AGAINST THE THEFT OF A NATION:

FIVE STEPS TO FREEDOM AND SOLVENCY

(October 31, 2008)

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BACKGROUND

The first two weeks of October 2008 have seen the most bare-faced and brazen, yet sly and and secretive, theft of a nation proceed. This gargantuan, in-our-face theft has robbed the public of the United States of both rights and posterity.

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Never before has so much money and means been taken from a supposedly sovereign citizenry in so little time as here in the U.S. since October 3, 2008.

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On October 15 mainstream commentators tallied the amounts taken so far, a total that adds more than $1.1 trillion to the national debt for the current fiscal year.

•$700 billion for the original "Bail-out Bill" unveiled by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve System Chairman Ben Bernanke after the failures of bettor/debtor speculators Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, and the American International Group (AIG) in September;

•$130 billion added on by the U. S. Senate and House of Representatives to the Bill that became law on October 3;

•$200 billion separately devoted to sustaining Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac;

•Over $100 billion already allocated to sustaining AIG.

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Beyond this $1.130-trillion total are unknowable and 'unlimited' expenditures that the powers given to the Treasury and to the Fed by the vote on October 3 have opened up.

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These expenditures include:

•Lending and credit without check, cap or oversight to the United States' most major, surviving commercial Banks (which now include the former investment-banks Goldman, Sachs and Morgan Stanley;

•Lending and credit without check, cap or oversight to "foreign" commercial and central Banks.

That last new means and power given to the Treasury and Fed deserves an exclamatory pause, then scrutiny, then it deserves any resort to rejection that we can raise against it.

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Now, you see, the Treasury Department (headed by "Hank" Paulson, former $37-million-a-year CEO of Goldman, Sachs) and the Federal Reserve System (the Fed, that private consortium of Banks that allies and/or relatives of the Rothschild and Rockefeller families manipulated into control of the U.S. money-supply just before World War I, its majority ownership and subsequent hundreds of billions in profits held by European financial interests, most of them based in the City of London) can give unlimited amounts of fiat money and credit to Germany's Deustche Bank, to Holland's Fortis Bank, to the Bank of England, to the b, to the Hong Kong and Shanghai Corporation, ....

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How is all this loss of money and sovereignty happening?

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Well, now, you see, the Fed, whose "war-chest" of $800 billion for ailing Banks and other Corporations is essentially tapped out by 2008's failures, can receive Bonds from the U.S. Treasury, (Bonds whose fiat value is created simply by computer key-stroke, please remember, though U.S. tax-papers remain ultimately liable for every penny of their nominal value. The Fed then count these Bonds as funds which it, the Fed, can then distribute to any needy Bank or Corporation, regardless of said supplicant's nominal nationality, so long as the supplicant is doing business somewhere in the 50 United States.

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And the Federal Reserve System and the Treasury Department can exercise this new and marvelous form of charity without check, cap or oversight, thanks to 74 Senators and 263 Representatives, despite the vehement opposition by a vast majority of these politicians' constituents to such obvious devaluation of the U.S. Dollar, impoverishment of our children's futures, and certain bankruptcy of the nation.

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Across every map of the United States should now be stamped: Owner, as of October 3, 2008, the City of London.

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We can, however, regain control of this nation. We can reject the destructive nonsense that's now imposed on us. We can throw off the vampire/zombie Banks now stuck on our backs and necks. We can simply repudiate the hundreds of trillions of dollars of debt these gamblers have assumed through "derivatives." We can go back to a real economy that produces goods for people's needs and prosper as never before through a true globalism that employs 21-century technology and recognitions.

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We can take five direct steps toward rationality and justice, solvency and freedom, personal independence and collective responsibility.

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FIVE STEPS

1. Replace the Federal Reserve System with a Publicly Owned National Bank that Issues Interest-Free Funds for Operation of the United States.

