- Major Wall Street banks occupy and control Washington.
They recycle their officials in and out, make policy, and enforce it with
money power supremacy for virtually everything they want.
-
- Political Washington salutes and obeys. Money power in
private hands and democracy can't co-exist. It buys what it wants at the
expense of government of, by and for the people. It never was and isn't
now.
-
- On December 23, 1913, Congress passed the Federal Reserve
Act, violating the Constitution's Article 1, Section 8, giving Congress
sole power to coin (create) money and regulate the value thereof.
-
- Abolishing or nationalizing the Fed and giving people
money power back through Congress is step one to regaining rights not possible
under banker controlled government.
-
- That's issue one Occupy Wall Street protesters and others
spreading across America in dozens of cities must address.
-
- Occupy Together is an "unofficial hub" for
burgeoning initiatives heading everywhere "in solidarity with Occupy
Wall St."
-
- Word spreads. Hidden anger surfaces. Small numbers grow.
So does commitment to stay the course. Activists and ordinary people know
something's wrong they want changed. Key is understanding money power in
private hands. Change depends on ending a system destroying futures for
working Americans.
-
- Major Wall Street firms comprise an illegal private banking
cartel monopoly controlling the nation's money, price, supply and availability.
For a century, it looted America's economy for its own self-interest.
-
- It's run by unelected, unaccountable crooks in league
with corrupt politicians taking bribes in the form of campaign contributions
to go along.
-
- Behind closed doors, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs,
Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and other giants run America, waging financial
warfare for profit.
-
- In theory, the Fed was established to stabilize the economy,
smooth out the business cycle, manage healthy, sustainable growth, and
maintain stable prices.
-
- Instead, it caused multiple recessions, the Great Depression,
and today's Greatest Global one. It also caused monetary inflation and
America's declining standard of living, notably in recent decades.
-
- In fact, a 1913 dollar today isn't worth a plug nickel,
and given reckless Greenspan/Bernanke money creation it's value is eroding
entirely. Notably the Fed caused:
-
- rising consumer debt;
-
- record budget and trade deficits;
-
- a soaring national debt equaling GDP and heading higher;
-
- escalating personal and business bankruptcies, both up
around 35% in 2009; near record levels persisted in 2010;
-
- millions of home foreclosures in America's worst ever
housing Depression;
-
- unemployment at nearly 23%;
-
- loss of the nation's manufacturing base;
-
- shocking levels of poverty in the world's richest country;
-
- an unprecedented wealth gap; and
-
- a hugely unstable economy lurching from one crisis to
another; it lets money power in private hands profit, as they say, all
the way to the bank by buying valued assets cheap to consolidate to greater
size and get open checkbook trillions for speculation and big bonuses.
-
- Easy money, market manipulation, deregulation, reckless
speculation, counterproductive fixes, and unsustainable debt caused today's
crisis.
-
- Why else would gold and silver prices soar. Bad policy
assures worse trouble ahead. Instead of washing out excesses, they increase
over time. Eventually, an unsustainable house of cards collapses, especially
when credit contraction persists.
-
- The combination of monopoly money power in private hands
combined with financialization at the expense of industrial America produced
policies wrecking the country and futures of ordinary workers.
-
- Job creation is moribund. Industrial America keeps imploding.
High-paying jobs are exported. Economic prospects are grim. Workers are
exploited for greater profits, and no one's sure how to revive stable,
sustainable long-term growth.
-
- America's FIRE sector (finance, insurance, and real estate)
fueled casino capitalist speculation over capital goods investments in
plant, equipment, transportation, and public utilities that earlier fueled
business cycle expansions.
-
- Instead of making better things for better living, America's
financialized economy proliferates unbridled greed, fueled by limitless
amounts of privately created money destroying the country.
-
- Headquartered on Wall Street, America and global economies
are strip-mined for profit. Investors and workers are ripped off. Money
is manipulated to make more of it at their expense.
-
- In league with political Washington, profits are privatized,
losses socialized. Main Street is sacrificed for Wall Street. It's grand
theft on an enormous scale, transferring wealth to giant banks, other corporate
favorites, and super-rich elites already with too much.
-
- Since the 1970s, wages stagnated and lost purchasing
power. Inflation rose. Benefits like retirement savings eroded. Household
debt rose to compensate. Two wage-earners now keep up with one years back.
-
- Accumulating enormous excesses, monopoly money power
caused 2008's global collapse. Capitalism's dark side and destructive contradictions
were exposed, particularly its financialized form.
-
- Money power in private hands is exploitively destructive.
Global populations are harmed. As a result, poverty in developed countries
soared. In underdeveloped ones it deepened, leaving millions facing destitution
and human misery, even death.
-
- Money power buys influence. Wall Street rules America
and the world. Deregulated excess produced unprecedented fraud and grand
theft, insider trading, misrepresentation, Ponzi schemes, false accounting,
market manipulation, toxic financial products, unprecedented profits, and
massive public deception.
-
- Deregulation facilitated it. Whatever Wall Street wants
it gets. Without money power, Washington can't or won't intercede enough
to matter. Trying produces days like 2010's May 6 "flash crash,"
cratering the Dow 1,000 points, then recovering losses in minutes. Wall
Street's power creates or destroys financial assets with keystroke ease.
-
- If Congress had money power and regulatory backbone,
too-big-to-fail banks wouldn't exist. Public banks would operate with small
private ones. Every state would prosper like North Dakota, the only one
with a state-owned bank.
-
- During the height of 2008's financial crisis, North Dakota
had its largest ever surplus. Global contagion cratered other states. If
they operated like North Dakota, prosperity would replace gloom.
-
- If federal, state or local governments lend their own
money, profit isn't at issue so rates can be low and affordable to businesses,
farmers, and private individuals. Moreover, for federal, state, and municipality
needs, government-issued credit is interest-free.
-
- In addition, public banks don't have to earn profits.
They're not beholden to Wall Street or shareholders. Only federal, state
or local community creditworthiness matters.
-
- In over 235 years, neither America or any state went
bankrupt. Only poorly governed Arkansas defaulted during the Great Depression.
Under publicly run banks, sustained prosperity is possible inflation free
as long as recycled money goes for productive economic growth.
-
- Whenever it was tried, it worked impressively, including
in colonial America for a generation, and today in North Dakota. Why not
everywhere across America including Washington.
-
- Sound monetary policy isn't rocket science. It's common
sense, serving public interest needs, not shareholders or Wall Street profiteers
seeking maximum profits for private gain.
-
- Without knowing the merits of public over privatized
banking, Occupy Wall Streeters know a better way is vital.
-
- In days, New York protests went viral, erupting in dozens
of cities nationwide. The hacktivist "Anonymous" group urges
"(e)veryone, everywhere (to occupy) their towns, their capitals and
other public spaces."
-
- It's a collective 99% majority against "corruption,
greed and inequality." A minority 1% wants privatized money power
for more of it. Everyone else demands change.
-
- Putting their bodies on the line despite police brutality
is key. So far spreading activism is impressive. Growing and sustaining
its energy is crucial.
-
- Famed Chicago activist Saul Alinsky (1909 - 1972) knew
the best way to beat organized money is with organized people, "getting
it altogether" for change.
-
- Calling conflict "the essential core of a free and
open society," he said "(i)f one were to project the democratic
way of life in the form of a musical score, its major theme would be the
harmony of dissonance," working for the common good.
-
- It's core issue is returning money power to public hands
as a first step to having government of, by and for the people serving
everyone.
-
- If that's not worth sustained struggle, what is?
-
- Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
-
- Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and
listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive
Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central
time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy
listening.
-
- http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
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