Putin/Trump/Coronavirus take on the Great Satan the Federal Reserve Bank

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Vlad the Impaler has lanced the festering boil on America’s derriere, the Federal Reserve Bank. Putin, in one fell swoop has blown the Central Banks into oblivion along with NATO, OPEC, and the EU.  Oh Glory be.  President Trump and President Putin, assisted by Coronavirus have ended the world as we know it.  From Gold Goatsand Guns:

Excerpt:

The world as we knew it is gone.  Someone pressed the big red History Eraser Button.  Russian President Vladimir Putin destroyed the myth of central banking, the U.S. Empire and self-sufficiency in oil production with one simple word...

Nyet.

And because of this OPEC is no more. The central banks are revealed as powerless.  Deflation finally reigns supreme and governments around the world are exposed as the frauds they are. 

The timing Putin showed was impressive.  As COVID-19 rages across the West deflating the oil markets and all the financialization that is a derivative of oil prices, Putin launched the next salvo in what has been a World War fought on the ground by proxies and in the financial markets.

Nigel Farage obtained Brexit without firing a bullet.  Putin just fought the Battle of Midway the same way, with a word. 

The Federal Reserve Bank is an evil entity that has enslaved the American people.  Congress serves the Central Bank not the American people.  Presidents who defied the Federal Reserve Bank’s policies didn’t fare well.  From Amo Paul Bishop Roden:

Excerpt:

THE FEDERAL RESERVE: THE TITHE TO SATAN

Satan, being Satan, has scarcely been content with a 10% tithe. As the Beatle's song says, "Be thankful I don't take it all." The economic crisis that besets the world is the brainchild of Satan and he has used deceit, intimidation and murder to bring the poor of the world to their knees…

The existence of a national bank in America has always been a source of controversy. Today many of the dire predictions about a national banking system have been realized. Here is part of what our forefathers said.

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and  then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." ~Thomas Jefferson.  The banks have deprived thousands of their homes in the past few years.

The charter of the First Bank of the US was not renewed in 1811. Another national bank was chartered for 20 years in 1816. Andrew Jackson was president from 1929 to 1937. After a struggle, Jackson destroyed the national bank by vetoing its 1832 re-charter by Congress and by withdrawing US funds in 1833. In 1836, Jackson forced the closing of the Second Bank of the US.

Jackson said, "Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves…"

Andrew Jackson was the only president to pay off the national debt. He took control of the money supply from the banks. Here is another quote. "If Congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given to be used by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations…"

Jackson's attack on the national bank was followed by an 1835 attempt to assassinate him. As you will see, this was only the beginning of violent attacks against presidents who opposed the control of our money supply by national and international bankers.  After Jackson, a free banking policy allowed a multitude of banks to handle the capital requirements of business.

Abraham Lincoln went to these bankers to finance the Civil War. They offered him interest rates of 24% to 36%. A friend, Colonel Dick Taylor of Chicago advised him to print his own money, and at Lincoln's request, the government printed $450 million in "greenbacks," notes printed with green ink on one side.

Lincoln was an opponent of the banking interests. "The government should create, issue and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers..... The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the Government's greatest creative opportunity...

The taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest, discounts and exchanges. The financing of all public enterprises, the maintenance of stable government and ordered progress, and the conduct of the Treasury will become matters of practical administration... Money will cease to be the master and become the servant of humanity. Democracy will rise superior to the money power…"

Abraham Lincoln survived the first two assassination attempts, but was assassinated shortly after his reelection. The Civil War was over and he was in a position to continue controlling the government's money supply.

President Garfield became president in 1881. He was an opponent of the bankers as well, advocating a currency based on gold and silver. “Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce…and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate...”   Garfield was the second American President to be assassinated. He was shot in July, 1881, and died in September, 1881.

William McKinley became president in 1897, in his inaugural address he advocated government control of money. "Our financial system needs some revision; our money is all good now, but its value must not further be threatened. It should all be put upon an enduring basis, not subject to easy attack, nor its stability to doubt or dispute. Our currency should continue under the supervision of the Government..."

Late in his first term, McKinley put the currency of the United States on the Gold Standard. His administration was very successful. McKinley was the third president assassinated, he died in the first year of his second term. In June of 1963,

President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order No. 11110 giving the US government the power to issue currency, without going through the Federal Reserve. Kennedy's order gave the Treasury the power "to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury." This meant that for every ounce of silver in the US Treasury's vault, the government could introduce new money into circulation. In all, Kennedy brought nearly $4.3 billion in US notes into circulation.

Kennedy's policy of printing silver backed government notes was a challenge to the Federal Reserve, who had control of the money supply from its inception in 1913. John F. Kennedy was the fourth president assassinated, he died in November of 1963. Video tapes of his murder show the lead agents who surrounded his car were pulled back from standard position just before he was shot.

