The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.

The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.

A fresh narrative of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 emerges from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions. While Fed officials say that almost all of the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.

Read more here.

As a result, government is far too big today, and nations such as Greece are in the process of fiscal collapse.

But that’s the good news – at least relatively speaking. Over the next few decades, the problems will get much worse because of demographic change and unsustainable promises to spend other people’s money.

(By the way, America will suffer the same fate in the absence of reforms.)

Here’s a stark indicator (click to enlarge) of why Greece is in the toilet.

Look at the skyrocketing number of people riding in the wagon of government dependency (and look at these cartoons to understand why this is so debilitating).

By the way, Greece’s population only increased by a bit more than 16 percent during this period. Yet the number of bureaucrats jumped by far more than 100 percent.

And don’t forget that this chart just looks at the number of bureaucrats, not their excessive pay and bloated pensions.

With this in mind, do you agree with President Obama and want to squander American tax dollars on a bailout for Greece?

He’s a punchline in his own country because he oversees the IRS even though he conveniently forgot to declare $80,000 of income (and managed to get away with punishment that wouldn’t even qualify as a slap on the wrist).

Now he’s becoming a a bit of a joke in Europe. Earlier this month, a wide range of European policy makers basically told the Treasury Secretary to take a long walk off a short pier when he tried to offer advice on Europe’s fiscal crisis.

And the latest development is that the German Finance Minister basically said Geithner was “stupid” for a new bailout scheme. Here’s an excerpt from the UK-based Daily Telegraph.

Germany and America were on a collision course on Tuesday night over the handling of Europe’s debt crisis after Berlin savaged plans to boost the EU rescue fund as a “stupid idea” and told the White House to sort out its own mess before giving gratuitous advice to others.German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble said it would be a folly to boost the EU’s bail-out machinery (EFSF) beyond its €440bn lending limit by deploying leverage to up to €2 trillion, perhaps by raising funds from the European Central Bank.”I don’t understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense,” he said.

All that’s missing in the story is Geithner channeling his inner Forrest Gump and responding that “Stupid is as stupid does.”

...at birth?

Separated...

This little spat reminds me of the old saying that there is no honor among thieves.

Geithner wants to do the wrong thing. The German government wants to do the wrong thing. And every other European government wants to do the wrong thing. They’re merely squabbling over the best way of picking German pockets to subsidize the collapsing welfare states of Southern Europe.

But that’s actually not accurate. German politicians don’t really want to give money to the Greeks and Portuguese.

The real story of the bailouts is that politicians from rich nations are trying to indirectly protect their banks, which – as shown in this chart – are in financial trouble because they foolishly thought lending money to reckless welfare states was a risk-free exercise.

Europe’s political class claims that bailouts are necessary to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis, but this is nonsense – much as American politicians were lying (or bamboozled) when they supported TARP.

It is a relatively simple matter for a government to put a bank in receivership, hold all depositors harmless, and then sell off the assets. Or to subsidize the takeover of an insolvent institution. This is what America did during the savings & loan bailouts 20 years ago. Heck, it’s also what happened with IndyMac and WaMu during the recent financial crisis. And it’s what the Swedish government basically did in the early 1990s when that nation had a financial crisis.

But politicians don’t like this “FDIC-resolution” approach because it means wiping out shareholders, bondholders, and senior management of institutions that made bad economic choices. And that would mean reducing moral hazard rather than increasing it. And it would mean stiff-arming campaign contributors and protecting the interests of taxpayers.

Heaven forbid those things happen. After all, as Bastiat told us, “Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”

But before trying to analyze whatever we may discover of what occurred there, it is critical to discern how it fits an overall picture.  For context, one must also see what the IMF and World Bank “communitarian” elitists are up to.

We find that before the Bretton Woods affair, focusing upon “new solutions,” there was a similar IMF meeting, called “New Ideas for a New World.”  It was centered upon “Post-Crisis Policy Making” and occurred March 7-14.  That gave some of them a lot of time to communicate and plan in quiet (the traditional word for that is conspire) when they were not attending official sessions, or making videos.

Then, we see that Soros’ April 8-11 conference ended just as the IMF and World Bank took up their April 11-17 Spring Meetings, just a limo ride away.  “Blossom of Spring, won’t you bloom and grow?”  Let us see what is budding in this intensive series of conferences, by the first one’s own promotional vid.

