Whoever Controls the Land will Control the Nations

May 15, 2012

Whoever Controls the Food will Control the People

By SUSANNE POSEL | OCCUPY CORPORATISM | MAY 15, 2012

Whoever controls the land controls the nation.

Corporations and foreign governments have been “ land-grabbing” from third world nations to control agriculture.

“What is missing the most in terms of land grabbing is a clear condemnation of this practice. That was one of the baseline demands of civil society,” Stephane Parmentier from aid agency Oxfam. “It was impossible to include it, because it was too sensitive and too controversial for quite a lot of member states.”

Nations like Ethiopia, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone, in Africa have “voluntarily” signed agreements with multi-national corporations and foreign investors, allowing them to control agricultural land. The nation’s leaders believe that giving access to their resources will benefit their people; however this is just another manipulative ploy to coercively acquire control over land, food production and securitization.

The world’s governments have agreed to follow UN dictated guidelines over land, and who controls the fate of land.

The United Nations (UN) has enacted global guidelines on purchasing agricultural land from developing nations like Africa and Asia.

The UN claims that to secure equality for the poor and disadvantaged, this international body must control their lands through the allowance of mutli-national corporations and governments who will develop the land for agriculture and securitize the crop yields; thereby giving the UN control over the global food supply.

The document entitled “ The UN Global Compact and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises” outlines through “voluntary” means, the UN will implement their international guidelines with respect to corporate conduct, standards and abilities.

The UN decries that their voluntary code of conduct promotes equal rights for women by securitizing title to land. They also claim that they will give poor people access to their own land once they own and control it. And once the UN controls the land, they will enact “legal help” to settle disputes.
This document requires governments and local communities to adhere to UN rules with respect to business practices.

The UN asserts that the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development; and the United Nations Convention against Corruption and subtle Agenda 21 initiates will allow their Global Compact principles to facilitate universal consensus.

To create this document and the guidelines within it, the UN collaborated with non-governmental groups, members of the global Elite within the private sector, and multi-national corporations.

“It’s a starting point that will help improve the often dire situation of the hungry and poor,” the head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Jose Graziano da Silva, said at a news conference in Rome.

Grazino da Silva said the guidelines should prompt revisions of national and international law.

Once agreements are signed, the land and the people are indebted to the UN for slave labor to work the land and watch their resources being reallocated to other countries for consumption. The promise of investment and technological advancement are just the hook to convince leaders to sign away the rights of their people and their land.

Over the last decade, the UN has “acquired” an area of land in Africa and Asia the size of Great Britain.

The World Bank, FAO and other UN agencies are meeting to create a new document to expand on the current guidelines. Certain acquisition of Africa through the guise of “investments” is a usurpation of land rights over a people who cannot say no or fight back.

Corporations like Cocoa-Cola have descended upon Africa by an $11 million dollar project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“Africa is now the last frontier in terms of arable land,” said James Nyoro, the Rockefeller Foundation’s managing director for Africa. “With the population growing to 9 billion, the rest of the world will have to depend upon Africa to feed it.”

Cocoa-Cola Corporation are employing 50,000 Kenyan and Ugandan small holders to produce fruit for Minute Maid, a subsidiary for Cocoa-Cola, to utilize their land in the hopes that crop yields will boost their profit margins.

“I have no doubt whatsoever that Africa can feed itself and that Africa can be a major contributor to world food security,” Namanga Ngongi, the former president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

It is also no coincidence that researchers for the British Geological Survey (BGS) and the University of London have uncovered underground aquifers of water in Africa that are 100 times the amount found on the surface of the continent.

Andrew Mitchell, the United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for International Development is delighted by this find.

Considering the plethora of natural resources in Africa, it makes perfect sense why the UN and multi-national corporations are now usurping this continent for their own use.

The UN is currently allowing corporatism through aggressive international law to claim governance over crop production, privatization of water, disbursement of food stores and the eventuality of securing control over the world’s food supply.

Filed under Africa, Asia, English Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Save Us from the Tyranny of Bankers

May 29, 2011

By Robert Chapman
International Forecaster
May 29, 2011

We hope all of our appearances on Greek TV, radio and in the press have helped the educational process and to allow the Greeks to identify who the real culprits are, and what to do about it. It has just been over a year since this tragedy became reality, but we reported on Greece and Italy ten years ago. They both bent the rules to enter the euro zone. We knew then that Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase were assisting them by creating credit default swaps. There were a few European journalist who reported on the issue, but the elitists control the media and few noticed that Greece and Italy were beyond bogus. The events of the past year remind us of the onslaught of the credit crisis, which unfortunately is still with us. What finally brought about trouble for Greece and other euro zone countries was the zero interest rate policy of the Fed and slightly higher rates by the EC. These policies encouraged speculation and caused problems that would have never happened otherwise. In addition, the stimulus measures by both banks were embarked upon to save the financial sectors and in that process promote speculation by the people who caused thee problems in the first place. That began with QE1 and stimulus 1, which we now recognize as our inflation drivers. Wait until QE2 and stimulus 2 appear next year. It will be very shocking.

Just to show you what a loser lower rates are just look at economic progress. There has been no recovery under either QE1 or QE2. Even 4.60% 30-year fixed rate mortgages have not encouraged people to buy homes. They are either broke or they don’t know whether they will be employed five-months or even one year from now, so how can they buy a house? Consumer spending is falling along with wages. The small gains you see are for the most part the result of higher inflation.

Growth moved from the fourth quarter of 2010 of 3.1% to 1.8% in the first quarter of 2011. We had forecast 2% to 2-1/2% growth for 2011. That is little to show for a minimum of $1.8 trillion spent in QE2 and stimulus 2. Without that we probably would have been at a minus 2%. Just think about that. Trillions of dollars spent with little results. Obviously such programs do not work very well. You would have thought the Fed would have found a better way after two such failures. They know what the solution is, but they won‘t put it into motion and that is to purge the system and face deflationary depression. That will happen whether they like it or not, but in the meantime the flipside is 10% inflation headed to 14% by yearend and another greater wave next year, and another in 2013. Unimpressive results is not the word for it. It has been a disaster and the Fed keeps right on doing it. As a result of the discounting of QE3 we wonder what the stock market has in store for us? We would think that a correction would be in the future. If that is so could that negatively affect the economy? Of course it could. All the good news coming, further stimulus by the Fed, will have been discounted. What does the Fed do for an encore? Create more money and credit – probably? Does that mean hyperinflation, of course it does. If the Fed stops the game is over. We are also seeing fewer results from additional stimulus. It is called the law of diminishing returns. In the meantime the dollar goes ever lower versus other currencies, but more importantly versus gold and silver.

If you can believe it, even though the Fed has provided financial flows and assisting speculative flows so Wall Street, banking and hedge funds can glean mega-profits, it still has not provided enough liquidity for additional GDP growth. The small and medium sized businesses have been shut out. The latter participants do not play those games, it is the propriety trading desks, hedge funds and the remainder of the leveraged speculating community that takes advantage of the excess liquidity and the Bernanke put of keeping bonds and stocks up artificially. The Fed and the others are sustaining this process. There are negatives for the Fed and their friends, higher commodity and gold and silver prices. The Fed and banks temporarily took care of that and haven’t quite finished their latest short-term foray in that sector. There are still fears as well regarding Greek debt fears and their CDS, Credit Default Swaps, and those of other euro zone members. They could still blow up in everyone’s faces in a partial if not total default, which is very likely. Banks are on the wrong side of this trade as well as the bond trade, not only with Greece, but with five other nations as well.

In the final analysis papering over the problem never works. The problems also reemerge with new additional problems. The combination of excessive speculation and liquidity and too big to fail is going to end badly, as it always has. De-leveraging will eventually rear its ugly head.

