Archive for the ‘Congress’ Category
The following is a comprehensive list of all representatives that voted against an audit of the "Privately Owned" Federal Reserve Bank.
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/materials/HR1207-Shame-List.pdf
We feel that every representative should have stood in favor of this important legislation for several reasons.
The primary, and most basic reason being that in the 97 years of its operation the Federal Reserve has NEVER been audited. EVER!
Do you think perhaps it is overdue? Especially in light of what has transpired with the economy in the last 24 months?
Can any of these representatives offer a valid reason for voting aginst this legislation? I dont think so, and we here at RTR have heard them all.
1. The most ridiculous being that it would disrupt operations and pose a risk to the recovery. What recovery? Most recently: Wells Fargo laying off 2,800, Microsoft laying off 5,800, and the tens of thousands that have lost their jobs?
High unemployment, and a moribund housing market have increased risks to the U.S. economic recovery, while the public debt looms large and needs to be cut.
2. Investors were worried that greater political influence in the Fed's operations, could weaken the central bank's resolve to fight inflation in the future. Please note, the dollar has lost approximately 95% of it's value since the Fed came into being in 1913. I think the Fed, based upon this fact, is losing it's battle against inflation.
The U.S. House of Representatives had approved a bill in December of 2009 that included a provision, championed by Texas Representative Ron Paul, that would have opened the Fed's dealings to audits much the same as agencies of the government. But in a statement on June 15 of this year, House Democrats participating in negotiations over a final financial reform bill signaled a willingness to live with a narrower Senate audit provision that does not cover monetary policy.
The Fed, which has admitted it was too complacent about regulatory oversight in the run-up to the global financial crisis, has come under heavy fire for being too close to the banks it regulates. So, in the end, the U.S. central bank appears to be emerging largely unscathed by the regulatory reform efforts. It successfully fought off a Senate push In May 2010, that would have stripped it of its oversight of smaller banks, and is poised to emerge as the most powerful financial regulator when reforms are complete.
If you agree with us that this legislation should have passed, then exercise your right in the next election cycle and vote out those who failed once again to do the right thing, and uphold their oath to defend, and protect the Constitution of the United States of America.
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Jesse's Cafe Americain
“I have to think this train is probably going to leave the station soon and we need to focus our efforts on explaining the story as best we can. There were too many people involved in the deals -- too many counterparties, too many lawyers and advisors, too many people from AIG -- to keep a determined Congress from the information.”
James P. Bergin, NY Fed, in an email to his Fed colleagues
'Though it is hard to divine much understanding from the unredacted filing, it has become clear that Goldman had more involvement than previously believed: In addition to the credit default swaps it bought from AIG, the filing shows that Goldman Sachs also originated many of the underlying assets that AIG and the New York Fed bought back from Société Générale.
The American people have the right to know how their tax dollars were spent and who benefited most from this back-door bailout," said Kurt Bardella, spokesman for Issa. "Now that it's public, let's see if the sky really does fall as the New York Fed said it would to justify its coverup."
Other lawmakers believed that the New York Fed was trying to hide its ties to Goldman Sachs.' AIG Reveals the Story - CNN
"Wednesday’s hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials.
We’re talking about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose role as the most influential part of the federal-reserve system -- apart from the matter of AIG’s bailout -- deserves further congressional scrutiny...
By pursuing this line of inquiry, the hearing revealed some of the inner workings of the New York Fed and the outsized role it plays in banking. This insight is especially valuable given that the New York Fed is a quasi-governmental institution that isn’t subject to citizen intrusions such as freedom of information requests, unlike the Federal Reserve.
This impenetrability comes in handy since the bank is the preferred vehicle for many of the Fed’s bailout programs. It’s as though the New York Fed was a black-ops outfit for the nation’s central bank...
New York Fed staff and outside lawyers from Davis Polk & Wardell edited AIG communications to investors and intervened with the Securities and Exchange Commission to shield details about the buyout transactions, according to a report by Issa.
That the New York Fed, a quasi-governmental body, was able to push around the SEC, an executive-branch agency, deserves a congressional hearing all by itself." Secret Banking Cabal Emerges From AIG Shadows - Reilly - Bloomberg
And this is the same Federal Reserve that was proposed by the Obama economic team to be the 'super regulator' with broad powers and consumer protection responsibilities over the entire financial system.
The Fed is a private agency, quasi-governmental, but not subject to discretionary audit or review by the government, except at arms length, through managed testimony. They make a point of demanding secrecy and independence at their own discretion, oversight on their terms.
This is a choice promoted by Geithner and Summers, who are creatures of the Fed and the banking system, almost sure to return to sinecures there after leaving government. And it is tempting choice for a president and congressmen of a weak character. If the Fed bears the responsibility they do not have to budget money and manage the process, and they can point fingers at its every failure. It is a formula for conflicts of interest, soft bribery and corruption. Confidence does matter.
The Fed and Blackrock are becoming to the Obama Administration what Halliburton and KBR were to Bush and Cheney, and the banking crisis -- the new Iraq. Can the handling of it be so inept that it becomes Obama's Watergate as well?
The Fed must be audited, and its power to disburse public money to private banks, except in the normal course of open market operations, curtailed. Only the Congress has the right to tax the people, and the Fed's ability to disburse billions of funds at its own discretion to domestic and foreign banks is a de facto form of taxation, since the Fed operates on a cost plus basis, without budgetary allotment from the Congress. The obligations of the Federal Reserve flow directly from its balance sheet, which is the basis for the national currency.
And despite the arguments from the Financial Times to 'stop snooping' the press and the Congress should delve deeply into the AIG bailout, because enough has already been exposed that it smells to high heaven.
