What Obama Inherited
Sat, 03/28/2009 - 10:37am
I wouldn't want to be in Obama's position: an economic depression looming, a nation in virtual bankruptcy/insolvency, kept afloat with the international credit card, all due to Bush/Republican financial irresponsibility and arrogance.
What Obama Inherited
The journey begins as FRONTLINE correspondent Forrest Sawyer takes viewers to a secret location: the Treasury's debt auction room, where the U.S. government sells securities backed by the "full faith and credit of the United States." On this day, the government is auctioning $67 billion of Treasury securities. The money borrowed will be used to fund services and programs that the government cannot pay for through tax revenues alone.
Observers warn that the United States' reliance on borrowing to fund essential programs is a dangerous gamble. For the first time, investors are beginning to question the ability of federal government to meet its growing financial obligations, and fading confidence can have dire consequences. "You might have a situation where there is one day when the government says we need to sell several billion dollars of bonds, and nobody shows," Economist reporter Greg Ip tells FRONTLINE. "No money to pay the Social Security checks, no money to give to the states for their Medicaid programs. Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut."
Yet more borrowing is exactly what the Obama administration plans to do: hundreds of billions to bail out the banks and other financial institutions; tens of billions more for the auto industry; $275 billion for homeowners and mortgage lenders; and a giant $787 billion stimulus package to jump-start an economy spiraling downward. Just like the Bush administration before it, Obama and his team are going to borrow big.
"That's the paradox of the situation that we're in now," observes Matt Miller, author of The Tyranny of Dead Ideas. "Government has got to run big deficits to stimulate the economy, deficits that would have been unthinkable ... because government's the only entity with the wherewithal to prop up a demand in the economy when businesses and consumers are all pulling back."
Watch:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tentrillion/view/#morelink
Obama KNEW what he was getting into.
Ultimately, it is the private fractional reserve banking system along with the "Federal" Reserve (privately-owned) Bank that no one seems to be able to reign in, that is the cause of our entrapment.
See this documentary if you want it explained:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3397679847952446140
We need another option. There is no way we could return to a gold standard at this point. Just saying.
Russia backs return to Gold Standard to solve financial crisis
:)
Incidentally, the documentary I posted does NOT advocate returning to the Gold Standard as a solution. It DOES advocate that the People, or People's Government, issue their OWN money, not letting PRIVATE BANKS like the "Federal" Reserve Bank issue the money, since they are just loaning it out at interest (for private profit.) You have to understand the private banking system and the "Federal" Reserve Bank and its origins to understand how we got into this mess from the beginning, and to understand that we will never be able to get out until this absolutely corrupt and literally evil system is rooted out and changed.
Oh someone already tried that. http://www.courierpress.com/news/2007/nov/15/liberty-dollar-office-raide...
Will never happen.
There doesn't need to be a parallel currency alongside the US "Federal" Reserve Notes, there needs to be the abolishment of the "Federal" Reserve Notes, and the issuance of real American money. This is in Congress' power, as Congress gave the power to private bankers to issue their own money which is LENT to us at interest. But Americans are such pussies. As long as they stay ignorant and believe in their powerlessness, they WILL always be at the mercy of the money changers and lenders. At least Jesus had the balls to drive them out with a whip.
And what will we back this "real" money with? Hope?
Let's examine what "backs" the "Federal" Reserve Notes: The American People, the "full faith and credit of the US Government" which is WE, the taxpayers, and our labor. But the taxpayers don't own the "Federal" Reserve Note-producing machine: the private bankers who own the "Federal" Reserve Bank do. If you watched the documentary, you will have learned that money has taken many forms over the years: feathers, seashells, bricks of tea, sticks of wood (as in the English money-sticks), anything that is an agreed-upon representation of exchangable value. We as Americans, through our Congress, have "agreed" that our currency is that which is issued by private bankers and LENT to us to use, and that this money can be created out of thin air by these bankers who have a corner on the market, and can be repeatedly lent out at 10 times the amount in "possession" by member banks by obtaining more "fiat money" again from the "Federal" Reserve (called "fractional reserve banking"). It is a ludicrous Alice in Wonderland system, but our nation has been built on it. This is the reason our house of cards is collapsing, and that we are collectively enslaved by this system of national debt to private bankers who take us for all we're worth everytime: The Bailout is the latest example.
Watch the documentary The Money Masters (on the origins of the "Federal" Reserve private banking system) to learn about this in detailed historical perspective, as linked earlier in this thread:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3397679847952446140
It would not matter who printed the monies if we had something backing it. You know. Printing money for war and all that.