As we said, Greece and others could cause extensive bond and CDS problems and that is not only being reflected in a lower euro, but in higher Greek bond yields of 16-3/8% in their 10-year notes and 24-3/4% in two-year yields, and Portugal, Ireland and Spain are not far behind. The socialists just lost the latest election in Spain in a big way showing the public is fed up with the lies of government and the bankers. The euro is attempting to break $1.40 to the downside as a result of those election results and the Greek impasse. It is obvious that Greece cannot service its debt and reduce its deficit and the other deficient nations are in the same boat. The CDS marketplace would be severely disrupted if there were a sovereign debt default. That fear, of contagion, could be seen in higher rates in Spain, some .30%, the highest upward move this year. Greece, Ireland and Portugal have problems that can never be resolved and Spain, Italy and Belgium are not far behind.

Spain is implementing austerity, but that means like in recent weeks millions have demonstrated in 72 Spanish cities. The 17 autonomous regions have doubled their debt in the last 2-1/2 years. The socialists just did not know when to stop, now they are out of office. Spain is going down. There is no way they can sustain. That should bring the CDS situation front and center. It will also increase unemployment for those 18 to 35 to 40% or more. It is not surprising that half of the protestors were in that age group.

Greek PM George Papandreou, who secretly promised Europe’s elitists bankers that he would sell-off and or pledge Greek state assets, wants to sell stakes in Hellenic Telecommunications, Public Power Corp., Postbank, the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki and their local water company. All supposedly worth $70 billion. The bankers, of course, say they are worth far less. They want to buy them for 10% to 20% of what they are worth – so what else is new. The Cabinet went along with the giveaway, as expected, and without a whimper. The EU is demanding all the assets be sold off immediately, so the bankers can buy them as cheaply as possible. The threat by the bankers is if you do not sell and sell fast for a pittance, then we won’t fund loans of $42 billion over the next 2-1/2 to 3 years. If not funded it would be “re-profiled” another new euphemism for default and debt restructuring, or perhaps debt extension.

Then there is the threat that the bankers, the ECB-European Central Bank for the Euro Zone, would refuse to supply the Greek banking system with any further liquidity. They would then admit their new word refilling would mean default. This would end with Greece leaving the euro zone and the euro and total default, the issuance of a new drachma at 50% of the value of the euro and perhaps even leaving the EU, the European Union. Jens Weidmann, the Bundesbank’s new president said no compromise on monetary stability and a correction back to normality and a full separation between monetary and fiscal policy. It is obvious to us that in spite of debt of $620 billion that Germany wants to cut Greece loose. The German voters said that in last month’s elections. The Germans should have accepted default for $0.50 on the dollar offered by the Greeks a year ago. Even if the Greeks sold $50 billion in assets it would be a drop in the bucket, when they cannot possibly pay off the remainder of the debt ever. This shows you how derelict the bankers and sovereign countries were in allowing this debt to be accumulated. In addition Goldman Sacks and JPMorgan Chase hid their problems, via credit default swaps and now these same banks and others want to loot the country.

Tuesday Jean-Claude Junker, chair of the euro zone finance ministers committee had to admit he lied about the secret meeting the bankers had concerning Greece. He is another who says Greece cannot pay its debt under its current debt burden. Both he, and Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, said that any partial or total default would put all of Europe and the euro in jeopardy. In fact, some of these apologists for banks, especially the Germans, have entertained having Germany control Greek budgets and collect taxes. That means you would have a financial SS running things not only in Greece, but also in Ireland and Portugal and eventually in Belgium, Spain and Italy.

It should be noted the ECB paid in capital $14 billion and they hold $183 billion in Greek debt. We would say the ECB is already insolvent. It could be the Ponzi scheme, much like that of the Fed’s will soon come to an end. Some believe that a 50% markdown is in store for Greek debt. That could have worked a year ago, but not low. It is 2/3’s or more of a write down. We can just imagine Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium, Spain and Italy recapitalizing the ECB – forget it. This is why partial or full debt default are out of the question. Just to buy time the ECB will kick the can down the road as long as they can. Those six nations in trouble should all go back to their currencies, default by at least 2/3’s and leave the euro zone.

European bondholders with a 50% debt write off are offside $1.2 trillion for Greek, Portuguese and Irish debt. If we include Spain, Italy and Belgium the 50% write off is $846 billion. That should easily destroy the ECB and the euro zone. We predict that by October changes will have to be made not only in the EU and euro zone, but in the UK and US as well. The battle rages in the euro zone, EU, UK and in the US over overwhelming debt. The debts are all unpayable. This dance of debt could go on for 4 or 5 months. Even a temporary solution is not going to work. The debts are unpayable. Once the lending stops the bottom falls out. The same is true in the US. They cannot raise interest rates and neither can the UK and euro zone, and the issuance of money and credit can only lead to inflation and hyperinflation. The bankers and the politicians in the debtor countries have so enraged the public, and the public now knows what they are up too because of talk radio and the Internet, that we don’t believe there can be settlements. We’ll see by the end of October and perhaps much sooner. All one party or group has to say is forget it we are out of here, and the entire system blows up.

We have seen the extensive damage, as we predicted, that has been caused by one interest rate fits all, which led to a major misallocation of funds and malinvestment. Due to such low interest rates massive debt was accumulated. The EU’s answer is to usurp sovereignty and turn the entire mess over to technocrats, who will most certainly make matters worse.

Political currencies like the euro do not work. It is an unnatural cultural instrument designed to bring people of differing cultures together as one. The order envisioned by European elitists is total amalgamation of all nations at every level. What the professionals not included with the elitists don’t understand is that these Illuminists want world government, at any cost.

The insiders in Europe have realized their plan did not work and that the six countries involved have to be cut loose and the remainder has to stay with the euro. Whether this can be accomplished remains to be seen and we personally believe it is a lost cause. In this withdrawal process bankers and others are going to be exposed and the outcome will be jail time and forfeiture of ill-begotten gains.

Over the past 1-1/2 years we have witnessed a degenerative process in Greece and in other nations as well. The Greek president and his party does not have the votes to give away Greece’s assets to European bankers even though they promised to do so.

Antonis Samaras, opposition leader, is not going to allow that to happen. The standoff could last 4 to 5 months. No Greek property collateralization and severe austerity are not acceptable. Opposition support will not be forthcoming. The formula proposed by the bankers is the same one used by the IMF to loot countries and keep them in perpetual servitude and poverty.

Probably on orders from the bankers the present government has made no effort to restart the economy. Mr. Samaras has called for renegotiation of the bailout deal before anything meaningful can get underway or proceed. He also knows 62% of the voting public is behind what he recommends, and that only 15% are against. That is why a referendum would solidify his position. If PM Papandreou promised the bankers he would sell off Greek assets he should not have done that, because he doesn’t have the power to do so. Worse yet, now Alexis Tsipras of the Left Coalition is calling for Mr. Papandreou’s resignation. Tsipras said what Mr. Papandreou is doing is a crime against the Greek people.

Professors and experts are pushing for a referendum because they say what the PM is trying to do is illegal. Polls already show that 62% of the electorate is against using Greek national assets as collateral. Fifteen percent are for, which means 23% is undecided. The PM does not have a majority in Congress and he cannot win a referendum for the terrorist bankers. These problems could last for months. In the final analysis they will be a partial bankruptcy that could last a year or two. Ultimately such an arrangement won’t work.

We are very proud of Mrs. Theodorakis and Samaras as they save Greece from the tyranny of the bankers.

As an addendum Italy has public debt of 120% of GDP and compromise 17% of the euros total GDP, Spain is 12% and Greece, Ireland and Portugal 6%. If Italy or Spain goes bankrupt the euro is dead. Italy has had a slow economy for ten years.

The top 91 European banks carry $144 billion in Italian debt, or quadruple their holdings of Spanish debt, and 22 times the holdings of Irish debt. This number will give you an idea of the enormity of European bank debt. If the euro fails there will be in a heap of trouble.

We haven’t commented too much regarding the Fed’s secret advance of $30 billion to Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and the Royal Bank of Scotland, which is controlled by the Queen of England. This just shows you the Fed is a tool of major banks and in particular European Illuminists banks. There is no transparency unless it is demanded by court order. The Fed is supposed to be an agency of government, when in fact they are agents of the banks who own them. The Fed handed out free cash to their owners. The horror story goes on and the one and the only solution is the termination of the Fed.

