A must read here. The author does not come at this problem exactly from our point of view (he's probably a monetarist), but has some astounding information.
Geithner's last job, as the President of the New York Fed highlights that question. The NY Fed's most important jobs, arguably, are safety and soundness supervision and capital market supervision. Success in carrying out those responsibilities should be the basic litmus test for the measuring how well the NY Fed is serving the public trust. In these roles it is supposed to examine, regulate and oversee the Federal Reserve regulated bank holding companies in the NY Fed's region, the largest bank holding companies in the country, many of which were AIG's counterparties.
I expect documents to come to light that will show that Geithner and Summers did the WTO negotiations on behalf of the industry and viewed the completion as a 'deliverable' to their financial constituents. How can Obama say, while Summers and Geithner are his team, "if the banks want a fight, I am ready to fight them"?
Geithner is a scapegoat. Bernanke got re-confirmed, so they're going to throw Geithner under the bus to quell mounting populist rage. It won't do us any good though because they'll just install another bankster shill in the Treasury and go on fleecing the US taxpayers.
Update: Reuters has pulled the story referenced below. We'll keep an eye out for any further updates.
A central plank to Obama's camapign was a pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class. Here's a video on how that is going. (Thanks to my friend Adam Radman at ATR)
Now, Reuters and Drudge are reporting on the back-door, sneaky way the Administration is planning to cut the deficit - not by cutting spending, or trimming back our overseas empire. No, it's to squeeze more money out of your pocket.
In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year -- effectively a tax hike by stealth.
If anyone is interested, the article can also still be found here (for now):
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20100201/backdoor-taxes-to-hit-middle-cla ss.htm
And Business Insider reported on the article-pull:
http://www.businessinsider.com/reuters-takes-down-story-linked-by -drudge-report-2010-2
Methinks the peons are not going to like this! Thing is, we don't need a bunch of RINOs jumping on the band wagon and taxing us more, as in the past! Got to pay for all of those government programs and the "workers" they employ!
Posted by Jesse Benton on 01/30/10 Last updated 01/30/10
Big News! Last year, Campaign for Liberty commissioned Bruce Fein, president of the American Freedom Agenda and former Deputy Attorney General, to write a foreign policy book. We needed a hard core educational tool that we can circulate to show the absurdity of the warfare state from someone with rock-ribbed intellectual credentials.
The book is complete and is now in its final editing process! Campaign for Liberty will publish, print, and promote this book through our contacts and social networks and mount a major media campaign to make sure this work gets serious attention at a critical time.
For the first time, pasted below is an exclusive sneak peak for our members. I cannot wait to get this published!
THE AMERICAN EMPIRE: BEFORE THE FALL
by Bruce Fein
Chapter 1
The American Empire At Its Meridian
It is the best of times for the American Empire.
It is the worst of times for the American Republic.
President Barack Obama has embraced if not bettered the national security instruction of the Bush-Cheney duumvirate, confounding messianic expectations.
His Nobel Peace Prize address boasted of the American Empire's six decades of policing the world, and of his unchecked power reminiscent of British Kings to commence war in ostensible defense of the United States or for professed humanitarian purposes on his say-so alone. The President spoke while he expanded United States wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan against adversaries unthreatening to United States sovereignty.
More than 100,000 American troops are fighting in Iraq while civil war or partition looms.
The post-9/11 perpetual and global war against international terrorism continues unabated. The United States claims unique legal power to violate the sovereignty of every foreign country in seeking to capture or kill an Al Qaeda suspect.
Now United States weapons, money, troops, military advisors, and professed nation-building bureaucrats are poised to intervene in Yemen in response to a foiled Christmas day attempt to blow up a commercial aircraft by a Nigerian Muslim youth who may have been radicalized there. The Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Joe Lieberman (Ind. Conn.), declares the incident an act of war that requires a military, not a law enforcement response. He advocates for the would-be bomber, 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutullab, to be regarded as a prisoner of war and prosecuted before a military commission. Somalia is next in the queue to be invaded by the American Empire because of the presence there of the Somali terrorist organization Al Shabab, which collaborates with Al Qaeda in Yemen.
