http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6551

Financial Meltdown: A "Slow Motion Train Wreck"

Engineering the Coming Wreck - Part II

Other than rampaging armies on the move, no institution anywhere has more power than central banks. And no central bank has more of it than the US Federal Reserve unless it's the secretive, unaccountable Bank of International Settlements (BIS) founded in 1930 and based in Basle, Switzerland. The BIS is central banker to its member banks (a sort of financial boss of bosses) that includes the Federal Reserve.

Some savvy financial experts believe the world's ruling elites control this bank of banks and intend using it to establish a global borderless financial world controlled by them. It's no hairbrained conclusion with the European Union in place, talk of a similar one in Africa, and a North American Security and Prosperity Partnership arrangement coming to a head that will create a borderless continent headquartered in Washington and likely will aim next to link with the EU for greater global control.

So what's important about the Fed, and why should we care? Despite common belief, the Federal Reserve is not a government agency. It's a privately owned for profit cartel of powerful banks (including Wall Street ones) protected by law, even though the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 violates the US Constitution. It's Article I, Section 8 states "The Congress shall have Power To coin Money (and) regulate the Value thereof..." In 1935, the Supreme Court ruled only Congress has this power and cannot constitutionally delegate it to another group or body, and that includes private for profit bankers running the Fed.

Simply put, commercial banks in charge of printing and controlling the nation's money supply constitutes criminal fraud. It's the reason the Federal Reserve was designed to look like a government agency when, in fact, it isn't. Being headquartered in Washington in the stately mausoleum-looking Eccles building is just part of the clever subterfuge.

But it's even worse than that. By establishing the Federal Reserve, Congress and President Woodrow Wilson privatized the nation's money creation system relinquishing the most important power governments have that got famed banker Baron MA Rothschild once to say: "Give me control over a nation's currency and I care not who makes its laws."

Ever since US private bankers got it, they've been empowered to print money in any amount, control its supply and price, and benefit hugely by loaning it out for profit. That includes making government pay interest on its own money it wouldn't have to do by printing its own. This amounts to no less that government sanctioning the right to counterfeit the national currency for private gain with the Fed and private bankers being world class pirates masquerading as guardians of the public interest.

It's no exaggeration to call this the all-time, greatest ever financial scam, still ongoing, and totally beyond the reach of public or any other type scrutiny. If there were any, it would be learned this institution was created as a scheme to transfer wealth from ordinary people to giant banks and Wall Street. It's worked like a charm, and few people are the wiser.

But there's more still to the story, and it keeps getting uglier. Supposedly, the Federal Reserve was established to stabilize the economy; smooth out the business cycle; maintain a steady, healthy rate of sustainable growth; create price stability and control inflation; and work for the betterment of everyone. So let's grade it on its performance.

Since 1913, we had economic crashes in 1921, and the major one in 1929 followed by The Great Depression lasting until the outbreak of WW II. Post-war, we then had recessions in 1953, 1957, 1969, 1975, 1981, 1990, 2001, and we're likely heading for future major trouble resulting from past Fed policy abuses under Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben Bernanke, carrying on in the same fashion. We also had a serious inflation problem beginning in the 1960s that became crisis-level severe in the 1970s and early 80s. In addition, in the wake of reckless financial market deregulation in the 1980s and lack of government oversight (with the Fed's blessing), we had a major financial crisis causing more bank failures than ever before or since in our history.

Further still, under the Fed, we've had -

-- soaring consumer debt;

-- record high federal budget and current account deficits;

-- an off-the-charts national debt, far higher than the fictitious reported number;

-- a high and rising level of personal bankruptcies and mortgage loan delinquencies and defaults;

-- an enormous government debt service obligation we're taxed to pay for;

-- the systematic loss of manufacturing and other high-paying jobs to low-wage countries;

-- a secular declining economy, 84% service-based, and mostly comprised of low-wage, low or no-benefit, non-unionized jobs;

-- an unprecedented wealth gap disparity;

-- growing rates of poverty in the richest country in the world;

-- a decline of essential social services; and

-- a lawless nation devoted to militarism and imperial conquest with the Federal Reserve complicit in supplying all the funds needed to fuel it, and all the while caring not for the public interest it's supposed to serve.

This type record adds up to a clear conclusion. Above all else, the Federal Reserve failed to accomplish what it's supposed to do revealing instead what's really going on. The Fed doesn't serve the public interest. It abuses it because that's how bankers and all corporate predators make money. In the world of finance, ordinary people lose out because giant banks and Wall Street are allowed to pull off the grandest of grand thefts, their thievery continues unabated, and the stakes keep rising.

Some astute financial observers now believe current excesses and resulting turmoil were caused by the intentional engineering of the US housing bubble with the Fed in on the scheme. Insiders made loads of easy money in the process and now stand to cash in big buying troubled assets for a fraction of their value the way they always do in the wake of market meltdowns. It's called "vulture" investing with shrewd buyers profiting hugely in good and bad times that are all good for them.

One analyst calls the subprime mortgage turbulence a global bank run with potential huge yet to emerge consequences. Writer Danny Schechter has another view in his article titled: "Subprime Or Subcrime? Time to Investigate and Prosecute," and he makes a strong case. He calls the subprime credit squeeze a "sub-crime ponzi scheme (causing) millions of people (to lose) their homes because of criminal and fraudulent tactics used by financial institutions (posing) as respectable players in a highly rigged casino-like market system." There's nothing free and open about it.

The problem is deep, structural and aided by stripped away regulatory protections giving predatory lenders and Wall Street schemers free reign to target unsuspecting victims. Part of Schechter's fix is calling for a "jailout," not a "bailout," but with friends in high places, don't bet on it beyond a small fry or two. It's sad and disturbing because this type behavior is part of the American "ethic" to scheme, defraud and prey on the innocent knowing big players nearly always get away with it, and under George Bush, it's practically guaranteed.

With a clear field ahead and friends in high places, the "Masters of the Universe" are now heading for their perfect kind of buying opportunity if Jeremy Grantham and other worriers are right. Manipulation aside, Grantham's persuasive evidence suggests we're watching an unstoppable "very slow motion train wreck" likely to be pretty ugly on "impact." By his reckoning, it's probably too late to undue the enormous damage done no one will escape from. His advice is that to be forewarned is forearmed to prepare as best as possible although for most people it's practically impossible.

It's a good time to think of the ancient Chinese proverb, that's, in fact, a curse and not of Chinese origin, but it sounds good saying it is: "May you live in interesting times." Whoever coined the phrase intended it to be ironic and "interesting" meant dangerous, turbulent or uncertain. That, indeed, is true now but to what degree we'll only know in the fullness of time.........

Peak oil realities and major Climate Change disruptions will be combining with the above mentioned coming financial Train Wreck, precipitating a Perfect Storm of " Interesting Times ".