How civil servants are spending millions of taxpayers' money on foreign trips, fast food and ukuleles

Five councils in West Midlands spent £7.5million on staff credit cards

One employee spent £423 on a tour of Arsenal's Emirates Stadium

Another spent £129.99 on a trampoline while staff made 147 fast food trips

Civil servants spent £7.5million on council credit cards, paying for parking tickets, KFC takeaways and even ukuleles with taxpayers' money.
Items bought on the council cards also included garden patio sets, a bowler hat and SpongeBob SquarePants cushions.
One local authority officer spent £423 on a tour of Arsenal's Emirates Stadium, while others paid off parking tickets dished out by their own employers.

Dudley Council, pictured, spent £5.5million on its 862 credit cards in one tax year

Eight ukuleles at a cost of £159.92 were bought on a Walsall Council credit card

Staff from five local authorities in the West Midlands racked up the £7.5million total using 1,500 'purchase' or 'procurement' cards.
The cards paid for travel to Paris and Venice as well as hotel stays and dozens of lunches from Marks and Spencer.
Dudley Council was the biggest spender, racking up £5.5million over 50,407 transactions on 862 cards.
Council staff made 147 taxpayer-funded visits to KFC and McDonald's in the 2011 to 2012 tax year.
Walsall Council's 183 cards bought items including eight ukuleles totalling £159.92 and edible printer ink costing £75.75.
The council spent £1,116,545.87 from April 2010 to April 2013, including the purchase of a £129.99 trampoline by a senior administrator.
Records also showed the Walsall council cards were used for £640 on two patio furniture sets, £137 on an ice cube maker and £11.97 for three SpongeBob SquarePants cushions.
Wolverhampton City Council has spent £4,547,851.48 in four years on its cards, although it could not produce detailed figures on its day-to-day expenditure.
Sandwell Council has 12 active credit cards, spending £145,232.36 in the past four financial years.

 

Wyre Forest Council in Worcestershire has 13 procurement cards and spent £66,370.79 in 607 transactions in the past financial year.
The councils say they had not paid any interest on the items bought as they paid off monthly statements on time.
John Polychronakis, chief executive of Dudley Council said: 'Purchase cards are a modern, efficient way of dealing with and managing local authority transactions to improve efficiency and reduce unnecessary paper trails and bureaucracy.'

Staff at Dudley Council put 147 trips to KFC and McDonald's on their council credit cards in the 2011-2012 tax year

Matthew Sinclair, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'Councils should publish bills for their taxpayer-funded purchase cards automatically.
'That way residents can scrutinise how their cash is spent and hold wasteful bureaucrats to account.
'Town halls have a duty to keep this spending down, some are blowing a fortune unnecessarily and putting the cards in the hands of too many staff.'

The 5 Biggest Obscenities of Capitalism Today

Committed capitalists don’t seem to recognize that people depend on each other, and that individual success is a result of collaborative effort, usually over a long period of time. The less free-market thinkers are regulated, the less they seem to care about others. They ignore the fact that America’s most productive eras were driven by progressive taxes that funded entrepreneurship in the middle class. And they fail to see the deficiencies in a system that relies solely on profit-making to the exclusion of social responsibility.
Like the images of a dreaded disease, their beliefs might best be defined as obscene.
1. The Market Works. Just Wait.
Capitalists have a remarkable capacity for groundless trust in the efficiency and egalitarianism of the free market. It started with Milton Friedman’s contention that “The free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all people.” Then on to 1998, when the New York Times cheered the breakup of the Glass-Steagall Act as having “temporarily demolished the increasingly unnecessary walls built during the Depression to separate commercial banks from investment banks and insurance companies.” Post-crash, in 2009 and thereafter, the capitalists noticed cracks in the foundation, but relied on self-correction. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein assured us that “The financial system may have led us into the crisis but it will lead us out,” and the Chicago Tribune echoed his sentiment: “Western-style private enterprise, despite its penchant for booms and busts, will lead the world out of the mess it led the world into.”
Even after 30+ years of free-market failure for the majority of Americans, the business people refused to surrender. Growing inequality had become a certainty. But Goldman Sachs adviser Brian Griffiths explained that “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all.”