Since Kennedy, no president has taken on the Federal Reserve, even though the national debt has become a heavy weight on the economy. In the 2009 fiscal year, the Treasury Department spent $383 billion on interest payments to the holders of the National Debt…

Yes indeed, not tithing to Satan is bad for a president’s health.  President Clinton defied congress early in his administration.  The Republican-led congress passed a huge tax cut for the rich that would have added to the massive deficits and debt built up under Reagan and Bush I.  When Clinton vetoed the bill they couldn’t muster enough votes to override the veto so the Republicans shut down the government.  Clinton subsequently was impeached which is a political assassination.

In eight years Clinton balanced the budget and America became a lender nation instead of a debtor nation.  When Clinton left office there was a surplus and we were on track to pay off the nation’s debt to the Federal Reserve Bank.

 The Federal Reserve Bank’s 100 year charter was set to expire in 2013 so the Fed was desperate to plunge America deep into debt before then.  When Vice President Al Gore defeated George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election, the Fed called in their chits and their handmaidens in congress and the Supreme Court shut down the recount in Florida and declared George W. Bush President. 

George W. Bush passed a huge tax cut for the rich that immediately tanked the economy.  Within 9 months the 911 attacks took place in America providing the excuse to launch the War on Terrorism and plunge America and the world into an abyss of debt to the central banks.  From Wall Street on Parade:

Excerpt:

The Untold Story of 9/11: Bailing Out Alan Greenspan’s Legacy

Today marks the 15th Anniversary of the tragic events of September 11, 2001 and yet the American public remains in the dark about critical details of hundreds of billions of dollars of financial dealings by the Federal Reserve in the days, weeks and months that followed 9/11.

What has also been lost in the official 9/11 Commission Report, Congressional hearings and academic studies, is how Wall Street, on the day the planes slammed into the World Trade Towers, was on the cusp of being exposed by the New York State Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer, as the orchestrator of a fraud of unprecedented proportion against the investing public.

That investigation was stalled for more than six months. It would have been politically incorrect to do perp walks outside Wall Street’s biggest investment banks as families mourned the loss of their loved ones; as U.S. savings bonds were renamed Patriot Bonds to rally patriotism around the country; and Congress paid homage to the heroes at the big banks, the stock exchanges and the Federal Reserve for getting the system back up and running in less than a week.

The loony policies of laissez-faire capitalism of Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, who worshiped at the feet of Ayn Rand, were also bailed out by the events of 9/11. Members of the Senate Banking Committee praised him on September 20, 2001 for his performance. Amazingly, at this hearing, just nine days after the attack, not one Senator asked Greenspan how much money the Fed had spent or to whom it went.

The percolating collapse of Wall Street was held off for seven more years until 2008 when it finally became impossible to deny that Greenspan’s brand of financial deregulation and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act he had pushed for, had left Wall Street in ruins – without any assault from the skies.

Here’s where Wall Street and the U.S. economy stood on September 10, 2001, the day before an attack in lower Manhattan provided the excuse for the Federal Reserve to flood Wall Street with unquestioned amounts of cash: The Nasdaq stock market, filled with the stocks of rigged analyst research from the iconic firms on Wall Street (the target of Spitzer’s investigation), had imploded, losing 66 percent of its pumped up value and wiping out $4 trillion in wealth.

While it wasn’t yet known at the time, being only officially acknowledged long after 9/11, the U.S. economy had contracted for two consecutive quarters and was looking at another negative quarter of growth.

Thus, it was quite advantageous for Alan Greenspan’s legacy as Chair of the Federal Reserve and what might have been an even worse economic slump that the Fed was given carte blanche to funnel hundreds of billions of dollars to Wall Street after 9/11 with the Federal government pumping billions more in fiscal stimulus.

According to a report from the New York Fed, an “unprecedented” amount of liquidity was pumped into the system. The Congressional Research Service quantifies the “unprecedented” amount as “$100 billion per day” over a three-day period beginning on 9/11. But the idea that the bailout lasted only a few days or weeks is misguided. The consolidated annual reports of the Federal Reserve Banks show that the Fed’s balance sheet grew from $609.9 billion at the end of 2000 to $654.9 billion at the end of 2001 to $730.9 billion at the end of 2002 and $771.5 billion as of December 31, 2003...

The Fed’s rapid cuts in the Federal Funds Rate and Discount Rate after 9/11 was worth hundreds of billions of dollars more to the big Wall Street banks by lowering their borrowing costs. On September 17, before the stock market opened for the first time since the 9/11 attack, the Fed announced it was cutting both the Fed Funds Rate and the Discount Rate by 50 basis points (half of one percent).

