Banking Crisis: Money-Spinning Scam for the Financial Giants

Bernanke: Shut Down Banks If They Threaten System

September 2, 2010

Associated Press – Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told a panel investigating the financial crisis that regulators must be ready to shutter the largest institutions if they threaten to bring down the financial system.

"If the crisis has a single lesson, it is that the too-big-to-fail problem must be solved," Bernanke said Thursday while testifying before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

Bernanke is presenting his analysis of the crisis and views on potential systemwide risks as the panel approaches the end of its yearlong investigation into the Wall Street meltdown.

The Fed chief said bailing out these institutions is not a healthy solution and that great improvement will come from the new financial overhaul law. It empowers regulators to shut down firms whose collapse pose a broader threat to the system.

"Too-big-to-fail financial institutions were both a source ... of the crisis and among the primary impediments to policymakers' efforts to contain it," Bernanke told the bipartisan panel.

"We should not imagine ... that it is possible to prevent all crises," he said. "To achieve both sustained growth and stability, we need to provide a framework which promotes the appropriate mix of prudence, risk-taking and innovation in our financial system."

Bernanke led the economy through the financial crisis and the worst recession since the 1930s. The Federal Reserve took extraordinary measures to inject hundreds of billions into the battered financial system.

Last week he said the central bank is prepared to make a major new investment in government debt or mortgage securities if the economy worsened significantly.

Sheila Bair, the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., also is testifying at Thursday's hearing. She says in prepared testimony:

"The stakes are high" for regulators to effectively exercise their new powers under the financial overhaul law. If not, "we will have forfeited this historic chance to put our financial system on a sounder and safer path in the future."

Financial Reform Bill Gives Fed More Power, Responsibility

July 16, 2010

Wall Street Journal - After fending off most challenges to its independence and winning new powers to oversee big financial firms, the Federal Reserve has emerged from a bruising debate on the overhaul of U.S. financial rules as perhaps the pre-eminent regulator in the sector. But that could only bring it added blame if things go wrong again.

Just a few months ago, amid populist anger at the Fed for failing to prevent the financial crisis of 2008 and bailing out Wall Street, Congress was talking of stripping the central bank of its supervisory oversight of banks or forcing it to submit to congressional audit of its interest-rate decisions.

Instead, the new law gives the Fed more power and a better tool box to help prevent financial crises. It will become the primary regulator for large, complex financial firms of all kinds, such as American International Group, the insurer which built a massive derivatives portfolio that regulators didn't see until it was too late.

Congress approved a sweeping rewrite of rules that touch every corner of finance in the biggest expansion of government power over banking and markets since the Great Depression. David Wessel, David Reilly and Al Lewis discuss the likely impact of Dodd-Frank.

This isn't the first time Congress has expanded the Fed's role. After the Great Depression, it passed the Employment Act in 1946, charging the Fed with averting the huge unemployment seen in the 1930s. After the double-digit inflation of the 1970s, the Fed was formally given a dual mandate of promoting both price stability and maximum sustainable employment. In the wake of the latest financial crisis, the Fed is effectively being told to add the maintenance of financial stability to its responsibilities.

The risks, however, are that the Fed still won't be able to prevent another crisis, and that it will be an even clearer target for blame if that occurs.

"The bill has good intentions, but I'm worried about its implementation. If I were the Fed, I'd be seriously worried about being left holding the bag," said Anil Kashyap, a professor at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.

The Fed, of course, still shares responsibility for overseeing the financial system with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Securities and Exchange Commission and other agencies with which it sits on the new Financial Stability Council. And in a change, the new law requires the Fed to get the Treasury's go-ahead before using its extraordinary authority to lend to almost anyone, and limits loans to sectors of the economy rather than individual firms, such as Bear Stearns or AIG.

But the Fed's role is in most respects expanded by the legislation. The central bank will decide whether the council should vote on breaking up big companies if they threaten the stability of the entire financial system. It also will be able to force big financial companies—not just firms legally organized as banks—to boost their capital and liquidity. It will have the power to scrutinize the largest hedge funds ...

The Fed will surrender its responsibilities for consumer-finance regulation —never central to its mission or to its chairmen—which will be shifted to a new independent agency. It will be housed and financed by the Fed, but the central bank won't have any authority over it.

In a sign of the greater importance assigned to financial stability, the Federal Reserve Board will get a second vice chair position, this one responsible for supervision, to be chosen by the White House ...