2. Taxes: Who Needs Them?
“Zero!” said Honeywell CEO David Cote when asked what the corporate tax rate should be. Misinformation about taxes may have started with Arthur Laffer’s napkin demonstration, which convinced Republicans for nearly forty years that lower taxes alchemistically result in higher revenues. Wealthy capitalists have come to believe that everyone benefits from tax avoidance. Said Charles Koch: “I believe my business and non-profit investments are much more beneficial to societal well-being than sending more money to Washington.”
Even the biggest tax avoider, Apple Corporation, which according to its CEO Tim Cook “has a very strong moral compass,” is fanatically defended for its nonpayment, despite the fact that taxpayer money paid for the development of transistors and integrated circuits and networking hardware and software that allowed the company to exist. Rand Paul fumed, “I’m offended by the spectacle of dragging in Apple executives. What we need to do is apologize to Apple and compliment them for the job creation they’re doing.”
Rand Paul may have been referring to Apple’s self-congratulatory claim of 500,000 jobs added to the U.S. economy. But Apple only has 43,000 U.S. employees. It is estimated that the company makes $400,000 profit per employee while paying an average of $12 per hour for its store workers.
3. Global Warming is a Hoax
According to Republican Senator James Inhofe, it’s “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” He would go on to reflect, “My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.” Rick Santorum called environmentalism “one of the favorite tricks of the left,” and Fox News reported that “Global Warming Stopped 16 Years Ago.”
Those not in complete denial offer profit-centered solutions. Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson calls global warming an “engineering problem” with “engineering solutions,” and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce insists that “Populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological and technological adaptations.” The cheery Chamber even posits that warming could be “beneficial to humans” because of reduced wintertime mortality.
Other environmental problems flash yet more dollar signs before businessmen’s eyes. Larry Summers recommended outsourcing our toxic waste problem: “I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to it.” Regarding the water shortage, Energy & Capital suggested that “If you play it right, the results of this impending water crisis can be very good.”
Monsanto stands out, below everyone else, in its report to the SEC: “We are committed to long-term environmental protection..”
4. Students Are Our Finest Product
The big names produce the biggest absurdities. A well-intentioned Bill Gates proposes quality control for the student assembly line, with video footage from the classrooms sent to evaluators to check off teaching skills.
Michelle Rhee said, “I think that we are doing the wrong thing in our society when we are congratulating mediocrity and participation.” Of course students should strive to go beyond mediocrity. But education is never an individual achievement. On the contrary, great individuals are the product of people working together, sharing ideas, filling in the missing gaps in others’ work.
But we hear the sounds of ca-ching rather than of society working together. Koch-funded Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast said, “We see vouchers as a major step toward the complete privatization of schooling…they are the only way to dismantle the current socialist regime.”
5. Money Can’t Buy Me Gov
Deception, delusion, denial. Capitalists have completed all the steps of their free-market program. Billionaire Kenneth Griffin believes that the wealthy “have an insufficient influence” on politics today. The Chicago Tribune concurs: “What’s so terrible about the infusion of so much money into the presidential campaign?……that’s not a bug but a feature…it’s the sound of democracy.”
It’s a little like having an obscene gesture thrust in your face.
Republished with permission from: AlterNet

The Bank of keeping mum or being dead: The financial scandals just keep piling up for the Vatican's money-men

Papal problem: The Vatican bank is said to have become a money-laundering hotspot

Just a month ago, in his crusade to take his flock back to basics and deliver it from the clutches of Mammon, Pope Francis said the Church "must go forward... with a heart of poverty, not a heart of investment or of a businessman".

