Global Vision Forum

THE PEOPLE vs THE BANKS - FIRST ANNIVERSARY
http://www.theclassactionsuit.com


Exactly a year ago today, on April 15, 2005, we filed the biggest class action suit in Canada - "The People vs The Banks." This class action created shock waves in heart of the world's banking business that deals in unlawfully created, non-tangible, non-existent digital money.

The class action involves millions of people in Canada. Despite the mainstream media's continued bias reporting, the news of the class action suit has traveled all over the world. The whole world is watching, waiting to see how the banks and the courts are going to stop John-Ruiz: Dempsey from proceeding with this major lawsuit.

The suit arises from the fact that banks as credit-lenders flourish only because of fraud and deception, breach of contract, deception, unjust enrichment, unlawful conversion and illegal creation of money.  The Plaintiff (as well as the other millions of people), the "borrower" is always the source of the principal amount of any alleged loan by virtue of his "promise" to pay (the "promissory note"), from which a negotiable instrument is generated, i.e. "money," pursuant to commonly accepted banking practice which the credit-lender then converts into another form (bank draft, cashier's check) in accordance with their lending policies which is then reissued in the form of a "loan." This "loan" is nothing more than accounting entries on the bank's ledgers, because the financial institutions like the defendant banks, loans nothing of substance, and are forbidden by banking regulations from loaning the bank's cash or assets.

Money simply does not exist. What we call money, the Canadian bank note they call "legal tender" is not money. It has no intrinsic value. It costs two cents to make a five dollar bill as well as it is for a hundred dollar bill. It is money by decree; it is money only because the government says it is money. Worse, in this case, the "money" in question in this lawsuit is the privately created, digital, computer generated money surreptitiously created by the banks and "loaned" to their unsuspecting borrowers with criminal interest at no cost to themselves.

As far as the representative Plaintiff, John-Ruiz: Dempsey is concerned, the People of Canada do not owe the banks any debt or money. It was the other way around. John says: "How can we owe them anything when we never received anything of any value [substance] from these banks?" The money which was assumed to have been credited into the borrower's account was derived from "thin air" - God's money, or money that never belonged to the banks at all. The banks have no legal right to use God's money and pass them on to the unsuspecting borrowers and call it a loan and then start charging usury. This is nothing but pure skullduggery.

"Only God can create something of value out of nothing.no action will lie to recover on a claim based upon, or in any manner depending upon, a fraudulent, illegal, or immoral transaction to which Plaintiff [the bank] was a party." Per Justice Mahoney in First National Bank of Montgomery v. Jerome Daly, 12/07/1968.

In First National Bank above, (more popularly known as the Credit River decision) further stated: "The [bank's] act of creating credit is not authorized by the Constitution and laws of the United States, is unconstitutional and void, and is not lawful consideration in the eyes of the law to support anything or upon which any lawful right can be built." - Justice Martin V. Mahoney.

The above Minnesota trial court's decision holding the federal reserve act unconstitutional and void;  holding the National Banking Act unconstitutional and void; declaring a mortgage acquired by the First National Bank of Montgomery, Minnesota in the regular course of its business, along with the foreclosure and the sheriff's sale to be void. This decision, which is legally sound, has the effect of declaring all private mortgages on real and personal property, and all U.S. and state bonds held by the Federal Reserve, national and state banks to be null and void. This amounts to an emancipation of the nation from personal, national and state debt purportedly owed to this banking system.  Every American (as well as Canadian) owes it to himself, his country, and to the people of the world for that matter to study this decision very carefully and to understand it, for upon it hangs the question of freedom or slavery.

The above statement by Justice Mahoney also holds true in Canada because there is no law in Canada, whether federal or provincial that remotely suggest that it is lawful for any bank to create money out of thin air and then use this created money as valuable consideration whereby they could now loan this created money as principal and then charge their unsuspecting victims interest for the rest of their lives!  This is legalized slavery.

An earlier decision by the Supreme Court of Canada which dealt with the same issue of lack of consideration per Henry J.: ".I know of no law to oblige me to pay it. When I deliver and execute a note, I am presumed to have received a consideration for it, and I am therefore bound to pay the legal holder or endorsee, but it would be contrary to every equitable, and I may say legal, principle to make me pay in the other case, where I received no value, or did no act from which such may be presumed." Scott v. R. (1878), 2 S.C.R. 349.

The People have a strong case. The only problem is money, and the banks have lots of it. The banks have been known to spend $100,000.00 or more trying to collect a $5,000.00 claim. The banks simply cannot afford to have any precedents. They can afford to pay their highly paid lawyers and perhaps even bribe the judges in order to achieve their evil goals.

Just recently, the banks and The People were compelled to appear before Madam Justice Garson, the assigned case management judge who heard the banks' lawyers argue that the statement of claim should be struck in whole or in part. The banks argue that the People's claim has no merit based on their flimsy arguments that the pleadings are either vexatious, frivolous, scandalous and abuse of process. However they all failed to show why the claims are vexatious, frivolous, scandalous and abuse of process.

John and his team, submitted the truth, that the court has no jurisdiction to hear or decide the case simply because the judge herself is in direct conflict of interest. Prior to Judge Garson becoming a judge of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, she worked for one of the defendant banks, TD Canada Trust. John filed a motion to have Garson recused. This motion was intended to be heard by the Chief Justice himself.  Notwithstanding, Garson took it upon herself to decide on the motion to recuse without any notice of hearing being filed which violates the maxim: "nemo judex in sua causa" which means that one cannot be the judge of his/her own cause. Garson saw nothing wrong with that.

During the last hearing on April 6, 2006, John personally served Garson a Writ of Summons and Statement of Claim.  John and others filed this lawsuit against Garson in her personal capacity for interfering with John's personal right of unlimited contract with his principals. The suit also named another judge, Justice James Williams who, without proving any jurisdiction or proof of claim or evidence against John decided to grant an injunction against him from representing other people in court because he is not a member of the BAR or law society. With this writ filed against Garson as a defendant, this judge is now in clear conflict without any excuse.

At the hearing on April 6, John and the others told Garson they will not accept any decision or order made or done while she is in direct conflict of interest and without proper jurisdiction. However, knowing how she made her previous decisions that have no foundation in law or fact, it will not come as a surprise if this judge puts her blindfold and ignore the law in order to give the banks a great favour. The whole world will have the opportunity to see whether or not the courts deserve the kind of respect they think we owed them. Nedless to say, the ball is in
their court.

Whatever happens however, this is only the beginning. The greatest battle, "The People vs. The Banks" has only begun. This battle will continue until the tables of the money changers have been overturned once more. If God be for us, who can be against us? May God Bless Us All.

Moeen, at the Global Vision Conference, I proposed that we need to reimpose "firewalls" between commercial and investment banking. I said we need something like the "Glass-Steagall" Act which was repealed by President Clinton and which prevented commercial banks lending to investment banks for the purposes of speculation - something which has been a big driver of the problem we are in now. Good to see the mass media, below, catching on!
Alistair
www.ProsperityUK.com

BARACK OBAMA NEEDS TO REINTRODUCE GLASS-STEGALL TO BEGIN TO END THIS CRISIS
Liam Halligan
The Sunday Telegraph 4 January 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comme...wrong.html


Appearing on BBC Radio 4's Today programme over the festive period, this columnist was labelled "miserable". But, as I explained to John Humphrys, our financial predicament is no laughing matter. What did the great radio inquisitor want me to do? Insist that if the Government keeps borrowing and listeners merrily load-up their credit cards
during the post-Christmas sales, then everything will be fine?

