Author Topic: Ready to Storm the Bastille yet? Fed Res. gave out 16 Trillion in Loans  (Read 1810 times)

Soul Crusher

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Source: DailyKos

...From Senator Bernie Sanders...

SNIP




"As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," said Sanders. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."

The Fed did the following:

• Provided trillions of dollars to foreign banks and corporations, from South Korea to Scotland
• Had members of the board that received money from the Fed for their companies (Conflict of interest)
• Outsourced emergency lending programs to private contractors, who in turn received low-interest and secret loans.
• No-bid contract to manage the bailout of AIG...

Read more: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/21/997128/-Fed-Au...

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Anger at government highest in 19 years: poll

Kase Wickman
Raw Story
July 21, 2011

Dissatisfaction and anger with the federal government are at a nearly 20-year high, according to the results of a new ABC News/Washington Post poll released Wednesday.

   

When asked how they felt about the federal government, 80 percent of poll respondents said that they felt dissatisfied or even angry about the work the government is doing. The last time such a peak of ill will was felt was during 1992′s economic slump, under President George Bush’s leadership.

The public’s slumping opinion of the country’s political class can be actively attributed to the negotiations surrounding the debt ceiling: The dissatisfaction numbers rocketed up 11 points between this month and last.

Indeed, congressional Republicans are facing the fire of poor public opinion. The ABC News/Washington Post poll shows a 28 percent approval rating for them, with 77 percent of participants saying the Republican leadership is unwilling to negotiate, further slowing debt talks.

----------------
I agree, time is now or never.  This is getting ridiculously out of hand.  Americans won't get mad enough though until they can't get food and gas, or if DHS comes for their guns.  Then it will get ugly.
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Federal Reserve is great and so are all the, every letter of the alphabet, government agency out there, just ask True Adonis.

Fury

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What's fucked up is that they actually bailed out all those fucking Eurotrash banks (I believe Douche Bank took more money than any other bank on the planet). Why are we constantly picking up after Europe?

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What's fucked up is that they actually bailed out all those fucking Eurotrash banks (I believe Douche Bank took more money than any other bank on the planet). Why are we constantly picking up after Europe?

They bought the bundled crap mortgages and probably threatened some bullshit. 

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They bought the bundled crap mortgages and probably threatened some bullshit. 

Yeah, and now they're up to their fucking necks in worthless Greek debt. They clearly never learn anything.


Soul Crusher

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Yeah, and now they're up to their fucking necks in worthless Greek debt. They clearly never learn anything.



I still am trying to understand why Greece is considered so important. 

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I still am trying to understand why Greece is considered so important. 

the greeks invented anal sex.  the GOP takes that shit seriously. 

without anal sex, airport bathrooms are worthless.

Fury

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I still am trying to understand why Greece is considered so important.  

A bunch of banks outside of Greece are carrying massive amounts of their worthless debt, which is now threatening the already terrible situation for the PIIGS. And whatever they do with Greece is going to have to eventually be done with Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland. And as the fascist EU kleptocrats in Brussels have, up until this point, completely fucked everything up to the best of their abilities, it doesn't bode well for the rest of the PIIGS when their time comes.

the greeks invented anal sex.  the GOP takes that shit seriously. 

without anal sex, airport bathrooms are worthless.

Thanks for another pointless contribution. Stick to talking about Bachmann's migraines and Rupert Murdoch.

Soul Crusher

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A bunch of banks outside of Greece are carrying massive amounts of their worthless debt, which is now threatening the already terrible situation for the PIIGS. And whatever they do with Greece is going to have to eventually be done with Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland. And as the fascist EU kleptocrats in Brussels have, up until this point, completely fucked everything up to the best of their abilities, it doesn't bode well for the rest of the PIIGS when their time comes.

Thanks for another pointless contribution. Stick to talking about Bachmann's migraines and Rupert Murdoch.

How did the fools who bailed them out ever figure they would be repaid?   They don't produce anything! 

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How did the fools who bailed them out ever figure they would be repaid?   They don't produce anything! 

