and MSNBC? To do so is to understand that there is no "real," only perception. On Fox, Sarah Palin was a goddess of conservative values and constitutional adherence. On MSNBC, she was a dimwit with a messiah complex and a deer rifle. In fact, the woman is probably neither, but whatever she is, we'd never know it by looking at the so-called news.
So, what's the point, you may ask. The point is that reality ain't all it's cracked up to be. If we're willing to fall in line, sheep-like, behind whatever version of life happens to be in front of us at the moment, we are buying into an illusion, colored by the perspective of whoever painted that fictionalized version of the way things are. In our reality, that's usually the government, either directly or through some paid filter, and it's usually telling us that some group, some ideology, some 'other' is the cause of all our problems. And as we dutifully jump on board, parroting the talking points, chowing down on their propagandized message, hook line and sinker, and blaming someone for our ills, we allow reality to pass us by.
I believe, after many many hours of research and thought and pondering, that reality is exactly this. There is an element of society worldwide today who finds us regular people to be about the same worth as any other piece of livestock. We are slave labor, cannon fodder, and loyal unthinking minions all rolled up in one. We are worthy only to make sure their money gets counted, their sheets get washed, their food gets grown, and their wars get fought. They own the biggest businesses, the biggest banks, and most of the governments. There aren't enough of them to actually defeat us all, if we actually tried to stop them. Their continued success turns on whether they can continue to be successful at having us fight one another. And so their game is to keep us stupid, scared, and angry at the "enemy" which they've conveniently defined for us.
Today, a fair number of people are actually starting to get this. Unfortunately, a lot of them are sitting around waiting for someone to save them--for Jesus to return, or for ETs to swoop in and defeat the evil ones, or whatever--when what we really need to do is save ourselves.
They want us stupid, so refuse to be stupid. Stop only looking at information that confirms your pre-conceived notion of what's good and bad. Consider the other side. Think. Be critical.
They want us scared, so refuse to be scared. Stop buying the "threat of the week." Just in the last few years, we've been told that the downfall of America is going to be the "illegals" taking our jobs, the Chinese manipulating their currency, the liberals killing babies, the conservatives hoarding guns, the Black Panthers intimidating voters, ACORN comitting voter fraud, the Muslims imposing Sharia law on the world, Saddam Hussein and his imaginary nukes, Moammar Gadhaffi and his whatever it was we killed him for, Iran developing enough nuclear material to blow their noses, some used car salesman conspiring with an FBI agent to assassinate a Saudi diplomat, killer asteroids and comets, murderous aliens, etc., etc., etc.
They want us angry at their defined enemy, so stop listening to them about who the enemy is. It's a manipulation--a sham. While we've been busy being scared of all these threats, the scary thing that's actually been occuring is that our own government has been systematically eroding our rights. They claim it's now Constitutional for our government to read our emails and listen to our phone conversations, put cameras and recording devices everywhere to spy on us, and put GPS units on our cars to track us, without warrants. They claim they can tell us what kind of food to eat, and what kind of medicines we must take. They even claim they can kill us, legally and without trial or proof of wrongdoing, if only they call us a name first. And they're only getting away with it because we're letting them--so stop letting them. Stop considering other ordinary people, whether they are liberals or conservatives, pro-life or pro-choice, Chinese or Russian, Muslim or Christian, as the enemy. They're not. They may disagree with us, yes, they may annoy us--but ordinary people can't make us do anything. The enemy is the authority--the people who have the money and the power to make us do stuff--and it's them that we need to oppose.
That's the only reality worth buying into--the one that makes us free.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Bad Blood-A Tale of Class Warfare
Once upon a time, there was a government that decided certain of its people were 'inferior,' because they were brown or black, or they were mentally ill, or they were 'promiscuous,' or they were alcoholics, or they were poor. The government didn't want to have to take care of these less-than-perfect-people, and it thought that their imperfections would spread as they reproduced. These ideas were first proposed by the most prominent and wealthy in its society, so many people concluded they must be good ideas.
