“And
then we have to get to work on the healing of our homeland, repairing the many
social and cultural injuries and injustices caused by turbo-capitalism.”
WHILE THE
CRONY BANKSTERS LOOTED AND PLUNDERED WITH IMPUNITY, THE GLOBALIST DEMS WERE
HANDING OUR BORDERS OVER TO THE MEX INVADERS!
Yes, Luttwak’s was a lonely voice in
1994. And yet he knew that he was on to something; in 1998 he published
the equally prescient Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and
Losers in the Global Economy. Describing the
contemporary system, he noted, “It enriches industrializing poor countries,
impoverishes the semi-affluent majority in rich countries, and greatly adds to
the incomes of the top 1 percent on both sides who are managing the arbitrage.”
In the memorable words of Stephen K. Bannon,
head honcho at the Trump presidential campaign and then for a time the top
strategist in the Trump White House, “The globalists gutted the
American working class and created a middle class in Asia.”
THE FRIGHTENING TAKE DOWN OF AMERICA
BY THE CRIMINAL FAMILIES OF BUSH, CLINTON AND OBAMA
Virgil:
How Bill Clinton and Neoliberal Trade Policies Led to the Rise of Fascism
https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2020/01/04/virgil-how-bill-clinton-and-neoliberal-trade-policies-led-to-the-rise-of-fascism/
4 Jan 20202,346
14:11
If Virgil told you about an article
arguing that the current system can’t handle the challenges of
globalization—pointing to “the completely unprecedented personal economic
insecurity of working people, from industrial workers and white-collar clerks
to medium-high managers”—you might be inclined to react as follows: “That’s old
news. I’ve read a hundred
articles making that point, again and again, over the last few years—quite a
few of them, in fact, at Breitbart News.”
Okay, but what if Virgil told you that
this particular article was written in…1994? As in, a full quarter-century ago? In
other words, way ahead of its time?
It’s worth recalling that back in
1994, in the wake of the end of the Cold War, the elites were in love with
globalization; they were avidly consuming utopian books such as The
Borderless World, The End of History, and The Twilight
of Sovereignty.
And yes, 1994 was the year that the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect. As President
Bill Clinton said as he signed the trade treaty,
“NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs.” In
fact, Clinton mentioned the word “jobs” a full 50 times in that
speech. Indeed, all that repetition might make one think that the 42nd
president was trying really hard to convince Americans that he
was telling the truth about their jobs.
BLOG:
THE CLINTONS HAVE FROM DAY ONE BEEN SERVANTS OF BIG BANKS AND LA RAZA, THE MEX
FASCIST PARTY THEY ENDLESSLY HISPANDER TO
Interestingly, as Clinton spoke in
support of the trade deal, he was joined at the podium by former presidents
Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush; in other words, at the elite level, support
for NAFTA was virtually unanimous. Everything would be wonderful, we were
assured, if the globalists got their way.
Yet back then, one observer was
having none of this giddy optimism. In April 1994, veteran D.C.
think-tanker Edward Luttwak, writing in the London
Review of Books, argued that trade deals such as NAFTA were hollowing
out Middle America—and that the elite didn’t either notice or care: “Neither
the moderate Right nor the moderate Left even recognizes, let alone offers any
solution for, the central problem of our days: the completely unprecedented
personal economic insecurity of working people, from industrial workers and
white-collar clerks to medium-high managers.”
Luttwak’s point was that
globalization and trade were a threat to the cultural and economic structures
of each and every developed country. That is, long-standing and intricate
systems of work and life were now being exposed to the “tidal waves of change
in the global economic ocean.”
Defenders of such planetary tidal-waving
said that it was inevitable, given that countries such as Mexico and China were
entering the world economy—and that as they did so, of course they would be
making big waves. And yet Luttwak’s point was that the elites were neither
noticing nor caring about the societal impact of these waves crashing on the
home country.
BLOG: VISIT MEXICO'S SECOND LARGEST CIT OF LOS ANGELES TO
WITNESS WHAT THE CRASHING WAVES TRULY LOOKS LIKE
Luttwak was especially cutting in
his dismissal of the Republican response: “In this situation, what does the
moderate Right … have to offer? Only more free trade and globalization,
more deregulation and structural change, thus more dislocation of lives and
social relations.”
Luttwak added that Republicans were
in the curious position of being economic libertarians and, at
the same time, social conservatives. That is, they were
more than a little schizophrenic, because wide-open economics typically
pulverizes any particular cultural heritage. As he put it, the
standard Republican “after-dinner speech is a two-part affair, in which
part one celebrates the virtues of unimpeded competition and dynamic structural
change, while part two mourns the decline of the family and community ‘values’
that were eroded precisely by the forces commended in part one.”
Okay, so Luttwak gets credit for
being ahead of his time—way ahead. He had grasped the reality that
economic growth and transformation is dislocating, especially when that
economic growth is differentialized within the society, as owners prosper and
workers suffer.
As Luttwak put it, the voguish
business-consultant jargon of the era—concepts such as “restructuring” and
“re-engineering”—was mostly just code words for downsizing and outsourcing. That
is, a given company might “grow” by slicing domestic employment and moving
production overseas, but it was growing only its own profits, not its
contribution to American society.
Yes, Luttwak’s was a lonely voice in
1994. And yet he knew that he was on to something; in 1998 he published
the equally prescient Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global
Economy. Describing the contemporary system, he
noted, “It enriches industrializing poor countries, impoverishes the semi-affluent
majority in rich countries, and greatly adds to the incomes of the top 1
percent on both sides who are managing the arbitrage.”
As we all know, it took a couple of
decades for people to see that Luttwak’s critique was dead-on. Back in the
’90s and ’00s, the elite consensus held that if planetary
arbitrageurs—operating in financial and informational hubs such as New York
City and San Francisco—were prospering, that was a good enough sign that
everyone was prospering. In this reckoning, what’s good for Goldman Sachs
and Google is good for America. And of course, if more immigrants—legal or otherwise—were needed
to serve in the service economy, well, that was good, too.
BLOG:
THE ENTIRE REASON FOR OPEN BORDERS IS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND PASS ALONG
THE TRUE COST OF ALL THAT "CHEAP" LABOR TO MIDDLE AMERICA. THERE IS
NO BILLIONAIRE WHO IS NOT AN ADVOCATE FOR AMNESTY, NON-ENFORCEMENT AND WIDER
OPEN BORDERS.
We can add that this smug view was
bipartisan: President George W. Bush shared Bill Clinton’s economic opinions;
indeed, if anything, Bush was even more of an enthusiast for closer integration
with Mexico. (Although, of course, Bush ended devoting most of his
presidency to the folly of closer integration with Iraq and Afghanistan.) And
as for Barack Obama, he was another globalist—seeking closer integration with
many countries, including China.
