FedUpUSA

Archive for October 19th, 2011

Many people are furious that the Federal Reserve and Bank of America have initiated a coup to dump billions of dollars of losses on the American people (and see this).

Many are suggesting that the “Occupy” protesters rally to stop this robbery.

One of the top stories currently on Reddit (one of the top social media sites), is:

OWS and 99%: Please pay attention to this and stop it from happening (BofA and Fed socializing losses)

I understand that the Occupy protesters are, in fact, currently debating making a statement on this theft.

Currently, there are two competing draft statements. This one is from someone very savvy on understanding how the average American thinks:

A portion of the 53 trillion dollars of derivatives (yes that’s with a t, about the size of the entire global economy) transferred to Bank of America’s parent company from Merrill Lynch in 2008 has recently been transferred to Bank of America.

Derivatives contracts in a bank are paid before anyone else gets paid.

Therefore, these derivatives contracts would be paid before depositors receive their money. These people just cut in front of you.

It’s very simple, the reason that banks and trading houses were originally separated was to prevent this sort of thing. What’s really going to happen is that the government is going to end up bailing out the FDIC … so this will end up being a government bailout.

You’ll end up getting shafted, either by derivatives holders cutting in front of you or by your having to bail out the FDIC so it can bail out banks depositors. Either way, this is yet another instance of looting by the big banks and big government.

Just say no … don’t let this stand.

And this one is from two people who are experts on the technical issues involved:

We denounce Bank of America’s transfer of high risk derivatives to its federally insured accounts. This is yet another example of systemically dangerous institutions, big banks like BofA and JPM, once again attempting to shift potentially substantial losses onto the backs of hardworking Americans. The fact that the Federal Reserve supports this action demonstrates Ben Bernanke’s complicity and/or gross incompetence in supporting the Wall Street elite at the expense of tax paying citizens.

Updates as they develop …

George Washington for ZeroHedge

Unique Perspective To Share

I have a very distinctly unique position. I’ve spent 4 years helping found Tea Party groups. I’ve spent 4 years on a speaking circuit educating TPs on the criminality and corruption – indeed the SYMBIOTIC relationship between Wall Street and our government. The type of resistance I am getting from some on the right is relatively typical of the difficulty I have had in general when trying to explain that what the left and right are arguing about is nothing more than ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ At this point in time, it makes no difference. They have merged to become one large, blood-sucking entity.

I watched as most TPs relinquished their independent voice to the GOP establishment. I watched as TP people began to worship false idols of that establishment, as certain of them pledged their ‘loyalty’ to the TP only to forget that pledge when they voted. And don’t give me crap about how “we didn’t get enough into Congress” or that “this is still evolving” – I am talking about ACTUAL recorded votes by those who professed kinship with the TP principles. Lt. Col. Allen West comes to mind as a prime example. So far, his votes have been entirely contrary to what he espoused while speaking to TPs with regards to economics and the Patriot Act. For a guy who pledged to uphold and defend the Constitution, he apparently must not have read it – but he sure did come across convincingly when he said he would bow to its enumerated powers. I used to meticulously record votes – but no longer, because it became very clear, pretty quickly there was absolutely no point in it. There is only so long I was willing to chronicle so many lies.

In contrast to the above, I have ALSO recently been deluged with correspondence and telephone calls from those on the left (by their own admission) and non-declaratory participants in OWS. While my experience with the ‘leftist’ component of this is rather new (certainly in comparison to my experience with the right/TP types) the contrast is still profound. I am talking hundreds of e-mails here, not just one or two.

While it has been like pulling teeth for 4 years to get many in the Tea Party to understand the aspect of the WS/government symbiosis and criminality, it has been almost effortless with the OWS crowd. I have received nothing but polite, well-educated, knowledgeable, intelligent questions and commentary (and I’m talking hundreds of e-mails and phone calls) from OWS people. They GET the cronyism. They get that their vote is rendered almost meaningless when the guy they put into office ends up selling out to the highest bidder 20 minutes after arriving in DC. They GET that the banks have committed fraud – independently, of their own volition – and most importantly, they GET that there is one set of laws for we the peasants, and another set for those who control our government and who are part of that government.

What The Criminality Has Done

Steve Jobs didn’t amass is fortune honestly – he contributed more money to various political campaigns, in order to break laws and by which the rest of us have to abide, than he had iPhones. This is not to mention that Chinese child slave labor was used to make that iPhone that you can’t put down. Jeff Immelt – he turned what was an American icon of ingenuity into a blood-sucking financial services company whose only real value resides in its profound ability to commit fraud without being prosecuted. There are probably thousands of Americans with fantastic ideas, inventions, innovations (you name it) but they don’t have a chance unless they have power to influence Congress.

