Cars.gov allows government to takeover dealer’s computer and copy it all.
August 1, 2009
Cars.gov allows government to takeover dealer’s computer
Cars.gov allows government to takeover dealer’s computer and copy it all.
June 20, 2009
It ain’t as if we weren’t warned
From the Southern National Congress as written by Clyde Wilson. He says our Southern Fathers told us what to expect. Another great article Carl, who say’s “Makes you proud to be a Southerner, don’t it?”
Steve
“ . . . and bank-notes will become as plentiful as oak leaves”—Thomas Jefferson
“ They [the people], and not the rich are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labours and our amusements . . . our people . . .must come to labour sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses . . . .”—Thomas Jefferson
“But an opinion that it is possible for the present generation to seize and use the property of future generations has produced to both parties concerned, effects of the same complexion with the usual fruits of national errour. The present age is cajoled to tax and enslave itself, by the errour of believing that it taxes and enslaves future ages to enrich itself.”—John Taylor of Caroline
“A crocodile has been worshipped, and its priesthood have asserted that morality required the people to suffer themselves to be eaten by the crocodile.”—John Taylor of Caroline
“We are now making an experiment, which has never yet succeeded in any region or quarter of the earth, at any time, from the deluge to this day. With regard to the antediluvian times, history is not very full; but there is no proof that it has ever succeeded, even before the flood.”—John Randolph of Roanoke
“I said that this Government, if put to the test—a test that it is by no means calculated to endure—as a government for the management of the internal concerns of this country, is one of the worst that can be conceived . . . .”—John Randolph of Roanoke
“Why should the government pay the expenses of one class of men rather than another?”—John C. Calhoun
“A habit of profusion and extravagance has grown up utterly inconsistent with republican simplicity and virtue, and which was rapidly sapping the foundation of our government.”—John C. Calhoun
“It was impossible to force the minds of the public officers to the importance of attendance to the public money, because we had too much of it.”—John C. Calhoun
“It has been justly stated by a British writer that the power to make a small piece of paper, not worth one cent, by the inscribing of a few names, to be worth a thousand dollars, was a power too high to be trusted to the hands of mortal man.”—John C. Calhoun
“We must curb the Banking system, or it will certainly ruin the country.”—John C. Calhoun
“The government is the executive committee of great wealth.”—Frank L. Owsley, Southern Agrarian, 1936
From the beginning of the U.S. Government, Southerners saw it as a locus of liberty, honour, and American mutuality. From its beginning, the predominant class in the North regarded the government as a source of profits. To Southerners, the Constitution was the means of the people’s control over government power. To Northerners, it was an instrument to be manipulated for their advantage. This difference came to a head in the struggle between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.Jefferson and his friends, notable Virginians of the time like John Randolph and John Taylor, called Hamilton, John Adams, and their friends “monarchists.” By this was meant not only that they favoured kingship, which they did, but also that they wanted a strong central government built on patronage to the wealthy (at the expense of the ordinary hard-working producers). This patronage was to be financed through national debt, manipulation of the currency, and various types of business subsidy, which they falsely claimed were necessary and beneficial to all Americans.Jefferson and his friends (which, to be fair, included a valiant minority of Northerners) managed to hold Hamilton’s schemes in abeyance for two generations, although the Hamiltonians never ceased to put them forward aggressively. Lincoln’s conquest and near-destruction of the South established the Northern program without any effective check. Yet Jeffersonian ideals continued to wield a certain power long afterward, right up to World War II. The regime of the Republican George W. Bush and the Democrat Barack Obama (there is no real difference) have now delivered the final death blow to the system of government and to the ideals of freedom established by our forefathers. The Constitution no longer exists except as a collection of minor procedural rules. The distinction between government spending for public purposes and for private profits has been abolished, as has the distinction between federal spending for national purposes and for merely local purposes. The government is now making sure the economy is frozen so that those who are presently wealthy will remain wealthy and so that your and my children and grandchildren will pay the price in diminished life.Only among the Southern people is there still enough allegiance to the genuine American founding principles to offer a viable alternative, but these principles can never be made real under the present evil empire.________________________________Clyde Wilson, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of the University of South Carolina, is the South’s leading historian, prolific author, and South Carolina Delegate to the Southern National Congress.
