Where were you born?

[Azazello1313]

occam's razor.

[bushwacked]

I wouldn't expect a left wing radical such as yourself to think any differently.

 

You sincerely believe energy corporations are conspiring with the govt. to supress the truth about global warming being a scam in an effort to achieve a new world order, and I'm the radical?

 

Edited June 14, 2010 by bushwacked

[Avernus]

You sincerely believe energy corporations are conspiring with the govt. to supress the truth about global warming being a scam in an effort to achieve a new world order, and I'm the radical?

 

 

 

if you think that they are conspiring "with" the government...that's where you're wrong...

 

energy corporations are just like all the other corporations and they speak only in money language as well as insider trading on top of that....

 

and I'm pretty sure they probably think that this "New World Order" stuff is crap also as they are pushing their left wing...or right wing slant - both sides are one in the same...

[wiegie]

not to mention the powers that be are handling this recession the same way they did back in 1930

this is pretty much 100% incorrect

 

In fact, they are handling this recession almost exactly opposite of how they handled things in 1930 and that is a large reason why our current recession did not become the Second Great Depression.

[CaP'N GRuNGe]

Humanistic psychologists argue that even if the cabal behind the conspiracy is almost always perceived as hostile there is, often, still an element of reassurance in it, for conspiracy theorists, in part because it is more consoling to think that complications and upheavals in human affairs, at least, are created by human beings rather than factors beyond human control. Belief in such a cabal is a device for reassuring oneself that certain occurrences are not random, but ordered by a human intelligence. This renders such occurrences comprehensible and potentially controllable. If a cabal can be implicated in a sequence of events, there is always the hope, however tenuous, of being able to break the cabal's power - or joining it and exercising some of that power oneself. Finally, belief in the power of such a cabal is an implicit assertion of human dignity - an often unconscious but necessary affirmation that man is not totally helpless, but is responsible, at least in some measure, for his own destiny.

 

The above quote from Az pretty much sums it up for me.

[Avernus]

this is pretty much 100% incorrect

 

In fact, they are handling this recession almost exactly opposite of how they handled things in 1930 and that is a large reason why our current recession did not become the Second Great Depression.

 

you act like the recession is over....

[CaP'N GRuNGe]

you act like the recession is over....

 

What makes a recession officially a recession again? Two or more quarters of negative GDP or something? What makes it over? Positive GDP?

[Avernus]

What makes a recession officially a recession again? Two or more quarters of negative GDP or something? What makes it over? Positive GDP?

 

we can have positive GDP and still be in a recession....

[Azazello1313]

we can have positive GDP and still be in a recession....

 

well no, not really, since the DEFINITION of a recession is negative GDP. postive GDP = no recession.

 

doesn't mean the economy is somehow "fixed" the moment GDP begins to grow again. an economy coming out of a recession and growing slowly can be pretty bad news. pretty much where we're at right now.

[wiegie]

well no, not really, since the DEFINITION of a recession is negative GDP. postive GDP = no recession.

Technically, that's not quite true (since the NBER business cycle dating committee doesn't rely exclusively on GDP when it determines when a recession has begun or ended), but you are a lot more right than wrong.

 

but the rest of this is true

doesn't mean the economy is somehow "fixed" the moment GDP begins to grow again. an economy coming out of a recession and growing slowly can be pretty bad news. pretty much where we're at right now.

[Avernus]

well no, not really, since the DEFINITION of a recession is negative GDP. postive GDP = no recession.

 

doesn't mean the economy is somehow "fixed" the moment GDP begins to grow again. an economy coming out of a recession and growing slowly can be pretty bad news. pretty much where we're at right now.

 

my point being that just because GDP is on the positive side does not mean that it's all clear blue skies from here on in as Cap'n was suggesting....

 

and yeah, I'm not celebrating just yet, but hopefully we can get out of this mess by 2014 - it's going to be a long road to hoe...

[Ursa Majoris]

You have to be kidding me. Corporate America owns the media. It is corporate America with the cooperation of our spineless corrupt governernment that is raping us.

This is the classic "we can never be wrong" argument. Somebody suspects 9/11 was an inside job, for instance, and all the evidence in the world won't shift them from that view because everyone and everything believing differently is a tool of the government and therefore either a liar or an accessory.

 

Voila, instant self-sustaining truth.

[montster]

OK, here's what we've got: The Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people, under the supervision of the reverse vampires, are forcing our parents to go to bed early in a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner. [lowers voice] We're through the looking glass, here, people ...

[Azazello1313]

This is the classic "we can never be wrong" argument. Somebody suspects 9/11 was an inside job, for instance, and all the evidence in the world won't shift them from that view because everyone and everything believing differently is a tool of the government and therefore either a liar or an accessory.

 

Voila, instant self-sustaining truth.

 

yeah, the conspiracy kooks are a little like that movie preview we saw a while back about the human centipede.

