Archive for the ‘Federal Reserve’ Category
The U.S. economy is dying and most American voters have no idea why it is happening. Unfortunately, the mainstream media and most of our politicians are not telling the truth about the collapse of the economy. This generation was handed the keys to the greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen, and we have completely wrecked it. Decades of incredibly foolish decisions have left us drowning in an ocean of corruption, greed and bad debt. Thousands of businesses and millions of jobs have left the country and poverty is exploding from coast to coast. We are literally becoming a joke to the rest of the world. It is absolutely imperative that we educate America about what is happening. Until the American people truly understand the problems that we are facing, they will not be willing to implement the solutions that are necessary.
The following are the top 100 statistics about the collapse of the economy that every American voter should know....
#100 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.
#99 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.
#98 Since Barack Obama was sworn in, the share of the national debt per household has increased by $35,835.
#97 The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration.
#96 It is being projected that the U.S. national debt will hit 344% of GDP by the year 2050 if we continue on our current course.
#95 The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that U.S. government debt held by the public will reach a staggering 716 percent of GDP by the year 2080.
#94 In 2010, the U.S. government paid $413 billion in interest on the national debt. That is projected to at least double over the next decade.
#93 According to one new survey, one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.
#92 State and local government debt has reached an all-time high of 22 percent of U.S. GDP.
#91 In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for 18.4% of all income.
#90 U.S. households are now receiving more income from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes.
#89 According to a new study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.
#88 If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.
#87 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.
#86 The cost of a health insurance policy for the average American family rose by a whopping 9 percent last year, and according to a report put out by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust, the average family health insurance policy now costs over $15,000 a year.
#85 One study found that approximately 41 percent of working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.
#84 An all-time record 49.9 million Americans do not have any health insurance at all at this point, and the percentage of Americans covered by employer-based health plans has fallen for 11 years in a row.
#83 According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States. Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually did have health insurance.
#82 Average yearly tuition at U.S. private universities is now up to $27,293.
#81 The cost of college tuition in the United States has gone up by over 900 percent since 1978.
#80 In America today, approximately two-thirds of all college students graduate with student loans.
#79 In 2010, the average college graduate had accumulated approximately $25,000 in student loan debt by graduation day.
#78 The total amount of student loan debt in the United States now exceeds the total amount of credit card debt in the United States.
#77 One-third of all college graduates end up taking jobs that don't even require college degrees.
#76 In the United States today, there are more than 100,000 janitors that have college degrees.
#75 In the United States today, 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.
#74 In the United States today, approximately 365,000 cashiers have college degrees.
#73 It is being projected that for the first time ever, the OPEC nations are going to bring in over a trillion dollars from exporting oil this year. Their biggest customer is the United States.
#72 U.S. oil companies will bring in about $200 billion in pre-tax profits this year. They will also receive about $4.4 billion in specialized tax breaks from the U.S. government.
#71 The United States has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976, and since that time the United States has run a total trade deficit of more than 7.5 trillion dollars with the rest of the world.
#70 The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
#69 The U.S. trade deficit with China is now 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
#68 Today, the United States spends more than 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.
#67 China has surpassed the United States and is now the largest PC market in the entire world.
#66 In 2002, the ...
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He is back! And so are we.
RTR is proud to back the man Dr. Ron Paul this coming election. Come on America! Restore The Republic. Vote for Ron Paul 2012.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUNIeOB0whI=320&h=240]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMxca8hhGhs=320&h=240]
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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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