There must be some kind of way out of here…

"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the People vs. the Banks."

 Lord Acton, Lord Chief Justice of England, 1875 

1.    FACUA: Spaniards putting organs up for sale. source

2.    El Pays, April 24, 2009, España genera en solo un año la mitad de los parados de Europa

3.    Vacature, April 18, 2009, p. 6,  De Brusselse tijdbom

4.   De Morgen, May 4, 2009

5.   De Morgen, May 3. 2009

6.   Nearly 1 billion go hungry, December 11, 2008, www.peopleandplanet.net

7.   Financial Rescue Nears GDP as Pledges Top $12.8 Trillion: Bloomberg News

8.   James Kirkup, The Telegraph, April 24, 2009

A long struggle to get free and stay free of control by international banks

"A democracy cannot be both ignorant and free."

Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the U.S.

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

Henry Ford,

Founder of the Ford Motor Company and father of modern assembly lines in mass production

On the website of the Advocates of Liberty, a student organization created at the Iowa University, I found the following statement:

“Few people today realize that much of American history is defined by the struggle to get free and stay free of control by international banks. Finally lost in 1913 when President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, putting the international banking cartel in charge of creating America's money.” source

During the last half of the 18^th century a political upheaval, now referred to as the American Revolution, took place on the North American continent. The Thirteen Colonies of what then was called ‘British America’ rebelled against British rule, due to the taxation that Great Britain was imposing on the colonies. They rejected the authority of the Parliament of Great Britain to govern them without representation and declared themselves independent from the British monarchy and it’s Empire with the Declaration of Independence, approved by the Continental Congress (- a convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies -) on July 4, 1776. These ‘Founding Fathers’, who signed the Declaration, were well aware of the true nature of money supply creation through debt-based private banking. Some examples:

Thomas Jefferson, who was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and became the 3^rd President of the United States (1801 – 1809), said: "The eyes of our citizens are not sufficiently open to the true cause of our distress. They ascribe them to everything but their true cause, the banking system; a system which if it could do good in any form is yet so certain of leading to abuse as to be utterly incompatible with the public safety and prosperity. I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity... is but swindling futurity on a large scale."  (Letter to Richard Rush, June 1819)

In a Letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, dated January 1814, he wrote: "The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered."

And in a comment to John Wayles Eppes (- a U.S. Representative and Senator from Virginia -) he stated: “Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulation medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790) was a member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence. When the directors of the Bank of England asked him what was the recipe for the booming economy of the young colonies, he explained that the colonial governments issued their own money, which they both lent and spent into the economy: “You see, a legitimate government can both spend and lend money into circulation, while banks can only lend significant amounts of their promissory bank notes, for they can neither give away nor spend but a tiny fraction of the money the people need. Thus, when your bankers here in England place money in circulation, there is always a debt principal to be returned and usury to be paid. The result is that you have always too little credit in circulation to give the workers full employment. You do not have too many workers, you have too little money in circulation, and that which circulates, all bears the endless burden of unpayable debt and usury."

George Washington, who became the 1^st President of the United States (1789 – 1797), stated: "No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable." On January 9, 1787, he wrote in a letter to Jabez Bowen, Deputy Governor of Rhode Island: "But if in the pursuit of the means we should unfortunately stumble again on unfunded paper money or any similar species of fraud, we shall assuredly give a fatal stab to our national credit in its infancy. Paper money will invariably operate in the body of politics as spirit liquors on the human body. They prey on the vitals and ultimately destroy them. Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice." 

John Adams, who’s regarded as one of the most influential Founding Fathers and became the 2^nd President of the United States (1797 – 1801) stated: "All of the perplexities, confusion, and distress in America arises, not from the defects of the Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation."

Samuel Adams (1722 – 1803), who was a Founding Father, a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and one of the architects of American republicanism that shaped the culture of the United States, put:  "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

4^th President of the United States, James Madison (1809- 1817), said: "History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance."

Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809) was a British pamphleteer, revolutionary, radical inventor and intellectual who emigrated in 1774 to the British American colonies to participate in the American Revolution. He was the author of ‘Common Sense’, a pamphlet published in 1776 that convinced many colonists and founding fathers of the wisdom of open rebellion against the British if necessary. source He also wrote in a blistering attack on paper money (1786): “There are a set of men who go about making purchases upon credit, and buying estates they have not wherewithal to pay for; and having done this, their next step is to fill the newspapers with paragraphs of the scarcity of money and the necessity of a paper emission, then to have a legal tender under the pretense of supporting its credit, and when out, to depreciate it as fast as they can, get a deal of it for a little price, and cheat their creditors; and this is the concise history of paper money schemes.” source

"When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes... Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain." 

Napoleon Bonaparte, 1815

"The division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the US, if they remained as one block, and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world." 

Otto von Bismark, Chancellor of Germany 1876

The awareness of the absurd and unjust power relations resulting from private banking monopolies was also kept alive and well by the next generations of politicians and intellectuals.

In 1829, Andrew Jackson, the 7^th President of the United States (1829 – 1837) said to Congress: "You are a den of vipers and thieves and I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out. If Congress has the right to issue paper money, it was given them to be used by themselves, and not to be delegated to individuals or corporations."  On July 10, 1832 President Jackson vetoed the charter renewal of the Second Bank of the United States, stating: "If Congress has the right to issue paper money currency, it was given to them to be used by the government and not to be delegated to individuals or corporations."  The Second Bank of the United States was in no sense a national bank but rather a privately held banking cooperation.

In a letter to Colonel E. Mandell House, dated November 21, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32^nd President of the United States (1933 – 1945), wrote: "The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson."

In 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35^th President of the United States (from 1961 until his assassination in 1963), said at Columbia University: "The high office of President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the American's freedom, and before I leave office I must inform the citizen of his plight. We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence…"

Former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and former senator John Danforth (born 1936), declared: "I have never seen more Senators express discontent with their jobs. I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices in doing something terrible and unforgivable to our wonderful country. Deep down in our heart, we know that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected."

In 1976, Congressman Larry P. McDonald (1935 – 1983) said: "The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government, all under their control. Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent."

On December 6, 1921 the American inventor and businessman Thomas Edison stated in the New York Times:

"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, also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who contribute directly in some useful way. It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people."

Many years before, Abraham Lincoln, who was the 16^th President of the United States, stated:

"The government should create, issue and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers..... The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the Government's greatest creative opportunity. By the adoption of these principles, the long-felt want for a uniform medium will be satisfied. The taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest, discounts and exchanges. The financing of all public enterprises, the maintenance of stable government and ordered progress, and the conduct of the Treasury will become matters of practical administration. The people can and will be furnished with a currency as safe as their own government. Money will cease to be the master and become the servant of humanity. Democracy will rise superior to the money power."  Abraham Lincoln Senate document 23, Page 91. 1865.

