One Sucker's Saga, Part VIII: Our Mystery Economy
In the last Saga, I noted the suspicious circumstances behind the current H1N1 virus (swine flu), how it seems to be artificial. This led to some very sobering reflection on demographics and, somewhat tangentally, the economy. This entry should reassure everyone that our economy is probably not what it seems, as smoking crater of ruin. In fact, it is probably quite a bit worse, with problematic and systemic weaknesses we as a country may never fully understand.
Today, we have a conundrum, a tentative but surging stock and bond market in a country with growing unemployment. Given that our economic woes have spread to the entire planet, it's fair to ask who is fueling that feeding frenzy, and with what?
Why not the white powders most illicit? As I outlined in Part IV, securing a stable heroin crop and supply lines in Afghanistan might be the reason we had to invade. Without such a regular infusion of cash capital, much of it gotten overseas from foreign users and addicts, our investment economy might not survive the shocks a likely 2005 peak in crude oil supplies would deliver.
There's another mystery to our economy to consider, one seemingly more substantial and verifiable. With its collapse now almost years in the past, why have very few official inquiries been made to determine what exactly went wrong with most of the banking sector? Ah, that's an interesting story. Let's just for the moment consider that Michael Ruppert is right and Wall St. is the main launderer of CIA happy powder profits. Let's just say. This would mean any investigation into the collapse might uncover some difficult-to-explain circumstances, right?
Wrong. Consider this Business Week article dated May 23, 2006:
President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye.
Unbeknownst to almost all of Washington and the financial world, Bush and every other President since Jimmy Carter have had the authority to exempt companies working on certain top-secret defense projects from portions of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. Administration officials told BusinessWeek that they believe this is the first time a President has ever delegated the authority to someone outside the Oval Office. It couldn't be immediately determined whether any company has received a waiver under this provision. (Emphasis mine.)
Meaning if any investigative team gets records of any given bank's activities, there is no guarantee that the information within those records is worth half a shit. Michael Ruppert took this situation very seriously. He dove into the actual statute and made inquiries about how any such directive might be known:
(Ruppert's publication From The Wilderness) placed calls to both the offices of the National Intelligence Director (DNI) and the SEC. We were told in both cases that no public announcements would be made indicating which companies had received such exemptions. . . .
A spokesman for the DNI told FTW, “We’re not going to acknowledge in a public way which companies are involved. We don’t expect such a list will ever be published.”
A spokesman for the SEC said, “I’m not aware of any plans to disclose anything.”
Translation: All one would have to do to legally hide any illegal activity undertaken as part of any government money laundering is to designate the colluding bank a defense contractor -- which is very broadly defined, apparently -- and invoke the provision. No one, neither angry shareholders nor a congressional committee, will be able to determine that the books presented are a complete fiction.
Furthermore, everyone on Capital Hill knows this. They have access to the Federal Register. They know that any investigation will be a complete sham, and are undoubtedly working hard to appear to do something else, perhaps something that might one day prove productive.
This should come as especially disturbing news to anyone with money invested in any of our country's SEC overseen companies. Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Librarians -- all are affected. All of us.
Addendum, March 2010: After giving this a bit more thought, I realized another reason for Bush to authorize Negroponte to give companies permission to lie. I mentioned it in 2005. Nothing really came of this scandal at the time, simply because the later State Attorneys General scandal buried it. The thing is, these two stories are intrinsically related.
I'll start with the first story I mentioned briefly in 2005:
If you were a totally crooked neo-con former CIA financier Republican who hangs with the corrupt Delay-Abramoff crowd, what would be the most unethical, diabolical way to funnel SO much money to the Republican Party and neo-con schemes that you could take back the government from the Democrats?
Easy!
With your corrupt Republican buddies, form a slew of your own brand-new Defense Companies, submit bids on things the Pentagon never even asked for to the Delay/Cunningham network and Bingo!--those contributions to the GOP and K Street will flow in like never before. You can then even give to Presidential candidates like George W. Neo-Con.
The article goes on to outline in excruciating detail the fake companies founded to funnel the funds and how some of those funds were funneled.
So which candidates got chunks of that taxpayer money earmarked for "defense"?
Henry Bonilla, Roy Brown, Rick Clayburgh, Duke Cunningham (of course!), John T. Doolittle, Maria Guadalupe Garcia, George W. Gekas, Lindsay Graham, Duncan Hunter, Darrell Issa, Samuel Johnson, Thaddeus G. McCotter, Constance Morella, Devin Nune, Steve Pearce, Bill Van de Weghe Jr., Jerry Weller.
Remember Duke Cunningham, the house member with the famous yacht called The Dukester? His case was overseen by Carol Lam . . . one of the first State Attorneys General fired in the scandal that eventually brought down Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. She was amassing evidence against the other names in list above before she was dismissed. Every Republican who sat on that Defense Appropriations Committee is suspect. But since Lam was let go, only Cunningham was prosecuted.