Congress also gave the Fed responsibility for setting the fees merchants must pay banks when customers use their debit cards, another political hot potato. The Fed will have nine months to collect data and decide on a ceiling for such fees that must be "reasonable and proportional to the cost of processing those transactions." During this time, there's certain to be a lobbying war pitting retailers and banks. The Fed faces criticism from consumer groups if it sets the fee threshold too high or anger from banks if the level is set too low.

Bank Tax a Major Step Toward World Government

April 23, 2010

Economic Policy Journal - Finance ministers and central bank governors are in Washington D.C. this weekend for a G-20 meeting, in preparation for the G-20 Summit to held in November in South Korea.

Hyun Song Shin, special economic advisor to the President of South Korea, gave a briefing today at the National Press Club on the G-20 activities. I attended.

During the Q & A, I asked Shin if the plans for a global bank tax had caused concern by anyone at the G-20 meeting that the tax was moving in the direction of creating a one world government. His answer scared the hell out of me.

He said that, no it was not moving in that direction because “There is no legal basis for the meetings.”

In other words, there are no restrictions on the G-20 participants. They are not part of any agency that has a specific mandate. They are not part of any global agreement. It’s a wild west show, without any adult supervision.

Expect future moves in global domination to take this ad hoc approach. It results in fewer roadblocks and opposition because there is no, as Shin put it, legal basis for such meetings. It’s just “members coming together where there is mutual benefit.”

Once they have most of a particular plan down and in place, they will form some organization to patrol what they have created for a given sector, but the serious planning is done at these wild west events.

As for the specifics of the global bank tax, as I pointed out on Wednesday, when discussing the tax:

One key point to note is that the tax will be based on “riskiness” where government paper will most assuredly be ranked as least risky, thus driving banks funds in the direction of propping up the government debt sector at the expense of the productive private sector.

The tax can thus be used to drive funds to the government financial securities markets and to other politically favored investment sectors. If a sector isn’t in good favor with the global elite, they will tax financial instruments coming out of that sector at a higher rate. Banks will make a lot fewer loans in sectors where instruments are heavily taxed.

Manipulative macro madness will be upon us with this move. The coming control of the financial sector at a global level will be something never before seen on the planet. The global elite are winning.

Bankers Prepare to Tax Americans to Death

April 22, 2010

PrisonPlanet.com - The global banking elite are preparing to assault Americans with two huge new tax increases as President Obama contradicts the assurances of White House aides and his own campaign trail promise by asserting that a VAT tax is still on the table, as the IMF outlines a new tax on financial transactions that is being hailed as a blow to the banks yet represents another stealth tax on the people.

“President Barack Obama suggested Wednesday that a new value-added tax on Americans is still on the table, seeming to show more openness to the idea than his aides have expressed in recent days,” reports the Associated Press.

Obama’s signal that he may embrace a European-style VAT tax follows former Fed chairman Paul Volcker’s call for a value-added tax.

In response, the U.S. Senate passed a nonbinding “sense of the Senate” resolution labeling any such move, “a massive tax increase that will cripple families on fixed income and only further push back America’s economic recovery.”

Not happy with hitting Americans with a roughly 20% increase in living costs that a VAT tax would impose, Volcker also called for a carbon tax in the name of solving the widely discredited scam of man-made global warming, a new levy that is already being introduced at the state level.

Despite the fact that White House aides dismissed the prospect of a national sales tax only on Monday, Obama’s u-turn once again contradicts his pre-election promise that he would not raise taxes for American families earning under a quarter of a million dollars a year.

During a speech on the campaign trail, Obama promised,

“No family making under $250,000 dollars a year will see any form of tax increase.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HE-rGGKksQ

However, the VAT tax is a flat rate levy that applies to everyone, and it will dramatically increase the cost of living for Americans already laboring under the greatest financial meltdown since 1929. As CNS News highlights,

VAT is also labeled “consumption tax, because it applies to items at every stage of production. Such a tax would affect purchasers at all income levels.”

Obama’s failure to keep his promise that families would not “see any form of tax increase” has force him to lie in public addresses and claim that he only ever promised not to increase income tax on families earning under $250,000.

“And one thing we have not done is raise income taxes on families making less than $250,000,” Obama said on April 10. “That’s another promise we’ve kept.”

As CNS News’ Fred Lucas points out, in addition to any future VAT tax,

“The $1-trillion health care overhaul bill contains at least 12 taxes and fees that will affect households earning less than $250,000.”

In our special report on tax increases contained in the Obamacare bill, we identified dozens of tax increases, most of which would apply to families making under $250,000 a year.

