Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth – Page 14

2009/07/25

Review: Surviving the Cataclysm: Your Guide Thorugh the Greatest Financial Crisis in Human History

6 Star Top 10%, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Complexity & Catastrophe, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Webster Tarpley

Three for Lacking an Index, Beyond Five Stars for Content

July 25, 2009

Webster Griffin Tarpley

This extraordinary work, first developed in the mid-1990's and updated recently for a second edition, would normally receive 3 stars from me for lacking an index. I know the author and I admire Progressive Press, but to put out a book of this quality in terms of content, without taking the week needed to create an index, is to me as a professional utterly unforgivable. I urge the publisher to create an index online and modify the description here at Amazon to alert readers to the availability of an index. Without an index for looking up Greenspan, Rubin, Goldman Sachs, or Morgan Stanley, this book loses half its value.

OK, that's the end of the rant. The content of this book–given that it was written a decade before Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) was bribed by lobbyists to put 200 pages of deregulation into a bill five minutes before it was to be voted on (and all Senators voted knowing this)–is beyond five stars. This is precisely the kind of knowledge that many, not just this author, have been putting before the public without effect since at least the 1970's.

At $26 this book is a gift and I urge one and all to buy it as both an education and as a keepsake. The author, whose books on Bush, on Obama, and on 9-11 I have found to be superbly researched and ably presented, is one of the modern greats in historical fact-finding and investigative history.

Up front he lays out a five point program for overcoming the world depression, and I am pretty sure that the Goldman Sachs executive now in charge of the US Treasury has absolutely zero interest in this public intelligence. The plan:

1. Measures for re-regulation, nationalization, neutralization of fictitious capital, combating speculation, plus bankruptcy procedures and the preservations of labor, plan, and equipment. This includes the deletion of toxic derivatives (rather than the criminal lunacy of buying them at public expense) and an end to adjustable rate mortgages and foreclosures (I called for this in October 2008 to no avail, see my own book, Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography)

2. Nationalize the Federal Reserve System and re-start lending and the credit system generally. [I stand with Ron Paul in calling for its elimination after an interim period of public control, I am certain the audit that is being planned will reveal high crimes and misdemeanors such that I would keep Guantanamo open just to hold the Fed and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and City-Bank executives, among others, until we reclaim their stolen wealth from the public. The author includes here zero interest loans for real physical production and construction.

3. Restart borrowing for production with a vast program of infrastructure development and science drivers for the modernization and recovery of the economy.

4. Emergency relief for the victims of the depression. I would note with Ron Paul that inflation is a tax, and stand with Thom Hartmann, whose book Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class – And What We Can Do about It (BK Currents (Paperback)) complements The Working Poor: Invisible in America and The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back. The hard-working normal average people have been ABUSED by Goldman Sachs specifically and Wall Street and the Fed generally. ENOUGH!

5. International economics and a new world monetary system. The author does not delve into Open Money or what Yochai Benkler calls The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, Alvin Toffler Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives or first one to notice, Barry Carter, Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era but now is certainly the time to move forward with no logo, buy local, end of absentee ownership of land, end of corporate personality protection not intended, and so on.

The author itemizes $12.8 trillion in gift money from the taxpayer to the bankers at our expense, and this is a debt that I hope we not only renounce, but follow up with a confiscation of the overseas accounts where all of our money has been converted into foreign currencies so that the bankers can literally double their money–I am not making this up–when Obama declared a bank holiday and federalizes the police in late August or early September, and the US dollar devalues to half its current value (which is in turn half its value in the early 1970's).

Most of us do not need to read this book in its entirety, especially those of us on heart medication. This is a thoughtful balanced book that will make any intelligent person with integrity ANGRY. America remains a great Nation in its people and its land, but its leadership is criminally corrupt and has committed treason against the public since at least 1974 when Peak Oil was first briefed to the Senate and Exxon/Esso and the banks persuaded the U.S. Government's political leadership to ignore the research and carry on with Empire as Usual.

The re-issuance of this book validates and vindicates the author's research and integrity, and I for one, as the top Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, am more than pleased to stand alongside Webster Tarpley, pledging my sacred honor to the Republic–the sovereign people of American who created the federal government as a SERVICE. The federal government is NOT in charge, Goldman Sachs and the Fed are. It's time for a non-violent revolution, and I believe that books like this need to be in circulation among the two thirds of the eligible voters planning to kick the two-party tyranny out of office in 2010.

