FEDERAL RESERVE ANNIVERSARY: SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS

THE FED – ANNIVERSARY EXPOSÉ BENEFITS

DECEMBER 29, 2013 BY THE DOC 

http://www.silverdoctors.com/the-fed-anniversary-expose-benefits/

“Secret negotiations established a banking cartel. It’s grown ever stronger through the years.” It operates “independently.”
“Rather than preventing financial crises, it precipitates new ones.”
“We know Fed policy continues to reap profits for Wall Street while impoverishing Main Street.”
“One hundred years is long enough. End the Fed.”   – Ron Paul
It is important for Investors and Citizens in General to know why, in the Midst of an Ostensible Economic Recovery, Middle Class Impoverishment continues, while Insiders well-connected to the Banking Cartel flourish.  
The Answers, including Opportunities for Profit and Wealth Protection, lie in an examination of Highlights of the History and Policies of the Private for-Profit Federal Reserve on its 100^th Anniversary this December, 2013. Consider:

The extremely limited edition copper Warbird & Sic Semper Tyrannis-
The LAST 2 OFFICIAL SBSS coins as Chris Duane re-brands the series on Dec 31st!

 

Submitted by Deepcaster:

“The Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913 in response to a wave of bank crises, which had hit on average every six years over a period of 80 years. The resulting economic depressions triggered a populist movement for monetary reform in the 1890s. Mary Ellen Lease, an early populist leader, said in a fiery speech that could have been written today:

“Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street…

“We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government…

“…the Federal Reserve Act that they got was not what the populists had fought for, or what their leader William Jennings Bryan thought he was approving when he voted for it in 1913…

“What Bryan and the populists sought was a national currency issued debt-free and interest-free by the government, on the model of Lincoln’s Greenbacks. What the American people got was a money supply created by private banks as credit (or debt) lent to the government and the people at interest…

“The new system was supposed to prevent bank runs, but it clearly failed in that endeavor. In 1929, the United States experienced the worst bank run in its history…

“The New York Fed had been pouring newly-created money into New York banks, which then lent it to stock speculators… precipitating the 1929 stock market crash…

“The result was widespread unemployment and loss of homes and savings, similar to that seen today. In a scathing indictment before Congress in 1934, Representative Louis McFadden blamed the Federal Reserve. He said:

“Mr. Chairman, we have in this Country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks…

“The depredations and iniquities of the Fed has cost enough money to pay the National debt several times over. . . .

“Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders.

“These twelve private credit monopolies were deceitfully and disloyally foisted upon this Country by the bankers who came here from Europe and repaid us our hospitality by undermining our American institutions.”

“100 Years Is Enough: Time to Make the Fed a Public Utility”

Ellen Brown, lemetropolecafe.com, 12/22/13

Congressman McFadden was “rewarded” for his Courage with 3 Assassination Attempts, the third of which was reportedly successful.

Stephen Lendman describes Connection between the Federal Reserve Act and the enactment of the Federal income Tax.

“ ‘In plain English, the Federal Reserve Act (FSA) authorized a private central bank to create money out of nothing, lend it to the government at interest, and control the nation’s money supply, expanding or contracting it at will.’

“Weeks before FSA was enacted, the 1913 Revenue Act became law. It imposed a federal income tax. It did so to pay bankers interest on America’s money. It let taxpayers do it.”

“ ‘One hundred years is long enough. End the Fed.’ Put money power back in public hands where it belongs!”

Stephen Lendman, veteransnewsnow.com, 12/23/13

Lendman also describes how the Act was born in Secrecy and how the Machinations of The Fed remain Secret to this very day.

“In 1910, seven powerful figures met secretly. They did so on Jekll Island. Nelson Aldrich and Frank Valderclip represented Rockefeller financial interests.

“Charles Norton and Benjamin Strong represented JP Morgan. Paul Warburg represented Rothschild family interests. No one represented popular ones.

“Rockefeller/Morgan/Rothschild representatives planned the Federal Reserve System.”

Ibid.

And he goes on to describe how the Act is arguably Unconstitutional.

“Doing so violated the Constitution’s Article I, Section 8. It affords Congress sole power to coin (create) money and regulate the value thereof.

