US Democracy: Private Global Bankers A Threat?
Dec 2nd, 2010 | no responses
The real security threat, internal or external, to the USA may not come from Osama bin Laden or WikiLeaks. The Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says banks are undermining the rule of law in America and bad mortgages still fester. In 2009 Stiglitz had advocated nationalization of US banks.
Yesterday, under the compromise contained in the Dodd-Frank Act, the US Federal Reserve Board released details of who borrowed what from its various emergency programmes from December 1st 2007 to July 21st 2010. This prompted a strong response: America is Held Hostage By Global Private Bankers, stated a blog.
“Washington is owned by the private global banking cartel that owns Wall Street. International law does not apply to this criminal cartel. They stole trillions of dollars from the American people with help from corrupt politicians over a stretch of many decades, culminating in the government bailout in 2008, and they have not been held accountable.” More here…
The Fed, in compliance with orders from Congress, today named recipients of $3.3 trillion in emergency aid. Among them were U.S. branches of overseas banks, including Switzerland’s UBS AG; corporations such as General Electric Co. and McDonald’s Corp.; and investors like Pacific Investment Management Co. and computer executive Michael Dell. More here…
The Economist states: “The biggest banks tended to be the biggest borrowers. The data are a bit tricky to interpret: each loan is reported separately even when it represents the rollover of a maturing loan. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank and JPMorgan Chase all borrowed at least $15 billion each via the Fed’s Term Auction Facility; the total outstanding at any one moment exceeded $45 billion in the case of Bank of America and Wells Fargo, according to Bloomberg.
“One of the more intriguing revelations is how much support the Fed gave to Europe’s banks: an American unit of Belgium’s Dexia had at least $14 billion outstanding at one point; RBS Citizens, a unit of Royal Bank of Scotland, at least $14.5 billion, and Bank of Scotland (part of Lloyds), $12 billion. Is it a coincidence that the parents of all these banks had to be bailed out by their host governments? (The European Central Bank was also far and away the largest users of dollar swap lines from the Fed, at one point borrowing $171 billion. It then lent those dollars to euro-zone banks.)
“Investment banks also became big borrowers when the discount window was opened to them. Bear Stearns borrowed up to $28 billion (no surprise there) as it fended off collapse in March of 2008. But the others did not borrow in size until that fall. Lehman borrowed $28 billion the day of its bankruptcy. (Why it didn’t borrow sooner is a bit puzzling. Was it too scared of looking like it needed the help? And should the Fed have lent to a dealer whose holding company had just sought bankruptcy protection?) Merrill Lynch borrowed up to $33 billion, Morgan Stanley $47 billion, and Goldman Sachs $18 billion.”
In this context, it is interesting that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has claimed a fresh “megaleak” will target a major US bank “early next year,” according to an interview published on Monday.
Speaking to Forbes magazine, Assange said that he was ready to unleash tens of thousands of documents that could “take down a bank or two.” Comparing the documents to the emails that exposed Enron’s dealings amid its collapse, the controversial Australian said an existing “big US bank” was the subject of a pending data dump. More here…
