(UPDATE: Everybody please wave to the Comptroller of the Currency! Hey Compy – I have a very special post coming your way…)
(Editor’s Note: Monster Readers? Are you ready to take a look at the debt noose around your necks?)
Remember way back when (March, 2009) when AIG paid out $90 Billion in US taxpayer funds to American investment houses that were already receiving TARP funds, and also to foreign banks? As of March, 2009, AIG had received $182 Billion in bailout funds.
A.I.G. Lists Banks It Paid With U.S. Bailout Funds
Financial companies that received multibillion-dollar payments owed by A.I.G. include Goldman Sachs ($12.9 billion), Merrill Lynch ($6.8 billion),Bank of America ($5.2 billion), Citigroup ($2.3 billion) and Wachovia ($1.5 billion).
Big foreign banks also received large sums from the rescue, including Société Générale of France and Deutsche Bank of Germany, which each received nearly $12 billion; Barclaysof Britain ($8.5 billion); and UBS of Switzerland ($5 billion).
Yesterday, 9.1.2010, Afghanistan’s Central Bank took over the largest private bank in the country and threatened the top brass of Kabul Bank with arrest for ‘illegal loans’ and misuse of bank funds to purchase real estate in Dubai if they did not resign. It appears that the Central Bank governor and General Petraeus were the voices behind Karzai’s decision to ‘change management’ of Kabul Bank. This bank reportedly has $1.3 billion in deposits from ‘ordinary afghans’, yet only about 5% of Afghans have bank accounts. (Source: Washington Post)
Today, 9.2.2010, the Treasury is working with the Afghanistan Central Bank (which we taxpayers spent millions to set up; betcha didn’t know that!) as they are watching Afghans scramble to pull their money out of Kabul Bank. According to the Washington Post article, shareholders state there is $500 million in liquid cash but most of it is sitting inside the Central Bank. (Source: Washington Post).
Why would most of the largest private bank’s funds be sitting inside the Central Bank?
Click For Full Size (Via Washington Post)
This is important because one of the biggest shareholders of Kabul Bank at 7% is President Karzai’s half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai who has been accused by President Karzai’s own defense ministry of corruption surrounding projects on government land, a background of drug trafficking, and is a CIA funds recipient.
Which takes us to the next thread, the CIA, drug trafficking, and the $150 Billion in global proceeds from Afghanistan’s opium production. Let’s just say the Russians ain’t happy, but this could be a main reason for Bush 43, Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner, and Obama saving the big banks while the rest of us go down with the Titanic. I would also like to state that I personally don’t believe the U.S. Military that we know and love is the mastermind of this operation. The CIA? That’s another story.
From Global Research, 2.23.2008:
Narco Aggression: Russia accuses the U.S. military of involvement in drug trafficking out of Afghanistan
Could it be that the American military in Afghanistan is involved in drug trafficking? Yes, it is quite possible, according to Russia’s Ambassador to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov.
Commenting on reports that the United States military transport aviation is used for shipping narcotics out of Afghanistan, the Russian envoy said there was no smoke without fire.
“If such actions do take place they cannot be undertaken without contact with Afghans, and if one Afghan man knows this, at least a half of Afghanistan will know about this sooner or later,” Kabulov told Vesti, Russia’s 24-hour news channel. “That is why I think this is possible, but cannot prove it.”
Afghanistan under the U.S.
When Russia backed the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan to crush the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the post-9/11 scenario, the last thing it expected to happen was that drug trafficking from Afghanistan would assume gargantuan proportions under the U.S. military. Since 2001, poppy fields, once banned by the Taliban, have mushroomed again. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Afghanistan produced 8,200 tonnes of opium last year, enough to make 93 per cent of the world’s heroin supply.
The U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation [NATO] forces in the country have not only failed to eliminate the terrorist threat from the Taliban, but also presided over a spectacular rise in opium production. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Afghanistan was on the brink of becoming a “narco state”.
Narco business has emerged as virtually the only economy of Afghanistan and is valued at some $10 billion a year. Opium trade is estimated by the U.N. to be equivalent to 53 per cent of the country’s official economy and is helping to finance the Taliban.
“Unfortunately, they [NATO] are doing nothing to reduce the narcotic threat from Afghanistan even a tiny bit,” Putin angrily remarked three years ago. He accused the coalition forces of “sitting back and watching caravans haul drugs across Afghanistan to the former Soviet Union and Europe.” As time went by, Russian suspicions regarding the U.S. role in the rise of a narco state in Afghanistan grew deeper, especially after reports from Iraq said that the cultivation of opium poppies was spreading rapidly there too.
“The Americans are working hard to keep narco business flourishing in both countries,” says Mikhail Khazin, president of the consultancy firm Niakon. “They consistently destroy the local infrastructure, pushing the local population to look for illegal means of subsistence. And the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] provides protection to drug trafficking.”
