54 Articles

Monday, November 2, 2009
Cut Wall Street Out! How States Can Finance Their Own Economic Recovery
(4 comments) President Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan has so far failed to halt the growth of unemployment. A total of 49 states and the District of Columbia have all reported net job losses. Only one state reports net job GAINS; and it has done it by generating its own credit, cutting Wall Street out.

Friday, October 23, 2009
Michael Moore supports the public banking option
(6 comments) In a 15-point action plan, Michael Moore has urged states to create their own publicly-owned banks.

Thursday, October 15, 2009
Reviving the Local Economy with Publicly-owned Banks
(9 comments) The credit crunch is getting worse on Main Street, despite a Wall Street bailout now in the trillions of dollars. The Fed may have played all its cards, but state and local governments still hold a few aces. Some local politicians are looking into the feasibility of opening their own publicly-owned banks, providing them with their own credit machines.

Friday, October 2, 2009
THE IMF CATAPULTS FROM SHUNNED AGENCY TO GLOBAL CENTRAL BANK
(9 comments) A year ago, nobody wanted to know the IMF. Last week, the G20 suddenly promoted it to global central banker and global collection agency for the banking industry. The end result will be to lock not only third world countries but the U.S. more firmly into debt to a global banking cartel.

Monday, September 21, 2009
LANDMARK DECISION PROMISES MASSIVE RELIEF FOR HOMEOWNERS AND TROUBLE FOR BANKS
(8 comments) A landmark ruling in a recent Kansas Supreme Court case may have given millions of distressed homeowners the legal wedge they need to avoid foreclosure.

Monday, September 7, 2009
Economic 9-11: Did Lehman Brothers Fall or Was It Pushed?
(8 comments) The disastrous collapse of Lehman Brothers on 9-11-08 was the catalyst that changed the rules of the game for the big Wall Street financial players. The banks would henceforth be bailed out by the taxpayers, no matter what the cost. Was the Lehman bankruptcy the result of "market forces" or was it engineered? If the bank was pushed over the brink by invisible hands, whose hands were they and what goal was being served?

Saturday, August 29, 2009
THE MERCURY MISCHIEF: As Obama Warns of Hazards, the FDA Approves Mercury Dental Fillings
(5 comments) The government seems to be speaking out of both sides of its mouth, as the President preaches one thing and the FDA does another. If we are going to have “smarter medicine that really works,” we need to get politics, lobbies and cronyism out of science.

Monday, August 17, 2009
THE SECRET OF CHINA'S MIRACLE ECONOMY: THE GOVERNMENT OWNS THE BANKS RATHER THAN THE REVERSE
(16 comments) To the extent that China's stimulus plan is working better than in the U.S. and the U.K., this seems to be because the government is using the banks for public ends, rather than allowing the banks to use the government for private ends.

Thursday, August 6, 2009
The Public Option In Banking: How We Can Beat Wall Street At Its Own Game
(17 comments) President Obama has repeated his call for a public option in health care, in order to create some competition for the insurance companies and keep them honest. We the people need to call for a public option in banking, in order to create some competition for the private banks and keep them honest.

Thursday, July 23, 2009
How California Could Turn Its IOUs into Dollars
(8 comments) California has over $17 billion on deposit in banks that have refused to honor its IOUs, forcing legislators to accept crippling budget cuts. These austerity measures are unnecessary. If the state were to deposit its money in its own state-owned bank, it could have enough credit to solve its budget crisis with funds to spare.

Monday, July 13, 2009
Toward a Solution to the Debt Crisis in California: The State Could Walk Away and Create Its Own Credit Machine
(5 comments) Four Wall Street banks, which received $15-25 billion each from the taxpayers, have rejected California's IOUs because the State is supposedly a bad credit risk. The bailed out banks would seem to have a duty to lend a helping hand, but they say they don't want to delay an agreement on further austerity measures. State legislators are not bowing quickly to the pressure, but what is the alternative?

