Category Archives: Government

Update JFK

2015 Unfortunate Truth JFK, 9/11, and Beyond – The World We Live in.

Published on Feb 18, 2015: Length 4:37:51

The Real History – of the world from an historical perspective to the present day. This video explains the Facts of who, how & why of the JFK assassination and 9/11 complete with names and motives.

Meet Lee Harvey Oswald, Sheep-Dipped Patsy from James Corbett – short and to the point.

Peace Revolution episode 080: JFK 50 Years Later / QUI BONO?  Richard Grove’s excellent 20 hr podcast from his Tragedy and Hope web site.  Enjoy!

 

The Federal Reserve, a collection

by DAVID BROWN | CLEARNFO.com | Aug 22, 2015

Seal of the Federal Reserve System

Seal of the Federal Reserve System

“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” -Woodrow Wilson – In The New Freedom (1913) Section I: “The Old Order Changeth”, p. 13

Below is a short collection of videos on the Federal Reserve.  I decided to list them here for educational purposes and to have a central repository on this site to document this secretive and clandestine organization which has inserted itself into the U.S. Government without the common knowledge of the American citizen.  These videos are representative of some of the best available.  I have listed the lengths of each video so that you can determine how much time you have to invest in learning about this important topic.  Enjoy.  –David Brown

The Federal Reserve Explained In 7 Minutes (Length – 00:07:06)

The Birth of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank – How usury destroyed America (Length 01:11:12)

Century of Enslavement: The History of The Federal Reserve (Length 01:30:11)

The Money Masters – Full Documentary (480p) (Length 03:29:20)

Money As Debt – Full Length Documentary (Length 45:56)


Additional Reading…

 

Hillary Prison 2016

by DAVID BROWN | CLEARNFO.com | Aug 18, 2015

Hillary Prison 2016

Hillary Prison 2016

What ever happened to those 30,000 emails about Hillary’s yoga classes that were deleted? Haven’t heard a peep about that in a while?

Most people with an IQ above that of a stalk of broccoli can agree Hillary is a phony; and so, find some enjoyment in her getting caught illegally transferring Top Secret emails via her own private server. Her justification? It was, as she explained, for “convenience” …. OH PLEASE! Are we that stupid? More likely her motivation was to hide her criminal activities. But my question goes deeper and concerns the legitimacy of the government classifying TOP SECRET anything they seek to hide from the public. “National Security” is always the excuse, as though the entire country would explode if any of this secret information ever saw the light of day. We have found out that this is just not true. Think Snowden, Sibel Edmonds, William Binney and other whistle-blowers. We have seen time and again when some of this very top secret information leaks out that the country does not explode, but rather some embarrassing and illegal activity is revealed. Activity that we really need to know about! Is there anything these evil three letter agencies have that is even worth hiding? What I mean by this, is that: it is an irrefutable fact that the CIA, NSA, FBI, etc. are all engaged –as Hillary was— in illegal and unconstitutional activities. So wouldn’t our nation be much better off turning on the lights to see just how many cockroaches are sleeping in our bed? So maybe rather than seeing if Hillary transferred Top Secret information on her server, maybe we should be more concerned with finding out what exactly was sooooo Top Secret in the first place and why.

Bet Valerie Jarrett has her own private email server.

Will Hillary receive any jail time? Doubtful. The head of the NSA lied under oath to Congress (a crime punishable for up to 5 years: TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 47 > § 1001), yet his only punishment was an increase to his budget and a re-affirmation of his tenure as Director of National Intelligence. What these continuing un-prosecuted criminal actions by government officials (DoJ, IRS, State Department, NSA, CIA) represent is a complete and utter disdain for their oath of office, the citizens of these United States, and for the documents upon which this country was founded. Federal officials break the laws and shred our constitution daily without fear of penalty or prosecution; and in complete violation of their oath of office. I hate to interrupt your daily programming brought to you by the MSM, but it is clear –based on the facts everywhere in front of us– that the U.S. Federal Government no longer even bothers to give lip service to the U.S. Constitution and is therefore by definition illegitimate.