And so this government made decisions. It passed laws called the "Eugenics Laws." It decided, for example, that girls as young as 8 years old were "promiscuous" or "feeble-minded" or similar indictments, and sterilized them. In other cases, it fed them milk infected with tuberculosis, with the idea that people with better genes would survive, and the 'others' would not, and sometimes, the so-called doctors who implemented the governments plans would just withhold care from those deemed inferior. The government decided to withhold available treatment from people with syphillis and "study" the course of the disease, which more often than not was death. The government took children away from the families of these undesirables, ostensibly to improve their lives, but it put them in mandatory boarding schools where physical, psychological, and sexual abuse was common, and many children died.
Occasionally, people who survived this government eugenics program would protest their treatment. The highest court of that government sided with the killing. Later, the government would 'apologize' for its murderous ways, and in some cases, the government made token payments to survivors or their heirs, but no one was prosecuted. Most of the evidence of the plot was hidden, records destroyed or sealed, and the government waited for the victims to die, so that the coverup would be complete. And, to this day, the government and all the people who perpetrated these crimes have gotten away with them, mostly because people don't want to think about it, talk about it, or acknowledge the horror of what was done. And the people who weren't killed by their government lived happily (and ignorantly) ever after.
Sounds like Nazi Germany, or Pol Pot, or the Khmer Rouge or Stalin, or Mao Tse Tung, or Saddam Hussein, doesn't it? We've been taught about how horrible those governments were. We've even been taken to wars, many times, with the mantra that we had to stop these regimes, who were killing and experimenting on their own citizens. (Gasp!) So who is this awful totalitarian government, and when and where did all this happen? Right here, in our flag-waving, diversity-loving, liberty-laden, US of A. Some of these incidents are from a hundred years ago. Some happened even during my lifetime, in the 1970s. Victims of these atrocities are still alive--prbably so are some of the perpetrators. And there are others happening today--a bit more surreptitiously, but they are still happening. Some of the laws authorizing these atrocities are still on the books, or have only recently been repealed. And that high court case that says that it's ok? It's never been overturned.
The names of the "wealthy and prominent people" who advocated for these policies read like a who's who of blue blood America today. Rockefeller (as in Jay and David), Carnegie (as in the Carnegie-Mellon foundation, Carnegie Hall, the Carnegie Libraries, etc.), Gamble (as in Proctor and), Hanes (as in socks and underwear), and many others. The same folks who own most of the wealth, and have used it to purchase the government today. Do you suppose that these families just changed their minds about whether poor, ill, promiscuous, and brown people are worthy of breathing the same air as their own privileged selves?
Are you willing to bet your life on it?
So when you hear the yammering of the poor little rich guys about "class warfare" being waged against them with taxes and so on--well--I don't think making billionaires pay more is exactly the same thing as attempted genocide, but even if it were... paybacks are a bitch.
And so this government made decisions. It passed laws called the "Eugenics Laws." It decided, for example, that girls as young as 8 years old were "promiscuous" or "feeble-minded" or similar indictments, and sterilized them. In other cases, it fed them milk infected with tuberculosis, with the idea that people with better genes would survive, and the 'others' would not, and sometimes, the so-called doctors who implemented the governments plans would just withhold care from those deemed inferior. The government decided to withhold available treatment from people with syphillis and "study" the course of the disease, which more often than not was death. The government took children away from the families of these undesirables, ostensibly to improve their lives, but it put them in mandatory boarding schools where physical, psychological, and sexual abuse was common, and many children died.
Occasionally, people who survived this government eugenics program would protest their treatment. The highest court of that government sided with the killing. Later, the government would 'apologize' for its murderous ways, and in some cases, the government made token payments to survivors or their heirs, but no one was prosecuted. Most of the evidence of the plot was hidden, records destroyed or sealed, and the government waited for the victims to die, so that the coverup would be complete. And, to this day, the government and all the people who perpetrated these crimes have gotten away with them, mostly because people don't want to think about it, talk about it, or acknowledge the horror of what was done. And the people who weren't killed by their government lived happily (and ignorantly) ever after.
