Monday, February 11, 2008

The Next Phase of The Mortgage Rip Off/Scam

The Next Phase of the Mortgage Rip Off Scam

“As Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s investment portfolios have grown, so too has
the amount of interest-rate risk that these companies retain. The implicit guarantee causes investors to continue to loan to Fannie and Freddie despite these risks because of the expectation that the Treasury would come to their aid in a crisis. This encourages the management at Fannie and Freddie to take on more risk and more debt than they otherwise would. As a result, Fannie and Freddie have a combined outstanding debt that is equal to 39 percent of the total outstanding U.S. public debt, and their combined financial assets are worth 44 percent more than those of Citigroup, the largest bank in the United States.” Problems at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae: Too Big to Fail? http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/

When the media rails about welfare fraud and taxpayer rip offs they focus on one small time individual or a “round the way” type group in order to hide and obfuscate the scope and pervasiveness of elitist white collar crime and the preferential corporate welfare that permeates this society. The current global economic meltdown is a classic example of massive white collar crime, fraud and class warfare on the part of the ruling plutocrats, their surrogates in government, media and the financial systems. The causes of the current financial crash were conceived in the boardrooms of the Federal Reserve Bank, Wall Street investment houses, insurance companies, mortgage companies, bond rating agencies, the White House, government and quasi government agencies and the corporate media. While most AmeriKKKans won’t admit it, the fact is the federal government has devolved into a criminal syndicate. The administration along with its partners on Wall Street, the media and the police state apparatus make the Mafia, Crips and Bloods look like angelic choir boys.
The current financial unraveling we are experiencing is the result of the deliberate planning and policies of the Federal Reserve Bank. The Federal Reserve Bank despite having the word federal in its title is a privately held banking cartel set up by the ruling elites that sets monetary and credit policies for the US. The Fed has as its number one customer, the US government and by extension US citizens who foot the bill (the humongous interest and principle on the loans they give to the government) with our taxes.
Like the Federal Reserve Bank, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are privately owned publicly traded companies that enjoy an extremely cozy and beneficial relationship with the US government. “Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae indirectly assist home buyers by purchasing mortgages from lenders, such as commercial banks, savings and loans and mortgage banks. Freddie and Fannie, in turn, generally get those loans off their books by creating securities that are eventually paid off as the underlying mortgages are paid off. Homeowners are happy because they are aided in borrowing money for a home. Lenders are happy because they don't have to hold mortgages for several years. Investors in the securities are happy because they have a reliable investment, and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are happy because they make a handsome profit. Sound like capitalism at its finest? Not exactly. Although Freddie and Fannie are privately owned, they are what is known as government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). GSEs don't have to follow all the rules that true privately owned companies do: they don't have to register their securities with the government, their securities receive special treatment for investment purposes, they don't have to pay state and local income taxes and--most important--their government sponsorship gives them the aura of a fully guaranteed government entity. That final benefit means they save billions in borrowing costs, just as lenders are willing to offer low-interest student loans that are guaranteed by the government. That savings alone allows the GSEs to pocket about $2 billion per year, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office and the Treasury Department.” Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae: Corporate Welfare King & Queen by Vern McKinley http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?
These two GSE’s profit handsomely from their special relationship with the federal government. Recently they’ve had their problems and their fraudulent activities were revealed for the world to see. They were audited and found to have engaged in deceptive bookkeeping practices very similar to what the heads of Enron did. Of course being big time white collar criminals none of the CEOs went to jail. They merely paid a fine and the beat went on. “Fannie Mae engaged in ‘extensive financial fraud’ over six years by doctoring earnings so executives could collect hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses, federal officials said yesterday in a report that portrayed a company determined to play by its own rules. Regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, in announcing a settlement with Fannie Mae that includes $400 million in penalties, provided the most detailed picture yet of what went wrong at the congressionally chartered firm.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23
Not satisfied to live of the billions of US subsidized guarantees, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae lied about their earnings to boost the compensation of their top executives. But that’s not all. As taxpayers we should be aware of what is going on at these two Congressionally Chartered businesses. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac set the tone and tenor for the current financial collapse by pioneering in the bundling and sale of collateralized debt packages (mortgages and housing loans). Their success led to others Wall Street investment banks to duplicate their efforts and begin bundling massive amounts of high risk loans and bonds. But unlike regular investors and banks, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have what amounts to unlimited lines of credit from the US Treasury due to their status as Congressionally Charted quasi governmental agencies.