Well it won't be. The UK - like most Western economies - is in a grave
situation. Our money markets are frozen, denying vital liquidity to millions
of credit-worthy firms. Unless the inter-bank market reboots, then even
hastily revised 2009 Western growth forecasts - down from 2-3pc a year ago to a 1-2pc contraction now - could turn out to be too optimistic. We face the very real danger of chronic unemployment across the so-called "advanced economies" and widespread social unrest.

Yet the Keynesian bail-out solution, accepted as "essential" by practically every mainstream commentator, will do nothing to unfreeze our credit markets. It's even more dangerous than the disease it's supposed to cure. Panicked politicians have now closed their ears to reason and are ripping up the rules. And as the bail-out continues, and the investment banks channel public funds to senior executives, the vested interests that caused this crisis are adding insult to injury.

With failure and incompetence thus rewarded, huge damage is being done to the very fabric of Western market-driven commerce. That could spark a damaging populist backlash, recreating the economic dark ages of heavy regulation and state diktat, crushing the entrepreneurial spirit that has long driven human progress.

So there are good reasons, Mr Humphrys, to be miserable - not only about where we are but, even more so, where the policy consensus is taking us. And when asked to give my opinion on the UK's most important radio show, I'd rather be miserable than wrong.

Commentators shouldn't only criticise, but also suggest ways out of this
mess. So I'll repeat my call for banks everywhere to be legally forced to
"fully disclose" and write-down their sub-prime liabilities BEFORE further
taxpayer-funded recapitalisation. The Swedes took this hard-headed approach during their early 1990s banking crisis. We've adopted, instead, the head-in-the-sand Japanese variant – creating our very own zombie banks which are technically alive (allowing powerful executives to keep their jobs and save face) but commercially dead
and a drain on society, given the weight of their toxic debts.

On top of full disclosure, Barack Obama could now make a move which, for all the hype of his inauguration later this month, would prevent a repeat of this credit crunch. The incoming President is fond of citing America's New Deal of the mid-1930s – given that he wants to repeat the depression-era use of public works. But the most important part of the US policy response to the 1929 Wall Street Crash was the more obscure Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.

Named after the two Democrat senators who sponsored it, Glass-Steagall
prevented commercial banks – which take deposits from ordinary households and firms – from engaging in the high-risk speculative activities undertaken by investment banks. Or at least it did – until 1999 when, after millions of dollars of political donations from investment banks, Glass-Steagall was repealed by then President Bill Clinton – at the urging of Robert Rubin, his Wall-Street trained Treasury Secretary.

That unleashed the forces which have landed us where we are now. Investment banks took over commercial banks - using their retail deposit base, on which there was an implicit government guarantee, for risky speculative trading, not least in opaque derivatives. The promised "Chinese Walls" were fiction, as swash-buckling investment bank culture pervaded "plain vanilla" institutions supposed to be servicing regular activity.

The situation was made more dangerous when, on top of this repeal, the US financial authorities allowed the investment banks to raise their
debt-to-capital ratios from 12:1 to 30:1 or even higher. This lit the fuse
on the commission-driven securitization and debt-fuelled purchase of tens of millions of dodgy mortgage-backed securities – which inflated the US housing market as politicians wanted, but spread "sub-prime" sickness around the world.

So will Obama re-introduce Glass Steagall? Will he heck. On the contrary,
the man upon whom the hopes of the West now rest is bringing back into
government many of Rubin's acolytes who drove the repeal in the first place. Meanwhile, some of America's most powerful investment banks have been allowed to convert themselves back into commercial banks – attempting not only to qualify for more bail-out finance, but to close down any debate on the need for a new Glass-Steagall. Has Obama got the audacity to end the party and order the Wall Street denizens to behave? Will he reintroduce the necessary firewalls upon which the stability of Western banking depends? My instincts tell me he won't. But perhaps I'm just being miserable.

THE OBAMA CROSSROADS: NEO-LIBERAL COUP OR RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT

Prof. John McMurtry
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...;aid=12120

When the U.S. Treasury gave away $700 billion to Wall Street banks with no strings attached in October of 2008, the Obama team gave a green light. A popular insurgence was soon silenced, with public wrath directed instead at the U.S. auto producers (and unions) who followed with a request for $25 billion. The auto companies ended up with a loan of about 1/50th the amount that went to Wall Street as a gift. The subtext message was disturbing. Wall Street firms produce nothing, no-one is required to explain what they are doing with all the public money they received, and no criteria of public benefit are applied.

With the Obama team onside, rule by the fast-money men is set to continue. The near-trillion quick hand-out of citizen debt to the bankers with no conditions has remained a non-issue. Even the shift from buying Wall Street assets to direct capital infusion has raised no questions. Obama’s subsequent appointments of his economic and financial directors follow in line. Those now in charge of the U.S. money-printing machine (alias the world’s reserve currency) and of the financially hollowed-out system that was once the U.S. economy have not really changed. Even the education cabinet post has been filled by what his Bush predecessor says is “a kindred spirit”. He (Arne Duncan) has enthusiastically implemented the Bush school program in Chicago - testing children instead of teaching them, firing lots of teachers, pressuring test-failures out of school, and degrading public education with corporate-quiz mechanisms in place of sound learning methods.

The Number One Issue: Who Now Runs The Economy and Finance
Obama’s new U.S. Treasury Secretary is Tim Geithner, a former chief deputy of his Democrat predecessors at Treasury - Robert Rubin (who presided in the first Clinton government and later Citigroup over the “new financial instruments” that have subsequently wrecked the U.S. and world economy), and Larry Summers (who as Secretary of the Treasury in 1999 tore down barriers between commercial and investment banks in the deregulation frenzy that set up the Wall Street crash). Geithner originally came from Kissinger and Associates - “a bipartisan man” - before moving on from deputy at Treasury to head of the New York Federal Bank Reserve. His main qualifying distinction - not mentioned in press releases - has been as chair of a central committee of the BIS (Bank of International Settlements), a body of chief-executive international bankers which has been the unseen point-man of neoliberalism over the last 25 years. The BIS first cut its teeth on collecting debt reparations from Germany which seeded the Nazi Party - for which the BIS later also stored stolen gold. In between these assignments, Geithner served the then-collapsing IMF as director of Policy Development and Review.

In short, Geithner is an international money-man following in the tracks of what has preceded him. Behind all the hoopla of “Change We Need” and “The People’s President” lies the same monetocracy. Geithner assisted in the massive bank giveaway and its sequel of another further 25 billion plus 300-billion credit to Citigroup, a Rockefeller bank led by Rubin. Neither he nor Summers, the new economic czar, lent anything but support when the flood of public money into the Wall Street hole more than doubled before Christmas from the original $700 billion to $1.5 trillion with no more conditions than before.

The biggest heist ever from the public treasury, some might say an extortionate swindle, has been backed by the threat of “give it over, or Americans won’t get credit”. No-one appears to notice the fraudulent pretext on which it is based. Who needs credit from the private banks when the public and government already back them for any credit they have got? Why pour public money into private-bank hands to lend money they do not have and are not lending when they get it?

More Dangerous to Our Liberties than Standing Armies

Former Federal Reserve chief, Allen Greenspan, observes that “sovereign credit and guarantees put in place during the crisis [i.e., new government money to private banks] is now estimated at 7 trillion”. Yet after 1.5 trillion U.S. public dollars thrown at the Wall Street hole, not one homeowner has been relieved of bankruptcy proceedings, the banks do not lend to productive enterprises or even themselves, and no-one tells anyone in America what’s been done with all the public money.