They've been holding the debt for years. The recent "bailouts" are just the dipshits in the EU leadership trying to save the Euro (and the EU) by pouring money down the drain.

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The Fed Audit

Share This
 
July 21, 2011
The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. "As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," said Sanders. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."
Among the investigation's key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. "No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president," Sanders said.
The non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress also determined that the Fed lacks a comprehensive system to deal with conflicts of interest, despite the serious potential for abuse.  In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans.
For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed's board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed.  Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed's emergency lending programs.
In another disturbing finding, the GAO said that on Sept. 19, 2008, William Dudley, who is now the New York Fed president, was granted a waiver to let him keep investments in AIG and General Electric at the same time AIG and GE were given bailout funds.  One reason the Fed did not make Dudley sell his holdings, according to the audit, was that it might have created the appearance of a conflict of interest.
To Sanders, the conclusion is simple. "No one who works for a firm receiving direct financial assistance from the Fed should be allowed to sit on the Fed's board of directors or be employed by the Fed," he said.
The investigation also revealed that the Fed outsourced most of its emergency lending programs to private contractors, many of which also were recipients of extremely low-interest and then-secret loans.
The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo.  The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates. Altogether some two-thirds of the contracts that the Fed awarded to manage its emergency lending programs were no-bid contracts. Morgan Stanley was given the largest no-bid contract worth $108.4 million to help manage the Fed bailout of AIG.


A more detailed GAO investigation into potential conflicts of interest at the Fed is due on Oct. 18, but Sanders said one thing already is abundantly clear. "The Federal Reserve must be reformed to serve the needs of working families, not just CEOs on Wall Street."

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Fed audit: $16 trillion in loans to banks in less than three years !!
Hotair ^ | 07/22/2011 | Ed Morrisey


Yes, that’s sixteen trillion dollars in “emergency” loans to financial institutions from the beginning of the recession in December 2007 to just one year ago. The long-awaited GAO audit shows that the Federal Reserve loaned more than the worth of the annual US economy, and not just to American banks, although US institutions got the lion’s share. Citibank was the largest beneficiary:

Of the $16.1 trillion loaned out, $3.08 trillion went to financial institutions in the U.K., Germany, Switzerland, France and Belgium, the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) analysis shows.

Additionally, asset swap arrangements were opened with banks in the U.K., Canada, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, Norway, Mexico, Singapore and Switzerland. Twelve of those arrangements are still ongoing, having been extended through August 2012.

Out of all borrowers, Citigroup received the most financial assistance from the Fed, at $2.5 trillion. Morgan Stanley came in second with $2.04 trillion, followed by Merill Lynch at $1.9 trillion and Bank of America at $1.3 trillion.

And there is a pattern to the disbursements, too:

The audit also found that the Fed mostly outsourced its lending operations to the very financial institutions which sparked the crisis to begin with, and that they delegated contracts largely on a no-bid basis. The GAO report recommends new policies that would eliminate such conflicts of interest, and suggests that in the future the Fed should keep better records of their emergency decision-making process.

The Fed doesn’t have a requirement to comply with the GAO’s recommendations, but its political position and independence are not exactly secure at the moment. Congress ordered the audit based on building political pressure to make the Fed more transparent, and the apparent conflicts of interest found by the GAO will only increase that pressure. First up, but probably not last, is Senator Bernie Sanders:

The non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress also determined that the Fed lacks a comprehensive system to deal with conflicts of interest, despite the serious potential for abuse. In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans.

For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed’s board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed’s emergency lending programs.

In another disturbing finding, the GAO said that on Sept. 19, 2008, William Dudley, who is now the New York Fed president, was granted a waiver to let him keep investments in AIG and General Electric at the same time AIG and GE were given bailout funds. One reason the Fed did not make Dudley sell his holdings, according to the audit, was that it might have created the appearance of a conflict of interest.