President Lincoln allowed in 1862 the printing of ‘Greenbacks’, legal tender U.S. Notes ‘backed by the credit of the government’.

In a letter to Colonel William F. Elkins, dated November 21, 1864, Abraham Lincoln expressed his concern about the future of his country:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."

In April 2009, Ellen Brown, an American attorney and author of Web of Debt, wrote in Revive Lincoln’s Monetary Policy: an Open Letter to President Obama, referring to President Abraham Lincoln: 

(…) “Today we the people are starting to understand our banking and monetary system, and we are shocked, dismayed, and furious at what we are discovering. The wizard behind the curtain turns out to be a small group of men pulling levers and dials, creating an illusory money scheme that, behind all the talk and bravado, is mere smoke and mirrors. These levers are controlled by a privately-owned, unaccountable central bank called the Federal Reserve, which has recently dispensed billions if not trillions in funds to its banker cronies, without revealing where these monies are going even under Congressional inquiry or in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. As Chris Powell pointed out recently in conjunction with an FOIA request brought by Bloomberg News, which the Fed declined to comply with:

"Any government that can disburse $2 trillion secretly, without any accountability, is not a democratic government. It is government of, by, and, for the bankers." source

“There was a time when private central bankers were the heavyweights in control, able to run their ultra-secret agenda with impunity; but that era is coming to an end. The bankers are scrambling, trying to patch up their crumbling creations with schemes, bailouts and sleight of hand. That effort, however, must ultimately prove futile.

(…) “The bankers are on the run, feverishly trying to use the collapse of the current system to steer us toward an "Amero"-style North American currency, or a one-world private banking system and privately-issued global currency that they and only they control. We the people will not accept those solutions, however, no matter how bad things get. We demand real solutions that empower us, not enslave us.

“Abraham Lincoln had such a solution. President Obama, you can finally bring his monetary solution to fruition. Manifest the vision of Lincoln, Jefferson, Madison and Franklin, and we the people will make sure you are placed in the pantheon of our greatest leaders and are revered for all time. America's greatest days can still be ahead of us; but for this to happen, we need to expose and root out the deceptive banking scheme that would enslave us to a future of debt and increasing homelessness in this great country our forefathers founded. The time has come for democracy to rise superior to a private banking cartel and take back the power to create money once again. Such a transformation would represent the most epochal and empowering shift that humanity has ever seen.”  Ellen Brown, Yes! Online, April, 2009  Link to full text

Concerning Lincoln’s monetary policy, the following editorial of unknown authorship is said to have been published in The London Times in 1865:

"If that mischievous financial policy which had its origin in the North American Republic during the late war in that country, should become indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off its debts and be without debt. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized governments of the world. The brains and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe." source

In 1865, President Lincoln was assassinated. According to historian W. Cleon Skousen, There was right after the Civil War “considerable talk about reviving Lincoln's brief experiment with the Constitutional monetary system. Had not the European money-trust intervened, it would have no doubt become an established institution."

“The institution that became established instead was the Federal Reserve, a privately-owned central bank given the power in 1913 to print Federal Reserve Notes (or dollar bills) and lend them to the government. The government was submerged in a debt that has grown exponentially since, until it is now an unrepayable $11 trillion”, says Ellen Brown. source

Ellen Brown’s websites: www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com

The Federal Reserve Act

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28^th President of the United States (from March 4, 1913 to March 4, 1921). Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to establish and promote the League of Nations. Although hailed by some, his Presidency was an enormous step backwards in relation to human rights. As a result of his policy, black people had more rights in the US in 1900 than they did from 1918 to 1967.

In ‘The New Freedom. A Call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People’ (1913) Wilson formulated his pledges of antitrust legislation, tariff revision, and reform in banking and currency matters. He wrote among other things:

 “Shall we try to get the grip of monopoly away from our lives, or shall we not? Shall we withhold our hand and say monopoly is inevitable, that all that we can do is to regulate it? Shall we say that all that we can do is to put government in competition with monopoly and try its strength against it? Shall we admit that the creature of our own hands is stronger than we are? We have been dreading all along the time when the combined power of high finance would be greater than the power of the government. Have we come to a time when the President of the United States or any man who wishes to be the President must doff his cap in the presence of this high finance, and say, ‘You are our inevitable master, but we will see how we can make the best of it?’” (…)

“We are at the parting of the ways. We have, not one or two or three, but many, established and formidable monopolies in the United States. We have, not one or two, but many, fields of endeavor into which it is difficult, if not impossible, for the independent man to enter. We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world—no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.”

www.gutenberg.org

With a view to end this dominance, President Wilson signed into law The Federal Reserve Act of December 23, 1913. Shortly after signing this Act, Woodrow Wilson stated, very disillusioned about what soon turned out to be a major blunder:

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men.”

For nearly 80 years, the U.S. had been operating without a central banking system. “Central Banking began with the Bank of England in the 1690s, spread to the rest of the Western world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and finally was imposed upon the United States by banking cartelists via the Federal Reserve System of 1913. Particularly enthusiastic about the Central Bank were the investment bankers, such as the Morgans, who pioneered the cartel idea, and who by this time had expanded into commercial banking”, wrote the American economist Murray Newton Rothbard. Those investment bankers wielded “powerful and baleful political influence (…) in the 19^th and 20^th centuries: in particular, the Rothschilds in Western Europe, and Jay Cooke and the House of Morgan in the United States. By the late nineteenth century, the Morgans took the lead in trying to pressure the U.S. government to cartelize industries they were interested in – first railroads and then manufacturing: to protect these industries from the winds of free competition, and to use the power of government to enable these industries to restrict production and raise prices.” 

The Fed “acts as a bankers’ bank. Banks keep checking deposits at the Fed and these deposits constitute their reserves, on which they can and do pyramid ten times the amount in checkbook money.” Link to full text (Fractional Reserve Banking)

Video: The Founding of the Federal Reserve

Congressman Charles August Lindbergh was one of the first to criticize the private character of the Federal Reserve System and the inherent problem of private banks working against the best interests of the citizens, stating: "This Federal Reserve Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President Wilson signs this bill, the invisible government of the monetary power will be legalized. The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency bill."  (…) “From now on, depressions will be scientifically created” and “The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That Board administers the finance system by authority of a purely profiteering group. The system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people’s money”. Link to source

John Francis Hylan, Democrat and Mayor of New York City (1917 - 1925), and others like William Jenings Bryan and the above cited Charles Lindbergh Sr. argued that an ‘invisible government’ exercised its control of the US Government through the Federal Reserve. Hylan made the following speech in 1922:

“The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation. To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually runs the United States government for their own selfish purposes.”

