There is a full frontal attack on democracy by a junta of megalomaniacal billionaires and the myriad of groups they fund, but at the vanguard of this relentless attack is an international criminal racketeering cartel in the form of the too-big-to-fail banking sector, including the biggest six banks in the U.S. (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley).
Because of their unprecedented power and sophistication, these financial criminal cartels have been able to buy off the entire U.S. government, turning it into an enabler and protector of the obscene and illegal gains they have been able to obtain through a breathtaking and relentless wholesale looting of the country's treasury, resulting in the destabilization of the economy and social order, with dire consequences for hundreds of millions of people.
In their January 2013 cover story ("What's Inside America's Biggest Banks?"), The Atlantic reports how some investors "describe big banks as 'Black Boxes' that may still be concealing enormous risks--the sort that could again take down the economy."
But again, this situation does not only apply to the U.S. This is an international criminal cartel that has somehow been able to take over the entire financial system in the U.S. and Europe, giving them the ability to, number one, loot the coffers of multiple nations (screwing taxpayers and citizens in the process), and number two, tear down democracy itself by de-funding government, and the public sector.
Many of the biggest banks now stand accused of manipulating the world’s most popular benchmark interest rate, the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), which is used as a baseline to set interest rates for trillions of dollars of loans and investments. Barclays paid a large fine in June to avoid civil and criminal charges that could have been brought by U.S. and U.K. authorities. The Swiss giant UBS was reportedly close to a similar settlement as of this writing. Other major banks, including JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Deutsche Bank, are under civil or criminal investigation (or both), though no charges have yet been filed.
As these banks continue to commit massive crimes and fraud with total impunity, and under the protection of treasonous political "leaders" and toothless and totally corrupt "regulatory agencies" in both, the U.S. and Europe, their actions are getting more brazen:
Accusations of illegal, clandestine bank activities are also proliferating. Large global banks have been accused by U.S. government officials of helping Mexican drug dealers launder money (HSBC), and of funneling cash to Iran (Standard Chartered). Prosecutors have charged American banks with falsifying mortgage records by “robo-signing” papers to rush the process along, and with improperly foreclosing on borrowers. Only after the financial crisis did people learn that banks routinely misled clients, sold them securities known to be garbage, and even, in some cases, secretly bet against them to profit from their ignorance.
The main conclusion of this great investigative journalism report by The Atlantic is that the only reasons investors have not dumped all the banking investments is because even thought they know there is a total lack of transparency in their regulatory filings, and there are signs of outright fraud, as long as the U.S. government continues to act as a protector and backer of this criminal enterprise, the risk is not as high as it may be otherwise.
The problem with this is that because the concept of "moral hazard" has been totally removed from the equation, and because the crimes are being committed with total impunity and with little fear of being held accountable, the risky behavior and reckless investments by banks in the search of higher and higher yields have brought about a situation that could be much, much worst than the 2007-08 financial crisis; exponentially worst.
If it unravels, even the U.S. government may not be able to respond properly or on time to advert an unimaginable worldwide financial catastrophe. Keep in mind that even if this were to happen, the ruling classes will remain pretty much Okay, while the terrible consequences and suffering would fall onto the citizenry.
Of course, what I'm describing here is a massive, international Ponzi scheme, unprecedented in scope, reach, and potential catastrophic consequences.
That's Matt Taibbi's conclusion in his latest Rolling Stone exposé, "Secrets and Lies of the Bailout: The federal rescue of Wall Street didn’t fix the economy – it created a permanent bailout state based on a Ponzi-like confidence scheme. And the worst may be yet to come."
The article describes in chilling details a situation in which the U.S. government has been totally usurped and turned into an active co-conspirator in the creation of a monstrous Ponzi scheme.
But the most appalling part is the lying. The public has been lied to so shamelessly and so often in the course of the past four years that the failure to tell the truth to the general populace has become a kind of baked-in, official feature of the financial rescue. Money wasn't the only thing the government gave Wall Street – it also conferred the right to hide the truth from the rest of us. And it was all done in the name of helping regular people and creating jobs. "It is," says former bailout Inspector General Neil Barofsky, "the ultimate bait-and-switch."
Taibbi goes on to report the astonishingly brazen actions--in your face fraud and deception--taken not only by the criminal racketeering banking cartel, but by on-the-take government functionaries as well.
Congress and the American people were lied over and over again, in order for these criminals to get access to trillions of dollars. And in spite of this largess, did they make loans available to small businesses, or did they provide relief to mortgage holder unfairly affected by the 2008 financial crisis? No, they parked trillions of dollars at the FED, and engaged in what can only be described as insider trading:
Meanwhile, at the same moment that leading banks were taking trillions in secret loans from the Fed, top officials at those firms were buying up stock in their companies, privy to insider info that was not available to the public at large. Stephen Friedman, a Goldman director who was also chairman of the New York Fed, bought more than $4 million of Goldman stock over a five-week period in December 2008 and January 2009 – years before the extent of the firm's lifeline from the Fed was made public. Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit bought nearly $7 million in Citi stock in November 2008, just as his firm was secretly taking out $99.5 billion in Fed loans. Jamie Dimon bought more than $11 million in Chase stock in early 2009, at a time when his firm was receiving as much as $60 billion in secret Fed loans. When asked by Rolling Stone, Chase could not point to any disclosure of the bank's borrowing from the Fed until more than a year later, when Dimon wrote about it in a letter to shareholders in March 2010.
The citizenry is being taking for a ride... But it's not a fun ride. It's a terrifying ride full of outright torture, abuse, exploitation, and manipulation. Worst of all, through the powerful effect of the mass media corporate conglomerate propaganda, our minds are being numbed and "drugged" into accepting this absurd reality.
“These blind slaves are told they are “free” and “highly educated” even as they march behind signs that would cause any medieval peasant to run screaming away from them in panic-stricken terror. The symbols that modern man embraces with the naive trust of an infant would be tantamount to billboards reading, ‘This way to your death and enslavement,’ to the understanding of the traditional peasant of antiquity”
- Michael A. Hoffman II, Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare
It's time to get ready for Occupy 2013, and 14', 15', 16', and beyond.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
- Frederick Douglass
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It's time to make some noise. Agitate. Rise and put a stop to it!
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