I encourage everyone to go to the Lam Wiki page and read the "Key event timeline of the firing scandal." You'll see some CIA names she was going after as well (as if that is any surprise).
Today, we have a conundrum, a tentative but surging stock and bond market in a country with growing unemployment. Given that our economic woes have spread to the entire planet, it's fair to ask who is fueling that feeding frenzy, and with what?
Why not the white powders most illicit? As I outlined in Part IV, securing a stable heroin crop and supply lines in Afghanistan might be the reason we had to invade. Without such a regular infusion of cash capital, much of it gotten overseas from foreign users and addicts, our investment economy might not survive the shocks a likely 2005 peak in crude oil supplies would deliver.
There's another mystery to our economy to consider, one seemingly more substantial and verifiable. With its collapse now almost years in the past, why have very few official inquiries been made to determine what exactly went wrong with most of the banking sector? Ah, that's an interesting story. Let's just for the moment consider that Michael Ruppert is right and Wall St. is the main launderer of CIA happy powder profits. Let's just say. This would mean any investigation into the collapse might uncover some difficult-to-explain circumstances, right?
Wrong. Consider this Business Week article dated May 23, 2006:
President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye.
Unbeknownst to almost all of Washington and the financial world, Bush and every other President since Jimmy Carter have had the authority to exempt companies working on certain top-secret defense projects from portions of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. Administration officials told BusinessWeek that they believe this is the first time a President has ever delegated the authority to someone outside the Oval Office. It couldn't be immediately determined whether any company has received a waiver under this provision. (Emphasis mine.)
Meaning if any investigative team gets records of any given bank's activities, there is no guarantee that the information within those records is worth half a shit. Michael Ruppert took this situation very seriously. He dove into the actual statute and made inquiries about how any such directive might be known:
(Ruppert's publication From The Wilderness) placed calls to both the offices of the National Intelligence Director (DNI) and the SEC. We were told in both cases that no public announcements would be made indicating which companies had received such exemptions. . . .
A spokesman for the DNI told FTW, “We’re not going to acknowledge in a public way which companies are involved. We don’t expect such a list will ever be published.”
A spokesman for the SEC said, “I’m not aware of any plans to disclose anything.”
Translation: All one would have to do to legally hide any illegal activity undertaken as part of any government money laundering is to designate the colluding bank a defense contractor -- which is very broadly defined, apparently -- and invoke the provision. No one, neither angry shareholders nor a congressional committee, will be able to determine that the books presented are a complete fiction.
Furthermore, everyone on Capital Hill knows this. They have access to the Federal Register. They know that any investigation will be a complete sham, and are undoubtedly working hard to appear to do something else, perhaps something that might one day prove productive.
This should come as especially disturbing news to anyone with money invested in any of our country's SEC overseen companies. Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Librarians -- all are affected. All of us.
Addendum, March 2010: After giving this a bit more thought, I realized another reason for Bush to authorize Negroponte to give companies permission to lie. I mentioned it in 2005. Nothing really came of this scandal at the time, simply because the later State Attorneys General scandal buried it. The thing is, these two stories are intrinsically related.
I'll start with the first story I mentioned briefly in 2005:
If you were a totally crooked neo-con former CIA financier Republican who hangs with the corrupt Delay-Abramoff crowd, what would be the most unethical, diabolical way to funnel SO much money to the Republican Party and neo-con schemes that you could take back the government from the Democrats?
Easy!
With your corrupt Republican buddies, form a slew of your own brand-new Defense Companies, submit bids on things the Pentagon never even asked for to the Delay/Cunningham network and Bingo!--those contributions to the GOP and K Street will flow in like never before. You can then even give to Presidential candidates like George W. Neo-Con.
The article goes on to outline in excruciating detail the fake companies founded to funnel the funds and how some of those funds were funneled.
So which candidates got chunks of that taxpayer money earmarked for "defense"?
Henry Bonilla, Roy Brown, Rick Clayburgh, Duke Cunningham (of course!), John T. Doolittle, Maria Guadalupe Garcia, George W. Gekas, Lindsay Graham, Duncan Hunter, Darrell Issa, Samuel Johnson, Thaddeus G. McCotter, Constance Morella, Devin Nune, Steve Pearce, Bill Van de Weghe Jr., Jerry Weller.
Remember Duke Cunningham, the house member with the famous yacht called The Dukester? His case was overseen by Carol Lam . . . one of the first State Attorneys General fired in the scandal that eventually brought down Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. She was amassing evidence against the other names in list above before she was dismissed. Every Republican who sat on that Defense Appropriations Committee is suspect. But since Lam was let go, only Cunningham was prosecuted.
I encourage everyone to go to the Lam Wiki page and read the "Key event timeline of the firing scandal." You'll see some CIA names she was going after as well (as if that is any surprise).