Another feature this Friday was that Fitch cut its outlook for Japan to negative from stable, which was not unexpected due to the earthquake.

According to Goldman Sachs 2011 growth is not going to be 4.8% but 4.3%. UBS has cut their estimates from 3.9% to 3.6%. They also believe the market will remain stagnant.

Central banks are raising interest rates, China, India, the Philippines, Chile, Poland, Peru and Malaysia. Others like us are looking for worldwide growth this year of 3.5%.

Small gold and silver coins of one-ounce or less are becoming scarce in Europe. That condition is also moving up to bars.

The IRS, moving aggressively to collect more taxes from small businesses, is telling companies being audited to turn over exact copies of the electronic records kept in their business-software programs, according to a letter from an agency official to the American Institute of CPAs.

The accounting group fears this will force small businesses to turn over customer lists, personnel data, confidential client information and other unrelated information often contained in the off-the-shelf software programs many businesses use to manage all aspects of their finances.

Small-business groups are beginning to push back, saying the agency shouldn’t treat small firms like bigger businesses, which usually have elaborate accounting systems and are able to give the IRS only the data the agency seeks. Small businesses, defined by the IRS as those with assets of less than $10 million, often use one off-the-shelf software program such as QuickBooks or Peachtree. A spokesman for Intuit said the Mountain View, Calif., company “was aware that the IRS has purchased copies of small-business accounting software to use in its tax audits.” The IRS declined to comment.

“Many accountants are worried this could lead to fishing expeditions” to find problems beyond the scope of the requested information, said Danny Snow, a certified public accountant in Memphis who is active in the American Institute of CPAs, or AICPA. “It’s not like what the IRS asks of large companies.”

Orders for U.S. durable goods dropped more than forecast in April, reflecting less demand for aircraft and disruptions in supplies of auto parts stemming from the earthquake in Japan.

Bookings for goods meant to last at least three years fell 3.6 percent, the most since October, after a 4.4 percent jump in March, a Commerce Department report showed today in Washington. Economists projected a 2.5 percent drop in April, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. A measure of demand for business equipment declined by the most this year.

Bookings for Boeing Co. aircraft slumped last month and vehicle makers slowed production due to a components shortage that may be short-lived as Japanese manufacturers recover. At the same time, rising overseas sales at Deere & Co. and General Electric Co. indicate factories will keep expanding.

There is “a slowing, but not a dramatic slowing in manufacturing,” Bricklin Dwyer, an economist at BNP Paribas in New York, said before the report. “The inventory rebuilding cycle has tapered off and now we have a normalization. Manufacturing will still be an important component of growth going forward.”

Orders excluding the volatile transportation equipment category decreased 1.5 percent in April after a 2.5 percent gain. The median projection in the Bloomberg survey was for a 0.5 percent rise.

Estimates of total durable goods orders in the Bloomberg survey of 81 economists ranged from a drop of 5.7 percent to a gain of 2 percent. Economists’ forecasts for orders excluding transportation ranged from a decline of 1.2 percent to an increase of 1.8 percent.

New orders for manufactured durable goods in April decreased $7.1 billion or 3.6% to $189.9 billion. Excluding transportation, new orders decreased 1.5%. Excluding defense, new orders decreased 3.6%. Transportation equipment, also down two of the last three months, had the largest decrease, $4.9 billion or 9.5% to $46.7 billion.

Inventories of manufactured durable goods in April, up sixteen consecutive months, increased $3.2 billion or 0.9% to $350.5 billion. This was at the highest level since the series was first published on a NAICS basis in 1992. Transportation equipment, also up sixteen consecutive months, had the largest increase, $1.0 billion or 1.0% to $106.1 billion. This was also at the highest level since the series was first published on a NAICS basis in 1992.

Slower economic activity drove rates on fixed-rate mortgages down for the sixth week in a row, Freddie Mac’s chief economist said on Thursday.

The 30-year fixed rate hasn’t been lower since early December. The loan averaged 4.6% for the week ending May 26, down from 4.61% last week and 4.84% a year ago.

Fifteen-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 3.78% this week, down from 3.8% last week and 4.21% a year ago. That loan’s rate hasn’t been lower since late November.

Rates on adjustable-rate mortgages also fell this week, with the 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage averaging 3.41% this week, down from 3.48% last week. The ARM averaged 3.97% a year ago.

And 1-year Treasury-indexed ARMs averaged 3.11% this week, down from 3.15% last week and 3.95% a year ago.

To obtain the rates, the fixed-rate mortgages required payment of an average 0.7 point, while the ARMs required payment of an average 0.5 point. A point is 1% of the mortgage amount, charged as prepaid interest.

“Fixed mortgage rates eased slightly for the sixth consecutive week amid reports of slower economic activity. The index of leading indicators fell 0.3% in April and represented the first monthly decline since June 2010,” said Frank Nothaft, vice president and chief economist of Freddie Mac, in a news release. “In addition, the Federal Reserve banks reported less business and manufacturing activity in Philadelphia, Chicago and Richmond.”

However, Nothaft said that house-price indexes may be nearing a bottom.

“On a national basis, prices fell 0.3% between February and March, which was the smallest decline since November 2009, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In addition, four of the nine Census Regions exhibited positive growth, compared to none in February.

“Separately, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported a further reduction in the serious delinquency rate (90 or more days plus foreclosures) in the first quarter, which stood at the lowest reading since the second quarter of 2009.”

Sales of homes in some stage of foreclosure declined in the first three months of the year, but they still accounted for 28 percent of all home sales a share nearly six times higher than what it would be in a healthy housing market.

Foreclosure sales, which include homes purchased after they received a notice of default or were repossessed by lenders, hit the highest share of overall sales in a year during the first quarter, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.

“It’s an astronomically high number,” said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac. “In a normal market, you’re looking at the percentage of homes sold in foreclosure to be below 5 percent.”

In all, 158,434 homes in some stage of foreclosure were sold in the first quarter, down 16 percent from the last three months of 2010 and down 36 percent versus a year ago. Sales of all other types of homes also declined sharply, according to RealtyTrac’s figures, which differ from other home-sales estimates.

While the number of bank-owned properties sold declined, they grew as a share of all home sales. Bank-owned homes accounted for nearly 19 percent of all sales, up from 17 percent in the fourth quarter and up from 18 percent a year ago, the firm said.

That’s not good news for the housing market.

Filed under World Tagged with , ,

Consolidating US Money Power: The Four Horsemen of Global Banking

May 27, 2011

By Dean Henderson
Global Research
May 25, 2011

If you want to know where the true power center of the world lies, follow the money – cui bono.  According to Global Finance magazine, as of 2010 the world’s five biggest banks are all based in Rothschild fiefdoms UK and France.

They are the French BNP ($3 trillion in assets), Royal Bank of Scotland ($2.7 trillion), the UK-based HSBC Holdings ($2.4 trillion), the French Credit Agricole ($2.2 trillion) and the British Barclays ($2.2 trillion).

In the US, a combination of deregulation and merger-mania has left four mega-banks ruling the financial roost.  According to Global Finance, as of 2010 they are Bank of America ($2.2 trillion), JP Morgan Chase ($2 trillion), Citigroup ($1.9 trillion) and Wells Fargo ($1.25 trillion).  I have dubbed them the Four Horsemen of US banking Consolidating the Money Power.

The September 2000 marriage which created JP Morgan Chase was the grandest merger in a frenzy of bank consolidation that took place throughout the 1990’s.  Merger mania was fed by a massive deregulation of the banking industry including revocation of the Glass Steagal Act of 1933, which was enacted after the Great Depression to curb the banking monopolies which had caused the 1929 stock market crash and precipitated the Great Depression.