Two weeks later, on October 2, the Fed slashed both the Fed Funds and Discount Rates by another 50 basis points. Stunningly, on November 6, one month later, it again cut both rates by 50 basis points, bringing the Fed Funds Rate to 2 percent and the Discount Rate to 1-1/2 percent. On December 11, both rates were cut again but this time by just 25 basis points. The Fed Funds Rate was now trading at the lowest level in 40 years.

The Fed then went on pause until November of the following year, when it again slashed 50 basis points from both the Fed Funds Rate and the Discount Rate. At this point, the Fed Funds were at 1-1/4 percent while the Discount Rate was a miniscule ¾ percent.

When President George W. Bush submitted his budget in January 2002, it carried this often repeated misstatement of fact: “The terrorist attacks pushed a weak economy over the edge into an outright contraction.” That was the official narrative – which served to soften Greenspan’s gross bungling of his job as Fed Chair.

Using 9/11 as a handy source of blame would go up in smoke on March 26, 2002 when the National Bureau of Economic Research announced that the U.S. economy had entered a recession in March 2001, six months before the attacks…

The Fed was not the only Wall Street regulator to be given a free pass during and after 9/11. The Chair of the SEC at the time, Harvey Pitt, a long time lawyer to Wall Street banks, testified before the Senate Banking Committee on September 20, 2001 that the SEC had, for the first time, “invoked the emergency powers that you bestowed upon us.”

 According to testimony from U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill at the same hearing, the emergency relief the SEC invoked “included providing relief under Rule 10b–18 which provides a safe harbor from liability for manipulation in connection with purchases by an issuer of its own stock. The relief gives issuers greater latitude to provide buy side liquidity this week.”

Typically, corporations are not allowed to buy back their own stock during the opening minutes of trading on the stock exchanges. It is likely that requirement was waived when the market reopened on September 17, 2001 according to O’Neill’s statement at the Senate Banking hearing.

On April 14, 2002 – seven long months after 9/11 – the public finally found out what Eliot Spitzer knew about how the public had been hosed by the iconic investment banks on Wall Street. Spitzer released an affidavit he had filed with the New York State Supreme Court which indicated that his investigation had commenced in June of 2001…

Spitzer’s office would later uncover thousands of emails at Salomon Smith Barney, the investment bank and retail brokerage arm of Wall Street banking behemoth, Citigroup, showing that in 2000 and 2001, prior to 9/11, retail brokers at Salomon Smith Barney were livid at Jack Grubman, the telecommunications analyst that had issued buy ratings on startups that repeatedly crashed and burned.

One broker wrote in an email that Grubman was “an investment bank whore.” One email from Grubman explained the corrupt scheme in simple terms: “Most of our banking clients are going to zero and you know I wanted to downgrade them months ago but got huge pushback from banking.”

At some of the biggest banks on Wall Street, research analysts were telling the public to buy, buy, buy while secretly emailing their colleagues that the companies were “crap,” “junk” or a “piece of sh*t,” as illustrated by the emails released by Spitzer.

In April 2003, 10 of the banks investigated settled charges for $1.4 billion – marking the beginning of an era of massive fines and little meaningful change on Wall Street. The heads of the divisions that oversaw this massive fraud were never prosecuted. PBS reported the slaps on the wrist as follows:

“Two of the most well-known analysts, who came to symbolize the conflicts of interest of the 1990s bull market, were fined and banned for life from the securities industry. Henry Blodget of Merrill Lynch was ordered to pay $4 million in fines and Jack Grubman of Salomon Smith Barney was ordered to pay $15 million as part of the terms of the settlement. In addition, Sanford I. Weill, CEO of Citigroup, was banned from talking to his firm’s analysts about their research outside of the presence of company lawyers.”

Weill walked away from Citigroup with compensation that had made him a billionaire. Grubman paid $15 million in fines but his compensation at Citigroup’s Salomon Smith Barney had “exceeded $67.5 million, including his multi-million dollar severance package” according to the SEC. (NOTE THAT ON WALL STREET ONE GETS A SEVERANCE PACKAGE FOR FRAUD.) Blodget went on to found the financial news web site, “Business Insider,” which was sold last year for $343 million, a nice share of which Blodget will keep…

Where did Wall Street learn about how to funnel billions without going to jail? At the knee of the Federal Reserve, of course.

That was back then, since then all the fraud continued until 2008 when the entire craps game collapsed and Obama was installed by the corrupt bankers and a bunch of Bush holdovers who bailed out the banks and paid them bonus.  Why?  Because as the article said “on Wall Street one gets a severance package for fraud.”

Indeed, the fraud was on steroids under the Obama Administration.  The banks got even with Eliot Spitzer, claimed they filed a “suspicious activity report” with FinCEN the bank regulator claiming he sent money transfers to his high priced hooker.  Spitzer was driven out in disgrace.