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae used these governmental guarantees and backing to engage in risky transactions, buying mortgages and selling them as securities all over the world. As the Federal Reserve Bank opened the credit and insurance spigots the housing bubble inflated. The lower the interest rates went and the higher housing prices went the bigger the bubble grew. But sooner or later all bubbles burst. That popping sound you hear are the mortgage and credit bubbles bursting. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are right in the thick of things, up to their necks in debt over their limited capital reserves. “The recent media attention on the management and accounting scandal at Freddie Mac has exposed a more pressing concern: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have grown so large and are counter-parties to so many transactions that if unforeseen interest rate volatility caused either or both companies to fail, the potential cost to U.S. taxpayers could range into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Fannie Mae (the Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) are Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), whose federal charters confer certain benefits – most notably an implicit guarantee that the Treasury stands behind their securities. The basic problem at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae – from the taxpayers’ perspective – is their aggressive investment strategy that attempts to leverage their implicit guarantee to accumulate vastly increasing amounts of mortgage investments with a huge amount of debt. As Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s investment portfolios have grown, so too has the amount of interest-rate risk that these companies retain. The implicit guarantee causes investors to continue to loan to Fannie and Freddie despite these risks because of the expectation that the Treasury would come to their aid in a crisis. This encourages the management at Fannie and Freddie to take on more risk and more debt than they otherwise would. As a result, Fannie and Freddie have a combined outstanding debt that is equal to 39 percent of the total outstanding U.S. public debt, and their combined financial assets are worth 44 percent more than those of Citigroup, the largest bank in the United States.” Problems at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae: Too Big to Fail? http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/bk090903.pdf (My emphasis)
What this means is Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have incurred more debt than thirty-nine per cent of all private debt in the US! Remember unlike their competitors, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae enjoy government backing and guarantees. This means if anything goes wrong and the loans default or the industry collapses, the US taxpayers will pick up the tab. Connect the dots, the US is in the midst of a mortgage (credit) and liquidity crisis that is about to send AmeriKKKa into a major recession (depression?). Will mortgage and lending giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae suffer? No, because you and I will be the ones who bail them out with guaranteed tax dollars. “Although – as the management of both Fannie and Freddie is quick to note – the charters of both GSEs explicitly disavow any federal (i.e., taxpayer) responsibility for their securities, the reality is that investors do not believe the government would abandon their financial obligations. This was made obvious in 1981 when a dramatic rise in interest rates left Fannie Mae insolvent on a mark-to- market basis.5 Were it not for Fannie Mae’s special relationship with the federal government – between 1978 and 1985, the federal government provided Fannie with implied annual credit support estimated to range between $600 million and $11 billion – the firm likely would have failed that year or the next. Thankfully, interest rates subsided the following years, and no direct bailout was necessary; but it is clear that the markets continued to loan to Fannie Mae with the expectation that the government would have come to its assistance if necessary.” Problems at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae: Too Big to Fail? Executive Summary http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/bk090903.pdf
Corporate media lapdogs, think tankers and industry taking heads have called for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to take on even more of the toxic loans and mortgages. The new bipartisan “economic stimulous package” recently passed by Congress provides for a larger role for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But there is a hidden agenda here. The white collar criminals are setting the stage for an even bigger taxpayer rip off. Of course the investment bankers, commercial banks and corporate media would call for this type of program. It would get all the bad loans and toxic investment vehicles the Wall Street investment firms and banks, hedge funds and derivatives have on their off balance sheet books (the ones losing money as we speak) off their hands via a taxpayer bailout! It would mean Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae will take the hit on all the defaulting loans they purchased and pass them off on us instead of their stockholders. In other words you and I will be left holding the bag due to the implicit governmental guarantees to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to back their securities.
“Unfortunately, in the world of leveraged finance there can be no rewards without risk. And the financial rewards Fannie and Freddie have been generating for their shareholders in recent years are a direct consequence of both firms’ increased tolerance for risk, which is largely borne by taxpayers. Not only does every mortgage investment in their portfolio come with the interest-rate risk discussed above, but purchasing MBS with debt also exposes the purchaser to other significant interest-rate and liquidity risks that could result in collapse.” Problems at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae:Too Big to Fail? Executive Summary http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/bk090903.pdf
Unfortunately the above warning issued by the US Senate Republican Policy Committee in 2003 went unheeded.(Go to the Website and read the whole document.) Today we stand on the precipice of major financial collapse. If and when it happens (more when than if), the beleaguered taxpayers will be the ones bailing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae out. The criminal cabal that controls the banking system is manipulating things for a taxpayer bailout like they did with the Savings and Loan fiasco. Scrutinize the wording in the new stimulous package or any future mortgage relief “bail out” legislation; because more than likely we will be the ones footing the bills.