[rattsass]

This is the classic "we can never be wrong" argument. Somebody suspects 9/11 was an inside job, for instance, and all the evidence in the world won't shift them from that view because everyone and everything believing differently is a tool of the government and therefore either a liar or an accessory.

 

Voila, instant self-sustaining truth.

The very fact that so many people distrust our political system, that they are convinced (rightly or wrongly) that it was an inside job speaks volumes about how our government is percieved.

 

Whether it was an inside job or not, the very fact that over a third of Americans believe it was an inside job speaks volumes about how our government is viewed by the people they allegedly represent.

 

If you beat a dog enough times, the dog grows to expect to be beaten.

[rattsass]

Humanistic psychologists argue that even if the cabal behind the conspiracy is almost always perceived as hostile there is, often, still an element of reassurance in it, for conspiracy theorists, in part because it is more consoling to think that complications and upheavals in human affairs, at least, are created by human beings rather than factors beyond human control. Belief in such a cabal is a device for reassuring oneself that certain occurrences are not random, but ordered by a human intelligence. This renders such occurrences comprehensible and potentially controllable. If a cabal can be implicated in a sequence of events, there is always the hope, however tenuous, of being able to break the cabal's power - or joining it and exercising some of that power oneself. Finally, belief in the power of such a cabal is an implicit assertion of human dignity - an often unconscious but necessary affirmation that man is not totally helpless, but is responsible, at least in some measure, for his own destiny.

 

This is a nice tidy way to sweep conspiracy theorists under the rug. And now you can wash your hands of them. Until facts get in your way.

------

The first thing people need to understand is that the economic crash wasn’t a crash for the people who caused it. In fact, these financial terrorists are now doing better than ever. In a recent report, titled “Social Inequality in America: Widening Income Disparities,” more evidence of the unprecedented transfer of wealth was revealed:

 

“As of late 2009, the number of billionaires soared from 793 to 1,011, and their total fortunes from $2.4 trillion to $3.6 trillion…. Despite the crisis, the list of billionaires has grown by 218 people and their aggregate capital has expanded by 50%. This may seem paradoxical, but only at first glance. This result was predictable, if we recall how governments all over the world have dealt with the economic crisis.”

 

The inequality of wealth in the United States between the economic top 0.5% and the remaining 99.5% of the population is now at an all-time high. The economic top 1% of the population now controls a record 70% of all financial assets. The point here is that while the economic crisis has been devastating for 99% of America, the Wall Street elite are awash in record breaking profits. The most profitable firm in Wall Street history, Goldman Sachs, just had their most profitable quarter in their 140-year history and Wall Street firms issued an all-time record breaking amount in bonuses.

 

All of this is occurring after giving these firms $14 TRILLION in taxpayer support - that works out to be $46,662 of your hard-earned money. That’s $46,662 for every man, woman and child in this country. If you have a family of four, sorry, your future just got robbed and you and your children just lost $186,648!

 

So what are all these firms doing with these record-breaking profits? Are they returning them into the tax system in which they came from, the tax system that was looted just to keep their scam running?

 

No!

 

Let’s start with Wells Fargo. After being bailed out with our money in 2008, their top five executives DOUBLED their compensation and each one of them made over $11 million in 2009. Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf made off with a cool $21.3 million last year.

 

And now comes news that Bank of America and Wells Fargo will pay zero, yes ZERO in federal taxes for 2009. Bank of America will net a $3.6 BILLION benefit from the federal government in 2009. Wells Fargo, after $8 BILLION in earnings for 2009, will net $4 BILLION from the federal government.

 

So you and I are working our asses off just to make ends meet, paying 30% of our limited income in taxes, and gizillionaire John Stumpf’s company is paying ZERO in taxes so that he can personally swipe another $21.3 million of tax payer funds.

 

Al Capone is a dime store thief compared to this guy!

 

Well, to be fair, Mr. Stumpf is just a small-timer himself in this all-time greatest heist.

 

JP Morgan Chase made $12 BILLION in profit in 2009, as a direct result of our tax money - yes, I need to keep repeating this fact. These are profits that would not exist if it weren’t for our tax dollars.

 

It’s also important to point out that this is just the level of theft that has already occurred. However, as I also can’t stress enough, the theft still continues without any let-up.

 

Now comes news that JP Morgan is on the verge of getting a $1.4 BILLION tax refund! Yes, you heard me right, a $1.4 BILLION TAX REFUND. But JP is not alone in this latest theft. In total, the financial terrorists are due to receive $33 BILLION IN TAX REFUNDS!

 

Do you comprehend how depraved it is to give these people another $33 billion in tax refunds? I assume that they’re thinking that after stealing $14 TRILLION, another $33 billion really isn’t all that much. After all, last year, Goldman Sachs, the most profitable firm Wall Street history, only paid 1% in taxes, so what’s another $33 billion kickback among friends?

 

Let’s be clear about this latest $33 billion of which the US tax system is being robbed. What could we do with $33 billion?

