Fed’s Regional Chiefs ‘Fight’ for Monetary Policy Independence

Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve regional bank presidents are trying to ward off congressional efforts to weaken their clout, saying the moves may jeopardize monetary policy independence.

Kansas City Fed president Thomas Hoenig is circulating a book titled “The Balance of Power: The Political Fight for an Independent Central Bank.” Charles Plosser of Philadelphia said on Sept. 29, “we must preserve” the Fed’s structure.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank, his House counterpart, have said they may change how Fed presidents are chosen or curb their power. Presidents aren’t appointed by Congress and are partly selected by banks, which lawmakers say share blame for the financial crisis. The danger is that Congress, by altering the selection process, may gain enough influence over monetary policy to thwart Fed efforts to tighten credit in coming years and keep prices from surging.

“If Congress interferes with the Fed’s ability to do what has to be done, it could have major negative effects on the economy through its impact on inflation,” said former Fed Governor Lyle Gramley, 82. The threat to central bank autonomy “looks to be the worst that I can recall in my lifetime.”

U.S. stocks, bonds and the dollar would collapse if investors perceive Congress violating the independence of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, said Former Fed Governor Laurence Meyer, now vice chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers LLC.

Continue reading - Fed’s Regional Chiefs ‘Fight’ for Monetary Policy Independence

Public must learn to 'tolerate the inequality' of bonuses, says Goldman Sachs vice-chairman

Conservative peer Lord Griffiths said banks should not be ashamed of rewarding staff.

One of the City's leading figures has suggested that inequality created by bankers' huge salaries is a price worth paying for greater prosperity.

In remarks that will fuel the row around excessive pay, Lord Griffiths, vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, said banks should not be ashamed of rewarding their staff.

CAN YOU BELIEVE WHAT YOU HAVE JUST READ?

Speaking to an audience at St Paul's Cathedral in London about morality in the marketplace last night, Griffiths said the British public should "tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all".

HOW ON EARTH DOES THAT EVEN MAKE SENSE? TOLERATE INEQUALITY FOR GREATER PROSPERITY BY GIVING UNPRECEDENTED BONUSES TO BANKERS USING TAXPAYERS' MONEY? PEOPLE STARVE AND DIE AND LOST THEIR HOME, JOB AND FAMILY NOT TO MENTION THEIR SAVINGS AND RETIREMENT FUNDS GOT ERODED BECAUSE OF RAGING INFLATION YET SOMEHOW HE CALLED THIS A GREATER "PROSPERITY" FOR ALL? GOD DAMN LUDICROUS!

He added that he knew what inequality felt like after spending his childhood in a mining town in Wales. Both his grandfathers were miners who had to retire from work through injury.

With public anger mounting at the forecast of bumper bonuses for bankers only a year after the industry was rescued by the taxpayer, he said bankers' bonuses should be seen as part of a longer-term investment in Britain's economy. "I believe that we should be thinking about the medium-term common good, not the short-term common good ... We should not, therefore, be ashamed of offering compensation in an internationally competitive market which ensures the bank businesses here and employs British people," he said.

Griffiths said that many banks would relocate abroad if the government cracked down on bonus culture. "If we said we're not going to have as big bonuses or the same bonuses as last year, I think then you'd find that lots of City firms could easily hive off their operations to Switzerland or the far east," he said.

Goldman Sachs is currently on track to pay the biggest ever bonuses to its 31,700 employees after raking in profits at a rate of $35m (£21m) a day.

READ IT CAREFULLY! IT'S $35m (£21m) A DAY IN BONUSES!

The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) said today that City bonuses could soar to £6bn this year.

The chairman of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), Lord Turner, who was also present at the meeting, called once again for a global tax on financial transactions. He said that such a so-called "Tobin tax" could redistribute bank profits to help fight world poverty and climate change.

"The role of regulation is to bring a concordance between private actions and beneficial results," he said.

THIS IS THE GREATEST JOKE EVER CLAIMED BY A BANKER. GREED KILLS!