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The Escalating Class Warfare In AmeriKKKa

The Escalating AmeriKKKan Class Warfare Part II

“During the past five years (January 01—January 06), the information sector of the U.S. economy lost 644,000 jobs or 17.4% of its work force. Computer systems design and related lost 105,000 jobs or 8.5% of its work force. Clearly, jobs offshoring is not creating jobs in computers and information technology. Indeed, jobs offshoring is not even creating jobs in related fields.
U.S. manufacturing lost 2.9 million jobs, almost 17% of the manufacturing work force. The wipeout is across the board. Not a single manufacturing payroll classification created a single new job. The declines in some manufacturing sectors have more in common with a country undergoing saturation bombing during war than with a super-economy that is "the envy of the world." In five years, communications equipment lost 42% of its workforce. Semiconductors and electronic components lost 37% of its workforce. The workforce in computers and electronic products declined 30%. Electrical equipment and appliances lost 25% of its employees. The workforce in motor vehicles and parts declined 12%. Furniture and related products lost 17% of its jobs. Apparel manufacturers lost almost half of the work force. Employment in textile mills declined 43%. Paper and paper products lost one-fifth of its jobs. The work force in plastics and rubber products declined by 15%. For the five year period, U.S. job growth was limited to four areas: education and health services, state and local government, leisure and hospitality, and financial services. There was no U.S. job growth outside these four areas of domestic nontradable services.” The New Face of Class Warfare By Paul Craig Roberts http://vdare.com/roberts/061009_newface.htm

