Thursday, September 18, 2008

The pope's banks in America,...

THE POPE'S BANKS IN AMERICA,
THE GIANNINI FAMILY,
and THE AMERICAN CIA--PART ONE

by Sherman H. Skolnick

The Pope has had at least three banks in America.

What later was called the Continental Bank of Chicago, was founded in Chicago under different names prior to the American Civil War. About the same time as the setting up in 1857 of the Chicago Board of Trade with which the Continental became interwoven. Their transactions were so incestuous,,, how could one tell one from another? Early in its highly corrupt history, the Board of Trade was [and some say, still is] such a gambling hell, that Western Union Telegraph once cut off its wire there, refusing them services.

From early on, the Bank as well as the Board of Trade were supervised by the British and French Rothschilds, jointly with the Pope and the Papal States. And from early on, representatives of both the Vatican and the British monarchy sat on the Board of Continental. Few understand enough about all this to easily conceive of the Pope and the Queeen, together. In the public mind, at best, these are forces of friction.

Traditionally, members of the CBOT were those of the Irish Catholic and some few of the Jewish aristocracy, not your everyday ethnic and religious folk. As strange as it may seem to ousiders, this raucous gang was fully acceptable to and allowed themselves to be supervised by the representatives of the British royal house together with the Vatican.

From the onset, the Rothschilds were instrumental in the grain trading. To those who know a lot about the bloody conflict, called the Civil War in the North and the War Between the States in the South, President Abraham Lincoln's proposed post-war policies were bound to cause problems. The 16th President proposed to bind up the wounds of the Nation and not to be further destructive of the rebellious, now vanquished South. That policy would have permitted the South to as quickly as possible resume production of commodities, such as cotton. But, the Rothschilds, however, had in place speculations, in Chicago and New York, by which they would greatly profit if production would NOT soon resume and cotton prices were high or went higher.

The largest importer of U.S. cotton had been England for monopolistic textile production. And some contend the Civil War was fomented by Great Britain itching to take back the American continent as a British puppet colony,having failed to do so by the War of 1812. States' rights and the slavery issues, some say, were simply a gut-wrenching financial and emotional excuse to smash up the united federal republic.

Secretly involved in the Rothschild speculations to profit from high prices, post-war, were key members of the U.S. Congress. As part of this cabal, the head of what is now called the U.S. Secret Service, Lafayette C. Baker, plotted to create a security vacuum [like later in Dallas, 1963]. at some event where a convenient Southern assassin would be permitted to blow out the brains of Lincoln, the party-spoiler [or John F. Kennedy, who stepped in the face of the Oil Cartel].

To set an example, understood by some, Lincoln was assasssinated on highly Catholic religious Good Friday, a few days after the War ended. A key assassination player fled, and took up refuge in the Vatican. Rothschild agent, August Belmont, and his conspiratorial ring, their speculative positions secured, prospered greatly. Lincoln's surviving son Todd somehow fell in with his father's financial enemies. Very late in life, Todd said as to the papers he had assembled, that if the papers had been known, and revealed earlier, press and railroad owners, those who claimed to be Lincoln's friends, would all have been hung, for they plotted the President's demise. The documents showed how the Continental Bank had handled the finances for the political assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Todd reportedly burned the documents. [Not all of them.]

Amidst the growing bank collapses of the Great Depression, in 1931, the Federal Government through a massive loan, bailed out failing Continental Bank. This was also abou the time that Italian strongman Benito Mussolini bailed out the money-starved Vatican. The events, to some, are related. Thereafter, beholden to the central government, Continental became a convenient link to espionage. Continental allowed its facilities to be used to disguise government paid provocateurs and con-men used to manipulate public opinion. [Resulting in a little known federal court case against Continental in the 1970s. We have the file.

In 1984, again sinking, Continental had some some of its principal owners jump ship about six weeks before its plight become more known. As major owners of its parent holding company, the Vatican and the Queen of England sold THEIR shares before the market price went to almost zero. [I was the first to publicly correctly estimate the run on Continental as 20 billion dollars of flight capital.] A major owner of the bank itself, Walter J. Cummings, Jr., prevented hungry litigators from deluging the federal courts with damage suits against the Bank. Cummings was Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago, one step below the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court in Washington hearing very few cases, Cummings' Court was, in effect, the end of the line for most federal litigation from Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, the 7th Federal Circuit. Off the record, Chief Judge Cummings threatened reprisals against lawyers if they brought a flood of damage suits against his Bank.

After all, Judge Cummings was a "man of trust" for the Vatican, safeguarding their interests in his Bank and in his Court. He did NOT disqualify in related litigation. Guess who won in his crooked Court?

Another financial enterprise of the Pope in the U.S. is Bank of America. They have done a fairly good jon to conceal the Vatican ownership. They paid for a puff piece book, called, "Biography of A Bank- The Story of Bank of America N.T. and S.A." by Marquis James and Bessie Rowland James. Published 1954 by Harper & Brothers, and more or less the standard reference work on the bank's history.

They would have you believe that Bank of America National Trust and Savings Association was at the time of the book "the largest bank in the world". Bank mergers now occurring so rapidly, it is hard to say which is NOW the world's largest Bank. They would further have you believe that this money ship, up to 1930 called Bank of Italy, was founded by Amadeo Peter Giannini. And that the Bank was able to spread out all over the world because Giannini was so nice in helping people following the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. They were kept out of being a New York money center bank by the agent and front for the British Monarchy, J.P.Morgan & Company.

By way of that book and the publicity flacks that followed over the years, Bank of America is supposedly owned principally by numerous of their small account holders. A fairy tale supreme. By the 1970s, Bank America, the holding company, was owned principally by the Vatican and the Jesuits, the Pope's clever army who occassionally see fit to rebuff the Pontiff. In the 1970s, the ownership broadened out to include the French Rothschilds, wrongly identified by know-nothings as "Jewish bankers", actually very Pro-Vatican into many joint finances not exactly compatible with ordinary Jews or the State of Israel.

By the early 1990s, Bank America stock was steadily declining. More numerous than the traditional Italian and Sicilian mafia, the Japanese underworld, the Yakuza, bought their way into Bank America, becoming a major joint owner. The Yakuza now owns most every bank headquartered in California. The book "Yakuza" by Dubro and Kaplan, tells a lot about the Japanese mafia. In Osaka, Japan, the Yakuza is actually an adjunct of the local police. According to a discussion by the authors on a radio program, more than half of the new buildings built downtown Chicago in the 1980s are owned by the Yakuza. Later in the 1990s, Bank of America and the Giannini family merged their interests publicly with Continental Bank, although the Chicago-based and San Francisco-based money ships had been more or less joined at the hip privately long before that. The office buildings in which are also housed the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, are reportedly bankrupt because of low occupancy but owned reportedly by the Yakuza.

[Some contend O.J. Simpson was framed up for the two murders because of financial problems developed in enterprises in California he once greatly owned but given, in part, to his ex-wife, Nicole, part of the divorce. Those businesses reportedly were money laundries for the dope traffic controlled by the Yakuza in murderous competition with the Mexican dope gang, the Herreras. OJ once reported to the police that strange orientals were trying to kill him.]

