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Today's Top News
|
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
CONTACT: Congressman Dennis Kucinich Nathan White (202)225-5871 |
A Revelation; The Fed Grants $7.77 Trillion in Secret Bank Loans – The Fed Works for Banks, Not The Rest of America
Kucinich’s NEED Act Would Reclaim Monetary Authority for the People, Save Homes and Put Americans Back to Work
WASHINGTON - November 29 - Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a longtime advocate for reform of the Federal Reserve, is sharply criticizing the Federal Reserve today after Bloomberg news reported that the Federal Reserve secretly committed nearly $8 trillion in support to American and international financial institutions during the 2008 bailout. Kucinich recorded a video for his website before going to the floor of the House of Representatives to call upon Congress to reclaim its Constitution primacy over monetary policy.
Kucinich also called threats by ratings agency to downgrade U.S. debt a threat to our national sovereignty.
See Kucinich on the floor of the U.S. House HERE.
See Kucinich’s web address HERE.
“The Federal Reserve extended extraordinary support to financial institutions that crashed the economy with reckless speculation, and on that support many of the firms made billions in profit and paid obscene bonuses. The Fed asked for nothing from these firms in return and that is because the Federal Reserve works first and foremost for the welfare of private financial institutions, not the American economy.
“The message that emerges from these revelations for Americans who have lost their jobs, lost their homes, or watched their retirement nest eggs disappear is that we have unlimited resources available for the banks, but nothing for the American people,” Kucinich stated.
The Bloomberg report is the result of a court-ordered release of over 29,000 pages of Federal Reserve documents and records of more than 21,000 transactions. Through direct lending, loan guarantees and enhanced lending limits, the Federal Reserve supported national and international financial firms with as much as $7.77 trillion as of March 2009. The $7.77 trillion provided dwarfs the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) cap mandated by Congress.
Congressman Kucinich introduced legislation that would impose transparency on the Federal Reserve. The National Emergency Employment Defense (NEED) Act, HR 2990, would incorporate the Federal Reserve within the United States Treasury. The bill would establish fiscal integrity, reassert Congressional sovereignty and allow the federal government to correct crippling national deficiencies in infrastructure repairs and education nationwide by spending money into circulation without increasing the national debt or causing inflation.
Learn more about the NEED Act here.
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60 Comments so far
Show AllWho will clip the tiger's claws?
"the Oval Office"
toilet bowls are oval too.
I wrote this over a year ago, but CD wouldn't publish my comment at that time. Let's see if this gets through now.
The Ratings Agencies (S&P, Moodys, Fitch,) need to be shut down, or taken over by the gov'ts NOW. The ratings, whether sovereign debt bonds, corp bonds, stock prices, are simply and totally TOOLS & IN THE POCKET of GS. Yes, the stock market is rigged, completely and totally without question, with the assistance of ratings agencies and big auditing firms that produce phony financials to prevent any indication of what exactly corps financial health looks like.
Go Kucinich!
A simpler solution is to rescind the requirement that things like pension funds must invest only in securities given a high rating by the rating agencies. Let them hire their own people to do due diligence, the way they used to.
That will only help pension funds, and won't solve the problem of systemic fraud rampant in the entire financial reporting apparatus. I get the "simpler" issue, but it is so simple that it won't make enough of a wave to create the tidal wave that is necessary to change the look of the coast, as it were.
Don't take it over like a goddamn authoritarian. Just ignore them. Haven't they discredited themselves enough with this aaa subprime mortgage securities scam. If we reform the way money is made, like Mr. Kucinich has finally realized, then it changes everything. These people will be irrelevant if you ignore them.
When the people's congress regains sovereign control over the "money power", then these financiers will become, OVERTLY, what they already are, covertly: counterfeiters.They should be treated as such.
For this to be a good thing depends entirely upon the people regaining control over their own congress (ie. OWS's general assemblies eventually occupy congress)
If we can bank online we can vote online. I keep the house reps to write the legislation but we should have a final vote on it. Theres your general assembly right there. Direct democracy. People who want a say will have it. Direct democracy man, use the technology we have. Founders couldn't have thought that at some point soon we'd have the technology to access everyone instantly.