In the previous article I mentioned the ruling elites were engaged in class warfare against working folks, that one way they did it was through disinformation and lies about the state of the economy, employment, the budget etc. This not wild speculation on my part or hatin’ on AmeriKKKa, honest economists are also saying this. “As a result of the systemic manipulations, if the CPI and GDP methodologies of 1980 were applied to today's data, you would get the 8%-plus inflation and flat economic growth discussed in the opening paragraph. Using unemployment methodology of 1960 generates an estimate of current 12% unemployment.
When Main Street, U.S.A., does not believe the government's reporting, the reality of common experience usually is the better estimate of what is happening in the economy. The damage from the fraudulent statistics, however, is much more serious than just politics as usual, the misguidance of overly trusting investors, or the massive cheating of Social Security recipients (payments would 70% higher using the CPI methodology of 1980). The masking of the actual annual $3.5 trillion deficit is setting up the nation for an eventual national bankruptcy/U.S. dollar collapse. Putting that $3.5 trillion in perspective, consider this: If the government seized 100% of everyone's salary and wages, the government still would show a deficit. But that is a story in itself.” MANIPULATING THE MASSES by John Williams http://www.conservababes.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php
The elites, their government and media puppets don’t want us to know they are cooking their books, cheating us out of rightful benefits as they rob the Social Security Trust Fund in a vain attempt to keep AmeriKKKa afloat. This type of statistical manipulation is merely the tip of the iceberg. As they simultaneously rig the book keeping they are pulling the rug out from under Joe and Jane Sixpack leaving them in a financial lurch. They don’t give a hoot about us all they are worried about is us not rising up in revolutionary protest. And they have pretty much eliminated that via an ongoing COINTELPRO campaign that makes sure righteous leaders are maginalized and discouraged. “Be clear about this: COINTELPRO and COINTELPRO-type programs are alive, well, and functioning in 21st century America by a government (of both Democrats and Republicans) who fear most especially its population of color, and fear losing control if enough white Americans were actually to have a momentary lapse of INSANITY and realize that their precious whiteness is being used against them by their own brethren as a manipulating control mechanism, as in the well publicized 20th century laboratory of Pavlov’s salivating dogs. COINTELPRO and similar such government/police programs have no boundaries, no limitations, no conscience. COINTELPRO is utterly amoral and existed in the recent past, and continues to exist presently, in order to STIFLE AND NEUTRALIZE political consciousness and any effective resistance to economic and social control in this sham democracy. Moreover, without the active collaboration on the part of some of the US populace, COINTELPRO would, itself, be neutralized, and it is precisely this that politically conscious and justice-loving people must recognize and comprehend. COINTELPRO and COINTELPRO-type programs must be exposed as the internal terrorist activities they are and be neutralized [i.e. made defunct] by a politically conscious populace.” Capitalism, COINTELPRO and the Torture of Justice Larry Pinkney http://www.blackcommentator.com/257/257
The plutocrats have already put the repressive infrastructure in place: the police, mercenaries, the Army Labor Camps, detention camps etc to spy on, arrest and detain dissidents and they are now pushing legislation through Congress to make it all legal to designate any protest or dissent as terrorism. For the masses they plan to reduce the standard of living of working folks and make us cower in fear, live in destitution or keep us bamboozled, foolishly chasing a mythical AmeriKKKan dream. The truth of the matter is for most of us the Horatio Alger story of rags to riches will never be ours. “In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2001, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 51%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 84%, leaving only 16% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth, the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 39.7%. Table 1 and Figure 1 present further details drawn from the careful work of economist Edward N. Wolff at New York University (2004).” Wealth, Income, and Power by G. William Domhoff http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