In July 1929 Goldman Sachs launched two investment trusts called Shenandoah and Blue Ridge.  Through August and September they touted these trusts to the public, selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of shares through the Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation at $104/share.  Goldman Sachs insiders were bailing out of the stock market.  By the fall of 1934 the trust shares were worth $1.75 each.  One director at both Shenandoah and Blue Ridge was Sullivan & Cromwell lawyer John Foster Dulles. [1]

John Merrill, founder of Merrill Lynch, exited the stock market in 1928, as did insiders at Lehman Brothers.  Chase Manhattan Chairman Alfred Wiggin took his “hunch” to the next level, forming Shermar Corporation in 1929 to short the stock of his own company.  Following the Crash of 1929, Citibank President Charles Mitchell was jailed for tax evasion. [2]

In February 1995 President Bill Clinton announced plans to wipe out both Glass Steagal and the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956- which barred banks from owning insurance companies and other financial entities. That day the old opium and slave trader Barings went belly up after one of its Singapore-based traders named Nicholas Gleason got caught on the wrong side of billions of dollars in derivative currency trades. [3]

The warning went unheeded.  In 1991 US taxpayers, already billed over $500 billion dollars for the S&L looting, were charged another $70 billion to bail out the FDIC, then footed the bill for a secret 2 1/2-year rescue of Citibank, which was close to collapse after the Latin American debt crunch hit home.  With their bill’s paid by US taxpayers and bank deregulation a done deal, the stage was set for a slew of bank mergers like none the world had ever seen.

Reagan Undersecretary of Treasury George Gould had stated that concentration of banking into five to ten giant banks was what the US economy needed.  Gould’s nightmare vision was about to come true.

In 1992 Bank of America bought its biggest West Coast rival Security Pacific, then swallowed up the looted Continental Bank of Illinois for cheap.  Bank of America later took a 34% stake in Black Rock (Barclays owns 20% of Black Rock) and an 11% share in China Construction Bank, making it the nation’s second largest bank holding company with assets of $214 billion.  Citibank controlled $249 billion. [4]

Both banks have since increase their assets to around $2 trillion each.

In 1993 Chemical Bank gobbled up Texas Commerce to become the third largest bank holding company with $170 billion in assets.  Chemical Bank had already merged with Manufacturers Hanover Trust in 1990.

North Carolina National Bank and C&S Sovran merged into Nation’s Bank, then the fourth largest US bank holding company, with $169 billion in its war chest.  Fleet Norstar bought Bank of New England, while Norwest bought United Banks of Colorado.

Throughout this period US bank profits were soaring, breaking records with each new quarter.  The year 1995 broke all previous records for bank mergers.  Deals totaling $389 billion occurred that year. [5]

The Big Five investment banks, who had just made boatloads of money steering Latin American debt negotiations, now made a killing steering the bank and industrial merger- mania of the 1980’s and 1990’s.

According to Standard & Poors the top five investment banks were Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Salomon Smith Barney and Lehman Brothers.  One deal that fell through in 1995 was a proposed merger between London’s biggest investment bank S. G. Warburg and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.  Warburg chose Union Bank of Switzerland as its suitor instead, creating UBS Warburg as a sixth force in investment banking.

After the 1995 feeding frenzy, the money center banks moved aggressively into the Middle East, establishing operations in Tel Aviv, Beirut and Bahrain- where the US 5th Fleet was setting up shop.  Bank privatizations in Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Israel opened the door to the mega-banks in those nations.  Chase and Citibank lent money to Royal Dutch/Shell and Saudi Petrochemical, while JP Morgan advised the Qatargas consortium led by Exxon Mobil. [6]

The global insurance industry had a case of merger mania as well.  By 1995 Traveler’s Group had bought Aetna, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway had eaten up Geico, Zurich Insurance had swallowed Kemper Corporation, CNA Financial had purchased Continental Companies and General RE Corporation had sunk its teeth into Colonia Konzern AG.

In late 1998 the Citibank colossus merged with Travelers Group to become Citigroup, creating a behemoth worth $700 billion that boasted 163,000 employees in over 100 countries and included the firms of Salomon Smith Barney (a joint venture with Morgan Stanley), Commercial Credit, Primerica Financial Services, Shearson Lehman, Barclays America, Aetna and Security Pacific Financial. [7]

That same year Bankers Trust and US investment bank Alex Brown were swooped up by Deutsche Bank, which had also purchased Morgan Grenfell of London in 1989.  The purchase made Deutsche Bank the world’s largest bank at the time with assets of $882 billion.  In January 2002, Japanese titans Mitsubishi and Sumitomo combined operations to create Mitsubishi Sumitomo Bank, which surpassed Deutsche Bank with assets of $905 billion. [8]

By 2004 HSBC had become the world’s second largest bank.  Six years later all three behemoths had been eclipsed by both BNP and Royal Bank of Scotland.

In the US, the George Gould nightmare reached its ugly nadir just in time for the new millennium when Chase Manhattan swallowed up Chemical Bank.  Bechtel banker Wells Fargo bought Norwest Bank, while Bank of America absorbed Nations Bank. The coup de grace came when the reunified House of Morgan announced that it would merge with the Rockefeller Chase Manhattan/Chemical Bank/ Manufacturers Hanover machine.

Four giant banks emerged to rule the US financial roost.  JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup were kings of capital on the East Coast.  Together they control 52.86% of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. [9]  Bank of America and Wells Fargo reigned supreme on the West Coast.

During the 2008 banking crisis these firms got much larger, receiving a nearly $1 trillion government bailout compliments of Bush Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs alumni Henry Paulsen; while quietly taking over distressed assets for pennies on the dollar.

Barclays took over Lehman Brothers.  JP Morgan Chase got Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns.  Bank of America was handed Merrill Lynch and Countrywide.  Wells Fargo swallowed up the nation’s 5th biggest bank- Wachovia.

The same Eight Families-controlled banks which for decades had galloped their Four Horsemen of oil roughshod through the Persian Gulf oil patch are now more powerful than at any time in history.  They are the Four Horsemen of US banking.

Notes

[1] The Great Crash of 1929. John Kenneth Galbraith. Houghton, Mifflin Company. Boston. 1979. p.148

[2] Ibid

[3] Evening Edition. National Public Radio. 2-27-95

[4] “Bank of America will Purchase Chicago Bank”. The Register-Guard. Eugene, OR. 1-29-94

[5] “Big-time Bankers Profit from M&A Fever”. Knight-Ridder News Service. 12-30-95

[6] “US Banks find New Opportunities in the Middle East”. Amy Dockser Marcus. Wall Street Journal. 10-12-95

[7] “Making a Money Machine”. Daniel Kadlec. Time. 4-20-98. p.44

[8] BBC World News. 1-20-02

[9] Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History that Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons and the Great Pyramids”. Jim Marrs. HarperCollins Publishers. New York. 2000. p.74

 Dean Henderson is the author of Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network and The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries.  His Left Hook blog is at  www.deanhenderson.wordpress.com

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Reaping What Bretton Woods Has Sown

April 9, 2011

The International Forecaster
April 2, 2011

The seeds of today’s monetary problems were laid at Bretton Woods, NH in 1944, as a combination of socialists, communists and fascists laid the groundwork for the IMF, the World Bank and the eventual elimination of gold from the monetary world. The Federal Reserve’s role was to bring that about from behind the scenes.

In the intervening years in order to move toward those goals the banking system run by the privately run Federal Reserve, allowed banks, some of which were run by the owners of the Fed, such as JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, were allowed to run rough shod over the system, always knowing they would be bailed out by the public. These banks have had and continue to have a license to steal under the illegal Federal Reserve Act. Over and over again these banks, Wall Street, insurance companies and transnational corporations have been bailed out of their speculations under the aegis of too big to fail. The excuse has always been that it must be done to protect the public. These entities got to keep the gains and the public got to share in the losses. The public and 95% of those working on Wall Street and banking didn’t have a clue to what was really going on. The Fed and other major central banks were not only playing this Fed game domestically, but internationally as well. Over those years the Fed had been designated the lender of last resort. We saw them in action over the last 3-1/2 years during what was termed the credit crisis. The Fed’s job was to bail out not only the US banking system rent asunder by bank speculation in the mortgage market, but to also bail out the buyers of such mortgages, known as MBS and CDOs, sold to British and European banks and other financial entities, which had purchased 60% of the toxic waste. If you notice not one of these lenders or buyers ever filed a civil or criminal suit against these purveyors of what has become to be known as toxic waste. We can only speculate, but we believe the dumping ground for this mortgage garbage was preset and that some of the buyers if not all were guaranteed by the Fed that if problems arose they would be bailed out and one way or another made whole. The Fed attempted to hide what they were doing and a lawsuit has finally forced them to divulge, who received funds created by the Fed, some $13.8 trillion, why and what collateral was accepted for such loans and have such loans been repaid. Another program called TARP was set up by the Treasury to bail out Wall Street, banking and transnational conglomerates all involved in this tight little circle of anointed corporations. This bailout program was accomplished by Treasury Secretary Paulson. He told Congress if the funds were not forthcoming for the insiders to bail themselves out via speculation based on inside information, then he would see to it that the financial system was brought down and destroyed. The high-handed ruse or extortion worked and these miscreants received their funds from the public Treasury, as well as from the Fed.