Thus it took until the 2016 election
for a presidential candidate to say, “Enough!” That candidate, of course,
was Donald Trump. (And in an odd way, some of Trump’s anti-globalization
arguments were echoed by another prominent ’16 candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders.)
President Donald Trump
speaks to auto workers at the American Center for Mobility March 15, 2017, in
Ypsilanti, Michigan. Trump discussed his priorities of improving conditions to
bolster the manufacturing industry and reduce the outsourcing of American jobs.
(Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)
In the memorable words of Stephen
K. Bannon, head honcho at the Trump presidential campaign and then for a
time the top strategist in the Trump White House, “The globalists gutted the
American working class and created a middle class in Asia.”
By now, most national politicians,
in both parties, pay at least lip service to the Luttwak-Bannon argument;
there’s a realization that the American middle class paid the price while the
bi-coastal elite reaped the reward. And that’s why the various trans-Atlantic
and trans-Pacific trade deals favored by the Obama administration, and Hillary
Clinton, seem to be dead.
And as an aside on the 2020
presidential campaign, post-Clinton Democrats, having finally soured on
Bill-and-Hill-style neoliberalism, are now targeting White House hopeful Pete
Buttigieg for his association with McKinsey & Co.
That’s the notorious and scandal-plagued “management
consulting” firm that’s been at the forefront of so many corporate decisions to
lay off and to outsource, among other forms of international skullduggery.
Buttigieg is easily recognized as the candidate most likely to revive those
globalist trade deals, in keeping with his overall Harvard mentality; no wonder
he’s so popular with the Sonoma crystal wine-cave fundraisers.
Okay, so Luttwak stands as a prophet. However,
let’s hope that he isn’t proven to be right about everything that
he wrote back in 1994. After all, the headline atop Luttwak’s piece, a
quarter-century ago was scary. It bannered, “Why Fascism is the Wave of
the Future.” That’s right, the “F” word, Fascism.
Luttwak was careful to point out
that Fascism started out separate and distinct from Nazism. That
is, the Fascist movement of Benito Mussolini, who took power in Italy in 1922,
may have been un-democratic and illiberal, but it was not Hitlerian in its war-mongering,
antisemitic, and genocidal evil. In fact, within the early Italian Fascist
movement, Jews were well represented. But then, of course, Mussolini
took on a catastrophic turn in the 1930s, after Hitler came to power in Germany,
and Italy signed on to Hitler’s Axis.
September 1937: Italian
fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany,
in Munich. (Fox Photos/Getty Images)
Mussolini was later fully and
criminally complicit in Hitler’s wickedness, and yet still, Luttwak is right to
draw a distinction between early Fascism and Nazism.
And so it’s with the early-Mussolini
model in mind that Luttwak argued, back in ’94, that severe economic
dislocation would open the door to unpleasant political reaction:
… and that is the space that remains
wide open for a product-improved Fascist party, dedicated to the enhancement of
the personal economic security of the broad masses of (mainly) white-collar
working people. Such a party could even be as free of racism as
Mussolini’s original was until the alliance with Hitler, because its real stock
in trade would be corporativist restraints on corporate Darwinism, and delaying
if not blocking barriers against globalization.
Luttwak himself is no Fascist, and
yet as a learned historian and acute observer, he could see, a quarter-century
ago, that global trends were pushing Americans toward the point where an
anti-liberal backlash would come in full force.
Interestingly, in that 1994 article,
the American figure that Luttwak pointed to, as an early indicator, was Ross
Perot, the businessman-turned-populist. Perot was no Fascist, but his
success as a political outsider was, indeed, a stark repudiation of the liberal
and bipartisan status quo. Just two years earlier, Perot had, of course,
run for president as an independent, winning an impressive 19 percent of the
national vote. And what was one of Perot’s signature issues? Why, it
was his opposition to NAFTA. That trade deal, he said, would create a
“giant sucking sound,” as American jobs went south of the border.
U.S. independent
presidential candidate Ross Perot delivers his concession speech to the crowd
gathered November 3, 1992, at his election night headquarters. (PAUL
RICHARDS/AFP via Getty Images)
Perot was mocked at the time, and
yet, of course, he has been proven right, and Clinton—plus fellow NAFTA
cheerleaders Bush 41 and Bush 43—have been proven wrong. Just as Luttwak
said it would, NAFTA turbo-charged North America, enriching the fat cats of
Wall Street and Silicon Valley, while sending regular jobs from Ohio to Mexico.
BLOG: MOST OF WALL STREET AND ALL BILLIONAIRES ARE GENEROUS
DONORS TO THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY OF LA RAZA "The Race" NOW CALLING
ITSELF UNIDOSus - UNDER OBAMA, LA RAZA WAS FUNDED WITH TAX DOLLARS AND
OPERATED OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE.
But
okay, just one last thing: What about that “F” word, “Fascism”? If Luttwak
was correct in his economic and social predictions, might he be correct, too,
in his political prediction, about the coming of a “product-improved Fascist
party”?
Today,
many on the left have their answer: Donald Trump is a Fascist. A
Google search of “Donald Trump” and “Fascist” elicits millions of hits,
including an October 2016 Washington Post op-ed entitled, “How fascist is Donald
Trump?” And just on December 21, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, speaking to an
audience in California, declared, “It is fascism, what we’re evolving
into.”
Of
course, the left was playing the “Fascist” smear game long before Trump. Both
Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were routinely labeled as Fascists, as was George W. Bush. And in 2004, the leading
liberal group Moveon.org went there, equating Bush to, yes, Hitler.
Indeed,
as the liberal Atlantic magazine acknowledged in 2016, it’s been a
standard tactic of the left to smear just about every Republican
as a “Fascist.” So as we can see, the left’s demagoguery has cheapened the
word “Fascist” to the point of irrelevance; today, the “F” word is simply just
one more insult in the left-wing arsenal.
So
no, Trump is not a Fascist, and neither are Republicans. In fact, come to
think of it, if we wanted to envision Fascism in the 21st century—allowing for
changes in style and fashion—we might think of Antifa, which is the
hipster name for Anti-Fascist.
As
Breitbart News has pointed out, Antifa ideologists believe that
violent thuggery on the streets is a key part of their strategy for provoking
civil strife—and that, of course, is classic Fascism. So in other words,
when we see the word “Antifa,” we should just delete the “Anti” and know that
we’re seeing “Fa.”
An unidentified Rose City
Antifa member flicks off to the police during a demonstration between the left
and right at Pioneer Courthouse Square on June 29, 2019 in Portland, Oregon.
(Moriah Ratner/Getty Images)
Andy Ngo, a
Portland-based journalist, is seen covered in unknown substance after unidentified
Rose City Antifa members attacked him on June 29, 2019 in Portland, Oregon.
