Occupy Wall Street

[Jamie_B]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgopuzlBvJY

[Jamie_B]

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[size=4][url="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-study-that-shows-why-occupy-wall-street-struck-a-nerve/2011/10/27/gIQA3bsMNM_story.html?wprss=rss_opinions"]http://www.washingto...ss=rss_opinions[/url][/size]

[size=4][quote][/left][/size]
[size=4][b] The study that shows why Occupy Wall Street struck a nerve[/b][/size]

[left][size=4]The hard-right conservatives who dominate the Republican Party claim to despise the redistribution of wealth, but secretly they love it — as long as the process involves depriving the poor and middle class to benefit the rich, not the other way around.[/size]
[size=4][/left][/size][/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=Georgia, serif]That is precisely what has been happening, as a jaw-dropping new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office demonstrates. Three decades of trickle-down economic theory, see-no-evil deregulation and tax-cutting fervor have led to massive redistribution. Another word for what’s been happening might be theft.[/font][/color][/size]



[size=4][/left][/size][/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=Georgia, serif]The gist of the CBO study, titled “[url="http://cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12485"]Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007[/url],” is that while we’ve become wealthier overall, these new riches have largely bypassed many Americans and instead flowed mostly to the affluent. Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I don’t remember voting to turn the United States into a nation starkly divided between haves and have-nots. Yet that’s where we’ve been led.[/font][/color][/size]
[size=4][/left][/size][/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=Georgia, serif]Overall, in inflation-adjusted dollars, average after-tax household income grew by 62 percent during the period under study, according to the CBO. This sounds great — but only until you look a little closer.[/font][/color][/size]
[size=4][/left][/size][/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=Georgia, serif]For those at the bottom — the one-fifth of households with the lowest incomes — the increase was just 18 percent. For the middle three-fifths, the average increase was 40 percent. Spread over nearly 30 years, these gains are modest, not meteoric.[/font][/color][/size]
[size=4][/left][/size][/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=Georgia, serif]By contrast, look at the top 1 percent of earners. Their after-tax household income increased by an astonishing 275 percent. For those keeping track, this means it nearly quadrupled. Nice work, if you can get it.[/font][/color][/size]
[size=4][/left][/size][/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=Georgia, serif]This is not what Republicans want you to think of when you hear the word redistribution. You’re supposed to imagine the evil masterminds as Bolsheviks, not bankers. You’re supposed to envision the lazy free-riders who benefit from redistribution as the “poor,” and the industrious job-creators who get robbed as the “wealthy” — not the other way around.[/font][/color][/size]
[size=4][/left][/size][/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=Georgia, serif]If Americans were to realize they’ve been the victims of Republican-style redistribution — stealing from the poor to give to the rich — the whole political atmosphere might change. I believe that’s one reason why the Occupy Wall Street protests have struck such a nerve. The far-right and its media mouthpieces have worked themselves into a frenzy trying to disregard, dismiss or discredit the demonstrations. Thus far, fortunately, all this effort has been to no avail.[/font][/color][/size]
[size=4][/left][/size][/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=Georgia, serif]The right maintains that inequality is the wrong measure. To argue about how the income pie should be sliced is “[url="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/2chambers/post/boehner-on-obama-debt-plan-i-dont-think-i-would-describe-class-warfare-as-leadership/2011/09/19/gIQAzQpkfK_blog.html"]class warfare[/url],” and what we should do instead is give the private sector the right incentives to make the pie bigger. This way, according to conservative doctrine, everyone’s slice gets bigger — even if some slices grow faster than others.[/font][/color][/size]
[size=4][/left][/size][/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=Georgia, serif]Indeed, the CBO report says that even the poorest households saw at least a little income growth. Why is it any of their business that the high-earners in the top 1 percent saw astronomical income growth? Isn’t this just sour grapes?[/font][/color][/size]
[size=4][/left][/size][/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=Georgia, serif]No, for two reasons. First, the system is rigged. Wealthy individuals and corporations have disproportionate influence over public policy because of the often decisive role that money plays in elections. If the rich and powerful act in their self-interest, as conservative ideologues believe we all should do, then the rich and powerful’s share of income will continue to soar.[/font][/color][/size]
[size=4][/left][/size][/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=Georgia, serif]Second, and more broadly, the real issue is what kind of nation we want to be. Thomas Jefferson’s “All men are created equal” is properly understood as calling for equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes. But the more we become a nation of rich and poor, the less we can pretend to be offering the same opportunities to every American. As polarization increases, mobility declines. The whole point of the American Dream is that it is available to everyone, not just those who awaken from their slumbers on down-filled pillows and 800-thread-count sheets.[/font][/color][/size]
[size=4][/left][/size][/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=Georgia, serif]So it does matter that as the pie grows, the various slices do not grow in proportion. We’re not characters in one of those lumbering, interminable, nonsensical Ayn Rand novels. We believe in individual initiative and the free market, but we also believe that nationhood necessarily involves a commitment to our fellow citizens, an acknowledgment that we’re engaged in a common enterprise. We believe that opportunity should be more than just an empty word.[/font][/color][/size]
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[size=4][/left][/size][/left]

