Fed Up?

I began this with the intention of writing about the oligarchs dream come true...the Federal Reserve. And that will be one focus, but I realized I'm fed up about lots more...like: US imperialism, self serving corrupt corporate controlled congress critters, imprisoning and torturing journalists who report about war crimes, propaganda paraded as the press, the charade of our elections, the failure of the US to adequately deal with COVID, and on and on. Perhaps I'm grumpy because I haven't been to play music with friends, nor visit, nor hug, shake hands, and give a pat on the back ... all those things that kinda define our humanity and appreciation of one another. Another layer is my increasing understanding of our situation which suggests we are just at the beginning of this mess.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Winston Churchill

At least the garden is doing well. This time of year it is the salad bar special.

So let's start with the Federal Reserve

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.... I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
-Thomas Jefferson (unconfirmed)

We pick up the story, appropriately enough, under cover of darkness. It was the night of November 22, 1910, and a group of the richest and most powerful men in America were boarding a private rail car at an unassuming railroad station in Hoboken, New Jersey. The car, waiting with shades drawn to keep onlookers from seeing inside, belonged to Senator Nelson Aldrich, the father-in-law of billionaire heir to the Rockefeller dynasty, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. A central figure on the influential Senate Finance Committee, where he oversaw the nation’s monetary policy, Aldrich was referred to in the press as the “General Manager of the Nation.” Joining him that evening was his private secretary, Shelton, and a who’s who of the nation’s banking and financial elite: A. Piatt Andrew, the Assistant Treasury Secretary; Frank Vanderlip, President of the National City Bank of New York; Henry P. Davison, a senior partner of J.P. Morgan Company; Benjamin Strong, Jr., an associate of J.P. Morgan and President of Bankers Trust Co., and Paul Warburg, heir of the Warburg banking family and son-in-law of Solomon Loeb of the famed New York investment firm, Kuhn, Loeb & Company.
...
Their destination? The secluded Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia, home to the prestigious Jekyll Island Club, whose members included the Morgans, Rockefellers, Warburgs, and Rothschilds. Their purpose? Davison told intrepid local newspaper reporters who had caught wind of the meeting that they were going duck hunting. But in reality, they were going to draft a reform of the nation’s banking industry in complete secrecy.
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Amazingly enough, they were successful, not just in conspiring to write the legislation that would eventually become the Federal Reserve Act, but in keeping that conspiracy a secret from the public for decades. It was first reported on in 1916 by Bertie Charles Forbes, the financial writer who would later go on to found Forbes magazine, but it was never fully admitted until a full quarter-century later, when Frank Vanderlip wrote a casual admission of the meeting in the February 9, 1935, edition of The Saturday Evening Post:
“I was as secretive—indeed, as furtive—as any conspirator.[…]I do not feel it is any exaggeration to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System.”

https://www.corbettreport.com/federalreserve/

The author of "The Creature from Jekyll Island"

G. Edward Griffin: What happened is the banks decided that since there was going to be legislation anyway to control their industry, that they wouldn’t just sit back and wait and see what happened and cross their fingers that it would be OK. They decided to do what so many cartels do today: they decided to take the lead. And they would be the ones calling for regulations and reform.

They like the word “reform.” The American people are suckers for the word “reform.” You just put that into any corrupt piece of legislation, call it “reform” and people say “Oh, I’m all for ‘reform,'” and so they vote for it or accept it.

So that’s what they were doing. They decided, “We will ‘reform’ our own industry.” In other words, “We will create a cartel and we will give the cartel the power of government. We’ll take our cartel agreement so we can self-regulate to our advantage and we’ll call it ‘The Federal Reserve Act.’ And then we’ll take this cartel agreement to Washington and convince those idiots there to pass it into law.”

And that basically was the strategy. It was a brilliant strategy. Of course we see it happening all the time, certainly in our own day today we see the same thing happened in other cartelized industries. Right now we’re watching it unfold in the field of healthcare, but at that time it was banking, alright?

