Archival footage of Rioting Across America - The Great Depression

Obama and the Congress: Returning America to Hooverville

Riddle me this, what will it take for Obama groupies to take their heads out the sphincter of the President and what will it take for Tea party groupies to take their heads out of the same opening of the Tea Party? Is it just me or am I the only one who see that no matter what, Obamafied folk hate all the Tea party supporters and the Tea Baggers hate without though or question, all who support President Obama. The least common denominator both conglomerates fail to observe is that regardless of republican or democrat, male or female, gay or straight, or black or white, these people all represent the same thing from their K-street lobbyist influence to wealthy campaign donors. Yes, republicans and democrats are the same inside the beltway political party crooks. Some may take issue with this and their feeble thought processes may still wish to make delineations between the two but the math will prove unflappable.

Just this week, employers announced plans to shed 115,730 workers from their payrolls in September, making it the worst job cut month in over two years.Telling me if this is September, and what we know from history, which the President and the Congress seem not to be able to learn from, it is only going downhill from here given the federal government penchant for across-the-board cuts in spending put in place by President Obama and the congress during their debt ceiling debate. September job cuts were 126% higher than the 51,114 announced in August and 212% higher than September 2010, making it the highest since April 2009. Telling us regular no politician and non-wealthy political party donors what we already know – it’s hard out here. But what does the president do? He wants Congress to make it easier for private debt collectors to robo-call the cellphones of consumers delinquent on student loans and other billions owed the federal government via a hidden clause in his $3 trillion deficit-reduction plan Obama submitted to Congress. It should have been expected given how close the President is to campaign funders including the private debt collection industry – strange since he wanted Elizabeth Warren to fight these same folk, ACA International (the collection industry trade association).

It is apparent that neither Obama nor the congress care to solve our present economic crisis nor are they adult enough to tell the American people the truth regarding the severity of what we encounter from an economic perspective. Instead, they would prefer to bicker and move our nation towards Hooverville.

During the great depression of the 1930s, camps of dispossessed and destitute people grew across the nation after the stock market crash of 1929. These camps, comprised of homeless men, women and children who were forced to take up residence in shacks as a result of the Great Depression became known as Hooverville's in honor of President Herbert Hoover.
Policies of the federal government were so inept and out of touch with the seriousness of the economic forlornness most of America was experiencing (as now) that the little resources that the federal government made available often did not go to the hungry and homeless but rather to corrupt politicians and corporations who and kept those valuable resources to themselves (Wall Street Bailout and loans for big corporations).

As the economy continued to get worse, more people and families were impoverished due to rising unemployment and mortgage foreclosures. In fact estimates suggest that between 1929 and 1933, more than 100,000 businesses failed across the nation. Like Obama currently, by the end of President Hoover tenure in 1933, there were at least 13 million unemployed (around 25% of America's work force).

The Obama Administration and the congress are heading toward turning America into a country of Hooverville’s. The stock market crash in October 1929 helped trigger a devastating depression that led to massive homelessness and joblessness once the economy began to crumble in the early 1930s, resulting in these make shift shanty towns springing up across the nation. Seattle's main Hooverville covered nine acres and lasted from 1931 to 1941. One of the largest Hooverville's in the U.S. sprouted along the banks of the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri in 1930. In New York City’s Central Park, a Hooverville existed from 1931-33. There was even one in Washington, D.C. on the Anacostia flats south of the Capitol in the spring and summer of 1932.

The problems were similar to now. As today, during the Great Depression the Federal Government’s did not deal head on in terms of their response to the economic collapse since all of their Depression-era policies failed to alleviate unemployment and address the social crisis led to the creation of Hooverville’s. The real problem was the Federal Reserve banks and their practice of fractional banking.

Prior to 1913, there had only been two other times the Unites States had a federal reserve bank. The first central bank was created in 1791 amidst major dissent against such in the Congress and chartered for 20 years. Like the Federal Reserve Bank of today, it used its control of the currency to defraud the public and establish a legal form of usury. Its practice of fractional lending at a 10:1 rate (ten dollars of loans for each dollar they had on deposit) caused so much public outrage that the charter was not renewed and the bank ceased to exist in 1811.

The second central bank of the US came to fruition after the war of 1812. European and American bankers used this tumultuous time to influence Congress to charter the Second Bank of the United States in 1816. President Andrew Jackson won the presidency in 1828 with the promise to end the national debt and eliminate the Second Bank of the United States and during his second term as President he withdrew all government funds from the bank and on January 8, 1835, paid off the national debt allowing the charter to end in 1836.