The income gap is widening daily and the prospects of many folks in the lower socio-economic brackets jumping into a more affluent “class” are becoming more and more unlikely. “The gap between the rich and everybody else in this country is fast becoming an unbridgeable chasm. David Cay Johnston, in the latest installment of the New York Times series ‘Class Matters,’ wrote, ‘It's no secret that the gap between the rich and the poor has been growing, but the extent to which the richest are leaving everybody else behind is not widely known.’ Consider, for example, two separate eras in the lifetime of the baby-boom generation. For every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent of the population between 1950 and 1970, those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162. That gap has since skyrocketed. For every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent between 1990 and 2002, Mr. Johnston wrote, each taxpayer in that top bracket brought in an extra $18,000. It's like chasing a speedboat with a rowboat.
Put the myth of the American Dream aside. The bottom line is that it's becoming increasingly difficult for working Americans to move up in class. The rich are freezing nearly everybody else in place, and sprinting off with the nation's bounty. Economic mobility in the United States - the extent to which individuals and families move from one social class to another - is no higher than in Britain or France, and lower than in some Scandinavian countries. Maybe we should be studying the Scandinavian dream. As far as the Bush administration is concerned, the gap between the rich and the rest of us is not growing fast enough.” The Mobility Myth By BOB HERBERT http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/opinion/06herbert.html.
The number one newspaper of the ruling elites The New York Times did a series on the widening income gaps and revealed, “Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans — those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 — receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows. The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression. While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent. The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent. The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.” Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/business/29tax.html
While things look bleak we should not become discouraged or overly pessimistic. The coming economic downturn will impact us but it doesn’t have to devastate or destroy us. One of the most revolutionary things we can do to reverse the negative impact is stop spending beyond our means. A really seditious strategy would be to make a concerted effort to get out of debt!!! Years ago, The Temptations had a hit song “Don’t Let the Jones Get You Down” . In it they encouraged folks to stop trying to keep up with the Jones. It’s great advice, don’t allow the Madison Avenue psychologists and ad makers trick you into buying things you really don’t need, or dupe you into following the fads they create .
Sit down, take the time to create a realistic household budget and includes long term specific ways to pay off your credit card debt as quickly and practically as you can. If the ruling elites’ goal is to make us debt slaves and wage peons, the best way to outwit them is to get out of debt and stop overextending ourselves financially. This is easier said than done but nevertheless it can be done. The last thing the criminal oligarchy wants is a knowledgeable and organized populous resisting their fascist agenda. The elites’ goal is to create a fearful, uncritical and obedient herd of sheeple who passively go along with their program.
In the past “race” and color have been the wedge that prevented a united front by poor whites and people of color against the plutocrats who were exploiting and oppressing all of us. Racism is so entrenched, trying to build multi-ethnic coalitions probably won’t succeed. For us, the best way to defeat the fascists is through ethnocentric unified coordinated action, strategic boycotts and patronage, massive strikes and civil disobedience. The plutocrats will be forced to alter their exploitative and reactionary strategies. They can’t put all of us in jail just because we choose not to support corporations that exploit the masses, despoil the environment, corrupt government and devalue life.
We can come together with like minded black folks and plan to start a buying club or food co-ops to help cut expenses while having access to nutritious vegetables and fruits. We can organize and start community gardening programs to cultivate and develop vacant lots in the neighborhood and grow our own food. We can use these activities to teach our children about gardening and food. The possibilities are unlimited. Class warfare is real. We have to face this reality and begin to organize our personal and collective lives to minimize the damage, carnage and ensure our survival. We must simultaneously begin our counterattacks using the primary weapon at our disposal, our economic power.

