The World's Only Superpower - What does it mean?

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Well, for a long time America has been the single super power in the world and how have we handled the responsibility?  It may take many years for historians to be able to fairly assess the performance of our government in terms of world affairs the past few decades.

 

As the financial engine that powers the world we have certainly helped the world economy but then our financial greed also led to the greatest collapse of housing, stock market values, treasury notes, and employment opportunity since our great depression in the 1930's.  Oh yes, because we are the last world super power we took down most of the world in our collapse.

 

 

Science and technology are also areas of great contributions in America weighed against equally great potential for harm.  Genetically altered seed developed in America made it possible for the USA to become the breadbasket for the world, often saving nation after nation faced with broken infrastructure, war, genocide or drought conditions.

 

Now we are discovering that there are dangers in the genetic manipulation as it may render much poorer results in the nutritional value of the crops produced, it can destroy the productivity of the land used to produce the crops, and may have a severe harmful effect on our immune system and it's ability to protect us from disease.

 

 

In terms of military muscle again the USA is dominate and we do have this desire to be the savior of the world.  In fact we love the world so much more than half of our military capacity is deployed around the world, not in the USA.

 

American presidents from Jefferson through Lincoln to Eisenhower have warned us of the dangers of the military-industrial complex in which our structure of civilian control of the military by having the president be commander in chief of all the armed forces, can be compromised.

 

As you can see from the following tables, Defense spending, according to President Obama's own office, now equals 17% of our total budget, and 57% of our new spending.  Sounds pretty substantial for a country winding down two wars.

 

 

 

One day someone in Washington will finally turn attention to why our defense spending as a percent of total federal spending keeps rising even when we stop fighting wars.  Perhaps then we will hear the dire warnings from presidents Jefferson, Lincoln and Eisenhower about the potential dangers ranging from national and international bankers to  defense contractors and arms dealers.

 

Until then Uncle Sam will remain the ever considerate Uncle Sugar to a host of bad people and bad ideas.

 

 

Warnings from Presidents

 

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their  currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks…will deprive the people of  all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. – Thomas Jefferson in the debate over the Re-charter of the Bank Bill (1809)

 

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

 

The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating. -Thomas Jefferson

 

History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by  controlling money and its issuance. -James Madison

 

 

If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was  given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations. -Andrew Jackson

 

The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and  credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of  consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. -Abraham  Lincoln

 

Issue of currency should be lodged with the government and be protected from domination by Wall Street. We are opposed to…provisions [which] would place our currency and credit system in private hands. – Theodore Roosevelt

 

Despite these warnings, Woodrow Wilson signed the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. A few years later he wrote: I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of  credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most  completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a  Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men. -Woodrow  Wilson

Years later, reflecting on the major banks’ control in Washington, President Franklin Roosevelt paid this indirect praise to his distant predecessor President Andrew Jackson, who had “killed” the 2nd Bank of the US (an earlier type of the Federal Reserve System). After Jackson’s administration the bankers’ influence was gradually restored and increased, culminating in the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Roosevelt knew this history.

The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial
element in the large centers has owned the government ever since
the days of Andrew Jackson… -Franklin D. Roosevelt
(in a letter to Colonel House, dated November 21, 1933)

[Next story to feature NSA, Cyber Security, Homeland Security, Edward Snowden and other fun stuff.]
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Obamaville, February 16 - Everyone buys the lies!

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When is a fix a fix and what kind of a fix?

I think you know something is broken when everybody buys the lies.  That seems to be happening in our nation's capitol a lot lately.

Automated Phone Answering Systems

Have you tried calling your government lately?  Computers have taken over the phone system for the government and about everyone else who needs someone to answer phones.  It is certainly a great way to avoid dealing with a frustrated public.

Yesterday I spent 22 minutes talking to government computers trying to get the answer to a simple question.  After failing to answer three requests for different ID numbers which I never heard of before, I never even got to talk to a real person.

The voice was one of those nondescript female voices from a Stepford wife, straight monotone and clearly machine made or maid.  At first I thought of her as Vanna White on Valium but by the time she asked for voice responses to a question for the seventh time and I futilely answered for seventh time her name morphed to Bitch in my head.

Seems I was making a fatal mistake in my mission, I sounded too much like a hayseed from Iowa for my English to be understood.  Quite odd since hayseeds from Iowa were always the top news broadcasters on television because people speaking all the different forms of English in America could understand the hayseeds.