A new story out today discloses a secret meeting between Paulson and the heads of several investment funds where he warned them that fannie and freddie were about to be taken over.
The FED needs to belong to the people, the "Creature From Jekyll Island" should have been killed by the populist movement against it in the early part of the last century but the movement was absorbed into the mainstream and the monster survived.
Keep up the good work Congressman Kucinich. You and Bernie Sanders are about the only members of Congress trying to educate the people about the Federal Reserve System and the damage it can do if not tightly regulated.
And Ron Paul. The Federal Reserve System doesn't need to be regulated. It needs to be abolished and never considered again. Congress should have the authority to "coin" money like it says in the constitution. Fiat currency is a scam and in this monetary system the only way money comes into existence is through credit, or YOU taking out a debt and you owing more than you borrowed. All money roots back to taking on interest bearing debt. We all collectively owe more money than is in existence. You can't escape it. It's slavery. We're being ripped off on a grand scale. It doesn't need to be regulated. It needs to be abolished with utmost haste before we see a full scale currency collapse.
If you give a central government the ability to print and spend into circulation a fiat currency that serves as legal tender, so be it. But you must never outlaw competing currencies from operating in commerce. I keeps the money printers in line. And keeping competing currencies out through the barrel of the gun of the state is tyrannical.
All money is fiat, whether we are talking about gold, seashells, or purple feathers. The only way any wealth comes into existence is crediting the laborer who is producing that wealth (ie. "stake me some groceries today, and when my crop comes in tomorrow, I'll pay you back those groceries, with some interest/extra potatoes"). Whether or not the the monetized credit is deemed valuable depends upon the usefulness of the things produced by the receiver of that credit, always and everywhere, in every case, REGARDLESS of what tokens we use to represent that credit issued (gold tokens, seashells, purple feathers, or paper currency). The REAL issue is WHO gets to issue credit? WE the people (through our representatives in Congress) or some imperious financier (who cares NOT about the difference between producing things useful & necessary, and gambling for personal profit). As always, this policy depends upon the people retaining control of their Congress reps. THIS is the difference between tyranny and democracy, NOT the mere existence of regulations-as-such.
Agreed about the gold. I always tell my gold bug friends, you can't eat or make life easier with it. But the "credit" doesn't really need to be the source of all money. The central government could essentially spend it into existence. Or do a total debt forgiveness, make good on promised entitlements and stopping the new ones (too much of this would lead to inflation), and regulate the money supply through money spent on the expenses of government. Production should be the source of credit. People who produce value should be receiving the benefits of being the foundation of credit.
Here we have a congressman talking about himself in the third person. Not only is this NOT convincing, it seems like a desperate grab for the appearance of objectivity.
I wonder if he talks about himself behind his back.
Also, he is still a member of a corrupt party.
"I wonder if he talks about himself behind his back."
LOL
yeah, I laughed too. :)
It's a fucking press release and that is normally how they are written. Saves the lazy "journalist" any more effort than to copy and paste.
I just can't believe how everyone lines up to slam one of the few in Congress who at least try and work in the interests of the 99%. So maybe they aren't all saints and so principled and squeaky clean as the lot that reads CD, but they are leagues ahead of most of the Rwings in that place. Give him a break and read the message and not kill the messenger.
You want him to run for a third party? Well, get off your asses and form a third party that he can run for. You want him to do that too?
Fucking lazy "progressives" around CD these days, so pompous while sitting at their keyboards.
"Struggle"
The main reason I ridiculed this press release (Yes, I knew it was a press release) was that the wording is so pretentious and simultaneously late that it is a very clear example of how far from effective Kucinich really is. While he dawdles within the corporate clubhouse of the democrat corruption, he wants to pretend that he will make a difference.
Anyone who attends the Bank of America-owned convention in Charlotte, North Carolina next year and kneels to kiss the asses of Obama/Biden Inc. while they use the constitution as toilet paper does not deserve the time of day.
Kucinich will be there because he is part of their entourage of ass kissers.
I read this as a notice released and written by Mr. Kucinich's Communications Director Nathan White.