 

The privately owned Fed is now as it has been since its covert creation in 1913: a drain on the nation's resources, a guarantor that no Commercial Bank shall fail despite whatever excesses in speculation that the Bank commits, and a means of yoking people and businesses to unnecessary debt (sometimes called " 'credit' ") that intrinsically produces inflation and consequent, de facto devaluation of the U.S. dollar.

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The Fed is the central vampire that allows insolvent or "zombie" Banks to survive, drawing from workers' collective and personal wealth so that obviously bankrupt bettor/debtor Banks and other Corporations live on.

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In 2005 $352 billion of the $927 Individual Income Tax paid by workers in the U. S. went to to the Fed's consortium of private Banks as interest.

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The FRS and the IRS both violate the U.S. Constitution.

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Article 1, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution states that Congress alone shall have the power 'to coin money'.

 

In 1910, three years prior to legalization of the FRS, the U.S. debt was $1 billion, or $12.40 per citizen, according to Pastor Sheldon Emry's book Billions for the Bankers, Debts for the People.

 

By 1920 the amounts of debt were $24 billion for the U.S., owing mostly to World War I, and $228 per citizen.

 

By October 2008 the amounts of debt are over $10 trillion for the U.S. and correspondently over $33,000 per citizen, (not counting, of course, individual consumers' and home-buyers' debts for persons in the U.S.).

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2. Replace all international Commercial Banks with local, cooperative institutions that supply funds to the public without usurious interest and without 'fractional reserve-lending' that allows said Banks to lend at least 7 1/2 times the amount of their assets.

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According to the Insurance Information Institute, at the end of 2004 the 'book-value' (assets minus liabilities) of all U.S. Commercial Banks was $850 billion.

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In her book The Web of Debt, Ellen Hodgson Brown generously gives a double value to these Banks in advancing her solution to them. 

 

Her solution is based on estimation that 'around $1.7 trillion might be enough to purchase the whole U.S. commercial banking industry.'

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Ellen Brown's solution proposes that We, the People, can do a much better job of handling the nation's finances than Wall Street and the City of London.

 

Let's look at the mess Wall Street has made. How have U.S. Banks with a book-value of $850 billion gotten into a $180-trillion (yes, $180 trillion) total amount of debt from "derivatives" by 2008, so that the largest of them (J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America) have assets whose worth amount to 40, or 50, or more multiples times LESS THAN their debt from derivatives?

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Well, you see, derivatives are most often "side-bets", as you can register in this excerpt from CBS --60 Minutes-- piece on 'The Shadow Market' from October 5.

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Interviewer Steve Kroft asks University of California San Diego professor Frank Partnoy how 2008's stupendous "crisis" and "collapse" could have happened.

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Professor Partnoy answers: "It's the side-bets, it's the side-bets."

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By "side-bets" the emphatic professor means the unregulated "Credit Default Swaps" through which AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase et cetera have assumed nominal responsibility for highly risky "sub-prime mortgages" that they themselves previously packaged as "securities" before then treating and trading them as "swaps" at huge and highly leveraged profits (as much as $40 of nominal profit against $1 of nominal investment) among themselves and their global brethren.

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In short, a reality staggering to see, much less accept, these relatively few Wall Street Banks and other speculators have made colossally bad bets that we, the public, we masses, are now supposed to cover so that these Few and their gambling and lifestyles can continue.

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We Masses are again expected to bear losses and burdens for a Ruling Few. It's Sid the Elephant, facing our fascist Corporate State, redux. We Masses should, instead, take over and/or replace Banks of the Ruling Few. 

 

We should liquidate them and their liabilites as judiciously as possible. We should replace them with sane systems and local, community-governed institutions.

 

We should eschew them as we would a loan-shark who peddles bunco money. We should treat them as we would "dealers" who "live large" on the profits of peddling Crack and Smack to families and teen-agers.

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3. After replacing the Federal Reserve System, we the public should assume control of all Institutions that currently owe more to the FRS than they hold in assets.

