Unmasking the Fed

Time for a real change

It's called the Federal Reserve Bank, but it's neither "federal" nor a "reserve" nor a "bank."
In actuality it's a privately owned entity that has monopolistic control over the US money supply.
Rammed down the throat of Congress during the WW I era (the same period that gave us personal income tax, the draft, and the Pentagon), the reality of the Federal Reserve has been one of the best kept secrets in America.
Until now.
Thanks to the Internet, and specifically video on the Internet, more Americans understand the reality behind the Fed than at any time since the Fed's creation.
Spread the word.
A country that leaves the control of its money supply in the hands of a few bankers is not a free country.

From Brasscheck TV

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Unmasking the Fed

Technorati Tags: BrasscheckTV,video,the federal reserve bank,banks,the fed,money

Bail Out the People Movement

Bail Out the People Movement
FIGHTBACK CONFERENCE
Draft Working Paper

Realizing the Fightback – Some Perspective and Plans

Download PDF

The following was adopted at the Jan. 17 Fightback Conference in NYC. It is a work in progress.

 

In many ways, the U.S.-financed genocidal siege of Gaza that many of us have been demonstrating against in recent weeks is a harbinger of the widening war against the workers and oppressed peoples of the planet that is sure to intensify this year. In 2009, more and more lives are going to be devastated by the biggest global economic crisis since the depression of the 1930s.

 

This crisis is the challenge of a lifetime for those of us who have made a commitment to fighting for the rights of people. What we do or fail to do will prove decisive in the coming battle over whose interests in society shall prevail.

 

The election of the first African-American president, Barack Obama, realizes a measure of Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream. But depression-level joblessness, evictions and foreclosures made worse by cutbacks, war, bigotry and racism are not a dream but a nightmare. This is a time of many contradictions. Many people feel that the new president will bring progressive change but at the same time, there are Black youth being summarily executed by police; Proposition 8; new attacks on reproductive justice; one of the biggest bigots presiding over the inauguration ceremony, the prospects of a widening war in Afghanistan and much more.

 

Part of the legacy of Dr. King is the understanding that no election or president--however historical and inspiring--can be a substitute for a mass movement in the struggle against war or for social and economic rights. There are signs that the workers understand this.

This past December the bankers and bosses got hit with a one-two punch. The workers at the Republic Windows and Doors Factory in Chicago occupied their plant to win some measure of their rights. One day after the workers victory in Chicago, the Smithfield meat processing workers in Tar Heel, North Carolina finally won their right to a union after a long and bitter struggle. These battles are part of the first chapter of the Fightback that must and will grow. How can we help the development of the Fightback?

 

There can be no honest discussion about fighting without posing the inevitable question--Is it not time to terminate the capitalist system that appears only capable of trapping the people of the world in a nightmare of endless chaos, violence, misery, suffering, inequality, oppression, environmental destruction and other crises all in the interests of the super rich? How can this question not become the burning question as the absurd rules of capitalism mandate that no effort can be spared to bailout the barons of capitalist finance even while much of the population is pushed into life-threatening poverty? No doubt this unavoidable question will be an essential and welcome part of our discussion during the conference. Even if the question is not openly addressed, it will be the subtext of our deliberations.

 

However, though its direction is most definitely radical, it is not the intention of this document to unite conference participants around a comprehensive ideological position. Nor does it attempt to analyze the capitalist crisis, or address many issues of importance to all of us. This document is a framework for planning action. read more

 

 

Stop Foreclosures and Evictions!

Bail Out the People Movement

Technorati Tags: bail out,bail outs,banks,people,homes,foreclosure,society,government,actions,activism

U.S. May Give Car Czar Power to Force Bankruptcy

By John Hughes
Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Treasury may adopt a plan that would let a car czar or the Treasury secretary force General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC into bankruptcy if the automakers don’t show they can survive without government aid, a U.S. senator said.
GM and Chrysler would be required to submit viability plans by March 31 or lose any further U.S. support, Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, told reporters in Detroit yesterday. The Treasury plan would resemble a measure passed by the U.S. House last week that was rejected by the Senate.
“I expect that the terms would be similar to the ones that were in the House bill,” Levin said. “The power rests in the hands of either the czar or the Secretary of the Treasury to force bankruptcy by March 31.”
GM and Chrysler are seeking $14 billion to keep operating through the first quarter of next year. Without an infusion of cash, the largest U.S. automaker and No. 3 Chrysler may be only weeks from insolvency.
White House spokesman Tony Fratto declined to speculate on when a plan might be finished, though he said yesterday on Bloomberg Television that the administration wants to make sure taxpayers will get their money back.

