Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Confiscation of America, a Road Map: Overview

Between July 4th, 1776 and December 23, 1913 the US was embroiled in no less than five major wars. But the defining war, the war that most characterized the battle for freedom and liberty in the land thereof has been largely omitted from the history books. It remains the longest running war in US history, lasting over 130 years. The balance of power shifted no less than seven times, as an international chess game played out between principled American citizens in the highest elected offices and international financiers. Winning this war meant freedom and prosperity for every American, losing meant nothing less than slavery. On its surface this was the war against "the Bank," but more accurately it was against global totalitarianism, and prior to 1913 this war and every other was largely nothing more than a continuation of the one and only war this country had ever fought--the Revolutionary War, the war for our freedom.

Unknowingly the United States became a slave nation with the stroke of the Congressional pen on December 23, 1913. Remarkably its citizens remain ignorant to this day. But the awareness in creeping in slowly. The truth is like a living thing: it wants to be known, and those who have tried desperately to obfuscate our bondage and even the existence of the war itself strive desperately to keep the curtain drawn. The articles which follow detail not the war itself, though the history of it is filled with many victories and many heroes, but, rather, these articles detail the final battle, the subsequent plundering of the American people, the dividing of the spoils of the war, and the road to our postmodern slaver; simply put, the articles which follow provide proof for and are an historical account of the confiscation of America.

Friday, January 9, 2009

The 2008 Credit Crunch Swindle

The 2008 credit market statistics are out and the results prove just how much the government and banking interests control the game. Robert Higgs, Senior Fellow in Political Economy for the Independent Institute and editor of The Independent Review, writing for mises.org, has called the 2008 credit crunch a hoax. He points out that the statistics show that at no time was there a net decline in the credit market in 2008 but only a brief plateau in mid 2008. What does this mean? That means that we are trillions of dollars further in debt because Bernanke, Paulson, Bush, and the big banking interests were faking it.



But faking it to what end. Well let's look at what happened. The Federal Reserve (the Fed) has purchased hundreds of billions of dollars in Treasury Bonds with money that they printed out of thin air that the American citizens have to pay back with interest to the Fed's shareholders--international bankers--money which they will have less of because of the dramatic inflation caused by printing 1.4 trillion dollars. Treasury Secretary Paulson sold the idea into Congress as a means of buying toxic assets, but instead he used the first half of the money to give bankers big bonuses, buy stock in the banks, and enlarge the size and scope of the federal government. The second half of the money he has ordered to be released, but refuses to tell us where it's going or how it's going to be spent, calling disclosure "unproductive."

If that wasn't enough, major land shifts are underway in the banking community. Just as in 1907, 1919, 1929, 1971, and 1984 a massive consolidation of banking is happening right under our noses. Institutions are being systematically bankrupted, and who is waiting in the wings but even larger banks aided and abetted by the federal government. These Goliaths are buying up the defunct banks, companies, houses, cars, and assets of all kinds. The result is that now fewer and fewer people own more and more of the nations wealth. This is the business cycle at work. Unfortunately, that's just the economic impact. As Higgs writes:

The beauty of the Great Hoax of 2008, from the perspective of the ruling class, is that is was also a Great Scare, and such scares invariably serve as pretexts for the rulers' most audacious assaults on the peasants' lives, liberties, and purses.

What can we expect to see? More of what we've experienced over the last few months: inflationary spending, more regulation, more taxation (yes, a tax was levied to help pay for the bailouts), more government ownership in corporations, more multinational corporations in bed with big government, more lies, more deceit, more corruption, more money, freedom, and liberty for them, and a whole lot less for you and me.


Tuesday, January 6, 2009

The Business Cycle Theft

For more than 50 years the media, political pundits of both parties, and well-placed academics have portrayed the rise and fall (good times to bad times) of the US and world economies as a natural phenomenon, occurring as investment stochastically flows into promising areas and then on to new investment horizons. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Rather, the business cycle or boom-bust cycle, as it is called, is a carefully orchestrated contrivance of the banking and central banking cabal. It is designed to build confidence in a false market, lure investors and borrowers in, and then collapse the pseudo-market in order to confiscate wealth from the population. Each boom-bust cycle has six steps. Lets look at the current (and past) credit/real-estate market fiasco to see how the scam works:


Step 1: Find or Create a Problem.
The cliche' goes, "necessity is the mother of invention," but hand-in-glove with that is, "necessity is the mother of investment." Financiers look to the public and public officials to find an issue to exploit. In both the seventies to eighties and again in this decade the problem of affordable and available housing was used, some argue it was created, in order to generate a new economic boom.


