MEDIA ROOTS — On January 28th, 2012, Occupy Oakland moved to take a vacant building to use as a social centre and a new place to continue organising.  This is the story of what really happened that day as told by the participants.  The video features raw footage of police brutality and interviews with Boots Riley, David Graeber, Maria Lewis, along with several other witnesses to the events.

MR

The Battle of Oakland by Brandon Jourdan

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Photo by Abby Martin

DISINFO – “Brace yourself, the American Empire is over, and the descent is going to be horrifying.” Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges conducts an illuminating if depressing discussion on politics, poverty, and everything else regarding the way we live and where we are headed:

Chris Hedges on The End of the American Empire

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MEDIA ROOTS — The private, unaccountable, Federal Reserve operates above the law, as it dictates monetary policy.  That’s enough to spur Ron Paul followers into calling for an end to the Fed.  Now, if you shared in the justified rage of thousands of Occupy encampments across the nation, protesting, ‘Banks got bailed out, We got sold out,’ at the thought of hundreds of billions going to Wall Street in the name of trickle-down economics salvation, then imagine the rage at the news Bloomberg recently released.  Bloomberg has obtained thousands of pages of Federal Reserve documents under a Freedom of Information Act request revealing the Fed quietly funnelled trillions to Wall Street back in 2008 as Congress debated awarding banks those begrudged billions in bailouts.

If Ron Paul’s followers are misguided in their calls to ‘End the Fed,’ they are on the right track in pointing to the absurdity of having the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve System, privately run by unelected technocrats representing the 1%.  If the scale of the U.S. economy necessitates a central bank, at the very least, it must be publicly controlled.  As Thom Hartmann writes for Truthout, we need state banks a la North Dakota and the U.S. Treasury must “either buy the Fed from the for-profit banks that own it, or simply nationalize it.”  Meanwhile the token reformer in the Democrat Party, Kucinich, has called for something billed The Need Act.

This $7.7 Trillion dollar revelation is striking, as we are witnessing a breakdown of our capitalist economic system and of our political process.  The Occupy Movement and the journalists trying to cover it have witnessed the shredding of the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment.  This type of story, financial coup d’état, should be a national scandal and take centre stage, as we approach 2012 with the U.S. Presidential Election underway, not rumours of personal foibles. 

Messina

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TRUTHOUT — Do you know who Elizabeth Duke is? How about Donald Kohn or Kevin Warsh? No? Well – you should. Because while Congress was debating back in 2008 whether or not to bailout banksters with a $700 billion blank check – these guys and girls were just doing it. They were funneling $7.7 trillion to Wall Street under the table – without one constituent phone call – without worrying about one election – without having to give one explanation.

They were able to do that because they’re members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors – a group of people who are not voted into office, but have the power to completely dictate monetary policy in America. They are not politicians – they’re technocrats – they’re bankers and financial experts. Technocrats aren’t interested in democracy – it takes too long, and often the interests of the majority of voters don’t quite line up with the interests of the minority of bankers and foreign investors. Or – to put it in today’s terms – the interests of the 99% rarely line up with the interests of the 1%. That’s why – back in 2008 – the technocrats at the Fed weren’t interested in waiting for Congress – with all of its open debate and constituent services – to bail out the banks – they just went ahead and did it themselves. According to documents obtained by Bloomberg News – in 2009 – the Fed dished out $7.7 trillion in no-strings-attached, super-low interest loans to Wall Street’s biggest players.

That’s $7.7 trillion!

That’s more than half of the total value of EVERYTHING – every single thing produced in America – that same year. $7.7 TRILLION out the door – with no one bothering to inform the electorate about it until now. And since they were super-low interest loans – banks made enormous profits off of them. Six of the nation’s biggest banks – like Morgan Stanley and Bank of America – pocketed a not-too-shabby $13 billion in undisclosed profits, thanks to the deal with the technocrats at the Fed. So today – thanks to a decision made by technocrats, and not politicians – the too-big-to-fail banks are even bigger, and Wall Street has raked in more profits in just the last 30 months then they did in the entire eight years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis.

I guess the economic crisis that brought banksters to the ledge ended up being pretty lucrative for them in the long run. But the bigger picture is this: can our democracy survive future financial crises? As the world descends into financial turmoil on fears that the Eurozone may collapse, it’s the technocrats who are taking power – replacing elected officials.

The clearest example of this is what happened in Greece a few weeks ago. In order to preserve the euro – keep financial markets steady and ensure that foreign investors get what’s theirs – the technocrats at the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank demanded that Greece take a bailout. Knowing that a bailout would mean more layoffs – higher taxes and less benefits for the Greek people – Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou wanted to hold a national referendum on whether or not to take the bailout, just like Iceland had done a year earlier. He wanted the people – through democracy – to determine their own fate. But that never happened.

