politics for the 99%

Buying up the Planet

Written on June 22nd, 2014 in politics Comments Off

Published on Dissident Voice, by Ellen Hodgson Brown, June 20, 2014.

… When the US Federal Reserve bought an 80% stake in American International Group (AIG) in September 2008, the unprecedented $85 billion outlay was justified as necessary to bail out the world’s largest insurance company. Today, however, central banks are on a global corporate buying spree not to bail out bankrupt corporations but simply as an investment, to compensate for the loss of bond income due to record-low interest rates. Indeed, central banks have become some of the world’s largest stock investors.

This is a rather alarming development. Central banks have the power to create national currencies with accounting entries, and they are traditionally very secretive. We are not allowed to peer into their books. It took a major lawsuit by Reuters and a congressional investigation to get the Fed to reveal the $16-plus trillion in loans it made to bail out giant banks and corporations after 2008.

What is to stop a foreign bank from simply printing its own currency and trading it on the currency market for dollars, to be invested in the US stock market or US real estate market? What is to stop central banks from printing up money competitively, in a mad rush to own the world’s largest companies? … //

… The Central Bank Buying Spree: … //

… From Monetary Policy to Asset Grabs: … //

… Battle of the Central Banks?

Western central banks have generally worked this scheme discreetly. Not so much the Chinese, whose blatant gaming of the system points up its flaws for all to see.

Georgetown University historian Professor Carroll Quigley styled himself the librarian of the international bankers. In his 1966 book Tragedy and Hope, he wrote that their aim was “nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.” This system was to be controlled “in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements,” central banks that “were themselves private corporations.”

It may be the Chinese, not acting in concert, who break up this cartel. The PBoC is no more transparent than the US Fed, but it is not an “independent” central bank. It is a government agency accountable to the Chinese government and acting on its behalf.

The Chinese have evidently figured out the game of the “independent” central bankers, and to be using it to their own advantage. If the Fed can do quantitative easing, so can the Chinese – and buy up our assets with the proceeds. Owning our corporations rather than our Treasuries helps the Chinese break up US dollar hegemony.

Whatever power plays are going on behind the scenes, it is increasingly clear that they are not serving we-the-people. The global central banking scheme is systemically flawed and needs to be radically overhauled.

(full text).

(Ellen Brown is an attorney in Los Angeles and the author of 11 books. In Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth about Our Money System and How We Can Break Free, she shows how a private banking cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Read other articles by Ellen, or visit Ellen’s website).

Links:

Mass graves filled with remains of immigrants discovered in Texas, on Russia Today RT, June 21, 2014;

The Phoenix has lande’: What you need to know to fight for the survival of American democracy and your own, on Intrepid Report, by Luciana Bohne, June 20, 2014;

Ukraine president proclaims 7-day ceasefire, rolls out peace plan, on Russia Today RT, June 20, 2014;

The Fed’s Ever-Burgeoning Market Manipulation Support, on naked capitalism, by Yves Smith, June 20, 2014;

Pentagon crashed more than 400 military drones, on Russia Today RT, June 20, 2014;

on Real-World Economics Review Blog, June 20, 2014;