The Fed: Dishonest or Incompetent?

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: The Fed: Dishonest or Incompetent?

i believe the greatest challenge of the common man today is to remove the tools that allow the parasites to thrive. (and sadly the supposedly very smart people on this board are entirely blind to it even when it's pointed out repeatedly)

Whether or not the people who contribute to iTulip are very smart people or not depends upon where one is the the order of knowledge of economics, banking, and finance. From my position of knowledge there are definitely some smart people who contribute here, but I guess for you, fogger, your position is perhaps near the top of the order.

Personally, I dislike it when contributors speak cryptically. So that there is no misunderstanding in whatever is your opinion, please explain to the readers just what are the "tools" that allow the "parasites" to thrive. Who are the parasites? If the smart people here are blind, then please explain your comment and open their and my eyes--everybody may benefit from what you see so clearly. Thank you.

[Catherine Austin Fitts]

Re: The Fed: Dishonest or Incompetent?

As we are on the topic of war, I posted this link on my blog the other day.

Army Warns Rumsfeld It's Billions Short
An extraordinary action by the chief of staff sends a message: The Pentagon must increase the budget or reduce commitments in Iraq and elsewhere.
By Peter Spiegel, Times Staff Writer
September 25, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...home-headlines

If anyone is interested, I would welcome some discussion on what is really going on. Part of my interest is that I have been following money going missing from the federal government for years:

Solari -- Missing Money Article and Documents
http://www.solari.com/learn/articles_missingmoney.htm

The other part is that I am increasingly frustrated with the success of "incompetency" being used as cover for something quite competent. For more on that vein, see:


The Great “Incompetency” Heist
http://www.votesolari.com/catherinesblog/?p=8

American Theocracy
http://www.votesolari.com/catherinesblog/?p=4


I am flying home from New Zealand this weekend. Reading the news, I feel like I am flying into quite the "pea soup."

Catherine

[da bear]

Re: The Fed: Dishonest or Incompetent?

Personally I like this one:

"Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money and control credit, and with a flick of a pen they will create enough to buy it back."

Sir Josiah Stamp, former President, Bank of England

I hear there is good money in banking.

this is my second post on itulip. interesting thread. why cant the Fed be both incompetent and dishonest?

the conspiratorial nature of this thread brings to memory another board out there in finance/investment land.

hopefully we will see a greater understanding of what constitutes REAL money and the real nature of inflation.

hopefully in the future someone will remark, "now we are all Austrians."






da bear

[bart]

Re: The Fed: Dishonest or Incompetent?

I hear there is good money in banking.

this is my second post on itulip. interesting thread. why cant the Fed be both incompetent and dishonest?

the conspiratorial nature of this thread brings to memory another board out there in finance/investment land.

hopefully we will see a greater understanding of what constitutes REAL money and the real nature of inflation.

hopefully in the future someone will remark, "now we are all Austrians."


da bear

Trust an insouciant bear to speak sooth re: the Fed being both incompetent & dishonest.

You hereby are awarded an honorary wad of tinfoil, for your new hat... but beware oh furry one, that "other" board is also known as "the board whose name shall not be mentioned"... ;)
(in case anyone wonders, da bear also posts on DR and its almost completely unmoderated - and shows it frequently)

[fogger]

Re: The Fed: Dishonest or Incompetent?

"These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government....

The warning of Theodore Roosevelt has much timeliness today, for the real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over City, State, and nation... It seizes in its long and powerful tentacles our executive officers, our legislative bodies, our schools, our courts, our newspapers, and every agency created for the public protection...

To depart from mere generalisations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interest and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes.

They practically control both parties, write political platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organisations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business...

These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and magazines in this country."
John Hylan, Mayor of New York 1927

http://www.xat.org/xat/moneyhistory.html

[fogger]

Re: The Fed: Dishonest or Incompetent?

