FedUpUSA

Archive for the ‘#OCW’ Category

In what now seems to be like the ‘new normal’ Russia Today America tells some hard truth about the financial system and the economy here in the United States.   Pay very close attention to what Mr. Duncan says in the first few minutes.

Former World Bank economist Richard Duncan appeared on CNBC over the weekend explaining how the US government is delaying the economy from going into a “debt deflation death spiral” and explained how a massive depression unavoidable. According to reports, many experts share the same concern that America will go through a severe state and when this happens the world economy will follow. Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, explains the situation and what can be done to solve this issue.

Here’s the rub:  While we’ve watched in horror as the government of Cyprus has seized the bank deposits of its citizens in an attempt to recapitalize its insolvent banks, the fact is Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve have been doing the exact same thing here in the United States!   The only difference is that ours is called ‘quantitative easing’ and theirs is called ‘confiscation.’  By re-purchasing US debt, the Federal Reserve is emitting unbacked credit into our financial system.  The average, everyday citizen calls this ‘printing money’ and in many ways it is exactly that because credit does spend the same as cash, right?  Well, the real difference is that cash doesn’t have to be paid back.  It doesn’t have a ‘due date,’ but what Bennie and his Ink-Jetz are creating DOES.  Not only that, in order to emit credit, someone has to be willing to take on the debt and also make the payments.  Since the private sector can no longer afford to take on more credit, the government has stepped in and taken the private sector’s place; in other words, the consumer is tapped out; he’s broke.  The government steps in to replace the consumer by, you guessed it, borrowing massive amounts of money.  Now do you see why our Congress has absolutely no interest in cutting our deficit?  If they did, Bennie wouldn’t be able to continue to spew out credit/debt because no one would be contracting to pay it back!

But now it gets really problematic for YOU the American citizen.  While Bennie and the InkJetz are busy creating credit by his QE magic, he’s also creating DEBT and he’s also pulling down the value of US dollars already in circulation.  When you do this, it causes the things you have to buy to go up in price; things, like gasoline, food and housing.    So, this means his ‘money printing’ directly steals your income.  In addition, by re-purchasing US debt, he’s artificially holding down interest rates.  Those interest rates are what you would otherwise earn on a savings account or a certificate of deposit (CD).  Those means of income have been literally taken from you.   You are being robbed in the exact same way that the citizens of Cyprus are being robbed….and for the same reason:  Our banks are no more solvent than theirs are.  Absolutely NOTHING has even been addressed since the collapse of 2008, much less fixed.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve not only steals your income in the form of inflation, but it destroys the interest you would otherwise earn on your money.  However, the worst thing of all is that the government’s stepping in to replace private sector demand for debt/credit is DESTROYING YOUR JOBS!  So, you see, everything you have ever worked for, everything you have ever dreamed of having, is being stolen right out from under you, just like the Cypriots.   Because in the end, we are all Cyprus. No one gets out of this in tact.  ALL of the world’s largest banks are insolvent.  They have been since 2008.  You WILL be systematically robbed until they’ve taken everything from you.

Are you awake yet?!  Isn’t it past time to….

The ‘F’ word is FRAUD.  It’s the ROOT of our problem.

Neil Barofsky, who was the special investigator general of the US government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program until his resignation in 2011, spoke to RT about how the Washington-Wall Street political culture could lead to another devastating collapse.

Yes, that is the BIG question.  Really, it’s the only question that matters right now when it comes to our financial system.

Why do you obey the law, when the largest financial institutions in the United States break the law at will?

Time after time we watch the largest financial institutions break laws, the same laws under which we, the common person, would be jailed if we were to do the same thing.  These are the very same financial institutions who are receiving $83 billion in annual taxpayer support.  In essence, the taxpayers are being forced to finance the banks’ theft of our own property and money.

This is how civil wars occur — when the rule of law is entirely lost – when injustice reaches the point that certain “special people” get to break the law without consequence, while the “little people” violating the same or similar laws are arrested, indicted, tried, convicted and thrown in jail.  

The article below was published a few months back.  Sadly, there is all too much truth in this.  FedUpUSA was involved deeply and intimately at the beginning of the formation of the Tea Party and we were very much a part of the initial movement to send tea bags to Congress which truly took off with Rick Santelli’s rant on the floor of the CME.   This article points out the terrible unintended consequences that arose from the (erroneous) pervasive point of view that it was the homeowners who caused the mess that we found ourselves in and which continues to this day.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The Tea Party was also supposed to be about the loss of the rule of law and, as our motto states, it was supposed to:

But unfortunately, the looting continues unabated.  The Too Big To Fail Banks are continuing to pillage the nation, just in slightly different forms, and now formally protected by government legislation like Frank-Dodd.

As Daniel Gross said in The Daily Beast a couple of days ago:

Sadly, the Tea Party helped make this treatment of Wall Street and bankers ‘acceptable.’

How the Tea Party Helped the Big Banks

One of the most high impact outbursts in the history of television occurred on February 19, 2009 when CNBC editor Rick Santelli, standing on the floor of the world’s largest derivatives exchange, launched into a spontaneous attack on a White House plan to provide mortgage relief to homeowners. Santelli’s remarks were pointed. He accused the White House of “promoting bad behavior” and questioned whether government should “subsidize the losers’ mortgages.” He ended with a rhetorical flourish by asking, “President Obama, are you listening?” in response to which the crowd near him on the exchange floor erupted into applause and cheers. At the end of the clip, Santelli announced, “We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party.” His remarks became the subject of a White House press briefing the next day in which Press Secretary Robert Gibbs rebuked Santelli and the derivatives industry generally.