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Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Class Warfare In AmeriKKKa Is Real Part 1

Class Warfare In AmeriKKKa Is Real part 1

“Hard as it may be to believe, all major US policy from the 1970’s through the misnamed sub-prime crisis today, had a connecting continuous thread. Key Fed and Treasury and other US policymakers always held their ‘eyes on the Prize.’ The ‘Prize’ was untold financial gains to be won through a rollback of major concessions to the working blue collar and middle income Americans, concessions granted during the Great Depression by powerful establishment circles led by the Rockefeller and Morgan banking groups, to forestall a more radical revolt. Social Security was one target for rollback. Financial deregulation and above all repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, was another. Here a well-connected Wall Street banker named Alan Greenspan was to play the decisive role on behalf of the financial deregulation agenda in his tenure as Federal Reserve Chairman lasting from 1987 through 2006. Securitization of sub-prime or junk mortgages was to have been his crowning legacy. As it looks at this writing, it certainly will be, though perhaps not as he and others in Wall Street intended. It will more likely be a crown of disgrace. ” The Financial Tsunami: The Financial Foundations of the American Century by F. William Engdahl http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?

The current economic meltdown is the consequence of a designed policy by the ruling elites to consolidate, transfer and redistribute all wealth in their hands. This relatively small cadre/cabal of megalomaniacal psychopaths has set in motion plans that will make their robber baron ancestors look like saints and philanthropists by comparison. To see a concise synopsis of their overarching socio-political and financial objectives go to www.hermes-press.com/index.html . To better understand the historical implications of the current financial meltdown read the series: The Financial Tsunami: The Financial Foundations of the American Century by F. William Engdahl at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context These Websites provide additional pieces to the puzzle to help you better understand why things are unfolding the way they are. This way you will not fall for the okey-doke being put out by the corporate mind control apparatus whose primary job is to keep us bamboozled, distracted and misinformed about what is really going on in the world as they program us to be mindless Pavlovian automatons complying without question.
The ruling elites know that there will be some resistance to their plans for a fascist New World Order and they are preparing the legislation (USA PATRIOT ACT I and II, HR 1955 RFS and its Senate version, S.1959 Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007) to legalize their reactionary oppressive police state. They have already set up FEMA concentration camps, US Army Labor Camps http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r210_35.pdf and have the Executive Orders in place that will allow Bu$h or his successors to implement martial law whenever they deem fit. More than likely they will create another false flag pretext like 9-11 so they can launch their dictatorial agenda under the guise of “national security”.
The federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina is a prime example of what we have to look forward to in the not too distant future. The Bu$h cabal’s response to Katrina was a dry run, a test to work out the kinks in their domestic population control, marital law, dislocation, relocation plan. They were also able to test the use mercenaries to: disarm, control and intimidate the public. Using the media to characterize people scuffling to survive as “looters” and “thugs” when in fact most of the charges of vandalism, rape and pillage never really happened was also part of the plan. However the media on the ground unwittingly thwarted that part of the program by reporting a different spin on just how bad things really were. Another problem Bu$h and Co. encountered was the mass media spun Bu$h’s reaction as callous incompetence which did not go well for him on top of an illegal pre-emptive invasion/occupation that was neither popular nor a success.
In the meantime the plutocrats are planning another 1929 type economic catastrophe that will leave most AmeriKKKans debt slaves and wage peons. Keep in mind, the Stock Market crash of 1929 didn’t just happen, it was the result of Federal Reserve policies in conjunction with their Wall Street/ international banking buddies plans to loot the country. The Pecora Commission that studied the causes of the 1929 crash discovered the bankers were actively involved in stock manipulation, shaky credit deals, major fraud and wild speculation very similar to what went on with the Savings and Loan fiasco, Enron and the current “Subprime” debacle. Their schemes and policies created the perfect storm for the meltdown that is just beginning to unravel. I say just beginning because the real problems are just starting. The media and the elites are trying to spin the situation as if Bu$h and Fed have the problem under control but they really don’t. Things are so bad now their largest banks and investment firms are becoming insolvent or going belly up. To survive they are being forced to seek outside help from China, rich Arabs and central banks around the world. Since 2006 over two hundred major mortgage companies have imploded or gone belly up. The number increases daily and some of the largest names in the business are teetering on the brink of disaster. All the so called solutions are really designed to bail out the bankers and give them immunity from litigation.
Much like the Titanic which in its day was dubbed “the ship to big to sink”, banks and lenders like Countrywide Financial Corp, Bear Sterns, Sallie Mae, CITICorp and Merrill Lynch were considered too big and too well established to fail. Well, just like the Titanic we may see many of these go down in 2008 unless their intervention schemes save them. What does that mean for us on the bottom rungs of the AmeriKKKan socio-economic ladder? It means that like in ‘29 banks may close or be merged with other banks so they will not default or be sapped by runs on their deposits. An example is what happened recently to Northen Rock in England. This also happened to several major banks in France, Germany and Asia that bought heavily into the US mortgage/bond packaged deals that are now going bust. The Fed ( a private bank that controls the US money and credit supply) is printing money like crazy. It is lending to banks at reduced rates just so commercial banks won’t default leaving their depositors, investors and borrowers blowing in the wind.
