Grand Theft America

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By Stephen Lendman (about the author) Page 8 of 9 page(s)

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-- credit and interest rate default swaps;

-- commercial paper and more;

-- repackaged arcane stuff most people don't understand; even investors who bought them; like eating a stew with no idea what's in it; a recipe with no list of ingredients; learning too late it's toxic and you're in trouble;

Credit card companies as well from growing amounts of unrepayable credit card debt. The auto industry already assured of a low-interest $25 billion loan (or maybe handout) for starters. Airlines coming next. Select homebuilders and troubled companies called too big to fail. If they're too big to fail, says one observer, they're too big to exist.

EESA will give the treasury secretary near-carte blanche powers to conceal fraud and help the fraudsters, including his former company, Goldman Sachs, now in trouble. Pick and choose among others. Which will survive, and what less favored ones will go on the block at fire sale prices or disappear. Today there are 9000 banks in the country. In a decade, half or more of them may be gone.

Economist Michael Hudson calls EESA "cash for trash" and a "giveaway," not a bailout. A "transfer of wealth to insiders." A financial coup d'etat. The "largest and most inequitable (kind) since the (19th century) land giveaways to the railroad barons."

In this case, socializing losses to let fraudsters "sell out all their bad bets." Junk of all sorts: a stew of securitized assets, bad mortgages, car loans, credit card loans, student loans, anything for insiders stuck with too much of them.

A doomed scheme that will raise the debt level instead of lowering it. Enrich fraudsters with taxpayer funds. Stick the public with toxic junk. Maybe buy time before more people and markets catch on, but, in the end, cripple the economy and erode industrial capitalism with it.

Hudson is justifiably angry given the amount of fraud and deceit. The government-concocted scheme to whitewash it. Reward criminals. Harm most others, and wreck the country at the same time. He says a "kleptocratic class has taken over the economy to replace industrial capitalism....'banksers' " for FDR and earlier condemned by Jefferson with this stinging comment:

"I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs."

A half century later Lincoln said:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country....corporations (including bankers) 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."

Lincoln refused to pay bankers usurious rates to finance the Civil War and got Congress to pass the 1862 Legal Tender Act. It empowered the US Treasury to issue "greenbacks" that were interest-free because government printed its own money. When Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, the "Greenback Law" was rescinded. A new national banking act was passed, and the government once again had to pay interest to bankers.

On June 4, 1963, President Kennedy issued executive order (EO) 11110 giving the president authority to issue currency. He ordered the treasury to begin printing "United States (Treasury) Notes" to replace "Federal Reserve Notes." He began a process to let government control its own money and no longer private bankers under the guise of the Federal Reserve. Months later, Kennedy was assassinated. Once Lyndon Johnson took office, he rescinded EO 11110 and reestablished the current system. More on that below.

The Two Greatest Ever Financial Crimes - Today's Fraud and the 1913 Federal Reserve Act's Privatization of Money Creation

Most people think the Federal Reserve is a government agency, subject to its control. It's sometimes mistakenly called a quasi-governmental decentralized central bank to disguise its real identity and purpose. Its Eccles building headquarters compounds the subterfuge. Below it's stripped away.

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I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.

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and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.