Now we have the coronavirus that had the world in a complete lockdown.  But just like in 2001 the banks were ready to fail again.  The economy is a fraud the Fed is on the verge of collapse and the coronavirus is being blamed just like 911 was blamed in 2001.  Coronavirus may turn out to be a blessing.  From RT:

Excerpt:

The global economy was deathly sick long before now, but Covid-19 will take the blame if it crashes

As economists begin to predict what the global economic effects of Covid-19 will be, the danger is we play up the economic damage of the virus while hiding the deep-rooted sources of our contemporary financial doldrums.

It is inevitable that economic forecasts of the impact of Covid-19 on the global economy are being revised daily, if not hourly. It is right that economic forecasters should be updating their predictions. But we all need to keep in mind that these revised forecasts are little more than guesswork – however sophisticated their computer modelling might be.

Wall Street’s big coronavirus mistake

This is not prejudice against economists, the experts Michael Gove in particular referred to when he said during the Brexit referendum that the British people had had enough of them –referring specifically to their shaky prediction track record. Economic predictions and forecasting are notoriously difficult. It is the reason why leading economist JK Galbraith once quipped that the only function of economists was “to make astrology look respectable.”

We are going to see a proliferation of astrology in the days ahead. The biggest danger is going to be the battle to avoid economic alarmism.

The division of labour between health officials and economic experts is increasingly being blurred. Health officials are being asked about economic impacts, while economists are being called to make predictions about the impact of the disease. Health and economics are being conflated, which is confusing for all; what should be treated as a medical emergency is increasingly becoming a sphere for urgent government economic bailouts and politics aimed at alleviating the fall-out of lockdowns.

These confusions aside, predicting the economic costs of ill-health is very difficult. The Co-Operative Pharmacy reported in 2010, for example, that flu cost UK employers 7.6 million working days this year. It estimated that the cost to the economy was around £1.35 billion. But no-one even really knows the economic costs of these ‘normal’ diseases. Annual deaths precipitated by influenza are much higher than the deaths from coronavirus so far…

But there are things we know which should be at the forefront of our considerations. The world economy was already in deep ill-health before anyone had even heard of Covid-19. Losing sight of this means the remedies on offer might be good at stemming the symptoms of a problem, but they ignore the underlying cause, the real source of the malaise, which will remain untreated. This will be worse in the long run than any short-term dislocations we are forced to endure.

The world economy has been, if not on life-support, terminally ill for years. Global growth – and especially advanced-economy growth – this year was already dismal, and has been for many years. Forecasts for this year were already pretty downbeat before most people were aware of the word ‘coronavirus’.

The illness is the result of years of diminishing business investment in new technologies and ways of operating, and the propping up by governments of companies that should have gone out of business. The end result? Almost stagnant productivity.

People at work are no longer producing more in the same time. This is a significant break from the dominant pattern during the past two centuries of economic expansion. This waning in productivity growth – sinking to little more than flatlining in Britain – is what accounts for most people no longer benefiting from regular increases in living standards.

It is also what has led to the increased dependence on debt and financialisaton. The 2008 crash confirmed the fragility of economic systems that rely too much on borrowing and too little on creating new wealth. We are not in permanent recession, but we are stuck in a cycle of financial crises. Between the crashes, debt keeps things ticking along. The unstable dissonance between the financial and productive economies – reflected in the inflated stock markers – reveal that an adjustment was inevitable. The dramatic falls in global stock markets over the past two weeks were on the cards before the impact of Covid-19 panic set in.

The biggest unknown, and perhaps where all the economists’ astrology-powers will be focused, is whether the current market ‘adjustment’ will develop into a bigger financial implosion which will lead to a global recession.

One prediction you can be sure of, whatever happens: everyone will be quick to blame this on Covid-19, not the underlying structural weakness of the global system. The real patient will be ignored by immediate palliatives. But unless – and until – the terminally ill global economy is given a real reboot, rather than left to stagnate in a corridor out of sight, the world will be less able to deal with what is, after all, a severe health crisis – today and especially in the future.

The covid-19 virus is not the sole cause of the current market crash any more than 911 was the sole cause of the market crash in 2001.  The complete global banking collapse of 2008 was due to propping up corrupt central banks at the expense of humanity.  Now the central banks are trying to profit off the covid-19 crisis.  From Zero Hedge:

Excerpt:

BANKS PRESSURE HEALTH CARE FIRMS TO RAISE PRICES ON CRITICAL DRUGS, MEDICAL SUPPLIES FOR CORONAVIRUS

IN RECENT WEEKS, investment bankers have pressed health care companies on the front lines of fighting the novel coronavirus, including drug firms developing experimental treatments and medical supply firms, to consider ways that they can profit from the crisis.

The media has mostly focused on individuals who have taken advantage of the market for now-scarce medical and hygiene supplies to hoard masks and hand sanitizer and resell them at higher prices. But the largest voices in the health care industry stand to gain from billions of dollars in emergency spending on the pandemic, as do the bankers and investors who invest in health care companies.