Thursday, July 9, 2009
California Dreamin': How the State Can Beat Its Budget Woes
(6 comments) All eyes are on California as it attempts to solve its $26 billion budget crisis. State legislators are caught between the rock of tax ceilings and the hard place of debt limits. What to do? How about setting up a state-owned bank and using its state revenues as "reserves"? The bank could then do what any bank does: fan those reserves into many times their face value in loans.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009
BIG BROTHER IN BASEL: BIS FINANCIAL STABILITY BOARD UNDERMINES NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY
(33 comments) The Report on Financial Regulatory Reform issued on June 17 includes a recommendation that the Financial Stability Board strengthen and institutionalize its mandate. The new global Big Brother is based in Switzerland in the Bank for International Settlements, a controversial institution that raises red flags among the wary . . .

Thursday, June 18, 2009
The Retreat of the Shadow Lenders: Why Deflation and Not Inflation Is the Order of the Day
(13 comments) While contrarians are screaming "hyperinflation!", the money supply is actually shrinking. This is because most money today comes into existence as bank loans, and lending has shrunk substantially. That means the Fed needs to "monetize" debt just to fill the breach.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Out of the Ashes of GM: The Phoenix of Renewable Energy
(1 comments) Prophetically, GM named one of its now-extinct brands the Firebird. Like the fabled Firebird, GM could be reborn as something else. We now own a car company. To finance its transformation into something better, we just need to own a bank.

Sunday, May 31, 2009
#4 Idea on President's Policy Site: Take Back the Power to Create Money
(5 comments) It's not too late to vote for Congress to take back the money power!

Friday, May 29, 2009
But Governor, You CAN Create Money! Just Form Your Own Bank.
(5 comments) Christmas comes early, Governor. You CAN print your own money. Fiscally solvent North Dakota is doing it . . . and so can California. Now!!!

Thursday, May 21, 2009
The Weimar Hyperinflation: Time to get out the wheelbarrows?
(10 comments) Worried commentators are predicting a massive hyperinflation of the sort suffered by Weimar Germany in 1923, but there is something puzzling in the data. The British government is already funding more of its budget by merely printing money than Weimar Germany did at the height of its hyperinflation, yet the pound is holding its own. Something else must have been going on in Weimar Germany . . . .

Sunday, April 19, 2009
The Tower of Basel: Secretive Plans for the Issuing of a Global Currency
(7 comments) When you understand that the BIS pulls the strings of the world's monetary system, you then understand that they have the ability to create a financial boom or bust in a country.

Thursday, April 9, 2009
Revive Lincoln's Monetary Policy: An open letter to President Obama
(11 comments) The world was transfixed on that remarkable day in January when you gazed upon Abraham Lincoln's likeness at the Lincoln Memorial and searched for wisdom to navigate these difficult times. But you may not be aware of another form of slavery from which Lincoln tried to free his countrymen, one we are still battling today . . .

Saturday, March 28, 2009
Thinking Positively: How "Quantitative Easing" May Be Harnessed for the Public Good
(31 comments) Nervous pundits are predicting the end of American life as we know it, after Fed Chairman Bernanke announced that he would be dropping ANOTHER trillion dollars in helicopter money. But cautions aside, its new "quantitative easing" policy at least has the potential to serve the government and the people it represents.

Monday, March 2, 2009
Cash-starved States Need to Play the Banking Game: North Dakota Shows How
(8 comments) Forty-six of fifty states are insolvent and could be filing Chapter 9 bankruptcy proceedings in the next two years. One of the four states that is not insolvent is an unlikely candidate for the distinction – North Dakota. What does the State of North Dakota have that other states don't? The answer seems to be: its own bank.

Saturday, February 21, 2009
Monetize This! A better way to fund the stimulus package
(25 comments) Funding the government's budget shortfall has usually been left to private lenders; but those loans are drying up, and servicing them is proving expensive. Both this interest burden and the need to continually attract new lenders could be avoided by tapping into the government's credit line at its own central bank . . . .