“In 1935, the Supreme Court ruled Congress can’t constitutionally delegate its authority to another body or group.

“Congress and Wilson defrauded the public. They did so by granting Wall Street money creation power. They gave powerful bankers absolute monetary control.

“US and world economies changed. They did so for the worst.”

Ibid.

It is thus understandable why one of the United States’ Founders, Thomas Jefferson, warned

“I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”

“Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance.”

“The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.”

Thomas Jefferson

Lendman goes on to Warn of the International Banking Cartel’s Apparent Goal.

“The Fed isn’t federal. It has no reserves. It’s one of four dominant central banks. Others include the Bank of England, ECB, and Bank of Japan.

“The Basel, Switzerland-based Bank of International Settlements (BIS) functions as a central bank for central bankers.

“It’s an unaccountable boss of bosses. It’s final solution plan calls for establishing a global currency it controls. Achieving it assures ultimate money power.”

          Ibid.

And Lendman describes the Consequences of Mega-Banker Control of the World’s Economy.

“Fed policy caused booms, busts, inflation, deflation, instability, crises, and today’s protracted Main Street Depression.

“Growing poverty, unemployment, underemployment, homelessness, hunger and human misery reflect it. Money power in private hands is responsible for:

• economic instability;

• wrecking world economies for profit;

• waging wars for it;

• rising consumer debt;

• record budget and trade deficits;

• an out-of-control national debt;

• record numbers of business and personal bankruptcies;

• millions of home foreclosures;

• loss of America’s manufacturing base; and

• an unprecedented wealth gap between America’s privileged class and all others.”

Ibid.

No wonder then that G. Edward Griffin in his Definitive Classic aptly named The Fed “The Creature”, The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at The Federal Reserve.

But an important Guide we take from The Fed and its Mega-Bank Allies to Date, is that they will continue their Monetary Inflation (QE) indefinitely to maintain and enhance Power.

How can the Fed keep rates “low for a long time” as it recently promised, if QE is not continued in some form or another indefinitely?

For Profit and Wealth Protection we can infer and benefit if we are prepared for:

1. Monetary Inflation (of the $US and other Major Fiat Currencies) continuing, with all the consequent Opportunities we have described in our Alerts for Profit and Wealth Protection, and
2. The $US Purchasing Power is being destroyed by The Fed with one consequence being that at some point soon it will no longer serve as the World’s Reserve Currency. Already China has entered into Bilateral Yuan Currency Swap Deals with Major Nations. And as the World’s largest Gold Producer and Importer it is preparing to back the Yuan with Gold.
3. Another Financial Crisis and Market Crash is therefore on the Agenda and
4. US Treasury Bonds are The Greatest Financial Bubble in History both because the U.S. is the largest Debtor Nation in History and because the Bonds are denominated in a deteriorating (thanks to the Fed) Fiat Currency – a Bubble is destined to pop.
   Best regards,  Deepcaster

Need a Banking Sector? Not Any More

DECEMBER 19, 2013

Do We Even Need a Banking Sector? Not Any More

An automated banking utility has no need for parasitic bankers or politicos or indeed, a central bank.

http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/do-we-even-need-banking-sector-not-any.html

Do we need a banking sector dominated by politically untouchable "Too Big to Fail" (TBTF) banks? Thanks to fast-advancing technology, the answer is a resounding no. Not only do we not need a banking sector, we would be immensely better off were the banking sector to wither and vanish from the face of the Earth, along with its parasitic class of political enablers, toadies and Federal Reserve apparatchiks. 

The key to understanding why big banks have outlived their purpose is to grasp the implications of computing power, self-organizing networks and crowdsourcing. Banks came into existence to manage the accumulation of capital (savings) and distribute the capital to borrowers in a prudent manner that minimized risk and still yielded a return for savers and the bank's investors/owners.

Back in the pre-computer era, the record-keeping and risk management processes of these two core functions required a complex bureaucracy and a concentration of accounting skills and lending experience. The costs of operating this record-keeping and risk management bureaucracy was high, and these costs justified the bank's fees and interest rate spread. In an idealized scenario, a bank might pay depositors 3% annual yield on their savings and charge borrowers 5%. The 2% spread was the bank's to keep for performing the accounting, collection and risk management functions.

