Friday, February 12, 2016

The Prophecy: Senator Bernie Sanders and Unleashing the Creature from Jekyll Island



The United States has been destroyed by the “elected” representatives in our government who are funded by and serve the interests of the Creature from Jekyll Island, the Federal Reserve Bank.  The people of the world are dying in masses because the American people failed to heed the prophecy of Thomas Jefferson.


“The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered. ”


― Thomas Jefferson


For over 200 years the American people were repeatedly warned what would happen if the Central Banks were unleashed on the people of the world.  But like cockroaches in the night the United States Senate passed Commodity Futures Modernization Act on December 15, 2000, just three days after the United States Supreme Court ordered an end to the recount of the votes in Florida and declared George W. Bush the winner.


The 1999 repeal of the Glass Steagall Act or Gramm-Leach-Bliley which passed the United States Senate with only 8 Senators voting against making it veto proof, was not the sole cause of the global banking meltdown of 2008.  The direct cause of the massive industrial scale fraud perpetrated by Wall Street banks and the Federal Reserve Bank was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. 


During this Presidential election year many of the accusations hurled at the Clinton’s are factually incorrect and grossly exaggerated.  Senator Bernie Sanders likes to blame President Clinton for signing GLBA into law in 1999 and cites his no vote as a demonstration of his superior judgement.  However, being one of only 8 Senators to vote against GLBA doesn’t take much courage as he knew it will pass anyway.



The real example of the lack of judgement on Senator Sanders’ part was his vote to deregulate derivatives trading where his vote was crucial to the Senate getting Commodities Futures Modernization passed.  Without his vote the bill would never have reached President Clinton’s desk to be signed into law. From Huffington Post:


 Excerpt:



How Congress Rushed a Bill that Helped Bring the Economy to Its Knees


In the waning days of the 106th Congress and the Clinton administration, Congress met in a lame-duck session to complete work on a variety of appropriations bills that were not passed prior to the 2000 election….


The saga of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act begins in 1998. At the time, the economy was booming, stocks soared, and new instruments of trading were found to make more money while evading the oversight of regulatory bodies. Two of those growing instruments were financial derivatives and credit-default swaps


The chairman of the Commodity Futures Trade Commission (CFTC) Brooksley Born issued a first call for her regulatory commission to have power to oversee financial derivatives. While previous legislative attempts had been made earlier, Born's efforts were the most direct and threatening to the financial industry…


In the midst of this debate Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), a major hedge fund employing some of the top economists, collapsed. LTCM was highly over-leveraged and held a big portfolio of swaps. In the end, during the government organized bailout of the company, LTCM recorded a loss of $1.6 billion on swaps alone.


Born felt that an unregulated derivatives market that spawned the LTCM bailout could "pose grave dangers to our economy." In the end, Born lost her battle and, in May 1999, asked to be replaced as CFTC chairman…


Meanwhile in Congress, lawmakers were still up-in-arms over Born's attempts to regulate the financial derivatives market and began working to pass their own set of deregulatory language…


Little attention followed Congress as the contentious 2000 presidential election was stuck in a stalemate as lawyers and khaki-clad protesters fought over the Florida recount to decide whether Gov. George W. Bush or Vice President Al Gore would be the next president.


During a lame-duck December session, while the media was focused on the recounts and court cases, Gramm and Ewing sought to strike a compromise on the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.


The day after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gov. Bush, December 14, Ewing introduced a new version of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. On December 15, with little warning or fanfare--aside from the overshadowed discussions on the floors of Congress--the new, compromise version was included as a rider to the Consolidated Appropriations Act for FY 2001, an 11,000 page omnibus appropriations conference report…


As of June 30, 2008, the global derivatives market had exploded to $530 trillion


Consensus is nearly universal that the failure to regulate financial derivatives trading and the subsequent explosion of credit default swaps, by passing the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, was a mistake.


So Bernie Sanders and the United States Senate, knowing full well the dangers of an unregulated derivatives market after the collapse and bailout of Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in a lame duck session. 


Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders claim Hillary Clinton’s war vote as the biggest blunder in history and say her vote disqualifies her from being President for lack of judgement.  Both Sanders and Obama cite their superior judgement, Bernie’s for voting against the authorization and Obama did have to vote, but claims he would have voted no. 