Tiny Denmark, whose defense budget is a decimal point of the Pentagon's, is less easily frightened. On January 1, 2010, a Somali Muslim attempted to assassinate artist Kurt Westergaard in revenge for a 2005 cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammad as a terrorist. The cartoon had earlier provoked Muslim firebombing attacks on Danish diplomatic missions and three other radical Islamic plots to kill the Danish cartoonist. Denmark's intelligence chief asserted the assassination incident was "terrorist related," with a possible connection to Al Shabab. The Danish Prime Minister descried the terrorism as "an attack on our open society and our democracy." Yet Denmark did not declare war on terrorism or against Al Shabab. It did not declare the would-be assassin a prisoner of war. It charged him with attempted murder subject to prosecution in civilian courts with customary due process protections. The American Empire would have characterized the crime as war, and the perpetrator as a warrior.
Stories featured in leading newspapers and broadcasts corroborate General Douglas MacArthur's post-World War II observation: "Our economy is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear." Never has United States sovereignty been so invulnerable. Never has the United States been so frightened of foreign danger.
The Empire is electrified by a feeling of self-righteousness. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sermonized: "America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great."
The Founding Fathers would be shocked. They had constructed an American Republic that vehemently opposed crusades, constant warfare and virtual deification of the President. They had pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to defeat the British Empire, and to renounce entangling alliances as the bane of peace, checks and balances, limited government, and individual liberty. President Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural Address proclaimed: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none." President Grover Cleveland elaborated on the foreign policy of the United States inherited from the Constitution's makers:
It is the policy of peace suitable to our interests. It is the policy of neutrality; rejecting any share in foreign brawls and ambitions on other continents, and repelling their intrusion here. It is the policy of Monroe and of Washington and Jefferson: Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
But the Founding Fathers' handiwork has turned to ashes. The American Empire's annual military budget exceeds $690 billion, greater than the yearly military expenditures of the next 25 countries combined. United States military spending climbs despite the disappearance of all foreign dangers to United States sovereignty.
I'm also proud to announce that Bruce Fein will be joining us at CPAC 2010 for a C4L-sponsored panel on why we need to oppose the War on Terror. It's sure to be an exciting event!
If money for anti-British militant Irish Catholics were taken up in bars in Boston, Chicago and New York, and after terrorist attacks and attempts, decided to fly UAV drones over the cities to bomb the bars, killing innocents, we know what we, and our government would say.
Unless, of course, our government was corrupt, bribed by the Brits, and militarily inferior and dependent on their bribes and weapons.
And just look at Britain now! The IRA no longer bombs Britain, but their own government accelerates the pace of its police-state technology to what end?
I'd also recommend Chalmers Johnson's excellent book "Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic"
It's really the third book in his "American Empire" trilogy, after "Blowback" and "The Sorrows of Empire", all of which are good, but it can be read out-of-sequence.
Anyone who thinks C4L was straying away from non-interventionism with the latest incident/miscommunication, they obviously are not holding back in fighting the warfare state.
Bruce Fein is the last person to write on American foreign policy. He is a paid agent of the Turkish government to deny the Armenian Genocide. Fein as a paid agent from Ankara, Turkey and the Turkish Coalition of America legitimizes the illegal Turkish military occupation of 37% of the Republic of Cyprus. Fein is paid by the Turkish government in which religious, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression has been limited by the government. Turkey has charged journalists and intellectuals for insulting Turkishness if they speak out about the Armenian Genocide. The most popular book sold in Turkey is 'Mein Kampf' written by Hitler. Also, the military runs the show in Turkey.
