Most Serious Economic Crisis in Modern History
by Michel Chossudovsky
The October 2008 financial meltdown is not the result of a cyclical economic phenomenon. It is the deliberate result of US government policy instrumented through the Treasury and the US Federal Reserve Board.
This is the most serious economic crisis in World history.
The "bailout" proposed by the US Treasury does not constitute a "solution" to the crisis. In fact quite the opposite: it is the cause of further collapse. It triggers an unprecedented concentration of wealth, which in turn contributes to widening economic and social inequalities both within and between nations.
The levels of indebtedness have skyrocketed. Industrial corporations are driven into bankruptcy, taken over by the global financial institutions. Credit, namely the supply of loanable funds, which constitutes the lifeline of production and investment, is controlled by a handful of financial conglomerates.
With the "bailout", the public debt has spiraled. America is the most indebted country on earth. Prior to the "bailout", the US public debt was of the order of 10 trillion dollars. This US dollar denominated debt is composed of outstanding treasury bills and government bonds held by individuals, foreign governments, corporations and financial institutions.
"The Bailout": The US Administration is Financing its Own Indebtedness
Ironically, the Wall Street banks --which are the recipients of the bailout money-- are also the brokers and underwriters of the US public debt. Although the banks hold only a portion of the public debt, they transact and trade in US dollar denominated public debt instruments Worldwide.
In a bitter twist, the banks are the recipients of a 700+ billion dollar handout and at the same time they act as creditors of the US government.
We are dealing with an absurd circular relationship: To finance the bailout, Washington must borrow from the banks, which are the recipients of the bailout.
The US administration is financing its own indebtedness.
Federal, State and municipal governments are increasingly in a straightjacket, under the tight control of the global financial conglomerates. Increasingly, the creditors call the shots on government reform.
The bailout is conducive to the consolidation and centralization of banking power, which in turn backlashes on real economic activity, leading to a string of bankruptcies and mass unemployment.
Will an Obama Administration Reverse the Tide?
The financial crisis is the outcome of a deregulated financial architecture.
Obama has stated unequivocally his resolve to address the policy failures of the Bush administration and "democratize" the US financial system. President-Elect Barack Obama says that he is committed to reversing the tide:
"Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers. In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people." (President-elect Barack Obama, November 4, 2008, emphasis added)
The Democrats casually blame the Bush administration for the October financial meltdown.
Obama says that he will be introducing an entirely different policy agenda which responds to the interests of Main Street:
"Tomorrow, you can turn the page on policies that put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of men and women all across Main Street. Tomorrow you can choose policies that invest in our middle class and create new jobs and grow this economy so that everybody has a chance to succeed, from the CEO to the secretary and the janitor, from the factory owner to the men and women who work on the factory floor.( Barack Obama, election campaign, November 3, 2008, emphasis added)
Is Obama committed to "taming Wall Street" and "disarming financial markets"?
Ironically, it was under the Clinton administration that these policies of "greed and irresponsibility" were adopted.
The 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act (FSMA) was conducive to the the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. A pillar of President Roosevelt’s "New Deal", the Glass-Steagall Act was put in place in response to the climate of corruption, financial manipulation and "insider trading" which resulted in more than 5,000 bank failures in the years following the 1929 Wall Street crash.
Bill Clinton signs into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act, November 12, 1999
Under the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, effective control over the entire US financial services industry (including insurance companies, pension funds, securities companies, etc.) had been transferred to a handful of financial conglomerates and their associated hedge funds.
The Engineers of Financial Disaster
Who are the architects of this debacle?
In a bitter irony, the engineers of financial disaster are now being considered by President-Elect Barack Obama's Transition Team for the position Treasury Secretary:
Lawrence Summers played a key role in lobbying Congress for the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act. His timely appointment by President Clinton in 1999 as Treasury Secretary spearheaded the adoption of the Financial Services Modernization Act in November 1999. Upon completing his mandate at the helm of the US Treasury, he became president of Harvard University (2001- 2006).
Paul Volker was chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in the l980s during the Reagan era. He played a central role in implementing the first stage of financial deregulation, which was conducive to mass bankruptcies, mergers and acquisitions, leading up to the 1987 financial crisis.