“They practically control both parties, write political platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business.”

“These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen and seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection.”  source: wikipedia/ John Francis Hylan

These conclusions of J.F. Hylan correspond to a large extend to the findings of “Federal Reserve Directors: A Study of Corporate and Banking Influence. Staff Report, Committee on Banking, Currency and Housing, House of Representatives, 94^th Congress, 2^nd Session, August 1976.” Link to source

"Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States”,  Senator Barry Goldwater (1909 – 1998) stated.

"The Federal Reserve is answerable to no one." 

Ronald Reagan, 40^th President of the United States, (1981 – 1989).

"When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover the check, but when the Federal Reserve writes a check there is no bank deposit on which that check is drawn. When the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money."

 "Putting it Simply", Boston Federal Reserve Bank 

 

"Neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities, intrinsically; a 'dollar' bill is just a piece of paper. Deposits are merely book entries."

Modern Money Mechanics Workbook, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 1975 

The Federal Reserve System has an official statute of ‘an independent government institution that has private aspects.’ As such, it has “the authority to act on its own without prior approval from Congress or the President. The Members of its Board of Governors are appointed for long, staggered times, limiting the influence of day-to-day political considerations.”

Section 5 of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 states that the Federal Reserve Banks (-12 in total-) through stock issuance by private Member Banks. This issue of private ownership is “one of controversy for many reasons”.  source wikipedia

On its website the FED explains: “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.”

Link to a short official ‘History of the Federal Reserve’.

Wright Patman, Democratic Congressman (1928-1976) and Chairman of the Committee on Banking & Currency (1963-1975), said: "In the U.S. today, we have in effect two governments. We have the duly constituted government, then we have an independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government in the Federal Reserve, operating the money powers which are reserved to congress by the Constitution. (…) "I have never yet had anyone who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal Government borrowing the use of its own money . . . . I believe the time will come when people will demand that this be changed. I believe the time will come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone else connected with the Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an idiotic system to continue."

According to American political writer Eustace Mullins "The increase in the assets of the Federal Reserve banks from 143 million dollars in 1913 to 45 billion dollars in 1949 went directly to the private stockholders of the [federal reserve] banks."

In January 2009, democratic member of the US House of Representatives, Dennis John Kucinich, stated in Congress: “The Federal Reserve is no more federal than Federal Express....If we could take that (money-issuing) power back and place the Federal Reserve under Treasury, we start to be in a position of being able to control monetary policy on behalf of the United States people." See Video link

On February 4, 2009, Republican Congressman Ron Paul introduced before the US House of Representatives the Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act, H.R. 833: “legislation to restore financial stability to America’s economy by abolishing the Federal Reserve.”

Ron Paul writes: “Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, middle and working-class Americans have been victimized by a boom-and-bust monetary policy. In addition, most Americans have suffered a steadily eroding purchasing power because of the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies. This represents a real, if hidden, tax imposed on the American people.

From the Great Depression, to the stagflation of the seventies, to the current economic crisis caused by the housing bubble, every economic downturn suffered by this country over the past century can be traced to Federal Reserve policy. The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial “boom” followed by a recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts.

With a stable currency, American exporters will no longer be held hostage to an erratic monetary policy. Stabilizing the currency will also give Americans new incentives to save as they will no longer have to fear inflation eroding their savings. Those members concerned about increasing America’s exports or the low rate of savings should be enthusiastic supporters of this legislation.” Link to full text here and here

Dr. Ron Paul about the Federal Reserve on Youtube

Economist Alan Greenspan, who was Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, wrote in ‘Gold and Economic Freedom’ (1966): “If banks can continue to loan money indefinitely — it was claimed — there need never be any slumps in business. And so the Federal Reserve System was organized in 1913. It consisted of twelve regional Federal Reserve banks nominally owned by private bankers, but in fact government sponsored, controlled, and supported. Credit extended by these banks is in practice (though not legally) backed by the taxing power of the federal government. Technically, we remained on the gold standard; individuals were still free to own gold, and gold continued to be used as bank reserves. But now, in addition to gold, credit extended by the Federal Reserve banks (”paper” reserves) could serve as legal tender to pay depositors.”

Economist and Nobel Prize Winner Milton Friedman, who said that he would prefer to “abolish the Federal Reserve and replace it with a computer” source, stated that “the Federal Reserve definitely caused the Great Depression by contracting the amount of money in circulation by one-third from 1929 to 1933.” source Ben Shalom Bernanke, who succeeded Alan Greenspan on February 1, 2006 as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, replied: “I would like to say to Milton (Friedman) and Anna (J. Schwartz): Regarding the Great Depression, You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again”… source

Between 1933 and 1938, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated the New Deal, a sequence of central economic planning and economic stimulus programs with the goal of tackling the big problems caused by the Great Depression. The ‘First New Deal’ of 1933 included the suspension of the gold standard for United States Currency and the mandate for anyone holding significant amounts of gold coinage “to exchange it for a fixed price of US dollars, after which the US would no longer pay gold on demand for the dollar, and gold would no longer be considered valid legal tender for debts in private and public contracts.” source wikipedia This gold confiscation “was argued to be unconstitutional, but Roosevelt’s executive order asserts authority to do so based on the ‘War Time Powers Act’ of 1917.”  source wikipedia This order “made it a criminal offense for U.S. citizens to own or trade gold anywhere in the world, with exceptions for some jewelry and collector's coins. These prohibitions were relaxed starting in 1964.  Gold certificates were again allowed for private investors on April 24, 1964, although the obligation to pay the certificate holder on demand in gold specie would not be honored. By 1975 Americans could again freely own and trade gold.” The U.S. Gold Reserve Act of 1934 “required that all gold and gold certificates held by the Federal Reserve be surrendered and vested in the sole title of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.” (…) The Act also changed the nominal price of gold from $20.67 per troy ounce to $35 per ounce.” source wikipedia

During the first three weeks of July, 1944 the delegates of all 44 Allied Nations (World War II), who were gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, deliberated upon and signed the Bretton Wood Agreements. This led to the establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which today is part of the World Bank Group. These agreements also included a return to the gold standard as part of “an international monetary system based on convertibility of the various national currencies into a U.S. dollar that was in turn convertible into gold. It also prevented countries from manipulating their currency's value to gain an edge in international trade.”  Source wikipedia The  Chief features of the Bretton Woods System were “an obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rate of its currency within a fixed value –plus or minus one percent- in terms of gold and the ability of the IMF to bridge temporary imbalances of payments.” The US dollar became the ‘reserve currency’ of the world economy. The states which had signed the agreement had lost a part of their authority by pegging the value of their national currency to the value of the dollar. This “caused considerable financial stress in the world economy.” Source wikipedia Because the dollar was pegged to gold in its reserve currency role, it was supposed to be ‘as good as gold’, and therefore “to be treated as a reserve asset just like gold,” Paul Stevens wrote in Bretton Woods: 1944-1971. Stevens called this ‘limited gold – unlimited dollars’ combination a formula for disaster… “In the face of increasing financial strain, the system collapsed in 1971, after the United States unilaterally terminated convertibility of the dollars to gold.” Source wikipedia