Sounds like Nazi Germany, or Pol Pot, or the Khmer Rouge or Stalin, or Mao Tse Tung, or Saddam Hussein, doesn't it? We've been taught about how horrible those governments were. We've even been taken to wars, many times, with the mantra that we had to stop these regimes, who were killing and experimenting on their own citizens. (Gasp!) So who is this awful totalitarian government, and when and where did all this happen? Right here, in our flag-waving, diversity-loving, liberty-laden, US of A. Some of these incidents are from a hundred years ago. Some happened even during my lifetime, in the 1970s. Victims of these atrocities are still alive--prbably so are some of the perpetrators. And there are others happening today--a bit more surreptitiously, but they are still happening. Some of the laws authorizing these atrocities are still on the books, or have only recently been repealed. And that high court case that says that it's ok? It's never been overturned.
The names of the "wealthy and prominent people" who advocated for these policies read like a who's who of blue blood America today. Rockefeller (as in Jay and David), Carnegie (as in the Carnegie-Mellon foundation, Carnegie Hall, the Carnegie Libraries, etc.), Gamble (as in Proctor and), Hanes (as in socks and underwear), and many others. The same folks who own most of the wealth, and have used it to purchase the government today. Do you suppose that these families just changed their minds about whether poor, ill, promiscuous, and brown people are worthy of breathing the same air as their own privileged selves?
Are you willing to bet your life on it?
So when you hear the yammering of the poor little rich guys about "class warfare" being waged against them with taxes and so on--well--I don't think making billionaires pay more is exactly the same thing as attempted genocide, but even if it were... paybacks are a bitch.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Bankster Governments
Think that Greece is just a financially irresponsible nation, getting bailed out by more responsible members of the EU? It's actually the latest target of the criminal banking cartel. If you don't know what's going on in Greece, you need to watch this ten minute video. Italy is next, and the US is not far behind, unless we get wise quick, and call these con-men on their massive, worldwide fraud.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Lies, Damned Lies and Worse Damned Lies
If you need any more convincing that this government needs stripped to the studs, here it is. Please, please read all the articles linked. Sad and tragic that we've all let this go this far. Let's don't let it go any further.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Disinformation
Thought you all might be interested in this. I posted a few days ago that I had emailed Oakland Mayor Jean Quan about the Scott Olsen assault by Oakland Police. This morning, I got a message from the Office of the Mayor. Here's the text of that message:
Mayor Jean Quan’s Statement Concerning
Day of Action on November 2, 2011
It is my expectation that tomorrow’s general strike is peaceful and places the issues of the 99% front and center. I am working with the police chief to
make sure that the pro-99% activists – whose cause I support – will have the freedom to get their message across without the conflict that marred
last week’s events. Although getting the balance right is never an easy task, in Oakland we are committed to honoring free speech and protecting
public safety.
The protestors are raising important issues that we must confront. Oakland is a city struggling with high levels of unemployment,
underemployment, foreclosure, and budget cuts. We all have to work together to solve these problems.
Tomorrow morning, Chief Jordan and Administrator Santana and I will open the Emergency Operations Center early in the morning and work together to monitor the situation and maintain peace. I call on everyone to lift up important issues and to lift up peace.
In the short term, I want to encourage everyone to support our small businesses, especially those in the downtown core who have experienced
declining patronage. They are a part of the 99%, and they are essential to our local economy.
Makes her sound positively reasonable, doesn't it. Well, don't get your hopes too high on that score. Here's an interesting video I got a link to this morning. It shows that the Oakland Police Department is infiltrating the protesters. There's footage of two different police officers, some in their uniforms, some while they're acting like Occupiers. I wonder why? Might it be so they can stir up trouble and create justification for some more police violence? We'll see.
Please forward the link to the video to folks you know. The more people know that officials may be trying to instigate violence they could then be heroes for 'putting down,' the less likely they actually will do it.
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