We are impacted because real inflation (meaning the actual rise in the money supply) is causing the US dollar to lose more and more value every day. This fact is making the cost of living go up which means making ends meet will become harder and harder. For working class folks, our consumption will slow or our debt will continue to rise unless we wake up to the scam being pulled on us. Long term our standard of living will rapidly fall. When you couple all this with the so called “trade” policies that sent US manufacturing jobs overseas, the government’s (both political parties’) vicious assault on organized labor, and an ever widening gap between the rich and the rest of us; it is clear to see there is deliberate class warfare going on in AmeriKKKa.
“Federal Reserve monetary policy has been typically misrepresented as a series of ad hoc pragmatic responses to recurring crises in post-war banking and finance. The reality is that it has faithfully followed a coherent hidden thread of policy that was first laid out in 1973 by the spokesman then for America’s most powerful establishment family. The policy was outlined in a little-noted book titled, ominously enough, ‘The Second American Revolution.’ It was written by John D. Rockefeller III, scion of the powerful Standard Oil and Chase Manhattan Bank empire, and, along with his three brothers—David, Nelson and Laurance—architect of the world arrangement after 1945 known as the American Century. In his book, Rockefeller declared the establishment’s determination to roll back concessions grudgingly granted by the wealthy and powerful during the Great Depression. Rockefeller issued the call in 1973, long before Jimmy Carter or Margaret Thatcher came to office to implement it. He called for a ‘deliberate, consistent, long-term policy to decentralize and privatize many government functions…to diffuse power throughout the society.’ The latter was a witting deception as his intent was not to diffuse power, but just the opposite—to concentrate that economic and banking power into the hands of a tight-knit elite. Privatization of essential and socially useful government functions that had been established often with great social agitation and political pressure during the difficult crises of the 1930’s, was the Rockefeller agenda. In brief, it was the removal of Depression era government regulations on all aspects of economic and social life in America. Above all, deregulation of Wall Street and financial markets was the goal, along with a radical reduction in the equalizing of wealth, as seen by Rockefeller and friends, inherent in such programs as Social Security. The George W. Bush ‘tax cuts for the wealthy’ were just a continuation of a three decade agenda of the powerful establishment circles.” The Financial Tsunami: The Financial Foundations of the American Century Part 2 by F. William Engdahl http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7813
We are being used as cannon fodder for the ruling oligarchy and their puppets. One of their minions, Henry Kissinger once publicly referred to people not of his social and ethnic groups as “useless eaters”; hence their diabolical global depopulation strategy which includes massive death and carnage from their perpetual wars. As we move deeper into 2008 look for socio-economic conditions to worsen, more banks and mortgage companies will become insolvent, fail or be consolidated to prevent them from failing. More companies will take US jobs overseas. Major industries will weaken due to the credit crunch. Unemployment will continue to rise as will homelessness. Many more AmeriKKKans will lose their homes to default and foreclosure and the money supply will continue to rise; lowering the standard of living as real wages remain stagnant.
More importantly for us, the elites’ lies will begin to become obvious, the manipulated government statistics, the real deal will become known as more hedge funds and derivatives (the Shadow Banking system) feel the pinch of the bad loans made by their banking buddies. Because the truth of the matter is we are being lied to daily. “Sadly, the one result of a false government inflation figure is that our interest rates are set unrealistically low. This cheap money fuels massive borrowing. The borrowing creates massive liquidity and a buying boom in such items as real estate, stocks, commodities, and consumer items. All these items rise in a dangerous price bubble. The economy looks good for a time, but the day of reckoning starts to appear as the U.S. dollar gets hit increasingly hard in international currency markets. In addition to cooking the key inflation measure (CPI), our government has ceased publication of M3, a popular measure of money supply that economists use as a gauge of future inflation. Government figures have been ‘doctored’ for many years, under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter. The former President George H.W. Bush began efforts to lower the reported CPI systematically. Clinton set the stage for a new and lower inflation CPI. So, our present government is not content to cook just the CPI. Their inflation lie is spreading to other statistics as they try to keep the lid on the real inflation rate and to expand on the inflation ‘cooking’ expertise of President Clinton. It is not just commentators such as Lou Dobbs and us who have expressed major concerns over stealth inflation. As we have often reported, former Fed chairmen bankers, who are not known to rock the boat, such as in Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan, have expressed their concern in public. Even senior bankers, such as Gerald Corrigan of Goldman Sachs, and successful fund managers, such as Rudolph-Riad Younes of Julius Baer, have shared their growing inflation concerns.” http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1773119/posts
In part two we’ll continue our look at how all this impacts us.