Gold backing for the US dollar was part of the result of the conference at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods in that July of 1944. We have to interject here that in 1946 or 1947 I climbed Mt. Washington and once I reached the hotel it started snowing. Yes, snowing in August. The group of us from the camp quickly raced back down through the forest to better climes, which the snow failed to reach. Thus, 2 or 3 years after that historic meeting, I briefly visited that hotel, of course, not knowing what had taken place there.

 

George Soros, one of the world's strongest pushers for Global Financial and Economic consolidation.

This UN Monetary and Financial Conference, which included the International Bank for Reconstruction & Development, which became the World Bank, which was to make loans to the rubble that was to be Europe in 1945, and to which those economies, promote monetary cooperation and fix exchange rates, and eventually to eliminate the use of gold, as the backing and basis for international currency exchange, replacing gold with a fiat paper standard controlled by the Federal Reserve. The discipline of gold was to eventually be phased out of the system, so that the fed could create money out of thin air. This would be a perpetual tax on Americans as their currency dropped in value versus gold over the years. Currencies would no longer be exchanged in terms of their gold value. This was called a gold exchange standard. The public could not exchange US notes or Federal Reserve notes for gold, but nations could. The value of currencies versus one another, all of which were backed by gold was set by supply and demand. If a nation created too much currency the value of their currency would fall versus gold and other currencies. This method of monetary policy had previously been set into law by the passage of the Federal Reserve Act. The concept was to eventually have a world bank that would create a fiat currency for all nations that would supersede all other currencies. That, of course, is still underway today as elitists strive for a one-world currency and a new-world order. These concepts were promulgated and put in place by well-known Fabian socialist John Maynard Keynes, who as we reflect back was the author of an economic system that was corporatists fascist and the then Treasury Secretary, Harry Dexter White, who was a communist. It took 27 years, and on August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon removed the US dollar from the gold exchange standard. That is how the fiat dollar was generally planned and that is why we have non-gold Federal Reserve notes today, instead of a gold backed currency.

 

The elitists’ corporatist fascist model is not working very well. The Fed, the Bank of England and Western banks have serious problems and throwing money at the problems is not working. Of course, do they want the solution to work? This depression they have deliberately created is not working the way they envisioned it would. In fact they are having trouble keeping it under control. We have just seen what is called a “black Swan” event. An earthquake, an untoward event, which ostensibly came from out of the blue. We’ll surmise that until we have empirical evidence that man did not create it. These are the kind of unplanned events that throw the elitist plans off kilter. It throws the direction of neo-liberal capitalism in several different directions. This is the system so prevalent in Europe, where profits are privatized and losses are socialized and become a debt that has to be paid by the people. This system, which we now have in America, keeps Wall Street and banking in power. This is accomplished by bailouts when the anointed corporations get themselves in trouble as we see in America today and in Europe as well. The state in our case by the privately owned Federal Reserve losses are monetized and appear in part in the form of higher inflation. It also comes in the form of public debt that has to be repaid by the taxpayer. Eventually the debt consumes the host.

As a result it is only a matter of time before the system unravels. The fractional banking system does not work and never has worked. The players who run the system know that. History is replete with instances of failure, which are well known to elitists. The collapse of the Lombard System in 1348, the year of the plague, and the collapse of the Hanseatic League in the early 1600s, are but two of scores of failures, most of which were deliberately planned. Fractional banking for those of you who do not know what it is, takes place when a lender lends more money than he can collateralize. The rule of thumb over the centuries has been to lend no more than eight times assets. Today that number is 40 times as assets. That is why most major western banks are broke. Any major untoward event could presently collapse the current system. In addition, some 10% of the basic assets of these banks are worthless. These banks are still in serious trouble in spite of receiving trillions of dollars in bailout funds of one kind or another. What happens when interest rates rise, which they must? The banks will be in trouble, as inflation rages. If that wasn’t bad enough contagion could also affect the banking system. That is when one bank borrows from another and then cannot get their funds back. That happened 3-1/2 years ago and the Fed stepped in and secretly guaranteed deposits. In this process of saving Wall Street and banking the public is put at enormous risk, which is a pattern used over and over again over the centuries.

These events naturally lead us to the dollar, which for months has had little sustainable strength either fundamental or technical. The run to 89 on the USDX ended in failure, and the recent strength at and near 75 was tepid at best. The recent intervention by the G-7 to weaken the yen, which has moved from 76 to 83, was really a backhanded attempt to stage a dollar rally, especially when you consider the absorption of Japanese Treasury sales, which is really what the exercise was all about. Needless to say, the NYC elitists needed the Japanese problem like they needed a hole in the head. The baggage the US dollar has is overwhelming. The government is being 70% to 80% financed by the Fed, which creates money and credit out of thin air. The federal deficit for the fiscal year will be $1.7 trillion. The US has two occupations and two ongoing wars costing billions of dollars a month. Municipalities and states are in dire financial straights and the economy would collapse without quantitative easing and stimulus. A rather sad state of affairs. Incidentally, we called the recent bottom on the dollar, but more importantly, we called the top at 89. Dollar and Treasury bond weakness will be exacerbated by the Middle East and North African revolutions and the ultimate result will be the demise of the petro dollar, which has always been the underlying strength to the dollar. The US, UK and France guaranteed safety for the oil producers, they denominated oil in US dollars, and they deposited their profits in NYC, London and Paris for management. The policy may well be at an end. If so that will be the end of regional purchases of US T-bonds. Thus, the loss of Chinese, Japanese and Gulf purchases will cancel out 70% of US Treasury purchases. These events could very well lead to the collapse of the Treasury bond market essentially leaving only the Fed as a buyer. As we predicted months ago the second half of 2011 will bring an implosion of US Federal debt, municipal and state debt, British debt and a collapse in EU debt and the beginning of the end for the euro. Along with 14% inflation gold and silver will rocket upwards.

The latest insult to American consciousness is a proposed cut in the budget deficit of $33 billion. That isn’t even cosmetic. In a budget with a $1.7 trillion deficit that isn’t even chump change. Can you imagine what the rest of the world is thinking? Try to sell treasuries under those conditions? The House is totally out of touch with reality. It takes its orders from Wall Street and banking. That has never been more obvious.

Hundreds of municipalities will fail in 2011 as well as some states. Austerity will continue for the average American citizen. That means GDP will fall from 70% by consumers to 68.5% with more bad news to come next year. All of these events have already, as displayed recently, begun to end the safe-haven status of the US dollar. Not only will the dollar be under pressure, but also so will the sale of Treasuries. It is possible the dollar could go to 65 on the USDX and the Treasury market could collapse. The plight of the dollar has not gone unnoticed. In 2001, the dollar’s share of official global foreign-reserves was 71.5%. At the end of 2010 it was 61.3%. Those moves do not instill confidence in the dollar.

We have contended for a year that a major meeting will be held with all countries attending to revalue and devalue currencies each against one another, there would be a multilateral default of some kind and a new devalued international world reserve currency backed by gold. That new currency could be the dollar. The status of old debt would be clear. How domestic debt would be handled remains to be seen. The collateralized gold backing would be today $6,000 and silver perhaps $300. The problem is that is now. The figures a year or two from now could be $8,000 and $400, who knows? All we know is the trend is clear.