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GOP Senators 'not acting as Americans' - Michigan governor

I thought dissent is the highest form of patriotism...
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm expresses her feelings about the Republican Senators who opposed the Detroit bailout. Granholm explains, "They are not acting as Americans. They are acting with their parochial interests, and I think it is astonishing."



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Jan 17: Bail Out the People, NOT Wall Street

 

 

Endorse the Jan 17 Call to Action |  Donate | Download Leaflet | Download Call

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear activists and organizers,
The Bail Out the People Movement invites you to come together on Jan. 17, 2009 to talk, share and plan to fight back. If there was ever a time for us to recommit ourselves to Dr. King’s struggle for economic and social justice, there can hardly be any doubt that now, 80 years after his birth, is that time.
The people made history by electing Barack Obama president. Certainly that accomplishment realizes a measure of King’s dream. Yet poverty, racism and war remain a growing part of our reality--especially now, as people’s lives are being devastated by the biggest worldwide economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
In addition to the almost $1 trillion dollars that the U.S. government has wasted on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it plans to spend almost $8 trillion dollars to save the crisis-ridden economic system. Most of this fortune has been given to the big banks. An undetermined yet small percentage of that money is pledged towards an infrastructure renewal project that promises to create jobs. Yet unemployment is rising so fast that the infrastructure renewal proposal is far too little and too distant to have any impact on the depression-level joblessness that we face.
Given the remarkable scope of the government’s intervention into the financial sector of the economy to shore up the banks, it is shockingly criminal that the government hasn’t declared a moratorium on the evictions and home foreclosures that throw thousands of families onto the streets everyday.
It is no less shocking that the government has done nothing to stop the waves of cruel budget cuts that are forcing students to quit school, raising public transportation fares, making healthcare even more inaccessible for millions, and pushing more workers onto the unemployment line.
King devoted the last year of his life planning the beginning of what he considered to be the second phase of the civil rights struggle--for the right of all to a decent paying job, or an income for those unable to work. King realized that this phase of the struggle would be harder, and that because Wall Street holds the real power, no election or president--however historical and inspiring--could be a substitute for organization and mass action in the struggle for economic rights.
Whether you are an antiwar activist; a union organizer; someone who first became excited about politics because of Obama’s campaign; or someone who is losing a job, a home, the ability to go to school, healthcare, a pension and are ready unite and fight back, let’s come together and determine what we can do during the first 100 days of the new administration and beyond to help give birth to a desperately needed mass struggle to fight for all that people need to survive and thrive.

Endorse the Jan 17 Call to Action |  Donate | Download Leaflet | Download Call

Technorati Tags: bailout,bail out,activism,protests,petitions,economy,people

Naomi Klein Breaks Down the Bailout

Nation magazine columnist Naomi Klein speaks at a Nation/Brecht Forum event about the financial crisis. She offers some blunt advice to Barack Obama ("Larry Summers and Bob Rubin have got to go") and one big proposal: Nationalize Exxon.



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The Bailout Isn't Being Policed Properly

Lawmakers want the Treasury to do a better job of insisting that banking institutions sharing in the $700 billion bailout comply with limits Congress imposed on executive salaries and use the money for its intended purposes.

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Bush Administration Weakened Lending Rules Before Crash

The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.
"Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories," California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.

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The Golden State, not so golden

Less dramatic than the wildfires is
the foreclosure tidal wave that's
overtaking California.

* Over 700 families lose their home EVERY DAY

* "Nice" neighborhoods where every other house
is vacant

* Families walking away from their homes
leaving all the furnishing.

It's mind boggling...

Here's what Ground Zero of the credit
collapse looks like:

After the Fall

 

Contrary to anti-social, right wing propaganda, "sub-prime" loans were not made to help poor people get their first homes.

 

They were created to help new home builders, especially in states like California, Nevada, and Florida, sell out their new home inventory at super-inflated prices.

