By Eliot Spitzer
Slate Magazine
Tuesday, March 17, 2009, at 10:41 AM ET
It’s not the bonuses. It’s that AIG’s counterparties are getting paid back in full.
Everybody is rushing to condemn AIG’s bonuses, but this simple scandal is obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant: Why are AIG’s counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?
by Josh Sidman
Dandelion Salad
Featured Writer
Josh’s Blog Post
March 22, 2009
There’s a lot that doesn’t make sense about the economy these days. The situation is so mind-numbing that an increasing number of Americans seem to be opting to simply ignore it all in the hopes that it just goes away. Most people I know have stopped looking at their account statements, and “bailout fatigue” is nearly universal.
Part of the reason for our collective denial is that we don’t want to come to terms with our diminished circumstances. When the average American’s life-savings has been cut in half, its understandable that people would be reluctant to face the new realities. However, I would argue that there’s something deeper going on. Not only does a clear-eyed appraisal of the situation require people to come to terms with painful facts, but it is also threatening to their basic sanity. How are we to make sense of the idea that the way to solve a crisis caused by excessive debt is by taking on even more debt? Faced with such counterintuitive notions, the rational mind simply turns away.
The latest insanity announced by the government is a plan whereby the Fed will buy over $1 trillion of government bonds and mortgage backed securities. In other words, the government is going to print money and then loan it to itself.
by Rosemary and Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
March 22, 2009
There have now been more than 4,000 deaths and 30,000 casualties of American military in the war in Iraq. More than 100,000 Iraqis and others, most of them civilian, have also been killed in what is now known to be an unnecessary war. But, we as a nation are not outraged.
We have recently learned that former President Bush and former Vice-President Cheney had authorized the use of torture. But, we as a nation are not outraged.
The Supreme Court has ruled there have been significant and substantial constitutional violations during the Bush-Cheney era. But, we as a nation are not outraged.
More than 46 million Americans don’t have health insurance. Millions don’t get the health care they need or are turned away because they can’t pay. But, we as a nation are not outraged.
by Catherine Austin Fitts
http://solari.com
Global Research, March 22, 2009
This text by Catherine Austin Fitts is a response to an article entitled “The Fed Didn’t Cause the Housing Bubble” by Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, published in the Wall Street Journal
In his article on your opinion page, “The Fed Didn’t Cause the Housing Bubble,” Alan Greenspan attributes the housing bubble to lower interest rates between 2002 and 2005. That’s amazing to me.
My company served as lead financial advisor to the Federal Housing Administration between 1994 and 1997. I watched both the Administration and the Federal Reserve aggressively implement the policies that engineered the housing bubble. These are described at my website and in my on-line book, Dillon Read & the Aristocracy of Stock Profits (http://www.dunwalke.com).
One story, for example, is the following: Continue reading
Updated: added parts 2 and 3
Eugene Jarecki is an award-winning dramatic and documentary filmmaker whose previous film WHY WE FIGHT won the 2005 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER, won the 2002 Amnesty International Award. In addition to his work in film, Jarecki is also the Founder and Executive Director of The Eisenhower Project, an academic public policy group, dedicated in the spirit of Dwight D. Eisenhower, to studying the forces that shape American foreign policy.
By George Galloway
ICH
March 21, 2009 “The Guardian”
setfree68
3.20.09
The decision to ban George Galloway from Canada seems odd, but now it emerges that the Jewish Defence League (JDL) pressured the Canadian Government to so the action takes on sinister connotations for Canada, why? Because the Jewish Defence League are according to the FBI a Terrorist Group. In its report, Terrorism 2000/2001, the FBI referred to the JDL as a “violent extremist Jewish organization”. This “violent extremist Jewish organization” now it seems has power and influence over the Canadian Government.
by Dr. Ellen Hodgson Brown
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
webofdebt.com
Mar. 22, 2009
Originally published 2007
Introduction
President Andrew Jackson called the banking cartel a “hydra-headed monster eating the flesh of the common man.” New York Mayor John Hylan, writing in the 1920s, called it a “giant octopus” that “seizes in its long and powerful tentacles our executive officers, our legislative bodies, our schools, our courts, our newspapers, and every agency created for the public protection.” The debt spider has devoured farms, homes and whole countries that have become trapped in its web. In a February 2005 article called “The Death of Banking,” financial commentator Hans Schicht wrote:
The fact that the Banker is allowed to extend credit several times his own capital base and that the Banking Cartels, the Central Banks, are licensed to issue fresh paper money in exchange for treasury paper, [has] provided them with free lunch for eternity. . . . Through a network of anonymous financial spider webbing only a handful of global King Bankers own and control it all. . . . Everybody, people, enterprise, State and foreign countries, all have become slaves chained to the Banker’s credit ropes.1
Schicht writes that he had an opportunity in his career to observe the wizards of finance as an insider at close range. The game has gotten so centralized and concentrated, he says, that the greater part of U.S. banking and enterprise is now under the control of a small inner circle of men. He calls the game “spider webbing.” Its rules include: Continue reading
Hundreds of anti-war protesters from across the United States are rallying in Washington to mark the sixth anniversary of the war in Iraq.
by Cindy Sheehan
Dandelion Salad
Featured Writer
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Blog
Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox
March 22, 2009
Introduction
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Billionaire Robber, Warren Buffet.“I call you my base: the Haves and the Have Mores.”
George W. Bush
Since this country was founded, it has been governed, or controlled by the Robber Class. Some people call our “Lords,” the Ruling Class, the Oligarchy, the Kleptocracy, or Plutocracy. Some call our system Cronyism, a Democratic Tyranny, Soft-core Fascist State, or if you are a member of the Robber Class or Blinded Robbed Class, you call it a Democracy, or Republic.
Let me define the terms Robber Class and Robbed Class for the purposes of this Internet Booklet: The Robber Class consists of The Wealthy Ones (not all wealthy people are robbers!) of our society who have earned this wealth off the hard labor of others: not by doing an honest days work or being fair and just with their talents or employees, but by stealing the fruits of our labor through outright theft or economic or violent exploitation.
By Timothy V. Gatto
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
liberalpro.blogspot.com
March 22, 2009
The country is coming to conclusions that a year ago would be unthinkable. The current turmoil on Wall Street has convinced many Americans of something that has been said for years, but nobody really believed…entirely. That something was that lawyers and bankers cannot be trusted. The American people know by now that the advice is largely true, they can’t be trusted. Neither can politicians, stockbrokers and financial advisors. In fact, people are starting to realize the entire concept of capitalism can’t be trusted, not just for the average Joe, but for the entire country. Capitalism is not your friend; it never has been and will not be in the future. It will continue to feed the rich, in fact, more than just feed them, but it won’t help the average wage earner realize the American dream. That’s never what it was designed to do. It was put in place to insure that the rich got richer and that the not so rich would stay where they were and to be grateful they could feed their families.
This isn’t the first time that capitalism has failed. Every time it fails we use a form of temporary socialism to shore up the economy. When things start to return to normal, we give everything back to the capitalists. Why is that? Could it be that we have no choice?
Dandelion Salad 