He’s back and in denial in a March 11 Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined: “The Fed Didn’t Cause the Housing Bubble.” He lied, the way he did throughout his career and for 18.5 years as Fed chairman. How else could he have kept the job, be knighted in the UK for his “contribution to global economic stability, wisdom and skill,” then afterwards be extolled by the Money Trust he enriched. FULL ARTICLE
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37 comments ↓
Nicely done, Stephen. What people need to realize is that the economic problems we’re facing have been caused by too much consumerism – too much spending, too much debt, and too much inflation.
What Obama, Geithner, Bush, Bernanke, and Greenspan seem to want to solve this is – more spending, more debt, and more inflation.
Wouldn’t some people call that insanity?
Michael. I really don’t think it was too much consumerism. My take is that it was actually caused by greed of the Financial Industry. I am one of those people that believe that there is no such thing as “too much” buying, as long as one can afford it. The Debt that we taxpayers have is of two types:
One that we ran up seeking the “good Life”. The other debt was fostered on us by a runaway Government. The national debt is over $11 trillion and that does not include the bailouts which also runs to over $11 Trillion and then there’s the long Term Liabilities that has been run up over the last eight years – now approaching $70Trillion.
If you divide the sum of those three ( $92 Trillion ) by the number of families in the United States close to 76 million, you will find that the average family in America has a Government imposed debt of over a million dollars. I’ll bet that you and I could combine our fingers and toes and have digits left over if we were going to count the average American family that has run up over a million in personal debt.
There’s definitely too much buying – and Cliff you just agreed with that statement. People cannot buy stuff that they don’t earn the money to purchase. Well, they have been. People have been borrowing money like never before in history - to consume.
But we’ll see how more buying is going to “help” us out. It’s just what Greenspan and bernanke and obama and the rest of these people want. They decry savings and are trying to whip us up to buy more, buy more, buy more!
When that all fails miserably, Cliff, will you join the chorus and say that it wasn’t enough? We really needed to borrow and buy even more?
Who is in charge the King and his Men or the people?
Why did we allow this to happen?
I think it is time the people are in charge. We need to form a Cyber Assembly of the people. We can than make sustainable plans and take actions which are for the good of the Earth and inhabitants.
Bruce
Tax policies that encouraged making a quick buck over building equity in the long term combined with the Fed’s monetary policy to propel the bubble economy. Supply-side economics is a bad joke; it’s putting the cart before the horse. Speculative bubbles were encouraged in order to generate an artificial boom – on paper, at least – to conceal the real weakness in the economy: that workers, the foundation of the economy, were receiving less and less of the profits they generated, even as their productivity increased.
You can’t build a sound economy based on consumers borrowing in order to consume – that should have been obvious to everyone from the start (yet we tried it anyway). The government borrowing and investing in infrastructure, particularly that which produces home-grown renewable energy to replace unsustainable imports, is not the same thing. That strategy has the potential to put our economy back on a sound footing – but it had better work fast, we can’t keep borrowing at this rate for long.
Of course, we could get rid of our overseas military bases, and stop pouring money into weapons systems designed to counter the Soviet threat (as if it still existed!); the budget problems would vanish. The military-industrial complex has a stranglehold on our politics, though.
