Kona Tea Party, 4.15.2009

For two years, (and for some of us, even longer), we have been educating our families and neighbors about the Federal Reserve devaluing our money and draining our wealth.  We were the first responders when Paulson ran to Capitol Hill and scared the bejesus out of a group of people that are much less intelligent than most of us (they just want you to think you are stupid).  We said “HELL NO” to TARP, Bank Bailouts, Car Company Bailouts, Stimulus 1, 2, 3, etc., Union Bailouts, Obamacare, FinReg, and monetization of the federal debt.  We knew the housing bubble that Congress and The Fed created was collapsing, and that the market was trying to find its ‘real’ baseline.  We knew many people were going to take it on the chin, but we also knew we would then be on stable ground to start the rebuild.

Then Bush 43 caved to the Wall Street/Federal Reserve boys.  That whole running up to Capitol Hill is such a show for the corporate-owned moos; the banks tell the politicians what to do.  As soon as Bush ‘put aside the free market in order to save it’, we knew we were screwed six ways from Sunday.  The banks were going to be protected and coddled, and us little people were going to be left swinging in agony (for years) as all that bad paper sat on their balance sheets clogging up the gears of the economy.  We did not actually believe Paulson’s story about the $700 Billion going to buy bad assets, and we were right.

Karl Denninger – “Remove Bernanke”

The good news?  Ben Bernanke has lied to the American people by stating in July, 2009 that the Federal Reserve would NOT monetize the debt which they just did again the day after the election, in what appears to be a last ditch, ‘Hail Mary’ maneuver to save their asses. There is almost nothing we can do because:

The members of the Fed’s Board of Governors also cannot be impeached by Congress, which is especially twisted, since the President of the United States can be impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors”. [The Legality of the Federal Reserve System, 8].

$6.99 a year ago; $14.19 10.13.2010 (Diamond's Local Grocery Store)

So dire is the situation that Sarah Palin has decided to wade into the thick of it, not realizing exactly how much a parasitic and vampiric Federal Reserve has completely drained America and is now trying to resuscitate the host/corpse.  Fortunately for us, her level of media coverage is going to push the entire subject of the private banking cartel, mortgage fraud, and the hidden tax of inflation into the light.   Thank You Sarah!

I would still like to know where that unaccounted $9 Trillion went.  And by show of hands, how many of you would like to know if Congress is actually going to try to confiscate 401(k)s (some $8 Trillion) during the lame duck session?

Back to Sarah, and then on to Bill Black, the encyclopedia on the economic collapse.

Palin to Bernanke: “Cease And Desist”

Here are snippets from Palin’s prepared remarks obtained by National Review Online:

I’m deeply concerned about the Federal Reserve’s plans to buy up anywhere from $600 billion to as much as $1 trillion of government securities. The technical term for it is “quantitative easing.” It means our government is pumping money into the banking system by buying up treasury bonds. And where, you may ask, are we getting the money to pay for all this? We’re printing it out of thin air.

The Fed hopes doing this may buy us a little temporary economic growth by supplying banks with extra cash which they could then lend out to businesses. But it’s far from certain this will even work. After all, the problem isn’t that banks don’t have enough cash on hand – it’s that they don’t want to lend it out, because they don’t trust the current economic climate.

And if it doesn’t work, what do we do then? Print even more money? What’s the end game here? Where will all this money printing on an unprecedented scale take us? Do we have any guarantees that QE2 won’t be followed by QE3, 4, and 5, until eventually – inevitably – no one will want to buy our debt anymore? What happens if the Fed becomes not just the buyer of last resort, but the buyer of only resort?

Bill Black on the continuing mortgage fraud that still exists.  For more information from Bill Black about the entire fiasco, check out this post ‘Sociopaths In Charge Of Banks And Government‘ from 4.7.2010.

`Major Frauds’ Continue at Mortgage Companies….. Black Says (10.22.2010)

Bill Black; The Best Way To Rob A Bank Is To Own One

Here is the history lesson for those that still believe that the Federal Reserve IS NOT a private banking cartel, that it is a government agency, and exists for our best interest.

From BusinessInsider:

How Did A Single Unconstitutional Agency Become The Most Powerful Organization In America?

