Just in Case You Thought You Were Off “The Menu”

Posted on August 15, 2025 by marcia

Plunder: Financing the Panopticon

August 5, 2025

“If you want long-term success in business, relationships and life, you have to get better at accepting uncomfortable truths as fast as possible. When you refuse to accept an uncomfortable truth, you’re choosing to accept an uncomfortable future.”

~ Steven Bartlett, The Diary of a CEO

By Catherine Austin Fitts

Plunder is an ancient story. The promise of plunder brought Attila and the Huns over the Alps to raid the Roman Empire in northern Italy. It inspired the conquistadors of Spain to hunt for silver in Mexico and South America, where they wiped out the Aztec and Incan Empires. Protected by court intrigue and secrecy, pirates have teamed up for centuries with royalty whose reign depended on rich spoils to pay back their bank loans. When the leaders of the British Empire could not maintain a trade surplus, they flooded the Chinese with opium, conquering with addiction and gunboats what could not be secured with manufacturing and diplomacy.

The founding of the Bank of Amsterdam, the Bank of Sweden, and the Bank of England in the 1600s launched the beginning of the economic paradigm I call the “central banking-warfare model”—but we could just as easily call the dominant economic model the “central banking-plunder model.” Plunder in its many forms has been essential to the rich accumulation of capital that helped to build the Western world. You can grow wealth, or you can take it—and in many cases, taking it is the preferred method. Alibaba founder Jack Ma once said, “When trade stops, war starts.”

The long history of Western plunder inspired the formation of the intergovernmental organization known as BRICS (whose current membership includes founding members Brazil, Russia, India, and China in 2009, followed by South Africa in 2010, and Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates in 2024-2025)¹ and the BRICS nations’ ongoing efforts to achieve financial and military independence. More recent history helps explain Russia’s fierce resistance to NATO encroachment—the Russian people have not forgotten the “Rape of Russia”² after the Soviet Union collapsed. As Samuel Huntington observed in his 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations:

“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”

As technological innovation grows, so do the applications of plunder—along with its profitability. As David A. Hughes explained in our recent Omniwar report,³ “Omniwar” involves “the weaponization of everything.” Thus, instead of killing their prey physically in open combat, plunderers now can simply empty victims’ bank accounts while distracting them with propaganda and pornography. Plunder leaves students, who spend years getting an education that is not relevant to generating an income, with enormous student loan debt that they cannot retire. Frauds like the Madoff Ponzi scheme⁴ steal a mother’s savings, and when she commits suicide, her children’s inheritance can scarcely cover funeral expenses, much less finance their education and future. Plunder also encompasses the politically engineered health, food, and education policies that poison children. Moreover, the poisoning has a profitable postscript: the medical establishment claims that the children are sick (instead of poisoned),⁵ and parents liquidate their savings to try to heal their children in a manner that generates significant revenues for medical enterprises and pharmaceutical businesses.⁶

A key reason why the Solari team focuses on financial freedom⁷ is out of a desire to protect ourselves and our subscribers from being plundered. Because so much of the art of plunder involves management and manipulation of the financial system and the train tracks of transactions, we place great emphasis on having a good map of the world in which we live and understanding how to recognize the difference between “official reality” and reality. That is why the second of the six pillars of our Building Wealth curriculum⁸ is “Navigation Tools.”⁹ With the ability to develop and maintain a good map of reality, you can navigate. You can invest your time and resources to serve your purpose and achieve your goals, rather than find yourself plundered by someone trying to take the wealth—both the living and financial equity—that you have worked so hard to accumulate.

At Solari, our intention is not to depress you by dwelling on the unpleasant topic of plunder, but rather to help you build a strong immune system against being plundered. Ideally, you should also build networks and communities that help members do the same. Now is the time to do so, because technological innovation is powering the plunder game in new and challenging ways.

The 21st-Century Panopticon

We are in the midst of a quantum leap in the technology of surveillance and control. Let’s start with the metaphor of the “panopticon”—reintroduced in recent years by Ian Davis, Whitney Webb, and Mark Goodwin in their writings for Unlimited Hangout. English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham originated the term panopticon in the 18th century, Wikipedia explains, to convey the idea of “a design of institutional building with an inbuilt system of control…. The concept is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be observed by a single prison officer, without the inmates knowing whether or not they are being watched.”¹⁰ Davis, Webb, and Goodwin use “panopticon” to describe U.S. and Israeli surveillance, assassination, and warfare systems—including those supported by Palantir—as well as the public distributed ledger systems, including blockchain, being used to shift the financial system into a control grid.

In 1975, French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–1984) described a panopticon as follows:

“The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen…. The ideal point of penality today would be an indeﬁnite discipline: an interrogation without end, an investigation that would be extended without limit to a meticulous and ever more analytical observation, a judgement that would at the same time be the constitution of a ﬁle that was never closed, the calculated leniency of a penalty that would be interlaced with the ruthless curiosity of an examination, a procedure that would be at the same time the permanent measure of a gap in relation to an inaccessible norm and the asymptotic movement that strives to meet in inﬁnity.”¹¹

As governments and militaries around the world use satellite constellations, telecommunications, digital technology, and invisible weaponry to build a planetary panopticon, the U.S. administration and its allies are demonstrating the unique features of this new model. For example, on June 13, 2025, financed by the United States, Israel launched its war on Iran by assassinating 11 of Iran’s top military leaders and nuclear scientists. Some were reportedly targeted at home, resulting in the death of their families and neighbors. Describing the events, Ron Unz wrote, “I cannot recall any previous case in which a major country had ever had so large a fraction of its top military, political, and scientific leadership eliminated in that sort of illegal sneak attack.”¹²

In short, war has been converted to a high-powered manhunt with assassination as the end point. This is possible because, according to technology entrepreneur and economist Dr. Pippa Malmgren, U.S. and Israeli systems now can track all 92 million Iranians and identify each of them by their unique biometrics:

“The key to understanding all this is that Iran is now a digital Panopticon prison, now that the US and Israel, and probably some other regional allies of these two, can detect a person’s location, communications, conversations, and state of mind at any time, anywhere. The Iranian leadership is effectively already in a digital prison. A person can now be tracked based on their walking gait, unique heartbeat, voice, the network of people in their circle, and their own behavioral patterns. There is no place to hide in a digital Panopticon prison.”¹³

Moreover, as The Economist commented last year with respect to the legality of assassinations in Gaza, it is possible no military officer can be found guilty of an international war crime because it is software that is now choosing the targets. As we discussed in our interview and report on AI with Whitney Webb,¹⁴ AI has been positioned to assume responsibility and take the blame. This is why, in my introduction to the AI report, I warned, “the people who are using AI as a scapegoat are dangerous.”¹⁵

Anyone, Anywhere

It was immediately obvious that the Iranian assassinations had planetary implications. If software can identify each person in Iran, then, as long as Starlink or other U.S. satellite constellations are operating overhead, those who control the panopticon can identify pretty much anyone, anywhere. Whether with drones, invisible weaponry, or missiles, parties who are remote and unaccountable can influence targets’ thoughts and health or end their life—all on a highly economic basis.

In two important Solari Report interviews, “Control & Freedom Happen One Person at a Time”¹⁶ and “The Economy of the Energy Body,”¹⁷ Ulrike Granögger and I described how an automated and cost-effective control system has been built that is customized for each unique human. Thus, it did not surprise me when, following the deaths of the Iranian leaders and their families and neighbors, most European leaders fell right in line with increasing their country’s NATO contributions to 5% and agreeing to new tariff conditions. Add to this the financial controls of the sanction systems, or the Epstein-type files that surveillance and kickbacks create, and you start to see how the overriding of global treaties and laws and the extraction of tariffs from countries as well as corporations is working, as the control grid assembles and integrates into a global panopticon.

Although each one of us can be surveilled, tracked, and eliminated, the system doing the observation and pulling the trigger is invisible. No one is accountable. In fact, this opaqueness is an essential feature of control. In his 1984 classic, The Evolution of Cooperation, political scientist Robert Axelrod demonstrated in economic gaming scenarios the general population’s willingness to shun dirty players. This type of shunning is a powerful strategy that can advantage the players who cooperate and are willing to enforce against those who engage in dirty tactics. It only works, however, when the general population can see who’s who. In other words, transparency is essential to identify the dirty players.

Unfortunately, the panopticon has taken secrecy to a whole new level. It is no accident that alongside the descent of Western civilization into the panopticon, we have witnessed the growing success of media propaganda in making sure dirty players either remain invisible or (as an equally effective strategy) are portrayed as successful, rich, famous, and worthy of admiration.