"The Federal Reserve definitely caused the Great depression by contracting the amount of currency in circulation by one-third from 1929 to 1933."
Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winning economist

"It was not accidental. It was a carefully contrived occurrence... The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as rulers of us all."
Rep. Louis T.McFadden (D-PA)

"I think it can hardly be disputed that the statesmen and financiers of Europe are ready to take almost any means to re-acquire rapidly the gold stock which Europe lost to America as the result of World War I."
Rep. Louis T.McFadden (D-PA)

[fogger]

Re: The Fed: Dishonest or Incompetent?

I'm not anywhere near the top. I'm simply a person who repeatedly tests and challenges my own beliefs for accuracy. And I don't mean to sound cryptic. I thought I was speaking very clearly. What I'm saying must be vastly different from what you learned during your "education".


The most powerful tool of the parasites are the world's central banks, the BIS, and WMF. If we were to eliminate the bank of england and the fed and let congress print its own money, the parasites would instantly lose much of their grip.

Lincoln, Garfield, and Kennedy all had one thing in common: prior to their respective assassinations they had all issued private currency outside the bankers' control. Also read about Andrew Jackson's successful battle against the banks.


Everyone studies the markets and charts and statistics of stocks and bonds, etc, but very few ask "what is money and where does it come from?" That would be the logical place to start.

[fogger]

Re: The Fed: Dishonest or Incompetent?

"To cause high prices all the federal reserve board will do will be to lower the re-discount rate..., producing an expansion of credit and a rising stock market; then when... business men are adjusted to these conditions, it can check... prosperity in mid-career by arbitrarily raising the rate of interest.

It can cause the pendulum of a rising and falling market to swing gently back and forth by slight changes in the discount rate, or cause violent fluctuations by greater rate variation, and in either case it will possess inside information as to financial conditions and advance knowledge of the coming change, either up or down.

This is the strangest, most dangerous advantage ever placed in the hands of a special privilege class by any Government that ever existed.

The system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money.

They know in advance when to create panics to their advantage. They also know when to stop panic. Inflation and deflation work equally well for them when they control finance..."
Rep. Charles Lindbergh (R-MN)

[fogger]

Re: The Fed: Dishonest or Incompetent?

"The powers of financial capitalism had [a] far-reaching [plan], nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.

This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences.

The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations.

Each central bank... Sought to dominate its government by its ability to control treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."
Carroll Quigley, Professor, Georgetown University

http://www.xat.org/xat/worldbank.html

[EJ]

Re: The Fed: Dishonest or Incompetent?

I never got this part of the critique of central banks: Yes, the Fed is a for-profit institution with oversight by Congress, to in theory make sure it operates within the law, and "independent" from all branches of government, which it is–sort of–depending on the central banker and other circumstances. Yes, it'd be cheaper for the government to print money directly. But do we really want Congress to one hand on the "spend" lever and the other on the "print" lever? Seems to me, the situation is bad enough as it is.

Greenspan said in his last hearing before Congress that he thought the continuation of Fed should go to a vote of Congress every four years, meaning, if they don't vote to continue the Fed, it just goes away.

What's your vision of a world without central banks?

[fogger]

Re: The Fed: Dishonest or Incompetent?

The Fed is in partnership with the government. The spend lever and the print lever are already one and the same. They are only hidden from view.

1. Congress wants money
2. They go to the Treasury.
3. The Treasury issues bonds (ie. borrows money)
4. The bonds are sold on the open market to investors

OR

if there are not enough investors to buy the bonds, the Fed buys them directly (ie. prints money and hands it to the Treasury)

the bonds are a farce. the money is a farce. inflation just occurred. noone is the wiser. Congress just stole .0001% of that dollar in your wallet today.

Why are the central banks around the world the largest holders of US bonds? Because government and banks are in partnership.

[fogger]

Re: The Fed: Dishonest or Incompetent?

In the above example, Congress stole money through inflation but they've also created a liability for the interest.

More productive work siphoned off to the for-profit bank.


