The Detroit 'Bail-In' Template: Fleecing Pensioners

Monday, August 5, 2013 by Common Dreams

The Detroit 'Bail-In' Template: Fleecing Pensioners to Save the Banks

by Ellen Brown

Protestors in Detroit earlier this summer. (Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)The Detroit bankruptcy is looking suspiciously like the bail-in template originated by the G20’s Financial Stability Board in 2011, which exploded on the scene in Cyprus in 2013 and is now becoming the model globally. In Cyprus, the depositors were “bailed in” (stripped of a major portion of their deposits) to re-capitalize the banks. In Detroit, it is the municipal workers who are being bailed in, stripped of a major portion of their pensions to save the banks.

Bank of America Corp. and UBS AG have been given priority over other bankruptcy claimants, meaning chiefly the pensioners, for payments due on interest rate swaps they entered into with the city. Interest rate swaps – the exchange of interest rate payments between counterparties – are sold by Wall Street banks as a form of insurance, something municipal governments “should” do to protect their loans from an unanticipated increase in rates. Unlike ordinary insurance, however, swaps are actually just bets; and if the municipality loses the bet, it can owe the house, and owe big. The swap casino is almost entirely unregulated, and it is a rigged game that the house virtually always wins. Interest rate swaps are based on the LIBOR rate, which has now been proven to be manipulated by the rate-setting banks; and they were a major contributor to Detroit’s bankruptcy.

"The banking casino, it seems, trumps even the state constitution. The banks win and the workers lose once again."

Derivative claims are considered “secured” because the players must post collateral to play. They get not just priority but “super-priority” in bankruptcy, meaning they go first before all others, a deal pushed through by Wall Street in the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005. Meanwhile, the municipal workers, whose pensions are theoretically protected under the Michigan Constitution, are classified as “unsecured” claimants who will get the scraps after the secured creditors put in their claims. The banking casino, it seems, trumps even the state constitution. The banks win and the workers lose once again.

Systemically Dangerous Institutions Are Moved to the Head of the Line

The argument for the super-priority of derivative claims is that nonpayment on these bets represents a “systemic risk” to the financial scheme. Derivative bets are cross-collateralized and are so inextricably entwined in a $600-plus trillion house of cards that the whole financial scheme could go down if the betting scheme were to collapse. Instead of banning or regulating this very risky casino, Congress has been persuaded by the masterminds of Wall Street that it needs to be preserved at all costs.

The same tortured logic has been used to justify the fact that the federal government deigned to bail out Wall Street but not Detroit. Supposedly, the mega-banks pose a systemic risk and Detroit doesn’t. On July 29th, former Obama administration economist Jared Bernstein pursued this line of reasoningon his blog, writing:

[T]he correct motivation for federal bailouts — meaning some combination of managing a bankruptcy, paying off creditors (though often with a haircut), or providing liquidity in cases where that’s the issue as opposed to insolvency – is systemic risk. The failure of large, major banks, two out of the big three auto companies, the secondary market for housing – all of these pose unacceptably large risks to global financial markets, and thus the global economy, to a major industry, including its upstream and downstream suppliers, and to the national housing sector.

Because a) there’s not much of a case that Detroit is systemically connected in those ways, and b) Chapter 9 of the bankruptcy code appears to provide an adequate way for it to deal with its insolvency, I don’t think anything like a large scale bailout is forthcoming.

Holding Main Street Hostage

Detroit’s bankruptcy poses no systemic risk to Wall Street and global financial markets. Fine. But it does pose a systemic risk to Main Street, local governments, and the contractual rights of pensioners. Credit rating agencyMoody’s stated in a recent report that if Detroit manages to cut its pension obligations, other struggling cities could follow suit. The Detroit bankruptcy is establishing a template for wiping out government pensions everywhere. Chicago or New York could be next.

There is also the systemic risk posed to the municipal bond system. Bryce Hoffman, writing in The Detroit News on July 30^th, warned:

Detroit’s bankruptcy threatens to change the rules of the municipal bond game and already is making it more expensive for the state’s other struggling towns and school districts to borrow money and fund big infrastructure projects.

In fact, one bond analyst told The Detroit News that he has spoken to major institutional investors who have already decided to stop, for now, buying any Michigan bonds.

The real concern of bond investors, says Hoffman, is not the default of Detroit but the precedent the city is setting. General obligation municipal bonds have always been viewed as a virtually risk-free investment. They are unsecured, but bondholders have considered themselves protected because the bonds are backed by the “unlimited taxing authority” of the government that issued them. Detroit, however, has shown that the city’s taxing authority is far from unlimited.  It already has the highest property taxes of any major city in the country, and it is bumping up against a ceiling imposed by the state constitution. If Detroit is able to cut its bond debt in half or more by defaulting, other distressed cities are liable to look very closely at following suit. Hoffman writes:

The bond market is warning that this will make Michigan a pariah state and raise borrowing costs — not just for Detroit and other troubled municipalities, but also for paragons of fiscal virtue such as Oakland and Livingston counties.

However, writes Hoffman:

Gov. Rick Snyder dismisses that threat and says the bond market is just trying to turn Detroit away from a radical solution that could become a model for other struggling cities across America.

A Safer, Saner, More Equitable Model

Interestingly, Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero, Snyder’s Democratic opponent in the last gubernatorial race, proposed a solution that could have avoided either robbing the pensioners or scaring off the bondholders: a state-owned bank. If the state or the city had its own bank, it would not need to borrow from Wall Street, worry about interest rate swaps, or be beholden to the bond vigilantes. It could borrow from its own bank, which would leverage the local government’s capital into credit, back that credit with the deposits created by the government’s own revenues, and return the interest to the government as a dividend, following the ground-breaking model of the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.

There are other steps that need to be taken, and soon, to prevent a cascade of municipal bankruptcies.  The super-priority of derivatives in bankruptcy needs to be repealed, and the protections of Glass Steagall need to be restored. While we are waiting on a very dilatory Congress, however, state and local governments might consider protecting themselves and their revenues by setting up their own banks.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. She is president of the Public Banking Institute,http://PublicBankingInstitute.org, and has websites at http://WebofDebt.comand http://EllenBrown.com. 

For Fighting Poverty, Cash Is the Key

Global Economics

For Fighting Poverty, Cash Is Surprisingly Effective

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-03/for-fighting-poverty-cash-is-surprisingly-effective#r=rss

By Charles Kenny

June 03, 2013

• http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-03/for-fighting-poverty-cash-is-surprisingly-effective#r=rss

Related

• 

  New Research Indicates Microloans Don’t Solve Poverty

• 

  The Price Tag for Obama's Antipoverty Moonshot

• 

  Why Ending Extreme Poverty Isn't Good Enough

Worldwide, richer people express fears about handing money to poorer people. Giving poor people money is no way to stop them being poor, the thinking goes: Surely they will just waste it. Instead, we design complex, bureaucratic programs like SNAP, the supplemental nutrition assistance program (formerly known as food stamps), to help poor families buy food and only food. That way, they can’t buy a trip to Disney World with our tax dollars.