(Moriah Ratner/Getty Images)
An Antifa demonstrator
has a heated exchange with a pro-Trump supporter during the Denver March
Against Sharia Law in Denver, Colorado on June 10, 2017. (JASON CONNOLLY/AFP
via Getty Images)
Of
course, there’s more going wrong with American society than just Antifa
hooliganism. The sort of churn that Luttwak lamented a quarter-century ago
has been profoundly damaging to the social fabric, and we see it in the
worsening of societal indicators, including flattened wages, family breakdown,
opioid use, and gun violence, including mass shootings.
And yes, it’s possible that if the deterioration continues, some
sort of strong antidote—more precisely, a horrible “antidote”—could emerge.
So
if we want to make sure we can fend off even the threat of Fascism, we should
start with leadership that’s both strong and wise. Strong leaders stand up
to extremist Antifa-type violence, of course, and yet, at the same time, they
are wise enough to solve the underlying social conditions that contribute to
extremism.
After
all, Italian Fascism emerged from the wreckage of World War One. And we
can add that Communism—another terrible extremism that’s a kind of mirror to
Fascism—emerged in Russia at around the same time, in the wake of the same war. And
a decade later, Nazism emerged from the war, too, as well as from the
Depression.
So
obviously we start our anti-Fascism plan with a commitment to overall peace and
prosperity. That is, no stupid foreign wars, no crazy economic policies. And
then we have to get to work on the healing of our homeland, repairing the many
social and cultural injuries and injustices caused by turbo-capitalism.
GRIFTER AND PHONY CHARITY FOUNDATION
FRAUDSTER HILLARY CLINTON’S LONG SERVICE TO AMERICA’S MOST EVIL BANKSTERS
The judge found these
releases, together with the publication of Clinton’s secret speeches to Wall
Street banks, in which she pledged to be their representative, were “matters of
the highest public concern.” They “allowed the American electorate to look
behind the curtain of one of the two major political parties in the United
States during a presidential election.”
SUCKING IN THE
BANKSTERS’ BRIBES: DID THEY SERVE THEIR BANKSTERS WELL?
“Clinton also failed to mention how he
and Hillary cashed in after his presidential tenure to make themselves multimillionaires,
in part by taking tens of millions in speaking fees from Wall Street
bankers.”
GEORGE SOROS AND
THE CLINTON GLOBALIST AGENDA FOR BANKSTERS AND WIDE OPEN BORDERS
NEW YORK — Demand Justice, an
organization founded by former members of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential
campaign and associated with a “social welfare organization” financed by
billionaire activist George S oros, is raising money for an eventual court fight
against what the group describes as President Trump’s proposed “racist, unnecessary
wall.”
“Obama would declare himself president for life with Soros
really running the show, as he did for the entire Obama presidency.”
“Hillary was always small potatoes, a placeholder as it were. Her health
was always suspect. And do you think the plotters would have let a doofus like
Tim Kaine take office in the event that Hillary became disabled?”
THE GRIFTERS: HILLARY, BILLARY and CHELSEA… global
looters!
"But
there is no doubt in my mind that the Clintons, thoroughly practiced
grifters
that they are, as well as their increasingly shady daughter, will not
hesitate
to use such classified information as they may be able to access for
personal
and political enrichment. They've been doing it for decades,
and
they're
not about to stop now." RUSS VAUGHN
CLINTON MAFIA AND THEIR BANKSTERS AT GOLDMAN SACHS
WHO IS TIGHTER WITH THE PLUNDERING BANKSTERS? CLINTON,
OBAMA or TRUMP?
The Clinton White House
famously abolished the Glass–Steagall legislation, which separated commercial
and investment banking. The move was a boon for Wall
Street firms and led to major bank mergers that some analysts say helped
contribute to the 2008 financial crisis.
Bill and Hillary Clinton
raked in massive speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, with CNN documenting a total
of at least $7.7 million in paid speeches to big financial firms, including
Goldman Sachs and UBS. Hillary Clinton made $675,000 from speeches to Goldman
Sachs specifically, and her husband secured more
than $1,550,000 from Goldman speeches. In 2005 alone, Bill Clinton collected over $500,000
from three Goldman Sachs events.
Hillary Clinton is simply the epitome
of the rabid self – a whirlpool of selfishness, greed, and malignance.
It may well be true that Donald Trump has made his greatest
contribution to the nation before even taking office: the political destruction of Hillary Clinton and her
infinitely corrupt machine. J.R. Dunn
"Hillary will do
anything to distract you from her reckless record and the damage to the
Democratic Party and the America she and The Obama's have created."
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S
BILLIONAIRES’ GLOBALIST EMPIRE requires someone as ruthlessly dishonest as
Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama to be puppet dictators.
http://hillaryclinton-whitecollarcriminal.blogspot.com/2018/09/google-rigged-it-so-illegals-would-vote.html
1.
Globalism: Google
VP Kent Walker insists that despite its repeated rejection by electorates
around the world, “globalization” is an “incredible force for good.”
2.
Hillary Clinton’s Democratic
party: An executive nearly broke down crying because of the candidate’s loss. Not
a single executive expressed anything but dismay at her defeat.
3. Immigration: Maintaining
liberal immigration in the U.S is the policy that Google’s executives discussed the
most.
HILLARY CLINTON’S GLOBALIST VISION:
SURRENDER OF OUR BORDERS WITH NARCOMEX AND SUCKING IN GLOBAL
BRIBES FOR THE PHONY CLINTON FOUNDATION
Even though it has gone
virtually unreported by Corporate media, Breitbart News has extensively documented the
Clintons’
longstanding support for
“open borders.” Interestingly, as the Los Angeles Times observed
in 2007, the Clinton’s praise for
globalization and open
borders frequently comes when they are
speaking before a wealthy
foreign audiences and donors.
The list of predicate crimes is extensive and includes bribery,
embezzlement, fraud, theft, money laundering, and obstruction of justice.
Secretary Hillary Clinton and the Deep State: A RICO Criminal
Conspiracy
We who elected President Trump
understood our elected officials and the Deep State were sandbagging Trump and self-dealing public funds.
It was no secret that President Trump is no angel, unpresidential, blunt, and
crude, and a disruptor. Trump was hired to drain the swamp.
I watched this kabuki theater unfold over the last several
years. Through my eyes as a shopworn gumshoe, I will explain what is happening.
My investigative curiosity was first piqued by the ATF Fast and Furious scandal
and continues through the recent House impeachment show trial. There is a
common element running through all of these cons — the
actions of an organized crime conspiracy. A group of people either acting
alone or in concert with others committed crimes with a common purpose -
a criminal enterprise as described in "CRIMINAL RICO: 18 USC. §§1961-1968 A
Manual For Federal Prosecutors."