Alexander Va, Where's your proof that Bruce Fein is a paid operative of Turkey? Are you trying to say that there are people who espouse non-invention or neutrality because they are paid by muslim nations, who want to see islam spread across every nation and take over the entire world. I think that could be a viable theory of some sort. Although we as citizens, who believe in the ideas proposed by some of our founders on the basis of neutrality and peace among all nations should know that we can believe in these ideas as true and tried. If you believe that libertarian, constitutional or independent political writers and politicians are bought out by a form of islam in attempt to take over the world you sound paranoid like a neo-con trying to cover up your hate for people of different faiths. In my opinion, if we actually followed the advice of our founders we would have established strong and respectable ties with the middle east by now. Thus there wouldn't be any form of radical sects of islam believing that America is the evil they must bring down. I will read this book because I believe in the ideals it has nothing to do with who the author is. Just like it doesn't matter who espouses the ideas of liberty, peace, non-interventionism, sound money, free markets and constitutional government. If that person truly believes this I will support that individual for office.
Jesse Benton listed his credentials above. Are you certain that you have the right person?
Your claims should be checked out, for real. That would not bode well for Campaign for Liberty or the entire grassroots movement to promote someone if they are who you claim they are.
I consider this progress. In the next interview maybe the subject of GBOT and blowback will be discussed.
Most notably however is the appearances of Ron Paul all over the media. CNBC, Glen Beck, and Larry King today.
The power of this man and the liberty movement will soon be acknowledged and what a sight it will bring.
One of the lessons learned from the Vietnam conflict was the fact that a gorilla campaign does not mean killing troops, but wounding, as a wounded soldier takes more resources from the enemy than the dead. Killing more of them than they kill of us does not apply.
Evidence can always be manufactured, as we saw leading up to the Iraq invasion. Hussein was our guy and invaded Iran with our help in the '80s. On whose evidence do you obliterate a people?
Glenn isn't bad in principle to my knowledge I think he is mad like the rest of us and thats why he was talking about bombing the daylights out of people. I think a lot of warmongers really are just mad and they search for a black sheep or scapegoat to blame.
I was in the car, switched stations, and viola this interview began. I caught it right from the beginning. I found myself cheering Dr.Paul almost every time he opened his mouth - what truth he speaks! I think Glenn is beginning to learn his lessons! Fantastic!!
This was really refreshing. It doesn't sound like Mr. Beck is too far off from Dr.Paul, at this point. Although, I'm skeptical of all talk show hosts, as I always question if they are genuine in the beliefs they express because they're out for ratings, I am glad Mr. Beck engaged Dr. Paul on this subject. It's a debate that we need to have in the country as often as possible.
Our friend Tucker Carlson is leading an excellent team and has launched a new news and comentary site The Daily Caller. Check them out at www.TheDailyCaller.com.
Tucker is a solid libertarian Constitutionalist, one of the most clever journalists out there, and a great guy to boot. I have a feeling The Daily Caller will quickly be a regular "must read" for our movement.
Tucker said on the Bubba the Love Sponge show that he left the R4R because of the 911 Truthers and mostly Jesse Ventura's speech about 911 being an inside job... He thinks Ron Paul made a mistake in letting the 911 Truthers hang on to him...
Meh... I've seen some of Tucker's appearances as a Cato "scholar" and they're pretty bland. He says some good things at times but seems pro-state at others.
And jumping ship at R4R because of the truth movement is pure BS. 9/11 was clearly an inside job.
9/11 could have been, we have all seen the documentaries. But until we get hard proof, perhaps some admissions of guilt, etc. I think it was less an inside job and more like complacent knowledge of what was going on and using it as a tool for war.
Personally if your a 911 truther its up to you, I have no disrespect for your belief in something that is still a theory in the mainstream.
I don't know why anyone would think that Ron Paul "let's Truthers hang on to him."
Regardless of what proof their is/was, Ron Paul has never tried to tell people what to believe or disbelieve...and he certainly doesn't pass judgement on those beliefs. I've only ever seen him encourage people to think for themselves, be independent, work hard, and love their family. This makes me fairly certain that he knows people are all different, and if you want everyone to agree with everything as YOU see it, well, you're just not going to have many people around ya. Ron Paul respects individuality without judging it...based on what I've read so far, it sounds like this guy could learn a thing or two about that.
To be fair though, I haven't ever heard him speak or read anything he's written, so I am only going by what's been posted here.
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
—Thomas Jefferson
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