Webster Tarpley is an American hero in the tradition of Paul Revere.

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2009/07/212009/10/24

Journal: Chuck Spinney Highlights: Dark Hole of Democracy: How the Fed Prints Money Out of Thin AirGreider

Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Commercial Intelligence, Democracy, Government

Full Article Online

The full article [click on AltNet] should be must reading to any one interested in understanding the Federal Reserve Board's sinister relationship with the Banksters who, after having done such great damage to the economy, are now laying the long-term foundation for a corporatist — purists might say neo-fascist — state which, if left unchecked, might even evolve into an American variant of the zaibatsu that controlled the economic and foreign policy of the Empire of Japan. CS

By William Greider, The Nation

Posted on July 17, 2009, Printed on July 18, 2009

http://www.alternet.org/story/141373/

The financial crisis has propelled the Federal Reserve into an excruciating political dilemma. The Fed is at the zenith of its influence, using its extraordinary powers to rescue the economy. Yet the extreme irregularity of its behavior is producing a legitimacy crisis for the central bank. The remote technocrats at the Fed who decide money and credit policy for the nation are deliberately opaque and little understood by most Americans. For the first time in generations, they are now threatened with popular rebellion.

During the past year, the Fed has flooded the streets with money — distributing trillions of dollars to banks, financial markets and commercial interests — in an attempt to revive the credit system and get the economy growing again. As a result, the awesome authority of this cloistered institution is visible to many ordinary Americans for the first time. People and politicians are shocked and confused, and also angered, by what they see. They are beginning to ask some hard questions for which Federal Reserve governors do not have satisfactory answers.

Where did the central bank get all the money it is handing out? Basically, the Fed printed it, out of thin air. That is what central banks do. Who told the Fed governors they could do this? Nobody, really — not Congress or the president. The Federal Reserve Board, alone among government agencies, does not submit its budgets to Congress for authorization and appropriation. It raises its own money, sets its own priorities.

Representative Wright Patman, the Texas populist who was a scourge of central bankers, once described the Federal Reserve as “a pretty queer duck.” Congress created the Fed in 1913 with the presumption that it would be “independent” from the rest of government, aloof from regular politics and deliberately shielded from the hot breath of voters or the grasping appetites of private interests — with one powerful exception: the bankers.

The Fed was designed as a unique hybrid in which government would share its powers with the private banking industry. Bankers collaborate closely on Fed policy. Banks are the “shareholders” who ostensibly own the twelve regional Federal Reserve banks. Bankers sit on the boards of directors, proposing interest-rate changes for Fed governors in Washington to decide. Bankers also have a special advisory council that meets privately with governors to critique monetary policy and management of the economy. Sometimes, the Fed pretends to be a private organization. Other times, it admits to being part of the government.

The antiquated quality of this institution is reflected in the map of the Fed's twelve regional banks.

Five of them are located in the Midwest (better known today as the industrial Rust Belt).

Missouri has two Federal Reserve banks (St. Louis and Kansas City), while
the entire West Coast has only one (located in San Francisco, not Los Angeles or Seattle).
Virginia has one; Florida does not.

Among its functions, the Federal Reserve directly regulates the largest banks, but it also looks out for their well-being — providing regular liquidity loans for those caught short and bailing out endangered banks it deems “too big to fail.” Critics look askance at these peculiar arrangements and see “conspiracy.” But it's not really secret. This duck was created by an act of Congress. The Fed's favoritism toward bankers is embedded in its DNA.

This awkward reality explains the dilemma facing the Fed. It cannot stand too much visibility, nor can it easily explain or justify its peculiar status.

Fed chair Ben Bernanke responded with the usual aloofness. An audit, he insisted, would amount to “a takeover of monetary policy by the Congress.” He did not appear to recognize how arrogant that sounded. Congress created the Fed, but it must not look too deeply into the Fed's private business. The mystique intimidates many politicians. The Fed's power depends crucially upon the people not knowing exactly what it does.

President Obama inadvertently made the political problem worse for the Fed in June, when he proposed to make the central bank the supercop to guard against “systemic risk” and decide the terms for regulating the largest commercial banks and some heavyweight industrial corporations engaged in finance. The House Financial Services Committee intends to draft the legislation quickly, but many members want to learn more first. Obama's proposal gives the central bank even greater power, including broad power to pick winners and losers in the private economy and behind closed doors. Yet Obama did not propose any changes in the Fed's privileged status. Instead, he asked Fed governors to consider the matter. But perhaps it is the Federal Reserve that needs to be reformed.

