The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. – Benjamin Franklin
Part 1: Lindsey Williams on The Alex Jones Show
Source: YouTube
Part 2: Lindsey Williams on The Alex Jones Show
Source: YouTube
Part 3: Lindsey Williams on The Alex Jones Show ‘Update’
Source: YouTube
Related video: The Energy Non-Crisis by Lindsey Williams
Lindsey Williams talks about his first hand knowledge of Alaskan oil reserves larger than any on earth. And he talks about how the oil companies and U.S. government won’t send it through the pipeline for U.S. citizens to use.
A future out of control, bankrupt financial institutions trying to hold on, limitation on credit severely limits ability of the economy to start up again, debt totally embraces our lives, handouts a state secret, soon cash infusions wont work for banks anymore, banks hold too much toxic garbage to even know if they are solvent. We are now 17 months into a credit crisis that continues to expose the corruption and incompetence of government, banking, Wall Street and transnational corporations. The situation has not stabilized and it won’t anytime soon. All we see are sweetheart deals for elitist corporations for which American taxpayers will pay for years to come. The future of our nation is totally out of control. For the last eight years our economy has been running on something for nothing, lies and deceit. The result will be hyperinflation and then the Second Great Depression.
Read moreHyperinflation and then The Second Great Depression
“We do not tell you what we are doing, but you have to pay for it.”
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What would you do to someone that breaks into your house and is stealing your money?(I know, it isn’t really ‘your’ money anyway, but that is another story.)
That is exactly what the Fed is doing. The Fed is also stealing the value of your money. Inflation is a ‘hidden tax’.
You don’t have to study economics to understand what these banksters are doing, although it was helpful for me.
Hyperinflation is coming. The government and the Fed are bankrupting the US.
Remember just a few months ago when they told you that ‘the economy is sound’?
Listen to Ron Paul, Peter Schiff and Jim Rogers and prepare yourself for the worst.
This article is a must read.
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Vehicles are parked outside the U.S. Federal Reserve building in Washington, Dec. 4, 2008. Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/Bloomberg News
Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The Fed responded Dec. 8, saying it’s allowed to withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information. The institution confirmed that a records search found 231 pages of documents pertaining to some of the requests.
“If they told us what they held, we would know the potential losses that the government may take and that’s what they don’t want us to know,” said Carlos Mendez, a senior managing director at New York-based ICP Capital LLC, which oversees $22 billion in assets.
Read moreFederal Reserve Refuses to Disclose Recipients of $2 Trillion
The federal government committed an additional $800 billion to two new loan programs on Tuesday, bringing its cumulative commitment to financial rescue initiatives to a staggering $8.5 trillion, according to Bloomberg News.
That sum represents almost 60 percent of the nation’s estimated gross domestic product.
Given the unprecedented size and complexity of these programs and the fact that many have never been tried before, it’s impossible to predict how much they will cost taxpayers. The final cost won’t be known for many years.
The money has been committed to a wide array of programs, including loans and loan guarantees, asset purchases, equity investments in financial companies, tax breaks for banks, help for struggling homeowners and a currency stabilization fund.
Most of the money, about $5.5 trillion, comes from the Federal Reserve, which as an independent entity does not need congressional approval to lend money to banks or, in “unusual and exigent circumstances,” to other financial institutions.
If you want to see a very emotional financial analyst this is a must see.
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Max Keiser calls treasury secretary Hank Paulson a “Financial Terrorist”. He states America is issuing non collateralized bonds that are worthless.
The Dollar and the Bonds are counterfeit. They have nothing backing them. This will lead to an economic collapse to all countries who play into this Wall Street scheme.
Developing nations are giving away their commodities for worthless paper.
Source: YouTube
Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve’s new $800 billion effort to combat the financial crisis is designed to make credit more accessible to shaken consumers who aren’t sure they want more debt.
Households and lenders may not respond much because of the wealth destruction from plunging property and stock values, and the deepening economic slump, economists say. That means banks may end up returning the Fed’s new liquidity through deposits at the central bank.
“We are sort of spitting in the wind,” said Michael Darda, chief economist at MKM Partners LP in Greenwich, Connecticut. “Banks won’t be throwing a lot of loans out there when they fear — rationally — those loans may not be paid back.”
