We’ve been scammed: Federal Reserve secretly administered $7+ trillion bailout to benefit bankers

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Opposites in many ways, the Tea Party movement and Occupy Wall Street have this in common: Both have channeled the public’s not always well-informed anger over the behavior of banks and government during the financial crisis. As it turns out, they didn’t know the half of it, and neither did the rest of us, including Congress.

As a story in the January issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine shows, between August 2007 and April 2010, the Federal Reserve secretly administered the largest bailout in U.S. history without approval or oversight from the legislative branch. To give a sense of the scale of this effort, as of March 2009, the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year, to the rescue.

Even as they were tapping the Fed for emergency loans at rates as low as 0.01 percent, the banks that were the biggest beneficiaries of the program were assuring investors that their firms were healthy. Moreover, these banks used money they had received in the bailout to lobby Congress against reforms aimed at preventing the next collapse.

By keeping the details of its activities under wraps, the Fed deprived lawmakers of the essential information they needed to draft those rules. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, for example, was debated and passed by Congress in 2010 without a full understanding of how deeply the banks had depended on the Fed for survival. Similarly, lawmakers approved the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to rescue the banks without knowing the details of the far larger bailout being run by the Fed.

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Read more at Bloomberg.com HERE.

‘America’s Toughest Sheriff’ Joe Arpaio officially endorses Gov. Perry

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Confirming the weekend’s reporting, on Tuesday “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” Joe Arpaio, endorsed Texas Gov. Rick Perry for president at a diner in Amherst, New Hampshire.

“The federal government has failed on border crime and border enforcement, and no candidate for president has done more to secure the border than Governor Rick Perry,” Arpaio wrote in a statement. “I have been watching Governor Perry and Texas closely and know his border surge operations with state, local and federal law enforcement officials have helped shut down the illegal trafficking of weapons, drugs and people.”

While the federal government has failed, according to the Arizona sheriff, Perry is the guy who can right the wrongs on the border.

“I’m endorsing Rick Perry because we need a tough-on-crime president who will champion and fund full-time border security operations from Brownsville[, Texas] to San Diego,” he said. “Governor Perry has a superior border security record and plan to make our border and our nation safer.”

Arpaio is well known for his aggressive opposition to illegal immigration and unwavering law and order policies. According to ABC News, the sheriff will be campaigning Tuesday and Wednesday with the Texas governor in New Hampshire.

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Read More at The Daily Caller By Caroline May, The Daily Caller

Obama Civil Rights Commission to Investigate Whether States are Violating Illegal Immigrants’ Rights

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Only in the Obama administration does it make sense to spend millions of dollars for the privilege of spending billions more on non-citizens, yet that is precisely what the administration is doing. The Obama administration’s civil rights division is investigating whether states that deport illegal immigration are violating illegals’ civil rights or making them less likely to live off welfare in an effort to paint their opponents as “racists” and further eviscerate the law.

In the latest in a series of high-profile lawsuits designed to stop state and local law agencies from deporting illegal immigrants, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) voted unanimously on November 18 to investigate several states that have passed immigration enforcement acts for potentially violating the civil rights of illegal aliens. The announcement was held until last Tuesday, when the holiday news dump assured it went largely unreported amidst Thanksgiving plans, stories of Occupy Wall Street protests, and brawling Black Friday shoppers. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the commission “will study laws in several states, with emphasis placed on Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.” Another report specifies, “In particular, the commission will examine whether the state-level immigration laws foster discrimination or contribute to an increase in hate crimes; cause elevated racial and ethnic profiling; affect students’ rights to public primary and secondary school education; and compromise public safety and community policing. ”

The chairman of the USCCR, the appropriately surnamed Martin R. Castro, said, “I believe that the enactment of these state immigration enforcement laws presents a pressing national civil rights issue that affects immigrants and U.S. citizens alike.”

That is, the Obama civil rights division is concerned states are violating illegal aliens’ rights by denying them the “right” to education. Its members will use the tried-and-true tactic of “disparate impact,” claiming since most of those deported are Hispanic, the laws must be racially motivated and thus unconstitutional.

The civil rights kangaroo court comes after the administration has filed lawsuits against every state attempting to control its exploding illegal alien population. The most recent defendant is Utah, which the Obama administration targeted last Tuesday. The state’s Republican governor, Gary Herbert, signed a tough enforcement bill in March.

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 Read More at Floyd Reports By Ben Johnson, The White House Watch

What Could a Gingrich Presidency Mean For Your Finances?

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As President Obama looks increasingly vulnerable, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has emerged as the latest frontrunner for the GOP’s presidential nomination. Many political observers attribute this to his status as the party’s idea man who promises fundamental change. Here are some of those ideas and how they could directly affect your wallet:

1) Make the Bush tax cuts permanent. If nothing changes, the Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of 2012, increasing tax rates on almost everyone who pays taxes (maybe that’s what the Mayan’s meant by the end of the world). While Obama would let the cuts expire for the top two tax brackets, Gingrich, like all the GOP candidates, would make them all permanent.

2) Eliminate the estate tax. Part of the Bush tax cuts was the elimination of the estate tax in 2010. While the estate tax sprung back to life in 2011 for estates over $5 million (and over $1 million starting in 2013), Gingrich also joins the other Republicans in wanting to repeal it altogether.

3) End the capital gains tax. This has long been a Republican policy goal. If you think this is likely to happen, you may want to postpone selling taxable investments and use your retirement accounts to re-balance. But if you’re wrong, the capital gains tax for most taxpayers is currently scheduled to increase from 15 to 20% in you guessed it…2013.