A growing number of studies suggest that this is wrong-headed, that just handing over cash even to some of the world’s poorest people actually does have a considerable and long-lasting positive impact on their incomes, employment, health, and education. And that suggests we should update both our attitudes about poor people and our poverty reduction programs.

In 2008, the Ugandan government handed out cash transfers worth $382, about a year’s income, to thousands of poor 16- to 35-year-olds. The money came with few strings—recipients only had to explain how they would use the money to start a trade. Columbia University’s Chris Blattman and his co-authors found that, four years after receiving the cash, recipients were two-thirds more likely to be practicing a trade than non-recipients, and their earnings were more than 40 percent higher. They were also about 40 percent more likely to be paying taxes.

In a second study, Blattman and colleagues looked at a program that gave $150 cash grants to 1,800 of the very poorest women in northern Uganda. Most began some sort of retail operation to supplement their income, and within a year their monthly earnings had doubled and cash savings tripled. The impact was pretty much the same whether or not participants received mentoring; business training added some value, but handing over the money it cost to provide would have added more.

Most cash-transfer programs do impose conditions—like requiring kids to go to school or get vaccinated, which does improve school attendance and vaccination rates considerably. But Blattman’s research suggests conditions aren’t necessary to improve the quality of life of poor families. In fact, while analysis by the World Bank’s Berk Ozler shows that making cash transfers conditional on kids being in school has a bigger impact than a no-strings-attached check, even “conditionless cash” considerably raises enrollment. Conditional programs increase the odds of a child being in school by 41 percent; unconditional programs, 23 percent. Other studies of cash transfers in developing countries have found a range of impacts that had little or nothing to do with any conditions applied:lower crime rates, improved child nutrition and child health, lower child mortality, improved odds of kids being in school, and declines in early marriage and teenage pregnancy.

These studies all suggest that if you give poor people money they’ll use it to make themselves a little better off. That’s not necessarily a pathway to wealth—after all, microenterprises of the sort started by Blattman’s Ugandan entrepreneurs are usually a last resort for poor people, who would much rather have a steady job. And cash transfers may improve nutrition and school attendance, but they can’t make up for a dysfunctional state that can’t provide public infrastructure or decent services. But what they can provide is at least one or two rungs on the ladder out of poverty.

This holds true outside of the developing world. Back in the 1970s, the U.S. federal government experimented with a “negative income tax” that guaranteed an income to thousands of randomly selected low-income recipients. (Think of today’s Earned Income Tax Credit, only without the requirement to earn income.) The results suggested that the transfers improved test scores and school attendance for the children of recipients, reduced prevalence of low-birth-weight kids, and increased homeownership. Early analysis of a 2007 cash transfer program in New York City suggested that transfers averaging $6,000 per family conditional on employment, preventative health care, and children’s educational attendance led to reduced poverty and hunger, improved school attendance and grade advancement, reduced health-care hardships, and increased savings.

Findings from around the world suggest that giving cash over goods or in-kind transfers is cheaper and more cost-effective, too. Economist Jenny Aker has found that cash transfers are better used than food vouchers in a comparison in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Unsurprisingly, giving people a food voucher means they purchase more food than they do if you give them cash. But give them cash and they are able to save some of the money and pay school fees, all while consuming as diverse a diet as those who got vouchers. And the cash-transfer program is considerably less expensive to run.

It is comfortable for richer people to think they are richer because of the moral failings of the poor. And that justifies a paternalistic approach to poverty relief using vouchers and in-kind support. But the big reason poor people are poor is because they don’t have enough money, and it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that giving them money is a great way to reduce that problem—considerably more cost-effectively than paternalism. So let’s abandon the huge welfare bureaucracy and just give money to those we should help out.

Kenny is a fellow at the Center for Global Development and the New America Foundation.

Bloody Masonic fingerprints left on 9/11

Bloody Masonic fingerprints left on 9/11 crime scene

22.07.2013 12:42

          http://english.pravda.ru/society/anomal/22-07-2013/125209-masonic_kingerprints-1/

By Jerry Hood 

To understand what had realy happened on September 11, 2001, one has to have some good knowledge in the ancient astronomies, Hebrew and Greek gematria, including the masonic "secrets"and symbolism, plus comparative knowledge of all major religions of the world and mythologies...They share one common "secret". The NUMBERS, math and "sacred" geometry. Math is the universal and only truthful language in the entire world...The so called "holy books" serve as vehicles of important numbers and scientific datas from age to age, from one great cosmic year to another...By the knowledge of the cosmic cycles, the lenghts of the Great solar, lunar and equatorial/tropical years, MATH is the KEY to solve all of the religious-mythological and masonic "secrets".

I would advice to anyone to reach for the best book of all times from professor Giorgo de Santillana and Herta von Dechend-Hamlet's Mill, revealing the frame of our universe, our galaxy and solar system, perceived by the ancient civilizations and how it was encoded into their myths and religions with the most important numbers to know and remember. Then, there is another excellent book recently published by david Montaigne-End Times and 2019, to widen the great knowledge what are we up to as a civilisation of mankind. Plus what are the masons up to and how they follow the Tao-Path of Heavens, so well known in the ancient Chinese masonry.

One shouldn't omit this ancient fact either, it is the part of the cabalistic "abracadabra" in regard of languages read from left to right and right to left...For example, Zeus, the god of the Greeks is hidden in the name of Suez. Artemis as Simetra,and so on...Giza used to be the "Zero Meridian",dividing the ancient world on four equal parts. The languages west of Giza were written and readed from left to right. To the East from Giza the languages were written and readed from right to left. The ancient Maya were writing from top to bottom and numbers/calendars from bottom up in columns...The ancient predecessors of the modern Japanese were writing from bottom up and numbers from top to bottom...The languages of the ancient world had created a CROSS on the globe,the most ancient symbol of astronomy/cosmogony and cosmology...

They saw and recognized the CROSSING POINTS in the STARRY HEAVENS/SKIES at the BLACK HOLE and CENTRE OF OUR GALAXY with the GALACTIC ALIGNMENT of the ityphallic Belt of Orion as the male stargate, which is also the galactic anticenter known as Min or Tav.