CIA Gun Runner: Hillary’s Benghazi Crimes Confirmed
Published on Aug 20, 2015
Alex Jones talks with Robert Tosh Plumlee about why the media is focusing in on Hillary Clinton’s latest scandal and how it’s diverting attention from a much, much larger issue.

Debbie Downer

by DAVID BROWN | CLEARNFO.com | Aug 18, 2015

Debbie Reynolds

Debbie Reynolds

I debated whether or not to post the dreary forecast from Tyler Durden below, since most of the news we consume is already very negative; and what, after all, can one more dire prediction contribute? Well, what it can contribute is the answer to a burning question we have all had on our minds since the U.S. Federal government decided to monetize our debt, which historically is the kiss of death to any economy. I guess they thought this time would be different, eh? Or maybe they believed in the magic of Keynesian economics as promulgated by the Nobel Prize winning Paul Krugman. It seems fitting that Krugman is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, since it was the ‘Progressive’ Wilson who brought us the Federal Reserve and the 16th Amendment. Anyway the question is “when will the economic collapse begin?” I think the answer is in the article below. What the article does not address is the incredible mountains of wealth transferred from those of us who make the economy work to those who are in the rarefied position of shuffling paper around.

23 Nations Around The World Where Stock Market Crashes Are Already Happening
by Tyler Durden on 08/18/2015

 

 

The Law of Corruption

by DAVID BROWN | CLEARNFO.com | Aug  18, 2015

The Big Four Bridge from various angles in May 2013

The Big Four Bridge from various angles in May 2013

Most systems (bridge, car engine, computer program) can withstand a certain amount of corruption; but all systems will fail at some point, when and if the corruption becomes too great.  For example, if Jeffersonville, Indiana and Louisville, Kentucky can’t decide who will paint the Big Four Bridge spanning the Ohio River, it will become corrupted by rust and fall into the river of its own weight.  Likewise, here in the U.S.A., if we don’t get control of the corruption that is running rampant in all three branches of the Federal Government, it too will fail.  We can argue on the details of the causes and the fixes, but the underlying problem is unconstrained lawlessness and corruption by our Federal officials. Until this is addressed head-on, the system upon which 321,512,481 American souls depend is destined to fail.


NOTE:

A system is a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole
Some systems share common characteristics, including:

  • A system has structure, it contains parts (or components) that are directly or indirectly related to each other;
  • A system has behavior, it exhibits processes that fulfill its function or purpose;
    A system has interconnectivity: the parts and processes are connected by structural and/or behavioral relationships;
  • A system’s structure and behavior may be decomposed via subsystems and sub-processes to elementary parts and process steps;
  • A system has behavior that, in relativity to its surroundings, may be categorized as both fast and strong.

 

12 Dictators, Tyrants And Terrorist Groups Aided By The US Federal Government

StopTheLie.com News update (07-27-2015)
Source: LibertyUpward.com

Joe Plummer

Joe Plummer

Throughout the history of United States Foreign policy the U.S. Government has often justified or called for the invasion of another country by claiming the need to remove a dictator who was committing human rights abuses against his own people.

But what is not commonly known is that throughout that same history the U.S. Government also gave military and financial support to numerous tyrants and terrorists with the full knowledge and awareness that these groups were committing human rights abuses against their own people.

This is something the mainstream media in America will never talk about.

And while the media and the U.S. Government tells us that “terrorists hate us for our freedoms”, perhaps it’s much closer to the truth to say they hate us for propping up dictators around the world, who kill, torture, steal from and unjustly imprison their citizens.

