FedUpUSA

Archive for December, 2010

You are not going to believe some of the things that the U.S. government is spending money on.  According to a shocking new report, U.S. taxpayer money is being spent to study World of Warcraft, to study how Americans find love on the Internet, and to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.  Not only that, but money from the federal government is also being used to renovate a pizzeria in Iowa and to help a library in Tennessee host video game parties.  These are just some of the examples in a new report on government waste from Senator Tom Coburn entitled “Wastebook 2010“.  Even as tens of millions of American families find themselves suffering through the worst economic downturn in modern history, the U.S. government continues to spend money on some of the craziest and most frivolous things imaginable.  Every single year articles are written and news stories are done about the horrific government waste that is taking place and yet every single year it just keeps getting worse.  So just what in the world is going on here?

It almost seems as though Congress actually enjoys inventing new ways to waste U.S. taxpayer money.  It seems nearly inconceivable that anyone could keep a straight face while trying to justify spending money on many of the things in the list below.

At a time when the U.S. national debt is closing in on 14 trillion dollars, government waste just seems more out of control than ever.  The following are 20 of the craziest things that the U.S. government is spending money on….

#1 A total of $3 million has been granted to researchers at the University of California at Irvine so that they can play video games such as World of Warcraft.  The goal of this “video game research” is reportedly to study how “emerging forms of communication, including multiplayer computer games and online virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life can help organizations collaborate and compete more effectively in the global marketplace.”

#2 The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave the University of New Hampshire $700,000 this year to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.

#3 $615,000 was given to the University of California at Santa Cruz to digitize photos, T-shirts and concert tickets belonging to the Grateful Dead.

#4 A professor at Stanford University received $239,100 to study how Americans use the Internet to find love.  So far one of the key findings of this “research” is that the Internet is a safer and more discreet way to find same-sex partners.

#5 The National Science Foundation spent $216,000 to study whether or not politicians “gain or lose support by taking ambiguous positions.”

#6 The National Institutes of Health spent approximately $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.

#7 Approximately $1 million of U.S. taxpayer money was used to create poetry for the Little Rock, New Orleans, Milwaukee and Chicago zoos.  The goal of the “poetry” is to help raise awareness on environmental issues.

#8 The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs spent $175 million during 2010 to maintain hundreds of buildings that it does not even use.  This includes a pink, octagonal monkey house in the city of Dayton, Ohio.

#9 $1.8 million of U.S. taxpayer dollars went for a “museum of neon signs” in Las Vegas, Nevada.

#10 $35 million was reportedly paid out by Medicare to 118 “phantom” medical clinics that never even existed.  Apparently these “phantom” medical clinics were established by a network of criminal gangs as a way to defraud the U.S. government.

#11 The Conservation Commission of Monkton, Vermont got $150,000 from the federal government to construct a “critter crossing”.  Thanks to U.S. government money, the lives of “thousands” of migrating salamanders are now being saved.

#12 In California, one park received $440,000 in federal funds to perform “green energy upgrades” on a building that has not been used for a decade.

#13 $440,955 was spent this past year on an office for former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert that he rarely even visits.

#14 One Tennessee library was given $5,000 in federal funds to host a series of video game parties.

#15 The U.S. Census Bureau spent $2.5 million on a television commercial during the Super Bowl that was so poorly produced that virtually nobody understood what is was trying to say.

#16 A professor at Dartmouth University received $137,530 to create a “recession-themed” video game entitled “Layoff”.

#17 The National Science Foundation gave the Minnesota Zoo over $600,000 so that they could develop an online video game called “Wolfquest”.

#18 A pizzeria in Iowa was given $60,000 to renovate the pizzeria’s facade and give it a more “inviting feel”.

#19 The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave one enterprising group of farmers $30,000 to develop a tourist-friendly database of farms that host guests for overnight “haycations”.  This one sounds like something that Dwight Schrute would have dreamed up.

#20 Almost unbelievably, the National Institutes of Health was given $800,000 in “stimulus funds” to study the impact of a “genital-washing program” on men in South Africa.

In light of all this, is it any wonder why the approval rating of Congress recently hit another new record low?

According to the most recent Gallup poll, only 13 percent of Americans approve of the job that Congress is doing.

Just think about that – only 13 percent!

Our politicians seem very confused about why there is so much anger in the country today.  Well, there are certainly a lot of reasons for it, including the fact that the U.S. economy is on the verge of collapse, but it certainly doesn’t help that our government is basically flushing our tax dollars down the toilet and spending them on some of the most wasteful things imaginable.