Israel has played a significant leadership role in building the technology that powers the emerging planetary panopticon, and nothing demonstrates the plunder that these technological systems enable better than the genocide currently underway in Gaza. Antony Loewenstein’s The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World is an excellent source on the history of the prototyping of control technologies in Palestine.¹⁸

Israel’s crypto community has also played a leading role in developing and prototyping the distributed ledger technology essential to building financial transaction control systems. However, the systems—and the AI and databases that make the control grid go—are extremely energy-intensive. Building and operating the necessary data centers requires land, energy, and water. Now that the panopticon systems have matured, the Palestinian population is no longer useful, whereas their resources are seen as a valuable component of a profitable control grid infrastructure. Israel has, therefore, increasingly laid claim to Palestinians’ offshore oil and gas, land, and aquifers, while attempting to move the population out of Palestine, but—despite systematic destruction of Palestinians’ civilian, farming, and transportation infrastructure—the transfer of Palestinians to Egypt and neighboring countries has not succeeded. Consequently, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is now exterminating the population through bombings, sniper assassinations, and mass famine. Some reports indicate that the Palestinian population has dropped from 2.2 million—including 1.1 million children—to 1.6 million. Given the effort to force mass famine, a rapid die-off appears imminent.

Nothing has visually communicated plunder’s powerful potential better then a short AI-generated video retweeted by the U.S. President celebrating a redeveloped Gaza Riviera.¹⁹ Video scenes show a Trump golden statue and resort, and Elon Musk (let’s not forget his role as leader of the Starlink satellite network) enjoying a bowl of hummus while Trump and Netanyahu sip cocktails by a swimming pool. This video followed the publication of Netanyahu’s vision for Gaza, “Gaza 2035,”²⁰ which in turn led to reports indicating that various neighboring Arab states have been cut in on the potential development deals. This public visioning process appears to have been used to syndicate potential plunder profits and build political constituencies for escalating the genocide. Gaza is a method,²¹ and we dare not forget it.

Understanding the Panopticon Threat

As control becomes more centralized and automated in the planetary panopticon, fewer human hierarchies are needed to maintain control. For example, why continue to spend billions on soft-power bureaucracies such as those fielded and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)? Who needs thousands of federal civil service workers to implement and enforce complex federal regulations? All of this can be done much more economically by controlling people’s money with programmable stablecoins, credit cards, and bank accounts. While many people cheered the firing of well-paid bureaucrats and nongovernmental organization (NGO) personnel, they seem not to appreciate the fact that the automated replacements will be far worse. I would much prefer to try to reason with a government bureaucrat than with an AI software bot that has no contact or support function and may have the power to cut off my bank account or electricity or send in a drone.

We face several challenges in understanding the panopticon. The first is understanding the point of view of the people who are building it. I just finished reading The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West by Palantir CEO Alexander Karp and his general counsel, Nicholas W. Zamiska. Karp and Zamiska make the case that the West must maintain a superior capability in national security if it is to protect our way of life. This may sound like common sense, but the argument breaks down when you understand the relationship between Palantir’s U.S. government contracts and the U.S. build-out of a financial transaction control grid.

Look at Palantir’s role in building the Lavender system for the Israeli military—an AI targeting system used to direct Israel’s bombing in Gaza.²² Palantir is helping to build the planetary panopticon, paid for with our tax dollars but operating on behalf of a transnational crime syndicate. There is a difference between national security and digital concentration camps. There is a difference between national security and genocide with plunder. The line of who is protected and who is plundered is far more fluid than Karp and Zamiska describe. As Colombian President Gustavo Petro said in a July speech to the Hague Group:

“Gaza is simply an experiment of the mega-rich trying to show all the peoples of the world how they will respond to a rebellion of humanity. They plan to bomb us all.”²³

The builders of the panopticon have sent a message: You are being watched and, at any time, you may be killed. This has nothing to do with national security—this is about the engineering of a coup d’état in the Western world. When the chief operating officer of Palantir claims that Palantir’s goal is to be the operating system of the U.S. government, he is stating that they intend the end of U.S. government sovereignty.

A second challenge is that plunder in the panopticon is facilitated with invisible weaponry that we do not understand. Do we think the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004 was natural? Nope. Do we think the fires in Northern California in 2017 or in Lahaina in 2023 were natural? Nope. Do we think Hurricane Helene and the floods in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina in 2024 were natural? Nope. That said, how do we know who is responsible? How do we see them? How do we figure out how they did it? How do we hold them accountable? That is the nature of the panopticon—we are seen, but they are unseen. And it is hard to pull the plug on or shut down the unseen.

A third challenge is the extent to which the financial panopticon diminishes market price discovery and financial disclosure. Private equity and credit are moving far more businesses out of the public market and into privately controlled hands. The federal government’s long-standing refusal to comply with federal audit and disclosure laws or to account for over $21 trillion of undocumentable adjustments—and the adoption of FASAB Statement 56 in combination with the existing national security and classification laws—have rendered large parts of the financial disclosure in the U.S. government as well as the U.S. stock and bond markets essentially meaningless.²⁴

While these challenges are significant, they are also inspiring a backlash by those who understand that such assaults on fundamental productivity threaten to shrink the pie for one and all. If we can face the panopticon and understand that no one is as smart as all of us, we can work together to unleash the global hearts and minds of millions so that people come to see who is doing this and how their technology works.

In 2023, Peter Gabriel wrote a song along those lines called “Panopticom.” Wikipedia describes the song as follows:

“The song’s title references the panopticon, a prison structure designed by Jeremy Bentham that enabled prison guards to observe the actions of all of [sic] prisoners without being detected. Gabriel’s concept of the panopticom was to invert this model by enabling ‘ordinary people’ to observe the actions of authority figures. The ‘com’ in the panopticom refers to the ability for people to ‘communicate both to the globe and what’s going on in the globe. It’s turning surveillance on its head.’”²⁵

“Panopticom” by Peter Gabriel²⁶:

In the air
The smoke cloud takes its form
All the phones
Take pictures while it’s warm

Panopticom, let’s find out what’s going on
Panopticom, let’s see where clues are leading
Panopticom, won’t you show us what’s going on?
Panopticom, show how much is real

And we pour the medicine down
While we watch the world around us
We got witness on the ground
Takin’ in the evidence
And we reach across the globe
Got all the information flowing
You face the motherload
Tentacles around you, around you

From above
And deep below the ground
It was in Berlin
That all the evidence was found
Look from the street
And we look down from the skies
See through the barriers
We can see through all those lies

Panopticom, let’s find out what’s going on
Panopticom, let’s see where clues are leading
Panopticom, won’t you show us what’s going on?
Panopticom, show how much is real

Again, plunder is an ancient story. On the other hand, the effort to understand and map it and create systems to prevent it at scale by millions of people collaborating openly throughout the world is a very new story. This is the story in which the Solari team wishes to play a part. With this report dedicated to unpacking plunder, we invite you to build and protect your own wealth and to join us, in cooperation with others, in shifting the state of play entirely.

As Sherlock Holmes would say, “The game’s afoot!”

Pano

from: https://solari.com/plunder-introduction/

The Problem of De-Banking

Posted on August 14, 2024 by marcia

Pushing Back Against ‘De-Banking’ Due to Discrimination by Banks of Certain Viewpoints

August 14, 2024 Real Clear Markets 2

Large national banks lead a trend of ‘de-banking’ business and individual accounts due to discrimination against certain viewpoints, with little warning, and virtually no explanation. In response, Florida and Tennessee enacted consumer protection laws that prohibit big banks from canceling customer accounts based on their constitutionally protected speech and religious exercise. The Tennessee law applies to banks with at least $100 billion in assets—which includes both Regions and Bank of America. Bank of America was exposed for working with the US Department of Treasury to profile people and label them domestic terrorists when they made purchases from Bass Pro Shops or buying “religious texts”. The US Treasury has now spoken out in opposition to these state-level attempts to protect the God-given freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. The Treasury cannot profile half of America as domestic terrorists, institute Orwellian financial surveillance, and then hide behind the fig leaf of national security when the states push back.

On paper, Zulfat Suara and Steve Happ don’t have much in common.

One, a Muslim woman, immigrated to the U.S. from Nigeria in the 1990s and now serves on the Nashville City Council. The other, a Christian man, is a Memphis native with a background in software who began a ministry partnering with Ugandan non-profit charities that care for orphaned and at-risk children in 2015.

But they do have at least one thing in common: Both were canceled by large national banks with little warning and virtually no explanation.

Suara, who like Happ, is also involved in non-profit work, received a vaguely worded notice of cancelation from Regions Bank earlier this year, giving her 30 days to find a new bank. Happ’s cancelation by Bank of America came in 2023 shortly before he made a trip overseas—forcing him to scramble for solutions and delay hard-earned paychecks to Ugandans.

Happ’s notice said he was operating in the wrong “business type.” As we reported in this year’s report for our Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index, which measures corporate respect for free speech and religious liberty, these problematic policies are present in at least 69% of the country’s largest financial institutions.

Incidents like these are a small sample of a larger trend of viewpoint-based discrimination in financial services—known as “de-banking”— which has also affected firearms and fossil fuels because of radical net zero emissions commitments and government initiatives like Operation Choke Point. It has also garnered the attention of both sides of the political aisle.

These incidents propelled Tennessee lawmakers to adopt a landmark legislative solution aimed at curbing this dangerous weaponization of the financial system. Like a similar law that recently went into effect in Florida, the legislation is a first-of-its-kind consumer protection bill that prohibits big banks from canceling customer accounts based on their constitutionally protected speech and religious exercise.