The idea of a central public bank system controlling the currency and credit constitutionally held by governments and lending it for purposes that serve the public interest (e.g., social infrastructure, housing, environment and education) is as old as the modern state. But it has been dinned out of citizens’ minds. In fact, the only democratically accountable and efficient banking system is one in which skyrocketing non-productive costs, unaccountable debt creations and pyramid schemes are made impossible inside the law. Yet most are enslaved to a false double dogma - first, that unaccountable big banks creating compound-interest debts for everyone including governments are economically necessary; and, second, that they must be left free to leverage, mix and repackage debt assets as they please without the money to back the credit or capital they allocate. Statesmen since Thomas Jefferson have not been so foolish. “Banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies”, Jefferson pragmatically observed. “Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power [of credit] should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs”.

Instead, the “monied aristocracy” and its servants are now loaded with public cash even as their vast global pyramid schemes have cratered. The consistent policy to prevent what bankers themselves call “moral hazard” is to leave them to their market fate where their plundering of the world with toxic financial products has poisoned them. The responsible public solution to “keep credit flowing” is for government to keep its control over currency and credit issue to direct loans to public and productive purposes. Let the banks lend money they can back with 100% reserves, and manage as their private depositors allow them to - what in fact the best economists have recommended since the 1929 Crash.

Yet even conditions of public service by the banks loaded with public cash have not surfaced to debate. Instead a Bush-Obama transition has handed over the keys of the U.S. Treasury to the very coterie of neoliberal money manipulators who have hollowed out the country’s wealth and much of the world. As long as they run the show, the people and the real economy continue down the hole.

Eco-Economy and Social Justice in Reverse
Obama claims that he is bringing “fresh thinking” with Larry Summers as chief of economic policy formation. If you think he can lead a new program of productive economics, employment, non-oil energy, and environmentally friendly manufacture - what every sane person wants and what Obama hope promises - consider the track record of his economics czar. Before becoming Clinton’s second-term Secretary of the Treasury where he mentored Geithner, Larry Summers had distinguished himself as an outspoken neoliberal advocating the loot-and-pollute globalization that has brought cumulative ecological as well as financial catastrophe. In a leaked Memorandum as Chief Economist of the World Bank, Summers urged “more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]” for three reasons (all his words):


1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. - - - I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.

2) I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. - - [We should prefer] world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.

3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. - - - While production is mobile the consumption of pretty air is a non-tradable.

Summers then explains where he stands on “deregulation” versus “moral and social concerns” in an epitome of neoliberal life blindness: “The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) is that it could be turned around and used against every Bank proposal for liberalization.” Summers here lets the cat out of the bag on what “liberalization” demands to be sacrificed to it - “goods”, “moral reasons” and “social concerns”, all the values Obama says he stands for.

After the memo became public, Brazil’s Secretary of the Environment Jose Lutzenburger wrote back to Summers: “Your reasoning is perfectly logical but totally insane...” Mr. Lutzenburger was fired. Summers has become President Obama’s chief economic adviser.

No Roots in Adam Smith or the New Deal

Adam Smith’s vision of the free market did not envisage exporting toxic wastes to the poor to save rich polluters from cleaning up their act. When the market’s “invisible hand” was briefly annunciated by Smith, he was clear that the free market was only in “tangible goods useful to mankind”. The neoliberal school invokes Smith, but simply erases the productive economy from its models where only money coordinates count.

For them, the New Deal is an enemy. When banks failed and credit dried up, Roosevelt’s administration ploughed all the public money into public works and productive employment, not into banks’ coffers . One New Deal program, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), became the largest employer in the nation financing the arts as well as public infrastructures. The New Deal also started old-age and unemployment insurance, loans to local authorities for slum clearance, and guaranteed income to the indigent - the latter program scrapped by Summers under Clinton. Even now with promises of new major spending on
“infrastructures”, we may observe it is targeted to upgrade highways, computers and airports rather than to build and protect social and ecological life support systems.

The Turn to Responsible Government

The imperatives are clear. Return constitutional powers over currency and credit to accountable public authority, and away from private banks free-riding on public cash and guarantees for no productive or public goal. Let credit and the allocation of capital flow in correspondence to productive function for what is needed - that without which the life capacity of citizens is reduced. Allocate new capital and interest charges to meet the greatest economic challenge in history - the conversion from fossil to clean renewable fuels, and the re-tooling of manufacture towards ecologically coherent industry, both of which massively create jobs.

The eco-energy rescue of the economy with the money for it to come from a responsible central public bank system is a conjuncture made in heaven. It has become politically possible with Wall Street’s corrupt collapse, and economically imperative with America and the world facing a life-and-death policy crossroads.

Canada’s long-serving Prime Minister, MacKenzie King, was no radical. But he realized that “once a nation parts with control of its credit, it matters not who makes the laws - - -Privatized money control is the single greatest threat to democratic freedom”. Thus was born the public Bank of Canada in 1935 with statutory public functions of “regulating credit and currency” and of “making loans and advances” to governments. Since the Reagan-Mulroney turn, however, public banks and government have been bent into service to the deregulating, money-leveraging and casino speculations of the borderless money party - all on the back of Canada’s social programs, its manufacturing base, its integrity of ecology and resource bases, and secure employment of citizens in good jobs and life-serving vocations.

Presidential Brand Change in Place of Economic Reform

Is Obama’s administration only a presidential brand change? Is the same rule of money, waste, toxic commodities and foreign occupations to continue? Observe closely Obama’s building of a “new job-creating energy-efficient economy”. The image has certainly changed, but the reality remains that a Washington-led carcinogenic capitalism continues to cumulatively strip the earth of its species and resources, impoverish life vocations and the poor, and allocate public policy and wealth for decoupled money multiplication, industrial agribusiness and armed forces with no committed life function.

America’s President is where the buck stops, but the buck has been passed on to the people who helped end the New Deal, deregulated the financial sector, and broke the wheels of the productive economy. Neoliberal religion still rules. In a lecture at the University of Toronto a few years ago as Harvard’s President, Larry Summers, the new chief of economic planning for Obama, proclaimed his credo as “the essential truth” that all “basic value including “literacy is linked to market growth”. This is the ultimate neo-liberal equation - More Money-Value Exchanges = More Market Growth = More Basic Values. The social and ecological goods and resources on which every life depends, the most basic values that exist, are simply blinkered out. Since fresh air to breathe, stable climate cycles and life spaces to live and work securely do not compute to this life-blind economics, money-sequence and commodity growth continue to depredate and destabilize human and ecological life systems with no accountability to their requirements. Perpetually turning leveraged money into more money for private money possessors with no life standards is, in the end, the logic of a global cancer.

Obama’s First Crisis: Forgetting the Past

The most instructive moments in America’s history have been forgotten -for example, the 1776 American Revolution itself which Benjamin Franklin said was most of all to wrest back control over the issuing of money from the private Bank of England; Abraham Lincoln’s issue of
“greenbacks” to go over the head of the New York bankers’ demand of 17% compound interest to fund the war for the Union; and FDR’s historic New Deal which guaranteed minimum economic security and put people back to work in rebuilding the real economy. Yet not even the Depression has demanded the economic reset now required to resolve the coinciding energy, environmental, employment and financial crises confronting America and the world.

As with soaps, so with Presidents. Sales pitches metamorphize reality into miracles with nothing in fact changed. We are conditioned to the magical thinking - the pervasive images and parables of super cleansers and cosmetics, new vehicles of transfiguring power, aphrodisiac doorways to paradise, redeeming graces for the rejected, and people who pretend to care for us. Is the Obama presidency merely a macro variation on the theme? Already many believe that Obama will save the day without policies to do so, even Europeans gushing over his hope of a climate solution. A deeper turn is required, as events will show.

