Enough is Enough

 

By Vicky Davis

The American people should Just Say NO!  to this bailout of Wall Street.  Wall Street engineered this problem.  They all got rich from it by defrauding investors.  The people who should repay the investors are the people who stole their money.  For starters, the government could confiscate the personal assets of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Henry Paulson, John Chambers, Maurice Greenburg, Jack Walsh, David Rockefeller, and all the politicians who lined their pockets with lobbyist money to enable it to happen.  The government should take the assets of AIG, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, American Express and use that money to pay the defrauded investors.  To ask the working people of this country to pay again - after they've already paid with the loss of their jobs and homes, their declining standard of living and the diminished prospects for the future of their children is beyond hubris.  It is demented and evil. 

 

 

This morning on C-Span Washington Journal, there was a Congressman who said that he was retiring from Congress so he doesn't have a dog in this fight about the bailout.  He was on the program to talk about why he thinks we need to do this.  The reason is "psychological".  The banks won't loan money to "Main Street" if we don't bail out these investment bankers on Wall Street.  He said he is going to vote for the bailout. 

 
It's worth watching the 20 minute segment to listen to him because he talks about the bailout in plain terms.  Basically what it boils to is that the investment bankers bought packages of loans (liar loans) that were bundled and sold as securities (securitization).  The promoters of this bailout are depending on there being an underlying value in the homes that the liars bought.   Under the bailout plan, the government will buy the mortgages hoping that if they hold the underlying assets long enough, their value will rise to meet the amount that the government paid for them.   But there are several problems with that...
 
As per usual, when the news media focuses on one aspect of a problem and they repeat it over and over to burn it into your brain, you should look elsewhere for the source of the problem.  'No doc' liar loans are only one part of the problem.  A bigger problem are the loans for builders.   
 
Builders of homes got funding in the same way as the junk mortgage brokers.  Huge loans were made to builders that were securitized and sold in the stock market and the builders went crazy building homes beyond what the market could absorb.  I know of at least three areas that were grossly overbuilt - and the homes sit empty because there are no buyers.  Those areas are Boise, ID, around the Atlanta area and the Sacramento area.    
 
In the past 8 years I've watched the economy fairly closely because of the issue of outsourcing.  Most of you probably know that I was a software professional so the issue of exporting these jobs to India was my central focus.  From the minute I learned about exporting knowledge jobs to India, I knew our economy was going to collapse.  It was just a matter of time.  Back then about 65% of our economy was in knowledge jobs - and programming and engineering jobs were among the best of those jobs - high paying, white collar jobs. 
 
On the Internet there is a core group of these professionals who have worked tirelessly to sound the alarm to the media, Congress and everybody we could reach to try to tell them what was happening and what was going to happen because of the export of these white collar jobs.  We were and are - an information sharing network.  What was consistent in all of those years was the propaganda on the economy.  We'd read how great the economy was - but in the fine print - joblessness was up and 'economists were always surprised'.  We'd read that there were record bankruptcies, thousands of people standing in lines for Walmart jobs, record foreclosures, massive layoffs - but all of this was reported in local markets only.  National economic news was that everything was great and Wall Street indicators were used to prove it.  One of those indicators was 'housing starts'.   
 
Traditionally, the 'housing starts' number was used as an indicator for the health of the economy because in days gone by - when people used their own money for investment, 'housing starts' would have indicated a healthy economy because builders don't build unless there is a market - and people don't buy when they don't have jobs.  Money to build those excess homes was obtained through the securitized mortgage market as well.   There was a complete disconnect between the real economy and the economy that was being reported in the mainstream news media.    The full extent of the fraud of the economic News was revealed in 2004.  If you learned about it - it was by accident or luck because the mainstream news didn't cover it either.  
 
On October 6, 2004 in 2004 the House Budget Committee had a hearing on tax revenues.  The purpose of that hearing was to discuss 'Tax Revenue Options' because:   
 
John Spratt (D-SC) said, as of the end of fiscal year 2003 revenues were at their lowest point since 1950. The revenues were only 16.2% of GDP
 
Rep John Linder (R-GA) said, "there has been 8 quarters in a row of declining revenues since 2001".
 
Rep. John Linder, "there is six trillion dollars offshore".