Thursday, January 22, 2009
Mysterious Prison Buses in the Desert
(26 comments) Prison buses are driving around empty in the Tucson area. Are Wackenhut and the DHS preparing for civil unrest?

Saturday, January 10, 2009
Credit Where Credit Is Due: The Direct Approach to Fixing the Credit Crisis
(32 comments) Last fall, Congress committed an unprecedented $700 billion in taxpayer money to reversing the credit crisis, and the Federal Reserve has already fanned that into $8.5 trillion in loans and commitments. But the bank bailout has proven to be no more than a boondoggle for a handful of lucky Wall Street banks, without getting credit flowing again. What went wrong and what WILL get credit flowing again? . . .

Monday, December 29, 2008
Borrowing from Peter to Pay Paul: The Wall Street Ponzi Scheme Called Fractional Reserve Banking
(109 comments) Bernie Madoff showed us how it was done, but his Ponzi scheme was small compared to one that has been perpetrated for hundreds of years by the banking system itself. What distinguishes the legal scheme known as "fractional reserve" lending from the illegal schemes of Madoff and his ilk is that the bankers' scheme is protected by government charter and backstopped with government funds.

Friday, December 19, 2008
GROUND ZERO ON WALL STREET: FED FUNDS AND T-BILLS HIT 0% INTEREST
(14 comments) The federal funds rate and the interest on 3-month Treasury bills both just hit ZERO percent. This means banks and the government are borrowing money for free. Yet demand for the T-bills was four times the available supply! Who is clamoring to buy the debt of the world's most insolvent debtor for no return at all, and why?

Monday, December 8, 2008
Sustainable Government: Banking for a "New" New Deal
(22 comments) Obama has started his version of Roosevelt's "fireside chats." He has said he plans to create 2.5 million new jobs by 2011 and kick-start the economy by building roads and bridges, modernizing schools, and creating technology and infrastructure for renewable energy. These are excellent ideas, but what will they be funded with - more government debt? There is another alternative . . .

Sunday, November 30, 2008
"Oops, We Meant $7 TRILLION!" What Hank and Ben Are Up to and How They Plan to Pay for It All
(27 comments) The $700 billion that was arm-twisted from Congress in October was just the camel's nose under the tent. The Paulson/Bernanke team is now prepared to pay $7.76 trillion to rescue the financial system. Prepared to pay how? Congress has not raised its debt ceiling to that level, and the Fed doesn't have the funds on its books . . .

Monday, November 3, 2008
All Is Well in Stepfordville: More on the Pre-election Chicanery of the Plunge Protection Team
(17 comments) It was another surreal week on Wall Street, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising a thousand points while the economy continued to sink into its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. More evidence of the Plunge Protection Team at work? The election was only days away . . .

Saturday, October 25, 2008
The not-so-invisible hand: How the plunge protection team killed the free market
(8 comments) October 24 marks the 79th anniversary of the October 1929 stock market crash. Many feared a repeat of this disaster on Friday, October 24, 2008; but remarkably, disaster was averted. How? Suspicious observers saw the hand of the Plunge Protection Team pulling strings behind the scenes . . .

Saturday, October 18, 2008
FINANCIAL MELTDOWN: The Greatest Transfer of Wealth in History
(19 comments) HOW to reverse the tide and democratize the US monetary system

Thursday, October 16, 2008
The Real Debate: Crony Socialism or Economic Sovereignty?
(8 comments) The Presidential debates failed to address what is really wrong with the economy -- a credit freeze representing a failure of the banking scheme itself. Bailing out bankrupt banks won't fix the problem. The banking system itself needs to be overhauled.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008
THE FED NOW OWNS THE WORLD'S LARGEST INSURANCE COMPANY -- BUT WHO OWNS THE FED?
(6 comments) The Federal Reserve has assumed sweeping new powers in the last year. These increasingly controversial encroachments on the public purse warrant a closer look at the central banking scheme itself. Who owns the Federal Reserve, who actually controls it, where does it get its money, and whose interests is it serving?