How about the oil companies? The right loves to defend them, and the left loves to excoriate them. Bah. Profit margins in the oil business have dwindled to nothing thanks to the devaluation of the dollar in which the price of oil is denominated. Hate them all you want, but it shouldn’t be for the price of oil. They’re all making money on GREEN SCAMS! So-called ‘green energy’ was never about ‘saving the planet’ it was about creating a massive Ponzi scheme from which the elite politicos, and their protected cronies, could profit. Bubbles were collapsing, so a new area to exploit had to be developed. Both sides of the aisle have been ‘had’ by this ruse.

Don’t take my word for it – go look it up. Find out how many oil companies have invested money into the carbon trading/cap & tax ruse. You’ll probably stumble upon how AlGore worked with Goldman Sachs to develop a very opaque carbon trading index, run by our favorite Wall Street bankers. Rick Perry has his little finger in the Solyndra pie….and he’s from an OIL STATE. Try Googling Thoriumreactor. We’ve had the technology to be 100% energy dependent since the mid-1960s. Even better it is a 100% RENEWABLE source of energy. Why do Americans not know about this technology that is being used in the US Navy right now? MONEY. An energy source such as this is extremely hard to exploit with a hidden Ponzi scheme. There’s must be a lot of money being spent to keep that technology out of the public view; money provided to Congress by oil companies, ‘green energy companies’ and any number of corporations that make their money through that industry. Who is getting screwed by this prime example of government/corporate cronyism? Everyday Americans! Whether they prefer donkey or elephant is irrelevant!

You can also throw the huge pharmaceutical and insurance companies into the mix – the companies that helped orchestrate Obamacare (yet the left has been convinced it was to help make healthcare affordable) on the flip-side of that card, the right refuses to acknowledge that there is a serious healthcare crisis that is happening in this country. For example, if I lose my job, I am screwed. I will never be insurable because I have health conditions. Our entire healthcare industry has been bubble-ized by the Wall Street/Government criminal cartel!

The fact is that our entire economy is a PONZI scheme built “part and parcel” upon the leverage put into the system, which originated on Wall Street, was facilitated by our own government in order to spend that which it did not have through debt issuance and deficit spending, which the elite politicos dole out in the form of “bread and circuses” to the masses to gather the votes necessary for reelection. The end result is Ponzi, Ponzi, Ponzi…everywhere you look. And it is all controlled by the government/Wall Street criminal complex. Wall Street controls the amount of money created into the system. That money allows Congress to deficit spend, while Wall Street funds the campaigns of those they put into office to facilitate the entire process. No one I know begrudges others’ their wealth and success; they only begrudge those who have obtained their wealth and success by STEALING it from others.

MOST people are NOT asking for more government; they just want this nightmare to end.  They most certainly can agree upon what is WRONG; it is how to fix it that we need to have a dialogue that will include all Americans.   The right-wing politicos would just like all conservatives to THINK that all on the left are asking for more government handouts.  Most people ARE craving freedom and the vast majority at least have some idea of what that looks like. They just instinctively know THIS ain’t it! The left-wing politicos would like all liberals to think conservatives only care about personal profit and indeed, the left-wing politicos would love nothing better than to facilitate the idea that ALL conservatives are themselves the elite!  Lies, lies, lies. ALL of it!

The REAL risk of another wholesale fascist/communist slaughter comes from the RIGHT/LEFT divide being orchestrated by the elite politicos on BOTH SIDES OF THE AISLE. It is in their best interests to keep us labeled with inflammatory rhetoric to facilitate and enable the continued infighting amongst ourselves. The left labels the right Nazi’s. The right labels the left Communists. A few bad apples on both sides are used to feed this idea. Meanwhile, the respective parties are dismantled from within by ‘sympathizing’ and infiltrating the very movements that threaten them. American-hating-American is what is being orchestrated here, and it is being orchestrated by our own government. You want to blame the government SOLELY for one thing? There it is…right there…”divide and conquer”…100% the purposeful goal and fault of our government, aided by the media that they control. FCC anyone?

