October 2010
10/08/2010
FEMA videographer with proof Cheney knew 9-11 was coming, US police seek his extradition
A FEMA videographer who has footage that conclusively proves top US government officials were aware of the 2001 terrorist attacks beforethey occurred is now wanted by the US government on murder charges.
He is the only cameraman that filmed crucial images of Ground Zero in New York after the Twin Towers collapsed.
Sonnenfeld, who lives in Buenos Aires with his Argentine family, says the footage proves that 9/11 was a lie. He still has the 22-hour footage that US authorities want.
“I have promised to give my footage to the big investigators that are credible and widely known – investigators who will be able to detect anomalies that I or other people without scientific education might miss. With that in mind, I hope that there are many things they can discover that disprove the current official story of what happened,” Sonnenfeld told a Press TV correspondent.
He says he fears for his life if he is sent back to the United States to face trial.
The Denver police have claimed they have evidence that show he killed his first wife in the US.
Social activists who are campaigning for Sonnenfeld to be given refugee status in Argentina say the Denver police are lying.
The Sonnenfelds say they have been under police surveillance and that their phone has been tapped.
Sonnenfeld claims that his footage proves top US government officials were aware of the 2001 terrorist attacks before they occurred says he is a victim of a US plot to silence his 9/11 conspiracy theory.
US Economic Collapse: 27 signs the Middle Class is circling the drain, "flush" times over
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/27-signs-that-the-standard-of-living-for-americas-middle-class-is-dropping-like-a-rock
The U.S. economy is headed for collapse and middle class Americans are in for some really, really hard times.
The following are 27 signs that the standard of living for America's middle class is dropping like a rock....
#1 Household spending for the middle fifth of all U.S. income earners was down 3.5% in 2009. That was the steepest one year decline since records began being kept back in 1984.
#2 Median household income in the United States fell from $51,726 in 2008 to $50,221 in 2009.
#3 According to one new report, in 2009 residents of New York state experienced their first full-year decline in income in more than 70 years.
#4 Of the 52 largest metro areas in the United States, only the city of San Antonio did not see a decline in median household income in 2009.
#5 Home ownership in the United States declined for the third year in a row in 2009.
#6 In 2009, approximately 4 million Americans fell out of the middle class and now live below the federal poverty line.
#7 The number of Americans enrolled in the food stamp program has set a new all-time record for 20 consecutive months.
#8 In July (the last month for which data is available), 41.8 million Americans were on food stamps.
#9 The number of Americans in the food stamp program skyrocketed more than 55 percent between December 2007 and July 2010.
#10 In 2009, more than 48 million Americans were enrolled in the Medicaid program.
#11 One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the U.S. government.
#12 According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010.
#13 According to the Cato Institute, anti-poverty spending by the U.S. government has increased 89 percent over the past decade.
#14 The cost of health care increased a staggering 9.6% for all U.S. households from 2007 to 2009.
#15 It turns out that only the top 5 percent of all U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
#16 35 percent of all U.S. households now live on $35,000 or less.
#17 New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli says that Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
#18 According to a poll taken in 2009, 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck. That was up substantially from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
#19 Today, 28% of all American households have at least one member that is searching for a full-time job.
#20 Nearly 10 million Americans now receive unemployment insurance, which is almost four times as many that were receiving it back in 2007.
#21 A recent Pew Research survey found that 55 percent of the U.S. labor force has experienced either unemployment, a pay decrease, a reduction in hours or an involuntary move to part-time work since the recession began.
#22 In 2009, 43.6 million Americans were living in poverty. Sadly, the number of Americans living in poverty has increased for three consecutive years, and the 43.6 million poor Americans in 2009 was the highest number that the U.S. Census Bureau has ever recorded in 51 years of record-keeping.
#23 A staggering 25 percent of all American adults now have a credit score below 599.
#24 It is estimated that nearly a third of all Americans cannot qualify for a mortgage because of low credit scores.
#25 For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all American households put together.
#26 Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a stunning 32 percent increase over 2008.
#27 According to a new report by the U.S. Census Bureau, the bottom fifth of all U.S. income earners brought in just 3.4 percent of all income in 2009 while the top fifth brought in a whopping 49.4 percent of all income.
If you still have a job and you can put food on the table and you still have a warm house to come home to, then you should consider yourself to be very fortunate. The truth is that every single month hundreds of thousands more Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty. The statistics that you are about to read are incredibly sobering. Household incomes are down from coast to coast. Enrollment in government anti-poverty programs sets new records month after month after month. Home ownership is down, personal bankruptcies are way up and there are not nearly enough jobs to go around. Meanwhile, the price of basics such as food and health care continue to skyrocket. Don't be fooled by a rising stock market or by record bonuses on Wall Street. The U.S. economy is not getting better. After World War II, the great American economic machine built the largest and most vigorous middle class in the history of the world, but now America's middle class is disintegrating at a blinding pace.
Most of those who write about the plight of the American middle class believe that things can be turned around and that the middle class will eventually be stronger than it ever has been. But unfortunately, that is just not the case. As a society, we have lived far, far beyond our means for decades. Now the bills are coming due and none of our leaders seem to know what to do.
Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is being rapidly assimilated into the emerging one world economy. Middle class American workers now find themselves in direct competition for jobs with the cheapest labor on the other side of the globe. Of course many multinational corporations have taken advantage of this by moving factories and jobs to countries like China where blue collar workers make about a dollar an hour. This has helped raise the standard of living for workers in those nations by a nominal amount, but it has been absolutely devastating for the standard of living of America's middle class.
So what does all of this mean?
So is there any hope that things will turn around soon?
No, not really.
At this point, even some of the top economic authorities in the nation are admitting that we are headed for very difficult times.
Goldman Sachs recently announced that the U.S. economy is likely to be either "fairly bad" or "very bad" over the next 6 to 9 months.
Not only that, but Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke now says that the U.S. economy is in a situation that is dire and "unsustainable".
Not that Goldman Sachs or Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke should be trusted when it comes to the economy.
When it comes to the problems we are facing, the truth can be found in the long-term trends. If you have not done so already, please read "11 Long-Term Trends That Are Absolutely Destroying The U.S. Economy". It will open your eyes to the true horrors that our economy is now facing.
But statistics alone do not tell the real story.
Sometimes what gets lost in the endless economic statistics is the very real pain of the millions of Americans who are trying to live through this. The following story from the Unemployed Friends website is from a woman named Leetah who is desperately hoping to be able to get through this upcoming winter....
The place I live in right now has no jobs and no places to live. My fiance, Lloyd, and I have been looking for anything but he lost his job from McDonald's and the factories (the only jobs to make a living off of) consider him an insurance liability. I can't get hired to a factory because of I was fired from our major factory for attendance (I had to miss 3 days of work because I was sick). So we are moving to the Edmond/OKC region where we are hoping to find a job and a place with running water and heating. We've spent the last few years without heat and running water and so having a place with water and heat would be heaven.
Winter is coming up fast and I am so afraid. Last winter we almost died from the cold and now the thought of cold makes my throat close up and my heart pound. But it isn't just ourselves we are looking out for, we have our dog too. Our wonderful APBT Maggie who is 2-years-old and has been with us since she was 5-months-old. She's our baby girl and we can't lose her. We almost lost her to the cold too and it scared me so much. We are going to be living in our car soon with our dog.
I am hoping to be able to keep our food stamps in the new city so we can still eat. I have already applied for ten+ jobs and nothing yet but I am keeping my hopes up. Hopefully it will get easier to find a job once we get there. Then we just have to save up and then we can afford an apartment. Now finding an apartment with my awesome dog is another story.
Please say a prayer for those who are out of work and on the verge of being forced out on the street.
You never know, you might be next.
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Fact vs. Faux News: The Truth Will NOT Be Televised
False reality
The last US combat troops have left Iraq “as promised, on schedule”, according to President Barack Obama. TV screens have filled with cinematic images of the “last US soldiers” silhouetted against the dawn light, crossing the border into Kuwait.
Fact
They are still there. At least 50,000 troops will continue to operate from 94 bases. American air assaults are unchanged, as are special forces’ assassinations. The number of “military contractors” is currently 100,000 and rising. Most Iraqi oil is now under direct foreign control.
False reality
BBC presenters and reporters have described the departing US troops as a “sort of victorious army” that has achieved “a remarkable change in [Iraq’s] fortunes”. Their commander, General David Petraeus, is a “celebrity”, “charming”, “savvy” and “remarkable”.
Fact
There is no victory of any sort. There is a catastrophic disaster; and attempts to present it as otherwise are a model of Bernays’ campaign to “re-brand” the slaughter of the first world war as “necessary” and “noble”. In 1980, Ronald Reagan, running for president, re-branded the invasion of Vietnam, in which up to three million people died, as a “noble cause”,
a theme taken up enthusiastically by Hollywood. Today’s Iraq war movies have a similar purging theme: the invader as both idealist and victim.
False reality
It is not known how many Iraqis have died. They are “countless” or maybe “in the tens of thousands”.
Fact
As a direct consequence of the Anglo-American led invasion,
a million Iraqis have died.
This figure from Opinion Research Business is based on peer-reviewed research led by Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC, whose methods were secretly affirmed as “best practice” and “robust” by the Blair government’s chief scientific adviser, as revealed in a Freedom of Information search. This figure is rarely reported or presented to “charming” and “savvy” American generals. Neither is the dispossession of four million Iraqis, the malnourishment of most Iraqi children, the epidemic of mental illness and the poisoning of the environment.
[In John Pilger's latest article for the New Statesman dated September 2nd 2010, he examines the difference between Fact and False Reality in mainstream media reporting.]
http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=586
"Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the first world war, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe.
In his book, Propaganda, published in 1928, Bernays wrote that the “intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses was an important element in democratic society” and that the manipulators “constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country”. Instead of propaganda, he coined the euphemism “public relations”.
The American tobacco industry hired Bernays to convince women they should smoke in public. By associating smoking with women’s liberation, he made cigarettes “torches of freedom”.
In 1954, he conjured a communist menace in Guatemala as an excuse for overthrowing the democratically-elected government, whose social reforms were threatening the United Fruit company’s monopoly of the banana trade. He called it a “liberation”.
Bernays was no rabid right-winger. He was an elitist liberal who believed that “engineering public consent” was for the greater good. This was achieved by the creation of “false realities” which then became “news events”.
"Perfect Storm" brewing for "global cooling" - La Nina, Quiet Sun, Volcanic Eruptions
Kirk Myers Seminole County Environmental News Examiner
“Global warming” may become one of those quaint cocktail party conversations of the past if three key climate drivers – cooling North Pacific sea surface temperatures, extremely low solar activity and increased volcanic eruptions – converge to form a “perfect storm” of plummeting temperatures that send our planet into a long-term cool-down lasting 20 or 30 years or longer.
“There are some wild cards that are different from what we saw when we came out of the last warm PDO [Pacific Decadal Oscillation] and entered its cool phase [1947 to 1976]. Now we have a very weak solar cycle and the possibility of increased volcanic activity. Together, they would create what I call the ‘Triple Crown of Cooling,’” says Accuweather meteorologist Joe Bastardi.
If all three climate-change ingredients come together, it would be a recipe for dangerously cold temperatures that would shorten the agricultural growing season in northern latitudes, crippling grain production in the wheat belts of the United States and Canada and triggering widespread food shortages and famine.
Cool Pacific Decadal Oscillation
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation refers to cyclical variations in sea surface temperatures that occur in the North Pacific Ocean. (The PDO is often described as a long-lived El Niño-like pattern.) PDO events usually persist for 20 to 30 years, alternating between warm and cool phases. During these long periods there are sometimes short-interval phase switches that can last several years.
From 1977 to 1998, during the height of “global warming,” North America was in the midst of a warm PDO. Since then, we have experienced several short-duration PDO fluctuations between cool and warm.
But the PDO has once again resumed its negative cool phase, and, as such, represents the first climate driver in the Triple Crown of Cooling. With the switch to a cool PDO, we’ve seen a change in the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which alternates between El Nino (warm phase) and La Nina (cool phase) every few years. The recent strong El Nino that began in July 2009 is now transitioning to a La Nina, a sign of cooler temperatures ahead.