[Jamie_B]

[url="http://sfbayview.com/2011/notes-from-occupy-oakland/"]http://sfbayview.com/2011/notes-from-occupy-oakland/[/url]

[img]http://sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Occupy-Oakland-General-Strike-shutting-down-Port-110211.jpg[/img]

[size=7]In the headline event of the General Strike, some 40,000 shut down the Port of Oakland for at least five hours.[/size]

[BengalRep85-9]

This is great. The revolution just keeps growing

[sois]

[quote name='Jamie_B' timestamp='1320153626' post='1054585']
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgopuzlBvJY[/media]
[/quote]

Yet somehow S&P is still a respected company, smh

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='sois' timestamp='1320363660' post='1055627']

Yet somehow S&P is still a respected company, smh

[/quote]


No kidding.

[Homer_Rice]

[url="http://teamcoco.com/video/triumph-occupy-wall-st"]http://teamcoco.com/...-occupy-wall-st[/url]

[Jamie_B]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dANFfwcSGc

[BengalBacker]

[quote name='Homer_Rice' timestamp='1320512948' post='1056231']
[url="http://teamcoco.com/video/triumph-occupy-wall-st"]http://teamcoco.com/...-occupy-wall-st[/url]
[/quote]
Love Triumph.

[Jamie_B]

Danny Glover nails it.

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE42dp6DoF4#!"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE42dp6DoF4#![/url]

BTW I hate that any time there is a ! point at the end of a youtube it wont embed.

[Jim Finklestein]

[quote]
[b] OAKLAND: Another Iraq War veteran injured, hospitalized after police injured him during arrest[/b]

[/quote]

[url="http://www.ktvu.com/videos/news/oakland-another-iraq-war-veteran-injured/vD5pb/"]http://www.ktvu.com/videos/news/oakland-another-iraq-war-veteran-injured/vD5pb/[/url]

Fuck this pisses me off. Dude is an ex Army Ranger.
Here is more of the story.