It would be bad enough if the federal government was swimming in money, but the truth is that all of this waste is being committed at a time when the U.S. government is nearing bankruptcy.

Over the last 30 years, the U.S. national debt has gotten 13 times larger.  We have accumulated the largest debt in the history of the world and there is no end in sight.

In fact, we are rapidly running out of people to borrow money from.  According to the Wall Street Journal, in order to repay maturing bonds and finance the exploding budget deficit, the U.S. government will have to borrow 4.2 trillion dollars in 2011.

Eventually the rest of the world is going to lose confidence in the ability of the U.S. government to repay all of this debt.  Once confidence in U.S. Treasuries is totally gone, and there are already signs this is starting to happen, the game will be over and the U.S. financial system will collapse.

But the U.S. Congress just continues to act like it is “business as usual” and the wasteful spending just continues to get worse.  Someday historians will look back and think that we must have been a nation full of idiots and morons.

For decades our politicians have been spending us into oblivion, yet we keep sending the vast majority of them back to Washington D.C. every time an election rolls around and the mainstream media keeps assuring us that our “respected leaders” know exactly what they are doing and that everything is going to be okay somehow.

It is almost as if some sort of collective insanity has overtaken most Americans.  The path we are on inevitably leads to national bankruptcy and the destruction of our financial system, but only a small percentage of the population seems to care.

Well, in the end we will reap what we have sown.  Unfortunately, the economic pain that is coming is going to be devastating for all of us – including those of us who are awake and are trying desperately to change things.

The Economic Collapse

The Federal Reserve system (the Fed for short) is the US central banking system.  The Fed was created in 1913 with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act.  In the beginning the Fed had limited powers and its mission was limited.  According to the Fed its mission today is to conduct monetary policy, supervise and regulate banking institutions, and maintain stability in the financial system.  If this is the mission of the Fed, it has radically failed and the American people should audit the Fed to see what went wrong.  The problem with the Fed is that it is independent within the government since it does not need to seek legislation for actions.  Yet the authority of the Federal Reserve is derived from the US Congress.  Yet we have recently seen when a push to audit the Fed was issued in Congress a major backlash hit from the Fed and we have yet to conduct a full audit of the Federal Reserve.  The Fed has conducted and put at risk the US currency to protect the banking interests of its member banks.  The unstated mission of the Fed is to protect its banking allies even if it means destroying the economic structure of its host nation so long as wealth is stabilized in the new financial oligarchy.

Even as the Fed gloats that the economy is on a mends, we see that the Fed balance sheet hasn’t really shifted since the financial crisis hit:

Source:  Wikipedia, chart

The Fed currently has over $2 trillion in “assets” on its balance sheets.  We have documented that within this enormous amount of assets, there are questionable loans and items including shadow bailouts of the imploded commercial real estate market.  The Fed has bailed out shopping malls in Oklahoma that have no adequate traffic to justify their existence all the way to luxury hotels.  Do you think the American people consider this a solid way of managing the nation’s financial health?

Yet let us go back to one of the stated items listed on the Fed’s mission statement, that of financial stability.  In the last decade the US financial markets have seen some of the worst financial volatility since the Great Depression.  The Fed did not sit idly by as we now know with the released lending notes during the crisis.  The Fed made $9 trillion in short-term loans to 18 of the largest financial institutions in the country.  It also made loans to corporate entities like McDonalds for example.  The Fed of course did not want this information to be released since it showed favoritism to the largest organizations in the country all the while lending tightened up to smaller businesses and organizations.  Individuals certainly have felt the credit freeze and nowhere in the notes do we see the Fed making a solid effort to bolster lending to the American public.  They were concerned about the biggest institutions and the rest were left hanging on a shingle.

During the banking crisis of the Great Depression many banks failed in a system setup under unit banking:

Source:  Mortgage News

Yet the big problem today is that we have a handful of banks holding over 50 percent of all total banking assets ($13 trillion and half with 19 banks out of 7,700+).  So the raw count of bank failures is deceptive.  We can have 100 bank failures costing $1 million each or have one giant failure like IndyMac costing $8 billion.  The era of too big to fail is just as dangerous as one in which banks are isolated.  In fact with the data released from the Fed we see the insidious problem of a system in which the worst performing banks with the most deceptive practices not only are bailed out but are given more capital to remain in business.  All this does is solidifies their actions and makes them grow even bigger, the side effect of moral hazard.  Think of JP Morgan taking over Washington Mutual and now they are going to charge customers $10 a month for what used to free checking for life.  Think of Bank of America swallowing up Countrywide Financial.  This is the kind of banking consolidation that the Fed has orchestrated since the crisis started with no accountability to Congress or the American people.

