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2012 Election: A Constitutional republic run by the people we elect to run it, or we'll continue to be subjected to the whims of an international cartel which privatizes profits and socialize losses

Can We Keep Our Republic?



Americans, whether they know or not, are in for the fight of their lives. It's been one week since the biggest story of the last three years was published by Bloomberg News, and maybe the only thing more fascinating than the story itself is the level of indifference it's gotten from our so-called mainstream media. Remember the $700 billion in TARP funds used to bail out the banks? Chump change. Or more to the point, collateral for the $7.77 trillion made available by the Federal Reserve to bail out financial institutions all over the world.
That's right, all over the world. Back in August, the facade was partially pierced when the number on the bailout went from $700 billion up to $1.2 trillion. That's when it was revealed that almost half of the Fed's top 30 borrowers were European firms, including Royal Bank of Scotland, Zurich-based UBS, Belgium-based Dexia SA and France's Societe Generale SA. Now we discover that even the $1.2 trillion was a crock. Or rather Bloomberg News discovered it, after filing a Freedom of Information Act petition that took more than two years to wend its way through the courts. Bloomberg got the information after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal last March by the Clearing House Association LLC, a group comprised of the nation's largest commercial banks. They, along with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, tried to prevent the details from becoming public. If it were up to them, Americans still wouldn't know a thing. Its a scheme in which the Feds made available an amount of money equal to half of America's Gross National Product for an entire year. Furthermore, on a single day, December 5, 2008, the banks were in such dire straits they needed a combined $1.2 trillion to remain solvent. How duplicitous were the bankers themselves? A little more than a week before this level of borrowing occurred, former Bank of America CEO Kenneth D. Lewis, informed shareholders that B of A was "one of the strongest and most stable major banks in the world," despite owing the Federal Reserve $86 billion at the time. In a March 26 letter to shareholders, JP Morgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon claimed his firm used the Fed's Term Auction Facility (TAF) "at the request of the Federal Reserve to help motivate others to use the system"-- even though his bank's total borrowings were nearly twice its cash holdings.

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Now, one might think that people besides the bankers and their enablers knew all of this was going on. One would be wrong. Bush administration officials managing the TARP program didn't know. Top aides to then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson were out of the loop. Even Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, said he "wasn't aware of the magnitude" of Federal Reserve lending taking place. Congress was also kept in the dark--with a couple of possible exceptions. One was Judd Gregg, former New Hampshire senator who was a lead Republican negotiator on TARP. No doubt it's sheer coincidence that Gregg now works for...Goldman Sachs. The second possible exception? Democrat Congressman Barney Frank, who chaired the House Financial Services Committee. Much like the MSM's failure to mention Frank's singular efforts to protect Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, resulting in the worst housing crisis in the history of the nation, this little tidbit of info also failed to make the cut in the kvelling surrounding his retirement announcement last week. Thus, another arrogant hack who destroyed the lives of countless Americans slithers off into the sunset--complete with his Cadillac pension and health benefits intact. Both men, in typical Washington, D.C. double-speak, admitted they knew something was going on, but that they were unaware of the "magnitude" of it. I'll bet. And lest you think anyone's contrite, Big Ben defended the secrecy, saying borrowers would have been "stigmatized" if the extent of their loans were revealed. Stigmatized? Ordinary Americans would likely have demanded that these Masters of the Universe be drawn and quartered. At the very least, they would have demanded some well-merited resignations for their $700 billion, "got have it now or else" TARP contribution. They might have also demanded that Congress pass the Safe Banking Act of 2010, placing hard caps on the leveraging abilities and size of financial institutions. Our inimitable Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, helped kill that bill when he told one of its sponsors, former Senator Ted Kaufman (D-DE), that banking issues were "too complex for Congress and that people who know the markets should handle these decisions." In other words, the very same people who brought the world economy to its knees--none of whom have been held responsible for their gross fiscal negligence. And lest anyone think they've stopped the madness, think again. Last week it was also announced that several central banks are making "cheaper" dollars available to bailout the socialist basket cases in the EU. Cheap money for Europe means higher prices for Americans, as once again Bernanke and Company are debasing the currency and holding Americans hostage to the ransom demands of bankers, who once again are telling us systemic failure awaits if we refuse to kowtow to their demands. So let me tell you what's at stake here. It's something that transcends Democrat and Republican, left and right, conservative and liberal. The real dividing line is between those who still believe in a quaint, but rapidly unraveling concept known as national sovereignty, and the New World Order supra-nationalists, for whom countries are little more than an annoying impediment getting in the way of their one world government schemes. Even now Europeans are being told that the only way out from under the current crisis is to grant the European Commission the power to approve national budgets--before each country's parliament gets to vote on them. If that sounds like the "making you an offer you can't refuse" schtick from the Godfather, that's because it is. No more Greeks or Italians deciding what's best for Greece or Italy, flawed as those decisions might be. It's take it or leave it from thug bureaucrats in Brussels. The same thugs whose unbridled arrogance gave the world an EU that was doomed to failure from the start. And they're far from alone. For the last three years, the Obama administration, the Feds, and a host of the usual suspects in Congress have told Americans that what is now known to be a $7.7 trillion bank bailout program "saved" the world's financial institutions from "systemic failure." Really? Then why are we right back in the same soup-or worse? And where is Congress, who ought to be making it crystal clear that the United States Federal Reserve has no business bailing out an EU that steadfastly refuses to put its own house in order? You won't see too much about any of this in the news. But you can bet your life this is the essence of what the 2012 election is all about. Either we're going to have a Constitutional republic run by the people we elect to run it, or we'll continue to be subjected to the whims of an international cartel which privatizes profits and socialize losses, even as they threaten the autonomy of every democracy in the world in the process. Those are the stakes. And it behooves Americans to demand that every candidate for president, including the current One Worlder occupying the White House, to say where they stand on the issue.


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Arnold Ahlert -- Bio and Archives

Arnold Ahlert was an op-ed columist with the NY Post for eight years.


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