On behalf of the Pope, the Giannini family has operated in the Chicago-area a so-far low-key operation called First National Bank of Cicero. Historically, Cicero has been the mafia enclave adjunct to Chicago's old West Side. A dominant force in with the Gianninis and that Bank has been Bishop Paul Marcinkus, originally running aa Catholic Church in Cicero. Marcinkus went on to become head of the Institute of Religious Works [IOR] commonly called the Vatican Bank. Marcinkus fled the Vatican and took up refuge in Chicago, late in 1991.

Shortly after Marcinkus returned to Chicago, a purported asset for Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, in December, 1991, was found murdered, mafia-style, not far from the First National Bank of Cicero. A U.S. Bankruptcy Court auctioneer who corruptly skimmed off funds from Bankrupt Estates to contribute to Israel, Wallace Lieberman tried to shake down the Giannini family, their bank in Cicero, and related others, threatening to expose their role in the corrupt traffic in illicit gold, arms, radioactive materials, and such; that they acted jointly with the American CIA, the traditional Italian and Sicilian mafia, and Bank of America.

The murder of Lieberman was announced in the heavily pro-Vatican and pro-British monarchy Chicago Tribune, in their edition for Christmas Day, 1991, an ironic twist not lost on everyone. Shortly thereafter, Lieberman's son, Barry, was framed up on U.S. treason charges. Barry Lieberman was supposedly caught in the process of supposedly selling to the State of Israel, certain stolen top U.S. military electronic counter-measure radar secret equipment. Actually, equipment abandoned by U.S. forces in the Iraqi and Saudi desert after the short Persian Gulf War.

With the help of Marcinkus and the Giannini family, an Illinois State Senator, Judy Baar Topinka, from the Berwyn-Cicero area, was elected in 1994, as Illinois Treasurer. On our TV Show in October of that year, she praised the First National Bank of Cicero and former Vatican Bank Chief Marcinkus who she said she knew. She had previously, in some capacity or another, acted as public relations flack for the bank in Cicero. Topinka was re-elected in 1998. So,the former Vatican Bank crooked helped install the woman who is in charge of all the State money of Illinois.

After leaving Chicago, sometime after 1991, Marcinkus took up residence in Sun City, Arizona. Italian authorities have tried repeatedly, to no avail, to force the U.S. to send Marcinkus back to Italy for prosecution for crimes implicating him and the Vatican Bank, the American CIA, and the traditional mafia, in assassination financing, arms smuggling, and illegal trafficking in stolen gold, counterfeit currencies, stolen bond, and radioactive materials. Marcinkus fought off all such attempts to send him back to Italy, by sheltering himself in his Vatican passport, the Vatican, after all, being a separate sovereignty from the Republic of Italy.

Briefly surfacing in December, 1995, was a related scandal. A retired agent of the American CIA, living in Italy with dual U.S.-Italian citizenship, was arrested by the Italian police. Roger D'Onofrio was charged with being implicated with at least ten others in illegal trafficking in stolen gold, stolen bonds, exceptionally good quality counterfeit currencies destabilizing the economies of various countries, and trafficking in osmium nuclear bomb detonators and other radioactive materials. Reportedly implicated with D'Onofrio were a ring that included the former Vatican Bank Chief Paul Marcinkus, the Archbishop of Barcelona, Spain, and the First National Bank of Cicero. Earlier, D'Onofrio had been described by a witness as the CIA's paymaster with the task of making secret payments to CIA assets and business partners.

Other witnesses reportedly contend that D'Onofrio's team were the ones reportedly arranging to poison Pope John Paul 1st who was murdered after only 33 days in office. That Pontiff wanted to stop the Vatican Bank and Marcinkus from dirty business with the American CIA and the traditional mafia.

No coincidence. After Marcinkus returned to Chicago late in 1991, set up in Chicago about the same time was the North American office of the super-secret Catholic organization, Opus Dei. This was done reportedly with the aid of the Archbishop of Milan, Italy.

In August, 1995, we did a taped TV Show, partly on-location, right near the First National Bank of Cicero, pointing out their criminal enterprises with Marcinkus, Topinka, and a confidant of that Bank, John Tarullo who lived nearby. Tarullo was once a member of the London Gold Pool and arranged clandestine shipments of stolen gold for the American CIA and the traditional mafia, as well as other criminal cartels. He was closely aligned with the Archbishop of Milan and, some say, also the Archbishop of Barcelona. [Note: Wallace Lieberman's body was found betweeen the bank and the not faraway residence of Tarullo.] Tarullo was murdered on the day our TV Show was cablecast.

The Vatican has a major interest in a world-wide chain of Hotels and Motels called Ramada. A member of the Giannini family, Steven Belmonte [his mother is a Giannini], has been a top operating official of the chain. According to persistent off the record reports by very well informed law enforcement, Ramada reportedly is in some way implicated in vast money laundering of illicit funds, smuggled gold, and proceeds from the dope and arms traffic. Or, at the very minimum, traffickers and money launders of the same somehow find it convenient if not safe and secure, to meet at various Ramada locations. Why?

Since about 1983, there have been a series of state and federal lawsuits by Joseph Andreuccetti, a Chicago-area caulking contractor. He has contended that First National Bank of Cicero, in combination with other banks and savings & loans, misappropriated tens of millions of dollars of funds, assets, and properties belonging to him. In the process, an extensive real estate development in a western suburb, called Kingspoint Condominiums, owned by him, was stolen by corrupt top IRS offiicals in the Chicago region, for their own personal benefit and not for the Public Treasury. The Acting Inspector General, Robert Cesca, arranged reportedly to cover it up. Cesca has been described by law enforcement personnel, as "the highest ranking mafia representative in the U.S. government".

About 1983, a federal agency parked 58.4 million dollars in federal funds with Household Bank and Household International [described by some as CIA proprietary operations]. This was to make good Andreuccetti's pending claims. About 1988, 50 million dollars of that disappeared, and was secretly transferred to Little Rock,Arkansas, to try to cover up a 47 million dollar S & L embezzlement for which Bill and Hillary Clinton are subject to federal criminal prosecution and upon conviction, federal prison.

Joseph Andreuccetti, a member of the Giannini Family, contends some in the Family want him silenced because of all the details coming out through his extensive litigation about the financial octopus linked to other Giannini family members, former Vatican Bank Chief and crook Marcinkus, the Giannini-linked First National Bank of Cicero, the merger of two corrupt enterprises, Bank of America and Continental Bank, and the involvement of CIA proprietary Household International and Household Bank. Household is the alter ego and successor to the CIA's Nugan-Hand Bank which disappeared in 1980.

Arriving in the fall of 1999 in the Chicago area and closely tracking him, Joseph Andreuccetti contends, has been a "hit" team head, known abroad as "The Sweet Assassin" by the way the killer boss is friendly to his target, kissing the target on the cheek, and then arranging some form of rub-out. This top killer has total immunity, U.S. and Italy, and elsewhere, and has co-ordinated his doings reportedly with the American CIA, primarily in Italy, and with the Italian military intelligence service, SISMI. These efforts are likewise intersected with the operations of Propaganda Due, known as P-2, a super-secret society pledged to overthrowing representative governments and re-instituting Fascism, the Iron Fist. P-2 has members in Italy, France, the United Kingdom, and the U.S., including judges, legislators, journalists, executive department and cabinet members, espionage officials, and civil and military brass. Reported members include former American secret political police chief George Herbert Walker Bush and retired war industry chieftain Alexander Haig, once head of NATO.

WATCH FOR PART TWO, more about all this.

Since 1958, Mr. Skolnick has been a court reformer. Since 1963, founder/chairman, Citizen's Committee to Clean Up the Courts, researching and disclosing certain instances of judicial bribery and political murders. Since 1991 producer, since 1995, moderator/producer of "Broadsides", a one hour weekly public access Cable TV Show, on in Chicago, every Monday evening, Channel 21 cable, 9 p.m. For a heavy packet of our printed stories, send $5.00 [U.S. funds] plus a stamped, self-addressed BUSINESS SIZED envelope [#10, 4-l/4 x 9-l/2] WITH THREE STAMPS ON IT, to: Citizen's Committee to Clean Up the Courts, Sherman H. Skolnick, chairman, 9800 So. Oglesby Ave., Chicago IL 60617-4870. Recorded phone message: (773) 731-1100. Office: 8 a.m. to midnight, 7 days: (773) 375-5741 [PLEASE, no "routine calls"]. Call before sending FAX. Website: www.skolnicksreport.com [note "s" after name in website address]. E-mail: skolnick@ameritech.net

Source: http://www.cloakanddagger.de/skolnick/popes1.html

Politics about service not power: Pope

Politics about service not power: Pope

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (CNS): The Catholic Church in Nicaragua must educate the country's Catholic majority to recognise that politics is not about power, but about serving the common good, Pope Benedict XVI said.

At the papal villa in Castel Gandolfo on September 6, the Pope met with the bishops of Nicaragua, who were making their "ad limina" visits to report on the status of their dioceses.

He told them he was pleased with how they had shared the lot of the Nicaraguan people and "scrupulously respected" the obligation to stay out of partisan politics.

At the same time, the Pope said, they had worked to promote a climate of dialogue and calm in a situation of great political upheaval and efforts to build democracy.

Pope Benedict said the bishops had worked "to defend basic human rights, to denounce situations of injustice and to promote an understanding of politics that, more than being an ambition for power and control, is a generous and humble service of the common good".

He said charity, solidarity and education were key Church tasks in Nicaragua, a country marked by extreme poverty and often battered by natural disasters. Nearly 90 per cent of the 5 million inhabitants are Catholic.

He said the church in Nicaragua owed much to the lay catechists and the lay "delegates of the Word", who educated people in the faith and led prayer services when priests were not available to celebrate Mass.

Archbishop Leopoldo Brenes Solorzano of Managua told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, "The Church in Nicaragua is working so that the faithful feel that an essential part of their identity is to be missionaries, to be disciples of Christ and to preach, not only with their words, but also with their witness."


Source: http://www.catholicleader.com.au/index.php?id=4499

Some of Ike's missing may have washed away

With no idea of numbers, authorities say final accounting may take years

Image: Hurricane Ike damage
Mark Wilson / Getty Images
Pilings are the only thing left standing on Thursday where a beach house once stood in Bolivar, Texas. Locals there and in other hard-hit areas fear some people might have been washed away by Ike's surge.


updated 12:49 a.m. ET, Thurs., Sept. 18, 2008

GALVESTON, Texas - The death toll from Hurricane Ike is remarkably low so far, considering that legions of people stayed behind as the storm obliterated row after row of homes along the Texas coast. But officials suspect there are more victims out there and say some might simply have been swept out to sea.

Exactly how many is anybody's guess, because authorities had no sure way to track those who defied evacuation orders. And the number of people reported missing after the storm, whose death toll stands at 17 in Texas, is fluctuating.

State search and rescue teams on Wednesday pulled out of Galveston after checking on almost 6,000 people and performing more than 3,500 rescues.

"We don't know what's out there in the wilds," said Galveston County medical examiner Stephen Pustilniks. "Searchers weren't looking for bodies; they were looking for survivors."

Authorities are now relying on Red Cross workers and beach patrols to run welfare checks on people named by anxious relatives.

The Galveston Island Beach Patrol is still making roughly 100 checks a day on storm holdouts, working from tips called in by anxious relatives.

On his rounds Wednesday, lifeguard Marc Butler hit at least a half-dozen homes. At only one did he find who he was looking for.

Questions for years to come
As the hurricane closed in, authorities in three counties alone estimated 90,000 people ignored evacuation orders. In Galveston, another 6,000 refused to leave after Ike hit.

Nobody is suggesting that tens of thousands died, but determining what happened to those unaccounted for is a painstaking task that could leave survivors wondering for months or years to come.

Authorities concede that at least some of those who haven't turned up could have been washed out to sea, as at least one woman on the peninsula apparently was, and that other bodies might still be found.

"I'm not Pollyana. I think we will find some," said Galveston County Judge Jim Yarbrough, the county's highest-ranking elected official.

Pustilniks' office brought in two refrigerated tractor-trailers to store bodies until autopsies are performed. One sat in front of the medical examiner's office Wednesday morning with a sign on the side: "Jesus Christ is Lord not a cuss word."


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Anxious searches for loved ones
The stench of rotting animals and livestock polluted the once-picturesque community of Crystal Beach, where about two dozen people stayed behind. One survivor told of seeing a friend wrenched from the rafters by the storm's fury and swept out to sea.



In evacuation shelters hundreds of miles from the coast, displaced residents — like the loved ones of victims of 2005's Hurricane Katrina — scrolled through address books and blog postings and anxiously dialed relatives, friends and neighbors not heard from.

On an Internet forum where survivors listed notes giving their whereabouts and asking for news of the missing, the messages revealed the growing anxiety and frustration of those desperate for some word about their loved ones.

"Anyone know Rosa who lived on the end towards the bay in gilchrist on Dolphin rd? She didnt have a vehicle and last we heard she was staying?"

And this message: "If ANYONE KNOWS WHERE MY FATHER IS OR KNOWS IF HE IS ALIVE AND WELL, PLEASE PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I AM HEARTBROKEN!!"

The U.S. Financial System in Serious Trouble

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The U.S. Financial System in Serious Trouble

by Rodrigue Tremblay

“… a bailout of GSE (Fannie and Freddie) bondholders would be perhaps the greatest taxpayer rip-off in American history. It is bad economics and you can be sure it is terrible politics.”

Matt Kibbe, President of Freedom Works

"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists."

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), (September 1932)

[After the Bear Stearns bailout] "As more firms lost access to funding, the vicious circle of forced selling, increased volatility, ... and margin calls that was already well advanced at the time would likely have intensified. The broader economy could hardly have remained immune from such severe financial disruptions."

Ben Bernanke, Fed Chairman (March 2008)

In August 2007, at the very beginning of the subprime financial crisis in the U.S., and referring to the alchemy-like practice of creating artificial financial instruments, such as mortgage-backed securities (MBSs), here is what I wrote:

Like all 'Ponzi schemes', such pyramidings of debts with no liquid assets behind them are bound to implode sooner or later.” I also wrote about the Fed's intervention in such cases, that “it alleviates the 'liquidity crisis', for sure, but this does nothing to cure the underlying 'solvency crisis' of institutions holding large chunks of non-performing mortgage-based assets. Sooner or later, such low-valued derivatives will have to be written off, and this will necessarily lead to an erosion of these institutions' capital base. Bankruptcies of the most leveraged and imprudent institutions are to be expected.

In fact, such bankruptcies of over-leveraged financial institutions become unavoidable. For a while, forced mergers between banks, initiated by the Fed or the Treasury, can soften the blow. But after a while, outright bankruptcies cannot be avoided and balance sheets have to be balanced.

What is the cause of this financial mess?

Last month, I provided a short answer:

At the center of current financial problems is the failure to adapt standard financial regulation to new financial institutions, such as broker-investment banks, off-shore based hedge funds and large derivatives markets that remain, for the most part, outside of the traditional authority of regulators. However, when things go wrong, as they did with Bear Stearns last March, their demise threatens to destabilize the entire financial system and handy government bailouts are quickly called in.”

Today I say that this major crisis has to be placed at the very feet of the Washington establishment. This is a politico-financial establishment that has pushed to the limits its ideology of deregulation of financial markets and stretched the working of unregulated corporate market capitalism to the breaking point. Now, the system is imploding under our very eyes and financial institutions are falling like dominos. As I wrote last August, and repeated in April of this year, the U.S. financial problem is not one of liquidity, (there is plenty of liquidity provided by the Fed when banks and brokers can borrow at will newly printed dollars from the Fed’s discount window) but one of solvency, weak balance sheets, risky assets and debt liquidation. That's a horse of a different color.

Over the last twenty-five years, beginning with the Reagan administration and culminating with the current Bush-Cheney administration, the Washington establishment dismantled piece by piece the system of protection that had been built since the 1930's economic depression and removed nearly all government regulations that could stand in the way of greed and gouging on the part of unscrupulous market operators.

And that's where the rubber hits the road. Short of bankruptcies is the nationalization of the over-leveraged banks by the government. And the Bush-Cheney administration took a big step in that direction when it came to the rescue of the two largest mortgage financing institutions, Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association: FNM) and Freddie Mac, (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation: FRE) which were close to being insolvent. This step was initiated after foreign central banks (in China, Japan, Europe, the Middle East and Russia) threatened to stop buying U.S. bonds and debentures issued by the two shaky financial institutions.

But the Bush-Cheney administration, while providing public money to keep the two lenders in operation, stopped short of nationalizing them. Indeed, the U.S. government committed to invest as much as $200 billion in preferred stock and extend credit through 2009, to keep the two mortgage lenders solvent and operating.

But instead of taking them over by placing them into administrative receivership, in order to change their business model, as they should have done since the government is now guaranteeing their outstanding debts, (more than $5 trillion US) the U.S. government chose rather to keep the appearance that these were still two privately run banks and only appointed a legal conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Even when they bail out what can be called two Government sponsored enterprises (GSEs), their market ideology prevents them from doing the right thing.

After years of irresponsible public deregulation and private mismanagement and irresponsible, pyramiding risk taking, the American financial system is now in serious trouble, and it may draw the U.S. economy further down with it in the months and years to come.

In the coming weeks, however, as other American financial institutions teeter on the brink of bankruptcy, the U.S. government will have to consider creating a Bank Resolution Trust under the model of the 1989 Resolution Trust Corp. which took over the savings and loans banks that were then in financial difficulties. For example, as recently as February 16 of this year, the British government did not hesitate to nationalize the Northern Rock bank and rescued this large British bank with about £55 billion ($107 billion) in public loans and guarantees. Sooner or later, the American government will have to do the same, in order to stabilize the financial system, because the financial problems in the U.S. are systemic and much more serious than elsewhere.

By the same token, maybe the U.S. government should correct an anomaly of the 20th Century, that is the semi-private status of its central bank. Indeed, the American Federal Reserve, is a semi-public and semi-private central bank organization that is as much responsible to large private banks as it is to the U.S. government and the population. This creates an unhealthy conflict of interests that is not fair to the American public. Indeed, the American practice of privatizing profits and socializing losses would be considered unacceptable in most other democracies.

What we are witnessing these days in the U.S. is a massive wealth transfer from taxpayers, savers and retirees to banks, their creditors and their managers. On the one hand, the Fed has pushed real interest rates deep into negative territory to help troubled banks, and, on the other hand, the American taxpayers have foot the bill for bailing out very large financial institutions.

I wonder what the two presidential camps, the Obama and the McCain camps, have to say about that! They both want to increase the federal deficit and add significantly to the already high national debt.

Source: http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.html

"The Lord Is My Strength"


1O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: because his mercy endureth for ever.

2Let Israel now say, that his mercy endureth for ever.

3Let the house of Aaron now say, that his mercy endureth for ever.

4Let them now that fear the LORD say, that his mercy endureth for ever.

5I called upon the LORD in distress: the LORD answered me, and set me in a large place.

6The LORD is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me?

7The LORD taketh my part with them that help me: therefore shall I see my desire upon them that hate me.

8It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.

9It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in princes.

10All nations compassed me about: but in the name of the LORD will I destroy them.

11They compassed me about; yea, they compassed me about: but in the name of the LORD I will destroy them.

12They compassed me about like bees: they are quenched as the fire of thorns: for in the name of the LORD I will destroy them.

13Thou hast thrust sore at me that I might fall: but the LORD helped me.

14The LORD is my strength and song, and is become my salvation.

15The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tabernacles of the righteous: the right hand of the LORD doeth valiantly.

16The right hand of the LORD is exalted: the right hand of the LORD doeth valiantly.

17I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD.

18The LORD hath chastened me sore: but he hath not given me over unto death.

19Open to me the gates of righteousness: I will go into them, and I will praise the LORD:

20This gate of the LORD, into which the righteous shall enter.

21I will praise thee: for thou hast heard me, and art become my salvation.

22The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.

23This is the LORD's doing; it is marvellous in our eyes.

24This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

25Save now, I beseech thee, O LORD: O LORD, I beseech thee, send now prosperity.

26Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the LORD: we have blessed you out of the house of the LORD.

27God is the LORD, which hath shewed us light: bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar.

28Thou art my God, and I will praise thee: thou art my God, I will exalt thee.

29O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.



Psalm 118

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

AP Top News at 5:39 p.m. EDT

Trader Christopher Crotty rubs his eyes as he works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday Sept. 17, 2008. Wall Street stumbled again Wednesday, with anxieties about the financial system still running high even after the government bailed out the insurer American International Group Inc. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)



AP Top News at 5:39 p.m. EDT
2 hours ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street plunged again in a crisis of confidence Wednesday as anxieties about the financial system still ran high after the government's bailout of insurer American International Group Inc. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped about 450 points, and investors seeking the safety of hard assets and government debt sent gold, oil and short-term Treasurys soaring. The market was more unnerved than comforted by news that the Federal Reserve is giving a two-year, $85 billion loan to AIG in exchange for a nearly 80 percent stake in the company, which lost billions in the risky business of insuring against bond defaults. Wall Street had feared that the conglomerate, which has its tentacles in various financial services industries around the world, would follow the investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. into bankruptcy. The ramifications of the world's largest insurer going under likely would have far surpassed the demise of Lehman.

Source: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g8-DEMtAE9q4i4ySQ0eV_qZefmRQD938NJQ01

The Highest Paid CEOs in 2008

By Zul

• Jul 17th, 2008

The latest list of America’s Highest Paid CEOs in 2008 saw Steve Jobs, who was ranked first in 2007 dropped his place to a shocking 120th, after a restructuring of stock grants in his company Apple.

Larry Ellison of Oracle Corporation, who tops the new list, earned a massive US$192 million for the year 2007, on top of over 20 million shares he owns.

Larry founded Oracle in 1977, which started its first database project for the CIA agency with only $2,000 investment and has been the CEO for more than 30 years.

Apart from being the highest paid executive, Larry also has a net worth of US$18.4 billion, making him as the 14th richest men in the world at the moment. He is also publicly known for his extravagant life style, owning expensive boats, a private jet, cars and lives in a US$200 million dollar house.

Among other notable presence in the top 20 include Howard Schultz (Starbucks), Lloyd Blankfein (Goldman Sachs), Richard Fuld (Lehman Brothers), Steven Burd (Safeway) and John Chambers (Cisco).

The top 20 highest paid CEOs, and their companies:

1. Larry Ellison, Oracle (US$192 million)

oracle

2. Frederic M Poses, Trane (US$127 million)

3. Aubrey K McClendon, Chesapeake Energy (US$117 million)

4. Angelo R Mozilo, Countrywide Financial (US$103 million)

5. Howard D Schultz, Starbucks (US$98.6 million)

6. Nabeel Gareeb, MEMC Electronic Mats (US$79.6 million)

7. Daniel P Amos, Aflac (US$75.2 million)

8. Lloyd C Blankfein, Goldman Sachs (US$73.7 million)

9. Richard D Fairbank, Capital One Financial (US$73.2 million)

10. Bob R Simpson, XTO Energy (US$72.3 million)

11. Richard S Fuld Jr, Lehman Brothers (US$71.9 million)

12. Steven Roth, Vornado Realty (US$71.9 million)

13. Marijn E Dekkers, Thermo Fisher, (US$69 million)

14. Steven A Burd, Safeway (US$67.2 million)

15. Gregg L Engles, Dean Foods (US$66.1 million)

16. Nicholas D Chabraja, General Dynamics (US$60 million)

17. Leslie H Wexner, Limited Brands (US$56.1 million)

18. David C Novak, Yum Brands (US$55 million)

19. John T Chambers, Cisco Systems (US$54.8 million)

20. William R Berkley, WR Berkley (US$55 million)

Other posts you may want to read:

  1. 15 Highest Paid Young CEOs in US
  2. Medical Has The Highest Paying Jobs in America
  3. How Much The Highest Paid TV Actor Earns?
  4. Cameron Diaz The Highest Paid Actress
  5. Highest Paid Women CEOs

Source: http://skorcareer.com.my/blog/the-highest-paid-ceos-in-2008/2008/07/17/

Paulson's April Fool's Joke Is Wall Street Gift: Susan Antilla

Susan Antilla
Paulson's April Fool's Joke Is Wall Street Gift: Susan Antilla

Commentary by Susan Antilla


April 1 (Bloomberg) -- Seriously, it wasn't an April Fool's Day joke.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson presented his plan for regulatory revolution in Washington yesterday, releasing a 212- page ``Blueprint For a Modernized Financial Regulatory Structure.'' After the biggest financial meltdown since your great-grandfather stood in bread lines, Paulson mostly proposed that the markets be less regulated.

Depending upon which broadcast/print/Internet outlet you use to get your news, you might have thought that just the opposite had happened. Words like ``sweeping'' are, well, sweeping the coverage. Promises of the biggest changes ``since the Great Depression'' are peppering the commentary.

And maybe all of that is so. The problem, though, is that this big historical change is such a gift to Wall Street that its leaders can barely contain their glee. The overhaul proposals amount to a ``thoughtful and sweeping plan,'' said Tim Ryan, president of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, or Sifma, in a statement Friday, when a draft of the report began to circulate. Sifma ``intends to be an important player'' in the multiyear process of modernizing the U.S. regulatory system, the statement said.

It's no surprise that Sifma is making itself heard. Sifma and other financial-industry lobbyists have been sharing their proposals on how to fix the U.S. regulatory system since last fall, when the Treasury Department sought comments on the subject.

Into the Abyss

Considering the mess the industry has gotten us into, you would think Paulson's final product might incorporate ideas from those who warned that we were headed into the abyss, not the players who helped push us over the edge.

Yet the final product reads like a very early Christmas gift to the people who run hedge funds, brokerage firms and private equity funds. The financial industry put together its wish list in letters to Treasury in November, and Santa Paulson delivered.

Sifma, for example, recommended in a letter on Nov. 21 that the Securities and Exchange Commission merge with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and that the merged entity follow the ``principles-based'' regulatory approach favored by the CFTC. (Wall Street can't get enough of this principles approach, in which mushy concepts such as ``management responsibilities'' and ``prudential supervision and enforcement'' are pushed.)

Presto, Paulson yesterday suggested both the SEC/CFTC merger and a shift to ``principles'' in U.S. regulation.

Cozy Up

The Financial Services Roundtable, a lobbying group of leaders at 100 large financial companies that also backs the principles idea, called for ``optional chartering,'' which would let national insurance companies opt out of state regulation in favor of federal oversight. Yesterday, Paulson proposed an ``optional federal charter'' in his speech. The Roundtable said that it applauded Paulson. And why shouldn't it?

It's all so cozy that the Managed Funds Association -- a lobbying group for hedge funds --- wrote to Treasury that its version of principles-based regulation would encourage a ``cooperative, not combative'' relationship between business and regulators. Don't you just have visions of Steve Schwarzman and Ben Bernanke bursting into a verse of ``Kumbaya?''

Financial companies weren't the only entities to relay their thoughts to the Treasury Department about how to go about a regulatory overhaul. Among those who wrote, though, they appear to have been the most successful at getting what they wanted. Consider the feedback that Treasury received from the Consumer Federation of America, a Washington-based lobbying group whose ideas were invisible in the final report.

More Breaks

CFA sent a proposal to Treasury asking that the regulatory process be more independent of the institutions being regulated and that there be a ``meaningful redress mechanism'' for consumers who were victims of fraud or deceit. The Treasury blueprint proposed the opposite.

Paulson's proposal would give the industry even more leeway to police itself, including making it easier for self-regulatory organizations such as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) to change or create rules without soliciting public comment or getting SEC approval. It also seeks to use self-regulation in new areas, recommending that financial advisers, who are now overseen directly by the SEC, regulate themselves just like brokers do.

Paulson didn't address the issue of consumers with complaints about fraud, but he almost didn't have to. Apart from Treasury's plan to better regulate the mortgage business, the philosophy behind the report was one of streamlining regulations in a way that would benefit the financial industry, not consumers.

No Lawsuits

The financial industry has provided its feedback on redress, though. In its November letter to Treasury, Sifma said that while it was pushing for a principles-based system, it would want to be sure that any change wouldn't ``increase the litigation risk experienced by financial firms.'' New principles to follow, but no lawsuits when you ignore them.

Critics aren't confident that Paulson's blueprint has what it takes to help regulators tackle problems before they become crises. Barbara Roper, director of investor protection at CFA, says she agrees with Paulson on one matter: today's financial crisis wasn't caused by a flawed regulatory structure. It was, she says, the result of ``regulators whose mindless belief that the market is always right made them deaf to warnings of risks'' and blind to the risks that securitization was spreading all over the place, not reducing them.

Paulson told us that we need a strong financial system for ``working Americans.'' Yet his focus is on helping firms like Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the one he used to run, have an easier time of it. When is the public going to say that enough is enough?

(Susan Antilla is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Susan Antilla in New York at santilla@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: April 1, 2008 00:01 EDT

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_antilla&sid=az0GuS.t1g3o

World's Highest Standard Of Living

Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory Structure

March 31, 2008
hp-896

Treasury Releases Blueprint for Stronger Regulatory Structure

Washington- The U.S. Treasury Department today released its Blueprint for an improved financial regulatory structure, one that strengthens consumer protections, improves tools for market stability and enhances financial innovation. Treasury's Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory Structure presents a series of short-, intermediate- and long-term recommendations for reform of the U.S. regulatory structure. The Blueprint, announced in June 2007, is a key part of Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.'s efforts to improve the competitiveness of the U.S. capital markets in the increasingly global marketplace.

"We should and can have a structure that is designed for the world we live in, one that is more flexible, one that can better adapt to change, one that will allow us to more effectively deal with inevitable market disruptions and one that will better protect investors and consumers," said Secretary Paulson in remarks at the Treasury Department. "The challenge is to evolve to a more flexible, efficient and effective regulatory framework – and that is the purpose of this Blueprint."

The short-term recommendations include improvements to regulatory coordination and oversight that regulators can make quickly. The Blueprint recommends creating a new federal commission for mortgage origination to protect consumers better. The report also recommends modernizing the President's Working Group on Financial Markets and clarifying the Federal Reserve's liquidity provisioning, as Secretary Paulson discussed last week.

Intermediate-term recommendations focus on eliminating some of the duplication in our existing regulatory system, but more importantly they offer ways to modernize the regulatory structure for certain financial services sectors, within the current framework. Recommendations include eliminating the thrift charter, creating an optional federal charter for insurance and unifying oversight for futures and securities

The long-term recommendation is to create an entirely new regulatory structure using an objectives-based approach for optimal regulation. The structure will consist of a market stability regulator, a prudential regulator and a business conduct regulator with a focus on consumer protection.

The United States is the world leader in financial services, so it is from this position of strength that we must constantly work to improve our system. Secretary Paulson convened a blue-ribbon panel to discuss this issue at his March 2007 U.S. Capital Markets Competitiveness Conference. Industry leaders and policymakers alike agreed that the competitiveness of our financial services sector – and its ability to support U.S. economic growth – are constrained by an outdated financial regulatory framework.

The U.S. regulatory structure does not serve American as well as it could, and modernization is inevitable. It has been largely knit together over the last 75 years, put into place for particular reasons at different times and in response to circumstances that may no longer exist. The current U.S. regulatory framework for financial services providers includes:

  • Five federal depository institution regulators in addition to state-based supervision.
  • One federal securities regulator, additional state based supervision of securities firms, and self-regulatory organizations with broad regulatory powers.
  • One federal futures regulator
  • Insurance regulation that is almost wholly state-based, with 50+ regulators. This structure also has an international dimension that can be inefficient, costly and harmful to U.S. competitiveness.

But capital markets and the financial services industry have evolved significantly over the past decade. Globalization and financial innovation, such as securitization, have provided benefits to domestic and global economic growth; while highlighting new risks to financial markets.

These developments are pressuring the U.S. regulatory structure, exposing regulatory gaps and redundancies, and often encouraging market participants to do business in other jurisdictions with more effective regulation. As a result, the U.S. regulatory structure reflects an antiquated system struggling to keep pace with market developments, while facing increasing challenges to anticipate and prevent today's financial crises.

Although Treasury began this effort a year ago, market conditions today provide a pertinent backdrop for this study's release and highlight the need to examine the U.S. regulatory structure. Recent events have also reinforced the need to balance strong consumer protection and market stability on one hand, with capital markets competitiveness on the other.

Public input has been important to our work. In addition to the range of views present at the Capital Markets Conference in March 2007, Treasury published a request for public comment in the Federal Register in October. Response to the Federal Register notice was strong, with hundreds of letters from investor advocates, state regulators, financial institutions and many others. All public comments are posted on the internet at www.regulations.gov.

For more information, visit http://www.treas.gov/offices/domestic-finance/regulatory-blueprint/.

-30-

REPORTS

Source: http://www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/hp896.htm

The Shell Game (Gas Blame Game)



Where I live in the Southeast, gas has risen considerably since Hurricane Ike made landfall in Galveston, Texas.
I first noticed the increase in gas prices on Monday, September 15, 2008; That was two days after the impact of Ike on the U.S. The most outlandish price I've seen so far was $4.10 per gallon for Unleaded at a Texaco station. The lowest price I've seen in my area is $3.86 per gallon for Unleaded gas.

The kicker:
The most amazing aspect of the gas game is that all the Shell gas stations I've seen recently are not selling gasoline; The convenience stores that accompanies them are open for business; Yet, the pumps are out of order. From what I've gathered from the news media: there are no shortages in the Southeast at present. How do these Shell Gas Stations manage to act as if they're out of gas? That's probably a good question for the Shell Answer Man.
I suppose that with their international clout, and their gargantuan profits they can afford to bluff a shortage. What I see is an attempt by Shell Oil distributors to withhold their supply and sell it when they can get the price they desire. When Hurricane Ike approached the U.S., and as the week-end arrived many motorists rushed to fill up on gasoline. Let me point out that Shell gasoline is "diluted" with 10% Ethanol in my vicinity. If I'm not mistaken, here in America Ethanol is processed from corn; So far, there aren't any justifiable reasons for the Ethanol production activities to be affected by weather, or any other factor. So, where's the GAS? Where's Jeb?

The state of Florida has experienced a high incidence of gasoline price gouging after Hurricane Ike. The state Attorney General Bill McCollum called for citizens who suspected gas stations of charging ridiculous prices to call a hot line and report the abuse. By late Tuesday afternoon, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said his office had received more than 5500 complaints of price gouging statewide, ...1
Price gouging during a state of emergency is a practice that is punishable by law in Florida. I wonder if the so-called 'crack-down' on price gouging has anything to do with Shell gas stations "holding-out"? What else could have happened to cause this shortage? Did Shell run out of corn for their Ethanol formula all of the sudden? What I see is a shell game being played by the Shell Gasoline Distributors. But, they're not the only ones playing games; The whole oil industry has been playing games since OPEC was founded, as far as I'm concerned. Was it the 14 refineries that were shut down before Ike arrived? Or, was it the Oil drilling rigs that were evacuated that have caused this 'shortage'? Meanwhile, crude oil is selling at $91.42 a barrel.
.

Arsenio.