[quote]By [url="http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=noel.randewich&"]Noel Randewich[/url][color=#000000][font=arial, helvetica, sans][size=1]
[color=#666666][size=2]
[b]SAN FRANCISCO[/b] | Fri Nov 4, 2011 7:43pm EDT[/size][/color]
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[color=#000000][font=arial, helvetica, sans][size=1](Reuters) - A former U.S. Army Ranger and Occupy Oakland protester was in intensive care on Friday after a veterans group said he was beaten by police during clashes with demonstrators this week.[/size][/font][/color][/size]
[color=#000000][font=arial, helvetica, sans][size=4]
The veteran, identified as Kayvan Sabeghi, was the second former American serviceman during the past two weeks to be badly hurt in confrontations between anti-Wall Street protesters and police in Oakland.[/size][/font][/color]
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The group Iraq Veterans Against the War said Sabeghi was detained during disturbances that erupted late on Wednesday in downtown Oakland and was charged with resisting arrest and remaining present at the place of a riot.[/size][/font][/color]
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Highland General Hospital confirmed that Sabeghi was a patient in the intensive care unit there.[/size][/font][/color]
[color=#000000][font=arial, helvetica, sans][size=4]
Brian Kelly, who co-owns a brew pub with Sabeghi, said his business partner served as an Army Ranger in Iraq and [url="http://www.reuters.com/places/afghanistan"]Afghanistan[/url]. He said Sabeghi told him he was arrested and beaten by a group of policemen as he was leaving the protest to go home.[/size][/font][/color]
[color=#000000][font=arial, helvetica, sans][size=4]
"He told me he was in the hospital with a lacerated spleen and that the cops had jumped him," Kelly said. "They put him in jail, and he told them he was injured, and they denied him medical treatment for about 18 hours."[/size][/font][/color]
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The Oakland Police Department did not immediately return calls seeking comment. Sabeghi's name was listed by the Alameda County Sheriff's Office as one of more than 100 people arrested that night.[/size][/font][/color]
[color=#000000][font=arial, helvetica, sans][size=4]
The veterans group said in a statement that police struck Sabeghi with nightsticks on his hands, shoulders, ribs and back, and that in addition to a lacerated spleen he suffered from internal bleeding.[/size][/font][/color]
[color=#000000][font=arial, helvetica, sans][size=4]
Clashes between police and demonstrators broke out in the early morning hours of Thursday in downtown Oakland following a day of mostly peaceful rallies and marches citywide against economic inequality and police brutality.[/size][/font][/color]
[color=#000000][font=arial, helvetica, sans][size=4]
The Port of Oakland was forced to shut down during those demonstrations, sparked in part by the severe injury of another former serviceman, ex-Marine Scott Olsen, during a confrontation with police last week.[/size][/font][/color]
[color=#000000][font=arial, helvetica, sans][size=4]
Olsen's injury became a rallying cry for the anti-Wall Street protest movement nationwide.
(Reporting by Noel Randewich; Editing by [url="http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=steve.gorman&"]Steve Gorman[/url] and Cynthia Johnston)[/quote]

[url="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/04/us-protests-oakland-veteran-idUSTRE7A37A820111104"]http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/04/us-protests-oakland-veteran-idUSTRE7A37A820111104[/url]

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[Jamie_B]

[Jim Finklestein]

[quote]
[left]


[b] Why Mitt Romney's Entitlement-Privatization Plan Is Crazy[/b]

[/left][left][color=#000000][font=georgia][size=3]POSTED: November 8, 10:09 AM ET[/size][/font][/color]

[/left][left]
[url="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog"][img]http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/blog/70x608/3637acd81588ec9aafbcd714821f89d3e740b408.png[/img][/url]
[/left][center]



[b] Why Mitt Romney's Entitlement-Privatization Plan Is Crazy[/b]



[size=4]David Brooks, the [gratuitous insult deleted], wrote this this morning entitled [url="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/opinion/brooks-mitt-romney-the-serious-one.html?ref=opinion"]"Mitt Romney, the Serious One."[/url] In it, he explained how Romney’s recent decision to unveil a plan for reforming the entitlement system "demonstrates his awareness of the issues that need to define the 2012 presidential election."[/size]


