Well shit, Glory, glory Hallelujah. It does my heart a world of good to know that among other places my tax dollars went to help bail out MacDonald's (those horrifying fake roach hotel hamburger joints) during the Great Heist of 2008.
At least now, we can all stop pretending that the Federal Reserve is anything more than bullshit secret slush fund for Wall St./the Banks and the Corporate welfare teams, who have blatantly robbed us blind.
Read it an weep America. It is absolutely disgusting to allow this to continue in our nation, as we watch the Cat Food Commission and deficit hawks trying to figure out a way to pay off the 'toxic debt' that Bernanke and Co., has been holding as 'Junk,' while the Oligarchy Orgy of Greed and corruption continues.
A must read today is by Matt Stoller on Naked Capitalism:
Entitled: End This Fed:
Something new is happening around the contours of monetary policy. It’s becoming part of our popular political landscape. We saw this a few weeks ago, when Sarah Palin injected into the 2012 Presidential race the idea of fundamentally reorganizing the Federal Reserve’s mandate. Republican Mike Pence, Senator Richard Shelby, and a host of other Republicans have jumped on this concept, and there will soon be legislation introduced to make this happen.
Beyond Republican politicians, the public is beginning to rethink our monetary order. This YouTube video on quantitative easing has over 3 million views. The video slams the Fed for missing the dotcom bubble, the subprime crisis, for being fundamentally undemocratic and unaccountable, and for being engaged in collusive dealings with Goldman Sachs. Financial blogs and CNBC discuss the Fed, and its associated characters, with deep insight and passion. And Bernanke received 30 no votes in his confirmation hearing in 2009, the most ever for such a position, just four years after drawing almost none. The market nearly crashed on the possibility that Bernanke’s nomination would fail, before the White House stepped up aggressive lobbying efforts.
On the left, the last few years saw a remarkable grassroots coalition of economists and activists to bring transparency to the central bank, joining a long-sought libertarian crusade. I was a staffer for Rep. Alan Gryason working with that coalition to require an independent audit the Federal Reserve. Tomorrow, because of provisions put into Dodd-Frank by Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressmen Grayson and Ron Paul, the Federal Reserve will release details of its 2007-2010 emergency loans to the web.
for the full article go here:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/...
Back to how our money was stolen used for MacDonald's and other companies:
The Federal Reserve’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF) presents a particularly stark portrait of the depth of the crisis in the fall of 2008. Commercial paper refers to short-term loans that businesses and some governments use to fund day-to-day operation. The market for such paper was quickly freezing up, as money market and mutual funds backed away, worried about the solvency of the corporations. The Fed jumped in to start buying the paper, sending cash to more than a thousand companies and foreign governments, including McDonald's, Mitsubishi, Harley-Davidson, Amstel Funding Corp., GE, to the Bank or Korea. Bank of America was on the receiving end of several billion in such loans made over several days. The Fed says that all these loans were repaid. -- Ryan Grim
Want to know how much 'junk' was dumped into your laps by Wall St./the Banks, and how much money they made (and are still making on this 'junk'?
Wall Street firms teetering on the verge of collapse pledged more than $1.3 trillion in junk-rated securities to the Federal Reserve for cheap overnight loans - almost a quarter of all the long-term securities pledged to the Fed with a credit rating -- according to data released by the Fed on Wednesday. The program, initiated to keep securities firms afloat during the height of a financial crisis that saw the collapse of two storied investment banks, the rescue of the world's largest insurance firm and the largest banks, was designed, in the Fed's words, to "improve the ability" of Wall Street's biggest firms to "provide financing to participants in securitization markets."
Essentially, the Fed gave Wall Street overnight loans with interest as low as 0.50 percent in order for the firms to have cash that they could then use to buy other securities or make loans. Those firms could trade with that cheap money and profit handsomely. As collateral for those loans, Wall Street firms gave the Fed securities that were, in essence, junk. Of the 50 overnight loans with the most speculative-grade securities pledged as collateral, 35 came from Citigroup. 11 of those loans were taken out by Morgan Stanley; two from Bank of America, and one each from defunct investment firm Lehman Brothers and Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs.
The 18 firms, known as "primary dealers" because they're authorized to directly trade with the Fed, pledged $1,315,863,900,000 in non-investment grade collateral for the loans from March 2008 to May 2009. Overall, the firms pledged about $9.7 trillion in collateral, which came in the form of whole loans and securities. About $5.7 trillion of that came in the form of long-term securities with a credit rating. The totals likely include double-counting, as the firms may have pledged the same collateral on multiple days. The loans totaled about $9 trillion because the Fed took excess collateral in case its Wall Street borrowers defaulted.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
And then of course there is this little fact of something called the Constitution and Federally mandated laws that govern (haha) the Federal Reserve (the secret 4th Branch of our Government).
