The Federal Reserve's Explicit Goal: Devalue The Dollar 33%

 

The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) has made it official:  After its latest two day meeting, it announced its goal to devalue the dollar by 33% over the next 20 years.  The debauch of the dollar will be even greater if the Fed exceeds its goal of a 2 percent per year increase in the price level.

An increase in the price level of 2% in any one year is barely noticeable.  Under a gold standard, such an increase was uncommon, but not unknown.  The difference is that when the dollar was as good as gold, the years of modest inflation would be followed, in time, by declining prices. As a consequence, over longer periods of time, the price level was unchanged.  A dollar 20 years hence was still worth a dollar.

But, an increase of 2% a year over a period of 20 years will lead to a 50% increase in the price level.  It will take 150 (2032) dollars to purchase the same basket of goods 100 (2012) dollars can buy today.  What will be called the “dollar” in 2032 will be worth one-third less (100/150) than what we call a dollar today.

The Fed’s zero interest rate policy accentuates the negative consequences of this steady erosion in the dollar’s buying power by imposing a negative return on short-term bonds and bank deposits.  In effect, the Fed has announced a course of action that will steal — there is no better word for it — nearly 10 percent of the value of American’s hard earned savings over the next 4 years.

Why target an annual 2 percent decline in the dollar’s value instead of price stability?  Here is the Fed’s answer:

“The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) judges that inflation at the rate of 2 percent (as measured by the annual change in the price index for personal consumption expenditures, or PCE) is most consistent over the longer run with the Federal Reserve’s mandate for price stability and maximum employment. Over time, a higher inflation rate would reduce the public’s ability to make accurate longer-term economic and financial decisions. On the other hand, a lower inflation rate would be associated with an elevated probability of falling into deflation, which means prices and perhaps wages, on average, are falling–a phenomenon associated with very weak economic conditions. Having at least a small level of inflation makes it less likely that the economy will experience harmful deflation if economic conditions weaken. The FOMC implements monetary policy to help maintain an inflation rate of 2 percent over the medium term.”

In other words, a gradual destruction of the dollar’s value is the best the FOMC can do.

Here’s why:

First, the Fed believes that manipulation of interest rates and the value of the dollar can reduce unemployment rates.

The results of the past 40 years say the opposite.

The Fed’s finger prints in the form of monetary manipulation are all over the dozen financial crises and spikes in unemployment we have experienced since abandoning the gold standard in 1971.  The financial crisis of 2008, caused in no small part by the Fed’s efforts to stimulate the economy by keeping interest rates too low for, as it turned out, way too long is but the latest example of the Fed failing to fulfill its mandate to achieve either price stability or full employment.

The Fed’s most recent experience with Quantitative Easing also belies the entire notion that monetary manipulation can spur the economy.  Between November 2010 and June 2011, the Fed tried to spur economic growth by purchasing $600 billion in Treasury securities, flooding the banking system with reserves and keeping interest rates low.  In response the economy, which had been growing at a 3.4% annual rate, slowed to a 1% annual rate in the first half of 2011.  Once, the Fed stopped supplying all of that liquidity, economic growth in the second half of the year accelerated to a 2.3% annual rate.

Second, the Fed does not use real time indicators of the price level.  Instead, it views inflation through the rear view mirror of the trailing increases in the PCE.  And, even when it had evidence of rising inflation — as it did in the first quarter of last year — it chose to temporize, betting that the spike in inflation would prove temporary.

This spike in inflation did prove temporary, as Fed Chairman Bernanke predicted at the time, but not for the reasons — a slack economy — that he cited.  Instead, the growing debt crisis in Europe led to a massive shift in deposits out of the euro and into the dollar — an event totally out of the Fed’s control.  Yet, this increase in the demand for dollars was far more important than any action taken by the Fed because it increased the value of the dollar and produced a slowdown in the inflation rate.

What we are left with is a trial and error monetary system that depends on the best judgment of 19 men and women who meet every six weeks around a big table at the Federal Reserve in Washington.  At the end of a day and a half of discussions, 11 of them vote on what to do next.  The error the members of the FOMC fear most when they vote is deflation.  So, they have built in a 2% margin of error.

Given the crudeness of the tools the FOMC uses to set monetary policy, allowing for such a margin of error is no doubt prudent.  For example,  when the economy slowed in the first half of last year, inflation picked up, accelerating to a 6.1% annual rate during the second quarter.  And, when the economic growth accelerated in the second half, inflation slowed.  These results are the precise opposite of what the Fed’s playbook says are supposed to happen.