To Sanders, the conclusion is simple. “No one who works for a firm receiving direct financial assistance from the Fed should be allowed to sit on the Fed’s board of directors or be employed by the Fed,” he said.

The investigation also revealed that the Fed outsourced most of its emergency lending programs to private contractors, many of which also were recipients of extremely low-interest and then-secret loans.

The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates. Altogether some two-thirds of the contracts that the Fed awarded to manage its emergency lending programs were no-bid contracts. Morgan Stanley was given the largest no-bid contract worth $108.4 million to help manage the Fed bailout of AIG.

Sanders calls the report an exposé of “socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.” Of course, Sanders is a proponent of socialism for everyone, but put that aside for a moment. The report shows not so much that the Fed chose crony capitalism over clean hands, but that they didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter. By the time the crisis hit, the financial markets had narrowed to such a point that the only entities that could handle the work needed by the Fed were the same ones needing the bailouts. It’s a predictable consequence of the too-big-to-fail approach and a lax attitude towards industry consolidation.

Actually, as the Washington Independent reports, the audit didn’t really contain that many red flags for the Fed, other than the massive amounts of cash it loaned:

The report concluded $16 trillion in emergency funds were issued to financial institutions worldwide, and that some $660 million were paid to a handful of banks to administer the emergency loans. Most of the contracts associated with the latter sum were not issued through a bid, primarily due to “exigent circumstances,” the report explains.

While the contracts were consistent with acquisition policies governing the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the most active of the Federal Banks during the financial crisis, the authors of the report write, “policies could be improved by providing additional guidance on the use of competition exceptions, such as seeking as much competition as practicable and limiting the duration of noncompetitive contracts to the exigency period.”

Given the lack of competition available, the GAO recommendation may be more academic than useful.

For those interested in the fate of the mortgage-backed securities that created all of the financial instability when housing prices dropped, there is some good news:

On November 25, 2008, the FOMC announced that FRBNY would purchase up to $500 billion of agency mortgage-backed securities to support the housing market and the broader economy.56 The FOMC authorized the Agency MBS program under its authority to direct open market operations under section 14 of Federal Reserve Act. By purchasing MBS securities with longer maturities, the Agency MBS program was intended to lower long-term interest rates and to improve conditions in mortgage and other financial markets. The Agency MBS program commenced purchases on January 5, 2009, a little more than a month after the initial announcement. FRBNY staff noted that a key operational challenge for the program was its size. As discussed later in this report, FRBNY hired external investment managers to provide execution support and advisory services needed to help execute purchases on such a large scale. In March 2009, the FOMC increased the total amount of planned purchases from $500 billion to up to $1.25 trillion. The program executed its final purchases in March 2010 and settlement was completed in August 2010.

“Agency MBS” refers to those securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and/or guaranteed by Ginnie Mae, the government-sponsored entities at the root of the housing bubble. According to the audit, the Fed has drawn at least a significant portion of the poison out of the economy, and their ownership should make it easier for foreclosure negotiations to proceed. The fact that foreclosures have proceeded apace despite the consolidation shows that the problem is no longer having clear title to the lien but the ability of current homeowners to sustain their investments.

It’s an interesting report overall, one that doesn’t paint the Fed in an entirely bad light. It will, however, be a good argument for further audits in the future.



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16 TRILLION Reasons Why Everyone In Washington, Including The President, Should Be Heading To Prison
A Time For Choosing ^ | July 22, 2011 · 4:06 pm | Gary Jackson
Posted on July 22, 2011 10:28:08 PM EDT by curth

When I first learned of this, late Thursday, I was so angered I couldn’t even put it into words. Even now I’m really doing all I can to measure and moderate my tone. One thing about it, now we know why so many were adamantly opposed to auditing the Fed!

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders [Socialist-VT] reports the first ever top-to-bottom audit of The Fed shows $16 TRILLION in secret “emergency” loans to American and foreign banks and other businesses. All sympathetic to the democrat party.

Last year, the gross domestic product of the entire U.S. economy was only $14.5 trillion!