U.S. freelance writer Dave Gibson recalled in an article published in American Chronicle in December what a U.S. foreign intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told NewsMax.com in March 2002 of the CIA’s record of involvement with the international drug trade. The official said: “The CIA did almost the identical thing during the Vietnam War, which had catastrophic consequences – the increase in the heroin trade in the USA beginning in the 1970s is directly attributable to the CIA. The CIA has been complicit in the global drug trade for years, so I guess they just want to carry on their favourite business.”
Another more detailed article.
Hidden Agenda behind the “War on Terrorism”:
US Bombing of Afghanistan restores Trade in Narcotics
by Michel Chossudovsky
- Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca , 20 May 2002
CRG’s Global Outlook premiere issue on Stop the War” provides detailed documentation on the war and September 11 Order/subscribe. Consult Table of Contents
In 2000, the Taliban government under advice from the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) imposed a total ban on opium production. Prior to the ban, according to the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Afghanistan produced more than 70% of the world’s opium in 2000, and about 80% of opiate products (meaning heroin) destined to the European market.1
The annual proceeds of the Afghan Golden Crescent drug trade (between 100 and 200 billion dollars) represented approximately one third of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $500 billion.2
In many regards, the trade in narcotics as well as the drug routes to the European and North American markets are considered to be “strategic”. There are powerful financial interests behind the drug trade, which have a pervasive influence, behind the scenes, on the conduct of US foreign policy.
These multibillion dollar revenues of narcotics were deposited in the Western banking system. Most of the large international banks -together with their affiliates in the offshore banking havens-laundered large amounts of narco-dollars. In other words, Afghanistan, the poorest country on earth, was the source of tremendous financial wealth derived from the drug trade to financial institutions, business syndicates and organised crime. Part of the drug related revenues accrue to the CIA, which continues to protect both the Asian and Latin American drug trade. Visibly, only a very small percentage of these revenues stays in Afghanistan. .
Following the year 2000 ban on poppy production imposed by the Taliban government, opium production collapsed by more than 90 percent, leading to a dwindling drug trade and substantial losses to the inters underlying this multibillion dollar trade including Western financial institutions.3 The Northern Alliance became the main political force involved in protecting the production and marketing of raw opium.
The Drug Trade Restored by the US Puppet Regime
While oil and oil pipelines out of the Caspian sea basin were undoubtedly a factor, the bombing of Afghanistan also served to restore the multibillion drug trade, which is protected by the CIA.
Immediately following the installation of the US puppet government under Prime Minister Hamid Kharzai, opium production soared, regaining its historic levels. According to the UNDCP, opium cultivation increased by 657 % in 2002 (in relation to its 2001 level). In 2001, opium cultivation had fallen to an estimated 7606ha.(See table below). It is currently estimated by the UNDCP to be of the order of 45 000 -65 000ha.
In the immediate wake of September 11, the price of opium in Afghanistan increased three-fold. By early 2002, the price (dollar/kg) was almost ten times higher than in the year 2000.4
Opium Poppy Cultivation in Afghanistan
Year Cultivation in hectares
1994 71 470
1995 53 759
1996 56 824
1997 58 416
1998 63 674
1999 90 983
2000 82 172
2001 7606
2002* 45 000 – 65 000
Sources:
UNCDP, Afghanistan, Opium Poppy Survey, 2001, http://www.undcp.org/pakistan/report_2001-10-16_1.pdf .
UNDCP, Afghanistan, Opium Poppy Survey, Pre-Assessment, 2002, http://www.undcp.org/pakistan/report_2002-02-28_1.pdf
* Preliminary estimate
Notes1. BBC, Afghanistan’s Opium Industry, 9 April 2002.
2. Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a Changing World, Technical document no 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also United Nations Drug Control Programme, Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations, Vienna 1999, p 49-51, and Richard Lapper, UN Fears Growth of Heroin Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000.
3. UNDCP, Afghanistan, Opium Poppy Survey, 2001, http://www.undcp.org/pakistan/report_2001-10-16_1.pdf ,
4 UNDCP, Afghanistan, Opium Poppy survey, Pre-Assessment, 2002, http://www.undcp.org/pakistan/report_2002-02-28_1.pdf
Copyright: Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG) 2002. All rights reserved.
Narco Dollars and the Banks.
How many of you are familiar with Catherine Austin Fitts and her research surrounding Narco Dollars?
An excerpt from the 2001 report that follows:
NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso Embracing a FARC Commmander
A Real World Example:
NYSE’s Richard Grasso and the Ultimate New Business “Cold Call”
Lest you think my comment about the New York Stock Exchange is too strong, let’s look at one event that occurred before our “war on drugs” went into high gear through Plan Colombia, banging heads over narco dollar market share in Latin America.
In late June 1999, numerous news services, including Associated Press, reported that Richard Grasso, Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange flew to Colombia to meet with a spokesperson for Raul Reyes of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), the supposed “narco terrorists” with whom we are now at war.