 

Audio Clips for the House Budget Hearing
 
Audio Clips for Treasury Secretary Snow - National Press Club

 

 
Also in 2004, Treasury Secretary John Snow gave a speech to the National Press Club in which he said that the equity markets collapsed in 2000.  The dot.con stock fraud (my word) took $7 TRILLION out of the economy.   And THEN we had 9-11 as a further blow to the economy.   That was the real state of the economy in 2004.    And if you are looking for a motive for 9-11 - look no further.  The $7 TRILLION stock fraud provided plenty of motivation for both the event - taking out WTC 7 where the SEC was investigating the fraud - to the media promotion of the official storyline that was also a fraud.
 
Going back to the 1990's and the Internet.  The technology industry lobbyists (Jack Abramoff being one)  became Evangelicals for the Internet selling the idea of the Internet as the Golden Goose.  Everybody would be able to get a Golden Egg from the Golden Goose by becoming an entrepreneur on the Internet.  Corporations would get piles of Golden Eggs from the Golden Goose because the Internet was global and their products and the world would become an open market for them.  This idea was promoted on television with programs on the booming stock market.  There is no doubt that there was collusion between Television producers and stock market analysts because Frank Quattrone - one analyst went to prison for it.    
 
During the Budget Hearing mentioned above - and in subsequent hearings, the members of Congress were confused about why tax revenues were so low when the economy had to be booming - because they are victims of media propaganda too.  They were being given the impression that the revenue losses were due to the Internet Entrepreneurs holding out on giving the IRS a slice of their golden eggs.    Technology corporations used the Internet services like ebay and Monster.com to create the illusion of this 'New Economy'.  Congress and the vast majority of people didn't understand that with computer systems - programmers can create illusions if they want - it's easy.   Job offerings posted on Monster can be fabricated.  Selling on ebay can be fabricated.  Voting tallies can be modified for the desired outcomes.  Computer systems are only as honest as the people who write the systems and the people who run the systems.  And the technology industry has proven that they are NOT HONEST. 
 
Why would they do that?    Think about the world in terms of automation (computers).  Only the industrialized countries have automation.  There are over 5 billion people who could have a computer and an internet connection.  That's a huge potential market for them - so much bigger than the U.S. market and the markets in the other industrialized countries combined. 
 
During the 1990s when the idea of the Internet as the Golden Goose was sold, 'bridging the digital divide' became an agenda item for the United Nations.  Bridging the digital divide means bringing automation to the undeveloped and underdeveloped countries.  But obviously, that means bringing them out of their 19th century existence to the 21st century - skipping 2 centuries of development.  Bridging the digital divide was supposed to deliver a golden egg to those 5 billion people.  Sheer insanity on all levels - not even close to being a real possibility. 
 
In mid 1990's the financials industry teamed up with the technology industry to begin the process of 'bridging the digital divide' by exporting technology jobs to India.  In an article in the Financial Express, an Indian website there was an article around the 2004 timeframe that I found said the following:

 

"WIPRO Chairman Azim Premji while “speaking at a seminar organised by the All India Management Association (AIMA) and Bombay Management Association (BMA)”.[3]   [said the following]

 
“Addressing management students here, Mr Premji explained that when software services were being outsourced, it was done surreptitiously. This was done because it was the requirement of that time. The industry then stood witness to a vast number of layoffs.”
It was done surreptitiously because it was a hostile attack on our economy engineered by the tech industry in collusion with the financials industry.  The financials industry is all about automation and information services.  They cut their costs by 80% by exporting software and knowledge jobs to India - and their reported profits after the 2000 bursting of the dot.con bubble showed it.    The part that the financial industry's played in this attack was documented in a report prepared by the Erik Wesselius and was published by the Transnational Institute in a 2002 report titled, "Behind GATS 2000:  Corporate Power at Work".      
 
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Behind GATS 2000:  Corporate Power at Work

 

Page 6 - US Coalition of Service Industries: Godfathers of GATS

 

The US Coalition of Service Industries (USCSI) is undoubtedly the most influential services lobby group in the world. Its origins date back to the mid-1970s. At that time, US financial services companies American International Group (AIG), American Express and Citicorp wanted to improve their access to what were at that time heavily regulated markets outside the US. They considered the inclusion of ‘trade in services’ in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT, the WTO precursor) as a good tool with which to force open these markets.

