REVIVE LINCOLN’S MONETARY POLICY: AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

REVIVE LINCOLN’S MONETARY POLICY: AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

Ellen Brown, April 8th, 2009
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/lincoln_obama.php


Dear President Obama:

The world was transfixed on that remarkable day in January when, to poetry, song, and dance, you gazed upon Abraham Lincoln’s likeness at the Lincoln Memorial and searched for wisdom to navigate these difficult times. Indeed, you have so many things in common with that venerable President that one might imagine you were his reincarnation in different dress. You are both thin and wiry, brilliant speakers, appearing on the national stage at pivotal times. Fertile imaginations could envision you coming back dressed in that African heritage you freed, to help heal the great scar of slavery and prove once and for all the proposition that all men are created equal and can achieve great things if given a fighting chance.

As Wordsworth said, however, our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; and if that is true, you may have forgotten a more subtle form of slavery from which Lincoln tried less successfully to free his countrymen.  You may have forgotten it because it has been omitted from our popular  history books, leaving Americans ill-equipped to interpret the lessons of our own past.  This letter is therefore meant to remind you.

President Obama, we are now met on another battlefield of that same economic war that visited Lincoln and the Founding Fathers before him.  For you to finish the work Lincoln started would be a poetic triumph no American could miss.  The fate of our economy and the nation itself may depend on how well you understand Lincoln’s monetary breakthrough, the most far-reaching “economic stimulus plan” ever implemented by a U.S. President.  You can solve our economic crisis quickly and permanently, by implementing the same economic solution that allowed Lincoln to win the Civil War and thus save the Union from foreign economic masters.

Lincoln’s Monetary Breakthrough

The bankers had Lincoln’s government over a barrel, just as Wall Street has Congress in its vice-like grip today. The North needed money to fund a war, and the bankers were willing to lend it only under circumstances that amounted to extortion, involving staggering interest rates of 24 to 36 percent. Lincoln saw that this would bankrupt the North and asked a trusted colleague to research the matter and find a solution. In what may be the best piece of advice ever given to a sitting President, Colonel Dick Taylor of Illinois reported back that the Union had the power under the Constitution to solve its financing problem by printing its money as a sovereign government. Taylor said:

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THINKING POSITIVELY ABOUT MONETARY POLICY: HOW ‘QUANTITATIVE EASING’ COULD BE HARNESSED FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD

Nervous pundits are predicting the end of American life as we know it, after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke announced on March 18 that he would be dropping yet another trillion dollars in helicopter money – up to $300 billion to buy long-term government bonds and an additional $750 billion to buy private debt, with the Term Asset-backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) to be opened up for the sake of consumers and small businesses. The dollar immediately experienced its worst drop in 25 years, amid worries that the Fed’s intervention would spur hyperinflation.

Read more here —
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/bernanke.php

Cash-starved States Need to Play the Banking Game: North Dakota Leads the Way

Forty-six of fifty states are insolvent and could be filing Chapter 9 bankruptcy proceedings in the next two years. One of the four states that is not insolvent is an unlikely candidate for the distinction – North Dakota. What does the State of North Dakota have that other states don’t? The answer seems to be: its own bank.

Read more here — http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/state_bank_option.php

If you like this idea, here is a sample letter to send to your congresspeople, prepared by Charlie Fleetham —

https://webofdebt.wordpress.com/sample-letter-to-congressmen-forming-a-state-owned-bank/

Standing Up to the Banks: Make Them Produce the Note!

This is a followup to my post of July 30, 2008, “Standing Up to the Banks: How to Challenge Your Foreclosure.”  The make-them-produce-the-note defense has made it to prime time.  This clip is from “Good Morning America!” —

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx7YkiH79nw

A lobby of many people prepared to bring this defense could have some significant clout in Congress.

MONETIZE THIS! A Better Way to Fund the Stimulus Package

Funding the government’s budget shortfall has usually been left to private lenders; but those loans are drying up, and servicing them is proving expensive. Both this interest burden and the need to continually attract new lenders could be avoided by tapping into the government’s credit line at its own central bank . . . .

Read more —

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/monetizethis.php

Mysterious Prison Buses in the Desert

Prison buses are driving around empty in the Tucson area.  Are Wackenhut and the DHS preparing for civil unrest?

Read more —

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/wackenhut.php

HOW TO RESOLVE THE CREDIT CRISIS: GIVING CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith famously said, “The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.”  If banks can create money, why are we suffering from a “credit crunch”? Why can’t banks create all the money they can find borrowers for? 

                                                                                                                 Read more . . .

Borrowing from Peter to Pay Paul: The Wall Street Ponzi Scheme Called Fractional Reserve Banking

Bernie Madoff showed us how it was done, but his Ponzi scheme was small compared to one that has been perpetrated for hundreds of years by the banking system itself. What distinguishes the legal scheme known as “fractional reserve” lending from the illegal schemes of Madoff and his ilk is that the bankers’ scheme is protected by government charter and backstopped with government funds. The sheer size of the bailout efforts today, however, indicates that the banking scheme has reached its mathematical limits and needs to be superseded by something more sustainable.

Read more:   http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/ponzi.php

GROUND ZERO ON WALL STREET: FED FUNDS AND TREASURY BILLS HIT 0% INTEREST

The federal funds rate and the interest on 3-month Treasury bills both just hit ZERO percent. This means banks and the government are borrowing money for free. Yet demand for the T-bills at auction was four times the available supply! Who is clamoring to buy the debt of the world’s most insolvent debtor for no return at all — and why?

