As Senator Sanders has said:
"I sense that many Democrats see the Massachusetts election as a wake-up call," Sanders said. "There is a growing understanding that our economy is in severe distress, a greater appreciation that people are disgusted with the never-ending greed on Wall Street, and a better recognition that we need a new direction at the Fed."
Yes, people are not only disgusted but the center of our very society in our nation is crumbling before our eyes. We have been demoralized as a nation who once again fought perhaps one of the most difficult, long and bitter recent elections in our history to elect President Obama, only to find out that not only was it 'business as usual' but worse than 'business as usual'. First the Bush train wreck of completely destroying out national economy, then after the election the continued cover-up of the greatest transfer of wealth in our nation's history through the Federal Reserve, AIG and Goldman Sachs that is still being hidden from us. Now we have been forced into yet another 'transfer of wealth' to the Private Insurance Companies and big Pharma in the guise of 'a Fake Health Care Reform Bill.'
Of course Americans are pissed off and demoralized. What did these leaders expect? Did they just expect that the taxpayers would lay down like beaten submissive animals begging for more abuse?
Scott Brown is the official 'Poster Boy' for the beginning of the backlash of Americans saying loud and clear to our government and to the Democrats and Republicans alike:
GET RID OF THE CORRUPTION NOW
If there is a silver lining in this mess, it is that I have been able to learn much more about how my government works, and more importantly how it supposed to work, and does not work, and how those failures are the direct result of just how insane the idea that 'regulators regulating regulators who all look the other way, while scratching each others backs' got us to the place we are today.
For instance, the 'mystery' of the Federal Reserve is no longer a mystery to me at all. What was Ben Bernanke's job as Chairman of the Federal Reserve? Here it is:
The Federal Reserve has four main responsibilities: to maximum employment and prevent inflation; to keep the financial system from imploding; to maintain the safety and soundness of financial institutions; and to protect consumers against deceptive and unfair financial products.
He failed in each one of these areas of responsibility, but he specifically failed most at keeping the financial system from imploding and in protecting consumers against deceptive and unfair financial products, which in turn lead to the failure of the safety and soundness of our financial institutions and put over 25 million Americans out of work.
In the past few months Bernanke has been getting desperate. He wrote an oped piece in the Wall Street Journal, he gave several speeches recently that were unprecedented, and now all of a sudden, low and behold, he is ready to allow a certain amount of 'discovery' to come forward in the handling of AIG. But all of this posturing on his part is simply like a cat trying to cover up a pile of shit in a little box with no litter left in the box. Nice try Ben, but the car is laying at the bottom of the cliff, crashed, burned and broken - beyond repair.
Things are not looking good for Ben because the bloom has come off the rose and the worm has started to turn:
HuffPost's Jeff Muskus and I polled as many senators as we could find Thursday after posting this story.The question: Have they decided how they'll vote on the nomination of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for a second term?
We found 26 senators in all. Half were undecided; one wouldn't say; three were outright nays; only nine were firmly in the aye column. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) summed it for many of her colleagues. The decision, she said, "gives me heartburn." Along with Mikulski, eight other Democratic senators said they are undecided, including Maria Cantwell (Wash.), Ben Cardin (Md.), Patrick Leahy (Vt.), Carl Levin (Mich.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Bill Nelson (Fla.), Bob Casey (Pa.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Debbie Stabenow (Mich.). Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) declined to say which way he would vote or whether he's made up his mind. Republican Sens. Kit Bond (Mo.), John McCain (Ariz.) and Olympia Snowe (Maine) also said they are undecided.
The undecideds cited Bernanke's role in the financial collapse. "Usually at this stage of a vote like that, you have a better sense about it. I'm clearly and definitively undecided," said Casey. "Part of it is just how we analyze his stewardship at the time when our economy began to go in the wrong direction. "Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) said he's voting no unless Bernanke tells Congress "who got direct loans from the Fed," he said. "He's essentially said to us he doesn't intend to tell the congress or the American people which investment banks got direct loans from the Fed for the first time in history." Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) has made up his mind and is firmly opposed. "I was a Fed defender for 22 years -- probably one of the biggest ones on the banking committee," he said. "Once I got into the weeds on the Fed's role as a regulator dealing with the holding companies, their regulatory regime, and their record was weak and flawed and that is my beef right now."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
No...no...no..no indeedy no...things are not looking up for Ben at all...and 'getting into the weeds of the Fed's role as a regulator and dealing with holding companies and their regulatory failures' (let alone their absolute refusal to answer any of Senator Dorgan's questions or any other Senators questions) regarding 'where the fuck is money' is not sitting well with the Senate now that the public has put their 'Poster Boy' Scott Brown on the front lines of the 'we're mad as hell and we aren't going to take it anymore' pitch forks and torch crowd.
