The following is an excellent article from The Economic Collapse blog that outlines the vast Ponzi scheme knows as the Federal Reserve System -- the cartel of privately owned banks that run the U.S. government spending, debt and monetary regime.
The article lays out the Ponzi scheme simply and efficiently, and really should be read in its entirety in order to get a complete understand of how Machiavellian and sinister the system truly is, but I'll try to boil it down here to its essence.
Basically, the Federal Reserve cartel of private banks manages the mechanics of United State Federal Government spending and monetary supply, profits handsomely for doing so, and has become so brazen and cavalier in its management that it now illegally "approves" spending and monetary supply of its own (in the form of illegally issued credit and bailouts to its bank members and cronies) amounting to trillions of dollars -- all for which the American taxpayer is liable.
Here's the formula:
a) Congress and the president (increasingly negligently, recklessly and irresponsibly) approve massive spending on this, that, and the other "government" project or program;
b) The Federal Reserve (the Fed cartel of private banks) creates the money for this spending, Federal Reserve Notes, which today are mostly electronic entries representing credit;
c) In return, the government gives the Fed cartel Treasury Bonds, which are essentially taxpayer-backed IOU's promising to pay back the debt at a certain interest rate by a certain date;
d) The the Fed cartel is then instructed to sell these IOU's on the open market around the world to countries, corporations, wealthy individuals, etc. willing to buy American debt in return for a promise to pay back the principal and the varying amounts of interest by the varying maturity dates of the bonds;
e) The Fed cartel makes billions of dollars in fees for brokering these transactions;
f) Since the U.S. Federal Government is creating an endless supply of credit for itself by instructing the Fed cartel to essentially create whatever amount of credit the government needs to spend on whatever it wants, whenever it wants, for those wondering what incentive the government has to control its spending, the answer is "no incentive whatsoever";
g) Despite making hundreds of billions in fees over the years by greasing the skids on all of this, the Fed cartel is insatiably greedy, and has become criminally corrupt, hence at least since the economic meltdown, and probably going on for even decades prior, the Fed cartel has been issuing its own, non-Congressional approved credit to member banks the world over, essentially allowing them to create their own credit out of thin air, but ostensibly guaranteed by the U.S. taxpayers due to the Fed cartel's official relationship with the United States Federal Government;
f) This blatant criminalism will probably turn out to be the Fed cartel's fatal mistake, because once the politicians who have thus far officially looked the other way because they are part of the Ponzi scheme economic regime (and well-compensated for their treacherous betrayal of the American taxpayers) have either had their feet held to the fire, or have been completely ousted by voters, and a political regime willing to represent the interests of all Americans instead of the corrupt, criminal 1% is installed, this blatant Fed cartel criminalism will probably be the noose that the new regime uses to hang the corrupt Fed cartel and its political accomplices by the neck.
How will this likely be accomplished?
By nationalising all of the banks who have participated in what amounts to a RICO conspiracy, seizing their assets and those of all the individuals who have profited from the criminal scheme, and using them to compensate the American people and the American economy that has been robbed blind by the white collar criminal and political class that has instituted this illegal Ponzi scheme. -- C.M.
-------------------------
From:
10 Things That Every American Should Know About The Federal Reserve
(The Economic Collapse) -- by ? --
What would happen if the Federal Reserve was shut down permanently? That is a question that CNBC asked recently, but unfortunately most Americans don't really think about the Fed much. Most Americans are content with believing that the Federal Reserve is just another stuffy government agency that sets our interest rates and that is watching out for the best interests of the American people. But that is not the case at all. The truth is that the Federal Reserve is a private banking cartel that has been designed to systematically destroy the value of our currency, drain the wealth of the American public and enslave the federal government to perpetually expanding debt. During this election year, the economy is the number one issue that voters are concerned about. But instead of endlessly blaming both political parties, the truth is that most of the blame should be placed at the feet of the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has more power over the performance of the U.S. economy than anyone else does. The Federal Reserve controls the money supply, the Federal Reserve sets the interest rates and the Federal Reserve hands out bailouts to the big banks that absolutely dwarf anything that Congress ever did. If the American people are ever going to learn what is really going on with our economy, then it is absolutely imperative that they get educated about the Federal Reserve.
The following are 10 things that every American should know about the Federal Reserve....
#1 The Federal Reserve System Is A Privately Owned Banking Cartel
The Federal Reserve is not a government agency.
The truth is that it is a privately owned central bank. It is owned by the banks that are members of the Federal Reserve system. We do not know how much of the system each bank owns, because that has never been disclosed to the American people.
The Federal Reserve openly admits that it is privately owned. When it was defending itself against a Bloomberg request for information under the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Reserve stated unequivocally in court that it was "not an agency" of the federal government and therefore not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
In fact, if you want to find out that the Federal Reserve system is owned by the member banks, all you have to do is go to the Federal Reserve website....
The twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks, which were established by Congress as the operating arms of the nation's central banking system, are organized much like private corporations--possibly leading to some confusion about "ownership." For example, the Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to member banks. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. The stock may not be sold, traded, or pledged as security for a loan; dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year.Foreign governments and foreign banks do own significant ownership interests in the member banks that own the Federal Reserve system. So it would be accurate to say that the Federal Reserve is partially foreign-owned.
But until the exact ownership shares of the Federal Reserve are revealed, we will never know to what extent the Fed is foreign-owned.
#2 The Federal Reserve System Is A Perpetual Debt Machine
As long as the Federal Reserve System exists, U.S. government debt will continue to go up and up and up.
This runs contrary to the conventional wisdom that Democrats and Republicans would have us believe, but unfortunately it is true.
The way our system works, whenever more money is created more debt is created as well.