John McMurtry is Professor Emeritus, University of Guelph, Canada, Author and Editor of Philosophy and World Problems, Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), UNESCO. Paris. He is the author of Value Wars: The Global Market versus the Life Economy (London:2002), The Cancer Stage of Capitalism (London and Tokyo: 1999, 2002), Unequal Freedoms: The Global Market As An Ethical System (Toronto and Bloomfield Ct: 1998, 2000)

STIMULUS OR AUSTERITY : THE PEOPLE vs THE BANKS

Shamus Cooke

Global Research, June 30, 2010

The most powerful nations in the world met recently at the G-20 in Toronto and managed to agree on only one thing of significance: the need to reduce deficits, “half by 2013.” Implied by the statement is the need to lower deficits via “austerity,” meaning eliminating or reducing social programs.

Why does every mainstream political pundit or corporate CEO fanatically agree that reducing deficits is the most important thing to do now? Let Obama explain:

    “...if financial markets are skittish and don't have confidence in a country's fiscal soundness, that is also going to undermine our recovery."

Apparently, the most important policy for the world economy cannot be said in plain English. What does Obama mean? Essentially, he is saying that “financial markets” should determine how wealth is distributed and how the economy is directed.

What are financial markets? And why must every country be at their mercy?

A financial market is anyplace the super-rich invest their money.  It can be done through a bank, hedge fund, or a private equity firm, etc. The rich demand that their investments are safe and therefore are especially “skittish” at the slightest hint of inflation or other economic distress.

The rich who dominate financial markets advocate only one solution to balancing budgets: reducing or eliminating social programs. They ignore the other solution— a massive public works project— because it directly affects them in a negative way: raising taxes on the wealthy.  

This raises another issue. The investors who control financial markets know that a day of reckoning is coming: the massive debt that was pushing forward the world economy for years needs to be paid back, and those who own the banks don’t want the responsibility.  Better for millions of workers to sacrifice social services, pensions, wages, etc., than for thousands of rich investors to be taxed.

Some people will argue that it is counterproductive to tax the rich, since they will then choose not to invest their money, causing further harm to the economy.   But this is already happening and happens every time a recession hits.  

The New York Times describes one example of the rich hoarding their money, until better, profitable times return:

    “Only on Wall Street, in the rarefied realm of buyout moguls, could you actually have too much money... Private equity firms, where corporate takeovers are planned and plotted, today sit atop [are hoarding] an estimated $500 billion. But the deal makers are desperate to find deals worth doing...” (June 24, 2010).

Rich investors are not investing in companies because consumers are not buying the products that corporations produce. And where mainstream economists blame “consumer confidence” for this problem, the real issue remains “consumer impoverishment.”

It is the rich investor that lacks the “confidence” that the unemployed or low-waged worker can buy enough of the products produced by corporations. This is the problem that will continue to haunt the establishment economists, who will incessantly preach that the economy is on a perpetual verge of recovery.

This illusion of recovery is being instituted into government policy. The Obama administration has argued that federal stimulus money is only needed in small doses to put the economy back on track. With politicians agreeing that the recession is “basically over,” less stimulus money is being offered.

Indeed, Congress has had a terrible time passing the tiniest stimulus bill, which would extend unemployment benefits and help states with Medicaid costs. If such a bill is eventually passed, it will be a mere fraction of what is needed.

Because Obama insists that “reducing deficits” is the new governmental priority, the stimulus faucet will quickly dry up (since government stimulus is financed through deficit spending).

But for millions of U.S. workers, the debate over stimulus spending is not theoretical, but a matter of life and death. If no federal stimulus is passed— and the current one has virtually died in Congress— millions of unemployed people will have zero income. Meanwhile, the states budget crises will worsen, shutting off state-run health care, social services and education, while slashing public sector jobs by the thousands.

Both Democrats and Republicans agree that “financial markets” should dictate the economic policy of the U.S. The two parties disagree only to what degree and how quickly to implement the same policy.

The American labor movement must find an independent voice to demand that a stimulus bill be passed.  Labor — especially public sector workers — must ally themselves with the unemployed, students and teachers, and other victims of the states’ budget crises who will suffer real tragedies unless a federal stimulus bill is passed.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action

THE NEOLIBERAL EXPERIMENT AND EUROPE's ANTIi-AUSTERITY STRIKES:
Governments must Lower Wages or Suffer Financial Blackmail

Michael Hudson
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...;aid=21263


While Labor Unions celebrate Anti-Austerity Day in Europe, the European Neoliberals raise the ante:

Most of the press has described Wednesday's European-wide labor demonstrations and strikes across in terms of the familiar exercise by transport workers irritating travelers with work slowdowns, and large throngs letting off steam by setting fires. But the story goes much deeper than merely a reaction against unemployment and economic recession conditions. At issue are proposals to drastically change the laws and structures of how European society will function for the next generation. If the anti-labor forces succeed, they will break up Europe, destroy the internal market, and render that continent a backwater. This is how serious the financial coup d'etat has become. And it is going to get much worse - quickly. As John Monks, head of the European Trade Union Confederation, put it: "This is the start of the fight, not the end."

Spain has received most of the attention, thanks to its ten-million strong turnout (reportedly half the entire labor force). Holding its first general strike since 2002, Spanish labor protested against its socialist government using the bank crisis (stemming from bad real estate loans and negative mortgage equity, not high labor costs) as an opportunity to change the laws to enable companies and government bodies to fire workers at will, and to scale back their pensions and public social spending in order to pay the banks more. Portugal is doing the same, and it looks like Ireland will follow suit - all this in the countries whose banks have been the most irresponsible lenders. The bankers are demanding that they rebuild their loan reserves at labor's expense, just as in President Obama's program here in the United States but without the sanctimonious pretenses.

The problem is Europe-wide and indeed centered in the European Union capital in Brussels. This is why the major protests were staged there. On the same day that the strikers demonstrated, the neoliberal European Commission (EC) outlined a full-fledged war against labor. Fifty to a hundred thousand workers gathered to protest the proposed transformation of social rules by the most anti-labor campaign since the 1930s - even more extreme than the Third World austerity plans imposed by the IMF and World Bank in times past.

The neoliberals are fully in control of the bureaucracy, and they are reviving Margaret Thatcher's slogan, TINA: There Is No Alternative. But there is, of course. In the small Baltic economies, pro-labor parties have made it clear that the alternative to government shrinkage is to simply repeal the debts, withdraw from the Euro and break the banks. It is either the banks or labor - and Europe has just realized that this is truly a fight to the economic death. And the first test will come this Saturday, when Latvia holds its national parliamentary elections.

The EC is using the mortgage banking crisis - and the needless prohibition against central banks monetizing the government budget deficit - as an opportunity to fine governments and even drive them bankrupt if they do not agree roll back public-sector salaries. Governments are told to borrow at interest from the banks, rather than raising revenue by taxing them as they have done for half-a century following the end of World War II. And if governments are unable to raise the money to pay the interest, they must close down their social programs. And if this close-down shrinks the economy - and hence, government tax revenues - even more, then the government must shut down even more social spending.

From Brussels to Latvia, neoliberal planners have expressed the hope is that lower public salaries will spread to the private sector as well. The aim is to shrink their economies to roll back wage levels by 30 percent or more - depression-style levels - in the belief that this will "leave more surplus" available to pay in debt service. Governments are to tax labor - not finance, insurance or real estate (FIRE), but to impose new employment and sales taxes while cutting back public pensions and public spending. Europe is to be turned into a banana republic.