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June 13, 2009
Canada/Brazil: New World Order-Spreading the Wealth
Well they just come out and say it now, what used to be considered a “conspiracy theory” and denied is now heard almost daily. The “New World Order”, globalization- just another word for “world government.
"How we manage the rebalancing of the global economy could profoundly influence how open, equitable, and prosperous the New World Order will be," Governor Carney said in a speech delivered to the 15th Annual International Economic Forum of the Americas. THEN: The global financial crisis has reduced the differences between nations and created the opportunity to form a new world order, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Wednesday. Speaking after a meeting with Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev in the Kazakh capital Astana, Lula called on the global community to seize on the crisis to create a fairer world for developing nations. "I want to say that before the crisis, there were many countries which had greater significance than others, and some countries which had no significance at all," he said through a translator. "After the crisis, everyone has become similar. We have the possibility to create a new world order and together we should improve our relations." Breitbart.com
New world order’ needs better economic grounding: Carney
Comments94
CBC News
Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, shown in March, said renewed globalization requires more transparency, efficiency and prudent regulations. (Jimmy Jeong/The Canadian Press) Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney said Thursday that renewed globalization is going to require more transparency. (just like Obama said)Despite the meltdown, globalization has been good, he said. “Globalization lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and created the potential for hundreds of millions more to share their destiny.” (yep-spreading the wealth…sound familiar?)
But it’s not clear how international commerce and finance will be reorganized coming out of the recession, Carney told the International Economic Forum of the Americas in Montreal.(how about some global control coming from maybe the UN? like the IMF?)
Carney proposed an agenda for fixing the failures that caused the recession, saying “the next wave of globalization needs to be more firmly grounded and its participants more responsible,” in part because a belief in markets has been weakened by policy-makers and private players who didn’t always live up to their responsibilities.(so we can trust the bureaucrats at the UN or the EU to make it better I guess and more trustworthy ?)
Carney suggested the “new world order” needs:
- More transparency to avoid problems such as inadequate disclosure on securitized products.
- More efficient markets that are less susceptible to extreme price movements, which contributed to companies failing and the global economy crashing.
- More prudent regulations, such as new capital requirements for banks, to help smooth the credit cycle.
- Ensuring all countries accept responsibility for promoting a better international monetary system, which could include allowing their exchange rates to adjust.
The decisions made in the recovery could influence how open, equitable, and prosperous the new world order (world government globalization) will be, he said.
‘More to come’
Carney said there are still major adjustments being made to inventories, investment growth will be negative into 2010, G7 unemployment will rise and excessive levels of private debt must still be cut. (referring to a group of nations as a whole under control?)
“Although global demand and trade levels appear to be approaching bottom, and inventory and labour adjustments have already been substantial, there is still more to come,” he said.
Governments have fought the economic shortfall with more spending,(yep-that always works good, when your in debt spend more money and that will get you back on your feet fast!) but they need to develop realistic exit strategies to avoid stifling the recovery, Carney said.
The global financial crisis has reduced the differences between nations and created the opportunity to form a new world order, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Wednesday.Speaking after a meeting with Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev in the Kazakh capital Astana, Lula called on the global community to seize on the crisis to create a fairer world for developing nations.
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“I want to say that before the crisis, there were many countries which had greater significance than others, and some countries which had no significance at all,” he said through a translator.
“After the crisis, everyone has become similar. We have the possibility to create a new world order and together we should improve our relations.”