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The Historical Framework of Globalization

January 3, 2011

by Dr. James Polk

Our era  is largely defined by two highly interlinked concepts: globalization and the so-called “war on terrorism.” As geopolitical-economic operatives, both concepts complement each other as significant means to specific ends; both shape important aspects of our daily lives and determine form and content of much that passes for public discourse. Particularly in Europe and in the United States, populations are kept vigilant to the “clear and present dangers” ostensibly posed by “international terrorism” through mnemonic icons of troop movements in Central Asia and/or strategically deployed bomb plots that are purportedly thwarted “just in time” by our intelligence services. As if copied from the lecture notes of Carl Schmitt, a totalitarian “enemy” has been constructed which can conveniently be called back into service at a moment’s notice should public memory begin to fade.globalization

Globalization has proceeded by means of three distinct but clearly interwoven interpretations and representations of the world in toto: as the sociopolitical “cosmopolitan moment” [1] (to borrow a term coined by Seyla Benhabib)  of the globe as the embodiment of our lifeworld;  as the stage of operations for multinational corporate/financial interests; and as the battlefield on which incited conflicts are seen as requiring comprehensive, global solutions which are to be achieved through a New World Order. In its current development, the construct of a unified world is largely synonymous with the ideal world government as envisioned in the Sociocracy of French philosopher Auguste Comte in the 19th century [2], in which international bankers and elitist think tanks determine and execute public policies.

Implied in this global ideal is of course the complete dissolution of the nationstate as such through the gradual but de facto irreversible integration of individual nations into the totalitarian framework of the political, economic, and chief judicial/juridical entities operating on a global scale (most significantly the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Bank for International Settlements, and the World Trade Organization).

The philosophical roots of this integrative process can be found in the determinant factors that led to the Treaty of Westphalia, which ended Europe’s horrendously brutal Thirty Years War. The treaty also buried the eius regio, quius religio principle and reinstated the tolerance of Protestants as spelled out in the Peace of Augsburg (1555), the revocation of which under the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II in the Edict of Restitution (1629) prompted the vicious counter-response from Protestant nobility in Austria and Bohemia. The terms of the peace accord also radically limited the territory and power of the Holy Roman Empire and acknowledged the sovereignty of the many principalities that constituted the realm of German influence, with France and Sweden entrusted as guardians of the peace.

But the Treaty of Westphalia was of major importance for one other significant reason. The councils of minds at Münster and Osnabrück were able to establish through rational discourse the concept of a peace accord based on the primacy of reason and rules of law that transcended warring national interests and belief systems, effecting in a truly Kantian sense the regulative idea of attainable peace as a principle of reason to guide all actions of the parties involved, and to which all participants, nolens volens, were to submit.  This is clearly evident in the way various clauses in the treaty assumed a meta-normative role. The treaty thus paved the way for an era of secularized thought in which the rule of law and political negotiation served as instruments of conflict resolution and as guidelines of national sovereignty based on principles of reason.

Parallel to the development of international principles of cosmopolitan conduct in our own time such as those found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the statutes of the Geneva Convention, economic and financial interests have exploited both the judicial codices formulated in international agreements and the juridical measures that now in many cases supersede pre-existing national laws through increasingly totalitarian bodies such as the World Trade Organization. [3] It is the power embodied in the domains of concentrated financial interests that today are in the process of transforming our lifeworld and realms of experience in previously unimaginable ways.

Coup d’état

Silently, and carefully hidden from public scrutiny, a coup d’état occurred in 1913 in the United States of America. The results of this bloodless coup are being felt today on a truly global scale. With careful, detailed planning, representatives of the most powerful financial institutions in both Europe and the United States succeeded through the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act (also known as the Glass-Owen bill) in radically and permanently altering the foundations of the nation as a whole.

Through the creation of the Federal Reserve system, the financial interests that conceived, wrote, and implemented the Glass-Owen bill took away the authority of the United States government as theoretical representative of the citizens of the country to print our own currency and placed that authority in the hands of a private banking cartel. According to Article 1, Section 8 of the American Constitution, it is Congress to whom the power is given “to coin money” and to “regulate the value thereof.” The Federal Reserve Act of course interprets this power quite literally as the coinage of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters; it is, however, the creation of money in the form of bank notes that lies at the heart of the act. When the government requires money, the United States treasury writes out IOUs in the form of U.S. treasury bonds, which it then sells to the privately owned Federal Reserve system in exchange for a Federal Reserve check. In reality, the “Federal” Reserve bank simply enters the corresponding numbers on its computer keyboard, once as a liability, and once as an asset. In other words, the numbers are created by the Federal Reserve out of nothing, for which it then demands repayment with interest. The funds are then credited to the government’s account, from which all the various bills are then paid. It is in that exact moment that “money” as such is created by the Federal Reserve bank out of nothing. But there is one additional trick used by all banks operating on the Federal Reserve system: fractional reserve lending. This scheme allows the bank to multiply the amount of money it lends to clients tenfold without having the actual funds in reserve to back it up. This entire scheme has allowed the hidden owners of the private “Federal” Reserve system to effectively extort money from the American people in the form of IOUs, also known as treasuries, which then must be repaid with interest.

The legal anchoring of this scandalous system in the Glass-Owen bill in the United States was only the beginning. Like other central bank signatories to the Bretton-Woods Agreement (and thereby to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund), the US Federal Reserve system is able to control the amount of money in circulation through several mechanisms, for example by raising or lowering interest rates and/or the minimum reserve requirements of banks in the fractional reserve lending system. Through the enactment of the Federal Reserve system, the essence of money has become debt. Through the creation of debt, money comes into existence in the system. It thus becomes obvious that it is never in the bank’s interest that clients, borrowers, actually pay off their debts because that would leave the banks without interest payments. When the borrowers happen to be sovereign nations, for example from the developing world, or now the United States and a number of countries in Western Europe, the interest payments earned by the banks easily go into the hundreds of billions. This is extraordinarily profitable for banks who have been able to “sit in on” the negotiation of peace accords (through which terms of surrender and repayment of damages are settled) and international trade agreement deliberations to regulate global commerce and finance.

World War I and its outcome provide a very enlightening example of just how this has been  accomplished. The terms forced on Germany through Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles laid the foundations for the consolidation of the enormously powerful financial interests in London, New York, Frankfurt, and Paris, which had been instrumental in pushing through, by hook and by crook, the Federal Reserve Act in the United States. (It should be noted that these are the same financial interests which also did their part to push the nations into military conflict in the first place. The focus here however remains restricted to the genesis and perpetration of the private central banking cartel as such and its connections to the current financial crisis and the war on terrorism.)

The horror of World War I quickly led to the realization  that the global  community of nations should not allow a recurrence of such cruelty, and that universally recognized and accepted principles of conduct were needed to guarantee international peace and harmony. Such principles of good will, intentionally redolent of the terms set out by the Peace of Westphalia, could only be implemented through a common general will or global consent. In other words, a League of Nations, a Völkerbund in the strictest Kantian sense, was needed to define and implement internationally valid principles of humanitarian, indeed cosmopolitan conduct to benefit the entire human species and our lifeworld.

It was this positive impulse among other things that led the participants in the “war to end all wars” to found the “Covenant of the League of Nations.” The agreement encompassed 26 principles to which the 58 member states committed themselves.  But the most central problem confounding the ideals of the League was the fact that the agreement was predicated on significant economic interests that essentially doomed  the treaty to failure from the start. The League was based on the status quo as defined by the victors of World War I, who, as simultaneous representatives of ostensibly “national interests” did everything in their power to ensure the richest gains possible for the elite bankers working behind the scenes in New York, London, Paris, and  Frankfurt. And the means to this end were found in the terms of reparation payments they then forced on Germany. An article featured in the May 31, 1922 issue of the New York Times outlined the most salient demands being made on Germany by the Allied entente powers:

“The Reparation Commission called on Germany to consent to the following undertakings before May 31:

1. Reduce  expenditures and balance the budget.

2. Halt the increase of the foreign debt and the growth of paper money in circulation.

3. Accept a light supervision of her efforts in that direction.

4. Take measures to prevent the further flight of capital and to get back $2,000,000,000  spirited out of the country in the last two years.

