Puppycow
Penultimate Amazing
Perhaps you could give a brief synopsis of the video, as I don't have time to watch now.
Here you go.
World Debt
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Perhaps you could give a brief synopsis of the video, as I don't have time to watch now.
Here you go.
Its only an 8 minutes video. Oh well, its a former lawyer working at the World Bank. Her job was to make sure that the World Bank played by the rules. But they did not. She confirms some of what the The Economic Hitman book have been claiming. She is not yet convinced herself, and will do some more investigations, to see if it can be true that the World Bank and the IMF has been used to put third world countries in debt to get control over them politically.
What she did find was associations with drug dealers, and money laundering in the World Bank. What she did find was that the biggest banks work together and control the economy in a very illegal way. Because they are not supposed to share information with each other about say how the dealings are going to be on the stockmarket, or whether or not to lower or raise interests on certain loans, because it opens for the possibility of insider trading and price fixing.
You can check her website.
She has not shared secret documents like Snowden, because she tried to go through the official channels to make the people aware of this problem. There is supposed to be an oversight when it comes to the dealings of the World Bank, and she was supposed to be part of this oversight. But what she found was that she had no official channels to use, to report illegal activities at the World Bank. In fact she lost her job even though congress told the bank several times not to fire her.
From the other thread you shared, which I had hoped you could have summed up a bit, I found this:
http://thechiefbrief.blogspot.dk/2006/08/creations-of-economic-hit-man.html
Which is a skeptics summary. But not what I would call a critical thinker. Why not investigate it yourself? Instead of just reading the book and claiming evidence is missing, then look into it. The facts are out there. It explains what is going on in the world before it happens, because you know what agenda is going on. You become less surprised when you discover that Snowden can reveal one day that NSA monitors Google, Facebook, Hotmail and so on, without the need for a judge to access the information they retrieve. Read up on the constitution, its very illegal. Not something the court is supposed to just make legal because some presidential elected judge says is suddenly legal.
http://kahudes.net/
But it takes quite a lot of investigation to really connect the dots. Investigation most people here is not willing to do for themselves. They rather find the holes in the cheese they are given, and throw it away. I hope you are not going to do the same.
Puppycow
Penultimate Amazing
I watched the video last night and was writing a post about it when the battery on my smartphone ran out and I lost it.
Anyway, the gist of her argument is that there is widespread corruption at the World Bank. There was one specific allegation of some money in the hundreds of millions of dollars that was intended to fight poverty in the Philippines going to someone it shouldn't have. Unfortunately, she also made nebulous and vague allegations about "the corporate media" being entirely owned by some mysterious international conglomerate that also controls like most of the money in world. And something about "it's all going to come crashing to a halt within a matter of weeks". I don't doubt that there may be some corruption at the World Bank and it should be looked into. I'm more skeptical of her claims that "the corporate media" are covering it up and are all controlled by some shadowy Illuminati-like cabal. Although there's probably a kernel of truth to that too: the rich help each other; many companies have interlocking boards of directors; and the directors and top executives happily vote huge salaries for themselves in a mutually back-scratching arrangement.
Watching it again now.
I'll try to list the specific allegations:
Announcer:
1) World bank is laundering money
2) World bank increases poverty by keeping the third world in perpetual debt and servitude to the first world
Karen Hudes:
3) securities fraud
4) financial information that was not disclosed to bondholders
5) she was fired from the World Bank for whistleblowing about the above 1 and 2 over the objections of members of congress including former senator Lugar
6) asked for specifics of the money laundering: "the money was going every which way because anyone who reported misconduct was fired."
7) borrowers were being overcharged
8) $900 million that was supposed to fight poverty in the Philippines instead went to a corrupt man, Lucio Tan(?) who was in default on his loans; the Philippine National Bank went into default; I was trying to expose the cover-up; the cover-up went all the way to congress and then to 188 ministers of finances; so this is corruption in the entire world; so until it's set straight, what we're going to have is a currency war
9) "the corporate press" ignored her story because it's all owned by a "mega-conglomerate". all financial institutions in the world are part of this scheme to rip off everybody, every single citizen on the planet.
10) Swiss mathematicians looked at the boards of directors of companies and found that one organization controls 40% of assets and 60% of earnings of all companies traded in the world (I think the idea here is that if a director sits on the board of directors of two or more companies, then all those companies are part of the same conglomerate)
11) this means that the central banks of the world are issuing paper money with no accountability to the people.
12) pretty soon, in a matter of weeks, the whole system is going to come to a screeching halt with something called "gold back gradation(?)"
Announcer:
13) clearly these institutions have no oversight and are laundering money off-shore
14) does this organization control the government too?