Read moreFed Risks `Spitting in the Wind’ With $800 Billion Pledge to Thaw Lending
Related article: Fed Pledges Top $7.4 Trillion to Ease Frozen Credit
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. spoke at a news conference at the Treasury Department on Tuesday in Washington.
The federal government unveiled $800 billion in new loans and debt purchases on Tuesday, hoping another infusion of cash can help unfreeze troubled credit markets and make borrowing easier for homebuyers, small businesses and students.
The Federal Reserve said that it would buy up to $600 billion in mortgage-backed assets from the government-sponsored mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The agency would also buy up to $100 billion in debt directly from the companies and up to $500 billion in mortgage-backed securities.
“This action is being taken to reduce the cost and increase the availability of credit for the purchase of houses, which in turn should support housing markets and foster improved conditions in financial markets more generally,” the Federal Reserve said in a statement.
Separately, the Fed and Treasury Department announced a $200 billion program to ease commercial lending on debts like student loans, car loans or business loans. The Fed would lend up to $200 billion to holders of asset-backed securities supported by car loans, credit card loans, student loans, and business loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration.
On Friday November 21, the world came within a hair’s breadth of the most colossal financial collapse in history according to bankers on the inside of events with whom we have contact. The trigger was the bank which only two years ago was America’s largest, Citigroup. The size of the US Government de facto nationalization of the $2 trillion banking institution is an indication of shocks yet to come in other major US and perhaps European banks thought to be ‘too big to fail.’
The clumsy way in which US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, himself not a banker but a Wall Street ‘investment banker’, whose experience has been in the quite different world of buying and selling stocks or bonds or underwriting and selling same, has handled the unfolding crisis has been worse than incompetent. It has made a grave situation into a globally alarming one.
‘Spitting into the wind’
A case in point is the secretive manner in which Paulson has used the $700 billion in taxpayer funds voted him by a labile Congress in September. Early on, Paulson put $125 billion in the nine largest banks, including $10 billion for his old firm, Goldman Sachs. However, if we compare the value of the equity share that $125 billion bought with the market price of those banks’ stock, US taxpayers have paid $125 billion for bank stock that a private investor could have bought for $62.5 billion, according to a detailed analysis from Ron W. Bloom, economist with the US United Steelworkers union, whose members as well as pension fund face devastating losses were GM to fail.
Read moreColossal Financial Collapse: The Truth behind the Citigroup Bank “Nationalization”
As the Federal bailout bonanza prepares to spread beyond the mortgage and financial sectors to fill Detroit’s depleted coffers, few economic or policy analysts have spared a thought for the destitution of the U.S. government itself.
Put simply, our government doesn’t have enough spare cash to bail out a lemonade stand let alone a bloated and failing industry that is losing tens of billions of dollars per month.
Washington can only offer funds that it has borrowed from abroad or printed. Unfortunately, the nation is in the grips of a delusion that money derived from these sources has the power to heal. But history has clearly shown that borrowed or printed money only has the power to destroy.
The argument that energizes the pro-Detroit camp is that the government should extend the same courtesy to the rank and file auto workers that it lavished upon the fat cats of Wall Street.
While two wrongs certainly do not make a right, the fact remains that the Wall Street firms are still floundering despite the bailouts. What’s worse, the money spent was either printed or borrowed from abroad. Both options are destructive to America.
When it comes to bailouts, the real discussions are not centered in Washington but rather in Beijing, Tokyo, and Riyadh. With no money of our own, our ability to bailout our own citizens is completely dependent on the world’s willingness to foot the bill.
We will see hyperinflation, the dollar will fail and then the US will fail.
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Henry Paulson, U.S. treasury secretary, left, and Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, look through their notes before a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee in Washington, Nov. 18, 2008. Photographer: Jim Lo Scalzo/Bloomberg News
Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. government is prepared to lend more than $7.4 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers, or half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, to rescue the financial system since the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.
The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $2.8 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The commitment dwarfs the only plan approved by lawmakers, the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Federal Reserve lending last week was 1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis.
When Congress approved the TARP on Oct. 3, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged the need for transparency and oversight. Now, as regulators commit far more money while refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in return, some Congress members are calling for the Fed to be reined in.
“Whether it’s lending or spending, it’s tax dollars that are going out the window and we end up holding collateral we don’t know anything about,” said Congressman Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican who serves on the House Financial Services Committee. “The time has come that we consider what sort of limitations we should be placing on the Fed so that authority returns to elected officials as opposed to appointed ones.”