Oil went up. The “Cheap Oil Era” ended. American workers got more expensive. Containerized shipping got good. The Shysters, swindlers, shylocks, banksters and fraudsters saw weakened regulations (the Bush follies). Sales people, chasing the everlasting commission charged ahead with new sales skills and no regulation and made small fortunes selling bogus real estate and mortgages. Car companies stagnated because the boys at the top were over-paid and under taxed (Bush Follies again). Most of all, a source of almost free labor was found in China. An army of Chinese peasant women, formerly thought worthless by their own government, were found to be a self-perpetuating, unending source of good 85 cent an hour labor, who for a small bag of rice and a few trinkets and a bit of cash, would live in factory dorms and slave 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, eat rice at company cafeterias, poop in slot toilets on the factory floor, sleep in 3′ X 6′ curtained off sections of the factory floor, live in factory uniforms, go back to peasant farms when burned out, (no welfare, no compensation, no pensions, no medical, and no hope,) and at almost no cost to anyone build a better car than the Chev Volt, that China will sell in America for HALF the price, and still make fantastic profits! All American manufacturing moved off-shore when America capital migrated to the Shanghai stock exchange! The Uber-rich investors of the world have simply found a better deal than what the U.S.A. has to offer, and taken it! Dancing around finger pointing and looking fo who to blame has just obsfucated the truth and left politicians dancing knee-deep in clownshit. The truth is America is being “Outworked” by an army of little 89 pound women who sacrifice all for the survival of their children in what Americans consider “Slave” conditions. They have done more damage to the American economy than any war ever could have, they are our new holacoust. They have defeated us faster than uniformed soldiers ever could have, and without a shot fired. History compiled the coincidence, and the Chinese ladies drove the nail through America’s heart. We have shown our achilles heel and are doomed to Asian manufacturing domination here after. For validation of thei cockamamy dissertation, SEE:
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“The astounding Chinese have epoched the great GM, of U.S.A. in producing an Electric/gas/plug-in car! They are driving them in the streets of China as we speak, they will be retailed in the U.S.A. by 2011, they will cost half the price of a “Volt” and they are “On Order” for Israel! GM, take a deep breath, your naughty parts have just been cut off by a Chinese high-tech competitor, and the “Volt” is still “Vapor-ware”!” See:http://www.cleantech.com/news/3983/chinas-byd-sells-first-mass-produced-plug-cars
Uncle B really sums it up well. And so do the others above. What is revealed is that what happened to our economy is more complex than what we normally speak of, and yet it can all be boiled down to one five letter word – greed.
But not greed of the consumer, although our culture has become plastic and it is easier to purchase when one doesn’t have to immediately pay. And the overextended credit of consumers is something that could have been addressed as it grew.
But Uncle B, you nailed it, on the greed of our Business world putting the unfortunate in a sort of economic slavery, conditions that in the United States would be criminal, but easy to exploit outside the U. S. once the Corporation became big enough.
Yes we consumed too much on credit, but in a way it is a symptom of, rather than the underlying foundation of the problem. Sort of like fever lets you know there is some infection somewhere. What the International Financial Cartel is attempting to do is get us even deeper in dependence to them as we try to buy our way out ( added consumer debt ) – remember the old song about “Load 16 tons and go deeper in debt?”. We are getting to watch a collage of that as it occurs.
When we finally identify the culprit though, it does have to come back to us. We allowed laws to be passed, de-regulation to happen, corruption to occur, and by far the worst of all -Our Government, as a consumer running amok for the “Elites” ever increasing debt ( Our liabilities under Bush increased three times greater than all the debt increases for the previous combined history of our Government). And there are a multitude who still enable this monstrosity.
These actions all are designed to feed the greed of those who would be our masters - the Money monsters! This Cabal has no Nationality, no Fidelity, nor do they practice ethical constraint. They grow larger and larger with each dollar of debt and the larger they become the more often they must be fed because the appetite of greed is self perpetuating.
That is where we are to blame. Life was good. We cut slack for the likes of Bush and those like him who preceded him. Now the payment is due. And the bill collector is our own government.
#5 greenknight – I think you said something worthy of repeating:
“You can’t build a sound economy based on consumers borrowing in order to consume”
all that an economy like that can be is a house of cards. people will run wild, as they always do in a boom – and the transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the corporate and political class marches on.
Everywhere, I go there seems to be to many political parties that don’t work the right way. People are generally too unfriendly in Columbus, GA. The folks that go A wall in fort Benning probably have a lousy time you can’t trust the military for sure. You used to get help from the gang if you need it. We know the libertarian parties but, mostly republican parties causes eninimity by being to unfriendly that still brings me back to my independent anarchist leaning self.
A big thanks to Stephen Lendman for yet another excellent article. Very well said! The only minor quibble I might have is Lendman’s description of Libertarian criticism as coming from the “right”. The old left-right debate is an artificial construct used as a very effective divide and conquer strategy. A more accurate description of the age old conflict between the various incarnations of the Money Trust and the rabble is one of centralization vs. decentralization – a concept brilliantly dissected and explained by Catherine Austin Fitts and others in her network of anti-government corruption activists/writers. To get a deep understanding of the carefully orchestrated “tapeworm economics” we are now witnessing compliments of high ranking government officials and their insider connections on Wall Street read Austin Fitts expose on the subject available on her website Solari.com – under Archives “Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits“. I also recommend Patrick Byrnes’ “Deep Capture” series on Overstock.com.