The best the Fed can do — an average debauch in the dollar’s value of 2% a year while producing recurring financial crises and a more cyclical economy — is demonstrably inferior to the results produced by the classical gold standard.  Here’s just one example.   The largest gold discovery of modern times set off the 1849 California gold rush and increased the supply of gold in the world faster than the increase in the output of goods and services.  The price level in the U.S. did increase by12.4 percent over the next 8 years.  That translates into an average of just 1.5% a year.  The gold standard at its worst was better than the best the Fed now promises to do with the paper dollar.

The Fed’s best is hardly good enough.  The time has arrived for the American people to demand something far better — a dollar as good as gold.

Article by Charles Kadler, Forbes.com

Ron Paul: “People Are Frightened! They’ve Lost Faith In Government! They’re Sick & Tired Of Wars!” (Video)

Full-Blown Civil War Erupts On Wall Street – Financial Elite Start Turning On Each Other

Finally, after trillions in fraudulent activity, trillions in bailouts, trillions in printed money, billions in political bribing and billions in bonuses, the criminal cartel members on Wall Street are beginning to get what they deserve. As the Eurozone is coming apart at the seams and as the US economy grinds to a halt, the financial elite are starting to turn on each other. The lawsuits are piling up fast. Here’s an extensive roundup:

Time to put your Big Bank shorts on! Get ready for a run… The chickens are coming home to roost… The Global Banking Cartel’s crimes are being exposed left & right…

Prepare for Shock & Awe…

Well, well… here’s your Shock & Awe:

First up, this shockingly huge $196 billion lawsuit just filed against 17 major banks on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Bank of America is severely exposed in this lawsuit. As the parent company of Countrywide and Merrill Lynch they are on the hook for $57.4 billion. JP Morgan is next in the line of fire with $33 billion. And many death spiraling European banks are facing billions in losses as well. 

FHA Files a $196 Billion Lawsuit Against 17 Banks 

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), as conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises), today filed lawsuits against 17 financial institutions, certain of their officers and various unaffiliated lead underwriters. The suits allege violations of federal securities laws and common law in the sale of residential private-label mortgage-backed securities (PLS) to the Enterprises.

Complaints have been filed against the following lead defendants, in alphabetical order:

1. Ally Financial Inc. f/k/a GMAC, LLC – $6 billion
2. Bank of America Corporation – $6 billion
3. Barclays Bank PLC – $4.9 billion
4. Citigroup, Inc. – $3.5 billion
5. Countrywide Financial Corporation -$26.6 billion
6. Credit Suisse Holdings (USA), Inc. – $14.1 billion
7. Deutsche Bank AG – $14.2 billion
8. First Horizon National Corporation – $883 million
9. General Electric Company – $549 million
10. Goldman Sachs & Co. – $11.1 billion
11. HSBC North America Holdings, Inc. – $6.2 billion
12. JPMorgan Chase & Co. – $33 billion
13. Merrill Lynch & Co. / First Franklin Financial Corp. – $24.8 billion
14. Morgan Stanley – $10.6 billion
15. Nomura Holding America Inc. – $2 billion
16. The Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC – $30.4 billion
17. Société Générale – $1.3 billion

These complaints were filed in federal or state court in New York or the federal court in Connecticut. The complaints seek damages and civil penalties under the Securities Act of 1933, similar in content to the complaint FHFA filed against UBS Americas, Inc. on July 27, 2011. In addition, each complaint seeks compensatory damages for negligent misrepresentation. Certain complaints also allege state securities law violations or common law fraud. [read full FHFA release]

You can read the suits filed against each individual bank here. For some more information read Bloomberg: BofA, JPMorgan Among 17 Banks Sued by U.S. for $196 Billion. Noticeably absent from the list of companies being sued is Wells Fargo.

And the suits just keep coming…

Click here to see complete article

By David DeGraw - ampedstatus.org 

Col. Craig Roberts Discusses Oklahoma City Bombing Investigation Inconsistencies (Video)

Col. Craig Roberts talks about what really happened on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing, and how the FBI confiscated all video footage of that days' event, and still refuses to this day, to turn over this key evidence. Additionally, he talks about mysterious deaths and disappearances of witnesses, including police officers, and people closely associated with the bombing.

"The Entire System Has Been Utterly Destroyed By The MF Global Collapse". Corzine's Criminal Act And Its Ripple Effect

The following letter was sent by Ann Barnhardt, of Barnhardt Capital Managment, to her clients, colleagues, and friends. The successful trader quit the business (and returned her client's funds) because she was disgusted with Obama and his government cronies who have destroyed our country's futures and options markets by allowing corruption to rule the day.