Now I have often reached real people operators, especially at computer companies, who are from foreign countries and you cannot understand a word they say.  But for an American government agency to have an automated computer that doesn't understand hayseed English is a setback for American technology.

I finally hung up on the computer when she asked if I wanted to start over.

Our federal government is supposed to have over 2 million employees.  Why can't they answer the phones?  I say every automated system should reduce the government payroll and somehow compensate people for the nonsense we have to go through to reach our elected and appointed representatives.

What President raised the National Debt the most?

Since both political parties blame the other for the National Debt and the politicians try to confuse us by double talking about both the Federal Budget Deficit and the National Debt, as if they were one and the same, where does the truth lie?  Well, as a matter of English usage truth can never lie as the question implied.

That is the same problem with political parties and politicians.  In Washington they teach you to tell lies so often it becomes the truth, at least your truth, and hopefully the truth for the unsuspecting public.  Are we really that dumb?

For the record, if you took all the national debt in our history for the 39 presidents who preceded Ronald Reagan, all 39, and added them together, it would not equal the total national debt raised by any one president since Ronald Reagan's time.

Bet you never heard that from the Democrats or Republicans.  But the truth is this.  When Reagan got elected and took office in 1981 the National Debt was about $712 billion.  So what happened during the presidential terms since then?  Here are the facts.

Reagan served 8 years and the National Debt rose from $712 billion to $2.1 trillion, an increase of about $1.4 trillion.

Bush 1 served 4 years and increased the National Debt from $2.1 to $4.2 trillion, an increase of about $2.1 trillion.

Clinton served 8 years and increased the National Debt from $4.2 to $5.7 trillion, an increase of $1.5 trillion.

Bush 2 served 8 years and increased the National Debt from $5.7 to $10.6 trillion, an increase of about $4.9 trillion.

Obama served 4 years and increased the National Debt from $10.6 trillion to $16.2 trillion, an increase of about $5.6 trillion.

Was that so hard to understand?  All of our last five presidents are in the exclusive Trillion Dollar League secret society.  Facts being what they are, Obama did increase the National Debt more in four years than the previous record by Bush 2, except Bush 2 took eight years.

Searching for debt ceiling

Did we fix the housing crisis like Obama said?

This week the president announced a $26 billion settlement with banks and mortgage lenders over foreclosed housing in which these big, bad companies must cough up the big bucks.  So far they must pay $21.5 billion to foreclosed people and it is not clear where the other $4.5 billion goes.

Of course a couple of years ago the government announced two programs to help those being foreclosed promising they would end the problem by serving 4 million families.  So far about 900,000 were helped but by no means saved.

In other words government housing programs generally fail based on past experience.

There are a few things I don't understand about the latest effort to wave the magic wand and solve our problems.

There are 4 million foreclosed homes and another 11 million homes delinquent and in foreclosure.  These homes represent over $700 billion in negative equity, meaning value lost.  How does $26 billion from the bad boys cover the $700 billion in lost equity in the homes facing foreclosure, say nothing of the trillions and trillions of dollars in lost equity by those Ame4ricas who did pay for their homes?

Is this just another example of Obamanomics?

Should we really be paying their salaries?

President Obama is in just the early part of his 4th year and has already held around 200 campaign fundraisers raising tens of millions of dollars.  For a mere $38,500 a ticket you can go and rub shoulders with the pres.

During the same time Congress, including both the House and the Senate, has been passing about 1-3 important bills a year while failing to adopt a single budget in four years.

The President, Democrat controlled Senate and Republican controlled House have all failed to address our most critical needs like deficit spending, increasing National Debt, broken health care and dormant housing.

Nor have they addressed the future needs of our nation like Social Security shortfalls, Medicare waste and runaway entitlement costs.

So why don't we pass a People's Constitutional Amendment saying all politicians and their staff must serve the needs of our people and nation or simply not get paid?

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Campaign 2010 - Economy Poised to Take off if Republicans Win Big

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One of the realities of economics is a favorable (Conservative) Congress can always trump an unfavorable (Liberal) president and never is that more obvious than in the 2010 midterm elections. Obama has clearly staked his claim as the enemy of the business community, big and small business, with harsh anti-business and class polarization rhetoric and a Progressive agenda threatening income redistribution and regulatory interference in a broad range of business interests.

Anyone wanting to send a message to Washington need only vote Republican and the extent of GOP wins will dictate the extent of the positive economic bounce that may result in the stock market and throughout the business community. Seldom, if ever, has a sitting president run against the entire scope of the broad based business community that fuels the American economy.