The players acted together – in the
usurpation of power, the abuse of power by public officials, bribery, thefts by
fraud including federal funds, money laundering, perjury and the obstruction of
justice, the violations of fundamental of civil rights, aided and abetted in
the commission of these crimes and or to conceal these crimes. Criminals will
lie and can't keep their lies straight. Their methods and behaviors are the
same, whether engaging in street crimes or elaborate white-collar financial
schemes. The only difference is when more money is involved, the perps are more
adept in concealing, covering up their sins, and hiding where the money went.
Many of these scandals are well known to the American Thinker readers.
I will focus my comments on Hillary's home brew sever and the Clinton
Foundation as an example of how RICO can be used to prosecute the players.
FBI Director James Comey indicted
Hillary Clinton for her home brew server at his press conference. Comey then
egregiously concluded that there was no evidence of criminal intent purportedly
“required” to prosecute. Comey bastardized the Federal Espionage Act in absolving Hillary Clinton.
FBI's investigation of Clinton's emails was low-balled. There was never a real
search for the truth. The outcome was preordained. My jaw dropped wide open. I
knew the fix was in. FBI Director Comey lied to the people with a straight
face. Why?
The chance meeting of Bill Clinton
and AG Loretta Lynch on the airport tarmac was no mere coincidence. This chat
was not about the grandkids. Bill Clinton was there to convey a specific
message to Lynch that there would be no indictment of Hillary. Hillary
Clinton's email case must tank. This would have constituted bribery, if AG Lynch was
assured she would continue as AG in Clinton Administration. This meeting
took place only weeks before Comey's press conference dumping Hillary Clinton's
email case.
The Deep State needed Hillary Clinton
to win the 2016 presidential election, or the dike holding back the truth would
burst. Trump, the disruptor, was an immediate threat to both the Republicans,
Democrats, and the Deep State. If the truth
were laid bare, it would expose the Obama Administration, Hillary Clinton, the
Senate and House, and many executive departments for these abuses of power,
corruption, bribery, frauds, and thefts of public funds.
High-level government officials and
the Deep State committed many serious felonies either in furtherance of or to
conceal the crimes committed in the pay to play scam. In
exchange for favorable consideration by Secretary Clinton, those who benefited
would donate to the Clinton Foundation. The FBI started and
stopped investigations into the Clinton Foundation at least twice as reported
by the Washington Post. Peter Schweizer's book, Clinton Cash, is the most damning. Dinesh D'Souza slammed the Foundation
in the National Review, as did The Federalist.
The status of the investigation of the Foundation by US
Attorney John Huber's is unknown. Rudy Giuliani said there was enough to
pursue "Clinton Inc" as racketeering
under RICO. The
Foundation and its affiliated nonprofits require a real investigation with an
in-depth forensic audit to determine where the money went. In financial crimes
investigation, the prime rule is "follow the money, honey." Illicit
nonprofits have many ways to divert funds by inflating salaries, expenses, and
money laundering.
Illegal nonprofit schemes are
difficult to prosecute without hard evidence and the testimony of insiders. The
motive of Hillary Clinton's use of the home brew server was to conceal emails
from FOIA requests that would provide the hard evidence. Hillary Clinton
destroyed the data on her server and cell phones with the knowledge of the FBI.
It took years for Judicial Watch and others to pry and recover
some of these damning emails from the foot-dragging executive departments that
were complicit and knew what was going on.
RICO initially was used to target mob
families. RICO is also a useful tool to fight white collar conspiracies. They
both have the same hierarchy of low-level crooks led by the top players, linked
together with a common purpose. RICO has tools to squeeze the low-level
operatives to gather evidence to prosecute, jail, and seize assets of the
conspirators. The critical element required is a pattern of criminal
or racketeering activity. This pattern is proved by showing two predicate
crimes were committed within ten years. The list of predicate crimes is extensive and includes
bribery, embezzlement, fraud, theft, money laundering, and obstruction of
justice. The typical five-year statute of limitations for most federal
felonies is extended to ten years from the last criminal act or acts committed
to conceal the conspiracy, i.e., lying under oath and similar actions to
obstruct justice. The prison sentences are steep. The effect is to cut off the
head of the organization and not just the low-level players.
The criminal activity extends back to
the ATF's Fast and Furious program through the House impeachment show trial to
cover up the illegal acts of the Obama Administration, Hillary Clinton, the
Department of State, the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA. A telltale sign that
the DOJ under US Attorney General Barr is willing to play hardball and may use
RICO, came when he spoke to the Federalist Society: "Barr accuses liberal 'resistance' of
trying to 'sabotage' Trump." AG Barr said this, "shows FBI launched Trump campaign
investigation on the 'thinnest of suspicions." AG Barr is the new sheriff in town, he wears a
badge, has guns and will travel, can impanel grand juries, indict and arrest
people, and is not limited in his jurisdiction, like DOJ IG Horowitz.
The collective actions of the Deep
State are and were a silent coup to delegitimize a Presidential candidate. Once
elected to impede and resist the duly elected President. The President's law
enforcement and intel agencies were corrupted at the highest level and went
rogue.
Organized crime can't exist without
corrupt law enforcement. As I wrote in a letter to President Trump earlier this
year:
.
. . I believe you understand the gravity of the situation and of its importance
to the very survival of our Country as we know it. If the people involved are
not held accountable for their actions, we will be no different than some Third
World Banana Republic.
Failure
to act will destroy our founding principle of the Rule of Law as stated by
President John Adams, "We Are a Nation of Laws, Not of Men" and we
cannot allow a two-tiered justice system to prevail.
Ron Wright is a retired detective from Riverside PD, CA. BA in
political science CSUF, M. Adm. University of Cal, Riverside. Facebook at Ron
T. Cop.
Soros-Linked
Group Gets Six GOP Governors to Resettle More Refugees
A pro-mass immigration organization
with links to billionaire George Soros has successfully lobbied six Republican
governors to resettle more refugees in their states.
For Fiscal Year 2020, President
Donald Trump will continue cutting refugee admissions by reducing former President Barack
Obama’s refugee inflow by at least 80 percent. This reduction would mean a
maximum of 18,000 refugees can be resettled in the U.S. between October 1,
2019, and September 30, 2020. This is merely a numerical limit and not a
goal federal officials are supposed to reach.
Coupled with the refugee reduction,
Trump signed an executive order that gives localities, counties,
and states veto power over whether they want to resettle refugees in their
communities.
Executives at World Relief and the
Evangelical Immigration Table — an organization with links to the Soros-funded National Immigration Forum — have been
lobbying governors across the country to bring more refugees to their states.
So far, six Republican governors have signed off to resettle refugees in their
states, including North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Arizona Gov. Doug
Ducey.