Today, computers running scripts/programs can perform these functions with minimal human oversight and at very low cost. The tracking and recording of millions of transactions and accounts no longer requires thousands of clerks and a large institutional bureaucracy; a relative handful of software engineers are all that's needed to maintain these services, which are in effect a low-cost utility.

Risk management and lending are also computerized; the human interface of a banker is a bow to tradition, not necessity. Crowdsourced funding is entirely computerized: those with money/capital choose to join a pool of lenders who accept the risk of lending to an individual, household, project or enterprise for a specified return.

This process of aligning excess capital (savings) with borrowers is already automated. Is there a role for regulation? Absolutely: such a system requires transparency that can be trusted. Those who violate this trust with cooked-books, lies, misinformation, etc. must suffer negative, long-lasting consequences, starting with being banned from the system.

It is an abiding irony that the present banking system's secret portfolios and processes (shadow banking, derivatives designed to fail and trigger profitable defaults, etc.) are considered core competitive advantages: in other words, eliminating transparency generates the highest-return bank profits.

And let's not overlook the political consequences of these immense profits: a political and regulatory order that is easily captured to serve the interests of big banks. The number one agenda item is of course to arrange Central State protection of the most profitable (i.e. the least transparent) parts of the banking sector's operations.

This lack of transparency distorts the financial market, rendering it systemically vulnerable to malinvestments and risky speculations and the financial crashes that result from these systemic distortions.

The other top agenda item for bank lobbyists is to arrange Central State/Federal Reserve subsidies of bank profits. These subsidies are also known as financial repression, as the Central State/Bank rigs interest rates and regulations to favor bank profits at the expense of both savers and borrowers.

Thanks to the Federal Reserve's Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP), savers have been robbed of hundreds of billions of dollars in income--money that has been effectively transferred to the banks by the State. This is why I call our system State-Cartel capitalism, as the State and cartels rule in a mutually beneficial marriage at the expense of the real economy, the citizenry and especially what's left of the dwindling middle class.

Since the core functions of banks can now be performed by cheap processors and software, we can get rid of the entire parasitic banking sector, once and for all. But what about investment banking? That too can be automated. What about wealth management? In a world where index funds beat 96% of money managers over a long time-frame, that too can be automated.

But what about the tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions politicos skim from the bankers? Now we finally reach the real reason why the parasitic banking sector is allowed to exist, even though it has outlived its purpose and value: the political class of parasites benefits immensely from the banking sector's giant state-rigged skimming machine.

An automated banking utility has no need for parasitic bankers or politicos or indeed, a central bank. The only legitimate regulatory function of the state is to enforce transparency; beyond that, its actions are all subsidies of one sort or another of politically powerful constituencies at the expense of the real economy's productive people, communities and enterprises.

The Mechanics of Precious Metals Price Manipulation

http://www.silver-coin-investor.com/The-Mechanics-of-Precious-Metals-Price-Manipulation.html

Much confusion persists regarding the method, or mechanics, of how the big banks are able to push the price of precious metals around at will for so long.

GATA and Ted Butler have long established and outlined the reasons why this occurs (legally). They have also established the foundation that forms the basis of how the manipulation unfolds. Despite very clear and concise commentary, the message sometimes becomes diluted in its distribution. This situation makes for easy picking from the hard-core opposition who mainly reside, ironically, as part of the professional mining and trading community.

The confusion comes from declarations that on price drops, the bullion banks are selling. This then triggers the frequent and violent down-drafts we have witnessed over the last 2 years and counting. However, the trading data indicates the contrary. Commitment of Traders (COT) data shows that the big banks always buy on these dips and they always sell on rallies. Always. (This is clear evidence of manipulation in and of itself.)

So how do they get the price moving in one direction or another, usually to the downside?

The mechanism is made clear by the forensic analysts at NANEX, which provides documented real time price action down to the microsecond.