Perhaps Obama had no choice because he relied on the far left and self-serving special interests to get elected in the first place in 2008 and as feeble as his efforts were to take care of the unions, health care industries like insurers and pharmaceutical giants, and the housing industry, he built a base of special interests with diametrically opposed agendas.

Whatever he did to help his Goldman Sachs base hurt his SEIU union base. His efforts to protect the union health care plans while trying to appease the health care industry left him with a phony health care reform that may extend coverage to the uninsured at some point, but assured the health care industry they could raise prices and premiums to cover any loss. By guaranteeing that unions could keep their Cadillac high cost plans he assured future health care would drive up prices for all Americans.

As for his so called economic reforms, his highly heralded economic reform program did not even touch the housing industry which brought down the economy in the first place. His hundreds of millions of dollar contributors from Wall Street not only did not even get a slap on the wrist, they got federal bailouts and record bonuses since Obama was elected.

To protect his contributors to the most expensive presidential campaign in history in which Obama and the Democrats spent well over ONE BILLION DOLLARS to get him elected, he had to create a straw dog to blame for his failure to keep unemployment under 8%, his promise not mine, in order to get his TRILLION DOLLAR non-stimulus bill passed. Thus the Republicans and Bush became the enemy.

Certain truths have been conveniently obscured by our young president and he seems convinced the people of Main Street America are too stupid see through the political smoke screen. He cannot deliver on his promises to his own liberal base because the nation and the world are rejecting the folly of a liberal nation dominating the world. Unfortunately someone has to pay for the socialist agenda and it won't be the socialists who claim to be entitled to cradle to grave care from the government.

Every socialist experiment in the world in which there is no capitalist base to pay for the program has failed, pure and simple. Nearly every country in Europe has had to elect a conservative government to undertake the painful budget and deficit reforms needed to save the nations from bankruptcy while gutting the liberal promises previously made.

At the same time, Obama has run against the Bush and Republican record the 8 years before he got elected and forgets to mention the Democrats under Pelosi, not the Republicans, controlled the House the last two Bush years and approved the record deficits. During the entire 8 years many Democrats had to vote with the GOP in order for the depending to happen. In fact during the entire Bush years Republicans never had control like Obama did the last two years with huge majorities in the House and Senate, yet Bush always got the Democrats to approve his budgets and deficits and never whined about the Democrat minority or majority blocking progress.

A whole lot of misinformation has been thrown at the electorate in this, the worst year in campaigns in ages. It is a testament to the fact Obama made no effort to reform the campaign laws that give special interests more control than citizens and give campaign funds more importance than citizen needs. He owned the national agenda and made NO effort to fix the corrupt campaign mess we are in.

So we shall see to what extent the people were fooled by the politicians like Obama who has now taken his rightful place among the political establishment he is so quick to condemn. As I said, the stronger the Republican vote against the Obama agenda the stronger the recovery of the economy and the return to bi-partisan cooperation to solve our problems.
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What Happened to the Housing Sub-prime Mortgage and Foreclosure Crisis?

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Was it just three years ago that sub-prime mortgages, or was it the scandal of sub-prime mortgages, was the trigger that set off the worldwide economic collapse and it became the first priority of the newly elected Obama administration in terms of getting out of the recession? It seems like light years away yet there is probably no one in America whose home equity and 401K or other pension program is still not suffering as a result of the crooked manipulation of the housing market.

So where are we in attacking the first of the economic disasters that hit? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two troubled mortgage giants, were seized by the government nearly two years ago and now own or guarantee 56% of all American mortgages, and they are losing billion of dollars. Nine out of every ten new mortgages originating today are backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or the Federal Housing Authority.

The government has already pumped $150 billion into the two giants and some economists estimate it will take up to $1 trillion to keep them afloat. They now hold $210 billion in bad loans. In July there were over 2.02 million homes in foreclosure and 5 million more homeowners were behind on mortgage payments.

The Federal Reserve now owns around $1.09 trillion in mortgage-backed securities. The Obama $75 billion mortgage rescue program was a failure. Housing prices continue to remain at a six year low while inventories are bloated. At the same time the Fed loans money out to lenders at a 0-.025% interest while mortgage rates remain at the lowest levels ever seen in modern times.