Read moreFed Pledges Top $7.4 Trillion to Ease Frozen Credit
This Is Not A Normal Recession
Moving on to Plan B
“The Winter of 2008-2009 will prove to be the winter of global economic discontent that marks the rejection of the flawed ideology that unregulated global financial markets promote financial innovation, market efficiency, unhampered growth and endless prosperity while mitigating risk by spreading it system wide.” Economists Paul Davidson and Henry C.K. Liu “Open Letter to World Leaders attending the November 15 White House Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy”
The global economy is being sucked into a black hole and most Americans have no idea why. The whole problem can be narrowed down to two words; “structured finance”.
Read moreThe global economy is being sucked into a black hole
‘But, but, but … that money was only for my friends on Wall Street and not for the people.’
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Henry Paulson, U.S. treasury secretary, left, and Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, right, listen during a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee in Washington, on Nov. 18, 2008. Photographer: Jim Lo Scalzo/Bloomberg News
Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) — Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson rejected using the government’s financial-rescue program as a “panacea” for economic difficulties, clashing with lawmakers who want the funds to help beleaguered homeowners.
“The rescue package was not intended to be an economic stimulus or an economic recovery package,” Paulson said in testimony to the House Financial Services Committee in Washington. The Troubled Asset Relief Program was designed to stabilize financial markets and the flow of credit and “is not a panacea for all our economic difficulties.”
Representative Barney Frank, who heads the House panel, cut off Paulson during the question-and-answer session, saying “the bill couldn’t have been clearer” in also being aimed at reducing foreclosures. Paulson told lawmakers he has no plans to use the second half of the $700 billion program, indicating it will be up to the incoming Obama administration to resolve the matter.
“We don’t have a lot of time and I don’t usually do this,” Frank said in interrupting Paulson during an exchange on how to deploy TARP cash. “I read sections of the bill that says — write it down — give them assistance,” Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, told the Treasury chief.
Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) — Members of Congress, taxpayers and investors urged the Federal Reserve to provide details of almost $2 trillion in emergency loans and the collateral it has accepted to protect against losses.
At least five Republican members of Congress yesterday called for the Fed to disclose which financial institutions are borrowing taxpayer money and what troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral. More than 300 more investors and taxpayers also pressed for more disclosure in e-mails and interviews with Bloomberg News.
“There cannot be accountability in government and in our financial institutions without transparency,” Texas Senator John Cornyn said in a statement. “Many of the financial problems we are facing today are the direct result of too much secrecy and too little accountability.”
House Republican Leader John Boehner and Republican Representatives Jeb Hensarling of Texas, Scott Garrett of New Jersey and Walter Jones of North Carolina also are pressing Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke to elaborate on the Fed’s emergency lending. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in the separate $700 billion bailout of the banking system that was approved by Congress last month.
European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet today urged greater disclosure to help strengthen the global financial system.
US authorities are scrapping plans to buy up toxic mortgages securities and shifting the focus of a massive financial rescue plan, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, seen here in October 2008 in Washington, DC said Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (AFP) – – US authorities are scrapping plans to buy up toxic mortgages securities and shifting the focus of a massive financial rescue plan, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Wednesday.
Paulson said the 700-billion-dollar plan would focus now on continued capital injections to struggling banks, but would also look at ways to help the “nonbank” financial sector under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
“Over these past weeks we have continued to examine the relative benefits of purchasing illiquid mortgage-related assets,” he said.
“Our assessment at this time is that this is not the most effective way to use TARP funds, but we will continue to examine whether targeted forms of asset purchase can play a useful role.”
The program approved by Congress was initially aimed at buying up so-called toxic mortgage securities that were clogging the financial system, but analysts had warned that such a plan could prove difficult to implement with prices hard to fix.
In the meantime, US officials had moved to emulate plans in Britain and elsewhere to tackle the credit squeeze by investing directly in banks.
A man exits the American International Building, home to the headquarters of American International Group (AIG), in New York, Nov. 10, 2008. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News
Nov. 11 (Bloomberg) — The revised bailout of American International Group Inc. marks a new phase in the government’s effort to shore up financial markets: It’s the first time cash from the rescue fund Congress created last month has been committed to a failing company.