Stacking the Bid with Fill and Kill

Via high frequency trading, the big banks are able to stack the bid with spoof orders because of their size and privilege. They are able to place the trades in large size because of their already super-concentrated short (and long in the case of gold) corners. This issue, along with no governor on position limits, also constitutes manipulation on its own.

This technique has been around the HFT world for years and is otherwise known as “fill and kill”‚ trades. The price for these contracts is impossible to fill, so the transaction never closes. However, the bid lasts long enough to trigger speculative funds (hedge funds) to respond (via their own algorithms) into automatic selling and down goes the price.

In the aftermath, the big banks are ready and willing to buy. And they clean up, as it is revealed when the COT data is released a week later. The reverse happens on the way up.

Who has the ability to out a trade on like that?

These sudden moves appear around market opens and coincide with the overlap between the London fixes and the COMEX open. These millisecond trades that have 'broken' the CME platform more than a few times over the last 6 months are fill and kill trades.

These are naturally active sessions of which, on at least four occasions over the last 6 months, the CME has needed to stop trading because of the sudden surge in liquidity.

The resulting price action forms the foundation of the technical analysis. It also forms the popular commentary as to why the price moved this way or that, which of course really has not much to do with those exogenous events.

Opponents, mainly those in the professional trading community, will often misrepresent or attack the wrong argument. It is natural that most of us desire to imagine we are part of an ethical system and not operating in a rigged casino.

That the miners remain largely mute on the issue may be simply due to their dependence on the very banks that control the price.

The Broader Effect

Are the big banks intervening in all markets?

Many will often point out in opposition to sweeping statements about manipulation by the FED or the government. They will dispute that surely they cannot be involved in corn, wheat, and other commodities.

Maybe so, probably not.

The very same analysis of trading structure analysis can be applied to other commodity markets.

The fact that other commodity markets are also down doesn't necessarily mean that JPM is acting in all markets. But surely these 'other' commodities take their signal from the indications put out by PM performance. Like it or not, precious metals may be peripheral, but remain as peripheral assets. However, they are a permanent guide to inflation expectations. 

What the FED Wants

The Gold Antitrust Action Committee (GATA) has quietly built a huge archive of evidence fully revealing the role of government in the covert manipulation of the gold market. But the Fed doesn't have to be involved on a day to day basis. They are by proxy given their status as regulator. Additionally, to a large degree they are members of the Federal Reserve because of the banks which own these outsize positions.

The big banks (aka, the bullion banks) are simply allowed to do it. And they prosper as a result.

Nothing much has changed in the strategy by which concentrated power wields control over markets. The technology simply adds speed and blocks detection. The question, of course, is when will this end - if ever? The answer is impossible to say, though the inevitability that it will end at some point is guaranteed - just as the sun will come up tomorrow.

But the effect of the price distortions on the physical markets underlying (the interest rate of money, the wider financial system fragility and the economies they threaten) is the crimes of the century.

Noam Chomsky: We’re really a plutocracy

Noam Chomsky: We’re no longer a functioning democracy, we’re really a plutocracy

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/27/noam-chomsky-were-no-longer-a-functioning-democracy-were-really-a-plutocracy/

By Travis Gettys
Friday, December 27, 2013 13:59 EST

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The world faces two potentially existential threats, according to the linguist and political philosopher Noam Chomsky.

“There are two major dark shadows that hover over everything, and they’re getting more and more serious,” Chomsky said. “The one is the continuing threat of nuclear war that has not ended. It’s very serious, and another is the crisis of ecological, environmental catastrophe, which is getting more and more serious.”

Chomsky appeared Friday on the last episode of NPR’s “Smiley and West” program to discuss his education, his views on current affairs and how he manages to spread his message without much help from the mainstream media.

He told the hosts that the world was racing toward an environmental disaster with potentially lethal consequence, which the world’s most developed nations were doing nothing to prevent – and in fact were speeding up the process.

“If there ever is future historians, they’re going to look back at this period of history with some astonishment,” Chomsky said. “The danger, the threat, is evident to anyone who has eyes open and pays attention at all to the scientific literature, and there are attempts to retard it, there are also at the other end attempts to accelerate the disaster, and if you look who’s involved it’s pretty shocking.”