Source: Public must learn to 'tolerate the inequality' of bonuses, says Goldman Sachs vice-chairman

The Warning on Derivatives Market

"We didn't truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market," says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency -- the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] -- who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country's key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. "They were totally opposed to it," Born says. "That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?"

In The Warning, veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk unearths the hidden history of the nation's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the center of it all he finds Brooksley Born, who speaks for the first time on television about her failed campaign to regulate the secretive, multitrillion-dollar derivatives market whose crash helped trigger the financial collapse in the fall of 2008.

"I didn't know Brooksley Born," says former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, a member of President Clinton's powerful Working Group on Financial Markets. "I was told that she was irascible, difficult, stubborn, unreasonable." Levitt explains how the other principals of the Working Group -- former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin -- convinced him that Born's attempt to regulate the risky derivatives market could lead to financial turmoil, a conclusion he now believes was "clearly a mistake."

Born's battle behind closed doors was epic, Kirk finds. The members of the President's Working Group vehemently opposed regulation -- especially when proposed by a Washington outsider like Born.

"I walk into Brooksley's office one day; the blood has drained from her face," says Michael Greenberger, a former top official at the CFTC who worked closely with Born. "She's hanging up the telephone; she says to me: 'That was [former Assistant Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers. He says, "You're going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II."... [He says he has] 13 bankers in his office who informed him of this. Stop, right away. No more.'"

Greenspan, Rubin and Summers ultimately prevailed on Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation of derivatives. "Born faced a formidable struggle pushing for regulation at a time when the stock market was booming," Kirk says. "Alan Greenspan was the maestro, and both parties in Washington were united in a belief that the markets would take care of themselves."

Now, with many of the same men who shut down Born in key positions in the Obama administration, The Warning reveals the complicated politics that led to this crisis and what it may say about current attempts to prevent the next one.

"It'll happen again if we don't take the appropriate steps," Born warns. "There will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap over and over until we learn from experience."

Even Warren Buffett had warned repeatedly in the past about the dangers of unregulated derivatives market as the financial weapons of mass destruction. See Warren Buffett on Derivatives

It is, undoubtedly, going to get very very extremely ugly in the future if it remains unregulated and controlled by the fools in Washington and Wall Streets. It's just a matter of time till all the multi-trillion dollar derivatives aka illusory wealth default. God bless America and the World.

A Must Watch Very Important Documentary
Stream: Frontline - The Warning

Atlas Shrugged

"Watch money. Money is the barometer of society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot." - The great Ayn Rand

Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces marked: 'Account Overdrawn' - Ayn Rand

One of the most important book ever written in the history of mankind



Atlas Shrugged and The Wall Street Journal

Gold and Economic Freedom

Recently, I have found the decades old article on the web written by former chairman of the Fed, Alan Greenspan in 1966, on the issue of Gold and Economic Freedom. I believe this will shed some light on the gold standard and the laissez-faire. Recommended reading.

Closing quote:

"In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves."

"This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard."

Source: Gold and Economic Freedom by Alan Greenspan

Naked Short-Selling - A Counterfeiting Scheme that killed Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers

Closing quote from this story:

"The new president for whom we all had such high hopes went and hired Michael Froman, a Citigroup executive who accepted a $2.2 million bonus after he joined the White House, to serve on his economic transition team — at the same time the government was giving Citigroup a massive bailout. Then, after promising to curb the influence of lobbyists, Obama hired a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, Mark Patterson, as chief of staff at the Treasury. He hired another Goldmanite, Gary Gensler, to police the commodities markets. He handed control of the Treasury and Federal Reserve over to Geithner and Bernanke, a pair of stooges who spent their whole careers being bellhops for New York bankers. And on the first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when he finally came to Wall Street to promote "serious financial reform," his plan proved to be so completely absent of balls that the share prices of the major banks soared at the news.