It is rising during approx.10800 years as an erecting falus from South to North on meridian,and when it reaches the yonic Black Hole as the cosmic vagina leading to our galactic and COSMIC WOMB,the double centre they named as Scorpio A & B, currently known as Sagittarius A & B due to the precesion of Eartly axis which moved it on the Sagittarius backround of the starry skies. The ancient symbol for this double centre of our galaxy is number 8 in horizontal way..The Black Hole is known by the ancients as Yama (which was also the goddess and god of the DEAD in India), is also known in the astronomic circles as CYGNUS X1=The SWAN, which is the "sacred" bird of the masonic British queen which symbolizes the heavenly queen=Milky Way,bowed over the sky arches...The Black Hole is located in the Y-shaped Milky Way, in its MESOPOTAMIA, between the two river-legs of this cosmic queen and goddess.Mesopotamia in a shape of female LAP with the Black Hole in the confluence of both river-legs.The ancient Maya called this region as the Dark Rift...The two river-legs name the Bible in Genesis chapter 2, as Pishon and Gihon which encompass the land of Havilah,the twisting and coiling serpent...

This are the two, male and female cosmic stargates which are currently once again aligned with our potent and also phallic Sun,in the Galactic alignment as the cosmic TRINITY in a sort of "sexual" UNION of 69,meaning the same all over the globe...It is so well depicted on the Codex Mendoza, revealing the Seven Stars/Constellations, but also Nine Stars/Constellations of 117 and 135 single stars for each. The central column reveals the current galactic alignment of the cosmic Trinity from top to bottom: T-tav/Min with 11 stars as the male stargate;in the centre is the 9 ringed Jar/Pot of Potter-Creator-Aquarius and Y.S.R.=Djoser, symbolizing the Black Hole, with 11 stars inside/within that Jar/Pot, hence creating the GALACTIC CYCLE of 9/11 and 20, the famous Maya vigesimal system of calendars based on number 20!(The ancient Persians knew also 7 ringed Jar/pot 'Yamshid')! And with both, male and female stargates alignment is in "sandwich"procreation and creation alignment also our potent, phallic Sun, with 11 stars...

Total of 42 months as 3,5 years or 1260 days of the biblical Trials and Tribulations known as Time (360 days)-Two Times (720) and Half Time (180) days...The Seven Stars/Constellations is the Head of New cosmic year, and the Nine Stars/Constellations is the Tail or End of the same New cosmic year...In Mesopotamia of Iraq, which is the local copy of the cosmic Mesopotamia, Babylon was located at the Black Hole, and Babili meant God's Stargate-Heaven's Gate...The two stargates aligned are depicted as Ying and Yang, or the zionist Magen David triangles: Upward is male and downward is female stargate...This galactic alignment in new creation and procreation is also the reason why the Bible starts with plural, ELOHIM ! Only in Genesis, chapter 2, verse 4 starst the Tetragrammaton IHVH, similar to the egyptian ANKH meaning...We know by now that our Great Cosmic Equatorial(between Solar and Lunar great Year) has 25 773 years and ended in Hebrew calendar of 5773 Anno Lucis or Anno Mundi,what is in our Gregorian year of 2012 Anno Domini or Common Era...It matches also the Maya calendar...

The current Galactic alignment with the Black Hole and the double centre of our galaxy has huge impact on our Sun,with more and more sun spots and solar eruptions which suppose to end with solar repolarization...Our extreme weather is the result of the solar activity which may have catastrophic consequences for our planet once the repolarization of Sun occurs,the earth aligned with the Sun's magnetic field,will follow the same path with catastrophic consequences for all of us...after all,we aren't the First or Last civilization...And this is the biggest secret of masons and religions(and mythologies),because the religious ordersare also masonic orders and lodges!

In the ancient astronomies,the East is always RED,and so were painted the famous tombs(red)as tombs of rebirth or resurrection,because East is the place of Sunrise and Resurrection,confirmed by the major "prophets" of the Old Testament in the Bible. The West is always BLUE and on few occassions Black,the place of Sunset and entrance to the Underworld...

We live in DUAL & BIPOLAR WORLD, and the Bible itself has TWO explanations: One is for the religious sheeps of followers;and the other is ASTRONOMY for the "enlightened" masons and "elite" of leaders...Sothe masons do everything double or twice,as we will see...There were the temples of DaGoN and Astarte full of whoredom and call out for tearing down the symbols of it, like the "asherim" pillars symbolizing the male phallus...

In ancient India,the lingam sits on the yonic pedestal in the Hindu temples...The "Onion" towered churches are male stargate where mostly worship religious females the Father and Son...The Synagogue is Greek name(Sin is female and lunar symbol).The Hebrew name for synagogue is Minha or Minge,vagina,where comes only religious males who deny Christ and male G-d write with hyphen/dash and worship there everything Motherly and of female! In hot countries they have lunar religions and in cold countries of North they have solar religions...

The Mecca complex is from air/plane view phallic,it has 5 main gates and 4 minarets,and the min(aret)is male symbol...There is the RED hill of Safa(purity) down on the Saa'ee path of life to the Blue hill of Marwah(polution and sinfulness).The US and UK political ONE PARTY system has two pretending party system of Red Republicans and Blue Democrats. The UK has Red Labour and Blue Torry party as ONE,under the foot of the megabanksters Rothschilds and Rockefellers...There is two ways of applying the LAW,one way for the rich and masons and the other for the ordinary citizens...The masonic judges usually wears the masonic ring with Y engraved on it...

The Blue Lodge of the West is divided on the Northern Illuminati branch and Skull&Bones Southern branch in the corporeal USA...The masons have also two main universities where they educate and select from their memberships and future politicians: The Yale is the "motherly" branch with Y for Milky Way and gave us the notorious Bush family...Harward is the "fatherly" branch with hard heads like Clinton...In UK,the Atlantic ally and Manasseh the older brother of Ephraim as they both symbolizes as well,has the "motherly" university of Cambridge and "fatherly" in Oxford (Clinton went to also)...Many names of cities or entire countries are purely astronomical! Many local rivers were used as the earthly copy of the cosmic river...There are many copies of the cosmic Mesopotamia,worldwide! For example,the Sinai peninsula.The Manhattan island.

The confluence of Ganga river and Yamuna river. The Inca's Coricancha Golden temple was located in Mesopotamia(confluence) of rives Huatamay and Tullumayo...The ancient Olympia was located in the confluence of rivers Alfeios and Kladeios...And in this Mesopotamias is always the story with gold or of gold... The 3 stars of the male stargate,the Belt of Orion were also locally copied. In ancient Izapa there are huge stone balls on stone pillars...In Gizeh(Giza) are the 3 pyramids,and so are in Teotihuacan as the only known GLOBAL CLOCK of Time and Ages! The 3 obelisks in Washington,D.C....Into the measures of the ancient temples and pyramids were encoded cosmic solar and lunar cycles,in both measures,the foot and yard and the meter.the first mentioned comes from the circumferrence of Earth at the Equator,and the meter from the circumferrence across the poles...Both were "dusted off" and the French had never discovered the meter,that's masonic deception...Now,after brief but fair enough introduction to the ancient astronomies and masonic-religious "secrets" we can proceed to September 11,2001.