Step 2: Pump the Problem.
In the seventies the housing issue received a great deal of attention. The media, largely owned by those who owned the banks, were a-buzz with stories highlighting not the median housing situation but the worst of the worst. At the time very little was mentioned of the roll high energy and commodity prices played in the housing situation, a problem compounded by the fact that very few loans were given out due to exorbitant federal interest rates, resulting in a low money supply. Academics wrote papers talking about the ethical and moral travesty playing out among the poor, who desperately sought a house to call their own. The American dream was declared dead. The public outcry was heard by Congress, which promptly passed legislation and regulation to ensure that credit was easily available and monthly payments were "affordable."


Step 3: Boom the Economy.
To meet the "demand" for housing and to comply with government regulations like the
Community Reinvestment Act (1977), the Federal Reserve (the Fed) and fractional reserve bankers pumped money into the economy in the form of loans to real-estate investors, builders, and new home buyers. As the money supply ballooned, the Congressional plan appeared to have worked. More people were in homes. However, the loans came with a grave price--usually variable interest rates and low down payments on overvalued loans.

Step 4: Let Supply and Demand Work.
We should make no mistake, our nation's financiers (as well as those on the world stage) are no dummies. They understand supply and demand perfectly, and they know how to use it to their advantage. As soon as there are more houses built than buyers for those houses, the system will crash. The value of homes will drop leaving borrowers underwater, owing more than the house is worth. The over-investment in the housing market rushes away to more logical, real, and sustainable areas. Layoffs in the housing industry ensue; corporate and consumer spending decreases; more layoffs; people are unemployed and unable to pay the loans on the new houses.


Step 5: Constrict the Money Supply.
Often the government--who is largely complicit in the scam, receiving campaign contributions from big banking financiers and being personally invested in the financial sector--commences with the bailout dog-and-pony-show. They spend even more of your money or print more money, which is inflationary. But this is all a sham. This money goes no where because the bankers have already received the slap on the wrist for government mandated and subsidized predatory lending practices and have increased the loan requirements beyond what most can bear. The result is that less money is flowing into the economy from loans. Those who have not defaulted on their loans continue to make their payments, which also goes no where in the system because no loans are being given back into the economy. This results in less money. And the hardship spreads as businesses and families go bankrupt. Incidentally, as I write this, we are currently in this stage of the game; banks that are usually running at 3% reserves are now sitting in the mid 90% range in reserves. They are actively and purposely taking money out of the economy.


Step 6: Confiscate the Wealth.
During the boom stage the confidence in the market was high and loans were easy. Families and companies who were overextended were still able to make ends meet because the money supply was also elevated. As the money supply dwindles these families and companies are unable to pay their loan payments. The result is foreclosure and the confiscation of not only the loan asset (the house) but also the collateral on the loan. The bankers created money out of thin air to give as loans in the first place, then took away the ability for those people to pay back the loans, then took away the actual wealth--houses, cars, businesses, etc. The rich are made richer and the poor, poorer.


If you can survive the years between the bust and the next boom, you'll see that there's another investment opportunity to solve a new problem, and the money and loans will flow freely. People will think that the government bailouts worked and the world has learned a valuable lesson, but as things reach a euphoric high, the immutable law of supply and demand will take over. The bankers will be there to constrict the money supply, take your wealth, make themselves richer and you poorer, and do it all again.

The stakes are getting higher though, and the economic variables are getting harder to juggle. Each boom is getting bigger and so is each bust. Each time more money is dumped into the economy, hyper inflation becomes a more serious risk. Do the international financiers believe that this cycle can go on forever? Are we headed for a systematic crash of the US economy? Unfortunately, I can't say. But given how close this crash was, chances are we'll still be around to find out.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Exponential Theft

Legend has it that a sixth century Asiatic sage and mathematician created a little game called Chaturanga, which consisted of a square board with 64 small squares (8 squares on the length and 8 on the width). This game caught on among the people and eventually found its way into the hands of the king. So enamored was the King with the game that he ordered that the sage be brought to him. The king praised the sage's accomplishment and offered the sage one gift of the sage's choosing. The sage refused, but the king persisted and demanded that the sage request a gift. The sage made a simple request: fill the first square on the game board with one grain of rice, the second square with two grains, the third square with 4 grains, the fourth with 8 grains, and so on until the board is full. The king marveled at such a modest gift and ordered that it be done as the sage requested. The first row of squares was filled, but as the second row began filling it it became obvious that the board would not hold all the rice. Bags were brought in, and as the 20th square was filled, the king was forced to give rice fields over to the sage. By the time the 30th square was filled all the rice in the land belonged to the sage. The king became furious and ordered the sage killed for his treachery and banned the game from the land. But the game only grew in popularity, and as it came to the west it became known by a different name, Chess. Had all 64 squares been filled, all the rice on earth for several decades would have belonged to the sage.