By the early 1970s the Vietnam War and increased domestic spending accelerated inflation through which the United States for the first time in the 20^th century “was running not just a balance of payments deficit but also a trade deficit. The crucial turning point was 1970, which saw U.S. gold coverage of the paper dollar deteriorate from 55% to 22%. (…) In 1971, more and more dollars were printed (an increase of 10%) and then sent overseas, to pay for the nation’s military expenditures and private investments.” In May 1971, West Germany “left the Bretton Woods system, unwilling to deflate its own currency to prop up the dollar. In the next three months, the dollar dropped 7.5% against the deutsche mark. Because of the excessive printing of paper dollars, and the negative balance of U.S. trade, other nations were increasingly demanding fulfillment of America’s ‘promise to pay’. That is, they were demanding gold from the U.S. in exchange for paper dollars.” On August 5 1971, President Nixon “canceled the Bretton Woods system and stopped the direct convertibility of the United States dollar to gold.” Unusually, the decision was made “without consulting members of the international monetary system or even with his own State Department, and was soon dubbed the Nixon shock.” (…)”On August 9, Switzerland also took its currency from Bretton Woods.” (…) “By March 1976, all of the world’s major currencies were floating –in other words, exchange rates were no longer the principal target used by governments to administer monetary policy.” Source Wikipedia

In 1993, Joel Kurtzman, a former editor of Harvard Business Review began to refer to this change in the economic nature of money  following the ‘Nixon shock’ by calling it the death of money. “The concept of ‘death of money’ also refers to the fundamental change in the nature of business transactions based on a complex, electronically managed system of valuations used for stocks, bonds, insurance policies and other financial contracts that go beyond the simple, historic notion of money representing physical reserves. A simple view of this concept is that if everyone decides to cash out their bank account on a single day, there is no longer enough paper money to represent it. (…) Kurtzman discussed how the new electronic financial economy allows for new trends in securitization, e.g. the inclusion of mortgage backed securities into compound and complex financial instruments and warned of possible financial reversals.” Source wikipedia

When Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 4, 1979 to November28, 1990, and Ronald Reagan, President of the United States from January 20, 1981 to January 20, 1989, got in power, the West had to contend with economic stagnation. It was the period of Generation X and their ‘No Future’ slogan. The unemployment rate was high, the public debts were increasing fast and governments were cutting down on spending. But Thatcher and Reagan agreed with a wave of privatization and deregulation, which continued in many countries at the beginning of the 21^st century. “Countries in the third world were forced to open their borders to allow more trade activity. The ‘free market fundamentalism’ got all the space in the world.” This was the start of over 25 years of economic growth. As from the beginning of the 1990s, there was a whole generation in the West “growing up with the idea that there would always be work for them and that the economy always would recover from a dip.” As a result of the deregulation, the financial sector was booming, stimulated by new technological developments. “Thanks to financial innovations, a greater amount of venture capital became available that was invested in young, technologically very promising companies. The stock markets were flourishing, the house prices were rising and people were tempted by this all to consume more.” New York and London, both rather impoverished cities at the beginning of the 1980s, “became the financial capitals of the world, examples of success and luxury. (…) Brilliant mathematicians and physicists chose for a financial career. But through their complex mathematical investment products which were not comprehended by their bosses, those whizzkids finally put the prosperity of the whole world at stake.” These self-called “masters of the universe” now are “begging for a multi-billion dollar support in the political centers where they had lobbied for many years to obtain the least possible governmental interference and the least possible rules.” Since August 2007 their financial world is staggering blindly. Many financial institutions became bankrupt, must be (partially) nationalized or were barely able to survive. “For the first time since the 1930s the financial crisis has turned into a global recession.” But, as showed by recent research from the economists Reinhart and Rogoff, “no less than 139 financial crises have hit the world between 1973 and 1997, 41 of these took place in western, developed countries.”  Meanwhile governments are creating a new soap bubble. The American government alone has planned to issue in 2009 new government bonds for an amount of $ 1.500 to 2.000 billion, “to be able to save the financial sector and to finance other stimulus packages.” The entire market of American government bonds actually (March 2009) comes to be “approximately $ 5.000 billion, so an enormous cut in the price of bonds can be expected.” Moreover, as the Federal Reserve is maintaining a zero interest rate policy since the end of 2008, just like Japan did for years in its own fight against deflation, it seems to have no other option than to ‘print’ money to fight the crisis. So, completely in accordance with the rules of this particular financial art, the Fed just decided to ‘print’ an additional 1.2 trillion dollars out of thin air on March 18, 2009, to buy government bonds and mortgage-related securities in order to lower borrowing costs for home mortgages and other types of loans, thereby stimulating economic activity. Of course, “this could increase inflation spectacularly”. (…) “Worthless government bonds or a related rapidly devaluating dollar are a nightmare for rising countries that have a big trade surplus with the U.S., like China. They have large dollar reserves which they’ve reinvested in American government bonds.” The total amount of government debt in the United States evolved from 160 % of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 1929 to 260 % in 1932. By August 2007, it was expanded to 385 %, and a rapid further increase to more than 500 % is expected. Though not only the U.S., but the whole western world has to contend with increasing government debts.

Source & Quotes: ‘Bankroet. Hoe bankiers ons in de ergste recessie sinds de Grote Depressie stortten.’ Egbert Kalse & Daan van Lent, published by Prometheus / NRC: Bankiers hebben met onze welvaart gegokt: March 28,  2009 / http://www.volkskrantblog.nl/bericht/254374 : Bankiers hebben met onze welvaart gegokt, April 01, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/18/AR2009031802283.html Fed to Pump $ 1.2 Trillion into Markets, Washington Post, March 19, 2009

New York Times, December 16, 2008, Fed Cuts Key Rate to a Record Low

Who’s got the power?

“The Congress shall have power (…) to coin money and regulate the value thereof.”

Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution (September 17, 1787)

"The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes."

Benjamin Disraeli (1804 – 1881), First Prime Minister of Britain 

"There is no more direct way to capture control of a nation than through its credit and money system." 