In the 7^th Bak'tun (from Egyptian gods Kab/Geb and Nut) blossomed in small "golden age" of enlightenment the Mesopotamia and Near East and to commemorate it, they built 7 stepped ziggurat-pyramids,encoding t=in their measures a lot of cosmc cycles informations...The Maya had blossomed in the primarily 9^th Bak'tun and built to commemorate it 9 stepped pyramids to Kukulkan and goddess Ixchel of 9 heads...The "sacred" number of China is 8,and China call itself as the Empire of the Centre-Chung kuo...Their craddle of civilization was in the confluence of the Yellow river and Ming river,with the famous Emperor palace underground,palace of 7 gates,where in the golden hall on the Trinity throne sits the famous BLUE JAR of China...The Maya used to have a national holiday of the Son Itzamna,lasting on the island of Cozumel(Swallow,but also Swan island)7 days...8^th day was sacred to Zamna,god Creator,and the 9^th day was sacred to Ixchel goddess of childbirth and of 9 heads...Itzamna=118 in Hebrew gematria and Zamna is 99, similar to the islamic savior and Mahdi Zaman...Islam has its Caaba and Maya its Kabah...The Bible has two perfect cubes as the symbol of Earth and New Jerusalem.Bot the symbol is also the square!

In Indonesia, there is Pura Kebo Edan=Pure or Purified Cube (Earth) as Eden...The Bible has 7 days holiday of the Harvest of Tabernacles (Booths) and since the last day falls on sabbath,God is adding the 8^th day,which also falls on Yom Kippur,thus God adds also the 9^th day... And Ama-ruca (Kechua language of Incas,similar to the Kiche Maya) means Motherly Dragon/Serpent continent/land,which America resembles,Florida as her breast and South America from waist down...There is the river of Ama-zona(s) and then the Rio de Janeiro=January river,when starts the New Year,with its largest statue of Christ,as Old Madonna with big grown Son! Meanwhile all world knows Madonnas with small child-son...Women and feminism have the most freedoms and powers in America...In China they try to abort the girls in the old times...It is the opposites and opposite poles in our bi-polar world. In China, in white suits people goes to burials and in dark blue or black to the weddings.In America it is the opposite...Now,when the USSR was dismatled as the "negative" superpower and quietly moved to Brusels and EU as the next Gulag of Captive Nations,still taking firm hold there,the "positive" Blue USA is the only temporary superpower in the contemporary world,slowly being moved to China and in USA dismantled...The masons follows the same Tao-Path of Heavens and fullfil that Path!!! Caused by the PRECESSION OF THE EARTH AXIS...So follows the enlightenment and conquest of nations from East to the West and back.

WITH THESE MASONIC "SECRETS" WE CAN PROCEED TO 9/11 TERRORIST ATTACKS INVESTIGATION.

There are many of us enough old to remember in the 70's of the 20^th Century the terrorist Black September group which had hijacked the American civilian airlines/planes into the Jordanian desert.Passengers were released and the aircrafts blown up...This terrorist group was led by man known as Abu Nidal. Abu means 'Father and leader'...In the 90's suddenly had appeared domestic USA terrorism in Oklahoma,checking the people's reaction...Then came in 1993 the Twin Towers attack in garages,blamed on the blind sheikh from Egypt...Since masons do everything twice or double,they came with the 9/11 terrorists attacks blamed on Al Qaeda and Bin Ladin...Al Qaeda means DATABASE and is fictious group-name created by Reagan administration during their support of the mujaheddins against the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afganistan...The Hebrew gematria of Al Qaeda is 135! A number we already mentioned and will or can see almost everywhere the mason has his fingers...Bin means Son and leader...The cabalistic "abracadabra" reveals that NIDAL=LADIN backwardly,and both had created the Black September! Bin Ladin on Black September,2001,as the official propaganda has claimed and repeated it over and over again...

In February 1989 was published National Geographic Magazine with 45 pages(page 140-185 in two parts) article: SKYSCRAPERS. It is a BLUE PRINT/PLAN with 22/respectively 24 US Skyscrapers in whose architecture is encoded the Maya and Biblical calendars on the 'END OF THE AGES' and END OF THE GREAT COSMIC YEAR..There is in fact 24 buildings involved because there are two sets of TWIN TOWERS.

The calendrically divided buildings are: 5 buildings with total of 52 floors(Maya calendar) starting with the masonic Washington obelisk(falus), plus 13 buildings-skyscrapers /respectively 15 buildings starting with the Monadnock Twin Towers of Chicago-the modern birthplace of the skyscrapers. Besides,Monad means Creator the first ray and photon of Light...Plus the 4 buildings after the Twin Towers of New York City...The 13 buildings proceed to its "Rejected Cornerstone"as symbol of Christ and Sun/Son,the Chrysler Building of 77 floors as there is 77 generations from God to Christ, in Luke, chapter 3...Hence also the Flight 77 dirrected at Pentagon, the female stargate symbol, turned 270 arc degrees westwardly to US Navy-the masonic symbol of the Black hole in Milky Way...270 is the gematria of INRI(Iesus Nazarene Rex Iudaeorum=Jesus Nazarene,King of Jews), but also masonic meaning of: In Nature Renovatur Integra=In Nature is Integral Renovation)...It hit between the 4^th and 5^th staircases of Navy=9,Ennead...There was black hole in the Navy section of Pentagon which has galactic and solar measures, amont of floors,windows, etc...In fact, Flight AA77 symbolizes the violent 'UNION-RAPE' of the heavenly queen/goddess by the Sun...One should remember that the angle from Pentagon to White House is the same as the way of the Dead/Way of the Stars in Teotihuacan, the angle of Milky Way, the Cosmic River in the current Galactic Union of 69/Creation of New World and Age, the New World Order as the Bush Sr. loved it so much...The same angle is repeated in the masonic SQUARED twin city of Washington,D.C. and Alexandria, VA, between the Trident shaped Union Station (Trident=symbol of Aquarius) and DelaWARe Ave., the WAR street...It is 15 arc degrees and 28 arc minutes East of the True North, what is 928' arc minutes, matched by the 928 chapters in the Old Testament of the Protestant Bibles...New Testament has 260 chapters,what is as arc minutes also 4 arc degrees and 20 arc minutes. Adding it to 15*28'+4*20'=19*48', the latitude of the Moon Pyramid in Teotihuacan (means Union of Gods,just as Vatican's main street, Via della Conziliazione), matching the Black Hole in Milky Way-Mesopotamia region.The Pennsylvania Avenue has the same angle, only from SE toward NW, following the Solstice path...The Bible has 1948 RED verses as dirrect speech of Christ...The average protestant Bible has 31071 verses, what is Giza in Hebrew gematria, and the Giza complex is Bible in the stone!!! Pennsylvania Avenue is the masonic right leg, the left leg of the "Beast" there is the Virgin Ave. going in Underworld-tunnels...The ancient Izapa is located on 15*28' latitude,where the black "Olmecs"(should be called Benu Yamina=Benjamin)passed their civilization on the Maya..