Timothy Geithner is CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which is the most powerful private financial institution in America. He was also a former Clinton administration Treasury official. He has worked for Kissinger Associates and has also held a senior position at the IMF. The FRBNY plays a behind the scenes role in shaping financial policy. Geithner acts on behalf of powerful financiers, who are behind the FRBNY. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
Jon Corzine is currently governor of New Jersey (at the time of writing), former CEO of Goldman Sachs.
(At the time of writing), Obama's favorite is Larry Summers, front-runner for the position of Treasury Secretary.
Harvard University Economics Professor Lawrence Summers served as Chief Economist for the World Bank (1991–1993). He contributed to shaping the macro-economic reforms imposed on numerous indebted developing countries. The social and economic impact of these reforms under the IMF-World Bank sponsored structural adjustment program (SAP) were devastating, resulting in mass poverty.
Larry Summer's stint at the World Bank coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the imposition of the IMF-World Bank's deadly " economic medicine" on Eastern Europe, the former Soviet republics and the Balkans.
In 1993, Summers moved to the US Treasury. He initially held the position of Undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs and later Deputy Secretary. In liaison with his former colleagues at the IMF and the World Bank, he played a key role in crafting the economic "shock treatment" reform packages imposed at the height of the 1997 Asian crisis on South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia.
The bailout agreements negotiated with these three countries were coordinated through Summers office at the Treasury in liaison with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Washington based Bretton Woods institutions. Summers worked closely with IMF Deputy Managing Director Stanley Fischer, who was later appointed Governor of the Central Bank of Israel.
Larry Summers became Treasury Secretary in July 1999. He is a protégé of David Rockefeller. He was among the main architects of the infamous Financial Services Modernization Act, which provided legitimacy to inside trading and outright financial manipulation.
"Putting the Fox in Charge of the Chicken Coop"
Summers is currently a Consultant to Goldman Sachs and managing director of a Hedge fund, the D.E. Shaw Group, As a Hedge Fund manager, his contacts at the Treasury and on Wall Street provide him with valuable inside information on the movement of financial markets.
Putting a Hedge Fund manager (with links to the Wall Street financial establishment) in charge of the Treasury is tantamount to putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.
The Washington Consensus
Summers, Geithner, Corzine, Volker, Fischer, Phil Gramm, Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Rubin, not to mention Alan Greenspan, al al. are buddies; they play golf together; they have links to the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg; they act concurrently in accordance with the interests of Wall Street; they meet behind closed doors; they are on the same wave length; they are Democrats and Republicans.
While they may disagree on some issues, they are firmly committed to the Washington-Wall Street Consensus. They are utterly ruthless in their management of economic and financial processes. Their actions are profit driven. Outside of their narrow interest in the "efficiency" of "markets", they have little concern for "living human beings". How are people's lives affected by the deadly gamut of macro-economic and financial reforms, which is spearheading entire sectors of economic activity into bankruptcy.
The economic reasoning underlying neoliberal economic discourse is often cynical and contemptuous. In this regard, Lawrence Summers' economic discourse stands out. He is known among environmentalists for having proposed the dumping of toxic waste in Third World countries, because people in poor countries have shorter lives and the costs of labor are abysmally low, which essentially means that the market value of people in the Third World is much lower. According to Summers, this makes it far more "cost effective" to export toxic materials to impoverished countries. A controversial 1991 World Bank memo signed by of Chief Economist Larry Summers reads as follows (excerpts, emphasis added):
DATE: December 12, 1991 TO: Distribution FR: Lawrence H. Summers Subject: GEP
"'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the Less Developed Countries? I can think of three reasons:
1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality.... From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.
2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I've always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.
3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. [the demand increases when income levels increase]. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is is 200 per thousand.... "
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/summers.htm
Summers stance on the export of pollution to developing countries had a marked impact on US environmental policy:
In 1994, "virtually every country in the world broke with Mr. Summers' Harvard-trained "economic logic" ruminations about dumping rich countries' poisons on their poorer neighbors, and agreed to ban the export of hazardous wastes from OECD to non-OECD [developing] countries under the Basel Convention. Five years later, the United States is one of the few countries that has yet to ratify the Basel Convention or the Basel Convention's Ban Amendment on the export of hazardous wastes from OECD to non-OECD countries. (Jim Valette, Larry Summers' War Against the Earth, Counterpunch, undated)
The 1997 Asian Crisis: Dress Rehearsal for Things to Come
In the course of 1997, currency speculation instrumented by major financial institutions directed against Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea was conducive to the collapse of national currencies and the transfer of billions of dollars of central bank reserves into private financial hands. Several observers pointed to the deliberate manipulation of equity and currency markets by investment banks and brokerage firms.