Curiously, Obama did not include housing reform in the financial reform package even though the fraudulent housing securities were the main cause of the economic collapse. Much work remains to be done to stop people from walking away from mortgages worth more than the homes, to halt the record number of foreclosures, to stabilize housing prices, to sell the huge housing inventories and to encourage home building and purchases.

Financial Reform Moves Forward - What Must Be Fixed to Make it Real?

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Now that the Senate Republicans have agreed to debate the financial reform bill we will finally get to see the real intent of Congress to tackle the Wall Street problems. Missing from the Democrat bill the media claims the GOP was blocking, when in fact the GOP wants it just as bad as the Democrats, are a number of critical elements that better be addressed in the floor debate.



First, the major cause of the economic collapse was the housing element in which sub-prime mortgages were forced on the public by the drop in mortgage standards by our monstrous housing agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These federally funded agencies who insure most of the mortgages in America reduced down payments from 20% to zero and allowed a technique called the Stated Income loan, or NIV for "No Income Verification". Most fraud on mortgage applications resulted from use of this technique in which applicants would just state how much income they earned without offering proof. This opened the floodgates to fraud.

Now a second feature of the extent of fraud and deception came in the repackaging of the loans into pools, called collateralized debt obligations, CDO, which was how Wall Street intended to cash in on the trillions of dollars in the mortgage market and the astounding increase in home values in the decade before 2006. Of course the demand for CDOs continued long after the housing market became stagnant and it became obvious certain markets were far overpriced.



To keep the housing market moving the Federal Reserve steps in and buys mortgage backed securities from the two housing agencies and banks. By March 31, 2010, the Federal Reserve had purchased $1.2 trillion of mortgage-backed securities from banks and $200 billion of direct obligation debt of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for total purchases of $1.4 trillion. As a result of these actions, the Federal Reserve now owns almost 25% of the stock of mortgage-backed bonds. Assuming that banks turned these excess reserves into loans at a typical 10:1 ratio, the increase in money supply would be $12 trillion. That's more than the current amount of outstanding mortgages in the United States!

Finally, the Treasury Department has estimated the total additional US spending to prop up the two federal agencies will be $188 billion dollars. This is above and beyond the Fed money. Treasury says $85 billion will be lost along with $49 billion in foreclosure activity by Treasury, a total of $237 billion in taxpayer exposure with a total loss expected of at least $134 billion. That means we will have about $1.5 trillion at risk in supporting the housing market.



Nothing in Senate financial reform bill addresses the issues concerning housing including the CDO issue, relaxed down payments, the stated income loans, Treasury aid, foreclosure aid and Federal Reserve aid, all of which is still at risk. That means the predator mortgages, fraudulent mortgages, even foreclosures saved by the government will cost the government at least $134 billion. That sounds like an incredible windfall for all the thieves who ripped off the government. A reason for the omission may be that the changes in federal rules and policy that led to the actions were approved late in the Clinton administration, a move Clinton already acknowledged was a failure of his to stop his people from changing the rules.



The Senate bill also fails to address the conflict of interest of the credit reporting agencies who gave the CDO packages triple A ratings to help sell them even though many were defaulting within months after issue. Since the brokerage houses selling the packages were paying the millions of dollars in lucrative fees made by the credit agencies, there was intense competition to approve them regardless of the real value of the mortgage pool. Some contained as much as 90% stated income mortgages. Nothing is in the Senate bill to stop the conflict of interest nor punish credit agencies for fraudulent ratings.



Also there is nothing in the bill to review the actions by the government that opened the floodgates to bank control over the economy. Once again the absence of this area may well be inspired by the fact it was the Clinton people who made the changes. In the '90s Wall Street took over Clinton's Treasury Department and all of the regulatory agencies (Clinton's Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin came from Goldman Sachs). In 1998 Rubin, his deputy Larry Summers, Allen Greenspan (Fed Chairman) and Arthur Levitt (SEC Chairman) gave Wall Street a major victory -- defeating a modest proposal to regulate the then nascent, exploding derivatives market (e.g., mortgage backed securities). In 1999 Glass-Steagall was repealed. From 1995 to 2009 the six biggest banks (Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America) grew from 20 percent to 62 percent of GDP. These Wall Street victories gave us the Great Recession of 2008.