St Peter, he noted, "did not have a bank account". As we learnt a few weeks later, though, the senior Vatican official Monsignor Nunzio "Don 500" Scarano certainly did – at least two of them, which, prosecutors say, he used to smuggle €20m (£17.3m) into Italy from Switzerland, and to launder money used to buy a €1.7m luxury flat in Salerno.
Don 500 – so named because of his tendency to dish money around in the form of €500 notes, the criminal's favourite denomination – can't be dismissed as an isolated case. Two years ago there was the affair of Evaristo "Don Bancomat" Biasini, an official working for the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, who was accused of shady financial dealings in the construction sector.
Most damaging for the Vatican is the role that its own bank, the IOR (Institute for Religious Works), may have played in these affairs. In the case of Mgr Scarano, investigators are in no doubt he used his two IOR accounts like overseas slush funds. Records show that on one occasion last year Mgr Scarano withdrew €560,000 from an IOR account in a single transaction. He is currently in the Regina Coeli prison, awaiting trial. On Friday the Vatican announced it had frozen his assets and warned that other people may be caught up in the investigation.
Aware of the IOR's scandal-struck reputation, Pope Francis hired a new president for the institution, Baron Ernst von Freyberg, in May. The German industrialist immediately made himself a hostage to fortune, however, by declaring that the IOR was a "well-managed and clean financial institution" whose reputation was paying the price for past scandals.
Last week finance police and magistrates, led by Giuseppe Pignatone, released a report on their 30-month investigation into the IOR. The document said that high demand for recycling cash, together with the lack of checks and controls by the IOR and the Italian financial institutions it had dealings with, made the Vatican's bank a money-laundering hot spot. The two men in charge of the IOR's daily operations, the bank director Paolo Cipriani and his deputy, Massimo Tulli, immediately quit after six years in their jobs.
Within hours Baron von Freyberg released a new statement: "It is clear today that we need new leadership to increase the pace of this transformation process." Pope Francis appeared to share this view, appointing a five-person commission to examine how the Vatican's finances are run. But those hoping for a truly independent assessment must have been disappointed by the line-up.
Instead of a breath of fresh air, there are only Vatican insiders. The most detached of the five appears to be Mary Glendon, 74, a former US ambassador to the Holy See who heads the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences. But like the other five commission members she has an IOR bank account.
Another commission member is Mgr Peter Wells, 50, a high-ranking figure in the church's governing body, the Curia, who, like Ms Glendon, has personal connections to fellow American Carl Anderson. Mr Anderson is a member of the IOR's board of directors and head of the wealthy Knights of Columbus, which has been described as the "Catholic masons".
Vatican-watchers say this doesn't mean that Pope Francis is averse to cleaning out the stables – or doing something even more radical. "I think Francis's natural inclination is to shut the damn thing down," said Robert Mickens, the veteran Vatican correspondent of The Tablet. But like other experts he believes Pope Francis will be feeling the full force of vested interests in the Holy City.
Some at the Vatican will be quick to remind Pope Francis that the IOR gives the Holy See tens of millions of euros a year that help it pay the electricity bills and overseas trips – and keep it in the black. The Italian press has speculated that the notion of closing the IOR may have produced the threat of fresh Vatileaks-style disclosures from those who want to maintain the status quo.
An idea of who these people might be is emerging from Mgr "Don 500" Scarano himself. Under interrogation by Rome magistrates, and apparently intent on securing house arrest in his 700-square-metre apartment lined with art by Giorgio de Chirico and Marc Chagall, rather than time in a jail cell, Mgr Scarano is shedding a light on the murky workings of the other key financial institution in the Vatican, Apsa (Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See), which administers the Holy City's finances – and whose key figures benefit from IOR accounts.
One name keeps coming up: that of Paolo Mennini, who heads the division of Apsa that looks after the patrimony of the Holy See. He has been called the Pope's merchant banker. Investigators are particularly interested in cash flows totalling €230m that occurred between 2009 and 2011 from Apsa accounts to London banks. As Rome's Il Messaggero newspaper noted, these probes have extra piquancy given that in this period Apsa declared income of only €22m and paid just €3m in tax.A look at the history and connections of the Mennini family produces a list of facts and incidents that would have Dan Brown wringing his hands in envy. Paolo Mennini's brother Antonio, who has served as the Vatican's ambassador to Britain since December 2010, was the priest sent to hear the final confession of the kidnapped prime minister Aldo Moro before his execution by the Red Brigades in 1978. Vatican influence has ensured he's never had to testify at state hearings concerning Moro's abduction and murder. More pertinent perhaps, is the career of their father. Luigi Mennini, who died in 1997, was managing director of the IOR in the period following the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano, in which the IOR was the major shareholder. This was the scandal that involved the killing of "God's Banker" Roberto Calvi in London, and the suspicion that the IOR was linked to the mafia and money-laundering.
On 31 May this year, shortly after his appointment, IOR president von Freyberg announced on Vatican Radio that he had a dream: "My dream is that our reputation is such that people don't think of us any more, when they think about the Vatican, but that they listen to what the Pope says."
But so it appears, did one of his recent predecessors, the respected financier Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who was removed for his trouble. Officially, Mr Gotti Tedeschi was himself investigated in 2010 regarding a money-laundering scandal and later stepped down after a no-confidence vote by the bank's directors.
But Mr Gotti Tedeschi didn't go quietly. He insisted he got the boot because he'd ruffled too many feathers in his attempts to clean up the IOR by introducing greater transparency and targeting non-religious holders of IOR bank accounts. His claims were backed by last week's report by magistrates and finance police.
With this in mind, Pope Francis might have second thoughts regarding the advice he is now seeking. One of the voices critical of Mr Gotti Tedeschi was the IOR board director, Carl Anderson of the Knights of Columbus, whose influence could now be felt on the special committee Pope Francis has convened.
If he is serious about tackling financial sleaze, Pope Francis may be better off listening to his instincts – and take an axe rather than a broom to his tainted bank. As Mr Mickens noted: "After all, what's to stop priests and nuns using ordinary bank accounts like the rest of us?"
God's bankers
For an institution whose main role is looking after the money of priests and nuns, the IOR has had a remarkable number of scandals in its 71-year history.
The most notorious concerned the collapse in 1982 of the Banco Ambrosiano, in which the IOR was a major shareholder. The Vatican paid around £150m to compensate Ambrosiano's account holders – without admitting any wrongdoing. The then head of the bank, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, was indicted but claimed diplomatic immunity as a high-ranking Vatican official. But events became much murkier when Ambrosiano's chairman, Roberto Calvi, known as God's Banker, was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge, London in 1982. Calvi's death was eventually classed as murder, following two inquests and an independent investigation. Prosecutors said he was killed for stealing mob money.
Many of the scandals have involved "papal gentlemen" – Italian businessmen, industrialists and aristocrats who assist at papal ceremonies and so are entitled to IOR accounts. Francesco La Motta, formerly high up in the secret service, has been a papal gentleman since 2007. He was arrested last month and accused of illegally transferring €10m of state funds out of Italy. Another, Angelo Balducci, was arrested in 2010 on corruption charges linked to building contracts.
Last July EU inspectors said the Vatican bank had failed on seven counts to clean up its act. The report said the IOR had made progress, but it would remain outside the "white list" of countries that abide by global norms on combating money laundering, financing terrorism and tax evasion. The report "strongly recommended" the bank be "independently supervised by a prudential supervisor in the near future".
 

 

