Volcker In? Trouble Out?

I read an article by Robert Scheer this morning. (www.truthdig.com/report_volcker_rules)
The gist is that we might be moving in the right direction.

Finally President Barack Obama has come to his senses on financial regulation. His endorsement of what he calls the “Volcker Rule” for once puts him squarely on the side of ordinary Americans as opposed to the banking bandits who have so thoroughly fleeced the public.

Does anyone believe this will serve as an answer?

It’s a tree – Don’t focus on it. The Forest is the money factory – Always has been. Countries cannot simply print money – because they want to. People in the business of government want things, so the Fed prints money, congress signs “The Public” on the payee line. That kind of childish nonsense can’t, hasn’t and won’t work. Doesn’t matter who hosts the show or who the producers, set designers, enraptured contestants and so on. The system is foul and designed to create a debt slave world populace. The only option is to not participate – period.

This setup worked splendidly for more than six decades, until the rules were changed to permit the merger of the two types of banking activity, which never would have happened had President Ronald Reagan renamed Volcker as head of the Fed back in 1987. To reappoint Volcker would have been the logical move given his spectacular record in taming inflation, which he brought down to 3.6 percent after it had risen to 11.3 percent thanks to the energy crisis of 1979. Reagan went with Alan Greenspan instead because of their shared ideological fervor for unfettered free markets. But the repeal of Glass-Steagall required bipartisan support, and that eventually came with the presidency of Bill Clinton, who reappointed Greenspan and his fellow free-market ideologues Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers to head the Treasury Department. They joined forces with the Wall Street lobby, and as a result Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999 when Clinton signed the law eliminating it.

Decades of Facts: http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade70.html

Facts about this decade.
Population: 204,879,000
Unemployed in 1970: 4,088,000
National Debt: $382 billion
Average salary: $7,564
Food prices: milk, 33 cents a qt.; bread, 24 cents a loaf; round steak, $1.30 a pound
Life Expectancy: Male, 67.1; Female, 74.8

(see if this doesn’t all sound familiar – Like it could be any year)

The chaotic events of the 60′s, including war and social change, seemed destined to continue in the 70′s. Major trends included a growing disillusionment of government, advances in civil rights, increased influence of the woman’s movement, a heightened concern for the environment, and increased space exploration. Many of the “radical” ideas of the 60′s gained wider acceptance in the new decade, and were mainstreamed into American life and culture. Amid war, social realignment and presidential impeachment proceedings, American culture flourished.

During the 1970′s the United States underwent some profound changes. First a Vice President and then a President resigned under threat of impeachment. The Vietnam War continued to divide the country even after the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973 put an end to U.S. military participation in the war. Roe v. Wade legalized abortion. Crime increased despite Nixon’s pledge to make law and order a top priority of his presidency. Increased immigration followed passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, which reformed an earlier policy that favored western Europeans. People from Third World countries came to this country in search of economic betterment or to escape political repression. Women, minorities, and gays increasingly demanded full legal equality and privileges in society. Women expanded their involvement in politics. The proportion of women in state legislatures tripled. Women surpassed men in college enrollment in 1979. However, the rising divorce rate left an increasing number of women as sole breadwinners and forced more and more of them into poverty. African-Americans also made their presence felt as the number of black members in Congress increased, and cities such as Los Angeles, Detroit, and Atlanta elected their first African-American mayors. Affirmative action became a controversial policy as minorities and women asserted their rights to jobs and quality education. Native Americans began to demand attention to their plight. In 1975 the Indian Self-Determination Act encouraged Indians to take control of their own education and promote their tribal customs.

Presidents: Richard M. Nixon (1969-1974), Gerald Ford (1974-1977), and Jimmy Carter (1977-1981).
Houston’s U.S. Representative Barbara Jordan gained national prominence with her eloquence during the Watergate investigation and hearings which resulted in impeachment proceedings against Nixon.

The 1980′s:

Population: 226,546,000
Unemployed in 1980:
National Debt: 1980 – $914,000,000,000
National Debt: 1986 – $2,000,000,000,000
Average salary: $15,757
Life Expectancy: Male 69.9 Female 77.6
Minimum Wage: $3.10
BMW was $12,000; Mercedes 280 E was $14,800
Attendance: Movies 20 million/week

The 1980s became the Me! Me! Me! generation of status seekers. During the 1980s, hostile takeovers, leveraged buyouts, and mega-mergers spawned a new breed of billionaire. Donald Trump, Leona Helmsley, and Ivan Boesky iconed the meteoric rise and fall of the rich and famous. If you’ve got it, flaunt it and You can have it all! were watchwords. Forbes’ list of 400 richest people became more important than its 500 largest companies. Binge buying and credit became a way of life and ‘Shop Til you Drop’ was the watchword. Labels were everything, even (or especially) for our children. Tom Wolfe dubbed the baby-boomers as the ‘splurge generation.’ Video games, aerobics, minivans, camcorders, and talk shows became part of our lives. The decade began with double-digit inflation, Reagan declared a war on drugs, Kermit didn’t find it easy to be green, hospital costs rose, we lost many, many of our finest talents to AIDS which before the decade ended spread to black and Hispanic women, and unemployment rose. On the bright side, the US Constitution had its 200th birthday, Gone with the Wind turned 50, ET phoned home, and in 1989 Americans gave $115,000,000,000 to charity. And, Internationally, at the very end of the decade the Berlin Wall was removed – making great changes for the decade to come! At the turn of the decade, many were happy to leave the spendthrift 80s for the 90s, although some thought the eighties – Totally Awesome.