“We’re definitely headed towards La Nina conditions before summer is over, and we’re looking at a moderate to strong La Nina by fall and winter, which, as these La Ninas tend to persist in the cold PDO for two years, should bring us cooler temperatures over the next few years,” predicts Joe D’Aleo, founder of the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project (ICECAP) and the first director of meteorology at the Weather Channel.
He is not alone in his forecast. Bastardi also sees a La Nina just around the corner.
“I’ve been saying since February that we’ll transition to La Nina by the middle of the hurricane season. I think we’re already seeing the atmosphere going into a La Nina state in advance of water temperatures. This will have interesting implications down the road. La Nina will dramatically cool off everything later this year and into next year, and it is a signal for strong hurricane activity,” Bastardi predicts.
The difference in sea surface temperature between positive and negative PDO phases is not more than 1 to 2 degrees Celsius, but the affected area is huge. So the temperature changes can have a big impact on the climate in North America.
In fact, as Dr. Roy Spencer points out, the warm-phase PDO lasting from 1977 to 1998 might explain most of the warming we experienced in the late 20th century.
“This is because a change in weather circulation patterns can cause a small change in global-average cloudiness. And since clouds represent the single largest internal control on global temperatures (through their ability to reflect sunlight), a change in cloudiness associated with the PDO might explain most of the climate change we’ve seen in the last 100 years or more,” he writes.
Declining solar activity
Another real concern – and the second climate driver in the Triple Crown of Cooling – is the continued stretch of weak solar activity Earth is experiencing. We recently exited the longest solar minimum –12.7 years compared to the 11-year average – in 100 years. It was a historically inactive period in terms of sunspot numbers. During the minimum, which began in 2004, we have experienced 800 spotless days. A normal cycle averages 485 spotless days.
In 2008, we experienced 265 days without a sunspot, the fourth-highest number of spotless days since continuous daily observations began in 1849. In 2009, the trend continued, with 261 spotless days, ranking it among the top five blank-sun years. Only 1878, 1901 and 1913 (the record-holder with 311 days) recorded more spotless days.
In 2010, the sun continues to remain in a funk. There were 27 spotless days (according to Layman’s sunspot count) in April and, as of May 19, 12 days without a spot. Both months exhibited periods of inexplicably low solar activity during a time when the sun should be flexing its “solar muscle” and ramping up towards the next solar maximum.
Why are sunspot numbers important? Very simple: there is a strong correlation between sunspot activity and global temperature. During the Dalton Minimum (1790 - 1830) and Maunder Minimum (1645 -1715), two periods with very low sunspot activity, temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere plummeted.
During the Dalton Minimum, the abnormally cold weather destroyed crops in northern Europe, the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. Historian John D. Post called it “the last great subsistence crisis in the Western world.” The record cold intensified after the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815, the largest volcanic eruption in more than 1,600 years (see details below).
During the 70-year Maunder Minimum, astronomers at the time counted only a few dozen sunspots per year, thousands fewer than usual. As sunspots vanished, temperatures fell. The River Thames in London froze, sea ice was reported along the coasts of southeast England, and ice floes blocked many harbors. Agricultural production nose-dived as growing seasons became shorter, leading to lower crop yields, food shortages and famine.
If the low levels of solar activity during the past three years continue through the current solar cycle (Solar Cycle 24), which is expected to peak in 2013, we could be facing a severe temperature decline within the next five to eight years as Earth’s climate begins to respond to the drop-off in solar activity.
“The sun is behaving very quietly – like it did in the late 1700s during the transition from Solar Cycle 4 to Solar Cycle 5 – which was the start of the Dalton Minimum,” D’Aleo says. If the official sunspot number reaches only 40 or 50 – a low number indicating very weak solar energy levels – during the next solar maximum, we could be facing much lower global temperatures down the road.”
Even NASA solar physicist David Hathaway has said this is “the quietest sun we've seen in almost a century.”
"Since the Space Age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high," Hathaway told NASA Science News. "Five of the ten most intense solar cycles on record have occurred in the last 50 years. We're just not used to this kind of deep calm."
Volcanic eruptions
Although the eruption of Iceland’s Mount Eyjafjallajokull volcano continues to raise havoc with air travel, it remains a relatively minor event by volcanic standards. Much of its ash cloud has stayed out of the stratosphere, where it would reflect sunlight, bringing cooler temperatures to the northern hemisphere.
Unfortunately, there is a very real chance Eyjafjallajokull’s much larger neighbor, the Katla volcano, could blow its top, creating the third-climate driver in the Triple Crown of Cooling. If Katla does erupt, it would send global temperatures into a nosedive, with a big assist from the cool PDO and a slumbering sun.
The Katla caldera measures 42 square miles and has a magma chamber with a volume of around 2.4 cubic miles, enough to produce a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) level-six eruption – an event ten times larger than Mount St. Helens.
Katla erupts about every 70 years or so, most recently in 1918, often in tandem with neighboring Eyjafjallajokull, which is not a good sign.
According to Bastardi, “The Katla volcano in Iceland is a game changer. If it erupts and sends plumes of ash and SO2 into the stratosphere, any cooling caused by the oceanic cycles would be strengthened and amplified.”
Iceland’s President Olafur Grimsson says the eruption of Eyjafjallajoekull volcano is only a "small rehearsal.”
“The time for Katla to erupt is coming close . . . I don't say if, but I say when Katla will erupt,” Grimsson predicts. And when Katla finally erupts it will “create for a long period, extraordinary damage to modern advanced society.”
Not a very encouraging outlook. Yet major eruptions throughout history bear witness to the deadly impact of volcanoes.
The Tambora eruption in 1815, the largest in 1,600 years, sent the earth’s climate into a deep freeze, triggering “the year without a summer.” Columnist Art Horn, writing in the Energy Tribune, describes the impact:
“During early June of 1815, a foot of snow fell on Quebec City. In July and August, lake and river ice were observed as far south as Pennsylvania. Frost killed crops across New England with resulting famine. During the brutal winter of 1816/17, the temperature fell to -32 in New York City.”
And Katla, with its large magma chamber, would register high on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, if it were to erupt. When it unleashed its fury in the 1700s, the volcano sent temperatures into a tailspin in North America.
As Gary Hufford, a scientist with the Alaska Region of the National Weather Service, observes:
"The Mississippi River froze just north of New Orleans and the East Coast, especially New England, had an extremely cold winter.
"Katla could cause some serious weather changes. It depends on the duration of the eruption, and how high the ash gets blasted into the stratosphere.”
Global cooling: a life-threatening event
With the PDO now in its cool phase, solar activity the weakest in more than 100 years, and the prospect of a major climate-cooling volcanic eruption, actions to limit CO2 emissions should be shelved and preparations made for an extended period of global cooling that would pose far more danger to humankind than any real or imagined warming predicted by today’s climate models.
Says D’Aleo: “Cold is far more threatening than the little extra warmth we experienced from 1977 to 1998 during the recent warm PDO. According to NASA, crop yield decreased 30 percent, and there was a 10 percent decrease in arable land during that period, which helped us feed many millions more of the earth’s population. A cooling down to Dalton Minimum temperatures or worse would lead to shortened growing seasons and large-scale crop failures. Food shortages would make worse the fact that more people die from cold than heat.”
"Perfect Storm" brewing for "global cooling" - La Nina, Quiet Sun, Volcanic Eruptions
Kirk Myers Seminole County Environmental News Examiner
“Global warming” may become one of those quaint cocktail party conversations of the past if three key climate drivers – cooling North Pacific sea surface temperatures, extremely low solar activity and increased volcanic eruptions – converge to form a “perfect storm” of plummeting temperatures that send our planet into a long-term cool-down lasting 20 or 30 years or longer.
“There are some wild cards that are different from what we saw when we came out of the last warm PDO [Pacific Decadal Oscillation] and entered its cool phase [1947 to 1976]. Now we have a very weak solar cycle and the possibility of increased volcanic activity. Together, they would create what I call the ‘Triple Crown of Cooling,’” says Accuweather meteorologist Joe Bastardi.
If all three climate-change ingredients come together, it would be a recipe for dangerously cold temperatures that would shorten the agricultural growing season in northern latitudes, crippling grain production in the wheat belts of the United States and Canada and triggering widespread food shortages and famine.
Cool Pacific Decadal Oscillation
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation refers to cyclical variations in sea surface temperatures that occur in the North Pacific Ocean. (The PDO is often described as a long-lived El Niño-like pattern.) PDO events usually persist for 20 to 30 years, alternating between warm and cool phases. During these long periods there are sometimes short-interval phase switches that can last several years.
From 1977 to 1998, during the height of “global warming,” North America was in the midst of a warm PDO. Since then, we have experienced several short-duration PDO fluctuations between cool and warm.
But the PDO has once again resumed its negative cool phase, and, as such, represents the first climate driver in the Triple Crown of Cooling. With the switch to a cool PDO, we’ve seen a change in the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which alternates between El Nino (warm phase) and La Nina (cool phase) every few years. The recent strong El Nino that began in July 2009 is now transitioning to a La Nina, a sign of cooler temperatures ahead.
“We’re definitely headed towards La Nina conditions before summer is over, and we’re looking at a moderate to strong La Nina by fall and winter, which, as these La Ninas tend to persist in the cold PDO for two years, should bring us cooler temperatures over the next few years,” predicts Joe D’Aleo, founder of the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project (ICECAP) and the first director of meteorology at the Weather Channel.
He is not alone in his forecast. Bastardi also sees a La Nina just around the corner.
“I’ve been saying since February that we’ll transition to La Nina by the middle of the hurricane season. I think we’re already seeing the atmosphere going into a La Nina state in advance of water temperatures. This will have interesting implications down the road. La Nina will dramatically cool off everything later this year and into next year, and it is a signal for strong hurricane activity,” Bastardi predicts.
The difference in sea surface temperature between positive and negative PDO phases is not more than 1 to 2 degrees Celsius, but the affected area is huge. So the temperature changes can have a big impact on the climate in North America.
In fact, as Dr. Roy Spencer points out, the warm-phase PDO lasting from 1977 to 1998 might explain most of the warming we experienced in the late 20th century.
“This is because a change in weather circulation patterns can cause a small change in global-average cloudiness. And since clouds represent the single largest internal control on global temperatures (through their ability to reflect sunlight), a change in cloudiness associated with the PDO might explain most of the climate change we’ve seen in the last 100 years or more,” he writes.
Declining solar activity
Another real concern – and the second climate driver in the Triple Crown of Cooling – is the continued stretch of weak solar activity Earth is experiencing. We recently exited the longest solar minimum –12.7 years compared to the 11-year average – in 100 years. It was a historically inactive period in terms of sunspot numbers. During the minimum, which began in 2004, we have experienced 800 spotless days. A normal cycle averages 485 spotless days.
In 2008, we experienced 265 days without a sunspot, the fourth-highest number of spotless days since continuous daily observations began in 1849. In 2009, the trend continued, with 261 spotless days, ranking it among the top five blank-sun years. Only 1878, 1901 and 1913 (the record-holder with 311 days) recorded more spotless days.
In 2010, the sun continues to remain in a funk. There were 27 spotless days (according to Layman’s sunspot count) in April and, as of May 19, 12 days without a spot. Both months exhibited periods of inexplicably low solar activity during a time when the sun should be flexing its “solar muscle” and ramping up towards the next solar maximum.
Why are sunspot numbers important? Very simple: there is a strong correlation between sunspot activity and global temperature. During the Dalton Minimum (1790 - 1830) and Maunder Minimum (1645 -1715), two periods with very low sunspot activity, temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere plummeted.
During the Dalton Minimum, the abnormally cold weather destroyed crops in northern Europe, the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. Historian John D. Post called it “the last great subsistence crisis in the Western world.” The record cold intensified after the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815, the largest volcanic eruption in more than 1,600 years (see details below).
During the 70-year Maunder Minimum, astronomers at the time counted only a few dozen sunspots per year, thousands fewer than usual. As sunspots vanished, temperatures fell. The River Thames in London froze, sea ice was reported along the coasts of southeast England, and ice floes blocked many harbors. Agricultural production nose-dived as growing seasons became shorter, leading to lower crop yields, food shortages and famine.