Wake Up America!

BCM Has Ceased Operations

Dear Clients, Industry Colleagues and Friends of Barnhardt Capital Management,

It is with regret and unflinching moral certainty that I announce that Barnhardt Capital Management has ceased operations. After six years of operating as an independent introducing brokerage, and eight years of employment as a broker before that, I found myself, this morning, for the first time since I was 20 years old, watching the futures and options markets open not as a participant, but as a mere spectator.

The reason for my decision to pull the plug was excruciatingly simple: I could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were safe in the futures and options markets – because they are not. And this goes not just for my clients, but for every futures and options account in the United States. The entire system has been utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse. Given this sad reality, I could not in good conscience take one more step as a commodity broker, soliciting trades that I knew were unsafe or holding funds that I knew to be in jeopardy.

The futures markets are very highly-leveraged and thus require an exceptionally firm base upon which to function. 

That base was the sacrosanct segregation of customer funds from clearing firm capital, with additional emergency financial backing provided by the exchanges themselves. Up until a few weeks ago, that base existed, and had worked flawlessly. Firms came and went, with some imploding in spectacular fashion. Whenever a firm failure happened, the customer funds were intact and the exchanges would step in to backstop everything and keep customers 100% liquid – even as their clearing firm collapsed and was quickly replaced by another firm within the system.

Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise. What was a surprise was the reaction of the exchanges and regulators. Their reaction has been to take a bad situation and make it orders of magnitude worse. Specifically, they froze customers out of their accounts WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO TRADE, refusing to even allow them to liquidate. This is unfathomable. The risk exposure precedent that has been set is completely intolerable and has destroyed the entire industry paradigm. No informed person can continue to engage these markets, and no moral person can continue to broker or facilitate customer engagement in what is now a massive game of Russian Roulette.

I have learned over the last week that MF Global is almost certainly the mere tip of the iceberg. There is massive industry-wide exposure to European sovereign junk debt. While other firms may not be as heavily leveraged as Corzine had MFG leveraged, and it is now thought that MFG’s leverage may have been in excess of 100:1, they are still suicidally leveraged and will likely stand massive, unmeetable collateral calls in the coming days and weeks as Europe inevitably collapses. I now suspect that the reason the Chicago Mercantile Exchange did not immediately step in to backstop the MFG implosion was because they knew and know that if they backstopped MFG, they would then be expected to backstop all of the other firms in the system when the failures began to cascade – and there simply isn’t that much money in the entire system. In short, the problem is a SYSTEMIC problem, not merely isolated to one firm.

Perhaps the most ominous dynamic that I have yet heard of in regards to this mess is that of the risk of potential CLAWBACK actions. For those who do not know, “clawback” is the process by which a bankruptcy trustee is legally permitted to re-seize assets that left a bankrupt entity in the time period immediately preceding the entity’s collapse. So, using the MF Global customers as an example, any funds that were withdrawn from MFG accounts in the run-up to the collapse, either because of suspicions the customer may have had about MFG from, say, watching the company’s bond yields rise sharply, or from purely organic day-to-day withdrawls, the bankruptcy trustee COULD initiate action to “clawback” those funds. As a hedge broker, this makes my blood run cold. Generally, as the markets move in favor of a hedge position and equity builds in a client’s account, that excess equity is sent back to the customer who then uses that equity to offset cash market transactions OR to pay down a revolving line of credit. Even the possibility that a customer could be penalized and additionally raped AGAIN via a clawback action after already having their customer funds stolen is simply villainous. While there has been no open indication of clawback actions being initiated by the MF Global trustee, I have been told that it is a possibility.

And so, to the very unpleasant crux of the matter. The futures and options markets are no longer viable. It is my recommendation that ALL customers withdraw from all of the markets as soon as possible so that they have the best chance of protecting themselves and their equity. The system is no longer functioning with integrity and is suicidally risk-laden. The rule of law is non-existent, instead replaced with godless, criminal political cronyism.

Remember, derivatives contracts are NOT NECESSARY in the commodities markets. The cash commodity itself is the underlying reality and is not dependent on the futures or options markets. Many people seem to have gotten that backwards over the past decades. From Abel the animal husbandman up until the year 1964, there were no cattle futures contracts at all, and no options contracts until 1984, and yet the cash cattle markets got along just fine.