Six reasons why granting the Fed even more power is a really bad idea:

1. It would reward failure. Like the largest banks that have been bailed out, the Fed was a co-author of the destruction.

2. Cumulatively, Fed policy was a central force in destabilizing the US economy.

3. The Fed cannot possibly examine “systemic risk” objectively because it helped to create the very structural flaws that led to breakdown.

4. The Fed can't be trusted to defend the public in its private deal-making with bank executives. The numerous revelations of collusion have shocked the public, and more scandals are certain if Congress conducts a thorough investigation.

5. Instead of disowning the notorious policy of “too big to fail,” the Fed will be bound to embrace the doctrine more explicitly as “systemic risk” regulator.

6. This road leads to the corporate state — a fusion of private and public power, a privileged club that dominates everything else from the top down.

Whatever good intentions the central bank enunciates, it will be deeply conflicted in its actions, always pulled in opposite directions.

Obama's reform might prevail in the short run. The biggest banks, after all, will be lobbying alongside him in favor of the Fed, and Congress may not have the backbone to resist. The Fed, however, is sure to remain in the cross hairs. Too many different interests will be damaged —

thousands of smaller banks,
all the companies left out of the club,
organized labor,
consumers and
other sectors,
not to mention libertarian conservatives like Texas Representative Ron Paul.

The obstacles to democratizing the Fed are obviously formidable. Tampering with the temple is politically taboo. But this crisis has demonstrated that the present arrangement no longer works for the public interest. The society of 1913 no longer exists, nor does the New Deal economic order that carried us to twentieth-century prosperity. The country thus has a rare opportunity to reconstitute the Federal Reserve as a normal government agency, shorn of the bankers' preferential trappings and the fallacious claim to “independent” status as well as the claustrophobic demand for secrecy.

Progressives in the early twentieth century, drawn from the growing ranks of managerial professionals, believed “good government” required technocratic experts who would be shielded from the unruly populace and especially from radical voices of organized labor, populism, socialism and other upstart movements. The pretensions of “scientific” decision-making by remote governing elites — both the mysterious wisdom of central bankers and the inventive wizardry of financial titans — failed spectacularly in our current catastrophe. The Fed was never independent in any real sense. Its power depended on taking care of its one true constituency in banking and finance.

The reform of monetary policy, in other words, has promising possibilities for revitalizing democracy. Congress is a human institution and therefore fallible. Mistakes will be made, for sure. But we might ask ourselves, If Congress were empowered to manage monetary policy, could it do any worse than those experts who brought us to ruin?

William Greider is the author of, most recently, “Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country (Rodale Books, 2009).”

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/141373/

2009/07/132009/10/16

Review: Critical Path

5 Star, Atlases & State of the World, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Complexity & Catastrophe, Complexity & Resilience, Economics, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Future, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

History, Philosophy, Engineering, Architecture, & Education,

July 13, 2009

R. Buckminster Fuller

Although I heard Fuller speak at Muhlenberg College in 1973 or so, I had not read his books and for me Critical Path was a very healthy reminder that long before many of the current authors, Buckminster Fuller had a grip on the basics:

1) Economic theory of scarcity and secrecy is evil, benefitting the few at the expense of the many

2) Earth is NOT a zero sum Darwinian game for humans, in fact it is the human role–the human mind's role–to “synergize” Earth into a win-win for all.

3) Money is not wealth only an artifact that is representative of empty bank vaults and gross misrepresentation by the alleged wealthy. Only time-energy accounting and “true cost” of goods and services should be used.

4) Obstacles to displacing rule by scarcity and secrecy are the public ignorance of natural science and the collaboration among governments, corporations and large organizations such as religions and labor unions that “divide and keep conquered.”

5) Computers–and Fuller was clearly envisioning today's computers, not those of his time–if properly fed all of the relevant data can alter perceptions on a just enough, just in time basis. This coincides with my own view that we can and must educate the five billion poor one cell call at a time, but it also favors the ideas gaining currency of connecting the one billion rich (80% of whom do not give to charity) directly with the needs of the five billion poor at the household level of need.