The Federal Reserve Act of December 23, 1913 was designed “to provide for the establishment of Federal Reserve banks, to furnish an elastic currency, to afford means of rediscounting commercial paper, to establish a more effective supervision of banking in the United States, and for other purposes.” The tricky part was the “for other purposes,” which basically meant it could create money from nothing and collect interest on it.

The Federal Reserve Act, which was passed without discussion during the Christmas recess, transferred all the rights and profits from the creation of money from the citizens and the U.S. Government to private banks. Basically giving private banks the right to create money out of thin air and turn us regular folks into slaves of debt. This debt is the result of fractional banking. Fractional banking or fractional lending is the ability to create money from nothing, lend it to the government or someone else and charge interest.

It is clear that President Obama, his administration and the congress do not understand our problems as a nation and ergo do not see the negative role the Federal Reserve Bank and it fractional banking approaches have played in what we are experiencing now.

Historically we have seen banks deciding on their own to shut off the debt/money, citing the need to control inflation resulting in massive bankruptcies, unemployment and foreclosures. They singularly have the power to engender both prosperity and depression. All wealth that is created in America is eventually transferred to the central bank and becomes what we poor folks view as a process of consolidating the wealth. The basic math is that the FRB creates inflation, and then restricts credit and the market’s collapse while the rich get richer – just look out ours and across the pond in Europe.

When we as a nation did not have a central bank to manipulate the supply of money, the US experienced unprecedented growth for 60 or 70 years. Consequently in 1910 Senator Nelson Aldrich (originator of the Sixteenth Amendment - income tax), then Chairman of the National Monetary Commission, in collusion with representatives of the European central banks, devised a plan to pressure and “deceive Congress into enacting legislation that would covertly establish a private central bank.”

Obama and congress are in the pockets of the wealth oligarch of Wall Street. They have jobs and benefits. Their wages continue to increase while ours do not. They are not interested in how we are supposed to live and survive. All they want to do is allow the Federal Reserve Banks to print more money so we can sell the only thing we make – weapons. To grow our economy it is simple, end the Federal Reserve and bring production back to America. We must end fractional banking system. There was time when a person could walk into a bank and exchange a dollar for gold. We can’t do such any more. They President and congress will bailout banks to the tune of billions but not us. Soon there will be no middle class.

Thomas Jefferson said, "If the America people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currencies, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their prosperity until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." Sad thing is nothing will change because we too stupid to see this. Nothing that is until we get money out of politics in the form of the Koch Brothers, George Soros and warren Buffet and end the fractional banking practices that got us in this mess. But like I said it is against the interest of the wealthy, even those in politics from Obama to Ryan. They will be better served financially when America once again becomes a country of Hooverville’s.

Smart money knows the stock market is finished. Get prepared

bank of America

It seems as if some don’t really live recession or if it really exist as others say does not. I know for me it is hard and recession is felt daily in my pocket. Ironic to me is how fiscal conservatism (the word as uttered by Republicans and not the actual practice) leads it seem to this mess and even to our greatest financial disasters the way i see. Coolidge, Harding (depression), Keating (Bush/Regan) and now this. I really don’t think it is the responsibility and that there can exist NO reason for the government to bail out the result of presupposed free market activity, if such is self corrective? I mean they seem to be a bit willing to me and not arduously trying to discern of it as if it is wise to spend MY loot on such without my permission.

This is the real war on terror we need to go after. Economic terrorism. You can not just take trillions of dollars from an economy (the Iraq War – both really) and not REASONABLY expect not to have problems. And these fools wanted to privatize social security. If they are, they need to be committed on insanity if not held for criminal liability for corporate felonies –dang that’s right, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 prevents such from occurring. Not to mention whoever thought of giving tax breaks to the rich and suggesting such creates jobs is shootin’ up because the take the loot and invest overseas – not here.

I don’t profess to knowing what has to be done, but something has too, they even sneaky at the Whitehouse, spend all that loot on buying Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and not put it on the budget; like 200 billion dollars in any form is of non budgetary status. But I guess it should be expected since folk don’t Articl1 section 8 (To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures) no more. Thank you Woodrow Wilson for the Federal Reserve. Shouts out to Lyndon Johnson for privatizing Fannie Mae. Shouts out to China, that 374 billion you own in all this debt you purchased, meaning my federal tax dollar coming you way; free of charge. And for being the birth place of AIG in 1919 – gotta check for yawl too.