Here is a partial list of some of the worst tyrants and dictators your tax dollars have aided and abetted over the years… Read full article at: 12 Dictators, Tyrants And Terrorist Groups Aided By The US Federal Government

COMMENT: “Again, as Quigley points out, the “power structure” that he exposed isn’t loyal to Communism, or Socialism, or Fascism, or capitalism. The Network is happy to exploit the rhetoric of any movement or ideology, prop up any dictator or tyrant, and support any economic or political model, provided it serves their one overarching aim. That aim, to bring “all the habitable portions of the world under their control,” is as old as the lust for power itself. The death and suffering that their policies have already caused in pursuit of this aim are incalculable. Allowing them to continue as they have will only bring more of the same.

Tragedy & Hope 101 by Joe Plummer

Tragedy & Hope 101 by Joe Plummer

–If there is one goal for this book, it is to expose the attitude and inherent nature of those who seek to dominate others. Don’t worry about remembering all of the dates and names that have been listed. Don’t worry about trying to recall all of the specific events. (All of that information will always be here if you need to find it again.) Instead, make it a point to simply verify the following: there is no lie that these men will not tell. There is no crime that they will not commit. The only measure of “right” and “wrong,” in their view, is whether their tactics succeed or fail. This might sound like hyperbole now, but by the end of this short book you will understand the truth of this assertion. (The Network’s game is won by those who calculate properly, and moral considerations only impede accurate calculation.)” —Tragedy and Hope 101

Car Cyber Attacks

by DAVID BROWN | CLEARNFO.com | July 27, 2015

Michael Hastings serveimageBy the very nature and fundamental design, the Internet is NOT secure and therefore you can never, ever guarantee your privacy. Add to this the denaturing and bastardization by the CIA and NSA of the existing attempts at security and the internet leaks like a sieve. These two evil twins have been caught red-handed putting backdoors into security software, thus enabling yet another pathway for hackers: mistakenly believing that the backdoors were for their exclusive use. Since there is no guarantee of security on the internet, it necessarily follows that there can be no iron-clad security concerning the matter of remotely controlled vehicles. Thus, when car manufactures claim that they have fixed certain security holes and that now you are safe, this is a bold-faced lie. Simple logic, folks. Get a clue. Just say no to being their trained Lemming, else wise if you get crosswise with the all mighty and powerful Federal Government, you might find yourselves in a brand new Mercedes rushing headlong into a tree.

Michael Hastings

… Michael Hastings was killed. (credit: Al Seib/Los Angeles Times)

In 2013, former U.S. National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism Richard Clarke told The Huffington Post that what is known about the single-vehicle crash is “consistent with a car cyber attack.”

Clarke said, “There is reason to believe that intelligence agencies for major powers” — including the United States — know how to remotely seize control of a car.

“What has been revealed as a result of some research at universities is that it’s relatively easy to hack your way into the control system of a car, and to do such things as cause acceleration when the driver doesn’t want acceleration, to throw on the brakes when the driver doesn’t want the brakes on, to launch an air bag,” Clarke told The Huffington Post. “You can do some really highly destructive things now, through hacking a car, and it’s not that hard.”

“So if there were a cyber attack on the car — and I’m not saying there was,” Clarke added, “I think whoever did it would probably get away with it.”

The Ashley Madison hack: Age of self-delusion
by John McAfee | Jul 21, 2015

Michael Hastings was afraid his car was tampered with
Published time: 22 Aug, 2013

Update: Chrysler recalls 1.4M vehicles after Jeep hack
By Lucas Mearian Computerworld | Jul 24, 2015

How much did NSA pay to put a backdoor in RSA crypto? Try $10m – report
21 Dec 2013 by Neil McAllister

From Cryptome.org
by Bill Blunden |San Francisco State University | 12 August 2015
Thoughts About Michael Hastings

Why Does The “War on Terror” Serve Western Policy?