Power and money. The founding fathers warned us. Don’t believe me? Let me introduce you to Dr. Benjamin Franklin, and what he said would happen if we allowed PRIVATE institutions to create that what is deemed the right of a sovereign state: A store of value in response to production, freely given, without debt. This is a RIGHT of a sovereign nation. Let me have DR. FRANKLIN tell you what happens when the pursuit of power, coupled with unlimited remuneration, becomes the goal of civil service. (Oh, look, a right-wing radical website has been linked as a reference.) That so-called ‘radical’ site (as labeled by leftists) often has conversations about our FFs, with text taken from the Library of Congress, as well as the from the archives of various universities, which were kind enough to put them online and make them available without editing. If you’re a left-winger, just try reading that article, but pretending it came from [insert your favorite left-wing publication here] and then tell me with what you disagree.

Let’s Start To Fix It

The point I am making here is that our entire way of communicating, American to American, has been dictated to us by those in whose best interest it is to keep us infighting amongst ourselves. They label us. They use catchphrases, broad and overreaching generalizations, slurs and outright lies. They change positions behind the scenes and they excel in continuing to move the goal posts further and further apart. WE MUST STOP THIS! We must take back the control of our own discussions.

In furtherance of this idea I am proposing to start a sort of challenge or ‘contest’ whereby everyday Americans attempt to come up with a catchy, short and to-the-point sign or phrase wherein we will begin to regain control of our own discourse without outside influence of the politicos. Most importantly the ONLY rule here is that the phrase and/or signage must NOT fall into the right/left divide – to the contrary, what we want are words that BRIDGE that divide.

The perfect example of this is: STOP THE LOOTING & START PROSECUTING!

But I want to go further.  For example:

SOCIALIST WELFARE FOR BANKERS IS NOT CAPITALISM!

This line does multiple things all at once.

1. It points out to the right-wing that giving money to bankers, taken from those who are not responsible for the bankers’ misdeeds, IS social welfare.

2. It points out to the left-wing that what they hate about our situation is NOT (nor was it ever) capitalism; it’s socialism.

If you believe, as we do here at FedUpUSA, that we must cast off stereotypes, unjust bigotry, false ideas and most of all the labels imposed upon us by the elite politicos in our society, then help us bridge the right/left divide. We ARE the 99%! (Actually, it’s more like 99.97%…but we’ll let that math rounding stand….just this once.)

JOIN THE CHALLENGE (registration required to post)

1st Prize – A FedUpUSA Coffee Mug

2nd Prize – A FedUpUSA Bumper Sticker

3rd, 4th and 5th Prizes will receive honorable mention and all winners will receive full public credit for their submission.

Judging:  while everyone is free to critique submissions amongst themselves and even vote amongst themselves, winners will be chosen by FedUpUSA.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) got us first glimpse inside the Federal Reserve, It was his amendment that yielded new information about the 18 Fed members bailing themselves out at the same time that they were at the Federal Reserve. He joined Dylan on the show today to discuss the new findings. The full GAO Report.  Here’s the show clip:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Dylan Ratigan

Hmmm…

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Monday laid out an economic plan that would lower corporate and individual taxes and cut federal spending by $1 trillion during his first year in office, achieved partly by eliminating five cabinet-level departments.

Mr. Paul, a longtime Texas congressman, said he would close the departments of Education, Energy, Commerce, Interior and Housing and Urban Development, as part of a broader plan to cut federal spending. The federal work force would be cut by 10%. Mr. Paul also called for stopping foreign aid and “ending foreign wars.”

Now that is cutting spending.

It also likely has the media power and public acceptance of about 3% of the population, because doing so will instantly collapse the entire ponzi game that has been run for the last 30 years.

It needs to happen too.

But it won’t.

Nonetheless, I do give Mr. Paul credit for putting it forward and actually saying what needs to be said in this area.

And while turning Social Security and Medicare into programs that people can “opt out” of sounds good, neither step does anything about the promises made that cannot be kept.  So…. what’s the plan there and how do we avoid the boomer blowup problem?  (Incidentally, again for those who missed it the last time, if we assume a current cost of medical insurance for a healthy 50 year old of $600 monthly, by the time he turns 85 at current cost escalation rates that policy costs about $12,000 – per month – or nearly $150,000 a year!)

The fail in this plan is that it does not address the 900lb Gorilla in the China Shop, which is the medical system.

That has to be fixed or the rest simply doesn’t matter and Ron Paul, like the rest, fails to address it, moving part of it to the States (sorry, shifting dollars doesn’t address the problem) and doing nothing of materiality with the rest.

The plan is, however, a start.