The nation's largest financial players are able to write the rules for own their businesses and brazenly steal billions under the noses of regulators, and nothing is done about it. A thing so fundamental to civilized society as the integrity of a stock, or a mortgage note, or even a U.S. Treasury bond, can no longer be protected, not even in a crisis, and a crime as vulgar and conspicuous as counterfeiting can take place on a systematic level for years without being stopped, even after it begins to affect the modern-day equivalents of the Rockefellers and the Carnegies. What 10 years ago was a cheap stock-fraud scheme for second-rate grifters in Brooklyn has become a major profit center for Wall Street. Our burglar class now rules the national economy. And no one is trying to stop them."

Worth reading.

Source: Wall Street's Naked Swindle by Matt Taibbi

The Gold Dollar

Ah, little gold dollar, republican name,
Let peace be thy motto, and freedom thy fame;
may all use thee kindly and not hide thy face
Like misers and bankers in some lonely place,
But gain thee by labor or calling that’s just,
And part with thee freely whenever they must;
Let labor’s adore thee as both kind and civil,
Though bankers may make thee the root of all evil.

‘'Twas labor that caus’d thee to leave the gold mine
‘'Twas labor that made thee in splendor to shine,
‘'Twas labor that coin’d thee and fashion’d the mold
To shape thee so nicely a dollar of gold.
Since dollars and labor are nearly allied
In payment for labor they should be applied;
And all who will labor six days out of’ seven,
Gold dollars in payment should always be given.

‘Tis cheating of’ labor when misers do hold
And store up so useless those dollars of’ gold;
‘Tis knavery that bankers should keep them in gabs,
And substitute for them a vile trash of rags;
A bill made of’ paper, pure gold to alloy,
To build up the rich and the poor to destroy.
Unknown to our fathers who fought for our freedom,
Forbid it ye younger who doth now succeed them.

Arise then ye freemen, use liberty’s hand
And drive this vile paper from liberty’s land,
And let the gold dollar be coin for the poor
And circulate freely to every man’s door,
Awake up to freedom and not be controll’d,
Submit not to bankers to pocket your gold.
Put down the whole system of legalized knaving
And down with the brokers who now live by shaving.

Now look about the country and see those that shirk
Too idle to labor, too lazy to work,
Bank bills are their hobby, they live at their ease,
And make a new issue whenever they please;
They sport on the inter’st of’ bills they have lent,
Whose capital value is not worth a cent.
And cheating so common, the nicest inspector
Is forced to keep by him a bank note detector.

Then freemen use wisdom, be free when you can
Drive all the small paper from liberty’s land,
Send back to the bankers all notes under tens,
And draw back the specie to make you amends;
And henceforth refusing this paper disgrace,
Gold dollars and silver will soon take their place.
Our country will stand on a footing more civil,
And freemen rejoice at the downfall of’ evil.

The Federal Reserve Must Die

“The Federal Reserve in collaboration with the giant banks has created the greatest financial crisis the world has ever seen. The foolish notion that unlimited amounts of money and credit created out of thin air can provide sustainable economic growth has delivered this crisis to us. Instead of economic growth and stable prices, (The Fed) has given us a system of government and finance that now threatens the world financial and political institutions. Pursuing the same policy of excessive spending, debt expansion and monetary inflation can only compound the problems that prevent the required corrections. Doubling the money supply didn’t work, quadrupling it won’t work either. Buying up the bad debt of privileged institutions and dumping worthless assets on the American people is morally wrong and economically futile.” - Representative from Texas Ron Paul questioning Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke

Highly Recommended Reading
Source: A Comprehensive Review Of The Fed - The Fed Must Die

The Blue Brain Project

The Blue Brain Project is the first comprehensive attempt to reverse-engineer the mammalian brain, in order to understand brain function and dysfunction through detailed simulations.

Computer simulations in neuroscience hold the promise of dramatically enhancing the scientific method by providing a means to test hypotheses using predictive models of complex biological processes where experiments are not feasible. Of course, simulations are only as good as the quality of the data and the accuracy of the mathematical abstraction of the biological processes. The first phase of the Blue Brain Project therefore started after 15 years of systematically dissecting the microanatomical, genetic and electrical properties of the elementary unit of the neocortex – a single neocortical column, which is a little larger than the head of a pin. From the data gathered from 15,000 experiments in rat somatosensory cortex, it became possible to begin constructing a model of this part of the brain.