While the Obama regime plans to whack Americans with a whopping new VAT tax, international bankers are busy preparing their own financial assault by readying a new tax on all financial transactions, a tax that would inevitably be passed down to consumers but one which globalists and the corporate media are stealthily introducing under the illusion that its aim is to target large banks and financial institutions.

Publications like the London Guardian are hailing the new IMF “FAT tax” as a necessary move that will “rein in banks” by taxing their profits and bonuses. However, what they’re less keen to stress is that this new “FAT tax” will also be accompanied by a financial stability contribution (FSC),

“Which should be paid by all financial institutions, not just banks, and used to bail out weak and failing firms.”

In other words, every single financial institution, including local credit unions, mom and pop’s car showroom business, small local banks, local student loan unions, and any company that offers small loans, will be forced to pay another slice of whatever meager sum they have left after the VAT tax, the carbon tax and the myriad of new health care taxes, directly to the G20 and the IMF, who will then dole it out to their Goldman Sachs buddies or whichever other giant financial megalith that is suddenly in need of a bailout.

A tax on financial transactions, even if it is introduced in the name of pegging back banker bonuses, will inevitably be passed on to all consumers, not just the wealthy. This will mark the end of free bank accounts, you will be forced to pay a monthly tax simply to have a checking account, paying bills, cashing checks, paying employees, every financial transaction imaginable will be subject to this new tax because the big banks will merely pillage the consumer to cover the costs of the “FAT tax” being imposed on them by the IMF.

“Clearly what this appears to say is very wide ranging and covers much more of the financial services sector than the industry expected. Taxation is not without consequences and additional taxation is not without additional consequences,” said Angela Knight, chief executive of the British Bankers’ Association, clearly implying that the costs will be passed on to everyone.

As the Guardian reports separately, the IMF plan “is ambivalent about how governments spend the billions in revenue it would raise.” In other words, this will be nothing more than another slush fund directed straight into the coffers of the IMF and World Bank to fund the global government now being set up to boss this new infrastructure.

Guardian writer Dan Roberts states that under the FAT tax,

“Taxing bank profits and bonuses in a globally co-ordinated way potentially makes more sense than taxing transactions because it stands less chance of simply being passed straight onto customers,” while failing to acknowledge that the FAT tax will be accompanied by an FSC tax that will do precisely that.

It’s abundantly clear that the global elite and the international offshore banking cartels that control our national governments are preparing another round of looting, but God forbid should Americans be expected to do anything other than lie back and meekly accept the raping they are about to suffer.

Being angry about massive tax increases that our leaders promised us would never happen in the midst of a massive economic downturn is unacceptable according to the manufactured consensus being spewed by the establishment media and the authorities, who have labeled all dissent and opposition to tax hikes as extremism and even domestic terrorism.

According to hate groups like the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose material is used to train police and federal authorities in America on who to target, getting upset about the fresh onslaught of pillaging you are about to suffer as it is openly announced means you’re an extremist, a racist, and possibly even a terrorist who should be silenced.

IMF’s Global Taxes Can Only Be Enforced Through Global Government

April 22, 2010

Prisonplanet.com - As you will have no doubt read in the headlines today, the IMF has proposed levying two “global” taxes on the world’s banks to make sure those greedy guys don’t get us into trouble again. If that sounds dubious, it’s because it is. In reality what is being proposed, and has been falling into place for some time, is the framework for an unelected global authority with powers above and beyond those of sovereign governments.

In our featured article today we explain how the IMF’s so called global Financial Activities (FAT) tax on banks is nothing more than a bailout slush fund that would inevitably trickle down to the consumer, and also be levied upon all financial institutions (not just the big ones that commit massive fraud on a daily basis).

This will not prevent globalist bankers from over reaching, it will in fact provide the incentive for more moral hazard by providing built in insurance against risky actions.

Such taxes will drastically reduce the profits of all banks and financial institutions, ensuring only the biggest can continue to thrive. Global competition could be killed off completely, signaling the final nail in the coffin of the free market.

Some within the banking industry also argue that reduced capital in financial institutions makes them a less attractive investment and makes it more likely that governments will have to step in when a fresh crisis hits.

The Association for Financial Markets in Europe issued a statement to this effect:

“The IMF has set the right objective in addressing the need to avoid another financial crisis, but appears to have chosen the wrong means to achieve it.

“The financial sector should not rely on public funds in the event of a crisis. As an industry, it needs to put in place measures that will enable failing firms to be wound down or restructured without needing taxpayer support. Banks must be allowed to fail and the cost of dealing with any failure must be first met by shareholders and creditors, not taxpayers.”