 

For one, we could put over one million unemployed people back to work and pay them the average national median wage for the next year. Add the record-breaking $150 billion in bonuses (our tax money) that Wall Street handed out this past year to the $33 billion and guess what? We can now put over six million people back to work making the average annual wage! Do you think that would stimulate the economy? Green shots galore.

 

But why do that? Jamie Dimon needs another new 40,000 square foot mansion and Goldman Sachs needs to upgrade their fleet of luxury jets filled with the finest wine, champagne, cigars and hot tubs.

 

Maybe we could use that $33 billion to save some of the hundreds of schools that are being forced to close this year due to devastating State budget deficits. Or maybe pay the thousands of teachers who just found out that their jobs have been cut. How about using that money to feed the 50% of US children who need to use food stamps during their childhood to eat? How about using it to give a raise to the 15 million US workers who work 40 hours or more a week and still fall below the poverty line.

 

Wait, I know, how about helping the millions of Americans who have been foreclosed upon due to JP Morgan’s predatory lending schemes and illegal subprime “liar’s loans.”

 

And don’t even get me started again on how we can better use the $14 TRILLION that Wall Street made off with…

 

People of the United States to Obama: Hello! This is happening on your watch!

 

Change We Can Believe In!

 

Oh, but wait… it gets even better. This just in from the Roosevelt Institute:

 

De facto bailout for Freddie and Frannie

 

Did the Fed and the Treasury orchestrate a de facto bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — at public expense and sans Congressional approval? John Hussman thinks so. He provides a detailed account of just how 1.5 trillion dollars got diverted to Freddie and Fannie — money that we can all kiss goodbye. American taxpayers, it seems, have gotten the middle finger once again.

 

And then in comes this little known, highly underreported news item: U.S. Taxpayers on Hook for $5 Trillion of Fannie, Freddie Debt

 

“After years of winks and nods, there’s no doubt that Fannie and Freddie now enjoy an explicit guarantee, according to most observers. The U.S. government placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in conservatorship in September 2008: ‘This means that the U.S. Taxpayer now stands behind $5 trillion of GSE debt,’ according to the Congressional Research Service.”

 

Hank “Pentagon-Sachs” Paulson’s right-hand man Tim Geithner, now Obama’s hand-picked Treasury Secretary and point man for the continued looting, recently assured his friends on the Financial Services Committee: “We will do everything necessary to ensure these institutions have the capital they need to meet their commitments.” Geithner then acknowledged that US taxpayers will take “very substantial” losses on this bailout.

 

Yep, Obama’s Chief-of-Theft, Rahm “Freddie Mac Daddy” Emanuel’s former company now has unlimited ability to rob taxpayer money and is making off with $5 TRILLION. And I thought Cheney’s Halliburton was as bad as it could get.

 

Yes We Can… Get Robbed Even More!

 

But don’t worry, if you thought the past two years were bad, the history books will recall them as a walk in the park compared to what is coming our way. You don’t have trillions looted from the economy and continue to just keep going about your life business as usual. I wish I was wrong, and I wish this was just my opinion, but facts are facts and every societal and economic indicator says things are going to get worse, MUCH WORSE.

 

 

-----

Osama Bin Bank of America

 

Let’s also not forget that Bank of America kept pumping money into the terrorist financing bank, Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), as I detailed in a report I put together back in 2004. Bank of America single-handedly kept BCCI alive by secretly funneling them a BILLION dollars a DAY, even after BCCI was caught funding Pakistan’s nuclear weapon’s project, Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons, Osama bin Laden’s al Queada network, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Manuel Noriega’s drug trade, the drug war in Nicaragua, the Iran-Contra Affair, along with the vast majority of the world’s largest drug dealers and terrorists. BCCI also pioneered most of the tricks used on Wall Street that led to the economic crisis. They were a significant player in the Savings and Loan scandal as well, and were the financing arm for the largest covert operations in the CIA’s history.

 

The harsh truth is that most of today’s biggest terrorist networks wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for Bank of America’s support of BCCI. In “ The Outlaw Bank,” investigative reporters Jonathan Beaty & S.C. Gwynne revealed the significant role Bank of America played:

 

“Five of Bank of America’s senior officers were either on BCCI’s board of directors or helped to manage Abedi’s bank. For the next decade the two banks would move billions of dollars a week through each other’s international offices, and the Bank of America would be an invaluable, if hidden, ally, since it would continue to accept BCCI’s letter-of-credit business after virtually no other Western bank would touch it. Indeed, it could be argued that Bank of America became the single most important financial institution helping BCCI stay afloat.

 

In the United States alone, Bank of America transferred more than $1 billion a day for BCCI until the moment of BCCI’s global seizure in July 1991.

 

Thus Bank of America acted as a sort of global vacuum cleaner, sucking up many BCCI branch deposits and thereby providing the fuel Abedi needed to keep his Ponzi scheme alive….”