The Tennessee law applies to banks with at least $100 billion in assets—which includes both Regions and Bank of America—the latter of which has also been exposed by U.S. House oversight as working hand-in-hand with the U.S. Department of Treasury to profile as domestic terrorist threats my organization, Alliance Defending Freedom, and everyday Americans who committed the sin of shopping at Bass Pro Shops or buying “religious texts.” It should come as no surprise that this same government entity has now spoken out in opposition to these state-level attempts to protect the God-given freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.

In a recent letter lauded in these pages by Hispanic Leadership Fund president Mario H. Lopez, the Treasury makes a series of false assertions about Tennessee and Florida’s laws. Chief among these specious claims is that the laws prevent Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) from dealing with money launderers and terrorist threats.

There’s no need to provide a nuanced answer to this accusation. It’s simply untrue. Twenty state attorneys general recently responded to this letter and rightly observed that the standards the Treasury is attacking in the state laws are the exact same standards the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency proposed—and the Treasury did not object to—only a few years ago.

Likewise, Lopez’s reactionary appeal to free market principles fails. Banks don’t operate in a free market. ESG is avowedly anti-free market. And the market is not free if access depends on your political and religious views.

First, banks are highly regulated. But in exchange for those regulations, they benefit from a wide spectrum of government subsidies. Those include bailouts, tax credits, property tax abatements, and grants at the state and federal levels. Since 1998, for example, JPMorgan Chase has received over $1.7 trillion from American taxpayers in the form of subsidies.

Second, ESG activists, and even government regulators, are introducing non-financial and subjective factors into decision-making by classifying groups like mine as domestic terrorist threats and denying service to ministries that support orphans and widows for being the wrong “business type.” Someone should explain how these groups, or those of Christian broadcaster Lance Wallnau or U.S. Ambassador Sam Brownback, present national security threats. Of course, one of the features of the state laws is that customers like Wallnau and Ambassador Brownback can demand a written explanation from the banks.

Read full article here…

Dr. Mercola with Catherine Austin Fitts Dealing with Financial Control

Posted on March 25, 2024 by marcia

The Great Taking

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Central bankers and other globalists have carefully planned the coordinated takedown of the financial system using highly sophisticated strategies, including the manipulation of derivative markets. Whatever securities you believe you may own, you’re not the actual owner of, and when the derivative markets collapse, everything can be taken from you
While Webb’s work raises serious concerns, there are other more pressing issues that need our attention. Priority No. 1 is ensuring we have control over our financial transactions. We need to help state legislators to protect financial transaction freedom
North Dakota has a sovereign state bank, and the Florida State Legislature is getting ready to introduce legislation for state banking in the state of Florida. All states need to do this, as it’s one of the primary ways to protect the financial freedom of all citizens
Priority No. 2 is building and securing food freedom, and No. 3 is transparency and education. We need to educate people about the severity of what’s coming, so that we can, en masse, begin to make different choices

The video above features repeat guest Catherine Austin Fitts, a finance expert, and founder and president of the Solari Report. She’s one of the wisest persons out there when it comes to understanding finances and how to protect your wealth in the face of this global wealth transfer.

We also discuss the work of David Webb,¹ a former hedge fund investor and a good friend of Austin Fitts. He has written a book called “The Great Taking,” available for free as a PDF from thegreattaking.com, as well as a documentary by the same name, available on CHD.TV, Rumble and YouTube.

Webb’s book and film detail how the Federal Reserve influences financial markets, and how its money creation has outpaced economic growth of the U.S., which is a huge red flag indicating that the velocity of money (the rate at which money is circulating through the economy) is collapsing. In short, a major financial depression is at hand, and when it all falls apart, we will lose everything.

A Financial Coup Is Underway

Webb reveals how central bankers and other globalists have, for at least five decades or more, carefully planned the coordinated takedown of the financial system using highly sophisticated strategies, including the manipulation of derivative markets.

Whatever securities you believe you may own, you’re not the actual owner of, and when the derivative markets collapse, everything can be taken from you. At the end of it all, you truly will “own nothing,” as predicted/promised by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

But there’s more. In her annual wrap-up, Austin Fitts reviews what she calls “The Many Great Takings,” because Webb only describes one of them. Wealth is also being stolen from us in dozens of other ways, and we need to understand them all if we are to protect ourselves with any amount of success.

“My focus is hugely on remedies, not problems,” Austin Fitts says, “and when it comes to remedies, you want to make sure you sequence your remedies against the enemy’s various tactics. So, sequencing is very, very important when it comes to remedies.

The important thing to understand about the great taking is that the World Economic Forum has told you what they’re planning: It’s 2030 and you have no assets. So the question is, exactly how are they going to strip you of your assets?

What David is talking about is stripping you of your securities, but you need to worry about far more than just your securities. You need to worry about your bank, which he touches on and does a very good job of describing some of the history around banking. You have to worry about your real estate. You have to really worry about your precious metals and other currency alternatives.

You have to worry about your business and your local investments and then yes, you have to worry about your securities. David is focused on just securities, which is why we did this section called ‘The Great Taking’ that goes through everything.”

Top Three Priorities

While Webb’s work may raise serious concerns, there are other more pressing issues that need our attention. Priority No. 1, according to Austin Fitts, is ensuring we have control over our financial transactions. Her focus for 2024 is therefore to help state legislators in the U.S. to work with banks and citizens within its jurisdiction to protect financial transaction freedom.

“That’s where pushback is critical,” she says. “If they can get financial transaction control then they can take everything, and I mean, everything, including your children …

If you dive in and look at the terms and conditions that some of these payment gateways are asking for now … you’re giving them permission to go into your bank account and take everything. It’s frightening.

So, the No. 1 thing to remedy against is financial transaction control. If you go to Solari, we have something called a financial transaction freedom memo. Print it out and start looking at all the things you can do to protect yourself from somebody controlling your financial transactions.

If they get that, The Great Taking is on. They take everything — real estate, securities, everything. So first and foremost, don’t worry about your securities. Worry about your banking and your transactions.

The second Great Taking is … food and health. The push to control the food system is on because to control financial transactions, they also need to control food because, if you can get your food and energy outside the banking system, you can survive without their banking system. This is why we cannot allow a 100% digital financial system.

The third Great Taking I’m concerned about is the real estate, because we see an extraordinary move being done to take control of the land, the real estate, including farmland, which is very much related to the food.

There are all sorts of games that can be played with the banking system to default people on their mortgages, and of course, interest rates and inflation are part and parcel of that.”

As noted by Austin Fitts, the process of reducing the homeownership rate has been going on for decades. It’s related to monetary policy, because inflation has doubled the average payment on the median-price home in America over the last four or five years alone. So, the younger generation is being completely wiped out and cannot afford to buy homes.

It’s also related to another Great Taking, which is the fraudulent inducement of student loans. Most of the big banks are paying close to zero percent for their capital, while students with loans are paying 5% to 9%, and those with credit card debt are paying 17%. “It’s an extraordinary differential in the cost of capital that’s literally engineered into the system in a very unfair way,” she says.

A System to Rob Us of Our Security Assets

Austin Fitts goes on to review Webb’s background, and how he came to the discoveries he made. In summary, financial regulators have created a way, through the custodian system, of robbing 100% of the security assets as a senior creditor, most likely through a default of derivatives.

Austin Fitts is not overly concerned about this, though, because while Webb believes a legal pathway has been created through the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), Austin Fitts and her experts don’t think it’ll stick. “We are still looking for a UCC expert who can figure this out,” she says.

What Webb has proven, however, is that there has been an extraordinary effort by the financial regulators to assert control of ALL collateral. Austin Fitts believes this was done to keep the financial bubble going.

“The reason I’m not worried about a grab of the securities in the near future is because I think the way you grab assets is by getting financial transaction control to the banking system,” she says. “Once you have that, you can do everything. You can take 100% of the assets, including securities. So, I think financial transaction control is coming faster.

I think in terms of sequencing, a grab of all the securities is not near. What David would say is, if they get themselves in a corner, they have to do it. My feeling is they have so many ways out of a corner, it’s not necessary. What they’re going to do is what I’ve seen them doing, which is pushing for financial transaction control.

But here’s what’s great about David’s research. No one goes through the bother of doing what they’ve done if there’s integrity in the system. I think David has proven, yet again, that the financial system is lacking integrity and is engineered to benefit a few at the expense of the many.

The other thing I thought was very good about his book was, he describes the game in terms of insiders and outsiders to the banking system through the Great Depression — how your bank could fold; you lose your deposits, but you’re still liable for your mortgage.

And of course, that’s how you get people’s real estate. You abrogate your income obligations to them, but then you hold them accountable for their debts.”

There’s No Safe Harbor for Anyone

It’s telling that Webb started this journey because he was trying to figure out how to protect his own family’s wealth only to, in the end, realize there is no safe harbor, not even for a financial insider like himself. The system is completely rigged from every angle. The sober realization is that there’s no getting away from this Great Taking.

We must face it head on, and do the work necessary to change the system so that it protects everyone. Part of that work is to make our political representatives understand what is happening, and that it is in their own self-interest to protect financial freedom.

Many of them are extraordinarily wealthy, and they too stand to lose everything if they don’t take action. They’re not insulated from this Great Taking. Like Webb discovered, there’s no safe harbor for them either. Webb’s contention is that the situation is salvageable, but we do need some kind of reset.