 

Home buyers were told by the Fed chairman...by the President...by Fox News...by every idiot financial reporter on TV...that the loans they were taking out were a "good deal."

 

The loans were very simple:

 

Very little down, very low payments and then, a few years out - when theoretically the property would be worth much more - the monthly payments would rise dramatically.

 

The idea was that long before then the home buyer would have sold out at a handsome profit and moved onto their next home.

 

Free enterprise at work.

 

It's easy to call these people foolish, but what they really are are the victims of a scam.

 

The home builders got paid lavish premiums for their inventory...real estate companies and loan brokers got rich from these sales...the Wall Street banks that packaged these scam loans and sold them throughout the world made hundreds of billions of dollars...and the psychopathic Bush administration got to fund its wars without raising taxes based on the illusion that the economy was good and could afford it.

 

Now the chickens are coming home to roost.

 

This is EXACTLY the same scam that Bush Sr. ran in the 1980s using the Savings and Loans real estate fraud bubble to pay for the Contra war and God only knows how many billions he and his fellow crooks siphoned off on the side.

 

Bush Sr. even had the same Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan running the central bank.

 

The only difference is this disaster is 100 (1000x) larger.

The Golden State, not so golden

Technorati Tags: BrasscheckTV,video,home loans,economy,banks,Bush

Paulson: Don't Use Bailout Money for Automakers

WASHINGTON – Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told Congress on Tuesday that the administration remains firmly opposed to dipping into the government's $700 billion financial bailout fund for a $25 billion rescue package for Detroit's Big Three automakers, no matter how badly they need the help."There are other ways" to help them, Paulson told...

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US nationalizes banks, candidates talk economy

Mike Whitney: Both candidates promote stimulus but real solution is higher wages

US President George W Bush made the radical announcement on Tuesday of the partial nationalization of the nine of the nation's leading banks. The move to part ownership by the government, was made to ensure that the banks won't be hoarding their bailout money, but use it to bolster lending -- to each other and to customers. The Presidential candidates also announced their economic proposals to deal with the current financial meltdown. Barack Obama spoke in Ohio on Monday: "Today, I'm also proposing a 3 month moratorium on foreclosures. If you're a bank or a lender that is getting money from the rescue plan that passed congress and your customers are making a good faith effort to make their mortgage payments and renegotiate their mortgage, you will not be able to foreclose on their home for 3 months." Obama also proposed allowing people to withdraw up to 10 thousand dollars from their retirement accounts without any penalty for the remainder of the year and 2009. A $3,000 tax credit for every new full-time job created in the US by businesses for the next 2 years. To suspend the tax on unemployment benefits for the rest of this year and next. And to have the Federal Reserve provide short-term loans to state and local governments caught in the credit crunch. John McCain made his announcement in Pennsylvania Tuesday."On my orders, the Department of the Treasury will guarantee one hundred percent of all savings accounts for a period of six months. - I will cut in half the capital gains tax on stocks purchased and held for more than a year from a rate of 15 to 7.5 percent.” McCain also proposed that for 2009 – 2010, those over 59 who take money out of their retirement accounts should only be taxed at 10%. To Raise the deduction on stock losses from $3000 to $15000, And like Obama, to suspend the tax on unemployment benefits for the rest of this year and next. The Real News Network spoke to Counterpunch columnist Mike Whitney.

US nationalizes banks, candidates talk economy

"Bush's Iraq Madness helped destroy the US financial system"

Bush's Iraq Madness helped destroy the US financial system

Another Bush adminstration accomplishment

Joseph Stiglitz won the Noble Prize and he was president of the World Bank.

He has two simple messages:

1. The Iraq War will cost the US $3 TRILLION (minimum)

2. The war is one of the chief causes behind the destruction of the US (and the world's) banking system.

This interview was recorded back in April, long before the seriousness of the banking problems were apparent and long before the multi-trillion dollar bailouts.

Technorati Tags: BrasscheckTV, media, Iraq, financial news, economy

US may partly nationalize banks

Okay, this is just scary. Perhaps necessary (I'm going to wait for Chris in Paris to wake up and give us his two cents (now only worth 1.5), but on its face, we're talking about nationalizing banks. What did the hell did the Republicans do to our country? And John McCain doesn't want to talk about the economy. I guess if you have 12 homes you have that luxury.

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