Romney grasped the toughest issue – how to reform entitlements to avoid a fiscal catastrophe – and he sketched out a sophisticated way to address it.[/center][left]So we had a giant financial crash in 2008 that necessitated a bailout costing a minimum of [url="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Total_Wall_Street_Bailout_Cost"]nearly $5 trillion and perhaps ultimately costing $10 trillion[/url] more, we have foreclosure crisis with [url="http://www.fdic.gov/about/comein/files/foreclosure_statistics.pdf"]more than million people a year losing their homes[/url], and we have a burgeoning European debt disaster that threatens to devastate the global financial system – and the chief issue facing the country, according to Brooks and the [i]Times[/i], is reforming the entitlement system?
[/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=georgia]The column goes on to throw bouquets on Romney’s plan to semi-privatize Medicare and Social Security. Romney’s ideas are not as draconian as Paul Ryan's, but they do pave the way for Wall Street’s ultimate goal – full privatization of Social Security and Medicare.[/font][/color][/size]
[/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=georgia]Think about what such reforms might mean. Your typical Medicare/Social Security recipient might already have been ripped off three different ways in this era.[/font][/color][/size]
[/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=georgia]He might have been sold a crappy mortgage or a refi by a Countrywide-type firm (which often targeted the elderly). He might then also have unwittingly become an investor in such mortgages and seen the value of his retirement holdings devastated (many of the banks sold their crappy mortgage-backed securities to state pension funds).[/font][/color][/size]
[/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=georgia]Lastly, if he paid taxes, he saw part of his tax money go to pay off the bets the banks made against these same mortgages.[/font][/color][/size]
[/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=georgia]So now that Wall Street has ripped off this segment of society three times, it makes all the sense in the world that Mitt Romney – a former Wall Street superstar who was a [url="http://nymag.com/news/politics/mitt-romney-2011-10/"]chief architect of the modern executive-compensation-driven corporation[/url] – is coming back and telling us that we need to cut their Medicare and Social Security benefits in order to defray the cost of the previous three scams.[/font][/color][/size]
[/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=georgia](Actually, it makes sense. If we don’t cut health care and retirement benefits for old people, how can we pay for the carried-interest tax break that allows private equity guys like, well, Mitt Romney to keep paying 15 percent tax rates?).[/font][/color][/size]
[/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=georgia]There’s another aspect to all of this that boggles the mind.[/font][/color][/size]
[/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=georgia]We’ve just witnessed an episode of industry-wide financial mismanagement that surely has no parallel in history. From Lehman Brothers to AIG to Goldman and Morgan Stanley (which in 2008 needed the [url="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/goldman-morgan-to-become-bank-holding-companies/"]unprecedented emergency granting of a commercial bank charter to avoid bankruptcy[/url]) to Citigroup (which needed a [url="http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/was_the_citi_bailout_really_a.php"]$25 billion bailout and $300 billion in federal guarantees[/url] to survive) to Bear Stearns (dead) and Merrill Lynch (dead) and so on, virtually every single one of America’s leading financial institutions from the last decade is either already out of business or functionally insolvent and living off government life support and cheap cash from the Fed.[/font][/color][/size]
[/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=georgia]Even leaving aside the fact that most of them are facing mass litigation for fraud, dishonest accounting, and/or systematic perjury (for robosigning financial documentation), they’ve all proven their complete and utter incompetence to do their ostensible jobs, i.e. the care and stewardship of money.[/font][/color][/size]
[/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=georgia]For instance, the top five investment banks in the [url="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/secs-2004-rule-let-banks-pile-up-new-risk/"]country sought to remove capital requirements in the middle of the last decade, and all of them instantly jacked their debt-to-equity ratios above 20-1[/url], some of them going as high as 33-1 or 35-1. Of those five investment banks, three (Bear, Lehman, and Merrill) went out of business during the crash, and the other two (Goldman and Morgan Stanley) required massive government aid to survive.[/font][/color][/size]
[/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=georgia]The commercial banks have not been much better, with two of the biggest (Wachovia and Washington Mutual) imploding thanks to bad investment decisions and three of the biggest survivors (Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup) recently[url="http://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-downgrades-Bank-of-America-Corp-to-Baa1P-2-Bank--PR_226511"] facing downgrades[/url].[/font][/color][/size]

[size=4]The recent downgrades, incidentally, were widely seen as Wall Street’s way of making two interlocking judgments about these big banks. One is that their accounting is so fucked up and dishonest that it simply cannot be believed, leading to widespread expectation that one or more of them will ultimately collapse. The other is that when they collapse, the[url="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/21/us-bankofamerica-downgrade-idUSTRE78K4P020110921"] government may no longer be able or willing to completely bail these companies out[/url]. The downgrades were spurred by vague fears that implementation of new reforms via Dodd-Frank will make it harder to get bailouts.[/size]
[/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=georgia]So the mere [i]hint[/i] that these banks might be denied future bailouts caused a company as massive as Bank of America to be downgraded to just above junk status. That means, in other words, that without the implicit promise of government aid, Wall Street considers these banks to be junk or below-junk businesses. Evaluated purely on their own merits, without the implicit attachment to the taxpayer, these companies actually have negativetrustworthiness.[/font][/color][/size]
[/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=georgia]And these are the people we want managing the nation’s Social Security accounts?[/font][/color][/size]
[/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=georgia]If there wasn’t such a very real chance that this could happen, it would be worth laughing about, but unfortunately it’s no joke. It’s a testament to the tenacious idiocy of our national media that an idea like Social Security privatization could continue to be publicly contemplated, in the wake of a disaster on the scale we’ve just gone through.[/font][/color][/size]
[/left][left][size=4][color=#000000][font=georgia]Advocating the turning over of Social Security management to Wall Street after the 2008 crash is a little like asking Paris Hilton to pilot Air Force One, or tabbing Charlie Sheen to manage the inventory of a hospital pharmacy – completely nuts, but to David Brooks, that makes Mitt Romney the “serious” candidate.[/font][/color][/size]