Just not The Great Reset the globalists have planned. One possibility would be to implement a small tax on digital transactions, like a fraction of 1%. The revenues generated from that transactional fee could fund the government, doing away with income taxes, provided we don’t have to engage in international wars.

Top Three Financial Drains

According to Austin Fitts, the top three things that are draining our wealth are:

Tyranny
The use of environmentally damaging processes like industrial farming instead of regenerative farming, the hardware required for the control grid and the electromagnetic field radiation that goes with it
The control of innovation, which prevents cost savings

All three of these are alterable. We can eliminate these financial drains, but we can’t start there. First, we need to secure our financial transaction freedom, because everything basically hinges on that. If we lose that, we’ve already lost everything else.

Three Basic Action Items

Again, be sure to download Solari’s financial transaction freedom memo. It details the problems, and the solutions. “Do what you’re comfortable doing,” Austin Fitts says.

“One is using cash. And when you use cash, start talking with local businesses and find ways of interacting locally that will give you more local resilience. And of course, the big one is food, because I don’t know a way of getting food that is safe, other than knowing where it’s coming from and knowing the people who are producing it …

The third thing you can do is to bring transparency, and this is really important. If you go to Solari, we’ve put together a list of short videos on CBDCs and financial transaction freedom. The first one is the one-minute video of the head of the BIS basically saying we can make the rules centrally and enforce them centrally with CBDCs.

The second one is Neel Kashkari, head of the Minneapolis Fed, one of the 12 Fed banks, saying ‘I can see why the Chinese would want this because it gives you complete surveillance and control. But why would Americans ever let this happen?’ If it’s so bad that one of the Fed presidents is telling you you don’t want it, that’s very helpful.

Then we have Bo Li [deputy managing director of the] IMF talking about the programmability of money, so if they decide you can only eat bugs and no pizza, your money will only buy bugs. And then the last one is Richard Werner talking about a top central banker telling him that CBDCs, ultimately, will be a chip that they want to put in your hand.

We need to tell people what’s going on and help them understand how serious this is, because it’s hard for many to fathom that somebody would want that kind of complete control. With AI and software, you can deliver that kind of complete control.

With a very short video, one minute or less, people get it. And that’s the point at which you can turn to your state legislators and your state banking association and say, ‘OK, what are you guys going to do to make sure I don’t end up like the Tennessee truckers?’

What’s very interesting … the states have the power to assert complete sovereignty over the money and the cash flows within their area, and to protect them. Now, they haven’t done it. And one of the reasons they haven’t done it is the Treasury and the central banks have been very good at making it financially attractive to buy into the federal system.

[Eventually], it’s going to be more important to be sovereign and free than to get another $2 billion in education — an education that requires you to teach your kids how to be sex slaves.

So, one of the things you can do bring transparency, but start working with your bankers, with your State Bankers Association, your state legislators, and encourage them to take the steps. And if you look at the Financial Transaction Freedom memo, we list all the different things that a federal legislator can do.”

Why We Need Sovereign State Banks

North Dakota already has a sovereign state bank, and the Florida State Legislature is getting ready to introduce legislation for state banking in the state of Florida. Tennessee is looking at ways to create independent payment systems, and is in the process of starting a Bullion Depository and authorizing their treasurer to start buying gold and silver.

These are just some of the strategies that can, and need, to be implemented by all states. As noted by Austin Fitts, “The only way I can protect my individual sovereignty is if my state protects my financial sovereignty.” And states can do that by implementing sovereign state banks that are not tied to the central banking system.

“If you have a sovereign state bank, what that means is, your citizens are paying taxes into your accounts, and you have the ability, working with the state banks and credit unions and financial institutions, to keep the transactions going so that the Treasury or the central bank can’t lock you down or shut you down.

I mean, that is amazing. If you also have a bullion depository, then you’ve got gold and silver reserves and that makes it easier for other people in the state to have a depository they can trust, and that means they can start doing transactions with gold and silver, particularly if you take the sales tax off.

Tennessee has taken the sales tax off golden and silver. And there’s a big squabble now — several states have put in bills making gold and silver legal tender, but do it in a way where the Feds can’t charge capital gains, so that you can use gold and silver as currencies locally. It’s a great way to start a local currency.”

A Building Wealth Reset

In conclusion, what we need to do, first and foremost, is to regain and safeguard our control of our financial transactions. Next, we need what Austin Fitts refers to as a “building wealth reset,” a reset of the financial system that allows us to build both living equity (health) and financial equity.

And we can do that. While it may seem as though we’re on a speed train headed for a brick wall, and that we have no way to get off, that may simply be an illusion. We probably have far more choice than we think.

“During my litigation [against the government], I had many different attorneys, and they would surround me and say, ‘You have to do this, you have no choice,’” Austin Fitts says.

“And I would say ‘I refuse. I’m not going to do that.’ That’s a choice. And then, what would happen? Suddenly, an option would open up that wasn’t there before. In other words, my refusal to go down the pathway that I had no choice created a new choice.”

Remember that as you move forward. Refusing to be part of the system may seem impossible, but the very act of making the choice to refuse may be the very thing that opens up brand new possibilities and options. Certainly, there are paths to victory, beginning with getting state leadership to get onboard with sovereign state banking.

from: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2024/03/24/david-webb-the-great-taking.aspx?ui=f460707c057231d228aac22d51b97f2a8dcffa7b857ec065e5a5bfbcfab498ac&sd=20211017&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art2HL&cid=20240324_HL2&foDate=true&mid=DM1547304&rid=2077843189

We Know Who you Are, Where You Live, and NOW We Can Control What You Buy

Posted on August 31, 2023 by marcia

CBDCs As A Weapon To Debank The Banked

POSTED BY: EMILE PHANEUF III VIA AEIR JULY 23, 2023

If implemented as planned, CBDCs will end federalism, crush the U.S. Constitution, destroy the existing banking/financial system and slam dunk Technocracy into place. You don’t want to go along with this? You will be debanked, defunded and thrown out of economic life until you decide to comply. It’s a roundabout way to say “inclusive”. ⁃ TN Editor

In March 2022, President Biden signed an Executive Order directing government agencies to urgently research and develop a potential US central bank digital currency (CBDC) “in a manner that protects Americans’ interests.” It also encouraged the Federal Reserve Bank to continue doing so. And it isn’t just the Biden Administration in the United States working in such a direction.

As of the time of writing, CBDCTracker.org lists three countries or regions with retail CBDCs already “launched” (Bahamas, Jamaica and Nigeria), another five in “pilot” stage, and another twenty in “proof of concept” stage. Many more have at least researched wholesale CBDCs. (“Wholesale” CBDCs are intended for commercial and central bank use and the like, while “retail” CBDCs are intended for the rest of us). A report by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) released just this month summarizes the results of a survey of 86 central banks and concludes that “there could be 15 retail and nine wholesale CBDCs publicly circulating in 2030.”

When you read statements from high-level officials of the BIS, central banks, and governments, you get the impression that CBDCs are an exciting development in the evolution of money. The BIS, for example, calls them “a new tool in the financial inclusion toolkit.” An op-ed co-authored by BIS General Manager Agustín Carstens and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands frames them in the title as “CBDCs for the people.” An IMF working paper asserts that CBDCs can “bank large unbanked populations” in developing countries.

Unpopular and risky

But when a CBDC was thrust upon the Nigerian people, adoption rates were abysmal at best (below 0.5 percent even a year after its launch), and Nigerians took to the streets to demand access to cash. CBDCs are widely unpopular in the United States as well. A CATO Institute national survey published just in May found that only 16 percent of Americans support the idea, and over twice as many (34 percent) oppose it. 78 percent responded that if a CBDC were offered, they would be unlikely to use it altogether. As for partisanship, while Democrats were twice as likely to support a CBDC than Republicans (22 percent for Democrats, 11 percent for Republicans), just as many Democrats oppose it, and the remaining 56 percent respond that they “don’t know.”

Risks CBDCs present include the loss of settlement finality that comes with physical cash (as abandoning cash accompanies the push for CBDCs), loss of financial privacy, easy seizure of assets, loss of the ability to resolve problems at a local level with a commercial bank (as it would be doubtful that a central bank would come to be known for its customer service), outright prohibition on spending or purchase limits with certain merchants or on certain products, and (perhaps most importantly) the paradigm shift from money as an exercise of economic freedom to one of social engineering by central banks and their respective governments. The latter could manifest itself in various ways, including (to name just a few) negative interest rates (essentially a confiscation of one’s savings), the expiry of one’s money (with a date determined by the issuing central bank or its government) — or even discouraging the consumption of products like gasoline, plane tickets or red meat in order to enforce a climate agenda.

Another CATO resource dedicated to identifying the risks of CBDCs rightly points out that a CBDC could reduce credit availability, disintermediate banks, and challenge the rise of cryptocurrencies. And all this is to say nothing of how businesses operating legally under state law would be treated by central banks when those very same economic activities are illegal under federal law. Even at present (with no CBDC yet launched in the United States), businesses working in the cannabis industry struggle to obtain and maintain bank accounts as many of the commercial banks are federally regulated. Are we really supposed to believe that the Federal Reserve would be more accommodating for cannabis businesses? It is difficult to imagine how CBDCs would not radically undermine federalism.