The Fed would like you to believe that they are using their own money but this is a lie.  The Fed was instrumental in creating the housing bubble with their low Fed funds rate:

Most Americans carry a large part of their net worth in real estate.  So the fact that the Fed turned what used to be a stable asset into a highly volatile commodity that encouraged Wall Street banks to develop CDOs and other instruments of financial destruction was a method of siphoning off wealth from most Americans to their banking overlords.  Again, the Fed is designed to maintain financial stability but the actions of the last few decades demonstrate that their mission should read:

“To aggregate as much wealth into the banking system while eliminating the American middle class by a slow systematic dilution of their currency and financial well being and standard of living.”

This is exactly what has happened in the last decade.  The average American makes roughly $39,000 a year or less.  72 million Americans make $25,000 or less each year.  Yet at the same time wealth at the top is getting more and more consolidated.  So now we have a system where giant bank failures don’t happen but we have a slow destruction of wealth for the remainder of the American public.  The Fed only cares about stability for its member banks.  Ben Bernanke, the current Fed chief went on 60 Minutes claiming that Americans would be better off if they just got more educated.  Oh really?  So you mean with the current higher education bubble Americans should borrow more money from banks and the government so they can go into massive debt for a degree that may not help them land a job?  We all know that the cost of college has far outpaced the cost of most items including healthcare costs. Yet the solution to our current crisis is to get into deeper debt and become slaves to banks yet again?  Sounds like Alan Greenspan being a champion for adjustable rate mortgages.

The Fed has given horrible advice over and over.  It wouldn’t be such a problem if they were a pundit on a radio show.  But this is our central bank!  This is the institution that made $9 trillion in short-term loans and fought Congress to keep it hidden from the American people.  This is the institution that has over $2 trillion in “assets” and doesn’t want to say what it is because the American people will find out that junk mortgages on failed real estate deals will show up.  The Fed has failed on its explicit mission and it is time to fully audit the Fed.

My Budget360

Six of the biggest banks in the nation have been told by New Jersey’s Supreme Court Chief Justice  that unless they can prove otherwise, they will have to stop tens of thousands of foreclosures in the Garden State.

“This is something we have focused on for a number of months,” Chief Justice Stuart Rabner told NBCNewYork in a conference call with reporters Monday afternooon.

New Jersey‘s action follows similar moves in other states where lawyers for homeowners have found bankers using so-called “robo signing” to process the paperwork of foreclosures, when court rules require the banker involved to have specific knowledge of each case.

The banks involved include Bank of America, Ally (formerly GMAC), JP Morgan Chase, One WestBank (formerly Indybank), Citibank, and Wells Fargo.

Together, they filed 29,000 foreclosure notices so far this year, nearly half of the 65,000 to date.

In addition, the Court is demanding that two dozen smaller lenders prove that they are on the up and up with all of their foreclosure actiions, and must provide proof to a Special Master that they did not use any shortcuts in moving people out of their homes.

In New Jersey, a lender can begin foreclosure action only after four months of a homeowner being in arrears.

But the process of getting people out of their homes has to go through the courts, and while it is usually up to a Judge to decide, he or she normally relies on affadavits by banking officials that in New Jersey, require some detailed personal knowledge.

Legal Services of New Jersey, apparently following up on reports of sloppy foreclosures elsewhere, began a multi month investigation that formed the basis of today’s action by Chief Justice Rabner.

 In all, three fourths of the 65 thousand foreclosure filings made so far this year are being questioned by this action, with the six big banks being told to appear in a Mercer County courtroom January 19th to prove they’re not guilty as charged.

NBC

Institutional Risk Analytics Co-Founder Christopher Whalen argues money and debt built the American dream.

Leading bank analyst Chris Whalen has raised the question of whether criminal charges should be brought against former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.

Any discussion of whether Paulson committed unlawful actions as Treasury Secretary needs to start with Tarp.

As the New York Times wrote last year:

In retrospect, Congress felt bullied by Mr. Paulson last year. Many of them fervently believed they should not prop up the banks that had led us to this crisis — yet they were pushed by Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke into passing the $700 billion TARP, which was then used to bail out those very banks.

