Make of it what you will: Catherine Austin Fitts

[don]

Behind the Wheel

Sunday, August 29, 2010 1:23 PM

von Lars Schall

Hardly another serious plague to society is associated with more hypocrisy and erroneous assumptions than the drug business. So Lars Schall talked with Catherine Austin Fitts, who explains the real deal: “It’s a very old business. It goes back to the question of how you control the most territory with the fewest players as possible.”



Catherine Austin Fitts is a graduate from the University of Pennsylvania (BA) and the Wharton School (MBA). At the Chinese University of Hong Kong she studied Mandarin. She served as a managing director and member of the board of the Wall Street investment bank Dillon, Read & Co, Inc. (now part of UBS). Later, she was Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) during the presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush. As such, she was responsible for the operations of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), the largest mortgage insurance fund of the world.

After leaving the Bush Administration, Fitts founded The Hamilton Securities Group, Inc., an investment bank and financial software developer named after the first U.S. Secretary of Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. In 1996, she and her successful company became targets of a vicious, longlasting “qui tam lawsuit”, that resulted in the closing of Hamilton Securities.[1] Fitts was ultimately successful in Court of Claims litigation asserting that the government had no right to withhold monies owed to Hamilton.

In the years afterwards, Fitts spoke publicly about the degree of fraud endemic in the federal mortgage operations, trillions missing from government agencies and the connections to drug trafficking and “black budgets.”[2] Moreover, with her mentioned expertise, she was one of the first to warn of an approaching housing bubble. Her prediction that the ”strong dollar policy” would lead to a weakened federal credit is currently being proven correct.

Fitts is the president of Solari, Inc., publisher of “The Solari Report”

(www.solari.com), and managing member of Solari Investment Advisory Services, LLC. She serves on the board of directors of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, GATA (www.gata.org), and writes “The Real Deal” column for Scoop Media in New Zealand (www.scoop.co.nz).

Catherine Austin Fitts lives in Tennessee, U.S.A.

The following interview was conducted, while she sat in her car and drove across the U.S.-state of Montana.

http://www.chaostheorien.de/artikel/...l?redirect=%2F

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Make of it what you will: Catherine Austin Fitts

Behind the Wheel
...
The following interview was conducted, while she sat in her car and drove across the U.S.-state of Montana.

http://www.chaostheorien.de/artikel/...l?redirect=%2F

Awesome.

As in the movie "The Matrix", it is always difficult to know whom to trust. So many people are caught in the matrix, one way or the other.

My inclination is to trust Ms. Fitts, though at times I vacillate.

If she's reasonably accurate, then the nature and extent of the current fraud escapes most prominent observers.

[BuckarooBanzai]

Re: Make of it what you will: Catherine Austin Fitts

Awesome.

As in the movie "The Matrix", it is always difficult to know whom to trust. So many people are caught in the matrix, one way or the other.

My inclination is to trust Ms. Fitts, though at times I vacillate.

If she's reasonably accurate, then the nature and extent of the current fraud escapes most prominent observers.

Whether you trust her or not, the great majority of what she says in the interview is verifiable through other sources, for the person who cares to find them. Most of us who come to iTulip know that what is commonly understood about the global economy is almost complete nonsense; and that how modern economics and finance really work is kept so obscured, so hidden, and so misunderstood, that it almost defies imagination that human beings could be so completely ignorant; UNLESS one seriously entertains the idea that there are powerful forces at work whose job is to obfuscate, misinform, and miseducate to an almost unfathomable degree.

If one accepts this about the economy, it is then much easier to accept this about other areas of public interest, i.e., politics, military affairs, intelligence agencies, etc.

Catherine Austin Fitts may not be 100% correct in her assessments-- given what she is up against, that would be impossible-- but I'd wager she's more than 90% on target.

[medved]

Re: Make of it what you will: Catherine Austin Fitts

My inclination is to trust Ms. Fitts, though at times I vacillate.

This is because you have good reasons to vacillate. AMOF, Ms. Fitts is full of wishful thinking.

Here is what she says : "Essentially what happens is: Central banks print money and then the military makes sure that other parties accept".

What military made Americans accept the Federal Reserve act? What military made Europe accept Nixon's default and replacement of the gold-based currency by fiat? What military made China accept fiat currency? What military makes Russia accept fiat currency?

The simple answer she gladly misses is "None". All of the above gladly accepted fiat of their own will, because they believe the gov't should control the currency.