This requires dictatorship, and the European Central Bank (ECB) has assumed this power from elected government. It is "independent" of political control - celebrated as the "hallmark of democracy" by today's new financial oligarchy. But as Plato's dialogues explained it, what is oligarchy but the political stage following democracy. We can now await the new power elite making itself hereditary - by abolishing estate taxes, for starters - and turning itself into an outright aristocracy. "Join the fight against labor, or we will destroy you," the EC is telling governments.

One can therefore forget the economics of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and the Progressive Era, forget Keynes and forget the early 20th-century social democratic traditions. Europe is entering an era either of totalitarian neoliberal rule. This was inevitable since the Chilean dress rehearsal after 1973. After all, one cannot have "free markets" neoliberal style without totalitarian control. This is what Wednesday's strikes and demonstrations were about, after all. Europe's class war is back in business - with a vengeance!

This is economic suicide, but the EU is sticking to its demand that Euro-zone governments keep their budget deficits below 3% of GDP - and their total debt below 60% of GDP. They must not raise taxes on the wealthy, but only on labor and what it buys (via sales taxes). Yet at the same time they must slash wages and pensions, cut back public spending and employment, and shrink the economy.

When an economic problem is as economically destructive as this, it can only be imposed by economic blackmail. On Wednesday the EU passed a law to fine governments up to 0.2% of GDP for not "fixing" their budget deficits by imposing fiscal austerity. Nations that borrow to engage in countercyclical "Keynesian-style" spending that raises their public debt level 60% of GDP will have to reduce the excess by 5% each year - or else suffer harsh punishment. And unlike central banks elsewhere in the world, Europe's central bank is forbidden from monetizing public-sector governments. These governments must borrow from banks, letting these institutions create their own interest-bearing debt on their own keyboards rather than having their own central bank do it without the cost. The financial privatization and monopoly in credit creation that governments have relinquished to banks is now being made to pay off - at the price of breaking up Europe.

The unelected members of the European Central Bank (ECB, independent from democratic politics, not from control by its commercial bank members) has taken over planning power from elected government. Beholden to its constituency, the financial sector, the ECB has had little trouble in convincing the EU commission to back the new oligarchic power grab. It threatens to fine euro-area states up to 0.1% of their GDP for failure to obey its neoliberal recommendations - ostensibly to "correct" these imbalances. But the reality, of course, is that every neoliberal "cure" only makes matters worse.

Rather than seeing rising wage levels and living standards as a precondition for higher labor productivity, the EU commission will "monitor" labor costs on the assumption that rising wages impair competitiveness rather than raise it. The broad spectrum of neoliberal junk economics is being brought to bear. If members of the euro cannot depreciate their currencies, then they must fight labor - but not tax real estate, finance or other rentier sectors, not regulate monopolies, and not provide public services that can be privatized at much higher costs. Privatization is not deemed to impair competitiveness - only rising wages, regardless of productivity considerations.

This economically destructive policy has been tested above all in the Baltics, using countries such as Latvia as guinea pigs to see how far labor can be depressed before it reacts politically. Latvia gave free reign to neoliberal policies by imposing flat taxes of 51% on employees, while real estate is taxed at only 1%. Public-sector wages have been reduced by 30%. Labor of working age (20 to 35 year-olds) are emigrating in droves. Lifespans are shortening. Disease rates are rising. The internal market is shrinking, and so is Europe's population - as it did in the 1930s, when the "population problem" was a plunge in fertility and birth rates (above all in France). That is what happens in economic depressions.

Iceland's looting by its bankers came first, but the big news was Greece. When that nation entered its current fiscal crisis, European Union officials recommended that it emulate Latvia, which stands as the poster child for neoliberal economic devastation. The basic theory is that inasmuch as members of the euro cannot devalue their currency, they must resort to "internal devaluation": slashing wages, pensions and social spending. So while Europe enters recession it is following precisely the opposite of Keynesian policy. It is reducing wages, ostensibly to "free" more income available to pay the enormous debts that Europeans have taken on to buy their homes, to pay for schooling (hitherto provided freely in many countries such as Latvia's Stockholm School of Economics), transportation and other public services that have been privatized (at sharply, drastically increased rates - which the privatizers justify by pointing to the enormously bloated financial fees they had to pay their bankers and underwriters to buy the infrastructure being sold off by governments that the neoliberals blocked from taxing the wealthy).

The result is economic shrinkage. Europe is creating economic suicide - and demographic and fiscal suicide too. Every attempt to "solve" the problem of this shrinkage, neoliberal style, only makes things worse.
Latvia's public-sector workers have seen their wages cut by 30 percent over the past year, and its central bankers have told me that they are seeking further cuts, in the hope that this will lower wages in the private sector as well. What these cuts are doing, hardly by surprise, is spurring emigration - and also is destroying the real estate market, leading to defaults, foreclosures and a flight of debtors from the country. The emigration is headed by younger workers seeking employment in the shrinking economy. Indeed, Latvia's working conditions also happen to be Europe's most neoliberalized, that is, dangerous, unpleasant and almost neofeudal.

For starters in yesterday's Action Day, there was the usual stoppage of transportation and an accompanying honk concert in Latvia's capital city of Riga for 10 minutes at 1 PM to let the public know that something was indeed happening. What is happening most importantly is the national parliamentary elections this Saturday (October 2), where the leading coalition, Harmony Center, is pledged to enact an alternative tax system and economic policy to the neoliberal policies that have reduced labor's wages and workplace standards so sharply - along with public infrastructure - over the past decade.

Altogether about 10,000 Latvians attended protest meetings, from the capital in Riga to smaller cities as part of the "Journey into the Crisis." Six independent trade unions and the Harmony Center organized a protest meeting in Riga's Esplanade Park that drew 700 to 800 demonstrators, relatively large for so small a city. Another union protest saw about half that number gather at the Cabinet of Ministers where Latvia's austerity program has been planned and carried out.

To highlight the economic issue, a bus tour drove journalists to the victims - schools and hospitals that had been closed down, government buildings whose employees had seen their salaries slashed and the workforce downsized. Crowds were reported to gather, re-igniting the anger expressed early last year in the cold of mid-January when Latvians had demonstrated to protest the start of these cuts.

These demonstrations seem to have gained voter sympathy for the more militant unions, headed by the hundred individual unions belonging to the Independent Trade Union Association. The other union group - the Free Trade Unions (LBAS) lost face by acquiescing in June 2009 to the government's proposed 10% pension cuts (and indeed, 70% for working pensioners). Latvia's constitutional court was sufficiently independent to overrule these drastic cuts last December. And if the government does indeed change this Saturday, the conflict between the Neoliberal Revolution and the past few centuries of classical progressive reform will be made clear.

The Neoliberal Revolution seeks to achieve in Europe what has been achieved in the United States since 1979, when real wages stopped rising. The aim is to double the relative share of wealth enjoyed by the richest 1%. This involves reduce the population to poverty, breaking union power, and destroying the internal market as a precondition for blaming all this on "Mr. Market," presumably inexorable forces beyond politics, purely "objective" rather than a political power grab.

It is not really "the market" that is promoting this destructive economic austerity, of course. Latvia's Harmony Center shows that there is a much easier way to cut the cost of labor in half than by reducing its wages: Simply shift the tax burden off labor onto real estate and monopolies (especially privatized infrastructure). This will leave less of the economic surplus to be capitalized into bank loans, lowering the price of housing accordingly (the major factor in labor's cost of living), as well as the price of public services (by having owners take their returns as a return on equity rather than factoring interest charges into their cost of doing business). The tax deductibility of interest will be repealed - there is nothing intrinsically "market dictated" by this fiscal subsidy for debt leveraging.