Goldman Sachs - Funding the New World Order

It would be the epitome of human folly to ignore the duplicity of Wall Street financiers who have routinely inflicted financial chaos and abject poverty by debt upon the under-developed world for decades, who now have leading roles in enforcing national IOU’s which they created in Europe that is devastating each nation, who created and manage the $16 trillion debt on the United States, who also permeate the U.S. Treasury, who are also the largest campaign contributors for congressional and presidential candidates, and who are further the putative recipients of hidden profit from their Ponzi scheme that embezzles trillions of dollars from the United States government.
The chaos of Greece has resulted in massive layoffs of government and civilian employees, loss of governmental services, impoverishment of the nation, riots, and has reduced much of society to dumpster-diving. Goldman Sachs assisted politicians in 2003 to cook the books and impose massive debt upon the citizens without their knowledge. Goldman reportedly made an initial gross profit of 600 million euro on the arrangement and then made bets the “shitty” bonds would fail. A Goldman man is now the Greek PM. Greece and Cyprus, that invested in Greek bonds, are now being ravished by the IMF and the ECB.
Goldman Sachs agents are also alleged to control the finances of Germany, Italy, Belgium, France, and UK to guarantee payment of debt. Ref. http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12996-goldman-sachs-global-coup-de-tat. Even the CEO of the European Common Bank is from Goldman. Spain, Portugal, and Iceland each have severe economic problems of similar origins.
Is this evidence the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that have rapaciously exploited lesser developed nations for decades are now moving up to developed European nations? Is their four step scenario the touted utopian advancement of the New World Order ? Is the United States in the advanced stages of their sequenced subjection? Is the funding that drives the scheme possibly from profit concealed by the Federal Reserve bank of New York City which legally belongs to the U.S. government?
The answer is a collective YES.
The frustrating part is that the financiers received and hid the entire value of the U.S. debt when it was created but they will additionally ravish the Nation when their fraudulent Ponzi scheme collapses.
Joseph Stiglitz, a former chief economist for the WB, has commented that a ten percent commission for a corrupt politician (such as a finance minister) in a hidden bank account can readily result in a huge debt imposed upon the citizenry beyond their ability to pay. A private debt then becomes a public obligation. The debt arranged by Goldman Sachs with Greece (hidden from the citizens) has been turned over to a ‘troika’ of the IMF, ECB, and EC that is also supervising debt collection of Cyprus and Portugal. Proceedings are not entirely smooth. http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/europe-economy-debt.p0q
The loan arrangements of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have resulted in impoverishment of many nations. After preliminaries, the following “conditionalities” are demanded. A select elite operate businesses manufacturing exports paying poverty wages while confiscated agriculture land produces items for export. Foreign contractors controlled by the elite have priority on required work. Food and essentials must be imported and is controlled by the elite. National assets such as hospitals, utilities, and roads must be privatized for the lender’s profit. Currency is devalued to benefit the creditors. Society becomes a few rich elite with masses living in destitution; the middle class is eliminated. Ref. Michael Chossudovsky, GLOBALIZATION OF POVERTY AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER; cf: google WAR BY OTHER MEANS video by John Pilger for the rape of the Philippines; VICIOUS CIRCLE OF DEBT AND DEPRESSION by Ismael Hossein-/zadeh at http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/05/14/the-vicious-circle-of-debt-and-depression/
The IMF and WB were established at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 with primary architects being Alger Hiss and John Maynard Keynes. The first U.S. delegate to the IMF was Harry Dexter White. The agencies have headquarters in Washington DC. The IMF determines quota for shareholder membership based upon ability to pay. The U.S. quota for 2013 is SDR 42.1 billion (about US$64 billion). The U.S. has a 17.69 percent shareholder domination control exercised by Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke. Another document lists Meg Lundsager as Director on the Executive Board to the IMF. One page identifies the U.S. government as paying 41 percent of total quotas while another IMF source lists 17.69 percent. The IMF holds 2,814 metric tons of gold among other assets.
The IMF formally requested the U.S. contribute $64 billion via Ms. Lael Brainard (ex Goldman Sachs employee ?) Undersecretary of the U.S. Treasury on April 24, 2013. Ref. http://financialservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/042413_mpt_memo.pdf. The clarity of financial commitments and handling of U.S. obligations, as evidenced by the committee hearing video, appears to make the “shitty” Goldman debt to Greece a simple IOU. Ref. Truthout, id. Obscuration is very profitable for financiers. Is the IMF ready to transfer physical possession of gold as collateral (at $32 per ounce) to the U.S. (not to FRBNY) for $64 billion?
The U.S. is also the dominate 15.86 percent shareholder of the WB. Robert Zoellick from Goldman Sachs was president of the WB from 2007 to 2012. He has also served as deputy Secretary of State. Lewis Preston from JP Morgan served as president from 1991 to 1995. Alden Clausen from Bank of America was president from 1981 to 1988. Nations are usually represented by ministers of finance. The two organizations have an annual meeting together. Bonds are sold to raise capital. Greg Palast identifies the U.S. Treasury as 51 percent owner. The groups claim that programs are derived from the United Nations to minimize government interference.
Members of the WB must first join the IMF by paying an assigned quota, and                     also pay 88 percent of the IMF assessment to the WB.. Then, in summary, the nation must pay US$141,000 and $1.3 million in other assets to purchase shares of the WB. The nation is further obligated to have $22 million available in callable assets.
The United States is the exclusive nation that has veto power over any policy change of the IMF and the WB. It is incontrovertible that Wall Street controls the two entities. Control by Congress appears to be minimum.
It would be a mistake to blame greedy politicians for the rapacious debts. The IMF and World Bank rely upon the CIA to impose and enforce their exploitation. Perkins informs us that if the financier’s offer is refused, the “jackals” are called in for a “wet operation” (murder). Ref. CONFESSION OF ECONOMIC HIT MAN by John Perkins; KILLING HOPE by William Blum; THE WAY OF THE KNIFE by Mark Mazzetti. It is assumed similar pressure is put on nations to join the WB and IMF. Apparently the Mafia now has a government cover.
The CIA’s School of the Americans (now WHINSEC) brings foreign military leaders to the U.S. for training. The sessions include recruiting CIA assets, teaching torture and suppression of protests against their local government. It also permits screening and recruitment of future puppet leaders for nations that require a coup if a ruler becomes reluctant to pay a debt.