Phillip A. Benson, President of American Bankers' Association, 1939 

"Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce . . . and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate."

James Garfield, 20^th President of the United States. (1881)

 

In Beyond Greed and Scarcity, economist, author, monetary and alternative currency specialist Bernard Lietaer says in an interview by Sarah van Gelder:

“For one thing, power has shifted irrevocably away from governments toward the financial markets. When a government does something not to the liking of the market - like the British in '91, the French in '94 or the Mexicans in '95 - nobody sits down at the table and says "you shouldn't do this." A monetary crisis simply manifests in that currency. So a few hundred people, who are not elected by anybody and have no collective responsibility whatsoever, decide what your pension fund is worth - among other things. (…)

“George Soros, who's made part of his living doing what I used to do - speculating in currencies - concluded, "Instability is cumulative, so that eventual breakdown of freely floating exchanges is virtually assured." Joel Kurtzman, ex-editor at the Harvard Business Review, entitles his latest book: The Death of Money and forecasts an imminent collapse due to speculative frenzy.

“Just to see how this could happen: all the OECD Central Banks' reserves together represent about $640 billion. So in a crisis situation, if all the Central Banks were to agree to work together (which they never do) and if they were to use all their reserves (which is another thing that never happens) they have the funds to control only half the volume of a normal day of trading. In a crisis day, that volume could easily double or triple, and the total Central Bank reserves would last two or three hours.

“If that happens, we would suddenly be in a very different world. In 1929, the stock market crashed, but the gold standard held. The monetary system held. Here, we are dealing with something that's more fundamental. The only precedent I know of is the Roman Empire collapse, which ended Roman currency. That was, of course, at a time when it took about a century and a half for the breakdown to spread through the empire; now it would take a few hours.”

Now just let’s see what some famous bankers have to say themselves about the real power that’s imputed to them.

"The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing."

William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England in 1694, then a privately owned bank.

"This truth is well known among our principal men now engaged in forming an imperialism of Capital to govern the world. By dividing the voters through the political party system, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance. Thus by discreet action we can secure for ourselves what has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished."  Sir Denison Miller (1860 – 1923), the first governor of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

"Banking was conceived in iniquity, and was born in sin. The Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen, they will create enough deposits, to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers, and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits. Sir Josiah Stamp, President of the Bank of England in the 1920s, then the second richest man in Britain.

"Capital must protect itself in every way. Debts must be collected, mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible. When through the process of law the common people lose their homes, they will become more docile and more easily governed through the strong arm of government applied by a central power of wealth under leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principal men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd. It is thus by discreet action we can secure for ourselves that which has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished." U.S. Banker's Association Magazine, 1924 

"I am afraid that ordinary citizens will not like to be told that the banks can, and do, create and destroy money; and they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of governments and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people." Reginald McKenna (1863 – 1943), Chairman Midland Bank London 

"Those few who can understand the system (check book money and credit) will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on it favors, that there will be little opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear it burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests."  The Rothschild Brothers of London, 1863

"Give me the power to issue a nation's money; then I do not care who makes the law." Amschel Mayor James Rotschild

"Our goal is gradually to absorb the wealth of the world."  Cecil Rhodes on "The secret banking cabal". Cecil Rhodes (1853 – 1902) was “an English-born businessman, mining magnate, and politician in South Africa. He was the founder of the diamond company De Beers, which today markets 40% of the world's rough diamonds and at one time marketed 90%. He was an ardent believer in colonialism and imperialism, and was the founder of the state of Rhodesia, which was named after him. Rhodesia, later Northern and Southern Rhodesia, eventually became Zambia and  Zimbabwe respectively.”

"For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."  David Rockefeller, in his Autobiography, "Memoirs", page 405

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The super-national sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."  David Rockefeller, then Chairman of Chase Manhattan bank, speaking at the June, 1991 Bilderberger meeting in Baden Baden, Germany

"We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nation will accept the New World Order." David Rockefeller.

David Rockefeller Sr. is an American banker, statesman, globalist and the current patriarch of the Rockefeller Family. He has been chairman of the Chase (Manhattan) Bank from 1969 to 1981.

“Under his stewardship the Chase spread internationally and became a central pillar in the world's financial system, including being the leading bank for the United Nations. It has a global network of correspondent banks that has been estimated to number about 50,000, the largest of any bank in the world. A notable achievement was the setting up of the first branch of an American bank at One Karl Marx Square, near the Kremlin, in the then Soviet Union, in 1973. This was also the year Rockefeller traveled to China, resulting in his bank becoming the National Bank of China's first correspondent bank in the United States.” (…)

“The Chase Bank has also had a strong connection to the World Bank, as three presidents (John J. McCloy, Eugene R. Black, Sr. and George Woods) all worked at Chase before taking up positions at the international bank. A fourth president, James D. Wolfensohn, is also closely associated with Rockefeller, serving as a director of the Rockefeller Foundation, amongst other family-created institutions.^”

“Rockefeller has also for many years hosted annual luncheons at the family's Westchester County Pocantico estate for the world's finance ministers and central bank governors, following the annual Washington meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. These luncheons were held at the Playhouse”   source: wikipedia

In 1949 David Rockefeller joined the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as its youngest-ever director. “The CFR is “an American nonpartisan foreign policy membership organization founded in 1921.” Some international journalists “believe it to be the most powerful private organization to influence United States foreign policy.” source

In 1954 David Rockefeller became a founding member of the Bilderberg Group, ‘an unofficial annual invitation-only conference of around 130 guests, most of whom are persons of influence in the fields of politics, business and banking.’ source A lifetime globalist, due to the strong influence of his father, he ‘has been a consistent attendee through the decades and has been a member of the "steering committee", which determines the invitation list for the upcoming annual meetings. These have frequently included prominent national figures who have gone on to be elected as political leaders of their respective countries.’ source

In 1965, David Rockefeller and “other senior businessmen formed the Council of the Americas to stimulate and support economic integration in the Americas. The Council subsequently played a key role in the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).” source

Dissatisfied with the failure of the Bilderberg Group to include Japan, David Rockefeller decided to form in July 1973 the Trilateral Commission (TC), “a non-governmental, policy-oriented discussion group of about 350 distinguished citizens from Western Europe, North America and Pacific Asia formed to encourage mutual understanding and closer cooperation among these three regions on common problems.” source “This Commission was to come under media scrutiny when it was later disclosed that Carter appointed 26 former Commission members (who must resign before taking up government positions) to senior positions in his Administration. Moreover, it also came out that Carter himself was a former Trilateral member. (The Clinton Administration, by contrast, had close to a dozen Commission members, including Clinton himself; both Gerald Ford and George Bush Sr. were also Trilateralists.)” source