Just floating the idea cost Papandreou his job – he was forced out of office and replaced by a technocrat, Lucas Papademos, who just so happened to be the former vice president of the European Central Bank. Probably because when the Icelandic people were asked in a national referendum if they should take austerity cuts to bail out their banksters, they said, overwhelmingly, “No, let the banks fail.” But with a technocrat in charge, there will be no vote – a bailout will be shoved down the throat of the Greek people, and so, too, will painful austerity – anything to keep the banksters happy.

[Conservative] New York Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat laid out this new reality of technocrat control in a recent article in which he wrote, “For the inhabitants of Italy and Greece, who have just watched democratically elected governments toppled by pressure from financiers, European Union bureaucrats, and foreign heads of state, it evokes the cold reality of 21st-century politics. Democracy may be nice in theory, but in a time of crisis it’s the technocrats who really get to call the shots. National sovereignty is a pretty concept, but the survival of the European common currency comes first.”

All signs indicate that we’ll be confronted with this problem once again in America – as another financial crisis, be it caused by Europe or some other bubble like student debt or housing, seems like a foregone conclusion at this point. And when it hits the fan – and the American people tell Congress no way in hell will they sign off on another bailout of Wall Street – then the technocrats at the Fed will takeover and our democracy will be irrelevant – just like it was in 2008 and 2009. That’s why we, the people, need to take back control of the Fed, and why the people of Europe need to take back control of their central banks and global financial institutions.

Only when the Federal Reserve becomes an instrument of the people to calm the mood swings of the market – and not a piggy bank for transnational banking corporations – can we really protect ourselves from a technocratic takeover in the future. And the way to do it is pretty straightforward – it was Alexander Hamilton’s idea back in the George Washington administration. Have the central bank owned by the US government and run by the Treasury Department, so all the profits from banking go directly into the Treasury and you and I pay less in taxes while the banksters on Wall Street can find a job at Wal-Mart.

The good people of North Dakota did just this, back in 1919, established something very much like this – the Bank of North Dakota – and it’s kept the state in the black, and kept its farmers, manufacturers and students protected from the predations of New York banksters for nearly a century. It’s time for every state to charter their own state bank, just like North Dakota did, and for the Treasury Department to either buy the Fed from the for-profit banks that own it, or simply nationalize it.

Only when we get control of our money out of the hands of sociopathic banksters will our democracy begin to function for the people instead of just for the banksters.

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Photos by flickr user Late Night Task Force (synopsis) and flickr user Mike Licht, NotionsCapitol.com (above)

MEDIA ROOTS— Recently, economic journalist Doug Henwood was interviewed on Pacifica Radio’s “Against the Grain” to dispel various myths he and his interviewer tied to the Occupy Wall Street Movement.  One of which was about the Federal Reserve being the source of all evil.

The Federal Reserve System is the private U.S. central bank which controls our monetary policy.  And although Federal Reserve Banks are “privately owned and locally controlled corporations,” run by ruling-class elitists, we’d be worse without it, claimed Henwood.

The interviewer associated OWS concerns over the Fed with conspiracist quackery, but avoided all of the real perils of the Fed in its current structure.  Henwood’s main arguments in favour of the Fed included assuring, contrary to popular belief; it wasn’t nefariously hatched up at some secret meeting on Jekyll Island, but that it was instead “a project of many decades undertaken by the ruling-class.”  Gee, that makes me feel much better…

The scale of our modern economy, per Henwood, necessitates a central bank capable of injecting liquidity into the system swiftly in times of crisis, something the gold standard could not do.  Henwood also cited Bernanke regarding the virtues of stimulus, despite the fact that stimulus is rigged for the 1% to horde capital whilst the 99% pray for crumbs and sink deeper into debt.

The biggest problem is that the Federal Reserve system works above the law, which is why Bank of America has gotten away with dumping $75 Trillion of derivatives on U.S. taxpayers with Federal approval.  With the Fed having to answer to no one, why wouldn’t its ruling-class drivers horde profits whilst shifting liabilities onto taxpayers?  It’s unlikely to be due to the benevolence of their hearts.

Messina

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SEEKING ALPHA— Bloomberg reports that Bank of America (BAC) has shifted about $22 trillion worth of derivative obligations from Merrill Lynch and the BAC holding company to the FDIC insured retail deposit division. Along with this information came the revelation that the FDIC insured unit was already stuffed with $53 trillion worth of these potentially toxic obligations, making a total of $75 trillion.