Hudes:
15) absolutely. what i have documented is "government capture"
16) Robert Zoellick was Mitt Romney's transition planning chief but CBS refused to report it, or ask questions about it, keeping American voters in the dark
17) Bank of America and Goldman Sachs and all other banks actually just one big bank
18) headed for a currency war again
19) 70% of Americans in a recent Gallup poll distrust the media because it's owned these banks (wait, who reported the results of this poll? the corporate media?)
Announcer:
20) why do you suppose that the government isn't going after you like they are with Snowden?
Hudes:
21) uhhhh, because we have the people behind us.
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Puppycow
Penultimate Amazing
Brilliant
She sure knows what she is talking about.I just watched the movie "Watchmen" which is very much on this very topic as well. Brilliant movie. Have you seen it?
Puppycow
Penultimate Amazing
Brilliant
I just watched the movie "Watchmen" which is very much on this very topic as well. Brilliant movie. Have you seen it?
Actually, no, I missed that one at the time but maybe I will rent it someday.
PIMCO owns all the debt.
I'm only half-joking.
Then there is intragovernmental debt. Pay attention.
The government has a certain amount of financial obligations. For instance, somebody wants an Obamaphone. That costs money. Someone else wants roads and bridges. Those cost money. Someone else wants their Social Security check. That costs money. To pay for all this, the government collects taxes and duties. But then some jackass wants a tax deduction because he is paying interest on his mortgage, and the government gifts him with a lower tax bill. Another buffoon gets a lower tax bill because an appliance company bribed Congress to give tax expenditures for buying their refrigerators.
Lowering someone's tax bill does not lower the amount of money to which the government has obligated itself. Consequently, everyone else either has to pay higher taxes, or the government has to borrow money because it allows over a trillion dollars of tax expenditures (deductions, credits, loopholes, whatever you wish to call them) every year.
The government borrows money two ways. One way is to borrow money from the Social Security Trust Fund, leaving a chit for the amount borrowed. Social Security used to take in more money in payroll taxes than it was paying out to old fogies. That was just too tempting for Congress to leave alone.
Another way the government borrows money is to sell bonds.
And that is how the government gets in debt.
So who owns that debt? As is obvious from above, the Social Security Trust Fund owns some of that debt. About $2.7 trillion to date. The buyers of the bonds own the rest of the debt. The question then becomes who bought the bonds.
PIMCO bought some. Public employee pensions funds, 401k funds, Saudi princes, the Rockefellers, Japan, Britain, China, and a raft of other public and private entitites bought them. These bodies don't buy the bonds out of the goodness of their hearts. They buy them for the interest earned on them, and because the United States has a AAA rating. At least it did until recently.
That is not the end of the list, however. The Federal Reserve also bought some of those bonds. The Federal Reserve "prints money" and gives it to the US Treasury in exchange for US bonds. Most of the interest earned by the Federal Reserve is returned to the US Treasury, and when the bond matures and the Federal Reserve receives back the money it had printed, it then destroys that money. The Fed may also sell those bonds before they mature and burn the money from the proceeds at that time in order to keep inflation in check.
That is who owns the debt.
We are in the midst of a gigantic bond bubble, though. The Fed balance sheet is so huge it is considered highly improbable the Fed will be able to soak back up all the cash it printed if and when inflation begins to rear its head again. Bond prices are at an astronomical high, and when the bubble bursts, bond prices will drop and the Fed won't be able to sell them for the same price it purchased them. The Fed's bonds will be "underwater", as it were.
Then we will all bleed.
I'm only half-joking.
Then there is intragovernmental debt. Pay attention.
The government has a certain amount of financial obligations. For instance, somebody wants an Obamaphone. That costs money. Someone else wants roads and bridges. Those cost money. Someone else wants their Social Security check. That costs money. To pay for all this, the government collects taxes and duties. But then some jackass wants a tax deduction because he is paying interest on his mortgage, and the government gifts him with a lower tax bill. Another buffoon gets a lower tax bill because an appliance company bribed Congress to give tax expenditures for buying their refrigerators.
Lowering someone's tax bill does not lower the amount of money to which the government has obligated itself. Consequently, everyone else either has to pay higher taxes, or the government has to borrow money because it allows over a trillion dollars of tax expenditures (deductions, credits, loopholes, whatever you wish to call them) every year.
The government borrows money two ways. One way is to borrow money from the Social Security Trust Fund, leaving a chit for the amount borrowed. Social Security used to take in more money in payroll taxes than it was paying out to old fogies. That was just too tempting for Congress to leave alone.
Another way the government borrows money is to sell bonds.
And that is how the government gets in debt.
So who owns that debt? As is obvious from above, the Social Security Trust Fund owns some of that debt. About $2.7 trillion to date. The buyers of the bonds own the rest of the debt. The question then becomes who bought the bonds.