 

In 1981, the chief executive officers of AIG, American Express and Citicorp concluded that there was a need to form a broader business coalition to push the demand to include ‘trade in services’ in the GATT agenda. They mandated American Express Vice-President Harry Freeman to form a coalition of services industries that would reach well beyond New York financial circles. In 1982, the US Coalition of Service Industries (USCSI) was officially launched under Freeman’s chairmanship.

 

Between 1982 and 1985, USCSI worked closely with the US Trade Representative (USTR) and the Department of Commerce to place services firmly on the global trade agenda. In late 1983, the USTR submitted a report to the GATT on the growing importance of services in the world economy, summarising existing international rules governing trade in services and suggesting possible approaches to a new regime. When the GATT Uruguay Round was launched at the September 1986 Punta del Este GATT Ministerial Conference, a Group on Negotiations on Services (GNS) was formed and negotiations formally started on a multilateral regime for trade in services within the GATT.

 

Complementing its work with the US Trade Representative, the USCSI intensively lobbied Congress. One of the methods used by the USCSI was to encourage Members of Congress to send letters to the USTR, expressing ‘strong support’ for liberalisation of trade in services. Congressional hearings, where industry experts and administration officials ‘testified’ side by side on the importance of the services industry for the US economy, were another important lobby tool.

 

As a result of such ‘manufactured pressure and support’, the USCSI and USTR negotiators developed ‘a symbiotic relationship’.3 The USCSI would raise the necessary support on Capitol Hill, in return for privileged access to the trade policy-making process through the formal Industry Sectoral Advisory Committee on Services (ISAC 13)4 and through a profusion of informal consultations, strategy sessions, seminars and conferences.

During the long-winded Uruguay Round, the USCSI became one of the pillars of support for the USTR negotiators. As Harry Freeman recounted afterwards:

 

“At the close of the Uruguay Round, we lobbied and lobbied. We had about 400 people from the US private sector. There were perhaps four Canadians and nobody from any other private sector. The private sector advocacy operations in the US government are radically different from those in every other government in the world.”5

 

The conclusion of the 1994 GATS agreement was a major victory for the services industry lobbyists. At the same time, it didn’t bring that much in actual market openings for US corporations. To quote Harry Freeman:

 

“In 1997 we made some progress in financial services and in telecom services. But we really haven’t gotten that far in liberalization as distinguished from what the trade people call stand-still, which is stay where you are but you can’t lower, you can’t increase your barriers. I think we’ll have a leap forward over a three- to four-year period in services, really a major liberalization”6

 

Since preparations for the GATS 2000 talks began in the late 1990s, co-operation has intensified again. The cosy relations between the US government and the USCSI was exemplified recently in the one day conference “Services 2000; A Business-Government Dialogue on US Trade Expansion Objectives”. The conference took place at the US Department of Commerce and was “sponsored by the Commerce Department’s Office of Service Industries and the US Coalition of Service Industries.” 7

 

At this conference, USCSI chairman Bob Vastine called the close partnership between succeeding US Administrations and the US services industry an “extraordinary example of government/industry co-operation that should serve as a benchmark for the rest of the world”.8 Deputy Secretary of the Department of Commerce, Samuel Bodman, assured the audience that “the Secretary and I see our role and the mission of the Commerce Department as being the advocate for the American business community.”9

The conference also highlighted the shared objective of the US Department of Commerce and the USCSI to use the GATS 2000 talks to increase market access for US companies, not only through specific market access negotiations, but also by adding new disciplines on domestic regulatory reform to the GATS “in order to ensure that market access and national treatment commitments achieve their promised objectives”.10 This confirms GATS critics’ warnings that the GATS negotiations comprise a corporate deregulatory agenda that threatens to undermine democratic governments’ ability to regulate.