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June 11, 2009
Fed Would Be Shut Down If It Were Audited, Expert Says
While we’re trying to get all this info from the federal reserve by the hardest, maybe we should consider sticking to the Constitution for coining our money. The founding fathers warned us about the “central banks” long ago, because they had dealt with them back then and knew what would happen. Remember, “those who fail to from learn history are doomed to repeat it.”
The Constitution gives Congress the power to “coin” money….not to delegate it to “private banks”, i.e. federal reserve.
Article 1 Section 8
….To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;…….
Fed Would Be Shut Down If It Were Audited, Expert Says
The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet is so out of whack that the central bank would be shut down if subjected to a conventional audit, Jim Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, told CNBC.
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With $45 billion in capital and $2.1 trillion in assets, the central bank would not withstand the scrutiny normally afforded other institutions, Grant said in a live interview.
“If the Fed examiners were set upon the Fed’s own documents—unlabeled documents—to pass judgment on the Fed’s capacity to survive the difficulties it faces in credit, it would shut this institution down,” he said. “The Fed is undercapitalized in a way that Citicorp is undercapitalized.”
Grant said he would support legislation currently making its way through Congress calling for an audit of the Fed.
Moreover, he criticized the way the Fed has managed the financial crisis, saying the central bank’s target rate should not be around zero.
“I think zero is the wrong rate for almost any economy,” Grant said, adding the Fed has “embarked on a vast experiment in moral hazard. Interest rates are the traffic signals in a market economy, and everything’s green. … You have to wonder whether these interest rates are the right clearing rate or rather they are the imposition of a central bank.”
Amid a disparity between analysts predicting there will be no rate hikes soon and the fed funds futures indicating tightening by the end of the year, Grant said he thinks the Fed indeed will begin raising rates as inflation creeps into the picture.
Fed funds futures have fully priced in as much as a half-point rise in the target rate from its current range of zero to 0.25 percent.
“If the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when there’s too much unanimity of opinion, then one begins to worry about this,” he said. “The Fed proverbially has been late.”
Fed Unveils Lending Details After Lawmaker Pressure
The Federal Reserve unveiled its most detailed picture yet of its record $1 trillion expansion of credit, as Chairman Ben S. Bernanke responds to congressional pressure for greater transparency from the central bank.
For the first time, the Fed announced details on the number of borrowers and the ratings of securities pledged as collateral for loans. The data come in a new monthly report released by the central bank today in Washington.
Officials still stopped short of identifying the firms, a measure called for by some lawmakers and the subject of freedom-of-information requests and lawsuits.(Which I might add, the federal reserve it not bound to because it isn’t federal…..it’s private.)
Fed officials believe naming companies would undermine the central bank’s efforts to stabilize the economy, a senior Fed official said at a press briefing today.
Congressional Votes
The Fed’s effort at greater transparency in its emergency lending programs is a response to an April 2 nonbinding budget amendment sponsored by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, and the panel’s ranking Republican, Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, Bernanke said. That proposal passed 96-2.
The Fed didn’t mention the tougher measure, also nonbinding, sponsored by Sanders, which passed 59-39 on the same day. Bloomberg News filed a lawsuit against the Fed in November seeking the names of borrowers.
Sanders, in a statement last month, threatened to pass the measure again “in a stronger form” if Bernanke failed to accept it. Bernanke told Sanders in February that identifying borrowers would be “counterproductive” and result in “severe adverse consequences for the economy.”
Read entire article at Bloomberg.com
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June 10, 2009
June 7, 2009
May 13, 2009
Obama Looks to Regulate Pay of Non-TARP Financial Firms
Do we see something wrong with this picture?
Obama wanting control of census.
Obama wanting control of internet.
Obama firing CEO of public company.
Obama forcing GM into bankruptcy.
Obama regulating pay of banks that got no TARP money.
Obama Looks to Regulate Pay of Non-TARP Financial Firms
The Obama administration has begun serious talks about how it can change compensation practices across the financial-services industry, including at companies that did not receive federal bailout money, according to people familiar with the matter.