If the low levels of solar activity during the past three years continue through the current solar cycle (Solar Cycle 24), which is expected to peak in 2013, we could be facing a severe temperature decline within the next five to eight years as Earth’s climate begins to respond to the drop-off in solar activity.
“The sun is behaving very quietly – like it did in the late 1700s during the transition from Solar Cycle 4 to Solar Cycle 5 – which was the start of the Dalton Minimum,” D’Aleo says. If the official sunspot number reaches only 40 or 50 – a low number indicating very weak solar energy levels – during the next solar maximum, we could be facing much lower global temperatures down the road.”
Even NASA solar physicist David Hathaway has said this is “the quietest sun we've seen in almost a century.”
"Since the Space Age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high," Hathaway told NASA Science News. "Five of the ten most intense solar cycles on record have occurred in the last 50 years. We're just not used to this kind of deep calm."
Volcanic eruptions
Although the eruption of Iceland’s Mount Eyjafjallajokull volcano continues to raise havoc with air travel, it remains a relatively minor event by volcanic standards. Much of its ash cloud has stayed out of the stratosphere, where it would reflect sunlight, bringing cooler temperatures to the northern hemisphere.
Unfortunately, there is a very real chance Eyjafjallajokull’s much larger neighbor, the Katla volcano, could blow its top, creating the third-climate driver in the Triple Crown of Cooling. If Katla does erupt, it would send global temperatures into a nosedive, with a big assist from the cool PDO and a slumbering sun.
The Katla caldera measures 42 square miles and has a magma chamber with a volume of around 2.4 cubic miles, enough to produce a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) level-six eruption – an event ten times larger than Mount St. Helens.
Katla erupts about every 70 years or so, most recently in 1918, often in tandem with neighboring Eyjafjallajokull, which is not a good sign.
According to Bastardi, “The Katla volcano in Iceland is a game changer. If it erupts and sends plumes of ash and SO2 into the stratosphere, any cooling caused by the oceanic cycles would be strengthened and amplified.”
Iceland’s President Olafur Grimsson says the eruption of Eyjafjallajoekull volcano is only a "small rehearsal.”
“The time for Katla to erupt is coming close . . . I don't say if, but I say when Katla will erupt,” Grimsson predicts. And when Katla finally erupts it will “create for a long period, extraordinary damage to modern advanced society.”
Not a very encouraging outlook. Yet major eruptions throughout history bear witness to the deadly impact of volcanoes.
The Tambora eruption in 1815, the largest in 1,600 years, sent the earth’s climate into a deep freeze, triggering “the year without a summer.” Columnist Art Horn, writing in the Energy Tribune, describes the impact:
“During early June of 1815, a foot of snow fell on Quebec City. In July and August, lake and river ice were observed as far south as Pennsylvania. Frost killed crops across New England with resulting famine. During the brutal winter of 1816/17, the temperature fell to -32 in New York City.”
And Katla, with its large magma chamber, would register high on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, if it were to erupt. When it unleashed its fury in the 1700s, the volcano sent temperatures into a tailspin in North America.
As Gary Hufford, a scientist with the Alaska Region of the National Weather Service, observes:
"The Mississippi River froze just north of New Orleans and the East Coast, especially New England, had an extremely cold winter.
"Katla could cause some serious weather changes. It depends on the duration of the eruption, and how high the ash gets blasted into the stratosphere.”
Global cooling: a life-threatening event
With the PDO now in its cool phase, solar activity the weakest in more than 100 years, and the prospect of a major climate-cooling volcanic eruption, actions to limit CO2 emissions should be shelved and preparations made for an extended period of global cooling that would pose far more danger to humankind than any real or imagined warming predicted by today’s climate models.
Says D’Aleo: “Cold is far more threatening than the little extra warmth we experienced from 1977 to 1998 during the recent warm PDO. According to NASA, crop yield decreased 30 percent, and there was a 10 percent decrease in arable land during that period, which helped us feed many millions more of the earth’s population. A cooling down to Dalton Minimum temperatures or worse would lead to shortened growing seasons and large-scale crop failures. Food shortages would make worse the fact that more people die from cold than heat.”
10/07/2010
Single link to all global banking scandals: BCCI - New Book: REVOLUTION OR WW III
To get a more complete understanding of our current crisis, we need to look at the history of events that led up to it. We need to peer deeply into the inner workings of the Global Banking Intelligence Complex. Without acknowledging and exposing the covert forces that are aligned against us, we will not be able to effectively overcome them.
In the past I have shied away from going too deeply into the details of the intelligence world out of fear of being written off and dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. If I hadn’t spent the majority of the past 20 years investigating global financial intelligence operations, I certainly wouldn’t believe half of this myself. Given the severity of our current crisis and the imminent devastating implications, I now realize that I must go deeper into covert activities than I publicly ever have. The information I am about to report is very well-sourced and documented, and needs to be covered before we can proceed to exposing present operations.
Here is a partial list of the economic and political scandals that I investigated throughout the 1980s and early ’90s:
The Savings & Loan scandal; Stock market manipulation and money laundering; Iran-Contra Affair; The October Surprise and Iran hostage crisis; Iraqgate-BNL and the rise and funding of Saddam Hussein; Pakistan’s nuclear program and the selling of bomb-making technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea; The rise and funding of the Afghan Mujahideen (founding and funding of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network); Illegal weapon sales to Iran and Saudi Arabia; The proliferation of Middle Eastern terrorism; The international drug trade run by people like Manuel Noriega and Pablo Escobar.
All of these scandals had one vital thing in common, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
In December 1992, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations delivered a report on their investigation into the bank, entitled “The BCCI Affair.” The report would disclose the largest political corruption case in the history of the global economy. As the Senate Committeesummed it up:
“BCCI’s criminality included fraud by BCCI and BCCI customers involving billions of dollars; money laundering in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas; BCCI’s bribery of officials in most of those locations; support of terrorism, arms trafficking, and the sale of nuclear technologies; management of prostitution; the commission and facilitation of income tax evasion, smuggling, and illegal immigration; illicit purchases of banks and real estate; and a panoply of financial crimes limited only by the imagination of its officers and customers.
Among BCCI’s principal mechanisms for committing crimes were its use of shell corporations and bank confidentiality and secrecy havens; layering of its corporate structure; its use of front-men and nominees, guarantees and buy-back arrangements; back-to-back financial documentation among BCCI controlled entities, kick-backs and bribes, the intimidation of witnesses, and the retention of well-placed insiders to discourage governmental action.”
The BCCI scandal gave citizens of the world a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the covert global banking intelligence power structure, revealing power politics in its purest form. BCCI was modeled after the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies and multinational corporations. It represented the evolution of organized crime into the new world of the global economy, rendering nation-states obsolete. BCCI transcended religions and nationalities; it cut across the entire political spectrum, uniting countries and groups that, on the surface, were considered rivals, yet were unified in their pursuit of power.
BCCI consisted of a complex alliance of intelligence agencies, multinational corporations, weapons dealers, drug traffickers, terrorists, global bankers and high-ranking government officials. It involved leaders from 73 countries and formed what was described as “an elaborate corporate spider web.”
As former US Senate investigator Jack Blum described it:
“The problem that we are all having in dealing with this bank is that… it had 3,000 criminal customers and every one of those 3,000 criminal customers is a page one story. So if you pick up on one of [BCCI's] accounts you could find financing from nuclear weapons, gun running, narcotics dealing, and you will find all manner and means of crime around the world in the records of this bank.”
BCCI would become known as the Bank of Crooks and Criminals with clientele such as Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, Pablo Escobar, Abu Nidal, the Qassar brothers, Muammar Gaddafi, Ben Banerjee, Cyrus Hashemi, Ferdinand Marcos, Rodriguez Gacha, Alan Garcia, Daniel Ortega, Adolfo Calero, Adnan Khashoggi, Manucher Ghorbanifar, Sarkis Soghanalian, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Islamic Jihad holy warriors the Mujahideen, including Osama bin Laden and many others.
In a 1991 Time magazine article entitled, “The Dirtiest Bank of All,” investigative journalists Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne summed up BCCI this way:
“Nothing in the history of modern financial scandals rivals the unfolding saga of the Bank of Credit & Commerce International, the $20 billion rogue empire that regulators in 62 countries shut down early this month in a stunning global sweep. Never has a single scandal involved so much money, so many nations or so many prominent people.
Superlatives are quickly exhausted: it is the largest corporate criminal enterprise ever, the biggest Ponzi scheme, the most pervasive money-laundering operation and financial supermarket ever created for the likes of Manuel Noriega, Ferdinand Marcos, Saddam Hussein and the Colombian drug barons.”
In another report Beaty and Gwynne added:
“This is the story of how the wealthy and corrupt in Latin America managed to steal virtually every dollar lent to their countries by Western banks, creating the debt crisis of the 1980s; how heads of state… skimmed billions from their national treasuries and hid them in Swiss and Caymanian accounts forever free from snooping regulators; how Pakistan and Iraq got materials for nuclear weaponry and how Libya built poison-gas plants.”
Even though BCCI was a Middle Eastern-based bank, investigations by the US Senate, NY Attorney General Robert Morgenthau and several award-winning journalists revealed that BCCI was run by the CIA and top US officials. CIA covert operations were run through BCCI’s “black network.” Former CIA directors George Bush Sr., William Casey and Richard Helms, former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were all key players and shielded the bank from investigations throughout its reign. BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi and former CIA director William Casey met secretly for years. BCCI’s Mohammed Irvani was partners with former CIA director Richard Helms. BCCI frontmen Kamal Adham and A.R. Khalil were top Saudi intelligence directors and primary CIA liaisons for the entire Middle East. Many high-ranking Republicans and Democrats were vital to the bank’s operations, along with top corporate executives at First American Bank, Bank of America, PR firm Hill & Knowlton, cable company TCI, and auditing firms Price Waterhouse and Ernst & Young - to name just a few US companies that played crucial roles.
The CIA, DIA, and NSC used BCCI as their own private bank, sending billions of dollars in covert funding and weapons to organizations and countries with which we are now in conflict - most notably the Mujahideen in Afghanistan (which evolved into Al Qaeda and the Taliban), Pakistan’s ISI, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the government of Iran.
BCCI investigations gave us the most detailed and well-documented view into the inner workings of the “war racket” that we have ever had. The BCCI Affair blatantly exposed how global intelligence agencies and banking interests covertly fund terrorists and drug cartels all over the world. As investigative reporter Chris Floyd wrote, “Instead of stopping the drug-runners and terrorists, the CIA decided to join them, using BCCI’s secret channels to finance ‘black ops’ all over the world.”
Reporting in Time magazine, Beaty and Gwynne revealed some of the details:
“From interviews with sources close to B.C.C.I., TIME has pieced together a portrait of a clandestine division of the bank called the ‘black network,’ which functions as a global intelligence operation and a Mafia-like enforcement squad…. The black network — so named by its own members — stops at almost nothing to further the bank’s aims the world over.
The more conventional departments of B.C.C.I. handled such services as laundering money for the drug trade and helping dictators loot their national treasuries. The black network, which is still functioning, operates a lucrative arms-trade business and transports drugs and gold. According to investigators and participants in those operations, it often works with Western and Middle Eastern intelligence agencies. The strange and still murky ties between B.C.C.I. and the intelligence agencies of several countries are so pervasive that even the White House has become entangled. As TIME reported earlier this month, the National Security Council used B.C.C.I. to funnel money for the Iran-contra deals, and the CIA maintained accounts in B.C.C.I. for covert operations. Moreover, investigators have told TIME that the Defense Intelligence Agency has maintained a slush-fund account with B.C.C.I., apparently to pay for clandestine activities….
The black network was a natural outgrowth of B.C.C.I.’s dubious and criminal associations…. Its original purpose was to pay bribes, intimidate authorities and quash investigations. But according to a former operative, sometime in the early 1980s the black network began running its own drugs, weapons and currency deals….