By Jay Dyer | Monday, July 20, 2015

lawrence-of-arabia1

Peter O’Toole as British Intelligence agent, T.E. Lawrence

From Benghazi to Turkey, the ISIS “supply lines” are directly from NATO-controlled territory, and apparently it never occurs to the minds of western media to ask where, in fact, the so-called Islamic State obtains their arms.  The reason for this is obvious, as it would demonstrate that the Islamic State is not a homegrown, indigenous Wahhabist extremist group, but western creation, funded and aided like Al Qaeda since its inception, as Carter and Brzezinski openly discussed.  Not much has changed in the international terror theater since 1979, save the targets.  Counterpunch noted over a decade ago:

“Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [“From the Shadows”], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.”

Concerning the aiding and funding of the updated Mujahideen-Al Qaeda-ISIS brand, Logistics 101: Where Does ISIS Get Its Guns by  Tony Cartalucci.

The London Telegraph would report in their 2013 article, “CIA ‘running arms smuggling team in Benghazi when consulate was attacked’,” that:

“[CNN] said that a CIA team was working in an annex near the consulate on a project to supply missiles from Libyan armouries to Syrian rebels.”

Weapons have also come from Eastern Europe, with the New York Times reporting in 2013 in their article, “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.,” that:

“From offices at secret locations, American intelligence officers have helped the Arab governments shop for weapons, including a large procurement from Croatia, and have vetted rebel commanders and groups to determine who should receive the weapons as they arrive, according to American officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.”

And while Western media sources continuously refer to ISIS and other factions operating under the banner of Al Qaeda as “rebels” or “moderates,” it is clear that if billions of dollars in weapons were truly going to “moderates,” they, not ISIS would be dominating the battlefield.

Recent revelations have revealed that as early as 2012 the United States Department of Defense not only anticipated the creation of a “Salafist Principality” straddling Syria and Iraq precisely where ISIS now exists, it welcomed it eagerly and contributed to the circumstances required to bring it about.”

In terms of foreign policy, the target with ISIS is still Syria, as Washington elites have expounded through their Brookings Institute discussion of June 24, a rebound from the failed attempt by John Kerry to drum up support for war with Syria that fell flat due to the exposure of the laughable false flag “chlorine attack” propaganda pinned on Assad.  Now ISIS is both the means and the raison d’etre for invading and saving Syria, in the classic problem-reaction-solution strategy the West never tires from enacting in the global “freedom” war.

beheadingfake

Acting far inferior to Peter O’Toole.

The endless, eternal war on terror is a contrived strategy of tension the Atlanticist establishment has used for over a hundred years, dating back to the exploits of Harry St. John Philby, T.E. Lawrence and the British carving up of the Middle East and special relationship with Saudi Arabia.  As mentioned, nothing has changed in the last century, other than the focal point of the terror attacks, as the Middle East must constantly be broken up, destabilized and reorganized into “micro-nations” more amenable to Washington’s corrupt corporate and ideological expansionist domination.  Recent so-called “terror events” are merely dots on the long timeline of terror, a scripted narrative designed to remodel the American landscape as much as the Middle East, according to D.C. think tank machinations.

Saudi Arabia, is of course one of the world’s chief funders of terror, operating as a proxy for the western elites.  Jordan, Qatar, the UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait are all “Gulf Cooperation nations,” arising from the aegis of the British Empire, and adopted under the U.S. empire.  And what is constantly forgotten is the origin of this cadre’s alignment of the West through oil production was not merely the result of OPEC and Kissinger, it was in fact organized by Bilderberg: It was Bilderberg that organized the 70s OPEC oil debacle.  Isn’t it curious the GCC pro-terror states are also western-supplying oil states?  Citing William F. Engdahl in his A Century of War, Andrew Gavin Marshall writes:

“One enormous consequence of the ensuing 400 percent rise in OPEC oil prices was that investments of hundreds of millions of dollars by British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell [both present at Bilderberg] and other Anglo-American petroleum concerns in the risky North Sea could produce oil at a profit,” as “the profitability of these new North Sea oilfields was not at all secure until after the OPEC price rises.”  In 2001, the former Saudi representative to OPEC, Sheik Ahmed Yamani, said, “’I am 100 percent sure that the Americans were behind the increase in the price of oil. The oil companies were in real trouble at that time, they had borrowed a lot of money and they needed a high oil price to save them.” When he was sent by King Faisal to the Shah of Iran in 1974, the Shah said that it was Henry Kissinger who wanted a higher price for oil.” (136-7)

world-power-relationships-3-638

Heartland versus Rimland

In other words, war is a racket, as General Smedley Butler famously stated, and the new “War on Terror” (TM) of our day is not new, but an updated version of the old British strategy of staving off Russia.   Little has changed a century later, as the major power bloc of the West, the Atlanticists still charge forward according to the Mackinder Heartland doctrine that the western merchant/banking sea power must dominate and control the Eurasian “heartland” to ensure no Eastern rivalry.  Through the export of Opium, China was subjugated, and through export of Marxism, both China and Russia experienced the havoc of western-born ideological materialism.

It is precisely this same utilitarian Anglo-empiricist, pragmatist philosophy that has ultimately turned on its own populace in a parasitical fashion unheard of for past empires.  Promising sensual and economic utopia, the Bolshevik export to Russia on the part of the Atlantic banking power is not the top-down social engineering strategy of the corporate elite upon the U.S. population itself.  The great delusion is that the West is “free,” when it is entering the realm of greater enslavement than Sovietism experienced.  The only difference is the foolish western populace cannot grasp their enslavement is at the hands of Marxist corporations

The central banks, the Fortune 100 and their shareholders love cultural Marxism and command and control, socialist economic models because it is the quickest way to consolidate wealth and transfer the actually valuable assets to the controlling oligarchy.   In such a system, the opposition will inevitably all be titled “terrorists,” as the appellation is already being extended beyond radical Islamists.  And after it extends beyond the average person, the conditioning will be so strong that any thoughts, words, actions or potential-pre-crime actions will also follow under the elastic notion of “terror.”

Terrorism is thus a social weapon, not of indigenous, individual “actors” and lone wolves, but stage managed dupes, patsies and tools of an international oligarchical cartel, as Orwell demonstrated in 1984 with the fictional villain of Immanuel Goldstein.  Indeed, who funds these groups? (We saw who, above).  The most obvious fact of the contradiction of the “War on Terror” (TM) is that it almost always works to further Washington’s domestic and geopolitical aims.  Terror, then, is like Trotsky’s notion of perpetual war – perpetual war on the psyche of the globe (it’s a global war on terror), as a phase in the dialectical convergence on the path to global government.  That is why terrorism serves western political aims.


Related links on ClearNFO:

The Populist Cry For Glass-Steagall

by Guest Writer KRISTINA BRUCE | CLEARNFO.com | July 16, 2015

Kristie Bruce imageThe housing crash of 2008 wiped out over $6 trillion dollars in American assets and dropped household net worth by almost 40%.  Not only that but the banking debacle also cost an additional $26 trillion in bailouts and another $3.6 trillion in Quantitative Easing. The latter was to keep interest rates low in an attempt to jump-start housing sales. We’ve frequently seen mention of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (GS) as the mechanism which could have averted the banking crisis and it’s making headlines again as a bill originally introduced in 2013 by the unlikely duo of Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and John McCain (R-AZ). It seems the memories of the American public like goldfish aren’t very long because what’s old seems to be new again.

Was Glass-Steagal actually doing the job of protecting the public from the evils of retail and investment banks interconnectedness, collusion and risk taking when it was still in place? No it wasn’t. Enacted in 1933, by the time a portion of it, yes only a portion was repealed in 1999 with the passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the banks had long been involved in the very same activities which are once again being blamed for creating the crisis. Pay no attention to the fact that GS regulation would have had no effect on the failures of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Fannie Mae nor Freddie Mac. Oh and please ignore the fact that in 2004 the SEC decided to raise banks debt-to-capital ratio from 12:1 to 30:1. Surely that had no effect on how much more risk they were able to take on. Right? No it was all Glass-Steagall the politicians proclaim!

