Mover Mike

Two movements converged this morning. In June,2005, I defined fascism in What is Fascism? I wrote,

In its general sense, fascism (small "f") means state control over the individual and the economy using regimentation and regulation. While similar to state socialism in its authoritarianism, fascism prefers state control over ostensibly private property rather than nationalization.

In The Oregonian, first Matt Welch, editor in chief of Reason magazine, wrote a column entitled The myth of a maverick. In the article, Welch writes, "...in both legislation and rhetoric, Mr. McCain has consistently sought to restrict the very freedoms he once exercised, in the common national enterprise of “serving a cause greater than self-interest.”

“We are fast becoming a nation of alienating individualists, unwilling to put the unifying values of patriotism ahead of our narrow self-interests,” Mr. McCain warned in a speech during his 2000 presidential campaign.

In the second, Reuters tells us, "the U.S. Treasury Department will propose on Monday that the Federal Reserve be given sweeping new powers that would make it chief regulator with authority to require actions to ensure market stability."

I have railed against the FED often, writing that since 1913 when the FED was created, financial crises have not been avoided, one of the reasons the FED was created, instead we've had a depression, inflation, resulting in a 95% fall in the currency, and skyrocketing debt. Now we want to give the FED sweeping new powers to deal with the mortgage crisis which is a result of the FED's policies.

The sweeping new powers include:

• fix "regulatory gaps and redundancies"


• "market stability regulator" - GATA has argued for some time that the Plunge Protection Team (PPT) and the Working Group for Financial Markets interfere in our financial markets capping the price of Gold and preventing market corrections.


• broad authority to require information from all participants in financial markets and a right to collaborate with other regulators in writing the rules that companies and institutions must follow. - This would mean that the FED could raid any finacial institution, hedge fund or private investment group for priviledged information


• it should have some authority over the investment banks - not since the 1930s has this area been regulated.


• an optional federal charter for insurance companies.

  The chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Democratic Rep. Barney Frank, last week said Congress should seriously consider giving a federal agency the power to monitor all risk in the financial system and act when necessary, regardless of its corporate form.

  George Ure writes at UrbanSurvival.com the FED (a cartel of banks) seized control of the currency in 1913. "It's about to seize Wall Street."

  Oh, and in dabbling their toes in owning (as securities pledge against loans) CMO's and such, the Fed may also have tipped its hat that it's getting into real estate ownership.

  Ure argues that 'market stability' is really price fixing!

  The convergence I see is the sweeping FED powers combined with a malignant form of "patriotism" giving us a totalitarian country far removed from the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

  Related Posts (on one page):

  1. POMOs Hit $99 Billion In March!
  2. GE To Buy Commercial R.E.!
  3. Germany To Sell Gold. Right!
  4. The Road Taken To Serfdom

Every time Gold action gets blood boiling, some government official trots out "central bank to sell Gold or the IMF to sell Gold." It's all designed to cap the price so you don't know inflation is picking up. The Gold price rising is thet canary in the mine. If the bird stops chirping or if Gold prices rise, you know you're in trouble.

Here's the latest twitch from government officials and immediately shot down:

Der Spiegel magazine reported in a preview of its latest edition that Finance Ministry State Secretary Werner Gatzer had proposed selling part of the central bank's gold reserves, currently worth around 65 billion euros (51.5 billion pounds).

According to the plan, the proceeds could then be either invested to earn interest or debt could be paid off freeing up cash that would have been used to for interest payments, the magazine said, citing unidentified participants in a March 13 meeting of budget experts.

So on March 13 Der Spiegel magazine writes that Finance Ministry State Secretary Werner Gatzer proposed in a meeting that German central bank sell some of its Gold. If you look at this chart of April Gold it sure seems orchestrated. Following the meeting on March 13, volume picked up and then Gold took a terrific beating falling from $1017 to $924 in less than a week. Now we get the denial and the rise can resume.

The result: the canary warning is subdued, confidence is hurt, margin accounts suffer and the insiders rush in and scoop up cheap Gold. Now, we are told the FED needs more power! More power to help the insiders and to screw the public.

This is how the world works!

General Electric (GE) plans to raise cash — $1 billion to $3 billion — from outside investors to begin investing in commercial real estate and other properties through newly established real estate investment funds.

[...]

"We think it'll be a good time to take advantage of pricing adjustments," said Joe Parsons, chief executive of GE's recently initiated global investment management division.

It's all a game to move money from little pockets to the BIG pockets or major corporations and we're the patsy.

In light of the recent Permanent Open Market Operations (POMOs) by the FED, $99 Billion since March 7, 2008, I throught this email from Chris Powell of GATA should be read by all:

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

The Federal Reserve's ever-increasing "short-term" lending to major commercial and investment banks, described in the news report appended here, is starting to recall the boast of Barrick Gold a few years ago that its huge gold loans were "evergreen," written for 15-year terms but always allowed to be extended for another year every year.

Barrick's suggestion was that its gold loans never had to be repaid — that they were gold loans from central banks and that the central banks did not want their gold back, that the central banks wanted instead for the gold price to be suppressed. By contrast, demanding repayment of the gold loans would cause a short squeeze in the gold market and send the price soaring. That's what central bank gold sales seem to be: not delivery of new gold into the market but cash settlement of old gold loans that can't be repaid without causing that short squeeze.

For who else would want to "lend" gold on the virtually indefinite terms available to Barrick? Who else would even be able to lend gold this way? Who else would want to do so? And what purpose could such loans have other than to suppress the price?

Does the Fed want its burgeoning loans to the commercial and investment banks repaid? Probably not any time soon, for all these "short-term" billions can be deployed to rig a lot of markets — not just the mortgage derivatives markets that are the center of attention but very possibly the commodities markets as well. Thus these loans would become just like the funds in the Fed's pool of repurchase agreements with the Fed's primary dealers in New York, a pool of funds that now stands near $300 billion. These funds too are nominally "temporary" loans, but the pool never goes back to zero or even close. To the contrary, it is usually growing and has nearly doubled over the last six months — and its only purpose is market rigging.

News organizations and Congress have not yet realized the purposes to which infinite money may be put and so haven't begun questioning all the money being flung around. But it's not about free-market capitalism; it's what's called lemon socialism, wherein private interests take any profits and the public assumes any losses.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

BTW, we have not had any POMOs since May of 2007 and that was for $1.396 Billion, a far cry from $94 Billion in nine operations in March, 2008.

Update:

I don't want to leave the impression that the FED is ballooning the money supply with these POMOs, when in fact they have been DRAINING operations. At last count these Outright Coupon Sales or Outright Bill Sales have continued daily for $5 Billion a day. Then since April 3rd they stopped. The total since starting, about $120 Billion.