"The Trilateral Commission is international and is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power: Political, Monetary, Intellectual, and Ecclesiastical." U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater (1909 – 1998)

David Rockefeller was also Class A director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

About the IMF and the World Bank

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) at the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, U.S. in July 1944. “The 45 governments represented at that conference sought to build a framework for economic cooperation that would avoid a repetition of the vicious circle of competitive devaluations that had contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s.”  source

The World Bank came into existence on December 27, 1945, following the international ratification of the Bretton Woods agreements. Their “mission evolved from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development as facilitator of post-war reconstruction and development to the present day mandate of worldwide poverty alleviation in close coordination with” their “affiliate, the International Development Association, and other members of the World Bank Group.” source

The IMF and the World Bank “have been empowered by the governments which control it (led by the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Germany, France, Canada, and Italy -- the "Group of 7," which holds over 40% of the votes on their boards) with imposing economic austerity policies in the countries of the so-called "Third World" or "global South." Once Southern countries build up large external debts, as most have, they cannot get credit or cash anywhere else and are forced to go to these international institutions and accept whatever conditions are demanded of them. None of the countries has emerged from their debt problems; indeed most countries now have much higher levels of debt than when they first accepted IMF/World Bank ‘assistance’,"  writes ’50 Years is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice. This coalition of over 200 U.S. grassroots, women’s, solidarity, faith-based, policy, social- and economic-justice, youth, labor and development organizations dedicated to the profound transformation of the World Bank and the IMF, was founded in 1994, on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of the World Ban k ad IMF. “The Network works in solidarity with over 185 international partner organizations in more than 65 countries. Through education and action, the Network is committed to transforming the international financial institutions' policies and practices, to ending the outside imposition of neo-liberal economic programs, and to making the development process democratic and accountable.” Link to website

According to Walden Bello, senior analyst at Focus on the Global South, a program of Chulalongkorn University’s Social Research Institute, and columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus, the IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs destroyed African agriculture. And whether in Latin America, Asia or Africa, the story has been the same: “the destabilization of peasant producers by a one-two punch of IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs that gutted government investment in the countryside followed by the massive influx of subsidized U.S. and European Union agricultural imports after the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture pried open markets. (…)At the time of decolonization in the 1960s, Africa was not just self-sufficient in food but was actually a net food exporter, its exports averaging 1.3 million tons a year between 1966 -70. Today, the continent  imports 25% of its food, with almost every country being a net food importer. Hunger and famine have become recurrent phenomena, with the last three years alone seeing food emergencies break out in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Southern Africa, and Central Africa. Agriculture is in deep crisis, and the causes are many, including civil wars and the spread of HIV-AIDS. However, a very important part of the explanation was the phasing out of government controls and support mechanisms under the structural adjustment programs to which most African countries were subjected as the price for getting IMF and World Bank assistance to service their external debt. Instead of triggering a virtuous spiral of growth and prosperity, structural adjustment saddled Africa with low investment, increased unemployment, reduced social spending, reduced consumption, and low output, all combining to create a vicious cycle of stagnation and decline.” Link to full text

During the G20 summit on April 2, 2009, in London the IMF has been ‘one of the biggest beneficiaries’. The G20 leaders agreed on “$500 billion for the IMF to lend to struggling economies, $250 billion to boost world trade, $250 billion for a new ‘overdraft facility’ countries can draw on §in the IMF’s currency, so-called Spacial Drawing Rights), and $100 billion that international development banks can lend to the poorest countries.”  The IMF will also “raise $6 billion from selling gold reserves to increase lending for the poorest countries.”  Source BBC News  The Economist wrote about this agreement: “Significantly, the IMF will print $250 billion of its own currency, known as special drawing rights, allocating sums to its members according to their quotas. It is not clear whether this can be redirected from rich countries to poor ones.” source (The G20 outcome is better than nothing, but can the IMF save the world?, April 2, 2009) This made Geert Noels, author of  ‘Econoshock’, conclude the following: “So, we all cheer about the G-20, because of the magical 1 Trln USD number that makes the headlines. Now it appears that a big junk is self-created by the IMF. Also the IMF is printing money at a high beat. The whole world is now printing money to solve the crisis, and the world leaders are cheering.” source

“The G8 really is this group of countries that represent the biggest multinational of corporations in this world and really serving their behest”.

John Perkins

John Perkins is an American economist and author of ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’ and ‘The Secret History of the American Empire’. As an Economic Hit Man, his job was “to convince Third World countries to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development—loans that were much larger than needed—and to guarantee that the development projects were contracted to U.S. corporations like Halliburton and Bechtel. Once these countries were saddled with huge debts, the U.S. government and the international aid agencies allied with it were able to control these economies and to ensure that oil and other resources were channeled to serve the interests of building a global empire.” source

Watch his testimony on Youtube in

‘How to Destabilize Countries Legally’ Part 1 & Part 2

Crisis 2008 & G20 Summit London

Once again:

"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the People vs. the Banks."

 Lord Acton, Lord Chief Justice of England, 1875 

"The one aim of these financiers is world control by the creation of inextinguishable debts."

Henry Ford 
 

Almost one hundred years after President Wilson’s alarming statements about the balance of power of that time between politics and the haute-finance and more than two centuries after the initial struggle of the Founding Fathers to create United States, independent from the international banking cartel, Bob Dylan said in a recent interview with Bill Flanagan: “Politics is entertainment. It’s a sport. It’s for the well groomed and well heeled. The impeccably dressed. Party animals. Politicians are interchangeable.” And while questioning what’s politics got to do with the democratic process, he added: “Politics creates more problems than it solves. It can be counter-productive. The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don’t think they have titles.” (March 2009, from an interview by Bill Flanagan)

Looking back from this point of view at the G20 summit on April 2, 2009 in London, the enthusiasm about the achieved consensus and the so-called historic turning point in the pursuit of world economic recovery might just be a bit theatrical because there are of course no indications at all that there will be touched at the real power of those ‘small groups of dominant men’. So this is all about an above all / at least very questionable attempt to recover a financial system that has excluded and suppressed the majority of the world population during the past three centuries and will keep on excluding and suppressing people for as long as it will exist.

“All attempts for international legislation disappear into thin air when they ignore the extraordinary explosion of inequality in the world, of which the most important cause lies in the obscene redistribution key in favour of capital owners”, writes Eric Goeman, spokesman of Attac Vlaanderen. (…)  “In the coming months the workers and the unemployed, the migrants and the poor all over the planet, will more than ever have to join in solidarity to avoid what the G20 really has decided in London: to let the common people pay the crisis caused by banks, shareholders, speculators and hedge funds.”