The reality is that Glass-Steagall stopped doing anything to protect anybody at the very latest in the era of Harold Geneen and International Telephone and Telegraph Corp (ITT). Why this reference? Because that was sort of the most famous example of a wave of large mergers and acquisitions which certainly showed up in the finance sector around that time. It didn’t take nearly as long to recognize in the business sector how very destructive the way Geneen gobbled up companies into IT&T was, to form this weird conglomerate of unrelated businesses. Eventually it destroyed the core business and that is what people should keep in mind as we go down the rabbit hole. Hands in too many pies eventually lead to big mistakes and malinvestment.

The point of that example is to compare it to the reunification of the finance sector which began around the same time and it soon got to a point that commercial banks, investment banks and proprietary trading banks had no separation that could be overcome no matter what the goofball regulators did and we’re talking the 1970’s here! Forty years ago not; even in this century! It had been going on for so long that by 1999 it was argued Glass–Steagall was already “dead.” One of the latest incidents before GS was repealed was Citibank’s 1998 affiliation with Salomon Smith Barney, one of the largest US securities firms, was permitted under the Federal Reserve Board’s then existing interpretation of the Glass–Steagall Act. They just did whatever the hell they wanted to and they’ll do it again. It was not long after Citibank/SSB that Clinton publicly declared “the Glass–Steagall law is no longer appropriate.” All they did was once again codify illegal behavior by changing the law just as the current administration has codified all sorts of illegal acts through the National Defense Authorization Act, The Federal Grounds Protection Act, continually extending the Patriot Act, the Freedom Act and this horrid upcoming Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. They tell you that they’re protecting you then they change the law to benefit the banking corporate cartel and also strip you of your rights.

What’s more is that the politicians are being disingenuous and playing on the naiveté of the public when it comes to both their short memories and lack of attention as to how the banking industry works. In Warren’s opinion as stated in a New York Times article from 2012; when asked if GS had been in place at the time of the financial crisis if it would have averted it or reduced banking loses, her reply ;

“The answer is probably ‘No’ to both.”

Andrew Ross Sorkin who did the interview summed up Warren’s motives for pushing GS reinstatement at the time hit the nail on the head:

“In my conversation with Ms. Warren she told me that one of the reasons she’s been pushing reinstating Glass-Steagall — even if it wouldn’t have prevented the financial crisis — is that it is an easy issue for the public to understand and “you can build public attention behind.”

She added that she considers Glass-Steagall more of a symbol of what needs to happen to regulations than the specifics related to the act itself.”

Bingo! It resonates with the populace. It makes them feel as though someone is actually doing something even if it is meaningless. It’s pandering.

Is there more to this though? Is there possibly something here from which the banks might actually benefit? I think there is. Pandering alone is not usually motive enough for politicians like McCain who is so entrenched they’ll probably remove him from the senate in a body bag or Warren who has already become so popular that her political career is almost ensured for as long as she desires to remain in the senate.

What happens if the new and improved GS 2.0 is passed? Well within 5 years the retail banks will have to divest themselves of all activities deemed exclusive to investment banks and vice versa. In some cases the government will also reserve the right to force cessation of certain activities in an even shorter time frame where it feels there is imminent risk to the public.  That means a lot of shifting of business will have to be done in a very short matter of time. Do you reckon that retail banks are just going to hand over that portion of their business to investment banks and the investment banks will do so in kind? Not likely. On top of that, there are portions of assets each hold which neither would even want to dirty their hands with.

It is likely that toxic assets are becoming so burdensome and eminently destructive that the major banks would actually welcome a superficial break-up at this point. It would give them an opportunity to spin some of the absolutely worthless portions of the $1.2 QUADRILLION holdings of completely unregulated derivatives market. This of course would be shoveled into smaller entities which could later be allowed to implode and without implicating the parent companies. It would also give them plausible deniability for the offload if it was government mandated too!!!