Over the past few weeks, investment bankers have been candid on investor calls and during health care conferences about the opportunity to raise drug prices. In some cases, bankers received sharp rebukes from health care executives; in others, executives joked about using the attention on Covid-19 to dodge public pressure on the opioid crisis.

Gilead Sciences, the company producing remdesivir, the most promising drug to treat Covid-19 symptoms, is one such firm facing investor pressure.

Remdesivir is an antiviral that began development as a treatment for dengue, West Nile virus, and Zika, as well as MERS and SARS. The World Health Organization has said there is “only one drug right now that we think may have real efficacy in treating coronavirus symptoms” — namely, remdesivir.

The drug, though developed in partnership with the University of Alabama through a grant from the federal government’s National Institutes of Health, is patented by Gilead Sciences, a major pharmaceutical company based in California. The firm has faced sharp criticism in the past for its pricing practices. It previously charged $84,000 for a yearlong supply of its hepatitis C treatment, which was also developed with government research support. Remdesivir is estimated to produce a one-time revenue of $2.5 billion.

During an investor conference earlier this month, Phil Nadeau, managing director at investment bank Cowen & Co., quizzed Gilead Science executives over whether the firm had planned for a “commercial strategy for remdesivir” or could “create a business out of remdesivir.”

Johanna Mercier, executive vice president of Gilead, noted that the company is currently donating products and “manufacturing at risk and increasing our capacity” to do its best to find a solution to the pandemic. The company at the moment is focused, she said, primarily on “patient access” and “government access” for remdesivir.  “Commercial opportunity,” Mercier added, “might come if this becomes a seasonal disease or stockpiling comes into play, but that’s much later down the line.” 

Steven Valiquette, a managing director at Barclays Investment Bank, last week peppered executives from Cardinal Health, a major health care distributor of N95 masks, ventilators, and pharmaceuticals, on whether the company would raise prices on a range of supplies.

Valiquette asked repeatedly about potential price increases on a variety of products. Could the company, he asked, “offset some of the risk of volume shortages” on the “pricing side”?

Michael Kaufmann, a vice president at Cardinal Health, said that “so far, we’ve not seen any material price increases that I would say are related to the coronavirus yet.” Cardinal Health, Kaufman said, would weigh a variety of factors when making these decisions.

“Are you able to raise the price on some of this to offset what could be some volume shortages such that it all kind of nets out to be fairly consistent as far as your overall profit matrix?” asked Valiquette.

Kaufman responded that price decisions would depend on contracts with providers, though the firm has greater flexibility over some drug sales. “As you have changes on the cost side, you’re able to make some adjustments,” he noted.

The discussion, over conference call, occurred during the Barclays Global Healthcare Conference on March 10. At one point, Valiquette joked that “one positive” about the coronavirus would be a “silver lining” that Cardinal Health may receive “less questions” about opioid-related lawsuits.

Cardinal Health is one of several firms accused of ignoring warnings and flooding pharmacies known as so-called pill mills with shipments of millions of highly addictive painkillers. Kaufmann noted that negotiations for a settlement are ongoing, and noted that the company has told local officials that discharging the litigation would allow his company “to distribute free goods.”

Owens & Minor, a health care logistics company that sources and manufactures surgical gowns, N95 masks, and other medical equipment, presented at the Barclays Global Healthcare Conference the following day.

Valiquette, citing the Covid-19 crisis, asked the company whether it could “increase prices on some of the products where there’s greater demand.” Valiquette then chuckled, adding that doing so “is probably not politically all that great in the sort of dynamic,” but said he was “curious to get some thoughts” on whether the firm would consider hiking prices…

AmerisourceBergen, another health care distributor that supplies similar products to Cardinal Health, which is also a defendant in the multistate opioid litigation, faced similar questions from Valiquette at the Barclays event.

Steve Collis, president and chief executive of AmerisourceBergen, noted that his company has been actively involved in efforts to push back against political demands to limit the price of pharmaceutical products.

Collis said that he was recently at a dinner with other pharmaceutical firms involved with developing “vaccines for the coronavirus” and was reminded that the U.S. firms, operating under limited drug price intervention, were among the industry leaders — a claim that has been disputed by experts who note that lack of regulation in the drug industry has led to few investments in viral treatments, which are seen as less lucrative. Leading firms developing a vaccine for Covid-19 are based in Germany, China, and Japan, countries with high levels of government influence in the pharmaceutical industry…

Later in the conversation, Valiquette asked AmerisourceBergen about the opioid litigation. The lawsuits could cost as much as $150 billion among the various pharmaceutical and drug distributor defendants. Purdue Pharma, one of the firms targeted with the opioid litigation, has already pursued bankruptcy protection in response to the lawsuit threat.