 

Most everyone on the planet, thanks to a “news” system that has no memory of these issues, seems to have conveniently forgotten that BCCI was, literally, al Queada. How is it that our multi-million dollar “news” operations can’t seem to connect these dots and don’t have any memory of this highly significant chapter in US history? This proves that these media companies are in the business of propaganda, not informing the public as they are legally obligated to do. Bank of America surrogate, Khalid bin Mahfouz, who is a Saudi and was known as the most powerful banker in the Middle East, also was business partners with Dick Cheney, George Bush, Enron’s Ken Lay and 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean - so it’s not surprising that this was all left out of the 9/11 commissions report.

 

Here’s some more significant information that seems to have been redacted from the history book…

 

Mahfouz was BCCI’s Chief Operating Officer and also Bin Laden’s main money man. He was intimately involved with James Baker and Dick Cheney’s “Strategy of the Silk Route” plan to build an oil pipeline through Afghanistan in a joint venture called CentGas. Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s current Prime Minister, was a lobbyists for the CentGas venture with close ties to the Pakistani ISI and was a key CIA asset at the time. When the US-funded Taliban was unable to gain control of the region by force, which is what Ken Lay’s feasibility study demanded, the CentGas pipeline deal fell through. Cheney knew control of the Caspian oil basin was of the highest geo-strategic value in securing control of the earth’s remaining oil supply, so he drew up plans for an invasion of Afghanistan. Then, of course, 9/11 happened, and all of this significant history was buried in the rubble of the World Trade Center.

 

I don’t want to get side-tracked into Bank of America’s scandalous past involvement in US intelligence, so I’ll get back to the current Wall Street accounting racket.

 

As Max Keiser’s report makes clear, the accounting scam works by keeping massive losses off-the-books. This way, they can report huge profits, which of course leads to them being able to give themselves huge bonuses. There is still well over a trillion more in hidden off-the-books losses, “toxic” debt yet to fall and be made public. The first debt bomb went off in 2008, the second BIGGER one is ticking away right now, and it will be a much more devastating blast when it goes off. This global Ponzi scam has gone on for years with no one regulating or enforcing the law to stop them. It’s going to blow and take us all down with it. That’s why they are dishing out record bonuses now, they know we are on the Titanic and they are stepping on us and jumping into the lifeboats.

 

It is not so much a conspiracy theory as it is conspiracy fact. Why is this so hard for otherwise intelligent rational people to understand? our government no longer represents our best interests, unless you are one of the elites. If you think otherwise, I'd love to live in your world for awhile. It must be nice.

[cre8tiff]

In order to put this to rest in the public eye it's really quite simple, post a birth cert.

 

 

exactly....one must exist somewhere in the world...

 

I'm from Missouri, the....you know where I'm going with this...

 

It was, years ago.

 

Factcheck.org, unless you don't really want proof.

[rattsass]

U.S. Elite

Institutions:

Federal Reserve

Business Council

Bilderberg Group

Conference Board

Brookings Institute

Advertising Council

Heritage Foundation

Trilateral Commission

Business Round Table

Chamber of Commerce

Federal Trade Commission

Council on Foreign Relations

American Petroleum Institute

American Enterprise Institute

American Bankers Association

Pharm Research & Manufacturers

Public Relations Society of America

American Psychological Association

Project for a New American Century

Securities and Exchange Commission

Committee for Economic Development

National Association of Manufacturers

Carnegie / Ford / Rockefeller foundations

Military / Media / Prison Industrial Complex

 

I don’t view the Economic Elite as a small group of men who meet in secrecy to control the world. They do feature elements of conspiracy and are clearly composed of secretive organizations like the Bilderberg Group - this is not a conspiracy theory, this is a conspiracy fact - but as a whole the Economic Elite are primarily united by ideology. They’re made up of thousands of individuals who subscribe to an ideology of exploitation and the belief that wealth and resources need to be concentrated into the fewest hands possible (theirs), at the expense of the many.

 

That being said, there are some definite lead players in this group and it is important that we are not too vague and expose the individuals who publicly lead them. Focusing on the fundamental structure of the US economy, we have people like Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan, Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, John Mack, Vikram Pandit, John Thain, Hank Greenberg, Ken Lewis, John J. Castellani, Edward Yingling and Tom Donohue.

 

In total, the Economic Elite are made up of about 0.5% of the US population. At the center of this group is the Business Roundtable, an organization representing Fortune 500 CEOs that is also interlocked with several lead elite organizations. Most Americans have never heard of the Business Roundtable. However, in my analysis, it is the most influential and powerful Economic Elite organization.

 

“The Business Roundtable joined the Business Council at the heart of both the corporate community and the policy-formation network and now has the most powerful role…. The Roundtable’s interlocks with other policy groups and with think tanks are presented [below].” -– G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America?

