by Bill Sardi

Recently by Bill Sardi: Who Is Left Holding the Bag on USDebt?

The government wants Americans to believe the greatest economic collapse in history was the result of ineptness and mistakes yet still have confidence in their financial institutions.

Should American bankers be let off the hook because they self-declare, before an investigational panel, that the failure of their newly invented risk swaps and other highly leveraged investment schemes was simply due to "mistakes"? Not malfeasance — just every-day mistakes? Bankers just fell asleep at the helm at a critical juncture in American history. Is that what we are being led to believe?

Oh well, it’s just 18 million American homes that now lay empty in the wake of unprecedented foreclosures, and the bankers have collected obscene bonuses for reckless lending of their depositors’ money. It’s like the captain and crew of a ship saying, not to worry, twenty-percent of the passengers were lost overboard, but this was due to unavoidable mistakes, and then being rewarded with bonuses when they reach port.

Are Americans to believe that the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to create a false bubble in the economy, at the same time the Securities Exchange Commission allowed investment banks risky reserve ratios and exerted lax control over investment tycoons like Bernie Madoff, and in lock step, the credit rating agencies (Fitch, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s) handed out sterling A+ credit ratings on risky mortgage-backed securities, while the US Treasury Department stood by and did nothing?

Shall Americans conclude the world’s largest economy is beyond the management skills and regulation of virtually every financial arm of government and the private sector? If so, widespread incompetence would suggest Americans had better come up with some institution or instrument of their own invention to protect their money.

Whatever or whomever did bring down the American economy, it appears to be an orchestrated effort. If one arm of the financial industry had objected or performed their job responsibly, the whole economic collapse could have been averted. The credit rating agencies alone could have put an abrupt halt to what amounts to a financial collapse of western civilization.

Lenses into the future: a planned default?

Americans cannot see the economy as the elites do. The elites have lenses into the future. They have access to information that foretells the future of our economy. They can see a better picture of when mounting debt will rise beyond the ability to repay.

They certainly can see pension funds, private and public, are under-funded and there is no way, with Baby Boomers now entering their retirement years, these obligations can be met. Medicare expenses are totally out of control with enrollees able to rack up bills in the tens of thousands of dollars beyond what they ever paid into the system.

At some point, seeing no way out, maybe a decision was made to default on our debts. There are rumblings that the world economy is being intentionally brought to its knees in order to usher in a one-world currency.

There are other hints that the US is intentionally tanking its economy.

Normally the US Patent & Trademark Office could be seen as a pathway to jump-start the economy. Some 6300 patent examiners hold the future fate of the American economy in their hands. But the patent office is backlogged. It embarrassingly has 6 years of patent applications, what amounts to over 1 million filings, waiting to be evaluated. Over $700 million of fees have been siphoned off by Congress to pay for other extraneous government projects, slowing the patent approval process to an agonizingly pace. About 7 of every 10 applicants were granted a patent in the past. But today, less than half are approved.

In the past decade there also appeared to be an effort to drive States into debt. Colorado, a State that had a mandated spending limit, was belittled for stifling its economy. Lies were told that Colorado was so bogged down with this limitation that it repealed its spending limit bill. That was far from the truth.

Another business stifling practice has been to limit the amount of large funds actually available to the economy in what is called M3 money supply. M1 is the amount of currency and traveler’s checks in circulation outside banks, along with demand deposits and other checkable deposits. M2 is M1 plus savings deposits, such as money market accounts. M3 is M2 plus large time-restricted deposits, institutional money-market funds and other large liquid assets. M3 is the best official measure of the total supply of money.

As of March 23, 2006, the M3 money supply is no longer published by the US central bank. So Americans can’t get a full view of what government is doing with the total money supply. The M3 is now estimated by two websites — ShadowStats.com and NowAndTheFuture.com. A severe contraction in the M3 money supply began to be reported in August of 2008. It appears there has been a sudden downturn in M3 funds, which could choke the economy at a critical time.

“Total money” M3 plus credit, recent time http://www.nowandfutures.com/key_stats.html

By plan or mistake?

It would be difficult for the American public to even contemplate the idea that their government may be intentionally tanking the economy. So we are left with the commonly-heard claim that people in government are just incompetent, there is no conspiracy of any kind. Regardless, heads should roll, and we still have the same derelict captains (Bernanke, Geithner) at the helm.