Sources have told investigators that B.C.C.I. worked closely with Israel’s spy agencies and other Western intelligence groups as well, especially in arms deals. The bank also maintained cozy relationships with international terrorists, say investigators who discovered suspected terrorist accounts for Libya, Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organization in B.C.C.I.’s London offices….
U.S. intelligence agencies were well aware of such activities. ‘B.C.C.I. played an indispensable role in facilitating deals between Israel and some Middle Eastern countries,’ says a former State Department official. ‘And when you look at the Saudi support of the contras, ask yourself who the middleman was: there was no government-to-government connection between the Saudis and Nicaragua.’”
The CIA worked in partnership with BCCI in what was, at the time, the agency’s largest covert operation ever, pumping an estimated $10 billion into funding the Afghan Mujahideen’s anti-Soviet Jihad.
In a 1992 article entitled, “The Riyadh Connection,” Time magazine reported:
“B.C.C.I. was similarly entwined in another key U.S. intelligence operation of the 1980s: the supply of arms and money to the Afghan rebels. While such clandestine support was legally condoned, B.C.C.I. officials have told reporters that CIA Director William Casey… struck a deal that included off-the-books operations never reported to the U.S. Congress.”
Pakistan would play a pivotal role in support of the Afghan Mujahideen. Pakistan was run by a corrupt militant oligarchy and was the operational home of BCCI. In “ Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks,” investigative reporter Loretta Napoleoni revealed details:
“As soon as Abedi’s bank [BCCI] came on board, all [CIA] covert operations were passed to its ‘black network’, virtually a secret banking institution within the bank. Its headquarters were in Karachi and it was from this city that the underground network acted as a full-service bank for the CIA. With about 15,000 employees, it operated in a similar fashion to the Mafia. It was a fully integrated organization; it financed and brokered covert arms deals among different countries, it shipped goods using its own fleet, insured them with its own agency and provided manpower and security en route. In Pakistan, BCCI officials knew whom to bribe and when to do it. They also knew where to channel the funds. Richard Kerr, the former CIA director who admitted that the CIA had secret BCCI accounts in Pakistan, confirmed that those accounts had been opened to distribute the CIA funds to Pakistani officers and members of the Afghan resistance. By the mid-1980s, the black network had gained control of the port of Karachi and handled all customs operations for CIA shipments to Afghanistan, including the necessary bribes for the ISI [Pakistan’s intelligence service]. It was BCCI’s job to make sure that cargoes of arms and equipment were discharged quickly….
As the war progressed, costs soared. There was constant shortage of money along the pipeline to supply the Mujahedin and so the ISI and CIA began looking for additional sources of income. One that proved viable was drug smuggling. Soon the narcotics-based economy took over the traditional agrarian economy of Afghanistan…. Within two years the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderland had become the biggest centre for the production of heroin in the world and the single greatest supplier of heroin on American streets, meeting 60 per cent of the US demand for narcotics. Annual profits were estimated between $100 billion and $200 billion. . . . In 1995, the former CIA director of Afghan operations, Charles Cogan, admitted that the CIA had indeed sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War.”
In “Afghanistan 1979-1992: America’s Jihad,” investigative journalist Tim Weiner reported:
“The CIA’s pipeline leaked. It leaked badly. It spilled huge quantities of weapons all over one of the world’s most anarchic areas. First the Pakistani armed forces took what they wanted from the weapons shipments. Then corrupt Afghan guerrilla leaders stole and sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of anti-aircraft guns, missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47 automatic rifles, ammunition and mines from the CIA’s arsenal. Some of the weapons fell into the hands of criminal gangs, heroin kingpins and the most radical faction of the Iranian military…. While their troops eked out hard lives in Afghanistan’s mountains and deserts, the guerrillas’ political leaders maintained fine villas in Peshawar and fleets of vehicles at their command. The CIA kept silent as the Afghan politicos converted the Agency’s weapons into cash.”
Through this operation Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network was formed. Bin Laden had accounts in BCCI and ran a CIA/BCCI-funded camp. [I'll go into further detail on this aspect of the BCCI Affair in the next report.]
BCCI also funded Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program when they set up the Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology. Pakistan then went on to sell the technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea. As a Chicago Sun Times report summed it up:
“[Pakistan's] President Pervez Musharraf has pledged that the disgraced founder of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program can keep the vast wealth he accumulated selling bomb-making technology to rogue states around the world. Just days after Musharraf provoked worldwide consternation by pardoning Abdul Qadeer Khan for supplying nuclear expertise to Libya, Iran and North Korea, he told the Sunday Telegraph he would also spare the scientist’s property or assets. ‘He can keep his money,’ Musharraf said, adding there had been good reason not to investigate the origin of Khan’s suspicious wealth before 1998, when Pakistan successfully tested its first nuclear weapon. ‘… you have to ask yourself whether you act against the person who enabled you to get the bomb.’ Khan is thought to have earned millions of dollars from his sale of nuclear know-how, beginning in the late 1980s. Much of the money was funneled through [BCCI] bank accounts in the Middle East.”
George Bush Sr. and current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates were key players in the BCCI financed Iran-Contra Affair. As the US Independent Counsel For Iran/Contra Matters investigation stated:
“Robert M. Gates was the Central Intelligence Agency’s deputy director for intelligence (DDI) from 1982 to 1986. He was confirmed as the CIA’s deputy director of central intelligence (DDCI) in April of 1986 and became acting director of central intelligence in December of that same year. Owing to his senior status in the CIA, Gates was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran/contra affair and was in a position to have known of their activities.”
Leslie Alan Aspin, a British CIA agent who was killed in 1989, had classified documents proving Bush Sr.’s involvement in illegal covert weapon sales to Iran. A 1991 report in New York Magazine by Christopher Byron revealed some details and was later summed up in The Reference Shelf:
“In a ten-page statement dated May 1. 1987, Aspin describes how he organized a 1984 BCCI financed TOW missile shipment from Portugal to Iran on behalf of Oliver North. Though North was at that time on the staff of the National Security Council, his recently declassified diaries indicate that he was spending much of his time working for Bush.”
Key Iran-Contra asset Oliver North was involved in the operations and was working directly for Bush Sr., who was Vice President at the time. North maintained several accounts in BCCI which he used to finance his covert operations. As Time magazinereported:
“… the National Security Council used B.C.C.I. to funnel money for the Iran-contra deals…. When American arms destined for Iran and Iraq passed through Israel, for example, B.C.C.I. was frequently the broker and financier…. There was, for example, the highly sensitive question of B.C.C.I.’s direct involvement in the secret arms-for-hostages deals in Iran during the 1980s, in which it acted as a broker and financier of weapons sales. Ollie North maintained three accounts at the B.C.C.I. Paris branch, and B.C.C.I. was used to transfer money to the contras.”
George Bush Sr. would go on to pardon convicted Iran-Contra figures - former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five former CIA employees; Elliott Abrams, Robert McFarlane, Duane Clarridge, Alan Fiers, and Clair George. Robert Gates then went on to serve as Director of the CIA under Bush Sr., and is currently serving as Secretary of Defense under President Obama, having been selected to that position by former President George Bush Jr..
V: Kissinger Associates & Iraqgate-BNL
George Bush Sr. and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were also heavily involved in another illegal covert operation run through an Italian BCCI-linked bank called Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL). BNL was used to covertly funnel billions of dollars to Saddam Hussein. This scandal would become known as Iraqgate.
In April 1992, former Congressmen Henry B. Gonzalez (TX-20) stated the following in the Congressional Record:
“Kissinger Associates, Scowcroft, Eagleburger, Stoga, Iraq, and BNL
Mr. GONZALEZ: ‘Mr. Speaker, today I will talk about Henry Kissinger, his consulting firm Kissinger Associates, two former Kissinger Associates directors, Lawrence Eagleburger and Brent Scowcroft, and the chief economist at Kissinger Associates, Alan Stoga.
I will explore their links to Banca Nazionale del Lavoro [BNL] and Iraq, and the Bush administration’s handling of the BNL scandal. But first, I will provide some background information on the BNL scandal….
The $4 billion plus in BNL loans to Iraq between 1985 and 1990 were crucial to Iraqi efforts to feed its people and to build weapons of mass destruction. In addition, the BNL loans were crucial to Reagan and Bush administration efforts to assist Saddam Hussein….
It is truly amazing that the BNL scandal went on as long as it did. Various agencies within our Government knew of BNL’s role in bankrolling Iraq–yet they supposedly did not know that the loans were unauthorized or not properly reported….
Several of BNL’s high level friends in the United States should have been aware of the BNL loans to Iraq. The high level patrons that I am referring to are Henry Kissinger, and his Kissinger Associates compadres, Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger….
I will reveal that both Mr. Eagleburger and Mr. Scowcroft played a key role in the Bush administration’s handling of the BNL scandal, even though BNL was a paying client of Kissinger Associates just months prior to the BNL scandal becoming public….
Kissinger Deliberately Misleads Public
Until recently, Mr. Kissinger was a member of the BNL’s international advisory board and during the height of the BNL-Atlanta scandal BNL was a paying client of Kissinger Associates.
While Henry Kissinger was a paid member of the BNL’s advisory board for international policy between 1985 and June 1991, he received at least $10,000 for attending each meeting of the BNL advisory board.
Other BNL advisory board members included David Rockefeller, the chairman of the Rockefeller Group and a director of Chase Manhattan Bank, Pierre Trudeau, the former Prime Minister of Canada, Lord Thornycroft, the former British Minister of Defense, and other politically well-connected international notables.
After my April 25, 1991, floor statement on Mr. Kissinger, he told the Financial Times newspaper that he had resigned from the BNL advisory board a week before the BNL indictment in February 1991 because `he did not want to answer questions about such incidents.’
Two weeks ago, the prominent TV show, ‘60 Minutes,’ revealed that Kissinger had not resigned from the BNL advisory board in February 1991, as he had told the Financial Times. In fact, `60 Minutes’ reported that Mr. Kissinger served on BNL’s advisory board until his contract expired in the summer of 1991, more than 4 months after the date he had previously reported.
Mr. Kissinger was not the only Kissinger Associates employee that dealt with BNL. Mr. Brent Scowcroft, the vice chairman and Mr. Lawrence Eagleburger, the president of Kissinger Associates also had relationships with BNL.
Brent Scowcroft, BNL, and Iraq
One of the most prominent of the Kissinger Associates alumni is Brent Scowcroft, President Bush’s current National Security Adviser and head of the NSC staff. . . .
Scowcroft often took charge of the National Security Council while Kissinger was fulfilling his duties as Secretary of State, and in 1975 he succeeded Kissinger as National Security Adviser to President Ford….
In 1982, Scowcroft joined Kissinger in setting up Kissinger Associates. Scowcroft served as vice chairman and head of Kissinger Associate’s Washington, DC, office until becoming the head of the National Security Council under President Bush in January 1989….
Alan Stoga–Kissinger Associates
Another link between Kissinger Associates, BNL and Iraq is Alan Stoga. Alan Stoga is a former economist at First Chicago Bank and is currently a director of Kissinger Associates. Mr. Stoga is said to be an expert in country risk analysis and international finance. He has been interested in the Middle East for many years and has made extensive visits to the area….
Conclusion
BNL was a client of Mr. Scowcroft’s while he was the vice-chairman of Kissinger Associates. Mr. Scowcroft regularly provided advice to BNL’s management and received hefty fees in return.
Mr. Scowcroft and his staff at the National Security Council, along with the State Department, masterminded the Bush administration’s handling of the BNL scandal in order to mitigate the damage it would have caused to United States-Iraq relations. In the process they trampled on United States law enforcement efforts and repeatedly misled the Congress and the American public about the United States policy toward Iraq….
As for Mr. Kissinger, he misled the public about his relationship with BNL and about his firm’s contact with Saddam Hussein. Mr. Stoga misled the Banking Committee about the reasons for his trip to Iraq in the summer of 1989 when he met with Saddam Hussein to discuss Iraq’s debt problems.’”