Read more: [url="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/why-mitt-romneys-entitlement-privatization-plan-is-crazy-20111108#ixzz1d9723stL"]http://www.rollingst...8#ixzz1d9723stL[/url][/quote][/left]

[Jim Finklestein]

[img]http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r159/RiverCityDude/OctopiWallStreet.jpg[/img]

[Jamie_B]

Elfocko showed me this, funny.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M8fOwHnwg0

[Jamie_B]

It's no chocolate rain but...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37eqoYbj1QM

[CTBengalsFan]

lol wow not expecting that from Tay Zonday

[Jamie_B]

Police did a midnight raid and have cleared out the park.

[url="http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/nov/15/occupy-wall-street-police-action-live?fb=native"]http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/nov/15/occupy-wall-street-police-action-live?fb=native[/url]


If they have leart nothing about the other protest sights, I expect this to bring in more numbers.

[Jamie_B]

A judge said they can come back and bring their tents, looks like their is another hearing expected at 11:30 about it.

[url="http://www.businessinsider.com/occupy-protesters-can-come-back-with-tents-2011-11"]http://www.businessinsider.com/occupy-protesters-can-come-back-with-tents-2011-11[/url]

[Jim Finklestein]

It's no coincidence that many of the cities are cracking down on the movement.

[url="http://my.firedoglake.com/gregglevine/2011/11/15/oakland-mayor-jean-quan-admits-cities-coordinated-crackdown-on-occupy-movement/"]http://my.firedoglake.com/gregglevine/2011/11/15/oakland-mayor-jean-quan-admits-cities-coordinated-crackdown-on-occupy-movement/[/url]

Shit could get real ugly real fast...

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='Jim Finklestein' timestamp='1321385832' post='1062750']
It's no coincidence that many of the cities are cracking down on the movement.

[url="http://my.firedoglake.com/gregglevine/2011/11/15/oakland-mayor-jean-quan-admits-cities-coordinated-crackdown-on-occupy-movement/"]http://my.firedoglak...ccupy-movement/[/url]

Shit could get real ugly real fast...
[/quote]

Sadly I'm not surprised by this.

[Jamie_B]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydOggvlbfwM

[Jamie_B]

SUCK IT Bloomberg!!!

[url="http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/15/us/new-york-occupy-eviction/index.html?hpt=hp_t2"]http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/15/us/new-york-occupy-eviction/index.html?hpt=hp_t2[/url]

[Passepartout]

Despite the violence and arrests from police, protesters say that they are undaunted. And will continue to protest.

[Jim Finklestein]

[quote]