Numerous sources including the congressional Church Committee have confirmed nefarious acts by the CIA. They include initiating terrorism disguised as revolutions and assassination squads not always in the best interests of the U.S. Ref. http://www.scribd.com/doc/49566880/CIA-ROGUE-AGENCY-RUN-AMUCK; HIGH TREASON by John Groden; PLAUSIBLE DENIAL by Mark Lane. Blackwater mercenaries have been identified as operatives of the CIA. The CIA as the operating arm of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) should be obvious. The government has no financial gain from exploitation.
The CIA has been identified by an Italian Supreme court judge as the controlling element used by the Bilderberg organization to manipulate governments such as in Operation Gladio involving numerous murders. http://deadlinelive.info/2013/04/12/italian-supreme-court-president-writes-book-linking-bilderberg-to-operation-gladio-and-the-cia-2/#comment-82358     
Rulers who put national interests before the exploitative financiers’ interest are demonized by the U.S. as building nuclear weapons, or abusing the indigenous people, or harboring terrorists, or using chemical weapons, or possessing weapons of mass destruction, or some such. If the methodology developed by CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt in 1954 of recruiting local malcontents and dregs of society with promises of grandeur and supplies of weapons for a “rebellion against tyranny” to overthrow the miscreant ruler fails, the U.S. media (all members of the CFR) will be used to inflame the masses to support U.S. military invasion. Recipients of CIA/Wall Street largess include Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Fidel Castro, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Chavez, Samosa, Noriega, Shah Pahlavi, Stalin, and Hitler. If nationalistic priorities preempt exploitation, the ruler must go. Hitler was TIME magazine’s 1938 Man of the Year but then he attacked Stalin. Antony Sutton documented Wall Street’s sponsoring of Stalin while publicly demonizing him. When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn made the same observation, his U.S. speaking tour was abruptly cancelled. If prompt policy decisions were not available from Moscow, they could be obtained from Manhattan.
The U.S. military is the ultimate force to squelch any recalcitrant nation, or a ruler who establishes a central bank not affiliated with the BIS/IMF, with a rallying cry of national defense and secrecy. War-mongering is a most profitable business for the CFR. Ref. JFK AND THE UNSPEAKABLE by James Douglas. Mass media control by the CFR members assures the proper propaganda spin to gain public support for expenditure increases. The CIA uses the U.S. military as a cover, as a supplier of material, and as a source of mercenaries. Ref. PRESIDENTS’ SECRET WARS by John Prados; CIA’S SECRET WAR by Kenneth Conboy; WAY OF THE KNIFE by Mark Mazzetti; also Fletcher Prouty. U.S. embassies are routinely used as an operational base for the CIA and at least one (Libya) is alleged to be a torture prison. It is Wall Street that determines the next nation the U.S. must destroy.
The CFR (created by David Rockefeller) is a social facade of businesses and organizations to multiply gains and eliminate competition as evident from their operation. The organization’s funding and control by Wall Street to promote a New World Order led by a financial elite is touted as an utopian society. Ref. TRAGEDY AND HOPE by Carroll Quigley; MEMOIRS by David Rockefeller. Even the CEO of the IMF confirms its future; http://www.thedailybell.com/1425/IMF-Article-Predicts-New-World-Order.html.   The interlocking directorships of major businesses as controlled by Wall Street and Rockefeller trusts and foundations has been known for decades. Ref. ROCKEFELLER FILE by Gary Allen; http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html.
An observer will look at Europe and see a pattern of international bond holders; Cyprus is holding Greek bonds; Spain is holding Italian bonds; Italy is holding French bonds; etc. They will then hear the hype the citizens must endure austerity to guarantee the bonds. How did all of these bonds originate? Greece, as a documented example, was fleeced by Goldman. Iceland, as another documented example, was fleeced by foreign bankers that utilized Iceland’s three banks. Roger Boyes in MELTDOWN ICELAND identifies Goldman as a prime cause. How much pressure by financiers or what payoffs to local politicians is unknown but fantastic profit for the financiers, as in the Greek and Iceland cases, appears assured.
Chossudovsky has documented numerous nations impoverished by the IMF through currency devaluation. The ECB is apparently restricted in its issuance of Euros by a requirement to obtain authorization from member states. This is a restriction on the ECB to prevent the issuance of fiat money. (An alternate fiat currency by the IMF would be SDRs.) If the European nations give the ECB authority for unrestricted printing of the Euro (to save Europe from financial disaster, of course) it will affect each and every nation of the Common Market. It will steal by the printing press the wealth of each member nation just as interest bearing Federal Reserve Notes replaced U.S. notes in the United States. It will put all of Europe under perpetual inescapable debt.
Is the United States immune to this world-wide exploitation now being experienced in Europe? Clearly not so. The lingo of “austerity” to condition the public to sacrifices is already in the media. Government spending and taxation is escalating while the people are told of reduced government benefits and jobs (and airline traffic delays). Preparations by the government for public protests include massive purchases of guns and ammunition, fully staffed detention centers, and military training and supplies for local law enforcement to suppress public objections. The $16 trillion in national debt hangs like a sword of Damocles while the people are not aware of the fraudulent nature of the inescapable obligation.
Every dollar of deficit spending ($4 billion EVERY DAY !!! ) is hidden profit for the Federal Reserve BOG (with ownership assumed but assured to include Goldman Sachs and Wall Street banks) through the FRBNY using the auction accounts of Treasury securities. No alternate mathematical conclusion has been found. Ref. Federal Reserve Heist, www.scribd.com/doc/101937790.
The profit of the Fed legally belongs to the government and assuredly the auction funds have helped finance the cabal. Concealment of funds that belong to the government is embezzlement. The Fed operates a Ponzi scheme that is inherently designed to self-destruct. The debt created can never be paid. The principal of the “loan” is created by issuing a Treasury security; the interest does not exist. A contract that cannot be culminated is void from its inception--it is an act of fraud. Ref. RIP OFF BY THE FEDERAL RESERVE,   http://www.scribd.com/doc/48194264/rip-off-by-the-Federal-Reserve-revised. The New York bankers previously identified are the organizations asserted to be owners of the (privately owned) Fed Board of Governors. Whether the BOG is operating as a government agency or as a government contractor depends upon the viewpoint.