At the G20 summit our political leaders have mainly confirmed their obedience to the laws of the non-democratic financial powers and renewed their faith in the core of a financial capitalism that urges to a continuous economic growth and short-term thinking, this “astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone”, to quote John Maynard Keynes. “We are prepared to do whatever is necessary to restore the world economy to the growth it needs”, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised. Mr. Barack Obama gave a speech about the fundamentally interconnected global economy and the human dimensions of the current crisis: “… people around the world who were already desperate before the crisis may find themselves even more desperate afterwards”, he said.

Former Chief Economist of the World Bank, 2001 Nobel Prize Winner and professor at Columbia University, Joseph E. Stiglitz, states in an article in the New York Times that the Obama administration’s proposal to deal with America’s ailing banks is “a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win – and taxpayers lose. Treasury hopes to get out of the mess by replicating the flawed system that the private sector used to bring the world crashing down, with a proposal marked by overleveraging in the public sector, excessive somplexity, poor incentives and a lack of transparency. (…) In theory, the administration’s plan is based on letting the market determine the prices of the banks’ “toxic assets” – including outstanding house loans and securities based on those loans. The reality, though, is that the market will not be pricing the toxic assets themselves, but options on those assets.” Under the plan of U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, “the government would provide about 92 % of the money to buy the asset but would stand to receive only 50 % of any gains, and would absorb almost all of the losses. Some partnership!- (…) The banks get to choose the loans and securities that they want to sell. They will want to sell the worst assets, and especially the assets that they think the market overestimates (and thus is willing to pay too much for). (…)The real issue is that the banks made bad loans in a bubble and were highly leveraged. They have lost their capital, and this capital has to be replaced. Paying fair market values for the assets will not work. Only by overpaying for the assets will the banks be adequately recapitalized. But overpaying for the assets simply shifts the losses to the government. In other words, the Geithner plan works only if and when the taxpayer loses big time. Some Americans are afraid that the government might temporarily “nationalize” the banks, but that option would be preferable to the Geithner plan. (…) What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a “partnership” in which one partner robs the other. And such partnerships — with the private sector in control — have perverse incentives, worse even than the ones that got us into the mess. (…) We are already suffering from a crisis of confidence. When the high costs of the administration’s plan become apparent, confidence will be eroded further. At that point the task of recreating a vibrant financial sector, and resuscitating the economy, will be even harder.” From ‘Obama’s Erzats Capitalism’,by Joseph Stiglitz, March 31, 2009, New York Times. Link to full text

Ann Pettifor, executive director of Advocacy International and the author of ‘The coming first world debt crisis’, advises not to take the communiqué of the G20 leaders too seriously. “Asking the G20 leaders to rebuild international finance is ridiculous – they are the ones responsible for its collapse”, she says. source

“Ann Pettifor is right”, Mark Braund, author of ‘The Possibility of Progress’, wrote in the Guardian. “Nothing in that lengthy communiqué suggests the G20 is prepared to engage with the underlying causes of the financial crisis, nor the chronic instability and injustice that characterize the current economic system. Chief among these is the deeply flawed mechanism by which money is created.” source

According to economists from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the unprecedented burden of public debt built up by Gordon Brown will not be brought under control until 2032… source: James Kirkup, The Telegraph, April 24, 2009.

On March 31, 2009, Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry reported in Bloomberg News:

The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s.

That same day free-lance journalist, historian and economic researcher F. William Engdhal, wrote:

“US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has unveiled his long-awaited plan to put the US banking system back in order. In doing so, he has refused to tell the 'dirty little secret' of the present financial crisis. By refusing to do so, he is trying to save de facto bankrupt US banks that threaten to bring the entire global system down in a new more devastating phase of wealth destruction.The Geithner Plan, his so-called Public-Private Partnership Investment Program or PPPIP (…) is designed not to restore a healthy lending system which would funnel credit to business and consumers. Rather it is yet another intricate scheme to pour even more hundreds of billions directly to the leading banks and Wall Street firms responsible for the current mess in world credit markets without demanding they change their business model.” Link to full text

According to Paul Krugman, economist, professor at Princeton University and 2008 Nobel Prize winner, finance now has turned into the monster that ate the world economy. In his New York Times column of April 9, 2009, he advocates for making banking boring again just like it became after World War II. The banking industry that emerged at that time “was tightly regulated, far less colorful than it had been before the Depression, and far less lucrative for those who ran it.” But, “strange to say, this era of boring banking was also an era of spectacular economic progress for most Americans”, Paul Krugman writes. Now his sense is “that policy makers are still thinking mainly about rearranging the boxes on the bank supervisory organization chart. They’re not at all ready to do what needs to be done — which is to make banking boring again. Part of the problem is that boring banking would mean poorer bankers, and the financial industry still has a lot of friends in high places. But it’s also a matter of ideology: Despite everything that has happened, most people in positions of power still associate fancy finance with economic progress. Can they be persuaded otherwise? Will we find the will to pursue serious financial reform? If not, the current crisis won’t be a one-time event; it will be the shape of things to come.” Link to full text

The ECOVAproject: a sustainable solution to create a stable monetary system

“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”

John Maynard Keynes

"The youth who can solve the money question will do more for the world than all the professional soldiers of history." 

Henry Ford

Though the need to pursue serious financial reform may be obvious, there is yet an even more important question that should become part of this discussion. When we focus on the essence of money as an agreement within our world ‘to use something as a medium of exchange’, while taking into account the high degree of virtuality of nowadays money creation out of thin air, then we should consider much more than just the choice between more or less regulation. Knowing that money can be wathever we make of it, we should ask our political leaders what keeps them from reforming the financial system so that it will be at the service of all people’s well-being instead of mainly guaranteeing the power and wealth of the mighty and rich. Isn’t it a bit bizarre that when it comes to the crunch, so many of our political leaders obey the laws of the non-democratic system that dominates and exploits the people instead of serving and defending the interests and well-being of the people they’re supposed to represent? The monetary alternative as proposed by the ecovaproject offers a sustainable solution to create a true free-market economy with worldwide social, economic and ecological security. This alternative is based on the value conversion of our basic or prosumers economy and the ecological capital into legal debt-free money. The proposed financial reform aims at serving the interests of all people and not just those of the non-democratic chosen financial ‘elites’. It is a true opportunity for all democratic forces in the world to recognize the value of the two most vital and perpetual elements of human economy: the prosumers economy,- which already is becoming again our main world economy -, and the ecological capital. Both are the real sustainable assets on which societies and the world community can build a stable monetary system, serving the development, the well-being and the prosperity of all the people within the limits of the ecological capacity.