For example, whenever the U.S. government wants to spend more money than it takes in (which happens constantly), it has to go ask the Federal Reserve for it. The federal government gives U.S. Treasury bonds to the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Reserve gives the U.S. government "Federal Reserve Notes" in return. Usually this is just done electronically.
So where does the Federal Reserve get the Federal Reserve Notes?
It just creates them out of thin air.
Wouldn't you like to be able to create money out of thin air?
Instead of issuing money directly, the U.S. government lets the Federal Reserve create it out of thin air and then the U.S. government borrows it.
Talk about stupid.
When this new debt is created, the amount of interest that the U.S. government will eventually pay on that debt is not also created.
So where will that money come from?
Well, eventually the U.S. government will have to go back to the Federal Reserve to get even more money to finance the ever expanding debt that it has gotten itself trapped into.
It is a debt spiral that is designed to go on perpetually.
You see, the reality is that the money supply is designed to constantly expand under the Federal Reserve system. That is why we have all become accustomed to thinking of inflation as "normal".
So what does the Federal Reserve do with the U.S. Treasury bonds that it gets from the U.S. government?
Well, it sells them off to others. There are lots of people out there that have made a ton of money by holding U.S. government debt.
In fiscal 2011, the U.S. government paid out 454 billion dollars just in interest on the national debt.
That is 454 billion dollars that was taken out of our pockets and put into the pockets of wealthy individuals and foreign governments around the globe.
The truth is that our current debt-based monetary system was designed by greedy bankers that wanted to make enormous profits by using the Federal Reserve as a tool to create money out of thin air and lend it to the U.S. government at interest.
And that plan is working quite well.
Most Americans today don't understand how any of this works, but many prominent Americans in the past did understand it.
For example, Thomas Edison was once quoted in the New York Times as saying the following....
That is to say, under the old way any time we wish to add to the national wealth we are compelled to add to the national debt.But we didn't.
Now, that is what Henry Ford wants to prevent. He thinks it is stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $30,000,000 of their own money the people of the United States should be compelled to pay $66,000,000 — that is what it amounts to, with interest. People who will not turn a shovelful of dirt nor contribute a pound of material will collect more money from the United States than will the people who supply the material and do the work. That is the terrible thing about interest. In all our great bond issues the interest is always greater than the principal. All of the great public works cost more than twice the actual cost, on that account. Under the present system of doing business we simply add 120 to 150 per cent, to the stated cost.
But here is the point: If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good.
We should have listened to men like Edison and Ford.
And so we pay the price.
On July 1, 1914 (a few months after the Fed was created) the U.S. national debt was 2.9 billion dollars.
Today, it is more than more than 5000 times larger.
Yes, the perpetual debt machine is working quite well, and most Americans do not even realize what is happening.
#3 The Federal Reserve Has Destroyed More Than 96% Of The Value Of The U.S. Dollar
Did you know that the U.S. dollar has lost 96.2 percent of its value since 1900? Of course almost all of that decline has happened since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913.
Because the money supply is designed to expand constantly, it is guaranteed that all of our dollars will constantly lose value.
Inflation is a "hidden tax" that continually robs us all of our wealth. The Federal Reserve always says that it is "committed" to controlling inflation, but that never seems to work out so well.
And current Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says that it is actually a good thing to have a little bit of inflation. He plans to try to keep the inflation rate at about 2 percent in the coming years.
So what is so bad about 2 percent? That doesn't sound so bad, does it?
Well, just consider the following excerpt from a recent Forbes article....
The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) has made it official: After its latest two day meeting, it announced its goal to devalue the dollar by 33% over the next 20 years. The debauch of the dollar will be even greater if the Fed exceeds its goal of a 2 percent per year increase in the price level.#4 The Federal Reserve Can Bail Out Whoever It Wants To With No Accountability
The American people got so upset about the bailouts that Congress gave to the Wall Street banks and to the big automakers, but did you know that the biggest bailouts of all were given out by the Federal Reserve?
Thanks to a very limited audit of the Federal Reserve that Congress approved a while back, we learned that the Fed made trillions of dollars in secret bailout loans to the big Wall Street banks during the last financial crisis. They even secretly loaned out hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign banks.
According to the results of the limited Fed audit mentioned above, a total of $16.1 trillion in secret loans were made by the Federal Reserve between December 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010.
The following is a list of loan recipients that was taken directly from page 131 of the audit report....
Citigroup - $2.513 trillion
Morgan Stanley - $2.041 trillion
Merrill Lynch - $1.949 trillion
Bank of America - $1.344 trillion
Barclays PLC - $868 billion
Bear Sterns - $853 billion
Goldman Sachs - $814 billion
Royal Bank of Scotland - $541 billion
JP Morgan Chase - $391 billion
Deutsche Bank - $354 billion
UBS - $287 billion
Credit Suisse - $262 billion
Lehman Brothers - $183 billion
Bank of Scotland - $181 billion
BNP Paribas - $175 billion
Wells Fargo - $159 billion
Dexia - $159 billion
Wachovia - $142 billion
Dresdner Bank - $135 billion
Societe Generale - $124 billion
"All Other Borrowers" - $2.639 trillion
So why haven't we heard more about this?
This is scandalous.
In addition, it turns out that the Fed paid enormous sums of money to the big Wall Street banks to help "administer" these nearly interest-free loans....
Not only did the Federal Reserve give 16.1 trillion dollars in nearly interest-free loans to the "too big to fail" banks, the Fed also paid them over 600 million dollars to help run the emergency lending program. According to the GAO, the Federal Reserve shelled out an astounding $659.4 million in "fees" to the very financial institutions which caused the financial crisis in the first place.
Does reading that make you angry?
It should...MORE...LINK
No comments:
Post a Comment