The 5+13(or 15)+4 buildings hide the masonic Target Year of 2013 in the following manner: 5+4=9, the Ennead, but 5x4=20&13, and also the Maya Tzolkin calendar of 20x13...There is also the Rejected Cornerstone, Chrysler skyscraper was built/open in1930. The neighbouring skyscrapers of Woolworth in1913 and the Empire State Building in 1931. All adds to 5774=2013 CE, the Target Year! The whole skyscraper calendar create also masonic cycles of 9 buildingsx13=117, the basic solar number of Sun cycles and the basic number of the Maya calendar! The Seven Constellations of Codex Mendoza has 117 single stars...And 9x15=135 single stars in Nine Constellations!! The Giza complex has total of 9 pyramids: 3 main as the Belt of Orion, and two set of 3 satellite-small pyramids...The Teotihuacan complex has total of 13 pyramids in the 'Citadela' of Kukulkan's pyramid,plus the Sun (4 tiered pyramid) and Moon (5 tiered) pyramids! Hence, the same pattern of 9x13 and 9x15 ocuuring also in the masonic article of Skyscrapers from February 1989 in the National Geographic Magazine,which also an indirrect and premature 'CONFESSION' to 9/11 to come in 151 months or 12 years and 7 months in the future! The mason does everything DOUBLE or TWICE!!! In this masonic calendar of US skyscrapers, the first 5 buildings symbolizes the Pentateuch and Pentagon, the female stargate (just as the 5 petalled Tudor's rose in England), and the Pentagon is also in Vatican, Castello di Angelo.Within that Pentagon is Squared building and within that square is circle bulding with number 540-gates to Norse Valhalla, in Anchored Vat/Tav in Cambodia, the 540 statues or 540 members of US luni-solar Congress and Senat tarnsliterated into arc seconds=Maya solar cyclus and calendar!  Besides,the US Supreme Court has 9 judges (UK 9 Lords)...The EU Highest Court has 13 judges: 9x13...THE EU parlament has 732 members in 7 political parties/groups=5124, the Maya calendar of 13 Bak'tuns and the 13 desciples at the Last Supper...Similar pattern was used in the Roman Empire,only solar calculus...

The National Geographic calendar also display the T-tav shaped Seagram (Whisky& Liquer company owned by Bronfman family) skyscraper...Then, there is the phallic skyscraper of Texas Commerce Tower in Dallas and the Scorpio tail skyscraper known as One Liberty Place in Philadelphia, PA...Further, it display the 9 buildings of the masonic mandala in Seattle, suggesting that the 7 WTC buildings were proposed for Seattle and the 9 buildings fro Seattle for New York...Of course here is the masonic sugestion of "head=7 and the tail=9" follows each other,just like the biblical Peter,the Head is beheaded and becoming the tail, Shaul/Paul, the tail who let stoned Steven becames the Head on the road to Damascus...Al Shaula is the last star in the Sting of Scorpio, pointing at the centre of our galaxy! And the Sting of Scorpio stands in Seattle, known as the Space Needle-in the shape of Sting of Scorpio! It is 526 feet high tower, not far away from the Union Lake shaped in Y-Milky Way. Later we'll approach number 526,the maya Venus number of cycles...The John Hancock building in Chicago is the symbol of cosmic womb,and it is a calendar within that large calendar! There are living all races and nationalities of this world for symbolical 1$ rent, waiting for empty flat whole decades! The numbers added together by this "creaking" skyscraper is 1 112 344 "days" equal to 3048 "years" a number we will meet again...Interesting 

Also, the last building of the 4, the AT&T Headquarter with the plastic White OWL above the entrance, symbol of the Dead for the Native "Indian" people of America...The AT&T encodes two Tavs(T), but also two in its architecture! Furthermore, the International,masonic style building of Pennzoil building of Houston has the three sets atop of 7+7+7=21 steps on left and 7+7+7=21 steps on right side, a total of 42 months=3,5 yaesr=1260 days...The WTC "magnificent 7" had its own amazing architecture and atop the Egyptian and Mexican stepped pyramids, plus our church and mosque and synagogue copula roof...The RCA Music Hall reminds us the cosmic meteorite shower...Interestingly, the masonic authors of this masterpiece article of DUAL MEANING reveals us also the following on the BLUE CALENDAR TWIN PAGES 156-157, from the first 5 buildings: DEMOLISHED WERE: Montauk Block in 1902;Tacoma Building in 1929 and Rand McNally Building in 1912, plus the Twin Towers DEMOLISHED in 2001+2001=all equals to 9745, the masonic year of dissapearance of Atlantis,plus the total of CREW MEMBERS on the hijacked aircrafts on 9/11...

The masonic US "national" flag has 9 rows+11 columns of stars=20,the galactic center number of cycle, well known to the Maya in their vigesimal calendar system. Plus 6 white+7 red stripes=13, creating the masonic hermetic pattern of Maya Tzolkin calendar of 20x13 and the zionist Blue Lodge Target Year of 2013!! The masonic Great Seal of USA has 19 clouds of solar magnetoplasma in a circle.

The 20^th "hijacker" is the whole circle itself. And within that circle of clouds is the zionist Magen david of two stargates of 13 stars, hence ance again, the zionist Target Year of 2013! Why zionist? Because the Pleiades are the marking point of the ages, located with the Hyades in the constellation of Taurus, the Bull...Its central star is Al Cyone, copied by the Earthly Sion/Zion mountain (male falus), as the God's Mountain or Hill is in the Bible the male stargate symbol, and the Well, Cave or Lake is the female stargate!!! The Bible starts with the Oath at Beer'sheba, the Well of Seven and Well of Oath...The Islam has its well of Zamzam. The Maya had Well of 5,7 and 9!!!(Hopolchen; Bolonchen and Cenote Sacrificos&Sagrados)...Everybody had the "sacred well"!!! 9x11=99 and 6x7=42...99+42=141 stars visible by naked eye in Tarus, the Bull, in whose shape is the masonic White House with its bottom oval part and Oval Office! Since the US symbolizes also the biblical Ephraim and UK Manasseh, Ephraim is described as a Bull (chasing nations of the world),and he IS NOT amongst the 12 saved tribes of Revelation 7:5-8...Dan, the Judge is NEITHER there for it is also the US which will "Judge the World" and start the Last War of all wars, WW3...And consequently will be destroyed as a result...From the "positive" site it is the current USA turning negative and the antichrist,the Great Satan...The positive pole is already on the shores of China in the precessional Tao-path of heavens!!!