Even The Economist has denounced the idea as “Treating the symptoms, not the cause.”

Aside from these issues is another valuable point being made by the banks themselves, as well as economists and commentators – you cannot have global taxes without a powerful enough global authority to enforce them.

Global Consensus Key to Introducing New Levies is the headline in the Korea Times, which notes that without an overarching international framework to oversee global taxation, the idea will struggle to come to fruition.

“Certainly, the recommendation will provide momentum for global discussions on whether to put the idea of this taxation into action.” The report states. “This issue is also expected to be on the top of the agenda during a G-20 meeting of finance ministers and central bankers to be held this weekend in Washington. What’s important is to build a global consensus on this contentious matter.”

The London Telegraph reiterates this key point:

“Both taxes would be tricky to enforce, as bankers were quick to point out. A FAT tax would almost certainly require global co-ordination or face “regulatory arbitrage” by banks moving operations to friendlier territories.”

The IMF is well aware of this problem, outlining in the proposal that unilateral measures “risk being undermined by tax and regulatory arbitrage, and may also jeopardise national industries’ competitiveness.” Coordinated action, it says, would promote a level playing field for cross-border institutions and ease implementation.

The Telegraph article continues:

“The IMF’s idea is for the levy to support a resolution regime that would minimise the need for state support. A resolution agency would determine when a bank was insolvent and ‘replace managers, recognize losses in equity accounts, and, as necessary, expose unsecured creditors to loss’.”

Leading globalists have recently called for further empowering the IMF, as well as the World Bank as global authorities in a new economic world order under a “bank of the world.” This is not a conspiracy theory, it is written in the IMF’s own internal documents, has been reiterated by World Bank President Robert Zoellick, and is the stuff of Washington Post articles.

Last year Zoellick openly spoke of using the economic crisis to give global financial bodies the power to regulate national policy as part of the larger creation of global government.

“If leaders are serious about creating new global responsibilities or governance, let them start by modernising multilateralism to empower the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank Group to monitor national policies.” Zoellick stated.

In his article under the headline A Bigger, Bolder Role Is Imagined For the IMF, Anthony Faiola of the Washington Post described how the IMF is on course to be transformed into “a veritable United Nations for the global economy.”

Faiola envisages a scenario where “central bankers and finance ministers would meet to convene a financial security council of sorts.”

“Serving almost as ambassadors to the IMF, they would debate ways to put out the world’s economic fires and stifle reckless policies before they ignite new ones,” he continues.

“Bowing to a new economic world order, the IMF would grant fresh powers to the likes of China, India and Brazil. It would have vastly expanded authority to act as a global banker to governments rich and poor. And with more flexibility to effectively print its own money, it would have the ability to inject liquidity into global markets in a way once limited to major central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve.”

The article then explains that this imagined scenario is taken directly from internal IMF documents, interviews and think-tank reports. The details were thrashed out at the G20 summit in London last year, and though they may take years to fully implement, this model represents the global financial elite’s blueprint for the near future.

Following the G20 summit, the London Telegraph’s international business editor also highlighted the agenda, noting that under a clause in Point 19 of the communiqué issued by the G20 leaders, the IMF’s power to create money outside the control of any sovereign body was activated.

The new reserve currency would be formed from Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), a synthetic paper currency issued by the IMF that has lain dormant for half a century.

“The world is a step closer to a global currency, backed by a global central bank, running monetary policy for all humanity,” Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote, quipping that “Conspiracy theorists will love it.”

As we have previously reported, both the IMF and the United Nations have thrown their weight behind proposals to implement this “multilateral” de-facto global financial dictatorship. Both bodies have also expressed support for new world reserve currency system to replace the dollar as part of the acceleration towards the new economic world order.

The introduction of a new global taxation and currency system, with an overarching regulatory body, is a key cornerstone in the move towards global government, centralized control and more power being concentrated into fewer unaccountable hands. The former cannot be fully realised without the latter.

The IMF’s global taxes are part of the ongoing movement to empower a group of unelected central bankers with the authority to usurp state sovereignty by overseeing benchmarks for national financial governance and setting regulations for financial institutions all over the globe.

Currently opposition to the taxes exists in the form of Canada, Australia and Japan, countries all arguing that their banking institutions should not be punished for the failures (should read crimes) of the big banks headquartered in U.S. and Europe.

The proposals for the IMF’s global taxes are set to be debated by the G20 in June.