People begin to change:

A 1980 study by UCLA and American Council on Education indicated that college freshmen were more interested in status, power, and money than at any time during the past 15 years. Business Management was the most popular major.

American education came under fire during the 1980s. Liberals cried out against budget cuts and rising student costs. School districts offered teachers exams and exit exams became a part of graduating for Education majors. Conservatives like E.D.Hirsch, Jr. and William Bennett advocated a return to the classics for college students and back to the basic skills for public school students. An attempt was made to improve the teacher quality by raising salaries slightly. Efforts to censor books tripled in the eighties. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , The Grapes of Wrath, and Catcher in the Rye were among books banned in New York State. Roget’s Thesaurus banned sexist categories: mankind became humankind; countryman became country dweller. Columbia University, the last all male Ivy League school, began accepting women in 1983. President Reagan endorsed a constitutional amendment to permit school prayer. It was defeated.

What I’ve noticed over the years is, not a change in the overall systems but a change in people. People started wanting things that could not possibly be had by all. “… status, power, and money …”

By their very nature these things are not the rule. To have power someone has to have less. So power is a rare commodity. It’s the system that creates the atmosphere for these yearnings. Without the system (The Monetary Government) other things would have value and these things would never come up.

We’ve become obsessed with status and used the Democratic system to demand it. Within this system there exists the mechanism for funding these dreams through consumer debt. Instead of recognizing and rejecting the yoke of debt, the public reveled in it. They needed it, wanted it….the hell with anything else. Just – Give me what I want.

From – what really happened.com/

So, what do all these countries on the plus side of the trade imbalance do with their surplus billions? Well, they have been loaning it right back to us!

Our government engages in a practice politely called “deficit spending”. Other terms which would aptly describe the practice include “counterfeiting” and “check kiting”, but it all comes down to the same thing; spending money one does not actually have.

What would be a prison offense for a normal citizen was rendered legal for the government by the Federal Reserve Act. This was not a popular piece of legislation. In fact the Democrats had campaigned in 1912 on a platform of rejection of the creation of a private bank in charge of a fiat money system. Nevertheless, on December 23, 1913, taking advantage of the absence of congressmen opposed to the creation of a fiat monetary system during the Christmas break, the Federal Reserve Act was passed.

Years later, during the great depression, Congressman Louis T. McFadden (who served twelve years as Chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency) asked for congressional investigations of criminal conspiracy to establish the privately owned ‘Federal Reserve System’. He requested impeachment of Federal officers who had violated oaths of office both in establishing and directing the Federal Reserve — imploring Congress to investigate an incredible scope of overt criminal acts by the Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve Banks. McFadden even suggested that the Federal Reserve deliberately triggered the great stock market crash of 1929, in order to eventually force the passage of the Emergency Banking Act of March 9, 1933, which suspended the gold standard.

In describing the FED, McFadden remarked in the Congressional Record, House pages 1295 and 1296 on June 10, 1932:

“Mr. Chairman, we have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal reserve banks. The Federal Reserve Board, a Government Board, has cheated the Government of the United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the national debt. The depredations and the iniquities of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal reserve banks acting together have cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States; has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through the mis-administration of that law by which the Federal Reserve Board, and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it”.

The government will easily admit to a $3 trillion “publicly held” debt, grudgingly concede that it’s “unfunded liability” brings that number to almost $7 trillion, but the real hard truth is that total government debt, state and federal, is now over $14 trillion dollars, or about 50,000 for every man, woman, and child inside the United States. Since 1960, the taxpayers have shelled out $15 trillion in interest payments alone, while the principal continues to rise.

Yet another stunt the government has pulled is to “borrow” from the various trust funds under its control. Some $2 billion has vanished from the trust accounts of Native Americans (presently suing the Departments of the Interior and Treasury), and nearly ¾ of a TRILLION dollars has been removed from your Social Security retirement trust fund and spent in the last 8 years.

If the government has to borrow your retirement money when things are supposed to be so good, under what conditions can it repay the money? Or is that government IOU in your retirement account merely a promise to either tax you a second time or stiff you on the benefits you thought you were paying for?

Focusing on the trees has never been the way of the wise. I don’t claim to be wise – I do try and seek out the wise and listen to them. There is constant debate over which political parties, political theories and so on are responsible for the financial situation we are in – at any moment. Below is a graph that represents the forest.

Ignore The Trees