They’ve got $TRILLION$ in bad derivatives bets which are going to eventually go sour no matter how much money they print and infuse the banks with. There’s a global economic slowdown and a currency devaluation war going on right now which ensures it’s going to happen at some point in the not too distant future. You bet your bottom dollar they’d love to get a huge portion of that off the books sooner than later! If they spin-off these toxic assets themselves everyone’s going to blame Goldman Sachs, Chase, HSBC and myriad other “too big to fails” for having done so. If government *snickering* “forces” them to become smaller, then the heat is off the parent entities when these bets do go bad for their spun-off children.

It doesn’t matter a whit if these banks create new separate entities to handle portions of business they will be precluded from engaging in. Most of what will be spun off are bets on junk and holdings in the grossly overvalued stock market; which is becoming more and more difficult to prop up, not just here in the U.S., but globally. The Chinese stock market was falling so precipitously that last week the government had to place stringent controls on selling by major holders for the next 6 months. They initiated discounts on transaction fees and decreased margin requirements to encourage buying. At the same time the NYSEX was halted for half a day which still is somewhat mysterious. At the same time the Euro zone is in a tremendous mess with Greece, which if it doesn’t go Germany’s way could set off a domino effect of similar defaults and send their markets into a tail spin. Doesn’t it seem awfully convenient that simultaneous to this all of the sudden, a 2-year-old bill which had been lost in the shuffle is suddenly in vogue again? The banks want to take out the trash and this is the perfect cover to do it under.

The general populist cry is understandable. The banks are robbing them blind and they want it to stop. The problem is that Glass-Steagall isn’t going to do much of anything other than give the banks an opportunity to stick it to them again. Say it publicly though and most folks’ hair bristles and spit flies out their mouths as they scream, “It’s better than nothing!” They want so badly to believe that some politician somewhere is doing something, ANYTHING on their behalf that when you gore the sacred ox of Glass-Steagall they lose all logic. The problem is that economics is a dismal science which even a goodly portion in the industry of trading and finance don’t fully understand. How are we to expect a public whose economic education on the subject generally amounts to the cumulative  sound bites they’ve heard on the evening news and a blurb or two from the likes of FOX News, MSNBC and their endless parade of bobble head commentators, to really have a grasp on what’s being proposed? At best it will do little to nothing. At worst it may be a Trojan Horse leaving another swath of destruction which the banking industry will casually walk away from relatively unscathed.


Note: The Glass-Steagall Act was enacted in 1933 to limit commercial bank securities activities and affiliations between commercial banks and securities firms.  In short it was a wall of separation between commercial and investment banking.  The 1999 repeal permitted Wall Street investment banking firms to gamble with their depositors’ money that was held in affiliated commercial banks.

By  Guest Writer Kristina Bruce ⋅ July 16, 2015
Read more from Kristina Bruce at Cutting the Gordian Knot

Joe Plummer’s ‘Dishonest Money’ – Now in German (Deutsch)

by DAVID BROWN | CLEARNFO.com | July 13, 2015

Dishonest Money

Dishonest Money

The information contained in ‘Dishonest Money’ is critical to any accurate understanding of money and banking, period. Having studied these topics for years, I am familiar with most of what Mr. Plummer discusses, but I have yet to see all the disparate pieces of this –sometimes confusing—puzzle come together so nicely in one easy to read and easy to understand book. It is easy and understandable because Mr. Plummer takes you step by step in a very thoughtful process meant to communicate not impress. ‘Dishonest Money’ will surly help even the expert clear out a few cobwebs and misunderstandings while being extremely approachable to the novice.

In my view, ‘Dishonest Money’ should be a vital part of any standard curriculum in public / private schools and universities interested in educating their students.   With this knowledge in the hands or rather the minds of the public, the Central bankers would likely never have another restful night’s sleep and would be looking over their shoulders with every step they take.

Dishonest Money – Book Review