Centralization of power can take the form of fascism (corporatism), communism, monarchies, oligarchies, nationalistic dictators, etc. What we have witnessed in the U.S. over the last year is the evolution of soft fascism into overt fascism with the concommitant loss of civil liberties and what transparency of government still remained. It is now time to return to our roots of representative government on the small scale with transparency and a well informed citizenry.
Great point on the source of power – the reality is that this is a debate, a battle, between statism and freedom. The two are mutually incompatible.
Michael, I agree. When worlds collide, and that is what is taking place right now, it becomes a very dangerous time. Freedom will always win the war in the end, but sometimes many battles are lost to the initial power, before the tide turns.
The reason it always turns is because the Elite have feasted off the sweat of rabble, and as the Elite drives the rabble to non productive status in the war of attrition, they are in fact dealing fatal blows to their own status, because without the rabble, the Elites don’t exist.
Uncle B’s comments on the Chinese labor market are very astute, but I wonder if anybody has considered the fact that perhaps big business and big investment here in the United States is looking forward to the time when the same things pertain here? When millions of people are out of work and in the streets, frantically seeking a way to get a few dollars to feed their families for yet another day, then these people, too, will be available to work 24/7 for a bite of food and a few dollars. Remember that’s the way it was in the early 30s. And again in the late 1800s. The Robber Barons always love an ignorant, poverty-stricken populace. They hate dignity, or the Rights of Man, except for themselves, of course.
We have to keep in mind that our greatest enemy, in regards to all these economic issues whether its debt, outsourcing and on and on – is inflation. It makes our purchasing power less, and everything we need to buy (including labor) more expensive.
What we need is a real reduction in costs across the board – food, housing, health and the rest. This can be done pretty quickly by increasing the value of the dollar. (hint: stop printing so many of them!)
Steve. Of course you are right and it is this that I keep calling Financial slavery. They are trying to get us to that point. And damned if we aren’t helping them.
How are we helping them? Well by not uniting on what is the root cause and the focus of the adversary.
Who is the adversary? The invisible Government, The Shadow Government, The Kleptocracy, The Oligarchy, whatever we call it, makes no difference. We need to kick them out.
As I said before, you eat an elephant one bite at a time. The first thing to get rid of is the enabler – that’s their political party. The next step is easier.
Some people think that eating the elephant is best done with a different first step – starving it. I happen to agree. But, that’s a really difficult kind of protest.
The question, though, is when is enough enough? When we will say that the risk is not too much to stop the insanity?
Allen. So right. When I say eat the elephant one bite at a time, if it has been starved you certainly do have less bites to have to manage.
And when I say the first thing to do is get rid of the enablers, that’s exactly what I mean – starve the elephant – you will notice that I call for shunning the Party. Believe me, that’s starving the elephant. The elephants sustenance is the enablers. Remove that and the elephant starves.
Interestingly another thing happens when this starving is going on. The elephant continues to get weaker. When candidates are no longer willing to run as a Republican because of the certain defeat, they will have to join other parties to be a viable candidate for public office. We need to have that alternative ready for them.
Of course, any Republicans (and most Democrats) that are afraid to run for an office in their party for fear of losing are not exactly the types you want in your new party.
We need a new party that will attract those who are tired of the way we are going; who long for the return of the Constitution, intact and functioning, to the halls of government; who want to make the United States return to the community of civilized nations; who believe in freedom of speech, freedom of religion and a free press. Perhaps a Populist Party?
Add to the above: And peaceful, diplomatic solutions to problems, global and domestic, rather than war, hatred, and destruction.
While I think starving the beast is the right goal, there are clearly a few different methods.
There’s elections – which don’t really seem to be working – but still good to keep trying.
There’s non-participation – encourage war resisters, don’t give your money to bailout recipients, boycotts, etc.
There’s starving – which I take as refusing to pay. Tax resistance. That’s scary to a lot of people – and it just might have to come to that some day.