I am hugely impressed with both specific actionable visions and specific actionable facts:

1) Now possible to create a global electrical grid that runs across Alaska into Canada and China, and eliminate the electrical shortfalls in both those countries and in Canada and the US West Coast.

2) In time-energy “true cost” accounting, every gallon of oil that we use cost $1 million (in 1981 dollars, which is to say, around $10 after the current Administration finished with its massive devaluation plans).

3) There are two critical paths that are not understood by the public or those who profess to represent the public: path one is those natural trends that proceed with or without human errors, omissions, and interventions; path two is the human path both local and as a global aggregate.

4) Considered in time-energy terms, both our industrial-era schools and our industrial-era office buildings are lunacy. He provides a fascinating discussion of inland versus island dwellers, concludes that most urban office buildings should be converted into mixed dwelling-telecommuting centers and is generally brutal about our national policies being 50 years out of date (in 1981–that would make them 80 years out of date today, and I agree).

5) He provides a BRUTAL discussion of banking and government bail-outs of banking as well as mortgage fraud that led to the Great Depression, how banks dispossessed the farmers not realizing that the land was over-valued AND that no one else wanted to do the hard work of farming, and I am generally thunder-struck by how history has repeated itself.

I am especially impressed by his “cosmic costing” which does not allow for hoarding (he joins others in cursing money as both a hoardable good and one that can draw interest beyond reason).

A goodly portion of the book covers the art of doing more with less; doing it faster; and ultimately benefitting increasing numbers of humans with the same technologies.

His discussion of “precession” revolves around not competing with anyone else, instead attending to the unattended. He has a gift for “comprehensive consideration” that we could all draw upon for inspiration.

I am completely absorbed by this book, which includes in the final third:

1) The challenge is to educate all humans, and to teach humans to learn in the shortest possible time–my kids have two answers: cell phones and video games. This is a no-brainer.

2) I offer some quotes below but am totally engaged with his discussion of the Geoscope, what some today might call an Earth Monitoring System, and his view that we can create a 200 foot version of the Earth where one inch equals three miles, and using computers, be able to illuminate for any human–however poorly educated or ideologically stunted–what actually IS the reality.

3) He spends time describing the World Game and cites two books by Medard Gabel that are no longer available via Amazon (but see the EarthGame(TM) technical description offered by Earth Intelligence Network), and describes it as a problem-solving choice-making educational game.

On page 287 I am stunned by his anticipation of the “de-sovereignization” of the United States of America, coincident with the bankruptcy of the US Nation at the hands of its out of control federal government.

On the architectural side I am fascinated by his discussion of flat slab building as the worst possible time-energy construction, and his discussion of the alternatives that he created, including floating cities that I now regard as inevitable.

The book contains an unexpected gem, a compendium created by Fuller based on US contractor experiences in Russia that was delivered to Brazil. It is still valid and it is a model for the kind of clear thinking that government engineers should be able to, but cannot do. [With credit to Chuck Spinney, I have learned that “government specification cost plus engineering” has fried the brains of multiple generations of engineers who are unable to computer biomimicry, cradle to cradle, green to gold, etc. We must wait for our children to rule the world, they are the “digital natives” who will not tolerate rankism, secrecy, scarcity, or lies.

A few quotes are in the comment as I must respect Amazon's 1000 word limit.

Below are some other books that strike me as very complementary of this one, but more recent.
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
The Philosophy of Sustainable Design
Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time
The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State
Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids
Don't Bother Me Mom–I'm Learning!
Conscious Evolution: Awakening Our Social Potential
Conscious Globalism: What's Wrong with the World and How to Fix It
Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time

Additional in Comment:

A couple of quotes:

xxv: “It is sa matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry.”

xxxvi: “The race is between a better-informed, hopefully inspired young world versus a running-scared, misinformed brain-conditioned, older world.”

xxxviii: “The political and economic systems and the political and economic leaders of humanity are not in the final examination; it is the integrity of each individual human that is in the final examination. On personal integrity hangs humanity's fate.”

118-119 “The USA is not run by its would-be “democratic” governance…..Nothing could be more pathetic than the role thats has to be played by the President of the United States, whose power is approximately zero.”

169 “The objective of the game would be to explore ways to make it possible for anybody and everybody in the human family to enjoy the total Earth without any human interfering with any other human and without any human gaining advantage at the expense of another.”