“We can’t say too much,” Collis responded. But the executive hinted that his company is using its crucial role in responding to the pandemic crisis as leverage in the settlement negotiations…

MARKET PRESSURE has encouraged large health care firms to spend billions of dollars on stock buybacks and lobbying, rather than research and development. Barclays declined to comment, and Cowen & Co. did not respond to a request for comment.

The fallout over the coronavirus could pose potential risks for for-profit health care operators. In Spain, the government seized control of private health care providers, including privately run hospitals, to manage the demand for treatment for patients with Covid-19.

But pharmaceutical interests in the U.S. have a large degree of political power. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar previously served as president of the U.S. division of drug giant Eli Lilly and on the board of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a drug lobby group.

During a congressional hearing last month, Azar rejected the notion that any vaccine or treatment for Covid-19 should be set at an affordable price. “We would want to ensure that we work to make it affordable, but we can’t control that price because we need the private sector to invest,” said Azar. “The priority is to get vaccines and therapeutics. Price controls won’t get us there.”

The initial $8.3 billion coronavirus spending bill passed in early March to provide financial support for research into vaccines and other drug treatments contained a provision that prevents the government from delaying the introduction of any new pharmaceutical to address the crisis over affordability concerns. The legislative text was shaped, according to reports, by industry lobbyists…

“Notwithstanding the pressure they may feel from the markets, corporate CEOs have large amounts of discretion and in this case, they should be very mindful of price gouging, they’re going to be facing a lot more than reputational hits,” said Robert Weissman, president of public interest watchdog Public Citizen, in an interview with The Intercept.  “There will be a backlash that will both prevent their profiteering, but also may push to more structural limitations on their monopolies and authority moving forward,” Weissman said.

Weissman’s group supports an effort led by Rep. Andy Levin, D-Mich., who has called on the government to invoke the Defense Production Act to scale up domestic manufacturing of health care supplies.

There are other steps the government can take, Weissman added, to prevent price gouging.  “The Gilead product is patent-protected and monopoly-protected, but the government has a big claim over that product because of the investment it’s made,” said Weissman.

“The government has special authority to have generic competition for products it helped fund and prevent nonexclusive licensing for products it helped fund,” Weissman continued. “Even for products that have no connection to government funding, the government has the ability to force licensing for generic competition for its own acquisition and purchases.”

Drug companies often eschew vaccine development because of the limited profit potential for a one-time treatment. Testing kit companies and other medical supply firms have few market incentives for domestic production, especially scaling up an entire factory for short-term use. Instead, Levin and Weissman have argued, the government should take direct control of producing the necessary medical supplies and generic drug production.

Last Friday, Levin circulated a letter signed by other House Democrats that called for the government to take charge in producing ventilators, N95 respirators, and other critical supplies facing shortages.

The once inconceivable policy was endorsed on Wednesday when Trump unveiled a plan to invoke the Defense Production Act to compel private firms to produce needed supplies during the crisis. The law, notably, allows the president to set a price ceiling for critical goods used in an emergency.

As this crisis continues more and more congressional corruption is exposed.  Several Senators, Richard Burr in particular, used his seat on the Intelligence Committee to warn his campaign contributors about the impending corona virus and the impact it would have on the Stock Market.  Burr sold $1.7 million in hotel stocks before the public became aware of the plans to limit travel and close businesses.  That’s insider trading.  Congress is more interested in lining their own pockets than helping the American people.  We have been here before.  From Strategic Culture:

Excerpt:

Why Assume There Will Be a 2020 election? General Butler and the ‘Wall Street Putsch’ Revisited

The upcoming American elections are just around the corner and everyone is wondering if the new president will be named Trump, Biden, Sanders or none of the above.  I can hear the incredulous reader exclaim: Wait, what does “none of the above” mean?? It’s certainly going to be one of those three isn’t it??

It is often too easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees and in the opinion-packed world of endless talking head commentaries, every leaf and branch is scrutinized by professional opinionators so closely that many forget that the entire forest is on fire.   As I’ve written extensively here and here and here, the reality is that the western financial system is careening towards a crash much worse than anything the world saw in 1929, and the deep state trying to manage this wreck from above would love nothing more than to impose a fascist dictatorship onto a frightened population.

Trump, Sanders and Tulsi: Not Good Fascists

The only reason why so much effort has been expended on attempting to paint Trump, Sanders and Tulsi as “Russian agents” has been the simple fact that neither one of the three individuals would make very willing puppets who would play along with a fascist dictatorship in America under those foreseeable crisis conditions.

For all their problems and differences, right wing neocons and left wing Malthusian technocrats despise Trump, Sanders and Tulsi for the crime that they are actual patriotic human beings who genuinely care about their nation. Unlike technocrats or neocons, actual human beings occupying political office may be inclined to spoil a good crisis in order to pass reforms that actually protect the people and revoke the power structures of the shadow government.