Here is a collection of pitches for “New Ideas for a New World.”  Hey, they left out the last word, “Order.”  Could it be that some of them know their version of order requires fomenting massive disorder first, the crises not to be wasted?  They also left out the word “Brave,” before “New World.”  Maybe that is because some of them like Huxley, have qualms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nsst1U8jidA

This video puts their dexterous foot forward about that March 2011 conference, while their sinister footfalls go on.  So who are these dudes, getting together and yukking it up (well, three out of four globalist manipulators seem to approve) and just how spooky are they?  What are the messages of the Big Money priests, to the unwashed, PITI-ful masses of principal, interest, taxes, and insurance payers?

Front and center, left to right:

• Joseph Stiglitz, Professor at Columbia University and infamous as one of George Soros’ most closely allied corrupto-economists.  In the video, he says he’s excited about our monetary crisis.  So glad he enjoys his work.
• Interactive media time — if you recognize the second hilarious taker, feel free to comment, below.
• Otmar Issing, President of the Center for Financial Studies is the man of unhilarious countenance.  Party poopingly, he does not like banking instability, calls for higher quality regulation, and has the audacity to propose that some banks reign in their excess liquidity.  What a bring down.
• Dominque Strauss-Kahn is the IMF chairman.  Were he to speak on a promo video, perhaps it would detract from the mystique of power.

Further bits from the video:

• At the outset, Michael Spence, Professor at Stanford University, downplays concerns about inflation.  No big deal.  He imagines we’ll kind of muddle through, though we may have crises “in Europe or America or both.”  He also  closes the show by warning that the unemployment crisis will remain.  Why stress that?  Doesn’t even a velvety soft revolution requires the discontent?
• Robet Solow, Professor Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wants the monetary crisis to bleed into fiscal policy (something for which central banks are so centrally known, profiteering from economy destroying debt and taxation bubbles they “nudge” along to foment, from the 17oo’s onward).  Wide-eyed, though, he gives us the news that debt build-up “will have to be settled in the longer run.”
• Graciela Kaminsky, Professor at George Washington University, placates us that the fiscal policy of the 2008 meltdown worked — don’t worry about such things as expanding the debt bubbles, worldwide.
• Jo-Marie Griesgraber, Executive Director of New Rules for Global Finance (wonder who donates to that?) admonishes financial services firms against being interested in… business profit.  The opposite pole for her is to be “interested in human beings.”  Yeah.  Thus, one may suppose human beings are naturally meant to be unprofitable, according to Ms. Griesgraber.  She regurgitates an absurd (read: unnatural, evil) Hegelian antithesis of Marxism: that job creation is a matter to be separated from profit or profit seeking.  She also puts in a word “for the impact on the environment — or anything else.”
• Vittorio Corbo, Former Central Bank Governor of Chile, calls for an artificial concoction of “incentives” to make banks “prudent,” centrally and globally, one may suspect.  He also provides diversity.
• Suman Bery, Director General of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, seems to wonder whether “the behemoths of the global financial system” may be “supervised” due to their political as well as financial power.  In these words, we see the antipathy of global financiers to banking and economics being governed by free nations.  The goal may also be inferred, of making central banking a bigger yet behemoth, ungoverned by nations, but instead governing all of them.  He assures us though, that “…nobody quite knows what the fixes are.”  Whew, and here we thought people seeking Uber-Behemoth Power were confident of their schemes.
• And see Damon Silvers, everyone.  He is with the American Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO).  Funny that he should be there, pulling for the same things as the rest.  Aren’t union activists the ones who fight against capitalists? — who barge into banks and disrupt them?  Mr. Silvers (no puns offered about his name) teaches fellow attendees and onlookers that “balanced growth, worldwide,” must involve “constraining the appetites and the political power of the rich.”  If such power is not globally overlorded, “we are absolutely certain: a. not to have balanced growth and, b. to continue high unemployment as we’ve had it and, c. to repeat our cycles of financial bubbles and busts,” so help him, Saul Alinsky, Richard Cloward, Frances Fox Piven, Andy Stern, and Richard Trumka.

What are the takeaways?

Global, uber-governance by central bankers, squeezing, leeching, and shrinking free enterprise, while using excuses such as egalitarianism and of course, “the impact on the environment — or anything else,” and while establishing a world full of deprivation and discontent, to set against successful employers and their free nations, all for the aforementioned global governance

Pardon the redunancy, but it does begin and end with the same goal of global governance, a worldwide empire of authoritarianism and enslavement.  Funny how America is always having to deal with such things.