Chomsky noted efforts to halt environmental damage by indigenous people in countries all over the world – from Canada’s First Nations to tribal people in Latin America and India to aboriginal people in Australia—but the nation’s richest, most advanced and most powerful countries, such as the United States, were doing nothing to forestall disaster.

“When people here talk enthusiastically about a hundred years of energy independence, what they’re saying is, ‘Let’s try to get every drop of fossil fuel out of the ground so as to accelerate the disaster that we’re racing towards,’” Chomsky said. “These are problems that overlie all of the domestic problems of oppression, of poverty, of attacks on the education system (and) massive inequality, huge unemployment.”

He blamed the “financialization” of the U.S. economy for income inequality and unemployment, saying that banks that were “too big to fail” skimmed enormous wealth from the market.

“In fact, there was a recent (International Monetary Fund) study that estimated that virtually all the profits of the big banks can be traced back to this government insurance policy, and in general they’re quite harmful, I think, quite harmful to the economy,” Chomsky said.

Those harmful effects can be easily observed by looking at unemployment numbers and stock market gains, he said.

“There are tens of millions of people unemployed, looking for work, wanting to work (and) there are huge resources available,” Chomsky said. “Corporate profits are going through the roof, there’s endless amounts of work to be done – just drive through a city and see all sorts of things that have to be done – infrastructure is collapsing, the schools have to be revived. We have a situation in which huge numbers of people want to work, there are plenty, huge resources available, an enormous amount to be done, and the system is so rotten they can’t put them together.”

The reason for this is simple, Chomsky said.

“There is plenty of profit being made by those who pretty much dominate and control the system,” he said. “We’ve moved from the days where there was some kind of functioning democracy. It’s by now really a plutocracy.”

Chomsky strongly disagreed with Smiley and West that he had been marginalized for his views, saying that he regretfully turned down dozens of invitations to speak on a daily basis because he was otherwise engaged.

He also disagreed that a platform in the mainstream media was necessary to influence the debate.

“If you take a look at the progressive changes that have taken place in the country, say, just in the last 50 years – the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, opposition to aggression, the women’s movement, the environmental movement and so on – they’re not led by any debate in the media,” Chomsky said. “No, they were led by popular organizations, by activists on the ground.”

He recalled the earliest days of the antiwar movement, in the early 1960s, when he spoke in living rooms and church basements to just a handful of other activists and they were harassed – even in liberal Boston – by the authorities and media.

But that movement eventually grew and helped hasten the end of the Vietnam War, and Chomsky said it’s grown and become so mainstream that antiwar activists can limit wars before they even begin.

He said President Ronald Reagan was unable to launch a full-scale war in Central America during the 1980s because of the antiwar movement, and he bitterly disputed the idea that antiwar activists had no impact on the Iraq War.

“I don’t agree; it had a big effect,” Chomsky said. “It sharply limited the means that were available to the government to try to carry out the invasion and subdue the population. In fact, it’s one reason why the U.S. ended up really defeated in Iraq, seriously had to give up all of its war aims. The major victor in Iraq turns out to be Iran.”

Despite these limitations, he said the Iraq War had been one of the new millennium’s worst atrocities and had provoked a violent schism between Sunni and Shiite Muslims that had sparked regional conflicts throughout the Middle East.

“The United States is now involved in a global terror campaign largely against the tribal people of the world, mostly Muslim tribes, and it’s all over. The intention is to go on and on,” Chomsky said. “These are all terrible consequences, but nevertheless they’re not as bad as they would be if there weren’t public opposition.”

By commenting,

Papantonio: Outsmarting Bankers With Reverse Eminent Domain

John Perkins About How To Beat Bankers

Occupy Economics (December 19)

One hundredth anniversary of the Federal Reserve

A VIABLE SOLUTION TO THE ECONOMIC CRISIS

By Robert Poteat, for AMI

http://www.monetary.org

December 23, 2013, will be the one hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Federal Reserve Act. This Act is arguably the greatest attack on humanity in all of history. It is the culmination of centuries of political, financial, intellectual, and moral corruption. The corruption has only increased in the one hundred year history of the Federal Reserve Banking System.