While the Asian bailout agreements were formally negotiated with the IMF, the major Wall Street commercial banks (including Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and J. P. Morgan) as well as the "big five" merchant banks (Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Salomon Smith Barney) were "consulted" on the clauses to be included in the Asian bail-out agreements. [Note: These are 1997 denominations of major financial institutions]
The US Treasury in liaison with Wall Street and the Bretton Woods institutions played a central role in negotiating the bailout agreements. Both Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, were actively involved on behalf of the US Treasury in the 1997 bailout of South Korea:
[In 1997] "Messrs. Summers and Geithner worked to persuade Mr. Rubin to support financial aid to South Korea. Mr. Rubin was wary of such a move, worrying that providing money to a country in dire straits might be a losing proposition..." (WSJ, November 8, 2008)
What happened in Korea under advice from Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers et al, had nothing to do with "financial aid".
The country was literally ransacked. Undersecretary of the Treasury David Lipton was sent to Seoul in early December 1997. Secret negotiations were initiated. Washington had demanded the firing of the Korean Finance Minister and the unconditional acceptance of the IMF "bailout".
A new finance minister, who happened to be former IMF and World Bank official, was appointed and immediately rushed off to Washington for "consultations" with his former IMF colleague Deputy Managing Director Stanley Fischer.
"The Korean Legislature had met in emergency sessions on December 23. The final decision concerning the 57 billion dollar deal took place the following day, on Christmas Eve December 24th, after office hours in New York. Wall Street’s top financiers, from Chase Manhattan, Bank America, Citicorp and J. P. Morgan had been called in for a meeting at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Also at the Christmas Eve venue, were representatives of the big five New York merchant banks including Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Salomon Smith Barney. And at midnight on Christmas Eve, upon receiving the green light from the banks, the IMF was allowed to rush 10 billion dollars to Seoul to meet the avalanche of maturing short-term debts.
The coffers of Korea’s central Bank had been ransacked. Creditors and speculators were anxiously awaiting to collect the loot. The same institutions which had earlier speculated against the Korean won were cashing in on the IMF bailout money. It was a scam. (See Michel Chossudovsky, The Recolonization of Korea, subsequently published as a chapter in The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, Montreal, 2003.)
"Strong economic medicine" is the prescription of the Washington Consensus. "Short term pain for long term gain" was the motto at the World Bank during Lawrence Summers term of as World Bank Chief Economist. (See IMF, World Bank Reforms Leave Poor Behind, Bank Economist Finds, Bloomberg, November 7, 2000)
What we dealing with is an entire " old boys network" of officials and advisers at the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the IMF, World Bank, the Washington Think Tanks, who are in permanent liaison with leading financiers on Wall Street.
Whoever is chosen by Obama's Transition team will belong to the Washington Consensus.
The 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act
What happened in October 1999 is crucial.
In the wake of lengthy negotiations behind closed doors, in the Wall Street boardrooms, in which Larry Summers played a central role, the regulatory restraints on Wall Street’s powerful banking conglomerates were revoked "with a stroke of the pen".
Larry Summers worked closely with Senator Phil Gramm (1985-2002),chairman of the Senate Banking committee, who was the legislative architect of the the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act, signed into law on November 12, 1999. (For Complete text click US Congress: Pub.L. 106-102). As Texas Senator, Phil Gramm was closely associated with Enron.
In December 2000 at the very end of the Clinton mandate, Gramm introduced a second piece of legislation, the so-called Gramm-Lugar Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which paved the way for the speculative onslaught in primary commodities including oil and food staples.
"The act, he declared, would ensure that neither the sec nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (cftc) got into the business of regulating newfangled financial products called swaps—and would thus "protect financial institutions from overregulation" and "position our financial services industries to be world leaders into the new century." (See David Corn, Foreclosure Phil, Mother Jones, July August 2008)
Phil Gramm was McCain's first choice for Secretary of the Treasury.
Under the FSMA new rules – ratified by the US Senate in October 1999 and approved by President Clinton – commercial banks, brokerage firms, hedge funds, institutional investors, pension funds and insurance companies could freely invest in each others businesses as well as fully integrate their financial operations.