What did the bank do? Created some bits in a computer, but they've also created a slave. Govt must then either borrow more to pay the interest or employ the IRS to ask for more taxes.

It's diabolical, but utterly simple.

[fogger]

Re: The Fed: Dishonest or Incompetent?

The next question to ask yourself is:

If you were a banker looking to maximize profits, it would of course be in your best interest to maximize the interest you receive for printing paper and entering bits into a computer.

So what is the best way to increase your customer's debt level? By instigating a war of course! Wars are massively expensive and require lots of debt. And just imagine if you can fund BOTH SIDES!


You're naive if you don't see this. Yes there really are people in this world with an entirely different morality than you.

[fogger]

Re: The Fed: Dishonest or Incompetent?

For ideas on a world without central banks:

http://www.mises.org/store/Money-Ban...es-P290C0.aspx

http://www.safehaven.com/article-3426.htm
http://www.financialsense.com/editor...2005/0227.html

[EJ]

Re: The Fed: Dishonest or Incompetent?

For ideas on a world without central banks:

http://www.mises.org/store/Money-Ban...es-P290C0.aspx

http://www.safehaven.com/article-3426.htm
http://www.financialsense.com/editor...2005/0227.html

fogger,

Thank you for your response to my question. I've read more than two dozen books on the banking and money, including most of Martin Mayers' books. I get the argument for eliminating central banks. But the fact is, you can't go to any country on earth–no matter how small (e.g., Iceland or Jamaica)–that doesn't have one. Either all nations have one, or none do, or–more likely if a drastic change to the system happens–they all do but they are different from what they are today.

No central bank will unilaterally break from the rest, except in a severe crisis. It has been my contention that worse than "Poom" (defined as an approximate 100% inflation over 5 - 6 years) may happen if global re-balancing is sufficiently sudden and chaotic that one or more major central bank breaks ranks because domestic political demands take precidence over global demands; China's, Japan's, Russia's and Middle Eastern central banks may allign against the US, for example, with a few others, such as Australia's, caught in the cross-fire.

The Fed has since WWII–when it emerged as the only major, functioning capitalist power–acted unilaterally within the global central banking system, such as "suspending" dollar/gold convertability in 1971 (forever), and ten years later when Volcker plunged many countries into crisis with massive US rate hikes. That kind of unilateralism is not so easy an option given the US foreign debt status. Orderly, dollar depreciation as occured 2001 - 2005 was the result of coordinated global central banking.

A failure of global central bank coordination might cause the system to fail. Perhaps out of such a failure a radical new order may emerge, such as a Pure Gold Standard with a 100-Percent Reserve Requirement, but I don't see such a new order developing via some international effort to replace the current system, without a crisis as a forcing function. (BTW, whatever happened to the Gold Dinar? Haven't heard much about it lately.)

Jesús Huerta de Soto's "Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles" looks interesting. Have you read it? At 875 pages, it makes Peter Warburton's 323 page "Debt and Delusion," with its 21 page glossary and 12 pages of footnotes, look like a quick read. I appreciate that he is proposing a clear alternative, but who will lead an effort to adopt an international agreement on a Pure Gold Standard with a 100-Percent Reserve Requirement? Not the US. Not China. Not Russia.

These ideas, however thoughtful and even profound, suffer a limitation that is common to micro-economic theory, as in the following tale.

A physicist, a chemist, and an economist are stuck on a desert island. Starving, they wander the island for days. Finally, the have the good luck to come across a carton of cans of tuna fish that has washed up on shore. But they have no way to open the cans.

The physicist proposes using his coke-bottle glasses as a magifying lens to focus the tropical sun on a can to heat it and cause it to explode, releasing the contents. After trying all day, the can never gets hot enough. The sun goes doown and they go to sleep hungry.

The next day the chemist proposes using the lens to heat and concentrate an acidic sap dripping from the bark of one of the trees. They try this all day, but the acid bearly corrodes the can. Again, they go to sleep hungry.

The next day the economist proposes, brightly, "Assume a can opener!"