 

 

 

The Roundtable’s first year of operation was 1972, which coincided with the beginning of the CEO salary explosion, and has been the driving force behind the unprecedented concentration of wealth since their inception. Their dominance over the US economy and government is unparalleled. Their members are a Who’s Who of everything that is wrong with our economy. Here is a partial list of some of their lead members:

 

——-Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman Sachs

——-James Dimon, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

——-James P. Gorman, Morgan Stanley

——-Vikram S. Pandit, Citigroup, Inc.

——-Brian T. Moynihan, Bank of America

——-Brendan McDonagh, HSBC

——-Robert W. Selander, MasterCard Incorporated

——-Kenneth I. Chenault, American Express Company

——-Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation

——-Glenn A. Britt, Time Warner Cable Inc.

——-Philippe Dauman, Viacom, Inc.

——-Jeffrey R. Immelt, General Electric Company

——-Brian L. Roberts, Comcast Corporation

——-Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft Corporation

——-John T. Chambers, Cisco Systems, Inc.

——-Randall L. Stephenson, AT&T Inc.

——-Ivan G. Seidenberg, Verizon Communications

——-David G. DeWalt, McAfee, Inc.

——-Steven R. Loranger, ITT Corporation

——-Paul T. Hanrahan, AES Corporation, The

——-Riley P. Bechtel, Bechtel Group, Inc.

——-W. James McNerney , Boeing Company, The

——-Rex W. Tillerson, Exxon Mobil Corporation

——-Marvin E. Odum, Shell Oil Company

——-John S. Watson, Chevron Corporation

——-James J. Mulva, ConocoPhillips

——-John B. Hess, Hess Corporation

——-James E. Rogers Duke Energy Corporation

——-J. Larry Nichols, Devon Energy Corporation

——-Ronald A. Williams, Aetna Inc.

——-David Cordani, CIGNA

——-Jeffrey B. Kindler , Pfizer Inc.

——-Angela F. Braly, WellPoint, Inc.

——-John C. Lechleiter, Eli Lilly and Company

——-Edward B. Rust, Jr., State Farm

——-Andrew N. Liveris, Dow Chemical

——-James W. Owens, Caterpillar Inc.

——-Ellen J. Kullman, DuPont

——-Edward E. Whitacre Jr., General Motors Company

——-Michael T. Duke, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

 

The Business Roundtable is the most powerful activist organization in the United States. Their leaders regularly lobby members of Congress behind closed doors and often meet privately with the President and his administration. Any legislation that affects Roundtable members has almost zero possibility of passing without their support.

 

For three major examples, look at healthcare and financial reform, along with the military budget. The healthcare reform bill devolved into what amounts to an insurance industry bailout and was drastically altered by Roundtable lobbyists representing interests like WellPoint, Aetna, Cigna, Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson. Obama and Congress are trying to please the Roundtable with a bill that supports their interests. This led to the dropping of the public-option put forth in the House bill. However, when it came to finishing the bill, Roundtable members began to walk away from the process. That’s the real reason why the reform bill has stalled. Obama will be meeting with the Roundtable on February 24th, in hopes of getting healthcare reform back on track. After that meeting, he will then hold a bipartisan healthcare meeting with members of congress.

 

Also being addressed in Obama’s upcoming meeting with the Roundtable are issues concerning financial reform. Almost every aspect of financial reform has been D.O.A. thanks to Roundtable lobbyists representing the interests of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America, HSBC, Master Card and American Express. They even pushed to make sure Ben Bernanke was reconfirmed as the head of the Federal Reserve and they have also guided Obama into focusing on deficit reduction, now that their member companies are healthy again and making record profits after receiving trillions in government subsidies. The Roundtable played a pivotal role in the appointment of Hank Paulson, formerly the CEO of Roundtable member Goldman Sachs, who replaced Roundtable member John Snow as US Treasury Secretary. The Roundtable also strongly lobbied on behalf of current Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and White House National Economic Council Director Larry Summers. Although there has been recent talk of Geithner being replaced at the Treasury, the lead choice to replace him is Jamie Dimon, Roundtable member and CEO of JP Morgan Chase.

 

The drastic rise in military spending is also a result of Roundtable lobbyists pushing the interests of large military companies like Boeing and Bechtel, along with the largest oil companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, Hess and Chevron.

 

The Roundtable tells politicians what they want done, and the politicians do it. At times, Roundtable members even write the laws themselves. On financial reform alone, those representing Wall Street firms gave “$42 million to lawmakers, mostly to members of the House and Senate banking committees and House and Senate leaders.” During the 2008 election cycle, they gave $155 million: $88 million to Democrats and $67 million to Republicans. Keep in mind, this is the spending on just their financial reform initiative. When it came to health reform, they gave even more.

 

When it comes to getting elected, over 90% of the time the candidate who simply spends more money on their campaign wins the election. The Roundtable and politicians recognize this fact, so the overwhelming majority of current elected officials relied heavily on campaign funding from Roundtable members, including President Obama.