[dummass]

Re: Make of it what you will: Catherine Austin Fitts

Whether you trust her or not, the great majority of what she says in the interview is verifiable through other sources, for the person who cares to find them. Most of us who come to iTulip know that what is commonly understood about the global economy is almost complete nonsense; and that how modern economics and finance really work is kept so obscured, so hidden, and so misunderstood, that it almost defies imagination that human beings could be so completely ignorant; UNLESS one seriously entertains the idea that there are powerful forces at work whose job is to obfuscate, misinform, and miseducate to an almost unfathomable degree.

If one accepts this about the economy, it is then much easier to accept this about other areas of public interest, i.e., politics, military affairs, intelligence agencies, etc.

Catherine Austin Fitts may not be 100% correct in her assessments-- given what she is up against, that would be impossible-- but I'd wager she's more than 90% on target.

She might also be a taco short of a combination plate.

[Diarmuid]

Re: Make of it what you will: Catherine Austin Fitts

This is because you have good reasons to vacillate. AMOF, Ms. Fitts is full of wishful thinking.

Here is what she says : "Essentially what happens is: Central banks print money and then the military makes sure that other parties accept".

I think she maybe refering to the oil backed dollar being imposed / backed up by...


As for the population, it will gladly accept FIAT, if it is a net beneficiary (free lunch) of the syphoning off of productive labour of the hapless elsewhere via imposition of oil backed said, especially when it is out of sight and mind. IMO this is what she is refering to when she says

I need to be morally responsible not just for my actions, but more importantly and this is a very big change: I need to be responsible for my financial actions. I need to understand where my money is going and what it is doing in my name, because I need to enforce against bad behaviour and reinforce the good behaviour. So if I’m own stock in a corporation and that corporation is trying to control the global seed supply, then I need to sell that stock or I need to go to the shareholders meeting and insist that they stop. I need to view my moral responsibility not just with my own personal actions, but also with the actions that I support with my bank deposits, my purchases and my investments.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Make of it what you will: Catherine Austin Fitts

What military made Americans accept the Federal Reserve act? What military made Europe accept Nixon's default and replacement of the gold-based currency by fiat? What military made China accept fiat currency? What military makes Russia accept fiat currency?

As Diarmuid suggests, by "military" might be meant more than just the overt actions of armed and uniformed members of the U.S. Military.

What armed IRS agents made me pay a substantial sum in U.S. Federal Income Taxes over the last many decades? Literally, none. I've never knowingly met an armed IRS agent.

But if I had resisted co-operation, I'm sure I could have.

I don't know if Ms. Fitts meant this or not, but if I extend the meaning of her remarks about the military to include the force of a massive, thus massively fraudulent, Anglo-American military-intelligence-financial-drug-political-media-academic-foundation empire, then her remarks still hold water. Certainly she knows of and describes well in her own way that monstrous empire.

That she glossed over the details of how the Dollar's dominance has been enforced does not (in my mind) invalidate the details on which she does focus.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Make of it what you will: Catherine Austin Fitts

I think she maybe refering to the oil backed dollar being imposed / backed up by...

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[World Traveler]

Re: Make of it what you will: Catherine Austin Fitts

Is this part of what Catherine Austin Fitts is talking about - only the middle managers get taken out while the big fish remain in place and in control? From Agence France-Presse...

"Ex-UBS whistleblower hits out at ‘corrupt’ US justice

GENEVA — Former UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld hit out on Saturday against the "corrupt" US judiciary which sent him to jail even though he was the whistleblower who led to the US tax fraud case against the bank.

"The Department of Justice's corruption is evident today -- why am I the only one in prison when I had revealed everything?" the US banker asked in a French-language interview with Swiss newspaper Le Temps.
Birkenfeld turned in thousands of people for trying to evade taxes in the United States. But he was sentenced in August 2009 to three years and four months in jail for inciting UBS clients to commit tax fraud.
Martin Liechti, who headed the bank's wealth management service in the Americas, was detained by US authorities, but later allowed to return to Switzerland.

Birkenfeld claimed that officials had allowed Liechti to get away as he knew too much about high-profile clients of the bank.

"Why did they let Martin Liechti go?" he asked.

"Martin Liechti knew all the big clients. He knows the secrets that the Bush administration did not want revealed. They made an arrangement to allow him to leave for Switzerland where no one would be able to interrogate him," claimed Birkenfeld.

He charged that the fact that the Department of Justice failed to uncover the tax fraud without his help showed that it was "not only incompetent, but corrupt."