Finally, I will not, under any circumstance, consider reforming and re-opening Barnhardt Capital Management, or any other iteration of a brokerage business, until Barack Obama has been removed from office AND the government of the United States has been sufficiently reformed and repopulated so as to engender my total and complete confidence in the government, its adherence to and enforcement of the rule of law, and in its competent and just regulatory oversight of any commodities markets that may reform. So long as the government remains criminal, it would serve no purpose whatsoever to attempt to rebuild the futures industry or my firm, because in a lawless environment, the same thievery and fraud would simply happen again, and the criminals would go unpunished, sheltered by the criminal oligarchy.

To my clients, who literally TO THE MAN agreed with my assessment of the situation, and were relieved to be exiting the markets, and many whom I now suspect stayed in the markets as long as they did only out of personal loyalty to me, I can only say thank you for the honor and pleasure of serving you over these last years, with some of my clients having been with me for over twelve years. I will continue to blog at Barnhardt.biz, which will be subtly re-skinned soon, and will continue my cattle marketing consultation business. I will still be here in the office, answering my phones, with the same phone numbers. Alas, my retirement came a few years earlier than I had anticipated, but there was no possible way to continue given the inevitability of the collapse of the global financial markets, the overthrow of our government, and the resulting collapse in the rule of law.

As for me, I can only echo the words of David:

“This is the Lord’s doing; and it is wonderful in our eyes.”

With Best Regards-
 

Ann Barnhardt

Source

D.C. Becomes America’s Richest City; Avg. Federal Employee Makes $126,000 A Year

This is but a microcosm of how our country got so broke! How in the hell does the federal government justify paying bureaucrats that much money? Stop the Insanity!

Wake Up America!!

Federal employees whose compensation averages more than $126,000 and the nation’s greatest concentration of lawyers helped Washington edge out San Jose as the wealthiest U.S. metropolitan area, government data show.

The U.S. capital has swapped top spots with Silicon Valley, according to recent Census Bureau figures, with the typical household in the Washington metro area earning $84,523 last year. The national median income for 2010 was $50,046.

The figures demonstrate how the nation’s political and financial classes are prospering as the economy struggles with unemployment above 9 percent and thousands of Americans protest in the streets against income disparity, said Kevin Zeese, director of Prosperity Agenda, a Baltimore-based advocacy group trying to narrow the divide between rich and poor.

“There’s a gap that’s isolating Washington from the reality of the rest of the country,” Zeese said. “They just get more and more out of touch.”

Article by Patriot Update

Federal Loans Fund Big-Ticket Energy Projects of Non-US Firms. Taxpayers Will Pay Billions for Another Administration Boondoggle

Among the biggest recipients on the Department of Energy's controversial list of loans to renewable energy companies like the failed Solyndra Inc. are a number of non-U.S. firms whose big-ticket energy projects will cost taxpayers billions of dollars -- but will generate no more than a few hundred permanent U.S. jobs.

Some of the companies employ complex solar technologies that cost more than twice as much as any other land-based renewable system, including nuclear.

The huge cost and relatively low long-term employment payoff for the investments could cast doubt on the Obama administration's claims that big investments in new green technologies will lead the U.S. to innovative parity with countries like China, and also create significant long-term employment gains for the U.S. economy.

As recently as July, for example, President Obama declared in a radio address that "we're accelerating the transition to a clean energy economy and doubling our use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power -- steps that have the potential to create whole new industries and hundreds of thousands of new jobs in America."

A case in point is Abengoa Solar, Inc., a Spanish-owned firm that has received more than $2.6 billion in federal loan guarantees from DoE for two power-generating complexes, with the most recent $1.2 billion guarantee closing just this month. Abengoa's press releases tout the thousands of construction and other jobs that will be result from the projects, one in the Mojave Desert in California, the other southwest of Phoenix.

Nonetheless, the DoE's own website reveals that the two projects will permanently employ no more than 130 people after completion.

Abengoa's entire staff worldwide, according to its 2010 annual report, was 526 employees.

The Solyndra scandal erupted at the end of August, when the company filed for bankruptcy about two years after it was given a loan guarantee from the Department of Energy for nearly $530 million, followed by a loan for the guaranteed amount from the Federal Financing Bank.

Loan guarantees under DoE's so-called 1703 program are given for "innovative clean energy technologies that are typically unable to obtain conventional private financing due to high technology risks."