And then of course, there is always the fact that now the Senate itself is looking to 'lay the blame' on anyone other than themselves, regardless of the fact that many of them signed away on deregulation faster than you can say 'Sarah Palin for President' with a pretend lisp three hundred times in a row without skipping a beat.
But what they may finally be realizing is this:
But when the fruits of society’s labor become maldistributed, when the rich get richer and the middle and lower classes struggle to keep their heads above water as is clearly the case today, then the system ultimately breaks down; boats do not rise equally with the tide; the center cannot hold. Bill Gross on: Enough is Enough
And in fact, the center is not holding and I believe that President Obama has finally realized this, as has our own Senate. Our country is in severe distress and the time for playing insider games and triangulation is over. The people of our nation have a right to fully understand that the Federal Reserve is not a 'Fourth' branch of our government that answers to no one, most of all our Senators and House members, let alone our President.
I applaud President Obama for finally listening to Paul Volcker as a voice of sanity, (but I hear the Timmy Geithner is refusing to come out from under in desk and is having a regular old Goldman Sachs meltdown sulking party and tantrum.)
It was very interesting to read an article on Zero Hedge today written by one of The most highly respected international Bankers in the world, Albert Edwards of Societe Generale. Please note what this individual is saying as to what he believes has taken place in our own country under the system of the Central Banks and Federal Reserve:
Theft! Were the US & UK central banks complicit in robbing the middle classes?
by Albert Edwards, Societe Generale
Mr Bernanke’s in-house Fed economists have found that the Fed wasn’t responsible for the boom which subsequently turned into the biggest bust since the 1930s. Are those the same Fed staffers whose research led Mr Bernanke to assert in Oct. 2005 that "there was no housing bubble to go bust"? The reasons for the US and the UK central banks inflating the bubble range from incompetence and negligence to just plain spinelessness. Let me propose an alternative thesis. Did the US and UK central banks collude with the politicians to ‘steal’ their nations’ income growth from the middle classes and hand it to the very rich?
Ben Bernanke?s recent speech at the American Economic Association made me feel sick. Like Alan Greenspan, he is still in denial. The pigmies that populate the political and monetary elites prefer to genuflect to the court of public opinion in a pathetic attempt to deflect blame from their own gross and unforgivable incompetence. The US and UK have seen a huge rise in inequality over the last two decades, as growth in national income has been diverted almost exclusively to the top income earners (see chart below). The middle classes have seen median real incomes stagnate over that period and, as a consequence, corporate margins and profits have boomed.
Some recent reading has got me thinking as to whether the US and UK central banks were actively complicit in an aggressive re-distributive policy benefiting the very rich. Indeed, it has been amazing how little political backlash there has been against the stagnation of ordinary peoples earnings in the US and UK. Did central banks, in creating housing bubbles, help distract middle class attention from this re-distributive policy by allowing them to keep consuming via equity extraction? The emergence of extreme inequality might never otherwise have been tolerated by the electorate (see chart below). And now the bubbles have burst, along with central banks? credibility, what now?
http://www.zerohedge.com/...
This is a long article, but well worth the read.
The time for this long national nightmare must come to an end, and the time for the continued cover up and secrecy regarding our national debt and how it is being distributed and managed and more important, why it is being managed under such 'CIA covert type' management must also come to an end.
Business as usual is no longer a viable alternative in a nation bereft with corruption and incompetence at the highest levels in our country and until we as a nation demand that our leaders 'come clean' and begin a new honest more open and transparent government in our key financial sectors, we can expect more or the same, and more of the same will mean that we can virtually be guaranteed additional financial catastrophes and additional unbridled corruption that will destroy our nation in the end.
The Senate has a responsibility to hold Ben Bernanke accountable, and it appears that this is exactly what they are finally going to step up to the plate and do. The next step after that would be to ensure, as Elizabeth Warren has said is (no thanks to Chris Dodd) to ensure that the Consumer Financial Protection Agency that will be equipped with the power to write rules governing basic consumer credit products like home mortgages and credit cards, and would have the authority to regulate big banks and monitor their compliance be put into place as soon as possible.
The Federal Reserve and Ben Bernanke's days are out dated, and it is time to revamp the entire system of the Federal Reserve and the Central Banks so that these organizations have strict oversight and regular auditing with perhaps even a second branch of the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, with specifically that mandate.
By the way, good luck Ben, because you sure as hell are going to need it, but in a strange way, even something as catastrophic and a tragedy of such epic proportions can be a terrible blessing in disguise, and that would be if our nation could finally come together and find a honest way to once again establish trust and confidence in our key financial sectors again for the 300,000,000 million people who, even after everything that has happened still proudly call this country their own. If we don't, then god help us all.
Thanks.
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