And so the banking cartel wrote their own rules and regulations, called it “The Federal Reserve Act,” got it passed into law, and it was very much to their liking because they wrote it. And in essence what they had created was a set of rules that made it possible for themselves to regulate their industry, but they went even beyond that. In fact, it’s clear to me when I was reading their letters and their conversation at the time, and the debates, that they never dreamed that Congress would go along and also give them the right to issue the nation’s money supply. Not only were they now going to regulate their own industry, which is what they started out as wanting to do, but they got this incredible gift that they didn’t dream would be given to them (although they were negotiating for it), and that was that Congress gave them the authority to issue the nation’s money. Congress gave away the sovereign right to issue the nation’s money to the private banks.

Some people think the study of money and banking is boring. However, what if there is another topic that deals with a group of embezzlers who secretly tapped into the computers of every bank in the world and, without anyone knowing it, had devised a method of stealing one percent of every financial transaction in the world, 24/7? And what if they also did this with insurance policies, savings accounts, real estate, and investments in stocks and bonds? And, if they knew that their own retirement accounts are being embezzled in the same way, and if they discovered that the stolen money is being used to undermine their liberty and independence, do you think they would be interested? Well, that IS the story of money and banking. It all begins here.

G. Edward Griffin

... the Federal Reserve does not print money—the US government does through the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, while the Federal Reserve decides how much of that money is circulated throughout the public.
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“US dollars” are what is known as “fiat currency.” It is money that is issued without anything tangible backing it up. Fiat currency has collapsed every economy in which it has ever been used, because it is structurally doomed to fail. Look at it this way: If you print $1,000 but expect back $1,100 through interest payments, you will never be able to get back to square one—you’ll just have to keep printing money until that money is worthless.
...

https://thoughtcatalog.com/jeremy-london/2018/08/federal-reserve-conspir...

There are many wild theories about the nature of the Fed. (6.5 min)

So why this focus on the Fed? Because it is literally buying everything...

Another day, another alphabet soup facility from the Fed – and along with it, an additional $2T and counting. From the repo markets, to commercial paper, to corporate debt (both investment grade and junk), to US Treasuries across the yield curve, and to mortgage-backed securities (both residential and commercial), there is virtually no end to what the Fed will purchase. And on top of this, the Fed is also lending to small and mid-sized companies. There is no free lunch and the American people are about to learn this the hard way and this is only the tip of the iceberg.

18 min clip

The Fed's Cure Risks Being Worse Than the Disease...
An alphabet soup of new asset-buying programs will essentially nationalize large swaths of the financial markets, and the consequences could be profound.
The economic debate of the day centers on whether the cure of an economic shutdown is worse than the disease of the virus. Similarly, we need to ask if the cure of the Federal Reserve getting so deeply into corporate bonds, asset-backed securities, commercial paper, and exchange-traded funds is worse than the disease seizing financial markets. It may be.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-27/federal-reserve-s-...

Fed Warns Stock Market and Financial System Could Face Significant SHOCK Near Term (12 min)

The Federal Reserve just made the problem of financial firms considered 'too big to fail' a whole lot bigger. That's because the U.S. central bank has hired investment giant BlackRock, which manages some $7 trillion in assets, to run purchases of corporate bonds and commercial mortgages that are part of its response to the pandemic-led recession.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/pedrodacosta/2020/04/20/a-glaring-new-confl...

Ron Paul suggests the Fed is doomed.
James Corbett sits down with Ron Paul to discuss the coming end of the Federal Reserve. Dr. Paul reflects on the End The Fed movement, explains the inevitability of the Fed’s demise, and talks about what system may come along to take its place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj0IBOopFkE (22 min)

Looks like the petrodollar is endangered as well. China is considering a gold backed digital yuan.
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/05/12/get-ready-for-next-game-changer-th...

Max and Stacy explain how the Fed is now buying junk bonds and corporate debt.
They discuss the similarities between Charles Saatchi and the US Federal Reserve, where junk is turned into ‘value’ through showmanship and public deception.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk7EgV4iT54 (15 min)

Whereas the fraud during the last crisis was in residential mortgages, the complaint claims this time it’s happening in commercial properties like office buildings, apartment complexes and retail centers. The complaint focuses on the loans that are gathered into pools whose worth can exceed $1 billion and turned into bonds sold to investors, known as CMBS (for commercial mortgage-backed securities).

https://truthout.org/articles/whistleblower-says-systemic-mortgage-fraud...

Gulfgal featured this article and clip in her essay yesterday.
https://eand.co/the-american-economy-is-imploding-and-america-is-too-e99...