Finally, the increased surveillance also has a chilling effect on the public – even for legal activities. Enjoy vice (gambling, pornography)? Want to buy a gun? Now maybe you avoid living your life as you presently do.

Hardly inclusive

A quick trip down memory lane demonstrates how the debanking of legally-operating banked businesses in action has historically manifested. An Obama-era Justice Department operation called ‘Operation Choke Point’ targeted gun retailers, payday lenders, and the like beginning in 2013 not by charging the employees or owners of those businesses with actual crimes, but by upping the cost for banks to provide banking services to them, reminding those banks of their obligations under the Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering (BSA/AML) regulations and the penalties for non-compliance. The result was (not surprisingly) the debanking of banked people and companies.

More recently, crypto has entered into the crosshairs, with regulators shutting down commercial banks that provide financial services to crypto companies. This latter operation was appropriately coined ‘Operation Choke Point 2.0’ by Nic Carter who draws parallels to the first operation.

The timing of a global CBDC initiative is also suspicious given the present cultural and political climate of “canceling” people with dissenting opinions and of Big Tech’s alignment with government to orchestrate something that resembles more of a PsyOp than “public health” as we have traditionally known it (as evidence from a FOIA request revealed).

Even if you think that a CBDC is a good idea, consider that its power may be turned against you when the political pendulum shifts in your direction and your views or activities are suddenly considered taboo or illegal by those in power. Real financial inclusion requires an economic system where financial censorship is harder to accomplish in the first place. (Paper cash and Bitcoin help here).

Oh, and by the way, the BIS itself calls physical cash “the most inclusive form of money we currently have.” With all the talk of financial inclusion, the global push to phase it out is, well, ironic. SEC Chair Gary Gensler was right when he declared that “we already have digital currency. It’s called the US dollar.” We can address the many shortcomings of the traditional financial system without introducing another digital dollar in the form of a CBDC.

The vast power that a CBDC would place in the hands of a nation state or its central bank points in the direction of an unprecedented level of financial surveillance, censorship, and potentially debanking the banked whenever it may serve certain political objectives. Thus, it is hardly an understatement to say that we are at a crossroads for civilization.

We would also be wise to consider the words of FA Hayek, from The Road to Serfdom:

Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends. And whoever has sole control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served, which values are to be rated higher and which lower—in short, what men should believe and strive for.

Read full story here…

from: https://www.technocracy.news/cbdcs-as-a-weapon-to-debank-the-banked/

Banks & Cash

Posted on March 12, 2019 by marcia

The Rise of Cashless Banks (And What To Do About It)

By J.P. Koning Monday, March 11, 2019

For centuries bank deposits have come with a comforting guarantee. Depositors have always been able to quickly convert them at par into cash.

But this guarantee is slowly being eroded. Banks in Canada, Ireland, Australia, Denmark, and Sweden are closing full-service branches and adopting a less-staffed “cashless bank” model. In a cashless branch, customers can no longer deposit or withdraw cash over the counter.

The next step will be when banks remove their external ATM machines too. Once this happens, we’ll have entered a strange new world where bank deposits are permanently inconvertible.

But if we don’t want a world with cashless banks, here’s a potential solution. Maybe banks should be allowed to issue their own unique brand of banknotes. By doing so, bankers may have more of an incentive to promote cash availability.

Bankers have been steadily introducing cashless banks over the last few years in response to falling customer demand for cash. With fewer people wanting to withdraw or deposit cash, the cost of offering these services gets harder to justify to shareholders.

Some commentators worry that banks are not simply reacting to customer preferences but are taking an active role in reducing cash usage. In a recent opinion piece, Brett Scott accuses banks of nudging customers away from cash by re-designing the withdrawal and deposit processes to be less accommodating.

As Scott points out, banks have an incentive to move customers into cards and other digital channels because that way they can make more profit off of transactions and suck up more data. Furthermore, deposits compete with central bank-issued banknotes as a form of saving. Banks prefer that consumers lodge cash at the bank because deposits are a low-cost source of funding for banks.

That banks are sole distributors of a third-party product that they directly compete with represents a major conflict of interest. This arrangement is unfortunate given cash’s many benefits. To begin with, it makes for a great back-up payments system — unlike card-based systems, cash can’t crash. It is also used by many people for budgeting purposes. And finally, banknotes allow people to regulate how much personal information they must give up in transactions. I’ve talked about many of these advantages before.

Given that cash is important to society, but banks have a perverse incentive to prevent its circulation, what is the solution? Perhaps the answer is to get banks on side by allowing them to issue their own banknotes. If they have a direct financial stake in the fate of cash, then banks will be less conflicted in the role they play as society’s main distributors of coins and banknotes.

Ireland is an interesting case study. The Bank of Ireland is the largest private bank in both the Republic of Ireland (a separate country) and Northern Ireland (which is part of the UK). Oddly enough, even as the Bank of Ireland threatens to make most of its branches in the Republic of Ireland cash-free, the northern arm of the bank is rolling out new polymer banknotes in 2019.

Banks in Northern Ireland and Scotland enjoy a long tradition of issuing their own banknotes. Of the four note-issuing banks in Northern Ireland, the Bank of Ireland is the largest issuer followed by Ulster Bank, Danske, and First Trust. As of the end of 2018, the big four had issued £2.9 billion worth of banknotes. These banks aren’t obligated to provide Northern Ireland with cash. They print it because their customers want it.

The Bank of England, UK’s central bank, requires Northern Ireland’s private note issuers to “back” each pound they issue with at least 60 cents in Bank of England notes or coins. The other 40 cents in backing can be held in an interest-yielding account at the Bank of England.

Northern Ireland’s cash-issuing banks thus enjoy two advantages relative to banks that cannot issue cash. Since they needn’t pay any interest to their banknote customers, but enjoy interest on the backing assets held in their account at Bank of England, they earn a recurring flow of income on each note that they put into circulation. Secondly, the circulation of their particular brand of banknotes serves as a form of free advertisement. The more of its notes that a bank can get the public to use, the more visibility it steals from competitors.

Thus, the Bank of Ireland’s northern operations have an incentive to ensure that cash is always available to depositors. But the bank’s southern arm, which distributes euro banknotes, does not have the same incentive, since it doesn’t directly share in the financial advantages of promoting cash usage.

The benefits of issuing cash can be sizable. For instance, at the end of 2017 Ulster Bank has issued £803 million in banknotes. This accounts for 7% of the bank’s total £11,501 million in liabilities. Given that Ulster Bank currently pays as much as 0.85% on its other liabilities, including savings accounts, the ability to issue notes at 0% significantly reduces its funding costs. I doubt that Ulster Bank would want to sabotage this gift.

Critics will point out that allowing banks to issue cash comes at the expense of the tax payer. That’s true. All of the profits that the Bank of England earns are paid back to the state, and ultimately the taxpaying citizens. By directing a bit of interest to the Bank of Ireland and other private issuers, that leaves less for the state.

But notice that Bank of England strikes a careful balance. It only allows the Bank of Ireland, Ulster Bank, and other private issuers to keep 40% of their backing assets in an interest-yielding account, the other 60% being lodged in no-yield Bank of England banknotes. So the current Northern Irish arrangement illustrates how it is possible to accommodate both taxpayers, banks, and their customers.

Alternatively, banks could invest the 40% in a higher yielding loan portfolio. Although some people might have financial stability concerns, we know from Selgin and White’s explorations of free banking that private banknote systems can be quite sound.

Allowing private banks to issue banknotes may seem like a radical solution. But by fixing the dysfunctional relationship between banks and cash, this option may help prevent an equally radical scenario from emerging; a world with only cashless banks.

from: https://www.aier.org/article/sound-money-project/rise-cashless-banks-and-what-do-about-it

The Future of Banking?

Posted on August 30, 2016 by marcia

Major Bank Official: Banks Are “Preparing for an Economic Nuclear Winter”

Posted by clnAdrian August 30, 2016

nuclear winter-compressed

By Matt Agorist | Activist Post

After years of giveaways to megabanks, marketed to the taxpayers as ‘quantitative easing,’ the crutches shoved under the banker-controlled global stock trade are about to snap. Bankers now say they are preparing for the collapse.

In June of 2015, former Congressman Ron Paul predicted that these crutches would fail, and the financial bubbles created by them would send the stock market into a free-fall.

The consequences will not be minor. Surprises will be many, since we are in uncertain waters and the world has never faced the gross misallocation of capital that exists today. The process is self-limiting. It will come to an end, and it’s not going to be far into the future.

Now, as chaos in the EU and weak corporate earnings create a tornado of uncertainty, banks are preparing for the worst.

According to CNBC quoting a major lender, banks are “preparing for an economic nuclear winter situation.”

The chaos in the market has major bank officials running for the hills. According to CNBC, European banks, in particular, have had a very tough six months as the shock and volatility around Brexit sent banking stocks south. Major European banks like Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse saw their shares in free-fall after the referendum’s results were announced. In the U.K., RBS was the worst-hit, with its shares plunging by more than 30 percent since June 24.