Finally there is the Consumer Protection Agency offered by Obama. For some odd reason he places it under the Federal Reserve which operates autonomous from the government and whose actions also played a role in the financial collapse. That is a big mistake. If anything, we should be auditing the Federal Reserve to find out what they are doing with America's currency, not adding to their powers.
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The Shootout at the Capitol Corral - Congress versus Goldman Sachs

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After two weeks of pre-meditated murder by Obama, the SEC, Senator Carl Levin, Senator Chris Dodd and the Democratic leadership in Congress, in which the president and his gang pilloried the Demons from Wall Street, the heavy weights from Goldman went before Congress in a 10 hour marathon Tuesday for a public shootout.

It was no contest. The Democrats had virtually persecuted the Goldman gang in the days leading up to the hearing before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations with civil charges from the SEC, a public scolding from former Goldman poster boy Obama, and charges of misconduct by the two Senators in their haste to get a financial reform bill through the Senate.



The court of public opinion was swayed, but not convinced, that the Obama style of liberal spending and bigger government was needed, but it was not over yet. That had to be decided in the outcome of the hearing. But this shootout was a rerun of the most famous shootout in the history of the wild west, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.



The gunfight at the O.K. Corral has been portrayed in numerous Western films. It has come to symbolize the struggle between law-and-order and open-banditry in frontier towns of the Old West, where law enforcement was often weak or nonexistent. The fateful battle took place in Tombstone, Arizona, where Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Virgil and Morgan Earp fought the Clantons and McLaurys.

One group of fighters represented rural Democrats from Texas who were involved in the cattle-trade in a remote area of Arizona territory which had been desert just a few years before. The other faction, (the Earps) had come from the East with the frontier, and represented the very different city interests of Yankee Republican capitalists and businessmen who were attempting to manage a silver-mining boom-town with Eastern expectations of behavior.



The battle left three rural Democrats dead and the Yankee Republican capitalists in control and the outcome of the shootout at the Capitol Corral had just about the same outcome. Before the dust had settled the Democrat Senators with their thousands of pages of briefings, tons of staff and seats behind the elevated bench were outfoxed, outclassed, outsmarted and out to lunch. The Yankee capitalists had won again.

Now I worked on the hill a couple of times and have been to many a hearing and I do not remember a time when the Congress ever looked so disheveled, disoriented, ill-prepared and out matched than this particular hearing. The politicians, well they looked every bit the good old boys and the Goldman gang the city slickers. This battle turned out no different than the last shootout back in 1881.



Of course the liberal media are sure to paint a different picture because the Democrats are their champions of the far left redistribution of wealth philosophy and Heavens knows the media may soon be out of work and in need of a redistribution of wealth to take care of them. But the outcome of this battle was never in doubt to any honest observer.



Three levels of Goldmanites testified with the junior executives first, the senior executives second, and the CEO Lloyd Blankfein last. Committee Chairman Carl Levin started out the attack, and his effort soon withered into a constant repetition of the same old question because a socialist thinker clearly has no clue how a capitalist system works. The juniors executives had him so flustered he constantly was searching through the thousands of pages of documentation trying to figure out where in the world the emails he quoted were to be found.

Like good junior execs, the Dapper Dans from Goldman seemed to be taking forever to find whatever the Senators were talking about. There was little continuity in the questions and no follow up questions, even when the opportunity presented itself. As the hearing droned on and on with each Senator grilling the Goldman gang the interrogators got more and more confused until one might have asked what they were doing at the hearing.

When the senior executives took the floor and started explaining the complex and highly complicated world of Wall Street high finance, as played by the biggest and best in the world, the look of utter confusion was in all the Senate faces. One by one they acknowledged defeat when they admitted they did not understand the intricacies nor mind set of Wall Street.



By the time Blankfein took the center seat even John McCain, with all his years of experience, was left befuddled and dazed. The white flag of surrender was raised and finally the hearing was brought to a close. Perhaps the power of Goldman was most obvious by the fact the New York Stock Exchange, and every foreign stock exchange in the world, crashed when the hearing started and the Dow was down over 200points before it was through.

When the actions against Goldman can cause world stock markets to tumble one can only surmise Congress might have underestimated their standing. But Goldman went further as the Goldman stock was about the only publicly traded stock to gain in value on this day. It was an exclamation mark on the power of the money changers.

To be honest, I have done many critical articles about the activities of Goldman over the past few years and was hoping some of my questions would be answered. They were not to be. Our Senators seemed to lose their minds when attempting to extract guilty pleas or inside information to prove how dastardly Goldman had acted during the economic meltdown.