Students of the national Tea Party still debate whether Santelli’s attack was the beginning of that movement. There were Tea Party-like protests against government spending going back as far as 2006. Yet, many observers consider Santelli’s comments to have had a catalytic effect. Websites, organized protests and media commentary about the “Tea Party” all emerged within 24 hours of Santelli’s attack. The outburst transformed the Tea Party from a loose array of local protests into a more cohesive and focused political movement.

And there can be no doubt about the power of the Tea Party. It has turned into a well-organized, well-financed political movement that was instrumental in helping the Republican Party to take control of the House of Representatives in 2010. That Democratic loss was said to have shocked the White House and has conditioned their political strategies ever since.

The rise of the Tea Party points to a particular failure of Obama’s economic policies. One of the mysteries of the depression that began in 2007 is why there has not been more debt relief. Large-scale elimination of debt will be needed before a strong economic recovery can begin. The existence of bad debt on bank balance sheets impedes their ability to make new loans. The need to pay down debt impedes the willingness of consumers to spend money or incur new debt for big-ticket purchases of cars and homes. Pervasive unpayable debt is like sand in the gears of the economic machine. Elimination of this debt by some means is an essential first step in escaping the depression.

Yet, how? There are only three ways to eliminate debt that cannot be repaid: default, forgiveness, and inflation. The first two are just different forms of the same thing. With either default or forgiveness, the debtor is relieved of an obligation and the banks suffer the loss. Inflation eliminates debt by making it easier to repay in cheaper dollars. The difference is that the loss falls not on the debtors or banks, but on savers and retirees. The loss also falls more broadly on everyday Americans who don’t see it coming. Keynes called inflation the most arbitrary form of confiscation and he was right.

Rick Santelli made some common sense points about debt relief. It does seem repugnant to those struggling to pay their mortgages and car loans and deal with their debts honorably. It does create moral hazard. Santelli touched a nerve and the White House knew it.

As a result, debt forgiveness seems to be off the table as a policy solution. This is not surprising. In addition to the political backlash that Santelli exposed, the banks are deeply opposed. If banks write-down first mortgages, their deeper losses on second mortgages and home equity loans will be revealed and lead to even deeper write-downs the banks cannot afford. The banks also covet fees on mortgage servicing, which are off-balance sheet items that go to the bottom line without requiring much capital. The banks are determined to suck the borrowers dry for as long as they can.

This leaves default and inflation as the only solutions. Default may come yet, but not if the Federal Reserve can help it. The Fed’s programs of zero rates, quantitative easing, balance sheet maturity shifts, a weak dollar, and communications propaganda are all designed to get inflation rates above interest rates and jump start the lending and spending machine. Negative real rates induce borrowers to take loans. Inflation induces consumers to spend money faster. The combination of lending and spending increases the velocity of money and gets nominal GDP where the Fed needs it to pay down nominal debt.

Here is the irony of Rick Santelli and the Tea Party: Debt forgiveness is a straightforward solution that puts the losses where they belong—on rapacious banks and their investors. By taking debt forgiveness off the table, Santelli, the Tea Party and the White House have become strange bedfellows in promoting inflation because it is the only alternative to write-downs. Inflation, as we know, hurts those everyday Americans that Santelli and the Tea Party set out to defend.

Debt forgiveness hurts banks. Inflation hurts everyone except speculators. By putting a stake in the heart of debt forgiveness, Santelli and the Tea Party, with White House connivance, end up helping the banks and hurting the innocent through inflation. The law of unintended consequences is alive and well.

James Rickards – USNews

It’s long passed time that the Tea Party realize that the fault doesn’t lie with their neighbors and the threat to our country doesn’t lie with the possibility that they might get a ‘free home’ (in fact, no one is getting free homes except the banks are buying back their foreclosures for pennies on the dollar and then renting them back to those on which they foreclosed, in effect cornering the market on rental properties in large areas of the country).

No, the real threat lies in the loss of the rule of law and even worse laws that only apply to ‘certain’ people, but not others.  The threat lies in the insidious inflation, which despite the Federal Reserve’s claims to the contrary, is running well above 3-4%.  According to Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider, your dollar is worth precisely 3.8 cents today.  This is destroying retirees, the middle and low-income families, and even destroying many of our small businesses.  The inflation is being purposely created by the Federal Reserve to keep the big banks and Wall Street from suffering the losses they should have taken 4 years ago!  Despite our government’s claims to the contrary, the bailouts are ongoing and they are being funded by YOU – and not just the taxpayers, but every single person in this country that must purchase things like food and gasoline.

The Tea Party was supposed to be about protecting Americans from a government acting against its own people, but instead, all it has managed to do is facilitate the criminal acts of government and prevent the break-up of the Too Big To Fail institutions whose wrong-doing and criminal behavior is what caused our ongoing economic crisis in the first place.  I implore the Tea Party to re-examine their perspective on our economic situation and consider the consequences of their previous actions.