Thanks mainly to Senators Barry Sanders and Ron Paul, the Federal Reserve was forced to endure a partial audit of its books after years of fighting and stalling any effort to provide voluntary disclosure to the public. You may wonder why you probably heard little to nothing about this audit. You were not supposed to as the major media outlets were strangely mum on the topic, including the usual financial networks such as MSN, CNBC and FOX. The results were worthy of mention, as even this partial disclosure revealed $16 trillion had been loaned out since 2008, at zero interest and with no set repayment terms, to a virtual who”s who of U.S. mega banks and brokerages, and a list of foreign mega banks in Germany, the U.K., Switzerland and France. To date not a single penny has been repaid. Let”s not confuse this with our current national debt of $16 trillion, that is the other $16 trillion in debt. This princely sum does not include an additional $9 trillion that is simply “missing” and unaccounted for from the Federal Reserves books, another story which received virtually no news coverage when revealed in 2010. That is a total of $25 trillion to ostensibly “stimulate” both the U.S. and European economies that U.S. taxpayers will be obligated to repay if not paid by the debtors. We know what a success the stimuli have been to date. It saved us from what might of happened if we did not do it, a fine bit of logic based upon pure speculation parrotted endlessly by toads in the major media.
Among those mega banks and brokerage houses on the receiving end of this endless largesse are Citigroup, which received $2.5 trillion, Morgan Stanley about $2 trillion, Bank of America $1.3 trillion, Goldman Sachs $814 billion, Lehman Brothers $183 billion (subsequently bankrupt), JP Morgan Chase $341 billion, Bear Sterns $853 billion (subsequently bought by JP Morgan Chase with $30 billion provided by the Fed) and Merrill Lynch $1.9 trillion. How much of the $50 billion Bank of America paid for Merrill Lynch was paid for by U.S. taxpayers? Thanks to rich uncle Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve. Given that the principal culprits at the Federal Reserve who approved these loans are principals at the same banks/brokerages/corporations that received them, and that these usual suspects also permeated the financial decision making of the last several administrations in Washington D.C., you cannot begin to wonder whether the whole circus is simply an exercise of financial inbreeding and corruption. Now the Fed primes the pump even further with QE3 and nary a hint of protest comes from anyone.
Wall Street does not care about politics, it butters both sides of the bread so it matters not which side lands face up. History shows that after increasing bank reserve requirements after 2008, the Federal Reserve gave a select group of mega banks the money to meet those requirements and well beyond, while never forcing any of these banks to start loaning money for business investment, particularly small business. The rich and powerful got taken care of, and the rest of country was told to tough it out or get on the government dole to survive. With QE3 Bernanke has now committed $40 billion a month of our money to buy toxic mortgages from his fat cat friends at the mega banks to improve their balance sheets. This was to lower interest rates. I did not see that rates had risen from historic lows. I guess we were not buried enough with Fannie and Freddie so far under water with toxic mortgages they blow bubbles. Good to know he is still looking out for the same folks and they don”t live on Main street.
How about Bank of America and G.E. that paid zero taxes last year? Or the list of the largest U.S.-based corporations, and I use that term loosely, that paid an effective tax rate of 10 percent or less last year due to tax laws that permit, and therefore encourage, overseas profits, job creation and tax exemptions? All this while G.M. expands factories and jobs in China after the bailout(s) while screwing corporate bond holders to save the auto unions. The same unions watched silently as jobs left and then made out mega million dollar checks for politician pals.
The list of campaign mega bundlers for both parties is made up of the same culprits listed above and they don”t put together hundreds of millions of dollars based on piety of purpose. They do it to buy outcomes that are favorable to them and history shows they are incredibly successful at it. I suspect the only real political solution is a new party made up of moderates from both major parties and independents, comprising by far the majority, leaving the zealots of the far left and right to stew in political obscurity where they belong. A third party that advocates for living within our means both on a government and personal level, fair and effective corporate and personal tax laws, getting troops back home rather then spread out like an octopus worldwide to be killed and vilified, independence of the individual over collectivism, and a commitment to not squandering trillions more in debt (QE 3-4-5 ad nauseum). Remember any government that controls your financial well-being controls you, directly or indirectly. Government belongs to the people, not the other way around.
Jerry Nicoletti
Kelseyville
