marym625
marym625's JournalI honestly thought I posted this here
Oy! Hell getting old
Cross post from GD meant to be in here in the first place.
Greg Palast is allowing free download of Vultures and Vote Rustlers
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026534366
Greg Palast is allowing free download of Vultures and Vote Rustlers
Just for tonight!
http://www.gregpalast.com/vulturesandvoterustlersfreedownload/
That and he has a great article about Chelsea Manning, wikileaks and the Deep Water Horizon disaster. I would post about this but it's not my area of expertise. I figure someone else who posted more about it can use the article in a post
Chelsea Manning
and the Deepwater Horizon Killings
http://www.gregpalast.com/chelsea-manning-and-the-deepwater-horizon-killings/#more-10399
Larry Summers and the Secret "End-Game" Memo (collapse of the world economy)
X post from GD. I don't want to detract from the discussion by posting it just here. Too important not to be discussed in full. I'm pretty sure what members of this group think
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026531352
Larry Summers and the Secret "End-Game" Memo (collapse of the world economy)
I have discovered that many people are still not aware of this immeasurably important document and what happened because of it. Even though this article by Mr. Greg Palast was written back on August 22, 2013, it is just as important today as it was then. Maybe even more so.
Posted in full with permission from Greg Palast.
The Memo confirmed every conspiracy freak's fantasy: that in the late 1990s, the top US Treasury officials secretly conspired with a small cabal of banker big-shots to rip apart financial regulation across the planet. When you see 26.3%unemployment in Spain, desperation and hunger in Greece, riots in Indonesia and Detroit in bankruptcy, go back to this End Game memo, the genesis of the blood and tears.
The Treasury official playing the bankers' secret End Game was Larry Summers. Today, Summers is Barack Obama's leading choice for Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, the world's central bank. If the confidential memo* is authentic, then Summers shouldn't be serving on the Fed, he should be serving hard time in some dungeon reserved for the criminally insane of the finance world.
The memo is authentic.
To get that confirmation, I would have to fly to Geneva and wangle a meeting with the Secretary General of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy. I did. Lamy, the Generalissimo of Globalization, told me,
"The WTO was not created as some dark cabal of multinationals secretly cooking plots against the people . We don't have cigar-smoking, rich, crazy bankers negotiating."
Then I showed him the memo.
It begins with Summers flunky, Timothy Geithner, reminding his boss to call the then most powerful CEOs on the planet and get them to order their lobbyist armies to march:
"As we enter the end-game of the WTO financial services negotiations, I believe it would be a good idea for you to touch base with the CEOs ."
To avoid Summers having to call his office to get the phone numbers (which, under US law, would have to appear on public logs), Geithner listed their private lines. And here they are:
Goldman Sachs: John Corzine (212)902-8281
Merrill Lynch: David Kamanski (212)449-6868
Bank of America, David Coulter (415)622-2255
Citibank: John Reed (212)559-2732
Chase Manhattan: Walter Shipley (212)270-1380
Lamy was right: They don't smoke cigars. Go ahead and dial them. I did, and sure enough, got a cheery personal hello from Reedcheery until I revealed I wasn't Larry Summers. (Note: The other numbers were swiftly disconnected. And Corzine can't be reached while he faces criminal charges.)
It's not the little cabal of confabs held by Summers and the banksters that's so troubling. The horror is in the purpose of the "end game" itself.
Let me explain:
The year was 1997. US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks. That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks. It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels.
Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game: "derivatives trading." JP Morgan alone would soon carry $88 trillion* of these pseudo-securities on its books as "assets."
Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers (soon to replace Rubin as Secretary) body-blocked any attempt to control derivatives.
But what was the use of turning US banks into derivatives casinos if money would flee to nations with safer banking laws?
The answer conceived by the Big Bank Five: eliminate controls on banks in every nation on the planet in one single move. It was as brilliant as it was insanely dangerous.
How could they pull off this mad caper? The bankers' and Summers' game was to use the Financial Services Agreement, an abstruse and benign addendum to the international trade agreements policed by the World Trade Organization.
Until the bankers began their play, the WTO agreements dealt simply with trade in goodsthat is, my cars for your bananas. The new rules ginned-up by Summers and the banks would force all nations to accept trade in "bads" toxic assets like financial derivatives.
Until the bankers' re-draft of the FSA, each nation controlled and chartered the banks within their own borders. The new rules of the game would force every nation to open their markets to Citibank, JP Morgan and their derivatives "products."
And all 156 nations in the WTO would have to smash down their own Glass-Steagall divisions between commercial savings banks and the investment banks that gamble with derivatives.
The job of turning the FSA into the bankers' battering ram was given to Geithner, who was named Ambassador to the World Trade Organization.
Bankers Go Bananas
Why in the world would any nation agree to let its banking system be boarded and seized by financial pirates like JP Morgan?
The answer, in the case of Ecuador, was bananas. Ecuador was truly a banana republic. The yellow fruit was that nation's life-and-death source of hard currency. If it refused to sign the new FSA, Ecuador could feed its bananas to the monkeys and go back into bankruptcy. Ecuador signed.
And so onwith every single nation bullied into signing.
Every nation but one, I should say. Brazil's new President, Inacio Lula da Silva, refused. In retaliation, Brazil was threatened with a virtual embargo of its products by the European Union's Trade Commissioner, one Peter Mandelson, according to another confidential memo* I got my hands on. But Lula's refusenik stance paid off for Brazil which, alone among Western nations, survived and thrived during the 2007-9 bank crisis.