Democrats quickly contributed to Fed profit by deficit spending on a social agenda including conservation projects, WPA, food stamps, housing assistance, medical care, and such while the Republicans of the Old Right were more frugal. Murray Rothbard relates in BETRAYAL OF THE AMERICAN RIGHT that Joe McCarthy unwittingly helped open the government spigot. With Bill Buckley’s war mongering in NATIONAL REVIEW trumpeting the communist menace and red-baiting, the New Right increased government deficit spending on militarism that not only gave direct profit to the owners of the Fed BOG and Wall Street stock proxies, but also profited the manufacturing members of the CFR. “(T)he more (Murray Rothbard) circulated among these (National Review) people, the greater (his) horror because (he) realized with growing certainty that what they wanted above all was total war against the Soviet Union; their fanatical warmongering would settle for no less.” Rothbard concludes Buckley had been a CIA agent and NATIONAL REVIEW was a CIA operation. id 161, 169.
The election of either political party into control of Congress now carries the potential to be used to profit the Fed. And politicians love to spend somebody else’s money to buy votes at home and let the next generation pay for it. Whether it is money for a healthcare program, or a new bridge, or a new airport, or sports stadium, or better roads even with matching funds from state or local governments, the debt is financed through New York and the piper does not play for free. Government does not demand that economic ventures must be cost effective.
Corruption by politicians in the United States is eliminated by definition. Campaign contributions, lobbyists gifts and perks, and secret insider market tips are defined by law to be legal--or result in winks. Some surveys suggest the group with the fastest increase in net worth is politicians. Opposition to legislation favorable to Wall Street will find political opponents with huge campaign war chests. And thus, for a few pieces of silver, are politicians intimidated to sell the birthright of the Nation, but much influence can be made without even being elected.
Numerous Goldman Sachs employees have worked for the U.S. government in key positions. They includes Barack Obama with GS being his largest campaign contributor ($884,907). An unknown BO was able to get elected, and reelected, without a birth certificate or challenge by either political party--and with judicial immunity. The BO record of constitutional trampling, of prolific spending, of claims of executive immunity from accountability, of consolidating all political power within the Executive agenda, is unprecedented. http://www.nachumlist.com/goldmansachsobama.htm . A lengthy list of Goldman employees who moved to government positions has been compiled. Ref. http://www.whiteoutpress.com/articles/q42012/list-of-goldman-sachs-employees-in-the-white-house/ .Should pundits conclude Goldman Sachs already controls the U.S. government?
Hank Paulson (ex CEO of GS) as Secretary of the Treasury begged Congress for $700 billion to save his $500 million in Goldman stock from bankruptcy under the pretense of saving AIG. http://articles.marketwatch.com/2006-06-30/news/30767746_1_paulson-goldman-sachs-stock-units . Paulson also eliminated more than $200 million in taxes by his brief government employment. Goldman received more than $14 billion from the bailout of AIG. More than $1 billion benefit went to Goldman from the “fiscal cliff” settlement of December 2012. Ref. http://www.moneynews.com/Wolinsky/crony-capitalism-Goldman/2013/01/03/id/469864.
An extensive listing of putative criminal actions by Goldman Sachs has been posted. Ref. http://deanhenderson.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/goldman-sachs-onc. John Galbraith in THE GREAT CRASH 1929 blamed the Great Depression on Goldman Sachs. Goldman created derivatives and MBS that are identified as causes of the current chaos.
President Obama, his mother, and his grandparents have a lengthy history with the CIA. Ref. http://exopolitics.blogs.com/exopolitics/2012/01/hidden-story-behind-jesse-ventura-piers-morgans-cnn-clash-over-obama-cia-ties.html   .
President George H.W. Bush was CIA Director in 1976. As president, he invaded Iraq in 1991 over weapons of mass destruction that were never found. He called for a New World Order in a speech before Congress on September 11, 1990 and in a speech before the United Nations on September 21, 1992. Bill Clinton, as Governor of Arkansas, facilitated the CIA operation of gun running and drug smuggling confessed by Colonel Oliver North after being granted immunity. The fatal mistake by President Carter was to slash funding for the CIA which lead to “October Surprise.”   JFK made an oath to shatter the CIA after he took the blame for the CIA’s sabotaging the Bay of Pigs invasion. He also planned for the U.S. to discontinue the CIA’s war in Viet Nam. Did Richard Nixon nixing of the CIA’s use of Tibetans for warmongering with China lead to the CIA’s blundering men burgling Watergate? The CIA torpedoed Ike’s dream of peace talks with Khrushchev by using a sabotaged CIA U-2. Messin’ with the CIA can have repercussions.
Ref. http://www.scribd.com/doc/49566880/CIA-ROGUE-AGENCY-RUN-AMUCK.
Every action of the Federal Reserve for the past five years, which cloaks its operation in as much secrecy as possible, has been to protect Wall Street and international bankers. To conclude the $16 trillion national debt (and growing exponentially) will be forgiven is naive. Wall Street banks that handle the redemption of Treasury securities will foreclose in any number of ways. The misfortunate status of Greece and Cyprus will be but a morsel compared to the frenzied gorging on the citizens of the U.S. being endlessly plundered.
And the President wants authorization to give the cabal unrestricted money via limitless National Debt and has the audacity to claim fiscal austerity with the scam sequester that merely shaved future increases? And this is in addition to the Fed being authorized to write unlimited checks on their own account without reserves such as was used in the TARP funds? And the total exposure thru derivates (creations of Goldman Sachs) may exceed $600 or $700 trillion largely held by four Wall Street banks should be a public debt? A successful hedge fund operator gets to keep $2 billion profit he made on derivates while depositors will have their accounts seized when derivatives tank ?? GET REAL !!!!!
[NOTE: The Fed banks have recent congressional authority to write checks on their own accounts (i.e., to create money as used in the QE purchases) in the same manner as commercial banks. They are not restricted by a reserve requirement as are the commercial banks. The Fed can potentially write any amount to cover all loss from derivatives held by Wall Street that become worthless. Government guaranteeing of derivatives, which were created by Goldman, will be like the banks writing themselves a check then having the public pay them for it.]
CONCLUSION: The government is facilitating a national self destruction for the benefit of Wall Street. The pattern has been field tested by the IMF and WB for decades. Every dollar of the $16 trillion national debt has been a hidden profit of the Fed and the Fed will further profit from the exponential increase in deficit spending that is approved by both political parties. When interest rates escalate as the public realizes inflation is rampant, more deficit spending will be required to service the national debt. This will cause further reductions in available funds for social programs (austerity). When Treasury securities become unmarketable, or the interest rate skyrockets, the interest payment on the national debt will not be available. The Fed will then handle the sale of government assets to the financiers---on the financiers’ terms. Wall Street banks that handle redeeming securities will own the entire United States and the people will be paupers.