 

Shortly after Obama’s inauguration he held a meeting with Roundtable members at the St. Regis Hotel. The president of the Business Roundtable is John J. Castellani. Throughout the first nine months of Obama’s presidency, Castellani met with him at the White House more than any other person, with the exception of Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue. If you look at the records of people who have spent the most time with Obama in the White House, other than these two, another frequent visitor is Edward Yingling, the president of the American Bankers Association.

 

These organizations - the Business Roundtable, Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers Association - along with the Federal Reserve, a secretive quasi-government private institution, form the center of the Economic Elite’s power structure. Since the bailout, the Federal Reserve has been working closely with private firm BlackRock. Due to this relationship, BlackRock has emerged as the world’s largest money manager and now manages more assets than the Federal Reserve. They also “manage many of the Treasury Department’s big investments.”

 

On a global level, you have economic institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and international treaties like NAFTA. These organizations already form a de facto world government that has rights beyond our constitutional rights and national sovereignty. If the WTO makes a ruling that goes against US law, the WTO ruling supersedes US law and wins out.

 

Here is how Global Exchange explains these global institutions:

 

“The World Trade Organization is the most powerful legislative and judicial body in the world. By promoting the ‘free trade’ agenda of multinational corporations above the interests of local communities, working families, and the environment, the WTO has systematically undermined democracy around the world…. Unlike United Nations treaties, the International Labor Organization conventions, or multilateral environmental agreements, WTO rules can be enforced through sanctions. This gives the WTO more power than any other international body. The WTO’s authority even eclipses national governments.

 

[World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)]

 

When the Bank and the Fund lend money to debtor countries, the money comes with strings attached. These strings come in the form of policy prescriptions called ’structural adjustment policies.’ These policies—or SAPs, as they are sometimes called—require debtor governments to open their economies to penetration by foreign corporations, allowing access to the country’s workers and environment at bargain basement prices. Structural adjustment policies mean across-the-board privatization of public utilities and publicly owned industries. They mean the slashing of government budgets, leading to cutbacks in spending on health care and education…. And, as their imposition in country after country in Latin America, Africa, and Asia has shown, they lead to deeper inequality and environmental destruction.”

 

In addition to dominating our political and economic system, the Economic Elite have already created their own private military. Their private military is now more powerful than the US military. As mentioned earlier, private mercenaries now outnumber US soldiers and receive the lion’s share of military spending.

 

Corporations like SAIC, Blackwater, Bechtel, Raytheon and Halliburton are composed of the most elite worldwide intelligence and military officers. These are the highly profitable and powerful entities that the Economic Elite turn to when national militaries and intelligence agencies - like the CIA, FBI or other government run entities - can’t get the job done.

 

For instance, SAIC, a “stealth company” that most people have never heard of, is considered to be the brains of the entire US intelligence apparatus, more powerful than the much more popularly known CIA, NSA and FBI - all agencies that SAIC is deeply intertwined with. I urge you to research SAIC to get a crash course in how the true power structure functions. You can start by reading an excellent investigative report by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele titled, “Washington’s $8 billion shadow.”

 

The Economic Elite dominate US intelligence and military operations. Other than the obvious geo-strategic reasons, the never-ending and ever-expanding War on Terror’s objective is to drain the US population of more resources and further rob US taxpayers, while using our tax money to create a private military that is more powerful than the US military.

 

I think any logical person can see the ominous implications of having such a vast and powerful private military and intelligence complex, created for and used, in secrecy, by the Economic Elite. Outside of the blatant economic policy attacks, heavily armed and sophisticated covert powers led by small groups of Economic Elite are now a serious risk and present danger.

 

In conclusion, these economic and government policy forming organizations, along with their private military and intelligence corporations, form the core of the Economic Elite power structure.

 

“I think one has to say it’s not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems.” – Paul Wolfowitz

[cre8tiff]

Wow, so Ladyhawke was a ratsass alias? Guess we can look forward to the H8Tank Report on the front page next season.

[rattsass]

Wow, so Ladyhawke was a ratsass alias?

Conspicacy theorist?

[rattsass]

Although most of the Economic Elite live and operate inside the US, they are not concerned for our future. To them, the entire world is theirs and they work intimately with other elites throughout the world against the interests of the US public. Ever since the days of Henry Ford, the Economic Elite have needed a thriving US middle class to increase growth and profits, but now, in the global economy, they view the US middle class as obsolete. They increasingly look globally for profits and they would rather pay cheap labor in countries like China and India. On top of the millions of jobs they have already shipped overseas to increase profits at our expense, they are planning to ship an additional 25% of current US jobs overseas as well.

 

They now see us as the biggest obstacle to their continued consolidation of wealth and resources. This is why they have stepped up their attack on us.