PIMCO bought some. Public employee pensions funds, 401k funds, Saudi princes, the Rockefellers, Japan, Britain, China, and a raft of other public and private entitites bought them. These bodies don't buy the bonds out of the goodness of their hearts. They buy them for the interest earned on them, and because the United States has a AAA rating. At least it did until recently.
That is not the end of the list, however. The Federal Reserve also bought some of those bonds. The Federal Reserve "prints money" and gives it to the US Treasury in exchange for US bonds. Most of the interest earned by the Federal Reserve is returned to the US Treasury, and when the bond matures and the Federal Reserve receives back the money it had printed, it then destroys that money. The Fed may also sell those bonds before they mature and burn the money from the proceeds at that time in order to keep inflation in check.
That is who owns the debt.
We are in the midst of a gigantic bond bubble, though. The Fed balance sheet is so huge it is considered highly improbable the Fed will be able to soak back up all the cash it printed if and when inflation begins to rear its head again. Bond prices are at an astronomical high, and when the bubble bursts, bond prices will drop and the Fed won't be able to sell them for the same price it purchased them. The Fed's bonds will be "underwater", as it were.
Then we will all bleed.
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A common meme is that if the government confiscated all the private wealth in the United States, there would not be enough to run the government for more than a few months, much less make a dent in the debt.
This is untrue.
There is enough private wealth to pay off the entire US federal debt and have enough left over to run the government for nearly a year.
This is not to be taken as a suggestion.
This is untrue.
There is enough private wealth to pay off the entire US federal debt and have enough left over to run the government for nearly a year.
This is not to be taken as a suggestion.
The problem with the national debt, which I'm not sure many people understand, is that some of your aforementioned private creditors have a very cozy relationship with the Federal Reserve. The Fed then arranges for they or the banks they control to have loans at interest rates that amount to more or less free money, which is then flipped into interest bearing government debt that you and I are on the hook to service. To the extent that this process is illegitimate, and a form of glorified counterfeiting, the national debt is illegitimate.
If the Fed merely constrained itself to monetizing the expenses of greedy politicians, then all we would be left with is the inflation tax, not inflation theft. This is bad enough, but as it is, we are headed down the same road that Greece is.
Roger Ramjets
Philosopher
So the national debt is completely legitimate?
Ah, I get it now. The reason inflation is so low is that the Fed is stealing it!
kevsta
RBL CHeck Failed
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lulz no, the reason inflation is "so low" (apart from the systemic fraud in the methodology) is that the shadow banking system is still deleveraging (deflation) as fast as Bernanke is trying to reflate the (insolvent) normal banking system.
there will be consequences from all that CTL+P eventually though.
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psionl0
Skeptical about skeptics
Even assuming that the Fed is giving money away to its cronies or buying up the banks' bad debts (difficult to prove) I fail to see how that makes it responsible for government debt. The government is still borrowing money faster than the Fed can print it and not from the Fed either.
This is all about the stupidity and greed of politicians who think they can do this for ever without facing any consequences and the people who vote them in.
Can you parse English? I said, to the extent that some of the debt is financed by printing money for cronies, that portion is illegitimate. If you worked and saved your entire life, I don't believe that portion is illegitimate.
What about inflation as measured by the prices of cash-flow generating financial assets that mostly wealthy people have?
You either didn't read, or didn't understand what I posted, neither did I say the Fed was "responsible" for the national debt. Congress is responsible for borrowing all of that money. What I said was, the Fed is not only in the business of lending to governments, but it also lends to private member banks, as well as primary dealers and various wall street banks at rates not available to the public (the part about free money). When those entities buy government debt with what is essentially counterfeit (although of course not technically) money, I view that debt as illegitimate. It's theft.
If I somehow managed to counterfeit $100 billion dollars, and Congress agreed to create $100 billion worth of USG obligations and lent it to me, the American people shouldn't be on the hook to service the interest.
Yes, the scheme is outrageous. Essentially the government is lending money at low rates, then borrowing that same money back at higher rates.
ravdin
Illuminator
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The Federal Reserve, not the government, is lending money at low (i.e. zero) rates. The Federal Reserve is a private consortium of banks and isn't a government entity any more than Federal Express is.
Sceptic-PK
Illuminator
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What a load of nonsense. Why are people so confused over things that are so easy to verify? Sheesh.
Emperor_Gestahl
Muse
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The debt all "nets" out to zero, but counter-party risk can get messy.
Um...hello? I could spend several minutes thrashing you about the head and shoulders explaining why this is such a boneheaded statement, or I could just refer you to the Federal Reserve web site and suggest you take a gander at the URL domain extension.
Does the President of the US appoint the FedEx Chairman?
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