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Banksters Rally Round Fed
To Keep Bailout Trillions Secret
Banks say they will go to Supreme Court to block
transparency
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Steve Watson Infowars.net
Thursday, April 15th, 2010The largest commercial banks in the U.S.
are ready to go all the way to the Supreme Court to block the public
release of details pertaining to the Federal Reserve’s 2008
secretive $2 trillion bailout.
Bloomberg News reports that The Clearing House Association LLC,
a group that includes Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase &
Co., have teamed with the Fed to rally against a lawsuit, brought
by Bloomberg itself, to disclose records of the Fed’s emergency
lending.
The fight for disclosure has been ongoing following the Fed’s
failure to comply with congressional demands for transparency.
The Fed has consistently refused to identify the recipients of almost
$2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled
assets the central bank accepted as collateral.
A New York District ruling last August declared that the destination
of around $2 trillion dollars in bailout funds must be revealed
after the Fed failed to convince the Judge that the records should
be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
Citing the fact that the US taxpayer is an “involuntary investor”
in the nation’s banks, Bloomberg argued that the risks behind
the $2 trillion in lending needed to be made public.
Following more stalling, a further ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals
in Manhattan on March 19 ordered the central bank to release the
documents. The Fed once again argued that disclosure would be harmful
to its independence, would stigmatize borrowers and discourage banks
from seeking further emergency help. READ
FULL STORY
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The Coming European
Debt Wars EU Countries sinking into Depression
by Prof. Michael Hudson
Global
Research, April 9, 2010
Government debt in Greece is just the first
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set to explode. The mortgage debts in post-Soviet economies
and Iceland are more explosive. Although these countries are
not in the Eurozone, most of their debts are denominated in
euros. Some 87% of Latvia’s debts are in euros or other
foreign currencies, and are owed mainly to Swedish banks,
while Hungary and Romania owe euro-debts mainly to Austrian
banks. So their government borrowing by non-euro members has
been to support exchange rates to pay these private-sector
debts to foreign banks, not to finance a domestic budget deficit
as in Greece.
All these debts are unpayably high because most of these countries
are running deepening trade deficits and are sinking into
depression. Now that real estate prices are plunging, trade
deficits are no longer financed by an inflow of foreign-currency
mortgage lending and property buyouts. There is no visible
means of support to stabilize currencies (e.g., healthy economies).
For the past year these countries have supported their exchange
rates by borrowing from the EU and IMF. The terms of this
borrowing are politically unsustainable: sharp public sector
budget cuts, higher tax rates on already over-taxed labor,
and austerity plans that shrink economies and drive more labor
to emigrate.
Bankers in Sweden and Austria, Germany and Britain are about
to discover that extending credit to nations that can’t
(or won’t) pay may be their problem, not that of their
debtors. No one wants to accept the fact that debts that can’t
be paid, won’t be. Someone must bear the cost as debts
go into default or are written down, to be paid in sharply
depreciated currencies, but many legal experts find debt agreements
calling for repayment in euros unenforceable. Every sovereign
nation has the right to legislate its own debt terms, and
the coming currency re-alignments and debt write-downs will
be much more than mere “haircuts.”
There is no point in devaluing, unless “to excess”
– that is, by enough to actually change trade and production
patterns. That is why Franklin Roosevelt devalued the US dollar
by 75% against gold in 1933, raising its official price from
$20 to $35 an ounce. And to avoid raising the U.S. debt burden
proportionally, he annulled the “gold clause”
indexing payment of bank loans to the price of gold. This
is where the political fight will occur today – over
the payment of debt in currencies that are devalued.
Another byproduct of the Great Depression in the United States
and Canada was to free mortgage debtors from personal liability,
making it possible to recover from bankruptcy. Foreclosing
banks can take possession of collateral real estate, but do
not have any further claim on the mortgagees. This practice
– grounded in common law – shows how North America
has freed itself from the legacy of feudal-style creditor
power and the debtors’ prisons that made earlier European
debt laws so harsh.
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Why
Are Corporate Groups Funding the Tea Party?
by Shamus Cooke
Global
Research, April 15, 2010
Rank and file Tea Partiers are, politically speaking, lost at sea
in the dead of night, looking for the light of common principles.
On land, those manning right-wing lighthouses are broadcasting ideas
loaded with hidden motives into this ocean of conservative public
opinion. What the Tea Party will become is presently unknown; but
those with an agenda will do their best to steer lost boats at sea
in their direction, with potentially dangerous consequences.
Only recently have some tea party groups spotted land, organizing
themselves under the new body National Tea Party Federation. One
would expect such an organization to release a detailed statement
about its members’ shared political positions, beliefs, goals,
etc.
Instead, only three unifying concepts were announced: fiscal responsibility,
constitutionally limited government, and free markets — all
vague terms overused by any corporate Republican. It seems, then,
that there is still much work to be done in organizing and channeling
the national Tea Party “movement.”
Because the three unifying ideas are so vague, special interests
will fill in the blanks when needed. For example, does a “constitutionally
limited government” allow the economy to be dominated by giant
corporations? Does “fiscal responsibility” mean that
the U.S. should spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually on
foreign wars? Does “free markets” mean that Wall Street
should be allowed to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants? The
answers to these questions, according to the National Tea Party
Federation, will all be YES!
How can we be sure? The website announcing the new federation lists
a number of Tea Party “allies” and “support groups.”
Many of these groups are corporate-dominated front groups such as
Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity — two groups who’ve
relentlessly promoted the Tea Party movement with massive resources.
Not listed as an “ally” is the super-rich Koch family,
which has also poured giant resources towards boosting the Tea Partiers.
Fox News and other corporate media outlets, too, are non-official
Tea Party “support groups.”
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