The Looting of America
A couple of days ago, I came across Catherine Austin Fitts for the first time. Fitts, a Wall Street investor and former Assistant Secretary of Housing, uncovered the methods for sucking trillions of dollars out of the US. She explains that it is a coordinated effort between the government and the big banks -- organized crime, she calls it.
She's an excellent speaker and explains it all really well so I recommend that you listen to her rather than have me write out the juicy bits.
The key things: it's been going on for over 2 decades. The housing bubble was anticipated. Instead of warning people about the impending bubble, everyone from government to banks to mortgage companies encouraged people to take on bigger and bigger mortgages. Contrary to what Hillary said, there was not fault on the part of the homeowners: they were seduced down the path of losing everything.
The video linked here is a good starting point. There are numerous interviews and presentations by Fitts on youtube and she covers different aspects of what happened and how it happened.
One of the things I really like about Fitts is that she offers solutions. She recommends that every county find out where government money is going and do something to redirect it into useful activities. She gives the example of a friend of hers, a very wealthy investor. She showed him where the money was going in his county and he immediately got angry. There was $4million for flood insurance when his county was on a hill and had never suffered a flood.
Another suggestion is to set up a local process (excluding the big banks) where local people with a little money to invest could provide loans to local businesses who need equity. Both sides would have a vested interest in success, shopping at local businesses, thus raising the value of the local community, instead of letting profits leave the community through businesses like Walmart.
Comments
Money centralization
Fitts describes the process of removing trillions of dollars from a country and moving it to wherever the international elite want it, as centralization. Keeping money in local communities and helping local communities become wealthier is called decentralization.
She counts the Clintons as centralizers. (I know, I know -- it's obvious, right?) This is just another thing that makes me despair of another Clinton presidency. No matter what HRC is saying now, the process of sucking every little bit of money out of the US is going to continue on her watch.
Popsicle Index "We're not Denmark"
Thanks for writing this. I did not know about the video, glad to see she is reaching more people. I used to listen to her on KPFA radio where I learned about the The Popsicle Index
Congratulations Danes regain 'world's happiest people' title. We're number thirteen! We're number thirteen! (usa)
My middle finger goes to the Clintons, now and forever fuck this shit.
edited for accuracy I hope, somewhat better than the captions at least.
Who believes that word salad nonsense? Not me, again reminded of the "don't tell me, show me" signature that used to be attached to other good words elsewhere. Because if it's the D's "job to rein in the excesses of capitalism so it doesn't run amok and it doesn't cause the kind of inequities" then Democrats have been a yuge failure for decades now. Why should I vote to continue that insanity? Because different insanity? Sophie's choice!
Peace
The thing is that it wasn't
The thing is that it wasn't an accident -- Wall Street run amok -- that caused the financial bubble. And the forces that built the greatest middle class in the history of the world were the post-WWII pro-union, pro-education years.
The ongoing recession is a calculated effort by the Big Banks with the collusion of the government to suck as much money as possible out of the country. For most bureaucrats, it is probably impossible to detect what is going on in their own area of responsibility. And the Clintons, being centralists, have no interest in stopping the process.
I think that businesses in general feel that they are not making the grade if they are not making their businesses profitable enough. Certainly, if they have shareholders, they feel a great deal of pressure to show a high level of profit. Hence employees get paid as little as possible and the numbers of employees is kept as low as possible. Benefits that cost money are strictly to be avoided. They pull the plug on businesses and locations in a flash if they are not profitable enough. You can't rebuild the middle class in that kind of business environment.
HRC likes to sell the story that what happened was due to a bunch of reckless, greedy individuals (who haven't ever been prosecuted, btw) and won't be allowed to happen again. That proves to me that she is going to allow it to continue.
"Allow" it to continue?
She's going to keep profiting from it herself - after all, Clinton Inc. isn't a billion dollar enterprise (yet).
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
In that word blended veggie smoothie...
Were pretty much every single possible position you can take on capitalism, in order to claim credit for it all.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Re: Your title
Re: Your title
"The Looting of America" is a very fine book by Les Leopold. I recommend it.
It directly relates to your subject here.
Have you heard of Ellen Brown?
She is the author of Web of Debt,
"Our money system is not what we have been led to believe. The creation of money has been "privatized," or taken over by private money lenders. Thomas Jefferson called them “bold and bankrupt adventurers just pretending to have money.” Except for coins, all of our money is now created as loans advanced by private banking institutions — including the privately-owned Federal Reserve. Banks create the principal but not the interest to service their loans. To find the interest, new loans must continually be taken out, expanding the money supply, inflating prices — and robbing you of the value of your money. "
She's a big time public banking advocate, which I agree.
http://www.webofdebt.com/
http://www.publicbankinginstitute.org/our_story
C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote