What the Federal Reserve is doing behind our backs

Thanks to an audit conducted last year (reported by Senator Bernie Sanders), it has now been confirmed that the Fed secretly handed out $16 Trillion. Before It's News puts that number in perspective:

$16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious – the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs. To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is “only” $14.5 trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is “only” $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.

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A distinction without a meaningful difference.

Of course Barack Obama is a different kind of president than Mitt Romney would be, but the differences are few and far between, and rarely occur on the most pressing of issues. To the extent that you doubt this claim, take a look at this stunning chart created by the campaign of Rocky Anderson who, despite the fact that his campaign is almost totally being ignored by the media, is also running for President of the United States. And further ask yourself how it can possibly be that Anderson's campaign and other parties that have much to add to the national conversation, will be excluded from any presidential "debates."

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Missouri Supreme Court gives Missouri voters the option to slap a 36% cap on payday loans

On Tuesday of this past week (July 31, 2012), the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that a ballot initiative capping the interest rate of small loans at 36% (including payday loans) will appear on the Missouri general ballot this coming November. This court decision is terrific news for the many poor, working-poor and struggling middle class people who have been victimized by predatory lenders throughout Missouri. I have previously discussed this hotly contested payday loan court case here. The payday loan industry had attacked this ballot initiative on numerous technical grounds, including constitutional issues, but in its July 31, 2012 decision, the Missouri Supreme Court shot down all of the arguments of the industry, holding that the payday initiative will go on the Missouri ballot in November. Here's the entire opinion of the Court. [More . . . ]

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Time to remake corporations as stewards of the planet

In the June 7, 2012 edition of Nature (available online only to subscribers),Pavan Sukhdev, chief executive of environmental consulting firm GIST Advisory, offers a formula for turning corporations into environmentally responsible entities. Sukdev points out that our corporations tend to cater to rampant consumerism, and this is immensely damaging to the environment. The effects can be seen in the form of "emissions, freshwater use, pollution, waste and land-use change." Corporations have also learned to excel at "influencing government regulation, avoiding taxes and obtaining subsidies for harmful activities in order to optimize shareholder returns." [More . . . ]

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Elementary Election Protest Too Muchedness

For the last few weeks I'd been receiving approximately daily post cards protesting the electric company considering a rate hike of more than a few percent in order to finance and build future power plants to replace some of the nearing dangerously obsolete ones. Some mailing came from a very liberal local politician with whom I generally agree. Someone is spending bales of money to encourage people to not-want to spend more for what they are already getting. Seems like sweeping the water downstream, to me. But I'm a Tanstaafl skeptic: Rebuilding infrastructure without incurring crippling debt does not seem like such a bad idea, my knee jerks. Also, local electric rates are lower than when I was in college, when adjusted for inflation, so it seems about time for a rate hike, anyway. Yesterday I finally got a rebuttal mailing that describes the finances behind this odd campaign: PAC affiliated with aluminum corporation at play in state Senate primaries. Yep, an aluminum company fears that it will have to raise prices, because a major part of the process of making it requires megawatts of electricity. Here's how aluminum is made, if you are at all curious: So now we know who has the profitability to outspend a huge power company on a campaign to make people do what they want to do anyway, and things are making sense, again.

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