So I ask again: What if the oncoming crisis results in a 2020 choice of “none of the above”? What if there is no 2020 choice “offered” democratically to the American public at all? It isn’t like this sort of thing has never happened in American history.

In order to best understand this danger and also gain insight into how it might be circumvented, I suggest revisiting the 1932-1934 efforts by the international deep state to impose a fascist dictatorship upon Americans and even overthrow the elected government of Franklin Roosevelt with a JP Morgan-funded military coup d’état.

The Fascist Economic Miracle Solution of 1932

1932-1934 was a period of history that saw the world torn down into a deep depression which the people of Europe and America were told by their media, could only be solved by the “economic miracle solution” of a new system of governance known as “fascism”.

This “fascist economic solution” took hold in Europe with the quick rise of Nazism, Franco and Mussolini’s Corporatism as well what later became Vichy France. In English Canada, the League for Social Reconstruction was ready to take power in 1932 and French-speaking Canada was quickly embracing the Nazi-inspired political party of Adrien Arcand.

The British governing class, led by the royal family were fully backing Nazism, and Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was rising faster than ever. All of these movements came in different flavors but were united under a cold utilitarian philosophy of government, a devout love for eugenics (the racist “science” of population control) and addiction to City of London/Wall Street money.

In the United States however, things weren’t going as smoothly.

The Rise of Franklin Roosevelt

Even though the financial elite of Wall Street had pulled the plug on the system four years earlier, the population had still not been broken sufficiently to accept fascism as the solution which Time magazine told them it was. Instead, the people voted for one of the few anti-fascist presidential candidates available in 1932 when Franklin Roosevelt was elected under the theme of taking the money lenders out of power and restoring the constitution.

In his March 4, 1933 inaugural address FDR stated: “Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence.”

“They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish. The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.”

During FDR’s famous 100 Days, an all-out war was declared on the “economic royalists” that had taken over the nation. Audits and investigations were conducted on the banks in the form of the Pecora Commission, and the biggest financial houses which had spent billions on fascist parties of Europe were broken up while speculation was reined in under Glass-Steagall. Meanwhile a new form of banking was unveiled more in alignment with America’s constitutional traditions in the form of productive credit and long term public works which created real jobs and increased the national productive powers of labor.

Many people remain totally ignorant that even before his March 4, 1933 inauguration, Franklin Roosevelt narrowly avoided an assassination attempt in Florida which saw 5 people struck by bullets and the mayor of Chicago dying of his wounds 3 weeks later. Within days of the mayor’s death, the assassin Giuseppe Zingara was speedily labelled a “lone gunman” and executed without any serious investigation into his freemasonic connections. This however was just a pre-cursor for an even greater battle which Wall Street financiers would launch in order to overthrow the presidency later that year. This effort would only be stopped by the courageous intervention of a patriotic marine named Smedley Darlington Butler.

Who was General Butler?

Born in 1881 to a family of patriotic Quakers, Smedley Butler quickly rose through the ranks of the military becoming the most decorated military figure of U.S. History- a record he holds to this day with multiple medals of honor, an Army distinguished service medal and Marine Corps Bruvet medal (to name just a few).

By the end of the British-orchestrated meat grinder known as WWI, the General had become an activist patriot giving speeches across America in denunciation of the private financiers steering America’s war-driven economy. Speaking to veterans in August 1933, the general said:

“I have spent 33 years being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism… I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in.

I helped rape half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street… In China, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested… I had a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, and promotions. I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents…”

In spite of his outspoken criticism of crony capitalism, Wall Street’s elite simply presumed all men had their price, and Butler was probably just indignant because he was never given a big enough piece of pie.

The Wall Street Putsch is launched

These financiers needed someone like Butler to channel the rage of the striking veterans of WWI across America who had been fighting for the bonus pay promised them years earlier but which didn’t exist due to the 1929 collapse. A force of hundreds of thousands of disgruntled seasoned soldiers was exactly what was needed to overthrow Roosevelt, but leadership was sorely lacking, and General Butler was their man for the job. He was a war hero who was seen as honest and loved by the veterans. He was perfect.

Under the guiding hand of JP Morgan’s Grayson Prevost Murphy, two representatives of the American Legion (Commander Bill Doyle and bond salesman Gerald MacGuire) approached Butler in July 1933 for the job of rallying the Legion’s veterans and began dropping hints of a larger coup plot. Butler became suspicious, but continued playing along with the plan to see how far this went up the ladder of power (1).

Over the course of the next several months, Butler discovered that America’s financial elite centered around John Pierpont Morgan Jr., the Harrimans, the Melons, Warburgs, Rockefellers and Duponts were at the heart of the plot.