Re: " the Federal Reserve secretly committed nearly $8 trillion in support to American and international financial institutions"
International institutions? My read: "foreign" institutions. Isn't there something essentially treasonous about this? Our gov't giving our tax dollars extrajudiciously to our nation's potential competitors?
I understand the point you're trying to make here, but I think it's important to not think about corporations as belonging to nation states. There is no such thing as an "Ameri can" corporation. Our rulers belong to a global club, not a national one. It's probably best to think of them that way.
Funny how there is no "American corporation" but there is personhood for corporations. Maybe we could declare the corporations all illegal aliens and send them to Mexico and Guatemala.
For no more taxes than they pay, who gives a shit if they move headquarters, down south.
I agree. Funnier still is that it's a two way street. While global corporations that are based here have personhood, the reverse is also true. A Siemens subsidiary operating on US territory has more constitutional protection than you do, as long as that sub is registered here.
This is probably the most formidable foe of the forces of Good and Light in the history of our species, simply because they're everywhere and nowhere. This is going to be a terrible fight in the medium run.
Just ask who owns The Fed? Remember it is privately owned. It should not be too surprising that several owners are foreign banks- British, French, Swiss, Italian, German.
Yup, it's just one little happy world for the Banking Elites! I wonder who they answer to?
"Yup, it's just one little happy world for the Banking Elites! I wonder who they answer to?"
Mammon.
Kucinich writes, “The Federal Reserve extended extraordinary support to financial institutions that crashed the economy with reckless speculation..."
No, sorry. This was not merely speculation. It involved criminal activity. Has anyone else watched the movie, "Inside Job"? Didn't the movie win some sort of award? And didn't the director get up and say something to the world? Are those of us who are reasonably informed doomed to live a life in Zelicow's "Parallel Universe" where the corporate media creates our smooth, seemless infomational cabled reality? Are we doomed to live in world where even the best of political 'leaders' appear to be liars, crooks, or fools?
Parsing the good and right and cute from the reckless and venal, and then once more again, from the diabolically criminal appears to be a cerebral task, one that is well beyond those compromised enough to have been duped into supporting Obama.
We need a clean break from this parallel universe, one day, not soon enough.
This whole move on Kucinich's part seems laudable at first blush, but, on second thought, it's way too late. We also know that there is no way that his corrupt colleagues in Congress are ever going to pass this piece of legislation.
And then there is this: Kucinich is still a member of our one-party system, aka The Party of Money, isn't he? How come? What's he doing, hanging out with that exponentially corrupt crowd?
excellent point. If he's serious, he would quit the party and be an independent, otherwise it's just all talk.
Throw out all incumbents. They are all bought and paid for whores of the corporate overlords.
Kucinich’s aims are laudable but, since his understanding of how the Fed works and what its structure is is flawed, it is unlikely that his proposed legislation would be very helpful.
Some of the provisions, the bill
“Puts the Federal Reserve (Fed) into the Department of Treasury (Treasury) to make our monetary policy truly accountable to Congress and the American people.”
But the Fed is already accountable to Congress and the president (see below from Wikipedia). And the Fed and Treasury already work in tandem.
The bill “Ends the banks’ special privilege by no longer allowing them to create our money supply when they make loans, through a simple and non-disruptive accounting change.”
Private banks do not create our money supply. Only the US government does through spending and/or lending, thereby supplying dollars (spending power) to the private sector economy. The special privileges banks enjoy are not the result of structural flaws of the Fed but the result of corruption, the revolving door policy by which private banksters become public officials making policy favoring their former friends and cronies in the bank and finance industry. No amount of structural tweaking of the Fed can combat human cupidity.
“The conflict of interest between private ownership of the 12 Fed banks and management of our nation’s monetary policy is ended by incorporating the Fed into the Treasury. The Fed is put on a budget and made accountable to the American people.”