The Federal Reserve, which saved the insurer from collapse two months ago with an $85 billion loan, yesterday reduced that loan and offered lower rates, while the Treasury chipped in $40 billion from its bank-rescue fund to buy preferred shares. The new terms represent a departure for Secretary Henry Paulson, who until now has said he only wants to invest Treasury funds in “healthy” firms.
Taxpayers are “keeping the zombie alive,” said Robert Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at hedge fund Cumberland Advisors and former director of research at the Atlanta Fed. “We keep getting deeper and deeper into these holes.”
The shift is likely to vastly expand political demands for saving dying companies in the name of financial or economic stability. The administration of President-elect Barack Obama may soon have to consider credit or capital injections for other insurers, automakers, even retailers as the U.S. slides deeper into what could be the worst recession in a quarter-century.
“Are you going to do General Motors and Ford, and, if you do those, are going to go on and do retailers?” said William Isaac, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and now chairman of the Secura Group LLC. “ Where does it stop? That is a very difficult decision we are going to face as a country.”
AIG’s Losses
Read moreRevised AIG Terms Begin Treasury Transfusions to ‘Zombie’ Firms
Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) — General Motors Corp. plummeted as much as 31 percent and moved toward its lowest level in 62 years after a Deutsche Bank AG analyst downgraded the shares, saying they may be worthless in a year.
“Even if GM succeeds in averting a bankruptcy, we believe that the company’s future path is likely to be bankruptcy-like,” Deutsche Bank’s Rod Lache wrote today in a note. The New York analyst recommended selling the shares and cut his 12-month price target to zero. He previously advised holding the stock.
The decline shows mounting pessimism that a turnaround will succeed at the largest U.S. automaker amid the credit crisis and the worst sales market in at least 15 years. GM is petitioning the U.S. government for aid after saying last week it may not have enough cash to operate this year. A bankruptcy typically wipes out the value of a company’s shares.
Barclays Capital and Buckingham Research Group cut their price targets for GM to $1.
GM, based in Detroit, lost 99 cents, or 23 percent, to $3.37 at 2:45 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. It fell as low as $3.02 in intraday trading, which would be the lowest close since Nov. 22, 1946, according to Global Financial Data in Los Angeles. Ford Motor Co. dropped 9 cents to $1.93.
Read moreGM Tumbles as Deutsche Says It May Become Worthless
Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn’t require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.
“The collateral is not being adequately disclosed, and that’s a big problem,” said Dan Fuss, vice chairman of Boston- based Loomis Sayles & Co., where he co-manages $17 billion in bonds. “In a liquid market, this wouldn’t matter, but we’re not. The market is very nervous and very thin.”
Bloomberg News has requested details of the Fed lending under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure.
Read moreFed refuses to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion
Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) — Fannie Mae posted a record quarterly loss as new Chief Executive Officer Herbert Allison slashed the value of the mortgage-finance provider’s assets by at least $21.4 billion and said it may need to tap federal funds next year.
In its first report since being seized by the U.S. government in September, Washington-based Fannie Mae said its third-quarter net loss was $29 billion, or $13 a share, the largest for any company in the Standard & Poor’s 500 this year.
The US bail-out amounts to a strings-free, public-funded windfall for big business. Welcome to no-risk capitalism
In the final days of the election many Republicans seem to have given up the fight for power. But don’t be fooled: that doesn’t mean they are relaxing. If you want to see real Republican elbow grease, check out the energy going into chucking great chunks of the $700bn bail-out out the door. At a recent Senate banking committee hearing, the Republican Bob Corker was fixated on this task, and with a clear deadline in mind: inauguration. “How much of it do you think may be actually spent by January 20 or so?” Corker asked Neel Kashkari, the 35-year-old former banker in charge of the bail-out.
When European colonialists realised that they had no choice but to hand over power to the indigenous citizens, they would often turn their attention to stripping the local treasury of its gold and grabbing valuable livestock. If they were really nasty, like the Portuguese in Mozambique in the mid-1970s, they poured concrete down the elevator shafts.
Nothing so barbaric for the Bush gang. Rather than open plunder, it prefers bureaucratic instruments, such as “distressed asset” auctions and the “equity purchase program”. But make no mistake: the goal is the same as it was for the defeated Portuguese – a final, frantic looting of the public wealth before they hand over the keys to the safe.
How else to make sense of the bizarre decisions that have governed the allocation of the bail-out money? When the Bush administration announced it would be injecting $250bn into US banks in exchange for equity, the plan was widely referred to as “partial nationalisation” – a radical measure required to get banks lending again. Henry Paulson, the treasury secretary, had seen the light, we were told, and was following the lead of Gordon Brown.