On Sunday, a source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, due to the fact that revealing this information can get bankers killed, a source from a major investment bank told CNBC “that financial services firms have put together a strategy in place that takes into account the worst-case scenario that could happen by the end of this year.”

“This could mean triggering Article 50, referendum in other European nations leading to a break-up of the euro or sterling hitting below $1.20 or lower. The banks are ready for anything now,” the source said.

This grim warning comes after the Royal Bank of Scotland has warned its investors of a “cataclysmic year.” In an eerily ominous note to its clients early this year, the megabank predicted another worse case scenario.

Sell everything except high quality bonds. This is about return of capital, not return on capital. In a crowded hall, exit doors are small.

In the note, RBS’s credit chief Andrew Roberts told investors how Quantitative Easing has failed and was expected to fail.

We have been told for 7 years now since the credit crunch, under QE, to borrow money and invest it in one of 3 things: 1) EM 2) credit 3) global equities. This is a big picture, multi-year bet that has been taken, which has worked fine, and stopped working 10 months ago, (this is NOT NEW).

As the Guardian’s Larry Elliott points out:

Markets have been supported for some time by low-interest rates, stimulus measures from central banks including quantitative easing, and hopes of economic recovery. But with the Federal Reserve raising rates and the Bank of England expected to follow suit, that prop is being removed.

Those who pay attention to the effects of central bankers looting their respective countries have long pointed out the mathematical certainty that is an economic collapse.

The collapse of global markets is inevitable as it is a natural correction to the wholesale fleecing of the citizens through the unscrupulous actions of central banks.

Ron Paul sums up the situation perfectly:

The credit and new money, when created by a central bank, is delivered to the market in a political fashion for which the one percent receive special benefits. It allows the pyramiding of debt to fractional reserve banking, which compounds the long-term problems.

It may be fun while it lasts, but it always ends with a crash.

from: http://consciouslifenews.com/major-bank-official-banks-preparing-economic-nuclear-winter/11125063/

What is Going On ?

Posted on April 24, 2016 by marcia

Survival Weekend: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

by Elle – 24/04/2016

0 16

Survival Weekend: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Daisy Luther
Contributor, ZenGardner.com

Today on Survival Saturday, we have a series of stories that could all be headlined, “What could possibly go wrong?” Do you remember the reality show by that name, where a couple of guys apply science and logic to ill-conceived ideas and explain exactly what could go wrong when you power a skateboard with homemade rockets? Perhaps our future doom won’t be caused by some kind of epic disaster, but by the unwillingness of the people to actually accept reality and apply logic to it.

Survival Saturday is a round-up of the week’s news and resources for folks who are interested in being prepared.

This Week in the News…

Coming to a City Near You: Aerial Spraying of GMO Bacteria over Residential Neighborhoods

Since regular pesticide isn’t bad enough, the officials of Seattle, Washington have taken things one step further: they’re going to douse the city in a genetically modified bacteria in an experimental attempt to eradicate gypsy moths. What could possibly go wrong with that one? (Well, for one thing, the story about the Zika virus originating in the area of South America where GMO mosquitos were released comes to mind.)

If you ever wondered whether you might possibly be an unwilling participant in a science experiment, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that you are.

The Washington Department of Health has recommended that people stay indoors for half an hour after the spray. (They don’t mention anything about sealing doors and windows with duct tape or closing vents to the outside, but hey, maybe that’s just me.) Of course, the USDA, always a proponent of things GMO and unnatural, says everything will be just fine, claiming that “the acidic diet of most Americans renders the bacteria harmless, though it is persistent in produce and food products.” Apparently, this GMO bacteria pesticide has been sprayed on our food for a while now, although I must have missed the announcement of that practice.

Speaking of pesticides, if you’re trying to avoid them check out this newly-released list of the fruits and vegetable with the highest pesticide residue this year. Grab a kleenex, because the things that must now be purchased organically will make you weep.

Reality Is Mean

Let me preface by saying that this little rant does not reflect my opinions on who can use which bathroom. Honestly, I don’t care. There are stall doors. Don’t even get me started on pondering how bathroom laws would be enforced or how it isn’t the government’s place to be potty monitors. We have bigger problems in this country than who pees where and you’d be wise not to get sidetracked by that ridiculous debate.

Okay – back to the story.

I’ll never forget when my kiddo was in 4th grade. She was telling me about an event that happened in school and being very vague in her description of the girl involved. Finally, it dawned on me. I asked her, “Are you talking about the girl in your class who is black?” Since there was only one child in the class of African American descent, that did indeed narrow it down. But my daughter was horrified because the kids had been taught never to refer to a person’s race, even when it was the most accurate descriptor. If I thought that was absolutely ridiculous, I had no idea at the time what was coming down the pipe of political correctness.

Well, here it is. And what has come out of the pipe is the pure sewage of cognitive dissonance.

What could possibly go wrong in a society that politely accepts fantasy as fact? It seems pretty obvious to me that college students are being prepped for the world Orwell had imagined.

Here’s What’s Going on Behind the Pending Economic Disaster

I sent out an extra email last week because I stumbled upon a series of events that made me wonder if the economic collapse is truly upon us. The Fed (which isn’t at all federal, but that’s another story – and one you really should read) has issued warnings to 3 major banks that their contingency plans simply won’t cut it. Chillingly, the Fed wrote to JPMorgan Chase that their plan was “not sufficiently actionable” and that it contained a “deficiency” so great that it could “pose serious adverse effects to the financial stability of the United States.” Gulp.

Meanwhile, secret meetings between those in the economic know abounded last week and Saudi Arabia threatened the US with massive economic reprisals – and by massive, I mean billions and billions of dollars – if their part in 9/11 came to light in a bipartisan bill on the table in Congress that would allow victims of 9/11 and other terrorist attacks to sue foreign governments.

A commodity trader has come forward (sort of…anonymously) and said that the current plan in the economic world is even worse. In his own words:

Here comes my Very-REAL Conspiracy Theory: the stupid FED and other Central Bankers around the world acting in unison to artificially raise inflation so that they can hopefully get out of the F’ing mess they got themselves into with this low/negative rate BS. Call me crazy, and I am not a “conspiracy theorist” – but what is happening has absolutely no “reasonable” explanation. So I have to think outside the box…

The FED and other Central Banks have already destroyed the equity and other macro-financial markets… it is now turn for the commodities markets…

Gee…what could possibly go wrong if/when that plan is enacted? Read the rest of his theory here.

Oh – and on a related note, if you ever wondered why no bankers have gone to jail for their parts in the economic cluster pulling the rest of the country under – an insider explains exactly why in this article. What could possibly go wrong with ignoring that?

You’ve Got to Taste It to Believe It

Do you have the supplies you need to survive an interruption in the supply chain? Regardless of what type of disaster you are preparing for, it pays to have nutritious, long-term supplies that you can rely on. Preppers Market features the products I use to ensure my own family’s health and well-being. You won’t find any GMOs, any soy, or chemical preservatives in our foods. Gluten-free products are also available for those who do not tolerate wheat products.

Emergency foods are hard to fully appreciate without tasting. Before you make an expensive purchase, try our 4 recipe Sampler Pack: Pasta Primavera, Enchilada Beans and Rice, Granola and Sweet Habanero Chili.

Healthy food storage with GMO-Free ingredients and great taste are rare. I know you’ll be convinced when you taste test our food!

Go here to check out the high-quality offerings, or try a sample pack first. You won’t be disappointed in the delicious taste!

Remember How I Said Justice Scalia’s Death Would Have Serious Repercussions?

I’m not one to say “I told you so!” – wait – who am I kidding? I totally am.

So, here it is.

Remember how I said Scalia’s sudden death, whether it came from natural causes or he was murdered, could change everything? At immediate risk, it seems, will be our right to bear arms.

If you’re wondering what could possibly go wrong if we get someone left-leaning in office, consider that Scalia’s replacement could very likely be the deciding factor in whether or not the Second Amendment remains strong. And now, Chelsea Clinton has ~~danced on his freshly turned grave~~ affirmed the plan to poke even more holes in our right to protect ourselves and our families, and even points out how much easier it will be now that Scalia is no longer on the bench. As reported by SHTFplan:

“It matters to me that my mom also recognizes the role the Supreme Court has when it comes to gun control. With Justice Scalia on the bench, one of the few areas where the court actually had an inconsistent record relates to gun control.”

“Sometimes the court upheld local and state gun control measures as being compliant with the Second Amendment and sometimes the court struck them down.”

“So if you listen to Moms Demand Action and the Brady Campaign and the major efforts pushing for smart, sensible, and enforceable gun control across our country — disclosure [they] have endorsed my mom, they say they believe the next time the court rules on gun control, it will make a definitive ruling.”

Stock up, folks. Food, ammo, and firearms.

Oh – and on a related note, did anybody else notice that Prince was immediately autopsied and a Supreme Court Justice was pronounced dead over the phone and instantly embalmed, thus precluding the possibility of an investigation into his death? Just sayin’.

Anything to add to Survival Saturday?