[b]Audit of the Federal Reserve Reveals $16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts[/b][center][font="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"][size="3"][color=#000000][font=Ariel, Hellvetica, sans-serif][size=1][url="http://www.unelected.org/"][b]unelected.org[/b][/url][/size][/font][/color][/size][/font][/center] [font="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"][size="3"][img]http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/10.11/images/ben-bernanke.jpg[/img][/size][/font] [color=#000000][font=Ariel, Hellvetica, sans-serif][size=1]
[font="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"][size="3"]The first ever GAO(Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out. Ben Bernanke(pictured to the right), Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100 year history were posted on[url="http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3"]Senator Sander’s webpage[/url] earlier this morning.[/size][/font][/size][/font][/color]
[color=#000000][font=Ariel, Hellvetica, sans-serif][size=1]
[font="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"][size="3"][color="#006699"][b]What was revealed in the audit was startling:[/b][/color][/size][/font][/size][/font][/color]
[color=#000000][font=Ariel, Hellvetica, sans-serif][size=1]
[font="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"][size="3"]$16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious - the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs.[/size][/font][/size][/font][/color]
[color=#000000][font=Ariel, Hellvetica, sans-serif][size=1]
[font="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"][size="3"]To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is "only" $14.5 trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is "only" $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.[/size][/font][/size][/font][/color]
[color=#000000][font=Ariel, Hellvetica, sans-serif][size=1]
[font="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"][size="3"]In late 2008, the TARP Bailout bill was passed and loans of $800 billion were given to failing banks and companies. That was a blatant lie considering the fact that Goldman Sachs alone received 814 billion dollars. As is turns out, the Federal Reserve donated $2.5 trillion to Citigroup, while Morgan Stanley received $2.04 trillion. The Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank, a German bank, split about a trillion and numerous other banks received hefty chunks of the $16 trillion.[/size][/font][/size][/font][/color]
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[font="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"][size="3"][i][color="#990000"]"This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else." [/color][/i]- Bernie Sanders (I-VT)[/size][/font][/indent][color=#000000][font=Ariel, Hellvetica, sans-serif][size=1]
[font="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"][size="3"]When you have conservative Republican stalwarts like Jim DeMint(R-SC) and Ron Paul(R-TX) as well as self identified Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders all fighting against the Federal Reserve, you know that it is no longer an issue of Right versus Left. When you have every single member of the Republican Party in Congress and progressive Congressmen like Dennis Kucinich sponsoring a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, you realize that the Federal Reserve is an entity onto itself, which has no oversight and no accountability.[/size][/font][/size][/font][/color]
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[font="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"][size="3"]Americans should be swelled with anger and outrage at the abysmal state of affairs when an unelected group of bankers can create money out of thin air and give it out to megabanks and supercorporations like Halloween candy. If the Federal Reserve and the bankers who control it believe that they can continue to devalue the savings of Americans and continue to destroy the US economy, they will have to face the realization that their trillion dollar printing presses will eventually plunder the world economy.[/size][/font][/size][/font][/color]
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[font="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"][size="3"]The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve [url="http://www.scribd.com/doc/60553686/GAO-Fed-Investigation#outer_page_144"]can be found on page 131[/url] of the GAO Audit and are as follows..[/size][/font][/size][/font][/color]
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[font="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"][size="3"][color="#000099"]Citigroup: [b]$2.5 trillion[/b] ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: [b]$2.04 trillion[/b] ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: [b]$1.949 trillion[/b] ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: [b]$1.344 trillion[/b] ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): [b]$868 billion[/b] ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: [b]$853 billion[/b] ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs:[b] $814 billion[/b] ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK):[b] $541 billion[/b] ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: [b]$391 billion[/b] ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): [b]$354 billion[/b] ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): [b]$287 billion[/b] ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): [b]$262 billion[/b] ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: [b]$183 billion[/b] ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom):[b] $181 billion[/b] ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): [b]$175 billion[/b] ($175,000,000,000)
and [url="http://www.scribd.com/doc/60553686/GAO-Fed-Investigation#outer_page_144"]many many more including banks in Belgium of all places[/url][/color][/size][/font][/indent][color=#000000][font=Ariel, Hellvetica, sans-serif][size=1]
[font="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"][size="3"]View the 266-page GAO audit of the Federal Reserve(July 21st, 2011): [url="http://www.scribd.com/doc/60553686/GAO-Fed-Investigation"]http://www.scribd.com/doc/60553686/GAO-Fed-Investigation[/url][/size][/font][/size][/font][/color]
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[font="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"][size="3"]Source: [url="http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-696"]http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-696[/url]
FULL PDF on GAO server: [url="http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf"]http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf[/url]
Senator Sander’s Article: [url="http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3"]http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3[/url][/size][/font]
[url="http://www.unelected.org/"]www.unelected.org[/url]

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