In the case of at least one Abengoa property, its Mojave Desert project, the administration's involvement apparently goes well beyond a loan guarantee. In its 2010 annual report, the Spanish company reports that it was subsequently able to obtain a loan from the U.S. Treasury’s Federal Financing Bank, which according to its website has "statutory authority to purchase any obligation issued, sold, or guaranteed by a federal agency to ensure that fully guaranteed obligations are financed efficiently."

It may also be debatable whether Abengoa should be able to get federal financing guarantees for its projects purely on the grounds that its technology is so innovative that private sector funding would not be forthcoming. According to its annual report, the use of cutting edge high technology in marketing and creating solar energy facilities is one of the key elements of Abengoa's business model, and a part of its global competitive advantage in solar energy construction.

"This proprietary technology development and a strategy of continued investment in R&D preserves Abengoa Solar's leadership position," the report says. It gives the company "a competitive advantage in an industry where technological change happens quickly, a better chance to offer competitive technologies in the future, as well as an adaptable portfolio of solutions and components for each project or market."

Click here for the annual report

Several efforts by Fox News to contact Abengoa executives to discuss the company's U.S. projects prior to this article's publication were unsuccessful.

In its annual report, Abengoa says it is successfully building plants using similar or related technology in Abu Dhabi, Algeria and multiple locations in Spain -- where expansive subsidies for solar power inaugurated by the Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero were cut back dramatically in 2008, as the country entered its current deep financial crisis.

In the case of its Mojave Desert plant, located about 100 miles south-east of Los Angeles, Abengoa has announced that it has begun building foundations in time to qualify for a 30 percent federal cash grant.

When the Mojave Desert plant is complete -- currently anticipated for 2013 -- it will sell energy to Pacific Gas and Electric, a California utility that is subject to dramatically increased mandates for renewable energy signed earlier this year by California Gov. Jerry Brown, and described in various reports as the most aggressive in the country.

Under the new mandates, California must get 33 percent of its energy from renewable resources -- solar, wind, biofuels -- by the end of 2020. That is a 65 percent increase over the previous mandate, which called for 20 percent renewable by the same deadline.

Critics of the new mandate have said that they will hike already steep electricity prices in the Golden State by an additional 19 percent.

Abengoa's Arizona solar energy plant, which was dubbed the largest solar energy facility in the world when the contract was announced in 2008, is now under construction. It will deliver energy to the Arizona Public Service Company, a state utility, under an Arizona renewable mandate that calls for 15 percent renewable energy generation by 2025.

The Arizona utility has announced that it will hike consumer energy bills by about 6.6 percent to meet the mandate.

In addition to "thousands" of temporary construction jobs on the project, and 60 permanent jobs tallied by the Department of Energy on its website, Abengoa has said that an additional 180 permanent jobs will be produced in Arizona in a factory that will make specialized mirrors for the project.

Both Abengoa projects make use of specialized "solar thermal" power rather than the photovoltaic sun-to-electricity panels familiar to most homeowners and consumers. Solar thermal power generation involves the construction of huge arrays of curved solar mirrors to focus the sun's energy on a tower containing water or another fluid medium, which is superheated and ultimately powers an electricity-producing turbine. Retaining and using heat when the sun is down adds to the expense and complexity of the system.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), such solar thermal power is far and away the most expensive option that it considered in projecting the cost of new electricity technologies over the next four years.

Using a complex calculation known as "levelized cost," EIA says that solar thermal energy will weigh in at $311.60 per megawatt/hour, vs. $210.70 for more conventional solar paneling, and $113.90 for "advanced nuclear."

Click here for the EIA cost estimates

Compared to more conventional energy sources, solar thermal is even pricier -- much pricier. The EIA says that natural gas-fueled energy plants, even using advanced techniques to remove carbon from their emissions, would cost $89.3 per megawatt/hour, while ordinary gas fueled natural gas generation would cost $66.10.

A conventional coal-fired electrical plant -- anathema in green circles -- would provide energy at $94.80 per megawatt/hour, and one equipped with "clean" coal technology and sequestration of carbon emissions would provide electricity at a cost of $136.20 per megawatt/hour.

The second-most pricey option on the EIA list, after solar thermal, is energy from wind turbines placed in the ocean, which comes in at $243.20 per megawatt/hour.

In other words, even that difficult and costly-to-produce energy source is projected to cost only three-quarters as much.

Article by George Russell, Fox News

Was CIA behind Operation Fast and Furious?