 

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There is ample proof that this attack on our economy was engineered.   Earlier this year, I watched an economist named Robert Lawrence give a presentation at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.  The speech was about a report he had written titled, 'Blue Collar Blues: Is Trade to Blame for Rising US Income Inequality'.  In that speech, he mentioned one critical piece of evidence to the engineering of this attack on our economy.  In 1992, U.S. tax law was changed.  The tax treatment for CEO stock options were changed to be treated as ordinary income rather than having the special tax treatment they'd had in the past.  That struck a chord with me because I rewrote the Keyman Stock Option Grant system for Phizer Pharmaceuticals for that tax change in 1992.  Two years later, the  dot.con stock market boom started which the market experts subsequently attributed to the Netscape IPO.  I attribute it to having all the ducks lined up for nuking our economy through stock market fraud and the exporting of a significant portion of the best part of our economy - the white collar knowledge jobs. 

 

The significance of that tax change was in the government statistics.  White collar workers were dropping like flies but the government statistics showed wages for white collar wages staying slightly ahead of inflation.  It is my belief that the inclusion of CEO stock options as wages in a fraudulent stock market run up covered the losses of white collar workers in the government statistical reports thereby masking the economic attack. 

 

In the audio clips of that House Budget hearing I've referred to several times, you can hear Douglas Holtz-Eakin describe how the tax revenue budget numbers are compiled for Congress.  Congress uses those CBO numbers to appropriate the money for government spending.  You don't even have to be an accountant to figure out how the CBO tax revenue numbers were manipulated to mask the lost tax revenues for a four year stretch of time - and how an infusion of big money would mask the numbers again for another four years.  It was a very clever scheme but it's easily proven as an intentional fraud. 

 

During another Congressional hearing on the subprime mortgage market meltdown, a very important question was posed to one of the mortgage company CEOs that was testifying.  I sent an email out out that hearing.  The following is the text of that email:

 

 

 

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The question came up in a Congressional hearing on CEO pay for the mortgage brokers who were involved in the subprime mortgage meltdown:   'Goldman Sachs dodged the bullet on the subprime mortgage market.  Why were they able to dodge the bullet - and you weren't?  What didn't you see that they did?'   Nobody could answer the question.   
 
I believe I have the answer.  His name is Robert Zoellick.  And I think the reason that Goldman Sachs was able to dodge the bullet - was because Robert Zoellick was the one who loaded the gun and aimed it.
 
I've been on Zoellick's trail ever since my research began on trade agreements.  Robert Zoellick has done more damage to the economy of this country than any other single person I've researched.  Of course, Zoellick is an operative - a Bush family Capo dating back to the plan for the reunification of Germany. The significance of that is again, the Helsinki Final Act that was the integration plan in preparation for the reunification.  And it's pretty clear that Zoellick (and others) have been following the same game plan for the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
 

Link for the above

 

http://www.channelingreality.com/UN/hemispheric_Integration.htm
 
In researching Robert Zoellick, I found his bio on the Eurasia Foundation website website a couple years ago.  
http://www.channelingreality.com/documents/Zoellick_Eurasia_bio.pdf
During the 1997-98 academic year, Mr. Zoellick was the John M. Olin Professor of National Security at the U.S. Naval Academy. From 1993 through 1997, he served as an Executive Vice President at Fannie Mae, the largest housing finance investor in the U.S., with a market capitalization of about $70 billion. He was responsible for the corporation's affordable housing business, the General Counsel, regulatory and government relations, and international financial services.
 
Mr. Zoellick received the Distinguished Service Award, the Department of State's highest honor. The German government awarded him the Knight Commanders Cross for his role in developing the U.S. Strategy toward German unification and service as the senior U.S. official in the "2 plus 4" negotiations.
 
From 1985 to 1988, Mr. Zoellick served at the Department of the Treasury in various positions, including Counselor to Secretary James A. Baker, III, Executive Secretary of the Department, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions Policy. Mr. Zoellick received the Alexander Hamilton Award, the Department of Treasury's highest honor.
 
He currently serves on three for-profit boards: Alliance Capital, Jones Intercable, Inc., and Said Holdings. He is also a member of Enron Corp's Advisory Council.
 