Read more  —  http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/zero_percent_t-bills.php

Sustainable Government: Banking for a “New” New Deal

Even before taking office, Obama has started his version of the “fireside chats” (updated from radio to online video) given by Roosevelt nearly weekly to reassure the public. He said on November 22 that he plans to create 2.5 million new jobs by 2011 and kick-start the economy by building roads and bridges, modernizing schools, and creating technology and infrastructure for renewable energy. These are excellent ideas, but what will they be funded with—more government debt?

Read morehttp://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?id=3162

“Oops, We Meant $7 TRILLION!” What Hank and Ben Are Up to and How They Plan to Pay for It All

The $700 billion that was arm-twisted from Congress in October was just the camel’s nose under the tent. The Paulson/Bernanke team is now prepared to pay $7.76 trillion to rescue the financial system. Prepared to pay how? Congress has not raised its debt ceiling to that level, and the Fed doesn’t have the funds on its books . . .

Read whole article here — http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/oops.php

All Is Well in Stepfordville: More on the Pre-election Chicanery of the Plunge Protection Team

It was another surreal week on Wall Street, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising a thousand points while the economy continued to sink into its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. More evidence of the Plunge Protection Team at work? The election was only days away . . .

Read more — http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/stepfordville.php

THE NOT-SO-INVISIBLE HAND: HOW THE PLUNGE PROTECTION TEAM KILLED CAPITALISM

October 24 marks the 79th anniversary of the October 1929 stock market crash.  Many feared a repeat of this disaster on Friday, October 24, 2008; but remarkably, disaster was averted.  How?  Suspicious observers saw the hand of the Plunge Protection Team pulling strings behind the scenes . . .

Read more

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/manipulation.php

THE COLLAPSE OF A 300 YEAR PONZI SCHEME: THE REAL DEBATE IS CRONY SOCIALISM OR FINANCIAL SOVEREIGNTY

Last night, the Presidential candidates had their last debate before the election. They talked of the baleful state of the economy and the stock market; but omitted from the discussion was what actually caused the credit freeze, and whether the banks should be nationalized as Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is now proceeding to do. The omission was probably excusable, since the financial landscape has been changing so fast that it is hard to keep up. A year ago, the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke through 14,000 to make a new all-time high. Anyone predicting then that a year later the Dow would drop nearly by half and the Treasury would move to nationalize the banks would have been regarded with amused disbelief. But that is where we are today.

Read more —

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/modest_proposal.php

The Fed Now Owns the World’s Largest Insurance Company — But Who Owns the Fed?

The Federal Reserve has assumed sweeping new powers in the last year. These increasingly controversial encroachments on the public purse warrant a closer look at the central banking scheme itself.  Who owns the Federal Reserve, who actually controls it, where does it get its money, and whose interests is it serving?

Read more . . .

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/time_to_buy_the_fed.php

It’s the Derivatives, Stupid! Why Fannie, Freddie and AIG All Had to Be Bailed Out

Why the extraordinary bailout measures for Fannie, Freddie and AIG? The answer may have less to do with saving the insurance business, the housing market, or the Chinese investors clamoring for a bailout than with the greatest Ponzi scheme in history, one that is holding up the entire private global banking system. What had to be saved at all costs was not housing or the dollar but the financial derivatives industry; and the precipice from which it had to be saved was an “event of default” that could have collapsed a quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble, a collapse that could take the entire global banking system down with it.

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/its_the_derivatives.php

Take a Load Off Fannie: Bailout or Nationalization for the Mortgage Giants?

The U.S. Treasury recently sought and was granted an unlimited credit line for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with the authority to buy their stock, effectively nationalizing them; but this could mean $5 trillion more in liabilities for the federal government, causing it to lose its own triple-A rating. What to do? There is a solution that would salvage the mortgage giants and cost the taxpayers nothing . . .

Read more —

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/take_a_load_off_fannie.php

WAG THE DOG: HOW TO CONCEAL MASSIVE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

Last week, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had just announced record losses, and so had most reporting corporations. Unemployment was mounting, the foreclosure crisis was deepening, state budgets were in shambles, and massive bailouts were everywhere. Investors had every reason to expect the dollar and the stock market to plummet, and gold and oil to shoot up. Strangely, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 300 points, the dollar strengthened, and gold and oil were crushed. What happened?

Read more . . .

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/wag_the_dog.php

FANNIE AND FREDDIE: GIVING AWAY THE FARM

Last week, Congress passed a housing bill that gave the Treasury Department a blank check to inject billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars into mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, snatching them from insolvency. To accommodate this blank check, Congress obligingly raised its debt ceiling by $800 billion. Ouch! That’s nearly a trillion dollars. Why was it necessary to incur this potentially crippling public debt to bail out two completely private, for-profit behemoths, which have run themselves into bankruptcy with their own risky investment schemes? Policymakers said it was essential to maintain the country’s creditworthiness with foreign lenders, which today hold about one-fifth of Fannie and Freddie securities. According to a July 21 report by Heather Timmons in The New York Times. . .

Read more . . .

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/fannie_and_freddie.php

PUTTING THE “FEDERAL” BACK IN THE FEDERAL RESERVE

In a July 19 Wall Street Journal article titled “Why No Outrage?”, James Grant notes that financial behavior that would have been met with outrage in the 19th century is now met with near-silence from a too-tolerant populace. Why? He suggests that the lack of outrage may be because the old 19th century Populists actually won . . . .

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/federal-back-fr.php