And sometimes, what the power-elites do not say is what is most important to pick up.  Never once is the word “insolvency” used, though it is the most critical problem brought on by all the back-and-forth buying and selling of debt, one centrally banked and planned layer piled upon another.  You can watch more of their programming at the IMF site and see if they ever use the word.

Jeffrey Sachs

So, just how snugly does Soros’ conference fit in this sandwich and what are the tactical solutions they all so collectively seek?  One set of hints has been provided by Soros’ right hand man, Jeffrey Sachs.  As reported by Aaron Klein, Jeff is seeking a brave, immediate future including global taxation, currency transfer tax, tax on the rental value of land and natural resources, royalties on worldwide “fossil energy projection,” fees for the commercial use of oceans, for air flight, of course for putting carbon in the air, and even fees for the use of “the electromagnetic spectrum.”  Oh, and he also envisions chronic economic stagnation, unemployment and labor revolt.  The proletariat have to do their part.

This forecast (and the coming burst of that hush-hushed insolvency bubble and ensuing hyperinflation and possibly, famine) is underscored by Soros’ own recent moves to commandeer as many American grain elevators as feasible. Not to worry though, the Marxtream media tell us he is one of our greatest philanthropists, along with so many of the IMF and World Bank lords, to be sure. And here we thought Demon-I-mean-Damien-er, Damon Silvers doesn’t trust rich people.

That should be enough context before delving further into the Bretton Woods and IMF April conferences.  One hopes it indicates the strategy engaged by the wealthiest one percent, of one percent, of one percent, this Spring of 2011.

By the way, is anyone in Congress speaking up about all this?

Would you consider that their goals include dragging American influence and incomes down, while confiscating much of our personal finances and giving them to other nations (and yes, the age-old financier network behind them) in the name of “communitarianism?”

Would you find their goal is to replace the bad influences of the IMF and the World Bank, with a much worse, more powerfully controlling, post-American global apparatus?

What would you think, if that meeting were being held this April 8th through 11th?

I got an email, last week; it was Tuesday the 22nd.  It was from George Soros.  To hear as straight from the dragon’s mouth as feasible, I had subscribed.  In this emailed article, he lamented the inequities of wealth among the nation-states of Europe, under the strains of their continuing insolvency crisis.  He warned of the dangers of national interest.  Rather, he proposed, not surprisingly, a further blowing of the global insolvency bubble, so the more indebted European nations may get along owing, while their lending nations get along being owed — all the while, blending and worsening the  financial and monetary crises and spreading this yeasty recipe further throughout the world, especially to America.

That was quite provocative.

Please be patient to let this article be a rather personal narrative and a kind of portal, and follow its links. Then, follow the links within the those articles. Perhaps, even one more layer. That will limit the redundancy involved and inform you as well as a book might, but in much less time.  To begin, here are my observations upon receiving his email, “Oh. My. George. Soros on Europe’s Worsening Banking Crisis & the Most Evil Plan Yet.”  Go ahead.  Big Government will generously wait.

“’Most evil plan yet,’ was that an overstatement?” I wondered.  No, knowing what one may see about Soros, it was not hyperbole and the statement was well with my soul.  The next day, confirmation came from Dan Gainor of Business & Media Institute and Media Research Center, by his “Unreported Soros Event Aims to Remake Entire Global Economy,” first published in Business & Media Institute and at Fox News.

If you read nothing else stemming from this introduction, do peruse that.  There, Gainor puts this iniquitous plan into context and elucidates.  Nope, not going to excerpt, nor even quote. Just read it if you have not by now, please.

It was my privilege to interview Dan last Monday night, for about a half-hour.  That discussion may be found here.

Again, no reiterations offered, except that I will repeat that the documentation shows we were raped by European banks, in their own, deep insolvency trouble in 2008, using us at exactly the time it hurt us the most — during the Mortgage Meltdown’s peak, right before the general election.  You know how that went.  (It was also swept along as in the sport of curling, by peculiarly timed internal operations, including those of Soros comrades, Herb and Marion Sandler, and Senator Charles Schumer’s tongue. One must not distract further, by going on about the Community Reinvestment Act(s), Franklin Raines and Fannie Mae, the Pelosi Congress and their shoot-to-miss regulations, Goldman Sachs and friends, etc.)

That being our reminder of how they operate, what may we expect from our nation’s finances being thoroughly and systematically controlled by a megacartel of despotic foreign interests?