These men used their agents such as Gerald MacGuire a Morgan-affiliated bond salesman, Democratic Party controllers John W. Davis and Thomas Lamont (both occupying directorships in the House of Morgan), Robert Sterling Clark (heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune), Grayson Prevost Murphy and Harriman Family investment banker Prescott Bush. All of these characters had become well known “investors” in European fascism, owned the biggest media platforms including Fortune and Time Magazine (both of which promoted Mussolini extensively for years), and controlled the levers of industry.

Luckily, the 1932-1934 Pecora Commission exposed these forces publicly as the architects of the great depression, making their ability to acquire popular support and sympathy more than a little difficult.

Outlining his Committee’s findings Pecora had written publicly: “Undoubtedly, this small group of highly placed financiers, controlling the very springs of economic activity, holds more real power than any similar group in the U.S.A.”

Butler Blows the Whistle

When the time was right, Butler blew the whistle by approaching the Special Committee on Un-American Activities (the McCormack-Dickstein Committee) which began an investigation on November 20, 1934. Unlike the Committee on Un-American Activities which made its reputation destroying patriotic lives under the communist witch hunt of McCarthyism, this earlier version was aligned to FDR and dedicated solely to identifying Nazi activity in America.

At first sceptical of the general’s claims, the committee soon  substantiated everything over the course of  a month long investigation and made their findings public to FDR and congress on December 29, 1934. An invaluable part of the hearings were the testimonies of journalist Paul Comly French whom Butler recruited to act as the general’s intermediary with the bankers.

Butler told the committee that MacGuire stated it “wouldn’t take any constitutional change to authorize another cabinet official, somebody to take over the details of the office—to take them off the President’s shoulders” and that “we’d do with him what Mussolini did to the King of Italy”.

When French asked MacGuire how the coup would help solve unemployment, MacGuire responded: “We need a fascist government to save the nation from the Communists… It was the plan that Hitler had used in putting all of the unemployed in labor camps or barracks—enforced labor. That would solve it overnight.”

Although the full transcripts were not made public, Butler did get the message to the population by giving his story to as many journalists as possible and recorded a message to the people in 1935 which should be listened to in full.

The Aftermath of the Exposure

This exposure, alongside the Pecora Commission findings, and earlier failed assassination attempt gave FDR the ammunition he needed to force America’s deep state into submission (at least for a while). As I outlined in my recent paper, FDR’s fight to stop a central bankers’ dictatorship started from the earliest days of his presidency to his dying breath on April 14, 1945.

Incredibly, after the sanitized and redacted 1934 report was published, the committee was disbanded (to be reformed later under a fascist mandate), and the thousands of pages of transcripts were buried for years- only officially made public in the 21st century- the contents of which can be found here with censored testimony in red.

The coup plotters lost no time forming a new organization on August 22, 1934 called the American Liberty League which spent the next decade sabotaging FDR’s New Deal. This group made every effort to promote an American alliance with Axis powers (until 1941’s Pearl Harbor attack), widely financed eugenics, and after FDR died, acted as the driving force behind the McCarthyite police state in America during the Cold War.

This organization also gave birth to such think tanks as the American Enterprise Association, Heritage Foundation and CATO institute which incrementally made Austrian school economics a part of the American right. Anyone wishing to understand what created the Frankenstein Monster called “neo-conservativism” during the last 60 years would not get very far without understanding the role of the American Liberty League and its hell spawn.

Today, a new systemic meltdown of a $1.5 quadrillion derivatives bubble has similarities to the 1929 crash and other similarities to the 1923 hyperinflation of Weimar. While the coronavirus may or may not be used to trigger this new blowout, one thing is certain: a new fascist coup should be taken more seriously than ever.

 

So rather than stressing about who might be on the 2020 ballot, it is wiser to ask the question: Where are the General Butlers today?

Yes indeed “where are the General Butlers today?”  President Trump is surrounded by vipers.  The corona virus relief package is becoming a big giveaway to Wall Street with crumbs being thrown to the American people. 

President Trump called on congress to issue checks to the American people to help them get through this time when many businesses are shuttering.  Trump wanted every American to get a check for $1,000 for two months, but Senate Republicans and Democrats are balking.

Senator Mitch McConnell has proffered that Republicans support $1,200 for each adult, $600 for people who are too poor to pay taxes.  This included elderly whose average SS payment is $600 per month.  $140 per month comes out of their Social Security to pay for Medicare, and they are required to carry supplemental insurance policies from private insurance companies that run about $150 per month.  The Republicans also want to give children $500 instead of the $1,000 requested by the President.

These traitors in congress cry crocodile tears about the children inheriting a great debt.  Meanwhile the Federal Reserve Bank is pumping trillions into the Wall Street Banks, and America’s ever wars and crippling sanctions continue unabated.  It is past time to end the Fed, nationalize the banks and socialize medical care.  I believe at the right time that is exactly what President Trump will do.  He’ll have his FDR moment.