These secret loans started during President George W Bush’s last month in office, December 2007, but it was all orchestrated by the Fed. In fact, many of the people who work for the Fed also have ties to the banks and corporations who got this money.

Here’s what Senator Sanders posted on his website:

The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. “As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,” said Sanders. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.“

Among the investigation’s key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. “No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president,” Sanders said.

The non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress also determined that the Fed lacks a comprehensive system to deal with conflicts of interest, despite the serious potential for abuse. In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans.

For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed’s board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed’s emergency lending programs.

In another disturbing finding, the GAO said that on Sept. 19, 2008, William Dudley, who is now the New York Fed president, was granted a waiver to let him keep investments in AIG and General Electric at the same time AIG and GE were given bailout funds. One reason the Fed did not make Dudley sell his holdings, according to the audit, was that it might have created the appearance of a conflict of interest.

To Sanders, the conclusion is simple. “No one who works for a firm receiving direct financial assistance from the Fed should be allowed to sit on the Fed’s board of directors or be employed by the Fed,” he said.

The investigation also revealed that the Fed outsourced most of its emergency lending programs to private contractors, many of which also were recipients of extremely low-interest and then-secret loans.

The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates. Altogether some two-thirds of the contracts that the Fed awarded to manage its emergency lending programs were no-bid contracts. Morgan Stanley was given the largest no-bid contract worth $108.4 million to help manage the Fed bailout of AIG.

A more detailed GAO investigation into potential conflicts of interest at the Fed is due on Oct. 18, but Sanders said one thing already is abundantly clear. “The Federal Reserve must be reformed to serve the needs of working families, not just CEOs on Wall Street.”

To read the GAO report, click here.

This is simply incredible. It’s crony capitalism at it’s worst, and the numbers are so large they are almost incomprehensible. We’re talking about more money than our yearly GDP, trillions more. It’s frightening enough to know our debt is equal to 100% of our GDP, and totally unsustainable, this puts us in a whole other world.

What’s more incredible is there have been numerous reports of bailout money going to foreign banks, a separate situation, and yet, Congress has done nothing.

Astute readers have heard of the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It was developed by a couple of radical, socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. both Cloward and Piven have been big players in the democrat party for decades, and have even been photographed at the White House with President Bill Clinton at official ceremonies.

Cloward-Piven is a strategy to overwhelm the system with debt, demand, and confusion, in order to cause the collapse the entire system of capitalism, and bring about a Marxist state. This is why you see the democrats wanting to add MORE debt, and spend MORE money, at a time we are beyond broke. It’s a deliberate, calculated strategy to destroy America as we know it, and bring about a command-and-control form of government …. Not that we aren’t almost there now!

In September of 2008 James Simpson wrote an great article: Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis for the American Thinker. Simpson laid out the strategy Obama would use, as well as giving readers a nice history lesson of Cloward-Piven and the art of “manufactured crisis.” It’s a must read if you want to understand where we are at right now, and what is actually going on.

It’s a damned shame our “betters” in the GOP didn’t take time to learn about all of this BEFORE Obama was elected. Had the feckless Republican establishment learned what many of us already knew about Obama, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess!

Besides the banks, you’ll notice General Electric is involved in all of this. GE’s CEO Jeffery Immelt is attached to Barack Obama at the hip. GE has received all sorts of special treatment, because Immelt has supported Obama so strongly, and is even on many regime advisory committees. He even turned the TV networks the company owns, most notably NBC and MSNBC, into propaganda channels for Obama and the DNC.

It’s crony capitalism. It reminds me of how socialist and communist states operate. The fat cats, as long as they support the regime, are allowed to not only make money, but actually raid the public coffers.

While these $16 TRILLION in secret loans are so over the top it’s almost hard top comprehend, they are no different to the Obama regime’s handouts to the labor unions, and other special interests who have the regime’s back. History tells us that it’s a good bet most of these loans will never be repaid.