No doubt many post-Soviet economies will find themselves obliged to withdraw from the euro area rather than see a flight of labor and capital. They remain the most extreme example of the Neoliberal Experiment to see how far a population can have its living standards slashed before it rebels.

GLOBAL FRAUD/GLOBAL HOPE
        
February 26, 2011
Hon. Paul Hellyer, P.C.
Former Canadian Minister of National Defence
    
The world financial system is a total fraud.  It is one gargantuan Ponzi scheme, no better than the one Bernie Madoff used to swindle his friends and neighbors, and thousands of times worse if you add up the total number of victims it has ripped off over countless generations.
        
The principal difference between the two schemes is that Madoff was acting outside the law while the international banking cartel has persuaded generation after generation of monarchs, presidents and prime ministers to provide legislative protection for their larceny.
      
The banks Ponzi scheme is alarmingly simple.  They lend the same money to several people or institutions at the same time and collect interest on it from each.  What the banks really lend, however, is their credit, and what they take back in compensation for that privilege is a debt that must be repaid with interest.
            
The number of times they lend the same money is called leverage.  The practice is as old as the hills but for our purposes we can start with the goldsmiths of Lombard Street in London, England, who accepted deposits for which they issued certificates redeemable on demand.  They paid their depositors a nominal interest rate on the understanding that they could lend the money to their customers at higher interest rates.  They soon found that they could lend more than they had in their vaults because only a few depositors came in to redeem their gold or silver at any one time.  It was a scam.  It was illegal.  Nevertheless they got away with it for a long while and the scam was legitimized when the Bank of England was chartered to help King William finance his war.  Rich people subscribed £1,200,000 in gold and silver, as capital, to found the bank, which then was lent to the government at 8 percent.  To show his appreciation the King allowed the bank to print £1,200,000 in banknotes and lend them at high interest rates.  In effect, the bank was allowed to lend the same money twice – once to the government and once to the people.
            
If any skeptics think I am overstating the case don’t take my word for it.  Go to www.victoryfortheworld.net and read some of the books that can be used as references.  A hundred pages of The Web of Debt, for example, setting out the history of money, will probably be enough to make you sick at your stomach.  I stopped reading it at night because if often made me so angry I couldn’t sleep.
          
Over the years, due to the avarice of the banks and the complicity of the politicians, that ratio has increased dramatically.  In the early days of the 20th century, federal chartered U.S. banks were required to keep gold reserves of 25 percent.  That means they were allowed to lend the same money four times.  I remember when Canadian banks were required to maintain a cash reserve of 8 percent.  That means they were allowed to lend the same money 12½ times.
          
Today, thanks to Milton Friedman’s irrational flip-flop from being a proponent of 100% cash reserves to the opposite extreme of zero reserves, and the adoption of his ideas by the major central banks of the world in 1974, multiples have increased dramatically – in some cases to as much as 20 to 1 or more.  Banks only keep enough cash to meet day-to-day demands for those few customers who go in and request it, and consequently the fraud is virtually total.
          
The system works this way.  Suppose that you want to borrow $35,000 to buy a new car.  You visit your friendly banker and ask for a loan. He or she will ask you for collateral – some stocks, bonds, a second mortgage on your house or cottage or, if you are unable to supply any of these, the co-signature of a well-to-do friend or relative. When the collateral requirement is satisfied you will be asked to sign a note for the principal amount with an agreed rate of interest.
            
When the paperwork is complete, and the note signed, your banker will make an entry on the bank’s computer and, presto, a $35,000 credit will appear in your account which you can use to buy your car. The important point is that seconds earlier that money did not exist. It was created out of thin air – so to speak.
            
The banking equation is a species of double-entry bookkeeping where your note becomes an asset on the bank’s books, and the new money that was deposited to your account is a liability. The profit for the bank comes from the difference between the low rate of interest, if any, you would be paid on your deposit if you didn’t spend the borrowed money immediately, and the much higher rate you would be obliged to pay on your note – the technical term is “the spread.”
          
At some point, however, you have to pay off your note and any interest owing.  And not only you but everyone else who has borrowed “money” from banks – including governments which, by the way, own the right to print money [creating money from nothing] but that have irresponsibly handed the right over to an elite group of private bankers.  Anyone who defaults is in big trouble.  Individuals who default will have the assets they pledged as collateral seized by the bank.  A government that is in danger of defaulting, will be forced to borrow from the International Monetary Fund, which will then tell that government how to run its affairs including cutting back on services and selling off public assets to the international vulture capitalists.
            
In reality, then, the banks have turned the world into one humongous pawn shop.  You hock your stocks, bonds, house, business, rich mother-in-law or country and the bank(s) will give you a loan based on the value of the collateral. [by creating money from nothing, a.k.a. counterfeiting, since the banksters don’t own the assets against which they issue the money]
            
A world system where all the money is created as debt is a perpetual disaster in the making.  It is like a giant balloon that the banks pump full of debt.  The balloon gets larger and larger until the debt load becomes too heavy to carry, and then it is like a balloon with a pin stuck in it.  The system crashes and thousands or sometimes millions of innocent people lose their jobs, homes, farms and businesses.
            
Almost any high school student should be able to see that any monetary system based on debt creation is totally insane.
          
The total world debt, mathematically, is always tending toward infinity – and there is no possible way of paying it off.  The real money (legal tender) to do so doesn’t exist.  And the real economy that depends on cash to grow shifts into low gear whenever the supply of credit money dries up.
      
Not surprisingly, there have been 25 recessions and depressions in the United States since 1890.  In several cases, including the Great Depression of the 1930s and the current Great Recession, the evidence indicates that the meltdown was anticipated by a few insiders who helped trigger the catastrophe.
          
In the wake of the Great Depression, the U.S. Senate Banking and Currency Committee Report that became widely known as the Pecora Report on the Practices of Stock Exchanges, indicated that there were insiders who benefitted from the crash.  “Legal chicanery and pitch darkness were the banker’s stoutest allies,” Pecora wrote in his memoir.  Similar allegations were evident in Charles Ferguson damning documentary “Inside Job,” relating to the 2007-2008 meltdown.  These reports, and other historical evidence prove beyond any doubt that much of Wall Street is rotten to the core.  It has become one gigantic millstone around the neck of both the American and world economies.
            
The collateral damage from the recent meltdown has been staggering.  The U.S. Bureau of Labor estimated that 8.4 million jobs were lost in the U.S. alone.  Most countries experienced similar dramatic losses.  The reduction in asset values worldwide has been estimated at $20 trillion U.S. dollars, yet not a single one of the culprits is in jail.  You would think that someone would have had the decency to launch a class action for at least $10 trillion against every individual and every organization that contributed to the catastrophe in any way.
          
It boggles the mind that a system so vulnerable to manipulation would ever have come into existence in the first place.  The evolution did not happen by accident.  It was not guided by the mythical invisible hand of Adam Smith.  On the contrary, for more than a century-and-a-half, it was engineered by the barely visible hand of the Rothschild family and its allies, and since World War II by the Rockefeller family.  The two dynasties combined forces to exercise influence on many fronts sheltered by the cloak of secrecy established by the Bilderberg Group.
          
The long term influence of the banking cartel is incalculable.  Their biggest coup was the establishment of the Federal Reserve System in the United States.  The big New York banks really didn’t like the idea of genuine competition, so a small group held a secret meeting at the private resort of J.P. Morgan on Jekyll Island, off the coast of Georgia.  Their scheme, devised by Paul M. Warburg, and subsequently adopted by Congress, is a legal private monopoly of the U.S. money supply operated for the benefit of the few under the guise of protecting and promoting the public interest.          