Whatever is planned for the future US economy, there certainly must be contingency plans in place to devalue the dollar, issue new currency, declare banking holidays, reappraise the value of real estate to true market value (~ 30% drop), sell off government-held real estate assets to hedge funds, confiscate guns, invoke marshal law, etc. If these events occur, they won’t be without forethought. Call it conspiracy if you will.

On November 21, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt stated, “The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the United States since the days of Andrew Jackson.”

Few Americans recognize the merger of state and corporate powers, with the news media also subservient to those in power. How gullible the public has been over recent decades to not see how government and business have conspired to raise the price of goods.

The oil embargo of the 1970s

I can recall the gasoline crisis/OPEC oil embargo of the 1970s. I was traveling around the US on business at the time and I noticed that shortages of gasoline were not nationwide but were actually being staged in different regions. In Seattle there was no shortage of gasoline, but there were long lines at gas stations in Los Angeles. There was no scarcity of gasoline in Atlanta, but later there were long lines at gas pumps throughout Georgia. TV screens around the nation made it falsely appear the shortage was nationwide.

The 1970s gasoline crisis was a concerted effort between government, oil producers and the news media to fool Americans into thinking there was a pervasive shortage of gasoline despite the fact OPEC, the oil-producing cartel, was founded because of an over-abundance of oil.

I recall reading an article in Fortune Magazine in 1963 how oil companies longed to find a way to raise the price of gasoline to European levels. Pre-OPEC, oil was sold at competing prices. That couldn’t be tolerated. A spot-price had to be introduced. Then one country couldn’t undersell another and prices would "stabilize." The OPEC cartel eliminated competition, except for Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in recent times. Of course, Chavez is demonized. We do not have free markets, we have controlled markets based upon contrived events.

Graph of oil prices from 1861—2007, showing a sharp increase in 1973, and again during the 1979 energy crisis. The orange line is adjusted for inflation.

Examine this map of failed banks in 2008—2009. There are over 2000 failed banks the FDIC indicates it needs to dissolve. Notice how evenly the bank failures are spread geographically across the US. The geographical locus of home foreclosures is centered in California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida. But bank closures appear to be more evenly spread, as if to create public awareness (and fear) in every geographic region that banks are in trouble. This is eerily similar to the geographically revolving gasoline shortages in the 1970s.

Tax cut or payoff to oil companies?

Another example of complicity between government and industry is the most recent run up in gasoline prices which began early in the past decade. The news media failed to note that when GW Bush passed his first tax cut in 2001, early in his first term in office, it was rapidly followed by an increase in gasoline prices at the pump. Had President Bush cut taxes in order to put money into consumers’ hands so they could then pay ghastly high gasoline bills? The tax cut appears to have been a hand-in-hand arrangement between oil producers and the federal government. Gasoline prices rose till the public began curtailing their driving. The oil companies had now determined the top price they could get for their refined oil without collapsing demand.

There is nothing wrong with companies determining the top price consumers will pay for their goods, but there is something wrong when government secretly schemes with oil companies to create false market value, as they have also done in real estate.

Looking back in recent American history, there were also shortages of coffee and bananas in the 1970s and 80s, all staged events blamed on storms in South America that ruined crops. In those days, Americans didn’t have easy access to weather maps and information via the internet. These shortages were prolonged and prices rose until usage declined. Then the barons who ruled the coffee and banana industries had found the top price they could sell their products at without dampening demand. Suddenly, the shortages disappeared. The public never imagined these shortages were all artificially created.

Just as the price of oil, bananas and coffee were covertly engineered by a hidden alliance between government, industry and news outlets, is currency being gamed in the same fashion today? If so, current economic events are not by mistake.

Since President Roosevelt banned citizens from owning gold in 1933, the people were left holding increasingly worthless pieces of paper.

Americans can’t imagine how monetary policy has eroded their purchasing power. The US was officially taken off the gold standard in 1971. Issuance of silver certificates ceased in 1964. Had the US dollar continued to be backed by gold, the rise in the value of gold would have offset recent increases in gasoline prices at the pump, a fact Ron Paul has brought to the public’s attention.

For example, a portion of the rise in oil prices in recent years is due to erosion in the value of the dollar. Had the dollar remained strong the relative price of a barrel of oil would only have been around $65 in 2007-2008. If you compare the spot price of oil to gold, there has been almost no increase. Imagine what a gold-backed currency would do for America? Again, government (the Federal Reserve) has now admitted that it has arranged gold swaps with foreign banks in a prearranged way to suppress the value of gold.

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