The purpose of the trip was “to bring a message of cooperation from U.S. financial services” and to discuss foreign investment and the future role of U.S. businesses in Colombia.
Some reading in between the lines said to me that Grasso’s mission related to the continued circulation of cocaine capital through the US financial system. FARC, the Colombian rebels, were circulating their profits back into local development without the assistance of the American banking and investment system. Worse yet for the outlook for the US stock market’s strength from $500 billion — $1 trillion in annual money laundering — FARC was calling for the decriminalization of cocaine.
To understand the threat of decriminalization of the drug trade, just go back to your Sam and Dave estimate and recalculate the numbers given what decriminalization does to drive BIG PERCENT back to SLIM PERCENT and what that means to Wall Street and Washington’s cash flows. No narco dollars, no reinvestment into the stock markets, no campaign contributions.
It was only a few days after Grasso’s trip that BBC News reported a General Accounting Office (GAO) report to Congress as saying: “Colombia’s cocaine and heroin production is set to rise by as much as 50 percent as the U.S. backed drug war flounders, due largely to the growing strength of Marxist rebels”
I deduced from this incident that the liquidity of the NY Stock Exchange was sufficiently dependent on high margin cocaine profits (BIG PERCENT) that the Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange was willing for Associated Press to acknowledge he is making “cold calls” in rebel controlled peace zones in Colombian villages. “Cold calls” is what we used to call new business visits we would pay to people we had not yet done business with when I was on Wall Street.
I presume Grasso’s trip was not successful in turning the cash flow tide. Hence, Plan Colombia is proceeding apace to try to move narco deposits out of FARC’s control and back to the control of our traditional allies and, even if that does not work, to move Citibank’s market share and that of the other large US banks and financial institutions steadily up in Latin America.
Buy Banamex anyone?
Excerpt #2:
The National Security Council’s Double Bind in 1996
Here is the acid test.
It’s August 1996. Gary Webb has just broken the story in the San Jose Mercury News about the CIA helping to deal drugs into South Central LA. He has put the legal documents up on their website. The proof is hard. The government is dealing drugs.
Catherine Austin Fitts’s company is publishing a tool on the web called Community Wizard that shows maps with Geographic Information Systems software that include patterns of defaults on HUD mortgages in the areas of LA with the heaviest concentration of CIA supported Iran Contra drug trafficking.
The patterns between HUD defaulted mortgages and narco dollars are much too close for comfort. What would you do if you were Bob Rubin (Secretary of Treasury, now Co-Chairman of Citicorp), Larry Summers (Deputy Secretary of Treasury, now President of Harvard), John Hawke (Undersecretary of the Treasury; now Comptroller of the Currency), Al Gore (Vice President, now teaching) and John Deutch (Director of the CIA, now teaching) sitting on the national security council or the related narco dollars task force?
Would you target Webb and get him fired and the story discredited or would you let the story
grow and flourish?Would you target Fitts and have her business and her software tools and databases destroyed or would you let her business flourish, allowing every community to see and track the narco dollars that were helping to drive their Solari Index to 0% while driving the Dow Jones Index higher?
Which will it be in an election year? Will you do everything you can do to attract the reinvestment of the narco dollars into your campaign and into the stock market or will you let Fitts and Webb continue to illuminate “how the money works” on narco dollars in a way that might crash the stock market and make it harder and more expensive for the government to finance the deficit?
Before you answer, let me tell you one more story.
The following report is only 23 pages long, and I urge my readers to read it in it’s entirety as it explains how the Narco dollars are flooding our communities and lowering our standard of living appreciably.
The noose hiding in plain sight? In this particular case, the threads appear to show that our own money is being used against us to degrade our communities, destroy our children, and all the while our wallets are being emptied by a government that appears to be enriching the political and financial classes through the creation of more debt laid upon us through the Federal Reserve credit card funding of wars. Remember Practical Madman’s essay?
[In explaining the “true” nature of banking in the world] The IBBC is a bank. Their objective isn’t to control the conflict, it’s to control the debt that the conflict produces. You see, the real value of a conflict, the true value, is in the debt that it creates. You control the debt, you control everything. You find this upsetting, yes? But this is the very essence of the banking industry, to make us all, whether we be nations or individuals, slaves to debt. – ‘The International’
just move along nothing to see here huh???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
RT @LogisticMonster The Noose Hiding In Plain Sig.. http://bit.ly/cCfGMU #Afghanistan #Central #Bank #Ahmed #Wali #Karzai
The Noose Hiding In Plain Sight: Is Treasury About To Bailout Kabul Bank Through Afghanistan’s Central … http://tinyurl.com/34h5nw2
RT @LogisticMonster: The Noose Hiding In Plain Sight: Is Treasury About To Bailout Kabul Bank Through Afghanistan’s Central … http://tinyurl.com/34h5nw2