The same angle of 15*28' NE-SW is also matched not only by Pentagon-White House and Union Station-DelaWARe Ave. in that real 'District of Crimminals',but also by the soli-lunar twin cities  as Luxor-Karnak;Varanasi (Dragon/Serpent)-Madurai in India; Nanking-Canton in China; or the Saa'ee "holy way" in Mecca,plus by the main axis of the "Sistine=Sixteenth" Chapel of Vat-i-Can(7+9=16), also seen on the famous Lid of Pakal from Palenque (formerly Naga city of the royal cobra,also known in Egypt and India)...The same angle of the cosmic river-Milky Way has also Nazareth-Beer'sheba and the MOUNTAINS OF TRANSFIGURATION, Hermon (death) and Tabor (Tav=life)...Hermon and Mt.Olives is the real magnetic North...

The East is always RED and the West is always BLUE (seldom Black)...There are the RED Republicans and BLUE Democrats...In the luni-solar Congress and Senat these mason wears usually with their expensive suits either Red or Blue ties...The rest is Votescam, the common people has nothing to say or represent them because the politics is virtually a masonic business!!!  So were the architects of the US Skyscraper calendar...The architect of the TWIN TOWERS in WTC complex was Minoru Yamasaki from Seattle, son of japanese immigrants, says the masonic encyclopedias...Min and Yama are the two stargates...The steel columns on the Twin Towers came from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (PA) and Seattle, WA...In Seattle ends the path of winter solstice...Each of the Twin Towers had total of 117 floors (110+ground floor above the ground zero level,and 6 below the ground). Each sttod upon 117 steel columns imbedded into the bedrock of the Manhattan island. They were built in very early 70's with all the MASONIC RITUALS! Gillespie's book, TWIN TOWERS, describe in some details the entire masonic rituals carried out by the Port Authority of Newark, New Jersey and New York...When the erectors, mostly Mohawk indians had to wait in a rain for the Authority to finish their masonic rituals...And many were symbolically calling to "tear down" the ugly cube buildings!!!  Yet, they knew better what they were erecting them for...

Manhattan island is the local masonic copy of the cosmic Mesopotamia with Hudson river to the West and East river. The WTC1 (North Tower)+WTC2 (South Tower)+US Stock Market Buildings had copied the phallic Min/Tav-Belt of Orion...After the controlled demolition of the Twin Towers, I knew that the next what the Blue Lodge will demolish is the Stock Market and US economy with global effect...And they did it!!! The Twin Towers stood on Lower Manhattan, in the Battery Park, so badly battered on 9/11 terrorist attacks...They left there SQUARED HOLES as "monuments"...SQUARE+SQUARE=8, the symbol of our galactic DOUBLE CENTRE and 'New Octave'=New Beginning for all of us who will survive even worst than 9/11 attacks... 

WTC1 (North Tower) was 526 meters to the tip of its TV antenna. It was attacked by Flight AA11 at 8:46 a.m. N.Y.Time,what was exactly 526^th minute of that masonic sacrificial Tuesday morning! It is also the number of Venus cycles, the Maya used to calibrate their calendars by Venus cycles as the Morning and Evening star...16 minutes later (SIxteenth Chapel) was hit the WTC2 (South Tower) by Flight UA175,at 9:02 a.m. Flight AA77 hit allegedly the Pentagon, and Flight UA93 was "overpowered" and crashed in Shan (Darkness in China) ksville, PA... All Flights, 11+175+77+93=356 days in lunar jewish calendar year...Jerusalem is located on 35.6* meridian...And 31.72* latitude...Bethlehem is on 35.2* meridian(352=Mary in gematria) and 31.68* latitude north of Equator...It is also 32.08* latitude...

WTC1 (North Tower) was 1368 feet high as a building itself (417 meters), what is anagram for Kyrios Iesous Christos=Lord Jesus Christ in Greek gematria name value equal to 3168 (800+888+1480)! Bethlehem, his alleged birthplace is located on 31.68* latitude, certainly it is not an accident! And 31.68* is also 32.08* latitude since 1 arc degree has 60' arc minutes...If you add the hours and minutes of taking off of each "hijacked" plane on 9/11, you'll get the summary exactly 32 hours and 08 minutes! Just another masonic bloody fingerprint on 9/11 crime scene... Two(2) hijacked Boeing 757 + two(2) hijacked Boeings 767=exactly 3048, as the USA mass media announced on 9/11 exactly 3048 victims! It was later, after 3 days reduced to the current 3024 victims in air and on the ground...1 foot=0.3048 meters!

Attacked types of buildings: Square+Pentagon=9, Ennead;

Aircraft attacks on buildings: Square+Square+Pentagon=13;

Buildings which collapsed on 9/11: Square+Square+WTC7=15; hence achieving the masonic pattern of 9x13=117; and,9x15=135... In WTC1 was destroyed 7 floors(93-99); and in WTC2 was destroyed by attacking plane UA175, 9 floors(77-85)...Within 77 minutes time frame were hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon...

Flight AA11 had 2 pilots+9 crew members=11 alltogether;

Flight UA 175 had 2 pilots+7 crew members=9 in total.

Since both Flights hit the Twin Towers,it creates the masonic hermetic pattern of 9/11 and 99,but also 20.

Flight AA 77 had 2 pilots+4 crew members=6;

Flight UA 93 had 2 pilots+5 crew members=7 in total.

It is 13,but also 42...

Hence it is the Blue Lodge TARGET YEAR of 2013 once again! And since the masons do the same thing twice or double, here it is:SQUARE(WTC1)+SQUARE(WTC2)+PENTAGON=13 + WTC7=20&13 Target Year around!!

11+9+6+7=11967BC when began the 2^nd half of the Great Year;and 9745 BC was lost Atlantis...(The 3+2 demolished building years equals to 9745,an accident)? 9X7x4x5=1260 days,3,5 years and Time(360)-Two Times(720)-Half Time(180) of Trials and tribulations... 2 pilotsx2x2x2=16...