Stated purpose of the Act: An Act To provide for the establishment of Federal reserve banks, to furnish an elastic currency, to afford means of rediscounting commercial paper, to establish a more effective supervision of banking in the United States, and for other purposes. The Act gave the power and privilege of creating the nation’s money supply to a private banking cartel, the Federal Reserve Banking System. That power is reserved and granted to the Congress of the United States by Article I, Section 8, Clause 5, of the United States Constitution.

The Act did in fact establish Federal Reserve Banks. If “elastic currency” is a euphemism for inflation, the System has fulfilled that intention. Certainly, the System rediscounts commercial paper to the advantage of the monopoly System and disadvantage of the nation. Since the passage of the Act, there have been nineteen recessions, including two major depressions, showing banking supervision to be a tragic farce. Who knows the meaning of the vague phrase “other purposes?”

Subsequently, the Act was amended to also require the maintenance of employment. That, too, has become another item in the System’s catalogue of failures. The System’s failure is obscured by politically manipulated corruption of unemployment statistics.

The System creates the nation’s money supply by creating debt. The debt is euphemistically called credit. Either way, credit and debt is the same thing. It is done by bookkeeping trickery often referred to as fractional reserve deposit expansion.ⁱ

This power to issue debt used as money gives the private banking cartel power over the rest of society because it not only determines how much debt is put into circulation used as money and withdrawn; but, also, gives the cartel power to determine who gets money for what purpose. War is given preference over physical infrastructure and human infrastructure such as education and healthcare.

The Act was passed just ahead of the United States entry into WWI. The war was financed by bank credit creating the greatest increase in national debt to that time. Since then, the national debt has been exponentially expanded and used as power to concentrate wealth in private hands that control government, information sources, production, and education. Since WWII the economy of the United States has been co-opted for the purpose of nearly continuous war making. The war making is an attempt to gain monopoly control of the world’s resources for the most violent and brutal corporate empire the world has yet known.

The power to issue money was assigned to the Congress by the Constitution. Congress subverted democracy and justice when it passed that power to private interests. The System subverts peace. It is the responsibility of Congress to address and correct the mistake Congress has made.

A viable correction has been offered; it was last introduced into the 112^th Congress by former Congressman Dennis Kucinich as HR 2990ⁱⁱ, the NEED Act (National Emergency Employment Defense Act). If passed, this bill could have refreshed and stabilized the U. S. economy, begun paying off the national debt, and made any level of physically possible and socially acceptable human culture available without national debt.

The NEED Act would terminate the power of private banks to create credit used as money and restore the power to Congress to create and spend into circulation debt and interest free money to maintain a stable economy without inflation or deflation. Private banks would retain the business privilege of acting as monetary intermediaries using their own money or money deposited with them by investors desiring that service. Uninformed people believe that this is the way banks operate, now.

The present check clearing, statistical data keeping, bank regulation, and institutional knowledge of the present system would be folded into the U. S. Treasury as a new bureau.

Some provisions of the NEED Act are an immediate end to growth of national debt; fast investment in infrastructure to create millions of jobs; a tax free grant to all citizens to stimulate the economy; and begin paying off the national debt as it comes due to reduce interest burden on taxpayers.

What is Congress waiting for? Why all the polarizing, stalling, rhetoric about austerity, sequestration, and cutting necessary and desirable human services? A real and permanent solution is available, now.

Modern Money Mechanic, publication of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. This publication is outdated since “reserves” no longer serve as a limitation of loan making, but it does confirm that loans are created by bookkeeping entries.

http://www.monetary.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/HR-2990.pdf

The above AMI statement was written by our Senior Advisor Robert Poteat, one of America’s premier monetary researchers and reformers. The American Monetary Institute recognizes the need for citizen awareness to develop beyond the interest generated by the FED’s becoming 100 years old. Therefore we are launching a continuing education program.

We are creating a three level course – Basic, Advanced, and Senior, for persons who wish to become educated in this monetary area which is of such vital importance to the future of our nation.