The initiative, which is in its early stages, is part of an ambitious and likely controversial effort to broadly address the way financial companies pay employees and executives, including an attempt to more closely align pay with long-term performance.
Administration and regulatory officials are looking at various options, including using the Federal Reserve’s supervisory powers, the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission and moral suasion. Officials are also looking at what could be done legislatively.
Among ideas being discussed are Fed rules that would curb banks’ ability to pay employees in a way that would threaten the “safety and soundness” of the bank — such as paying loan officers for the volume of business they do, not the quality. The administration is also discussing issuing “best practices” to guide firms in structuring pay.
Government officials said their effort, which is just beginning, isn’t aimed at setting pay or establishing detailed rules. “This is not going to be about capping compensation or micro-management,” said an administration official. “It will be about understanding what is the best way to align compensation with sound risk management and long-term value creation.”
Despite the banking industry’s weakened state, it would likely try to push back against curbs on how financial firms can compensate people. Bank executives have complained to federal officials that strict rules could prompt some of their best employees to move to parts of the financial industry that aren’t regulated, such as hedge funds, private-equity firms and foreign banks. They’ve also argued that paying substantial bonuses is integral to how the industry works.
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April 17, 2009
Here’s a good example of when you take money from someone, it always has strings attached and you need to know those strings before you take it.
Treasury Seeks to Keep U.S. Bank Stakes After Buyback
By Rebecca Christie
April 17 (Bloomberg) – The Treasury intends to retain an ownership interest in many U.S. banks even after the lenders buy back preferred stock the government currently holds as part of its rescue effort.
The government will continue to hold warrants, attached to every capital injection it has made, even after any share buybacks, Treasury officials said on condition of anonymity. Banks seeking to escape the government’s grip want to retire the warrants — which give the right to buy stock in the future at a preset price — at the same time they acquire the government- owned preferred shares.
The officials said the U.S. would give up the warrants only after subsequent talks with appraisers and the banks to agree on a price. As long as the warrants remain, lenders would continue to face some federal constraints, including limits on hiring non-American citizens, the officials said. Lenders would be freed of restrictions on executive pay and dividends, they said.
“When this program was created, everything was done so fast, I don’t think people were contemplating they would be exiting this quickly,” said Diane Casey-Landry, chief operating officer of the American Bankers Association.
Escalating federal demands on the banks have spurred institutions including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to seek an early exit from the Treasury’s rescue program. The warrants issue may be the latest complication in a $700 billion effort to unfreeze credit that has sparked an outcry among both lawmakers and some bankers.
Toxic-Debt Funds
Most of the funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program distributed so far have been used for buying stakes in financial companies. Warrants apply to all elements of TARP, and officials are still wrestling with how to include them in their plan to finance purchases of distressed assets.
Treasury representatives are working with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and potential participants in the toxic- debt programs on how to apply the warrants requirement.
Lawmakers pressed for warrants in the TARP law enacted in October as a way for taxpayers to benefit from future profits of companies getting help.(Looks to me like they just want to continue some control of a public business) When exercised, the government can buy newly issued shares from the company at a pre-determined price.
It’s unclear how much the warrants may be worth and valuing them may prove contentious. Bankers said the warrants, under current market conditions, may turn out to be expensive for those looking to exit the rescue programs quickly.
‘Payday Lender’
“If you look at the cost of those warrants and turn it into an annual percentage rate, it’s enormous,” said Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America. “It almost makes the Treasury look like a payday lender.”
Financial shares have rallied in the past month on signs that the industry’s performance improved in the first quarter. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Financials Index has soared 88 percent from its low of 78.45 on March 6, closing at 147.28 yesterday. That’s still down 71 percent from the high reached in May 2007.
Futures on the S&P 500 index were little changed at 861.2 just before the open at 9:27 a.m. in New York.
Goldman Sachs Chief Financial Officer David Viniar said in an April 14 interview that “there’s a prescribed process for how you do it — where you propose a price, they accept or not, you negotiate and then you hire appraisers and come up with an agreed-upon valuation.”