It is a tribute to the skill of the international bankers that they were able to draft a bill, revise it, change its name and make the few window dressing compromises necessary to get it adopted by Congress just before Christmas when quite a few Representatives must have been dreaming of sugar plum fairies instead of exercising due diligence.  Only Charles Lindberg Sr. seemed to grasp the essence of what was going on.
            
To put it bluntly, the Congress transferred its sovereign constitutional right to create money to the sole custody of a group of private bankers.  The magnitude of the hoist is unprecedented in the history of the world – the numbers now are in the high trillions.
            
Soon after the bill was passed the magnitude of the tragedy began to be recognized.  William Jennings Bryan, who acted as Democrat whip, later said: “In my long political career, the one thing I genuinely regret is my part in getting the banking and currency legislation (Federal Reserve Act of 1913) enacted into law.”  President Woodrow Wilson, just three years after passage of the Act, wrote: “A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit.  Our system of credit is concentrated (in the Federal Reserve System).  The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men….  We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world.”  But the bill was not repealed; almost 100 years later the sell-out is still the law.  This makes you wonder what the people’s representatives have been doing to earn their salaries.
            
The people in charge of the original deception were very far-seeing.  They realized that when future governments had to borrow from them they would need a constant income stream to pay the interest on the bonds.  So they persuaded the government to introduce income taxes, first as a temporary measure, but later permanently, so it would be able to meet its obligations to the bondholders.  In fiscal year 2005 total individual income taxes in the U.S. totalled $927 billion.  Of that amount $352 billion, or 38%, was required just to pay interest on the federal debt.  The figure would be higher now.
            
The banksters, as they were often called, then decided that an independent press might catch on to the chicanery.  Oscar Callaway is reported in the Congressional Record of February 9, 1917 as follows.
            
“In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world, and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States… They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers.  The 25 papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; … an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers [and to suppress] everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests served.”
          
It has been suggested that the Bilderberg Group may have taken a leaf from the Morgan precedent to protect their interests in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.  That is impossible to prove, because its members are sworn to secrecy, and the press won’t report on its meetings.
          
Could it be mere coincidence that the monetary system, the downside of globalization, 9/11 and the decades-long cover-up of the extraterrestrial presence and technology (especially the clean energy sources that would impact the value of oil stocks), the four subjects of most direct beneficial interests of the banksters, are the four subjects that are avoided like the plague by the mainline press?
          
I myself am not willing to go so far as to say that the men behind the international banking system are evil men because their thoughts are private.  But Sir Josiah, later Baron Stamp, a former director of the Bank of England, has given us a rare snapshot of the truth:          

“Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin.  The Bankers own the earth.  Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with a flick of the pen they will create enough money to buy it back again.  However, take that power away from them and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in.  But if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers, and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money.”            

In the latest meltdown of 2007-2008, the Fed acted quickly to prevent the Ponzi pyramid from collapsing completely.  It printed trillions of dollars to bail out the banks and a few industries that were highly indebted to banks.
          
But what did the Fed do for the taxpayers whose money was so wildly diluted to save the banks?  Nothing!  They were left to fend for themselves.  Millions of people lost their jobs, their farms, their houses, their hopes, and their dignity as a result of circumstances beyond their control.  The taxpayers bailed out the banks, but got nothing in return.
          

The same is true of governments who came so quickly to the rescue.  As a result of the meltdown their revenues were decreased so they were forced to incur or increase their deficits, as well as to start cutting back on essential services.          

The Fed pretended to be helping stimulate the economy by reducing interest rates to near zero.  It would be an interesting exercise to find out what happened to all of this low-cost money.  It would be a good subject for Congressional attention.  How much did the banks use to buy up domestic and foreign assets at fire-sale prices?  Was any of it used by financial institutions to try to corner world food markets and raise prices at a time when millions are starving?          

No doubt some taxpayers did take advantage of the low interest rates available but were they warned about the old bait and switch game?  Anyone who acquires assets with cheap money runs the risk of losing their property when the Fed ultimately raises rates.  It’s all part of the boom-bust cycle inherent in our infinitely silly monetary system.          
      

The Economics Profession          

What does all this have to say about the economics profession?  What it really says isn’t fit to print.  Someone once said that if you put 20 economists in a room you will get 21 opinions.
            
That is not my experience.  If you get 20 economists together they are likely to give you one stock answer, or at most two.  And if there is one dissenter he or she is likely to be drowned out by the 19, squawking like a flock of parrots the words memorized from what their professors taught them.            

I have witnessed this herd-like mentality firsthand.  When I was first elected to the House of Commons in 1949 there were only a handful of Keynesians in Ottawa.  Twenty years later nearly everyone was a Keynesian including, I am told, Richard Nixon.            

At that time there were only a few monetarists around.  But they spread like mushrooms and soon dominated the economic landscape.  It reached the stage when Keynes was anathema, and it was almost impossible to get a tenured position in a school of economics unless you were part of Milton Friedman’s monetarist revolution.
            
Apparently little if any thought was given to the possibility that neither Keynes nor Friedman had got it right.  The former was a bit closer to reality than the latter, but both theories foundered on the rocks of one inescapable truth.  Both assumed that the economic system is self-correcting, yet more than two centuries of experience has demonstrated clearly that it is not!  Someone has to be at the tiller charged with steering clear of the shoals and rocks of economic disaster and that person has to be someone who is responsible to the people and not the self-serving boom-busters.              

Better People        

The third essential change is for us as individuals.  A just and peaceful world is not possible when it is riddled with graft, fraud and corruption of all kinds.  Greed is king and mammon rules the world.            

Institutions have to change too.  For centuries major religions have been selling their alleged superiority or exclusiveness at the point of a sword, leading to the deaths of thousands of innocents.  The three Abrahamic religions, for example, all claim the inside route to paradise.  Mathematically that is impossible.  It is far more probable, mathematically, that they are all wrong and that the truth is larger and more inclusive.  

Ancient and modern history both suggest that there is no hope of a just and peaceful world unless all religions, and those with no religion, forget their differences and start working together to build the Kingdom of God on Earth.  I define this as a world where every child can expect food to eat, clean water to drink, adequate clothing to wear, a roof overhead, access to medical support and enough education to be able to determine how best he or she can serve humankind positively, with dignity and self-fulfillment.

What a wonderful world that would be!  But it would require a 180-degree change in policies and priorities and a serious effort to apply the Golden Rule that all religions claim as a common thread.            

The application of the Golden Rule would mean a end to empire building, and the pursuit of military power and advantage.  The U.S., for example, would have to stop being its own worst enemy.  The declaration of the war on terror was the biggest strategic blunder I have seen.

On the 11th day of September 2001, following the attacks on the World Trade Center, the United States enjoyed the sympathy of the world, including Arab states and populations.  The threat from al-Qaeda was limited and quite within the potential of police and intelligence operations to cope with.          

The situation changed dramatically with the launch of a war on Iraq.  The goodwill began to evaporate overnight.  Soon, instead of a few dozens insurgents the numbers of young Muslims willing to die for their cause multiplied to thousands and a great chasm of hate and mistrust enveloped much of the world.

The U.S. has consistently refused to be even-handed in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and the Israelis deceive themselves, and the world, when they claim to be the victims.  For a long while peace has been within their grasp if they could have agreed to a just settlement, and establishment of a vibrant Palestinian state.  But a handful of fundamentalists have always succeeded in disrupting the peace process because they are not willing to accept the great Rabbi Hillel’s admonition.  “So always treat others the way you would like them to treat you; that is the message of the Law and the Prophets.”   Meanwhile the peace and stability of the world remains in jeopardy.
          