Why did the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) let criminals buy firearms, smuggle them across the Mexican border and deliver them into the hands of vicious drug cartels? The ATF claims it launched its now-disgraced Operation Fast and Furious in 2009 to catch the “big fish.” Fast and Furious was designed to stem the “Iron River” flowing from American gun stores into the cartels’ arsenals. The bureau says it allowed gun smuggling so it could track the firearms and arrest the cartel members downstream. Not true.

During the course of Operation Fast and Furious, about 2,000 weapons moved from U.S. gun stores to Mexican drug cartels - exactly as intended.

In congressional testimony, William Newell, former ATF special agent in charge of the Phoenix Field Division, testified that the Internal Revenue Service, Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement were “full partners” in Operation Fast and Furious. Mr. Newell’s list left out the most important player: the CIA. According to a CIA insider, the agency had a strong hand in creating, orchestrating and exploiting Operation Fast and Furious.

The CIA’s motive is clear enough: The U.S. government is afraid the Los Zetas drug cartel will mount a successful coup d’etat against the government of Felipe Calderon.

Founded by ex-Mexican special forces, the Zetas already control huge swaths of Mexican territory. They have the organization, arms and money needed to take over the entire country.

Former CIA pilot Robert Plumlee and former CIA operative and DEA Director Phil Jordan recently said the brutally efficient Mexican drug cartel has stockpiled thousands of weapons to disrupt and influence Mexico’s national elections in 2012. There’s a very real chance the Zetas cartel could subvert the political process completely, as it has throughout the regions it controls.

In an effort to prevent a Los Zetas takeover, Uncle Sam has gotten into bed with the rival Sinaloa cartel, which has close ties to the Mexican military. Recent court filings by former Sinaloa cartel member Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, currently in U.S. custody, reveal that the United States allowed the Sinaloas to fly a 747 cargo plane packed with cocaine into American airspace - unmolested.

The CIA made sure the trade wasn’t one-way. It persuaded the ATF to create Operation Fast and Furious - a “no strings attached” variation of the agency’s previous firearms sting. By design, the ATF operation armed the Mexican government’s preferred cartel on the street level near the American border, where the Zetas are most active.

Operation Fast and Furious may not have been the only way the CIA helped put lethal weapons into the hands of the Sinaloa cartel and its allies, but it certainly was an effective strategy. If drug thugs hadn’t murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry with an ATF- provided weapon, who knows how many thousands more guns would have crossed the U.S. border?

To be sure, Operation Fast and Furious suited the ATF’s needs. It was all too willing to let guns walk to increase its power, prestige and budget in Washington. It actively recruited so-called straw purchasers and happily used American gun dealers as pawns. And it was only one agency in a mosaic of federal agencies helping the CIA actualize its covert plans.

The fact that Operation Fast and Furious was part of the CIA’s black-bag job in Mexico does not excuse the ATF for violating the very federal laws it was created to enforce; for contributing to the deaths of hundreds of innocent citizens, including a Border Patrol agent trying to live up to his oath; or for being unrepentant, uncooperative and unresponsive to the wishes of the American people for honesty, integrity and loyalty to the U.S. Constitution.

Nor should the FBI get a free pass for subverting the criminal-background-check system designed to prevent illegal firearms purchases. The Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department - all major players in the CIA’s grand schemes - should not escape scrutiny, either. In fact, we should not shrug off the activities of any of our federal agencies that broke the law on the Sinaloa’s - and thus the Mexican government’s - behalf.

The Obama administration clearly thinks the entire federal government should help keep the profoundly corrupt Calderon government in power - no matter what. If that means sending lawyers, guns and money to unconscionable criminals, so be it. In this, Obama officials are wrong.

By choosing sides in a brutal war between opposing criminal syndicates rather than sealing our southern border, the Obama administration is fueling brutality and carnage and killing any hope of Mexican democracy. All that aside, either we are a nation of laws or we are not. If we live by our principles, Congress must appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the people in the Obama administration who enabled this reckless gun scheme.

Article by Robert Farago and Ralph Dixon, Courtesy of The Washington Times

Texas Senator John Cornyn Blasts ATF’s Reported Promotion of Supervisors in Ill-Fated Gun Operation

How do you punish 3 of your top supervisors for running a rogue program that sends thousands of firearms into Mexico eventually winding up in cartel hands? And.. some of which end up killing a Border Patrol agent? If you are the ATF you promote them, of course!

Wake Up America!

These Bull Sh*t government agencies are not working for you!

A top Republican senator slammed the Justice Department for reportedly promoting the supervisors of the failed anti-gunrunning sting operation Fast and Furious, which is under a federal and congressional investigation after weapons linked to program were used in a December attack in Mexico that killed a U.S. border patrol agent.