China signedbut got its pound of flesh in return. It opened its banking sector a crack in return for access and control of the US auto parts and other markets. (Swiftly, two million US jobs shifted to China.)
The new FSA pulled the lid off the Pandora's box of worldwide derivatives trade. Among the notorious transactions legalized: Goldman Sachs (where Treasury Secretary Rubin had been Co-Chairman) worked a secret euro-derivatives swap with Greece which, ultimately, destroyed that nation. Ecuador, its own banking sector de-regulated and demolished, exploded into riots. Argentina had to sell off its oil companies (to the Spanish) and water systems (to Enron) while its teachers hunted for food in garbage cans. Then, Bankers Gone Wild in the Eurozone dove head-first into derivatives pools without knowing how to swimand the continent is now being sold off in tiny, cheap pieces to Germany.
Of course, it was not just threats that sold the FSA, but temptation as well. After all, every evil starts with one bite of an apple offered by a snake. The apple: The gleaming piles of lucre hidden in the FSA for local elites. The snake was named Larry.
Does all this evil and pain flow from a single memo? Of course not: the evil was The Game itself, as played by the banker clique. The memo only revealed their game-plan for checkmate.
And the memo reveals a lot about Summers and Obama.
While billions of sorry souls are still hurting from worldwide banker-made disaster, Rubin and Summers didn't do too badly. Rubin's deregulation of banks had permitted the creation of a financial monstrosity called "Citigroup." Within weeks of leaving office, Rubin was named director, then Chairman of Citigroupwhich went bankrupt while managing to pay Rubin a total of $126 million.*
Then Rubin took on another post: as key campaign benefactor to a young State Senator, Barack Obama. Only days after his election as President, Obama, at Rubin's insistence, gave Summers the odd post of US "Economics Tsar" and made Geithner his Tsarina (that is, Secretary of Treasury). In 2010, Summers gave up his royalist robes to return to "consulting" for Citibank and other creatures of bank deregulation whose payments have raised Summers' net worth by $31 million* since the "end-game" memo.
That Obama would, at Robert Rubin's demand, now choose Summers to run the Federal Reserve Board means that, unfortunately, we are far from the end of the game.
* * * * * * * *
There are many reasons this is still as important as it was when it happened.
Take, for example, the threat from Larry Summers to Elizabeth Warren in 2009:
https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/04/29/stunning-quote-larry-summers-to-elizabeth-warren-in-2009-insiders-dont-criticize-other-insiders/
And more importantly, Larry Summers is a main adviser to Clinton on economic strategy.
*There are links in the article by Greg Palast that download documents. I don't know how to create those links here. If you are interested in them, please visit his website.
Original Palast article:
http://www.gregpalast.com/larry-summers-and-the-secret-end-game-memo/
Can someone tell me how to create a link in a post
That are the words from the link? I know I am saying that badly. A hyperlink I think it's called? So if I wanted to say, "in the new York Times article" if someone clicked on that it would take them to the article
Thank you for any help
Discussion- ending militarization of police, police brutality and gov sanctioned murder by LEO.
X posted from GD.
I truly believe this is one of the biggest problems facing us. It is the arm of the oligarchy to keep us under control. It is allowing human rights violations beyond belief, including actual torture, incarceration at rates that are unheard of and, of course, outright murder.
The man behind the tortures in Chicago is actually receiving a pension
I am cross posting here because I believe that this is just another issue that doesn't seem to fit in with the current party agenda
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026527597
Discussion- ending militarization of police, police brutality and gov sanctioned murder by LEO.
Let's figure out what we have to do to end this horror.
This is not a new problem. People of color, especially young black men, have been victims of LEO and judicial system oppression, brutality and murder since the beginning of our country. Poor and mentally ill people are next in line when it comes to these horrendous practices
The fact we are seeing it so often is due to technology. The fact we see it happening and still no one is punished is not new. However, the fact we have proof in at least 3 videos now of planted "evidence" is new.
I have been calling my elected officials and writing them to end the practice of the sale and gifting of weapons of war on the federal level for a while now. But how do we overhaul the local level of these practices?
Since I posted that we could possibly have a discussion today to come up with solutions, there has been some movement by a few elected officials discussing this.
Please, give us your thoughts. Let's start a grassroots movement and stop the insanity
A couple articles:
Top US lawmakers to discuss police killings as reform momentum builds
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/16/congress-police-killings-debate-reform?CMP=ema_565
'It's Not Over': Families Of Slain Black Men Call For End To Police Brutality After Shooting Of Walter Scott
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/7034528
Brinks Guards spontaneously walk off job and join Fight 4 $15
It's happening. Thousands of fast food workers are on strike in hundreds of cities.
And they aren't in the streets alone. Home care workers are there. Child care workers and teachers. Walmart employees. Adjunct professors. Airport workers. And even a group of Brinks armed guards who spontaneously walked off their jobs this morning.
Tens of thousands of us are demanding $15, fair pay, and union rights in over 300 cities across the globe.
Here's what CHANGE looked like this morning in Chicago.
Find the Fight 4 $15 near you today. Remember not to patronize a fast food place today
Happening in small towns and big cities all over the world today. Find a fight for $15 near you. Just enter your zip code.
Remember not to purchase from a fast food restaurant today
http://april15.org/rallylookup/
Profile Information
Name: Mary MathieuGender: Female
Hometown: Chicago
Member since: Wed Sep 12, 2012, 09:25 PM
Number of posts: 17,997