Fiscal conservatism – hum bug. These GOP hoodrats dont practice fiscal conservatism. What’s fiscal or conservative about allowing stuff to be sold when you cannot even calculate the value of the asset, or if it is an asset alone? Don’t know body know how much the paper they buying worth but they buying it anyway. Go figure, I’m through with economic, makes me mad. So I’m gone try and not think about the fact my dollar is .71 cents to the Euro and I aint have nothing to do with that. I would offer some advice, but I only advise self, based on personal thought processes designed specifically for me and mine. I can say learn your money, how to make it work for you, no matter how little you have. Learn investment, learn money, learn the markets.

And not investment the U.S. government way, they say it’s ok for fed debt to grow in short term to maintain a viable economy – maintain dang jones. I don’t know, I just want to know do the government run the banks, or the banks run the government? Bank of America, has a nice ring to it. vote

PS - meant to say me love some Kimmy Cantrell ( in pic).

the fat lady aint started singin' yet

For the record, tonight I am writing this without the assistance of Tequila and hot sauce – I know a shame. So If I make too much sense or not enough forgive me, for I left my wallet at the shop and I am eating black olives, brie cheese and drinking blueberry/pomegranate juice (dick hard food as I like to say). But for me it is a state of Emergency, especially since folk like Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson seems to always act ex post facto and put shit in place to deal with problems but not prevent them.

Now I will be the first to say I aint no investment banker nor am I an economist, but I read and don’t consider myself to be a stupid mother fucker. There are several things about the economy I want to point out. First, all of this shit has happened under the watch of republicans and all these chump bitch ass folk wanna do is put a band-aid on an amputated leg. And hate to say it, But Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG is only the beginning of what is to come. I remember recently how Paulson said that the problem that we have is because “We have an archaic financial regulatory structure that came in place a long time ago, after the Depression. It really needs to be rebuilt."

From my understanding of history, the problem during the depression was stocks. Yep stocks, for back then they were not regulated as they are today. In the current economic picture, we got to deal with some other thangs, namely hedge funds and derivatives, which are a lot more complex and no where close in resemblance to the classic stock or bond. But like in the depression era when stocks went unregulated, today derivatives and hedge funds and what they call credit default swaps, can be bought and sold and packaged without ANY federal or state regulation (yawl economist and investment genius correct this layman if I am wrong).

No regulation, nada. And we came to this like I have said in many post before, due to many folks, but one I have yet to mention is Former Senator Phil Gramm. Yea, yawl know Jones, he said that Americans were whinning over the economy. He currently is McCain’s economic advisor and I must say with him at the helm, I can only see the economy getting worse. A few post ago I wrote about how he led efforts to pass the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which served to reduce government regulations in that separated banking, insurance and brokerage activities that had been in place since the Great Depression. But more importantly to jones here was his role in getting the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 passed.

Now let me tell yawl about this. True, he is the VP of USB, a Swiss bank and one should expect such, but this was some sneaky and scandalous shit folk pulled mane because it made specific provisions that products offered by banking institutions would not be regulated as futures contracts – no regulations by feds or state governments, like stocks before great depression.

That’s another reason I say McCain is stupid, for picking a man who is the VP of a bank with 12 billion in losses last year as his top economic advisor and because McCain himself say he is learning economics by reading Alan Greenspan’s book – LMBAO. Not to mention Gramm aint write it but rather it was drafted by Wall Street lawyers. They do this shit via what are called structured investment vehicles and this shit aint even on the balanced sheets.

With the aforementioned and they way they keep they books, via Gramm’s help, we will never know what the actual losses are or will be. Add to that the way they cover this stuff is through another shady side bet called credit default swaps which are “expressly” deregulated via the Act mentioned above. Credit default swaps are the most widely traded form of credit derivative. They aint nothing but bets between folk on whether or not a company will default on its bonds. This is easy to do cause all the banks been doing is giving out mortgages for homes, bundling them up as securities and selling them to others

All I am saying is what we are seeing with Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and AIG is only the beginning because these are based on faulty MBS. Next its gonna be credit cards, student loans and all loans – even private equity loans (corporations). Yep the fat lady aint even started to sing yet and we the tax payer got to pay for this and get the shaft with no Vaseline because the feds will bail these folk out and let the CEOs leaves with 100 millions and even pay for big company but not folk who loose their homes.

All I am saying is handle yours because it WILL get worse. But yawl don’t hear me though, but I bet you getting your toes done, smelling the microwave pop corn and talking about what you eating and dranking at some fancy retro chic Bar. Not me mane. Not me. Like I said, the fat lady aint even started singing, so I would advise you to stuff your mattress, at least a little at a time. vote