Jenny Yang, vice president for
advocacy at World Relief, an evangelical agency whose work includes
resettlement, has been steering an effort to lobby governors to keep
their states open to refugees. [Emphasis added]
She said about 16 governors
have submitted written consent, six of them Republicans. Gov. Doug Ducey,
Republican of Arizona, agreed after receiving a letter supporting resettlement
signed by 250 evangelical leaders. Gov. Greg Abbott, Republican of Texas,
who leads the state that received the most refugees last year, has not yet
offered his view, despite a plea from the mayor of Fort Worth to continue
accepting refugees. [Emphasis added]
Refugee contractors, like
the Lutheran Social Services organization, have deployed a campaign to get
mayors, local officials, and governors to admit more refugees to their states.
Those contractors’ budgets every year are reliant on ensuring that as many
refugees are resettled across the U.S. as possible.
It remains unclear which six Republican
governors, aside from Burgum and Ducey, have been successfully lobbied by the
Soros-linked group.
This week, the Evangelical
Immigration Table sent letters to the governors of California, Florida,
Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina,
Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin to ask them to bring refugees to
their states.
The federally mandated refugee
resettlement program has brought more than 718,000 refugees to the U.S. since
January 2008 — a group larger than the entire state population of Wyoming,
which has 577,000 residents. In the last decade, about 73,000 refugees have
been resettled in California, 71,500 resettled in Texas, nearly 43,000
resettled in New York, and more than 36,000 resettled in Michigan.
Refugee resettlement costs American
taxpayers nearly $9 billion every five years, according to the latest research. Over
the course of five years, an estimated 16 percent of all refugees admitted will
need housing assistance paid for by taxpayers.
AXIS OF EVIL, GREED AND
CORRUPTION: THE SOROS – OBAMA – CLINTON CONSPIRACY
“The
Lawlessness of the Obama Administration: A never-ending story.” Michael
Barone – American Historian – Washington
Examiner
His ambition is without borders -- “The Soviet Empire is
now the Soros Empire.” “I’m the Pope’s boss now.” And so on, ad nauseum. Yet, like other
tyrants, he is untouchable. Those he has made richer and more powerful protect
him.
‘Deplorable’
Americans however confounded Soros by not voting for “What can we do for you,
George?” Hillary Clinton.
GEORGE SOROS AND
THE CLINTON GLOBALIST AGENDA FOR BANKSTERS AND OPEN BORDERS
NEW YORK — Demand Justice, an
organization founded by former members of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential
campaign and associated with a “social welfare organization” financed by
billionaire activist George Soros, is raising money for an eventual court fight
against what the group describes as President Trump’s proposed “racist, unnecessary
wall.”
THE PHONY CLINTON FOUNDATION CHARITY slush
fund
“There is no controlling Bill Clinton. He does whatever he wants and runs up incredible expenses with
foundation funds,” states a separate interview memo attached to the submission.
“Bill Clinton mixes and matches his personal
business with that of the foundation. Many people within the foundation have
tried to caution him about this but he does not listen, and there really is no
talking to him,” the memo added.
GLOBALIST BARACK OBAMA AND NANCY PELOSI’S CONSPIRACY TO
SABOTAGE HOMELAND SECURITY AND KEEP AMERICA FLOODED WITH DEM VOTING ILLEGALS
"Along with Obama, Pelosi and
Schumer are responsible for incalculable damage done to this country over the
eight years of that administration." PATRICIA McCARTHY
One of the most disgusting things to come out of the
Obama administration was "Operation Fast and Furious," where members
of the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) allowed
illegal gun sales to go through – commonly referred to as "gun
walking" – in order to track buyers and sellers they believed were connected
to the Mexican drug cartels. Nearly 2,000 firearms were sold and were
eventually found throughout the United States and Mexico. Two of them were used
to k ill Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. BETH BAUMANN
THE CONSPIRACY TO SABOTAGE HOMELAND SECURITY
The Democrat Party’s
secret agenda for wider open borders, more welfare for invading illegals, more
jobs and free anything they illegally vote for…. All to destroy the two-party
system and build the GLOBALISTS’ DEMOCRAT PARTY FOR WIDER OPEN BORDERS TO KEEP
WAGES DEPRESSED.
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/11/frontpage-hidden-agenda-of-pueblo-sin.html
Demonstrably and
irrefutably the Democrat Party became the party whose principle objective is to
thoroughly transform the nature of the American electorate by means of open
borders and the mass, unchecked importation of illiterate third world peasants
who will vote in overwhelming numbers for Democrats and their La Raza welfare
state. FRONTPAGE MAG
CLOSET MUSLIM BARACK OBAMA’S CONSPIRACY FOR A THIRD TERM FOR LIFE
First, destroy Trump and put Hillary away if she doesn’t end up in
jail.
HE PARTNERS WITH ZUCKERBERG, SOROS AND LOUIS FARRAKHAN
“Obama would declare himself president for life with Soros
really running the show, as he did for the entire Obama presidency.”
“Hillary was always
small potatoes, a placeholder as it were. Her health was always suspect. And do
you think the plotters would have let a doofus like Tim Kaine take office in
the event that Hillary became disabled?”
“Obama has the
totalitarian impulse. After all, he went around saying he didn't have
Constitutional authority to legalize the illegals, and then he tried anyway.
The courts stopped him.”
“The bottom line 2 is
this: Barack Obama is a Communist. This was all an Obama operation. Why is
anyone surprised that a communist (Obama) tried to subvert an election. That is
what Communists do. It is Barack Obama and his people like Brennan and Clapper
behaving to type. That's what Maduro does in Venezuela. That's what the Castro
brothers did. That's what every communist and socialist nation does. THEY FIX ELECTIONS!!”
“Hillary
kept a secret server overflowing with national security info which, more than
likely, was hacked. June 28, 2016, on a Phoenix tarmac, Bill Clinton met with
Attorney General Loretta Lynch to seal a deal insuring Hillary would not be
prosecuted.”
“Obama, of course, covered
up his own role, depicting his presidency as eight years of heroic
efforts to repair the damage caused by the 2008 financial crash. At
the end of those eight years, however, Wall Street and the financial
oligarchy were fully recovered, enjoying record wealth, while
working people were poorer than before, a widening social chasm that
made possible the election of the billionaire con man and Demagogue in November
2016.”
David Bernstein & The Heritage Foundation - “Lawless: The
Obama Administration’s Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule
of Law.”
“The
Lawlessness of the Obama Administration: A never-ending story.” Michael
Barone – American Historian – Washington
Examiner
George Soros: A New Kind
of Tyrant?
The
venomous careers of Hitler and Stalin provoked the study of totalitarian
regimes as the very epitome of evil, depriving their citizens of freedom and of
life itself. A state captured by a demagogue is considered a sure sign of
danger ahead -- hence the alleged justification by the Left for their hysteria
over “rabble rouser” Donald Trump’s election. Overlooked until more recently
are the unelected, bloated bureaucratic fiefdoms and regulatory encroachments
of both national and global government and non-governmental institutions, which
have created the opportunity for a sinister, large scale violation of political
power.