The American Airlines=16 letters; and, United Airlines has 14 letters...Together it is 30 stars in the constellation of Aquarius-Potter-Creator,whose Age of New Creation and Procreation we had entered on 9/11 according the masonic "secret code"...The main body of Aquarius has 14 single stars, and the River of Judgement flowing out of his Jar/Pot has usually depicted 16 single stars from 84, the total! There was 84 original pyramids in Egypt,and 84 royal tombs in the Valley of Kings(69)+Valley of Queens(15)! Both Valleys are located in the twist/lap of Nile river where was in the Black Hole place the golden tomb of Tutankhamon in the Trinity coffins...84 books has the Armenian and Georgian Bible. The Roman Catholic Bible has 73 books+11 Apocryphal books. The Protestant Bible has 66 books+18 Apocryphas...The masons on Manhattans island after the demolishion of the Twin Towers announced NO investigation in that area due to the Federal Gold Reserve on Liberty Street 33,5 blocks to the north of the Twin Towers,due the 5 floors underground vaults with gold...(Every local Mesopotamia has a local story with "gold")...

The last 3 numbers of 9745 are engraved on the famous Lid of Pakal, the solar king of Mexico, on the cosmic tree of life and CROSS: left arm ends by SEPTAGON; atop by SQUARE and the right arm by PENTAGON...Most likely, Pakal and his small "golden age" ended by his burial in 745 BC...The same is encoded on the modern catholic basilica of Guadalupe in the Tripple hill-Spanish sign: 'Bendita Seas Madre de el Hijo de Dios y Madre Nuestra" with 7+4+5 letters from the left and 754 from right to the left...As 'Bended Sea Mother of Son of God and Our Mother'...Below that tripple hill is the flower Mother known locally as La Indita and amount of flowers is calendrical. Above the tripple hill is the CROSS with suffering Christ who has 7 spoked "thorn crown" viewed from front,but sideway, over 30 arc degrees is visible total of 9 spokes/thorns...From front view two are overlaping and thus is visible only 7...Just as has the Statue of Liberty given to USA by the French masons...In her measures are calendrical cycles...She allegedly represents 'Mary Magdalene'(Bride of Christ=Milky Way) as does Mona Lisa in U-shaped Louvre with the ityphallic Eiffel tower in front of it...Female and male stargates,as is the tables in Assembly Hall in UN-the largest Masonic temple in the world...The Islamic crescent (female) with the potent male star in front of it...The Chinese masonic flag has 4 stras in the crescent shape and one big star/sun in front of it...the same symbolized the sickle and hammer of Norse/Scandinavian Thor, which is the 'sword' Min/Tav of the Belt of Orion...Most of Russian people are descendants of the Norse Viking "Varangians" whose Thor had Hammer (phallus) Belt of Orion...Hammersmith by London with 13 Min(s) across England,with the most famous WestMinStar and WarMinSter...In Seattle with largest scandinavian population is the statue of Hammering Man on its 1^st Ave....Just for additional information.

The Soth Tower(WTC2) was 6 foot shorter than WTC1,thus 72" inches, the KEY NUMBER TO PRECESSION, about 72 years for 1 arc degree...We live about 72 years average life span, we are 72 inches tall,183 cm or 5 foot 9 inches on average, with 72 heart beats per minute...And we have about 72% of water in our bodies,in the image of our galaxy,cosmos and Sun... The 72 conspirators of Osiris death...The 72 years was built the National cathedral in Washington, D.C., but skyscrapers on average 2 years...USSR lasted about 72 years,etc.,up to the 72 "virgins" for the terrorist-suicidal Muslim jihadees...

Of course, the New Liberty Tower erected in close distance from the Twin Towers has 69 floors and 1776 feet height as to commemorate the independence (rather DEPENDANCE ON MASONIC LODGES) of 1776CE...The Illuminati masonic lodge established by Jew Adam Weishaupt in Ingolstadt was on May1st, 1776...May 1^st was borrowed by the Red Lodge and 1776 by the Blue lodge...They share a lot "secrets" common to all of them atop the lodges...

84 is the JUDGEMENT NUMBER, and biblical Jacob was punished 7 years=84 months. Israel by captivity of 70 years=840 months...In nehemiah 84 people renew the covenant after the Babylonian captivity, when the Northern Israel of samaria went to Nebuchadnezzar in 731BCE and the Southern Judah in 586BCE=135 years later, our number for Al Qaeda...135^th Space Shuttle ended their flights...Apollo11 crew (Armstrong and Aldrin) spent total of 135 minutes on the surface of Moon...St.Peter's basilika is 135 meters high and wide. 216 meters long...The Millenia Wheel in London (copy of Vienna,Austria) is 135 meters high...Euro currency: 16 countries of EU minted each 8 coins=128+7 paper banknotes=135,and all has something common with the masons...

Abu Nidal=Ladin, Bin as "father and son" had a masonic counterpart or double in the Bush father and Bush, son presidents, both members of Skull&Bones and Yale University who had attacked the ancient Mesopotamia TWICE in 12 years period. Bush Sr. was 41^st president and Bush Jr. was 43^rd president of USA=84, the Judgement Number! Allegedly, the Trials and Tribulations have to last total of 8400 days=23 years (+70+7=100^th maya calendar cyclus in lunar calculus, and 99^th in solar)...The 100 eyed serpent of ancient Greeks...The 100 towered "golden city" of Pague (Praha means DOORSTEP into a Golden Age) on 7 hills like Vat-i-Can or Lisbon...Rio de Janeiro is on 9 hills...

In 2002, Silverstein invited architect Liebkind to propose 9 plans of reconstruction for the 7 buildings of WTC...

There are all over the 9/11 crime scene the bloody fingerprints of the masons from the Blue Lodge (Illuminati and Skull&Bones), executive branches who controls the US government for centuries and have the capacity and capability to carry out a such attack (based on Bojinka plan from Phillipines unveiled in 1996)...The approx. 3000 victims were SACRIFICIAL SHEEP just as Moses has done under Hermon/Sinai "God's Mountain" in the story of the Golden Calf...The masons had shortened their lives, only for several killed birds with one stone: After the artificial demise of Red USSR, they needed a new enemy in the world to continue their arms race and to set the stage for final battle at the Armageddon, the War of Civilizations,"Christian" West vs. Islamic world...But they will never admit this publicly...They'll denounce it as a "conspiracy theory" - yet they are the only ones who conspire and create wars, killing and sacrifying us the common people, they consider as their commodities and slaves! That's why they have a BEEHIVE as their highest masonic symbol,for they are the Kings and Queens and we are the working bees bringing the all the nectar...

