Government Takeover of Banks and Businesses

The global elite are deliberately tanking the economy worldwide in an effort to consolidate their hold and wealth, and this will result in unimaginable privation on a global scale. They have launched a final effort to usher in a world currency and a world government.

President Barack Obama pushed a humbled General Motors Corp. into bankruptcy on Monday and said the federal government will act as "reluctant shareholder" when it assumes a 60 percent ownership of the smaller carmaker that emerges. The president said he hopes GM — once a proud symbol of American capitalism — would emerge quickly from bankruptcy court, and pledged up to $30 billion in additional federal assistance to help it get on its feet. The government's partial stake in GM comes on top of a far smaller ownership of Chrysler LLC, as well as significant federal equity in banks, the AIG insurance giant, and two mortgage industry titans — all victims of an economic crisis unrivaled since the Great Depression. - Associated Press, June 1, 2009

Rule Change Intended to Ease Bank Crisis Could Make It Worse

April 2, 2009

McClatchy Newspapers - The little-known Financial Accounting Standards Board is poised to deliver Thursday a change in accounting rules that proponents say will save the banking system — and opponents warn could bring even more ruin to the U.S. economy. The FASB board is expected to relax the rules on how banks value assets that investors no longer are willing to purchase...

Supreme Court Drop-Kicks McCain/Feingold, Scores Victory for 1st Amendment; Obama Preparing ‘Forceful Response’

January 21, 2010
BreitBart.com - Fans of the First Amendment can rejoice. In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court today struck down large portions of the abomination known as the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, especially those aspects of the law that imposed restrictions on corporate spending on political issues.

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.
The ruling was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace will corrupt democracy.

“If the First Amendment has any force,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, which included the four members of its conservative wing, “it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.”

Even in Crisis, Banks Dig In for Fight Against Rules

June 1, 2009

The New York Times - As the financial crisis entered one of its darkest phases in October, a handful of the nation’s largest banks began holding daily telephone sessions. Murmurs were already emanating from Washington about the need for a wide-ranging regulatory overhaul, and Wall Street executives girded for a fight.

Atop the agenda during their calls: how to counter an expected attempt to rein in credit-default swaps and other derivatives — the sophisticated and profitable financial instruments that were intended to limit risk but instead had helped take the economy to the brink of disaster.

The nine biggest participants in the derivatives market — including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America — created a lobbying organization, the CDS Dealers Consortium, on Nov. 13, a month after five of its members accepted federal bailout money.

To oversee the consortium’s push, lobbying records show, the banks hired a longtime Washington power broker who previously helped fend off derivatives regulation: Edward J. Rosen, a partner at the law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton. A confidential memo Mr. Rosen drafted and shared with the Treasury Department and leaders on Capitol Hill has, politicians and market participants say, played a pivotal role in shaping the debate over derivatives regulation...

Dow Jones Swaps Travelers, Cisco for Citigroup, GM

June 1, 2009

AP - ...Traders expected Citigroup might be removed from the Dow as the company's share price tumbled since last fall. Citigroup joined the Dow in March 1997 as Citicorp. Travelers merged with Citicorp to form Citigroup in 1998. Citigroup then spun off Travelers in 2002.

Dow Jones said it left Citigroup and GM as a part of the blue chip index longer than it might have in less volatile markets. "The extraordinary conditions of the severe bear market and recession kept these stocks relevant and representative for a longer period than might have been the case in more normal times," John Prestbo, editor and executive director of Dow Jones Indexes, said in a statement.

The changes to the Dow likely won't affect many investors because the index is weighted by price. Therefore, the low share value of Citi and GM mean they have held less sway in recent months. And Dow will adjust the formula by which the index is calculated so the addition of Travelers and Cisco won't affect the value of the average.

Travelers rose $1.43, or 3.5 percent, to $42.09, while Cisco jumped $1.14 or 6.2 percent, to $19.64 on a day when the Dow is showing big gains following better-than-expected reports on U.S. manufacturing, consumer spending and construction spending. The Dow was up 200 points in midday trading.

GM shares rose 12 cents, or 16 percent, to 87 cents. It is expected stockholders will be wiped out in the bankruptcy.

Citi slipped 2 cents, or 0.5 percent, to $3.70...

Citigroup Shares Tumble Below $1

March 4, 2009

Reuters - Shares of Citigroup, once the world's most valuable bank, tumbled below $1 on Thursday, taking its year-to-date drop to 85 percent. Citigroup, a Dow component, fell more than 13 percent to an intraday low of $0.98, hammered by continued fears over the bank's health and ability to avert nationalization. About two years ago, Citi's market value was above $270 billion. Today its market cap is a little over $5.4 billion.

U.S. Taxpayers Owns a 36% Stake in Citi

February 27, 2009

MarketWatch - The federal government tightened its grip on a battered Citigroup Inc., agreeing to convert its preferred shares into common stock and boosting its direct ownership in the nation's once-largest bank to 36%. The U.S. government will own up to 36 percent of Citigroup under a deal announced Friday to convert up to 25 billion dollars of capital injected into the ailing bank to ordinary shares.

The conversion does not call for more government funds but helps shore up the troubled banking giant's capital position, according to Citi and U.S. officials. The U.S. Treasury would convert up to the 25 billion dollars injected in the form of preferred stock under two bailouts for Citi. Citigroup said the Treasury's conversion of its preferred stock from its 45 billion dollars so far pumped into the crisis-ridden bank could see the government take a stake of up to 36 percent...

The American Solution is to Further Rob the People

April 13, 2009

Mat Rodina - Wading through the alphabet soup of American governmental plans to save the private banks and their uber private bank, the Federal Reserve, one can only come to a single conclusion: since day one of the crisis, indeed, from the very creation of the bubble that could and would only lead to the crisis, this has been only about stealing every single kapeky of the people's money, their rights and powers, and it has been orchestrated by both branches of the One Party Two Branch system of American body politics. As I stated in The Hypocrisy of American "Democracy" and in Whom Does the US Congress Serve, the American public is living in a serious state of denial, the English along with them, if they for a second believe that their government has their best interest in mind, on paper or even as a fuzzy conception...

The stated goal of all of these bogus thefts, excuse me, bailouts, has been:
1. the stabilization of the banks
2. the release of credit
3. the salvation of the economy and thus of the body citizenry

To this end, nothing has been accomplished but the absolute theft of $2-4 trillion dollars, depending on how one looks at the promises and obligations of the members of the One Party Two Branch system in DC to their owners in the Federal Reserve and Wall Street. That there has been no substantial change in any of the policies of either the Bush or Obama administrations, only upholds the basic fact of this theft. As I stated in The Six Evils of Wall Street and the Suffering of Humanity, the owners of the Federal Reserve, the masters of much of the hell unleashed upon humanity of the past 120 years, have practiced their art of theft very well indeed. Their last, up to this, most successful enterprise, was the rape of Russia, but even that, in comparison, to the schemes in America, is chump change...