First Blatantly Unlawful Fed Act: AIG Foreign Sub Stock
Now we see why The Fed didn't want to tell the truth - it unearth this (among probably more)
Gee, what part of Section 14 of The Federal Reserve Act authorized this?
On March 2, 2009, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury announced a restructuring of the government's assistance to AIG. Specifically, the government's restructuring was designed to enhance the company's capital and liquidity in order to facilitate the orderly completion of the company's global divestiture program. As part of this restructuring, on December 1, 2009, the Federal Reserve completed transactions under which the FRBNY received preferred interests in two special purpose vehicles formed to hold the outstanding common stock of AIG’s largest foreign insurance subsidiaries, American International Assurance Company Ltd. (AIA) and American Life Insurance Company (ALICO). In exchange, the outstanding loan balance held by, and maximum amount available to, AIG under the line of credit were reduced by $25 billion.
That's a blatant and black-letter violation of Section 14, no part of which allows The Fed to take an equity interest in a company irrespective of the means or terms.
http://market-ticker.org/...
But of course when Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve 'do it' that means it is not illegal:
Meanwhile, what are the peasants getting for assistance in the continuing crash of the Housing Market and the Foreclosure scandal?
The Obama administration will spend less than a quarter of the $50 billion it promised to help homeowners facing foreclosure, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a report Monday.The CBO projection raises fresh questions about the success of the administration's foreclosure-prevention efforts and its commitment to helping homeowners, even as unemployment hovers near 10 percent. Corporations and large banks appear to be in full-fledged recovery -- last quarter, corporate profits reached an all-time high of $1.66 trillion on an annual basis -- but households and small businesses seem to have been left out.
Washington policymakers talk constantly about helping "Main Street" recover from the steepest downturn since the Great Depression. Spending less than a quarter of the money promised to help residents of "Main Street" keep their homes may not seem in line with that goal. President Barack Obama and his top aides, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, have made numerous pledges to the ever-increasing number of homeowners faced with foreclosure, declines in home value and reductions in equity. The administration's programs, announced by Obama in a Mesa, Ariz. high school just four weeks after he took office, originally aimed to "enable as many as 3 to 4 million homeowners to modify the terms of their mortgages to avoid foreclosure."
Using $50 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the bailout fund also known as TARP, the Obama Treasury Department would pay banks, investors and homeowners for every home loan modification that saved a borrower from foreclosure. To say the program has made a meaningful impact in ameliorating the housing crisis would be an overstatement.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
If you do not believe NOW that the real purpose of the Cat Food Commission is to pay off this 'junk and toxic debt' that our nation is still holding, and that you and I will pay for, our children will pay for and their children's children. Think again.
Meanwhile we have the dear, dear Rev. Mike Huckabee calling for the immediate execution of anyone and everyone affiliated with WikiLeaks. (Couldn't be because WikiLeaks are about to expose the Bankers for who they really are, could it?)
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and possible Republican presidential candidate provided a harsh assessment of what he believes to be an appropriate punishment for the source of the latest WikiLeaks transmission of U.S. embassy cables, saying that "anything less than execution is too kind a penalty."
"Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason," Huckabee said, according to a report from Florida Independent. "They've put American lives at risk."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Such a good Christian man, that Huckabee. Good thing he wasn't President when Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers, or when Woodward and Bernstein outed the Watergate Nixon crowd.
For your viewing pleasure, The Secret of Oz. This film won the Silver Sierra award at the Yosemite Film Festival and the Award of Merit at the Accolade Competition La Jolla, California. The film premiered on Oct. 2 at the Louisville International Film Festival, one of a handful of Oscar-qualifying film festivals. It was just made an Official Selection of the two big Orlando film festivals, INDIEFEST, and the Orlando Film Festival. These are big festivals that finally bring monetary reform into the national spotlight.
The yellow brick, the emerald city of Oz, even Dorothy’s silver slippers (changed to ruby slippers for the movie version) were powerful symbols of author L. Frank Baum’s belief that the people – not the big banks -- should control the quantity of a nation’s money.
The bottom line: No More National Debt. All our money is created out of debt. But nations don't have to borrow money from banks. Sovereign nations can create their own money -- debt free -- just as Abraham Lincoln did to win the Civil War. This is the secret that’s been hidden from us for over 100 years
Good thing that Bernanke, Geithner and Summers 'saved us all' isn't it? Any minute now we'll be hearing 'Happy Days Are Here Again' and the ticket tape parade will begin. Got your red, while and blue confetti all ready to go and your sparklers to wave around? (Passes around teeny tiny American Flags to wave for everyone).
I know I can sleep soundly tonight knowing that I helped bail out MacDonald's. I don't know a better way to have spent my hard earned money. Let's all have some Freedom Fries and thank our lucky stars.
Thanks as always,
Ms. B.