Setting Up for a Financial Collapse Worse than 1929-Karl Denninger

http://usawatchdog.com/an-economic-co… Karl Denninger of Market-Ticker.org predicts, “We are setting up for a collapse that is going to be worse than 1929, and it’s going to come sometime within the next two years. It could come as soon as the next couple of months, but it is going to happen, and there’s nothing that is going to stop it.” Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with trader and writer Karl Denninger.

 

 

This Massive Discovery Has Put The Saudi’s Into a Panic

It's the biggest find in 50 years and the media is completely ignoring it...
It is 6 times larger than the Bakken, 17 times the size of the Marcellus formation, and 80 times larger than the Eagle Ford shale.
All told what was recently discovered outside a sleepy Australian town contains more black gold more than in all of in Iran, Iraq, Canada, or Venezuela.  
With current estimates at 233 billion barrels its just 30 billion shy of the estimated reserves in all of Saudi Arabia.
According to one renowned international expert, this massive discovery could eventually dwarf the oil rich kingdom as the original estimates are revised.
An advisor to six of the top 10 oil producers and active consultant to 20 world governments, Dr. Kent Moors now believes the find, "may land at 300 or 400 billion barrels," making it one of  "the greatest unconventional oil discoveries any of us will see in our lifetimes."
"It's represents a bona fide redrawing of the global energy map as we know it," Moors says, "and the mainstream media is completely ignoring it."

Where the Hell is Coober Pedy?

But to people who call this place home,  the oncoming oil boom means nothing will ever be the same  ($20 trillion worth of oil can do that to a town).
It's centered around a place called Coober Pedy, an inhospitable speck on the map in Southern Australia.
Founded in 1915, Coober Pedy had long been the home to a scarce 1700 people who lived in residences literally carved out in its caves.
Now another 20,000 people have suddenly flocked there, making it one of the hottest real estate markets in all of Australia.
Considering the conditions the sudden stampede is remarkable - there's little to no water and temperatures routinely reach above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
While it's obviously still just the beginning, Coober Pedy real estate agent Di Enders says her phone has been ringing off the hook since the news broke.
"I've had so many calls, you wouldn't believe it," she says. "My brain is about to explode."
"People renting don't want to surrender their houses, they know they won't get another one," she says.
The big draw is the riches about to be pulled out of a vast geological structure called the Arckaringa basin.
Encompassing an area in excess of 30,000 square miles, what's buried within the basin is enough black gold to completely change the global oil landscape-not to mention the lives early investors.
Analysts now believe ground zero will be much like is was in Saudi Arabia in the 1950's.
And according to the inner circle briefing below by Dr. Moors, there's one little company that controls the whole thing.

And since Arckaringa footprint will be beyond extensive, hundreds of wells, massive infrastructure networks, gathering systems, pipelines, processing facilities and support services will vital.

The Death Knell for OPEC

The massive find has been likened to the Bakken and Eagle Ford shale oil projects in the US, which have created legitimate boom times in Texas and North Dakota.
The outflows from these areas have been so big they have given way to predictions that the US could overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer as soon as this year.
Even at the lowest estimate, the Coober Pedy fins is set to make Australia a net oil exporter; at the higher estimate, Australia would become one of the world's biggest oil exporters.
"What we're seeing up there is a very, very big deposit," says South Australia's mining minister, Tom Koutsantonis, "If the reserves and the pressure was right over millions of years and the rocks have done the things they think they've done, they think they can extract vast reserves of oil out of South Australia which would have a value of about $20 trillion."
Dependence on OPEC's crude is already slipping as the U.S. and Canada unlock unconventional oil supplies from deep underground shale deposits with new drilling techniques.
Now there's even more completion bubbling up from "Down Under."
Given all of the trouble in the Middle East, the Saudi's have good reason to be alarmed.
Editor's Note: Access to Dr. Moors' inner circle briefing on the investment potential of the Arkaringa basin is available for a limited time only. Go here to view it now.