By the end of the hearing Goldman was assuring Congress they would help the committee with new provisions of the financial reform bill that would have a chance of meeting the needs of America while bringing some sort of discipline, ethics and transparency to the Wall Street wagering in the markets.

That's a good thing since no members of the Committee seemed to comprehend what was going on. Obama is certain to have no comment as what is there for him to say? Tuesday was a big victory for Goldman. They demonstrated that no matter how intense their opposition may come after them, they are up to the challenge.

Perhaps now the stock market can continue it's upward momentum. And one last point on the fading liberal power of the Obama Democrat machine. About midway through the hearing the committee took a recess so the Senators could go vote on the procedure to move the financial reform bill to the floor. It was the second straight day good old Harry Reid brought it up for a vote and for the second straight day the Republicans and a Democrat defeated the Obama initiative.

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Goldman Sachs Sacked by SEC - Did the Rothschilds Finally Cast Them to the Winds?

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Three Year Quest by the CP Times Gains Momentum!



In a stunning development in the political and financial scene, today as you will learn from the following AP story, Goldman Sachs will have their day in court to prove they were not guilty of manipulating the housing market and helping to cause the collapse of the economy.



The Coltons Point Times first accused Goldman Sachs of manipulating the international markets in an illegal and unethical fashion in January of 2007, over three long years ago. By early 2008 we called for SEC action to charge Goldman with fraud in the housing and oil markets through the use of derivatives and swaps. Many articles about Goldman and their manipulation of housing mortgages, banks, oil futures, insurance companies and even the global warming community have appeared in the CPT.



We have also continuously reported on the millions of dollars Goldman was pumping into the Obama presidential campaign as well as the many things Goldman did to help get Obama elected starting in 2004. In addition we have published articles on all the Goldman alumni in the Obama administration and spread throughout the international banking community.



Today the SEC announced the first of their legal actions against the Goldman fat cats who cost us our 401K plan and housing losses while making billions of dollars off our suffering. Right now the SEC is running about four years behind in investigations but just maybe this will start the avalanche of criminal charges against the banking behemoth.



Now we all know Goldman has former execs throughout the Obama administration and financial world so don't be surprised if Goldman seeks a plea bargain which means they will pay a huge fine (though just a small fraction of what they profited) but not admit guilt. Of course it also means they can write off the entire fine as a business expense which is just as criminal as the crime they don't admit to in the first place. Congress should not allow a plea bargain or is Obama and congress really in the Goldman back pocket?



One wonders if the gunslingers at Goldman's have finally upset the highly secret international banking community who helped protect them including the House of Rothschild, and the Rothschilds have decided the manipulations by Goldman's are drawing too much attention to the world of banking and high finance. When you become a liability to these guys you suddenly disappear like Lehman Brothers and the other bad boys of finance.



SEC accuses Goldman Sachs of civil fraud
AP Report April 16, 2010

WASHINGTON – The government has accused Goldman Sachs & Co. of defrauding investors by failing to disclose conflicts of interest in mortgage investments it sold as the housing market was faltering.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Friday civil fraud charges against the Wall Street powerhouse and one of its vice presidents. The agency alleges Goldman failed to disclose that one of its clients helped create — and then bet against — subprime mortgage securities that Goldman sold to investors.

Investors in the mortgage securities are alleged to have lost more than $1 billion, the SEC noted.

The Goldman client implicated in the fraud is one of the world's largest hedge funds, Paulson & Co., which paid Goldman roughly $15 million for structuring the deals in 2007.

Goldman Sachs shares fell more than 10 percent after the SEC announcement.
The civil lawsuit filed by the SEC in federal court in Manhattan was the government's most significant legal action related to the mortgage meltdown that ignited the financial crisis and helped plunge the country into recession.
A Goldman Sachs spokesman didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

The agency also charged a Goldman vice president, Fabrice Tourre, 31, who it said was principally responsible for devising the deal and marketing the securities.
The SEC is seeking unspecified fines and restitution from Goldman Sachs and Tourre.
"The product was new and complex, but the deception and conflicts are old and simple," SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami said in a statement.

"Goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio, while telling other investors that the securities were selected by an independent, objective third party."



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Obama's Seven Cardinal Sins Since Becoming President

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Not to minimize the characterization of Cardinal Sins as they are the most serious of sins that can be committed in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, but for purposes of this article our Cardinal Sins are the most serious political sins that can be committed by a politician. Since taking office Obama has seen his favorable ratings collapse from 65% to 48% or less in his first year in office since being elected and tenth month of running the nation.