The “Basic” course will be structured around materials presented at our website, and will be free, but will require a firm commitment from participants. The “Advanced” course will be structured around Stephen Zarlenga’s book, The Lost Science of Money. It will also be free, but in addition to a firm commitment will require purchasing The Lost Science of Money book, and include some tests and essays regarding content. The “Senior” course will require a tuition and run over a one year period, and will be superior to any University Level monetary courses we are aware of. 

For a descriptive outline describing each program, please email Stephen Zarlenga, Director, American Monetary Institute at: ami@taconic.net. To be sure we receive your request; you can send me a letter at AMI, PO Box 601, Valatie, NY 12184

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HSBC shuts down following a Santa Klaus invasion

Seignorage: dark pools are bigger than ever

Definition:

Seignorage (a.k.a. seigniorage) is the amount of real purchasing power that a banker can extract from the public by printing money and creating credit lines, before being rightly hanged. 
- Marco Saba, December 23, 2013 (centenary of the creation of the Federal Reserve System)

Explanation: When a banker prints money or create credit lines, it is in essence creating purchasing power since it receives goods and services in exchange for the money. It gains further if issuing new money reduces (through inflation) the value of old money by reducing the liability that the old money represents. These gains to a money-issuing banker are called "seignorage" revenues.

December 23, a century of Federal Reserve seigniorage wars

December 23, a century of Federal Reserve seigniorage wars
To: Steve Pieczenik
cc: Rome US Ambassador

Dear Steve,

the next December 23 will mark the anniversary of the creation of the Federal Reserve System - a private banking cartel taking orders from the City of London terrorist hub - which enslave us all. Thanks to December 23, 1913, we got an Orwellian century of wars aimed by the banksters for gaining the supreme power of private seigniorage over the populations and governments. Many state leaders opposing the private seigniorage stranglehold were killed. We remember JFK, killed for introducing the UNITED STATE NOTES as a monetary instrument for the US Treasury: Kennedy was assassinated in the 53rd anniversary of the November 22, 1910 secret bankers meeting at Jekyll Island which was aimed at designing the Federal Reserve system.
In Italy we remember how your government bought our country for the bankers by issuing billions of 'American Military LIRE' which were later (1954) transferred as a PUBLIC DEBT in our state balance. Aldo Moro then issued the Italian version of US NOTES by issuing 450 billions of LIRE in "BIGLIETTI DI STATO A CORSO LEGALE" and was killed like Kennedy was, on May 9, 1978.
My dream is that by December 23, you do a short video commenting this bloody seigniorage war century in your own words.

I hope that our two countries, US and Italy, will soon be able to join forces and fight our common economic terrorist enemy once and for all.

Best regards,

Marco Saba

The medieval, unaccountable Corporation of London

The medieval, unaccountable Corporation of London is ripe for protest

Working beyond the authority of parliament, the Corporation of London undermines all attempts to curb the excesses of finance

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  • The Guardian, Monday 31 October 2011 21.00 GMT
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Illustration by Daniel Pudles

It's the dark heart of Britain, the place where democracy goes to die, immensely powerful, equally unaccountable. But I doubt that one in 10 British people has any idea of what the Corporation of the City of London is and how it works. This could be about to change. Alongside the Church of England, the Corporation is seeking to evict the protesters camped outside St Paul's cathedral. The protesters, in turn, have demanded that it submit to national oversight and control.

What is this thing? Ostensibly it's the equivalent of a local council, responsible for a small area of London known as the Square Mile. But, as its website boasts, "among local authorities the City of London is unique". You bet it is. There are 25 electoral wards in the Square Mile. In four of them, the 9,000 people who live within its boundaries are permitted to vote. In the remaining 21, the votes are controlled by corporations, mostly banks and other financial companies. The bigger the business, the bigger the vote: a company with 10 workers gets two votes, the biggest employers, 79. It's not the workers who decide how the votes are cast, but the bosses, who "appoint" the voters. Plutocracy, pure and simple.

There are four layers of elected representatives in the Corporation: common councilmen, aldermen, sheriffs and the Lord Mayor. To qualify for any of these offices, you must be a freeman of the City of London. To become a freeman you must be approved by the aldermen. You're most likely to qualify if you belong to one of the City livery companies: medieval guilds such as the worshipful company of costermongers, cutpurses and safecrackers. To become a sheriff, you must be elected from among the aldermen by the Livery. How do you join a livery company? Don't even ask.