As mathematician, Albert Bartlett, famously said:

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

No truer statement was ever said. And our inability to perceive the exponential curve is used against us in a number of important ways. Lets create a simple example to examine the problem. Let's say the Government promises you a $100 raise per year for hard work. The first year you earn $100 dollars; the second year you earn $200 dollars; the third year, $300, and so on. The government informs you that it will keep inflation (the amount of money in the economy above and beyond assets--clothes, cars, houses, etc.) at a steady 2% increase per year, to keep the economy from getting out of control. This sounds pretty good and looks pretty good on paper too, at least for a while. However, something insidious has occurred. One quantity (income) has a linear growth while the other (inflation) has an exponential growth. The 2% inflation the first year will be $2 per $100; however, the second year it will be $2.40 per $100. What starts off as a very small increment becomes a big problem over time. Let's look what happens in this economy over 150 years. The red line on the chart below represents income while the green line represents the amount of newly printed money in the economy:



Each dollar in the economy that does not directly represent an asset (house, car, shoes, a company, whatever) in the economy makes every other dollar have less buying power (see my Inflation Tsunami article for a detailed explanation of this). The graph above, therefore, can also be viewed in another way. Instead, in our simple mock economy, the red line represents the rate that money comes into your account, and the green line represents the rate that money is leaving your account. If you've ever wondered why it seems that your standard of living is decreasing even as more and more money is coming in, you've discovered, intuitively, that your income is not keeping up with the cost of goods and services.

If this is what's happening in the economy in the US today, then why do we see that wages and inflation are more or less the same? How can I be experiencing these losses if the government statistics say that income is rising at the same rate as inflation (2.3% since 1967). The answer is that unlike our graph above everyone is not gaining at the same rate in the US. The rich are getting richer much fast than the poor are.



The rich are getting richer because they are exploiting the exponential system. They understand it and position themselves to benefit. How? By using what money they have to ensure that they get first access to the new money in the economy. If they spend the new money on investments, houses, cars, etc., then they are buying things at a lower price than you and me, who get the new money that they already spent. They build a house and pay a contractor, and the contractor pays me, the worker. The money is already aging. If you work at a retail shop or a restaurant, the money has already been filtered several times. By the time we get it, the market has adjusted and the prices are already higher.


The system is set up to make the rich richer and the poor saddled with more and more debt as they try to keep up with the increased cost of living. Who creates the money in this county? The banking and Federal Reserve System. This is yet another reason that it has to end.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

The Fed Stranglehold: UPDATE

One aspect of the Federal Reserve system that I elected not to mention in my previous post is the role of Congress in the process of issuing new money. The reason for the omission is that in recent history the roll of the Congress has been largely for-show, as with the 4 trillion dollars in new bailout money this year.

Technically, the Congress grants the Fed "permission" to print more money, usually for the purpose of funding some legislative spending that the congress doesn't want to levy as a tax (they don't want you having to worry your pretty little head about the details, and taxes draw too much attention).

This week a remarkable and I would have thought almost unthinkable thing happened. The Fed went before Congress to talk about the possibility of the Fed issuing its own debt. What does "issuing its own debt mean?" Traditionally, the treasury or other authorized institution issues a bond which the Fed purchases with money it prints out of thin air. This money then enters the economy, starting with the treasury or investment bank and then trickling down to the rest of us. Because the Fed is buying a bond, not just printing money, they charge us interest--see this article for a more detailed examination of this.

What the Fed now wants to do is issues its own bonds and then buy them with money printed out of nothing. What's the difference you may ask? A bid difference. Although the Fed previously was not accountable to the people directly, they were accountable to (though not willing to be audited by) the Congress, who is accountable to us. If the Congress gives the Fed the ability to issue its own debt, it is then finally no longer accountable to anyone whatsoever. The Fed would have full power to issue as much money as it wants any time it wants with no restrictions and no genuine oversight or ability to adequately measure the amount of money being pumped into the economy.

This is a takeover, folks. I urge everyone who reads this to go to this site, which guides you through the very simple process of emailing your congressional representative. All you have to do is pick which state you live in, enter your name and address, and copy and paste the message below into the form (Note: to copy simply select the message below and go to Edit/Copy then to paste simply click in the message portion of the form and go to Edit/Paste, that's it):

I am writing to express my opposition to the Federal Reserve's issuance of dept. I implore you to adhere to the strict limitations placed on the Federal Reserve in the 1913 Federal Reserve Act, which requires Congressional oversight of all issuance of currency. Allowing the Federal Reserve to issue its own dept represents a serious threat to the proper checks and balances laid out in the US Constitution in Article 1, Section 8, which states:

"The Congress shall have Power to . . . coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures . . . ."

I urge you to look carefully at the Federal Reserve's proposal before Congress and uphold your sworn duty to protect the US Constitution. These are the kinds of grave issues I carefully weigh when entering a vote for Representative for my state.

Thank you for your full consideration.

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