Wikipedia: “The Federal Reserve Banks have an intermediate legal status, with some features of private corporations and some features of public federal agencies. The United States has an interest in the Federal Reserve Banks as tax-exempt federally-created instrumentalities whose profits belong to the federal government, but this interest is not proprietary.[2] In Lewis v. United States,[3] the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stated that: "The Reserve Banks are not federal instrumentalities for purposes of the FTCA [the Federal Tort Claims Act], but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations." The opinion went on to say, however, that: "The Reserve Banks have properly been held to be federal instrumentalities for some purposes." Another relevant decision is Scott v. Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City,[2] in which the distinction is made between Federal Reserve Banks, which are federally-created instrumentalities, and the Board of Governors, which is a federal agency.”
Kucinich bill: “A separate Monetary Authority (part of Treasury) made up of experts is made responsible for managing monetary policy. Its governing principle is to ensure that the money supply is sufficient to meet the demand in the economy, and is not inflationary or deflationary (i.e., the purchasing power of our money remains stable).”
Ensuring against inflation or deflation has been an important function of the Fed since it was created almost a century ago.
Wikipedia: “According to the Board of Governors, the Federal Reserve is independent within government in that "its monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government." Its authority is derived from statutes enacted by the U.S. Congress and the System is [NOTE] subject to congressional oversight. The members of the Board of Governors, including its chairman and vice-chairman, are [NOTE] chosen by the President and confirmed by Congress. The government also exercises some control over the Federal Reserve by appointing and setting the salaries of the system's highest-level employees. Thus the Federal Reserve has both private and public aspects.[12][13][14][15] The U.S. Government receives all of the system's annual profits, after a statutory dividend of 6% on member banks' capital investment is paid, and an account surplus is maintained. In 2010, the Federal Reserve made a profit of $82 billion and transferred $79 billion to the U.S. Treasury.”
You are so incredibly wrong its astonishing. You say "Private banks do not create our money supply. Only the US government does through spending and/or lending, thereby supplying dollars (spending power) to the private sector economy." Wrong. The government only creates the money supply through debt. We print bonds, not dollars. We owe more than we receive no matter how you look at it. And its a ponzi scheme. From the Fed the Bankers create money with fractional reserve lending and financial instruments, but its all enabled by the Fed. That's why the banks don't care if the Fed profits, they pull all their money out of the scheme with banks and financial markets.
And you are incredibly wrong again when you say the Fed is to Congress and the President. No it isn't. The President gets to appoint one preapproved idiot, that's about it. Congress or the President can't see their books. We can't sit in on their meetings. Its not public record. Haven't ever seen one on CSPAN. The Fed regulates the money supply but we can't look at their books. The stock is owned by the Banks, gee who do they work for. Why does it take lawsuites to see who our central bank handed money out to keep this ponzi scheme afloat.
Maybe you are right about one thing. Congress does have ultimate authority over it. They could abolish it and take control of the money supply like was laid out in the constitution. At least we can vote out the house every two years.
Do you believe everything you read? Who really owns the Fed? Do NOT tell me it's an institution run by 12 different regional US Banks. When you answer that one other things become clearer.
The big banks in each region own the stock.
But the only region that matters is New York. The other ones just give the illusion that power is decentralized. That's the scam you see.
The representatives of the oligarchs who met in furtive secrecy on Jekyll Island in 1913 did not do so out of concern for the well being of the nation.
Willful ignorance of the true nature of the Fed is a pitiful thing to behold 100 years after the fact.
According to testimony at the congressional hearing last week the Fed "has not owned any gold since 1934." That means that the monetary systems of the world are backed by all the gold at the end of the rainbow. That ,in turn, means that we are all on a fiat money system, with printed money [visible] and a credit money [invisible] which is by far the largest part of our money supply, but which is backed and supported by government laws and regulations. That , in its turn, means that each sovereign government can regulate its own money supply and that will enable them to 'regulate the value thereof.The next logical step is for the government to take back the power of money creation which had been usurped by the banks so many years ago. There is the solution to the present crisis,
The U.S. Money supply appears to be created by the Federal Reserve System, an interlocked system of private corporations. Is this not correct? Why does Congress not 'coin money and regulate the value thereof?
I suspect that anyone who writes in this chat room and claims that the money supply is not created by banks is probable working for a bank. They really believe that the banks do not create money. They do not believe that John Kenneth Galbraith was correct when he said " The method by which the banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled". Everyone else should pay attention
Until Dennis comes up with a real solution to how to get these pigs out of power permanently, he's blowing smoke. This system needs to end,and these people need to be shot out into space.