The project has focused, however, not only on building a model of the neocortical column, but on developing a generic facility that could allow rapid modeling, simulation and experimentation of any brain region, if the data can be measured and provided according to specifications. The facility has been used to build the first model of the neocortical column, which consists of 10,000 3D digitizations of real neurons that are populated with model ion channels constrained by the genetic makeup of over 200 different types of neurons. A parallel supercomputer is used to build the model and perform the experiments so that the behavior of the tissue can be predicted through simulations.

With the present simulation facility, the technical feasibility to model a piece of neural tissue has been demonstrated. The next steps will involve expansion of the project in two directions. First, the Blue Brain team is intensifying its efforts to extend the facility to support modeling of the subcellular domain, which will integrate additional levels of biological detail into the existing neocortical column model. Incorporating the molecular level structures, processes and effects is an important step towards pharmacological and medical research “in silico”. Second, the facility will be extended to integrate details of larger portions of cortex and other brain structures. Ultimately, given additional resources, the facility can be extended to permit whole brain modeling, simulation and experimentation.

More detailed information and a glimpse into the future of the Blue Brain Project.

TED Henry Markram builds a Brain in a Supercomputer

Dollar loses reserve status to yen & euro

Ben Bernanke's dollar crisis went into a wider mode yesterday as the greenback was shockingly upstaged by the euro and yen, both of which can lay claim to the world title as the currency favored by central banks as their reserve currency.

After printing up trillions of new dollars and new bonds to stimulate the US economy, the Federal Reserve chief is now boxed into a corner battling two separate monsters that could devour the economy -- ravenous inflation on one hand, and a perilous recession on the other.

"He's in a crisis worse than the meltdown ever was," said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. "I fear that he could be the Fed chairman who brought down the whole thing."

"Bernanke's other choice is to keep rates at zero, print even more money and sell more debt, but we'll see triple-digit inflation that could collapse the economy as we know it.

"The stimulus is what's toxic -- we're poisoning ourselves and the global economy with it."

It is clearly indicating that the US economy cannot sustain itself with or without the "stimulus aka bailouts" and worse still, its dragging the world's economy along with its own into an unseen bottomless abyss. Perhaps, I think it's about time to kiss goodbye to the US dollar.

Source: Dollar loses reserve status to yen & euro

ALERT! End The Fed Nationwide Mega-Rallies on Nov 22

Rally Promo - END THE FED - ACTION 11/22/2009


"You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, will rout you out." -Andrew Jackson



Previous footage

Financial Crisis Protest - New York, April 25, 2008


End The Fed - New York Fed Part 1


End The Fed - New York Fed Part 2


END THE FED - NYC!


End The FED NYC 11.22.2008


END THE FED Rally - 11-22-08 New York City NYC


Alex Jones End the Fed OTN Interview


EXCLUSIVE - End The Fed Rally with Ron Paul and Peter Schiff

End The Fed - Houston Rally with Ron Paul Pt.1


End The Fed - Houston Rally with Ron Paul Pt.2


End The Fed - Houston Rally with Ron Paul Pt.3


End The Fed - Houston Rally with Ron Paul Pt.4


End The Fed Rally NYC 2/2 Peter Schiff Speaks to Angry Crowd!


If you want to find out more about the movement, just go to YouTube.com and search for "End The Fed".

The Case Against the Fed

By far the most secret and least accountable operation of the federal government is not, as one might expect, the CIA, DIA, or some other super-secret intelligence agency. The CIA and other intelligence operations are under control of the Congress. They are accountable: a Congressional committee supervises these operations, controls their budgets, and is informed of their covert activities. It is true that the committee hearings and activities are closed to the public; but at least the people's representatives in Congress insure some accountability for these secret agencies.