He also claimed that UBS' senior management was well aware that bankers were helping rich Americans to evade taxes illegally.

"Of course they knew. All these trips, the encrypted laptops -- the management knew all that, and had even authorized them.

"Denying it is just like saying that the Japanese generals did not know that an attack on Pearl Harbor was being prepared," he charged..."

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/0828...rrupt-justice/

[oddlots]

Re: Make of it what you will: Catherine Austin Fitts

This is because you have good reasons to vacillate. AMOF, Ms. Fitts is full of wishful thinking.

Here is what she says : "Essentially what happens is: Central banks print money and then the military makes sure that other parties accept".

What military made Americans accept the Federal Reserve act? What military made Europe accept Nixon's default and replacement of the gold-based currency by fiat? What military made China accept fiat currency? What military makes Russia accept fiat currency?

The simple answer she gladly misses is "None". All of the above gladly accepted fiat of their own will, because they believe the gov't should control the currency.

This is a point that Hudson is at pains to re-iterate: no matter how appalled one might be at dollar hegemony in principle one has to recognise that noone who suffers under it has proposed a real alternative. Indeed, they have seemed all too willing to bolster it.

What does that mean?

Food for thought.

[medved]

Re: Make of it what you will: Catherine Austin Fitts

This is a point that Hudson is at pains to re-iterate: no matter how appalled one might be at dollar hegemony in principle one has to recognise that noone who suffers under it has proposed a real alternative. Indeed, they have seemed all too willing to bolster it.

What does that mean?

It means 2 simple things.
1. Everybody believes in the gov't managed fiat currencies and is afraid of PM-based money (difficult to manipulate).
2. Everybody trusts US gov't and its currency more than they trust theirs.

So, no military threat is necessary.

P.S. This year I went to Ukraine and talked to some local folks. Try to persuade them to pull their $avings from under the mattress and exchange whatever $US they have to the local currency, or even Euro. They will die laughing.

[BuckarooBanzai]

Re: Make of it what you will: Catherine Austin Fitts

It means 2 simple things.
1. Everybody believes in the gov't managed fiat currencies and is afraid of PM-based money (difficult to manipulate).
2. Everybody trusts US gov't and its currency more than they trust theirs.

So, no military threat is necessary.

P.S. This year I went to Ukraine and talked to some local folks. Try to persuade them to pull their $avings from under the mattress and exchange whatever $US they have to the local currency, or even Euro. They will die laughing.

have you considered that you may have confused cause and effect here?

and just because the vast majority willingly accept dollar hegemony-- possibly for some very good reasons-- does nothing to disprove the fact that there must be the threat of physical force behind any fiat money system, for it to function properly.

After all, the definition of "fiat money" is money that has value strictly by force of government decree. What do you think the word "force" means?

[BuckarooBanzai]

Re: Make of it what you will: Catherine Austin Fitts

This is because you have good reasons to vacillate. AMOF, Ms. Fitts is full of wishful thinking.

Here is what she says : "Essentially what happens is: Central banks print money and then the military makes sure that other parties accept".

What military made Americans accept the Federal Reserve act? What military made Europe accept Nixon's default and replacement of the gold-based currency by fiat? What military made China accept fiat currency? What military makes Russia accept fiat currency?

The simple answer she gladly misses is "None". All of the above gladly accepted fiat of their own will, because they believe the gov't should control the currency.

yes... and how on earth do governments enforce their laws and decrees? You claim to be russian-- or at least that is implied by your handle. I find it quite surprising that I have to explain to a russian how governments go about their business.

[BuckarooBanzai]

Re: Make of it what you will: Catherine Austin Fitts

"The Department of Justice's corruption is evident today -- why am I the only one in prison when I had revealed everything?" the US banker asked in a French-language interview with Swiss newspaper Le Temps.

His question practically answers itself! The poor chap just articulated exactly what the real imprisonable offense was, to the people that actually matter.

[medved]

Re: Make of it what you will: Catherine Austin Fitts

yes... and how on earth do governments enforce their laws and decrees? You claim to be russian-- or at least that is implied by your handle. I find it quite surprising that I have to explain to a russian how governments go about their business.

You are absolutely correct. *Any* law is supported by force, be it taxation or traffic rules. In this sense fiat currency is no different from any other law. But laws are only enforced after they are accepted.

So, tell me please, which army or what force made Americans dump the constitutional Gold standard and accept fiat money back in the early 20th century?