The Fed, by it’s own admission, is an independent entity within the government “having both public purposes, and private aspects”. By “private aspects”, they mean the entire operation is wholly-owned by private member banks, who are paid dividends of 6% each year on their stock. Furthermore, the Fed’s decisions “do not have to be ratified by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branch of government” and the Fed “does not receive funding appropriated by Congress”. In 1982, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed this view when it held that “federal reserve banks are not federal instrumentalities… but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations“. [The Legality of the Federal Reserve System, 5]. Yet, the Fed has exclusive control over the government’s ability to create money and regulate its value through the targeting of interest rates and open market operations (when the Fed buys an asset, it typically prints the purchase money out of thin air). How Congress can delegate its Constitutional powers to this independent, privately owned and unaccountable institution is beyond me.

Still, the Constitutional issue is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this twisted institution’s embodiment of all things undemocratic. When Congress (and the people it represents) makes a valid delegation of its powers to an executive agency, it almost always retains a level of control through its powers of appropriations, impeachment and oversight. For some not-so-strange reason, the Fed isn’t appropriated any funds by Congress, and so it cannot be financially “starved” like any other agency. The members of the Fed’s Board of Governors also cannot be impeached by Congress, which is especially twisted, since the President of the United States can be impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors”. [The Legality of the Federal Reserve System, 8]. What about oversight? Well, a Congressional committee holds “hearings” every once in awhile to ask the Chairman a few irrelevant questions, but if this process is what passes for “oversight”, then we have truly gone off the deep end.

Speaking of committees and oversight, when Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke testified under oath to Congress in July, he said in no uncertain words, “the Federal Reserve will not monetize the [federal] debt”. [1]. Fast forward to the day after mid-term elections, in which the American people clearly voted for LESS spending/printing, and the Fed announces its plan to monetize $900 billion in treasury bonds. [1]. The Chairman has proven his previous testimony before Congress to be a blatant lie, but instead of condemning the Fed’s recent actions, the federal government has welcomed it with open arms. That’s quite some oversight we have there. Perhaps the best way to oversee the Fed’s actions would be to actually figure out what in Lloyd Blankfein’s name it’s been doing.

In this country, that’s easier said than done. The Government Accountability Office is not allowed to audit the Fed’s transactions for or with foreign governments, central banks, nonprivate international organizations or those made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee (“FOMC”). It just so happens that these are the types of transactions which are most influential on global and domestic financial markets, especially the open market operations. These operations are conducted by the FOMC, who is comprised of the Board of Governors (7 members appointed by President and confirmed by Senate) and five representatives from the regional Fed Banks. Although the President appoints the Board of Governors, he must choose from a list of candidates provided by private institutions, and the other five representatives are also typically nominated by private member banks. Talk about an organization with conflicts of interest, lack of transparency and lack of accountability all tightly woven into its very fabric!

In the last two years, the almighty Fed has printed trillions of dollars in our name to buy worthless mortgage assets from “too big to fail” banks. It has lent these banks our hard-earned money at about 0% interest, so they could lend our own money back to us at 3%+. These banks also used our free money to ramp equity and commodity markets, which mostly benefited the top 1% of our population who owns 43% of financial wealth [2], and conveniently, also owns the Fed. The latter has kept interest rates at next to nothing to punish savers and encourage speculation, making everything less affordable for average Americans who have seen their wages stay the same, decrease or disappear. What’s left standing is the perniciously powerful, highly secretive and entirely unaccountable Fed, who now epitomizes the state of American democracy.

We have all become subject to the misguided and/or malicious whims of a few wealthy individuals operating the levers of economic policy, with no adequate means of challenging their power. Our most treasured contribution to political society has been reduced to a bunch of meaningless articles and amendments, containing equally meaningless words. We the people, in our pursuit of “a more perfect union”, have fallen into an age-old trap. Our economic policies, currency and laws are all manufactured by our very own private dictator, who amasses a fortune from our collective exploitation and destruction. Then, this despot continues to operate like nothing ever happened. We can scream “ABOLISH THE FED” all day, non-stop to every single politician at the top of our lungs, but it will never happen.  The reality is that there is only one way back to a true democratic system now, and this path will require nothing less of us than the courage of our forefathers.

Treasury Yields Tumble to Records on Fed’s Plan to Purchase $600 Billion

Number of the Week: $10.2 Trillion in Global Borrowing (for 2011)