Kissinger and his firm Kissinger Associates played a key role throughout BCCI’s entire existence. The Senate investigation report had an entire chapter focusing on Kissinger’s role, entitled “BCCI And Kissinger Associates.” After the report was released to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Henry Kissinger got them toredact several sections from the Government Printing Office’s final hardcopy version.
VI: The Ultimate Conspiracy: The BCCI Cover-Up
In Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne’s ground-breaking book on BCCI, entitled “The Outlaw Bank,” they detailed the overwhelming evidence proving the dominant role US intelligence, governmental agencies and global banking interests played in BCCI operations and in covering up the bank’s scandalous and illegal activities. As they reported:
“Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the BCCI affair in the United States was the failure of U.S. government and federal law enforcement to move against the outlaw bank. Instead of swift retribution, what took place over more than a decade was a cover-up of major, alarming proportions, often orchestrated from the very highest levels of government. When the Justice Department finally moved decisively against BCCI in late 1991, it did so reluctantly.”
As the US Senate report revealed:
“The political connections of BCCI’s U.S. lawyers and lobbyists were critical to impeding Congressional and law enforcement investigations from 1988 through 1991, through a variety of techniques that included impugning the motives and integrity of investigators and journalists, withholding subpoenaed documents, and lobbying on Capitol Hill to protect BCCI’s reputation and discourage efforts to close the bank down in the United States.”
As Beaty and Gwynne revealed in detail, government documents exposing BCCI’s criminality went back to 1979. As they wrote, “authentic, unambiguous information” on the bank’s illegal activity was presented to the State Department, Justice Department, Drug Enforcement Agency, Internal Revenue Service, Commerce Department, Customs Department, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of Energy, and the White House’s National Security Council.
Perhaps more than anyone, the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve had extensive information on BCCI’s criminal activities. As investigations revealed, “the detail of information was exceptional.” During pivotal BCCI years, James Baker, after serving as President Reagan’s Chief of Staff, was Treasury Secretary from 1985 - ‘88. After Baker left the Treasury Department, he became Bush Sr.’s Secretary of State from 1989 - ‘92. At the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, after serving as a director at the Council on Foreign Relations, became Fed Chairman in 1987 and served in that position throughout BCCI’s reign.
VII: Wall Street & US Banking Industry
BCCI penetrated deeply into Wall Street and the US banking industry. With the help of former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, BCCI secretly owned Washington’s largest bank, First American, and Bank of America was a vital BCCI lifeline. As Beaty and Gwynne revealed:
“B.C.C.I. even accomplished a Stealth-like invasion of the U.S. banking industry by secretly buying First American Bankshares, a Washington-based holding company with offices stretching from Florida to New York….
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.”
Stock Market Manipulation & Money Laundering
Long before the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) was covering-up wide-scale manipulation of the stock market during this economic crisis, they were working overtime to conceal BCCI money laundering and market manipulation. As the 1992 US Senate Report stated:
“In the entire BCCI affair, perhaps no entity is more mysterious and yet more central to BCCI’s collapse and criminality than Capcom, a London and Chicago based commodities futures firm which operated between 1984 and 1988. Capcom is vital to understanding BCCI because BCCI’s top management and most important Saudi shareholders were involved with the firm. Moreover, Capcom moved huge amounts of money — billions of dollars — which passed through the future’s markets in a largely anonymous fashion.
Capcom was created by the former head of BCCI’s Treasury Department, Ziauddin Ali Akbar, who capitalized it with funds from BCCI and BCCI customers…. Additionally, the company employed many of the same practices as BCCI, especially the use of nominees and front companies to disguise ownership and the movement of money. Four Americans, Larry Romrell, Robert Magness, Kerry Fox and Robert Powell — none of whom had any experience or expertise in the commodities markets — played important and varied roles as frontmen….
The commodities markets in the U.K. and the U.S. are not restricted, regulated or supervised as stringently as the banking industry or the securities markets.
Moreover, the commodities markets can sustain almost limitless volume, a necessary prerequisite for crime on the scale of that contemplated by BCCI since fraudulent transactions may be hidden in a multitude of legitimate ones. In a letter to the directors, the Chairman of Capcom, Larry Romrell, reported 165 million in trading during the first four months of operation, and profits of 883,393. That trend continued until 1988 leading Akbar to boast to agent Mazur: ‘We have contracted 165,000 contracts totaling $53 billion with Drexel Burnham,’ and later, ‘we have done over $90 billion total in 1988.’
While the number of contracts and dollar volume seems unbelievable, a commodities company can artificially create massive volume by many small or no-risk trading methods. Indeed, the volume generated by Capcom helped it to generate respectability and acceptance with reputable banks and brokers. For example, listed under ‘Auditors and Advisers’ in Capcom’s 1987 Annual Report were the following major international banks: Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, London, National Westminster Bank Plc, Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, New York, Deutsche Westminster Bank, A.G., and National Westminster Bank, plc. Elsewhere, Capcom noted its ties to Dean Witter Reynolds, American Express Bank, Refco, Prudential Bache Trading Corp., and Sumitomo Trust and Banking, Ltd.”
Also, long before the modern techniques of market manipulation and money laundering, like high frequency trading, round trip trading and quote stuffing, BCCI mastered a technique called “mirror image trading.”
The Senate report continued:
“Capcom and Money Laundering
There is evidence that Capcom engaged in money laundering for a variety of clients both in the United States and in London. For example, some 50 transactions were identified in the Futures, Inc. accounts with insufficient or no supporting documentation regarding the source or disposition of funds. These transactions totaled more than $125,000,000.
In testimony to the Subcommittee, Customs agent Robert Mazur testified how Akbar used ‘mirror-image’ trading to launder huge sums of money. Mirror image trading involves buying contracts for one account while selling an equal number from another account. Since both accounts are controlled by the same individual any profit or loss is effectively netted. According to Mazur, Akbar explained that because these ‘mirror image’ transactions can be lost among many millions of dollars worth of legitimate transactions ‘it would take forever for anyone to ever find it.’
Using mirror-image trading, Akbar bilked the BCCI Treasury accounts and laundered money for one of Capcom’s most notorious clients, General Manuel Antonio Noriega. Although complex, the series of transactions involving Noriega, BCCI and Capcom provide an illustration of textbook money laundering….
Conclusion….
In terms of the broader lessons of Capcom, regulation of the futures markets need to be greatly strengthened. Even a cursory background check on Akbar would have revealed that he had managed the Treasury accounts at BCCI which lost $400 million in the futures markets in the early eighties. Moreover, regulators who appeared before the Subcommittee testified on the one hand that annual audits of Capcom US turned up nothing irregular, but that Capcom’s books and records were a mess. That such a contradiction was allowed to continue for four years indicates that the CFTC needs to critically review the effectiveness of the various exchange audits. Finally, money laundering should be made a crime under the Commodities Futures Trading Act.”
VIII: The Savings and Loan Scandal
The Savings and Loan scandal was a significant part of the BCCI Affair. Looking back through piles of documents and research I’ve gathered, it is stunning how similar that crisis was to our current crisis. Both operations were put into motion as a result of the deregulation of key sectors of the financial system; in both of these cases the real estate sector was a main component. This is a clear pattern in financial intelligence operations. The first essential mission is to create legislation that allows for the creation of dark spaces, or “dark pools,” within key areas of the financial system where intelligence operations can then be executed without oversight or accountability.
To show you how history repeated itself, here’s an excerpt from the 1993 book, “Banking Scandals: The S&Ls and BCCI,” edited by Robert Emmet Long:
“The Savings and Loan debacle – the greatest scandal in the history of American banking – first came to national attention in the mid-1980’s. At that point, the failure of the thrifts, as S&Ls are sometimes known, appeared to be a controllable and containable situation. Both government officials and representatives of the Savings and Loan industry gave assurances that the S&L industry was still sound, and both worked to head off a full-scale investigation.… The delay in confronting the situation cost taxpayers billions of dollars. The price tag for bailing out the failed banks steadily escalated, from estimates of $50 billion at first to $500 billion and then $750 billion or even a staggering $1 trillion.…
The Savings and Loan scandal was unparalleled in the extent of its chicanery and in its ultimate cost to taxpayers, who will be paying for it for decades to come… In a series of steps beginning in 1980, the S&Ls were deregulated at the same time that the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance protection for depositors rose from $40,000 to $100,000. The combination stimulated get-rich-quick investments of a highly speculative nature on the part of bankers, who looted the treasuries of the institutions they were entrusted to protect.”
It was also George Bush Sr. who, then as Vice President, oversaw the “task force on deregulation and bank supervision” that led directly to the S&L crisis. In fact, his son, Neil Bush became known as the “poster boy” of the S&L crisis. Neil was nicknamed “the Silverado Kid” after he cost US taxpayers $1.3 billion while running Silverado Banking, Savings & Loan. In 1989, after becoming president, George Bush Sr. promptly bailed out the S&L industry, costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
Many of the failed S&L thrifts served as secret intelligence shell companies and were traced back to BCCI and the CIA. In a study entitled, “Organized Crime, The CIA and the Savings and Loan Scandal,” Criminal Justice Professor Gary W. Potter explains:
“It is not our intent to discuss the unethical and even illegal business practices of the failed savings and loans and their governmental collaborators. The outlandish salaries paid by S & L executives to themselves, the subsidies to the thrifts from Congress which rewarded incompetence and fraud, the land ‘flips’ which resulted in real estate being sold back and forth in an endless ‘kiting’ scheme, and the political manipulation designed to delay the scandal until after the 1988 presidential elections are all immensely interesting and important. But they are subjects for others’ inquiries. Our interest is in the savings and loans as living, breathing organisms that fused criminal corporations, organized crime, and the CIA into a single entity that served the interests of the political and economic elite in America. Let us begin by quickly summarizing the most blatant examples of collaboration between financial institutions, the mob, and the intelligence community….
First National Bank of Maryland…
Palmer National Bank…
Indian Springs Bank…
Vision Banc Savings…
Hill Financial Savings…
Sunshine State Bank…All told at least twenty-two of the failed S & L’s can be tied to joint money laundering ventures by the CIA and organized crime figures. If the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s reveal anything, they demonstrate what has often been stated as a maxim in organized crime research: that corruption linking government, business, and syndicates is the reality of the day-to-day organization of crime. Investigations of organized crime in the United States, Europe, and Asia have all uncovered organized crime networks operating with virtual immunity from law enforcement and prosecution.”
For further details on BCCI and CIA connections to the S&L crisis, let’s return to “Banking Scandals: The S&Ls and BCCI:”
“The banking scandals involving S&Ls and the rogue Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) are linked through David Paul, former CEO of CenTrust Savings Bank, a Miami S&L that was seized in February 1990. Like S&L kingpin Charles Keating, Paul knew that he could ingratiate himself with politicians by helping them raise campaign money. Political intervention by the likes of Keating Five senators Alan Cranston of California and Donald Reigle of Michigan helped keep CenTrust open for two years after it otherwise would have been closed. CenTrust’s involvement with BCCI was even greater than its interaction with S&L scoundrels. By mid 1988, CenTrust owed its survival to BCCI and one of the bank’s alleged front men, Ghaith Pharaon, who helped win approval of a CenTrust bond issue that brought new capital into CenTrust and improved the condition of its books just in time for the thrift to pass a crucial examination by regulators….
Sunbelt Savings, Western Savings, and State Savings have all been named by the Houston Post as members of a daisy chain of failed thrifts with links to organized crime and even, perhaps, to the CIA. All three have collapsed, at a cost to taxpayers of over $3 billion.”