It is remniscent of Watergate and Enron to see Timmy, Ben, and Hank falling all overthemselves in establishing that they had no knowledge or involvement in the payments of billions to AIG.
The truth must come out.
My own suspicion is that Goldman 'set up' AIG for a proper face ripping with its financial arrangements, playing both sides of the deal. There is further evidence of money flowing from Goldman to AIG executives before the bailout occurred. And at the least the major players saw what was happening and turned a blind eye to it, busying themselves with other things and establishing their plausible deniability.
A proper investigation can establish any specific guilt. It is a shocking scandal that the FBI and Justice Department are still not more actively involved in real investigation rather than these staged hearings.
But this incident should make it absolutely clear why the Fed cannot enjoy the expansion of its role as the regulator of the system. It is too conflicted in its mission of monetary independence, and at the same time the creature of the banks, to be a true civil servant fully answerable to the Congress.
Yes I understand the distinctions between the Fed Board of Governors and the NY Fed with regard to FOIA requests, and the appointmet process. What I am saying is that the distinctions obviously do not hold, do not work. The Fed is one organization. These distinctions are remniscent of the banking scandals exposed by then AG Elliot Spitzer. They simply do not work. They ...
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Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." - John Maynard Keynes, 1919
Part I
"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." - Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, a Treatise on Economics, (Fox & Wilkes, 4th rev. ed., 1963)
Part II
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Where are you going Papa?
Where are you going Pa?
I’m going off to war son.
I’m going off to war.
There’s nothing can be done son.
Our country has gone to war.
The cannon’s are calling.
The battlefield is red.
The flag is unfurling,
And soon I may be dead.
War is repugnant to the human character. It is due to greed, avarice, and a host of sins that have plagued us since Cain slew Abel.
Century after century armies have marched to the beat of bloodshed imposing some sort of tyranny on an often unsuspecting foe. Few times are we justified in bearing arms against our fellow man.
All war cannot be avoided from the prospective of those who wish to maintain their national sovereignty, and freedom. Typically civilian casualties are high, infrastructure destroyed, and some form of slavery ensues.
America was founded on a war for Independence. I am not going to justify the Revolution to you because it would simply be an exercise in futility to those who learned their history in modern government schools, and it needs no explanation for the rest who were willing to dig into the conflict that began years before the Declaration of Independence was signed on that hot July day.
Today, contrary to our stated goals as a country, America imposes its will around the world. It is not without descent that we do so, but rather an ongoing struggle by those who realize the essence of what lies under this tragic agenda.
Let me qualify my objections to our current platform of bringing democracy to the rest of the world. First, I would not hesitate to take up arms against anyone who would endanger the sanctity of our free state. I would further qualify that by stating that I have not done so at this point because we are either ill prepared for an internal war, or the balance of the citizenry would much rather languish under the failed, and unlawful acts of the current government.
Second, as we have never failed to point out here, this country is not a democracy, but rather a Constitutional Federal Republic. A country formed by a union of states, each sovereign in its own right, which contains a free and independent people never beholding to the majority rule in so much as we do not violate or abuse the rights of our fellow citizens. For America to be so hypocritical as to promote an obviously flawed, and failed form of government speaks volumes of who we have become, and what path we now walk.
There is no America for the many who serve us now in more than One-Hundred other nations across the globe. We are the policemen of the world, tearing fathers and mothers from their homes, and planting the seeds of strife, and despotism as we march ourselves deeper into an untenable position.
Ron Paul talked about blow-back from our meddling into the affairs of other nations. Those who would have us believe that we have the right to change the structure of other countries laughed at him. The media joined in the fray as the braying sheep they are, willing to sell out their fellow countrymen for the well paid positions of propagandists.
This article is not about our agenda, but the underlying tragedy it inflicts upon the few who are willing to serve their nation. I say few because at any given time it is only a very small percentage of the population that is willing to take up arms, even when it is apparent that a call to arms is necessary to maintain a free state.
Our military is voluntary. Many of the people who serve have been to Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Indeed some have been there four or five times, and that my fellow citizen is well beyond the term of abuse.
What impact does that have on the lives of a little boy, or girl who is without that one parent upon which they derive an essential part of their character? I suppose in a nation with a divorce rate of over fifty-percent we are want to even recognize the damage of the position. But, let me tell you that I would bet that those good people who are willing to serve their country are the ones who would create the most stable of environments for a sound family life.
I oppose the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and what ever else may come from these expeditions, but I laud the men and women of our armed forces as courageous despite any political difference. In the long run, as many of our Vietnam Vets realize today, we have entered into a war without justification that will ruin the lives of many.
The death toll to the American service is enough to make us ill at the notion of those who will not return to their loved ones, or those who have been, and will be burned with permanent disabilities. The death toll in the civilian population of Iraq alone should beat upon our hearts as an injustice so great that we should scream through every legislature for their explanation as to why they lay silent.
The civilian death toll in Iraq passed 1.5 million people more than a year ago, and the abomination of injuries caused by depleted uranium core munitions is a scar this country will not readily be able to reconcile in the long run. Blow-Back from this may be the position from which our government builds upon its already obvious assault on liberty. It may also be the battleground of our children who will construct their bunkers against attack, after attack from those who have seen the horrors of war brought about by our nation building paradigm.
Cindy Sheehan, while I could not initially agree with her, has come to see that this war is not a matter of democrats versus republicans, but rather it is the vilest aspect of a nation that has been captured by a one party system, indifferent to the rule of law, and captive to greed, and power. Today I can see we, ...
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