“We’ll figure it out, we don’t know” the cost, Viniar said. Goldman Sachs raised $5 billion this week in a share sale in order to help pay back the $10 billion it took from the government in October.
‘Scarlet Letter’
JPMorgan Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said April 16 his firm could repay U.S. government rescue funds “tomorrow.” He called the receipt of the $25 billion in TARP money last year “a scarlet letter.”
JPMorgan spokesman Joseph Evangelisti declined to comment on the warrants.
For the top 19 banks, any TARP repayments will have to wait until after the so-called stress tests conclude, a Treasury official said. U.S. regulators are reviewing the biggest banks to gauge whether they have enough capital to survive a deeper economic slowdown. A Federal Reserve official said yesterday that the results are planned for release May 4.
To repay, a bank must apply to the Treasury. The request then goes to the bank’s regulators, who review the soundness of the institution. If the bank is deemed in good shape, it’s allowed to buy out the government stake.
Some smaller banks are already in the process of repaying their TARP funds. Of the six who have repaid so far, five have outstanding warrants that need to be addressed
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April 8, 2009
Treasury Won’t Say If It Has Refused to Allow Banks to Give Back ‘Bailout’ Money
To me this proves that the story in the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal by Stuart Varney and the testimony of Judge Andrew Napolitano on the Fox News Channel a few days ago was true…even tho some questioned it because it did not give out the name of the bank because of fear of an threatened audit. Judge Napolitano called it extortion by the government for control.
Treasury Won’t Say If It Has Refused to Allow Banks to Give Back ‘Bailout’ Money
(CNSNews.com) – The Treasury Department won’t reveal the names of financial firms that are seeking to return the funds they received late last year and this year under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)–funds the firms no longer want and would like to give back to the Treasury in return for the federal government surrendering the ownership interests it took in the firms.
Despite repeated requests for the information from CNSNews.com, Treasury spokesman Jason Williams wouldn’t say how many financial instutitions want to give the money back in exchange for getting their stock back.
Williams said the government would only release the names of those banks that have successfully returned the money.
“We don’t release the names of those who have applied until we approve the allocation,” he said.
The Treasury Department also will not say whether it has refused any requests from financial institutions to repay the money they took from the government.
One institution, TCF Financial, which is based in the Minneapolis suburb of Wayzata, Minn., said it has been waiting since early March to hear whether Treasury will return the stock it owns in TCF in return for getting the money back.
“In truth we just haven’t heard one way or another, so they’re still looking at it and reviewing it and we hope to get an answer soon,” TCF spokesman Jason Korstange told CNSNews.com.
TCF, which is the largest bank to have attempted to return taxpayers’ money, wants to give back $361.2 million in bailout funds it says it didn’t need in the first place.
If successful, it would more than double the amount of public money returned to Treasury.
Korstange said that TCF was approached by Treasury to participate in its Capital Purchase Program because it is a healthy bank, but that recent changes in the program and statements from political leaders cast its participation in a negative light.
Korstange said his bank wants to return the money because of “all the changes” that have been forced on TARP.
Treasury came to the bank with the money, he said, not vice versa.
After Congress began considering additional limits on executive pay and closer inspections of participating banks, TCF decided to get out as soon as it could.
“Once that happened, the politicians decided they could run the banks (and) that they could tell us all the things we can and cannot do,” Korstange said. “So we just said, ‘Hey, we don’t need this, we didn’t need it at the beginning, and we’ll give it back to you.’”
Two other firms have announced they have applied to return the money they received from TARP–Sun Bancorp of Vineland, N.J., and Shore Bancshares of Easton, Md.
The other banks who have sought to return the money echoed TCF’s concerns, saying that congressional and administration actions have changed the rules and “stigmatized” their participation, creating a competitive disadvantage, especially executive compensation requirements and proposed federal regulation.
Steve Hilton
babybttrfly
Mike