Edgar J. Steele

September 23, 2008

This past week, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (one of an endless number of government functionaries formerly employed by Goldman Sachs, one of the two remaining investment banks in America) announced yet another bailout of Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, this time to facilitate the increased purchase of mortgages in the near future. How much? "Hundreds of billions of dollars," is all that he would admit. This must be added to the $300 billion bailout announced just two weeks ago (ranging up to $1 trillion, in effect, by some estimates). Paulson’s announcement followed a rare meeting including "WhirlyBen" Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, and a large number of government and private financial industry functionaries and leaders.

Now, congressional hearings are in progress to rubber stamp Paulson’s demand for $700 billion more to buy any sort of financial "asset," no matter how worthless, from any sort of financial institution, both American and foreign.

Here’s Your Share

Let’s put the figures into perspective. Of approximately 350 million American residents, perhaps 150 million households exist. Of those, less than half pay anything meaningful in taxes. Let’s be generous and say that there are 75 million tax-paying households in America today and that the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout is limited to only $1 trillion. Yours almost certainly is one of the tax-paying households. Your share of the mortgage giant bailout, therefore, is $13,333. And that doesn’t take consideration of the fact that half the tax-paying households rely upon a government paycheck, either.

Of course, you already are on the hook for twice that amount, or nearly $30,000, for the current Iraq war, which was started on a lie told by Bush and Cheney about Saddam Hussein’s "weapons of mass destruction." This pre-emptive Bush doctrine is the same one now so favored by McCain/Palin and which will lead us into WWIII via Iran, most likely.

Already, many have forgotten the precedent-setting bailout of Investment Bank Bear Stearns, to the tune of $60 billion. That kept Bear Stearns afloat. Think it won’t be back for more? Your share: $800, so far.

AIG was just rescued by us, too. $85 billion, or $1,133 from you. AIG is part of the cartel that illegally has been shorting silver and costing you big, incidentally.

Don’t forget the Bank of America bailout of Merrill Lynch this past week ($50 billion) and, previously, of Countrywide. Those were brokered by the Federal Reserve and, you can bank on it, funded by us. Let’s guess and say your share is $1,333.

What about Lehman Brothers, you might ask? After all, it was allowed to go bankrupt, thereby exposing all its dirty laundry for us to see. That $600 billion mess is being carved up right now by other financial companies and will end up pledged as assets to the Fed and the Treasury for future loans, rest assured. You can count on up to half of the Lehman corpse ending up as a dead loss. Your share: upwards of $40,000.

This doesn’t include the banks already taken over by the FDIC so far this year, a mere hint of things to come. Nor does it include the other financial giants teetering on the edge of financial oblivion.

For those keeping track, just the figures above put you in hock for nearly $100,000. Make that a quarter-million dollars if we consider that your government-employee neighbor gets paid with your tax dollars, too. How do you plan to pay that off, Bunky? Especially since the prices of everything just keep going up and you just lost your job?

But the fat cats are just fine, thank you, and thanks to you. Fannie Mae’s departing CEO took $14 million in severance and Freddie Mac’s ex-honcho walked with $9 million. Henry Paulson’s personal fortune is nearly a half billion dollars.

The $700 billion about to be handed over to Treasury Secretary Paulson will carry no oversight and no regulatory authority whatsoever: He gets a blank check. Section 8 of the proposed legislation provides that "(d)ecisions 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." How about that, eh? The arrogance of the Bush Administration continues to new heights, surpassing even that which buoyed up the Patriot Act.

The USSA

Some form of this new legislation will pass, rest assured. In the course of just two weeks, America’s entire financial system – banks, S&Ls, insurance companies, brokerages, etc. – have become adjuncts to the US government. This is nationalization, pure and simple. Paulson is being given unlimited authority to order these organizations to do whatever he demands and force our children and their children to pay for it.

If you don’t see this is as the most significant two weeks in American economic history, a period that transformed our country into a purely-socialistic state – the United Socialistic States of America – then you quite simply have not been paying attention.

What is going on right now goes well beyond anything that FDR dreamed when he set America on the path toward socialism.

To the right is a graph that provides just a hint of the problem as it really exists today. Look at it again – the vertical line on the right side is not the chart’s border! Now, imagine it being much, much worse. It will be as we follow the path charted by the Bush Administration.

By the time this is all over, the Federal Reserve Bank will own virtually all of America. Remember that the owners of the Federal Reserve, a private corporation, are almost all foreign central banking families.

What We Can and Cannot Do

We can’t feed and clothe all of America’s children, but we can afford $60 billion to bail out Bear Stearns.

We can’t provide decent medical care to America’s seniors, but we can give $85 billion to AIG insurance.

We can’t lift one finger to help out Americans losing their homes, but we can hand over up to $1 trillion to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

We haven’t the funds to provide proper care and support to American veterans, but we can afford up to $600 billion to buy pledged Lehman Brothers assets.

We can’t do a thing to stanch to flow of jobs offshore and alleviate the suffering of out-of-work Americans, but we can hand $700 billion over to a guy who, until two years ago, ran the main problem-creating company: Goldman Sachs.

We can’t afford to properly educate our children to fit into a changing America, but we can afford $1 trillion for a war that Cheney and Bush knowingly lied us into.

The Dollar is Dead

WhirlyBen Bernanke recently was quoted as admitting: "We have lost control. We cannot stabilize the dollar." Read that quote again. Consider how much Bernanke has lied to us and then imagine just how bad is the real truth.

During the past four years, the Federal Reserve Bank has created $4 trillion out of nothing. Every dollar created in this way dilutes the purchasing power of every already-existing dollar.

The recent runup in the dollar index from 71 to 80 was stupidly transparent – an obvious sham and machination of these guys who have created the very problems which they now demand so much more money in order to "solve." The prices of precious metals were hammered down as a consequence, so much so that now there exists a divide between physical metal prices and the artificial "paper metal" prices.

And these guys – these outright failures – have the gall to come and tell us to hand over the legacy of our children and their children so they can create more failures and further feather their own nests?

US Out of America!

Are you mad yet? You ought to be fit to be tied. We should all be marching on Washington, DC with firebrands and pitchforks, in fact.

Throw them all out on November 4. Vote against every single incumbent for every single office at all levels, local, county, state and federal. Vote against both Obama and Palin … er, McCain.

New America. An idea whose time has come.

9/11 Chronicles Part One: Truth Rising

Get the DVD and make copies or watch the high quality streaming and download version online at Prison Planet.tv. Click here to read more about the film and view sample trailers.

The Emergency Election Sale is now live! Get 30% to 60% off our most popular products today!