The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives promoted three key supervisors of Operation Fast and Furious who came under fire for pushing the program even after it clearly spiraled out of control.

The three supervisors -- William Newell and David Voth, both field supervisors who managed the program out of the agency’s Phoenix office, and William McMahon, who was the ATF’s deputy director of operations in the West -- are being transferred to Washington for new management positions at the agency’s headquarters, the newspaper reported.

“Until Attorney General (Eric) Holder and Justice Department officials come clean on all alleged gun-walking operations, including a detailed response to allegations of a Texas-based scheme, it is inconceivable to reward those who spearheaded this disastrous operation with cushy desks in Washington,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Cornyn sent a letter to Holder last week demanding answers following reports of alleged Texas-based “gun-walking” programs similar to “Fast and Furious.”

Holder insists that he didn’t know about the operation as it was being carried out. But Republican leaders say he should have known.

Spokesmen for the ATF did not return phone calls to the newspaper seeking comment.

At a congressional hearing in June, three ATF agents said they were repeatedly ordered to step aside while gun buyers in Arizona walked away with AK-47s and other high-powered weaponry headed for Mexican drug cartels. So far, 20 small-time gun-buyers have been indicted, but the investigation is still under way.

ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson admitted last month to congressional investigators that his agency, in at least one instance, allowed sales of high-powered weapons without intercepting them -- and he accuses his superiors at the Justice Department of stonewalling Congress to protect political appointees in the scandal over those decisions.

The operation was designed to track small-time gun buyers up to major weapons traffickers along the U.S. border with Mexico. Critics estimate that 1,800 guns targeted in the operation are unaccounted for, and about two-thirds of those probably are in Mexico.

Courtesy of Fox News

The Next American Revolution

 

What is the Authority for Rebellion? 

 

By Mark Alexander

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson

(The following essay may cause heartburn and knee-jerk reactions, especially in those who are predisposed to "give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety." But as Benjamin Franklin concluded, they "deserve neither liberty nor safety." For such feeble souls, Samuel Adams advised, "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!" For those who are not cast among that faint-hearted lot, please read on.)

I receive hundreds of messages every day from Patriots across the nation. For the last three years, one thematic question has emerged with ever-increasing frequency. To paraphrase that question: "What is the authority to rebel against the central government?"

That question is most often asked by those who have taken their oath of allegiance to our Constitution, particularly active duty, reserve and veteran military personnel. Typical is this note from a disabled combat Patriot this week: "Please clarify for me when my solemn oath to 'support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign AND [his emphasis] domestic,' kicks in."

Such questions were once deemed too radical and discordant for consideration in civil discourse. However, as Rule of Law enshrined in our Constitution has been all but completely usurped by the rule of men through the Left's so-called living constitution, the frequency and tenor of questions about the future of Essential Liberty for our once-great Republic is propelling them into mainstream debate.

The unfortunate ascension of Barack Hussein Obama and his socialist cadres had a silver lining: It revitalized the spirit of American Patriotism in tens of millions of our countrymen. The imminent threat to Liberty posed by Democratic Socialism is the catalyst driving this great awakening and it is spreading.

To the question of the authority to rebel against government, we turn to the Constitution's guiding document, our Declaration of Independence. It clearly affirms the "unalienable rights" upon which our Constitution was instituted, and those rights supersede the authority of the Constitution itself as they are the inherent rights of man.

This authorizing language reads as follows: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..."

So, is it time for another American Revolution?

The answer to that question depends upon the answer to a more fundamental question: Is it too late to restore authority of our Constitution? Moreover, will the current dire circumstances result in a sunset or sunrise on Liberty?

In my enthusiastic analysis, the degraded state of the union presents a great opportunity for restoration of Rule of Law, and this sunrise on Liberty is already in progress under the broad heading of the Tea Party movement. Further, having been in close proximity to revolutions on foreign soil, I am intimately aware that restoration (or revolution without shots fired) is a far more desirable path than the violent one -- not that the latter must ever be excluded as an option.

But behind every sunrise is a sunset. As Ronald Reagan warned thirty years ago, when the "Reagan Revolution" temporarily restored our nation's course toward Liberty, "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States when men were free."

Make no mistake; there are formidable obstacles to the restoration of Liberty. The most daunting of these impediments is complacency, the result of either a false sense of comfort, institutionalized ignorance or both. The votes of some 43 percent of Americans have already been co-opted Barack Obama socialist programs and policies. Nonetheless, I still believe that the ballot box is a viable alternative to the bullet box at this juncture. Every effort to work within what remains of our Constitution's framework to restore its Rule of Law, as outlined in The Patriot Declaration must be exhausted.