A "global financial supermarket" had been created, setting the stage for a massive concentration of financial power. One of the key figures behind this project was Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, in liaison with David Rockefeller. Summers described the FSMA as "the legislative foundation of the financial system of the 21th century". That legislative foundation is among the main causes of the 2008 financial meltdown.
Financial Disarmament
There can be no meaningful solution to the crisis, unless there is a major reform in the financial architecture, implying inter alia the freezing of speculative trade and the "disarming of financial markets". The project of disarming financial markets was first proposed by John Maynard Keynes in the 1940s as a means to the establishment of a multipolar international monetary system. (See J.M. Keynes, Activities 1940-1944, Shaping the Post-War World: The Clearing Union, The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, Royal Economic Society, Macmillan and Cambridge University Press, Vol. XXV, London 1980, p. 57).
Main Street versus Wall Street
Where are Obama's "Main Street appointees"? Namely individuals who respond to the interests of people across America. There are no labor or community leaders on Obama's list for key positions.
The President-elect is appointing the architects of financial deregulation.
Meaningful financial reform cannot be adopted by officials appointed by Wall Street and who act on behalf of Wall Street.
Those who set the financial system ablaze in 1999, have been called back to turn out the fire.
The proposed "solution" to the crisis under the "bailout" is the cause of further economic collapse.
There are no policy solutions on the horizon.
The banking conglomerates call the shots. They decide on the composition of the Obama Cabinet. They also decide on the agenda of the Washington Financial Summit (November 15, 2008) which is slated to lay the groundwork for the establishment of a new "global financial architecture".
Neoliberalism with a "Human Face"
There is no indication that Obama will break his ties to his Wall Street sponsors, who largely funded his election campaign.
Goldman Sachs, J. P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bill Gates' Microsoft are among his main campaign contributors.
Warren Buffett, among the the world's richest individuals, not only supported Barak Obama's election campaign, he is a member of his transition team, which plays a key role deciding the composition of Obama's cabinet.
Unless there is a major upheaval in the system of political appointments to key positions, an alternative Obama economic agenda geared towards poverty alleviation and employment creation is highly unlikely.
What we are witnessing is continuity.
Obama provides a " human face" to the status quo. This human face serves to mislead Americans on the nature of the economic and political process.
The neoliberal economic reforms remain intact.
The substance of these reforms including the "bailout" of America's largest financial institutions ultimately destroys the real economy, while spearheading entire areas of manufacturing and the services economy into bankruptcy.
The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order
by Michel Chossudovsky
In this new and expanded edition of Chossudovsky’s international best-seller, the author outlines the contours of a New World Order which feeds on human poverty and the destruction of the environment, generates social apartheid, encourages racism and ethnic strife and undermines the rights of women. The result as his detailed examples from all parts of the world show so convincingly, is a globalization of poverty.
This book is a skilful combination of lucid explanation and cogently argued critique of the fundamental directions in which our world is moving financially and economically.
In this new enlarged edition –which includes ten new chapters and a new introduction-- the author reviews the causes and consequences of famine in Sub-Saharan Africa, the dramatic meltdown of financial markets, the demise of State social programs and the devastation resulting from corporate downsizing and trade liberalisation.
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky
Monday, August 30, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Global currency coming soon....Hot News!!!
http://www.wnd.com/
If the International Monetary Fund gets its way, the U.S. dollar will be replaced by the "bancor" as the world's reserve currency. According to a report published April 13, the IMF would like to adopt a plan of action that would expand the use of SDRs (Special Drawing Rights) to replace the U.S. dollar as the storehouse of value and eventually create a global currency called the "bancor."
"Bancor" is the name suggested by John Maynard Keynes, the British economist who headed the World Banking Commission that created the IMF during the Breton Woods negotiations, which preceded the United Nations.
The new global currency would be issued by a new global central bank that would have the authority to levy taxes for various infractions. The bank would have to be, according to the report writers, "accountable to member nations, but remain independent." This statement sounds much like the defenders of the Federal Reserve, which was created by Congress and is supposed to be accountable to Congress, but refuses to allow Congress to audit its activities or even to answer congressional questions about to whom it lends U.S. dollars.