Mr. Zoellick is the Director of the Aspen Institute's Strategy Group on Foreign Policy. He is a board member of the Council of Foreign Relations, the German Marshall Fund of the U.S., the European Institute, the Eurasia Foundation, the National Bureau of Asian Research, the American Council on Germany, the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, and the Overseas Development Council. He serves on the governing council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
 
Mr. Zoellick is a member of the Advisory Board for Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), the Board of Advisors of the Law & Economics Center at George Mason University, the Advisory Committee of the Institute for International Economics, the Brookings Institution's Advisory Committees for the Foreign Policy and Economic Programs, the Advisory Board of the Nixon Center for Peace & Freedom, the World Wildlife Fund's Advisory Council, the U.S. Executive Committee of the Trilateral Commission, the Advisory Board of the Centre for European Reform in London, the Australian-American Leadership Foundation, the Inter-American Dialogue, and the D.C. Bar.
Scroll down on this page to 1989, Brady Commission, structural adjustment programs and the securitization of third world debt to shift risk away from banks - spreading the risk into 'emerging market funds'.  Zoellick had to have been involved in that. 
http://www.channelingreality.com/News/free_trade_Trojan.htm
 
Yesterday, an interesting article was circulating that described the history of low income loans in the mortgage market.  Zoellick would have been involved in the 1995 regulations - and probably helped formulate the policies before the actual implementation:
http://www.downsizedc.org/blog/2008/mar/18/what_youre_not_being_told
  • First, Congress passed something called the "Community Reinvestment Act" in 1977, resulting in the creation of bureaucratic regulations designed to encourage, or even compel, financial institutions to make loans to people with lower incomes. These regulations were then amended in 1995 and 2005 to create different rules for institutions of different sizes, so that various kinds of institutions would be better able to meet the government's goals for fostering home ownership in lower income communities.
  • Second, the Federal Reserve starting making loans available to the banking system at extremely low interest rates.
 
Zoellick's bio on the Whitehouse Website:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/zoellick-bio.html 
Mr. Zoellick was the lead State Department official in the negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Uruguay Round, and the launch of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group.
In 2004, Zoellick was the U.S.T.R he participated in a Special Summit of the Americas to plan for further deep integration - actually U.S. funding of building infrastructure in Mexico.  I had to recover this from the Internet archive, but it gives the agenda of the Special Summit:
 
http://www.channelingreality.com/documents/Special_Summit_of_the_Americas.pdf   
 
One of the documents retrieved was the Partnership for Prosperity Plan - and Zoellick would have been the person who set it up because that was his area of expertise. 
 
http://www.channelingreality.com/NAU/P4P/U.S._Mexico_Partnership_for_Prosperity.pdf
Leveraging the Resources and Expertise of the Private Sector
The action plan builds on the President's New Compact for Development. As President Bush said last week before the Inter-American Development Bank, "Most of the money for development does not come from aid. It comes from domestic investment, foreign direct investment, and, especially, from trade." The action plan, therefore, seeks to leverage private sector resources and expertise.
 
Action Plan
The action plan includes projects to facilitate investment in small business, housing, agriculture, roads, ports, airports, and information technology.
Specific examples include:
 
l Increasing investment in housing. The U.S. Treasury Department will coordinate the provision of technical assistance to Mexico's Sociedad Hipotecaria Federal (SHF) to encourage securitization of mortgages and the creation of a secondary mortgage market in Mexico. In these efforts, Treasury will draw upon experts with experience in housing finance from private financial institutions, government-sponsored agencies (like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae), and the U.S. Office of Federal Housing Enterprise and Oversight (OFHEO).
 
l Investing in infrastructure for commerce. The Partnership will lead an effort to spur the participation of U.S. companies in the development of Mexican infrastructure projects including: ports, an air cargo facility, and an expansion of Mexico's internet connectivity.
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The economic attack on our country will destroy it and us if we allow the thieves and traitors of Wall Street to get away with the fraud they perpetrated on the American people.  The corruption in New York City and Washington DC is like an inflamed boil... we must lance it and drain the poison so that we can recover to live normally once again.  And that means making the thieves pay for their crimes and hanging the traitors. 

 

For the life of me, I can't figure out why criminal stupidity is acceptable from a Harvard MBA - allowing them to steal billions - while a shoplifter can get six months in jail for their stupidity of five-finger discounts.   We claim to be a relatively moral and just country.  It's time to start acting the part instead of just marketing it.  Enough is enough.

 

Vicky Davis

September 25, 2008