This
new abuse was foreshadowed in the career of FBI architect and director, the
corrupt J. Edgar Hoover. It has been notched up to a planetary level of
hyper-coordination by George Soros as preliminary to the installation of his
global Open Society. In this grandiose plan, state governments (specifically
the USA) will be reduced to the level of relay stations for a supranational,
Sauron-like centralization of power.
What
unites the totalitarian and the new tyrant are three personality
characteristics, proposed by Professor John D. Mayer in his 1993 article, “The Emotional Madness of the Dangerous Leader.” The first is indifference.
The tyrant is consumed by a single-minded, fanatical purpose and has no regard
for the suffering wreaked on others during its implementation. The second is
intolerance of those whose opinions differ, facilitated through control of the
media, secret and insider knowledge, revenge against anyone who thwarts, and a
paranoid mania to shut down all opposition. The third character trait (the
foundation of the previous two), is psychopathic grandiosity. The power-abuser
assumes a messianic pose of unifying society under a utopian plan and
persuading others to participate. The very intensity of the tyrant’s narcissism
is transferred to vulnerable supporters eliciting a narcotic rush of
enthusiasm.
What
is easily overlooked is that the sham scheme is not a political health remedy,
but a device for maintaining the megalomaniac’s sense of personal omnipotence.
In Soros’ own words, “Next to my fantasies about being God, I also have very
strong fantasies of being mad. In fact, my grandfather was actually paranoid.”
Soros seems disarming in his frankness. But delusions of grandeur preclude
self-knowledge, as Soros’ next statements reveal. “I have a lot of
madness in my family. So far I have escaped it.”
Soros
has spilled bucketloads of words proclaiming he is
“amoral,” “self-interested,” and that “normal rules do not apply” to him. “I am
unnatural. I am a sort of deux ex machina. I’m very comfortable with my public
persona, because it is the one I have created myself.” And this from the man
who controls politicians and bureaucrats like a boss giving dictation to his
secretary. This is the man who has perfected the subversion of governments, who
has robbed failing states, and lavishly endowed every organization and movement
destructive of traditional Western society, from abolishing the Electoral
College to abolishing life itself if it is in utero, drug-addicted, or senile. His ambition is without borders -- “The Soviet Empire is
now the Soros Empire.” “I’m the Pope’s boss now.” And so on, ad nauseum. Yet, like other
tyrants, he is untouchable. Those he has made richer and more powerful protect
him.
In
March 1933 the Germans voted. They could have voted for the moderate Center
Christian party. Instead they voted in Hitler. ‘Deplorable’ Americans
however confounded Soros by not voting for “What can we do for you, George?”
Hillary Clinton. Yet where are the congressional and Senate investigations
into Soros? Where is the RICO indictment? Governments have been bought. The
media has been bought. The Soros NGO empire operates an invasive, parasitic web
currently devouring the body politic of the USA and many other nations besides.
What
Trump’s election has revealed is the limitation of the Presidency in
withstanding the transfer of power to unelected, publicly unaccountable
bureaucrats, and venal politicians, more concerned with their benefices than
their constituents. That void has allowed Soros to install himself as de facto puppet-master. We require bureaucracy,
and we cannot prevent the existence of associations, but there is an
urgent need for reform by abolishing permanency in government and establishing
citizens’ tribunals of appeal against abuses of administrative power.
Recently
in an interview on his simpering NPR, Soros confessed he was unprepared for the populist
opposition to
his insurrectionary agenda. Let us continue our opposition. Let us demand Soros
be investigated and brought to justice as conditional for obtaining our
vote. Those with connection to him must be banned from public office, and his
assets frozen. Then his parasitical minions will shrivel, like leeches
desiccated by a pinch of salt. If not, although we may escape the mass
slaughter of the twentieth century, it will be at the cost of vassalage beneath
a tyrant like George Soros.
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and
Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with
third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by
its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER.com
Book deals. The way to get rich upon leaving public office, just as
congressional insiders make themselves rich in public office by trading on
insider information, as described by Peter Schweizer in "Throw Them All Out."
#1 New York Times Bestseller!
Peter Schweizer
has been fighting corruption―and winning―for years. In Throw Them All Out, he
exposed insider trading by members of Congress, leading to the passage of the
STOCK Act. In Extortion,
he uncovered how politicians use mafia-like tactics to enrich themselves. And
in Clinton Cash,
he revealed the Clintons’ massive money machine and sparked an FBI
investigation.
Now he explains
how a new corruption has taken hold, involving larger sums of money than ever
before. Stuffing tens of thousands of dollars into a freezer has morphed into
multibillion-dollar equity deals done in the dark corners of the world.
An American bank
opening in China would be prohibited by US law from hiring a slew of family
members of top Chinese politicians. However, a Chinese bank opening in America
can hire anyone it wants. It can even invite the friends and families of
American politicians to invest in can’t-lose deals.
President Donald
Trump’s children have made front pages across the world for their dicey
transactions. However, the media has barely looked into questionable deals made
by those close to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Mitch McConnell, and
lesser-known politicians who have been in the game longer.
In many parts of
the world, the children of powerful political figures go into business and
profit handsomely, not necessarily because they are good at it, but because
people want to curry favor with their influential parents. This is a relatively
new phenomenon in the United States. But for relatives of some prominent
political families, we may already be talking about hundreds of millions of
dollars.
Deeply researched and packed with shocking revelations, Secret Empires identifies
public servants who cannot be trusted and provides a path toward a more
accountable government.
Schweizer:
Biden Needs to Address Ukraine Accusations ‘Front and Center’
11 Oct 201910
1:18
Breitbart News senior contributor
Peter Schweizer, author of “Secret
Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family
and Friends,” on Friday stressed the importance
of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden addressing the Ukraine
issue involving him and his son, Hunter.
Barack Obama is rather typical of the
Wall Street insiders who comprise a cabinet and White House team that is filled
with multi-millionaires, presided over by a president who parlayed his own
political career into a multi-million-dollar fortune.
Banks, hedge funds and other financial
firms lavishly backed Barack Obama his presidential bid, giving him
considerably more than they gave to his Republican opponent, Senator John
McCain.
Trump criticized Dimon in
2013 for supposedly contributing to the country’s economic
downturn. “I’m not Jamie Dimon, who pays $13 billion to settle a case
and then pays $11 billion to settle a case and who I think is the worst
banker in the United States,” he told reporters.
“The response of the
administration was to rush to the defense of the banks. Even before coming to
power, Obama expressed his unconditional support for the bailouts, which he
subsequently expanded. He assembled an administration dominated by the
interests of finance capital, symbolized by economic adviser Lawrence Summers
and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.”
Practically every cabinet appointee of Obama’s has close
personal connections to the ruling class, many having come directly from
corporate boardrooms. Under Obama’s watch not a single executive at a major
financial firm has been criminally tried, much less sent to jail, for their
role in the financial crisis.