5. Assure the Reichbank’s  autonomy from politics.

6. Resume publication of Government fiscal statistics.” [4]

Attentive readers will immediately note the  unmistakable parallels to the demands (“austerity measures”) frequently imposed on developing nations through the international monetary fund in its policy proposals formerly known as “structural adjustment programs,” including demands for the privatization of the banking system, or  to use the phrase introduced by “Fed speak,” to guarantee the banks’ independence (“autonomy”) from politics. (In corrected translation, this is the simple demand that this private banking cartel as the sole source of phony money should be allowed to perpetrate its debt-based currency scam without any supervision or control by the people or their representatives.) A gamut of conditions imposed by the IMF has consistently led to widespread domestic hardship and economic crises  within the nations in question, because the interests and well-being of the general population are often clearly at odds with the IMF programs being implemented. Joseph Stiglitz put it this way:

“The IMF is pursuing not just the objectives set out in its original mandate, of enhancing global stability and insuring that there are funds for countries facing a threat of recession to pursue expansionary policies. It is also pursuing the interests of the financial community. This means the IMF has objectives that are often in conflict with each other. The tension is all the greater because this conflict can’t be brought out into the open: if the new role of the IMF were publicly acknowledged, support for that institution might weaken, and those who have succeeded in changing the mandate almost surely knew this. Thus the new mandate had to be clothed in ways that seemed at least superficially consistent with the old.” [5]

And it is precisely this extraordinary expansion of the power  of the private bank cartels that was central to much of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering during and after World War I. In a very enlightening essay published in Foreign Affairs in 1936, Leon Fraser  brought the true hidden agenda of the banking elite into selective public view:

“The truth was that the experts [i.e., of the second Young Commission - jp]  seized the occasion of the new reparation adjustment as an excuse to repair a long recognized gap in the international financial fabric. The organization which they proposed had functions not connected with reparations, and these ostensibly secondary functions were, in the inner consciousness of the originators, the predominating motives for its establishment. By some of the members — in particular those connected with commercial banking — the institution was envisaged as an instrument for opening up new fields of world trade by means of fresh extensions of credit [...]  While there was no unanimity about the opportuneness of creating more credit, all experts agreed that the Bank could fill one obvious hiatus in the financial organization of the world, namely provide a center for central bank collaboration and for corporation to improve the international monetary mechanism.” [6]

The bank Fraser was referring to, of course,  is none other than the central bank of all central banks, the Bank for International Settlements, with headquarters in Basel.

Louis McFadden, former banker-turned-congressman from Pennsylvania, condemned the hidden motives and operational methods of the Versailles Treaty in no uncertain terms. McFadden took particular aim at the Bank for International Settlements, which took charge of the gold Germany was required to deliver in reparations payments. Writing with reference to Grotius’s theory of just settlements of military conflicts (De Jure Belli ac Pacis),  McFadden argued that the Versailles Treaty had in fact been negotiated in bad faith, with the “House of Morgan” and the usual suspects from the clique of international bankers being the prime beneficiaries of the reparations bonds, and that substantial aspects of the treaty had been worked out in the financial centers of London well in advance of the actual negotiations in Paris.  McFadden prophetically augured the long-term  consequences of the treaty as laying the “foundation for the renewal of a dozen wars that are legally justifiable.” [7]

The consolidation of economic and financial power in the West at the end of World War II made possible the ensuing rapid and encompassing globalization of inchoate trends already visible in the League of Nations platform.  The establishment of the United Nations in 1945 as well as the foundation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as stipulated by the outcome of the Bretton-Woods Agreement (1944), contributed substantially to the international system of currency and finance of a distinctively Anglo-American character. This meant in particular that the central banks of all member nations were largely to adopt the modus operandi of the Federal Reserve system. The printing of national currencies, once the privilege of sovereign governments, was to be replaced by the system of government bonds or IOU issuance, which would then be lent or sold to the private banking cartel (spearheaded by the country’s respective “central-bank”) in exchange for currency notes — with interest due. The outcomes of two world wars, in which a private banking cartel had ultimately written the terms of economic and financial surrender, had forced the vanquished into participant roles in the greatest scam in human history: the creation of money out of thin air through debt, with interest payments in permanent flow to the elite sphere of private bankers — all on a global scale.

Many of the newest investment vehicles and resources discussed in growing numbers of studies have so successfully interlocked the political realm with the corporate/financial that a clear separation is no longer possible. Nevertheless, among wide segments of the populations in many countries, voting citizens are still convinced of the sanctity of the elected office. Such convictions are based on false advertising, and the voters have failed to see the fusion between capital and the successful campaign/office tenure regularly performed behind the smoke and mirrors screens of the mass media. In a number of important instances, even opposition/protest movements have been bought and staged. [8] Yes we can! Si, se puede!  should now be seen as the pitiful chants of all those who fell for the change they believed in. Change came in the form of continued bailouts for Wall Street banks, with the former head of the New York Federal Reserve placed comfortably by Obama himself on the throne of the US treasury, immune from critique and reprimand, despite his urgent e-mails to the legal counsel of AIG urging silence in response to congressional queries on the extent of the Fed’s bailout funds funneled into the pockets of Goldman Sachs. (Of course at the time these revelations became public (on the Internet!), the mainstream media was busy convincing the semi-conscious public of the importance of the then-and-now whereabouts of Tiger Woods’s genitalia.) It’s been all business as usual. But the teary-eyed and desperate seem to fall for the Hollywood hype every time: He’s the ONE!

The schematic procedures carried out by the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO often acquire an outright absurd character. Such was the case in the often-cited structural adjustment program developed for Bolivia in the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) Policy Framework Paper for 1998 – 2001. In exchange for much-needed IMF loans, Bolivia was required to transfer the “rights” of the Cochabamba water system to the private firm of Aquas de Tunari, a subsidiary of the International Water Ltd. / Bechtel Corporation consortium. (Bechtel gained international notoriety under the George W. Bush administration as the recipient of generous no-bid military “reconstruction” contracts in Iraq.) The privatization of the water supply meant that prices for this necessity of life increased by more than 300%, becoming unattainable for many families. With public outrage and potential violence on the horizon, a report authored by World Bank experts advised: no public subsidies should be given to ameliorate the increase in water tariffs in Cochabamba. [9]

Recent machinations by the World Trade Organization have also led to precarious globalization strategies. According to Greg Palast, an internal report sent to his office at The Guardian revealed actual threats directed at the leftist government of Brazil if the country continued to refuse to sign the Financial Services Agreement of 1999. This agreement formed the international legal basis for the deregulation of so-called “financial products,” specifically derivatives such as “credit default swaps” and “mortgage backed securities,” which then led to the global financial meltdown.

The pattern of crisis followed by a ready-made plan for a global solution has been persistent since the early 1800s, when European banking elites pulled out all the stops in order to establish a central bank on American soil. These were the same structural interests which eventually led to the passage of the Glass-Owen bill. And it is within this pattern that the origins of the current financial crisis are also to be found, specifically within the highest echelons of the Federal Reserve system.

Subsequent to the September 11 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., the Federal Reserve was “forced” to lower interest rates to a minimum in order to avoid a potential collapse of a number of important services and industries. This move enabled the decision by all branch banks nationwide to make credit easily available, particularly for home mortgages.  Two years later, the entire country was in a house-buying frenzy with visions of homes increasing in value year after year until the end of time. Many buyers bought two or three in the hope of “flipping” them into untold thousands in profit.