It’s quite telling that at a time Obama is threatening to stop sending seniors and the disabled the monthly checks they have EARNED, as well as gutting the military, [while we are in three wars and terrorism is high] that he has plenty of party favors for his buddies.

The Fed is a bad situation all unto itself. That said, there is congressional oversight of the agency. That the agency has been allowed to run wild, while Congress did nothing, is criminal. Every single member of Congress charged with overseeing the agency must be fired. They also must be investigated. We should be filling our prisons with the corrupt bastards who allowed all of this to happen.

It’s quite obvious the Obama regime has purposely enriched it’s friends through all of this corruption.

We’ve never put a United States President in prison. Obama wants to be “historic” I say we need to make a little history. Obama, Fed chair Ben Bernanke, and an entire cast of characters have created a situation that will most certainly cause the Republic to collapse, if something radical isn’t done.

If the United States collapses, the entire world will collapse. Liberty and Freedom will be things we’ll read about in books. [if books aren't outlawed] We’ll all be living in a very dark time.

I have no faith in Congress. Even though Senator Sanders has exposed this massive corruption, you can bet this will be swept under the rug.

We, the people, must rise up and DEMAND satisfaction.

We must DEMAND that any member of Congress charged with keeping an eye on the Fed resign immediately, pending criminal investigation.

We must DEMAND Ben Bernanke resign immediately, pending criminal investigation.

We must DEMAND members of the Fed involved in this scheme resign immediately, pending criminal investigation.

We must DEMAND any bank officer, corporation management, absolutely anyone involved with any company that received these secret loans, and was involved in the process, should be investigated for criminal activity.

We must DEMAND the resignation of Barack Obama, and anyone else connected to this in his regime, pending criminal investigation.

We also MUST DEMAND a our next elected President have a record of successfully going after corruption, even in her own party. [I just happen to have someone in mind]

Never in the history of our nation has corruption been so rampant in government. We need a top to bottom overhaul. We MUST cut spending and get government out of our lives so we can grow jobs and create opportunities.

The only way we’ll even come close to surviving as a nation is to make the U.S. the most business friendly place on earth.

It’s going to take something radical. It’s going to take our government going back to First Principles, back to the Constitutional Republic our founders created. It’s going to take the federal government realizing what they can and cannot, and should not, interfere with. They need to realize most things, constitutionally, are left to the states to sort out and control.

We need new leadership. We need people who understand reality. We need people who understand they work for us, the people. That WE are their employers, their bosses.

We need people who are mindful of how hard it is to earn a living, and how precious those tax dollars that flow into D.C. are. We need people who will treat those dollars with respect, and spend them wisely.

We also need to send a message to the corrupt bastards in Washington now, by sending the guilty to prison [and throwing away the key] and the inept packing!

With all of the insanity we are seeing from Washington, we can no longer sit by and tolerate it. We must take action and we must be successful. The very existence of our Republic depends on us all standing up and being heard.

TOPICS: Government; Politics; Click to Add Topic
KEYWORDS: corruption; washington; Click to Add Keyword

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There have also been rumours that the Fed wants to fiddle with the CPI, to 'adjust' it.
I hate the State.

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the greeks invented anal sex.  the GOP takes that shit seriously. 

without anal sex, airport bathrooms are worthless.

And mean while in 240's back yard

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

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There have also been rumours that the Fed wants to fiddle with the CPI, to 'adjust' it.

The govt/Fed etc love to fiddle with the CPI. The more they manipulate the CPI to hid inflation (like right now) the less they have to pay COLA adjustments to S.S. recipients. With a massaged CPI that lies about the true level of inflation they, the Govt/Fed complex can print more money, take on more debt and crush the middle class. It's a stealth tax, we get fucked and they get rich.

Our economic system and financial system thrive on new debt and money creation.

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The govt/Fed etc love to fiddle with the CPI. The more they manipulate the CPI to hid inflation (like right now) the less they have to pay COLA adjustments to S.S. recipients. With a massaged CPI that lies about the true level of inflation they, the Govt/Fed complex can print more money, take on more debt and crush the middle class. It's a stealth tax, we get fucked and they get rich.