Thursday, October 2, 2008
BAILOUT BEDLAM: ROBBING THE TAXPAYERS TO SAVE THE BANKS
(2 comments) The bank bailout bill would turn the banks' worst assets into good U.S. dollars. The figure was $700 billion a few days ago and has already climbed to $800 billion after the pork was added in. That's nearly the cost of two Iraq wars, but it still won't be enough, because the covered instruments eligible for conversion include the black hole of derivatives. Derivatives held by U.S. banks are now estimated at $180 trillion . . .

Sunday, September 28, 2008
Thanks But No Thanks: What Lincoln Would Have Said to Paulson's $700 Billion Ransom
(5 comments) Last week, Treasury Secretary Paulson pulled out his bazooka and held it to Congress's head. "Seven hundred billion dollars or your credit system will collapse!" President Lincoln was faced with a similar threat from the bankers. He said, "Thanks but no thanks; I'll issue my own."

Thursday, September 18, 2008
It's the Derivatives, Stupid! Why Fannie, Freddie and AIG Had to Be Bailed Out
(35 comments) Why the extraordinary bailouts of Fannie, Freddie and AIG? The answer has less to do with the insurance business, housing, or foreign investors than with the greatest Ponzi scheme in history, one that is holding up the private global banking system. What had to be prevented at all costs was an "event of default" that could have collapsed a quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble, taking the global banking system down with it.

Friday, September 5, 2008
Take a Load Off Fannie: Bailout or Nationalization for the Mortgage Giants?
(6 comments) The Treasury just sought and was granted an unlimited credit line to the GSEs, along with the authority to buy their stock, effectively nationalizing them; but this could mean $5 trillion more in liabilities for the federal government, causing it to lose its own triple-A rating. What to do? There is a solution that would salvage the mortgage giants and cost the taxpayers nothing . . .

Thursday, August 14, 2008
WAG THE DOG: HOW TO CONCEAL MASSIVE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE
(8 comments) The dollar and the Dow are up, gold and oil are down, when all economic indicators point the other way. What's going on? Manipulation . . .

Thursday, August 7, 2008
Fannie and Freddie: Giving Away the Farm
(1 comments) Fannie and Freddie, two private for-profit mortgage giants, are being bailed out from their risky ventures with an $800 billion credit line from Congress. Meanwhile, Fannie and Freddie have sold off the mortgages to 10 percent of our real estate to foreign central banks and governments. Why are we letting our property be "nationalized" by other nations, and what can we do to reverse this alarming trend?

Friday, July 25, 2008
PUTTING THE "FEDERAL" BACK IN THE FEDERAL RESERVE
(4 comments) Where is the outrage? Remove the myth that the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac act by and for the people rather than being run for private gain, and we will soon see the outrage curiously missing today.

Monday, July 14, 2008
Let the Lawsuits Begin: Banks Brace for a Storm of Litigation
(2 comments) Lawsuits threaten the banks from all sides -- from state attorneys general, consumer class actions, and investor backlash. Shifting liability for the subprime debacle back to the banks could bankrupt even the biggest banks. But that might not be the end of the world . . .

Thursday, June 26, 2008
THE SUBPRIME TRUMP CARD: STANDING UP TO THE BANKS
The majority of subprime homeowners may have a valid defense to foreclosure. A coalition of beleaguered homeowners armed with this defense could have significant clout with Congress.

Saturday, June 14, 2008
What's the difference between Lehman Bros and Bear Stearns? Lehman's CEO is on board of NY Fed
Bear Stearns, far from being "rescued" by JPMorgan, was eaten alive. But Lehman Brothers, the next investment bank expected to fall, probably WILL be rescued by the Fed. What's the difference? The CEO of Lehman Brothers -- like that of JPMorgan and unlike that of Bear Stearns -- sits on the Board of the NY Fed . . . .