Sanders’ anti-war vote was hardly an act of superior judgement or courage because the vote overwhelmingly passed and would have with or without Sanders support.  After the 9-11 attack that destroyed the World Trade Center, Senator Hillary Clinton, the Junior Senator from New York where the attack took place, was put into an untenable position.


The Bush Administration was hell bent on going to war in Iraq and any voice that sought to repudiate their claims was immediately silenced.   Members of the Bush Administration went on talk radio and cable TV daily and warning a terrified public Saddam had nuclear weapons and was planning an imminent strike in America even bigger than 9-11.


Condoleezza Rice said the “smoking gun” would be a in the form of a mushroom cloud.  Rumsfeld said absence of evidence of nuclear weapons wasn’t evidence of absence. Dick Cheney said not only did Saddam have nuclear weapons, he knew where they were, they were in Tikrit.


C-Span carried 24 hour programming of rightwing groups like the American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Federalist Society, Heritage Foundation, RAND Corporation, etc. claiming an attack on the West Coast was imminent.  Many of their members are in Obama’s State Department today.


It is not my intention to defend Hillary Clinton’s war vote but to put that vote into context.  But Bernie Sanders’ vote to deregulate derivatives trading is still resonating today. From World Socialist Website:



Excerpt:



The looting of US workers’ pensions


Behind the backs of the American people, the Obama administration is carrying out one of the most significant measures of its tenure in office: the gutting of benefits for hundreds of thousands of retired workers covered by multiemployer pension funds. This attack on private-sector pension benefits coincides with an escalating assault on the pensions of public-sector workers.


On Monday in Detroit and Tuesday in Minneapolis, longtime Washington fixer Kenneth Feinberg held the final public hearings before the implementation of plans to slash the pension benefits of 270,000 retired truck drivers, package handlers and other beneficiaries of the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund by between half and 75 percent.


Pensioners will receive ballots to vote on the benefit cuts, which will be counted and totally ignored, as Feinberg, appointed by the administration to serve as the Treasury Department’s “special master” for multiemployer pension funds, rules unilaterally to proceed with the cuts.


As the Obama administration’s special master on executive compensation for banks and other firms that received taxpayer bailouts in 2008-2009, Feinberg rubber-stamped multimillion-dollar bonuses at companies such as the insurance giant American International Group (AIG), which was bailed out by the government to the tune of $185 billion.


The social counterrevolution has been intensified since the financial crisis of 2008-2009. To pay for the bank bailouts, in which the US government handed over some $7 trillion to Wall Street, the Obama administration, with the support and collaboration of the unions, ratcheted up the attack on the living standards of the working class.


First came the 2009 restructuring of the auto industry, in which the pay was slashed for all newly hired workers and the share of “second-tier” workers, earning half the pay of older workers, was expanded from 20 to 40 percent at GM and Chrysler, even as health benefits for retirees were slashed.


In a recent debate Bernie Sanders stated that he wrote the Affordable Care Act and was proud of it. 


In 2010, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, which created a mechanism for companies to offload workers from their existing health care plans into low-quality, high-cost private plans sold through exchanges. It introduced a sharp penalty, known as the “Cadillac tax,” on higher-quality health plans.


Next, in a series of deals with congressional Republicans, the White House repeatedly slashed vital social services such as food stamps and unemployment insurance and chipped away at the bedrock social programs Medicare and Social Security.


Then came the 2013-2014 Detroit bankruptcy, in which an unelected emergency manager used the bankruptcy courts, in collaboration with the Obama administration, to set a precedent for slashing constitutionally protected pension benefits of public-sector retirees. This opened up the floodgates for the dismantling of pensions in states throughout the country, including Illinois, California, Pennsylvania and New York.


In late 2014, the Obama administration worked with Congress, major corporations and trade unions to pass the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act, which opened the door to the slashing of the pensions of up to a million retirees, starting with the beneficiaries of the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund…


Yes, all of it is the result of the passage of Commodity Futures Modernization Act and there’s more.  The Flint Michigan water crisis is a direct result of CFMA and it’s spreading across America.  From MSN:




Excerpt:



Lead poisoning strikes another US town


A lead poisoning scandal has struck a second US town, with schools closed in Sebring, Ohio Monday and the water treatment plant operator accused of falsifying reports.