If the 2012 election cycle does not provide sufficient momentum toward the goal of restored Liberty, there are substantial measures of civil disobedience that can ratchet up the pressure -- measures which will find support among true conservatives in both the House and Senate.

Either way, we face a long, uphill battle. It has taken many years to degrade Rule of Law, and it will take many years to fully restore it.

As for timing, Obama has already dropped a debt bomb on our economy, the goal of which is to "fundamentally transform the United States of America." The greatest systemic risk to Liberty that this act of economic violence poses is the destruction of free enterprise by way of taxation, regulation and insurmountable debt. Accelerating the Left's effort to crush free enterprise, Obama and his Senate majority rejected the House's Balanced Budget Amendment as part of the recent "budget deal" to increase U.S. debt. The result: As of this date, our nation's total outstanding debt is now in excess of our total annual gross domestic product (economic output), for the first time since 1947. Then, most of the debt was associated with WWII. Now most of the debt is associated with socialist spending programs for which there is no constitutional authority.

It should, of course, be the highest aspiration of every Patriot to restore our Constitution's Rule of Law, a fundamental principle of which is the separation of economy and state. But is there still time, and are we sufficiently resolute?

Leading the forces arrayed against us are the statist extremists, the "useful idiots" on the Left who now vilify as "terrorists" those seeking to restore Rule of Law.

In a closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting this week hosted by Veep Joe Biden, Demo Rep. Mike Doyle said of the recent budget negotiations, "We have negotiated with terrorists. This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money." Biden, to his everlasting shame, concurred: "They have acted like terrorists."

Biden, Doyle, and the Kool-Aid-drinking legions of the Left are formidable. But history shows that Barack Obama's model for prosperity, is a blueprint for economic collapse, a model that is antithetical to prosperity and ultimately at odds with Liberty.

Patriots, we have an obligation to secure Liberty for our posterity, and in the words of John Adams, "Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives."

Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to James Madison dated January 30, 1787: "I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. ... An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."

Today, Tea Party "terrorists" should expect no such accommodation, as "honest republican governors" are few and far between.

That same year, Jefferson famously wrote more pointedly to John Adams's son-in-law, William Smith, "What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if the rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms."

Short of the bullet box, it is my fervent prayer that on 6 November 2012, an unprecedented army of American Patriots will use the ballot box to further alter the course of our nation toward Liberty and Rule of Law.

That notwithstanding, American Patriots remain well aware of both the authority for rebellion and more importantly the obligation to overcome tyranny, as enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. There may come a time to fight, and our Founders wisely extended to us the means for rebellion. We also fully understand the cost outlined in its closing: "For the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."

We do.

Courtesy of The Patriot Post

Ex-CIA Agent Explains How Bloggers Can "Dump Congress On Its Ass"

Robert D. Steele, gives credence to all who speak out against our illegal government. As more and more ex-employees come out with what the REAL mission of our government is, the truth shall come to light and the truth shall set us free..

Wake Up America!

Banks Always Get Their Bailout

 

When are we going to say enough is enough? When are we going to tell our elected leaders that their job is to represent OUR interests and not those of their rich taskmasters? When??

Wake Up America!  This is YOUR land.. Take It Back!!

The fix is always in with the Big Banks.

The biggest fix was when they were declared "too big to fail," which guaranteed they'd get a taxpayer bailout, even though some of them deserved to fail, or at least deserved to be broken up. But since they had their hooks in with the politicians, they got the bailouts.

They always get the bailouts.

The latest bailout is Greece. Now, you hear a lot about a bailout for Greece, but it's not for Greece -- it's a bailout for the banks, the banks that gambled on Greek debt. Banks bought Greek debt because the Greek bonds offered really high interest rates. They offered high returns, because they were really risky bets, just like the sub-prime instruments of a few years back. And just like the sub-prime market, the Greek bond market turned out to be too good to be true. The returns were spectacular because the underlying product was lousy.

But instead of taking their losses, the banks are relying on their collection agencies -- the IMF and their friends in government -- to get their money back. The fix is in, again.

So taxpayers -- both here and in Greece -- are going to be paying off rich bankers who made lousy bets, again! It's the scam of all time, and no one seems to care. No one, except us, and, hopefully, you.

Article by David Asman, FoxBusiness