In fact, there has been no nationalisation, partial or otherwise. American taxpayers have gained no meaningful control over the banks, which is why the banks are free to spend the new money as they wish. At Morgan Stanley, it looks as if much of the windfall will cover this year’s bonuses. Citigroup has been hinting it will use its $25bn buying other banks, while John Thain, the chief executive of Merrill Lynch, told analysts: “At least for the next quarter, it’s just going to be a cushion.” The US government, meanwhile, is reduced to pleading with the banks that they at least spend a portion of the taxpayer windfall for loans – officially, the reason for the entire programme.
What, then, is the real purpose of the bail-out? My fear is this rush of dealmaking is something much more ambitious than a one-off gift to big business: that the Bush version of “partial nationalisation” is rigged to turn the US treasury into a bottomless cash machine for the banks for years to come. Remember, the main concern among the big market players, particularly banks, is not the lack of credit but their battered share prices. Investors have lost confidence in the honesty of the big financial players, and with good reason.
Read moreThe Bush gang’s parting gift: a final, frantic looting of public wealth
It was only a few weeks ago that most right-thinking economists and left-leaning bloggers were jumping on Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson for his plan to jump-start the markets in asset-backed securities by having the government buy them up at auction. Much better, they argued, to use the $700 billion to “recapitalize” the banking system, just as Gordon Brown was doing in Britain. Even the Federal Reserve thought that a better idea.
So Paulson changed course, called in the nine biggest banks and “forced” them as a group to accept $125 billon in new capital. The critics patted themselves on the back for having been right all along.
Now, many of the same people are shocked — shocked! — to discover that the banks aren’t using the money to make new loans to households and businesses, as they had assumed, but are using it to maintain dividend payments to shareholders, pay this year’s bonuses to executives and traders, or squirrel it away for future acquisitions.
I hate to say it, but I told you so. Sprinkling money around a highly fragmented banking system when markets were panicked and everyone was scrambling to reduce leverage was always akin to shoveling sand against the tide.
Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point to 1 percent, matching a half-century low, in an effort to avert the worst U.S. economic downturn in the postwar era.
“Downside risks to growth remain,” the Federal Open Market Committee said today in a statement in Washington. “Recent policy actions, including today’s rate reduction, coordinated interest-rate cuts by central banks, extraordinary liquidity measures, and official steps to strengthen financial systems, should help over time to improve credit conditions and promote a return to moderate economic growth.”
Central bankers worldwide are trying to revive credit and stop a self-reinforcing downturn in consumer spending and bank lending from triggering a global recession. Today’s decision follows the half-point reduction the Fed coordinated with the European Central Bank and four other central banks on Oct. 8. Borrowing costs were pared today in Norway and China.
Read moreFederal Reserve Cuts Rate to 1% to Avert Prolonged Recession
Ben and Hank have both told you that the critical issue for the economy is for “lending to resume”, stating that it has dramatically contracted.
If this was the truth, then Ben and Hank would have come to you for $700 billion in the TARP, but instead of TARPing the money, they would have asked for permission to use it to capitalize 10 new banks which would be immediately IPO’d off to the public with the stake being in the form of some kind of super-senior debt that held a coupon high enough to encourage immediate (or nearly-so) replacement with private capital.
This would have resulted in an aggregate of seven trillion worth of new lending capacity in the economy, an amount that, incidentally, would allow the full replacement of Fannie and Freddie as holders of housing debt with about $2 trillion left over for credit cards, auto and business loans.
That would have immediately solved the “credit freeze” problem.
So why wasn’t this proposed?
This is the reason:
In short, it wouldn’t have done anything because the economy only grows at a rate of about 20 cents for every dollar of debt taken on. That is, it takes five dollars of debt to generate one new dollar of GDP.
The bad news is that once you reach the “$1 for $1” level you are no longer able to finance growth with debt, and it becomes inevitable that you will begin to finance debt with debt.
That, of course generates no GDP at all but precipitously tightens the spiral.
We crossed that Rubicon roughly around 1968, and you have had this fact concealed from you.
Congress, please listen:
The Truth is that we now require about $5 of debt to generate $1 of GDP.
Read moreCongress: What Bernanke and Hank Aren’t Telling You
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