A global central bank has long been a goal of those who advocate global governance. America's school system has failed to teach students about the century-long conflict between those who want a global governing authority and those who do not. Schools barely teach that Woodrow Wilson and his colleagues created the League of Nations, or why this institution failed. Schools never explain that many of the same people who promoted the League of Nations continued their efforts through non-government organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations until Franklin Roosevelt was elected president.
Schools do credit Roosevelt with helping to create the United Nations, but they never explain that Roosevelt brought into his administration dozens of people from the Council on Foreign Relations to draft his "New Deal," as well as plans for the United Nations.
Schools do not teach that President Kennedy planned to turn over U.S. military power to the United Nations to give the emerging global government the power to enforce its policies. People who refuse to accept this statement are encouraged to read "Freedom from War: the United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World," Department of State Publication 7277, released September 1961.
The people who believe the world should be governed by a global authority have been working toward this goal for more than a century. They are relentless; they are driven; they are convinced that they know best how people should live. They believe that all nations and all societies should be controlled by an elite, benevolent intelligentsia that can ensure social justice by enforcing what has now become known as sustainable development. These people are closer to achieving their goal than at any previous time in history.
Woodrow Wilson assumed his political power would be sufficient to impose the League of Nations. He underestimated the determination of freedom-lovers such as Henry Cabot Lodge and other senators who refused to ratify the treaty that created the League. Roosevelt assumed that the devastation of World War II would be sufficient to usher in the era of world government under the authority of the United Nations – and he was right, until political reality crushed his utopian socialist dream of a global community.
Kennedy's 1961 plans for complete disarmament evaporated in 1962, when the USSR began building missile-launching sites in Cuba. It became abundantly clear that despite all the warm and fuzzy global-neighborhood talk, the Soviets fully intended to gain the military power to crush the United States. Fortunately, President Kennedy confronted Soviet military power with U.S. military power, and the Soviets backed down.
This historical fact is a powerful lesson that should teach current and future leaders that this nation cannot risk meeting military threats with anything less than superior military strength. Those who seek to dissolve threats with rhetoric and double-barrel teleprompters are a more dangerous threat to America than any external enemy.
Those who advocate global governance have changed their tactics, but not their goal. They have made great strides through a variety of treaties, and particularly through the implementation of Agenda 21 and the concept of sustainable development. The erosion of freedom that is inevitable under any system of global governance has been painted green, packaged in a bundle labeled "social justice" and sold to a generation of Americans eager to make the world a better place.
The global currency proposed by the IMF is just the latest step toward that ultimate utopian vision pursued for so long by so many. The freedom that powered America's rise to greatness cannot exist in a system of global governance. Individual freedom, granted by the Creator and guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution is at best diminished by global governance, and at worst completely denied.
Global governance in any form must be rejected.
If the International Monetary Fund gets its way, the U.S. dollar will be replaced by the "bancor" as the world's reserve currency. According to a report published April 13, the IMF would like to adopt a plan of action that would expand the use of SDRs (Special Drawing Rights) to replace the U.S. dollar as the storehouse of value and eventually create a global currency called the "bancor."
"Bancor" is the name suggested by John Maynard Keynes, the British economist who headed the World Banking Commission that created the IMF during the Breton Woods negotiations, which preceded the United Nations.
The new global currency would be issued by a new global central bank that would have the authority to levy taxes for various infractions. The bank would have to be, according to the report writers, "accountable to member nations, but remain independent." This statement sounds much like the defenders of the Federal Reserve, which was created by Congress and is supposed to be accountable to Congress, but refuses to allow Congress to audit its activities or even to answer congressional questions about to whom it lends U.S. dollars.
A global central bank has long been a goal of those who advocate global governance. America's school system has failed to teach students about the century-long conflict between those who want a global governing authority and those who do not. Schools barely teach that Woodrow Wilson and his colleagues created the League of Nations, or why this institution failed. Schools never explain that many of the same people who promoted the League of Nations continued their efforts through non-government organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations until Franklin Roosevelt was elected president.
Schools do credit Roosevelt with helping to create the United Nations, but they never explain that Roosevelt brought into his administration dozens of people from the Council on Foreign Relations to draft his "New Deal," as well as plans for the United Nations.
Schools do not teach that President Kennedy planned to turn over U.S. military power to the United Nations to give the emerging global government the power to enforce its policies. People who refuse to accept this statement are encouraged to read "Freedom from War: the United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World," Department of State Publication 7277, released September 1961.
