Secret Agenda in Syria? Larry Summers and Cronies Opening the World to Criminal Banksters

[n2doc]

Iraq and Libya have been taken out, and Iran has been heavily boycotted. Syria is now in the cross-hairs. Why? Here is one overlooked scenario.

September 4, 2013 |
In an August 2013 article titled “Larry Summers and the Secret ‘End-game’ Memo,” Greg Palast posted evidence of a secret late-1990s plan devised by Wall Street and U.S. Treasury officials to open banking to the lucrative derivatives business. To pull this off required the relaxation of banking regulations not just in the US but globally. The vehicle to be used was the Financial Services Agreement of the World Trade Organization.

The “end-game” would require not just coercing support among WTO members but taking down those countries refusing to join. Some key countries remained holdouts from the WTO, including Iraq, Libya, Iran and Syria. In these Islamic countries, banks are largely state-owned; and “usury” – charging rent for the “use” of money – is viewed as a sin, if not a crime. That puts them at odds with the Western model of rent extraction by private middlemen. Publicly-owned banks are also a threat to the mushrooming derivatives business, since governments with their own banks don’t need interest rate swaps, credit default swaps, or investment-grade ratings by private rating agencies in order to finance their operations.

Bank deregulation proceeded according to plan, and the government-sanctioned and -nurtured derivatives business mushroomed into a $700-plus trillion pyramid scheme. Highly leveraged, completely unregulated, and dangerously unsustainable, it collapsed in 2008 when investment bank Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, taking a large segment of the global economy with it. The countries that managed to escape were those sustained by public banking models outside the international banking net.

These countries were not all Islamic. Forty percent of banks globally are publicly-owned. They are largely in the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—which house forty percent of the global population. They also escaped the 2008 credit crisis, but they at least made a show of conforming to Western banking rules. This was not true of the “rogue” Islamic nations, where usury was forbidden by Islamic teaching. To make the world safe for usury, these rogue states had to be silenced by other means. Having failed to succumb to economic coercion, they wound up in the crosshairs of the powerful US military.

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/larry-summers-and-syria?paging=off

[polly7]

1. With regard to that, Gaddafi had made a double faux-pas,

he'd been financing RASCOM, created to bring down the cost of communication on the African continent, cutting out its dependance on the World Bank and IMF.

[chimpymustgo]

5. What did Iraq, Lybia, Syria and Iran have in common?

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The Holdouts

That was the fate of countries in the WTO, but Palast did not discuss those that were not in that organization at all, including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. These seven countries were named by U.S. General Wesley Clark (Ret.) in a 2007 “Democracy Now” interview as the new “rogue states” being targeted for take down after September 11, 2001. He said that about 10 days after 9-11, he was told by a general that the decision had been made to go to war with Iraq. Later, the same general said they planned to take out seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.

What did these countries have in common? Besides being Islamic, they were not members either of the WTO or of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That left them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers’ central bank in Switzerland. Other countries later identified as “rogue states” that were also not members of the BIS included North Korea, Cuba, and Afghanistan.

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The Public Bank Alternative

Countries laboring under the yoke of an extractive private banking system are being forced into “structural adjustment” and austerity by their unrepayable debt. But some countries have managed to escape. In the Middle East, these are the targeted “rogue nations.” Their state-owned banks can issue the credit of the state on behalf of the state, leveraging public funds for public use without paying a massive tribute to private middlemen. Generous state funding allows them to provide generously for their people.

Like Libya and Iraq before they were embroiled in war, Syria provides free education at all levels and free medical care. It also provides subsidized housing for everyone (although some of this has been compromised by adoption of an IMF structural adjustment program in 2006 and the presence of about 2 million Iraqi and Palestinian refugees). Iran too provides nearly free higher education and primary health care.

Like Libya and Iraq before takedown, Syria and Iran have state-owned central banks that issue the national currency and are under government control. Whether these countries will succeed in maintaining their financial sovereignty in the face of enormous economic, political and military pressure remains to be seen.

As for Larry Summers, after proceeding through the revolving door to head Citigroup, he became State Senator Barack Obama’s key campaign benefactor. He played a key role in the banking deregulation that brought on the current crisis, causing millions of US citizens to lose their jobs and their homes. Yet Summers is President Obama’s first choice to replace Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve Chairman. Why? He has proven he can manipulate the system to make the world safe for Wall Street; and in an upside-down world in which bankers rule, that seems to be the name of the game.

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[polly7]

6. +1. Thanks, and .....

Gaddafi had also pledged to fund the creation of an African investment bank, an African monetary fund and an African central bank. African leaders felt that these Africa-centered institutions could completely end its dependence on the IMF and the World Bank. The US$ 30 billion which was frozen during the first unrest in Benghazi was meant to finance these.

[chimpymustgo]

8. Oh my, that's excellent information! Thank you.

What do you think really happened in Benghazi? It's horrible that those lives were lost, but why are the Rethugs pushing the story? Why did rMoney have that smug look on his face right after the attack, like he knew something nobody else knew?

Everything that happens now is so shrouded in lies and subplots and misdirections.

[polly7]

10. I truly have no idea. I just remembered the info I posted above because it was almost completely

ignored during all the cheering for NATO bombings in Libya, and I found that amazing ... and frustrating. I hope you get some answers re the 2012 attack, yes it was just awful.

[Trillo]

2. The U.S. post office could become a public U.S. bank. NT

[99th_Monkey]

3. Making the world safe for unbridled usury <-- US foreign policy

yep.

[Egalitarian Thug]

4. Same as it ever was. There are evil people running our world, supported by

an uncountable number of the stupid and the greedy.
& R

[KoKo]

7. Recommend...that was an interesting read...More Summers Info...

But, supposedly he is Obama's pick ....no matter what is exposed about Summers...he's part of the tight group of holdovers from Clinton Admin, that Obama trusts because he feels that that group knew what they were doing during the Financial Meltdown caused by the Deregulated Bankers.

[malaise]

9. And it is Shariah banking laws that keep their corrupt thiefing hands out

of the Middle East. It's all coming together.

[questionseverything]

11. end game

...where usury was forbidden by Islamic teaching.