1http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/stories/2008/09/15/daily22.html

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

The Final Destruction Of The Middle Class

THE FINAL DESTRUCTION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS

By Joan Veon
September 15, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

The Graet 2008 Transfer of Wealth

Americans are confronted with what appears to be the worse economic situation since the Great Depression. What will history say about the U.S. credit crisis turned global financial crisis? At every turn investors are faced with new problems, new crises, and less than desirable solutions which include debt, deflation and a transfer of wealth.

With regard to debt, the American taxpayer has been made the lender of last resort for international bank Bear Stearns and now the two Government-sponsored Enterprises-GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. On top of the $29B for Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie’s debt of $5.4T has been effectively transferred to the balance sheet of the USA. This is equal to the entire publicly traded debt of the U.S. which is also the same as the total of America’s mortgage-related assets. In addition to personal debt, every American now has a financial responsibility for Bear Stearns and Fannie and Freddie.

We, the people, have saved the foreign investors such as China which owns $376B, Japan which owns $228B, South Korea which owns $65B, Taiwan which owns $55B, and Australia which owns $33B, from losing faith in America. It is the stockholders, both common and preferred, that have been given the raw end of the deal. While large financial institutions such as JP Morgan, which owns $1.2B of Freddie and Fannie stock, said a complete loss would only erase one or two months of profits, contrast this to smaller banks such as the Central Virginia Bank in Richmond which has $20M in shares of Freddie and Fannie. That type of loss will put them in the same kind of trouble as Lehman Brothers, not enough capitalization. There are 15 other banks that hold 10% or more of their capital in shares of Freddie and Fannie.

The Federal Accounting Standards Board is requiring more stringent standards for banks and savings and loans to maintain a certain amount of capital to protect against insolvency. Those rules are in the process of being changed to conform to international rules issued by the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland which Congress has voted on. These rules which were only to pertain to international banks are now being applied to national banks.

Furthermore those in retirement who thought their money was safe—invested in the highest ranked bonds in the country are going to lose their dividends. Depending on the price they invested, they could have principal losses of up to 80 or 90% of their investment. Ouch.

The credit crunch began a year ago when the various investment banks both here and abroad stopped buying each others paper, a very uncommon practice between them. As a result of no liquidity for mortgage paper caused by their decision, we have the most serious slowdown in real estate in decades. The decision to not buy mortgage paper includes the sub-prime loans made to home buyers that had no down payment. To relate, I recently met a young Latino who is worried about her home. Five years ago she bought a $370,000 townhouse with $14,000 down. Her interest rate varies causing her monthly payment to jump from $2700 per month to $3500. She cleans houses for a living.

Freddie and Fannie decided they could make more money by buying subprime mortgage paper. Today there is an eleven month inventory of unsold homes. Higher interest rates as a result of the hidden clauses on floating interest rates have put many people in jeopardy of foreclosure. All of these problems have given the Federal Reserve the opportunity to seize total control of powers they did not oversee in order to protect our economy. Perhaps we should ask where the desire to put poor people into homes came from? It was part of the Bush Administration’s policy to conform to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals unveiled in the year 2000.


Exacerbating the credit crunch have been the historically high oil prices which have caused pain at the gas pumps and a weak dollar which has made imports more expensive. To counter high oil prices, Americans have drastically reduced how many miles they drive and a number of buying habits. In light of a tight job market and job losses in housing and the automotive industries, we are confronted with higher energy costs to heat and cool our homes, increased costs for food, and the inability to refinance mortgages. Basically the economy is now in deflation. When people stop spending, it moves from deflation to stagflation—no matter how cheap an item becomes, people can’t afford to buy. All this without knowing what the real fall out will be from the bailout of Freddie and Fannie.

The situation we are confronted with did not happen in the last few years, but began in 1913 when a group of cunningly deceitful legislators passed the Federal Reserve Act on December 24 at 11:45 p.m., after those who were opposed went home for Christmas. The entire financial system of the U.S. was transferred from Congress to a private corporation that is NOT accountable to Congress. They create and destroy the business cycle by various means: raising and lowering interest rates. The government of the United States is in bondage to a group of individuals who own the Federal Reserve. The reason why the American people cannot forgive themselves the interest on our debt is because we do not owe it to ourselves we owe it to the Federal Reserve! Every single time since then that the Federal Reserve Act was amended, over 195 times, the Federal Reserve gathered more power over various aspects of our economy. However, they are in the final throes of stripping America of any remaining vestiges of sovereignty as has been laid out in the Treasury “Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory System.”

The Blueprint was written under the watchful eye of one of America’s most successful international bankers, former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson, who is now our illustrious Treasury Secretary. Is this not a case of the fox in the chicken coup? Long time investment sage Marty Whitman commented on his actions, “Paulson thinks he is in Russia and is not giving any value to stockholders. It is outrageous that the Treasury Secretary is not giving any consideration to the shareholders.”

The Blueprint calls for key components of our financial system, not currently under Federal Reserve control, to be transferred to them. In order to do this, a number of changes will be necessary which Congress will have to approve. First, it recommends changing the banking charter to include all financial institutions, thus effectively transferring control over “national banks, federal savings associations, and federal [and state] credit union charters.” For your information, Washington Mutual is a savings and loan while Lehman Brothers is and Bear Stearns was an international bank. The Fed is to be given authority over the U.S. Payment and Settlement System thereby controlling the settlement process for securities. It will be given the role of Market Stability Regulator and it will have total control over the market. The Blueprint provides for the entire mortgage system of the U.S. to be federalized and to be under the control of the Mortgage Origination Commission. The Federal Reserve will be part of the Commission. Additionally the Federal Reserve will be given a say in the insurance industry which will be federalized and a new Office of Insurance Oversight will oversee its activities. The Federal Reserve will have a place on the Insurance Oversight commission.

By the time Congress votes on the Blueprint, there will be so many reasons for them to transfer the last vestiges of our financial sovereignty to the Federal Reserve that they will not even have to read the prepared legislation. So far, we have the bailout of Freddie and Fannie by giving Treasury a blank check to act; the Federal Reserve worked all weekend to find a buyer to Lehman, another international bank, their next project might be to rescue Washington Mutual, a savings and loan, and the Fed has been given initial powers to act as the Market Stability Regulator. The only component that is missing is the demise of an insurance company, AIG anyone?

For the record, at the heart of the Blueprint is changing our financial/banking and securities regulatory system from a national system to an international system to bring America into the world governmental system that functions above the nation-states. I have maintained that in order to get Congress to go along, we would have to have a huge problem which would allow Congress to be convinced that they need to act, however, the truth of the matter is they no longer have the power they once had because the majority has been transferred to the Federal Reserve.

History will determine how the final stage was set but I believe it started in 2000 with the Crash of the Nasdaq. Who would have ever thought that a stock would drop 90% in value? About $7T vanished from the balance sheets of investors. But we did not have to worry, as a result of 9/11, the Federal Reserve started to reduce interest rates to 45 year lows to get Americans to support the economy by buying the dream home. We bit the bait. It was the Roaring 20s all over again. At one point in the housing boom, one out of four jobs was created by the housing industry. No one asked if they could afford the debt, they only asked if they could afford the payment: a big difference. They did not ask the right questions about their mortgage because the mortgage industry was not required to disclose to them, when it should have. At one time the mortgage industry was run on honesty and integrity, but that changed too and people have been caught in a terrible snare.