The people who believe the world should be governed by a global authority have been working toward this goal for more than a century. They are relentless; they are driven; they are convinced that they know best how people should live. They believe that all nations and all societies should be controlled by an elite, benevolent intelligentsia that can ensure social justice by enforcing what has now become known as sustainable development. These people are closer to achieving their goal than at any previous time in history.
Woodrow Wilson assumed his political power would be sufficient to impose the League of Nations. He underestimated the determination of freedom-lovers such as Henry Cabot Lodge and other senators who refused to ratify the treaty that created the League. Roosevelt assumed that the devastation of World War II would be sufficient to usher in the era of world government under the authority of the United Nations – and he was right, until political reality crushed his utopian socialist dream of a global community.
Kennedy's 1961 plans for complete disarmament evaporated in 1962, when the USSR began building missile-launching sites in Cuba. It became abundantly clear that despite all the warm and fuzzy global-neighborhood talk, the Soviets fully intended to gain the military power to crush the United States. Fortunately, President Kennedy confronted Soviet military power with U.S. military power, and the Soviets backed down.
This historical fact is a powerful lesson that should teach current and future leaders that this nation cannot risk meeting military threats with anything less than superior military strength. Those who seek to dissolve threats with rhetoric and double-barrel teleprompters are a more dangerous threat to America than any external enemy.
Those who advocate global governance have changed their tactics, but not their goal. They have made great strides through a variety of treaties, and particularly through the implementation of Agenda 21 and the concept of sustainable development. The erosion of freedom that is inevitable under any system of global governance has been painted green, packaged in a bundle labeled "social justice" and sold to a generation of Americans eager to make the world a better place.
The global currency proposed by the IMF is just the latest step toward that ultimate utopian vision pursued for so long by so many. The freedom that powered America's rise to greatness cannot exist in a system of global governance. Individual freedom, granted by the Creator and guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution is at best diminished by global governance, and at worst completely denied.
Global governance in any form must be rejected.
Governments keeping TRACK of YOU!!!!!!
From Yahoo news...........
Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.
That is the bizarre - and scary - rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants - with no need for a search warrant.
It is a dangerous decision - one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.
This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.
After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA's actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)
In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno's privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the "curtilage," a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government's intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.
The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno's driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited.
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.
Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. "There's been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there's one kind of diversity that doesn't exist," he wrote. "No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter." The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of "cultural elitism."
The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state - with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi.
Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit's - including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.
In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's pro-privacy ruling was unanimous - decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last," he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell's totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: "Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."
Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.
That is the bizarre - and scary - rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants - with no need for a search warrant.
It is a dangerous decision - one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.
This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle's underside.
After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA's actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)
In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno's privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the "curtilage," a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government's intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.
The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno's driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited.
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.
Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. "There's been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there's one kind of diversity that doesn't exist," he wrote. "No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter." The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of "cultural elitism."
The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state - with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi.
Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit's - including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.
In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's pro-privacy ruling was unanimous - decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last," he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell's totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: "Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."
The Situation Room.......
Why does the Fed keep printing money when there is nothing to back it up!!!!!!
Monday, August 16, 2010
Is the world really flat?
According to Thomas Friedman in his book titled, "The World is Flat", he states 10 realities that have made the world flat connecting every nation one to the other with no barriers. In this book you will find lots of valuable information and will be given much insight into issues you probably would never have thought of, such as cable optic wires under the ocean connecting continents. Mr. Friedman argues his case for globalization and how that alone has helped other nations, particularly China, Indonesia, and India become not only economically prosperous but more politically savy.
He mentions the multi-nationals, such as Walmart, planting business in China creating jobs for chinese workers and the global supply chain creating an effective means for mass supplies as cheaply as possible. He mentions NAFTA and how more jobs have helped poorer nations out of poverty creating a much better life for their citizens. He mentions the tech bubble and it's crash and how India capitalized on it's collapse by buying up all the cable optic wires thus enabling the internet to reach their shores. He mentions the birth of the computer and the world wide web and all the apps. and software connecting pages quickly and efficiently. Truly it is a insightful book and challenges you to think about things that never would have crossed your mind.