Remember, Spoonerite, for those who would join a tax revolt, their money has already been withheld by the government. All they get for refusing to file is another big fine. Those who could successfully join a tax revolt are perfectly happy with the system as it now stands. They have so many loopholes, including disappearing their money offshore, that they don’t have to worry about taxes. Besides, the government is probably already paying them our withheld tax money as a reward for trashing the economy.
Actually, there is a method to taking part in a tax revolt – for those getting paycheck withholding. They could increase their exemptions at their job to say, 9 or 10, or whatever the maximum. In that case, the amount withheld for federal taxes would be almost zero for a significant portion of the population.
When taxes are due on the 15th, they don’t pay. Now I’m sure that’s all illegal, but that’s how people have told me it can be done. Makes sense. I do agree that there comes a point and time that there needs to be some kind of resistance. Is that effective? Don’t know.
Years ago, most people did that. Claimed xteen exemptions, then changed it when they filed their return. The government realized there was a lot of money they didn’t get to use during the year, so they passed a law that, if your withholding didn’t come within a small percentage of your taxes due, you had to pay a huge penalty.
I’m not sure if employers share in the misery or not, but they are supposed to verify any unusual number of exemptions.
If the amount due ( exceeds withholding ) exceeds $500, there is a penalty. Mine last year exceeded the amount and I had to pay a penalty. I have paid in quarterly this past year and I’m not sure whether I will have a penalty or not. Going to do the taxes next week. Hope I don’t have to come up with the same amount this year.
A tax revolt is dangerous unless there is enough people with you and it needs to be into the millions.
You can have a very safe tax revolt if you will do one thing:
Get rid of one of the big two. And as I said no one can stop you. It is perfectly legal. The surviving parties will know what you did and why you did it. They will also be smart enough to know they will be next if they don’t measure up.
For the life of me, I don’t see why that scenario is not crystal clear. And why there seems to be such a reluctance to go for it.
It costs nothing, its legal, and I think it will work.
The Greenspammer should be beaten until his morale improves! It always seemed to me he was guessing about the economy and now I’m certain of it.
The closer you were to the bottom of the economic food chain, the farther back it started. I say that because the wealthier and more secure you were when the recession hit the fan, it came as a bit of a surprise, but not to those loosing their jobs when Reagan started deregulating everything. Our economy has been like a sinkhole with everything happening well out of sight and the next thing you know, the house shakes and is underwater.
One fine morning in Frostproof, FL, a woman was awakened to her house shaking. She ran outside just in time to see everything but her garage gobbled up by a massive hole in the ground. People want to place explicit blame, but it happened over such a long period of time, but nobody pays any attention until the wealthy are affected.
I may not be a financial expert, but after seeing so much homelessness, it doesn’t seem a very good economic indicator. The jobless rate is also a joke, because it only counts the number drawing a check. If you are still unemployed and no longer drawing a check, you are counted as employed, because the checks stopped. The military was not counted in the employment data until the Reagan years, so long term employment data are skewed. If unemployment data were accurate and homelessness were included, it might show a more accurate assessment of our economy. It wouldn’t look good, so that’s why the feral government wouldn’t use that data.
When most of our heavy manufacturing went overseas, that may well have been the beginning of the decline of the American economic roller coaster, as we rebuilt Germany and Japan and failed to do anything for ourselves. All of our massive monopolization hasn’t helped, as it kills competition. Americans bought foreign cars because they didn’t want gas guzzling monsters, but did Detroit listen? Even the Japanese built a big truck for the American market. I’ll never understand how and why their marketing departments didn’t see the trend, but if they couldn’t see what the public was buying, they should find another line of employment.
Industry left America because too many working causes inflation in a fiat money system. The only way the government knows how to create jobs is to create debt and war. Simply put, “the borrower is servent to the lender” according to my Bible, and the government serves the Federal Reserve NOT THE PEOPLE!!
Inflation is an increase in the supply of money.
Increased prices (for everything), loss of jobs overseas, high unemployment, and a low savings rates are all results of inflation.
Pat I believe Industry left America because it could get cheap labor overseas. Had nothing to do with how many people were working here. I have spoken before of a company I worked for years ago that would find families in Singapore, make a deal with the head of the family where our company would supply everything but the labor. The family head would put his wife and children to work. The amount paid by the foreigner was “table wages”, in other words, nothing. Possibly an allowance. The point is no American could support a family on something like 25 Cents per hour.