If interested, here's a petition in support of the NEED Act: http://chn.ge/sgXLuO
I think it was in my senior year of high school ('65) that a woman came into our civics class to explain the benefits of the Federal Reserve System: if the economy stagnated due to a lack of cash-flow, the Fed could pump needed readies into the system. When I queried what would back these moneys, what the collateral would be, the answer was "Our reputation."
I shall not comment to avoid offending.
Pumping, ha! Pumping = get more people to take on interest bearing debt which = more money owed than in circulation. Pumping only keeps the ponzi scheme afloat.... for a while.
Backed by the Full Faith and Credit of the World's Largest Nuclear Stockpile...
Kucinich lost my support when he caved in to Opharmacare and led Obama lead him around Ohio like an Egyptian pharaoh dragging a war prisoner home.
America needs a leader who will come in and continue the renditioning programs started by Bush and continued by Obama, but instead of renditioning so-called "terrorists," let's rendition the real terrorists -- the entire top 1% and their kids to the deepest of black holes. No trial, no judge, no jury, no defense lawyers -- just like in Obama's Amerika today, but with defenseless rich people in chains instead of defenseless poor people. Just like Bradley Manning, but instead of heroes like Manning, let's rendition vicious haters like Michael Bloomberg, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, etc.
He proposes a bill and says the amount is $8 Trillion when in fact the General Accounting Office audit showed it was $16 Trillion - and none of it was approved by anyone!
A recent General Accounting Office audit, the first since about 1976, revealed our Federal Reserve secretly dished out over $16 Trillion (1) to both foreign and domestic banks and that’s in addition to the publicized TARP bail out funds! (2)
Comparing those amounts with the actual number of US Taxpayers per the Internal Revenue Service, against the recently released summary of what we paid out in both TARP and Federal Reserve cash total - and it shows American taxpayer dollars were handed out to the equivalent of $178,774.84 - per each and every American taxpayer.
(1) – Senator Bernie Sanders, Vermont- Government Accounting Office Audit
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3
(2) – Troubled Asset Relief Plan Recipients / TARP bail out banks.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/200904_CREDITCRISIS/recipients.htm
my following words will only show how ignorant I am of all going on.
A) i always read that the Federal Reserve is not affiliated in any way with The US government. It is a private entity,
B) It is hard to believe that Bloomberg would have anything to do with an expose as he is part of the problem not the solution. He treated 99% at Liberty Park terribly.
I am starting to feel like Alice at the Mad Hatter"s tea party.
Bloomberg means Bloomberg news corporation, not the mayor, altho I'm not sure if he's an owner, but it's more like Reuters..
When this came out in the 1976 film "Network" I was stunned to see honesty! I guess most people just took it for another scene, but watch this short clip. It explains the whole process which now seems to have come to pass.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3vbCxj2ifs&feature=related
Wow, trillions giving to banks around the world, as countries start austerity measures against thier people. Now that the 1% have all the money and all the laws working for them. We had better OWS around the world and stop these greedy bastard before they destroy us all.
tomcarberry, Nov 29 2011 - 5:50pm: yeah, my feeling, too.
Historically, the left has turned on its own and fractured into factions. Dennis Kucinich is one of our true friends in the seat of power. He needs our help, not our scorn. Even if his proposed legislation is obstructed we can shed light on financial corruption.
"shach"
The "financial corruption" will be in full bloom at the Bank of America-owned democrat's convention in Charlotte, North Carolina next year and you can bet good ol' Dennis will be there to kiss ass.
As long as he is a democrat, he is a fraud.
The democrats and the republicans (and their in-bred libertarians) work for the same owners.
I agree with BB as well. If the problem is the rank corruption of two parties that have them essentially functioning as one party, then any player in either party--in spite of the best of intentions--is not our friend. I do thnk people need to find the will to pull away from the formal politics of this system and spend more time on identifying and eliminating the real problem here: private power and wealth.
I would now support Kucinich over Paul for president. Unfortunately we don't have that choice.