Yet, it is the East Wind which shall prevail at Armageddon all over the other Winds...West will be beaten down to its ashes...USA shall be not spared or saved...The Ephraim/Bull shall be slain!!!Only remnants who'll survive it will roam once again the grassy planes there and have scattered knowledge of the past...It has already happened before...there aren't any "prophets",only observed and well observed cycles of the universe and of man on the Earth, hidden from the common people by the usurious "elite" who used to title themselves on the ancient past as "Acha/Aha and Ahau-Enlightened", or Pha-Ra-On,meaning the same,including Sultan, and so on...Today they claim perhaps different titles like Lord,Sir and so on...The common people are too busy to make their livelyhood and has no time to "enlighten" themselves and get rid once and for all of the treacherous and murderous selfchosen "elite"... 

After the artificial collapse of the Red USSR,now the masons carry out the collaps of Blue USA trough the banks, because in future the bipolar world will be China and EU...USA will become an average country just like Britain, France, Spain and Portugal the last big colonial powers...Thanks to the PRECESSION,we'll enjoy SOCIALISM in the Golden Age, as the middle road between the extreme left (communism) and the extreme right (crude capitalism)...And China has currently communist government with crude capitalist economy of "perestroika"...The outcome will be a HARMONIOUS SOCIALISM and HUMAN SOCIETY...It will take over 1 000 years before the USA would become a superpower again...But in 1000 years there will be a totally different world and people...

Astronomy and the Tao-path of heavens is the reason behind everything on this planet,including the current huge activities of masons on global scale...They create and hijack any revolution or "elections"...And don't be fool, the Iranian Islamic government is also freemasonic with similar soli-lunar symbols like their flag and seal on it, or the astronomical tomb of Khomeini in Tehran...After all, the world is only a Theatre Stage for the politicians who are parotting the dance of the most powerful who follows the same Tao-path and migrate with the global changes to secure their power and wealth! To do so, the Chages are necessary for them!!!And they own already the banks in China, Japan, Korea and elsewhere in the future bipolar world... And this is just small percentage of the revealed bloody fingerprints of the masons on 9/11 crime scene and beyond, in Iraq and Afganistan, they attacked for many different reasons as "terrorismus"...Here is a thief shouting: 'catch the thief'!!!

Jerry Hood 

Дмитрий Судаков

Credit card swipe fees inflated

Credit card swipe fees inflated, judge rules

• Article by: JIM SPENCER , Star Tribune 
• Updated: July 31, 2013 - 9:16 PM

Retailers, convenience stores, food sellers and gas stations had sued over the Federal Reserve rule on credit and debit card transactions.

http://www.startribune.com/business/217818031.html

WASHINGTON – A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the U.S. Federal Reserve Board allowed banks and credit card companies to charge “inappropriately” inflated fees for using debit cards in retail transactions.

The ruling was a major victory for retailers, food sellers, convenience stores and gas stations, which pay those so-called “swipe fees” to the financial services industry.

Judge Richard J. Leon said the Fed set swipe fees that yielded “billions of dollars” more than Congress intended when it passed legislation to control those fees in 2010 as part of Wall Street reform.

The swipe fee battle pits two lobbying powerhouses — the financial services and retail industries — in a multimillion-dollar fight that so far has included dust-ups on Capitol Hill, in regulatory agencies and on advertising billboards, as well as in court.

An antitrust class-action suit involving Visa and MasterCard over credit and debit card fees yielded a proposed $7.25 billion settlement, though scores of retailers have opted out and filed objections.

The financial stakes are enormous. Swipe fees brought debit card issuers $16.2 billion in revenue in 2009, according to documents filed in the case. Buyers now use debit cards for tens of billions of transactions a year, more than a third of all noncash payments.

The lawsuit brought by the National Retail Federation, the National Association of Convenience Stores, the Food Marketing Institute, Boscov’s Department Store and the National Restaurant Association charged the Fed with improperly increasing allowable swipe fees during its rulemaking process.

The Fed had issued preliminary rules that capped swipe fees for debit card issuers with assets over $10 billion. It limited the charge to 12 cents per transaction.

But after extensive lobbying by the financial services industry, the Fed issued a final rule that allowed swipe fees of up to 21 cents per transaction and allowed additional charges in certain circumstances that took the charge to around 24 cents per transaction.

The groups who sued said the higher rate violated a part of the Wall Street reform act known as the Durbin Amendment that restricted swipe fees to an amount that let card issuers recover reasonable card administration costs and profits, but did not allow them to churn big profits from swipe fees.

The Fed countered with an argument — advanced by the financial services industry — that certain costs that were not part of “authorization, clearance and settlement” needed to be included in figuring how much card issuers could charge. In this category were such things as an “allowance for fraud losses.”

Leon sided strongly with the plaintiffs, calling the Fed’s increase of the original swipe fee limits “utterly indefensible.” The judge sent the rules back to the Fed for retooling.

“From the very beginning, retailers and restaurants knew the Federal Reserve Board of Governors had grossly misapplied the swipe fee law,” the National Retail Federation’s top lawyer, Mallory Duncan, said in a statement. “They failed to heed Congress’ call to set fee standards that were ‘reasonable’ and ‘proportional’ to the actual cost of a transaction. Instead, the [Fed] manufactured a standard that was two to three times higher than the Fed staff recommended.”

Estimates put the cost of a debit card transaction at around 4 cents.

Minnesota reaction

Ron Velander operates two service stations in Minnetonka. At one of those stations, debit and credit card fees more than doubled over the past 12 years. The fees go up with the price of gas or other items as well as with new taxes on items such as tobacco.

So banks and credit card companies have profit margins built in regardless of their processing costs, said Velander, who also serves as president of the Minnesota Service Station Association.

“Certainly, you have to have card fees,” Velander acknowledged. Card issuers “have to be able to cover fraud and other things. They’re allowed to make a profit. What we’re measuring here is what their profits are.”

Minnesota-based retail giants Target Corp. and Best Buy declined to comment on the case.

The Retail Industry Leaders Association, to which Target and Best Buy belong, praised the ruling.

“Retailers welcome today’s ruling and the opportunity to ensure the law is finally implemented as intended,” Bill Hughes, the group’s senior vice president for government affairs, said in a statement. “The flawed Federal Reserve rules have muted the law’s intended benefits to merchants and consumers and resulted in further distortions in the already broken electronic payments market.”

A coalition of banks, credit unions and credit card companies, including the Financial Services Roundtable run by former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, criticized the court decision as a “windfall” for big retailers at the expense of consumers.

In a statement, the financial businesses maintained that the earlier Federal Reserve fee caps “did not allow card issuers to cover their costs while receiving a reasonable return on their investments.”

Jim Spencer • 202-383-6123

Real world Monopoly game without a jail

In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss the real world Monopoly board game without a jail and on which most players must pass 'go' and receive just $200 in foodstamps while a select few get to pass 'go' and collect $200 billion in bailouts, bail-ins and subsidies. In the second half, Max talks to precious metals expert, Andrew Maguire, about the run on the bullion banks happening right now.

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