To become Lord Mayor you must first have served as an alderman and sheriff, and you "must command the support of, and have the endorsement of, the Court of Aldermen and the Livery". You should also be stinking rich, as the Lord Mayor is expected to make a "contribution from his/her private resources towards the costs of the mayoral year." This is, in other words, an official old boys' network. Think of all that Tory huffing and puffing about democratic failings within the trade unions. Then think of their resounding silence about democracy within the City of London.

The current Lord Mayor, Michael Bear, came to prominence within the City as chief executive of the Spitalfields development group, which oversaw a controversial business venture in which the Corporation had a major stake, even though the project lies outside the boundaries of its authority. This illustrates another of the Corporation's unique features. It possesses a vast pool of cash, which it can spend as it wishes, without democratic oversight. As well as expanding its enormous property portfolio, it uses this money to lobby on behalf of the banks.

The Lord Mayor's role, the Corporation's website tells us, is to "open doors at the highest levels" for business, in the course of which he "expounds the values of liberalisation". Liberalisation is what bankers call deregulation: the process that caused the financial crash. The Corporation boasts that it "handle[s] issues in Parliament of specific interest to the City", such as banking reform and financial services regulation. It also conducts "extensive partnership work with think tanks … vigorously promoting the views and needs of financial services." But this isn't the half of it.

As Nicholas Shaxson explains in his fascinating book Treasure Islands, the Corporation exists outside many of the laws and democratic controls which govern the rest of the United Kingdom. The City of London is the only part of Britain over which parliament has no authority. In one respect at least the Corporation acts as the superior body: it imposes on the House of Commons a figure called the remembrancer: an official lobbyist who sits behind the Speaker's chair and ensures that, whatever our elected representatives might think, the City's rights and privileges are protected. The mayor of London's mandate stops at the boundaries of the Square Mile. There are, as if in a novel by China Miéville, two cities, one of which must unsee the other.

Several governments have tried to democratise the City of London but all, threatened by its financial might, have failed. As Clement Attlee lamented, "over and over again we have seen that there is in this country another power than that which has its seat at Westminster." The City has exploited this remarkable position to establish itself as a kind of offshore state, a secrecy jurisdiction which controls the network of tax havens housed in the UK's crown dependencies and overseas territories. This autonomous state within our borders is in a position to launder the ill-gotten cash of oligarchs, kleptocrats, gangsters and drug barons. As the French investigating magistrate Eva Joly remarked, it "has never transmitted even the smallest piece of usable evidence to a foreign magistrate". It deprives the United Kingdom and other nations of their rightful tax receipts.

It has also made the effective regulation of global finance almost impossible. Shaxson shows how the absence of proper regulation in London allowed American banks to evade the rules set by their own government. AIG's wild trading might have taken place in the US, but the unit responsible was regulated in the City. Lehman Brothers couldn't get legal approval for its off-balance sheet transactions in Wall Street, so it used a London law firm instead. No wonder priests are resigning over the plans to evict the campers. The Church of England is not just working with Mammon; it's colluding with Babylon.

If you've ever dithered over the question of whether the UK needs a written constitution, dither no longer. Imagine the clauses required to preserve the status of the Corporation. "The City of London will remain outside the authority of parliament. Domestic and foreign banks will be permitted to vote as if they were human beings, and their votes will outnumber those cast by real people. Its elected officials will be chosen from people deemed acceptable by a group of medieval guilds …".

The Corporation's privileges could not withstand such public scrutiny. This, perhaps, is one of the reasons why a written constitution in the United Kingdom remains a distant dream. Its power also helps to explain why regulation of the banks is scarcely better than it was before the crash, why there are no effective curbs on executive pay and bonuses and why successive governments fail to act against the UK's dependent tax havens.

But now at last we begin to see it. It happens that the Lord Mayor's Show, in which the Corporation flaunts its ancient wealth and power, takes place on 12 November. If ever there were a pageant that cries out for peaceful protest and dissent, here it is. Expect fireworks – and not just those laid on by the Lord Mayor.