For further reading

Just presented by colleague, Kelleigh Nelson:
“Klaus Warns Euro Pact will Lead to Full Political Union,” in euobserver.com, 3/29/2011

See the observations of compatriot blogger, Maggie Thornton and the related articles she links at the bottom of her piece:
“George Soros Bretton Woods II Conf: Changing Finance World-Wide — New World Order: God’s Gonna Cut You Down…”

And three caveats about this subject matter

1. Yes, this is anti-American and grossly evil.  It is warfare against our People.  America has been given us at great sacred cost, to preserve and pass along our freedom to our progeny.  Just as our Constitution rests squarely upon our Declaration of Independence, our freedom rests upon our personal, intra-national, and national sovereignties. There is no exception to this rule, whether it is assailed by any seemingly altruistic ideas and ideals of global governance, or of global finance.  And even the most generous offerings of internationalism require its antecedent, nationalism.

2. One must neither be taken with, nor be deterred by any coincidences of ethnic heritage, when studying banking, globalism, and collectivism.  While antisemites will at times present lies and distortions as facts, facts by their nature, can not be prejudiced nor bigoted.  Each individual is a free and ontologically equal, moral (and immoral) agent, all are sinners, all are offered redemption.

3. Come, let us be conspiracy investigators, regardless of the connotations and prior concoctions.  I suggest you start, or start afresh, with the startling and paradigm shifting research led by a gentleman named Norman Dodd, an energetic but humble young banker from the prior century, who eventually found himself going to Washington and working for Congress.  (Much of the records of the Reece Committee have been destroyed, hidden, or buried, but they are still preserved.)  If you saw Glenn Beck’s TV program last Friday the 25th, about the Federal Reserve, you will recognize Mr. Dodd’s interviewer.

One reason there are so many wild claims in this subject matter is that not enough people of discipline and sound epistemology engage in it.  But remember your Alinsky and do not be intimidated by ridicule.  There is a vast, worldwide conspiracy shown a few inches from your nose right now and many near the core of it meet next week in New Hampshire.

Live free or die.

Follow those links.

And follow the money.

Stephen Lerner

[Former SEIU Official Stephen] Lerner said that unions and community organizations are, for all intents and purposes, dead. The only way to achieve their goals, therefore–the redistribution of wealth and the return of “$17 trillion” stolen from the middle class by Wall Street–is to “destabilize the country.”

Lerner’s plan is to organize a mass, coordinated “strike” on mortgage, student loan, and local government debt payments–thus bringing the banks to the edge of insolvency and forcing them to renegotiate the terms of the loans. This destabilization and turmoil, Lerner hopes, will also crash the stock market, isolating the banking class and allowing for a transfer of power.

Lerner’s plan starts by attacking JP Morgan Chase in early May, with demonstrations on Wall Street, protests at the annual shareholder meeting, and then calls for a coordinated mortgage strike.

Lerner also says explicitly that, although the attack will benefit labor unions, it cannot be seen as being organized by them. It must therefore be run by community organizations.

Lerner was ousted from SEIU last November, reportedly for spending millions of the union’s dollars trying to pursue a plan like the one he details here. It is not clear what, if any, power and influence he currently wields. His main message–that Wall Street won the financial crisis, that inequality in this country is hitting record levels, and that there appears to be no other way to stop the trend–will almost certainly resonate.

Read the whole thing here.

A state lawmaker in California, during the nation’s worst recession, wants to outlaw employers from firing workers who come to work stoned. Isn’t that special? Or course the worker must have a medical marijuana card, which in California you can get at the checkout line in most supermarkets, or about as easily. Sneeze and you’ve got it.

So now truck drivers, heavy machine operators, accountants and secretaries all can continue their weekend binges into Monday. How else can a single bill: endanger lives, lose productivity, get the few remaining businesses to pack up and leave the state, while simultaneously encouraging increased drug use? That’s a four-fer! You get four objectives satisfied with a single law. Way to go, California! Who said California couldn’t get any higher?

No way that this type of insanity would ever pass the sober state legislature. Uh, wrong again. Pass the joint man, you just ain’t paying attention, dude. The legislature overwhelming passed this same bill in 2007, but was vetoed by the then Governor Arnold, who was probably stoned at the time. Now, with Governor Brown as the new sheriff in town, who knows? Brown doesn’t want to alienate his union base.

It seems that this is all the legislature can come up with as a way to improve productivity and the California economy: “everybody, let’s get stoned”. Apparently, the legislature already has a head’s start in that department. Heck, the state is insolvent with no other solution in sight; they might as well pass the joint in Sacramento as the state is burning.  Then, we can all pretend things are all right.  Yeah, dude.

Adam Sparks