Once again, George Bush Sr.’s role in BCCI and the S&L crisis cannot be understated. To recap, over the course of BCCI’s entire reign, Bush Sr. led the CIA, then served as Vice President before becoming President. He had extraordinarily close relations with Saudi Arabia, the most oil-rich nation in the world. Kahlam Adham was a top BCCI executive and head of Saudi Arabian intelligence, he was known as “the godfather of Middle East Intelligence” and was the CIA’s main liaison to the region. BCCI’s Chief Operations Officer was Khalid bin Mahfouz, who also led Saudi Arabia’s largest national bank and was a major player in the oil industry. Mahfouz was known as “the most powerful banker in the Middle East.” As already mentioned, Saudi Arabian intelligence was mixed in tightly with Wall Street banking interests in BCCI’s Capcom money laundering operations in the futures market. George Bush Sr. also did everything within his power to conceal these operations, as investigative reporter Chris Floyd wrote:
“When a few prosecutors finally began targeting BCCI’s operations in the late Eighties, President George Herbert Walker Bush boldly moved in with a federal probe directed by Justice Department investigator Robert Mueller. The U.S. Senate later found that the probe had been unaccountably ‘botched’–witnesses went missing, CIA records got ‘lost,’… Lower-ranking prosecutors told of heavy pressure from on high to ‘lay off.’ Most of the big BCCI players went unpunished or, like [Khalib bin] Mahfouz, got off with wrist-slap fines and sanctions. Mueller, of course, wound up as head of the FBI, appointed to the post in July 2001–by George W. Bush.”
Robert Mueller, who has been running the FBI since September 4, 2001, under Bush Jr. and now Obama, was Bush Sr.’s go-to guy at the Justice Department in covering up BCCI and S&L operations. Back in 1992, Beaty and Gwynne reported the following in Time magazine:
“In the U.S. investigators now say openly that the Justice Department has not only reined in its own probe of the bank but is also part of a concerted campaign to derail any full investigation. Says Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, who first launched his investigations into B.C.C.I. two years ago: ‘We have had no cooperation from the Justice Department since we first asked for records in March 1990. In fact they are impeding our investigation, and Justice Department representatives are asking witnesses not to cooperate with us.’”
In summation, George Bush Sr., Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Robert Mueller, Robert Gates and Alan Greenspan were all heavily involved in BCCI activities. Former President Bill Clinton even played a crucial role in continuing the cover-up by killing follow-up investigations upon taking office. More stunning than the BCCI operations and the cover-up, was that even after the BCCI Affair was finally exposed, all of these major players were not held accountable. The fact that people like this not only got to walk away, but remained in top positions of power for years after the scandal was exposed, with Robert Gates now serving as the Secretary of Defense and Robert Muller still serving as the head of the FBI, tells you all you need to know about the rule of law in the United States.
When you look back at the S&L crisis and understand how that scandal worked, you can clearly see how that operation served as a forerunner to, and evolved into, our current economic crisis. Of course this time it would happen under the presidency of George Bush Jr., and the cover-up would be maintained by a different Democratic President, Barack Obama.
While investigating BCCI operations, I began to clearly understand for the first time how the Global Banking Intelligence Complex runs both political parties in the United States. After years of researching and investigating BCCI, I’ve come to understand how power really operates, who the real power players are and how the mainstream media, which is tightly controlled by these forces, keeps the American public in the dark and marginalized by never reporting on the roots of power. The harsh truth is that American democracy and the rule of law are an illusion.
Above all, the BCCI scandal taught me two major lessons. First, when there is blatant criminal activity that goes unpunished, global banking intelligence interests are behind it. Second, you always have to follow the money. At the heart of power is the money supply, the ability to create, issue and manipulate global currencies. This is what the most powerful have always known. As the old House of Rothschild maxim goes, “Let us control the money of a nation, and we care not who makes its laws.”
When you peel back all the layers, the ultimate power in this world lies within the Global Banking Intelligence Complex, or the “money powers” as our Founding Fathers and early presidents called them. If you research our forefathers, you will see that they understood this point very well. The main theme throughout American history has always been the war between democracy and the concentration of power within the banks.
This may seem obvious to some, but this very obvious point has been omitted from mainstream media and public consciousness within the United States. This very viewpoint has been completely removed from the debate surrounding our current economic crisis and the failed financial reform process. And when it comes to the funding of perpetual wars, the banking interests behind the scenes are never even mentioned.
So this long winding road has led me right into the heart of our current crisis. It has been from this viewpoint that I have closely watched this crisis unfold. I’ve been following all these power players for years now and it’s given me an insider’s view and front row seat into our current political environment. Watching old BCCI players and their protégés continue to maintain positions as top US government officials over the years reveals a very different reality when you consider significant issues like 9/11; the Af-Pak and Iraq wars; the private military complex; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Pakistani, Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons programs; global weapons sales; mainstream media propaganda campaigns; campaign finance laws; lobbying efforts; electronic voting machines; the current economic crisis, along with the bailout and stock market manipulation.
When I think about the “War on Terror” and the modern global banking system, the BCCI Affair is child’s play in comparison. The Global Banking Intelligence Complex is on steroids and stronger than ever, with power and wealth concentrated in unprecedented fashion.
Now that we have a fundamental understanding of how financial intelligence operations worked throughout the 1980s and early ’90s, now that we’ve scratched just below the surface, I will now expose operations throughout the late ’90s and past decade.
How US got into the death spiral for a "Great-er Depression"
That a depression was in the cards has been foreseeable for decades. The distortions cranked into the system in the ‘60s – the era of “guns and butter” spending by the government – resulted in the tumult of the ‘70s. Things could, and one could argue should, have come unglued then. But they didn’t, for a number of reasons that have only become clear in retrospect:
- Interest rates were allowed to rise to curative levels;
- The markets were non-manipulated and so, as they became quite depressed, were left to send out real distress signals;
- The U.S. was still running a trade surplus;
- The dollar had only come off the gold standard in 1971 and was still relatively sound.
Then, starting with Reagan and Thatcher, the world’s governments started cutting taxes and deregulating. The USSR collapsed peaceably. China, then India, made a shift toward free markets. And on top of it all, the computer revolution got seriously underway. All told, a good formula for recovery and a sound foundation for a boom.
But sadly, taxes, government spending, and deficits soon started heading much higher. Despite the collapse of its only conceivable enemy, U.S. military spending continued to skyrocket. Monetary policy encouraged everyone to take on huge amounts of debt, much more than ever in the past, and everyone soon found they could live way above their means. The stock, real estate, and bond markets got pumped up to ridiculous levels. The main U.S. export became trillions of paper dollars. Worst of all, the U.S. devolved into just another country, undistinguished by anything other than a legacy of a high standard of living.
The standard of living in the U.S. is now going down for these reasons, and others. But most disturbing to the average American is the falling position of the U.S. relative to the rest of the world. In brief, Americans won’t take kindly to the notion that they can’t continue earning, say, $10-40 an hour, for doing exactly the same thing a Chinese will do for $1-4 an hour.
What’s going to happen is that the Americans’ earnings are going to drop, while those of the Chinese are going to rise, meeting someplace in the middle. Especially when the Chinese works harder, longer, saves his money, and doesn’t burden his employer with all kinds of legacy benefits, topped off with lawsuits. This is a new threat, one that can’t be countered with B-2 bombers. It’s also something as big and as inevitable as a glacier coming down a valley during an Ice Age.
This, along with other problems presented by the business cycle have ushered in the Greater Depression.
HOW LONG WILL THE GREATER DEPRESSION LAST?
Let’s briefly recap two definitions of a depression, along with a couple of examples, with an eye to seeing how things may evolve from here.
One definition is that a depression is a period of time when most people’s standard of living drops significantly. Russia had this kind of depression from roughly 1917 to 1990, so more than 70 years. A second definition is that it is a period of time when economic distortions and misallocations of capital are liquidated. Russia had this kind of depression from 1990 up to about 2000. It was very sharp but relatively brief.
The difference between these two examples is that, during the first, the state was in total – or even increasing – control. By the time of the second, the country had greatly liberalized. As a result, the depression was a period of necessary and tumultuous change, rather than drawn-out agony. A depression can be a bad thing or a good thing, partly depending on which definition applies.
Today, things are problematic in Russia for a number of reasons that aren’t germane to this article. But people can own property, entrepreneurs can start businesses, and the top tax rate is 11%. The depression of 1990-2000 resulted in greatly improved conditions in Russia.
Let’s look at a couple of other examples: Haiti and Mozambique.
Haiti has been a disaster since Day One and has no current prospect of improvement. The billions of dollars Obama is idiotically about to send them will evaporate like a quart of water poured into the Sahara – just like the billions of aid and charity that have gone before it. Worse, it will eliminate the necessity of Haiti making meaningful reforms. Additional aid actually precludes the possibility of liquidating distortions, misallocations of capital, and unsustainable patterns of life. It’s counterproductive.
Mozambique went through a long and nasty civil war from about 1970 to the early ‘90s. The war made conditions worse than anything even Haiti has seen. But when it came to an end, the Mozambicans changed things simply in order to survive. The place is hardly a beacon of the free market today, but duties and taxes have been reduced, most parastatals have been privatized, and entrepreneurs can operate. It’s a good sign that the country is drawing foreign investment but very little foreign aid, which always just cements people in their bad habits while ensuring government officials stay in office.
Why do I bring up these examples? Because it’s clear to me the U.S. is heading in the direction of Russia before 1990, or Haiti today. Not in absolute terms, of course. But everything the U.S. government is doing – raising taxes, increasing regulations, and inflating the currency – is not only the wrong thing to do, but exactly the opposite of the right thing.
This is really serious, because the government is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. What governments do makes all the difference – actually the only difference – in how countries perform. How else to explain that Haiti and Singapore were on pretty much the same level after World War 2, and look where they are now.
To my thinking, the U.S. is now clearly on the path Argentina started down with the Peron regime. Cause has effect. Actions have consequences, and the result will be much the same. Except I believe the descent of the U.S. will be much faster, much scarier, and will end in a much harder landing than that experienced by Argentina.
I say this because there’s no realistic possibility the Obama regime is going to change course. To the contrary, they’re likely to accelerate in the present direction. They believe the government should direct society – as do most Americans at this point. They feel government is a magic cure-all and not only can but should “do something” in response to any problem. Most complaints aren’t that they’re doing too much, but that they’re doing too little. Everything on the political front, therefore, is a disaster. There’s absolutely no prospect I can see that it will get better, and every indication it will get worse.
I’m not going to try to predict what will happen in the 2012 elections, but it’s fair to say the last several elections are indicators of the degraded state of the average American. What are the chances they’ll make a 180-degree turn, in the direction of someone like Ron Paul? I’d say close to zero, and libertarianism will remain a fringe movement, at best. Will Boobus americanus vote for someone who says the government should actually do less – much less – in the middle of a crisis? Especially if the current wars expand, which is quite likely in this kind of environment? No way.
Simply, the chances of a reversal in what passes for the philosophical attitude of this country are slim and none. And Slim’s left town. While there are some who hope for an improvement on the political front, I think that’s very naïve.
The Tea Party movement? Its ruling ethos appears to be a kind of inchoate rage. I sympathize with the fact that many seem to be honest middle to lower middle-class Americans who see their standards of living slipping away and don’t know why, or how to stop it. They feel bad that it’s no longer the America portrayed in Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne movies, but many are quick to blame the changes on swarthy immigrants. They’re desperately looking for a political solution. These folks tend to be highly nationalistic and atavistic, with a tendency to worship their preachers and the military. I just hope some popular general doesn’t get political ambitions…
The only bright spots – but these are very major bright spots – are in the areas of individual savings and technology.
As things get worse, the productive members of society will redouble their efforts to save themselves by producing more while consuming less; the excess will be savings. Those savings create a pool of capital that can be used to fund new businesses and technologies. The problem here is that with the dollar losing value quickly, the savers will be punished for doing the only thing that can really improve the situation. And they’ll be discouraged by wrongheaded propaganda telling people to consume more, not to save. Funding new business and technologies will be harder with more regulations. But still, people will find a way to set aside a surplus. And that is a factor of overwhelming importance.
As are breakthroughs in science and technology. Don’t forget that there are more scientists and engineers alive today than have lived, altogether, in all of previous human history. These are the people that will wind the main stem of human progress. And their numbers are going to grow. So there’s real cause for optimism.
The problem is that most young Americans now go in for things like sociology and gender studies, whereas the up-and-coming scientists and engineers are primarily Chinese and Indians who, even if they get advanced training in the U.S., tend to go back home afterwards. Partly because the U.S. discourages hiring non-Americans for “good” jobs, but mostly because they can see more opportunity abroad.
So, how long will the Greater Depression last? Quite a while, at least for the U.S.
But wait. Aren’t there other bright spots? How about the dollar?