See also page 199, page 202, 208, 221, 225, 287, 346

Simple awesome. If you want your children and grand-children to have an intellectual advantage, nurture their thinking on sustainable development and read in yourself on Buckminster Fuller.

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2008/10/012009/12/04

Review: Bad Money–Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism

4 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Corruption, Politics

Too Tough for Most, Here is Short Version and Links, October 1, 2008

Kevin Phillips

I admire this author, very much, and consider him to be one of the more thoughtful public intelligence minutemen–sadly, the media has failed us, as have the think tanks, and we who wish to know the truth of any matter are left very much on our own.

Here is the short version of this book (ending with NO on the bail-out) courtesy of and with permission of Sterling Seagraves, co-author of GOLD WARRIORS:

Many Continental European banks ARE stronger than USA banks, because they have more experience with disaster in past centuries. As do some current EU governments like France, Spain and Germany. But they are exposed for 2 reasons: 1, they found it easy to borrow money from USA banks, so they became somewhat addicted to easy money, and are now having to adjust to that source of money drying up. 2, most big banks not long ago set up divisions in Paris (for example, SocGen, CredAgri, Paribas) that were to play the investment game of derivatives and short-selling. In the case of SocGen, this was exposed recently but blamed on only one man, a trick to protect many others. With CredAgri, all their regional commercial banks are very solid, but their newer Paris investment division is in deep shit because of emulating New York and London corrupt practices.

The basic problem is that citizens must have a secure place to put their savings. Conservative banks initially use this money to make conservative investments, but as time passes the young and ambitious “upstarts” (arrivists) begin to make crazier investments to advance their careers and enlarge their private wealth — but still speculating only with the savings of citizens who trusted their bank. Eventually, these upstarts went crazy. But they were encouraged to do so by their bosses, and then by the Reagan, Bush Sr and Bush Jr administrations. During the first year of the Bush Jr administration, it had such a terrible reputation and the US economy was in such terrible condition, that it was decided to increase “housing starts” (home construction) by giving mortgages to everyone (even if they could not pay-back) because the statistics would look good on paper. This soon became a “feeding-frenzy” by the Piranha, creating a global feeding-frenzy by almost all big banks, including UBS and CreditSuisse.

The reason none of the “authorities” sounded the alarm is because they, and the politicians, and journalists, and professors, are all tied together like black slaves on a slave ship. If one goes overboard, they ALL go overboard. So they protect themselves by protecting “the system”. The proposed 700-billion US$ bail-out was simply the final robbery by the Bush admin, shared with all the big bank owners. In fact, the ECB has given that much to banks in the last two weeks to “increase liquidity” (put money in the pockets of the malefactors), so the Bush/Paulson bail-out was just a way of feeding their personal friends.

The people who are cheated are the citizens who trusted the banks with their savings. It is better to have the criminal banks crash, because only that will provoke a serious reform. I hope we are getting closer to the time when citizens will rise up and get violent. It is very healthy for governments and politicians (and bankers) to get their asses kicked, to be put in the tumbril and sent to the guillotine. This must be done every several generations to keep them afraid, because nothing on earth will keep them honest except fear. The Bush regime postponed the guillotine by mis-directing the fear of citizens toward Muslims, and avoided a quick military coup at home by sending most soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan where they are no danger to Washington. I may have put this very simply, but there are times when things need to be put simply.

END SHARED INFORMATION

Here are books that are easier to read and make the same case, but please note that all of this can be traced back to Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) and his deregulation of the financial industry with a 200+ page amendment that none of the other Senators read. Clinton “went along” because “easy money” was a popularity enhancer.

The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
The Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution and the Industrial System
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class – And What We Can Do about It (BK Currents (Paperback))
Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography)

2008/07/212010/07/21

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Evil

00 Remixed Review Lists, Atrocities & Genocide, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Censorship & Denial of Access, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Worth A Look

Evil

Review: The Lucifer Principle–A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History (Paperback)

Review: The Manufacture of Evil–Ethics, Evolution and the Industrial System

Review: The Marketing of Evil–How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom (Hardcover)

Review: War, Evil, and the End of History

NOTE: There are enormous amounts of evil depicted across all of the lists in the negative master list. This just focuses on the few that have evil (or Lucifer) in the title.

2008/07/212010/07/21