Many big banks, including Bank of America, issue derivatives because, if they are not triggered, they are highly profitable to the issuer, and result in big bonus payments to the executives who administer them. If they are triggered, of course, the obligations fall upon the corporate entity, not the executives involved. Ultimately, by allowing existing gambling bets to remain in insured retail banks, and endorsing the shift of additional bets into the insured retail division, the obligation falls upon the U.S. taxpayers and dollar-denominated savers.

Even if we net out the notional value of the derivatives involved, down to the net potential obligation, the amount is so large that the United States could not hope to pay it off without a major dollar devaluation, if a major contingency actually occurred and a large part of the derivatives were triggered. But, if such an event ever occurs, Bank of America’s derivatives counter-parties will, as usual, be made whole, while the American people suffer. This all has the blessing of the Federal Reserve, which approved the transfer of derivatives from Merrill Lynch to the insured retail unit of BAC before it was done.

The FDIC opposed the move, but there is nothing the FDIC can do, except file a petition for a writ of mandamus in court, against the Federal Reserve, seeking a declaration that the approval was illegal. But, the FDIC would lose, because Congress has given the Federal Reserve Board ultimate power to do whatever it wishes.

So, the bottom line is this: When something bad happens, and the derivative obligations are triggered, the FDIC will be on the hook, thanks to the Federal Reserve. The counter-parties of Bank of America, both inside America and elsewhere around the world, will be safely bailed out by the full faith and credit of the USA. Meanwhile, the taxpayers and dollar denominated savers will be fleeced again. This latest example of misconduct illustrates the error of allowing a bank-controlled entity, like the Federal Reserve, complete power over the nation’s monetary system. The so-called “reforms” enacted by Congress, in the wake of the 2008 crash, have vested more, and not less, power in the Federal Reserve, and supplied us with more, rather than less instability and problems.

This is not an isolated instance. JP Morgan Chase (JPM) is being allowed to house its unstable derivative obligations within its FDIC insured retail banking unit. Other big banks do the same. So long as the Federal Reserve exists and/or other financial regulatory agencies continue to be run by a revolving door staff that moves in and out of industry and government, crony capitalism will be alive and well in America. No amount of Dodd-Frank or Volcker rule legislation will ever protect savers, taxpayers or the American people. Profits will continue to be privatized and losses socialized.

Read more about how Bank Of America Dumps $75 Trillion In Derivatives On U.S. Taxpayers With Federal Approval.

© 2011 Seeking Alpha

MEDIA ROOTS- Sometimes I forget that I am living in a police state, and then I hear about stories like this: last Thursday, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) shut off cellphone service at several stations in an attempt to stop a planned protest over another fatal shooting by BART police. It was spun as a preventative safety measure by BART and officials, but it’s a disturbing commentary on how de-valued privacy and civil disobedience have become in our society.

BART is technically private, but it has all the auspices of a public space. You can argue that private industry has the right to interfere with first amendment rights being exercised on their property, but when a public transit company works in collusion with the telecommunications industry and the government to shut down modes of communication, how can you call it anything but Orwellian? What is the difference between Mubarak’s regime cutting off the internet for Egyptians during the protests and BART officials cutting off the passengers’ freedom? Corporations are technically “people,” but how far are their rights allowed to infringe upon the rights and progress of a free society?

Abby

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BREITBART– An illegal, Orwellian violation of free-speech rights? Or just a smart tactic to protect train passengers from rowdy would-be demonstrators during a busy evening commute?

The question resonated Saturday in San Francisco and beyond as details emerged of Bay Area Rapid Transit officials’ decision to cut off underground cellphone service for a few hours at several stations Thursday. Commuters at stations from downtown to near the city’s main airport were affected as BART officials sought to tactically thwart a planned protest over the recent fatal shooting of a 45-year-old man by transit police.

Two days later, the move had civil rights and legal experts questioning the agency’s move, and drew backlash from one transit board member who was taken aback by the decision.

“I’m just shocked that they didn’t think about the implications of this. We really don’t have the right to be this type of censor,” said Lynette Sweet, who serves on BART’s board of directors. “In my opinion, we’ve let the actions of a few people affect everybody. And that’s not fair.”

Similar questions of censorship have arisen in recent days as Britain’s government put the idea of curbing social media services on the table in response to several nights of widespread looting and violence in London and other English cities. Police claim that young criminals used Twitter and Blackberry instant messages to coordinate looting sprees in riots.

Read more about SF Cell Shutdown: Safety issue, or Hint of Orwell?

Photo by Flickr user Aracio Olvarado