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As you can see in the chart below, Henry Paulson's former firm, Goldman, Sachs, began the 21st century with assets of nearly $600 billion against borrowings, or 'Bank Credit', of about $240 billion from the Federal Reserve System.

 

By end of 2007, however, Goldman, Sachs had assets of about $815 billion against Bank Credit of over slightly more than $850 billion. That is, the firm accumulated a net deficit of about $400 billion in the eight years 2000 to 2007.

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As you can see, too, borrowing was especially heavy during Paulson's term as CEO 2004-2006--when Goldman, Sachs borrowed about $230 billion from the Fed and yet grew its assets little more than $20 billion, a net drain on the nominally Federal agency of more than $200 billion.

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The average annual bonus of a Goldman, Sachs partner in the 21st century is $5 million. Henry Paulson received $37 million in compensation 2005 as Goldman, Sachs' CEO.

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4. The hundreds of billions that we the public save through replacing the Fed, substituting local cooperatives and credit-unions for bettor/ debtor Commercial Banks, and assuming control of firms that already owe more to our Government's nominal lending agency (the Fed) than they are contributing to our economy, can be spent on society's urgent needs.

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Rebuilding infrastructure with 21st-century technology is one urgent need. Health-care and education equal to other nations' and equal for all are also urgent and possible. So too is affordable housing with features of renewable energy that allow net-zero expenditure.

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Before and above anything else, however, our savings from being rid of the Fed and its leading bettor/debtor, zombie/vampire Banks should go to assure that those made homeless or threatened with foreclosure by criminally structured loans have the opportunities to regain or keep their homes.

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5. At the same time, we should forget about and live apart from Big Government as much as possible.

 

The great lie of "de-regulation" and a "free market" is now exposed within the U.S., just as it's been exposed for decades in countries that the Western world has exploited throughout the "Third World."

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Banks in particular of supranational Corporations favor "deregulation" and a "free market" only when they hold absolute control over access to funds and hence control both livelihoods and life itself.

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We can can get along very well without such Banks and their like.

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We can substitute local cooperatives and credit-unions instead of supranational loan-sharks that have no connection or commitment to the communities they exploit and whom they under-serve.

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We can devise local community-currencies as our own, less corruptible means of exchange.

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We can use our 21st-century tools to assure access to needs such as water and to unprecedented modes of global connection. "Now we have the tools for all to be free."

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We can grow our own, healthier and more inexpensive and reliable food.

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The one good thing from the suffering already undergone by people in the " 'financial crisis' " of 2008 is that it can force new and healthy choices and changes.

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Crises produce opportunities.

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As in the first month after the attacks of September 11, 2001, we need clarity, courage and compassion to face realities and overcome difficulties. (Please see 'Truth Is the Way to Peace, ...', second column in my 2001 series for the San Francisco Bay View). Although ignored or hidden by mumbo-jumbo of financiers and their politicians, solutions can be as straightforward as the 'Five Steps' set forth above.

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The entire history of criminal and elitist financiers over more than 300 years, from founding of the Bank of England forward, proves two realities.

 

First, the Ruling Few flourish in climates of fear that hide the cruel unreason of their systems of exploitation.

 

Second, they profit most from the wars their pretexts produce. " '9/11' " and the current " 'credit crisis' " are these literal blood-suckers' 21st-century means of terror and de facto war against We Masses' prospects for our freedom and self-determined, shared prosperity.

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We need to control our nations' economies to control our destinies. ​

 

We need only to more empower ourselves as individuals and communities. We may then advance into the 'America' of ancestors' and immigrants' dreams and struggles, an all-world 'America' that releases in a steay, spectacular flow all of humanity's benign possibilities.

 

News of contemporary Victory Gardens is here.

 

You'll note, too, from the 900,000-members-strong Organic Consumers Association, a 2021 book from Dr. Joseph Mercola and Ronnie Cummins, The Truth about COVID-19.