It is little known, however, that there is a federal agency that tops the others in secrecy by a country mile. The Federal Reserve System is accountable to no one; it has no budget; it is subject to no audit; and no Congressional committee knows of, or can truly supervise, its operations. The Federal Reserve, virtually in total control of the nation's vital monetary system, is accountable to nobody — and this strange situation, if acknowledged at all, is invariably trumpeted as a virtue.

It is impossible to understand money and how it functions, and therefore how the Fed functions, without looking at the logic of how money, banking, and Central Banking developed. The reason is that money is unique in possessing a vital historical component. You can explain the needs and the demand for everything else: for bread, computers, concerts, airplanes, medical care, etc., solely by how these goods and services are valued now by consumers. For all of these goods are valued and purchased for their own sake. But "money," dollars, francs, lira, etc., is purchased and accepted in exchange not for any value the paper tickets have per se but because everyone expects that everyone else will accept these tickets in exchange. And these expectations are pervasive because these tickets have indeed been accepted in the immediate and more remote past. An analysis of the history of money, then, is indispensable for insight into how the monetary system works today.

Continue Reading - The Case Against the Fed by Murray N. Rothbard

The Dollar Crisis is Approaching?

Wow, just look at the gold price chart today. An abrupt $26.12 hike in one day. Now it's standing at freaking $1043.32 an ounce! Does that signal the dollar crisis is approaching soon? Perhaps, very soon, sooner than you might be anticipated. I think the gold price will skyrocketing in the subsequent weeks or months. Farewell to the supremacy status of the US dollar.

Gold hits new high as traders fret over dollar inflation

The price of gold hit another all-time high today amid mounting concerns over the value of the dollar and the inflationary impact of the global economic recovery.

Source: Gold hits new high as traders fret over dollar inflation


UN calls for new reserve currency

The United Nations called on Tuesday for a new global reserve currency to end dollar supremacy which has allowed the United States the "privilege" of building a huge trade deficit.

"Greater use of a truly global reserve currency, such as the IMF?s special drawing rights (SDRs), enables the seigniorage gained to be deployed for development purposes."

Source: UN calls for new reserve currency

UPDATE ON LATEST GOLD PRICE - $1050.80!

Partners In Crime - Perpetual Lies by Bernanke and Paulson

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. misled the public about the financial weakness of Bank of America and other early recipients of the government's $700 billion Wall Street bailout, creating "unrealistic expectations" about the companies and damaging the program's credibility, according to a report by the program's independent watchdog.

The Washington Times: Bernanke, Paulson misled public on bailouts

LIES, LIES, LIES

"At this juncture, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained." March 28th, 2007. See more - Ben Bernanke's Lies

Why are we still listening to this Bernanke?


"We've got strong financial institutions . . . Our markets are the envy of the world. They're resilient, they're...innovative, they're flexible. I think we move very quickly to address situations in this country, and, as I said, our financial institutions are strong." March 16th, 2008. See more - Henry Paulson's Lies

McCotter: Republicans Oppose the Paulson Splurge


So, Paulson lied? He’s misled America from Day One.

Before we get to the new TARP IG revelations of Hank Paulson’s deceit on the health of financial institutions, let’s take a trip down bank bailout memory lane. He’s been misleading America from Day One.

"Both parties in Washington are about to screw us over on an unprecedented scale. They are threatening us with fiscal apocalypse if we don’t fork over $700 billion to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and allow him to dole it out to whomever he chooses in whatever amount he chooses — without public input or recourse. They are rushing like mad to cram this Mother of All Bailouts down our throats in the next 72-96 hours. And right there in the text of the proposal is this naked power grab: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

This revelations about Hank Paulson's lies will completely blow you away, if you allow time for yourself to read it thoroughly.

EXCLUSIVE: Paulson misled America from Day One

These two partners in crime are the greatest jokes in the history of human civilization. Too much damage was, and still is, being done by them. The final stage of the financial apocalypse is about to set in the near future.

David Icke on "What is Money?"

David Icke - "What is Money?"