1. Double crossing his political base.

Case in point, the SEIU International Union, one of the two most important sources of money and support for the Obama political campaign. White House records indicated that SEIU leader Andy Stern was in the White House 22 times since Obama took office. These meetings between Stern, Obama and Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, might explain who coordinated the SEIU involvement in trying to control health care town hall meetings or how SEIU will get their payback for sinking $60.7 million into the Obama campaign.

Unfortunately, there was one group Obama clearly owed more to than the SEIU and it was Goldman Sachs, the multi-billion dollar beneficiary of the Obama presidency. So many billions of government dollars went into Goldman that they are able to pay over $22 billion just this year in executive bonuses in spite of doing little in the way of banking. Even SEIU is outraged and Stern started demonstrating outside Goldman Sachs offices bringing to a head the conflict of interest between these two Obama backers and powerful political forces.



Many other groups of Obama supporters have been trampled on as well since the election ranging from the Democratic governors, two Obama states have already been lost, to the auto unions where the auto bailout has only resulted in protecting executives while eliminating workers. People caught in the housing mortgage scandal which was a product of Goldman and other banks have lost their homes while the banks got bailed out. All the Congressional Democrats are at risk for reelection in 2010 thanks to the refusal of the Obama gang to look out for their interests.

For more information on the Obama/Goldman relationship check out the following:
http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html

More on Obama/SEIU:
http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2009/09/obama-caught-between-two-masters.html



2. Assuming he had an overwhelming mandate to push his own agenda.

Those of you who paid attention at the end of the campaign for president realized Obama outspent McCain by over 4-1, the economy was a disaster, Bush had the lowest approval ratings ever recorded, and still Obama only won the vote by 6%. He should have won by a landslide, but just won by 3% more than half of the vote. That means 47% of all American voters voted against him.



Yet the adoring media made the world think Obama won by the greatest landslide in history and Obama believed the media. He surrounded himself with ideologues committed to taking what everyone else had and gave them the power to do it. Was it arrogance? Why did the cap and trade bill Obama proposed guarantee Goldman Sachs and Al Gore untold wealth? He bailed out AIG and $13 billion went straight to Goldman. He bailed out the banks and Goldman took the no interest federal money and started manipulating the unregulated derivatives, swaps, futures and hedge markets, and kept making billions while doing nothing to help the American taxpayer who gave them the money.



First Goldman said they were doing "God's business". Does that mean Obama is God? Who else gave them the keys to the Treasury and a license to steal? Who decided it was time to regulate the financial markets then turned the effort over to his top aide, who was from Goldman? It has now been a year since the economic crash and no regulatory reform has even been proposed.

Obama spent his first days attacking every aspect of the federal government from the war in Afghanistan to Health Care reform, stimulus spending to saying there is no war on terror. He followed the advice of his top aides on the economy with stimulus, bailouts and massive deficit spending. These were the very same aides who worked for Clinton and ten years ago made the legislative and regulatory changes needed to allow the greatest theft in the history of America.



As the Obama poll numbers crashed they could care less. As people demanded that the economy, jobs and credit be our first priority they ignored the masses. They send Obama on hopeless foreign missions that almost seemed designed to fail in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Iran and North Korea, while alienating our fragile relations with Japan, China and Russia.

They cranked up the biggest deficit spending in history, added more to the national debt than any president in history, left over 10.2% of Americans without jobs, 2 million Americans are still facing foreclosure after all the billions spent to save the housing market, and the list goes on and on.



The Chicago and Goldman gang ruling the White House and programming the president live for special interests, defend the special interests over the public interest, continue unabated everything that got us into this mess in the first place, and have no regard for the American public. In their opinion, they act as if it is their time to control the White House, not Obama's, and they intend to leave a permanent legacy even if it destroys the country in the process. Arrogance at this level has never been seen in our history.

3. Using political expediency to ignore his own campaign promises.

During the campaign Obama made a lot of promises to a lot of people in the context of his promise to do things different in Washington, change the way politicians did business, be open and honest about government business, eliminate lobbyists and special interests from dictating legislation, and a bunch of other great sounding things.

To the liberals and socialists he promised the redistribution of wealth and to punish the Wall Street executives who brought about the near destruction of America. He promised to close Guantanamo prison, make peace with our enemies, get better deals from our allies, and who knows what else. Once elected a few bones were thrown to his people but they were soon forgotten in the avalanche of special interest money that the Obama gang and Congress starting collecting from special interests no sooner than they had been elected.