The world community must adopt principles and practices that override fundamentalists of any stripe whether they be Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Economic.  In addition, religious people should pay more attention to their holy books.  There is nothing in the Bible that would legitimize a preventive war, with its carpet bombing, or the launch of a drone or missile intended to kill one person when there is risk that innocent bystanders will also die.  Similarly, there is nothing in the Qur’an that would justify suicide bombing that results in the random death of innocents.

Global Hope        

If you get the impression that the world is going to hell in a hand basket you have heard me correctly.  But it doesn’t need to be so.  There are remedies but they involve massive change in the areas discussed – none of which are even on the political radar at present.  There is light at the end of the tunnel but, as Sir John Quinton, a former chairman of Barclay’s Bank said, “Bankers sometimes look on politicians as people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, order more tunnel.”            

What we are really talking about is restoring democracy to countries that not only claim they have it, but also take pride in trying to export it, even though they don’t really qualify as democratic as defined in the dictionary.  In Webster’s it is: “government in which supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them or their elected representatives.”  To begin, Wall Street has been the dominant power in the U.S. for decades, and still is.  Add to that the fact that the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, the President of the United States, does not have the security clearance for a number of projects controlled by troops under his command, and you have to conclude that the U.S. is not really a democracy.
        
The same can be said about Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and myriad countries that are really puppets of the International Financial System.  In each case the real interests of citizen voters is subjugated to the demands of international finance.
            
There is a sad irony in reading U.S. history of the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary days.  Historians often attribute the revolution to the tax on tea.  On the other hand, “[Benjamin] Franklin cited restrictions upon paper money as one of the main reasons for the alienation of the American provinces from the mother country.”  The U.S. won the revolutionary war but then lost the next critical one when it adopted the British banking system instead of pursuing the better model their provinces had been experimenting with.            

For the U.S. now to inflict the British practice on countries around the world, using the International Monetary Fund and World Bank as enforcers, is comparable to the King’s edict that gave birth to the United States.  So the financial chains of oppression have to be broken and freedom restored to citizens everywhere.          

It’s time to forget the tea party and address the critically important issues facing the U.S. and the world.  All of these issues are non-partisan by definition and deserve the attention and support of all genuine patriots without distinction of race, color, religion or political affiliation – both in the U.S. and worldwide.  We must unite to preserve and enhance the beautiful satellite that is our birthright.
        
An Agenda for Action            

The first and most urgent project is to clip the wings of the bankers and democratize the money-creation function.  In the U.S. the Federal Reserve System must be abolished and its alleged function of regulating the money supply be assumed by the federal government or an agency under its direct control.  The most powerful and valuable tool in the economic arsenal must be available to the representatives of the people who can be held responsible for their success or failure.
            
Some monetary reformers recommend that governments create 100% of new money in a debt free form, greenbacks or equivalent.  In the interests of a fast and smooth transition I am suggesting that a ratio of 34% government-created money to 66% bank-created money would work satisfactorily.  Banks would be required to maintain 34% cash reserves against their deposits.

            
The important thing is that governments must immediately create the large sums necessary to balance their budgets and get their economies running at maximum output again.  I am talking about an infusion of perhaps $10 trillion U.S. dollar equivalent to start and more if needed to get economies up to speed and to reduce unemployment worldwide by at least half, with the creation of millions of new jobs.

Is this likely to cause massive inflation, as the financial cartel will immediately allege, because it is one of its longest running and most successful bugbears?

            

The answer to their phony phonetics is a resounding “no.”  As any economist should know, it is the amount of money that is created that influences prices, and not who prints it.  So as long as governments limit what economists call “the multiplier effect” there will be no problem.

            
Certainly the present system has been inflationary.  A 1950 U.S. dollar is only worth 7.5 cents today.  A common sense monetary system should produce better results than that.  So there is no reason why the banking system should not be fundamentally reformed – at once!

          

There are four other actions that I think we, the people of the world should demand of our politicians.

            
1.         A law must be passed at once to prohibit all politicians, candidates for political office and political parties from accepting money from any financial institution as well as make it a criminal offense for any such institution either directly or indirectly to offer it.

2.         World leaders must adopt a 10-year time frame to reduce greenhouse emissions by 90 percent.

3.         That will only be possible if the U.S. discloses its knowledge of the ET presence and technology, and what has been accomplished in 60 years of back-engineering.

4.         The U.N. should declare 2012 the year of forgiveness and reconciliation – a new era of cooperation and (agape) love between races, tribes, religions, nations, and regions both mondial and intergalactic.  We have so much to learn from our star visitors in many areas including medicine and food production.

            
So the U.S. must relinquish its privileged position as the center of “the loop” as part of a new kind of leadership in creating the better world we all dream of.

            
International Finance vs. The People of the World          

None of this vision of a just and peaceful world will be possible unless the all-pervasive power of the international banks has been broken.  In 1999 I wrote a book in which I said the next world war would be between the banks and the people of the world.  There have been skirmishes for centuries and, so far, the banks have always come out on top.  They are now taking advantage of the recent meltdown, and the resulting sovereign debt crisis to line up their heavy artillery including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Federal Reserve System and the Bank for International Settlements for a final conclusive battle.

            
As always the aim of the game is to rob the people of the world of their sovereign right to govern their own affairs, and to entrench the power of the international banks, their elite industrial allies and a small cabal of military insiders who run the world as their private fiefdom.  The word “unjust” is too small a word by far to describe what they are up to.
      

If any skeptics think I am overstating the case don’t take my word for it.  Go to www.victoryfortheworld.net and read some of the books that can be used as references.  A hundred pages of The Web of Debt, for example, setting out the history of money, will probably be enough to make you sick at your stomach.  I stopped reading it at night because if often made me so angry I couldn’t sleep.
            
I entered politics more than 60 years ago because I thought recessions were quite unnecessary.  They were monetary phenomena with a relatively easy fix.  I have made hundreds of speeches on the subject and convinced a few thousand people.  But never the movers and shakers.  And the mainline press were less than helpful.  They were so jaundiced that they were not interested in a maverick speaking truth to power.  So it was always a case of David vs. Goliath, to use a Biblical analogy.            

Now, for the first time, the power exists to turn the tables and go for the jugular.  The internet is providing power to the people that they have never enjoyed before.  The young people of the world, in concert with the thousands of their parents and others who care about the state of the world can use the power of social networking to effect a miracle on their own behalf and that of succeeding generations.
          
The valiant people of Tunisia and Egypt have shown the way by achieving what was believed to be impossible.  We share their euphoria.  At the same time they, and we, must acknowledge that it is only the beginning.  Real freedom will only be possible when they have escaped from the tyranny of international banks, and Wall Street is no longer able to manipulate the price of their daily bread.
            
A good start might be to distribute a million copies of this speech and translate it into a number of languages.  Then the rising generation can bombard the barricades through their social networks.  Regime change is not necessary except for leaders who refuse to see the light.  But concerned citizens of the world should band together and rattle the cages of all federal politicians.  Tell them bluntly that they must vigorously support the above agenda or face inevitable defeat at the next election.  It is a simple message, but the only one they understand.
            
At a press conference on March 29, 2001 announcing the U.S. was backing out of the Kyoto Protocol, President George W. Bush said, “A friend is someone who tells you the truth.”  That is what I have been doing today.  It is a message of global hope for every race, color, religion and nationality in the world and of peaceful relations with visitors from other realms.