Our economic system and financial system thrive on new debt and money creation.

Creature from Jeklyll Island 

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Fed Audit: Trillions For Foreign Banks, Conflicts of Interest  | Print |   E-mail 
Written by Alex Newman     
Friday, 22 July 2011 12:25 




During a 2½ year period starting at the end of 2007, the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in secret bailouts to banks and other companies around the world, according to a government audit of some of the U.S. central bank’s operations.

Much of the Fed's largesse was lavished on banks in Europe (such as Barclays, left)  and Asia, the audit revealed. More than $3 trillion, for example, went to financial institutions in just five European countries. Trillions more flowed toward some of the biggest banks in America. Institutions from Brazil and Mexico to South Korea and Canada also benefited.

The 266-page report, produced by Congress’s non-partisan investigative service known as the Government Accountability Office (GAO), has already sparked intense outrage since its release on July 21. Fed apologists, however, have been quick to defend the actions, saying they were “necessary” to “save” the economy and justified under the Federal Reserve Act. 

“The scale and nature of this assistance amounted to an unprecedented expansion of the Federal Reserve System’s traditional role as lender-of-last-resort to depository institutions,” the report stated.

Beyond the secret bailouts — to put the figure in perspective, consider that the output of the entire U.S. economy last year was well under $15 trillion — problems with conflicts of interest and no-bid contracts also featured prominently in the audit report.

One example highlighted by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I - Vt.) was the CEO of JP Morgan Chase serving on the board of the New York Fed even as his firm scooped up almost $500 billion from the central bank. The bank was simultaneously helping to administer the Fed’s secret bailouts.

But JP Morgan Chase was hardly the only example. According to the analysis, more than 80 percent of the Fed’s largest contracts to manage the programs were awarded without bidding.

Many of the companies that received the contracts were also being showered with central-bank bailouts at the same time. And more than a few insiders were granted “waivers” to hold investments in companies that were being rescued by the Fed.

"As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," Sen. Sanders, a self-described socialist, said in a statement about the report. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."

The congressional investigation was triggered as part of the financial “reform” bill passed last year despite strong Fed opposition. After the original “audit the Fed” bill by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) passed in the House and became extraordinarily popular with Americans, Sen. Sanders helped ensure that only a watered-down version made it out of the Senate.

But even with what is known so far, critics are on the attack. Another report about the Fed is also due to be released in October of this year. And in recent months, other previously secret information about the Fed and its operations has come out following years of litigation.

All of the disclosures have fueled a growing anti-Fed movement aiming to eventually abolish the central bank - essentially a sort of banking cartel with private shareholders but some veneer of government oversight. Sen. Sanders suggested in his public statement, however, that the institution should merely be “reformed” to serve "working families" and not just Wall Street CEOs.

"No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president," he noted in the statement, perhaps not realizing that the Fed, by its own admission, is not an agency of the government. "No one who works for a firm receiving direct financial assistance from the Fed should be allowed to sit on the Fed's board of directors or be employed by the Fed."

The biggest single beneficiary of the Fed’s bailouts was Citigroup, which received about $2.5 trillion in assistance. Several other top banks in the United States, including Bank of America and Morgan Stanley also benefited to the tune of trillions of dollars. British bank Barclays PLC took close to $1 trillion.

The GAO report suggested that the Fed should implement better policies to deal with conflicts of interest. Its policies on awarding contracts, record keeping and risk management should also be revised, the agency recommended.

The Fed’s chief lawyer responded by saying that the central bank would “strongly consider” the advice. But for now — following bailouts to a bank owned by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, blatant and widespread market manipulation, wild money printing, and secret bailouts larger than the U.S. economy — analysts expect outrage to continue growing.   

Photo: The Barclays Group is based in Canary Wharf in London's financial district
 


http://thenewamerican.com/economy/markets-mainmenu-45/8313-fed-audit-trillions-for-foreign-banks-conflicts-of-interest