Jusat this week, IBM, a company that you and I as taxpayers gave in bvailouts , to help them save solvent so they could help keep americans working, announced that they were sending 5000 jobs from America to India. They didn’t offer to refund the bailout money.
Maybe I’m not saying this lound enough - What is happening to the taxpayer is the Greed of the Rich and Powerful.
And Dave tere are two types of inflation – natural inflation caused by the market, and artifical inflation brought about by – things like bailouts! And the bailouts are a result of the GREED of the Rich and the powerful.
What has hapened to us and the world is quite simple. The International Financial Cabal and their cohorts in crime have decided that it is time to make a move toward establishing a World Kleptocracy. They are using our funds to finance their move.
Did you notice that the Nations other than the United States are not funding bailouts like our Governemt is, and did you happen to notice that a goodly portion of the bailout money provided by the American taxpayer is going to foreign entities?
When people ask where all the $10.6 Trillion allocated by Bush in 2007 and 2008 went, tell them about 30% went to Foreign Nationals. You will be correct. Wake up everybody. You are being had.
Hmmm, on the way home today, I got to thinking. I wonder what the new flag will look like when they finally get rid of Canada, Mexico and the United States and activate the Greater North American Co-Prosperity Sphere? You know, that’s the organization that the three heads of state and many business cartels have been cooking up? If you read the fine print, the whole idea is for American big business to rip off the vast natural resources of Canada using cheap Mexican labor. Meanwhile, the continent will become a “Festung America” guarded by a ring of steel. Our “security” overseen by Homeland Security, no doubt aided by Blackwater, et al., as sub-contractors.
Comes the Amero, the buck will be worth doodely-squat! And you think we’ve got troubles now? The kleptocracy hasen’t even warmed up yet!
Yes Steve. That’s the one with the Highway from Mexico to Canada built by Spanish and I believe owned by them or Portugal.
And for the uninitiated, the highway that Bush said was just an unfounded rumor. Unload stuff into Mexico from China, drive it up throught the United States to Kansas City for offload of US Shipments and up into Canada for their offloads.
It is a restricted access road and yes the North American Partnership Plan is in full swing and will bring Mexico, the U S, and Canada all under one Business authority.
Brought to you by the same group who brought you the Economic crash. The Kleptocracy.
They don’t have a Party -they’ve got both of them.
A frightening thought – Quebec, a huge, rich land, and the separatism there received huge support from Mexico, in Spanish by shortwave radio and clandestine visitors! they also received the same sort of support in written and taped form from the stinker parts of Europe! Who caused this instability on our doorstep, and Why?
Who caused this instability on our doorstep, and Why?
Brought to you by the Kleptocracy, so they can own and control it all.
Kleptocracy – AKA corporatism – AKA fascism. right?
And so the light dawns!
A Kleptocracy is by one dictionary definition, a rule by thieves.
The Kleptocratic Government normally embezzles money from its citizens by misusing funds derived from tax payments, or money laundering schemes, such a political system tends to degrade most non-elite citizens quality of life. Corruption and the votes to write the laws or the purchased judicary to ignore the laws.
What I believe is that there is a Multi-National Cabal of individuals who have joined in business together to operate a behind the scenes Kleptocracy with a goal of one day ruling the world thru Financial bondage.
If they can control 99% of the wealth, they can control those power elites. And it is easy enough for those elites to control the rest of the worlds non-elites.
Already they control more than 90% of the wealth, possibly over 95%. They own both U S Major political Parties and control the Multi-National Corporations. They own the majority of the media and they give you a choice between their picked possibles when election time rolls around.
This Cabal is a profound threat to freedom of mankind in the future. And we are quite constrained by them now. We really should be thinking of ways to control them – and soon.
Since these people are like Mafia Dons, ruling their mobs from within or without jail, the only way to really get rid of them is by stretching hemp, but I guess that is out now, also.
I think Mafia dons might be the best description for our godlike leaders. The run a protection racket, take money from us at the barrel of a gun, and actually make us less safe too.
On top of it, they destroy our economy by wasting all our money on military madness.
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