“Attorney General Eric
Holder's tenure was a low point even within the disgraceful scandal-ridden
Obama years.” DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG
"One of the premier institutions of
big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the
eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that
another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a
government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama
will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact
of central bank actions in driving inequality between
asset owners and labor."
This manufactured crisis has, in turn, been exploited by the
Obama administration and both big business parties to hand over trillions in
pension funds and other public assets to the financial kleptocracy that rules
America.
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican
alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world
hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.”
---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com
“This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or
convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate
committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute
the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on
the national economy.”
"One of the
premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued
an internal report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008
crash, which warned that another “great liquidity crisis”
was possible, and that a government bailout on the scale of that
effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light of
the potential impact of central bank actions in driving
inequality between asset owners and labor."
Biden
Bashes Influence of Billionaires While Relying on their Money
JOSEPH
PREZIOSO/AFP/Getty Images.
Former Vice President Joe Biden is
bashing the outsize influence billionaires are having on the race for the 2020
Democrat nomination, despite his own campaign relying heavily upon their money.
In a fundraising email sent to
supporters on Thursday, Biden’s campaign excoriated two of his Democrat rivals
for using their personal fortunes to underwrite their presidential ambitions.
The email, titled “the billionaires are coming,” took direct aim at Tom Steyer
and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for spending heavily to
“saturate your airwaves and news feeds.”
In particular, Biden’s campaign
lambasted Steyer for using his fortune to gain access to the Democrat debates,
while attacking Bloomberg for skipping early primaries and spending $100
million in delegate-heavy Super Tuesday states.
“One billionaire is buying his way
onto the Democrat debate stage, and one is buying his way out of it,” Biden’s
campaign wrote, before proceeding to argue both billionaires were undermining
“how democracy is supposed to work.”
The former vice president’s attack
on the influence Steyer and Bloomberg are having is surprising given the fact
his own campaign has relied heavily on billionaires to underwrite his White
House hopes.
A recent report by Forbes indicates Biden has
been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the billionaire donor class since
launching his candidacy. In the last fundraising quarter alone, the former vice
president pulled in contributions from 44 billionaires—the most of any 2020
Democrat. Many of those contributing opted to max out, giving the largest sum
possible for a primary campaign under federal law.
The money rolled in from Silicon
Valley titans, Wall Street elites, and some of the country’s largest real
estate tycoons.
Among the donors was Eric Schmidt,
the former CEO of Google who stirred controversy in January 2017 when claiming
President Donald Trump would do “evil things” in office.
Schmidt donated $2,800 to Biden’s
campaign in May, less than a week after the former vice president entered the
race. In the past the former Google executive has heavily backed Democrat
candidates up and down the ballot, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
Employees from Google’s parent
company, Alphabet Inc., have donated more than $37,000 to Biden’s campaign to
date, according to the Center
for Responsive Politics. The hefty contributions have ensured Alphabet is one
of the former vice president’s top 20 contributors. Joining a list that
includes another Silicon Valley giant, Microsoft Corp.
Biden’s support in Silicon Valley
has not been confined to traditional Democrats. Former eBay CEO Meg
Whitman, a one time Republican nominee for governor of California,
donated $2,800 in September.
In 2016, Whitman broke ranks by endorsing former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Trump. Since that time, the former eBay
executive has become a consistent ‘Never
Trumper.’
On America’s other coast, the former
vice president has elicited prime backing from Wall Street and the real estate
industry.
Topping the list of Biden’s Wall
Street backers is Judy Dimon, the wife of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.
Although her husband, himself, has not donated, Dimon maxed out to Biden in
mid-September.
The contribution comes with its own
controversial history. In 2008, then-Sen. Joe Biden supported the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which granted large
financial institutions bailouts to survive the recession. JPMorgan was one such
institution, taking more than $25 billion in taxpayer money—one of largest bailouts granted to any company under the program.
The bailout came even though
JPMorgan’s mortgage lending practices helped create the housing bubble that,
when it burst, ultimately led the to the recession. In 2013, the bank agreed to
pay a civil fine of $13 billion for its
unscrupulous lending practices.
Apart from Dimon,
Biden received maxed out contributions from private equity executives,
like Blackstone President Jonathan Gray. Blackstone
recently made a $250 million investment in a
startup that helps outsource American jobs overseas.
In total, the former vice president
has filled a significant portion of his campaign account from Wall Street
donors, including nearly a million dollars from the securities and investment sector.
Wall Street’s contributions,
however, paled in comparison to the amount of money real estate tycoons have
donated to Biden. In between April and the end of September, the former vice
president garnered more than one million from real estate interests.
The funds poured in from longtime
allies like Neil Bluhm, a casino and real estate magnate, and George Marcus,
the leader of America’s largest commercial property brokerage firms.
Although Bluhm and Marcus have only donated $2,800
each, both men have hosted lavish
fundraisers on Biden’s behalf that have raised unknown amounts.
Biden’s reliance on such
billionaires is one of the reasons his campaign has struggled to compete
financially with the likes of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren
(D-MA).
Although Biden started the race with
a strong funding advantage, thanks to support from high-dollar donors, he ended
the most recent fundraising period well behind his competitors. In between July
and the end of September, Biden only raised $15.2 million. The sum was dwarfed by
that raised by Sanders ($25.3 million), Warren ($24.6 million), and South Bend
Mayor Pete Buttigieg ($19.1 million).
The former vice president’s
fundraising troubles stem from an inability to make in-roads with small-dollar
donors. Unlike Warren or Sanders, more than 2,900 donors have
already maxed out to Biden’s campaign.
In fact, top-dollar donors make up a
far higher percentage of Biden’s campaign coffers than those of his
competitors. In comparison, only 38 percent of the campaign’s funds to date
have come from individuals donating less than $200. Such a ratio poses a long
term issue, especially when top contributors are prohibited by law from
donating again until after the primary.
The disparate support between
billionaires and small donors was seen as a primary motivator for Biden’s
decision to jettison opposing outside help from Super PACs. Since such groups can raise and spend unlimited funds, the
former vice president’s billionaire donors are no longer subject to
contribution limits when supporting his campaign.
Biden, though, did not mention any
of this in his email to supporters on Thursday. Instead, the former vice
president kept his fire aimed at Steyer and Bloomberg, while downplaying his
own support from the billionaire donor class.
“Since the day that this campaign
launched, we have relied on grassroots support to power this campaign,” Biden’s
team wrote.
JPMorgan
shares climb after the bank posts record earnings and revenue
Jamie Dimon arriving to testify before
Congress. Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters
· JPMorgan reported first-quarter earnings
results on Friday, kicking off another earnings season for the largest US
banks.