Anecdotal Evidence Suggests The Nation’s Workforce Is Dividing Into Two Classes: The Overworked And The Idle

by Charles Hugh-Smith

A society of the increasingly overworked and involuntarily idle is not a stable or happy one.
Though I don’t have any data on this, anecdotal evidence suggests the nation’s workforce is dividing into two classes: the overworked and the idle. The overworked work more than 40 hours a week and are increasingly given impossible workloads, while the idle can’t find any work or can only get part-time jobs with limited hours.
This bifurcation crosses income and class lines: highly paid and poorly paid workers alike are overtasked, and both the highly trained and low-skilled are idled.
The income stratification in the U.S. workforce suggests that America is now a Three-and-a-Half Class Society (October 22, 2012):

The entrenched incumbents on top (the “half class”), the high-earners who pay most of the taxes (the first class), the working poor who pay Social Security payroll taxes and sales taxes (the second class), and State dependents who pay nothing (the third class).This class structure has political ramifications. In effect, those paying most of the tax are in a pressure cooker: the lid is sealed by the entrenched incumbents on top, and the fire beneath is the Central State’s insatiable need for more tax revenues to support its entrenched incumbents and growing army of dependents.
In Bifurcation Nation (June 24, 2013), I discussed the cultural and political divides that overlay these income-based classes:

There is a palpable zeitgeist that the nation is bifurcating into two camps which no longer overlap or communicate using the same cultural signifiers and symbology.There is also a growing awareness that the divide between very wealthy and the middle income households has widened into an enormous canyon of inequality.
These classes are coalescing into a Tyranny of the Majority, where the entrenched incumbents in State fiefdoms and state-funded cartels are joined by state dependents in demanding higher taxes on the 25% who pay 90% of the Federal income taxes.
This leads to a systemic question: Is Democracy Possible in a Corrupt Society? (November 12, 2012)
We can phrase the question as WTAFA Corollary #1: (named in honor of my book Why Things Are Falling Apart and What We Can Do About It (print) (Kindle)):

If the citizenry cannot replace a dysfunctional government and/or limit the power of the financial Aristocracy at the ballot box, the nation is a democracy in name only.If the citizenry cannot dislodge a parasitic, predatory financial/political Aristocracy via elections, then “democracy” is merely a public-relations facade, a simulacra designed to create the illusion that the citizenry “have a voice” when in fact they are debt-serfs in a neofeudal State.
In other words, the overworked are powerless to change the system they serve. The overworked often have big mortgages to pay, kids in college, huge medical bills and a high-cost lifestyle that is a legacy of better times, a lifestyle they try to maintain even as their net income after taxes and healthcare insurance declines year after year.

The involuntarily idle are equally powerless, of course, but they tend to think the status quo is rewarding the overworked. The overworked, meanwhile, look with envy on the involuntarily idle who manage to live pretty well on government programs and transfers.
There are structural reasons why the managerial and most productive classes are increasingly overworked. Our entire economy is suffering from diminishing returns: global competition is eating away at profit margins, and increasing debt no longer boosts the gross domestic product (GDP).

To maintain profits and output, managers are given additional duties even as support staff is trimmed. I have often wondered if the fascination with the TV series Mad Men wasn’t partly the result of our amazement at how little these guys actually worked and how many had secretaries/admin assistants.
This phenomenon is also visible in low-pay service work, where adverts for poorly paid administrative jobs demand familiarity with a dozen software programs, and fast-food workers are expected to maintain a punishing level of productivity for minimum wages.
This trend to loading existing employees with more work while keeping pay more or less the same is seen as cost-effective: training a new hire is both costly and risky, as once the training is complete the new hire will likely be poached by a competitor who doesn’t have an expensive training program.
The overworked, from minimum wage earner to manager, are increasingly unsympathetic to workers in government fiefdoms who work less than 40 hours a week and enjoy luxe benefits and pay scales that are simply unavailable in the private sector.
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) unions who recently went on strike, paralyzing public transit for 6.5 million inhabitants of the San Francisco Bay Area, were apparently caught off guard by the public animosity to their demands for 23% raises on top of their 50%-above-market base salaries and unavailable-at-any-private-job benefits.
Memo to BART union members: the overworked earn on average slightly over half ($47,000) of what you earn for “driving” an automated train and staffing station offices ($80,000), and those who earn more than you in the private sector often work 50% more than your 37 hours a week in highly stressful jobs. The highly paid private-sector techies you envy constitute 2% of the workforce, and they work a lot more hours than you in intrinsically insecure industries.
The self-employed are in the Red Queen’s Race, running as fast as they can to keep from falling into poverty. The self-employed pay all the taxes and healthcare costs paid by the employer, so their Real-World Tax Rate is 75% (July 5, 2012). The self-employed people I know are working the equivalent of two jobs to earn the net of one job, and that’s if they’re doing well. Thus it’s no surprise that the ranks of the self-employed have thinned:

The stress levels of the overworked are high due to impossible workloads, while the involuntarily idle suffer from financial stress and depression. This is one systemic reason why the nation’s mental and physical health continues to deteriorate.
Yes, there are pockets of state fiefdoms and private sectors where workers are well-compensated for low-stress work, but these are exceptions, not the norm. No wonder those who can do so are quitting and filing for Social Security or tapping their 401K retirement plans to get by, or otherwise opting out of the labor force.
A society of the increasingly overworked and involuntarily idle is not a stable or happy one. Pressure is building along multiple fault lines beneath the supposedly expanding American economy. What’s really expanding are stress, ill health, chronic depression, financial insecurity and the frustrations of the powerless.