Catherine Austin Fitts on Bear Sterns

[Rajiv]

Former Wall Street banker Catherine Austin Fitts talks about the tanking of Bear Sterns and its multiple impacts on the US economy

Min 4 to min 29

[MEDIA]http://aud1.kpfa.org/data/20080317-Mon1700.mp3[/MEDIA]

[Guest]

Re: Catherine Austin Fitts on Bear Sterns

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Posted to wrong thread.

[Jayhawk]

Re: Catherine Austin Fitts on Bear Sterns

I like her, but she seems to talk in code at times. Am I the only one that has a hard time following her?

That NY Teacher's Pension she has on her blog is scary.

[Rajiv]

Re: Catherine Austin Fitts on Bear Sterns

Jay,

Over the years she has developed a terminology to fit the mental picture she has developed of the way the FIRE economy works from the inside -- sometime it helps to have read some of her rather lengthy articles -- I think I refered GRG55 to some of her writing here

[World Traveler]

Re: Catherine Austin Fitts on Bear Sterns

I've been reading Catherine Austin Fitts since 2002. I think she has a unique perspective on things because at one time she was an insider (Wall Street investment banker/partner in the '80's, later Undersecretary of Housing under Bush 1). She unintentionally crossed the big boys and paid a big personal price.

She crossed the big boys in mid-90's when she started a company to track HUD foreclosures and optomize the selling price that HUD received when they went to auction. She became a government sub-contractor to HUD and she was successful in her goals. What she didn't realize until too late was that well-connected big boys made a lot of money from buying up these HUD foreclosures for cheap.

You can define the "big boys" as connected insiders both in the investment and political arena (she names Harvard Endowment fund manager, Andrew Cuomo, Jack Kemp, etc. etc.). These are only some of the names she mentions, she must be fearless, because she always names names.

She also makes clear that the rip-off and take-down of both HUD and the American economy is a bi-partisan effort. What really matters to the insiders is getting personally rich.

She did an interview with New Zealand Scoop website in 2002 or so re: Enron that was the best explanation I've read of what happened. How insiders make sure they have the loot far from any regulatory scrutiny by the time the "blow-up" occurs, how they stall for time via connected players/friends at key government agencies while they remove any fingerprints and obscure the paper trail. Also, to keep the public happy, a few lower minions are sacrificed.

Re; what's happening in America, essentially she sees it as the looting of America by a wealthy elite who control the most important financial and governmental sources of power and control. (note: Paul Craig Roberts agrees with that assessment, read his columns)

Her advice to us: remove yourself to the extent possible from what she calls the tapeworm economy. Set up local co-operatives to exchange goods and services when you can , use independent local banks and businesses when possible, do not help make the tapeworm economy and those who control it fatter and richer.

I highly recommend her site, especially the archives where some of the background articles I mentioned above are posted.

[Rajiv]

Re: Catherine Austin Fitts on Bear Sterns

Interview continued on 3/20 starts at 29 minutes into tape -- about half way down the scale

we continue our dialogue with Catherine Austin Fitts on the tanking of Wall Street and its expanding impacts on Main Street;

[MEDIA]http://aud1.kpfa.org/data/20080320-Thu1700.mp3[/MEDIA]

[GRG55]

Re: Catherine Austin Fitts on Bear Sterns

Rajiv: Thank you for the continued legwork to find and post all the interesting stuff that you do. It helps to stretch my thinking outside normal and comfortable patterns...
GR

[Rajiv]

More CAF on Bear 3/26

more CAF on Bear 3/26

starting 44 minutes into tape
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[MEDIA]http://aud1.kpfa.org/data/20080326-Wed1700.mp3[/MEDIA]

[Rajiv]

Re: Catherine Austin Fitts on Bear Sterns

More CAF on Flashpoints begins 44 min into tape


--------------------------------------------------------Here
[MEDIA]http://aud1.kpfa.org:80//data/20080402-Wed1700.mp3[/MEDIA]

[Rajiv]

Re: Catherine Austin Fitts on Bear Sterns

An interview by Phil Cubeta with Catherine Austin Fitts (1 hour long)

Catherine's site is Solari.com. Here is her bio. See her Narco Dollars for Beginners. See also, Will the Real Economic Hitmen Please Stand Up. And see, more recently, her Slow Burn. These will give you a pretty good idea of her clear eyed view of the world we have. Catherine is the one who introduced me to Ponerology: The Study of Evil. When we talk about a satirist or moral philosopher affecting a moral cure of those in power, it seems like a joke, doesn't it? But evil like any other disease spreads from those infected to those who who come into contact with the infected person. As the Sicilians say, "The fish rots from the head down," as John Ashcroft may have felt in discussing torture in the White House. Of course there is nothing we can do about it. We are complicit but innocent. No one can blame us, because we are like children, docile, unawares, trusting, and intimidated by those set above us. We are just glad that the big people do what they must to keep us safe, even as we fear for our own lives in a society increasingly stripped of civil liberties. If Father is a tryrant who feeds us, protects us, and beats us, best to say nothing, lest we or those we love turn up dead. The Unsaid in America is obtrusive. Catherine breaks that terrible silence.
Catherine, a veteran of the first Bush administration, characterizes herself as a conservative. What she seeks to conserve are sustainable, morally healthy, economically vibrant local communities. As against that world she sees ranged the forces of centralizing power (on Wall Street and in DC), as well as the covert flows of money from criminal enterprises, and governmental agencies that operate without public oversight or accountability. Her analysis of the ugly state of current affairs, a perversion, as she sees it, of true free market principles, is not so different from that of Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine. Both see our society and our market as having been captured by centralizing powers bent on creating their own Green Zones, a gated and armed paradise for the few, amidst a society for the rest of us that runs rapidly to dissolution. Both see us as caught up in an economic war of the few against the rest, disguised as a free market, but requiring the increased use of surveillance, brute force and covert force to keep the many down, as the few collude in secret to their mutual advantage. Where Catherine differs from Naomi and most progressives is in believing that we can outwit those who have outwitted us.

[MEDIA]http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Phil-Cubeta/2008/04/12/test.mp3[/MEDIA]