JPMorgan
Chase reported record first-quarter results on both the top and bottom lines
Friday morning. Shares climbed 2.3% in early trading to $108.68.
Here's how
the results stacked up with Wall Street's expectations as compiled by
Bloomberg.
· Adjusted net income: $9.18 billion versus $7.7 billion
expected
· Earnings per share: $2.65 versus $2.34 expected
· Revenue: $29.85 billion versus $28.4 billion
expected
· Expenses: $16.4 billion versus $16.7 billion
expected
"In
the first quarter of 2019, we had record revenue and net income, strong
performance across each of our major businesses, and a more constructive
environment," CEO Jamie Dimon said in the earnings
release.
"Even amid some global geopolitical uncertainty, the US economy continues
to grow, employment and wages are going up, inflation is moderate, financial
markets are healthy, and consumer and business confidence remains strong."
A deeper
look into the numbers showed the trading and investment-banking businesses
exceeded expectations, though trading declined 17% from the year earlier:
· FICC sales & trading revenue: $3.73 billion versus $3.67 billion
expected
· Equity sales & trading revenue: $1.74 billion versus $1.73 billion
expected
· Investment-banking revenue: $1.75 billion versus $1.63 billion
expected
Obama's Wall
Street cabinet
6 April 2009
A series of articles published over the
weekend, based on financial disclosure reports released by the Obama
administration last Friday concerning top White House officials, documents the
extent to which the administration, in both its personnel and policies, is a
political instrument of Wall Street.
Policies that are extraordinarily
favorable to the financial elite that were put in place over the past month by
the Obama administration have fed a surge in share values on Wall Street. These include the scheme to use hundreds of billions of dollars in
public funds to pay hedge funds to buy up the banks’ toxic assets at inflated
prices, the Auto Task Force’s rejection of the
recovery plans of Chrysler and General Motors and its demand for even more
brutal layoffs, wage cuts and attacks on workers’ health benefits and pensions,
and the decision by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to weaken
“mark-to-market” accounting rules and permit banks to inflate the value of
their toxic assets.
At the same time, Obama has campaigned
against restrictions on bonuses paid to executives at insurance giant American
International Group (AIG) and other bailed-out firms, and repeatedly assured
Wall Street that he will slash social spending, including Medicare, Medicaid and
Social Security.
The new financial disclosures reveal that
top Obama advisors directly involved in setting these policies have received
millions from Wall Street firms, including those that have received huge
taxpayer bailouts.
The case of Lawrence Summers, director of
the National Economic Council and Obama’s top economic adviser, highlights the
politically incestuous character of relations between the Obama administration
and the American financial elite.
Last year, Summers pocketed $5 million as
a managing director of D.E. Shaw, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world,
and another $2.7 million for speeches delivered to Wall Street firms that have
received government bailout money. This includes $45,000 from Citigroup and
$67,500 each from JPMorgan Chase and the now-liquidated Lehman Brothers.
For a speech to Goldman Sachs executives,
Summers walked away with $135,000. This is substantially more than double the
earnings for an entire year of high-seniority auto workers, who have been
pilloried by the Obama administration and the media for their supposedly
exorbitant and “unsustainable” wages.
Alluding diplomatically to the flagrant
conflict of interest revealed by these disclosures, the New York Times noted on
Saturday: “Mr. Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, wields
important influence over Mr. Obama’s policy decisions for the troubled
financial industry, including firms from which he recently received payments.”
Summers was a leading advocate of banking
deregulation. As treasury secretary in the second Clinton administration, he
oversaw the lifting of basic financial regulations dating from the 1930s. The
Times article notes that among his current responsibilities is deciding
“whether—and how—to tighten regulation of hedge funds.”
Summers is not an exception. He
is rather typical of the Wall Street insiders who comprise a cabinet and White
House team that is filled with multi-millionaires, presided over by a president
who parlayed his own political career into a multi-million-dollar fortune.
Michael Froman, deputy national security
adviser for international economic affairs, worked for Citigroup and received
more than $7.4 million from the bank from January of 2008 until he entered the
Obama administration this year. This included a $2.25 million year-end bonus
handed him this past January, within weeks of his joining the Obama
administration.
Citigroup has thus far been the
beneficiary of $45 billion in cash and over $300 billion in government
guarantees of its bad debts.
David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s top
strategist and now senior adviser to the president, was paid $1.55 million last
year from two consulting firms he controls. He has agreed to buyouts that will
garner him another $3 million over the next five years. His disclosure claims
personal assets of between $7 and $10 million.
Obama’s deputy national security adviser,
Thomas E. Donilon, was paid $3.9 million by a Washington law firm whose major
clients include Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and the private equity firm Apollo Management.
Louis Caldera, director of the White
House Military Office, made $227,155 last year from IndyMac Bancorp, the
California bank that heavily promoted subprime mortgages. It collapsed last
summer and was placed under federal receivership.
The presence of multi-millionaire Wall
Street insiders extends to second- and third-tier positions in the Obama
administration as well. David Stevens, who has been tapped by Obama to head the
Federal Housing Administration, is the president and chief operating officer of
Long and Foster Cos., a real estate brokerage firm. From 1999 to 2005, Stevens
served as a top executive for Freddie Mac, the federally-backed mortgage
lending giant that was bailed out and seized by federal regulators in
September.
Neal Wolin, Obama’s selection for deputy
counsel to the president for economic policy, is a top executive at the
insurance giant Hartford Financial Services, where his salary was $4.5 million.
Obama’s Auto Task Force has as its top
advisers two investment bankers with a long resume in corporate downsizing and
asset-stripping.
It is not new for leading figures from
finance to be named to high posts in a US administration. However, there has
traditionally been an effort to demonstrate a degree of independence from Wall
Street in the selection of cabinet officials and high-ranking presidential
aides, often through the appointment of figures from academia or the public
sector. In previous decades, moreover, representatives of the corporate elite
were more likely to come from industry than from finance.
In the Obama administration such
considerations have largely been abandoned.
This will not come as a surprise to those
who critically followed Obama’s election campaign. While he postured before the
electorate as a critic of the war in Iraq and a quasi-populist force for
“change,” he was from the first heavily dependent on the financial and
political backing of powerful financiers in Chicago. Banks, hedge funds
and other financial firms lavishly backed his presidential bid, giving him
considerably more than they gave to his Republican opponent, Senator John
McCain.
Friday’s financial disclosures further
expose the bankruptcy of American democracy. Elections have no real effect on
government policy, which is determined by the interests of the financial
aristocracy that dominates both political parties. The working class can fight
for its own interests—for jobs, decent living standards, health care,
education, housing and an end to war.
“Records show that four out of Obama's
top five
contributors are employees of financial
industry giants –
Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG
($364,806),
JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup
($358,054).”
OBAMA and HIS BANKS: THEIR PROFITS,
CRIMES and LOOTING SOAR
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