Indeed, Congressmen Brad Sherman and Paul Kanjorski and Senator James Inhofe all say that the government warned of martial law if Tarp wasn’t passed:

That is especially interesting given that the financial crisis had actually been going on for a long time, but – instead of dealing with it – Paulson and the rest of the crew tried to cover it up and pretend it was “contained”, and that it was obvious to world leaders months earlier that it was not a liquidity crisis, but a solvency crisis (and see this).

Bait And Switch

The Tarp Inspector General has said that Paulson misrepresented the big banks’ health in the run-up to passage of TARP. This is no small matter, as the American public would have not been very excited about giving money to insolvent institutions.

And Paulson himself has said:

During the two weeks that Congress considered the [Tarp] legislation, market conditions worsened considerably. It was clear to me by the time the bill was signed on October 3rd that we needed to act quickly and forcefully, and that purchasing troubled assets—our initial focus—would take time to implement and would not be sufficient given the severity of the problem. In consultation with the Federal Reserve, I determined that the most timely, effective step to improve credit market conditions was to strengthen bank balance sheets quickly through direct purchases of equity in banks.

So Paulson knew “by the time the bill was signed” that it wouldn’t be used for its advertised purpose – disposing of toxic assets – and would instead be used to give money directly to the big banks?

Senator McCain also says that Paulson pulled a bait-and-switch:

Sen. John McCain of Arizona … says he was misled by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. McCain said the pair assured him that the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program would focus on what was seen as the cause of the financial crisis, the housing meltdown.

“Obviously, that didn’t happen,” McCain said in a meeting Thursday with The Republic‘s Editorial Board, recounting his decision-making during the critical initial days of the fiscal crisis. “They decided to stabilize the Wall Street institutions, bail out (insurance giant) AIG, bail out Chrysler, bail out General Motors. . . . What they figured was that if they stabilized Wall Street – I guess it was trickle-down economics – that therefore Main Street would be fine.”

Even the New York Times called Paulson a liar in 2008:

“First [Paulson’s Department of Treasury] says it has to have $700 billion to buy back toxic mortgage-backed securities. Then, as Mr. Paulson divulged to The Times this week, it turns out that even before the bill passed the House, he told his staff to start drawing up a plan for capital injections. Fearing Congress’s reaction, he didn’t tell the Hill about his change of heart.

Now, he’s shifted gears again, and is directing Treasury to use the money to force bank acquisitions. Sneaking in the tax break isn’t exactly confidence-inspiring, either.”

What tax breaks is the Times talking about? The article explains:

A new tax break [pushed by Treasury], worth billions to the banking industry, that has only one purpose: to encourage bank mergers. As a tax expert, Robert Willens, put it: “It couldn’t be clearer if they had taken out an ad.”

Paulson insisted on a “get out of jail card” in the Tarp bill. Specifically, the bill includes the following provision:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Whether or not that would shield Paulson from the false statements he made before the bill was passed – e.g. why Tarp was needed, and what would happen if it didn’t pass – is a separate question.

Moreover, Tarp is just one of Paulson’s shenanigans as Treasury Secretary. And Paulson’s acts as head of Goldman Sachs are beyond the scope of this essay.

There is a growing awareness, a sickening realization out there that fraud is being committed in our courtrooms…just how pervasive the fraud is remains an open question….but I predict the real truth is not going to be pretty.  Some judges are taking the initiative and dismissing cases when they uncover the fraud.  So what kind of fraud rises to the level that a case should be dismissed?

The requisite fraud on the court occurs where “it can be
demonstrated, clearly and convincingly, that a party has
sentiently set in motion some unconscionable scheme
calculated to interfere with the judicial system’s ability
impartially to adjudicate a matter by improperly influencing
the trier of fact or unfairly hampering the presentation of the
opposing party’s claim or defense.” Aoude v. Mobil Oil Corp.,
892 F.2d 1115, 1118 (1st Cir.1989).

Check out this opinion:

5th DCA Fraud on The Court

And this beautiful piece of literature:

ordermersslammed

Along with a nice collection of cases from across the state finding that shows a pattern of our judges finally having enough of all this (hat tip to Foreclosure Hamlet):

Click here for beautiful reads from across the state

What’s my best example of a fraud that so permeates the proceedings?  Well for starters and the easiest, how about fraud in the service of process.  The service itself and the billing, all of which is incorporated into the Final Judgment.  That certainly permeates the whole of the proceedings.  Our judges need to read all of these opinions and start making them part of the practice.

Matt Weidner