THE DOLLAR
Over the years I’ve been agnostic as to whether this depression would be inflationary or deflationary. Or both in sequence, with inflation first, followed by a credit collapse deflation; or a deflation followed by a runaway inflation. Or perhaps both at the same time, just in different sectors of the economy – e.g., prices of McMansions collapse because people can’t afford to live in them, while the prices of rice and beans skyrocket because that’s all people can afford.
At the moment I’m leaning towards a deflation in most areas. Why? Because the purchasing media in the U.S. is primarily credit based. If a mortgage defaults, what happens to the dollars it represents? They literally disappear, which is deflationary. If a bond defaults, the same thing happens. If stocks and property prices crash, the dollars they represent vanish. If people or businesses don’t borrow, the money supply fails to expand; in fact, many are trying to pay back loans, which is deflationary. Even so, contrary to popular opinion, deflation is much better than inflation.
Because today’s dollar is just paper and credit, and because deflationary conditions will create a clamor for many more of them, the government will eventually succeed in its inflationary efforts. It’s true, as Bernanke has said in a moment of wry wit, that they can dump $100 bills from helicopters to prevent deflation. But it’s not likely since, in our fractional reserve banking system, the primary way the money supply is expanded is through the granting of loans, not the printing of paper, the way it was done in Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe. One problem with credit-based inflation is that at some point, banks become afraid to lend, and people afraid to borrow – a time like right now. In fact, people may even become too afraid to leave their dollars in banks. They’re coming to realize the FDIC is thoroughly bankrupt.
Here’s a speculative scenario. To solve these deflationary problems and resolve Ben’s helicopter conundrum, maybe the Fed will go into the retail banking business by directly taking over the hundreds of institutions that are now failing. The average American would feel safe depositing directly with the Federal Reserve. And the Fed could lend as much as they want, without the restrictions imposed by actual capital or pesky shareholders.
Ridiculous? I think not, certainly not after GM, Fannie, and the rest. Certainly not when you consider that this depression is still in only the second inning. It would be one way to head off deflation.
Be that as it may, or may not, at some point after the deflationary waters have receded as far as possible, an inflationary tsunami is going to wash ashore, to the surprise of all.
Everybody knows how bad things were in Weimar Germany, and what a catastrophe hyperinflation has been in Zimbabwe. But those were agrarian economies, with people still quite close to the land. If it hits in the U.S., as highly specialized and urbanized as it is, it will be an unparalleled disaster. And not just for the U.S., because the reserves of almost all governments are mostly U.S. dollars. And dollars are used as the de facto currency by the average man in about 50 countries. All told, there may be as many as seven trillion of the things held outside of the U.S., and, at some point, everybody will be trying to unload them at once. At which time they’ll lose value very, very quickly.
So, far from being something to rely on, and very far from being as good as gold, the dollar is going to be a lead player in the catastrophe called the Greater Depression. And all the other paper currencies are going down with it. Pity the fool who doesn’t see this coming. Or, for that matter, what’s going to happen to interest rates.
INTEREST RATES
The government is doing everything in its power to keep interest rates as low as possible. There are many reasons for this. Low rates make it easier for people to support their debt burdens and borrow more. Low rates inflate the value of stocks, bonds, and real estate – and the last thing the government wants to see is a meltdown of the markets. But, perhaps even more important, it’s a lot easier for the government to service $12 trillion of official debt at 2% than at 12%. That much of a rise in rates alone will add over a trillion to what they need to borrow to keep the giant Ponzi scheme going.
Of course it’s a fool’s game. Eventually (I’ll guess between six and 24 months), when their creation of dollars eventually overcomes the credit markets’ destruction of dollars, consumer prices will go up. That evidence of inflation will cause interest rates to rise, with all the short-term negative effects the government so fears. But higher rates are absolutely necessary to get out of the depression. Remember, it was the high rates of the early ‘80s that set the stage for the boom that followed.
Rates – the price of money – shouldn’t be controlled by the state, up or down, any more than the state should control the price of oil, or bread, or toothpaste. One of the major reasons the USSR collapsed was an inability to make correct economic calculations, and much of that was due to their arbitrarily fixed interest rates. One reason why Japan has been fading into the economic background over the last two decades is that the government has artificially suppressed rates, in the vain hope of stimulating the economy. All they’ve gotten is excessive levels of government debt, which will result in the destruction of the yen. And what will be tens of millions of impoverished, and very angry, Japanese savers.
The same thing is in process of happening in the West due to suppressed interest rates.
THE NEXT STEPS DOWN IN THE MARKETS
With interest rates depressed to near zero, stocks, bonds, and property in the Western countries are as good as they’re going to get – especially after a very long boom in all three. When rates inevitably go higher, stocks, property – absolutely bonds – are likely to head much lower. That’s entirely apart from the fundamentals under them, which are truly ugly. In turn, that will bankrupt pension funds across the economy, many of which are already severely underfunded.
These pension funds are likely to be the centerpieces of the next leg down of the evolving crisis. Will the government bail them out? Perhaps, although after the misadventure of poor taxpayers throwing money at rich traders at Goldman and AIG, the public doesn’t like the ring of that term. More likely it will nationalize them, assuming their assets in exchange for a special class of its paper. In the interest of “fairness,” that will happen to small and solvent funds as well as large and bankrupt ones.
After that, the next problem area will be insurance companies. And not necessarily because they’ll suffer from the same problems, like derivative trading, that sunk AIG. Even the well-managed ones have their assets invested primarily in commercial loans, commercial property, bonds, and stocks.
HOW THIS WILL END
Nassim Taleb has popularized the concept of the Black Swan: an event that no one thought was possible, actually happening. Naturally, it takes everyone by surprise. To that lesson from zoology, let me suggest one from astronomy. Let’s call it the Financial Asteroid Strike theory.
It’s well known that there are millions of pieces of sizable space debris floating around the solar system. It’s just a matter of time before something crosses our path at an inopportune moment, as has happened so many times in the past. Unlike the Black Swan, it’s well known that Financial Asteroids exist. It’s just that really serious ones appear so rarely that people conduct their lives as if they never will. It’s been such a long time since the last depression that people see it as something distant and academic – like the Chicxulub or Tunguska asteroid strikes. Until the actual moment it hits, everything is completely normal. Then everything changes radically.
I’d sum it up by saying that a Financial Asteroid Strike takes much longer to happen than you might expect, but once it actually gets underway, it happens much more quickly than you could have imagined. We had a strike in 2008. But they tend to come in clusters. I expect more to enter the atmosphere fairly soon.
The question is whether the next one is going to wipe out all the economic and financial dinosaurs or just flatten the trees for some miles around.
Either way, it’s far from being all gloom and doom.
HOW THIS COULD BE A GOOD THING
Everyone, certainly including myself, prefers good times to bad times. But much of the good times of the last two decades were a result of an entire civilization living above its means. It was great fun while it lasted, but the party is over. The result will be massive unemployment, lots of business failures, and huge investment losses. These things are most unpleasant, but inevitable. That said, I always like to look at the bright side.
And what might that be?
Let’s restrict ourselves to just one of the lead actors in this drama: the United States of America.
The bankruptcy of the U.S. government will, at least at some point, lead to a big drop in the number of government employees. This is a good thing, since little of what they do serves a useful purpose; most are an actual impediment to production.
With some luck it could result in the sale of agencies that have some value, e.g., NASA, the Smithsonian, and the National Parks – to private enterprise. It will also force a vast retrenchment of the military, although only after more costly wars make that necessity very obvious. It will force a decentralization of power, with more devolving to the states and municipalities. It will mean much less regulation, since there won’t be the personnel or money to enforce it. It will also mean much less taxation for the same reasons, even though the state will try desperately to collect more, and will absolutely succeed in the near term.
Internationally, it seems to me a sure thing that organizations like the UN, the IMF, the OECD, and so many more, will be totally hollowed out or even disappear. At a time when governments are straining to maintain themselves, they’re unlikely to ship scarce capital abroad. So the people who are worried about the UN taking over the U.S., One World Government and such, will have to find something different to fret about.
As domestic currencies the world over are inflated away, some medium of exchange and store of value will have to be agreed on. I don’t see any realistic alternative to gold. China is going to be a focus of change in this regard (among many others). The stupidity of the Chinese government buying U.S. government paper in order to enable Americans to continue consuming the things Chinese factories produce will come to an end. That will be an impetus to demands for an alternative medium of exchange.
But if the U.S. and governments of other advanced countries lose power, governments in places like Africa (in particular) will collapse; Somalia is a model of things to come there. That may sound like a horrible thing, but – notwithstanding teething pains – it’s a big step forward. Deprived of free money, free weapons, and lots of free bad advice that have entrenched kleptocracies, the Africans are likely to make real progress after the Greater Depression plays itself out.
The transition period, however, is likely to be messy almost everywhere.
Can we prevent the status quo from falling apart, and preclude these messy changes? Further, should we, if we could?
Entirely apart from the fact that change is an essential part of life – and I think the status quo is in dire need of some real change (although absolutely not the kind Obama and his posse might have in mind) – I actually don’t think there’s a realistic solution to the problems the world is facing in this decade.
Yes, there are solutions that the government could proactively bring about – almost entirely by doing less, rather than more. But the odds of the U.S. voluntarily defaulting on its debt, abolishing the Fed, using gold as money, abolishing all agencies not specifically designated in the Constitution, eliminating the income tax, and cutting back on military expenditures by about 90% -- among other things – are so small as to be considered a fantasy.
In fact, the concept of invoking changes of that scale are too scary for most to even contemplate. But they’ll happen anyway. Which means these things aren’t going to happen voluntarily, under some kind of control, and in a more or less orderly manner. Even so, because anything that must happen will happen – all these things and more will actually happen and, in the happening, will be most unpleasant and dangerous.
It seems to me that the upset we’re looking at could be the biggest thing since the Industrial Revolution. Or perhaps the French Revolution is a better analogy, although I expect it’s going to be a bit of both. It seems entirely possible to me that we could have another American Revolution, as unlikely as that seems among a nation of commuters and suburbs-dwelling reality TV watchers.
But it’s hard to see how it could be anything like the first one, which was led by thoughtful, rich, free market-oriented farmers and merchants. More likely this one will center on people like Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity on the one side, and Michael Moore and Nancy Pelosi on the other – strident, antagonistic, and bent, but also full of charisma and certainty. I don’t see much chance of collegial and reasonable compromise.
The best advice is not to be around the watering hole when two antagonistic groups of chimpanzees are hooting and panting at each other, getting ready to fight for control of it.
I’m afraid the current state of affairs is corrupt through and through. From the top of the financial world in New York, to the top of the political world in DC, right down to the average man on the street, 50% of whom aren’t obligated to pay income taxes but feel entitled to be net recipients of government largesse at the expense of others. Even among those that have assets, there’s no feeling of shame in gaming the system any way possible. There’s no longer any onus to being one of the 40 million people on electronic food stamps, or defaulting on one’s mortgage and continuing to live in the house, and collecting indefinitely extended unemployment benefits. Bankruptcy is just something you do when needed.
Frankly, it’s a mystery to me how the U.S. in particular, but most of the developed world, is going to escape from the very unpleasant consequences of its very stupid past – and current – actions.
Fax 802.253.9456
Republican Plan to Screw Main Street workers - OLBERMAN-MADDOW
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39520860/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann/
OLBERMAN:
Democrats are reportedly at work right now on a campaign strategy to push back against a growing element of the Republican Tea Party agenda, an agenda even Republicans know is so unpopular they do not want you to know about it.
It is, in our fifth story tonight: class warfare—a war against the middle class and the working poor. Namely, the Republican position that Americans are not working enough and they‘re not poor enough.
Alaska Senate Republican Tea Party candidate Joe Miller is only the most noteworthy attacker today—in a Web interview with ABC News and “Politico,” reading the Constitution literally to declare the federal minimum wage unconstitutionally, because it‘s not in there. And the 10th Amendment which he does not read literally prohibits, in his mind, any federal program or power not identified by name in the Constitution.