Oh – I do! Here’s one last link. Remember how our cat disappeared on moving day? Well, our pampered housecat managed to survive almost 5 weeks in the forest, and now he’s back. Of course, it got me thinking about how we could all learn some survival lessons from a lost kitty – you can check out the story here, assuming you don’t hate cats or happy endings.

from: http://www.zengardner.com/survival-saturday-possibly-go-wrong/

Bank Bail-ins Threaten Savings

Posted on January 1, 2016 by marcia

A Crisis Worse Than ISIS? Bail-Ins Begin

by Zen Gardner – Dec 30, 2015

EllenBrown.com

While the mainstream media focus on ISIS extremists, a threat that has gone virtually unreported is that your life savings could be wiped out in a massive derivatives collapse. Bank bail-ins have begun in Europe, and the infrastructure is in place in the US. Poverty also kills.

At the end of November, an Italian pensioner hanged himself after his entire €100,000 savings were confiscated in a bank “rescue” scheme. He left a suicide note blaming the bank, where he had been a customer for 50 years and had invested in bank-issued bonds. But he might better have blamed the EU and the G20’s Financial Stability Board, which have imposed an “Orderly Resolution” regime that keeps insolvent banks afloat by confiscating the savings of investors and depositors. Some 130,000 shareholders and junior bond holders suffered losses in the “rescue.”

The pensioner’s bank was one of four small regional banks that had been put under special administration over the past two years. The €3.6 billion ($3.83 billion) rescue plan launched by the Italian government uses a newly-formed National Resolution Fund, which is fed by the country’s healthy banks. But before the fund can be tapped, losses must be imposed on investors; and in January, EU rules will require that they also be imposed on depositors. According to a December 10th article on BBC.com:

The rescue was a “bail-in” – meaning bondholders suffered losses – unlike the hugely unpopular bank bailouts during the 2008 financial crisis, which cost ordinary EU taxpayers tens of billions of euros.

Correspondents say [Italian Prime Minister] Renzi acted quickly because in January, the EU is tightening the rules on bank rescues – they will force losses on depositors holding more than €100,000, as well as bank shareholders and bondholders.

. . . [L]etting the four banks fail under those new EU rules next year would have meant “sacrificing the money of one million savers and the jobs of nearly 6,000 people”.

That is what is predicted for 2016: massive sacrifice of savings and jobs to prop up a “systemically risky” global banking scheme.

Bail-in Under Dodd-Frank

That is all happening in the EU. Is there reason for concern in the US?

According to former hedge fund manager Shah Gilani, writing for Money Morning, there is. In a November 30^th article titled “Why I’m Closing My Bank Accounts While I Still Can,” he writes:

[It is] entirely possible in the next banking crisis that depositors in giant too-big-to-fail failing banks could have their money confiscated and turned into equity shares. . . .

If your too-big-to-fail (TBTF) bank is failing because they can’t pay off derivative bets they made, and the government refuses to bail them out, under a mandate titled “Adequacy of Loss-Absorbing Capacity of Global Systemically Important Banks in Resolution,” approved on Nov. 16, 2014, by the G20’s Financial Stability Board, they can take your deposited money and turn it into shares of equity capital to try and keep your TBTF bank from failing.

Once your money is deposited in the bank, it legally becomes the property of the bank. Gilani explains:

Your deposited cash is an unsecured debt obligation of your bank. It owes you that money back.

If you bank with one of the country’s biggest banks, who collectively have trillions of dollars of derivatives they hold “off balance sheet” (meaning those debts aren’t recorded on banks’ GAAP balance sheets), those debt bets have a superior legal standing to your deposits and get paid back before you get any of your cash.

. . . Big banks got that language inserted into the 2010 Dodd-Frank law meant to rein in dangerous bank behavior.

The banks inserted the language and the legislators signed it, without necessarily understanding it or even reading it. At over 2,300 pages and still growing, the Dodd Frank Act is currently the longest and most complicated bill ever passed by the US legislature.

Propping Up the Derivatives Scheme

Dodd-Frank states in its preamble that it will “protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts.” But it does this under Title II by imposing the losses of insolvent financial companies on their common and preferred stockholders, debtholders, and other unsecured creditors. That includes depositors, the largest class of unsecured creditor of any bank.

Title II is aimed at “ensuring that payout to claimants is at least as much as the claimants would have received under bankruptcy liquidation.” But here’s the catch: under both the Dodd Frank Act and the 2005 Bankruptcy Act, derivative claims have super-priority over all other claims, secured and unsecured, insured and uninsured.

The over-the-counter (OTC) derivative market (the largest market for derivatives) is made up of banks and other highly sophisticated players such as hedge funds. OTC derivatives are the bets of these financial players against each other. Derivative claims are considered “secured” because collateral is posted by the parties.

For some inexplicable reason, the hard-earned money you deposit in the bank is not considered “security” or “collateral.” It is just a loan to the bank, and you must stand in line along with the other creditors in hopes of getting it back. State and local governments must also stand in line, although their deposits are considered “secured,” since they remain junior to the derivative claims with “super-priority.”

Turning Bankruptcy on Its Head

Under the old liquidation rules, an insolvent bank was actually “liquidated” – its assets were sold off to repay depositors and creditors. Under an “orderly resolution,” the accounts of depositors and creditors are emptied to keep the insolvent bank in business. The point of an “orderly resolution” is not to make depositors and creditors whole but to prevent another system-wide “disorderly resolution” of the sort that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. The concern is that pulling a few of the dominoes from the fragile edifice that is our derivatives-laden global banking system will collapse the entire scheme. The sufferings of depositors and investors are just the sacrifices to be borne to maintain this highly lucrative edifice.

In a May 2013 article in Forbes titled “The Cyprus Bank ‘Bail-In’ Is Another Crony Bankster Scam,” Nathan Lewis explained the scheme like this:

At first glance, the “bail-in” resembles the normal capitalist process of liabilities restructuring that should occur when a bank becomes insolvent. . . .

The difference with the “bail-in” is that the order of creditor seniority is changed. In the end, it amounts to the cronies (other banks and government) and non-cronies. The cronies get 100% or more; the non-cronies, including non-interest-bearing depositors who should be super-senior, get a kick in the guts instead. . . .

In principle, depositors are the most senior creditors in a bank. However, that was changed in the 2005 bankruptcy law, which made derivatives liabilities most senior. Considering the extreme levels of derivatives liabilities that many large banks have, and the opportunity to stuff any bank with derivatives liabilities in the last moment, other creditors could easily find there is nothing left for them at all.

As of September 2014, US derivatives had a notional value of nearly $280 trillion. A study involving the cost to taxpayers of the Dodd-Frank rollback slipped by Citibank into the “cromnibus” spending bill last December found that the rule reversal allowed banks to keep $10 trillion in swaps trades on their books. This is money that taxpayers could be on the hook for in another bailout; and since Dodd-Frank replaces bailouts with bail-ins, it is money that creditors and depositors could now be on the hook for. Citibank is particularly vulnerable to swaps on the price of oil. Brent crude dropped from a high of $114 per barrel in June 2014 to a low of $36 in December 2015.

What about FDIC insurance? It covers deposits up to $250,000, but the FDIC fund had only $67.6 billion in it as of June 30, 2015, insuring about $6.35 trillion in deposits. The FDIC has a credit line with the Treasury, but even that only goes to $500 billion; and who would pay that massive loan back? The FDIC fund, too, must stand in line behind the bottomless black hole of derivatives liabilities. As Yves Smith observed in a March 2013 post:

In the US, depositors have actually been put in a worse position than Cyprus deposit-holders, at least if they are at the big banks that play in the derivatives casino. The regulators have turned a blind eye as banks use their depositors to fund derivatives exposures. . . . The deposits are now subject to being wiped out by a major derivatives loss.

Even in the worst of the Great Depression bank bankruptcies, noted Nathan Lewis, creditors eventually recovered nearly all of their money. He concluded:

When super-senior depositors have huge losses of 50% or more, after a “bail-in” restructuring, you know that a crime was committed.

Exiting While We Can

How can you avoid this criminal theft and keep your money safe? It may be too late to pull your savings out of the bank and stuff them under a mattress, as Shah Gilani found when he tried to withdraw a few thousand dollars from his bank. Large withdrawals are now criminally suspect.

You can move your money into one of the credit unions with their own deposit insurance protection; but credit unions and their insurance plans are also under attack. So writes Frances Coppola in a December 18th article titled “Co-operative Banking Under Attack in Europe,” discussing an insolvent Spanish credit union that was the subject of a bail-in in July 2015. When the member-investors were subsequently made whole by the credit union’s private insurance group, there were complaints that the rescue “undermined the principle of creditor bail-in” – this although the insurance fund was privately financed. Critics argued that “this still looks like a circuitous way to do what was initially planned, i.e. to avoid placing losses on private creditors.”

In short, the goal of the bail-in scheme is to place losses on private creditors. Alternatives that allow them to escape could soon be blocked.

from: http://www.zengardner.com/a-crisis-worse-than-isis-bail-ins-begin/

Charging Fees for Cash Deposits?