The campaign promises disappeared in a sea of cash that flowed into Washington when the rest of America was going broke, losing their jobs, losing their pensions and losing all faith in our government. The net result is the Chicago and Goldman gang in the White House has preserved the Wall Street Special Interest Control of our nation's capitol.

4. Surrounding himself with the Chicago gang, Goldman Sachs alumni and old time political hacks.

Much has already been written about the gang of old pros surrounding the president and dictating his every move. Every day their handiwork becomes more obvious whether it is Israel ignoring the president's warnings on settlements (Emmanuel), Wall Street continuing to get away with pillaging the US Treasury (Emmanuel, Geithner and Summers) or the host of other former Goldman and Clinton people surrounding our president who promised to drive out the demons.

For more information about the palace guard and the amazing control they maintain over the president check out the following articles from the Coltons Point Times.

http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2009/11/presidents-palace-guard-nixon-had.html

http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2009/10/bet-on-obama-turns-to-gold-for-goldman.html

http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2009/10/will-new-jersey-be-fooled-again-goldman.html



5. Failing to achieve any foreign policy breakthroughs.

Obama said he had the experience to turn around our foreign policy debacles starting with the day he took office. Yet another promise lost to political expediency. The rest of the world refused to be dictated to on how to fix the economies. We dropped the missile defense shield for Poland on the day of the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland.

Russia and China refuse to be parties to punishing nuclear renegade Iran. No one is helping out with North Korea. The International Olympic Committee tossed out the Chicago bid sought by Obama. Europe waits to see what will happen in Afghanistan. We are still in Iraq at full strength, still fighting in Afghanistan with a request for 40,000 more troops on the table.

Israel builds more settlements in spite of Obama's harsh warning not to. The Palestinians are not even attending peace meetings. Gore's global warming initiative has been rejected by the major powers of the world. The G8, G20 and every other world economic group has turned on the US as the cause of the world economic collapse, and impatiently waits for us to do something, anything, to fix it.



6. Protecting the rich while ignoring Main Street.

Thanks to Obama we have provided directly and through the Federal Reserve about $24 trillion to six major banks to cover their losses in the derivative, swaps, futures, commodities, hedge fund and other unregulated speculative ventures.



The same banks now are setting records in profits. The same banks are scheduled to give their executives $162 billion in bonuses this year. The same banks are not providing credit to businesses and consumers and not repaying any of the excess and speculative profits they made while destroying the savings, pensions and jobs of those they are licensed to help.



7. Allowing his ego to get in the way on precarious rights issues.

Obama and Eric Holden, his attorney general, both said they were holding criminal trials of five terrorists including the leader of the World Trade Center bombing in New York. They also promised they were doing this to show the world how they can try and then carry out the execution of these criminals under our civilian legal system. Now that would make Obama and Holden the prosecutor, judge and jury for these terrorists who, thanks to Obama, now have to be considered innocent until proven guilty. The action by our leaders may very well result in damaging the government case to convict these guys.

When he criticized the cop who arrested one of his friends without hearing any of the circumstances he also jumped the gun. Furthermore, his spending of well over $18 million to create a White House web site then refusal to release any contract details on why it cost so much when other government offices offered to do it for about $600,000 seems like a slap in the face of people who want openness, transparency and higher ethics in government.



So, where do we go from here? Mistakes are normal in the first year of a new Administration. Sometimes the people hired are too caught up in their own agenda to realize they serve all the people. When that happens the new leader must take action to fix the problems. These Cardinal Sins are mostly the result of poor policy, poor reading of the public, and arrogance on the part of the president's staff. He can fix those problems and still have a successful reign as president.

Transition administrations, those that take over from an opposing force like Obama replacing Bush take one year to learn the system and a second year to get the right people in place to do their work. The last two years they try and implement the policies that make sense. Obama has plenty of time to correct the problems. It will take leadership, patience, firm action to replace the people not serving the public interest, and a bit of humility. When he finally takes up the fight for the people rather than the special interests he can gain that support like Reagan did.

Most people like Obama and believe that when he starts listening to the right people he will get it right. He should start by listening to himself, his campaign promises, and the hope he instilled in people to give him a chance in the first place. People did not give up on the promise, the Obama gang did. Straighten out the gang and the people can be served. That is the difference between a politician and a leader, between a shooting star and a reliable sun. People want to see the sun rise every day. They want something they can count on. They want to be heard.

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