He does state that all this globalization has had a detrimental effect on the US. And from my point of view, that is obvious! Globalization and NAFTA and many other treaties have ruined this nation's sovereignty. Our nation, once known for it's strong industry and manufacturing, has literally been outsourced in every possible way. According to most multi-nationals, they discovered rather quickly how much cheaper it is to employ third world citizens and how much cheaper it is to manufacture their goods in other countries. These multi-nations that once made America great, have sold their soul to the devil making profit more important than the American people. Sixty years ago the average American worker could work 40 years for an American company, support his whole family on that living wage and retire modestly with a generous pension and SS retirement, with an inheritance left over for his children. Today that no longer holds true!
NAFTA and no tariffs on imports have created a trade deficit so enormous and wide, that it has made America a poor third world country. People cry protectionism when critics argue for tariffs on imported goods......but that is what keeps the trade deficit in check. Tariffs are necessary for the good of a nation. Is that why China keeps their currency artificially low so that Americans, struggling to make ends meet, are tempted to buy up their very cheap goods? China is not stupid but are leaders are! Even now of Fed speak, hoping to somehow stimulate the economy with interest rates at the lowest possible, are buying up treasury debt with counterfeit money, borrowed from their printing presses! However once again, this will lead much to their chagrin! It's just another desperate attempt to save American from total financial collapse.
Globalization, aka.....a new world order, was the goal of many world leaders by the year 2000. And obviously they have achieved that goal, nothing short of destroying and sacrificing America in the process! America has been the sacrifice and that is why we are suffering and not prosperous anymore! God says in Isaiah that He will take away our wise leaders when a nation forgets Him. We have forgotten God and now we see fulfillment of this prophectic statement. The real questions are.......how much more time do we really have? Is the world really flat? What do you think?
He mentions the multi-nationals, such as Walmart, planting business in China creating jobs for chinese workers and the global supply chain creating an effective means for mass supplies as cheaply as possible. He mentions NAFTA and how more jobs have helped poorer nations out of poverty creating a much better life for their citizens. He mentions the tech bubble and it's crash and how India capitalized on it's collapse by buying up all the cable optic wires thus enabling the internet to reach their shores. He mentions the birth of the computer and the world wide web and all the apps. and software connecting pages quickly and efficiently. Truly it is a insightful book and challenges you to think about things that never would have crossed your mind.
He does state that all this globalization has had a detrimental effect on the US. And from my point of view, that is obvious! Globalization and NAFTA and many other treaties have ruined this nation's sovereignty. Our nation, once known for it's strong industry and manufacturing, has literally been outsourced in every possible way. According to most multi-nationals, they discovered rather quickly how much cheaper it is to employ third world citizens and how much cheaper it is to manufacture their goods in other countries. These multi-nations that once made America great, have sold their soul to the devil making profit more important than the American people. Sixty years ago the average American worker could work 40 years for an American company, support his whole family on that living wage and retire modestly with a generous pension and SS retirement, with an inheritance left over for his children. Today that no longer holds true!
NAFTA and no tariffs on imports have created a trade deficit so enormous and wide, that it has made America a poor third world country. People cry protectionism when critics argue for tariffs on imported goods......but that is what keeps the trade deficit in check. Tariffs are necessary for the good of a nation. Is that why China keeps their currency artificially low so that Americans, struggling to make ends meet, are tempted to buy up their very cheap goods? China is not stupid but are leaders are! Even now of Fed speak, hoping to somehow stimulate the economy with interest rates at the lowest possible, are buying up treasury debt with counterfeit money, borrowed from their printing presses! However once again, this will lead much to their chagrin! It's just another desperate attempt to save American from total financial collapse.
Globalization, aka.....a new world order, was the goal of many world leaders by the year 2000. And obviously they have achieved that goal, nothing short of destroying and sacrificing America in the process! America has been the sacrifice and that is why we are suffering and not prosperous anymore! God says in Isaiah that He will take away our wise leaders when a nation forgets Him. We have forgotten God and now we see fulfillment of this prophectic statement. The real questions are.......how much more time do we really have? Is the world really flat? What do you think?
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
The guidance of God......
The need to be directed by God is real and pressing. Left to ourselves we are no better off than a rudderless ship or an auto without a steering wheel. It is not without reason that the Lord's people are so often termed sheep, for no other creature is so apt to stray or has such a propensity to wander. The Hebrew word for "direct" means "to make straight." How much each of us needs to beg the Lord to daily lay His quieting hand upon our feverish flesh!
