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Thread: A Story...

  1. #1
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    Default A Story...

    by Catherine Austin Fitts

    Imagine that you live in an historical mansion in a large, privileged family on a fine property -- rich with good land, good water and natural resources that your ancestors originally acquired through surreptitious means.

    Imagine that the mansion and estate have serious structural problems that accumulated over many years. The reasons are complex.

    There is enormous distrust within the family. As the vigor of the generations dissipated, expenses rose and numerous members have turned to activities that are unproductive at best, or fraudulent and criminal at worst.

    Those in charge of family finances were highly distrustful of the collective family intelligence and wisdom, and have mortgaged the estate and cut reinvestment in infrastructure to liquidate as much capital as possible to reinvest abroad - albeit in hidden legal forms. They have engaged in numerous criminal activities, including ones that had significantly harmed the neighborhood economy.

    Almost no one in the family objected as allowances continued to be funded, even increased and promises continued to be made. As long as everyone was getting his or her check, most everyone was willing to ignore the deterioration of the real human and physical assets and equity on the family balance sheet. They were also willing to ignore the harm done to their neighbors.

    The occasional relative who demanded a financial accounting of what was happening, or was not satisfied with petty bribes of various kinds, was sent packing or to work abroad, or even occasionally dealt with in a way that we pretend never happens - they developed diseases, were admitted to mental institutes, were said to have committed suicide or just disappeared. These instances were sufficient to strike terror throughout the family, leaving those in command of the family trusts unquestioned, as their offshore accounts and numerous enterprises grew.

    The result was a fragile peace that grew thin, as the deterioration in the infrastructure of the estate and the structure of the mansion accelerated. Innovation was not encouraged. The managers were interested in their own global competition. They did not want any pesky entrepreneurs taking risks that could in any way attract attention or create liabilities for their grand plans. Indeed, young members were encouraged to use student loans to get their advanced education, thus ensuring their dependence on their allowance and reluctance to branch out on their own. Thus the family members’ general understanding of the world around them and how to navigate it deteriorated rapidly.

    So now the day has come when the deterioration in the management of the estate, the growing debt, the structural problems in the mansion and the diminution of the family trusts has necessitated a dramatic reduction in allowances.
    Those in control face a marketing challenge. How do they arrange a dramatic reduction in allowances without providing an accounting of where monies had gone, thus threatening their offshore holdings and enterprises, or exposing criminal liabilities to their global enemies? How do they maintain control without the continual flow of allowances to placate family members? And what would happen when the family members discover that their retirement savings and benefits are empty promises?

    A task force was commissioned of family lawyers and counselors to make recommendations as to what could be done. They were instructed by the controlling family members to only make recommendations that involved cutting allowances or required contributions from those receiving them.
    Under no circumstances were they to ask for a real accounting, delve into the issues related to where family capital had been shifted abroad, the fundamental flaws in the family governance systems, property infrastructure needs, or the need for serious investment in the mansion foundation, let alone how to reinvigorate the prosperity of the land and property and the productivity and health of family members.

    They were to deal only with whose allowance were to get cut and by how much,and how much various family members should contribute to a fund to restore the property.

    The family lawyers and counselors wanted to keep their jobs and they certainly did not want to be “suicided.” So for months, they argued over proposals -- none of which addressed the real problems, let alone solved them.

    After months of this, the family members reached a unique consensus. Their lawyers and counselors were incompetent and should be replaced by new ones. Who would, of course, be subject to the same restrictions....


    http://solari.com/updates_2012/beyon...scal_cliff.php

    "Information is the hardest currency."

    ~Andrew Vachss

    Washington's negotiations to address the fiscal cliff of automatic tax increases and spending cuts legislatively triggered at the close of 2012 are the latest in an ongoing effort to address increasing U.S. federal government deficits and debt levels. Enormous monetary and fiscal stimulus has failed to produce an economic recovery. In short, the U.S. government and central banks have failed to dig out. Instead, they are now dug in deeper. What to do now?

    What is missing from this and other debates on the reengineering of the U.S. federal finances is an understanding or discussion of the structural problems in the federal finances that have been accumulating since WWII, when the United States - with 6% of the world’s population - found itself the master of 50% of the world’s resources.

    The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of some of these structural issues in the hope that more citizens will be encouraged to consider how the federal finances flow through the immediate world around us - our household budget, our business, farm or place of work, our municipality - and the government-sponsored organized crime and fraud draining us, so we can begin to implement real solutions.

    Ultimately, the fiscal cliff is the tip of the iceberg of our economic and cultural woes. Our problems are deeper. The more of us there are, who are prepared to look honestly at our situation and take responsibility for it, the sooner authentic solutions will become possible and emerge.

    As we look over the fiscal cliff into our financial abyss, now is a good time to “Come Clean” about the real state of our lives, our communities, and our economy, starting with the U.S. federal finances that flow deeply and intimately throughout every aspect of our lives.

  2. #2
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    I specially like this part:

    They did not want any pesky entrepreneurs taking risks that could in any way attract attention or create liabilities for their grand plans. Indeed, young members were encouraged to use student loans to get their advanced education, thus ensuring their dependence on their allowance and reluctance to branch out on their own. Thus the family members’ general understanding of the world around them and how to navigate it deteriorated rapidly.


  3. #3
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    "Washington's negotiations to address the fiscal cliff of automatic tax increases and spending cuts legislatively triggered at the close of 2012 are the latest in an ongoing effort to address increasing U.S. federal government deficits and debt levels. Enormous monetary and fiscal stimulus has failed to produce an economic recovery. In short, the U.S. government and central banks have failed to dig out. Instead, they are now dug in deeper. What to do now?"