The Bailout of Freddie and Fannie provide us with the latest excitement in the diabolical saga of the raping, robbing, and pillaging of America. Interestingly enough it took place 13 months after the beginning of the credit crunch. Lastly, I have maintained since the beginning of the credit crunch last August that it was planned and managed destruction in order to accomplish the final transfer of America’s financial sovereignty. All of the above only confirms my original suspicion. Sadly, only the strong will survive, only those who did not use their house as a checking account will survive, only those who turn to the Creator of the Universe, the Lord God who created heaven and earth, and His Son, Jesus, will survive in the midst of the Great 2008 Transfer of Wealth.

© 2008 Joan Veon - All Rights Reserved

Source: http://www.newswithviews.com/Veon/joan156.htm

The Two Witnesses!

The two witnesses in Revelation chapter eleven!

Q.: Who are they? Are they Elijah and Moses, or someone else coming in the spirit of Elijah and Moses only?


The Two Witnesses!

GOD has two special Witnesses that were murdered or destroyed and resurrected again. Of these GOD says: “And if any man will hurt them, fire proceeds out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.” [Revelation 11:5].

Now it is true that GOD gave us special Pentecostal Power to be His special Witnesses and we could say that the gift of tongues fires out of our mouth, but I would not go as far as to say that anyone could hurt Moses or Elijah up in heaven who have already experienced the physical resurrection. How then could they be slain and their bodies lie exposed for three and half prophetic days or three and half years? In their glorified immortal state they would not be subjected to death.

JESUS declared of the Old Testament Scriptures, “They are they which testify [witness] of Me.” [John 5:39] and again :”This Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a Witness unto all nations.” [Matthew 24:14].

Protestant Commentator George Croly wrote: “The ‘Two Witnesses are the Old and New Testaments…..The essential purpose of the Scriptures is to give Witness to the mercy and verity of GOD. Our Lord commands, ‘Search the Scriptures,…they are they which testify [witness] of Me.’

To hurt the Word of GOD is to oppose, corrupt, or pervert its testimony, and turn people away from it. Judgment fire pronounced against such will devour them in the lake of fire [Malachi 4:1; Rev.20:15, ; 22:18,19].

“And I will give power unto My two witnesses, and they shall prophecy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.”

Now remember that Revelation 10 stops all wild speculations for the end-time after the great disappointment which occurred in 1844 A.D. at the end of the 2300days/years of Daniel 8:14 and the Arab league in 1840 A.D.. Let us not be fouled by the Roman Futurism adopted by Protestants, that there will be such a thing as 3 ½ years etc. still to come. No more date setting please for this side of the second coming! It is only certain events remaing to be fulfilled such as the Sunday-law enforcement, the mark of the beast 666

The period of the 1260 days is variously referred to in the Scriptures. It appears in three forms: As 1260 days in Revelation 12:6

As 42 month in Revelation 11:2 and 13:5

As 3 ½ times in Daniel 7:25 and 12:7, Rev.12:14.

These all refer to the same time period and can easily be calculated. A time is a year, as evident from Dan. 11:13, marginal reading. A year has 12 month, and a biblical year contains 12 month and exactly 30 days each. As an example, the record of the flood in Genesis 7 and 8 that it came on the 17th day of the second month [7:11] and the waters subsided on the 17th of the seventh month [8:4].

That the flood continued for five month-from the second to the seventh month. Reference in Genesis 7:24 reveals that “the waters prevailed upon the earth 150 days. Our calculation shows 5 months. This text mentions 150 days, or 30 days to a month. One prophetic day stands for a literal year [Ezekiel 4:6 Numbers 14:34].

Thus we have a definite measure for calculating the prophetic periods, bearing in mind that in prophecy a day is equal to a year of ordinary time.

During this time of the 1260 years the witnesses are in a state of sackcloth, or obscurity, and GOD gives them power to endure and maintain their testimony through the dark and dismal period.

How are the two Witnesses further identified? “These are the two olive trees, and they the two candlesticks standing before GOD of the earth.” Verse 4

Evident allusion is made here to Zechariah 4:11-14, where it is implied that the two olive trees are taken to represent the word of GOD. David testifies, “The entrance of Thy words gives light and Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” [Ps.119:130,105]. Reference is made to the sanctuary of GOD where the oil of the olive trees fed the seven branched candlestick continually day and night. [Hebrews 9:2]

To compare Moses and Elijah to olive trees and candlesticks is unreasonable and nowhere found in Scriptures. The setting of the Two Witnesses in Revelation chapter eleven shows by its first two verses and the last two, that it refers to the judgment of the heavenly temple sanctuary of GOD.

Papal Rome had outlawed the Holy Scriptures during its long reign of 1260 years from 538 A.D. to 1798 A.D.

“And they have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy; and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.” V.6

In what sense have these witnesses power to shut heaven, turn water to blood, and bring plagues on the earth? Elijah shut heaven so that it did not rain for 3 ½ years, but not on his own, but on the word of the Lord.

Moses by the word of the Lord turned waters of Egypt to blood. Just as these judgments, recorded in their testimony [witness], have been fulfilled, so will every threatening and judgment pronounced by them against any people surely be accomplished. Of these two, only Moses was dead and resurrected again. Elijah never saw death and went up in a chariot of fire.

“As often as they will” means that as often as judgments are recorded on their pages to take place, so often they will come to pass. An instance of this the world is yet to experience in the last seven plagues.

“And when they shall have finished their testimony [their witness], the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.” Verses 7,8

When they shall have finished their testimony or witness, that is, in sackcloth. The sackcloth state ended. A “beast” denotes a kingdom or power [Dan.7:17,23]. The question remains, when did the sackcloth state close? And did such a kingdom make war on them for 1260 years?

We already showed that the 1260 years of papal supremacy had outlawed the Word of GOD from 538 to 1798 A.D. but the tenth part of the city is apparently the most wicked part and the greatest offender.

France or the Franks, were one part of the 10 Divisions of the Roman Empire after its collapse. Three of them were uprooted by the little horn power according to Daniel 7 and 8 in order for the little horn to grow exceedingly great, greater than Alexander the great. This cannot refer to Antiochus Epiphanes who never changed GOD’S laws and times. The Papal see however claims divine power to modify divine law and changed the Sabbath to Sunday and the time from sundown to the darkest hour of midnight.

France was the atheistical power here compared to spiritual Egypt. On the 1st November in 1793 A.D. the holy Scriptures were banned in France and also GOD’S weekly cycle. After exactly 3 ½ days of years, as the Bible prophesied, till June 1797 the Scriptures or the two Witnesses stood on their feet again.

Were they exalted to heaven after that date? Oh yes, shortly after 1797, in 1804, the British Bible Society was organized and followed by the American in 1816.

Before 1804 the Bible had been printed and circulated in 50 languages. But by 1942 translated in whole or in part to 1,058 languages and has since been voted the number one best seller in the world.

The Bible is exalted, next to JESUS CHRIST our Logos up to heaven more than Moses and Elijah. For more details www.come2jesus.info/apocalypse.htm

Source: http://www.come2jesus.info/whoarethetwowitnesses.htm