Posted on November 2, 2015 by marcia

WAR ON CASH: Banks to start charging for cash deposits

Friday, October 30, 2015 by: J. D. Heyes

(NaturalNews) Few could have envisioned it even just a few years ago, but it’s happening now, and on an ever-widening scale. More big U.S. banks are shunning cash, because the banking system has become so dependent on other “assets” that large cash deposits actually pose a threat to their financial health, according to The Wall Street Journal.

State Street Corporation, a Boston-based institution that manages assets for institutional investors, has, for the first time, begun charging some customers for making large cash deposits, according to people familiar with the development.

And the largest U.S. bank in terms of assets — JP Morgan Chase & Co. — has dramatically cut “unwanted” deposits to the tune of $150 billion this year alone, in part by charging customers fees.

What gives? What kind of world do we live in when banks no longer want cash?

As the WSJ reported:

“The developments underscore a deepening conflict over cash. Many businesses have large sums on hand and opportunities to profitably invest it appear scarce. But banks don’t want certain kinds of cash either, judging it costly to keep, and some are imposing fees after jawboning customers to move it.”

As usual, the problem originated largely in Washington, D.C.

Criminalizing cash?

The paper said the banks’ actions are being driven by low interest rates (set by the Fed) that eat into profits, as well as “regulations adopted since the financial crisis to gird banks against funding disruptions,” adding in a separate report that a number of large financial institutions have become more dependent on buying and selling stocks, bonds and commodities like oil.

The latest round of fees for large deposits stems from regulators’ deeming them risky. They are sometimes dubbed hot-money deposits that analysts believe is likely to flee quickly in a crisis (think runs on Greek banks recently, which the government eventually curbed).

Agreed upon a year ago in September and managed by the Federal Reserve and other regulators, the rule covering liquidity coverage ratios forces banks and financial institutions to retain high-quality liquid assets — like central bank reserves and government debt — to cover anticipated deposit losses over a 30-day period (creative way for the federal government to continue financing its overspending — by forcing private banks now to hold government debt). Under the rules, banks are required to retain up to 40 percent against certain corporate deposits and as high as 100 percent against some hedge fund deposits, WSJ reported.

“At some point you wonder whether there will be a shortage of financial institutions willing to take on these balances,” Kelli Moll, head of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP’s hedge-fund practice in New York, told the paper.

Moll added that the subject of where to actually put cash has become something of an interesting conversation as hedge funds are turned away by the traditional banking sector.

Dodd-Frank is to the financial industry what Obamacare is to health care

WSJ further explained the phenomenon and fallout:

“Jerome Schneider, head of Pacific Investment Management Co.’s short-term and funding desk, which advises corporate and institutional clients, said that as a result of the bank actions, he and his customers have discussed as cash alternatives boosting investments in U.S. Treasury bonds, ultrashort-duration bond funds and money-market funds.”

“Clients have been put on warning,” Schneider said, when it comes to cash.

The rules essentially criminalizing large depositors of cash stem from the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial “reform” law — a “reform” that did to the banking industry what Obamacare has done to the health care industry.

The law’s two primary authors — Democrats Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, both of whom are now out of Congress — were also backers of Clinton-era housing rules said by experts to have caused the 2008 financial crisis. So, in essence, Dodd-Frank is punishing banks for rules that the two of them (along with most other Democrats and too many Republicans — and Bill Clinton’s signature on the legislation) actually caused.

In the meantime, there appears to be no end to the federal government’s meddling in both the financial industry and just about every other facet of American life.

Causing more problems than it solves — that’s a classic congressional move.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/051762_cash_deposits_criminalization_banking_regulations.html#ixzz3qMD7OXjB

Reflections on the Monetary System

Posted on November 9, 2014 by marcia

Is it Time for a New Monetary System?

The Mind Unleashed

on 9 November, 2014 at 08:26

No matter what problem we look at today, regardless of scope or gender, demographic statistic or geographic location we can provide a solution; if we throw enough money at it…

And therein lies the actual problem.

The fundamental problem the human species faces today is the current monetary system. I submit that only by completely revamping the monetary system will we be successful as a species.

Currently the monetary system is controlled by a “for profit” Central Banking system. The major problem with this system is the idea of profit itself. Profit means “to obtain a financial advantage or benefit”. Unlike barter, the concept of profit necessitates a winner and a loser in any transaction. Most people are not aware that the current monetary system is a for profit system designed to create wealth and power for those that control the system, just as one would profit from the oil or manufacturing industry. Central banking is the business of controlling the monetary system to enrich only those that wield control of the system.

“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws” ~ Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild

The business of banking rests on two pillars. One is foreclosure, the other is usury, or more commonly called interest.

When a man or company or Government takes a “loan” from a bank, the bank actually creates a new digital entry into the system under the borrower’s associated account. It is imperative to understand that this is a digital entry for new “never before been in existence” digital currency.

Regarding the business of foreclosure, if the “borrower” never pays the “loan” back, the bank can foreclose on an outstanding “loan” and then gains control of a tangible asset like a car or a property. Yet the fact is that the bank never risked anything to begin with. The digital currency created at the time of the “loan” is not a tangible thing. It doesn’t exist. It’s like getting the “blessing” of the Bank to go and purchase something. This is a simplification of the system but it is basically a correct understanding. This scheme has worked like a charm for them…

“They will be stripped of their rights and given a commercial value designed to make us a profit and they will be non the wiser, for not one man in a million could ever figure our plans and, if by accident one or two would figure it out, we have in our arsenal plausible deniability”. ~ Edward Mandell House

Regarding the business of usury, whenever a “loan” of non-existent currency is created there is also an interest charge built into the contract. When the borrower pays back the “loan” they are also required to pay back an interest charge that is over and above the newly created currency. The point to understand here is that the interest due was not created along with the new digital currency and thus a shortfall of currency is actually built into the system. Thus bankruptcy is a fundamental component of the current monetary system because there is always a shortage of currency. If every dollar of debt in existence today were to be paid back right now, all the interest would still be outstanding. This is the mathematical formula that has been used for centuries in order to steal tangible wealth from the actual creators of that wealth.

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. ” ~Henry Ford

Having said all that, you might be intrigued and start to gain the understanding that only the bankers can win, but you might also say “so what”? People should be able to profit, after all, profit is the motivating factor in our world.

I submit that the concept of profit is the fundamental core of what is destroying the human species. If a larger, stronger man takes control of another man and subjugates him simply because he can, that is tyranny, and we as a species have evolved to see that this ethically wrong. Now we as a species have to evolve our understanding of the current monetary system to see that we are being subjugated into continuing to propagate the greatest control mechanism ever developed on this planet.

Let’s play the “If” game for a second.

If profit was taken out of the equation; do you think that cancer would still be a major threat to our species?

If profit was not a requirement; do you think that we would be using oil as the fundamental energy source used throughout the world today?

If the concept of profit was not in the human consciousness; do you think that “health” centres would ever refuse to treat the ill? Or actual cures for diseases would be shelved by Big Pharma?

If profit was not the driving factor of agriculture; do you think that we could easily feed the population of the world?

If everyone on the planet never had to worry about shelter or having enough food to eat or clothes to wear, would having more than you need be a consideration?

The concept of “profit” is what is holding us back as a species. We have been indoctrinated into a short term “take what we can NOW” philosophy that is based on the fallacy of continuous growthand competition. I submit that we would be far better off if we forged our future by cultivating the creative use of our finite resources using a co-operative intellectual methodology.

Study after study has shown that the world’s hunger and housing problems could be solved very quickly if a certain amount of money where to be thrown at those two problems. Studies show ending world hunger would cost around 30 billion dollars per year (vs $684 billion for the 2010 U.S. military budget). The fact that we as a species have not eliminated hunger proves that this problem is actually being facilitated. Is that acceptable to you? If it is, then all of us (but the few of the elite at the top of the control pyramid) are doomed.

Profit stifles as much creativity as it generates. Just look at the alternate technologies that have been suppressed because they would have upset the current paradigm, technology such as almost free and truly sustainable energy and anti-gravity devices. If either of these technologies ever went main stream the oil economy would take a huge hit and there would be an immediate shift in the controlling power structure.

The concept of profit is the paradigm that must be shed in order for us to move forward as a compassionate, free and intelligent species. It is the concept of profit that is the shovel we use to dig our own graves.

“Problems are best solved not on the level where they appear to occur but on the next level above them….Problems are best solved by transcending them and looking at them from a higher viewpoint. At the higher level, the problems automatically resolve themselves because of that shift in point of view, or one might see there was no problem at all.” ~David R. Hawkins

Abandoning just one concept, the concept of profit and our species will thrive for centuries to come.

About the Author

Rod Morin operates Barrie Tai Chi & Qigong studio in Barrie, Ontario, Canada, focusing on Yang-style Tai Chi, Taiji Qigong and Ziran Qigong. Rod has taught hundreds of students basic tai chi and energy work while striving to incorporate the profound teachings of taiji philosophy into his daily life. Please visit his website at www.barrietaichi.com.

For more ideas and a potential solution to economic subjugation, please visit Secodnary Money System.

Sources:

– David R. Hawkins. 2009. Healing and Recovery. Sedona, AZ; Veritas Publishing, p. 176.

This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.

fr0om: http://themindunleashed.org/2014/11/time-new-monetary-system.html