    Lots of folks have been analyzing and studying the problem. What we do know is shown in the cartoon.
    Attached Images Attached Images
    You're from BATFE? Come right in! I use all your fine products!

  4. #4
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    While I admire Ms. Fitts, she is fighting a lost battle.

    Watched a clip of Ms. Fitts asking a group, room, of investors if they knew that their "dividends" or earnings were from illegal drug profits, narcotics, and other corrupt transactions, would they be willing to "earn less" - give up the easy monies and divert their portfioios to honest firms, etc.

    The crowd shouted "No".

    Clearly the near past and present has decided that the future is a pool of slaves presently indebted TRILLIONS - with little hope of even a fraction of the success their near ancestors enjoyed.

    Not disputing the good times past generations have enjoyed, Just Saying They Should Learn How To Share, Not Consume, Devour The Future.

    While Millions watch IOUSA TV Land and are assured hourly their comfort zone will be maintained by "kicking the can" - ie; screwing the future, enslaving young people, ruining middle aged, foreign media understands we are living a fantasy, deluded.


    Link - Fair Use: http://www.heritage.org/research/rep...nment-programs

    The new dataset of people on government programs can then be further sorted to find out how many people say they are on a particular program. Here are some of the resulting numbers:

    • 128,818,142 people are enrolled in at least one government program.
    • 48,580,105 people are on Medicaid.
    • 35,770,301 people receive their retirement income from Social Security.
    • 43,834,566 people are on Medicare.
    • 39,030,579 people are living in a household where at least one person accepts food stamps.
    • 6,984,783 people are living in subsidized rental housing.
    • 2,047,149 people are receiving a higher-education subsidy.



    Link - Fair Use: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ni...ds-superpower/

    128 million Americans are now on government programmes. Can America survive as the world’s superpower?



    By Nile Gardiner US politics Last updated: January 8th, 2013




    I have just read a staggering report written by my colleagues Patrick D. Tyrell and William W. Beach for the Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis (I direct the Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom at Heritage.) It is a real eye-opener for anyone who cares about America’s future as the world’s superpower, on either side of the Atlantic. Ironically, Britain, through the tremendous determination of Iain Duncan Smith and his team at the Department of Work and Pensions, is starting to roll back the welfare state, precisely at the same time the current US administration is expanding it.
    The United States isn’t just gliding towards a continental European-style future of vast welfare systems, economic decline, and massive debts – it is accelerating towards it at full speed. Or as Acton Institute research director Samuel Gregg puts it in his excellent new book published today by Encounter, America is already “becoming Europe,” with the United States moving far closer to a European-style welfare state than most Americans realize.

    Tyrell and Beach point out in their Heritage paper, which is based on extensive analysis of the recently released March 2011 US Census Bureau Current Population Survey (CPS), that more than two in five Americans are now on government programs:
    The number of people receiving benefits from the federal government in the United States has grown from under 94 million people in 2000 to more than 128 million people in 2011. That means that 41.3 percent of the US population is now on a federal government program.
    Just as worrying is the rate of increase in spending on these federal government programmes:
    Between 1988 and 2011, spending on dependence-creating federal government programs has increased 180 percent versus “only” a 62 percent increase in the number of people who are enrolled in federal government programs, and a 27 percent increase in the population. Not only are more people enrolled in government programs than ever before, but more US taxpayer dollars are being spent on each recipient every year.
    This level of spending is simply unsustainable. “In 2010, over 70 percent of all federal spending went to dependence-creating programmes,” a figure which is likely to rise further in coming years, with the number of Americans enrolled in at least one federal programme growing “more than two times faster than the US population.” As the report’s authors argue:
    The time to reform dependence-creating government programs is now. The problem is too much government subsidizing, and too much transfer of wealth from taxpayers to those who pay fewer and fewer taxes. After all, government does not create wealth by spreading it around.


    Congress would do well to remember that there are no free subsidies and benefits. The government today is borrowing from future taxpayers to pay the current government program enrollees.
    In terms of indebtedness, America is well on the way to financial ruin, with total national debt already exceeding 100 percent of GDP according to the OECD, with publicly held federal debt projected to exceed 100 percent of US GDP by 2024. America’s government debt as a percentage of GDP (109.8 percent) based on 2012 figures now exceeds that of the general Euro area (100.6 percent), as well as France (105.1 percent) and the UK (105.3 percent). Only Greece (181.3 percent), Iceland (124.7 percent), Ireland (123.2 percent), Italy (127 percent) and Portugal (125.6 percent) currently exceed the US in terms of government gross financial liabilities as a percentage of GDP.


    Unless there is a dramatic reversal in the overall approach taken by the US government, with deep-seated entitlement reform, significant cuts in government spending and taxes, and a return to policies that advance rather than hinder economic freedom, the United States faces a bleak economic future, with devastating implications for American leadership on the world stage and the future of the free world.


    It is simply unimaginable for US leadership to be replaced by that of China, with its callous disregard for liberty, human rights and democratic values. An America that ends up like much of the European Union, dominated by big government ideology, drowning in debt, over-regulation, heavy taxation and chronically high unemployment, combined with weak militaries and an unhealthy deference to supranationalism, is a nightmare scenario. Unfortunately the US presidency remains firmly stuck in denial, as it has been for the last four years. This latest report serves as another warning for an administration perilously sleep-walking America towards economic disaster. It is time for the White House to wake up.

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