The foundations were laid for the initialization of a previously unknown financial instrument — BISTRO (Broad Index Secured Trust Offering) — developed in the think tanks of J P Morgan. At the speed of electronic funds transfers, BISTRO enabled unimaginable exponential profits through “credit default swaps” which the “House of Morgan” then divided up into packages and sold by the thousands to interested parties among corporations, banks, insurance giants, and investment funds worldwide. As the German magazine Der Spiegel so accurately put it, “bank managers and central bankers were the capitans of this ship, among them superstars such as J P Morgan manager Blythe Masters and former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan.” [10]

Attentive observers of financial history should recognize the concrete developmental pattern at work here. A putatively well-founded expansion of credit and a corresponding economic boom are followed by a sudden retraction of credit and an implosion of the markets. At the core of our current crisis is the banking industry and its ability to create money and derivatives out of thin air. The collapse was predictable, and in all likelihood carefully planned. No sooner had the collapse of 2008 begun than the directors of America’s leading banks began to issue ultimatums to the American people through their own representative, Henry Paulson (former CEO of Goldman Sachs), as the Secretary of the Treasury. If bank coffers were not replenished with ample public funds, Americans would soon wake up to martial law on the streets of many major cities.

And promptly, the see-no-evil representatives in Washington came to the rescue of the global financial elite, all at the expense of tax payers, and ultimately also at the expense of national sovereignty. Concomitant demands for “global solutions” to this admittedly global problem were promptly put on the national and international agenda by the G20 and by leading economists such as Kenneth Rogoff. The U.S. Congress recently ratified a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s financial system, and thereby granted increased authority to the Federal Reserve. On a global scale, financial and economic experts from around the world are in the process of developing fundamental revisions to the Basel Accord (Basel III) within the framework of the Bank for International Settlements. [11]

At the same time, the Federal Reserve’s late-2010 announcement that it would initiate a second round of “quantitative easing” in its efforts to free up credit and relieve financial institutions of moribund assets led to more vociferous calls for a new global reserve currency to replace the ailing dollar. The Federal Reserve’s decision to increase liquidity by printing more dollars is already seen as a potentially fatal mistake by many skeptics particularly in China, which holds an inordinately large sum of US dollars in its reserve currency trove. Russia and China, among others, have already agreed to a bilateral exchange of goods and services by using their own currencies, without the US dollar as intermediary.

Unavoidable inflationary pressures guarantee that the days of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency are numbered; this outcome does not bode well for the people of the United States, who very likely will see martial law if and when prices for daily necessities such as gasoline skyrocket beyond what is affordable. As the chief operative for all the clandestine forces intent on seeing a one-world government in control of the planet, the Federal Reserve has been actively destroying the US currency as an instrument of national sovereignty. And in close collaboration with the “Fed,” working groups within both the United Nations and the IMF have published key position papers in which a new global currency is proposed, to be printed or coined expectedly by a global central bank. [12]

The global “war on terror”

Accompanying the increased authority of global instruments such as the IMF, the WTO and the Bank for International Settlements, an international surveillance network is fully in the making with far-reaching consequences for individual life and liberty. At particular risk today is the integrity of the Internet as the last bastion of uncensored information exchange. With every publicized “cyber attack,“ whether a reality or an ad hoc creation, new demands go out for increased security measures and legislation to control both form and content online. New key supranational concepts such as “Al Qaeda,” “terrorist networks” or “suspicious money transfers” are now in common use in public discourse and enable the implementation of unprecedented military/political control measures and surveillance strategies over ordinary citizens. The readiness of governments worldwide to adopt anti-terror measures that are potentially inimical to all forms of individual freedom is predicated on the questionable acceptance of the official explanation offered by the US government and its intelligence services for the events that transpired on 9/11. The paucity of critique, particularly among  mainstream US media, of the implausible official narrative of all that transpired on 9/11 is itself sufficient evidence of a thoroughly top=down controlled American press.

The analyses of David Ray Griffin and Steven Jones (among many others) [13] of multiple inconsistencies and sheer impossibilities in the official explanation of the 9/11 attacks provide clear evidence that there were and are far more sinister plots at work than what the American public is ready to believe. Answers to the inevitable cui bono? question point to the long-term beneficiaries of global control which will ultimately allow  for no exceptions.

The pattern is always the same. Present a crisis of epoch proportions, and offer solutions on a global scale which ultimately consolidate the interests of a New World Order, one as envisioned by Auguste Comte, with bankers and a select intellectual elite in complete control. The Federal Reserve system should be seen for what it is – the agency of an international group of banking elites who are hell-bent on obtaining a global government, with a single system of universal justice, a single currency, and an all-encompassing surveillance network as guarantors of a fail-proof, totalitarian, neo-feudalistic regime. Thanks to the efforts of this same global elite, the United States is in its last throes and will eventually succumb to the constraints its leaders have willingly adopted within the context of globalization.

As admirable as perpetual peace might be under a system of benevolent reason, with the sanctity of all terrestrial life on earth foremost in mind, the concrete historical track record of those most actively engaged in bringing the ideals of this New World Order into full fruition suffices completely as a reason to reject their goals.

Elite bankers in the United States and Europe conceived and enacted the Federal Reserve system as a major stepping stone toward eventual global governance of a neo-feudalistic society. The continuing global economic crisis was also conceived and implemented as a further essential tool in bringing about a one-world government controlled by bankers and their intellectual shills sitting in crucial positions and calling the shots — qui custodiet custodes?

The “Fed’s” covert policies and clandestine machinations are accelerating the “need” and “demand” for a global currency to replace existing national currencies. In previous eras, the implementation of such plans and intentions would have been deemed high treason and appropriately punished; in today’s parlance, it should most properly be categorized as an act of terrorism.

Deeply influenced by both the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory and twentieth-century phenomenology, James Polk pursued his graduate studies in philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin, where he received his PhD for work on Kant and Heidegger. He is the author of Am Horizont der Zeit and The Triumph of Ignorance and Bliss – Pathologies of Public America.

Notes

1) Benhabib’s understanding of cosmopolitanism and its implications for human societies is presented in Another Cosmopolitanism (Berkeley Tanner Lectures), Robert Post, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) and in The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens (The Seeley Lectures), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

2) Auguste Comte, System of Positive Polity, transl. Richard Congreve, (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1877).

3) See in particular Michel Chossudovsky, “The Global Economic Crisis: An Overview,” The Global Economic Crisis. The Great Depression of the XXI Century, ed. Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, (Montreal: Global Research Publishers, 2010) 3 – 60.

4) Edwin L. James, “Reparations Issue Now Up To Bankers,” New York Times, 31 May 1922.

5) Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002) 206 – 207.

6) Leon Fraser, “The International Bank and Its Future,” Foreign Affairs (New York: Council on Foreign Relations) vol. 14, number 3 (April, 1936), p. 454.

7) Louis T. McFadden, “The Reparations Problem and the Bank for International Settlements,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 150, Economics of World Peace (July, 1930), p. 53 – 64.

8) Michel Chossudovsky, “Manufacturing Dissent: the Anti-globalization Movement is Funded by the Corporate Elites. The People’s Movement has been Hijacked,” Center for Global Research, September 20, 2010, http://www.globalresearch.ca

9) IMF Bolivia Public Expenditure Review. www.wds.worldbank.org

10) The original Spiegel text: “Bankmanager und Zentralbanker waren auf diesem Schiff die Kapitäne, darunter Superstars wie die JP Morgan-Managerin Blythe Masters und der Ex-chef der US-Notenbank, Alan Greenspan.” (translation j.p.) “Der größte Diebstahl aller Zeiten – wie Finanzjongleure die Welt in eine Krise stürzten, die noch lange nicht beendet ist,“ Der Spiegel, number 47 (November 11, 2008) p. 47.

11) See Ellen Brown, “The Towers of Basel: Secretive Plan to Create a Global Central Bank,” The Global Economic Crisis. The Great Depression of the XXI Century, ed. Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, (Montreal: Global Research Publishers, 2010) 330 – 342.

12) See in particular the International Monetary Fund paper entitled “Reserve Accumulation and International Monetary Stability” prepared by the Strategy, Policy and Review Department (April 13, 2010) and the United Nations’ “Report of the Commission of Experts of the President of the United Nations General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System” (September 21, 2009).

13) See especially David Ray Griffin, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory (Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2007); idem., The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2004); Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones et al., “Active Thermite Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe,” The Open Chemical Physics Journal, 2009, 2, 7-31.

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