Tuesday, May 13, 2008
DID BEAR STEARNS FALL OR WAS IT PUSHED? HOW INSIDER TRADING SAVED JPMORGAN AND LOOTED TAXPAYERS
(9 comments) Who was bailed out, Bear Stearns or JPMorgan? The evidence for illegal insider trading.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Speculating in Hunger: Are Investors Contributing to the Global Food Crisis?
Investment newsletters are now featuring headlines like "How You Can Profit from the Global Food Crisis." The recommended investments will no doubt do very well in the global food crisis; but before you put your money down, you may want to explore whether you will be helping to alleviate the problem or actually contributing to it.

Thursday, April 10, 2008
Credit Default Swaps: Derivative Disaster Du Jour
(12 comments) When the smartest guys in the room designed their credit default swaps, they forgot to ask one thing – what if the parties on the other side of the bet don't have the money to pay up? . . .

Monday, March 31, 2008
APRIL FOOLS: THE FOX TO GUARD THE BANKING HENHOUSE
(10 comments) The Federal Reserve, which has been credited with creating the current housing bubble and bust just as it created the credit bubble of the Roaring Twenties and the bust of 1929, is now to be given vast new powers to oversee regulation of the banking industry and promote "financial market stability." At least, that is the gist of a Treasury Department proposal to be presented to Congress on Monday, March 30, 2008 . . . .

Monday, March 24, 2008
Another Way Around the Credit Crisis: Minnesota Bill Would Authorize State Banks to "Monetize" Productivity
(11 comments) While the Federal Reserve is lowering the interest rates charged to banks, the interest municipal governments must pay on bonds is skyrocketing, seriously impairing their ability to do public works including repairing bridges and roads. A bill scheduled to be heard before the Minnesota Senate Transportation Committee on March 25, 2008, could represent a major innovation in the way local government projects are funded.

Friday, January 11, 2008
Patrol Boats in the Straits of Hormuz: Another Gulf of Tonkin Incident?
(2 comments) Despite a recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) finding that Iran is not engaged in a nuclear weapons program, the push for war continues. The question is, why? The Project for a New American Century provides some clues . . .

Sunday, November 11, 2007
Letter To The United Nations: How To Cut Sustainable Energy Costs In Half
(4 comments) Development loans have become debt traps for Third World countries, as interest compounds annually on money created by banks with accounting entries. If governments or the United Nations would take over that function, advancing credit created with accounting entries themselves, the crippling expense of interest could be eliminated. Interest-free loans could help ease climate change and other global crises.

Saturday, November 10, 2007
Behind the Drums of War with Iran: Nuclear Weapons or Compound Interest?
(10 comments) Why the relentless push for war with Iran? The nuclear weapons explanation is suspect. The most important impetus for war may not be oil or the bomb but that Iran has managed to escape the heel of an international clique of private bankers. We may be involved in a war of banking schemes, with Iran's innovative interest-free banking model pitted against the compound interest trap that has captured most of the world in debt.

Monday, September 24, 2007
Bank Run or Stealth Bail-Out? The Global Credit Crisis Comes to Main Street
Our debt-based monetary system is basically a Ponzi scheme, and it has reached its mathematical limits. The choices are bank runs, as we just saw in England, or stealth hyperinflation to keep the bubble afloat. But there's a third option: returning the monetary scheme to something closer to the vision of our forefathers.

Thursday, September 6, 2007
Market Meltdown: The End of a 300 Year Ponzi Scheme
(7 comments) The market is collapsing because we have come to the end of a 300 year Ponzi scheme, dating back to the privatization of money creation in the seventeenth century. The only way out of this fix is the way we got into it: by retrieving the power to create money from a cartel of private bankers and returning it to the people themselves.