 

If you want further proof of this, all one needs to do is study the Wall Street bailout. The entire bailout is strategically designed to eliminate the US middle class. Every time you hear the word “bailout,” you should think “coup d’état.” Here is the definition of coup d’état:

 

“A coup d’état or coup for short, is the sudden unconstitutional deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment… to replace the deposed government with another…. A coup d’état succeeds when the usurpers establish their legitimacy if the attacked government fail to thwart them, by allowing their (strategic, tactical, political) consolidation and then receiving the deposed government’s surrender; or the acquiescence of the populace and the non-participant military forces.

 

Typically, a coup d’état uses the extant government’s power to assume political control of the country. In Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook, military historian Edward Luttwak says: ‘A coup consists of the infiltration of a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder’, thus, armed force (either military or paramilitary) is not a defining feature of a coup d’état.”

 

The bailout was a financial coup, an intelligence operation to seize control of the US economy and tax system. It is similar to what the Economic Elite have done through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in many other countries throughout the world. It is clearly a case of economic imperialism. When financial coups are carried out in other countries, they call it a Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). The end result is the theft of working class wealth, the privatization of public functions and resources, rising unemployment, the elimination of the middle class and increasing taxation and debt that turns the overwhelming majority of the nation into a peasant class. This is exactly the track we are on now.

 

Just look at how they have already done this in many other countries, and then look at the “bailout.”

 

The success of the coup is clear by the control of the US Treasury by Goldman Sachs criminal masterminds Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner, and the continued control of the Federal Reserve by Ben Bernanke.

 

In 1970, Hank Paulson began his career in the Pentagon working for Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. In 1972, he then moved to the White House, where he worked for the Nixon Administration. He was “the assistant to John Ehrlichman during the events of the Watergate scandal for which Ehrlichman was convicted, and sentenced to prison.” After Paulson’s disgraced exit from the political world, he joined Goldman Sachs in 1974, eventually becoming CEO in 1999 when he led an effort to force out Goldman’s previous CEO John Corzine. While leading Goldman, Paulson developed very intimate relations with members of the Chinese elite, visiting the country over 70 times.

 

In 2004, during his time as Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, Paulson personally led a successful effort to get the SEC to remove the “ net capital rule,” which was a “requirement that their brokerages hold reserve capital that limited their leverage and risk exposure.” This was the biggest reason why the economic crisis happened. With the “net capital rule” out of the way, Goldman Sachs and other major Wall Street firms with over $5 billion in assets were free to engage in high risk/high reward behavior. This led to the housing bubble with the creation of high risk speculation, essentially rigged Ponzi-style scams like “mortgage-backed securities, credit derivatives, and credit default swaps… and other exotic structured finance instruments that only highly-trained mathematicians understand, based on models that are beyond the comprehension of most traders.”

 

After making over $700 million on these shady high risk activities that created a ticking time bomb in our economy, Paulson left Goldman Sachs to run the US Treasury. Shortly after that, the speculative trading scams blew up, and there was the man who played the most pivotal role in causing the economy to crash now running the US Treasury and in charge of “maneuvering” trillions of dollars in national wealth to “fix” the economy. It was time for Paulson, along with his close confidant Tim Geithner, then heading the NY Federal Reserve Bank, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, to engineer the greatest theft of wealth in history with the “bailout.”

 

Paulson quickly brought in several former Goldman Sachs partners to help him engineer the coup. A pivotal Paulson asset was former Goldman executive Dan Jester, who Paulson quickly hired as a “contractor.” As Robert E. Prasch recently reported, “Jester was never appointed by Congress or otherwise vetted before taking up his role as the Treasury’s de facto central player in the crucial decisions that marked that fall’s bailout of Wall Street.” Paulson’s most publicized move was the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). This was a blatant no-strings attached giveaway of taxpayer money, handed directly to Wall Street’s biggest players. To oversee the TARP operation, Paulson brought in Goldman Sachs Vice President Neel Kashkari.

 

Another egregious unilateral move by Paulson was installing Edward Liddy, one of his former board members at Goldman Sachs, as CEO of AIG. Liddy was the Chairman of Goldman’s Audit Committee, making him the most knowledgeable person regarding Goldman’s collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). Paulson knew these CDOs would go bust because they were based on fraudulent activities, essentially a massive Ponzi scheme. So Paulson and Goldman Sachs covered their risk by insuring them through AIG, making it pivotal to save AIG and have one of his most trusted allies run the company. With Liddy in place, billions of taxpayer dollars were secretly funneled by the Geithner-led NY Federal Reserve through AIG to Goldman Sachs and several other Wall Street elite counterparties. Without the AIG bailout, Goldman Sachs would have collapsed as a result of their own Ponzi scheme.

 

The assassinations of Goldman rivals Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, and the forced Bank of America acquisition of Merrill Lynch were all equally scandalous actions as well. The hidden hand of the Bernanke-led Federal Reserve’s secret “black magic” tactics — which created and distributed trillions of dollars — turned Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs into bank holding companies overnight, which gave them access to trillions of dollars to further manipulate the market and create record setting profits.