Initial tests found elevated lead levels in 28 homes and one school in the midwestern village of about 4,400 people, Ohio's environmental protection agency said. It is not clear how long lead has been leaking from the town's pipes.


The agency said in a statement it has "reason to suspect that the operator falsified reports" and has asked the federal Environmental Protection Agency's criminal division for help with the investigation….


The Ohio case comes as a special prosecutor was appointed to investigate how the city of Flint, Michigan exposed 100,000 residents to lead poisoning after cutting water treatment costs.


And the Zika virus is heading for America thanks to CFMA.  From Mother Nature Network:



Excerpt:


In foreclosure-ridden Florida, 'zombie' swimming pools add to mosquito woes


A discerning skeeter couldn't ask for a better breeding habitat than an abandoned swimming pool. And unfortunately for post-recession Florida, there's a whole lot of them.


It’s been well-established that summertime’s most irksome creature, the female mosquito, requires stagnant water to lay her eggs. And in Florida, the nation’s leader in both naked real estate and so-called "zombie foreclosures" — that is, forsaken homes left in a state of limbo in which the owner has walked away and the bank has not reclaimed the property — there’s plenty of stagnant water to go around.


In a recent  Florida Today article, these abandoned zombie homes, specifically foreclosed homes with swimming pools that have been transformed into foul, egg-laying havens for biting insects, are linked to an increasingly hellish — and dangerous — mosquito problem in the Sunshine State.


And with thousands upon thousands of neglected swimming pools — or “algae-caked cesspools” as Florida Today calls them — only exacerbating the problem, comes an elevated risk of being infected with mosquito-borne viral diseases including dengue fever and chikungunya.


While the latter tropical disease, a particularly miserable-sounding affliction transmitted by the Asian tiger mosquito, has appeared in Florida before, it has never been contracted inside of the U.S. That is, until earlier this month when not one but two non-travel-related cases of chikungunya were announced by Florida health officials. One case was reported in Miami-Dade County and the other in Palm Beach County.


Sounds lovely — abandoned homes, zombie pools, bloodsucking insects, and debilitating viral diseases!


Will Bernie Sanders be held accountable for his poor judgement in voting to pass the Commodity Futures Modernization Act?  Will Obama and Biden be held accountable for slashing pensions after bailing out Wall Street and authorizing billions of dollars in bonuses for criminal bankers? 


Will Timothy Geithner be held accountable for his role in crashing the economy as Head of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and then bailing out Wall Street banks as Treasury Secretary?  Wait, what’s this?  From USA Today:




Excerpt:


Ex T-man Geithner cashing in on Wall Street


WASHINGTON – Timothy Geithner is finally cashing in.


After an appropriate stint at a think tank to write his memoir and a quiet transition to Wall Street, President Obama’s first Treasury secretary, who left office in 2013, is now ready to make millions thanks to help from a big bank he used to regulate.


Bloomberg News this week disclosed that Geithner has gotten a line of credit from JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s biggest bank, to invest in a new $12 billion fund at the private equity firm where he works, Warburg Pincus...


Geithner of course was the Treasury secretary who pushed the bailout of the big banks, including JPMorgan, in the wake of the financial crisis, beating off anyone who wanted to discipline the banks or punish their executives with the argument that doing so would further destabilize the financial system…


Geithner also failed to execute the government’s plan for mortgage relief to individuals in order to shelter the banks from losses, one of the reasons Barofsky titled his book Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street…


Vermont's Sen. Bernie Sanders is hammering away at Wall Street influence, telling voters that the banks’ business model is fraud, and putting rival Hillary Clinton under constant pressure to explain her ties to Wall Street, including speaking fees from Goldman Sachs and other institutions.


Will anyone hold Bernie Sanders accountable for his vote to unleash the creature from Jekyll Island?  I doubt it, what they will do is keep beating down on Hillary Clinton to destroy her career and legacy while promoting Bernie Sanders.  After Hillary is marginalized the DNC will claim he is unelectable and the Super Delegates will overturn the will of the voters and pronounce Joe Biden the Democratic Candidate for President.


And what about the rest of us, well we’ll be lucky to get out of this world alive.




By Patricia Baeten

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