4) Cut the corporate income tax. Gingrich would also cut the top corporate income tax rate to 12.5% and allow for 100% expensing of investment in new equipment. Companies could pass the tax savings on directly to shareholders in the form of higher dividends or stock buybacks or potentially increase profits by expanding the company or cutting prices to be more competitive. This would actually benefit more people since most Americans own stock through mutual funds in their retirement plans, which aren’t affected by the capital gains tax.

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 Read More at Forbes By Erik Carter, Forbes

Mich. company plans Obamacare layoffs

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Stryker Corporation, a Michigan-based medical device company with operations around the world, is laying off five percent of its employees in order to offset the cost of a tax passed as part of Obamacare in 2009 and scheduled to take effect in 2013.

“The targeted [employee] reductions and other restructuring activities are being initiated to provide efficiencies and realign resources in advance of the new Medical Device Excise Tax scheduled to begin in 2013,” Stryker announced in a November 10 press release, “as well as to allow for continued investment in strategic areas and drive growth despite the ongoing challenging economic environment and market slowdown in elective procedures.”

Industry executives believe that the 2.3 percent tax will cost $20 billion in revenue over ten years. “If this tax is implemented in 2013, it will undermine our industry’s ability to create and maintain good jobs in the U.S., and worse, will lead to higher costs for patients, undercutting one of the primary goals of health care reform,” the head of a major medical device industry trade group warned in July.

Stryker CEO Stephen MacMillan hinted at such a response to the Obamacare provision in September. “There is no doubt that we’re already starting to think about actions that offset that additional tax,” he said at a conference, according to MassDevice.com. “”Here we are, one of the greatest industries in the country, and we’re staring down on January 1st, 2013 and the addition of a 2.3 percent excise tax, while meanwhile on the other side all the discussion in Washington is about creating jobs,” he added.

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 Read More at The Washington Examiner By Joel Gehrke, The Washington Examiner

How Paulson Gave Hedge Funds Advance Word

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Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stepped off the elevator into the Third Avenue offices of hedge fund Eton Park Capital Management LP in Manhattan. It was July 21, 2008, and market fears were mounting. Four months earlier, Bear Stearns Cos. had sold itself for just $10 a share to JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)

Now, amid tumbling home prices and near-record foreclosures, attention was focused on a new source of contagion: Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac, which together had more than $5 trillion in mortgage-backed securities and other debt outstanding, Bloomberg Markets reports in its January issue.

Paulson had been pushing a plan in Congress to open lines of credit to the two struggling firms and to grant authority for the Treasury Department to buy equity in them. Yet he had told reporters on July 13 that the firms must remain shareholder owned and had testified at a Senate hearing two days later that giving the government new power to intervene made actual intervention improbable.

“If you have a bazooka, and people know you have it, you’re not likely to take it out,” he said.

On the morning of July 21, before the Eton Park meeting, Paulson had spoken to New York Times reporters and editors, according to his Treasury Department schedule. A Times article the next day said the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were inspecting Fannie and Freddie’s books and cited Paulson as saying he expected their examination would give a signal of confidence to the markets.

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Read More at Bloomberg By Richard Teitelbaum, Bloomberg

Understanding the Gingrich Phenomenon

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Last summer, when all of the pundits had pretty much written off Newt Gingrich’s presidential candidacy, my niece, a college sophomore whom I always believed to be apolitical, remarked, “My friends and I like Newt – he tweets a lot on Twitter.”

I should have remembered that.

Two years earlier, I had heard Gingrich speak at the National Rural Health Association’s Annual Conference. At the beginning of his remarks, he took out his new mobile phone, and thus began a 30 minute dissertation on social media as the new paradigm in communications, and challenged us all to learn it, understand it and implement it.

Gingrich, ever the student of history, grasped early on the significance of President Obama’s use of social media as an effective tool for communications in the 2008 campaign.

Unlike Obama, Gingrich has had scarce resources and hasn’t had a cadre of aides, handlers and public relation firms to devise his social media campaign strategy. Instead, the 68 year-old former Speaker of the House from Georgia, whose campaign up until now has been just about a “one man band,” learned everything he could about social media and how to effectively employ it. As a result, he is now the one Republican presidential candidate who has mastered its use, and the results speak for themselves.

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Read More at Fox News By Van Hipp, Fox News

With McCain’s help the Senate will vote on stealing our rights to trial, conviction before prison

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As early as today the Senate could vote to strip us our 6th Amendment rights!

In a move that would make Joseph Stalin proud, Arizona Senator John McCain has joined Michigan’s Carl Levin in crafting a section of a bill designed to take away our rights to face an accuser and have a fair trial before being placed in prison. A section of S. 1867 The National Defense Authorization Act bill, written by McCain and Levin would in effect give the President arrest powers. It would authorize the Chief Executive to order our military personnel to forcibly- if necessary- take any one, regardless of guilt or innocence, into custody without charges or a trial.

These “McCain – Levin” detainees could be held indefinitely with no due process or speedy trial.

As if this sneaky piece of garbage was not bad enough the cowardly McCain and Levin pushed this bill through a Senate Committee in total secrecy with no public hearings or “leaks” to the press. Not a single Republican Senator brought this gross violation of our 6th Amendment rights to light. All of these feckless quislings turned their back on the guarantees Americans have fought and died for over the past 236 years.

The heart of the 6th Amendment reads as follows:

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.”

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 Read More at Coach Is Right By Kevin “Coach” Collins, Coach Is Right