 

Every step of the way, the economic terrorist organization led by Paulson, Geithner and Bernanke held our economy hostage by declaring that all their demands must be met or the entire economy would be destroyed, as a result of the very actions the players being rewarded had taken. (I don’t use the words “economic terrorists” as hyperbole. The threat posed by them and the amount of death, destruction and misery they have already caused the United States is much greater than that caused by Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda - it’s not even close.)

 

Through the crisis, the fundamental structure of the stock market has been proven to be a scam. The Ponzi scheme activities, outright market manipulation and massive worldwide fraud perpetrated by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, AIG, the three major ratings agencies and several other Wall Street elite firms are blatant. Just in the housing and oil futures markets alone, the criminal activity and economic theft is in the multi-trillions.

 

By looking the other way, the SEC, Congress and Presidents Bush and Obama are complicit. An analysis of actions taken, or most often not taken, by the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties prove that they are now accomplices. They have not only let it happen; they continue to look the other way and have been stonewalling laws, investigations and prosecutions in what is clearly criminal activity.

 

If we had a nation of law, none of these things would have happened. This proves to anyone who cares to look that we now live in a Banana Republic. Our democracy has clearly become a farce.

 

The overwhelming majority of our politicians are now on the Economic Elite payroll. This financial coup started under Hank Paulson in the Bush Administration and has been carried through, without even the slightest hitch, under Geithner in the Obama Administration, and all along Ben Bernanke has been leading the Federal Reserve. Bernanke’s reconfirmation shows you who the co-conspirators are - just look at the members of Congress who voted for it.

 

All three branches of our government are now complicit in what is literally the greatest theft of wealth in history, along with a mainstream “news” media that keeps going about their “reporting,” as if this wasn’t a crime, business as usual. Nothing to see here…

[Kid Cid]

This is the classic "we can never be wrong" argument. Somebody suspects 9/11 was an inside job, for instance, and all the evidence in the world won't shift them from that view because everyone and everything believing differently is a tool of the government and therefore either a liar or an accessory.

 

Voila, instant self-sustaining truth.

And this right here is exactly why I have a problem with the conspiracy theorists. It's the self supporting circular logic that doesn't rely on outside facts to support any part of the argument. It doesn't matter that there may be bits of truth scattered in amongst the theory, if the entire argument doesn't pass the sniff test then it is flawed and will be shot down.

 

ETA: After reading through all the stuff that was recently posted, I will say this. There is not a single bit of hard evidence in support of this theory. There is a lot of stuff that when viewed through a certain lens can be viewed in the way that ratsass suggests, but it is all very circumstantial at best.

Edited June 14, 2010 by Kid Cid

[The Irish Doggy]

[rattsass]

And this right here is exactly why I have a problem with the conspiracy theorists. It's the self supporting circular logic that doesn't rely on outside facts to support any part of the argument. It doesn't matter that there may be bits of truth scattered in amongst the theory, if the entire argument doesn't pass the sniff test then it is flawed and will be shot down.

 

ETA: After reading through all the stuff that was recently posted, I will say this. There is not a single bit of hard evidence in support of this theory. There is a lot of stuff that when viewed through a certain lens can be viewed in the way that ratsass suggests, but it is all very circumstantial at best.

Bottom line: whether you believe in a conspiracy theory or not, the reality is that we have been, and are being screwed. You can view the events of the last few years any way you want to, you can call it conspiracy or happenstance, Call it what you will, the result is the same. The corporate mafia elite have successfully sabatoged the American economy. That is clear no matter what lens you look through. And that is really all that matters. Or in the case of the majority of responders to this thread, doesn't matter.

[Duchess Jack]

wow, did you really just pull all those assumptions out of your arse?

 

you assume that I'm not happy just because I can point out a group of wealthy people that are able to manipulate governments and financial systems out of greed?...

 

if you're getting all this from what I'm saying, then maybe you shouldn't be responding...go back to your regularly scheduled program

I missed this post.

 

What assumptions did I pull out of my ass?

 

Where did I say that you were unhappy? Weigie responded to things that he's pretty happy with his life - which I took as more or less him suggesting that if these cats are doing what you think they are doing - than it hasn't - as far as he can tell - effected him negatively. I was giving the good ol' +1

 

You suggested that I was 'dreaming' and I asked for clairification on that.

I asked what evil this group has caused.

I asked for factual accounts.

 

 

This was after you though to suggest that I was in a dream land because I didn't see things like you have.

Your answer to this: To talk about assumptions I never made and to act like I somehow attacked you and said that you weren't happy - and somehow I am the cat the needs to stop responding?

 

Dude. Help me out here. What more did I do, but ask for more info after you suggested I was dreaming. Why did you post this if not to educate people?

 

You are the cat going on about these groups - I'd just like some honest to goodness facts and proof of wrong doing that is not already rampid throughout the world and world history as a result of our human nature.

Edited June 14, 2010 by Duchess Jack