The Need for Monetary Reform

“Monetary reform is the critical missing element needed to move humanity back from the brink of nuclear disaster, away from a future dominated by fraud, ugliness and warfare, toward a world of justice and beauty.”

Stephen Zarlenga, director of the American Monetary Institute (AMI) considers the American monetary system “to never have been adequately defined in law, but rather to have been put together piecemeal under pressure from particular interests, mainly banking, in pursuit of their own private advantage, without enough regard to our nation’s needs.”  That’s why the AMI proposes the American Monetary Act, “a comprehensive reform of the present United States money system” that “resolves the current banking crisis.”

According to the AMI, “monetary reform is achieved in three parts which must be enacted together for it to work.”:

“First, incorporate the Federal Reserve System into the U.S. Treasury where all new money could be created by government as money, not interest-bearing debt, and spent into circulation to promote the general welfare. The monetary system would be monitored to be neither inflationary nor deflationary.

“Second, halt the bank’s privilege to create money by ending the fractional reserve system in a gentle and elegant way. All the past monetized private credit would be converted into U.S. government money. Banks would then act as intermediaries accepting savings deposits and loaning them out to borrowers. They would do what people think they do now.

“Third, spend new money into circulation on infrastructure, including the crucial “human infrastructure” of education and healthcare needed for a growing society, starting with the $1.6 trillion that the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates is needed for infrastructure repair. This would create good jobs across our nation, re-invigorating local economies and re-funding government at all levels.”  Link to full text

Journalist Matt Taibbi about Goldman Sachs (in Rolling Stone, July 13, 2009):

The Great American Bubble Machine

‘From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they're about to do it again’

“The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.” (…)

“The bank's unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pumpanddump scam, manipulating whole economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or that market collapses, and all the time gorging itself on the unseen costs that are breaking families everywhere — high gas prices, rising consumer credit rates, halfeaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future taxes to pay off bailouts. All that money that you're losing, it's going somewhere, and in both a literal and a figurative sense, Goldman Sachs is where it's going: The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth — pure profit for rich individuals.”

“They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They've been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they're preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.” (…)

“Cap-and-trade is going to happen. Or, if it doesn't, something like it will. The moral is the same as for all the other bubbles that Goldman helped create, from 1929 to 2009. In almost every case, the very same bank that behaved recklessly for years, weighing down the system with toxic loans and predatory debt, and accomplishing nothing but massive bonuses for a few bosses, has been rewarded with mountains of virtually free money and government guarantees — while the actual victims in this mess, ordinary taxpayers, are the ones paying for it.

It's not always easy to accept the reality of what we now routinely allow these people to get away with; there's a kind of collective denial that kicks in when a country goes through what America has gone through lately, when a people lose as much prestige and status as we have in the past few years. You can't really register the fact that you're no longer a citizen of a thriving first-world democracy, that you're no longer above getting robbed in broad daylight, because like an amputee, you can still sort of feel things that are no longer there.

But this is it. This is the world we live in now. And in this world, some of us have to play by the rules, while others get a note from the principal excusing them from homework till the end of time, plus 10 billion free dollars in a paper bag to buy lunch. It's a gangster state, running on gangster economics, and even prices can't be trusted anymore; there are hidden taxes in every buck you pay. And maybe we can't stop it, but we should at least know where it's all going.”

To read the full article: click here

To watch Matt Taibbi talking about The Great American Bubble Machine: click here

Read also:

The Big Takeover (Matt Biatti, March 19, 2009, Rolling Stone): ‘The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution.’

Gore’s Dual Role in Spotlight: Advocate and Investor (The New York Times, November 2, 2009) Mr. Gore: “I believe that the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for all of us, and I have invested in it. And if you believe that the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed, you don’t know me.”

According to a new Friends of the Earth Report 'cap and trade' carbon markets have done little to reduce emissions but have been plagued by corruption and inefficiency: "The majority of the trade is carried out not between polluting industries and factories covered by carbon trading schemes, but by banks and investors who profit from speculation on the carbon markets – packaging carbon credits into increasingly complex financial products similar to the 'shadow finance' around sub-prime mortgages which triggered the recent economic crash." ‘The carbon market, mainly based in Europe, was worth $126 billion in 2008 and is predicted to mushroom to $3.1 trillion by 2020 if a global carbon market takes off.’ Source: The Guardian, November 5, 2009 / Link to video

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Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs:

“I’m doing ‘God’s work’.

We’re very important. We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle. We have a social purpose."

From The Sunday Times, November 8, 2009

“Social purpose? Those who have lost their jobs or seen their pay slashed thanks to bankers who flogged dodgy mortgages and dreamt up investments so complex not even they understood them, would gladly tell him where to stick his social purpose. But the problem is, Blankfein is a good advertisement for wealth creation. His own.” (…)

“Number 85 Broad Street, New York, NY 10004, is where the money is. All of it. It’s the site of the best cash-making machine that global capitalism has ever produced, and, some say, a political force more powerful than governments.” (…)

“The public, politicians and the press blame bankers’ reckless trading for the credit crunch and, as the most successful bank still standing, Goldman is their prime target. Here, politicians and commentators compete to denounce Goldman in ever more robust terms — ‘robber barons’, ‘economic vandals’, ‘vulture capitalists’.” (…)

“The list of former Goldman executives who have held key posts in the US administration and vital global institutions in New York and Washington alone is mind-boggling. It includes: the treasury secretary under Bill Clinton (Robert Rubin); the treasury secretary under George Bush (Hank Paulson); the current president and former chairman of the New York Federal Reserve (William Dudley and Stephen Friedman); the chief of staff to the treasury secretary Timothy Geithner (Mark Patterson); the chief of staff under President Bush (Joshua Bolten); the economic adviser to the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton (Robert Hormats); the chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (Gary Gensler); the under-secretary of state for economic, business, and agricultural affairs under President Bush (Reuben Jeffery); the past and current heads of the New York Stock Exchange (John Thain and Duncan Niederauer); the chief operating officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division (Adam Storch). Moreover, Goldman’s new top lobbyist in Washington, Michael Paese, used to work for Barney Frank, the congressman who chairs the House Financial Services Committee.” (…)

As in the US, the Goldman Sachs bank is closely linked to the British government as well. “Its former chief economist and partner, Gavyn Davies, is married to Gordon Brown’s special adviser Sue Nye. Under Tony Blair, Davies became chairman of the BBC. His successor as chief economist at Goldman, the late David Walton, was handed a seat on the Bank of England’s interest-rate setting Monetary Policy Committee. Paul Deighton, who is running the London Olympic Games organising committee, used to be Goldman’s chief operating officer. Goldman is a key banking adviser to the government.”

Read the full article at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk

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