We live in a world where everything is crooked. Sin has thrown everything out of joint, and in consequence confusion abounds all around us. A deceitful heart, a wicked world, a subtle devil ever seek to lead us astray and compass our destruction. How necessary it is, then, for God to "direct my paths". By giving to God our undivided confidence, not looking to any other for help and relief, we are trusting in the Lord. Turning to Him with childlike simplicity, there is no reasoning, but a simple taking of the parent's words at face value, fully assured that He will make good what He said; the child does not dwell on difficulties in the way, but expects a fulfillment of what is promised.
We are not to trust in our own wisdom or rely upon the dictates of human reason. The highest act of human reason is to disown its sufficiency and bow before the wisdom of God. To lean unto our own understanding is to rest upon a broken reed, for it has been deranged by sin. Yet many find it harder to repudiate their own wisdom than they do to abandon their own righteousness.
A fool is not mentally deficient, but the one who leaves God out of his thoughts and plans; a fool is a godless person. Contrariwise, the wise in scripture are not the hightly intellectual or the brilliantly educated, but those who honestly seek to put God first in their lives. God honors those who honor Him and He gives them good judgment. By teasuring up in his mind the doctrines, precepts, promises, exhortations, and warnings of Scripture and by diligently comparing himself with the rule by which he is to walk, the Christian grows into a habitual frame of spiritual wisdom. He aquires a gracious taste which enables him to judge of right and wrong with a degree of readiness and certainty.
Adapted from the book "The Nature of God" by Arthur Pink
Oh how important it is for me to remember this on a daily basis. And not just me but all Christians. With so many distractions and the busyness of our days we often rush through and fail to remember our pilgrimage here on this earth.
If only our national leaders understood this, but they keep throwing God out and in return have become a rudderless ship and an automobile without a steering wheel; a fool. The recent development in California over proposition 8....the marriage initiative and how just ONE activist judge ruled in favor of gay marriage, never minding that the people of California already voted against gay marriage. Obviously we are NOT living in a democracy but rather a world of darkness in which evil forces ever seek to laugh at God and mock Him. God will judge to preserve His glory; in His time.
We live in a world where everything is crooked. Sin has thrown everything out of joint, and in consequence confusion abounds all around us. A deceitful heart, a wicked world, a subtle devil ever seek to lead us astray and compass our destruction. How necessary it is, then, for God to "direct my paths". By giving to God our undivided confidence, not looking to any other for help and relief, we are trusting in the Lord. Turning to Him with childlike simplicity, there is no reasoning, but a simple taking of the parent's words at face value, fully assured that He will make good what He said; the child does not dwell on difficulties in the way, but expects a fulfillment of what is promised.
We are not to trust in our own wisdom or rely upon the dictates of human reason. The highest act of human reason is to disown its sufficiency and bow before the wisdom of God. To lean unto our own understanding is to rest upon a broken reed, for it has been deranged by sin. Yet many find it harder to repudiate their own wisdom than they do to abandon their own righteousness.
A fool is not mentally deficient, but the one who leaves God out of his thoughts and plans; a fool is a godless person. Contrariwise, the wise in scripture are not the hightly intellectual or the brilliantly educated, but those who honestly seek to put God first in their lives. God honors those who honor Him and He gives them good judgment. By teasuring up in his mind the doctrines, precepts, promises, exhortations, and warnings of Scripture and by diligently comparing himself with the rule by which he is to walk, the Christian grows into a habitual frame of spiritual wisdom. He aquires a gracious taste which enables him to judge of right and wrong with a degree of readiness and certainty.
Adapted from the book "The Nature of God" by Arthur Pink
Oh how important it is for me to remember this on a daily basis. And not just me but all Christians. With so many distractions and the busyness of our days we often rush through and fail to remember our pilgrimage here on this earth.
If only our national leaders understood this, but they keep throwing God out and in return have become a rudderless ship and an automobile without a steering wheel; a fool. The recent development in California over proposition 8....the marriage initiative and how just ONE activist judge ruled in favor of gay marriage, never minding that the people of California already voted against gay marriage. Obviously we are NOT living in a democracy but rather a world of darkness in which evil forces ever seek to laugh at God and mock Him. God will judge to preserve His glory; in His time.
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