This is what a dying economy looks like. Yes, a dying economy is a nation plunging into poverty — like America. But what people often fail to understand is that it’s much more than that, too. A dying economy takes systems and institutions and public goods with it. A dying economy takes a functioning society with it — it’s gentle bell curve, it’s norms of trust and acceptance and coexistence and tolerance. And a dying economy, ultimately, takes a sane, decent, sensible politics with it — the basic elements of democracy — too.

Jimmy and Dylan parse out the article.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncifVGKCcxI (28 min)

Dylan and Jimmy also discuss the disgusting $3T demoncrapic relief bill

The $3 trillion measure, presented by the Democrats as a boon to workers struggling with mass unemployment, is, in fact, a political maneuver. It is the opening salvo in a process of political theatrics between the two parties that will produce, in the end, a measure that further benefits the corporate elite while providing little to no relief for the mass of the population.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4VV97dsciw (22 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1i7YKS69IE (27 min)

Companies with ties to the oil industry have received some $1.9 billion in tax benefits under federal coronavirus stimulus legislation, according to an analysis from Bloomberg. Thirty-seven such companies claimed tax benefits through the $2.2 trillion CARES Act that was passed by Congress in late March, the outlet found after reviewing Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/498029-oil-cos-have-receiv...
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/05/16/big-oil-taking-19-billion-c...

Chris Hedges talks with Jimmy about Julian's mistreatment in the injustice system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGxh6UYNRpw (13 min)

ASSANGE EXTRADITION: Court Files Expose Sheldon Adelson’s Security Team in US Spying on Assange

An exclusive investigation by The Grayzone reveals new details on the critical role Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands played in an apparent CIA spying operation targeting Julian Assange, and exposes the Sands security staff who helped coordinate the malicious campaign.

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/05/14/american-sheldon-adelsons-us-spy-juli...

David Swanson has been developing a series of maps to look at militarism around the world
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/05/14/mapping-militarism/

Corona update...

As much as we would just like it to go away, second waves of covid-19 infections are pretty much a certainty at this point.We're already seeing initial proof of this in Asia in the very countries that have to-date been most successful at suppressing the virus: Hong Kong, China and South Korea.

Even after extended lulls in cases, they're finding that opening social movement back up results in flare-ups in new covid-19 clusters.

It's quite possible that these seconds waves will be followed by third and forth waves, as a growing number of scientists worry that the coronavirus may never go away -- as it can hide in asymptomatic carriers and because it mutates so rapidly that a permanent vaccine may not be realistic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZG64p0RBDI (56 min)

People are tiring of social distancing... social distancing “fatigue” and new allowances for people to return to work may have influenced others to leave their homes more despite orders in their state.
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/497936-number-of-ameri...

Just as polio killed or permanently handicapped millions worldwide before a vaccine was developed, medical experts are now drawing comparisons in scale with the coronavirus.

Covid-19 is "this generation's polio" declares Nicolas Hart, the British physician who recently treated UK PM Boris Johnson.

With the false claims of "it's just the flu" now disproven, we're now faced with how to live under the threat of covid infection until -- hopefully, as there are no guarantees here -- an effective vaccine is developed and deployed at scale.

How do we find a way to work, shop and socially interact without unacceptable risk to an invisible and highly-infectious virus that can kill us or leave survivors with long-lasting damage to our lungs and other organs?

Ready or not, we'll be figuring that out over the coming months...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH2UoBUcW2I (48 min)

Latin America has become the newest "hot spot".
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/14/pers-m14.html

And I'll wrap this up with my favorite conversation of the week with Matt Taibbi, Katie Halper, and Aaron Mate'. It last an hour, but goes quickly.

Aaron Mate, host of Pushback, joins the show to talk about the resurfacing of the Russiagate story, how it’s helped Trump, and the many flaws in the story.

I hope my venting this week didn't cause you to be "fed up" too. We seem to be in the midst of empire collapse. I think it will be for the best, depending on the system which next evolves. I suspect we are all tiring of COVID, but it sure looks like it isn't going anywhere anytime soon. We should have plenty of time to work on tolerance and patience. Yesterday there was a massive explosion in downtown LA and ten or more buildings are burning. Perhaps this mirrors US empire crashing and burning. I wish us all well during this convergence of catastrophes. Hang in there folks!