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Monday, February 04, 2008

Celebrate African History

Celebrate African History

“Several strands of evidence-fossil, genetic, and linguistic- point persuasively to the conclusion that every person alive today is descended from a population of anatomically modern humans that existed only in Africa until about 100,000 year ago. They were nomads and they soon spread around the globe. Within the span of 4,000 generations modern humans reoccupied the regions where Homo Erectus and archaic Homo Sapiens had become extinct, they replaced pre-existing populations and colonized lands that people had never occupied before. Humans dominate the Earth and have been tot he moon. We see vision of the future in the mind’s eye and turn them to reality with the aptitudes and talents which evolution bestowed-in Africa.” A Biography of The Continent Africa by John Reader page 85.

As we celebrate Black History Month let us not make the error of thinking our history began when we were brought to these shores in chains and shackles. Let us not fall prey to the disinformation and lies put forth by our adversaries that says Africans contributed little to the world except maybe song and dance. Let us expand our minds, beyond the culturally imposed boundaries of Eurocentric white supremacist compensatory propaganda and embrace the truth of our being. We are the direct descendants of the first modern human beings. As such we, yes you and I are heirs to a marvelously unbroken legacy of genius, invention, innovation and triumph. This same genius that created civilizations unsurpassed in magnificence along the Nile from Sudan to the Delta which subsequently spread into Asia and around the world is encoded and embedded in our DNA and genes. Ancient African people were the fathers and mothers of humanity. Their resourcefulness, resoluteness and resilience paved the way and laid the foundation for social or civil organization which we call civilization. Our ancestors created rituals and ceremonies like marriage and other rites of passage to recognize and denote the various stages of life. Our people created metaphysics, philosophy, religion, metallurgy, the esoteric and mundane sciences. We were the first to adorn ourselves with feathers, shells, gold and animal skins and parts. We incorporated our adornment into our rituals, our ceremonies and our daily living. We used adornment and oft times special scarification as a means to reinforce our values, customs, to signify social status and identify position within the group. We come from a truly innovative people!
Over the centuries Africans migrated to and fro building great communities throughout the continent: Great Zimbabwe in the South, Meroe, Nubia , Aksum, Cush, Sudan in the East and vast kingdoms in the West like Benin, Ghana, Mali and Songhay and the Kongo in the middle. We invented the notion of government whether it was an informal council of wise elders comprised of the men and women of the community who had demonstrated self-control, selflessness, skills, expertise and wisdom or a formal ritualistic leadership. We created the positions of Chiefs, Kings and Queens. There is no need for us to be in awe of anybody else or feel inferior to anything anyone else who came on the planet after us has accomplished. Our African ancestors laid the foundation for all we see in the world today, even the evil and dysfunctional.
Africans being social beings actively engaged in the process of life were forced to come to grips with dealing with anti-social or deviant behaviors. They must have worked on a trial and error basis at first until they came up with established patterns and ways of dealing with miscreant or incorrigible members of their community. One form of discipline was stoning or execution. Another form was banishment. We see in history our ancestors banished lepers from their midst. Leprosy was the scourge of the ancient world. It is equivalent to our AIDS. Since all Africans were originally richly melanated, once they contracted leprosy their skins became discolored (turned white), they turned blotchy with running sores and as the disease progressed their bodies became disfigured with deformed limbs. It was awful to look at and highly contagious. To prevent its spread and the possibility of infecting the whole community, early humans exiled or banished sufferers from their group, villages and communities. Coming from a socialistic or communal environment, the lepers huddled together as best they could in what were called leper colonies in an effort to survive amidst their debilitating infirmities.
Our ancestors also banished recalcitrant members of their community; behavioral deviants and perverts who could not be socialized by the conventional methods of the times, peer, age group and societal pressures. But because the deviants also came from communal environments they too banded together to survive. Legend has it that these outcasts were banished from communities in Africa and Southern Asia, they migrated into and settled into Eurasia. They settled there but eventually got trapped during the ice age. Away from their original cultural ties but continuing their deviant behaviors, they lost all semblance of a moral communal society. Through centuries of incestuous inbreeding they lost their melanin. They eschewed a collectivist African social paradigm and opted for a dog eat dog predatory lifestyle. The strong preyed upon the weak. Their lifestyle was characterized by infanticide, male dominated autocratic and ruthless rule which relegated females to a lessor status and role. The only way a woman could gain any status within the group or tribe was by attaching herself to a dominant or powerful male.
Two separate and distinct cultural patterns eventually evolved. The indigenous Africans and those Africans who migrated into Asia created and transplanted a more peaceful and balanced way of life. The de-melanated outcasts trapped in the Northern latitudes produced a more violent, blood thirsty patriarchal social paradigm. Cheikh Anta Diop called these two social paradigms the Two Cradle Theory. You an read more about them his books: Civilization or Barbarism and The Cultural Unity of Black Africa. There were vast differences between the Northern Cradle and their aboriginal ancestors. Whether they want to admit it or not, whether they like it or not, Europeans, Arabs, Chinese and all other non-African phenotypes are mutations of aboriginal Africans! “Noting a trend of evolutionary development, Brauer concluded that anatomically modern humans had evolved in East Africa from the pre-existing hominid stock not less than 150,000 years ago. Thereafter they spread rapidly throughout the length and breath of the continent. From among those who exploited the resources of the Nile Valley and reached the Delta, small numbers migrated along the shores of he Mediterranean into the Middle East and thence into Europe, Asia Australia and the Far East.” A Biography of The Continent Africa John Reader page 93.
Mitochondrial DNA has proven all modern humans are the fruit of Africans who lived in East Africa. We celebrate Black History Month best by celebrating and honoring who we are, human being whose ancestors originated and thrived in Africa! We are all descendants of those Africans who first populated Africa then spread out all over the world. Celebrate yourself, celebrate African History!!!

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