But even if it were constitutional to require that Americans make at least $7.25 an hour, the current minimum wage, Miller says it‘s still a bad idea.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MILLER: That should be the state‘s decision.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, there should not be a federal minimum wage?
MILLER: There should not be. That is not within the scope of the powers that are given in the federal government. And, again, let me make it clear. This is not just a simple checklist.
This is—let‘s think of this pragmatically as well. Even if you disagree with the constitutional approach, which I think is the number thing we ought to be following, it still makes far more sense to have those kinds of decisions made at the level closest to the people, where there‘s more accountability, less inefficiency, where there‘s more understanding of where the people ought to be and what the state rule of government is.
We‘ve said this many times, if you like big government, you know, move to Massachusetts.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OLBERMANN: In fact, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the minimum wage‘s constitutionality in 1941, in a battle that also involved the constitutionality of child labor laws, which also do not appear in the Constitution.
Miller‘s law school, Yale, not responding today to our question whether anyone there teaches that the minimum wage is unconstitutional.
The “National Journal” today reports that the Democrats are planning to use the minimum wage issue not only against Miller but against the surprisingly large number of Republicans who are also challenging it.
Just last week, Connecticut Senate candidate Linda McMahon called far a review of the minimum wage and did not know what her own state‘s minimum wage was.
West Virginia Senate candidate John Raese has called, like Miller, for simply eliminating the minimum wage.
Washington Senate candidate Dino Rossi has supported lower wages for teenagers and called for freezing the minimum wage for grownups.
Illinois gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady wants to lower his state‘s minimum wage
Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Tom "Enema" Emmer argued this summer that waiters made too much money, $100,000 a year, he said, thanks to the tips they get. So, he wants to cut the minimum wage for anyone who makes tips. The median wage for waiters there is, in fact, $9.36 an hour, $19,000 a year.
Chris Dudley also has a problem with waitresses. The Oregon gubernatorial candidate made headlines last month when he said, “It doesn‘t make sense that our waitresses are getting tips plus the highest minimum wage in the country.”
How high is the Oregon minimum wage Dudley has a problem with? Eight-fifty an hour. The Web site Blue Oregon reporting, this means an average salary of $35,000 to $50,000 well below the $450,000 that is the minimum wage for Dudley‘s old job in the NBA.
Why haven‘t you heard about this from Republicans? Ask Dudley.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS DUDLEY ®, OREGON GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: I‘m not going to make a forefront issue on it because it‘s something—it‘s a hot button people don‘t really understand. But at some point, I‘m well aware of the issue.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OLBERMANN: That‘s a rich, former pro-athlete explaining how he‘s going to keep everybody else poor.
But working for a lower wages is not all that working Americans must do in Tea Party America. Minimum wage workers must work longer, until they are older, and retire on less. That Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul explains is how they‘ll pay for extending tax cuts for those making more than a quarter million a year.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL: Well, I think you don‘t do anything to people who are currently receiving Medicare or Social Security. But we do have to admit that with the baby boom generation getting ready to retire, we‘re going double the amount of retirees. And to put our head in the sand and just we‘re going to keep borrowing more money is not going to work. There will have to be changes for the younger generation.
WALLACE: So, be specific.
PAUL: For the younger generation, there will be—have to—changes in eligibility. And they‘ve already started about this.
WALLACE: And you would raise the retirement age?
PAUL: There may have to be for younger people, yes. For younger people, longevity is out there. I mean, the average life expectancy in the ‘30s was 65.
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: You talked about higher deductibles or higher premiums.
PAUL: Not for those who are currently on Medicare and Social Security.
WALLACE: No, I‘m talking about people 55 or younger.
PAUL: Yes, you‘re going to have eligibility changes for the younger people. I think all younger people, if they‘re honest and will admit and have an adult discussion and not demagogue the issue, they‘ll admit that younger people will have to have different rules.
WALLACE: OK.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OLBERMANN: OK. Let‘s bring in Rachel Maddow, host of “THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW” every weeknight here on MSNBC.
Rachel, good evening.
RACHEL MADDOW, “THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW” HOST: Good evening, Keith.
Thanks for having me.
OLBERMANN: My pleasure. How real is this Republican antipathy toward the minimum wage? And what on earth could be behind it? How could it sell?
MADDOW: In looking into this today, knowing that you were going to be leading with this and we were going to be able to talk to it, I ended up going through my own files on the minimum wage. And I was surprised to sort of find there all the stuff about ACORN. Remember all the Republican hysteria about ACORN when it went from being sort of a corporate and conservative movement anti-ACORN thing, and it blew up and all the Republicans really started piling on against them?
The thing that ACORN was really, really good at was advocating for a living wage. Not only making sure that there was a minimum wage that was enforced everywhere, but that when you made minimum wage, it was a minimum wage that allowed you could to live out of poverty, that allowed you to live in a way that have some dignity. If you work full time, you ought to not be poor in the United States.
ACORN was great at that because the minimum wage and a living wage is very popular every time you put it on the ballot somewhere. That freaked out the right. And it stared off with the corporations trying to unseat them. And they eventually got the Republicans across the board to pile on to them. That was the real threat that ACORN ever, I think, posed to conservatives and to the Republicans that support them. And think that‘s why they had to go after them so vociferously.
OLBERMANN: My head hurts.
MADDOW: Yes.
OLBERMANN: How—but how can you—how can you sell this? I mean, at any point, is a Democrat going to make it clear that the Tea Partiers are appealing to middle class and lower middle class and working poor who may feel overtaxed and some sort of natural affinity of those sorts of candidates—the guy with the 5:00 shadow in Alaska—that, in fact, these people are not only out to wage class warfare on them but actually seem intent on making sure that they shoot any survivors who might somehow slip through the cracks?
MADDOW: Yes. At this point, the Democratic challenge is to turn policy here into politics, because the reason all of these Republican candidates feel like they can say stuff this radical is because they think they‘re only talking to their base, they think they are talking about issues that only they will engage on, that there‘s no Democratic counter argument, that there‘s no way to seem too extreme from the right, that if you can—it‘s about mobilizing the conservative movement base. And there‘s no cost to pay. There‘s no electoral price to pay for being very, very radical on these issues.
Democrats, when they try to call Republicans out on these, find very soft targets. It‘s very easy to make an attack ad out of Rand Paul‘s position on what it is to not being ophthalmologist in this country. And people who try to do it have great success with those ads. It‘s just a matter of Democrats actually being willing to swing at those very soft targets.
OLBERMANN: All right. Well then, let‘s try this. On Joe Miller‘s argument, can you unpack this thing about constitutionality regarding this and Social Security, and, you know, pretty much everything that is considered a social safety net in this country? What is his argument?
MADDOW: Well, he‘s a Tenther. He‘s—you know, we had birthers, we had deathers, he‘s a Tenther. He‘s a person who has a radical fringe interpretation of what the 10th Amendment means. And so, he not only means that there ought not to be a minimum wage, that that‘s against the Constitution; that the government, whether or not it‘s a good idea, literally cannot have programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. There can‘t be any unemployment insurance.
Joe Miller is one of these candidates who won‘t engage with non-conservative media. They won‘t, for example, his campaign won‘t make him available to my show or your show to do an interview. I know that we‘ve asked many, many times with him.
I would love for somebody who doesn‘t already agree with him and want him to win that election to be able to ask him questions, because I suspect that if you ask him whether it is—it is constitutional for there to be an income tax, we might find out that Joe Miller is a lot like Wesley Snipes. I think if somebody might if somebody asked him if there—if it‘s constitutional for there to be a Civil rights Act that prohibits businesses from refusing to serve black patrons, for example, we might find out that he‘s a lot like Rand Paul. As long he stays, though, in his right wing media bubble, nobody is asking him those questions.
OLBERMANN: The argument that states know best, too, is appealing if -
to anybody who actually ever took a course in American history or not recently, what is the reality of the society they want to bring about? Or should we actually say bring back? Is this what‘s kicking all the migrants and immigrants so that we can put Americans back in those jobs, you know, picking tomatoes and such? Where—what‘s the ultimate end of this?
MADDOW: Well, I mean, it‘s an argument that has a lot of very overt historical precedent. It‘s a very civil war-like argument. If the federal government does not have the power to set minimum rules for things under the interstate commerce powers that are declared in the Constitution, then the federal government can‘t say, “Hey, Deep South states, you have to pay people for working for you,” for example. I mean, this—when you have a radical proposition on states rights like Tenthers do, like, for example, Joe Miller does, there‘s—the slippery slope is very slippery and very steep back to Civil War era arguments about nullification and about, ultimately, slavery. I‘m not saying he‘s a pro-slavery guy but he‘s using the same arguments that were used to justify the position of the South during the Civil War.
OLBERMANN: Yes, I‘ve been waiting for Tea Party candidate John C.
Calhoun to show up.
MADDOW: Yes, with a cane.
OLBERMANN: And what is this, also, see, that‘s Brooks (ph) some in there, too—to what extent is this not class-based but generational? Because this Republican Tea Party wants our grandkids to pay for their tax cuts for the rich right now and the interest on the money they borrow to pay for them and they want to cut the retirement and medical benefits of the younger people, which the younger people will need more because they‘ll have to work longer before they can retire 50 years from now.
MADDOW: Well, you know, I think it is, in part, generational. I think that that some of what‘s going on here. More than that though, I think it‘s magic. I think the idea is that you pare down what government offers to the point where we‘re a nonsocial welfare state, you know, pre-social welfare state environment.
And you do it with arguments that are magic. I mean, Rand Paul, this weekend, on “FOX News Sunday,” is talking about how his first priority is to get rid of government debt. First priority is to get rid of government debt, and so, he wants massive tax cuts.
OLBERMANN: Yes.
MADDOW: It‘s magic. It‘s magic. It‘s magic.
Shills for Banksters try to sneak by bill to stifle citizens fighting foreclosures - Obama: VETO
EARL NASH
"Pig-fuckers in congress" Correspondent
>>>>> “It’s news to YOU…” <<<<<<
The Pig-fuckers in congress have rendered a sneaky piece of sausage legislation that "would require courts to recognize notarizations from out-of-state, which some consumer advocates say would make it more difficult to fight bogus foreclosures by banks.
These "representatives" of the Banksters may be cut off at the pass by President Obama, who says he will not sign the bill, because it might create too much potential for harm to homeowners at a time of economic tough times, and in the wake of a major controversy over waves of questionable foreclosures by Bank of America, JPMorgan and other big lenders. Ya think?
For those of you keeping score at home, here are the lapdog scumbags in your Congress who tried to sneak this anti-Main Street bill up the rear entrance
"The legislation passed the Senate without debate on Sept. 27 following a "unanimous consent" request from Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.). Casey's office told HuffPost that the senator made the request on (the Democratic) party leadership's behalf. "He had nothing to do with the bill himself," a spokesman said.
Reuters reported that, with the help of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), "Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy pressed to have the bill rushed through the special procedure, after Leahy 'constituents' (aka campaign contributors, who pull his strings) called him and pressed for passage." Previous versions of the bill have died in the Judiciary Committee after being passed by the House.
The bill's sponsor in the House, Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), was surprised by the speedy passage of the bill and the intensely negative reaction it's gotten. "There is absolutely no connection whatsoever between Congressman Aderholt's legislation and the recent foreclosure documentation problem," said a spokesman in an email to HuffPost. "Congressman Aderholt has been pushing this bill since April of 2005 when he first introduced it in Congress. Obviously, there was no controversy regarding foreclosure documents at that time.
"The Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act will improve interstate commerce by requiring that lawfully notarized documents be recognized across state lines. The law, once enacted, will strengthen consumer protections by requiring identification of notaries by means of seal and in rendering electronic documents tamper resistant."
Oh, really?
GOOD GUYS:
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who has blogged about notarization problems, told HuffPost she also considered the timing of the legislation suspicious, coming in the midst of a series of announcements by banks that foreclosure procedures are under review. "It's almost like H.R. 3808 was a trap door."
Ira Rheingold, director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, told HuffPost he wasn't sure he agreed the bill was so problematic. "Just because you get a lawful notarization of a bunch of lies doesn't change your ability to challenge an affidavit as a bunch of lies."
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